Never an Empire by James Green Page B

he let her stay. Slowly he opened the door. The young woman stood and looked at him.
    â€˜Please, Father, am I to stay tonight or should I go? Your housekeeper sent me to you and says you must decide.’
    And she waited.
    â€˜It is too late for you to go back to your village. You can stay again tonight and tomorrow I will decide what shall be done.’
    There was no smile of gratitude, no hint that she wanted to stay, nothing.
    â€˜Thank you, Father, I will tell her.’
    She walked away and Father Enrique watched her go. Was he glad or was he sorry? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that his whole body was a whirl of conflicting feelings and emotions. Tonight she would stay, but would she come?
    The church clock began to strike six. At six each day he was in church ready to lead the rosary. The people would be there waiting, wondering what had happened to him.
    Quickly he went to a chest of drawers, pulled one open, snatched up his rosary beads and almost ran from the room and out of the house. In the church about thirty people, mostly women, but with a few old men, were kneeling, all holding rosary beads. He hurried up the aisle, paused for a second, unsure whether he should delay even more by going to the sacristy and putting on his vestments, decided against it, and knelt down at the altar rail. Heads in the congregation turned to one another and not a few smiled knowingly. Very little went unnoticed in this small town and whatever their priest did was common knowledge almost at once.
    Father Enrique’s voice began as he made the sign of the cross. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’
    And the congregation answered dutifully. ‘Amen’.

Chapter Eight
    Father Enrique’s housekeeper, Maria Dolores Sanchez, had been aptly, if unfortunately, christened. Her Christian names, Mary of the Sorrows, had been prophetic. An industrial accident at a shipyard, sadly not so very uncommon, left her mother a widow without financial means and three small children to support. Maria was the eldest. From the tender age of seven all she knew was work, at first at home looking after her younger brother and sister. Then, when her mother became ill from an impossibly inadequate diet, the cares of looking after her family and overwork in the homes of others Maria had had to take over doing the cleaning, washing, serving, and anything else that paid enough to put food on the table at home. Education was denied her, as was a normal childhood. All she knew was work and want as she grew to womanhood. Fifteen, out of work and desperate, she stole a loaf of bread from the basket of a woman who was too occupied looking at dresses in a shop window to notice the theft. She continued looking at the dresses Maria couldn’t even afford to dream about but a citizen, more law-abiding than Maria, saw the theft, took hold of her and presented her to the owner of the loaf. He stood, his hand gripping the thin arm of the miscreant, awaiting his thanks. The woman, however, did not behave as the law-abiding citizen expected. She looked at Maria, her thin arms, her thin body, her sunken eyes. She asked Maria, kindly, why she had taken the loaf.
    â€˜It was for my mother. She is ill and hungry.’
    The law-abiding citizen, a bank clerk as it happened, was impatient of any conversation. A theft had taken place. The girl was a thief. It was a matter for the police.
    The woman didn’t see it that way.
    â€˜The girl is hungry, can’t you see that?’
    No, he couldn’t. All he could see was a crime and all he wanted was the thanks due to him. The woman begged to disagree: the child was sick and hungry, not really a thief, so the clerk let go of her arm and stormed off. What could any responsible citizen expect if the very victims of crimes, crimes committed in broad daylight on the street, fussed over the criminal instead of calling the police? The woman returned her attention