A Bit of Heaven and a Bit of Sin

(A fitting Sunday piece for Port Brokeferry... although in PB it is still only Saturday!)

PAN DROP MINTS

The minister sat with Lillian. Side by side on the sofa in her front room, turned into each other. He held her hand, his head bowed as though he was praying. She was telling him about Christmas with her late husband, Preston. And how Tom came over for Christmas dinner and he always brought soap in blue or yellow tissue paper. And he stayed late. Stayed even when Preston had departed this world. And there were letters that she read to him, letters from a daughter called Angela to a father called Tom.

The minister should have been listening. But he was dealing with his own loss. He’d been a friend, old Tom. They’d played cards together, every week for as far back as his earliest days in Port Brokeferry. They played for pan drop mints. Some weeks Tom was up, some weeks the minister walked away with a pocketful. He dropped them into the clutch-cupped palms of the children who came to church on a Sunday. Bits of heaven, bits of sin, he thought. Never touched them himself.

‘So, minister, what do you think?’ said Lillian.

He should have been listening. He said he was sorry. He hadn’t slept and his mind was on all that he had to do. Lillian squeezed his hand and said she understood. She said she was being silly, burdening him with all her nonsense.

He called in on Doctor Kerr after he’d been to Lillian’s. Just to let him know. And to let Margaret know, too. It was like he was there for an appointment. They talked in the surgery, Doctor Kerr behind his desk and Margaret standing beside him.

There were tears in Doctor Kerr’s eyes and he pressed his lips together, like there were things he could say but he kept it all back. Margaret talked for him. Polite things. The things you’d expect to hear.

The minister was elsewhere, his thoughts at least. His hand was in his pocket, riffling through the cards he had picked up from Tom’s bedroom the day before. It wasn’t just cards and pan drops that he shared with Tom. They talked. About the news and what was what in the world, their world shrinking through the years to the limits of Port Brokeferry. The minister tested some of the material for his sermons on old Tom. Changed a few things too after speaking with him.

‘Minister?’

He should have been listening. He apologised. Said he’d been by Tom till the end.

‘I just wondered if he’d suffered,’ said Margaret.

‘No, there was no struggle and no pain. He slipped away easy. In his sleep, the doctors said. Yes, a blessing. But already I miss him,’ said the minister.

Then he called on Susan Downs. He didn’t know why he did that. He’d heard things and thought she might need a kind word. Maybe it was just that.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, Susan, only I thought I might invite myself for a cup of your tea, and maybe a slice of toast. If it’s no trouble. Only I was in the hospital last night and old Tom passed away.’

Susan made the minister a cup of tea. He took it black with two sugars. She made him some toast, too. They sat at the kitchen table. She was sad about old Tom. She said so. But then she began talking about Kyle and how it was with them, all the bad stuff that was between them. And now Kyle was seeing a woman called Lynn who came with the fair.

The minister nodded, looked sympathetic and thoughtful. And he was thinking, but not about Susan Downs.

When there was an end to her talking and space left in the air between them, the minister spoke. ‘I was wondering if I might ask your daughter, Corinne, to sit with Lillian a while today. I think Lillian could use the company and Corinne was such a comfort to old Tom. She was reading him poetry. Before. I think it helped.’

‘Corinne?’ said Susan Downs.

And there she was, as though conjured up by the minister talking about her, or Susan Downs saying her name: Corinne, just out of sleep and her hair all tangled and tossed. And she was yawning and stretching, being herself, not knowing there was company.

The minister said, ‘Good Morning, Corinne,’ and as soon as he said it, her name, he felt he had said something he shouldn’t have and he was off balance, and didn’t know how to proceed, so he offered her a pan drop mint from a white paper bag.

And Corinne was off balance too, and she took a mint from the minister without really knowing what she did.