Archroy, however, looked far from lucky upon this particular occasion. His shoulders drooped and his lopsided hairpiece clung perilously to his shining pate. Pooley watched him from the corner of his eye. He could not recall ever having seen anybody looking so depressed, and wondered whether the sorry specimen might appreciate a few kind words. For the life of him Jim couldn’t think of any. Archroy looked up from the pouring of his ale and sighted Pooley, nodded in half-hearted greeting and sank back into his misery.
Pooley looked up through the pub windows. The flat-blocks quivered mirage-like in the heat and a bedraggled pigeon or two fluttered away into the shimmering haze. The heat strangled the bar-room air, everything moved in slow motion except Father Moity, resident priest to St Joan’s, Brentford, who unexpectedly entered the bar at this moment. He strode towards the bar, oblivious to the battering heat, and ordered a small sherry. Neville poured this and noted that the priest made no motions towards his pocket upon accepting same. “You are far from your cool confessional upon such a hot day,” said Neville cynically.
“Now, now, Neville,” said the priest, raising his blessing finger in admonishment. “I have come to seek out two members of my flock who seem to have fallen upon stony ground.” Pooley much enjoyed listening to the young priest, whose endless supply of inaccurate quotation was a joy to the ear. “Two prodigal sons who have sold their birthrights for a mess of porridge.” Pooley chuckled. “You know them as Hairy Dave and Jungle John.”
“They’re barred!” said Neville with a voice like thunder.
“Barred is it, and what pestilence have they visited upon you on this occasion?”
“They blew my bloody pub up.”
“Anarchists is it?”
“Bloody maniacs!” said Neville bitterly.
“Raise not thine hand in anger,” said the priest, bringing his blessing finger once more into play. “How many times shall I forgive my brother, seven isn’t it? I say unto you seven hundred times seven, or some such figure.”
“Well, they are barred and they stay barred!”
“Tsk, tsk!” said the priest. “It is because of bars that I find myself here, a lamb amongst wolves.”
“And how is the bar of your Catholic Club?” asked Neville sarcastically. “Still doing a roaring trade with its cut-price drinks and taking the bread of life from the mouths of hardworking publicans?”
“Judge not, lest thyself be judged,” said the priest. “The bars I refer to are of the gymnastical variety.”
Keeping fit was an obsession with Father Moity which verged at times upon the manic. He was forever jogging to and fro about the parish; as Pooley watched the young priest he noted the giveaway track-suit bottoms and striped running shoes peeping from beneath his robes of office. He did chin-ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit and had developed a system of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with the ritual movements of the mass. Even as Pooley observed him at the bar, the young priest was flexing his biceps and doing the occasional kneesbend.
None of these things went unnoticed, and the handsome, tanned and manly figure of the priest raised extraordinary feelings within the breasts of both matronly females and young housewives alike. He had become a focus for their erotic desires. Confession became a nightmare. Even women of well-known and obvious virginity confided to the handsome young priest their nights of passion in the satyric embraces of demonic succubi. Father Moity marvelled at their invention, but more often he covered his ears and allowed his mind to wander. Consequently his penances were likely to be “three Hail Marys and a hundred press-ups” or “an our father and a work out on the heavy bag.”
“Gymnasium bars,” the young priest continued, “for the church hall. I was promised that they would be constructed before the Olympic trials came on the television. I wish to take a few pointers.”
“Well I haven’t seen them,” sneered Neville, “and I have no wish to.”
Father Moity said nothing but peered into his empty sherry glass and then about the bar. “Jim Pooley,” he said, his eyes alighting upon that very man.
“Father?”
“Jim, my lad.” The priest bounced across the bar and joined Pooley at his table. “Would you by any chance have seen those two local builders upon your travels?”
“I have not,” said Jim, “but Father, I would have a few words with you if I may.”
“Certainly.” The priest seated himself, placing the empty sherry glass noisily upon the table. It vastly amused Pooley that even a priest of such olympian leanings was not averse to a couple of free sherries. Pooley obliged and the young priest thanked him graciously.
“Firstly,” said Jim in a confidential tone, “I have been given to understand that Hairy Dave and Jungle John were doing a great deal more construction work for you than a set of gymnasium bars. I heard mention of an entire chapel or the like being built.”
“Did you now?” The young priest seemed genuinely baffled. “Well I know nothing of that, chapel is it?”
“I took it to be R.C., because the plans were in Latin.”
The priest laughed heartily. “Sure you are taking the rise out of me Jim Pooley, although the joke is well appreciated. The Church has not drawn up its plans in Latin since the fifteenth century.”
Jim shrugged and sniffed at his steaming beer. “Stranger and stranger,” said he.
“Strange, is it?” said the priest. “It is indeed strange that those lads downed tools last Thursday night and never returned to be paid for what they had so far accomplished, for those fellows that I would call strange.”
Jim sighed once more. Something was going on in Brentford and it seemed not only he was involved. “Father,” said Jim with a terrible suddenness, “what do you know of evil?”
The priest raised his fine dark eyebrows and stared at Pooley in wonder. “That my son, is a most unexpected question.”
“I mean real evil,” said Pooley, “not petty getting off the bus without paying evil, or the sin of pride or anger or minor trivial forms of evil, I mean real pure dark evil, the creeping sinister evil which lurks at the corners of men’s minds, the low horrible…”
The priest broke in upon him. “Come now,” said he, “these are not fine things to talk of on a hot summer’s day, all things bright and beautiful as they are.”
Pooley studied the honest face of the young priest. What could he know of real evil? Nothing whatever Jim concluded.
“My son,” said Father Moity, noting well Pooley’s disturbed expression, “what is troubling you?”
Pooley smiled unconvincingly. “Nothing,” he said, “just musing I suppose. Of Dave and John, I have seen nothing. Possibly they drink now at the New Inn or Jack Lane’s, I should try there if I were you.”
The priest thanked Jim, wished him all of God’s blessing for the balance of the day and jogged from the bar.
Pooley returned to his melancholic reverie. When Neville called time at three he left the bar, his half of light ale still steaming in its glass, and shambled out into the glare. He wandered off down Sprite Street and crossed beside his beloved memorial bench to enter the sweeping tree-lined drive which curved in a graceful arc towards the Butts Estate. He passed within a few yards of the Professor’s front door and crunched over the gravel footway before the Seamen’s Mission to emerge through the tiny passageway into the lower end of the High Street near the canal bridge.
As he leant upon the parapet, squinting along the dried-up stretch of ex-waterway into the shimmering distance, Pooley’s thoughts were as parched and lifeless as the blistered canal bed. He wondered what had become of Soap Distant. Had he been blasted to dark and timeless oblivion by the floor tide which engulfed him, or had the rank waters carried him deep into the inner earth where even now he swapped drinking stories with old Rigdenjyepo and the denizens of that sunless domain? He wondered at Archroy’s misery and at what urgent business might have lured Hairy Dave and his hirsute twin from their Friday payment at St Joan’s.