Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk Page A

his contraption, dammit he hadn’t wanted to be a priest anyway, a shepherd for wayward sheep. He snorted. Constant interruptions, cretinous old women asking if they’d go to hell for being rolled in the hay forty years previously, a miserly stipend. Every week the sermon, every other week another puking, screaming brat that would piss in the font while its clottish parents trod mud down the aisle and pondered, ‘should we call him Ezekiel?’ when there were already four in the parish and four too many at that. He wasn’t suited for the job, he had no vocation. They’d told him as much at Oxford. ‘Calveston’, they’d said, ‘have you considered fully the fact that many are called but few are chosen?’ Considered! Dammit, he’d thought of little else. Except he’d been sent, not called, and when the sender was his father he was destined for the Lord’s service whether the Lord wanted him or not. On balance, he reflected, He probably did not, but what choice was there? Dear brother Michael had the land, and sold it with father’s body still warm. He had the church. Dammit! He cursed aloud, not so much at brother Michael, conniving little spendthrift runt that he was, as at his own clumsiness - he had jammed his thumb in the complicated piece of machinery he was cleaning and it was proving hard to extricate. Aah! It came loose and he stood back to survey the object of his labours.
    It stood about four feet tall, its cast iron sides gleaming dully. It looked something like a waterpump except that the cylinder through which the water would have been drawn up was partially cut away. A complicated mechanism of meshes and cogs could be seen together with the end of a piston-like object which presumably extended the length of the cylinder to the handle. It was his own invention, the first he had seen through successfully from conception to existence. His chicken-plucking engine had been too ambitious a project. It had worked well as a chicken disemboweller, but a disembowelled chicken with feathers had proved a commodity without a market on Jersey. The hair-cutting engine too had had its problems. No wonder the Crewe boy had made such a noise. Still, the hair had grown back to cover the marks. But his latest and greatest invention was of a different order. Ouch! He pulled his thumb out of the mesh which had pinched it for the second time and sucked it ruefully. He would be a great Inventor, a Man of Science yet. If only his duties were not so time-consuming.
    Thoughts of his flock did not soften his mood. Damn it, only this morning that priggish young ass had burst in demanding that he exorcise the field behind his house. Exorcise it! There hadn’t been an exorcism on Jersey for two-hundred years and if John Lemprière wanted one he could damn well do it himself. The little twit, babbling on about ancient gods rising out of the ground and grinning or crying, one of the two. If the idiotwanted a pope, there was always Italy. That should have shut him up but in the end he fobbed him off with one of those pamphlets
On the Right Guidance of the Rectal Soule
or somesuch. Old Eli kept printing the damn things and delivering them by the crateload. God might know why, but he didn’t. He doubted if Eli did either, stupid, old …’ But his machine awaited, there were more important things to occupy him than Eli’s stupidity. It was high time to operate the engine.
    He picked up one of the five potatoes which lay on his work-bench, feeling its smooth, cold skin in the palm of his hand. Father Calveston braced himself and took a firm hold on the handle. An expression of pleasurable anticipation spread across his face making him seem, for a moment, rather younger. His bald head shone gloriously as little beads of oily sweat percolated up through his skin to form a reflective sheen on its surface.

    Lemprière walked back from Calveston’s cottage, and only occasionally did his thoughts stray into the forbidden areas of which