‘Father’s right,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘We haven’t been to the shrine yet. You wouldn’t want to miss that.’
Miss Bunce nodded and wiped her eyes. David came down the stairs, alternately banging Miss Bunce’s suitcase against the wall and the banisters.
‘Are you ready, Joan?’ he said.
‘False alarm,’ said Mrs Belderboss and David hesitated for a moment, looked at Miss Bunce and then went back upstairs.
***
When everyone had dispersed, I went up to check on Hanny. He was sound asleep, an arm lolling out of the bed towards his soldiers, the stuffed rats and the envelope of money. He’d taken it out from under my pillow and rifled through the contents. There were bank notes all over the floor. I collected everything together and hid the money under the mattress so that Hanny wouldn’t find it again before we had to take it back.
In his other hand were the pornographic pictures Billy Tapper had given me. I took them off him and screwed them into a ball. They needed to go on the fire whenever the opportunity arose. Why we’d kept them, I didn’t know, and what Mummer would have done had she found him with them, I couldn’t imagine. Though I’d have naturally got the blame and branded a deviant like poor Henry McCullough who had been caught in mid strike as he lay on his bed with his mother’s underwear catalogues.
It had been around that time that a boy called Paul Peavey joined us as an altar server. He was younger than Henry and I, thin and pale, small for his age and keen as mustard to please Father Wilfred. He was the type that, given a different time and place, would have joined the Hitler Youth like a shot or been on the front row at a public hanging. His father was a regular fixture at the bar of the church Social Centre, where I helped collect the glasses on a Friday night. One of those loud individuals whose thinking is done for them by the tabloids. With him it was usually something about immigrants, or the unemployed or the Labour Party, or the nefarious connection between all three.
One Sunday after our cassocks had been inspected for dirt and creases and stowed in the vestry wardrobe, Father Wilfred went into his little office next door and came back with two pairs of gardening gloves. One for me and one for Paul. Henry held out his hands for his pair of gloves but Father Wilfred told him to sit down and guided Paul and I to the vestry door with instructions to go the end of the graveyard and pick as many nettles as we could carry.
Not daring to question Father Wilfred, we duly hurried out, found a clump of nettles by the large Victorian vaults and came back with fistfuls of the things, which, despite the gloves, had still managed to sting our arms.
Henry looked up at us, his eyes widening when he saw what we’d brought back, knowing that they were destined for him in some way, his mind racing with terrible possibilities.
‘Sit down,’ Father Wilfred said to us and we did so, trying not to let the nettles sting us anymore.
Henry started to ask us what was going on, but then jumped back into a rigid shape when Father Wilfred slammed the door to the vestry. For a few moments, Father Wilfred stood against the wall looking at us, prolonging Henry’s unease.
‘I have a question for you, boys,’ he said at last, setting off on his routine of pacing back and forth across the stone flags, patting his Bible. ‘Come the Day of Judgement, who is to be cast down the deepest?’
Paul immediately raised his hand.
‘Heathens?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Father Wilfred. ‘Even lower than the heathens.’
‘Protestants?’ said Paul.
Father Wilfred stopped walking abruptly and stood in front of Henry.
‘What do you think, McCullough?’
Henry looked up at him nervously.
‘Murderers, Father?’
Father Wilfred shook his head.
‘No, McCullough,’ he said. ‘The people I am talking about will look on with envy at the punishments of murderers.’
‘Fornicators,’ Paul said suddenly.
‘Close, Peavey. Onanists,’ said Father Wilfred.
Henry looked down at his feet.
‘Wicked little fellows who have too much time on their hands,’ he said. ‘McCullough, your mother tells me that you are an onanist.’
‘No, Father.’
‘She tells me that you keep vile magazines in your room.’
‘I don’t, Father. They’re hers.’
‘Are you calling your mother a liar?’
Henry said nothing.
‘Fifth Commandment, Peavey.’
‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’ said Paul, watching Henry expectantly.
Father Wilfred put down his Bible on the table. ‘I’ll ask you again, McCullough. Is your mother a liar?’
‘No, Father.’
‘Then what she tells me is true?’
Henry put his head in his hands and Father Wilfred curled his top lip as though he had smelled something unpleasant.
‘Sinful boy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have time for that kind of behaviour when I was your age. I was too busy begging for the scraps the butcher’s dog wouldn’t even eat to feed my family and the family next door. Think of The Poor next time you’re tempted; they don’t have idle hands, lad. They’re either working or praying for work.’
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Henry sobbed.
Father Wilfred continued to glare at Henry, but held out his hands towards me and Paul, and after a moment where we looked at one another uncertainly, we passed him the nettles, which he took from us without flinching.
‘Hands,’ he said to Henry.
‘What?’
‘Give me your hands.’
Henry held out his hands and Father Wilfred put the nettles into his open palms.
‘Squeeze them,’ he said.
‘Please, Father,’ Henry said. ‘I won’t do it again.’
‘Squeeze them, McCullough.’
Henry gently closed his hands and Father Wilfred suddenly clamped them tight. Henry cried out, but Father Wilfred only crushed them harder until green juice seeped out from between his fingers and ran down his arms.
‘Believe me, McCullough, this is nothing to the pain onanists receive in Hell.’
After another minute of sobbing, Father Wilfred told Henry to put the nettles in the wastebin and sent him out into the church to pray for forgiveness.
‘Not a word, boys,’ said Father Wilfred to me and Paul as we put on our coats. Paul had gone a shade of pink with the excitement of it all. ‘These lessons are for you and nobody else.’
‘Yes, Father Wilfred,’ we said in the same monotone chorus.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Kneel down now.’
We knelt down before him on the stone flags of the vestry, and in turn he placed a cold hand on our heads, reciting one of his favourite passages from Proverbs.
‘“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”’
‘Amen,’ we said and he smiled and went into his office and closed the door.
We were like that old bike tyre he used to roll down the streets of Whitechapel as a boy, giving it little corrective taps to stop it tumbling into the filth, something which poor Henry frequently seemed to do.
We found him in the lady chapel, kneeling in front of the Virgin, looking up into her doe-eyes, whispering and crying, his swollen hands shaking as he desperately tried to keep them together. Paul laughed and zipped up his coat and went outside.
Chapter Fifteen
Even though Moorings had been built fortress-solid to withstand the weather, and Mummer, out of London habit, made a point of checking every door and window before she went to bed, I still had the rifle next to me that night.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d seen in the woods. It seemed clear that Monro had been lured up there on purpose by the smell of the meat. We were supposed to find the thing hanging from the oak bough. It was meant to frighten us into leaving. And if we didn’t, what then?