The Laying on of Hands: Stories by Alan Bennett Read Free Book Online Page A

what had hitherto been vague fears and suspicions now given explicit corroboration many in the congregation found it hard to hide their concern, this death which had hitherto been an occasion for sorrow now a cause for alarm.
    One woman sobbed openly, comforted by her (slightly pensive) husband.
    A man knelt down and prayed, his companion stroking his back gently as he did so.
    ‘I didn’t think you needed to die of it any more,’ a round the world yachtswoman whispered to her husband. ‘I thought there were drugs.’
    Others just sat there stunned, their own fate now prefigured, this memorial service a rehearsal for their own.

    One of these, of course, was Father Jolliffe who is professional enough, though, to think this sobering down might be given prayerful expression, all this worry and concern channelled into an invocation not only for Clive but for all the victims of this frightful disease and not merely here but in Africa, Asia and America and so on. The landscape of the petition taking shape in his mind he stood up and faced the congregation. ‘Shall we pray.’
    As he himself knelt he saw the student-type in the anorak, impervious to the atmosphere obviously, still with his hand up and waving it even more vigorously now. But enough had been said and the priest ignored him.
    There is a hush, with Treacher relieved that Father Jolliffe has at last got a grip on the service and is now going to bring these unseemly proceedings to a fitting conclusion.
    ‘Vicar.’
    It was the young man in the anorak. His voice was very clear in the silence and those of the congregation who had knelt or just put their heads down now raised them to look and Treacher, who had felt this service could hold no more surprises, said ‘Oh God’ and would have put his head in his hands had it not been there already.
    Even the easy-going Father Jolliffe was taken aback at this unheard-of interruption. ‘I was praying,’ he said reproachfully.
    He thought the young man blushed but he was looking so worked up it was hard to tell. A long-wristed, narrow-faced, straight-shouldered young man now looking sheepish. ‘I did have my hand up before,’ he said. ‘And besides, it’s probably relevant to the prayer.’
    Had it not come at such an inopportune moment the notion that a prayer needed to be up to the minute and take account of all relevant information would have merited some thought and indeed might have provided a useful subject for ‘Faith and Time’, the series of discussion groups Father Jolliffe was currently running after Evensong on Sundays; the topicality of intercession in the light of the omniscience of God, for instance, or prayers taking place in time and God not. As it was the priest found himself staring at the young man, all pastoral feeling suspended, and saying rather crossly, ‘Well?’
    ‘My name is Hopkins,’ said the young man. ‘I’m on my year out. I’m going to do geology. I was in South America looking at rocks.’
    Some of this he said loudly enough for the congregation to hear, but other less relevant remarks he gave almost as an aside to the nearby pews, so that somebody out of range said: ‘What?’
    ‘On his year out, doing geology,’ somebody else called back.
    ‘And?’ said somebody else under their breath.
    ‘I got sponsorship from Tilcon,’ the young man added redundantly.
    Somebody sighed heavily and said: ‘Do we need to know this?’
    ‘That was why I was in Peru. The rocks are very good there.’
    ‘Can’t hear,’ said a well-known commentator on the arts. ‘I know about Peru and even I can’t hear.’
    A woman nearby smiled kindly at the boy, and indicated he should speak up.
    ‘The thing is’—and the speaking up made him sound defiant—‘I was staying in the same hotel as Mr Dunlop when he died, and he didn’t die of Aids.’
    Finding him so unprepossessing and with no air of authority whatever (and, it has to be said, younger than most of their children) the