Short story: Abicene, by Michael Hodder

When Brian alerted Andy that an owl was caught in the netting, he had been puzzled, wondering how such a large bird could have got inside. Its talons had got caught on the outside. Andy guessed it was the morepork which he had heard most nights over the past year – although not the past few when he thought about it. In the summer, he was certain that he would have seen it in his regular walks around the small orchard in the evening. But in winter it was dark by the time he got home from the train, enjoying the fifteen minutes’ walk after the over-heated carriages.
The bird came away with little effort. It was cold, eyes white, but undamaged. Andy wondered why he had not heard a different cry in the night and realised he didn’t know what sound such a bird would make when trapped in this way. He dug a deep hole near the compost bins while Brian filled his egg container. The four hens had laid regularly that week.
“I warned you about that netting,” said Brian. “Next time it could be a wood pigeon.” Andy thought that such a heavy bird would be unlikely to take rest on anything so flimsy and, if it did, its beak would tear the netting away. But it wasn’t worth debating. While as young men, his father and Brian had been ardent hunters – game and birds were all equally in their sights – Brian was now an ardent conservationist, doing a couple of days’ voluntary work in the bush reserve and sanctuary 30km north. He synchronised his visits to coincide with the coast bus service. He never knew that the reserve trust paid his bus fares.
Sarah associated the change in Brian’s thinking about the environment with his arrival at the local church. She had attended St Stephen’s throughout her life, having been baptised and confirmed there. Andy knew that was where she wanted to be married and that the timing would be hers not his (although he was not yet confident that he would be the groom). There were times when her large brown eyes seemed to stare through him while he was talking and he would become uneasy, wondering what she saw or wanted to see.
“I’ve always been like that,” when once he asked her. It was the furthest she got from her normal easy approach to things and her throaty laughter. He encountered that stare when Brian mentioned the morepork at lunch the following Sunday and his view that it would have starved to death.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Andy?” Sarah asked during the drive back to her flat.
“I forgot.” He brushed his hand through his fair hair and scratched his ear.
She sighed and talked about her mother’s latest diagnosis. When they got to Garrick Street, Sarah mentioned she had a headache and thought it would be best if she had time alone, lying down to get over it. Andy drove home, thinking of the morepork’s soft grey feathers, a few of which he had removed to present to Sarah. He stopped by the video store.
They had been seeing each other for nearly a year when Sarah invited him to go with her to St Stephen’s. He had visited once, curious to see what the town decided were its notable places. The dark grey stucco building was forty years old, light and angular inside. What struck him first was the bright orange cushions on the pews; second was the lack of stained-glass windows. His grandmother had been fond of hymns, but the only church services he could recall were special ones – five funerals, two weddings and one baptism.
Sarah proved an accurate and unobtrusive guide in the liturgy. The hymns seemed stodgy and he wondered what he should really be doing while most of the congregation took communion.
“The vicar doesn’t mind whether or not you have been confirmed,” she explained to him when he accepted her invitation. “But it’s better to wait until you understand what the communion means and you decide that you really want that.”
A bit like sex, thought Andy. They often kissed ardently and for some time but she always pushed him away when he moved beyond stroking her lips, hair, ears, neck and shoulders. He loved the softness. She dressed modestly and conservatively, in light pastels or floral patterns, and generally preferred a dress to slacks. She encouraged him to go the weekend church camp, and he discovered what a good dancer she was.
“I should be. Two hours twice a week after school for eight years.” 
He dutifully read the section she recommended each week of the New Testament she had bought for him. She was a thoughtful critic and he found himself enjoying the inevitable discussion of the Sunday sermon later in the day. The Kama Sutra would have to wait. He found it helpful to have a couple of games of squash during the week when she was at the women’s discussion groups or doing her back-stage stints at the Opera House. Sarah also played netball once a week, on Wednesdays, at a rural hall about 10 km out of town. She didn’t tell him about that.
Brian and Andy met in the hall after his first service. “You’re Jack’s boy, aren’t you? I’d know those milky blue eyes anywhere.”
Andy hadn’t seen Brian for nearly twenty years but recalled his extraordinarily large ears. Brian’s brown eyes, nose and mouth seemed very small. He talked about Andy’s father as a boy and young man.
“Did you know he was national welter-weight champion for three years? He gave it up after he KO’d an older guy who went into a coma for two months. He went to see the man every day during that time – the hospital made special arrangements because the family would probably have beaten him up then and there.”
When Sarah joined them, Andy realised that she had never spoke of their relationship to Brian.
“Andy and I work in the same building. We met last month at the emergency management committee which the building owners convened. I thought he might find what we do here interesting.”
Brian took up the cue, outlining how the parish was working with the other denominations to provide support for those suffering hardship or getting into trouble. He reeled off statistics which painted a much grimmer picture of the town that Andy had imagined.
“Take a day off work and go to the District Court. And then head to the Night Shelter. I do both regularly”
Sarah intervened with a cup of tea and a pikelet for each man.
“How about we bring lunch to your place after next Sunday’s service, Brian?”
Later, Sarah explained to Andy that, up to five years ago, Brian had been a regular at both the court and shelter, because of his excessive drinking.
“He was a nuisance, hassling people for money, and he often slept rough. But he never got into a fight.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that from the polished shoes, the wrinkle-free suit and the University tie.”
*
At the following week’s service, the vicar announced that the Lord’s Prayer would be said in Māori. Sheets with the new words were in each pew’s hymn-book racks. When the time came, the vicar’s voice, although boosted by the microphone, was drowned out by the congregation who stuck to the words they knew. Except for Sarah. Andy heard her words, with the resonance that comes naturally to Māori. He could see tears on her cheeks but he could not reach her: this week Brian stood between them booming out ‘And lead us not into temptation…..’
They met Brian back at his place with a large pizza. Sarah led Andy down the stairs at the side of the house.
“He used to own the whole place. His brother bought it when it went to a mortgagee sale. He lets Brian have the lower flat rent free in return for looking after the garden.”
The flat was south-facing, dark and damp, but Brian was effusive in his welcome.
“A cosy bolt-hole, especially when Sarah cooks for me.”
All four walls of the main room where they ate had fawn wallpaper, relieved only with dark brown flecks which looked to Andy like cow dung. The wooden window frames and sashes were an almost luminous green. The ceiling, the dining room table and its four chairs were also green, although more subdued. The two sofas were light blue with orange cushions. The unpolished wooden floor was bare apart from a bright red rug in front of the sofas.
“Someone told me this is historic and rare wallpaper. A Morris design perhaps. What do you think, Andy?”
Andy had no idea. Sarah asked Brian how his work at the sanctuary was going. Brian reeled off statistics of the declining number of all the native birds being protected. He knew the extent of government funding and the names (and gifts) of local donors. He described the techniques that ensured a track remained safe even when on a steep slope. The highlight of his day seemed to be feeding the eels whose migration pattern he showed by getting out a well-thumbed atlas and turning to the map of the Pacific.
“One day I’ll get to Tonga and see for myself.”
That evening Sarah taught Andy the Lord’s Prayer in Māori. He was surprised at the allusions behind the words chosen. “That’s what made it hard for the missionaries,” she said. “They wanted purity but they couldn’t find words which didn’t link back into the Māori belief system. Language can be deceptive. You must have wondered when Brian mentioned my cooking meals for him. Until I went full-time, I worked in the kitchen for Meals on Wheels on Tuesdays and Fridays. Brian only wanted the meals twice a week, and those were his days. The cooks’ names are always on a card with the meal when it’s delivered. Today was the first time I had been there since Brian moved in. I helped his brother clean it up before that happened.”
Next Sunday, the vicar was unwell and the service was conducted by the recently retired archdeacon, known for his traditional stance. At lunch Brian served up a highly seasoned goulash, fruit salad and his views on bird netting.
The following week, Trinity Sunday, the vicar was back. He tried again with the Māori text and received the same rebuff as before. Andy (having got in the pew first, leaving Brian on the aisle end with Sarah between them) joined in with Sarah. The people in front turned around with disapproving stares. After Communion was complete, the organ became subdued. This was the opportunity for anyone in the congregation to offer a prayer for any person or circumstance anywhere in the world, to be followed by a collective ‘amen’. Sarah had warned Andy that Brian was fond of this ritual, regularly praying for the ‘hard-working, those who keep to the law, and those who enforce it’.  She had never heard him pray for the homeless, the addicts or the abused. Agnes, who conscientiously sat with her friends from the Village, could be relied on for that.
“I pray for the vicar of this parish,” said Brian, “that he will maintain the language of the people in this Holy Church and not allow any other. I give thanks that the Church of England saw fit to abolish services In Latin. I give thanks to the people of this congregation that they have refused to use Māori to address the Lord.”
The ‘amen’ faded into the silence as the vicar signalled the organist to stop.
“Let us pray.”
*
Next Sunday Brian avoided Andy and Sarah, sitting up front with Agnes. Gemma joined them after the first reading, dressed informally in a light red jumper, blue jeans and white jandals. The vicar invited Sarah to take the choir through the Māori text which they sung lustily, their numbers almost doubled for the day by singers from the local pā. The congregation followed their lead.
Andy had asked Gemma if she could come late and slip into the vestry first to see what was happening with the early morning collection. But, as the vicar had promised, the outside door was now locked. However, Gemma found a trapdoor from the undercroft and confirmed the manner of accounting was unchanged. She showed them the pictures she took on her mobile phone. The bishop took the service the following Sunday.
A month later, Sarah took Andy to dinner and explained her feelings for Gemma. “I’ve resigned from the emergency committee. I think it’s better we don’t see each other for a while.”
Andy didn’t go to the church Sarah had recommended, although it was closer and the vicar (a kindly looking woman) had dropped round to see him. Before fruit buds came in the orchard that spring he built a frame with wire mesh on top. He used the netting for the sides where no bird was likely to perch. It proved a good place to run the hens. A year later he noticed a piece in the community newspaper reporting that Sarah and Gemma were in Paris working for Abicene and playing netball for the local arrondissement. They looked happy.
Asked what he had in mind when he wrote this story, the author replied, “It is a distorted reflection of when I had a close involvement with one of Wellington’s CoE churches, even to being on the vestry.  I write ‘distorted’ as I tried to reimagine some of the more standout people who came into the congregation – and how the collection money could be misappropriated (and for that to be discovered).”