Free Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley

worked for the fussy couple and been sacked because she never, when she dusted, replaced their collection of ornaments in the correct order. This useless memory reminded her that she should resume work immediately if she wanted to pay the pile of unopened bills scattered among the letters lying on the floor of her flat, and recollecting the unhappy period when she had worked for the middle-aged couple. She remembered, too, that the woman had jealously counted the biscuits she ate with the grudgingly provided mid-morning Nescafe. This in turn made her realize that she was hungry, had eaten little since Mrs Patel’s curry.
    There was a sandwich bar crowded with jostling office workers in the street. She queued and bought a sandwich and then, since the rain was still drenching down, she returned to the anonymous darkness of the church.
    While she had been away several people had come into the side chapel; they knelt or sat as though in anticipation. She chose a chair as far from them as possible and, with her back turned, surreptitiously ate the sandwich; then, appreciating the stillness, sat back and eased the shoes off her aching feet.
    Quite close to her was what looked like a sentry-box with a heavy curtain across and she noticed vaguely that people went behind the curtain, reappeared, knelt for a bit, then lit a candle, crossed themselves and went away. She sat mesmerically watching the candles, which flickered when a companion was added to their number. (Christy had loved candles, loved blowing them out and watching her wet her fingers before snuffing the wick.) Soon there would not be room for any more candles, but there was no need to worry, the people had left, she had napped. She yawned and stretched her legs, stiff with fatigue.
    When like a Jack-in-a-box the priest appeared from behind the curtain, she was badly startled, realizing that all this time she had been sitting by a Confessional, and that the priest might suspect her of eavesdropping. Overcome with confusion she averted her eyes, but the priest walked past her, leaving her alone.
    Her heart was beating with shock; it was time to go. She leaned down to put on her shoes, but her feet had swollen. The shoes would not fit. She almost wept with frustration.
    ‘Perhaps I could help?’ The priest was back and standing near her.
    ‘I did not realize it was a Confessional; I can’t get my shoes on. I wasn’t listening. I’m so sorry. My feet have swollen and will not go into my shoes—’
    ‘No hurry,’ he said, ‘no hurry at all.’ He sat beside her.
    ‘And I ate a sandwich in here. I’m sorry about that.’
    ‘So you ate a sandwich.’
    ‘And I laughed when that awful man went for the child for picking her nose when the bell—’
    ‘At the Elevation of the Host, m-m-m.’
    ‘Oh, curse these shoes. I must go! So you noticed him.’
    ‘Sit quiet a while.’
    ‘I have sat quiet. I’ve been here hours. I’ve slept.’
    ‘No harm in that.’
    ‘There is. I have to work, pay my bills, pull myself together.’
    ‘It looks to me,’ said the priest, ‘as though you’d “been together” too long.’
    ‘I’m not together any more,’ said Julia. ‘I am solo. Giles took Christy in the car when he was banned from driving; they were both killed. I thought it was safe,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Thought it was only fair for the child to see his father. Don’t you see? I am responsible. If I had been sensible and bloody-minded, Christy would be alive now.’
    The priest was silent.
    ‘I am not “together”,’ Julia went on, ‘any more than my feet are together with my shoes.’ Still the priest did not speak. ‘And don’t imagine,’ said Julia, who, having started to talk, could not stop, ‘that I am sorry about Giles being dead. I am absolutely delighted. He was selfish and violent and cruel and a rotten father. I was divorcing him anyway; he terrified me when he was drunk and I did not like him sober. He smelled and I found it