A Pocketful of Rye

by Anthony Masters

  They were spread in a rough semi-circle, well hidden behind concrete, protected by shadow, diffused into the backcloth of recession, yet lit by the moon breaking through scudding clouds that travelled wildly and fleecily across its face. As they waited Patrick looked up at this slate-grey night sky—the moon riding a whitening intensity—metallic white, flat, solid with a broken circumference, shedding translucent strands, high and uncomforting. The dirty linen clouds draped across the sky, then in the same moment seemed to bunch, to mass and to fly on leaving an unyielding monotony of night behind them.

  For minutes the children crouched, waiting, unnaturally still, tense and wraithlike. Insubstantial, they menaced the arena, awaiting action in its centre; not content to watch, but to participate.

  Waiting—would she break the greyness and run across the uneven surface, stumble and almost laughingly fall over the dead machinery, her face all the time upturned to his—eager for him and his warmth? Would she soon run towards him or would he wait in vain—and in falling hope?

  Angular turrets dissolved, shapes changed; moon distorted, the landscape yielded, was moulded, then, to stun his imagination and to discredit his dreams, it became reality again.

  Silence—a stifled cough. Atmospherics sharpened this and the subdued laugh that followed. Each sound, razor-sharp, dropped into the pool and hung there, deftly sounding beyond normality. Silence to premeditate action—and then their bodies stiffened to announce it. Freeze—Patrick too was inert, praying, sweating, telling himself it was her—it was her—he had waited and was now rewarded, she would appear soon—and then the tripping, stumbling joyous run towards him—he would not move but wait for her—she would be breathless as she fell against him, gasping and crying in his arms, her body trembling, the waiting—so worthwhile, the night around them enclosing, encircling—shapes for an electric moment were solid: tanks and transformers, boilers, pylons, wiring, piping, structure—all were readjusted for an instant. The air was steel—Patrick felt the sweat creeping under his shirt, his chest sensed droplets, his trousers clung to his legs—who was coming?

  The two children came as if to a stage, furtively and half afraid. Then the boy leaped a cable coil, letting out a shout—It blunted on the air, seemed inhibited, awkward, incomplete, as if the tangle of the surroundings caught it and tossed it back. The girl imitated and leapt the coil, but the cry hardly escaped her, and caught in her throat. They were two dark shadows in the arena as they stood indecisive staring around at the hard decay and loosening, paradoxical shapes.

  The sweat receded, he was limp and tired; yet not disappointed—not resigned, not even numb. Patrick felt as he did on a train journey halfway to a destination: disconnected, detached from the surroundings, a traveller watching a curious wayside scene, a spectator who was powerless—but not uninterested.

  “Come on—you promised—let me see—there’s no one here—and you promised. I won’t tell—you know I won’t tell.”

  The boy stood, commanding, hands on hips, reminding her of a dare and himself a growing guilt. He glanced nervously round at the shadows and jumped as something moved behind the concrete.

  “Come on—it’ll only take a sec—and you did promise—or are you afraid now?”

  Again he glanced round, and with the faintest flutter of a hand stilled a bobbing head. His voice became plaintive then matter of fact, as if trying to inspire a confidence, a mundaneness, a sense of everyday occurrence.

  “Look, are you going to, or not?—or shall we call the whole thing off? We can go back and no one will know—if you’re afraid—only I didn’t think you would be afraid—not with just me—and no one else.”

  And once again his hand fluttered loosely behind him, directing, subduing, and once again there was stillness within the silent company around the edge of the arena. Moon charged, the landscape sharpened and shadows receded.

  “Okay, you’re afraid—come on let’s go. I didn’t think you would be—but I suppose it’s—you’re just afraid—race you back—if you’re afraid?”

  She had been watching him intensely, hands clenched, feet firmly planted. With a shriek of fury she flung herself on him, nails scrabbling and scratching at him, whilst he bent forward to protect his face. He straightened himself, but she clung to him, furiously and wildly trying to hurt him. With an effort he threw her off and she fell. In a moment she was up, shaking with fury. He shouted: “Go on—prove it—show me you’re not afraid—you made the bet.”

  With almost a shout of defiance she tore of her shoes and socks and stood before him, her feet cautiously feeling the roughened surface of clinker and slate. She paused. “The ground hurts my feet.”

  With an obtuse gallantry he removed his jacket and threw it on the ground, and there was a muffled laugh from somewhere on the edge of the arena. Once again the commanding hand fluttered from behind his back and there was silence. “Stand on that then—and get on with it.”

  Quickly, with short vicious strokes, she pulled off her frock and Fair Isle cardigan. They fell in a heap around her ankles and she was white against the roughened silhouettes about her. Then she pulled off her underclothes and stood helplessly naked. Suddenly and quickly she bent down, gathered her clothes into a tiny heap, placed them neatly on one side and, with hands on hips, stood defiantly in front of him.

  “Is that what you want?” she shouted. “Anything I say—I do.” Naively triumphant at her actions and neat speech she smiled, in failed bravado, up at him.

  In a moment he had turned away from her, whistled sharply and, clutching her pile of clothes in one hand, jumped a few paces back, leaving her in the centre.

  Patrick, still detached and spectator-like, felt unable to move. Slowly, deliberately, he concentrated all his attention on the scene, warding off his growing crushing disappointment.

  Children seemed to emerge from behind every projection. Joyously, with shrieks of exultation, they rushed into the arena and began to dance around the naked girl. Their shouts echoed to the gasometer walls and were bounced dully back. Forming a rough circle around her they continued to dance, enclosing her gradually, then completely, step by step drawing in on her. Soon they were a tight-knit circle and her face was indistinguishable amongst them. As if at a signal they drew out and Patrick saw her face—but it was rigid with shock and incomprehension. They drew in again and she was lost. Like a mad peasant dance they continued to circle her in the arena, and they began to chant childishly at her. Stunted, whirling dwarfs they circled, the dance gathering fever and momentum—and unceasing delirium seemed to grip them so that they whirled tirelessly. In the centre the pallid flesh of the tiny figure was almost like a wraith of frost against the dull heat of the night. Sometimes it was lost when the host of black shadows enclosed it, then it re-emerged, delicate and helpless. Then they began to tire and to stumble on the loose surface—the dance slowed to reveal the girl with her head buried, hunched and ashamed in the centre. They slowed and finally stopped only to pick up her bundle of clothes, and after lethargically passing it amongst themselves they threw it skilfully on to the top of a rusting water-tank. With cries of glee and childish pleasure they ran out of the arena, the one or two that hung back being urged on by the others, and disappeared amongst the bulky shadows. Gradually their voices were lost and she was left standing in the centre watched by Patrick who was waiting nearby, but could only observe.

  Her clothes were feet above on the water-tank and for a while she stared up at them hopelessly, then she turned away and sat on the cables, shivering slightly.

  Waiting—on the inevitable. Patrick stood and waited whilst she broke through the greyness and ran, half eagerly, half fearfully towards him. She ran across the uneven surface and almost laughingly fell over the dead machinery, her face all the time upturned to him, eager for him and his warmth. She fell and in a moment was up again, running expectantly and confidently towards him. Patrick stepped out to meet her.

  Father Jessell Becomes a Sinner

  S
t. Bernards, withdrawn in elm shrouds, hid begrimed portals behind greying foliage. Obscured from the road by a warehouse, the Church’s baroque splendour was dulled and few people even noticed its turreted frontage. Even fewer stopped and bothered to investigate the rear of the warehouse, with its blind windows and blitzed roof—and except for a dwindling congregation no one entered the gloom of fading Catholic pageantry inside. Private meditation or prayer was prevented by the Church being locked most of the week, except for Confessionals which sparsely occupied a few hours in the morning. Victorian and over-decorative, St. Bernards stood amidst a tiny graveyard, the stones leaning crazily towards the clump of withered laurel in the centre. Dusty shrubs grew along the base of the Church and rusting iron posts enclosed the area, emphasising the lack of care and attention paid to the tiny space. There was even litter amongst the gravestones; cigarette cartons interspersed with waste paper and orange peel; whilst propped grotesquely against a huge marbled Victorian tomb was the battered frame of a bicycle.

  Inside the Church each sound rose to the painted ceiling and resounded round each wall, echoing sharply up and down the nave, until somewhere it was suddenly lost. There was a perpetual atmosphere of stale incense and candle grease, whilst the heavy darkened pews smelt of pine-scented polish and the musty leather of the missals. The furnishings were heavy and obscurely carved; the lectern being a grotesque confusion of scrolls and interwoven scriptures, whilst the altar was crudely fashioned and painted garishly with characterless religious episodes. Snakes climbed huge brass candlesticks, sinuously clinging in lifeless animation, and heavy stars and crosses clumsily surmounted almost everything. The altar cloths were too colourful, picked out in harsh, bright colours, imbued with a Victorian sentimentality that clashed with the ferocity of the murals on the shabby walls. Badly painted with lifeless line and tone, they vulgarly clamoured for immediate attention. Each figure, each face, either in composed serenity or misshapen caricature, compelled the eye to dwell on it, and then slide on uneasily to the painted ceiling—a happily softening, yet lurking monstrosity of lurid colour and bad craftsmanship. The stalls and organ were worked in teak, each decoration attempting grandeur and achieving the ridiculous, whilst the paving was a mixture of mosaics and religious lettering that combined to produce an effect of vast intricacy and worthless detail.

  St. Bernards, as if ashamed of her innate ugliness, chose to darken the interior to a perpetual twilight that pervaded the Church in all seasons. The stained glass, rich in Victorian melodrama, was dark and the windows themselves were high and narrow. Above the altar there was more glass, thinly slatted and mainly of deep amber, whilst over the west entrance a similar window distributed lights of deep purple. Neither window let in more than an occasional shaft of sunlight which pinpointed tiny flecks of whirling dust, a tasteless patch of mosaic flooring and the coarse grain of the woodwork of the confessional boxes.

  From the Priest’s house to St. Bernards there was a windswept half-mile of cluttered road and scrubby heathland, and to Father Jessell, his robe swirling in the sudden gusts of icy wind, a Confessional especially by appointment, was a trial. Tall and grotesquely angular, he clamped on his beloved hat, and firmly holding on to it made his way down the road. Flapping in the shelter of some derelict, boarded shops he paused to tie his shoe lace, but in bending down his hat fell off and began to blow along the road. Hurriedly tying the lace he gathered his skirts around him and speeded after the disappearing hat. Religiously he meticulously cursed, calling on the Lord’s name, not in vain, as he reminded himself, but in the cause of a twenty-year-old hat that skidded through the dust in front of him. He broke into a jerky run, and his long gawky figure stumbled awkwardly in pursuit. Lifted by a sudden gust, it blew on to the common land and came to rest on a spiky, soot-covered bush, amongst anonymous refuse that had been blown on to the razor-thin, thorn-like branches. With a cry of triumph Father Jessell ran forward, his robe flurrying around his thin ankles, and cut his hand as he clumsily bent to retrieve the hat. Sucking a thorn-scratched thumb and jamming the elusive hat on his head, he set off across the heath at a more dignified pace, oblivious of the delighted sniggers of nearby children and the great rent in the back of his robe.

  Father Jessell, withdrawn and an insatiable reader, wallowed in the uninterrupted peace of the Parish of St. Bernards. There were only a few Catholics in the district, and his dealings with his flock left him hours to spend reading theology in his great book-lined study. The study was in fact the main room of the house, and the bookshelves had gradually accumulated until they reached the ceiling. They had been bought over a period of years, all secondhand, and were of varying shapes and colours. Each was piled high with theological works, both obscure and renowned, and all of these had been read and re-read over Father Jessell’s fifteen years as Priest at St. Bernards. At a desk in the centre of the room he wrote—and had been writing for a number of years—his work of theology. The library was a secret joyous place to him, and the best part of the day was after nine, when Parish duties were complete and the great work could be mulled and slept over again. At ten his housekeeper wheeled in cocoa and sandwiches and at twelve the Father woke from a heavy sleep and went upstairs, well satisfied with a rewarding evening’s work.

  Within St. Bernards brass dulled and the candles were unlit in the Lady Chapel—hardly used except on Christmas Day when the Irish crowded St. Bernards to capacity, disturbing layers of dust on the back pews and leaving the Church warm and alive after they had gone.

  Father Jessell closed the heavy oak doors and stood silently facing the east window; staring up the dark aisle, watching light filter through the deep colours of the glass, letting the stale mystery creep into his nostrils, and then he walked slowly up the body of the Church, catching his feet in the cracked mosaic. The silence embalmed his senses and he tried to walk as softly as possible to avoid the sharp ringing discord of the echo. Reaching the altar rail he crossed himself and knelt in prayer, his awkward body bent in complete supplication, and his head bowed so far that his long narrow chin was almost hidden in the hunched folds of his robe. Despite desperate restraint, the dust of the altar cloths and carpeting made him sneeze, and the echoes swirled higher and higher up to the rich, vulgar ceiling. Startled, he tried to concentrate and pray, but sneeze followed sneeze and he had to pull out a huge, dirty handkerchief from within his robes, and he didn’t hear the sound of the heavy oak door opening, the rasp of its roughened edge on the uneven mosaics or the shriek of its rusted hinges.

  The old man wheezed, for even the two or three steps up to St. Bernards had been a serious exertion and he paused inside to regain his breath. He looked up the aisle and his eyes widened at Father Jessell’s convulsions. The Priest presented an extraordinary sight from behind, his body heaving and his hawk-like head rising and falling in motion to the tremendous bouts of sneezing. Each one seemed to be worse than the last, and the Priest, unable to bear the agony of kneeling any longer, rose to his feet in a swirl of robes and ran down the aisle, his handkerchief clasped to his nose and his eyes streaming. The old man backed away as Father Jessell bore down upon him, for he had obviously no intention of stopping and only managed to gasp out in a flurry of handkerchief as he passed:

  “So sorry—my hay fever—please go to the confessional—and I’ll join—” and in a moment he was through the door, leaving the bewildered old man staring after him. The oak doors rasped together and the sudden burst of sunlight faded into an eddy of dust.

  Father Jessell, gasping and still sneezing, leant on one of the iron posts that surrounded the paltry churchyard and wheezed to a standstill. Wiping his eyes and pushing a sodden handkerchief back into his robes he looked up at the sky and whispered a fervid prayer against more attacks in Church. Then, blushing at his own hypocrisy, he swiftly turned and re-entered the Church.

  The confessional box smelt of polished wood and faded curtaining, and Father Jessell settled uncomfortably on the hard wooden bench and lethargically incl
ined his ear to the grill. He could hear the shortened breath of the old man and the creak of brittle limbs as he moved.

  “I’m ready, my son.”

  He spoke the words formally and without warmth. His nose began to itch again and closing his eyes he muttered an opening prayer, concentrating on it with all his might, trying desperately to forget the tingling in his nostrils.

  The old man opened in a mumble and Father Jessell asked him to speak up. He must have done this a little sharply for the other plunged into a staccato narrative, stumbling over his words until he was brought up again by the Priest. The third attempt began more successfully.

  “I’m going to sin, Father—sin worse than ever before.”

  Father Jessell half closed his eyes and prepared to give his undivided attention. Above his head a tiny spider spun a web of intricate delicacy, each strand of lace—at the centre a crystal ball—spiralling into the thick, dark oak and ending in the furthest corner at Eternity. Was Eternity the completion of geometrical planes or the meeting of parallel lines? Could Eternity be reached—or regained? Why is—? He jerked forward and re-composed himself, returning to the nasal voice from the grill.

  “And this sin, Father, is the worst of them all.”

  The melodrama in the old man’s voice seemed pitiful, although its staccato pitch only served to increase a near sense of the ridiculous. To leave the warmth of the library, to cross the heathland, to hurry so that he wheezed, to endure the agonies of his hayfever—for the inane meanderings of this old man. Devoutness overcome him again, and swiftly admonishing himself he leant further towards the screen, his eyes tracing the knotholes in the grained wood and his nose tingling at the acrid smell of incense that seemed to cling to every piece of woodwork in the Church.

  “The sin is to come,” prophesied the old man, and the Biblical tone in his voice seemed to make the situation even more impossible.