William Monk 19 - Blind Justice

lightning on Saturday evening.
    “Tomorrow morning I am going to church,” she told him, facing him squarely and not even blinking. “I would like you to come with me, if you don’t mind.”
    He stood motionless, as if rooted to the kitchen floor. Then he turned to Monk, who was sitting at the table reading the newspaper. Monk raised his eyes and smiled.
    “You coming?” Scuff asked nervously. What did it mean? They had never taken him to church before. What would happen there? Some kind of ceremony?
    “I can’t,” Monk replied. “I have to go to the station at Wapping. But I’ll be back for Sunday dinner. You’ll be all right. You might find it quite interesting. Do as Hester tells you, and if she doesn’t say anything, copy her.”
    Scuff felt panic well up inside him.
    “You don’t have to do anything at all,” Hester assured him. “Just come with me, so I don’t have to go by myself.”
    He let go his breath—a sigh of relief. He could do that. “Yeah, all right,” he conceded.
    T HEY SET OUT ON Sunday morning, first across the river, then on an omnibus for what seemed like a considerable distance. Scuff wondered why they were going so far, when he could see they were passing churches much closer. They were rather obvious buildings; apart from having towers that you could see from a quarter of a mile away at least, a lot of them had bells ringing, just to make certain you couldn’t miss them. A couple of times he drew in his breath to point this out to Hester, who was sitting very upright beside him and staring forward. She did not seem like her usual self at all, so he changed his mind and did not ask.
    But he did ask a number of the other questions that rose in his mind.
    “Does God live only in churches?” he said very quietly to her. He did not want the other people in the omnibus to hear him. They probably all knew the answer and would think he sounded stupid.
    She looked a little surprised and instantly he wished he had said nothing. If he paid attention, he would probably have learned the answer anyway.
    “No,” she replied. “God is everywhere. I think it’s just that we give him more thought inside churches. Like learning at school. You can learn to read and write anywhere, but school makes it easier to concentrate.”
    “Do we have a teacher at church too?” That seemed a reasonable question.
    “Yes. He’s called a minister.”
    “I see.” That was a bit worrying. “Is he going to make me answer questions at the end?”
    “No. No, I won’t let him do that.” She sounded very sure.
    He relaxed a little. “Why do we have to go?”
    “We don’t have to. I would like to.”
    “Oh.” He sat in silence for almost half a mile.
    “Will he tell us about heaven?” he asked finally.
    “I expect so,” Hester answered. Now she was looking at him, smiling.
    He felt encouraged. “Where is heaven?”
    “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t think anybody truly does.”
    That troubled him. “Then how are we going to get there?”
    She looked awkward. “You know, that’s something we’d all like to know, and I have no idea. Perhaps if we go to church often enough and really pay attention, we will figure it out eventually.”
    “Do you want to go there? To heaven, I mean?”
    “Yes. I think everybody does. It’s just that too many of us don’t desire it enough to do the things that are necessary to get there.”
    “Why not? That seems silly,” he pointed out.
    “We don’t think about it, or believe in it, hard enough,” she answered. “Sometimes we decide it’s too hard to get there to be worth the trouble, or that we won’t make it anyway, no matter what we do.”
    He thought about it for several minutes while the omnibus went up a slight incline, slowing as it did so. The horses must have struggled a bit.
    “Well, if you’re not going to heaven, then I don’t think I want to either,” he said at last.
    She blinked suddenly, as if she were going to cry, only he knew she wouldn’t because Hester never cried. Then she put her hand on his arm for a moment. He could feel the warmth of it, even through the sleeve of his new jacket.
    “I think we should both try to get there,” she told him. “In fact, all three of us should.”
    He thought about that and made a note of several other questions he wanted to ask. He would save them for another time—he felt like he had bothered her enough for now. So they rode in silence until the omnibus