Ken McClure: Eye of the raven

The Rev Joseph Lawson took up stance at the door of his church to watch his congregation — all eight of them — depart at the end of the Sunday evening service. He could not help but feel — with what he thought was a brave attempt at humour — that what they lacked in numbers they made up for in years. He guessed at a combined age of something over six hundred.

Willie MacPhee, a long-retired bank employee and the last of the group to complete the walk along the overgrown path through a maze of vandalised headstones and neglected shrubbery, turned to close the gate behind him. His pronounced stoop and the fact that the sleeves of his beige rain jacket were too long made it difficult and his wife’s body language exuded impatience as he continued to fumble with the mechanism. When he heard the rusty latch finally fall into place, Lawson raised his hand to wave farewell but there was no response. He reasoned that probably neither MacPhee nor his wife could see that far.

Lawson closed the heavy front door and rested his forehead against the wood for a moment. Somewhere in the distance he heard local youths bawling out some football anthem as they made their way to the wooden hut that comprised the local social club, intent on a second night of lager-fuelled oblivion in the aftermath of their team’s Saturday victory. Lawson knew the words well enough; they had more to do with religious bigotry than football, not that the singers were religious by any stretch of the imagination: bigotry was just an easier option than agnosticism or atheism, which demanded some intellectual input.

‘ Morons,’ Lawson murmured although this wasn’t a sentiment you expressed too loudly here in the central belt of Scotland, especially the part known as ‘Orange County’ where seventeenth century battles were stop-press news and King William of Orange still reigned supreme.

As he turned, he noted that the porch smelt of lavender and liniment. He sniffed again before smiling and murmuring, ‘God be praised.’

There was no smell of stale urine this week. Old Mrs Ferguson had finally been taken into hospital where he supposed she would block a bed for what remained of her probably good but unremarkable life. Lawson silently wished her well and walked through into the main body of the church to gather up tattered hymnbooks before returning them to the sorry pile in the porch.

He paused to appraise the church notices giving times and locations of the various activities at St Johns, thinking that they really needed renewing. They had faded badly, the corners curling over the drawing pins, but this only made him consider who was going to see them anyway? Bible class comprised of two insurance clerks and a librarian. Scouts were eight youngsters and a leader he was beginning to have doubts about and the Young Mothers Club — four girls, all under twenty-two of whom only one was married and two had no idea who the father of their child was. ‘God give me strength,’ he murmured before turning away.

It wasn’t that Lawson’s faith was faltering but he did have the distinct impression that he was being tested — perhaps not in the way the martyrs had — for he had little in the way of pain and suffering to endure — no, for him, indifference and suspicions of irrelevance were the chosen instruments of examination. The telephone rang in the vestry and mercifully broke his train of thought.

‘ Reverend Lawson.’

‘ John Traynor, assistant governor at the State Hospital here, minister. Sorry to interrupt your Sunday but Hector Combe is asking to see you.’

‘ Can’t it wait until Wednesday?’ asked Lawson, seeing the threat to his planned evening in with a couple of drams of Ardbeg malt and Ian Rankin’s latest Rebus book. Wednesday was his usual day for visiting The State Hospital at Carstairs and he found once a week more than enough. Carstairs was a secure establishment for the criminally insane — Scotland’s equivalent of Broadmoor in England — and not the kind of place to offer comfort to those of low spirit or foster an unquestioning love of humanity.

‘ Fraid not, minister. Combe’s very poorly. The doctor doesn’t think he’ll see out the night.’

‘ All right, give me an hour,’ said Lawson, resigning himself to a forty-minute drive across bleak moorland in the dark when the weather forecast was for rain driving into central areas of the country, aided by strong westerly winds.

As he changed out of his robes in the vestry, Lawson couldn’t ever recall the patient, Combe, expressing a desire to speak to him before. The more he thought about it, an unpleasant sneer was what he associated most with the man, a look on his face that suggested cynical superiority and an outlook that equated religious belief with weakness. This of course, was before the man’s illness had destroyed his capacity to display any expression at all. Combe had been receiving treatment for cancer of the jaw, which had involved radical surgery to his face.

Combe was a dying man and that, as Lawson conceded, often changed things. Perhaps it wasn’t too surprising at all that he was seeking some contact with the Church at this late stage. A great many tended towards repentance when the grim reaper was about to call… just in case.

As he’d feared, the rain started in earnest as he set out in his old Ford Escort for Carstairs and positively lashed down as he drove across the barren stretch of moorland between his Upgate manse and the State Hospital. At one point he had to slow down almost to a standstill when the wipers failed to cope with the sheer volume of water. The sound of the rain hitting off the roof of the car was impeding his ability to think straight and his every instinct was to turn back but if this was to be Hector Combe’s last night on earth he felt obliged to push on if at all possible. He felt guilty for hoping that the governor would be right in his prognosis of death for Combe. He really didn’t want to be doing this for no reason. The rain slackened a little and he started to make better progress although it seemed as if every dip in the road harboured a small lake, which threw up a bow wave and threatened to swamp the car’s electrics.

Lawson’s thoughts turned to hoping that he could disguise his dislike of the prisoner, Combe, when he got there. Combe was a psychopath, a convicted murderer who had killed four people during his adult life without compunction or remorse. Lawson knew that it was incumbent upon him to seek out some saving grace in the man, particularly at a time when it was fashionable to believe that all people must have one but Lawson found it hard to share this view. His dealings with the inmates at Carstairs had convinced him otherwise. There had been times in that benighted place when he had felt the presence of evil to be almost tangible. Some of the inmates seemed to exude it, an invisible miasma of malevolence that challenged the very concepts of civilised society.

The car emerged from the confines of a long avenue of trees and Lawson felt the familiar hollow feeling come to his stomach as the high perimeter fence of the prison — or hospital as they insisted on calling it — came into view. Floodlighting highlighted the barbed wire rolls stretched out along the top against the night sky. All that was missing was The Ride of the Valkyries.

‘ It’s not your day today is it minister?’ asked the prison officer who looked into the car to check his credentials.

Lawson appreciated the ambiguity of the statement but knew well enough what the officer meant. ‘I understand Hector Combe is dying,’ he replied.

‘ And I’ll dance at the party when he does,’ replied the man without bothering to append an apology as he waved Lawson through to where he parked the car and completed the formalities of admission before being escorted to the assistant governor’s office.