All characters depicted in this story are eighteen years of age or older.
*****
Some years back, during my career in the armed forces, I marched into an air force officers' mess where I was billeted for the duration of a course I was to attend on that base. The duty officer, a young section officer who was also assistant mess secretary, looked at my travel documents and orders before looking up sharply.
"Captain Robertson," she said with the emphasis on my rank and a sort of startled, guilty look on her face. "You probably don't remember me, Louise Crowther, I'm engaged to Richard Lewis."
She flashed a small diamond in a ring on her left hand, then handed me my room key and instructions on how to get there as I smiled pleasantly.
I remembered Louise well, having spent my Sunday school and later, church service hours and several social evenings admiring her looks. She'd developed a truly magnificent bosom and a bottom to murder for as well as a beautiful face below short, black hair which made her look appealingly elfin despite the puppy-fat. Although she'd aged four or five years since I'd seen her last it only added to her physical attractiveness as an adult who'd slimmed down and grown taller. And I'd always desired ladies of more substantial proportions.
Richard Lewis, her fiance, was a bit odd, from my recollection. He'd always preferred to hang out with younger kids despite being at least five years older than I, taking groups of us on Sunday afternoon drives after Christian Endeavour meetings over the period of years in which I went along to church. There was no suggestion that he'd ever sought a physical relationship with any of them, even touched, but it did seem rather odd to me. I'd heard that he was presently engaged in a theological course in preparation for an ordination and graduation ceremony later that year.
My mother sent me to the Sunday school as punishment one Mothers' Day the whole family neglected to observe. I thought it was the most ordinary way a kid could be made to spend a sunny autumn morning when the river was still clear and fish were biting well, but they had a hook. If one could endure a weekly session of fundamentalist, protestant bible-thumping, one could play in the only basketball competition in our city for kids. It got me in for several years; until I discovered the game they play in heaven.
I had great difficulty with the Christian myth, particularly in how Jesus died so that I might somehow find a better life, that concept going right over my head. On querying the matter I was told that far greater minds than mine were convinced of the truth of the idea so I should just remain silent and listen instead of asking foolish questions. Funnily enough, that's much like the answers I've received from clergymen since, except that I'm now regarded as a smart-arse atheist who won't accept any reasonable answer and just use what's said to try to belittle their faith. Makes you wonder...
The other matter that made me wonder was the way that about four families in the congregation thought the church was their private chapel. You had to be one of those to even be nominated as a candidate for the ruling council, to be listened to on any matter or to have a say in ministerial hiring and firing. An adult, long-term engaged couple in the congregation were refused permission to bring their wedding day forward by three months on grounds of morality, she found herself unexpectedly pregnant, despite there being no other weddings on the new date. They were refused marriage in the church on the same grounds, it being suggested that they go somewhere else and find a denomination who were somehow less Christian.
A few months later the eighteen year-old daughter of one of the top families found herself with a belly full of arms and legs and, having delayed giving the news to her parents, the need for a quick and early wedding were really too obvious. There was no mention of immorality here and the nuptials were celebrated enthusiastically. I became something of a sceptic when the word went about to warn against jumping to judgemental conclusions or making any comparisons with earlier, or more recent events.
The following evening, after a day of lectures, I'd been preparing to go looking for an old friend in the sergeants' mess, but found that she'd gone off on a parachute refresher course and expected back in a fortnight. That was about my departure date. After dinner I read the evening paper and was buying a beer at the bar when Louise joined me. Just what I needed. She got herself a gin and tonic and paid for mine too.
"You didn't sign the pledge then?" I observed and she blushed fetchingly.
"I didn't think you'd remember stuff like that, sir," she told me. "Anyway I crossed my fingers."
"It's Jack," I said quietly. "Remember? In my corps subalterns don't go around saluting captains or calling them 'sir'."
"If you insist, Jack," she grinned. "Actually there's something I've got to tell you, it's a bit embarrassing for me."
She paused, apparently gathering her thoughts.
"I nearly fell over when I looked at your travel docs last night. A few years ago I ran into your brother at a function at home while I was there on leave. He and his pals had had a few drinks and were trying to chat us up when someone 'let it slip' that you were in prison for a long stretch. They all haw-haw-hawed about how funny it was and I must confess to being convinced they weren't lying. I even told somebody else. I'm so sorry I've been so silly Jack," she sniffed, just the hint of a tear in the corner of one eye.
"It's okay," I grinned. "I pull a lot of practical jokes on people in the mess or others I don't know, like newspaper editors."
"You tell lies?"
"It's more a matter of creating a belief by allusion or implication. One should actually be imprecise and not make too much information available. I find that people's imaginations are more destructive than anything you could tell them. Did Jim actually say I was in the slammer?"
"I don't remember the actual word, it's been a long time, but they kept saying institutionalised and mentioned a long sentence."
"So no actual lies, in that I'm institutionalised in the Army."
"Half-truths then?"
"No, a truth that one can check is much more useful, added to a falsehood that sounds plausible makes people think and doubt. Get them in two minds and you can suggest all sorts of foolishness. Religions have been doing it for many centuries now."
"That's pretty cynical."
"It's a cynical old world out there Louise," I told her in my best, world-weary voice.
She brought me up to date on the lives of those around the church I hated so much and found it so boring to hear about from her.
"I feel so sorry about poor Emma," she told me. "Dying so young, just nineteen, before she'd experienced the really good things in life."
Emma was a daughter of one of the previously-mentioned families with what I saw as a proprietorial interest in the church, a nice enough person, but not actually the canonisational material that her parents wanted others to believe after her death from leukaemia.
"She didn't miss out," I told Louise.
I'd had enough of her prattle, but didn't wish to be rude so thought I'd create a new legend for her to spread about.
"How d'you mean?" she asked uncertainly.
"I mean Emma had a secret, she'd explored her sexuality before she died."
"How do you know?"
"I saw her."
"Crap," she told me adamantly.
I didn't reply to that and there was a long silence as her mind gagged on the unwelcome information.
"Where?" she demanded.
"In the church, on the stage above the baptisimal font."
"Who with?"
"Barry and Harry Ezra."
The Ezra's lived next door to the church and regularly complained to the local authorities over the noise levels, but religious organisations were exempt from the by-laws on a Sunday. Louise looked doubtful about any kind of intercourse between Emma and the Ezra twins, given the acrimony between their families.
"Tell me more?" she challenged me.
"Do you remember the great smell?" I asked her.
"Oh yes," she giggled. "It was dreadful."
"It was me," I told her truthfully. "I happened to notice they'd taken the asbestos off the boxed eaves and knew that I could drop stuff down the air gap between the double brick walls. I filled a bucket with fish and crabs where the netters discard them by the river and climbed the scaffolding at night to insert them, but Emma caught me. Anyhow, she thought it was a big giggle and helped me then. I know she knew then that she was sick because she was very bitter at the church and her family. She thought that she was being punished for her old man's hypocrisy over the weddings saga."
Louise looked thoughtfull at my lies. Actually I was caught by my erstwhile school-mate Bazza Ezra who laughed so much that I thought we'd be noticed by most of the neighborhood. The upshot was that Bazza, Harry and I each gathered another bucket of fish the next day and inserted them before the eaves were sealed again. It was a hot week in mid-summer and it seems that the stench was palpable when the ladies arrived early on the Sunday morning to do the flowers. Because the cheap alternative to demolishing an external wall, removing the fish and rebuilding was the use of freshening sprays and fans, they chose to suffer the smell until it eventually abated after a couple of months. Unfortunately Zeke Ezra was taken in for lengthy questioning over the matter, but knowing nothing about it, was easily able to convince the cops of his innocence. When eventually given the facts he was so proud of his sons and always bought me a beer whenever he caught me in the pub for years afterward.
"We got more fish the next day and put them in too," I told her. "Then I went into the church with her, she had a key, and she persuaded me to give her an anal nooky."
"I don't believe you," she hissed, appalled at what I'd said. "She just wouldn't do that."
"Suit yourself," I said. "But she was very bitter and unhappy about such an uncaring god. She thought her old man should have taken the blame and punishment for his own sins. Defiling the church was part of her revenge."
"I can't believe it," she said less certainly than before.
"And I wasn't alone," I went on. "She did it with the Ezra brothers too, at the same time."
"You're pulling my leg, aren't you Jack?" she asked, but with much more confidence that time. "I knew her fairly well."
"Do you really know someone?"
"I knew her well enough to know you're telling fibs and you'll have more than a little difficulty in getting to heaven."
"Okay," I said simply, my tone implying that I really didn't care about what she thought.
"All right, tell me this," she challenged me again. "If she did what you said, you'd have seen something about her."
"Her birthmark, the one on her bum."
