Duty and Delusion

by Shawna Lewis

  There was no message from Derek when she got home from work so the money stayed where it was. Easy to forget.

  *

  Christmas decorations were everywhere, brash and fragile, fooling no-one. Belinda went carol singing round Sallby with a group of local women and children – no men, as usual – raising funds for the county’s air ambulance again. It always seemed to be her job to make the arrangements but no-one could remember why. This year, contributions were smaller, many donors tipping coins collected in socks into the concave bucket-lids. The coppers and silver made a satisfying racket as they slid through the slit and landed on those beneath.

  Soon the buckets were too heavy to carry. Damp and cold, the singers drifted home after only an hour. In the past, carolling had always ended in the pub, extracting money from drinkers with repeated threats to keep on singing just one more chorus. Then someone would buy them all a drink while they sat at a table and counted the takings. This had been one of the high points of Belinda’s Christmas.

  Now, with the pub boarded up, the singers drifted away in ones and twos to their own homes, leaving her with the blue-lidded bucket. No-one was keen to stop by and supervise the count, as legally required. She lugged the bucket home, feeling cheated, and stuck it in the wardrobe beneath the calico bag. A red blouse of artificial silk slipped from its hanger to cover the bucket, which balanced tipsily on a pile of spare coat hangers and old shoes.

  *

  There were only a few more days before Aidan came home for the Christmas vacation, so it was necessary for his mother to clean his room several times, tidy his drawers and sanitise the personal possessions he’d left behind in September. The next five weeks were going to be wonderful. He would bounce home, long-haired and dishevelled like the students on TV commercials. The house would smell of delicious home cooking; she’d produce his favourite meals at the drop of a hat, and boys who had been turning into men under her eyes would make themselves at home with hugs and warm looks, and gasp with pleasure at Mum’s sausage stew. The washer would be full of underpants and sports gear. Aidan would sit and watch her cook, picking her brain and cracking jokes. From time to time, he’d exclaim how much he’d missed all this. Melanie would start to smile again, and follow her brother round, once more the adoring puppy.

  Doug would be home for the full ten days. She would get him to replace that piece of cracked guttering that let the rain through onto the conservatory roof, keeping her awake on wet nights with its constant drip, drip, drip. Maybe they’d even have time and energy for a cuddle or two. She’d bring Mum and Dad over for tea and maybe a game of Monopoly or Cluedo. Something traditional. The Wii would be put away… Granddad had still not got over the smash on the jaw he’d given Melanie when ‘boxing’ last year. Belinda couldn’t wait.

  Meanwhile, at the library there was Story Time to prepare for. Part of a national scheme, Belinda found this part of her job a trial. She didn’t mind the preparation too much – finding attention-grabbing stories or poems was something to relieve the boredom of shelf-tidying and book-stamping, but the vacant countenances of the half-dozen regular attendees made her cross, suspecting as she did that they were only there to save on the heating at home. What with the library’s future under threat, there was no money for professional storytellers or performance poets. Belinda was it, even though her rendition of “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…” sounded banal even to her own ears. The expressions on the faces of young Charlie, Jacintha et al. told her she was useless at it, yet delivering these sessions was a box to be ticked by the Chief Librarian, so deliver them she must.

  *

  Afternoons were dark and damp. Street lamps glowed orange, reflected in puddles already a-glimmer with junction lights. Navy skies pressed downwards, shrinking the days. Moribund spirits made feeble attempts at regeneration by drinking, partying, and drinking again; self-abusing challenges sought to imitate enjoyment, and failed.

  But Aidan was coming home. For his mother, nothing else mattered. The time since his departure (and Doug’s, of course) had seemed like an aeroplane journey flown at a height of a hundred metres. You looked down from inside a sealed capsule at life carrying on oblivious. Nothing had changed: everything had changed. Almost like a death.

  Now her lifeblood began to flow again. It was Thursday, and the boy was expected at some unspecified time over the weekend. He insisted on travelling by train.

  There was just one lender in the library by 6.30, a middle-aged chap in a balaclava and cycle helmet wanting the latest Dan Brown. It was not in stock. As the man continued to browse between the stacks, with a change in air pressure and a surge of street noise, Marnie Thorne walked in, shaking raindrops from her cream, caped gabardine. She folded a neat, emerald green umbrella, throwing droplets onto the counter top, and inspected her purple nails.

  Concentrating on the computer monitor, the librarian barely registered a presence until, looking up at last, she smiled with genuine pleasure.

  Marnie, it seemed, had been in Denswick “on business”. What sort was anyone’s guess – she was certainly not going to tell – and on her way back to the bus station, she’d decided to pop in to say hello.

  Already in an optimistic frame of mind, Belinda gushed with life and warmth.

  “I have so much to tell you!” she laughed, thinking of the ladder, ambulance and hospital episode. “There isn’t time now or you’ll miss your bus.”

  “Well, I’m not doing much over Christmas.” Marnie tried not to sound too much of a Jilly-No-Mates, but just enough. “Maybe you could find time for an hour or two?”

  Belinda wouldn’t hear of ‘an hour or two’, insisting that her friend should spend a day with the family.

  Parents and grandparents would take up Christmas and Boxing Days and no buses would be running, so the date was set for 27th December.The hostess would be able to parade her happy family to her lonesome friend. Not that she felt smug.

  The man between the stacks approached the desk as Marnie left, and ordered Digital Fortress. Through the glass he saw the cream gabardine waiting at the bus stop before his view was blocked by the double-decker. On the bus, Marnie watched the glistening streets and smiled. Mission accomplished.

  *

  Patricia Street was on the doorstep when Belinda arrived home. Behind a half-open door, Melanie’s relief at the sight of her mother was evident. The girl had been struggling with her Maths homework and resented the intrusive Patricia, dangling a set of keys in the air, speaking at volume about some Goan holiday paradise the Streets were off to the next morning.

  At the news, Belinda allowed herself a laugh.

  “How wonderful!” The enthusiasm was genuine. “Wonderful for the children,” (meaning her own). “Wonderful for everyone!”

  Two whole weeks without the twang-bang-screech of the Street Fytas, who had recently ‘only just’ failed an audition for Britain’s Got Talent.

  “Have a lovely time, all of you!”Bel called after Patricia’s tottering heels. She couldn’t wait for them to be gone.

  *

  Her plan had been forming for some time. Now, execution was imminent. She heard next door’s car rev away in the early hours, but forced herself back to sleep. She must wait until Melanie had gone to school and other neighbours were about their business.

  At nine, she dressed in old clothes before extracting a length of plastic pipe from the garage, where it had lain for years. She found a small hacksaw and removed a metre from one end. That would be ample for her needs. Rooting in Doug’s tool box, Belinda unearthed a pointed, toothed gadget and a pair of pliers, then an off-cut of old carpet that Doug would lie on when examining the underside of his van. Hidden away on the cobwebby top shelf was an ancient, half-empty tub of rodent-control preparation, used once, years ago.

  She carefully dropped the equipment over the fence onto next door’s drive, before walking out of her
own front gate and in through the Streets’. Bel looked from side to side, calm but alert, making sure she was not watched.

  Hidden between the caravan and the fence, she pushed the carpet under the trailer. Belly down, only calves and feet protruding, she wriggled to reach the saw blade, which she took in her right hand. She had to twist her torso uncomfortably to stick the pointed end up into the caravan’s underside. After the first incision, she worked patiently until she’d created a small hole. Then the pliers were used to nibble away at the orifice until the floor looked chewed. Satisfied, she raised one end of the piping and forced it into the hole, wedging the other end against a wheel with a half-brick. (She must remember to move the pipework before the Streets’ holiday was over and install some fallen twigs in their place.)

  She took a paper bag containing bits of bacon rind, stale bread, corned beef and cheese from her pocket. Crushed into a paste and laced with a few grains of Ratrid, the mix was laid in a trail under the van and into the narrow entrance to the pipe. As an afterthought, she pulled this out of the hole again, put a good handful of the mixture up onto the caravan floor, and replaced the pipe.

  The rats would love it.

  10

  The Reverend Michael Batty had some interesting habits unknown to his flock at the grey-rendered Wesleyan chapel on Hooker Street. He had been on the Denswick circuit for three years now, but somehow he had not gelled with the chapel-goers.

  Denswick folk were not the sort of people he had ever seen himself ministering to. Nationally, churchgoers of any denomination were thin on the ground, doddery on their pins and, increasingly, bewildered in the brain. To make things worse, for centuries this county had been renowned as stony ground for preachers, prophets, priests and pastors, and sadly, Michael was not a man known for personal charisma or persistence.

  But Reverend Batty was a good man, though his left eye edged inwards towards his nose during conversation. His secret vice was not really a vice. Every Thursday he would roll up a frayed pair of black Speedo trunks in his favourite stripy towel, conceal them in an Asda carrier bag, and cycle to the swimming baths, which were housed in a 1960s concrete monstrosity a mile from the manse.

  There he had his half-hour of tuition from Samantha, the newest of the pool attendants, who had just achieved her instructor’s certificate. Samantha was unaware that the Reverend had been able to swim since he was seven.

  It was only a small lie. He had never said he couldn’t swim – just enquired about one-to-one lessons at the desk one day and found himself signing up for a twenty-week course. It was something to do to break the midweek monotony of funerals, hospital visits, prison chaplaincy and cups of tea with the housebound infirm.

  From the start, Michael had managed to tense his body in a way that made him sink in the water. It was no good Samantha teaching from the poolside. The man needed hands-on support.

  *

  Contact was light and slight, but it gave Michael a frisson rarely experienced since the death of his lovely wife, Sylvie, some nine years earlier. He craved physical contact. This was not about lust, but loneliness. Michael was a man born to love. He loved all God’s children; sadly, those who had loved him in return were dead or distant. Time was when it had been natural to hold the hand of a grieving widow, or take a small child on his knee during a home visit. Now, constant warnings about ‘inappropriate physical contact’ meant that every adult lived in fear of unwarranted allegations of paedophilia or other perversions.

  The Reverend Michael certainly loved children, but not in that way. After the death of Sylvie, their lack of offspring was his greatest sadness. For Sylvie had just begun to suspect she was pregnant, after ten years of hoping, when a hit-and-run accident had wiped out their future. Michael had so much love to give, but no-one seemed to want it.

  He was on the verge of falling in love with Samantha, her shapely bosom and gentle ways, but knew that it would be inappropriate. She was, after all, a pretty, comely, twenty-one-year-old girl, while he was a forty-three-year-old man with a cast in one eye and a calling that few people respected nowadays. Being the wife of a Methodist minister was no life for a young woman. Not that she would even look at him as a potential suitor in any case…but he couldn’t help dreaming.

  *

  On his way home from the swimming lesson, Reverend Batty sometimes stopped off at the library to borrow secular reading matter, for not all his lonely evenings were spent preparing sermons or calling in at the youth club. He liked to escape into a fictional world to combat the emptiness in his soul that, sometimes, not even the Lord could fill, and had recently taken a shine to Dan Brown’s novels. They might be far-fetched, but they certainly raised plenty of ‘What ifs’ that made one challenge past certainties.

  This dark, damp Thursday, he was browsing along the shelves when he heard a familiar voice; a voice he had not heard for almost four years; a voice which had played a large part in his move to Denswick. It was the voice of Marina, the escort whose company had brought him comfort and pleasure until he fell foul of tittle-tattle.

  Yes, he had been so desperate for female company that he, the Reverend Michael Batty, had paid for it. Not for sex, mind you. There was never any of that. An arm-in-arm stroll, a peck on the cheek, touching hands across a dinner table – this had been not quite, but nearly enough. He had tried other women from the agency, but they had been too full-on and out for a good time. Marina, despite her brassy appearance, had been more thoughtful and, yes, he had imagined that he might show her another way, broaden her mind and, God willing, save her soul.

  Their happy enjoyment and companionship had come to an abrupt end when his relationship with an erstwhile prostitute came to the attention of the more judgemental members of his city congregation. It didn’t take long for rumours to spread and for Michael himself to be vilified. It mattered not that he was innocent of everything but befriending a woman of dubious moral history.

  “Did not the Son of God do the same?” he challenged his accusers.

  This led to further accusations, this time of putting himself on a par with Jesus Christ. Michael had been in a hole, and every time he spoke, he dug it deeper.

  In the end, he had taken up the offer of a position on a different circuit, in a small-town location some thirty miles to the south. He never contacted Marina again for fear that events would repeat themselves, but he missed her company and knew he had behaved badly in not explaining his departure.

  *

  A lonely Christmas stretched before him. Michael would enjoy the Carol Service and the Brownies’ Nativity Play; the hymns and carols, so joyous to the contented, so mournful to the sad and lonely. Since Sylvie’s death, Michael had made moan to the Lord through many a bleak mid-winter. The hopes and fears of all the years weighed heavily on his spirits. He was saddened by humanity’s fall into the claws of mammon; grieved by the commercialisation of this holy festival and appalled by the dominant equation for young people, in which celebration = drunken debauchery + chemical enhancement.

  The ‘sports centre’ was closing for two weeks, so there would be no Samantha to look forward to and he could find no excuse to refuse Mr and Mrs Lovejoy’s kind invitation to Christmas dinner. If last year’s was anything to go by, a gravy-less chicken wing, some barely thawed roasties and sprouts from Iceland would be it. There would be no Christmas pudding, which Michael loved, because it gave the Lovejoys wind – this last explained to him sotto voce, with exaggerated lip movements and nods of the head. He sometimes daydreamed of going away for Christmas – on a cruise maybe – but for a clergyman, that was just not on. Sylvie and he had loved their Christmases spent with her sister, brother-in-law and their four children. He rarely saw them nowadays.

  But now! He had glimpsed his Marina once more! Had overheard her conversation with the assistant librarian; had knowledge that she would pass through Denswick again on the 27th. He would stand at the bus stop all
day to catch a glimpse of her, if necessary. He would try to talk to her. Explain things. Maybe it would all be possible this time. Surely nobody in Denswick could know of Marina’s history? And maybe the Dan Brown novel would arrive before Christmas. He could bury himself in that to help time pass quickly. Waiting for the 27th would keep Reverend Michael warm this Christmas, for sure.

  *

  The minister did not cycle straight home from the library but braced himself to call on one of the most acerbic members of his congregation. A regular worshipper and bun-baker extraordinaire, the eighty-year-old had just been sent home from hospital following heart surgery. She was one of his flock: more importantly, one of God’s children, so Michael loved her unconditionally. That is not to say he liked her.

  Leaning his bike outside the window of her little front room, he threw back his shoulders, fixed a smile on his face which failed to reach even the wandering eye, and rattled the door-knocker. He saw light and movement through the glazed panel. A huffing and puffing grumble approached. The door opened a few inches.

  Recognising the minister, the woman unhooked the chain and let him in. Without a word of welcome, she turned and shuffled back down the hall to a kitchen that smelt of cats and fried fish.

  On a chair pushed back from the floral-clothed table, Dave Simmons rested an ankle trapped in a plaster cast. A pair of plastic and aluminium crutches lay askew on the floor.

  “Dorothy! David! Good to see you both on the mend after your trying times! Looking forward to Christmas?”

  Dave Simmons raised an eyebrow and grunted. His ankle was refusing to mend and he had no time for optimism. Dorothy sat down with a wheeze and a thump, dabbed at her forehead with a crumpled tissue and groaned.

  “Oh, Mr Batty! It was very nearly the end of me, I can tell you. The things I’ve seen in that hospital… It’s a wonder I got out alive.”