CHOWCHOW AND A PRIEST

The monkey is still in the old church

The Reverend Peter Pringle had never been sure which direction was up and which was down. He knew that sinners went down, very, very deep down to where it was mind-blowingly hot, and he also knew that certain activities of a carnal nature made you into a sinner, but he enjoyed the sinful things. In fact, he was known to be willing to misbehave in a sinfully carnal way with anything that had a pulse.

He couldn’t help it, he told himself, it was God’s will. For God had created him, God was his guide and mentor and if God insisted that he dallied with an angel in a short skirt, who was he to refuse? It would be sinful to refuse, wouldn’t it? Or a long skirt. It wasn’t the skirt but the angel herself that he loved to dally with, though if asked for a preference he would have admitted to short, the shorter the better.

And it was with thoughts of Jeanette or Beryl or Artemis or little Annie uppermost on his mind that he stood by his altar and flicked a duster over the shiny brass bits (his cleaner had suffered enough from his affliction and had resigned, possibly pregnant) when he was sure he could detect an unfamiliar odour amongst the well-known air-born debris of the ages.

It was a far from pleasant smell. It spoke of dirty flesh, filthy hair and possibly even lice. And although he could tolerate most odours (Jeanette’s feet or Beryl’s underwear came to mind) this was one that made him retch. It needed removing from his heavenly church, and with the absence of a cleaning lady he knew that he had to do it himself.

His nose guided him.

He sniffed, and detected a possible source for the stench. It seemed to be centred at the back of the church, in what had always been a quiet corner where few sat on the pews because the acoustics of the place, designed before acoustics were understood properly, were rather poor.

The Reverend Peter Pringle sighed. What could it be? It smelled as if if might involve death, and the only death he could tolerate had to be in a coffin. Then it was all right even though he was sometimes wary of juices dripping out. But it might not be actual death but something on its way to the Hereafter. An old tramp, maybe … there were plenty of those around since the country he was happy to call home had proclaimed itself to be among the richest nations on Earth.

The stink persisted, and he knew he had to investigate. It was, after all, his own church that was smelling.

So arming himself with an ornate candlestick that didn’t weigh anything like its appearance suggested it might, and he made his way along the central aisle until he came to the last row of pews, and he peered along them, ready to admit his own failure as a man and run away. But all he could see was an untidy lump of something that was breathing at the far end, and from what he could see it wasn’t human.

It was gazing to the front of the church, where the rising sun was like a star from Heaven as it found its multicoloured way through an image on the stained glass window. The ancient glass picture portrayed a star over a stable, a huge and glittering star, and as good fortune would have it the rising sun exactly illuminated that star, giving it an unearthly brilliance.

Chowchow stared motionlessly at that star, marvelling at its splendour and at the same time remember tales told by the ancients back home, of Chimpo’s gods and their lights in the skies.

Meanwhile, the Reverend Peter Pringle stared at the monkey with as much concentration as it stared at the stained glass nativity. He’d seen images of such creatures in books.

So what was it?

He searched his brain for possibilities and it didn’t take long to remember one.

During the long period of history when mankind had a greater respect for their Lord and Master there had been speculations of a most vivid sort concerning the appearance of satanic beasts ready to corrupt innocent mankind. They had unnatural horns, vicious incisors that didn’t fit comfortably in their mouths and the kind of tail that might belong to anything satanic.

Was this one of those?

“Oh Lord,” he whispered to himself, “if this be a creature from the depths, an incubus designed by thy foul enemy to corrupt incorruptible me, then tell me what I should do...”

He wasn’t surprised when his Lord remained silent because that’s what his majesty normally did in response to a Pringle prayer. Answers came in non-verbal ways, like a suddenly hooting owl, falling masonry where it shouldn’t be falling or a jerk in his awkward right knee.

Sometimes he had to wait quite a time for such a reply to an urgent prayer, so he started waiting.

And Chowchow (for that was the reality of his incubus) woke up, stretched a little, yawned and saw the good vicar standing staring at him with a mixture of horror and patient waiting etched on his face.

There was no way the weirdly dressed man of God was going to understand anything that Chowchow said to him, and Chowchow’s own vocabulary was barely a language at all, but more a series of grunts, squeals and whistles which only a handful of his chums four and half million years ago could begin to understand. But he spoke anyway, and the response he received was what he expected.

The white-surpliced man of God ignored everything he clicked and grunted about, and backed nervously away before daring a few words of his own.

“Oh Lord,” he proclaimed, “advise me what to do! There is a foul fiend from the greatest depths in front of me, and I fear I might do the wrong thing. Will it please you if I bonk it on its hairy head with a candlestick?”

His Lord was quite clear about what he should do. There was a slight vibration in the air (a consequence of a diesel roller trundling past on the road outside, but he didn’t know that) and a voice, clear and pure as an angel’s, probably because it belonged to Artemis Jones, one of his personal angels, chirruped “what in the Heavens are you doing with that candlestick, Father?”

He wasn’t of the Roman church, so he wasn’t a father, but he chose to ignore that as he pointed towards Chowchow and said in as normal a voice as possible (which wasn’t normal at all) “we have a visitor and it might bite me...”

“Oh, the monkey! I’ve heard about that,” replied Artemis, “in fact my daughter’s friend knows all about it! Here, I’ll ring her, she might know what to do.”

And Artemis the lovely dialled a number on her phone and asked for Sally.

© Peter Rogerson 21.11.19