Annie’s Tale

 

                                    Chapter the first

 

The priest moved towards the door, straightening the edge of his cassock as he went. 

 

He seemed smaller now than before, as though shrunk by the experience he now endured. As, in turn, all the other experiences had taken something away, reducing him, diminishing him. He felt old, older even than his now considerable years. Recent times had taken their toll, as indeed they had of everyone else across the land. 

 

First the War, in all its savagery and loss, and now this. 

 

‘Spanish flu’ they had begun to call it. The plague, the pox, the vengeance of God is how it was also known. But, for all the names, and there were many more, nobody really knew much about it, other than its effects. 

 

It had started among the troops, in their bases behind the lines, then in the trenches, before spreading inexorably across the lands and seas to those waiting back at home, coalescing into a terrible vengeance on all those who had survived the fighting and the deprivations of the years before.  There were rumours that it had come with the ships carrying men from the States, but there were also many who believed that it had been spawned from all the poison gases used on the battlefields, or that it was the Bubonic plague reborn. 

 

It didn’t make much difference, certainly not to those it killed, as it stalked the streets and lanes of each and every town, taking its victims at will. 

 

Without reason, without remorse. 

 

By now most people knew its face, though. The symptoms that were its calling card, the effects that were its farewell. From the racking cough, the burning forehead, the aching muscles, to the red blotches that disfigured face and body, then the blue pallor, the paroxysms of fever and finally the black bile that filled the lungs, seeped from the lips, burst forth in waves of nausea. Breaking the soul, breaking the body, until it was, at last, still. 

 

Nothing could be done. No medicine. No care. 

 

It was as inexorable as the coming of the night, but without the any promise, any possibility of a morning light. And, like the great plagues before it, it threatened to sweep the streets clean, and empty each and every house. 

 

All they could do was pray, as he in turn had done, prostrate before the altar. 

 

But that too made no difference. 

 

Still his parishioners died. 

 

Still he had to read the rites, watch the coffin lowered into the mud. 

 

At times, each day had taken someone. And usually someone in the full flush of healthy maturity. He had despaired, he had wept, but still his god refused to listen. So he had sought the bottle instead. Just a drop at first, then a couple of long mouthfuls, and now more than he cared to recall. 

 

But none of it took away the sense of guilt that eat away at his entrails. The guilt he felt for all the empty words he had used, all the futile explanations and rationale with which he had sought to console. None of it blocked out the pictures that came crashing in each time he closed his eyes. Pictures of young men, young women. Always with so much more to live for. People he had chatted to in the street, people he had cared for. People he had known since they were born. People who had no sin, no malice, who deserved better. 

 

People like Annie Ellen lying there in her coffin. A face that once smiled, and sparkled with life, now void, falsely pale, falsely cold. A body once so strong, so full of determination, now emaciated, skeletal, stripped of all its warmth and beauty. 

 

He felt a curse climbing up into his throat, but forced it back again, then forced his feet across the dark expanse of threadbare carpet until he was stood looking down into the coffin that sat across the trestle in front of the empty fireplace.

 

He studied the face within the box, cradled in its finality. Eyes tight shut, each held in its place by the usual coin. Payment to the ferryman, they say. More likely weights to stop the look of horror at death come far too soon, he thought. The features were strangely thin, bird-like. She never looked like that, he mused. She had grown into a broad-faced woman, with an equally expansive smile on the bright-red lips, and eyes that sparkled in warmth and humour. Someone who would give you advice, whether you wanted or not; someone who would hug you tight, when she thought you were down; someone who would see the upside of life, even if it was hidden in the darkness of despair. She was a woman who you would always remember. 

 

As he remembered her now.

 

And his mind drifted back to when he had first encountered her.

 

A screaming baby. Just born.

 

A Whittaker. From a whole brood of Whittakers, newly come to the smoking stacks and tight-knit streets of Manchester. Carters, miners, weavers. Born from the granite rock of the Pennines from which they had originally come, carved and shaped by the winds and storms that scoured the valleys below.

 

He had been young then. A curate in fact, feeling his way, learning his priestly duties at St Luke’s on Cheetham Hill. Didn’t know which side was up, which side down. As those blessed, or cursed, with his training often commented. Which is why he was sent out to meet the parishioners in the way that he was. Continually. To keep him from getting under the feet and to let life teach him what he needed to know – that was the mantra. And calling in to see new mothers, new babies, fell right into the middle of that frame. So there he was. Expectant faces, screaming baby, each in their own separate way wanting something that he simply could not provide.

 

He must have cut an amusing figure, because they were, after a few awkward seconds, clearly amused. The father of the new-born, recognizing his youth and his uncertainty, had clapped him around the shoulder and said,

 

‘You ain’t done this afore, have thee?’

 

He had shaken his head, even further bewildered now.

 

‘Well, put it like this. Thee be right to take bairn now, tap its back a couple or thrice, say as how it looks grand. Real bonny, that manner of thing. Then hand it back t’wife and say how she’s as done just fine and should be pleased as punch. And she will be. Then thee can go. Job done.’

 

And so he had. Clumsily, but effectively. The mother had glowed. The Husband had glowed. He had glowed. Even if the baby herself had carried on screaming.

 

Annie Ellen

 

That was her name, they had said.

 

Annie Ellen.

 

And here she was, a shadow of all that she had once been, a pale reminder of the woman he had grown to know over the years, and to love. Laid out in this wooden box, only a mere matter of thirty five years later.

 

It wasn’t right, he muttered.

 

It just wasn’t right.

 

He turned away, and looked through the chink in the dark drapes, though which what little light, other than the one small candle on the mantle-piece, crept into the room.

 

And that brought back other, better pictures. Of her christening. His first official duty. A bag of nerves. Scared witless that he would drop the baby, mid-sacrament, in front of the little gathering there in St Luke’s, in front of the stern gaze of his mentor. But the Whittakers had grinned, and encouraged him with a friendly pat on the back, and Annie Ellen had looked up from the blanket in which she was immersed, fixed him with her hazel eyes, and smiled. 

 

That infectious, innocent smile that would mark her throughout her short life.

 

And he had smiled back, in relief, and in delight.

 

But what of that smile now?

 

He looked back to the silent form, the lips now drawn in the pursed rictus of death.

 

How could one so full of movement, so driven by restless energy, be so still? How could life have left one so vital?

 

He cast his mind back again, searching for better thoughts, happier memories.

 

And now they came in earnest, flooding the mind like starlings come winging over the slate roofs outside. He remembered her bouncing along on her mother’s arm, eyes still watching him with a frankness that seemed to see straight through him; he remembered her out in the road learning how to hopscotch, when little more than a toddler newly taken to her feet; he remembered her running up to him in the street, aged no more than four or five, cheeks red with the snap of the wind, the excitement of the game, eyes glowing in the morning air.

 

‘Mister, mister, look at this………………@

 

And with that he had been proffered a jam-jar full of a questionable liquid, full in turn with all manner of decaying matter.

 

He had tried to show appreciation, a pleasure in the experience, but he had obviously failed. Much to the infant’s chagrin.

 

‘Look……………look!’ she had squealed, somewhere between irritation and sustained delight.

 

‘What…………is it?’ he had eventually replied, still failing to see anything but a rather muddy concoction.

 

‘It’s ………………..it’s……………..TAD……..POLES!’ she exclaimed, as the word swam back into her mouth. ‘There’s LOTS and LOTS!’

 

He had looked again and, as the eyes had adapted to the murky light and the child’s eye view of things, had made out the characteristic blobs flicking wriggle-tailed through the murk.

 

‘Ah, yes, tadpoles,’ he had said, with a knowing nod. ‘Where did you get them from?’

 

‘From the…………from………..the Canal!’

 

He had smiled, remembering the days when he too had come tadpoling from the same canal that ran through the heart of the town. It was a natural haven for the young. Always had been. 

 

She had swung the jar on its string. Back and forth, eyes up, clearly weighing his reactions in some sort of balance. Unnerving him. Again. So he had added,

 

‘Yes, I know the Canal. Used to fish there myself. When I………….was a little older than you are now.’

 

‘Me ma says not to go to the………..canal,’ she had muttered sheepishly.

 

‘Yes, it’s not a safe place really.’

 

‘But we go anyhows. Tadpoling…………and things.’

 

He had resisted the urge to chide, to appear complicit with the parent, knowing that that would almost certainly end the conversation. Instead he had smiled conspiratorially and said,

 

‘Must be fun!’

 

She had eyed him again, hand now held over her eyes to block out the sun now breaking through the clouds. Then she too had smiled. The big beaming smile that seemed to stretch right across her face, filling all around with a welcome glow of warmth. She had stared up at him, then reached across and touched his cassock.

 

‘Why you all in black……….like that? Why you wearing a dress?’

 

‘That’s because I am a priest. At the church. Round the corner.’

 

‘What’s a priest then?’

 

‘We ………..run things in the church. Services, they’re called. And we……..help other people when we can.’

 

She had reflected on the idea for a while, then a realization had suddenly taken hold.

 

‘Church………….that the place with the big…………..tower thing?’

 

‘Yes, that’s it……………….’

 

‘Went there once. With me ma and me sister. Sang songs.’

 

‘Yes, you would have done. We call them hymns.’

 

‘Hims? Only know one him and that’s me da!’

 

‘Your da………….? No, not that kind of him. A hymn is……………….no, never mind. Songs is fine!’

 

‘Lots of words too………………’

 

‘Yes, lots of words. They are called prayers………………..and maybe a sermon, but yes, lots of words! Did you enjoy it?

 

‘Got bored. I wanted to go outside but me ma made me stay!’

 

‘I’m sorry about that. We’ll try harder next time……………….’

 

She had resumed the stare at that point, head to one side, one foot tucked inside the other. Then she had giggled, and grabbed his hand.

 

‘Mister, what’s yer name?’

 

‘Francis Trevelyan. But you can call me Father Frank.’

 

‘Fraaaank…………….Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaaank’  She had played with the word, rolling it round her mouth as though some sort of boiled sweet, trying to shape and understand it at the same time. ‘Frank. Why you Father Frank? Does that mean yer like me da?’

 

‘No, a different kind of father. I look after the soul……….no, don’t worry about that. It’s just what they call people……..like me.’

 

Another beaming smile.

 

‘Mister, can you take me back to me house. Me ma is prob’ly out looking for me. Might get  a clip round me head……….. but with you there…………………..’

 

And with that she had taken a firm hold on the jam-jar with her other hand and had marched off down the street, pulling him along beside her, as she went.

 

And so he had got to know the young force of nature that was Annie-Ellen Whittaker.

 

The same Annie-Ellen now laid out in the coffin before him. Lifeless, cold, unmoving. All the very things she had never been before.

 

He forced himself to look at her again. See the person he had known, rather than the shadow that was left. Then he reached down and took her ice-white hand in his, as though it was that child from all those years before lying there. Needing to be guided home. Across a different street. To where the sun would never shine. He held the hand there, willing the warmth to return, the eyes to re-open.

 

It was always the same, though.

 

However much death he saw, he had never got used to the hard-edged reality of it all. 

 

There and not there. Here and yet forever gone.

 

Yes, it was always the same.

 

Each time the same mind-sapping sense of loss, the same difficulty in accepting what he knew was a door now closed for the rest of time.

 

And he had seen many such doors in recent weeks and months.

 

The pestilence, for what else could it be, had come sweeping through the streets a couple of year before. A black tide spreading from the battlefield in Europe. Rumours had preceded it, like an evil scent carried ahead on the winds. Then it had reached the ports and the southern towns. London. Birmingham. Before finally coiling around the chimney stacks and the cobbled streets of Lancashire. Bolton was first, so he recalled. And Blackburn soon after, before in a final lurch it had struck in the heart of Manchester, filling the overwhelmed hospitals with floods of coughing, dying humanity.

 

Yes, it did seem that the Black Death itself had returned from the pages of decrepit old history books. Back with all the terror that it had seemingly evoked all those hundreds of years before. People had locked themselves in their houses. Turned to the priests, like him, looking for forgiveness for whatever the sins were that had brought such retribution. They had wept and trembled as those around them had been taken. Had turned to the bottle. Had died before they were dead. 

 

Nobody knew what to do. They were caught between the twin nightmares of the war still raging in and around France and now this plague back home. Emergency hospitals sprang up to help share the load. Nurses were recruited from ever younger women. Doctors were brought back from retirement. Civil guards patrolled the streets for fear of widespread hysteria and panic. Messages, saying what should, or should not, be done, were sent out by the government. But none of it made any difference. Still the workers in the mills and the mines, the mothers in their homes, the postmen in the street, sickened and, in nearly all cases, died. 

 

Like Annie-Ellen.

 

Yes, he had been here, to console, to officiate, to despair, many times in the last two and a bit years. But still he could not quite grasp what was happening. 

 

He remembered bumping into her again, a few years later. Literally. He was turning the corner, she was tearing down the pavement as if being chased by all manner of demon. He had caught hold of her before she fell.

 

‘Ruddy hell,’ she had growled, ‘Let me………………….  Oh, you. Man from the church.  Father somut or other……….’

 

‘Father Frank. Yes, the man from the church. Think we met two or three years back. Had a conversation about soldiers and Jesus, if I remember correctly.’

 

He had straightened up, making sure that no damage had been done in the collision, then looked down at her and realized that her eyes were still fixed upon him, like a pair of lamplights. The hair now grown dark hung in cascades, framing her impish face, emphasizing the paleness to which he was accustomed. He had felt more than just watched. It was as though she was scrutinizing him, trying to work out who or what he really was, underneath the cloth.

 

‘What you doing round here?’

 

‘If you must know, I’ve been taking communion to some …………people who live round here.’

 

‘ What’s communinon?’

 

‘Communion……….it’s the blood and……………it’s something that believers do. To show their belief in Jesus. In God.’

 

‘Me ma don’t hold with none of that. Says it’s all claptrap!’

 

He had flinched then. At the directness of the attack, albeit somewhat second hand. Then he had smiled. It was hardly her view. She was far too young to have reached any such conclusion for herself.

 

Wasn’t she?

 

Could only just have started going to school. Plenty of time for her to be guided and directed. Anyway, it was not as though he was unaccustomed to such sentiments. The mills and the factories, with their hard grind and brutal conditions, had seen to that. As had the revolutionary politics which swept the streets from time to time. No, he had become well used to defending his views, both in and out of the church to which he was attached.

 

Besides, there was also a humour in the darkness of the eye. He sensed it was no more than a game, a testing of his will. He had smiled again.

 

‘Well, me and your ma will have to have a chat about that, won’t we? And, if you want to come to Sunday School, I’ll tell you all about it too!’

 

‘What, more school? Mister, you must be barking!’

 

He had thought about chiding her, and explaining the importance of schooling, but the words forming in his mind had felt clumsy, overblown, so he had chuckled instead.

 

‘Yes, I know what you mean. I didn’t much care or those days myself. People telling you what to do all the time. Getting angry when you did anything wrong. You’re right. Best be out in the street, playing with your friends, eh?’

 

She had looked at him even more quizzically then. This wasn’t what a man like him was supposed to say. She had expected a finger-wagging instead. With a few well-chosen words. That was the game. Then she would have blown a raspberry. He would have got red in the face. She would have cocked a snook and run. That was how it was played. Not like this.

 

‘But, Mister………………….’ She began, but tailed off, uncertain of her new environment.

 

‘Yes, I do understand. Was your age once, you know. Lived round the corner in Waterloo Street. With my sisters and brother and my…………ma.’

 

The eyes had widened, then narrowed, as she had sought to adjust the focus. Who was this man in the black cas hook? Not what she expected at all.

 

‘What about yer da?’ she had eventually said.

 

‘Oh, he went off to war. In India. Never came back.’

 

‘Wot. Like those soldiers of God?’

 

‘Soldiers of God?’

 

‘Yeah, in that song. Someut about soldiers………………and war.’

 

‘Ah, you must mean Onward, Christian soldiers…………….. Yes, a bit like that. Her got caught up in something called the Mutiny and then just disappeared.’

 

‘Ain’t that what yer man did?’

 

‘My man?’

 

‘Yeah, that Jesus man the teacher at school goes on about all the time…..’

 

‘Ah, him. No, he was different. He didn’t believe in fighting. Not like that anyway.’

 

‘Funny kind of soldier, if you ask me. Thought as how that were what soldiers did.’

 

‘Well, that’s a long story. But he was kind. Told us to look after children too.’

 

So, do you miss yer da?’

 

‘Sometimes…………….. What about yours?’

 

‘Oh, me da’s just me da. Works down pit.’

 

‘Ah, a miner. I think I knew that. Which pit does he work in?’

 

‘Don’t know nothing bout that. Just comes home all black. He’s funny. Tells me stories……………….’

 

‘What are the stories about?’

 

‘Oh, all sorts. Monsters and dragons. Princesses ‘n soldiers. Not about yer man………..soldiers in different places. Like yer da……………..Inja.’

 

‘India……………….’

 

‘Yeah, there!’

 

‘It’s a long way away. India, I mean.’

 

‘I knows. Longer ‘n Manchester to Birmingham……………….’

 

Yes, quite a bit further than that. It’s on the other side of…………….the Ocean.’

 

‘What’s a ocean?’

 

‘A really big sea. Takes about two months to get there. A long, long journey,’

 

‘Why d’ya want to go there?’

 

Oh, it’s full of amazing things. Deserts and mountains. Temples and palaces. Millions of people………………………..’

 

 ‘That more ‘n Manchester?’

 

‘Yes, quite a lot more. More than you could ever count!’

 

‘I can count a lot. Good at me sums. Teacher says so.’

 

‘That’s good. So why don’t you like school?’

 

‘None of yer ruddy business!’ added with a flash of the eyes, then, obviously still fascinated by the idea of faraway lands, ‘You been there?’

 

‘Where?’

 

‘Inja……………..’

 

‘It’s Ind-i-a. And yes, I went when I was very young. Something called a missionary.’

 

‘Miss….who?’

 

‘’Missionary. Telling people about God and………………Jesus.’

 

‘Why’d they want to know bout that?’

 

‘Well, they believe in strange things there. Old things. They need…………..educating.’

 

‘What’s that?’

 

‘ Teaching…………………..’

 

She rolled her eyes.

 

‘Teaching done me no good. Lot of………….claptrap. Tell you what to do all the time. Can’t play. Sit still. Be quiet. A strapping if you do owt wrong. Is that what you do?’

 

‘No……..no………….I just………… talked. Told them stories. Helped at the hospital we were building there.’

 

‘Hospital. That where you go when you get took poorly’ Like me da when he got the fever?’

 

‘Ah, yes, I remember that. A lot of people got that fever, didn’t they?’

 

‘Don’t know nothing bout that. Just know as me and me brother got sick. Me da nearly died…….’

 

‘Is he all right now?’

 

‘Dunno. Never see him. Just when he comes back and has his bath in the tub. In the kitchen. Then goes off. To the……………..boozer.’

 

‘What about when he comes back in?’

 

‘In bed b’then. Sides, can hear him and ma having words, like as not. Just keep quiet, and put the bolster over me ears. Don’t want to listen to that…………….Get a right proper smack, if he hears yer make a noise…………’

 

He nodded in understanding, knowing only too well the sort of situation she was referring to. Saw plenty of evidence of what happened, if you got caught up in the drunken rages that seemed to be all too common. Bruises on the faces of many of the women who came into his church. Badly concealed by what little they had for the purpose.

 

‘Don’t thee worry none,’ she had added, sensing his concern, ‘it’s just me da. Way it is.’

 

And, with that, she had sped off again. Without even a glance back. He had stood watching her as she skipped and ran down the street, seemingly oblivious to life’s perils, and wondered why the air around him suddenly felt that much colder.

 

He shook his head as the memory drifted past and looked again at the ashen face framed in its wooden surround. There were so many more memories, though, twittering in the eaves. Other chance encounters through the years, each with their bit of irreverent banter, each with their reflections on a life lived. A marriage too, a death, and then another, as her ma and da both passed away, a baby born, a baby lost, rings on the thickening tree. He had always felt that he knew, always knew that in fact he did not.

 

He pushed the thoughts away, and tried to focus on what he had come to do. The words that would somehow make sense of it all.

 

But, as he sought to steel himself, insidious questions began to whisper from the shadows. Again.

 

How many times had he done this in the last two years? Since the outbreak of this new plague.

 

How many times had he tried to comfort a grieving family, now without a mother, a father, a son, a daughter? Tried to find the words to fill an unfillable gap.

 

How many times had he stood in a parlour, in a bedroom, a hospital ward, struggling to control his own emotions, his own inner rage at the futility and the meaninglessness of it all?

 

How many times had he had to force the question back into the morass from whence it had emerged, slyly insinuating itself into his mind? The question for which there was no answer, other than the losing of his faith.

 

No, he knew no logic, knew no number with which to drive it back. All he could do was cease to think, cease to feel. Carry out the tasks and the chores, the empty rituals that maintained the illusion. It was all anyone could do. Accept the remorseless flow of it all, the endless continuum that stretched back to a time that now lay almost beyond memory.

 

There must have been over a hundred, he mused to himself. Yes, well over a hundred. Each a tragedy that tore at the heart. Each a tombstone lying heavy on this broken society. And this one was no different. 

 

Except that it held an extra sting, an extra sadness.

 

Annie Ellen.

 

A firebrand, a character, full of zest, full of life. Until the mill had taken its inevitable toll and begun to grind her down, as it always did. 

 

Old before her time, he muttered to himself. As they all were.

 

And now this.

 

He composed himself, searched again for the words, hoping to find solace in the familiarity, in the reminder of the certainty that had once been his faith, and then, with a heart-felt sigh, he knelt before the coffin, and intoned the words of blessing.

 

And farewell.

 

The ritual duly complete, the feelings duly suppressed beneath the needs of decorum, he got back to his feet and wearily made his way to the door, hidden in the half light in which the room was shrouded. As he fumbled for the door knob, though, he allowed himself one backward look. Half expecting to see her sitting up, with that familiar smile lighting up her face, to hear her chuckle that it had only been a joke, after all. 

 

‘Got yer that time, did’n I?’

 

But he knew in the same instant, as he always did, that that was no more than an instinctive reaction, as the mind sought to adjust to the finality of it all. A gasp of air exhaled belatedly from the corpse.

 

There was no coming back from this.

 

No humour.

 

No light.

 

He turned away from the stillness, shaking his head again, muttered a final prayer beneath his breath, and made his way out.

 

In the little hall, where the hat pegs jostled with the staircase, stood the husband. Or rather the widower. Now. 

 

George Harry.

 

Eyes, usually so vividly blue, now dulled and reddened. With tears that would have to be shed, at other times, in other places, away from the public gaze. Secret, hidden, out of shame’s way.

 

He nodded at the priest. Wiped the bristling moustache that bedecked is upper lip, with a nervous hand, watching all the while for some kind of message, some kind of hope.

 

Maybe he too was half expecting it all to be some sort of trick, an illusion that would be expelled in the light, the body disappearing beneath a magician’s shroud, only to re-emerge from a nearby cupboard, accompanied by the oohs and ahs of a music hall audience.

 

But he was no conjurer, and there was no music hall.

 

He nodded back, then moved his head slowly from side to side. Maybe to confirm that the dead still were dead and that God had not, after all, performed any trick. Maybe to show his sadness, his sense of kindred loss. Maybe just out of bewilderment. At the injustice of it all, the waste, the absurdity. He wasn’t sure himself.

 

They stood there, words too heavy to lift from the chest, looking away lest their eyes met, and the emotions broke.

 

‘Rum do………….’ George Harry eventually said.

 

‘Yes, it certainly is that,’ the priest replied. ‘My condolences. To you………….and to all the family.’

 

‘Thank thee. Not as though it’ll do any good.’

 

‘No, I know. Words are pretty useless, aren’t they……………at times like this.’

 

‘Thee be right. Won’t as bring her back, will it?’

 

‘Sadly, no, it won’t. She was………..’ he paused, trying to find the right words, ‘a good woman.’

 

‘I know that.’ The blue had returned to the eye, an edge to the tongue. ‘Not one of thine, though. Not hardly.’

 

‘Yes, I know that. Makes no difference, though. Still blessed in the eyes of the Church.’

 

‘Blessed……….in whose ruddy eyes? That man of thine, eh? That won’t do no good, neither. Waste of ruddy time, if thee ask me. As I’ve told thee many times.’

 

‘Yes, I know that too. It’s all a matter of faith. And I know Annie did have some teaching. And did occasionally come to church.’

 

‘Not my idea. Told her not to go. Another bloody waste of time. Didn’t do her any good, neither. Did it?  Didn’t keep her out of that there box!’

‘I know. But we don’t know what God’s purpose is. We just have to believe that there is one and that all of …………this………….has some meaning.’

 

‘Beats me what the reason for that,’ said with a jerk of the thumb in the direction of the parlour door, ‘might as be. If thee can tell me there be some manner of reason for that, and all the rest of them, well I’ll spit in his ruddy face!’

 

‘There’s no need for that. Anyhow, I hope she is resting in heaven now, protected by God’s love and kindness.’

 

‘Yer what? His love and kindness. What be that, when it be at home? No sign of any love in there. Just a ruddy body in a box. And that be that. As for bloody heaven, that just be words. Empty words.’

 

The priest sighed. They had had similar conversations on many previous occasions and he knew that the view would not change, especially not in those circumstances.

 

‘Don’t mean to be rude,’ George Harry continued, ‘but that my feeling. Best thee go now, Father, afore I may as something else. Speak me mind. And thee don’t want to hear that.’

 

‘No, you are probably right. I don’t think I do. Not just at the moment.’

 

He made for the sanctuary of the door, aware that there were other ears, other eyes listening and watching from the back room, and up the stairs.

 

Just before he went out into the street outside, he looked back again.

 

‘She was a good woman, you know, and I cared for her deeply. Ever since she was a babe in arms.’

 

‘I know thee did. And yes, she were.’