NO CANDLE
Doyle was glad he hadn’t pulled the short straw, glad it wasn’t
him who had to go and ring on a doorbell with that sort of news on Christmas
Eve.
Poor bastard: a few weeks in the squad, all fresh-faced and
full of enthusiasm, and he’d walked straight into a bullet.
Nobody had volunteered to go and break
the news to the bloke's family - not even him, so they'd decided to
settle it with a few
matchsticks. He supposed it seemed fair - they'd done it like that
before for solo agents or if partners went together, but it still
seemed harsh.
Doyle felt his throat tighten. Knew he had to get out of
there or he'd make a fool of himself.
It was raining – the damp,
drizzly sort. There weren’t many people about at nine in the
evening, but there were plenty of signs of
Christmas. Tinsel around street lamps, which had miraculously escaped
vandals or
partygoers with a few too many drinks inside them, a bus going past
with Father
Christmas emblazoned on its side, a pub decorated to within an inch of
its life.
The church, when he found himself in front of it, wasn’t the sort he'd grown up with,
but what did that
matter? He’d surrendered the last vestiges of belief in a
benevolent God anyway.
He even remembered when: the day, as a young copper, he’d
seen a young pregnant
woman dead in the wreck of a car driven by drunken louts. He remembered
knocking on her door, too, and wondering who he despised most - the
drunks or the God he'd been brought up to believe in as the husband had
answered.
So why was he thinking about going into a church at all?
By
the looks of it, it wasn’t a very churchy church either. It was
the sort that his
mother would condemn out of hand as being Spartan, almost unholy. Not
enough candles or incense, stained glass and statues for her liking.
Not a confessional in sight. His mother thought a quick confession
solved just about everything.
Stop it, he told himself. This wasn’t a time for thinking
ill of anybody, much as he’d felt like thumping Bodie
before.
How could Bodie just snap out of things? Switch it all off?
Just how much death did it take to make you like that? How could he suggest a Christmas
Eve drink at the pub, for Christ's sake, when Jax was driving towards the suburbs with
his guts in a knot?
Another poor bastard, Jax. Another one who let
death get to him: Doyle had seen that before. Apparently Jax
drowned his sorrows in long,
punishing runs.
Doyle looked down at his boots, considered the idea fleetingly, and
pushed the church door open.
Automatically, he looked for the
candles, but saw none. Not
a church where you slipped a few coins into a box and lit one, then.
That was a
shame: religious he might not be, but somehow it would have been a
gesture. He lit one for his dad, sometimes, when he went up home.
Old, wooden folding chairs were placed in not very straight
rows, and to Doyle’s relief they were all empty. No lingering priests, or
vicars, or whatever they had here were to be seen either. Good – he didn’t want
anybody to pour out his soul to, or even to tell them to leave him alone.
He sank onto a hard seat and stared at the simple altar. The
Christmas decorations were modest too: greenery, a few of those red star-like
plants with a name he could never remember. Poin, point… well, star things.
A wall at
the side sported kids’ drawings. Baby Jesus with a black face, with a white
one, with an orange halo. Donkeys with smiles and more legs than seemed
logical. Mary in a mini skirt. Joseph with what looked like a rasta hairdo.
Somebody cleared their throat at the back and made him jump.
Somebody else giggled. A voice said something half-sternly, and then Doyle saw
them: a dozen or so kids all jostling to form two lines either side of the
altar and an older woman carrying a sheaf of music.
Maybe he’d better go, Doyle decided, but didn’t. Memories of
starched collars and stupid robes that got caught in the ironwork slid into his
mind, but this lot were wearing jeans, boys and girls alike. Since when did
girls… oh, never mind, he told himself.
Somebody hit a chord on a piano: no organ, clearly. A dozen
chins went up, faces staring intently at the woman. Doyle expected something traditional: Hark
the Herald Angels sing (and that last verse that was such a bugger with the
extra, high bit, whatever they called it…), but no, it was something jazzy he
didn’t know.
He sat through that, then another
one he’d heard before but
couldn’t put a name to. It was haunting, the lilting notes
dancing and sliding and talking of life, not death. To his disgust and
shame, felt his eyes wet.
This wouldn’t do. He should leave.
He didn’t.
They sang a few more things:
traditional carols, the catchy one with the drummer-chorus-thing he'd
always liked. The woman stopped them once or twice, at one point
reminding
them it was the last rehearsal before the midnight service, and
that there was no excuse
for picking
noses or gossiping between the carols. That - and the singing - cheered
him up a bit, just to see happy kids.They teased and jostled every time
the music died away, but they were putting hearts and souls into the
singing as well.
Then his mood changed again, and
rapidly. The choirmistress went over to the piano for a moment, and one of
the singers stuck out two fingers in a crude imitation
of a gun, pointing it at the blonde moppet beside him. Doyle felt his
fingers
curl in fury, had to hold himself back from striding up there and
shaking the
little bugger, telling him what guns really did.
He didn’t.
Instead, he got up and headed for the exit, pushing the
swing doors leading into the porch viciously.
When somebody grasped his arm he whirled, ready to lash out.
Another hand grabbed his wrist.
“Bodie.” He said it flatly, shaking off the hold and
refusing to meet his partner’s eyes, not wanting to see scorn, amusement or
even sympathy. “What the bloody hell are…”
“Shouldn’t swear in church,” Bodie said, quietly.
“Apparently. And I followed you.”
“For the ‘let’s drag Doyle out of the wallowing in misery’,
right?”
“No. Yes. No.” Bodie paused. “Yes, I wanted to. But no, I’d
decided to leave you to it. See, I supposed whatever
I said or did wouldn’t be what you wanted to hear. Liked the singing, though, so I stayed a bit. Then you left like a bloody rocket, so...”
“You…” Doyle had no idea how to finish the sentence. Fortunately,
'Hark the Herald' was in the background, and some poor kid was doing
battle with the descant - yes, that was the word, descant - and losing.
“Ouch,” Bodie grinned.
“It’s hard,” Doyle said. “That bit.”
“Take your word for it. Fancy a pint? Quiet drink at my
place?”
Doyle shrugged, knowing he was just playing hard to get now.
Bodie didn’t push, so he softened. “Your place, preferably.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“I wanted to light a candle.” Doyle said, quietly. “Daft, I
suppose, when you don’t believe in…”
“Not daft,” Bodie said. “At all.”
The singing stopped. The silence hung for a moment or two.
"Thanks," Doyle muttered. To Bodie, to the church,
to the kids: he didn't know.
Somehow, he felt better, felt watched
over, and not just by Bodie. It was a strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one.
He lingered in the entrance just a few seconds longer,
imagined a candle for his dad, for the bloke who'd died, and took one last look at the kids through the porch window.
Then he followed Bodie out into the rain.
Christmas 2006
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