9 THE VISITORS

Two visitors for the Priest

“What are you going to say to him?” asked Constance of the library for what must have been the hundredth time as the two women paused at the wrought iron gate of the Presbytery.

“I’m going to apologise to him if he thinks it might have been me that sent his heart into override,” replied Sophia, “though in all truth he deserved to hear a lot more than what I said outside the theatre. But I won’t go into that!”

“You were upset over the funeral that wasn’t,” pointed out Constance, “and I must say I can’t blame you.”

“It was still fresh on my mind,” admitted Sophia.

Constance smiled at her and squeezed her by one hand. “It’s over and done with,” she said quietly, “Come on then. As long as we don’t upset him again.”

The two women pushed the presbytery gate open and started walking down the long path that led to its large front door.

oo0oo

Father Samuel Tinder was peeping out of his window from behind the curtain. It was still light outside, and would be for some hours yet, and two women were hovering near his gate as though they intended to open it.

It’s that woman who helped me in the library, the librarian, he thought to himself, what can she want?

He didn’t have an immediate answer to that question, and he watched the two women as they continued to talk to each other, and then one of them pushed his gate open.

So they do want to come here. Oh dear me… what have I done? The thought raced through his mind, uncontrolled.

He made sure that he was well behind the curtain and hidden, he hoped, from view. He stared out as they paused part way down his path, then one of them turned to the other, and they started talking again.

He would have loved to hear what they were saying, but his double glazing cut out all but the loudest sounds from the world outside.

Good Lord, what do they want? The question was half to himself and half prayer.

But the good Lord’s reply, if it existed, was totally inaudible.

oo0oo

Constance pulled Sophie by one arm.

“What if he’s still too weak to talk to us? What if he has another heart attack, and it’s down to us calling? What if he … dies on us?” she asked.

Sophie looked shocked at the suggestion.

“He was let out of hospital because he got upset by indigestion, and nobody dies of that!” she said, somewhat scornfully. “Look, I’m treating this as background for my new novel, call it research if you like. So we’ll be nice as pie to him if that’s what you want.”

“Are you really writing about a priest?”

Sophia nodded. “I like the idea,” she said quietly, “a Priest, I should imagine, is almost a perfect human being with few of the nasty habits that quite a lot of men suffer from, like cursing and drinking.”

“There are some nice men who aren’t Priests,” Constance told her, “there must be!”

“I know there are, but a novel’s not real life, yet it’s got bits of real life in it,” said Sophia, maybe a little haughtily because she thought she knew her subject. “I want my Priest to be so dedicated to his faith that he has no time for anything else until a maiden in distress comes along!”

“And then what? Time for bed?”

“Not quite. You know my books. But my Priest is going to be a lonely sort of man, not much time for people in general let alone women. No friends and no lovers. And poor man, at least to start with, is celibate.”

“Poor man indeed,” grunted Constance, “come on, then… your research awaits!”

The two women continued down the path.

oo0oo

Bother! I hoped they were going to turn back! Maybe they’re not quite sure how well I am…

He was reasonably well and without the inconvenience of a Bishop pouring the waters of doubt upon the fires of his faith he felt ready to face most things.

After all, he only had himself to care for. He remembered what the doctor had told him in the hospital ward. The old man in the opposite bed apparently had a senile wife somewhere, a senile wife whose very existence was daily breaking his heart because, despite her weakness he still loved her and yet would probably never see her again. And if he did she wouldn’t know him.

That’s no way to spend the last bit of your life, he thought, and although he couldn’t empathise with the elderly man he most certainly could sympathise.

His mind was briefly dragged back to his own parents, both dead now, and how they had seemed to grudgingly care for each other. They had given him the impression they only stayed together because being together was a habit they couldn’t break. If they’d actually loved each other they’d kept it secret.

The old man in the hospital hadn’t been like his father, yet he might have been happier if he had been. Love, apparently, was both a friend and a curse. His own love was of his God, and he wasn’t quite sure what that really entailed, being a friend or a curse?

He leaned closer to the window, still behind the curtain, and watched as the two women passed out of sight, to his left.

oo0oo

“He’s looking!” whispered Sophia to Constance, “see that curtain there! It’s got a man-shaped bulge in it, and it just twitched!”

“So it has! He’s watching us! So we can hardly turn back now without looking daft. I tell you what, I’ll remind him that I’m the librarian and ask him if there are any books we ought to get for the library. That’s the kind of opening that might put him off his guard.”

“Why should he be on his guard?” asked Sophia.

“You know what I mean. It’s just a saying, and he has been ill.”

“Okay. Come on then.”

The two women reached the front door.

The Presbytery had been built over a century earlier, and had a neo-Gothic look common to other pompous buildings of the Victorian age, and the door fitted in well. It was wood, unpainted though no doubt well varnished, and had a huge knocker in the shape of what was probably a Saint’s head, in the middle of it. Fortunately, though, there was a modern doorbell to one side of the door frame, and Sophia pressed it.

The sound of a modern bell came to them faintly from within.

They didn’t have to wait long, and the door slowly opened.

oo0oo

The bell rang, a sudden intrusion into the quiet calm of his beloved presbytery, and Samuel sighed.

I’d better go and open it and see what they want, he muttered to himself.

He probably wouldn’t have seemed particularly sprightly to a casual observer, but he was fast for him as he made his way to the front door, which blocked one end of a badly illuminated passage from which several doors led to the main downstairs rooms of the building. A stranger would probably have found it dull and unwelcoming, but he loved the sober introduction to his little corner of creation.

He opened the door. He had to open it slowly because that’s the way it wanted to be opened. He could feel the enormous weight of the thing and he could hear the way its Victorian hinges and the several layers of varnish that had seeped into them over many decades protested at anything faster than slow.

The two women stood there. He recognised the library woman first because she had been most helpful when he’d been trying to research the good Samaritan and find out whether it was at all possible for females to play that role in life. Then he recognised the good Samaritan herself, and his heart gave a friendly thump, not threatening like it had outside the theatre, but almost pleasant. The feeling was brand new to him, and troubling.

“Can I help you?” he asked in his best sermon voice, a bit like a rumble from beyond the grave, a slice of sound from the heavens themselves.

“We’ve called to ask you a question,” said a nervous Constance, “about library books,” she added.

He cleared his throat. Then, “you’d better come in,” he said.

He’d rarely said that to ladies calling. Even as a busy Priest it took a lot of courage for ladies to voluntarily ring his bell, and when they did he showed them into his office. He kept a distance between his home and his work, not from choice but because that was the way things were. Most weeks the only woman going anywhere near his home was the cleaning lady who did for him, and sometimes she would be there doing her thing and he never even saw her until she searched him out for her wages.

”This way,” he said, and might have led them into his office, but he didn’t. He led them into his front room where the comfortable chairs and settees were.

“How can I help you?” he repeated when they were seated.

© Peter Rogerson 15/01/19