latter days of Mr Jones, The

Spectator, The, Dec 13-Dec 20, 2003 by Gardam, Jane

A child was standing looking at the crib.

He was swarthy child with tight black curls and a decided nose and he wore no trousers, only a tunic. His legs and feet were bare. He was examining in his hand one of the little carved Kings with great attention and amusement.

'How dare you!'

Mr Jones astonished himself with a parade-ground voice.

'What are you doing here? This is holy ground. You're not properly dressed. You behave as if you owned the place. Put down the Wise Man.'

The child replaced the figure in the stable and then came across to Mr Jones and embraced him round the knees. He disappeared.

The weather worsened. Mr Jones kept within doors. People began to be kind. They left him Christmas cake and mince pies and leftovers from the turkey at his back door. One or two of the grand neighbours even asked him to a New Year's party. He did not reply. The vicar's farewell party in the Church Hall took place without him. The vicar sent letters from his new parish, and reminded him that he was not alone and would not be alone at his trial.

The neighbours began to notice an extended darkness over Mr Jones's house. The curtains stayed drawn in the daytime. There was scarcely a light. Nobody answered the doorbell. Someone among the grand neighbours said at a party that they had seen the police raid. Hundreds of pornographic books had been seized. Someone else said they had heard that Mr Jones believed he was Jane Austen, and one of the male 'partners' said that he had been jogging one evening just after Christmas and Mr Jones had burst out of the church shouting, 'I have seen the Christ, the Son of the Living God.' Or something of the sort.

'Mad.' they said, 'But if it's not true what they say about him, if the jury like him - he's a charmer after all - and if he gets off, he's going to collect a fortune for slander.'

'It won't help him,' said another man of the world. 'There'll always be a question mark.'

Just before the feast of the Holy Innocents and a couple of days before Mr Jones's trial - and the day incidentally when all the charges against him were dropped because the main complainant remembered the attentions of a long-dead uncle - Mr Jones went up to bed as usual.

The telephone had been ringing all day, but he had ignored it. He had polished his shoes and put them as usual at the foot of the stairs. He had drawn back his bedroom curtains and opened the window an inch as he always did. The night was black, heavy with coming snow. He climbed into his schoolboy bed and wished that his face would stop twitching and his heart thundering. He wondered where the vicar was. Obviously, not coming. He wondered where his mother was. he wanted to tell her about the boy. He wished the dogs were here. He slept.

There was a scratching at his bedroom door. Then a woof.

'Hello?'

'Hello?' he shouted. 'Yeoman?'

He put on his dressing-gown and slippers and opened the door. Nothing. Only the red and blue Turkey stair carpets and the brass stair-rods and the hall in darkness below.