Lonie53

Father Campbell made Audrey sit down in his padded swivel seat. The phone rang. He picked it up and immediately put the receiver down, a message to whoever was calling that he wasn’t available. He sent Lorna, who was almost as dew-eyed as Audrey, to make tea. Even Jim had perched himself in the chair next to her, and hung over her like a tongue-tied oaf on a first date. Audrey had never been so popular. She didn’t like it. Her thoughts strayed towards sitting with her back against a cool wall and getting ignored.

‘Ah.’ Father Campbell smile was that of a genial host when Lorna bustled in with a tray and put it down on the desk in front of Audrey. Her eyes drifted across and she sucked her breath in when Audrey returned her gaze, as if she'd seen something she didn't like.

Jim insisted on pouring everybody’s tea and sloshed milk onto the tray. He served Audrey first, passing over her cup –with no sugar. His remark, ‘there’s nothing worse than cold tea,’ was met with smiles.

Audrey could think of a few things, but sipped her tea and said nothing as the others were served.

Father Campbell’s eyebrows lifted a fraction, an indication he was going to say something. ‘When my hands began to weep blood and then my feet and then my head; my insides were bleeding in more than one sense.’ He stirred his tea and looked down to see if Audrey understood. His hand fell on her shoulder. She wanted it to stay there.

Lorna, who was sitting side-saddle on the periphery of their gathering, had her own ideas. She picked up a chair close to the one she sat on, lifted it over the desk, and guided Father Campbell like a thin wayward child into it and made him sit down.

He now sat across from Audrey separated by the worn out woodchip of the desk, but his eyes remained on her and he gave her his attention. ‘Like you I was troubled. I was a young doctor with a history of instability and nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t even hang myself. God had other plans for me.’ He looked from Audrey to Jim beside her and turned to Lorna, nodding his head as if to say, that is how it was. ‘The worst part was my family. They didn’t understand. For them the idea of Christ filling my body with His affliction was too close to Papacy to be believable.’ He sighed, a letting go of the past. ‘Worse than that it was a betrayal of everything they understood. I was a Catholic Judas in their midst, full of Catholic mumbo-jumbo and denying God with my antics. Getting above myself they’d have said to something less serious.’

‘No.’ Jim shook his head and pressed his lips together. ‘You’re no Judas. You’re a good man.’

‘Only God is good.’ Father Campbell’s reply was swift, but he favoured him with a thin smile. ‘My own hospital turned me away, an embarrassment to the patients I’d cared for. An embarrassment to my profession and to myself. “Psychosomatic disorder” was the diagnosis and because they claimed not to have the resources to deal with me-- balderdash, of course-- I was referred to the Catholic units in the same block.’ He sipped at his tea and reached for a Digestive biscuit. Lorna caught his eye and shyly looked away. ‘Here among the cast-offs from society.’ He stamped his feet on the stone floor. ‘Here in this lazar house I found love and attention. Here I found God Almighty.’

They returned to the individual silences of slurped tea and in Jim’s case scratching an itch beneath his jumper with a marked self-consciousness.

Father Campbell was not deflected from his course. His eyes locked onto Audrey’s. ‘It seems that, like me, something in your past has shaped this future. For that we have got to be truly thankful.’

‘Amen.’ Lorna put her cup down and seemed ready to spring up and march for some heavenly band.

‘I don’t know.’ Audrey placed her cup down on the desk. The tea tasted insipid. Her answer, even to her own ears, sounded rather lame. Her hand still shook, but she clasped them together and leaned across the desk, her eyes swollen with the need to be understood. ‘I’m not a believer.’

‘God is the believer. Not man.’ His head tilted and his face made a little gesture of contrition that made him smile. ‘Or women. Go some of the way and God will fill in the gaps.’

Audrey looked at the ascetic face of Father Campbell. She looked at the caring faces of Lorna and even Jim, but she felt hemmed in. ‘What would I need to do?’

‘Have you been baptised?’ asked Father Campbell.

Audrey shrugged. ‘Yes.’ She played with the looped earring in her left ear as she tried to squeeze out a memory. ‘I’m quite sure I have.’

Father Campbell stood, held his hand up in a placatory manner, and as a signal that her efforts to remember no longer need matter. ‘Would you be willing to be baptised again, into the Catholic Church?’

‘No.’ Audrey spoke very firmly. ‘I don’t think mother would like that very much. I’m not sure I would either.’

Father Campbell nodded as if he’d expected that. ‘My child, we can only help you if you help yourself. We are not asking you to forsake the vows you have already taken. We are just asking you to renew them. Catholics do the same thing at the start of every Lenten season.’

Jim cut in. ‘Look it’s not something you need to be uncomfortable about. I was like you, an unbeliever. I’ll run through what you need to do and say beforehand and if you don’t want to…that’s fine.’ He patted her on the arm, ‘but you really need to do this for your own sake.’

A shriek from one of the patients' rooms made her spill some tea. ‘Who would perform the ceremony?’

‘I would.’ Father Campbell held his hand up. ‘It’s for the best.’

Lorna stood up to make her declaration. ‘You know we’ve grown to love you. Hand on heart.’ She placed her hand in the white band between her cardigan. ‘It’s for the best.’

A roar like caged animals travelled down the corridor. Jim got up too casually and left the office. He did not hurry or seem particularly fazed. Audrey, in contrast, felt that the others would be able to see her heart beating through her blouse. She reached for her bag, her mouth dry. ‘I’ll think about it.’ It felt like betrayal but she needed to be outside, to feel the wind on her face. Voice sprouted outside the safety of the office, deep tones, unworldly and then a man and a woman giggling, which was the most upsetting of all.