12. Chinks of Darkness

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 12

“It looks really comfortable,” grinned the Reverend Jonah Pyke as he looked at the newly erected single bed in Roger’s bedroom.

It had been quite an adventure getting it to Empire Road. In the absence of anything motorised the vicar had coaxed Billy Cranver into lending his horse and cart for an hour that morning. Billy Cranver was a rag and bone man who plied his trade throughout Brumpton and who must have made a decent income judging from his spacious home despite the fact that his appearance was more that of a moneyless tramp than a business man. Yet rags and bones was his business and the truth was he managed very well on other people’s cast-offs.

“I’ll say an extra prayer for you if you help us hump it up the stairs,” promised Jonah once they’d taken it off the cart.

“Can’t buy hay for the nag with prayers,” growled Billy, but he helped anyway. It was only a single bed, the sort with a mesh of springs to rest the mattress on, and it was an easy task for two strong men and a woman.

When the bed was in Roger’s room and Jane had attended to sheets and blankets, she offered cups of tea all round, but Billy said he had no time for such luxuries if he was going to make the day’s pennies, and left them straight away, his horse clomping wearily away.

Which left Jane and Jonah, at the kitchen table with a tea pot and two cups.

“You’re my second male visitor today already,” Jane told him with the sort of smile that made her eyes twinkle.

“Really?” he asked with the hint of a frown clouding his features, “and who might my opposition be?”

“Now then,” she laughed, “who said anything about it being a competition?”

“Women are like that,” he growled, semi-seriously “they like to have armies of men ready to fall at their feet and … and you know what.”

“I know what? What do I know?” she asked, still twinkling.

“You were married. You understand the things married people get up to.”

“Oh, I suppose in your holier than thou way you’re referring to the marriage bed,” she said, quite brazenly, “a bit much for an unmarried clergyman to know anything about.”

That made him uncomfortable. “I suppose I do, in a roundabout way,” he mumbled.

“Roundabout?”

“Not every two people who share a bed at night are married, so I doubt that marriage bed is always the right name for it,” he said, awkwardly.

“I know that! There’s Betty and Roger for starters,” smiled Jane, “Betty’s a girl and Roger’s a boy and until this very day they were obliged to share a bed.”

“I meant adult,” he said, a shade irritably, “you must understand what I mean!”

She shook her head and poured two more cups of tea. “When I said you were the second person to enjoy a cup of my tea I wasn’t thinking of bedroom antics and the fun folk have between the sheets,” she said, firmly, “I was thinking about Mr Dimbleby from across the road. He had a fall last night after going to an army reunion and having, as he put it, one jar too many, and this morning he popped in to tell me why. He was in the army during the Boer War and got injured, and it was that injury that left him weakened so that after a wee dram he found himself falling down.”

“Oh.”

“And what’s more, he lost a very important part of him in that war. He told me. One of his testicles was destroyed when a bullet scorched into his groin area, and I gathered he almost died. That was the first thing that fighting in a war did for him. The second was it dictated what the rest of his life was going to be like. Single, lonely, friendless, except for an annual meeting with his comrades in arms. Even the lass he loved would have nothing to do with him when she saw the extent of his injury. He must have lowered his pants and showed her.”

“Poor man.”

“I bet someone told him that the fight that cost him so much in was for the right, and that God was on his side. They always say that, don’t they? The military men who hide behind the lines in offices with little risk to their own flesh, that God is on their side?”

“They abuse true faith,” agreed Jonah, nervously straightening his clerical collar. Jane couldn’t help noticing and wondered whether it was an indicator that not all was well with his own faith.

“You have a problem?” she asked.

“My entire life is dedicated to my calling,” he said slowly, “as was my father’s, but it twisted him. He saw his god as a cruel and demanding creator, one without forgiveness in his heart. And in a way that ruined his life. He met my mother even though he looked on women as the fountain of all sin, married her, they had me and from that moment I guess they started to drift apart. I have no siblings, which suggests something.”

She nodded. “That is sad if they wanted more but none turned up,” she agreed.

“It’s just that there are so many interpretations of God it seems we must all pick our own,” he said, frankly, “and I choose a deity with love in his heart. Maybe because my father was the exact opposite. And my father got his comeuppance when my mother ran off with the window cleaner!”

“I hope she was happy.”

“I don’t know. He never mentioned her after she had gone, and I was away at college and quite clueless about what was going on.”

“Well, my George’s interpretation of God was that he was a character from a pre-historic fairy tale who’s overstayed his welcome,” said Jane, “but I was brought up to revere Heaven and Hell and all the angels. So I say my prayers, though some of George’s doubts make sense to me.”

“And those prayers have been answered. You’ve got Roger’s bed!”

“You’re right, if the bed was included in my prayers, but I doubt it,” smiled Jane.

“I want to believe completely in what I preach,” sighed the vicar, adjusting his collar again, “but there are chinks of darkness where doubt sometimes creeps in…”

Jane was feeling uncomfortable. Where, she wondered, was all this leading? Chinks of doubt? He was a vicar capable of haranguing his congregation at great length if he detected anything like a chink of doubt!

“Which brings me to Roger’s bed,” he said nervously, “it belonged to a parishioner whose son died before his time, very sadly. And she gave the bed to me knowing I would pass it on to the right person, a god-fearing widow in real need.”

“Did the boy die in the bed?” asked a horrified Jane.

He shook his head. “No. Have no fear about that! He was a victim of a lightning strike. He died several years ago, directly hit by a falling tree while he was staying with his grandparents and actually sleeping in a different bed. The house was damaged and it collapsed, and they all died, and it was a tragic loss of life.”