31. The Change

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

With the boy being quite clearly dead, the Bishop has another problem...

“What’s that?” demanded DI Glumpy from his seat next to the slumping Gozza, “You say he’s dead? I was talking to me just a few seconds ago! He can’t be dead! I won’t allow that he is!”

“What you will or won’t allow is irrelevant,” the doctor told him rather bluntly, “the poor lad has no pulse and doesn’t seem to be breathing, and that is that!”

“But what happened to him?” demanded Bishop Pyke, “healthy young lads don’t pop their clogs for no good reason, I mean they don’t pass into the hereafter, just like that!”

“He had quite a serious knock to his head,” reminded the doctor, “and it seemed his character changed, from being lively, almost as lively as his brother, to being sleepy and appearing to be out of it most of the time. That’s why he’s come here, for goodness’ sake, to get the rest he needs in order to recover.”

At this point Father Teatrader reached the car and in a hastily whispered but slightly slurred voice Bishop Pyke told him what had happened.

“Then I’ll pray for him!” announced the Father, “in fact, we’ll all pray for him. But first, let’s get him indoors. It looks like rain, and being out in the rain and getting soaked to the skin is no way for a youngster like him to meet his maker.”

He signalled to someone they couldn’t see, and as if by magic two or three of his junior colleagues appeared, carrying between them a stretcher.

“We didn’t know whether he would be asleep when you arrived here as we were told he had a sort of sleeping sickness,” explained Teatrader, “hence the stretcher being on hand.”

The rain forecast by Father Teatrader started with a vengeance, lashing down suddenly out of a sky but moments earlier had been blue and fairly clear. It was through a downpour that Gizza Scumbag was carried into the Retreat, he being covered with a waterproof blanket whilst the rest of the party became suddenly and unexpectedly soaked.

Father Teatrader led them into the hospital wing of the Retreat, not so much a wing as a couple of small rooms and a medicine cupboard,, one of the rooms containing two beds whilst the other was a consulting room used by Mother Nurse when she doubled as the chief medic of the place.

He was gently transferred from the stretcher to one of the beds, and Father Teatrader ordered one of the brothers to fetch the Reverend Barney Pickle as he was the closest thing to an actual ordained clergyman for miles.

“Any of my brothers and even I could officiate, but it would be best if a man with a collar performed the transfer of the poor boy into the balmy lands of Heaven,” he said, “pardon me, Bishop, but you don’t seem to be in any fit state to oblige our Lord at the moment.”

He wasn’t. Even when he had been driving he had been taking surreptitious sips from a flask that he knew contained good Scotch whisky, and since the announcement that Gozza Scumbag had stopped breathing he had found an excuse to empty it. Feeling a great deal better he nodded his head and wondered if he could trust himself to talk clearly and decided not to take the risk.

The Scumbag lad looked truly at peace where he lay, his pale face turned towards the light in the room and with an almost angelic appearance giving his the appearance of one who could do no wrong. But he was clearly dead. Even two of the brothers who had helped with the stretcher and who had never as yet come face to face with death could see that. Their faces told the story of their own discomfort

“Dear Lord!” murmured the Reverend Barney Pickle as he entered the room having been summoned, “what happened to the boy?”

“He was involved in a quarrel with a motor the other day vehicle and it has taken this long for the true effect to be felt,” explained the DI.

“It may be his brain was bleeding,” suggested Mother Nurse.

“That is quite likely,” agreed Doctor Blanding, “I’ve seen it before. It’s not exactly rare.”

“Oh dear,” murmured the DI, and he looked the Bishop firmly in the eye. “You know ahtt his means, Jossop, don’t you?”

“Do I?” asked Bishop Pyke, actually managing two words without slurring them.

“This boy held the bank up, and I got blamed for it,” put in Barney Pickle, “they even sent me to gaol because of it! So I can’t say that I’m sorry to see him departing this life.”

“Now them sir, be Christian,” suggested the Father Teatrader, “we have before us a soul who was lost in this world, who probably had no honest influence on him from the day he was born, so is it any surprise to we who had good parents to guide us, that he has a reputation that appears to be soiled?”

“Hear hear!” burbled the Bishop.

“The less said by you. The better,” hissed DI Glumpy in his ear, “when we get out of here I’ll drive your car and as we motor along I’ll have to arrest you for causing death by dangerous driving, and I’m sorry but now that the boy has passed away there’s nothing else I can do.”

The enormity of his problem hit the Bishop, and he crumpled onto the bed next to Gozza Scumbag’s cooling body.

“This is all getting to be quite a problem,” decided Father Teatrader, “it needs sorting out. I suggest we leave the boy here in peace, for he’s in no position to make any judgement himself, and retire to my office and maybe have a drop of something that will focus our minds. I have some excellent elderflower tincture. It reaches those places that other tinctures can’t. I swear by it A few drops of that will reach the minds and calm the thoughts. But you, Reverend Barney, may I ask you to remain here and pray this wretched boy’s soul to the gates of out Lord’s celestial mansion ”

The last thing Barney wanted to do was spend time in the company of a corpse. The only dead people he had been acquainted with had been in wooden boxes, coffins or caskets, call them what you will, but he hadn’t ever directly been face to face with an ex-person.

It was then that he rather suspected he might be finally losing his sanity because the pale figure on the bed suddenly and impossibly opened his eyes.