So how did this ecumenical boiling pot lead to me being, at this stage of my life, agnostic? This being a view that there is no proof of either the existence or non-existence of any deity, but since any deity that may exist appears unconcerned for the universe or the welfare of its inhabitants, the question is largely academic and that their existence therefore has little or no impact on personal human affairs and should be of little theological interest. Yet the Ghanaian Akan Twi proverb ‘No state is permanent,’ speaks to me. The future is an empty chapter at present.
I remind you this story is not just a book about faiths but a crime novella too.
Prologue
At the age of eight I moved to Shawlands in Glasgow from Kirriemuir in rural Angus. My first day at primary school there was a seminal experience of considerable educational and religious magnitude.
Miss Dick demanded that we work out a sum on the board and proceeded to move unobtrusively up each row of pupils like a viper whose tongue was ready to dart out and pounce on an errant mathematician. The problem I had was I knew there was no long division in Kirriemuir. (I believe they have it now.) My ploy was to score out the sum and start to draw it in again as Miss Dick passed by. I knew if I could survive this day, then my older sister would be able to instruct me in this advanced mathematical mystery that night.
‘We do not make a mess like that,’ I heard. An eerie silence prepared the class for the day’s ritual torture. I was dragged out to the front. The viper struck. Twice in fact with her Lochgelly manufactured leather belt, the likes of which I had never set eyes on before. I tried hard not to cry as my fingers tingled in red hot pain. I was sent back to my seat without any instruction in how to go about solving the sum and so anticipated another trashing that afternoon if we returned to this dark calculation. Morning break could not come quickly enough.
That was when I was approached by a caring pupil whose surname I had never encountered.
Leslie Hecht felt sorry for my morning difficulties and befriended me with a very strange question.
‘Miller, are you a Jew?’
This was not the time to reject the kindly voice I was hearing. Somewhere in the make-up of my ‘son of the manse’ background, a phrase kept itching to be heard. Ah yes, Christ was King of the Jews. I could now reply with confidence.
‘Yes, I am a Jew,’ I said pleased with myself.
‘Then bring your yarmulke on Friday. That’s when we have Hebrew lessons.’
‘My what?’
‘Yarmulke. Your parents must be reformed Jews. Your school cap will do.’
The next couple of months were less traumatic than that first day at Shawlands Primary but my father, who was minister of Shawlands Old Parish Church, was also the school chaplain. He asked me what I was enjoying at school, probably to see if I had an arts leaning or a science preference.
‘Hebrew,’ I said.
‘Hebrew?’ clarified my father who had studied Greek and Hebrew at St. Andrews University as part of his divinity degree.
‘Yes. Baruch hata Adonai. Elo-henu malech ho-olam, ha’tov, va-ha’me-tev,’ I said.
‘Why are you speaking Hebrew, Miller?’
‘Because I am a Jew, Dad.’
‘No, you are not.’ he replied as my eyes fell to the ground. At that moment I realise no more bar mitzvah’s of my friend’s older brothers would come my way.
Several years later, when I was a student, I flew to the States with Camp America in the summer months. It happened to be a Jewish camp I travelled to. Beautiful Lake Onota, in the verdant Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, nestled at this site which had served the New York Jewish community for three generations. There, they were not surprised that I spoke Hebrew. They assumed I was a Jew until we got ready to swim in the camp pool. I was certainly not a Jew after all.
Three months later I was working for the Presbyterian Church in Ghana. I was there from 1972 to1978. It was there I met my Anglican wife. Membership seemed open to all adherents in her mother church - except for us.
When my wife met the vicar of the church in Wigan, in preparation for our January wedding, he was somewhat concerned to find her fiancé was neither Anglican nor English, that he lived in West Africa and was not present. The Anglican Church did not open its doors to everyone it seemed, at that precise moment.
The Anglican Bishop of Liverpool was to be notified and consulted before progress could be made for our marriage. And so the famous cricketing Bishop, David Shepherd, gave his blessing on our marriage and the great personal event took place in January 1978.
The following year, we returned to the UK from Tema in Ghana. I enrolled to study a post graduate degree in West African traditional religions, geography and the history of colonial Africa. There I found a multitude of faiths mixed at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Jews and Muslims, Hindu and Baptists mingled with Sanskrit poems and readings heard in the corridors. We drank coffee and smoked from Turkish Aykoc Meersham Sultan pipes and I made many friends of different faiths, in harmony with different belief systems.
After graduating, I was offered two jobs. One was in Surrey and the other in Stirling. With a family in mind, we preferred to head north and I found work as an educational social worker in St Modan’s Roman Catholic Secondary School in Stirling. These were happy days in which I engaged in the rites of that denomination but when I left three years later, I was more than ever convinced that religion in schools should never be on a compulsory basis – as in France.
I became a reporter to the children’s panels. Over the next twenty years, I was a reporter in Kilmarnock, Irvine, Ayr, and finally held the post of Regional and Authority Reporter for the south of Scotland. A Hearing meant that at every meeting there were three panel members. Robin Wood was an excellent member and held a high position on the Council for Secular Humanism. He gave me magazines and I attended some Humanist conferences, ironically some were back in Stirling. There were Jews, Baptists, Methodists, Atheists, Salvationists and Congregationalists – all caring panel members making decisions in the lives of children, influencing young lives in a positive manner and, in turn, influencing me to a significant degree.
After I retired, I knew a Policeman who also had a restaurant. He was a Muslim. Farook Ahmed’s niece was killed in the tragic earthquake in South Asia of October 2005. He met me in town. As he knew I had been the reporter, he asked if I would go to one of the camps to help the children who had lost parents and their dwellings in the disaster.
He had in mind that I would play with and teach the young children. Accordingly I travelled east with paper and crayons, several glove puppets and a mouth organ.
But there was trouble at the Mundihar camp in the Islamic Republic of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan when I arrived. Aid had come flooding in from wealthy countries and the farmer and his wife, who had donated their land for the tents, could not cope. Some of the aid was taken by the farmer’s wife to the local town’s people who had not been affected by the tragedy. A meeting took place in the camp grounds. It was chaired by a Brigadier of the Pakistani Army. He was deciding if the farmer’s wife should be prosecuted for her illegal distribution of aid.
I stood up and told the assembled circle of interested parties that when a major disaster occurred, the worldwide response was immediate. Money and goods were rushed to the area but so often, whether in Asia or Africa, the local networks were traumatised and understandably slow to get organised with a distribution plan. I had sympathy for the farmer’s wife as she had faced this problem and then I sat down. The Brigadier stood up and pointed his finger at me.
‘You are not a Muslim,’ he said placing me on edge. ‘You are independent. You will be the camp manager.’
And so I became responsible for the care, protection, feeding and supply of the needs of 24,500 Sunni Muslim victims, of all ages, of the 2005 earthquake.
/> The camp had its own Imam. I regret my memory escapes me regarding his name but his English language was clear, educated and beautifully descriptive. But his wish was to make me realise Islam was the only way of life. Yes, Christ Jesus was a prophet but no more than that. He was persuasive and persistent. When I left, I did not reject his ranting but saw all religion as part of a human psyche trying to find the meaning of life.
Let each person use his or her senses to find that meaning but remember religion requires faith and faith is not fact. Nor should anyone be prevented from choosing their own vehicle of faith and certainly no one has the right to prevent individuals from abandoning their set of beliefs to acquire another, or none at all.
So these are my somewhat unusual, albeit unconventional, exposures to different religions over my lifetime. These encounters, I concede, must influence this novel, for writers rely on their experiences and what they know and have learned.
So why have I written this book?
There is a hunger to understand the forces of religion. They can drive both the politics of good and also the powers of evil. They can create acts of great kindness and acts of sheer evil, death and destruction. Religion is worn ostentatiously by some and covertly by others. Their way is the best way; the only way, if only that were true.
This novel looks behind the denominational beliefs to find the essence of a common human experience – the very values of what it is to be human.
1
Overburdened
Dr Tony Scriven’s marriage did not explode. It simply faded like an autumn dusk. His acrimony was negligible even after he learned his wife had a new partner. He was married to his work, a factor in the separation. Now city life was behind him. It no longer held its charms.
From a busy Manchester practice, he moved to a post in rural South West Scotland. Fewer cases pleased him. It gave him time to enjoy a weekly round of golf. An interest in ornithology had been resurrected too especially on his Rambling Club walks. These were the positive aspects of his new life. However there was a gap in his life and it was hard to fit into such a close-knit community. It became an increasing concern as he grew older. Could he find a partner before it was too late? Had he made the wrong decision to leave the city after all?
The Reverend Alan Barker reported to the desk secretary and took a seat in the square waiting room. The NHS could not afford a fresh coat of paint. So a flat screen stared at Alan. It fought to occupy his troubled mind with house purchasing in far-away warmer climes.
“A mere quarter of a million would secure this view; twice as much with a pool and an extra bedroom,” said the highly tanned, golden-haired and provocatively dressed presenter.
To Alan, this visual offering was pure Disneyland. His manse was large of course but it was on loan to each succeeding incumbent. It too had a good view. He had a glebe as well. But there was no swimming pool, just a damp patch at the bottom of the lawn supporting a few tadpoles this spring.
Dr Tony Scriven arrived extending his hand and projecting a warm smile.
‘Mr Barker? Hi. This way please,’ he said turning to take the lead. Tony had passed Alan’s church on foot many times but he rolled out in his Volvo on Sundays to exercise his mind and body on the golf course. Easter and Christmas rituals with the occasional funeral had been his sole church visits in the past, making him a nominal Church adherent should anyone ask.
Alan felt a surge of relief. The process had begun. What lay ahead remained a mystery. This was a medical appointment of which he had no experience.
‘Alan, the floor is yours,’ said Tony the former GP turned psychiatrist.
Alan hung his coat on the peg behind the door. Should he state the over-arching problem with a monologue of gigantic proportions or produce make short sentences? He pulled out the wooden chair in front of the desk and sat down before the psychiatrist. He crossed his legs and rested his hands in a tight clasp over his right knee.
‘Something’s not right. I don’t feel like.......well......’
‘Burnt out? Sermon drought?’ suggested Tony.
Alan nodded, briefly looking up at his inquisitor. He knew his recent sermons had been recovered from years gone by. He felt it safe to resurrect them, as few would remember a dust covered sermon or its message. But even those pulpit outings were of the past. He had not entered his very own church for over four weeks.
Tony flipped through his notes. He noted his wife was bedridden following a riding accident eight months ago.
‘Your role must have changed considerably since your wife’s accident.’
Was that a question he wondered? ‘Of course it has, bloody difficult it is. What else would you expect?’ he snapped.
Tony gave a supporting nod, surprised at the clerics mild swearing and anger.
‘It’s time consuming. I do everything now, everything. I clean, bathe, shop, garden, cook.........’ He was cut short.
‘It must leave little time to be a pastor.’
Alan gave a weird grin. It hadn’t taken the psychiatrist long to confirm what he knew, but was that depression?
‘Do you get enough sleep?’
‘Disturbed, I’d say. But I try to go to bed early. We sleep apart – have to. Don’t watch much TV these days either.’
‘Does your wife read or watch telly?’
Alan looked across at the monitor behind Dr Scriven. It was either a television or heart or something else monitor. He wondered just what it was but did not ask.
‘Your wife, Alan, I was asking....’
‘She can’t turn pages. The telly’s in her room. Yes, it’s her pal when I am out.’
Alan felt Dr Scriven had got a picture of his daily life. But there were still a few initial questions to overcome for the doctor’s satisfaction. The interrogation continued.
‘Does the congregation help in any way?’
Alan blew and sniffed into his handkerchief. ‘No, not much,’ he said in all honesty.
‘And why’s that?’
‘Probably the nature of the disability. Possibly see me as the duty carer 24/7. Just no role for them, I suppose.’ Alan sighed as the image of his daily drudgery was laid bare. He returned his handkerchief to his pocket.
‘Not a very Christian lot I’d say. You mean no one to do the garden for example; ironing; making meals?’
Alan shifted from one buttock to the other. ‘We occasionally get a few loaves and crumbles, that sort of thing.’ He wondered if the psychiatrist was acting more like a social worker.
‘Alcohol intake?’
‘Teetotal,’ he replied promptly then wondered if the Christmas drink or a birthday tipple constituted a light drinker. He was wondering whether to retract and amend his answer but his thoughts were cut short by a personal intrusion.
‘Your sex life. Satisfying?’
God, sex always sex. Psychiatrists must be obsessed with the topic, he thought. I suppose he’s heard everything, he concluded. He took a deep breath.
‘The sin of Onan. Self-satisfying and sometimes mutual.’
‘Good. I don’t know how I’d cope in your situation Alan, especially as the change was so sudden. But you’ve not got depression. I can be sure of that. If anything you are too active, domestically. You are overburdened. You are doing the job of two people if not three and feeling guilty that you cannot serve your congregation. I can see why you feel you are losing the place. And you are.’
Alan knew he was certainly not functioning and was glad his own diagnosis had been wide of the mark.
‘Just to clarify, it’s not depression this thing I have?’
‘No. Mind you, your GP was right to refer you to me. He must have suspected the dark dog. But there’s none I’m pleased to say. Not a bark or a whimper,’ smiled Tony.
Alan felt relieved but saw no further purpose in the examination. His eyes wandered ro
und the room.
‘So what happens now?’
Tony lifted his telephone. As it rang he focussed his eyes on Alan and smiled.
Tea perhaps? Yes, that’s what he’ll be arranging, the British solution to all aches of the mind and body. However his opening remark sent a shiver down Alan’s spine.
‘Can you come to my room? I’ve a client for you.’
2
A Bridge Over Troubled Water
Shower-heads set on full. That’s what the rain seemed like. Falling on roof tops sending gushes of bubbling water down into thirsty drains. The sky was dark. Streets were claustrophobic in busy home-time, wet-clothing time. It had been one of those life supporting necessary but so inconvenient miserable days. Coloured umbrellas identified female pedestrians while golf insignia and black ones kept the head and shoulders dry of the men as they headed, keeping their heads down, towards car parks, public transport and onward to their homes. Those in cars leaned forward, mesmerised by the full throttle of wiper blades out of time with Radio 2 and sometimes too fast for Classic FM.
Most pedestrians walked purposefully, watching for approaching puddles. Bus passengers looked down on them with some sympathy hoping the worst of the rain would have subsided when they alighted.
That was why police could find no witnesses or even an explanation why a man lay on a muddy reed bank beneath the town bridge. His life seemed to have ebbed away amid the constant ripples of water washing his face. None of the commuters glanced over the bridge. There was nothing to see but darkness, and the occasional effervescent ripple.
His hair moved, flowing backwards and forwards to the vagrancies of the tide and his bearded chin chattered in erratic bursts of nothingness.
The in-shore lifeboat stationed further down the river was alerted by one observant bus passenger’s mobile. Yet another body in the river. Third this year but it was November. The average annual water death toll had just been achieved. Water always had its fascination; its alluring recreation and its death enticing moods. They sped towards the fatal casualty. They were certain to encounter a corpse. They were prepared as ever.
The Trials of Sally Dunning and a Clerical Murder Page 15