Such Men Are Dangerous Read Online Free Page B

cuts in services to the old and the mentally ill. Simon bit his lip. Well, he said that we were heading for disaster. And told us how we’d have to mend our ways .
    Hmm.
    It reminded Simon of nothing so much as the sort of ‘encouraging’ message delivered with such vibrant intensity at séances. Yet you’d think an angel could come up with something a bit more convincing. Surely?
    And why on earth should he choose to deliver it in Scunthorpe? Scunthorpe of all places! The very name was a music hall joke; the easy butt of every second-rate comedian. Over the past three years Simon had become genuinely fond of the town and was often vociferously indignant at the rotten press it received. But the fact remained that, by and large, Scunthorpe was not a spot that the British media, or indeed the British population in general, treated with much seriousness.
    Could anything good, they would say, come out of Scunthorpe?
    These reflections occupied a few minutes. During the remainder of the meeting only one other thing distracted him: the memory of a burial service he had conducted that same morning. It was a death which had bothered him all week.
    A man whom Simon hadn’t met had hanged himself in a local wood. He was twenty-three and had been out of work for five months. He left a widow of nineteen who was pregnant with their third baby—which even yet the doctors were struggling to save. The man’s father hadn’t attended the funeral either, “because, if you must know, I’m just too bloody well disgusted by that bloody boy!” Nor had the man’s mother, a recovering alcoholic. There had been eleven mourners at the service; these had included Mrs Madison and seven other members of the congregation who also hadn’t met Jerry Turner. The remaining three were a former workmate, a schoolfriend and a teenage Pakistani boy, the son of a neighbour. They stood around the graveside in warm sunshine under a cloudless sky, awkward, their dark clothes incongruous, and as they came away the schoolfriend said—there were tears on his pockmarked cheeks—“And he was always so sodding cheerful!” He had hung in the wood for nearly a week before he’d been discovered by two eight-year-olds playing at being savages.
    Well, as a vicar, of course, you had to guard against becoming bitter. Either bitter or sentimental. Simon now chewed his lip again—a habit his mother kept trying to break him of—and suggested giving a party at the vicarage for this other unknown young man who would be stopping there for a weekend, en route , eventually, for Nigeria. “Better than having the kind of get-together here in the hall where you’re half afraid no one will turn up!”
    The meeting ended. As he locked the office he saw Paula waiting for him by the main door.
    “I was wondering if you’d heard on tonight’s news, Simon, about the vicar who’s just resigned from his parish near Stoke-on-Trent?” She was forever storing such snippets for him and—as usual when they were alone—spoke more breathlessly than at other times. “He’s caused a split in his congregation by setting up a rival church nearby!”
    Simon shook his head. He guided her onto the pavement and locked the outer door.
    “And can you guess why?” she hurried on. “Because his son went to Lourdes and was cured of his convulsions! Imagine something inspirational like that, Simon, creating so much controversy and so much bad feeling!”
    “Strangely it often seems to.”
    “And after seventeen years! Feels drawn to Rome! It’s wonderful about his son, of course, but I really can’t see—”
    “Perhaps he thinks the Church of England pays too little attention to miracles? Perhaps, what’s more, he could be right. But excuse me, Paula, I’m on my way to an appointment.”
    “Of course,” she said. “Please give my love to your mother,” she called across the broad expanse of pavement.

4
    Josh Heath had gone to the pub. Dawn hastened to excuse this by