Chapter 51
Joyce
Sorry, the ring at the door was a parcel for upstairs, and we always sign for each other, so that’s where I’ve been. Sometimes, if I know Joanna is sending me flowers, I pretend not to be in, just so a neighbor picks them up and sees them. Terrible of me, really, but I’m sure people do worse.
Anyway, Bernard was saying that he wouldn’t take orders from the police. He was staying put, and that was that.
Ron said that he’d once been chained to a pit shaft in Glasshoughton for forty-eight hours, and they’d had to defecate into sandwich bags. Though he didn’t say “defecate,” and that was when Father Mackie introduced himself.
I had seen him at the meeting. He had sat at the back, quiet as you please, and slipped biscuits into his pocket when he thought no one was looking. As I’ve said, no one ever realizes I’m watching. I just have one of those faces.
I have to say he was very polite, and he thanked us for protecting the Garden.
Bernard told him the Garden was only the start of it, and once you give someone an inch, then we all know what they’d take.
Ron then had to have his say, and told Father Mackie that “his lot” (the Catholics) had not always been squeaky clean when it came to graveyards, but that a liberty is still a liberty and he didn’t like to see one being taken.
Father Mackie said that “wouldn’t happen on my watch” and it all got a bit cowboy film, which was fine by me.
I like to see men being men, up to a point.
This is when Ventham must have caught sight of Father Mackie, because over he rushed, with Chris, Donna, and Ibrahim chasing behind. And so, the stage was now set.