Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘What are you smiling at?’ the object of his affectionate recollections asked.

‘Life,’ he said. ‘And all of its rich tapestry.’

‘Seems to me you look like the cat that got the cream.’

‘If I was a cat I would be purring.’

‘ I certainly am. You sure you don’t want to come back to bed and stroke me again?’

The priest laughed. ‘Like I say, you’re a wicked, wicked woman, Sarah Jane.’

‘You’re quite right, and I should be spanked for it.’

He laughed again. ‘I’d give it a try but I imagine I’d end up with a couple of missing teeth.’

‘Yes. You probably would.’

Sarah Jane let the sheet drop, revealing her large breasts, the nipples clearly aroused and as pink as her lips against the creamy white magnificence of her skin. She put her hands behind her neck, arching her back slightly. ‘Are you really sure you wouldn’t like to linger?’ she asked again, breathlessly.

Carson swallowed and shook his head, a look of something like regret passing through his eyes. ‘I really can’t — sorry.’

Her smile faded. ‘You’ll have to go and tell a few Hail Marys, I suppose?’

The priest sighed. ‘Don’t, Sarah Jane.’

‘It’s not our fault I chose the wrong man.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s your precious God who made him gay. Made him that way but didn’t give him the balls to admit it until he had been married to me for fifteen years.’

‘Let’s not discuss this again.’

‘Seems to me your religion can be pretty flexible when it comes to your own moral code but not to others.’

‘It’s not my religion that dictates celibacy.’

Sarah Jane blinked. ‘Come again?’

Father Carson Brown sat beside her and took her hand. ‘It’s just Church law, not based on any scriptural doctrine.’

‘Really?’

The priest nodded his head sadly. ‘It was in 1139 when the Second Lateran Council forbade the marriage of priests and declared null and void those legitimate marriages that had taken place before.’

‘Nice of them.’

‘But it didn’t ban sex for them.’

Sarah Jane was sitting up now, the sheet wrapped demurely around her and her forehead creased with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The edict made the wives into concubines, is all.’

‘Why?’

‘So their progeny wouldn’t have the right to inherit property. Priests used to travel around before but now churches were being built by communities and parishes were created and the priest was staying.’

‘So?’

‘So it was all about money. The property was owned by the Catholic Church.’

‘So why haven’t they done anything about it nowadays, if it’s such an old and ridiculous law?’

‘They’ve tried. Ever since the 1960s there has been an enormous groundswell of opinion that the Church law should be changed. There’s an organisation called CORPUS that campaigns and represents tens of thousands of resigned priests throughout the world. Trust me, I don’t feel guilty about what we are doing because my heart and my soul are telling me it’s right.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. And that’s what constitutes faith. It’s what religion is all about.’

‘So why haven’t you told me this before?’

Father Carson took a deep breath. ‘Because I am thinking of resigning from the priesthood.’

Sarah Jane looked up at him, shocked and feeling not a little guilty. ‘Because of me?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head sadly again. ‘Because of me.’

*

The conversation with Sarah Jane Keeley was still running through Father Carson Brown’s mind that Sunday morning as he walked past the houses on Westbury Terrace and up to his church. Most of the curtains were closed but he still felt as if he could feel the eyes of his parishioners on him … judging him. He held his jacket closed with one hand, shivering against the cold as he opened the small gate to Saint Botolph’s. There was a low wall in front of the church that the gate was set in, and beyond that about twenty yards by six of yard. The gravel, still rimed with frost, crunched under his feet, as he closed the gate behind him, but he paid no attention to the sound or to his surroundings as he walked up to and into the small side porch that led into the church. He didn’t find it odd that the outer church door was open and he hardly registered the coldness of the holy water as he dipped the first two fingers of his right hand in it and made a sign of the cross on his forehead. The inner doors to the church were also open and the priest had his head bowed, deep in thought, as he entered, knelt and made another larger sign of the cross, touching his forehead, both shoulders and his chest. He rose slowly and walked towards the altar. It took a moment or two for him to notice that something was amiss.

On the altar, which should have been bare, was a white cloth draped over a large object. Puzzled, Carson Brown walked forward up onto the low dais and raised the cloth. He looked down uncomprehending for a heartbeat and then gagged and held his hand to his mouth. He turned away in horror, fell to his knees and threw up into Maureen Gallagher’s mopping-up bucket.

Outside on the church’s roof a crow took off into the air. Buffeted by the wind, he swirled and banked, his caw shrieking like a prophecy fulfilled.

*

The sound echoed in Delaney’s ear as he looked out of the window at the river below him. And time stilled. The water swirling violently now. The rush of it as loud as the wind in his ears. And the little stars of sunlight, which had danced on the water like mayflies, were now flakes of snow, little shards of ice that tinkled in the air like frozen whispers.

It seemed as though time had also frozen. Jack had entered a crossing place between the past and the future. A hiatus. A moment of change that was irreversible and inevitable. Then he blinked his eyes and turned back the way he had come, ran to the edge of the ruined first floor of the mill house, and lowered himself over the edge of the broken floor to dangle for a moment before letting go. Then it seemed like he was falling for ever, the scream ringing in his earls like a knife thrust in his heart, before the cold floor appeared to jump up at him, slamming his knees into his chest as he rolled onto his side, jarring his shoulder as he slammed down. He gasped with pain, rubbing his knee, and staggered to his feet. He could still hear Siobhan screaming in terror and ran across the mill-house floor to the door. His feet slid on the ice-covered concrete and he skidded into the door, clutching it to regain his balance before wrenching it open and charging outside. Siobhan’s screams were desperate now and Jack ran towards the river.

A light snow was falling, the fat frozen flakes dancing in the air and floating into Jack’s eyes, blinding him. He wiped his hand across them and struggled as fast as he could down the bank, the worn soles of his boots sticking in the slippery mud as he clambered down to the river’s edge. Out in the water Siobhan gripped hard to the edge of a long-abandoned half-sunk barge that stuck out from the raging waters at an angle.

‘Hold on, Siobhan,’ screamed Jack as he got onto the barge and picked his way along the narrow edge that skirted the rotting hulk of the cabin. ‘I’m coming.’

‘Please, Jack. Please. It’s so cold.’

‘I know, Siobhan. Just hold on. I’m coming.’

Jack made it to the front of the barge, where the engine would have been housed when the boat had been in use many years before. He clambered up into the small forward deck space and, bracing his feet, leaned over the crumbling woodwork to reach down. He could see the naked terror in Siobhan’s young eyes as her frozen hands clung to the rotten woodwork of the hull, clutching at the edges of a gaping hole. The river swirled beneath and around her, like a thing feeding. She whimpered with fear as Jack smiled down at her.