THE LAST MONK 4

A new character arrives, but is it really Betty's mother?

THE LAST MONK

4.

The man the nurse or whatever he was called an Inspector looked at me and gently shook her head, and I got the same feeling I used to get at the beginning of my life when Celestial had tried to teach me reading and I got muddled and made mistakes. He could be patient with me, could Celestial, and I hoped that this Inspector would be equally understanding of my very obvious limitations. After all, I had seen more people in this hospital in one day than I had seen in total all the rest of my life. I had only known three monks, and already I was aware that there were ten times than number of people in the world, people I had never imagined might exist. It was an unfolding revelation.

The Inspector walked up to where I lay and looked down at me.

Then he spoke.

“Let me explain,” she said, her voice oozing patience. ”My name is Inspector Appleby, but you can call me Daniel if you find it easier. My job is to find out how you came to be where you were and see if I can reunite you with your family, if that’s what you want, of course. Is that all right?”

I didn’t know whether it was all right or not. But as for my family, I could help him out there because I had none. Not since the only three men I had ever known had walked, of their own accord and separately, down the steps leading to the tomb where I was told they would be gathered by Satan and sent to an Afterlife that reflected that devil’s opinion of the way they’d lived their lives.

It was very sketchy, probably because I had never liked thinking about it, but in no way did it have anything to do with what I understood by the word family.

“I have no family,” I told him, tearing my mind away from tombs and Satan, “there were three monks, but they are all gone to the Afterlife. I saw them go when their time was up.”

“Yes. My forensic team found remnants, some of them recent, I’m sorry to say, of three men, middle aged, and apparently quite happy to lie in stone coffins down there. But they’re not your family unless one of them sired you. The fact is, the words ‘our family’ means parents, blood relatives, maybe even offspring, that sort of thing, and not necessarily a group of eccentric monks.”

Parents? Who gave this woman the right to talk filthy like that? My mother was a w***e, I know that, and any other relative I might have is totally unknown to me. I have heard the word father but have no idea what it can mean other than a way of talking about Satan.

“What is sired?” I asked for wont ao any words to fill a growing void of silence. She looked at me, smiled faintly, and replied

“Fathered,” she explained, “the man who provided the genetic material for half of you,” he added, obviously intent on being plain and not looking as if he was trying to insult me even though that’s exactly what he was doing.

“I was told,” I said a little hesitantly because all this looking back over my life was brand new to me, “I was told… that I was born in the monastery and that my mother was what August, the first of the three monks to go to their tomb, called a w***e.”

“We know of your mother,” he said, looking as if he might have more to add but not sure whether he should, “and she is a decent woman who is interested in what has happened t you.”

“Why should I be told she was a w***e ansd that she died when I was born?” I asked, “unless it was true, unless that’s what she was. The monks were not the kind of people to tell lies because they believed in Satan and they believed in truth.”

“Look, Betty, I can call you that, can I?”

“It’s my name,” I confirmed, “so of course you can.”

“Then I will. Betty, there are many more questions I must ask you and quite a few more answers I require of you. We will leave what needs to be done for the moment and when the nurses and doctors are sure you’re fit and well, we will carry on at the police station, where I will appoint a solicitor to assist you.”

“What’s a solicitor?” I asked.

“A man of the law. Who can make sure you aren’t asked any wrong questions.”

I shrugged. “Then you must do it,” I said, “and I must do as you say. Are all girls as bossy as you?”

He smiled at me. “That’s one thing you will have to get straight,” he said, “the gender thing. I, dear Betty, am a man and you, dear Betty, are quite a pretty young woman. Once you understand that you will find me an easier person to talk to.”

There was much that I could say to that, but being referred to as a woman was enough to put the shutters down on my mental blinds. I knew what I was, what I have always been, ever since I was a boy.

“I am not a young woman!” I protested, “I am a man. Everyone with eyes must know that!”

“We’ll get that sorted in good time,” he told me, “and until then I will leave you in the competent hands of the nurse.”

And he went out of my space, just like that, leaving me in my comfortable bed trying to work out why he’d insulted me like he had. After all, I can’t have said anything tp upset him, can I?

“He’s not a nice person,” I told the nurse, avoiding a gender noun and using the general word person, and she smiled at me.

“They speak vey highly of him,” she said, “at the police station, I mean. They say he is understanding and always gets his man!”.

“Speak highly of her!” I spat, angrier than I could remember ever having been in my life before then.

I could see the nurse was ready to question me when the door was flung open and a man stormed in. I think that’s the right way for me to describe what happened. The door opened with a bang that I could feel as it collided with the table by my bed, and in stormed an apparently angry man

!”ust a minute,” said the nurse, if that’s what he was, firmly, “madam, I must ask you to leave! This woman needs her rest!”

“This woman?” almost screeched the interloper, and she stared me full in the face, and then her features relaxed.

“It is you, isn’t it, Betty?” she asked, “Betty, the name I gave you twenty two years ago, when I gave birth to you?”

TO BE CONTINUED...

© Peter Rogerson 08.08.23

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Reviews

[Ruthies]

.....more puzzled....awesome reading though....