The Eve of St. Agnes

Talk to Agnes for she will listen,

tell you of your future husband

and that he’s married to your sister.

It was a warm day. Robert stood on the steps of the church, his forehead slowly burning under the sun. He always left prepared; he was at the church two hours before the beginning of the wedding mass. As photographer he need to be there prior to the groom’s arrival.
It’s just far too hot to work today, Robert thought as he felt the warmth building up in his leather shoes. He sat down on the church steps, setting his camera next to him. The only time he went near a church, chapel or any kind of religious place was for work these days. Yeah, he believed in God, just about as much as the Jews believed in Hitler.
Working at weddings always made him feel lonely. He was pushing fifty, had never married, had no kids, lived with his mother and was in the literal and non-literal sense a fat bastard… Wouldn’t you feel that way too?
He’d always thought that he was a pretty good person. Not Gandhi good, but alright all the same. So why didn’t God give him even the un-finer things in life? This is what he thought as he sat on the steps, rubbing his pudgy left hand over his sweaty brow.

Sam held open the church door for his wife Mary. After fifty-six years of marriage he still opened the door. The elderly couple tortoise-paced their way down the steps. Mary noticed Robert’s camera as they walked around him and became aware that there was a wedding today.
“It’s a lovely day for a wedding, isn’t it?” said Mary to Robert.
Robert moved his hands away from his brow and tried to focus his eyes on the two bright sun-lined silhouettes in front of him.
“What?” he asked the now-visible Mary.
“It’s a lovely day for a wedding, isn’t it?” said Mary.
Robert sensed hesitation in Mary’s voice and watched her eyes fix on his camera. Fun time, Robert thought.
“Oh, the camera. No, you’ve got it wrong. There’s no wedding. I’m a representative of Murphy’s Estate Agents. The church is going on the market,” said Robert.
“On the market!” said Sam, his dentures falling loose in the process.
“You can’t put a church on the market,” said Mary.
“Oh yes you can. It’s all been authorised. Actually, it going on the market is just a formality really; a buyer has already been found.”
“A buyer?” said Sam.
“Who in the name of God buys a church?” said Mary.
“Well… Other churches I suppose… In this case temples,” said Robert, rubbing the sweat away again like a magic lamp or window wipers or something.
“Temples? What are they, bloody Hindus?” said Mary. She adjusted her glasses slightly, pushing them slowly up her nose with her middle finger.
“You got it in one, love. They’re taking it over to save the cost of building a new temple,” said Robert.
Robert can see the anger building up in the faces of the elderly couple. They’re fucking fuming. If the heat doesn’t make them combust, I bet I can, he thinks.
“Well I’m going to Father Smith right now. He’ll put a stop to this,” said Sam.
At this Mary and Sam walked away, this time not at tortoise speed. They moved more like a hare with arthritis.
“Hare Krishna folks,” shouted Robert when they were halfway down the street.

Robert hated those old holy Joe types. Just because they went to the place for an hour a week didn’t mean they owned it. And at the first sign of a break in routine they ran to the priest. Father, Father, the man with the camera is picking on me!
They made him laugh. He went to the car and poured a cup of tea from his flask, ate a soggy ginger nut and sat back on the step with about three quarters of an hour before the groom was due to arrive.

Sophie pulled her van up by the church’s front door. She noticed Robert sitting outside. Oh no, not that disgusting man, she thought to herself as she opened the door, turned in her seat and eased her long legs to the the ground, being careful not to give him a glimpse up her skirt. She had encountered Robert a few times before, never really talking to him, but his eyes had done a whole lot of Sophie exploring.

Pulling open the back door of the van, she looked at the two large trees within. The trees were fairly heavy so she decided to leave them for the time being. She lifted the box of decorations and carried it towards the church, and thought she could almost see herself in Robert’s sweat-mirrored head.
Please don’t let him talk to me, please don’t let him talk to me…
“Hello,” said Robert, his eyes slowly rising, mauling her body from her toes up.
“Hello, Robert. You’re here early,” said Sophie.
“I thought I’d just catch a little bit of sun. When was the last time we had a day like this? Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Bet you’ll be wanting to get home early,” said Robert with a wobbly zig zag smile.
Sophie nodded, smiled and walked on. She became aware with every step she climbed that Robert’s view up her skirt was expanding slightly. She was certain that he was still looking; it was his reputation to do so after all.

After Robert got his eyeful, he turned his attention toward the van again. The days of him having a double chin were long gone and the days of no chin at all were raging on. His own reflection was his torturer, for when it was not to be seen he believed in his heart that he was still young and attractive. A man with hopes and dreams. But as he looked at the metallic black van and saw his distorted form staring back at him, his heart broke.

Sophie was almost finished. She hung the remaining few decorations from the tall candle stands at each side of the altar. A bony hand as fragile as paper reached out and rested on her arm. A jolt went through her whole body. But she turned to see that was just Mrs McCall, the caretaker’s wife and deputy.
“I’ve told you before, haven’t I? You mustn’t put your silly things up on the altar. It’s not yours, it’s God’s,” said Mrs McCall, her voice crackling like it was being played on a dusty record.
“OK, I’ll take them down,” said Sophie, knowing that protesting was only a waste of time.
“You’ve no choice, darling,” said Mrs McCall as her skeletal hand tightened like a vice.
Sophie carried her things to the back of the church. At that moment Mrs McCall developed a heart and followed slowly up the aisle.

The heat was getting to Robert, but he was suddenly shaded. He looked to his left and saw Sam, Mary and a priest.
“How dare you! How very dare you to talk to senior members of this parish with such disrespect!”
Robert hung his head and laughed.

“So darling, are you married yourself then?” asked Mrs McCall
“No not yet. I don’t think the chance has really come,” said Sophie.
“Ahh, rubbish. A pretty girl like you, the chance of love must pass you every day.”
A curious look grew on the woman’s face. With her knotted fingers she reached for her purse and took out a holy medal of St. Agnes.
“There’s you go, darling. There’s a whole ritual, but I believe in just talking honestly to her,” said Mrs McCall.
Sophie stared at the woman, totally puzzled.
“You don’t have a clue what I’m on about do you? Monday is the eve of St. Agnes. It’s believed if you carry out your prayers and ritual correctly that night you will see the face of your future husband.”
Sophie felt herself begin to laugh, but she controlled herself, keeping to a fine smile, as she noticed Mrs McCall’s very stern face. So far in her life, love just seemed to give her a miss. There had been men, but they weren’t love. At least not when she woke the next day. “So how does it work?” she asked.

Robert’s head ached from being bombarded by the holy trinity. They left him eventually and their mutters of self-righteous hate became a distant whisper. Sophie walked out of the church behind him, approached her van’s back doors and was hidden from his view. Sophie opened the back door and looked at the two large trees on the inside. There was no way that she could move them on her own.
“Robert!” she called out. “Could you help me with this?”
Robert struggled to his feet, feeling pins and needle prickle their away up his legs. He imagined himself a younger man again and as he neared the van he pictured Sophie laid out and waiting for him in his mind. But theses fantasies of youth were soon drained dry when he felt the sweat break out on his face, when he found it hard to breathe as he struggled to drag a tree to the church, as he climbed the steps, and he felt even older again when he realised he had to do it all over again with tree number two.

The wedding passed and so did the following days, until along came Monday, along came the eve. Her shoes filled with wet rosemary and thyme, set at each side of her bed, Sophie felt like a story in a tabloid. Love found in wet feet.
“St. Agnes, that’s to lovers kind. Come, ease the trouble of my mind,” she prayed aloud. If love should find her at any point in her life, let it be now. Before age kicked in and warped her skin. While the beauty of herself could at least have a chance of standing knee-high to the beauty of true love.
From this melancholy state she broke into a moment of hysteria. In her head she rhymed off:
Talk to Agnes for she will listen, tell you of your future husband and that he’s married to your sister.
She had no reason to feel this down; she was a young, good-looking woman with zero hang-ups.
She closed her eyes and slept.

Sophie is back at the church. A young man stands in front of it. The man is handsome, dressed in fine and fitted clothing, radiating warmth and light to groups of people as they enter. It’s a wedding, for the groom is on the top step welcoming his guests. Is he my love? Is this my wedding day? No, for he just is not handsome enough.
Sophie’s view drifts back to the young man. In his hand she can see a camera. She doesn’t love this man, but lust overwhelms her. A rumbling engine approaches from behind her, and a black van comes into view. It is her own van, but it has now lost its shine. This is it, this is the dream. This is how I will meet my future husband! This is how I will find true love! Sophie thinks to herself as she watches the lucid dream unfold.

The van door slowly opens and Sophie sees herself. But a terrible shock overwhelms her for it is not a mirror image that she sees, it is herself but middle-aged. Her beauty now tarnished, gone are her curves and grace to be replaced by this overweight figure.
She watches on as her aged, bespectacled self opens the back of the van and struggles to move a large tree out of it. How can this be! What about my true love? she thinks as she notices her own knotted, ringless finger. Older Sophie’s hair is wild, greying and wire-like, and though there is little more than a breeze in the air, from the shoulders up she appears to have been caught in a hurricane. Sweat is breaking on her forehead at the weight of the large, decoration-coated tree.
Someone should help her… me, but they’re just looking at me… Younger Sophie’s eyes switch back to the young photographer, her Prince Charming now chatting to a beautiful girl, both laughing and joking while watching this haggard image of desperation.

Sophie cannot believe her eyes. What of her love? This man it can’t be. For though he is beautiful his heart is lost. And what of her own heart? Now broken… and to stay broken forever? Until she has decayed enough to become the rippling image she sees before her?
If her love is not real, shouldn’t it at least be a lucid dream?

© JOSEPH “JOE” GRAHAM, [2016].
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