Goodnight, John-boy: Chapter 40

The nun was squeezing him by the throat and warning him never to speak about what he had seen or heard, or she would personally send him to Hel

Welcome to Book Two of my dark comedy thriller series, Read Em And Weep.

A new chapter of Goodnight, John-Boy drops every week – sign up for free so you don’t miss it!

If you’re new to the Read Em And Weep series, start with Book One: Serial Killer.

DAVE REFLECTED on his threatening the Major’s killer and facing up to Fabulous Keen on the long journey on the Central Line to the studios at White City. He’d always assumed his courage came from his mother or his demons. Then the thought hit him: perhaps it actually came from himself? Was that possible? Because here he was, on the Underground, unconcerned and barely aware of his fellow passengers, any one of whom might be about to thrust a misericorde between his ribs.

It made him think of his boyhood encounter with Mother ‘Vinegar Bottle’ St Vincent, the Sister of Sorrow who made Mother Theresa look like Audrey Hepburn. He had been talking to his school friends about Konrad, his mother’s relationship with the Canon, and the priest’s other forms of communion with his young parishioners. He had been overheard by Vinegar Bottle, who made him go and pray in church and ask God for forgiveness for his terrible lies. But that didn’t work. The next day he still related, with mischievous glee, the Canon’s extra-clerical activities. Something had to be done about young David.

The way Dave originally remembered it was as a compressed memory, stripped of any detail. The nun was squeezing him by the throat and warning him never to speak about what he had seen or heard, or she would personally send him to Hell. It clearly worked, because he had no idea what he had seen or heard.

But now, so many years later, the door to his memories had been opened and he recalled it all vividly as the tube train trundled through to the West End.

He was being escorted down an immaculate blue corridor inside the nunnery. While the other boys were in the playground after school dinner, he was being taken to the Holy of Holies and he felt a strong sense of exultation. He was going to the batcave. His school chums would be so jealous. He was being singled out for being so bad.

The swishing of the nun’s robes; their fusty old lady smell; the rattle of her heavy rosary beads against her outsize, lethal crucifix: it all reinforced the little boy’s hostility towards her.

And his pride. Because it was unheard of for a primary school kid to enter the nunnery. This was serious business. Nun and boy went through a central hall and, as he took in his surroundings, he was disappointed to find there were no overhead beams, even though he had insisted to his playground pals that at night, the nuns slept hanging upside down from them, like bats.

Then the excited boy was ushered into Mother St Vincent’s office. The batcave itself. The Holy of Holies. It was a stark, sparse room furnished only with a desk, filing cabinet, a crucifix, and paintings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the founder of the Sisters of Sorrow. The walls were painted with a pastel ‘holy’ green. There was a stained-glass Gothic window and, unbelievably, it showed a depiction of the martyr St Sebastian, being shot to death by arrows.

Looking back as an adult, this seemed most unlikely. Why would there be an image of an almost nude man, impaled by arrows, in a convent? For a moment, it made Dave doubt the rest of his memories as fanciful delusions, but nevertheless that was his clear recollection with the sunlight streaming through the saint’s muscular, naked torso as he was used for target practice.

It was an apparently pain-free death and its hidden significance was lost on the liquorice detective. But it suggested the joy and the sweetness of pain and suffering and of being pierced, yet pure. The wider esoteric implications of this were not generally aired, known or discussed in the outer circle of the religion. The secret meaning and the importance of St Sebastian, who had been a gay icon for centuries, Dave was totally unaware of.

The headmistress was joined by two other nuns, and the three Sisters of Sorrow stared solemnly down at the small boy.

Mother St Vincent knew she had no choice now but to make an example of this defiant child. His parents were not simply working-class folk who could be intimidated into silence by her presence alone. David’s father had a good job at Pell’s and the firm was an important benefactor of the church. The mother was no better than she should be, with her film-star looks and her fancy furs; however she was also a member of the Virgin Soldiers and the nun sensed there was a defiance about her, too, that she had somehow passed onto her son.

In fact, there had been rumours about Mrs Maudling and the Canon, born out by the boy’s rude talk and that disgraceful drawing he was showing his pals, which she’d torn up. So she had wondered whether the poor man had succumbed to the temptress; just as she knew he had succumbed to that wicked little boy, Konrad, who had led him astray.

She had been forced to ask the Canon about Mrs Maudling, but he assured her that they were just friends and ‘nothing happened below the belt’.

Mother St Vincent’s bat sisters were also present to intimidate the hell out of David and ensure he never spoke of the Canon’s behaviour. Yet, already, she could see from the impertinent expression on his face, his horrid eyes gleaming with delight, that this little monster was somehow enlivened by the thought of three nuns dealing with him. The very opposite effect of what she had intended. He was meant to be awed by being ushered into the Holy of Holies and yet, perversely, he was enjoying every moment of it. As far as David was concerned, the more nuns the better. Ten nuns would have been good.

This made the headmistress afraid, and somehow the child knew it; he sensed her fear. He couldn’t articulate it in his mind, couldn’t vocalise it with words, but the animal in him felt it intuitively and it gave him that slight smirk of triumph that also brought out the inner animal in Mother Saint Vincent. She was a small, Napoleonic woman, so she couldn’t tower over him, in fact, they were almost head to head, her features convulsed with rage behind her silver spectacles.

And yet she was afraid, as she seized him by the throat and squeezed. Afraid of just what she might have to do silence this child who was endlessly talking about Konrad and the Canon and things that must never be spoken about. Because she had to protect the Church. Nothing must ever damage its reputation. That need and that fear drove her to violence, so, in that moment, she definitely wanted to kill him.

The boy knew it. And he didn’t seem to care.

And so she squeezed, until he finally felt fear, causing her to increase her grip on his throat.

Now, at last, he was getting the message.

As his eyes bulged, he knew she was going to kill him, and that was how it should be. St Sebastian looked down on him, glorying in his own pain. There was an inner calm and resignation about the boy that matched the martyr, but yet owed nothing to him, only to his inner being.

Because he knew his death would destroy the nun.

The accompanying nuns tried to warn her, ‘Mother! Mother … please! … Stop!’ She realised she had almost gone too far.

But that didn’t actually stop her. Because it still had to be done. He had to be silenced. For the sake of the church.

It was the expression on David’s near-blue face, as fear turned to resignation, and then to triumph. She wouldn’t be able to hush up his murder as they had hushed up Konrad’s.

If there was a word in Dave’s brain as his young life slipped away, it would have been ‘Gotcha’.

It was that final defiance that brought her to her senses and released her grip. Coughing and spluttering and sucking air into his empty lungs, Dave returned to the land of the living.

There was an inevitable gag reflex, with unfortunate consequences for Mother St Vincent standing directly in front of him. His school dinner was ejected in all its splendour over her black robes. Semolina: a pallid pink, after he had stirred in the little dollop of jam they put on top. Diced carrots, mashed potatoes and spam luncheon meat, all thoroughly consumed following the exhortations of the school dinner lady, and already partially digested. A second retch erupted unidentifiable vomit from even deeper in his guts, which also splattered across her robes and crucifix.

He caught a treasured memory of the horrified expression on her face before he blacked out.

He awoke to find the antiseptically-clean room was now septic. But the Sisters of Sorrow were prepared for such everyday situations. A galvanised bucket of hot water, billowing Dettol-laced clouds of steam, was brought into the office; sawdust was liberally scattered on the floor of the batcave. David was ordered to clean the tiled floor. Disappointingly, they didn’t ask him to wipe down Vinegar Bottle herself.

The memory shook Dave with its significance. He had always thought he was afraid. Like when he received his fourpenny one every Saturday from Mr Cooper. Clearly this was not true.

In that moment, it occurred to Dave that kids needed to personally exercise their vengeance on adults. It was their right; why should it be passed to disbelieving, useless authorities? And they should do it in any way they could get away with. And his example showed there were many, many ways. He was destined for his role in this total war.

All super heroes have a seminal experience in their youth that they look back on and realise that the inciting incident – sometimes forgotten, yet secretly motivating their actions – is what makes the man.

So Dave, too, had an experience that confirmed the role destiny had chosen for him. He had vomited on a nun.

It was a seminal moment as well as a semolina moment. Cheered by this thought, Dave got off at White City.

---

Goodnight, John-boy is the second book in the Read Em And Weep series and you can buy it digitally or as a paperback.