Death's Sweet Echo

by Maynard Sims

  ‘You know that I can perform a private confession, then?’

  ‘That is what I need. Private. Just me pouring out… letting go, to you.’

  ‘Have you committed a crime, is that what weighs heavily on your conscience?’

  Martin did laugh then, and the fury of it reverberated through the wide aisles and up, until it was lost in the wooden rafters of the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘Conscience? No, I have no conscience. I need something else.’

  Waters wasn’t sure what this man needed, but the feeling of a troubled soul was even more intense now. This man was suffering and yet he professed to have committed no crime he needed to unload. He scoffed at the idea his conscience might be bruised. What was it that was eating away at him so voraciously?

  ‘Do you want me to hear your confession now?’

  ‘Confessions?’ Martin said firmly. ‘I have more than one.’

  ‘Okay. I would usually use the traditional confessional, which is the common practice, or, if you prefer, I can hear you in a private meeting, just us, face to face, or at an angle where you don’t have to look at me while you speak. I might sit in the sanctuary, just inside the communion rail, facing towards the altar and away from you, you see. I can use a portable screen to divide us so that you speak but won’t be seen.’

  ‘I’m happy to sit at an angle from you. I have no fear of your opinion, and your face may betray your mind even though you want to remain neutral, but it will be easier for me to list my… easier for me to speak if I can do so without having to look at you.’

  ‘That’s fine, we can sit here then. When you have finished your confession of sins and I have given the assignment of penance, I will make the pronouncement of absolution. Be assured, the seal of the confessional, as with Roman Catholics, is absolute and anything you say to me stays within these four magnificent walls.’

  ‘I have no conscience, and so I equally have little shame.’

  Waters was about to ask what purpose confession would serve here if there was so little to unburden. He stopped himself. Strange as this man was, he had about him something that drew Waters to him. He wanted to hear what this man had to say.

  Private confession was envisaged by the canon law of the Church of England, which contains the following, intended to safeguard the Seal of the Confessional: if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him; we... do straitly charge and admonish him, that he does not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy.

  Waters knew very well that there was no requirement for private confession, but a common understanding that it may be desirable depended on individual circumstances. He had never heard one before, and he had to admit that he was fascinated by the anticipated experience. An Anglican aphorism that he remembered hearing when he first entered the clergy was All may; none must; some should. Waters felt this man needed.

  They sat in their respective places, and Waters took the figure of Jesus on the cross to one side of the sedilia as the reference point for his eyes, so that he had a point of focus while he listened.

  Martin got comfortable on the wooden pew and closed his eyes. His list was long, and he wanted to recall it in chronological order. He had a lot to unburden, and he thought if he threw out the older guilts first, it might make more room for the others. He had come to think of them as abstract things he had collected over a long period of time. As he occasionally did with his books and clothes, he threw out the old to accommodate the new. He wondered, without much optimism, if it might work the same way with his troubles.

  ‘I don’t know if I have to go through the speech you see in films,’ he said, ‘about ‘Father, I have sinned’ and all that, but I’m not going to. I’m just going to say my piece and leave. I don’t even want your absolution, not really. All I want is to release some of this from inside me. I can’t take any more. I’m full up. There’s no more room.’

  He fell silent, and stayed quiet for so long that Waters almost glanced across to see if he was still there, but then a long, drawn-out sigh, and he started to talk.

  Martin had tried unburdening the guilt before, by contacting some of those he had slighted. It hadn’t gone well.

  He had a list; it was an attempt to rationalise it all, put it down on paper so he had some control over it, so that his mind wasn’t haunted all the time, his thoughts weren’t ransacked so regularly.

  ‘Connie?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Martin Tyler. Don’t hang up. I know you won’t have been expecting this call. I expect I’m the last person you want to–’

  ‘I hoped you were dead.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, I wanted–’

  ‘I don’t care what you wanted. I relied on you at work and you let me down. No, you didn’t let me down, let me rephrase that. You stabbed me in the back. And for what? So you could have an extra week off at Christmas. Pathetic.’

  ‘Look I know I did wrong. I should never have told HR about you and the man from accounts, but honestly, they’d have found out eventually. All I did–’

  ‘All you did was get me fired from a job I loved. Not only that, but I lost the ‘man from accounts’ as well. Once it hit the fan, he did the same as you, all men together, he blamed me. Fired, with no references. I’m on social security benefits now. Thanks for that.’

  ‘I wanted to say sorry, to say I feel guilty–’

  ‘Good. I hope the guilt eats away at you every day and gives you cancer or something.’

  No, Martin realised, as he began talking to Waters, none of the people he had called to confess his guilt had accepted his apologies. None of them wanted to take his guilt away. He was left with it, rotting inside him, consuming him until he couldn’t take it any longer.

  ‘I am a weak man,’ he said. ‘I suppose I was weak as a child and it became a habit I could never quite break. I blamed the boy next door when the window of his parents’ greenhouse got broken, even though it was me who did it. He was punished and when he was allowed out to play again, he didn’t want anything to do with me. I told my parents that he had tried to touch me, you know, inappropriately, and social services got involved. I don’t know what happened after that, how it ended, but I didn’t see much of him after all of that.

  ‘At school I was the sneak who let off the stink bomb in assembly but made sure I didn’t get the blame. I did that by what became a tried and trusted method: I became the snitch, the one who told the teacher who had done it, even though what I told them was invariably a lie.

  ‘At university I got in with a bad crowd, but not for long. Whenever their misdemeanours came to the attention of the authorities, there was always a person who managed to have seen it all and could report what had been done, who had done it, and very often why and when as well. No prizes for guessing who this all-seeing and all-reporting person was. Students were sent down for some of the crimes and I began to experience something that I hadn’t noticed before. I began to feel guilty.

  ‘Not sufficiently so for me to confess, of course – I’ve saved that all up for your lucky ears – no, I just started to realise that I had done wrong to so many over so long a period that it was inevitable that occasionally I should feel a twinge of reality over my actions. Guilt, it would be called, a conscience as well, but for me it was the start of a new phase when, by adding to my list of slights and wrongs, I was adding substance to an already richly filled well.

  ‘I helped people get fired at work, I helped relationships fall apart. Not to do deliberate harm to anyone – I have never been cruel about my actions. I did it all to allay blame from me, to deflect the finger of suspicion away, to make sure I was left spotless and free from any fault.’

  Now there was a silence that extended so long that Waters felt bound to make comment. It hadn’t so
unded as if the man was welcoming an interjection, but he had fallen still, and it seemed a natural point at which the confession might require some reflected thoughts.

  ‘So, let me be clear, your confession is that you feel guilty about past actions – many of them, it seems – and you want me to absolve you in some way?’

  ‘No,’ Martin said firmly. ‘That’s not it at all. I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done. It was all necessary to survive. I admit, fully and openly, that many of my actions have been abhorrent. I’m not a nice man, it has to be said. No, I don’t want absolution, I thought I made that clear from the start.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I need some of the guilt to go away. I want to feel less bloated with them. I need to release some of the pressure. They come for me when I sleep. They won’t give me any rest. By confessing to you, admitting I have done wrong, I want you to give me peace of mind. I want to be able to sleep restfully again.’

  Waters stood, and even though he tried his best to avoid looking at Martin, it was impossible.

  ‘You’ve misunderstood the purpose of confession,’ he said. ‘I can only absolve you if you truly confess your sins.’

  ‘I am doing.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re telling me about them, recounting deeds, but you aren’t repenting. You don’t want to cleanse your soul for what you’ve done. I’m sorry, but you even seem proud to have behaved the way you tell me you’ve done all your life.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Well, you should be. Don’t you see, that’s why you can’t sleep? You do have a conscience, even if you can’t recognise it. You do feel guilty, that’s why you talk about the many different guilts you’ve built up overwhelming you.’

  ‘They come to me like shadows when I sleep.’

  Waters had heard enough. ‘I think, forgive me, but I think you need the help of a psychiatrist, not a man of the cloth. We work closely with the local…’

  But Martin had stood and was already marching back up the aisle, away from the altar and away from Waters.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ he called over his shoulder.

  He didn’t know yet, but they were waiting for him outside the church.

  Martin closed the heavy oak door behind him and felt he had sealed in his confessions, at least. The vicar might have felt he was a lost cause, but Martin knew the simple act of unburdening his thoughts had given him some respite. He didn’t feel quite as full. He felt as if some of the pressure had been released. Where the guilt would go once he had voiced it and let it go, he had no idea, but he didn’t think a guilt admitted, whether repented or not, would come back to haunt him again.

  He was halfway along the gravel path when he felt the wind picking at the collar of his jacket. His hair blew across his eyes, and as he brushed it away, he thought he saw a large, black shape hiding behind one of the older gravestones.

  Clouds had congregated in the darkening sky, and he felt the coldness embrace him as he stood still. He dared not move forward any further, because the path was blocked by so many small, darting shadows that he feared they were going to attach themselves to him. And that was just what they did.

  They gripped his ankles, and crept up his legs as if he was paddling in the sea and his trousers were getting wetter the deeper he went. When the blackness had engulfed him up to his waist, he noticed the bigger shadows swooping down from the clouds. They were like crows, or possibly ravens, big and sharp-taloned, and they picked at his face and took hold of his hair. He tried to brush them away with his hands, but there were too many, and they were too insistent.

  He thought he recognised vague faces in the shadowed masses that were pulling him down to the ground. They were images as if from an old negative: white where it should be dark, and dark elsewhere. He was sure his brother’s face was there, in the biggest shadow, tearing at the skin of his throat.

  He sank to the ground under the weight of the dark horde. He lay still, and although he wriggled and attempted escape, he knew that his released guilts had proven too much.

  When Waters locked up the church a few hours later, he was shocked to find the emaciated body of Martin, the skin sagging on the gravel, as if it had been emptied, the contents set loose amongst the headstones and neat bushes of the graveyard.

  JUST THE WAY IT IS

  The mullioned windows filtered the weak autumnal sunshine as though it was attempting to mask the portent of the conversation within the room. There were two men talking, and both were unaware of the efforts of the ancient glass to shield the outside world from the subject they were discussing. What each was alive to, however, was the failure of the afternoon light to alleviate the unease they felt, or to fully erase the shadows that seemed to shift in the unlit corners of the spacious and comfortable sitting room.

  Pulford’s house was large, and by any measure would be considered rather grand. It was built of the local honey-coloured stone which gave the impression that it glowed when the sun was at its strongest and laid hot hands onto the walls, and yet the same colours could seem mellow and restful when the weather was changing from the blessings of summer to the cooler days and colder nights of autumn, as they now were. Pulford had lived there, happily, with his wife of many years; childless through circumstance, they had learned to place that sadness inside a personal box that each managed and protected, in their own way, within their minds. Since her early death from pernicious cancer, the house was probably too large for him and his loyal housekeeper of longstanding, Mrs Wilson, and he found he rattled around with only his memories and the occasional shadows to talk to. It was the memories that kept him here, a comfort that he clung to with persistent tenacity. Despite the size of the Georgian house, and the expense of the upkeep, it had been a happy house, and one in which he could now wallow without much guilt.

  His old friend, Priestley, visited regularly, with an increasing schedule and with the visits becoming of longer duration since the suicide of his own wife some short time ago. Both widowed far too young, they found that their friendship took on a deeper poignancy as they discovered they had much more in common than they would have appreciated previously, and which they would have been loathe to confirm in any case.

  The two P’s in the pod, as their wives had called them in happier times, had settled into a rhythmic pattern of behaviour that was more comfortable than exciting. It was a pleasant enough life, and left them feeling less sad than they otherwise might have been, less prone towards the maudlin, less likely to become morose. When Pulford left Priestley’s house, or vice versa, each noticed that their natural personal sadness was reduced to a constant nagging, rather than the all-but-debilitating grief that threatened to overwhelm each of them when they were alone.

  ‘That was a marvellous meal,’ Priestley said, and patted the waistcoat-covered stomach which strained against the Savile Row–purchased material.

  ‘I shall pass your commendations on to Mrs Wilson,’ Pulford said, quite visibly pleased at the compliment given by his old friend.

  ‘And will it be chess after cheese?’ Priestley inquired.

  Pulford glanced out of the window of the sitting room. ‘It looks a fine afternoon,’ he said. ‘I thought we might take our port and cigars out into the gardens.’

  ‘Make the best of the remaining warmth of the sun while we can?’

  ‘Exactly. I have a newly arrived box of El Rey Del Mundo Choix Supreme that I have been looking for an excuse to open.’

  Priestley stood from his armchair and stretched. ‘That sounds like the perfect accompaniment for that 1871 bottle of Cabral Vintage Port you’ve been teasing me with.’

  Pulford smiled. ‘Already decanted and sitting on the table beneath the oak tree.’

  Priestley laughed and said, ‘You know me too well. Shall I take out the glasses while you fetch the cigars?’

  The two men busied themselves with their tasks, and met some mom
ents later in the gardens. The flower beds were resplendent with a multitude of colours, from the purples and reds of the fuchsia to the yellows of the coneflower. A few leaves had fallen from the colossal oak and these seemed to lend a melancholy air to the scene, laid out as they were beneath the table and two chairs.

  They prepared their cigars, and when both were drawing satisfactorily, Pulford poured some wine into the two glasses and watched while Priestley savoured his first taste.

  ‘As good as I anticipated,’ was his verdict.

  ‘And the cigar?’

  Priestley looked strangely at his friend. ‘Not your usual manner to question me so quickly. Something on your mind?’

  Pulford drew on his cigar and blew a thick cloud of smoke into the air, where it eddied beneath a low-hanging branch of the tree. He picked up his crystal glass and sipped the thick, deep red port, and savoured the rich flavour on his tongue. After a while he said, ‘I did wonder if you had news of Randolph?’

  ‘Ah,’ was all Priestley replied.

  ‘If it’s too soon, I would understand,’ Pulford said. ‘Although it would be good to hear exactly what happened from someone who might know some facts, rather than the gossip that’s circulating around the Club.’

  Priestley blew smoke out angrily and flicked a large column of ash into the ashtray that sat on the wrought iron table.

  Further conversation was stalled by Mrs Wilson bringing out the cheese and biscuits, as well as a jug of coffee with cups, cream and sugar. When she had gone, Pulford began to fill the cups.

  ‘It’s not that it’s too soon,’ Priestley said. ‘More that it really is Randolph’s tale to tell, isn’t it?’

  Pulford passed Priestley his coffee and selected some cheddar and brie from the selection. ‘Quite,’ he said quietly. ‘Although it would prove a little difficult to ask him, wouldn’t it.’