5

On his way home Scobie stopped his car outside the Catholic church and went in. It was the first Saturday of the month and he always went to confession on that day. Half a dozen old women, their hair bound like char-women’s in dusters, waited their turn: a nursing sister: a private soldier with a Royal Ordnance insignia. Father Rank’s voice whispered monotonously from the box. Scobie, with his eyes fixed on the cross, prayed - the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Act of Contrition. The awful languor of routine fell on his spirits. He felt like a spectator -one of those many people round the cross over whom the gaze of Christ must have passed, seeking the face of a friend or an enemy. It sometimes seemed to him that his profession and his uniform classed him inexorably with all those anonymous Romans keeping order in the streets a long way off. One by one the old Kru women passed into the box and out again, and Scobie prayed - vaguely and ramblingly - for Louise, that she might be happy now at this moment and so remain, that no evil should ever come to her through him. The soldier came out of .the box and he rose.

       ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.’ He said, ‘Since my last confession a month ago I have missed one Sunday Mass and one holiday of obligation.’

       ‘Were you prevented from going?’

       ‘Yes, but with a little effort I could have arranged my duties better.’

       ‘Yes?’

       ‘All through this month I have done the minimum. I’ve been unnecessarily harsh to one of my men ...’ He paused a long time.

       ‘Is that everything?’

       ‘I don’t know how to put it, Father, but I feel - tired of my religion. It seems to mean nothing to me. I’ve tried to love God, but -’ he made a gesture which the priest could not see, turned sideways through the grille. ‘I’m not sure that I even believe.’

       ‘It’s easy,’ the priest said, ‘to worry too much about that. Especially here. The penance I would give to a lot of people if I could is six months’ leave. The climate gets you down. It’s easy to mistake tiredness for - well, disbelief.’

       ‘I don’t want to keep you, Father. There are other people waiting. I know these are just fancies. But I feel - empty. Empty.’

       ‘That’s sometimes the moment God chooses,’ the priest said. ‘Now go along with you and say a decade of your rosary.’

       ‘I haven’t a rosary. At least...’

       ‘Well, five Our Father’s and five Hail Marys then.’ He began to speak the words of absolution, but the trouble is, Scobie thought, there’s nothing to absolve. The words brought no sense of relief because there was nothing to relieve. They were a formula: the Latin words hustled together - a hocus pocus. He went out of the box and knelt down again, and this too was part of a routine. It seemed to him for a moment that God was too accessible. There was no difficulty in approaching Him. Like a popular demagogue He was open to the least of His followers at any hour. Looking up at the cross he thought. He even suffers in public.