Testament

"For which I am an ambassador in chains: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak." 

Ephesians; 6:20  

Content Warning:

Strong injury detail, homicide theme

Transcript

Testament

Martha and Georgia were hurrying because they had to go over something with the organist before mass. It was nearly twenty minutes to ten. No rush, they both thought, and yet they were in a rush because they’d entered the loft ten minutes before mass last week to prepare the responsorial psalm and the organist had snapped at them. Neither one of them could remember precisely what he had said. But they both had gleaned something startling, something startling and repulsive in his tone, in the way he had told them they were late, much too late, and banished them back down the stairs. 

Martha and Georgia reached the top of the musty-smelling staircase that led to the loft, and gingerly opened the door that opened onto the place where the console of the organ was located. The door creaked. The console of the organ was there, the panels of control busy with bewilderingly named and ranked stops, the film of persistent purple dust on everything, the surveying umbrage of the pipes, burgeoning out in their symmetric forest from the back of the church. But there was no organist, there was no sign of life, nor of disturbance since last week. The pedal light was off, the console lamp was off. The two hymnals, both the blue and the green, lay disarmingly shut.

“Where’s the organist?” Martha asked the priest, back downstairs, in the sacristy.

The priest had a million things on his mind, duties both pastoral and liturgical. That very morning, no sooner had he opened the doors of the church, he’d been bombarded with people’s needs. A parishioner had informed him tearfully that her mother was entering the last days of her life. A street person, addicted to crack, had taken up about twenty minutes explaining his predicaments. It always moved Father Niall, in a curious way: no matter how apparent a person’s crisis, they’d still always articulate it to him as clearly and illuminatingly as they were able. Never mind that one look at a face like that told you all you needed to know.  

Incompletely robed in Lenten purple, the priest continued to do as fine a job as he was able of bearing everything, everything that was expected of him, coming at him and heaping him like a blizzard. He informed Martha and Georgia that he was already aware of the organist’s absence but couldn’t offer any explanation for it. He apologised to the girls on the organist’s behalf and smiled a smile that had about it a deep sagacious warmth. It was a smile meant only for God, telling God how great his love for humanity, his pleasure in walking amongst their number as a priest, in all their imperfections.

Nobody knew anything. As five minutes to became two minutes to, the priest could only shrug, resigned to an organ-less service. He rang the bell, and led the first hymn as best he was able with his voice. He censed the altar in a grave but curiously apt silence, made the sign of the cross at the lectern, and apologised to his congregation for the unexpected lack of music. A shaft of heavenly sunlight broke softly through the clouds, and stole through the south window, into the church. 

Father Niall had no idea where the organist was. But he sensed that something was amiss. He faced this fear with steadfastness and courage. For one so zealous and precise, his unannounced absence didn’t bode well. When the mass was over and the people all gone and the sun had changed position, withdrawing its magical beams and taking them somewhere else, carrying away their blessing so as to offer it to some other untouched building, Father Niall went to the lady chapel, knelt down in the silence there, and prayed for his absent organist.       

The sun clambered with grand, solar sluggishness, higher, into the sky. Light fell upon the aged and familiar faces of Big Ben and Paul’s, and upon the strange, young, alien faces of the Gherkin and the Shard. Their vast shadows shortened with the sun-climb, and revolved. Voices began to chorus, talkers talking, cacophonic lisping laughter began to sound from the city’s tunnels and grottos and alleyways as markets, in their various grimy localities, came alive. The waters of the river shone with steadily intensifying brilliance. Buses, red and noble and two storeys high, went one way and the other, with the flowing traffic, over Tower Bridge.      

The organist had had all avenues of communication closed to him. He sat, pale and stiff and formal in his great coat, in the Plaistow police station. He sat, seated on one of the armless office chairs in the dreary, metal-toned corridor by an attentively poised sergeant, slouching slightly and swinging his legs, like a little boy. Periodically, the sergeant spoke to the organist. The organist’s name was Michael. Michael, he’d say, do you want a glass of water, maybe some breakfast, how about cornflakes? Or, what would you be doing now if you weren’t here? It just seemed polite: even under these circumstances, courtesy seemed warranted. It never ceased to amaze the sergeant. But after just saying “No comment” a few times, in response to the fourth utterance, Michael did nothing more than raise a pointed index finger to his lips and keep it there for several seconds. For the few long, weighted seconds following, a furious anger seethed inside the sergeant at this act, and an old, rancid fervour filled him: he felt himself reaching for his truncheon, seduced by the thought that it was within his capabilities to reduce this man, this appalling treacherous man-shaped monster, to nothing, just a snivelling pool of tears and contrition. But then he remembered that the monster next to him was, in fact, a man, and the life of the man next to him was almost certainly ruined forever. Though he bore it with an apathetic, smirking arrogance, he knew he was forever sullied, that he was facing the last creaking moments of a life when nothing was broken: he was watching a door close on this life, never to be opened again: his life was ruined. As were the lives of his parents, his siblings if he had any, and the parents, siblings, next of kin of the body they found in the river. The sergeant smiled. 

The body they found had been smashed with a small bottle of some spirit or other they couldn’t identify, the face had been completely disfigured by a repeated battering with a brick, the man had been kicked so hard and so many times in the genitals that his scrotum had detached. 

A police barricade was set up, cordoning off the place where they found him in lurid colours. Parked police vehicles sat, marshalled about the scene. The dark, silhouetted forms of officers moved, slowly, in the slush of the silver river-shore below. The same bright, emergency tones, and the same darkened officers, anonymous in the morning light, had visited the street where Michael P. Orbis lived, just outside Golders Green. The front door of Number 8, Tailfeather Gardens, had been smashed out of the frame and wouldn’t shut. The warranted search for evidence had left the house a mess, its post, its dirty washing, its record stacks, its book-shelves, its dishwasher, its storage cupboards, all ransacked, thoroughly. The body had been discovered three days ago. It had taken law enforcement three days, using the legion CCTV provided by the council and local businesses, to track down its butcher. On the Lord’s day, the day of rest, they arrested him. In the district where he resided, the Edgware branch of the Northern line rumbled, distantly., with a fleeing tube-train. The carriages clattered, noisily, over a little kink in the sleepers. Three Jews, a man, a woman, and their son, the male among them already in yarmulkes, were hurrying off to temple in Brent Cross, with urgent sabbath fidelity.

A week later, Father Niall was summoned to the police station. The police informed him of their reasons for summoning him over the telephone. He was alarmed by how right he had been. He assumed Michael was a “misper”, a missing persons case. His own life had touched nearly ten mispers. Strange people who’d evaporated one particular evening. He found it an honour, in all ten cases, to have been contacted by the police. In each case, he had been a final bastion of something, vestigial, mooring. He was shocked to learn how different this case. He was further surprised that he’d been contacted. He felt like he hardly knew the man. Yet, it was so that when Michael was detained, Father Niall and his congregation had been the only people that felt his absence, his absence in and from the world beyond the compass of the police station, its walls, its bars.

            “Thank you for coming to speak to us, Father Niall,” the interviewing officer began. He had been newly assigned to the case. His search was for a motive. He had little faith that the priest would be of much help in the search. Beside him sat another officer, big, taciturn, and severe looking. Father Niall couldn’t tell whether the man’s stature emphasised his silence, or his silence amplified his stature. Father Niall had been introduced to them both at the entrance before being led to the interviewing room, a small austere room in which no word went unrecorded. The officer speaking was called Officer Harris, his partner Officer Wilson.     

            “Not at all, officer, I’m just so sorry to hear about what’s happened,” Father Niall said, seating himself on the little chair provided.

            Father Niall was a big man. He shuffled in the chair, too big for it, concealing his discomfort as best he could.

            “So, I’d like to begin right away, if that’s alright, Father. We have a couple of questions about Michael, Michael P. Orbis, we’d like to ask you. This interview is being recorded- just to let you know, Father- is that alright?”

            “That’s quite alright,” Father Niall replied.

            “So…can you tell us how you met Michael.”

            “I should say straight off that I really don’t know him that well. I’ve had dealings with him but I don’t know him, personally. He wasn’t very conversational. You know, he never stayed for coffee after services.”

            “You’re actually the closest thing we’ve been able to find to a close friend or acquaintance. He appears to have led a very solitary life. You’re one of the people he’s mentioned most frequently, and enthusiastically”.

            Father Niall was surprised by this. He allowed himself a moment to be affected by this revelation. Unable under the circumstances to express his gladness at this, he was silent, recognising, in silence, that the moment meant something even if he were not quite sure what, before going on with his testimony:

            “Erm…our main organist at my church, St. Cedd’s, Southwark, was gradually stepping down. He said he was feeling his age and not quite up to the job anymore. So, about, oh gosh…six, seven months ago…” the priest calculated the figure to the best of his recollection, “…close to a year, say nine months ago, I got in touch with a friend of mine, Sally, Sally Redcombe who’s an organist and asked her if she’d be interested in working for us.”

            “Sorry to stop you, Father, can you give us that name again…Sally …?”

            “Redcombe. R-E-D-C-O-M-B-E.“ The larger, and the silent of the two policeman, made his solemn jottings on a little note pad, in red biro.

            “And how do you know her?”

            “I was at university with her. Emmanuel, Cambridge. She was the organ scholar. She’s very good, much sort after, and London based. It was a shame that she couldn’t be persuaded to come and play for us, and perhaps develop a choir.”

            “Why couldn’t she?”

            “She said she was too busy. I knew she was stepping down from the place where she had been director of music up until then. I don’t think she wanted to commit to our church. I think she felt it was below her; wanted to keep herself available to apply for different work. She interviewed at a place with a more developed musical tradition, a more pre-eminent position. Got the job I think. Anyway, long story short, she said she was gutted but she couldn’t help us out. The best she was able to offer was a list of contacts. Three organists who might be able to help, email addresses. I emailed all three. One was a no, one was a no-reply, one was a yes. Yes, I’d be delighted, he said. That was Michael. He came to play at a Sunday mass, not long after Easter Sunday, a few weeks into Eastertide season. I suggested he do a sort of trial service, for him to see how he got on with us, with our organ and our congregation, and for us to see if we gelled with him. That was May last year. And he was great, we thought. He came every second and third Sunday of the month, and fifth if there was one, while Steve- that’s the previous organist- played every first and last Sunday of the month. After about three months, Michael took over completely.”

            The officers were both silent for a minute. The large one seemed contemplative. Then he spoke, coughing just before he did so.

            “Do you know how…” he looked at his pad, “Sally happened to know Michael?”

            “No. I wondered if perhaps they’d been in a relationship but I don’t think that’s very likely, now. I think she probably knew him but had never actually met him. Perhaps she’d got his details online, had him cover for her one Sunday. I think that’s probable”.

            The other officer stirred. He’d been listening carefully, present with the other people in the room. Now there had crept into his demeanour a kind of dreamy, thoughtful absence. He spoke, waking from his reverie:

            “What was Michael like, Father? I know you said you didn’t feel like you knew him that well, but just tell us anything you can think of?”

            The priest visited the part of his consciousness where Michael dwelt, the part that was, in a sense, concerned with Michael. He hadn’t known him long and yet he struggled to take himself back to a time before he knew him, it was hard for him to remember what it was like not to know him. He had an entire lifetime of memories before Michael and yet it seemed to him now that Michael cast a shadow over the life before. It was as though the future had become a source of light like the sun, and the intersection of their two trails across this life, Michael’s and the priest’s, formed a strange, high mental monument, the long shadow of which lay darkly upon the past. The priest felt himself remembering everything, and yet having nothing to say.

            “He was formal. A little stiff, I wondered if he might be on the spectrum. He was polite, I suppose. He wasn’t open, I suppose you’d describe him as introverted.”

            “Would you describe him as introverted, Father Niall,” the larger officer asked.

            The priest thought for a moment, remembering to make honesty, rather than courtesy, his mission. 

            “No, I’d describe him as insecure. Sort of…locked. Closed. Shuttered up. You felt you only received a very small part of him…I felt,” the priest revised, “that I was only receiving part of him, each time that I encountered him. He was a good organist. Efficient, organised, meticulous. Authoritative, I suppose, there was something authoritative about the way he played the organ. He accompanied hymns well, you could tell he knew the words of each verse because the sound would change, the intensity of the sound would change depending on what the verse of the hymn was conveying. You know, stormy and loud one minute, then soft and reflective a stanza later.”

            “You’re sure he didn’t mention family, friendships, significant others?”

            “Never. He never mentioned a single person by name or even alluded to one. I felt that he was very lonely. Self-obsessed, yes, but more than that. Lonely. Stricken on some very deep level by loneliness. Totally inept, totally clueless when it came to other people. I suppose he made me feel a bit uncomfortable. You know, honestly, I felt at the time that I would have preferred someone a little warmer, a little more outgoing. But I felt that I was providing him with some kind of purpose, some kind of community, some kind of connection to the world. Though he was up in that organ loft, alone, cut off from the rest of us, I felt somehow that his being there was good. I felt glad he was there rather than somewhere else. I never knew anything about what he got up to during the week. He was so reluctant to discuss his personal life. If you brought it up at all he’d tense up, glare at you angrily, and then make an excuse to leave, or just go to toilet.”

            The smaller officer enquired:

            “Did you ever hear about any incidents. Aggressive or violent or sexual incidents?”

            “In the church?”

            “Did anyone report anything? Congregation, laity, other clergy perhaps…did anything ever come up?”

            “No. No. He was DBS checked. I don’t know if that’s worth mentioning. But, in answer to your question, No, I never heard about any incidents.”

            The priest went very silent for a short while. He was pensive. Searching his memories for confirmation of what he had said, what he believed to be the case, he found no contradiction. He wanted to discover that he had been wrong all the time, that he had been fooled, that he had been wooed and duped by some hypnotic spell now broken, that the clues as to Michael’s real character had been there all along, that he now saw that to which he had been blind before. The priest found no such epiphanies lurking. He said:  

            “People hide so much from you, when you are a priest. They want to be near you, and you sense the trouble and the complexity and the pain and the darkness in their lives, but they lie and they hide, they act as if there’s nothing to hide. If you want to know the truth, officers, I felt very sorry for him. For Michael. I’m not being self-congratulatory, I’ve done nothing worthy of congratulations, quite the opposite. What I’m trying to say is…that…I sensed some darkness in him. He scared me. I can’t really explain why. I saw darkness within him and I told myself that it was none of my concern, I kidded myself that it was the same darkness as I’ve witnessed in many human beings, in many good human beings even. Steve told that me that he ripped a few pages out of the hymnbook. Steve was alarmed by this; it didn’t bother me. Georgia and Martha who sign the psalm together at Sunday mass said that he had a bit of a temper, that he was unfriendly. I’ve encountered so many organists like that. Once, and this only happened once, I found him sitting in the lady chapel before mass. He was very early, as usual, and the mass wouldn’t be starting for half an hour. Typically, he had a twitchy, anxious energy, he was always in the middle of something, rushing off to attend to some task or other, on his way somewhere in a hurry. Not that morning. He was serene, he was present, almost emptied out. He was true, he was hon  est. For that ten minutes in which he sat in the lady chapel, his back to me, all I could see was the back of his head, he was true unto himself. I never saw him like that before or since. He was asking God for something, he was recognising his own inadequacy, he was silent, unmoving, but I knew that he was conversant with God. He was having a conversation. He was asking for clarity, asking for God’s help in making some important decision known only to himself. I believed, truly I believed that what I saw in that moment, that what I witnessed in my church that Sunday morning, was enough, was enough and would be enough to keep me from this police station, to keep me from this room, talking to you two policemen. I mean no offence, officers.”

            “None taken, Father, none taken,” the smaller officer said.

            The larger seemed distant.

            “Who was the man he killed?” the priest asked.

            “We can’t talk about that, I’m afraid. The man’s name was Tom Sands. We can’t say any more than that, I’m afraid,” Officer Wilson said. His partner concurred. 

            “That’s all, Father,” Officer Harris said, concluding the interview.

            “Was he a homosexual?” Father Niall asked.

            “That will be all, Father,” Officer   Harris said again.  

            Officer Wilson took the priest’s hand, said nothing more. Officer Harris walked with Father Niall to the entrance. Rage followed them down the booming corridor. In the cells, behind each punitive, bolted door they passed, there was rage. Shouts, explosive and sudden, echoed in the corridor, died. Doors were kicked, the barks of the guards and the strikes of their truncheons in response mingled with the cries of prisoners in the grim-toned corridor. Through the glass of a large sky-light in the high, steel ceiling, a great light showed. Sometimes, in the morning, if the weather conditions were right, from the east a great beam broke through and lay like a celestial searchlight in that cold, dark place. 

            “On your knees. Now!” a voice commanded. 

            Departing, it was the last voice Father Niall heard. The prisoner fell to his knees.