Stuart Pawson - The Mushroom Man

"Oh, how do you do? I'm Mary Conway. You must be Vicky and Lee."

"That's right."

"So pleased to meet you. Ronald said would you mind if he saw you in the church? He's in there now, if you'd care to pop along."

"Oh, all right, then. G'night."

"Just go straight in. Bye bye."

They turned on their heels and walked back down the drive. Halfway up the path to the church Lee's power of speech returned. "Hey, Vicky," he whispered.

"What?"

"When we come out, when we've finished, we could always come back and have it in the graveyard. That'd be a laugh."

"Lee Todd! You're obsessed. Sex! Sex! Sex! That's all you ever think about!"

"I know. That's why you love me, in nit Vicky embraced his arm in both hers and looked up at him. "Probably," she laughed.

The big door swung open and Lee entered a house of God for the first time in his eighteen years. He quietly closed the door behind them. It was not an example of ecclesiastical architecture likely to fill a young heathen with a sense of awe and wonder, being built during one of the Church's more austere periods. What did impress Lee was the power of the silence.

"What do we do?" he hissed.

"Dunno. Look for him, I suppose. Let's go down to the front."

They walked down the aisle together for what was to be the only time in their lives, Lee's trainers padding noiselessly and Vicky's stilettos ringing out on the stone flags.

There was a door marked Vestry, with a glimmer of light visible under it. Lee, now confident that no bolt of lightning was about to smite him, knocked… There was no answer. He turned the handle and they went in.

"Cor, it's a bit warmer in 'ere," Vicky said.

"Yeah. Smells as if someone's been smoking Pashas."

"Pashas? What's them?"

"Strongest cigs ever made, according to my dad. It's one of 'is catch phrases "You smell as if you've been smoking Pashas," he sez."

"Spect it's incense," Vicky told him.

They wandered back into the nave and looked around them.

"How long do we wait?" asked Lee.

"Dunno."

Down near the entrance was a notice board, with letters and schedules and various Third World appeals pinned to it. They studied the messages, and were unmoved by the pictures of pot-bellied children and weeping, wizened mothers.

Lee's bravado had returned by now. Or his animal desires had overcome his apprehension. "Hello! Anybody there?" he shouted. Vicky laughed. Lee sprinted down to the front of the church and climbed into the pulpit. "Today's hymn is "My Way","he called out.

Vicky followed him. "You're daft," she giggled.

Lee put his arms around her and kissed her. He turned her around so that he was behind her and enclosed her breasts in his fingers.

"Don't," Vicky moaned, as his tongue probed her ear.

"Hey! Who's that watching us?" he demanded.

"Where?" said an alarmed Vicky.

"Her up there."

Vicky looked where he gestured. "That's a statue of the Virgin Mary," she explained.

"What, the vicar's wife?"

"No, idiot. Jesus's mum."

"Blimey, bet they had to go a long way to find her."

"Yeah. Specially with sex maniacs like you around."

He resumed his fondling and Vicky rotated her buttocks against his loins. The Mother of God gazed serenely just above their heads as his fingers flicked open the buttons of Vicky's blouse and slid her bra up, revealing nipples as brown and hard as the carved acorns that decorated the oak lectern.

"Stay there," he ordered, suddenly letting go of her. He sprinted to the church door, slid the big bolt across, and was back with her in seconds. Vicky stood pulling the front of her blouse together.

Lee grabbed her hand. "C'mon," he ordered.

"Where?" whimpered Vicky.

"In here," he replied, dragging her towards the vestry. The only furniture in there was the vicar's ancient writing desk and a chair. On the floor in front of the desk was a thick woollen rug, woven in a pattern representing scarab beetles. It was from Morocco, and had been presented to the church by the local Bible-Koran Society, in a gesture of conciliation.

Lee closed the door behind them. The key was in the lock, so he turned it. He kissed Vicky roughly, fondling her and fumbling with her clothing, then forced her down on to the rug.

After the absolute minimum of preliminaries he hooked his fingers into her pants and pulled them off. This time she eased her buttocks off the ground to facilitate their passage.

Lee was kneeling between her legs. He undid his jeans and was on to and into her with a speed that would have impressed a Wensleydale sheep farmer.

Their lovemaking depended on enthusiasm and athleticism rather than tenderness and concern. The aim was to achieve a fleeting moment of intense pleasure as rapidly as possible, which would immediately be followed by a feeling of wondering what all the fuss had been about until the urge to do it again slowly returned.

Sex in unusual places has its own eroticism, but it does sometimes fall down on practicality. Vicky was lying entirely within the borders of the woven pattern, but Lee's feet projected beyond it, on to the parquet floor, which the ladies of the congregation polished, with assiduity and Johnson's wax, every Tuesday morning.

He was wearing Reebok basketball boots, famed for their grip on slippery surfaces. Every thrust of his loins pushed Vicky and the rug across the floor, and every three or four thrusts his toes stuttered forwards to bring him back into the optimum position. Slowly they progressed across the vestry, like some Gothic, ratchet-propelled animal.

It was unsatisfactory for Vicky, too. She flailed her arms around, trying to find a fixture to cling to. There was nothing at all within the arc of her right arm, but the left was underneath the big wooden desk.

She groped about in vain for several seconds, then she thought her fingertips brushed something. The next thrust confirmed her thoughts and the one after that brought it within her grasp.

Vicky grabbed hold and braced herself. It wasn't the solid anchorage she was hoping for. It was soft and yielding, as well as wet and sticky.

It was another hand.

Vicky gasped with terror and yanked her own hand back.

She held it above her and blood dripped from it onto her face.

Her scream echoed around the high roof and set the starlings flying from the tower. With a mighty convulsion she threw Lee off and jumped to her feet. The locked door delayed her progress slightly, but within seconds she was running barefoot out into the night, still screaming.

Lee had just reached the good bit. Vicky's first recoil action made him think that for once his timing was perfect. He was on the backstroke, on the verge of the big finale, when she shot out from under him. He impregnated a woven scarab beetle with half a billion of his healthy, if genetically undistinguished, spermatozoa.

Exhausted and frustrated, he collapsed on the rug. He was facing the underside of the desk, but his right arm was obscuring his vision.

Beyond his arm, in the shadows under the desk, Lee could make out what looked like somebody's shoulder, wearing a tweed jacket. His hand was trembling uncontrollably as he drew it back, and he found himself staring into the sightless gaze of the late Reverend Ronald Conway.

Lee caught Vicky at the reproduction lich-gate. She was sobbing and screaming and cursing because she'd hurt her feet in her panic. He grabbed her arm and manhandled her into the car, before shaking her until her teeth rattled. It was an effective treatment for hysteria.

When she quietened down they drove off. Parked in a farm gateway a couple of miles away, they reviewed the situation: they'd had an appointment with the vicar; his wife knew their names; Vicky had left her shoes and knickers behind and Lee had deposited a sample of his body fluids that would have provided for the nation's in vitro fertilisation programme into the next century.