29. A Likely Meeting

It seems likely there might be a meeting between one of the Scumnag bank robbers and the vicar who was accused of it.

The Scumbag parents, Dirk and Penny, had been asked to see the medical staff at Brumpton hospital when they called to collect their boys because one of them wasn’t responding to treatment and they were concerned that he might have rattled his brain against his skull causing bruising when he had been involved in the accident with Bishop Pyke’s car.

Doctor Rogers looked at them, her expression serious. They were an odd looking pair. The woman, Denise, the Scumbag boys’ mother, looked no older that thirty, though she must have been nearer forty and Matthew, the Scumbag father, who looked as if the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders.

“We’ve got a problem with one of your lads.” she said quite seriously, “Young Gozza, bless him, doesn’t seem to be responding to treatment.”

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Denise Scumbag.

“We’re not quite sure. We’ve scanned him and there’s no fracture to the skull and no unwanted bleeding of the brain, but he does seem to be probably bruised up there.”

“But you’re a hospital! You mend people!” protested Matthew.

“Mr Scumbag, the brain is a very delicate organ,” explained May Rogers, “and experience has taught us that the best cure for him is complete rest. It’s what his body is trying to get! But his brother gets in the way…”

“Well Gozza always could sleep for England,” murmured Denise with a pleasant if not knowing smile, “Many’s the time I’ve told him to wake up and shake himself or he’ll take root. And Jed can be the lively sort. He’s got a heart of gold, but he is all go!”

“I had noticed,” smiled Doctor Rogers, “but let me get to the point. It doesn’t seem likely that Gozza will get the total peace and quiet he needs at home with his brother around, but there is a place we can send him to for a week or two where he will be guaranteed a decent chance for any bruising to go down with no need for surgery. I’m afraid it’ a few miles away. It’d known as the Cowslip retreat.”

“I’ve heard of that place!” almost exploded Matthew, “it’s run be monks, ain’t it? All god-botherers.”

“That’s probably why it’s so ideal. They wouldn’t be in a position to bother your lad if they’re on their knees praying all the time, would they?” asked the doctor, “ but that isn’t my point. They have a small and quite exclusive section for teenage boys. Not girls, so a handsome lad like Gozza would be safe from too much girl action And he’d be free to get enough rest that a boy of his age can get without going mad! And the good news is it wouldn’t cost you a penny even though it’s not on the NHS. There’s a well qualified nurse there and the place is run as a charity. You can take your lad today if you’d like to satisfy yourselves that he’s settled in comfortably, and is quite happy.. And it might do his more lively brother a good turn finding himself on his own with nobody to bounce his ideas off.”

“And it’s free?” Denise needed reassurance that the treatment of her son wouldn;t bite into the family savings, not that there was much set aside for anything less mundane than merely living.

“Oh yes, quite free,” confirmed Doctor Rogers, wondering how ill their son would have to be before they found a single penny piece to help him.

“Then I say give it a go,” said Matthew, the expression on his face showing relief that one of his ,little terrors would be out of his hair for at least a week

Meanwhile at the Retreat Emma was determined that she was going to do something to shake her employer who was also the vicar of her local church out of what she looked on as an unnecessary bout of self-imposed misery. After all, she had worked for him in his parsonage and he’d always seemed contented with life and as happy as a man in his position could be. Not that she’d got to know him well, she was aware of that. Yet, during th years she’d dusted and cooked for him there had been something about him she had found attractive.

Without a husband at home, Ralf being deceased before she’d almost accidentally found employment at the parsonage, there had been an increasingly uncomfortable vacuum in her life. Ralf had been a loving and caring husband, and she missed that. Maybe, it might have crossed her mind, the vicar, this Reverend Barney Pickle, might make up in some way for her loss.

Now she had him in the same room as herself, and he was sitting on the edge of his bed and not looking at her at all.

“What have I done wrong, Barney?” she asked “for you to treat me like this? I’ve slaved away for you for more years than I care to think of and you’ve never got near to paying me anything like the going rate!”

Barney looked shocked and shook his head. “It’s not you, Emma,”he said quietly. it’s the bank robbing boy. I just happened to be in the bank trying to withdraw enough money to pay you for my underpants that you so kindly bought from the shops for me, sorry to mention such a garment. I was almost ten pounds short and there wasn’t enough in my account, and then two lads came in a pretended to rob the bank with a pretty convincing drawing of a shot gun.”

“I know, and that daft copper thought it was you,” smiled Emma. “the story went round the town,”.

“And they arrested me and took me to court and then on remand to prison!” he exclaimed. “All because two hooligans were playing th silliest of silly games. And then just back there I learned one of them is coming here.”

“So that’s what’s got onto your mind. Surely, Barney, you can use this as an opportunity to put the boy onto the right path if he’s gone astray,” suggested Emma, “it’s what you church men do.”

“But he sent me to… to prison!”

And suddenly she saw the hurt in his eyes, the agonised way he tried to see into own mind and discover whether it was hatred or merely dislike that simmered away in there.

“And it’s nothing to do with the things you said your father taught you?” she asked, “you know, about the very worst sins in the universe? The ones that you believe lurk inside your underwear?”

There was despair in his eyes, now.

“There’s that too,” he moaned, “I’ll never be forgiven! Not in a dozen eternities, the way you saw the forbidden parts of me when my zip flew open! I know that there’s huge sin there, for sure. Let me give you my perspective, Emma.

“When I was, what, about ten years old, my school short trousers lost a button on the fly. For some reason I had buttons up the front when most kids had zip fasteners, but my dad thought that zips were too risky in a world where mechanical things can go wrong. Anyway, he noticed my missing button before I did, and he beat me black and blue for the sin of almost exposing myself. If I’d actually done it, let my you-know-what pop out, then I’m sure he would have actually killed me...do you see how that fear can lunger for a very long time… the fear of hell because of my sins, the fear of death if things got any worse.”

It upset Emma when she heard that and she put one arm round his shoulder. ““I’ll try to understand” she said, “but it’s all so alien to the life I’ve lived, me on my own and me with Ralf who, if what tour father taught you had any truth behind it, is writhing in fiery hell as punishment for the number of times he… you can guess the rest.”

“But you don’t thing he is? In hell, I mean?

“He was a good man. A very good man, in fact, and if he’s anywhere at all it will be somewhere just as good. But then, he couldn’t see much sense in heaven and hell and all that… nonsense, he called it.”

“Oh no, Emma… oh no… Poor Ralf,” he wept, “he should have met my father.”

“Goodness me no!” exclaimed Emma, “because it he had my bairns would never have been born, and then, where would the human race be?”

© Peter Rogesron, 03.05,24