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I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of the Story. Here is Part 2.
You will need to read Part 1 and can do so here!
The Priest – Part 2
She held out her hand. He noticed the self tattooed dots on each of her knuckles. He had asked her once what they represented. Her answer was, “Nothing. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” That summed her up. Live for the moment. To hell with consequences. Not like him, a man who weighed each and every action before committing to it.
“I miss you,” he said, “Come back to me. I am nothing without you.”
She smiled. That gap toothed smile. Her green eyes sparkled. “Be still Father. Be still.” Her eyes, despite all that she had suffered still radiated kindness. Cramps rented him, but Susan remained.
“She’s come back for me!”
He had tried to help her. Find the heroin she needed. Give her life. If needs be with his life. He had started to buy it for her. To help her overcome her addiction. Get away from Luke her pusher and pimp. He could save her, his very own Magdalene.
He had found her in the Church on that distant Summer’s evening, asleep on one of the pews sporting a black eye and split lip. Her visitation was a sign. He was sure of that.
A sign that his duty was to help her. Through his faith and his magnanimity. But it would also prove to be a test of faith. A test that he had failed. The wrap of foil and the smoke stained Biro casing lying on the floor attested to that.
At first he left her food. Sandwiches, Tuna and Sweet corn or Cheese and Pickle. Mars Bars. Coffee even though she preferred Coke. He began to leave small amounts of money, loose change from his pockets, a fiver now and then.
He had asked about her parents. There were none. She was taken into care as a baby. Her mum was dead. Heroin she thought. Couldn’t be sure. Didn’t care either way.
He had told her about the night shelter in the Town Centre, but she didn’t want to go back there. Too dangerous. Besides, she liked being alone. Something a Care System never allowed. People prying into her business, her “welfare” when the only people who ever took interest in her were the men who wanted to groom and pimp her.
Here in the Church, she was alone. Safe. After all that is what churches were at the end. Havens.
She would return to Luke each morning and earn the money to pay for the heroin he sold her, but at least it was safe here in the church. And after all, she told the Priest, one day Luke wouldn’t come looking for her and she would be free then. Then she could make some choices about her life.
The Priest was uncertain at first. It wasn’t his job. He wasn’t a Social Worker or trained in this world. He had had a quiet word with Detective Inspector O’Leary, a parishioner. “Watch her, she’s trouble that one. If you want I will sort her out for you.”
It was not the reply he had been expecting. A tad harsh. The girl was a victim of fate or at least circumstance. He should help her. More to the point he could help her. Demonstrate to her the love of His God for all people.
The train began to move. Station lights bled through the opaque glass. He tried to read the station sign but couldn’t. He threw some cold water on his face. The shock was welcome. He was on a train heading to Durham. Good, he was beginning to feel in control again.
Luke. A spindly urchin of feral design and mindset, who reeked of cannabis and Lynx body spray. At first, he was aggravated by a Priest interfering in his affairs. The Girl was popular. Cheap to run and earned him more than the other girls. He would be mad to let her go. Not until she was spent and the punters wouldn’t want her anymore. Couple of years away at least. Then she could just fuck off and the Priest would be welcome to her.
The Priest spent a month caring for her, leaving the sandwiches, drink and money. He had even sought out Luke to score for her. Small amounts to help her wean herself off the stuff. On the third occasion, Luke had said to him, “Try it Father? I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. You seem the sort. You lot always need something to cling to.”
He refused the offer. Naturally. Heroin was dangerous. Evil. Like the asp in the Garden of Eden. At first he was impervious to its mendacious whisperings, but the voice grew louder and attached itself to him, wrapped itself around his sub-conscious. He now saw it as a test of his faith. And if it would bring him to a closer understanding of the Girl’s struggles, then that could only be a good thing. He had given up smoking and knew he had the strength of will to refute the narcotic’s siren advances
He smoked it. Luke showed him how. He reminded himself it was to get closer to her suffering and understand what agonies she must be enduring. Why she needed to escape her life.
He had enjoyed it.
No.
He loved it.
Fuckin’ loved it.
It instilled the peace his restless mind had always sought and brought him closer to a God who had become distant in the past few years. He forgot about her, Luke and everything else he had concerned himself with.
Heroin loved him and helped God find him again. Intellectually as well as spiritually. He had craved this insight all his life and the Girl, as if a messenger had shown him the way to enlightenment.
Luke was right.
Blackmail is a cruel trick to play. But Luke being a shrewd business man knew that extorting a priest for two hundred a week was a much easier way to earn than scoring, pimping or robbing. He granted Susan one night a week off as part payment. “Fair deal, your holiness!” he said without a glimmer of irony.
The train drew to a halt at another station. Through the frosted glass he made out the comings and goings of other passengers. The train cranked and cussed as straining metal cooled.
Susan stroked his cheek. How could she have been oblivious to his feelings for her? If he had heard once “I love you Father,” it would have been enough, even a simple thank you would have sufficed.
No, no that was wrong. He had not sought or played for the girl’s affections, she was the one at fault not he. She must have understood his life as a priest, his celibacy and his devotion to the poor rather than himself. Through his haze, he felt anger rise.
Good, an emotion. The drugs were beginning to abate.
No, it was plain to him now that she only saw him as an amusement. A conduit. Less risky, an idealistic fool who supplied her drugs for free, kept her from the clutches of Luke and the punters who beat her. Let her sleep in the church. She probably thought he was a perv. The Bitch.
Where was he? What was he doing here? Who is this girl smiling down at me?
“You have to go Susan. Can’t you see you led me to this?” She withdrew her hand. The smile tipped from her face and in its place a scowl darkened her gaunt features. She was at fault. If only he had never met her. If only he had not taken Confession that night in the Church.
Did she not see that in this confined space, her Christian duty and duty as a woman, was to help him? What was she doing here anyway? She didn’t belong here.
She faded and the warmth of her touch returned to being a memory.
“Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please.”
She did not reply.
Again there was a knock on the door. “Are you alright in there?” The voice outside displayed some concern.
“Yes, yes, sorry,” He replied. Guilt was his companion now. The opiate rush dulled further. The anger and confusion were replaced by the crimson shame. It had been so easy to succumb to his addiction once more. It had not been conquered, merely fettered for those months of rehabilitation.
He stood. Stronger this time. Good. The train jerked forward. He fell towards the wash hand basin, wrapping left knuckles in the process. The pain was welcome. Real.
He opened the door and gingerly stepped out, expecting to be confronted by the impatient voice that had been knocking earlier. There was no-one there.
He cast a glance backwards. The foil wrapper lay on the floor by the flush pedal and the smoke charred pen case lay at an angle to it.
He began the unsteady journey back to his seat, stumbling into other passengers as he did so, earning agitated glances. He mumbled apologies, his pallid features and sweat matted hair presenting a disturbing, deranged portrait to other passengers who averted their gaze.
He was thankful that he would never see these people again. Thankful not to be wearing his priest’s garb.
The train slowed. The scent of asbestos lined brakes filled the carriage.
He inhaled deeply. The carbonated taste of the air brought him back to his current location. He estimated that he had been in the cubicle for nearly four hours. The Guard announced that they were now approaching York station.
He moved through the carriage trying to remember where he had sat. Several rows away he saw a young boy furiously colouring a drawing. He remembered. He had been sitting opposite the boy and his mother.
“Look mummy, I’ve finished!” The child held up his crayon scrawl for his mother to view. She praised the boy and shot an uncertain glance at the catatonic man now sitting opposite her.
The boy sat back with a furrowed look on his face before saying, “It’s a pig mummy can’t you tell?”
“Of course it is Jake.”
“Oink! Oink!” the little boy said gleefully. His mother laughed to. She tidied the pile of coloured pictures the boy had completed on the journey. The Priest’s eyes scanned them and noticed the clowns faces peering up at him. The boy had been colouring in that one when he had left them. White faces and red noses.
A residue of vomit had collected in the corner so his mouth. He pulled out a tissue and wiped it clean. He felt his Rosary Beads in the pocket too. A memory. Of only a few hours ago. Four hours.
He thought back to the final session with Father Stephen,
“Your own conceits and half baked assumptions about your own intellectual rigour and proximity to the seat of God were your undoing David. Most people turn to God in times of personal or national crisis. You on the other hand turned to God to seek adulation.”
“I always thought I was different Stephen, somehow set apart from everyday life. I was created for something else.”
“David, accept what you have been given and revel in that. Lose this self deluding notion of saintliness and you can still offer something to God, the Church and people.”
David ruminated on Fr Stephen’s belligerent assessment. He could admit to being a little self obsessed, he had the treatment to thank for that, but he was surprised that Stephen could still not see how different he was to everybody else.
Part 3 Tomorrow……
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