The Hope by James Lovegrove Page B

filed out of the double doors, which were made of brass decorated with ornate curlicues and bas-relief iconography, on one side a hard-edged Christ with streams of spun metal radiating from his head and on the other a crude Mary, more like a man than a woman. The brass had a clumsy, pitted texture, but perhaps that was deliberate on the artist’s part.
    Arthur closed up the keyboard and locked the lid. Chartreuse shook every member of his congregation warmly by the hand, giving each a slight nod and a smile. Old Charlie and a couple of lads from the engine room stopped to chat for a moment and Chartreuse and those in the queue behind them got restless almost immediately, but soon everyone was out and Chartreuse was threading his way through the pews towards Arthur.
    “Well?” he said, and it occurred to Arthur for the umpteenth time that Chartreuse was able to convey hideous implications of fire and brimstone in a single, quiet word. Then again, it was only fitting for a priest to have that kind of power.
    “I’m sorry,” was all Arthur could find to say. He could not tell the priest of the spell cast by his sermons, how they banished mortal fears and doubts and unworthiness and replaced them with an overwhelming love of God, because spells, he knew, were the tools of the Devil and of unbelievers.
    “Can I do the Lord’s work properly if there is … incompetence undermining my efforts? Can I?”
    “No, you can’t,” Arthur replied lamely.
    “No. But I can only forgive you, as the Lord would wish me to. We all make mistakes, do we not?”
    Arthur was a crumb, a speck, a seagull dropping.
    “So, Arthur,” Chartreuse continued, “check the music before you begin playing. I know, I know, you were listening to me and I appreciate that, but you are doing the Lord’s work too…”
    The Lord’s work! Arthur quivered inside.
    “… and the Lord loves you for that and for what you are. Just pay attention. Carelessness is sloth and sloth, as we know, is a deadly sin.” Chartreuse paused. “That’s all. Off you go and I’ll see you at Evensong.”
    “Yes. I’m sorry. Thank you, Reverend Chartreuse. Thank you.”
    Arthur set off with a determined stride. This evening would be faultless, he vowed, even if he had to practise all afternoon.
    Walter was lurking in the shadows below the pulpit. He gazed at Arthur, his dumb, cow-like eyes overhung by the thick lobes of his forehead and a stringy fringe of hair. He made Arthur shudder. A halfwit stopper, Chartreuse had found Walter outside his cabin one night, so the story went, and had taken him in and instructed him in the basics of reading and writing and taught him about the Lord and calmed his pathological heart with the balm of Holy Truth, but Arthur doubted the Reverend had done the job properly because Walter seemed perpetually on the point of raising one of his cracked and scabbed hands and bashing everyone’s brains out. Arthur averted his eyes and hurried through the double doors.
    “Walter,” said the priest softly, and Walter sidled up to him like a whip-scared dog.
     
    Agnes had not waited for him. She had gone straight to the cabin after the service. Arthur feared her recriminations almost as much as he feared Chartreuse’s, Agnes not having the Lord’s authority weighing behind her tongue but possessing to a near miraculous degree the art of cutting Arthur with the precision of a surgeon. She had put Sunday lunch – two small herrings each and some insipid vegetables – on the table as if nothing was amiss and Arthur sat down opposite her and examined his hands. She had assumed an armour of silence.
    Halfway through lunch Arthur chose the most innocuous topic he could think of, knowing full well that whatever he said would bring her anger to the boil but it was best to get these things over and done with as quickly as possible.
    “Good fish, dear.”
    Agnes stared at the tangled bones of her fish, pursed her lips so that they resembled a cat’s