Seeking Sanctuary Read online

  He stopped by the fern, beyond what he called the St Michael Bend, and lit a cigarette. Five a day only, usually reserved for that blissful time when he sat in front of the television and listened to the roar of a crowd. If football had replaced religion as the opiate of the masses, he could not criticise since it certainly worked with him. God forgave everything, surely, even a priest who liked looking at the decor of handsome houses and gossiping about them more than he liked the insides of impoverished flats, and enjoyed spectator sports better than anything. At least he had no envy in him. He just liked the looking, was all, just as he enjoyed the sight of a beautiful woman. He was, he supposed, running out of emotional steam, wanted to be useful, but no longer wanted to be furious with pity. Compassion ate you alive. Someone was calling his name.

  ‘Is that you, Father?’

  Even being called Father irritated him. He had a name, for God’s sake. He was nobody’s father, more was the pity, and he particularly disliked being called Father by men older than himself. Like Edmund, who had the same shape and reminded him of his own wrong turnings. But it wasn’t so bad to be hailed by Edmund, who had never, so far, demanded spiritual solace, thank God, and seemed devoid of day-to-day problems, apart from his health. Edmund would want one of his cigarettes and was welcome, even though he should not, since the man had had one stroke at least. Not a big one, but a warning and not bad enough to prevent him from racing back to his garden, Christopher remembered, although, looking at it now, it was difficult to see quite what it was that made him feel so necessary. Edmund was wonderfully slow moving. Whatever had provoked the stroke was not his excitable temperament, but probably an unfortunate genetic disposition together with an acquired addiction for booze and fags and a tendency towards tears, as well as all those wrong choices a single life makes.

  He was crying now. A big, sad, clumsy man, sitting on the dirty bench, which would always be in the shade on the brightest day, and after a summer of plentiful, if inconsistent good weather, he was still pale, with the sagging abdomen Father Goodwin somehow associated with the celibate and hated to see in himself. Approaching, he disposed himself towards sympathy and fumbled again in his trouser pocket for the cigarettes. He should carry more than his own ration: they were far more effective consolation for those so inclined than anything else, and he could hardly refuse to offer one when he had one lit himself. Without the cigarette, Edmund might not have known he was there. Oh, dear, how tiresome it was to have to manufacture sympathy instead of having it available in an endless, free supply. And to have those hopping thoughts interfere to remind him that while Edmund was a good soul, he was also a very plain man for whom washing was not a priority. It was easier to help clean, healthy people. A true saint would not notice the difference, but Christopher was not a saint, and he did.

  ‘What ails you, Edmund?’ he asked, heartily, sitting beside him and patting his thigh with his left hand, determined not to relinquish the cigarette.Then he looked down at Edmund’s big feet, preparing himself to meet his eyes, and he could see exactly what was making the man cry. Within a yard were four bird corpses, blackbirds, he guessed without knowing one from another, although a closer glance showed them to be different sizes, and, it followed, different breeds. The cigarette dropped from his fingers and he brushed it away.

  ‘Will you bless them, Father?’ Edmund asked, calmly. ‘Before I bury them?’

  ‘They can have the full rites.’

  He improvised. ‘In your mercy, Lord, dispel the darkness of their night. Let their household so sleep in peace, that at the dawn of a new day, they may, with joy, awaken in your name. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.’ This did not seem adequate. The priest moved to the corpses, made the sign of the Cross over each in turn, intoning softly, ‘Upon you no evil shall fall, no plague approach where you dwell. For you He has commanded his angels, to keep you in all His ways. Amen.’

  Edmund blew his nose. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  Christopher Goodwin sat down again and produced the cigarettes. Maybe it was disrespectful to smoke in the presence of death but Edmund would be the judge of that. He took a cigarette from the miserable packet of ten and Father Goodwin had an irrelevant memory of a grieving son who, when it came to the time to toss the clod of earth on to the coffin, had absent-mindedly thrown in a fag end instead. It was still grief.

  ‘Were they killed by a cat?’ he asked. Edmund began to shake. It looked as if he might weep again. He looked at the cigarette burning in his fingers and took a shuddering draw on it instead.

  ‘They were . . . they were . . . murdered.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘She was right,’ he murmured. ‘Matilda was right . . . She told me this morning he was a wicked boy and he shot the magpie and he poisoned these. What am I to think, Father? I loved him.’

  ‘Loved who, Edmund?’

  The cigarette was finished during this halting speech, which contained more pauses than words. They were as many words as Edmund could manage. He seemed, finally, to sense Father’s inadequacy and pity him for it.

  ‘Never mind, Father. The wicked get punished, don’t they?’

  ‘Not always in this life, Edmund, but often enough. Are you all right now? Shall I help you with the burial?’

  ‘He’s careful. He killed the females so the big boys won’t come back to nest,’ Edmund said.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Edmund repeated. ‘I’d better get on. And so’d you, I expect.’

  ‘Can I send someone to you?’

  ‘No, thank you. Matilda will be out after supper. She says her prayers out here, you know.’ ‘Does she?’

  ‘Thanks for the cigarette, Father. I owe you.’

  The sense of unease had come back in full force, along with that familiar sense of being redundant. Feeling insensitive and unkind, Christopher Goodwin left.

  It was half past six, the ridiculously early hour at which the Sisters sat down to a meal which he would have called tea and they, in their wisdom, called supper. Cold meats and salads at this time of year, augmented by soups and things on toast when the weather grew brisk. Some ate like troopers, others like sparrows, and the virtually bed-ridden group, which had included Sister Jude, ate nursery food in solitude. These he was supposed to visit on a weekly basis at least, depending on their state of health, which meant that up until now, he had stayed five minutes with Pauline and Dympna (who, as befitted one with the name of the patron saint of mental illness, was away with the fairies), and as many hours as he could spare with Sister Jude, who was never asleep and always lucid. He missed her and it reminded him that he was too frail for further effort this evening, too much on his mind even before Edmund and his dead birds. He detoured to the chapel. Snatched items from the meeting had lodged in his memory, something about the window being broken and mended in a miraculous way, leaving a residue of curiosity which, when he was as tired as he felt today, remained the only emotion he could sustain.

  It looked the same as ever, the same as it had been when he said Mass here the Sunday before and less adorned than it had been when he had seen it with Jude’s body lying in state amid the floral tributes she would have enjoyed better if she had received them when she was alive. There was no sign that any window had been broken: the room remained quiet and serene, mercifully free from the excessive and lurid statuary that marred so many a Holy Roman Church. Really, he was becoming so intolerant, reaching a state in life when mere opinion became so callused it turned into a prejudice. Maybe that joyful anarchist Kay was right and it was time to look for another religion. One without recrimination, prospects of hell and promises of heaven; one entirely without decorative gold leaf. One actually shared by the majority of the population. A life without duty and the burden of secrets.

  Ahead of him, nearest the altar, was Anna, sitting, not kneeling mind, but still in an attitude of thought. The sight of her was obscurely disappointing. It should have gladdened his heart but had the reverse effect. He sl
unk down the black and white corridor, feeling like a criminal for the second time in ten minutes, past the refectory and the sound of talking, out of the front door, which was for once unguarded by Agnes. He felt like Judas.

  Christopher: named for a famous saint and yet there was no benevolence about him today, no blessing from that saint as he strode down the road, so relieved not to be in the car that he walked like an athlete in training, thinking of the legend of his name and how he would tell it. That saint was a big man, a giant who wished to serve only the strongest and most magnificent of kings. Now, one great king and the promises of the devil had tempted him into service, but their demands were so puerile they disappointed him, and he defected into the life of a hermit, settled by the side of a dangerous river, where his self-appointed task was to carry travellers across, in a humble but useful employment for his physique, until one dark and stormy night, while he was carrying a mere baby across the torrent, the child became heavier and heavier, until he stumbled and sweated and almost fell, in despair of his own strength. Ah, said the child, I am Jesus, the king you have always been seeking, you are carrying the weight of the whole world.

  My dear Anna, Father Goodwin, née Christopher, told her in mental communication, which lasted him until he turned into the park, that is what it is to have this belief. It is a tyranny as well as a blessing. Please do not succumb, or at least, not yet. Let the hound of heaven bite at your heels for a long time before you turn and feed it.

  It was a park of peculiar beauty, his frequent solace. As an added incentive for him to walk further, it surrounded a football ground for children to practise and he loved to watch them. Tiny schoolboys, kicking the shit out of the thing, sometimes indistinguishable in mud, playing in all weathers with no audience, no cries from a crowd, only exhortations from coaches and parents, and a burning desire to win in an orchestrated riot of energy. He never watched for long, in case anyone should assume that a dog-collared, cheap-suited man must be either a halfwit or a paedophile, although no one had ever thought so, as far as he knew. Paedophiles didn’t chat to parents and yell themselves hoarse as he was inclined to do, but still, he left before the end. There was always a point in a game where he knew who would win, but it was a shame to miss the individual act of courage, the verve of the one who could play in the team and play without it.

  He could write her a letter, rehearsed it in his head. Dear Anna, Please continue being a pagan. Do not assume the mantle of a creed. Make your own rules.You have had the most appalling examples to follow, although you don’t know it yet. Your mother, the saint … Ah well. Leave us, make a life without rules. Just make one. Do not kneel to anyone or anything. Never, ever kneel.

  And then he thought, what about all the other letters Anna must have received and Sister Jude alluded to? Letters regarding deaths, her mother’s and her father’s. What would she want with an old fool adding his own?

  Inside the chapel, she did not kneel. She never knelt, she simply conversed, in the manner Sister Jude had suggested, without the suggestion ever becoming an order. The window was mended without a trace of the destruction she had seen, as if it had never happened, truly a miracle.

  ‘He walked me home, Lord, but I left him on the corner for the last bit. I don’t want him to know where I live, although he might know already. Christ almighty, is he serious or is he serious? Anyway, I might have been late for the meeting if I hadn’t run. I’m sure you approve.’

  She eased her shoes off her feet. They were all still at supper and much more animated than usual, so that would last longer and leave her in peace. Her feet smelled slightly from a long day in trainers, but the Lord would have to put up with that. This wasn’t the climate for going about barefoot, or wearing a long cotton robe like a disciple.

  ‘Trust me to find another God freak,’ she continued, twiddling her toes. ‘With a hole in the brain, but maybe that’s what you intended. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know I’ve signed all these silly billies up for a taxi account. Told bloody Barbara I could get her a discount, and as you know that’s always a draw. ’S’what Catholics have in common, always after a discount. Poor cow. I can’t get her a discount, of course, but that isn’t the point. How do you feel about lies?’

  Black and white tiles in the corridor. Black lies are bad, white lies are fair.

  ‘You know the trouble with you?’ Anna said. ‘You’re looking such a pillock. Time to change the garments and upgrade. Get yourself an image. Make them speak Latin or something, get back a bit of that old mystique that everyone can sing along with. Credo in Unum Deum, get it chanted on a single note by absolute wallies in pink cassocks, that’ll get them in. Evening classes. You’ll get all the anoraks who can’t otherwise string a tune. Plenty of those.’

  She rested her bare feet on the chairback in front, tilting it towards her, the better to examine her toes. Fine little feet, which did not, at the moment, seem admirable. Too small for further use and uselessly perfect, apart from the grime between the toes.

  ‘I tell you what, Lord. You were my best fucking mate when I was a kid, and then you buggered off and left me. And I could quite see why, because you were never there at all. Big-time illusion. Why didn’t you make us well? Why have I got that priest on my back trying to tell me why we were cooped up for so long and my father left? Does he think I don’t know? Well, I do know. Simple. He was too bad and she was too good.’

  She put her feet back into shoes. It was getting cold and she did not want to lose her sense of jubilation. She leant towards the window, stared at the mended pane, willing it to do it again, wanting the sound of the smash, sitting back with her feet warm, wanting to be home and knowing it was near.

  ‘You know what he said, Lordy? He said, aren’t you small, and why are you so small? I said, you aren’t so tall, either, you’re half the size of my father and what’s it got to do with you if I never grew? He’s called Ravi. He’s a Hindu. And do you know what he said to me? He said that all Gods are good Gods and all religions teach harmony. Why didn’t anyone tell me that when I was ten? Anyway, I kidded him about it. Aren’t we a sad pair? I told him. Two people of our age, walking down roads on a nice afternoon, talking about God. I mean, how sad can you get?’

  She considered her feet and turned her face to the window.

  ‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know that for all the bad stuff Allah’s supposed to have inspired, I think I like the sound of him better than you. And if I took up with Mohammed, I could still have Jesus and the Archangel Michael. But it looks like I’d better look at the Hindu first.’

  She bent down and retied her shoelaces.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ she addressed the window behind the crucifix, ‘I don’t know what you did with that guardian angel of mine. Aren’t we all supposed to have one? Muslims have two, you know. I’d be no good as a Hindu. No point thinking about it, I’m too impure. And I haven’t got the option of honouring my father and my mother, have I? He left us and she’s dead. That shocked Ravi. He said Hindus wouldn’t do that. Do what, I said, die? Completely fucking pathetic, he is, when he should have been saying your place or mine if he knew what he was dealing with, just so I could say I never fuck in my place.’

  Silence.

  She yawned and rose.

  ‘Night-night, Lord. Take care of Therese, even if you do a lousy job.’ Then she sat down again. ‘Look, OK. I’m beginning to see something about my sister. If this is where she thinks she belongs, she’d better stay. If this is where she gets happiness, she’s got to have it. And that means I do anything, I mean anything, to keep this place afloat. Understood?’

  She went slowly down the black and white corridor. Agnes was by the door. Agnes loved to be touched and hugged, so on an impulse, remembering with gratitude her voice, singing so unaffectedly by Sister Jude’s grave, Anna patted her on her plump shoulder and found her own hand gripped and squeezed hard.

  ‘Night, Aggie.You should do some more singing.’

 
‘Goodnight, dear. I’m a very happy woman today. Do you know why?’ She pulled Anna down to whisper in her ear. ‘My son came to find me.’

  Ah well, they all talked in code, sometimes. God made everyone batty, not necessarily bad.

  Back inside her own flat, Anna went up to the roof. The sky was clear in one of those perfect evenings that made her feel cheated of the day until she remembered the rain, and Ravi. The trees by the chapel window shimmered as the shadows deepened. At the rear of the garden, she could make out the figure of Edmund, sitting. Too cold for an old man to sit out as if he had no home; it was late for him to be there, but that was his choice and Matilda would be somewhere around until darkness fell completely. How well she knew their routines in the garden, although not what any one of them really thought, believed, needed, and she was suddenly humbled. If Ravi the Hindu paid respect to other, alien creeds, then so should she.

  Down below, among the silent shrubs, she thought she saw a flash of gold. A moving head, standing by Edmund’s side and just as suddenly obscured. There would be a full moon tonight and Anna was too tired to watch for it; she would wait for the new moon and wish on that. Her whole small body vibrated with a massive, satisfying yawn. It was so peaceful out there and she had made her mark today, spoken out and someone had listened. She knew, for once, what it was like not to be angry. Maybe God lived on the moon and that was his face.

  ‘Matilda? Are you there? Help me, please . . .’

  ‘It isn’t Matilda.’

  ‘In the name of God, help me. Oh, you bastard boy. You killed them.’

  ‘And I shall kill all the others. The thrush and the sparrow. Destroy all the nests.You can die as soon as you like, old man.’

  ‘Help me . . .’

  Darkness fell early.