Disreputable People

by Penelope Rowe

  ‘Time to go,’ said Robin gently, taking Cathy by the elbow, appalled that their journey through the macabre had reached a climax in this charnel house.

  ‘In a moment,’ said Cathy, just as gently. She turned to face him, pulling his warm living body close to hers. ‘Thank you for everything, my darling, your love and your patience and your concern.’ Her voice faltered momentarily. ‘I’m glad we came in here. It’s not just a house of death, a meditation on mortality. It’s a place of communion with infinitely suffering people. Only in despair would one make supplication in such a terrible place. The people who come here have nothing left to offer but their pain. It’s not death I feel here, but their life and hope. Without that how can any of us go on?’ She kissed him. ‘Wait for me outside. I’ll just be a minute.’

  Cathy knelt on the stone floor, oblivious to the people around her.

  ‘I’m offering my pain here and Robin’s pain,’ she said aloud. ‘I want to join with all the maimed and weary who have come here before me. I place my invisible deformity up there on a ledge of bone so that the tiny gust of hope it emits will flow down and touch the supplicants that follow me. I’ll leave it there for any good it might do.’

  She closed her eyes and prayed for them all that they might find the strength to continue, then she rose and went calmly to join her beloved husband in the sunlight of life.