A dram with a young minister

The young minister sat alone at the bar.  His long, thin fingers trembled as he reached for his glass of malt.  A middle-aged man entered the room and took the seat to his right.

'I knew you were telling the truth, at least you were saying what you thought was true.'

'Inspector…'

'Call me Len.'

The young minister didn’t finish his statement and there was an anxious silence as he stared with catatonic eyes at his drink.

'It’s a shame when men of the cloth fall into this shite,' Len corrected his words immediately, '...stuff.  It's all too common these days.  In the end we’re only human.'

'That’s what makes this whole thing so devastating for me – we’re human.  Inspector,' the young minister corrected his words immediately, 'Len.  This isn’t supposed to happen.'  His eyes remained fixed on his drink.  'To be human is to be something profound…'

'I only know what I know.  Do you know what percentage women have been victims of rape in this country in the past decade?'

'More than fifteen per cent...'

'Aye, it’s awful.  When I first started with the police, the first rape case I took kept me up for days.  I had to take a statement from the victim.  She was about the same age as Ms Flynn.  She couldn’t look me in the eye and she couldn’t stop shaking.  Why they had a bloke interview a rape victim, I don’t know.  And the man was her fucking father.'

The young minister remained silent.

'It’s an awful mess, but you learn to live with it.  In the last fifteen years I had two fellow officers go down for this.  These were men I knew and trusted, but they were still men. … Listen, Alan, James did what he did and it isn’t right, but you’ll have to move on some day.  Not today, but at some point you’re going to have to move past it if you want to keep on living.'

'James was my mentor.  I didn’t think he could do such a thing.'

'Alan, you’ve only been a minister here for six months.  Things are moving so fast for you, a talented young minister.  You’re still that – a young minister.  Eventually this idealism will wear off. … What are you thinking?'

'I’m distraught, to be honest.  My heart’s broken for Izzie Flynn, my heart’s broken for James’ wife and kids, my heart’s broken for my congregation, my heart’s broken for the Kirk.  My heart’s broken for James.  My heart’s broken even for me.  I believed him.  I gave him the opportunity to confess so many times and I remained on his side because I believed him when he looked into my eyes and told me, “Alan, I couldn’t do such a thing.”  Well maybe he couldn’t do it, but he did, if that makes sense.  I feel deeply betrayed by one of the few people in this world I absolutely trust.'  The young minister corrected his words immediately.  'Trusted.'

The Emotionalist

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‘How’s it going?’

‘Fine, you?’

‘I’m single again.’

‘I’m sorry, hon.’

‘Want to go on a drive tonight?’

‘Will it last longer than a night?’

… ‘Probably not.’

… ‘When will you pick me up?’

‘I’m already on my way.’

And so the cycle continues.  He has been playing it this way for years, not going more than five minutes alone, perhaps making up for lost time in his simultaneous dating of several women.  He’s committed to all of them, only not exclusively to any single one. He shows affection only to Elisabeth.  She’s not one for conversation.  The rest are an occasional trip to the cinema, a casual lay and an awkward goodbye, usually only lasting the thirty seconds it takes him to put on his trousers and walk out the door to his car to go to work.

He drives incessantly.  He has eight different places in this county alone to take a woman and treat her as if she is all that matters in his world.  And for those brief moments, he makes the particular woman just that.

He considers his biggest relational problem the fact that he cannot find a woman who fits with him.  He could never see himself spending a lifetime with any one of the women he is seeing.  He is an unusual magnet for insecure women and is very aware of this.  Yet these women represent the broadest extremes, from the most passive deadbeat to the most aggressive feminist.  He thinks he wants someone in the middle, but in his mind he’s already passed through seven of them, while at the time not knowing that they were the right ones for him.  He discovered this while passionately kissing Agnes.

He sees himself as some sort of Phil Connors.  He can work his routine ten times without a repeat.  He can sharpen it up and try new things the next time around.  He knows that he is failing at life, but has such low expectations for himself that his conscience is expiring.

He is the product of seventeen years of incessant emotional manipulation, and all forms of abuse.  He has no trust for the government as a result of the numerous cries for help, an extremely brief investigation, followed by an eventual grand maternal manipulation, the likes of which Katherine Hepburn had never reached.  As soon as they had come, Social Services had left, four times over.

A mixture of his own narcissism and insecurity have fueled him his full time pursuit of  women since the age of fourteen.  He is a man of no special talents or abilities.  He has many books, most of which have never been opened except upon arriving home after a purchase when they were to be stamped, ‘From the Library of…’

But for a moment, once, he was in love.  21 November 1999.  She's married now.  Now he searches evermore for that same feeling, fleetingly.

Eight fifteen for Ayr

On Friday, 10 October 1997 a train en route to Ayr from Glasgow derailed near Knockinlaw, killing six people and leaving 20 injured.  Five people died on the train.  A sixth died whilst being airlifted to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock.  She, a 19-year-old from Ayr who was studying English at the University of Glasgow, was found unconscious and it was determined that she had died from internal bleeding.

She was considered ‘a good student, well liked by her friends, a member of the University Photo Society and an accomplished flautist.’  With all due respect for the young woman, she was a decent flautist, taking up the instrument at age eight, but losing all real interest in lessons—in favour of an interest in the lads—by age sixteen.  She hadn’t performed publicly since she was 14 and when she died the flute was stowed away neatly under her bed at her parents’ home in Doonfoot, Ayr.  But she did in fact possess a warm personality, assisted by her sky blue eyes and kind smile.  Those very eyes had been on her boyfriend’s mind when he received a phone call from the young woman’s older sister that evening.  Perhaps overdramatically, he would grow to hate the odd sunny day with its blue-sky reminder for many years to follow.

It was considered a miracle that only six people were killed among the 61 passengers and two staff.  Of the three carriages of the SPT Class 318 train, the six fatalities were confined to the first two.  Four people, including the aforementioned young woman, were in Coach A and two were in Coach B.  Sitting in Coach A, seat 6 was a tall, thin young man of 24, asleep at the time of the accident.  When Coach A fell onto its right side he was flung across the carriage and into a windowpane just before it shattered, suffering a fractured skull.  He remained unconscious until he bled to death a short time later.

At his funeral, as is probably the case with most funerals, a great many untrue things were said.  Everyone is made a saint in death.  Some men are fathers and some are not.  Among the fathers, some are good fathers and some are not.  With regard to his relationship to his seven-year-old son, he was a father of this latter type.  But this young man, who had in the eight months and seventeen days leading up to the accident, been part of a local methadone programme in the Priesthill area of Glasgow, wanted to change.  When his body was discovered it was still clutching a late birthday gift for his son.  The package contained a pair of size 12 green and white Nike football boots.  An attached note read:

Callum,

I’m sorry I missed yer birthday.  I promise I won’t miss any again!  I promise that we’ll go out to the park by yer house and play fitba every Saturday from now on.

Daddy loves ye very much!