CHAPTER 80
I had to take the hints, I had to back down and out, but I still worried.

I was also surprised at her mental strength. What had happened to the friend who had hidden all her life, too frightened to come out into the world? It seemed she was right: that person had died on a hospital bed. Some people change personality markedly after a head injury as bad as hers, but I didn’t think it was that. She really seemed to have had an awakening rather than a change, and I suspected it was a case of her seeing that the world had done its worst, and she was still in it.

Whatever the reason, though, this was a much harder personality. Not cruel, just less likely to back down or run from obstacles. I realised that I had seen a hint of that when she made her unilateral decision to come out. It was time for me to take stock and let her get on with it, but I still had her back, in both senses.

We had a lot to do at work, anyway. All the recent events had left us a little short-staffed through the Summer, and the last locum had been less than efficient, which meant a lot of working through his notes and trying to decipher his handwriting. It was so bad he should’ve been a doctor.

Thankfully, the stock records are computerised, as are the repeat prescriptions, but the scrip from the doctors is handwritten, and matching it all up was a bugger. Our glorified temp believed in filing everything under ‘B’ for ‘Bitsapaper’. After a week of ordering said bits into date order for starters, I was tearing my hair out. The usual suspect was off on bloody honeymoon, the two girls were somewhat distracted, Alice wasn’t able to spend long periods at work yet, so as usual it all fell on me. I made sure the kettle stayed warm, and apart from the resulting runs to the toilet I got my head down and slogged away.

Both the girls were good, though, only disturbing me when something needed authorisation, and occasionally popping over the High Street to return with coffee and chocolate. They knew my needs.

While Suzy just wandered around smugly, Anne was a changed woman. Some accommodation had obviously been reached with her new man, apart from the saliva exchanges we had all witnessed, and so I was a little surprised when she started popping out at lunchtimes again. This time, though, there was no plastering job, no gas warfare. I decided that it was safe, now, to ask.

“Anne, love, where are you off to at lunchtimes?”

“Oh, just to Church”

Oh shit. “Er, what’s doing there at lunchtimes? I tend to think of it as a Sunday thing”

“Oh, there’s a pastoral group meeting twice a week. Sort of an outreach thing, not the style at my old Church.”

“Old church?”

I was turning into a bloody echo.

“Yes, I moved. I had a difficulty with, em, the doctrinal interpretations of one of the priests there, and Jon sort of invited me along to see how his Church did things, and, well, I sort of stayed…”

So a certain priest had lost his little fun breaks, then. ‘Doctrinal interpretation’, my arse.

“I gathered from the wedding that you two had sorted things out. How are you doing now?”

She smiled. “We have both recognised we can be a little quick to see problems, and far too quick to try and solve ones that aren’t really there. We see life the same way, after all, and each of us was imagining things about how the other thought that weren’t true. It’s like you, you think I am all hooked up to Opus Dei and that, don’t you?”

I had to admit that, yes, I did.

“Well, I did sound them out a while ago, and their outlook makes great sense. The sanctity of work is what I aim for, to do my best, to be my best.”

“Don’t they go in for whipping and all that?”

“That was my sticking point. Sar, you must know I fast regularly, partly as a penance, and partly to remind myself that many people can’t pop across the road for a coffee, can’t even trust their local water. I pray, Sar, and I do it without comforts, so I know how frail I am compared to my Saviour, and how I need Him. I looked at mortification of the flesh, quite seriously, for that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

“Yes, like that mad monk thing in that film”

“Bloody stupid film, dreadful book, and so poorly written. But yes, that is what a lot of them do, and I found the idea offensive. The Lord did not give me this body so I could damage it wilfully.

“That was one of the things I couldn’t handle about Alice, that she had such a desire to mutilate herself”

I sighed, the memories still fresh. “You do know that the only alternative she could see was death?”

Anne put her hand on mine and squeezed. “Yes, I have done an awful lot of reading since this came up, and Pat has been quite literally a Godsend, and I believe that deeply, in clearing away ambiguities. The small beetle, he calls it, or Pat’s Razor”

I groaned. “The lesser of two…”

“Weevils, yes. But he came up with the Razor himself, after Occam. He says that it is impossible to live a life without sinning, so while one must always strive to avoid sin, when it comes to the point where all choices in front of you are sinful, choose the least harmful option. God doesn’t expect perfection in His creatures, just that they try their best,. Why is such a man leaving the priesthood, Sar?”

“Because he is a man, Anne, and he has found a woman to fall in love with”

She smiled. “Just now, Sarah, I can fully understand that point of view. I have my own little journey of discovery to do, and it is rather exciting”

With that, she was off, leaving me back in my little world of Sanskrit and random filing.

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Tony brought Jim up to Canterbury that evening by train as we had arranged a few days earlier, and I changed into the other bike gear after work so we could have a family ride back home. Tony had laughed when he first saw my road bike, with its traditional leather saddle, but when I attached my saddle bag to the matching loops and stowed all my work stuff there, as he fiddled with a rucksack, he looked less amused. I filled all our bottles at work, and we set off out past the gaol to the odd meander past school playing fields and housing estates till at last reaching the countryside by a sharp little climb, Past the strawberry and maize fields, down the sunken lane, where a hare shot off through the hedge, carefully over the roundabout, and then Tony tried to sprint past me as Jim giggled.

He took the left turn at speed, following the cycle route sign, and Jim and I shared one of those mother-son knowing looks as his scream came back to us. He’d found the ford–at speed. We walked across the little footbridge as he waited on the other side, a great streak of damp up his shorts and back, dripping from the rucksack. It was some time before we could ride on, two of us, and then three, were laughing so much. I did relent a little, though, and tied his socks to the back of my saddle bag to dry out a little on the way home.

The bit after the ford is rather steep, so for Jim’s sake we walked it until we were onto the top of the Downs, and then we rollercoasted our way home to the waiting dog.

I had to apologise to Tony, after our cruelty, and as Jim released his dog into the back garden for some sport with a football and a rope toy, I followed my husband to his hiding place in the shower, and after carefully locked the door I took all of my own clothes off and joined him. After all, you should save water….

Now, I do know that when I am making love with my bear I tend to lose all rational thought processes, but we weren’t doing that. I soaped his back, feeling all those familiar little bumps and nodules from old injuries, those places I knew so well, and I dug my fingers into the muscles of his back and neck to loosen them, and all the time the warm water was cascading down over us and dribbling off our extremities, our chins, the elbows of my bent arms, his…

When I said we weren’t making love, I lied. Jim made himself a sandwich, sensible boy.