Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“Maggie. We can’t.” He plunged It inside.

Scrubber, she thought. Scrubber, slut, tart. She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Her vision blurred as tears slid from her eyes, forking across her temples and down into her ears.

I’m nothing, she thought. I’m a slut. I’m a tart. I’ll do it with anyone. Right now it’s only Nick. But if some other bloke wants to stick It in me tomorrow, I’ll probably let him. I’m a scrubber. A tart.

She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She looked across the room. Bozo the elephant wore his usual expression of pachydermatous bemusement, but there seemed to be something else in his face tonight. Disappointment, no doubt. She’d let Bozo down. But that was nothing compared to what she’d done to herself.

She eased off the bed and onto the fl oor where she knelt, feeling the ridges of the worn rag rug pressing into her knees. She clasped her hands together in the attitude of prayer and tried to think of the words that would lead to forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean it to happen, God. I just thought to myself: If only he’ll kiss me then I’ll know things’re still right between us, no matter what I promised Mummy. Except when he kisses me that way I don’t want him to stop and then he does other things and I want him to do them and then I want more. I don’t want it to end. And I know it’s wrong. I know it. I do. But I can’t help how I feel. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. Don’t let bad come out of this please. It won’t happen again. I won’t let him. I’m sorry.”

But how many times could God forgive when she knew it was wrong and He knew she knew it and she did it anyway because she wanted Nick close? One couldn’t make endless bargains with God without Him wondering about the nature of the deal He was striking. She was going to pay for her sins in a very big way, and it was only a matter of time before God decided that an accounting was due.

“God doesn’t work that way, my dear. He doesn’t keep score. He’s capable of endless acts of forgiveness. This is why He’s our Supreme Being, the standard after which we model ourselves. We can’t hope to reach His level of perfection, of course, and He doesn’t expect us to. He merely asks that we keep trying to better ourselves, to learn from our mistakes, and to understand others.”

How simple Mr. Sage had made it all sound when he’d come upon her in the church that evening last October. She’d been kneeling in the second pew, in front of the rood screen, with her forehead resting on her two clenched fists. Her prayer had been much the same as tonight’s, only it had been the fi rst time then, on a mound of paint-stiffened wrinkled tarpaulins in a corner of the Cotes Hall scullery. With Nick easing her clothes off, easing her to the floor, easing easing easing her ready. “We won’t actually do it,” he’d said, just like tonight. “Tell me when to stop, Mag.” And he kept repeating tell me when to stop Maggie tell me tell me while his mouth covered hers and his fingers worked magic between her legs and she pressed and pressed herself against his hand. She wanted heat and closeness. She needed to be held. She longed to be part of something more than herself. He was the living promise of all she desired, there in the scullery. She merely had to accept.

It was the aftermath that she hadn’t expected, that moment when all the nice girls don’t’s came rushing through her conscience like Noah’s flood: boys don’t respect girls who…they tell all their mates…just say no, you can do that…who steals my purse…they only want one thing, they only think of one thing… do you want a disease…what if he gets you pregnant, do you think he’ll be so hot for you then…you’ve given in once, you’ve crossed a line with him, he’ll be after you now again and again…he doesn’t love you, if he did, he wouldn’t…

And so she had come to St. John the Baptist’s for evensong. She’d half-listened to the reading. She’d half-heard the hymns. Mostly, she’d looked at the intricate rood screen and the altar beyond it. There, the Ten Commandments — etched into looming, individual bronze tablets — comprised the reredos, and she found her attention helplessly riveted on commandment number seven. It was harvest festival. The altar steps were spread with an array of offerings. Sheaves of corn, marrows of yellow and green, new potatoes in baskets, and several bushels of beans fi lled the church air with the fertile scent of autumn. But Maggie was only imperfectly aware of this, as she was only imperfectly aware of the prayers being said and the organ being played. The light from the main chandelier in the chancel seemed to glitter directly onto the bronze reredos, and the word adultery quivered in her vision. It seemed to grow larger, seemed to point and accuse.

She tried to tell herself that committing adultery meant that at least one of the parties had to be in possession of wedding vows to break. But she knew that an entire school of loathsome behaviours rested beneath the awning of that single word, and she was guilty of most of them: impure thoughts about Nick, infernal desire, sexual fantasies, and now fornication, the worst sin of all. She was black and corrupt, headed straight for damnation.

If only she could recoil from her behaviour, writhing in disgust over the act itself or how it made her feel, God might forgive her. If only the act had made her feel unclean, He might overlook this one small lapse. If only she didn’t want it — and Nick and the indescribable warmth of their bodies’ connection — all over again, now, right here in the church.

Sin, sin, sin. She lowered her head to her fists and kept it there, oblivious of the rest of the service. She began to pray, making fervent supplications for God’s forgiveness, with her eyes squeezed shut so tight she saw stars.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Don’t let bad happen to me. I won’t do it again. I promise. I promise. I’m sorry.”

It was the only prayer that she could devise, and she repeated it mindlessly, caught up in her need for direct communication with the supernatural. She heard nothing of the vicar’s approach, and she didn’t even know the service was over and the church empty until she felt a hand curving firmly round her shoulder. She looked up with a cry. All of the chandeliers had been extinguished. The only light remaining came in a greenish glow from an altar lamp. It touched one side of the vicar’s face and cast long, crescent shadows from the bags beneath his eyes.

“He is forgiveness itself,” the vicar said quietly. His voice was soothing, just like a warm bath. “Never doubt that. He exists to forgive.”

The serenity of his tone and the kindness of his words brought tears to her eyes. “Not this,” she said. “I don’t see how He can.”

His hand squeezed her shoulder, then dropped. He joined her in the pew, sitting not kneeling, and she slid back onto the bench herself. He indicated the rood atop its screen. “If the Lord’s last words were, ‘Forgive them, Father,’ and if His Father did indeed forgive— which we may be assured that He did — then why wouldn’t He forgive you as well? Whatever your sin may be, my dear, it cannot equal the evil of putting to death the Son of God, can it?”

“No,” she whispered, although she had begun to cry. “But I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway because I wanted to do it.”

He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s the nature of sin. We face a temptation, we have a choice to make, we choose unwisely. You aren’t alone in this. But if you’re resolved in your heart not to sin again, then God forgives. Seventy times seven. You may rely upon that.”