In What Had Once Been a Church Dungeon

       By Doug the Flying Buttress

Janitors at cathedrals get sick of visitors. They pray, if they are believers, for a reduction in those conditions that encourage tourists. For janitors, sun is a no-no. Political stability is undesirable. Good welcoming priests are a liability. Much stained glass simply won’t do. An open-door policy acts against all honest desire. A general acceptance of the prohibitions of nudity is a bad thing. Clean and neat washrooms inhibit the unfolding of what is best. Neatness of dress and care of habiliment set the agenda back. Female ushers and guides are an abomination. The absence of loud rock music over the church intercom strongly urges forward what should be kept back.

       Jenworth Buck-Wadding was a janitor at St. Peter’s cathedral in East Waddington, UK. He had worked there two years and a bit and his favorite snack was bangers and mash. He stood six inches under six feet in his running shoes, but had massive shoulders and the promise of a wide grin. His thin face set off his smileless mouth like a wide gash across it, with lips so thin they seemed no lips at all.  His long cotton jacket, green as bread mold, and an orange tint in his hair proclaimed him a favorite of either St. Patrick, or the witches of Hallowed Evening. Orange happened to be his first choice in colours and he wore socks the hue of mandarins. He had rheumy, watery eyes, and his feet smelled with such exuberance that, even wearing fresh socks and through his shoes, a visitor asking him directions grew bleary-eyed and nauseous. He seldom changed them for he had few orange pair. The stench hung about him ferocious, tainting, and thick as paint. Halitosis sealed the deal and left him a social misfit. No one wanted to go near him. Few visitors ever came back a second time. He was not allowed on the premises during mass.

       Buck-Wadding, on a summer evening, with the birds happy round about, and a frog mating and singing in the marsh, knelt and made fervent prayer. “Lord” he intoned, his head bowed, his hands clasped, and his body in an attitude of contrition and respect, “please hear my prayer. I am praying, Sir, for one wish to be realized. Hear me in your generosity and grant it, I beg.” He paused and listened, an ear to the sounds from the trees and grass and ditches above and behind him. He fancied he heard a still, small voice and so he continued. “I pray, Great Creator, for a summer without much traffic here at St P's. Kindly indulge me and reduce the number of visitors that come. I am weary now, going into my fifth decade, and need some rest and an easing of my burdens. Please accept the sincerity of my prayer, dear Savior, and keep tourists away from St. Peter’s!” With that, the janitor looked about him, hands still clasped, waited a moment, stood, gathered himself together, and returned to the office beneath the main floor in what had once been a church dungeon.

       A little girl stood at the church doors alongside her mother and father. The sun shone down with cheerfulness and fell in warmth and cleanliness on both the father’s dark jacket and the mother’s auburn hair. The season had been cool and uncivil, as they often are in Britain. This week, however, the weather had changed and seemed to hold forth promise of good times and still better to come. Wind ruffed the dresses of both, and three of four walkers who otherwise would have continued on their ways, chose to turn in at the gate and see the cathedral interior, too. They stood close to the family who showed little inclination yet to enter. The neat knot of people appeared inviting and others also who would have gone about their business, turned in at the gates. Soon, fifty visitors waited and then entered simultaneously.

       “Thank you very much!” the janitor groaned and began to scramble to find a nook where he could not be found. They discovered him within five minutes and asked for directions to lead them up to the loft near the pipes of the organ. Recently, the Prime Minister had agreed to allow the French to cross over without the normal travelers’ surcharge and half of the visitors today spoke little English and nattered in Alsatian German. The priest heard the noise of feet and appeared suddenly with outstretched hand, smiling, welcoming all, asking if any had as of yet been taken to see the famous colored windows that had been saved from bombing in the last great war. Just in time they had been removed and stored in rooms deep down below them.

       “We try to encourage newcomers to enter our doors,” he said, hands held behind his back, beatific amusement upon his features, straight-backed, and proud. We love visitors and hope you will invite your friends and relatives the next time they are in the vicinity.” These words meant nothing to his audience that were bending their necks about to see this or that spectacularity, but he spoke them as a way of spreading the news of welcome. The janitor crept along behind, making faces at the back of his boss. He disliked the man with a great dislike.

       “We once had,” the priest continued, looking at the little girl, "a rash of nudity and absence of dress on these premises that I never could explain. A grandmother ran across the pantel right here wearing nothing but a pair of bloomers.” He paused for effect and looked about at his fifty guests. They nodded and he took that for consent and he continued his list.

       “A man walked about in here alone in his bathing suit and I was forced to come and remonstrate with him and ask him to leave at once or get dressed in the confessional just over there to your right.  Then, the very next week, while the janitor led a group through the sanctimum, and down the loft-run, a woman of thirty or so began to remove her blouse and then her knickers. I approached and inquired immediately what her reasons might be. She answered that since it was stifling in the building she felt compelled to disrobe for the sake of air. I had to forcibly remove her. She would not willingly go. I finally carried her bodily out the back by way of the basement so none might see her in her state who had not already done so. Her husband met me at the door carrying the lady and he inquired as to the meaning of the event. I explained that I meant no harm, only she had flung off all of her outer and under wear. He hesitated not a moment but immediately disgarded his own clothing. I would not let them back inside and so for the afternoon they sat picnicking in the grassy area, which you can see there, without a stitch on. The priest continued with three or four more strange accounts of undressing persons and then left the rest of the tour up to the janitor.

       When the group had been there for another half hour, they asked after restrooms and the janitor obliged but with only half a will. He took them out back to the outhouses and they were surprised that each had two holes and no partitions between. They participated with a will, though, and sat them down together, man and woman, and in this way accomplished the necessary. The outhouses were not clean or fresh and each and every one of their consumers appeared out of them in a state bordering on panic, breathing with difficulty and obvious relief. Then the tour ended. The janitor claimed that he had suddenly remembered an obligation and left the group to disperse on its own. It was a summer of similar daily and unprecidented large attendance, and by the time August arrived the janitor realized that he did not believe in God.