18 THE CAP AND GOWN

Two couples and one pub....

Father Potter had been a stranger in the town until very recently and didn’t know much idea where to take a decent woman for a drink or two, and when he asked Sophia she immediately thought of her old university watering hole, a cosy and quaint old pub near Swanspottle.

“We came here when I was at Uni,” said Sophia to Father Peter Potter as they walked into The Cap and Gown, and it looked the sort of place students might favour, being within a spit of the county’s University. It was usually heaving with students during term time, all trying to outdo each other in all manner of fascinating ways, but this being the summer break there were very few customers in it.

“With, what’s her name, Mildred?” asked Peter

She nodded. “All the time,” she said, “whenever we could. Mildred loved it here...”

“I suppose it’s where you both met your various boyfriends...” he murmured, dropping the question almost casually into the conversation before going straight to the bar and ordering red wine for Sophia and beer for Himself.

She found a seat in a shallow alcove near the window, and waited for him. There was space for four in there, but it being the University’s summer break they were unlikely to be joined by strangers looking for somewhere to sit.

“There were two of us,” sighed Sophia in reply to his question, “and I wasn’t what you’d call a romantic back then, only I spent all my time admiring Mildred for being so outgoing. She loved life, did Mildred, and being a right brain box she could get away with spending more time enjoying herself that I could. I suppose I was a quiet little mousey creature back then, sitting in the corner, only I got on so well with Mildred even though she was the opposite of what I was. And she got on with me. I suppose we complemented each other, and even after Uni stayed the best of friends.”

“Tell me about her,” asked the priest, “I don’t want to pry, but I need to understand why Father Tinder was so against conducting her funeral. I’ve looked into his work, his papers and so on and even some of his sermons, and it seems he was a truly devout man with deeply held beliefs. The Pope would love him!”

“I’ve heard that he was more Christian than Christ,” agreed Sophia, “but personally I don’t know that much about him. I was brought up C of E, you know, but shook off the chains of religion when I was still in my teens. So did Mildred...”

“So why did she want a Catholic funeral?” asked Peter.

Sophia smiled at him, a little sadly, “I doubt she was in any condition to express a preference,” she said. “Didn’t you know that funerals are not so much for the dead but for those who are left behind? It was up to Jonathan, that’s her grieving husband, to choose the right funeral, and when he did it was the right funeral for him, not for her. She was dead. Nothing matters to you when you’re dead, does it?”

“Now you’re trying to shake what little faith I have left,” grinned the Priest.

“No I’m not. You are who you are. Enjoy your faith, use it as whatever it means to you, a crutch, maybe, in times of hardship or grief, but don’t expect everyone to feel the same.”

“I didn’t come out with you for a lesson in religion,” he laughed, “all I really want to know is was your late friend a bad girl? Is that why Tinder refused her in his church.”

“Oh, her coffin made it into church. It was then that he did his double-take and ordered it out,” Sophia told him, “and that was unforgivable.”

“But why did he do it?” asked Peter Potter.

“It’s too late to ask him, but I reckon that one of the congregation got at him,” sighed Sophia. “Look, can we get this out of the way and change the subject?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling faintly, “before we start on something else, one of the congregation got at him?”

“An elderly woman who thought she knew more than she did know. I’ve been told, and I’ve no proof, that she suggested that Mildred was the wrong sort for heaven, that she was too fond of men and physical stuff with men, even though I know for a fact that she never strayed, not once, during her marriage to Jonathan.”

“Okay. I get it. A bitchy old dame with too much time to think and not enough brain cells to do it with.”

Sophia sighed. “That sums her up pretty well,” she said quietly, “and according to rumour she was an eighty year-old virgin, if that helps. There are quite a few in small towns like Brumpton”

“Oh, well, it helps. It most certainly helps.”

“So what do you want to talk about that isn’t God?”

He smiled. A warm smile, thought Sophia, not calculating, but human. He might be a priest, but he was an all-right human being at the same time.

“Tell me about yourself,” she suggested.

“I will … but just a minute… isn't that woman over there the young constable who was with that insufferable police inspector?

He pointed towards the door and at the extremely attractive young woman who had just walked in.

oo0oo

“Where do you want to go?” asked Jonathan. The police constable had arrived and he was astounded at how good she looked, dressed simply in a black dress with just a small brooch to relieve the delicious monochrome. In fact, she looked beautiful. Spectacularly so.

“In my job a girl gets to be quite well known in the area where she works,” she said slowly, “how about a place I know that’s a bit out of town?”

“Might I know it?” he asked.

“Swanspottle way, not far from the University,” she said. “A place called the Cap and Gown. It’s busy when there are students everywhere, but during the summer it’s cosy and quiet.”

“I know it,” he sighed, “I went there with Mildred a few times over the years. She said she had old memories lingering there, like scabs on old sores and I was the right kind of ointment to get rid of them.”

“If it doesn’t bring back too many memories… is there anywhere else?”

“No, the Cap and Gown’s a nice enough place, and I guess I’ll see shadows of Mildred for the rest of my life. I don’t want to forget her, you know. She was … an angel.”

“But shadows can fade, with time,” she said softly.

“I know.”

“Come on then, and if you find everything, the memories, the old sores, too painful, there are other pubs!”

“It’ll be fine.”

Pamela had opted to drive, for two reasons. Firstly, she thought that Jonathan might want more to drink than was sensible and within the law, and secondly, she didn’t drink much herself anyway.

The Cap and Gown had a large car park for a pub that was really fairly small and there was only one other car in it, and Jonathan didn’t recognise it.

“It’s quiet here tonight,” he said, “almost spookily so. Come on. What’s your poison for when we get in?”

“Just a small white wine. And as I’m driving that’ll have to do for the evening. It’ll be pineapple juice after that.”

“We should have gone closer to home and got a taxi, then you could have lived it up a bit!”

“I’d probably have the same wherever we were, driving or not,” she said, “come on! A girl doesn’t have to be drunk to enjoy herself. I’ve seen enough young women dressed in nearly nothing and out of their minds, and very few of them are enjoying themselves. I’ve asked them next day, when they’ve been nursing sore heads.”

“In cells?”

She grinned at him. “Nah,” she said, “in their uniforms!”

She pushed the door open and walked in.

As indicated by the empty car park, the place was almost deserted except for a couple in an alcove near the window.

“Well well,” she said quietly to Jonathan, indicating the couple, “isn’t that the romantic novelist? And the Priest who was with her when she found the body? And doesn’t she look cute in black?”

© Peter Rogerson 24.01.19