Andrew Hurley - The Loney

‘It’s the only one I’ve ever seen north of Gloucester,’ said Farther, leaning close to Father Bernard again and pointing up to it. ‘I mean it’s got nothing on the ones at Patcham or Wenhaston, but still.’

‘I wouldn’t have it on my wall,’ Father Bernard said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Farther. ‘It has a certain charm.’

‘Rather you than me.’

When I was a child and I believed all that Father Wilfred said about Hell and damnation, the Doom gave me no end of sleepless nights at Moorings. I suppose because, in a sense, I already knew the place it depicted and that meant it might just be real.

It reminded me of the school playground with its casual despotism and the constant anxiety of never knowing which traits in a boy might be punishable with instant violence. Too tall, too small. No father, no mother. Wet trousers. Broken shoes. Wrong estate. Sluttish sister. Nits.

Hell was a place ruled by the logic of children. Schadenfreude that lasted for eternity.

In the painting, the damned were forced down through a narrow crack in the earth, crushed against one another, swimming headfirst through the soil, before they tumbled in a naked landslide towards the clutches of lascivious black-skinned demons who grasped their hair and drove red hot knives into their flesh. Yet, this was only the initial punishment. They had merely fallen on the welcome mat, where some of the old lags of Hades had gathered to pray for the souls of these newcomers in the vain hope of their own redemption, their faces upturned, their mouths wide open and desperate, like blackbird chicks.

From here, the wicked were collected in enormous cauldrons to be cooked for Satan, who squatted like a sort of horned toad and dipped into the pots with a fondue fork, impaling the squirming human worms and swallowing them down whole, presumably to slither through his bowels and out the other end to begin the whole process once more.

In other parts of Hell were tortures so vile they bordered on being funny, which in turn worried me even more. The mockery of Hell, I thought, would result in an even worse punishment if I ever ended up there.

In one dark corner a demon had its arm down a man’s throat so far that it came out of his backside to throttle the woman cowering beneath him. People had their limbs torn off and were hung upside down by hooks through their privates. Some had their tongues nailed to trees and their bellies slit to feed the slavering dogs that obediently attended the devils. Eyeballs were pecked out by things that looked like oversized starlings. Boiling lead was funnelled down throats. Severed heads were emptied of blood to irrigate the paddy fields of black weeds that grew up the sheer rock walls of Hell and broke through into the lush green pastures of the living to ensnare the sunflowers and the lilies growing there. It was all Father Wilfred had promised us it would be.

***

As we had always done when we’d come to the Tenebrae service in the past we doubled the congregation in one fell swoop. The few people kneeling with their faces in their hands were the same people that had always been there. And when they broke out of their prayers, they looked at us not as strangers but as people they half recognised even though it had been years since we’d last come.

‘Isn’t that Clement?’ said Mr Belderboss, pointing to someone sitting alone in one of the side pews.

‘Yes, I think it is,’ Mrs Belderboss replied and she tried to attract his attention.

‘His mother’s not with him, though,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘I wonder why?’

‘Well, she’s perhaps not up to church anymore,’ Mrs Belderboss replied. ‘She is getting on, I suppose.’

Mummer shushed them as the organist struck up a dirge and a miserable-looking altar boy, acned and gangly, brought out the hearse, placed it on a low table and lit the fifteen candles with a taper. He went away again and came back with a small, fat candle that he lit and placed down under the altar out of sight.

The priest came in and we all stood up. He gave a brief introduction — his voice thudding around the stone walls and gathering into a boom — and then the two hour cycle of Matins and Lauds began — all in Latin of course — and after each a candle was extinguished by the altar boy until little by little the church darkened to match the encroaching gloom outside.

The wind continued to rise and fall. Whining and shrilling. It was as insistent as the priest, louder sometimes, preaching an older sermon, about the sand and the sea. Warning the faithful to stay away from The Loney.

Hanny fell asleep but no one bothered him, as Mr Belderboss had done the same, leaning his fluffy white head against my shoulder. In any case, Mummer was too engrossed in a contest with Miss Bunce as to who could be the most moved by the ceremony. At each increment of darkness, Mummer held her rosary tighter and prayed harder. Miss Bunce had tears in her eyes when Jesus called out to God and the candles on the hearse were snuffed out in quick succession. She even managed a small, anguished wail of her own when in the darkness the altar boy went down the aisle and slammed the heavy church doors shut to symbolise the earthquake that had buckled Golgotha at the moment Jesus’ human heart stopped beating.

Mr Belderboss woke with a start and clutched at his chest.

***

Once the service was over and the single candle that had been secreted under the altar had been brought out to symbolise the promise of resurrection, we filed out into the rain. The altar boy held an umbrella over the priest as he quickly clamped each cold hand in his and passed on God’s blessing. The regulars disappeared quickly, back to the sombre little houses hunkered down in the rain around the village green and as soon as the last person was out of the church, which was Mr Belderboss, rolling up and down on the cam of his bad hip, the priest went back inside and closed the door.

‘Well,’ said Mummer, as we walked back to the minibus. ‘I thought that was a lovely service.’

She was talking to Farther but he had stopped several paces behind and was running his hand over the carvings worked into the stone around a side door.

‘I say it was a lovely service,’ she called over to him, but he either didn’t hear her or he ignored her and moved his glasses to the end of his nose to better inspect the men and demons locked in mortal combat.

‘It was,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘It was.’

‘What do you know, you great lug,’ said Mrs Belderboss, batting his shoulder with the back of her hand. ‘You missed most of it.’

‘I did not,’ he said, rubbing his arm and smiling. ‘I was deep in prayer.’

‘Cobblers,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘I think moving is probably the right word,’ said Miss Bunce. ‘It’s meant to be quite a sombre service.’

David nodded in solemn agreement.

‘Oh, I didn’t enjoy it, as such,’ said Mummer.

‘I didn’t say I didn’t enjoy it,’ Miss Bunce said.

‘So where’s this fish feller?’ Father Bernard said, leading Mummer back to the minibus.

***

Mummer sat in the front with Father Bernard and directed him to a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere where a man with a face full of scars sat behind plastic trays of skate and mackerel and vicious-looking eels freshly pulled out of the Irish Sea. It had been a tradition in the time of Father Wilfred to stop here on Good Friday and Mummer was delighted to see that the shop was still there and the same man was still taking the money, using an old chum bucket for a till. The change came out greasy but Mummer didn’t seem to mind.

We all waited in the minibus as Mummer and Farther chatted to the man while he wrapped up their fish in newspaper. A Land Rover went past us and pulled up next to the stall. It was Clement’s. The same one that I had seen parked on the road down from Moorings. Parkinson, the bull man, got out first and looked at us, nodded at Father Bernard specifically, and then wandered over to the stall, followed by Collier and his dog. Freed from the cab but still on its chain, it went off sniffing and barking and then squatted in the middle of the road.