Andrew Hurley - The Loney

Father Wilfred turned to me suddenly, aware that I was staring.

‘Carry on, Smith,’ he said.

I went back to winding the handle of the spirit bander that was copying the parish newsletters. It was something I did on the first Sunday of the month and always tried to hold my breath as much as possible to stop the methylated spirits from raking out the back of my throat.

‘Why were you late, McCullough?’ said Father Wilfred, folding his arms.

‘I told you, Father,’ he said. ‘I got a puncture.’

Father Wilfred nodded. ‘Yes, I know that’s what you said .’

He went to a bookshelf, pulled out a Bible and dropped it into Henry’s lap.

‘But I’m not convinced that it is necessarily the truth. Psalm one hundred and one, verse seven,’ he said.

‘Sorry, Father?’

‘Find it, McCullough.’

‘But I’ll get blood on it, Father.’

‘You won’t.’

Henry carefully flipped through the book, trying not to bleed onto the pages.

‘Well?’ said Father Wilfred.

‘I can’t find it, Father.’

‘Psalms, McCullough. Between Job and Proverbs. It’s not difficult.’

At last Henry found the right place and started reading.

‘“He that worketh deceit shall not dwell in my house; he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.”’

Father Wilfred repeated what Henry had said in a slow, measured way, pacing up and down the office.

‘God hates liars, McCullough,’ he said, nodding to the Bible on Henry’s knee. ‘It’s in there a thousand times over. Proverbs, Romans, Jeremiah. When you lie, McCullough, you are brethren with the serpent in the garden. You forfeit your place in heaven. God has no time for deceivers. I’ll ask you again. Why were you so late?’

Henry looked down at his bleeding knuckles.

‘You were too lazy to get out of bed weren’t you?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘And too overweight to make up the lost time.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Yes, Father,’ he repeated. ‘Psalm fifty-five, verse twenty-three. Quicker this time, McCullough.’

Henry sped through the pages and traced his finger along the line.

‘“But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction; bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.”’

Father Wilfred held out his hand for the Bible.

‘Do you know what the most terrible torment of Hell is?’ he said.

Henry passed it to him. ‘No, Father.’

‘The worst torment, McCullough,’ he said. ‘Is not being able to repent of the sins you have committed.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘In Hell, it is far too late.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You must come and see me in confession, McCullough.’

‘Yes, Father. I will.’

‘And then at least we may stand a chance of saving your soul.’

The butterflies dispersed as the rain returned and began the next washing of the land. Stone walls shone like iron. The trees bowed and dripped. The sullen countryside disappeared behind condensation and for a long time we could have been going anywhere until a low spire appeared on the other side of a cattle field, barely rising above the trees that surrounded it.

The Church of The Sacred Heart was an ancient place — dark and squat and glistening in the rain like a toad. The large front door was green with moss and over the years long sinews of ivy had wormed their way around the tower.

We crowded under the lych-gate to wait for a particularly heavy burst of rain to pass. Water leaked through the canopy onto the stone seats that had been worn into scoops over the years by the backsides of countless pallbearers or by people like us simply sheltering from the rain.

The churchyard itself was small but well stocked with the village dead — a second, more populous settlement bordering the first — all of them lying east-west as though the wind had combed them that way over the centuries. Gravestones listed against one another under the shade of several huge, dripping yew trees, one of which had been blasted by lightning at some point and had a new stem growing out of the blackened split.

‘What do you think, Father?’ said Mummer, nodding towards the church itself.

‘Very atmospheric, Mrs Smith.’

‘Fifteenth-century,’ said Farther.

‘Is that right?’ Father Bernard replied.

‘Some of it anyway. The stonework inside’s all Saxon. They managed to escape the Reformation.’

‘How’s that?’

‘I don’t think they could find it, Father.’

The rain shower ended as suddenly as it had come. Water poured off the slate roof and along the lead flumes to spew from the mouths of gargoyles that had been weathered to lumps of stone. Father Bernard held open the gate and everyone went quickly up the path to the church before the rain came back, but Hanny stood looking up at the mangled grey demons, trying to pull his face to match theirs.

Inside, we took up a pew towards the back, shuffling along as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the silence. All around the church, the statues of saints had been covered up for Lent, like ghosts half hidden in the shadows of the alcoves. Now and then their drapes shivered in a draught. The wind was getting in somewhere and whistled like a seabird around the rafters.

Hanny held my hand.

‘It’s alright,’ I said.

He glanced nervously at the nearest shrouded saint, the Archangel Michael by the sword sticking out of the sheet.

‘Just don’t look at them.’

Once everyone was settled, Farther inclined his head to Father Bernard.

‘See the windows in the clerestory,’ he said, pointing at the tiny arches high up on the wall, each of them letting in a trickle of red light. ‘Look at the thickness of the mullions. And the glass, that’s Romanesque.’

‘Is that good?’ said Father Bernard.

‘It’s about seven hundred years old.’

Father Bernard looked impressed.

‘They should open this place for a museum,’ he whispered to Farther. ‘They must have kept everything they’ve ever owned.’

It was true. Nothing, it seemed, had ever escaped the oak doors or the castle-thick walls. Any light that had entered through the windows had been held captive and absorbed into the wood. Over the centuries the pews, pulpit and misericords had blackened to ebony like the beams which supported the roof — each one made from the fork of a huge oak tree, giving the congregation the sense of being inside an upturned boat.

The smells of benedictions and snuffed candles remained as steadfast as the gravestones that floored the central aisle. The doors to the aumbrey opened on hinges that had been forged at a time when they still dunked witches and died of plague. It was a place where wafer ovens, alms boxes and rush-holders remained as working tools; where there was a sanctuary knocker, a parish chest carved out of a single trunk of walnut, and a Table of Consanguinity attached to the wall above the font as a ready-reckoner to prevent interbreeding amongst the ignorant poor. Though I suppose by the time the child was being dipped into the water, it was rather too late.

At the end of pews were effigies of the Seven Deadly Sins, smoothed almost to anonymity by the countless hands that had gripped them during genuflection. But one could just make out Sloth curled up like a dormouse, and Gluttony vomiting on his own beard and Wrath beating his brother man with the jawbone of an ass.

Between the nave and the chancel, the church still had its rood screen with its painted melange of saints at the bottom and the crucifixion at the top. Above it was part of a Doom painting, and though much of it had flaked off it was still a considerable size and sprawled like dark rot across the stone.