Fast Fiction: The Preacher
Richard Mallinson tells an atmospheric story about a preacher who, evidently, is not as good as he ought to be.
In the moorland churchyard the two men go on digging. They must know by now that I am watching them but they give no sign.
They are a vegetable-looking pair. One of them has a head like a turnip and the other like a rancid potato.
The rain pours down on all three of us but I am wearing my preacher’s hat. The rain drips off the brim.
‘Where are your hats?’ I call. There is no answer.
As I move closer I see that they are deep in mud. They are shovelling it out but the rain makes more. Some of the mud that they have already dug out is oozing back in but they do not seem to notice.
‘Like sin,’ I say to myself.
*
After a while I return to the coach in as dignified a manner as possible.
The hunched coachman, lashed by the rain, does not descend to help me but stays perched up there, staring ahead.
(His wife has recently had another child - her tenth, I think.)
I am dripping wet as I squeeze in next to the elegant silent matron, who starts to tremble. I calm her with a discreet touch of the hand.
Facing me is the pert young Mistress Lucent, who is travelling with her sick father to visit distant kith and kin before it is too late.
She has asked if she may come to my room at the inn tonight for a Bible reading. I have said yes but she must bring her father, if he is not too weak.
‘But what if he is too weak?’ she’d asked.
Now I gaze at the rising and falling contours of her sweet bosom and when I look up she gives me a lovely lewd smile.
‘Drive on, coachman,’ I yell, opening my Bible at random.
