4. Time to Remember David

THE SANDS OF TIME Part 4

Gavin Hobson watched the retired police superintendent as he shuffled off, leaving him alone in the café.

“A friend of yours?” asked the woman serving, a cheery blond he thought might be somewhere in her twenties, with long hair that she displayed over one shoulder even though he thought it might be more hygienic if she tied it behind her, out of the way. That was the policeman still in him, caring for the safety of his fellow man like he always had.

“Not at all,” he replied, “he seemed to think he knew me, but maybe he didn’t.”

“He comes here sometimes,” she told him, smiling as if the whole world encompassed one big joke which only she was privy to. “He was a copper, you know, before he retired. I’ll bet he was a strict one, locking toe-rags up where they ought to be, behind bars. We need more like him and we’d all be safer on the street.”

Gavin shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t in the mood for a conversation, least of all with a pretty blond with hair like she had.

“I don’t know him,” he repeated.

“But he knows you all right,” she told him, “he said he knew you of old. He said you’d find out soon enough. I reckon you might have been one of the toe-rags he chased to gaol in the past. Did he lock you up? Were you in prison because of him? Did you spend half your life behind bars wishing you’d been a good boy?”

“I don’t like you and the things you say,” he said, trying to make his voice snap, but failing. Instead he sounded more like a grumpy old fart with one foot in the grave, and he knew it.

“Sorry!” she replied, “just making friendly conversation, that’s all.”

“Then I’ll bid you goodbye!” he retorted, and he stood up, aware the he didn’t look or feel anywhere near as sprightly as he would have liked. But that was old age, being ninety one, and doubtless on his way out of the world and out of life, not that he actually felt it.

“Miserable old sod!” she muttered. He heard but ignored it because she was young and probably vital, and if he was anything at all he was a miserable old sod. She was right.

It’s a pity she wasn’t a young man, handsome, reeking of testosterone like the boys he’d taught before they’d sacked him for wanting to keep them on the straight and narrow.

He tottered along the beach, not going far before he found somewhere to sit, on ancient boulder smoothed to comfort by millennia of waves washing over it, and he cautiously lowered himself onto it. He’d had few less comfortable seats, but beggars can’t be choosers, and he was a beggar when it came to where he sat.

What was the name of that old fellow, the one who had as good as threatened him? Desmond something-or-other.

He remembered a boy called Desmond from way back when he was still ruler of the roost in his classroom, with its portraits of monarchs on display for the boys to admire and learn how to live from. Even good queen Bess was there, the so-called virgin queen, and he would have liked her. Admired her, even. She knew what she wanted, and she took it and it struck Gavin that if she’d wanted a man she would have taken him, so it stood to reason that a man was something she didn’t want.

Like he didn’t want a woman. He’d had one once, and he shuddered when he remembered her. But a boy was a different kettle of fish altogether. There had been David, still alive and well in his head when he got maudlin. In his vestry, dressing and undressing, showing his firm limbs to anyone who cared to look as long as that anyone was him.

And it wasn’t just his limbs. David knew what Gavin liked to admire and although it was both illegal and a sin, he let him.

David had been like him. They’d shared the same thoughts and needed the same things. Until David had done the worst possible thing and started, what did they call it back then, walking out with a woman.

And it hadn’t been any woman either. It had been the winner of the local town beauty competition, she called herself Daisy Delight of all things, the lass who’s paraded herself in a pageant, almost naked. But then, lots of young women had been happy to be almost naked back then. The fashion had been very much mini skirt or mini dress, and it had been disgraceful. They showed their flesh as if it was the right thing to do, and it was plain as a pikestaff to him it wasn’t anything of the sort.

And David, that lovely, beautiful young man, had fallen into their trap and started courting one of them! In his dog collar, too!

What had that policeman said? That they'd found him in his grave? That they’d dug him up? How dared they!

His mind roamed over the moment when a great deal of Gavin’s life had collapsed into itself in an orgy of anger and regret.

“But I thought you were mine,” he had said to the young vicar when he’d just mentioned the girl in his life, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. “I thought it would always be us, just the two of us alone in the world with your God looking on.”

“He’s your god too, Gav,” David had said, trying to avoid what was bound to be coming. There was nobody in that vestry, just the two of them, and David was fully dressed, not even teasing him dressed only in his underpants like he sometimes did, as if to say see what you’re missing unless you’re a really good boy and earn it.

“I do love you, Dave…”

There, he’d said it, the truth that had lingered at the edge of their times together, unspoken by either of them, but nonetheless the one overpowering truth they both knew existed.

Or did they?

“Love?” asked David, “I love my Lord. I love Jesus, and, yes, I like you, you’re my friend, but love? Never in a million years!”

The statue, a crucified Christ, had been heavy, very heavy, it was solid metal, but he had reached for it where it stood on a cupboard for safety, lifted it up and then, crash, he’d brought it down on David’s head

He had strength enough to do that. Thrashing boys had kept his muscles toned up, and he had gently put the statue down next to where his friend lay on the vestry floor and smiled at David.

“Did your god like that, my love?” he asked, taunting him, not believing he was doing anything but pretending to be unconscious. After all, he hadn’t even meant to hurt him, and it had been a statue of David’s saviour, the one he loved, apparently, even though he wasn’t allowed to love a real living mortal man like himself.

But David had never said another word, and the blood that formed a pool had been frightening.

He’d known he had to get out of that vestry. But David couldn’t actually be dead, could he? Maybe he should check… maybe he should touch the precious flesh of the one he’d always loved, and always would love, and feel for a pulse.

But no! He couldn’t put a finger near flesh now the life might have gone out of it. He stood there, staring at the fallen men of God, both of them, and his heart froze inside him.

Then he acted.

Without making a sound even though he wanted to weep like he’d never wept before, he made his way out of the vestry and into the church’s small graveyard, with ancient graven monuments to the dead, some crazed and cracked and fallen, others covered in moss or lichen or something green There hadn’t been room for new bodies for years, which is why the town had a municipal cemetery not so far away.

“Help!” he called to a passing PC Plod, “I heard a terrible noise from in there.” He pointed to the vestry door.

“What sort of noise, sir?”

“Like something falling, and a thud as if it had fallen on flesh!”

And that was believed. The statue of Christ had fallen from the top of a cupboard where it was assumed it always stood, and the poor reverend David Hobson had unfortunately been in the way. Passing heavy traffic was blamed, the church and its vestry being elderly buildings and prone to shaking if the foundations were disturbed by traffic hurtling by.

Gavin grinned sadly, sitting there on that smooth rock. It had been believed. Experts had said that it was quite possible and that as nobody held a grudge against the vicar there can’t have been thieves or murderers about and if there had been wouldn’t they have stolen the valuable statue that had crushed a good man’s skull? So it must be an accident.

Or, thought Gavin mischievously, an act of God.

But now, it seemed, an elderly retired policeman thought he knew different.

© Peter Rogerson 10.03.22

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