Concerto for Flute and Orchestra

years and the sweet fellowship they'd all known during that time was still
fresh in his memory—wasn't it in theirs?
Henry had been determined that the "infection" he saw—the hatred and
suspicion—would not spread to his little congregation. He had prayed daily
for them, especially for the Elders who led the church with him and with
whom he had enjoyed a special friendship. He had encouraged his people to
be friends with those from other churches.
He had made a point of meeting with the other pastors, each in turn, for
lunch. The other men had soon tired of it, however, as Henry continued to
urge them—"badger" them, they called it—to make peace among themselves.
He would point out Scripture verses to support his appeal, but that had
seemed to carry no weight with them. He had been increasingly bewildered
and distraught by their attitudes.
All this time he had continued leading and teaching his small flock of
about a hundred members. The three Elders had encouraged him and
helped him in the pastoring work, and the church had slowly begun to grow
as new Christians, the fruit of their reaching out to the community, were
added to their number. The people had resolved to be a light in their town by
living as close to the New Testament model as they could.
Henry Smith had once been married, but his wife had died during the
Protection nightmare when she had been hit by a car and had been refused
treatment at the local hospital because she was a Christian and therefore
blacklisted as a Rebel. His grief had been intense but he had doubled in his
determination to cling to and work with the Lord for as long as the Lord kept
him on Earth. His congregation's love and their own faith in God had carried
him through that difficult time, and through others.
Then, in 2040, something strange and even more worrying than the
division among the believers occurred. It began with the Lutherite minister
suddenly leaving his wife.
"Just like that," Henry, snapping his fingers, told Carl, "One fine morning
his wife woke up and he was gone. He'd taken all his clothes, his diary, a
few odds and ends from his desk, and he was gone. No note, nothing. She
was hysterical! One day he'd been on top of the world because his
congregation would be opening their new building in a week's time, she said,
and the next morning he'd vanished without so much as a goodbye!"
"Do you mean that she'd no warning that anything was wrong?" Carl
asked incredulously.
"Not a hint. In fact, from what she said, it was just the opposite. Their
marriage was better than ever, his people were proud of his preaching, and
the church had received some substantial gifts from wealthy members
towards the new building. He seemed very happy. And then he just went.
Disappeared. She had no news of him—nor did anyone else—until one day
one of their folk came and served her divorce papers. He was a lawyer, her
husband's lawyer, I suppose, I don't really know. Then he showed her a
Sydney paper with a photo of her husband at some do, with another woman.
She went completely to pieces. That was one thing, and one pretty much
expects that, under the circumstances. But what happened next was not

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expected. In a matter of weeks the Lutherite church in this town ceased to

exist. Three of their people ended up coming over to my church, but they
refused to comment on what had happened."
"Did you ever find out?" Carl asked, astounded by what he'd just heard.
"Eventually. But wait—that was only beginning. It got worse." Henry
paused, swept a hand several times through his grey hair, and shut his eyes
as if in pain. "The next church to disintegrate was that of the Baptizers.
Now, there was a group that seemed determined to follow the Lord and fight
the disharmony. Their problems seemed to have started when the pastor
decided that he did want to try and make peace with the others. At least, to
me it looks that way. The first thing that went wrong was that all three of his
children were caught at school with illegal drugs in their bags. Don't ask me
where they could possibly have got them from! The next thing was that he
was discovered at a local motel with a woman who wasn't his wife. This had
apparently been going on for some weeks before it was found out and
splashed all over the local paper. Well his wife and his church fell apart too!
Two people from that group came over to ours."
"What happened to the other members of those churches?" Carl asked.
"They either went to other churches," Henry replied, "or just stopped
going to any church. Most of them just stopped going."
"Well, what did the other pastors do about this?" Carl asked, "Did it have
any effect on their attitudes?"
"Unfortunately it had the wrong effect," Henry answered sadly, "They
started strutting—that's the only word for it. They didn't say, 'There but for
the grace of God go we'. No, they told their people that that's where following
Lutherite or Baptizer teaching leads one!"
"And it was their turn next?" Carl surmised.
"Yes. The Gatherer fellow—a single bloke, not very long out of the new
training course at their College—well, it turned out he was apparently
having an affair with the wife of one of his members. Apparently." Henry
looked up at Carl, a puzzled frown creasing his forehead. "What I couldn't
understand, and I still can't understand, is why the pastors' actions caused
the whole church to fall apart. I mean, one would expect that some members
would leave in disgust, but that the rest would stay and just find another
minister. But no—they all left. We inherited three Gatherers." He sighed
deeply.
"Did this happen to the Pentecoster groups too?"
"There were four different Pentecoster groups, and yes, they went the
same way..."
Henry's voice had got lower and lower as he spoke, until he was almost
whispering. Carl had a feeling that the story was getting close to home for
his companion.
"There were four other independent churches besides mine which had
been striving for unity. The five of us—the pastors, I mean—had been
meeting regularly to pray and encourage each other. They'd also got some of
the members from the other churches. I mean, those people had started
going to their churches."

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"Am I right in guessing that this is an important detail—that all those

people moved to your churches?" Carl asked.
"You're right, yes." Henry smiled wryly. "Those people came to our
churches and the cancer began to spread there, too..." His voice caught, and
he paused, staring in surprise at his plate, as if he wondered how it had got
there.
He picked up his fork, seemed to think better of it, and put it down. He
swept his fingers through his hair again, glanced up at Carl, looked around
the room—they were still the only customers—then looked down at the table
again.
Carl watched all this thoughfully. There was something about Henry's
way of sweeping his hands through his hair... Certainly the pastor was
deeply distressed, but there was something else.
As Henry had been telling him about the downfall of the churches in
Goldridge, Carl had felt increasingly apprehensive—not least because each
of the churches Henry had mentioned had invited him to preach that week.
In fact he was supposed to preach at the Lutherite church that afternoon. At
least, the letterhead on the invitation was that of the Lutherite church. What
was the name at the end of the letter, now? Alfred Greenstone? Carl decided
to ask Henry Smith if he knew the man—but only after the pastor had
finished his story. If what Henry had been telling him was true, "cancer" was
a mild term for the disease afflicting the Goldridge church.
"So what happened, then, after these people started coming to your
church?" he asked.
"Well, nothing—at first," the pastor replied, looking up at Carl and
grimacing, "That's what put me off my guard, you see. They just started
coming to the Sunday meeting, they also joined the mid-week prayer and
Bible Study groups, they just—well, they just sort of became part of the
church." He tapped the table with one finger as he added, "They were a
mess, but we didn't realize it until much later. And they spread that mess
very subtly and very generously over the next few months, and none of us
realized what was going on, would you believe?"
"And what is it that was going on?" Carl asked, raising his eyebrows.
"I suppose Jesus would have called it sowing tares among the wheat.
That's what they were doing. Sowing half-truths, sowing discord. Only, the
way they did it, and because we weren't on the alert, we were completely
fooled into thinking it was wheat they were sowing..." He paused again,
thought for a moment, and then added, "No—not all of us were fooled. But
we didn't listen to those one or two who weren't. We called them wet
blankets! Then suddenly it was too late..."
"Too late?"
"My church fell apart too..."
"How did that come about?" Carl asked gently.
"Their pastor went off the rails..." Henry whispered it, not looking at Carl.
He fell silent again, the silence of deep hurt, and seemed to study his
glasses. After a moment, he glanced up at Carl again, grimaced, and asked,
"Do you really want to hear this?"

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 Concerto for Flute and Orchestra

"Yes, I do," Carl replied, "Tell me about it."

"Well, all right. Why not? After those folk had been with us a few weeks,"
Henry continued, "I began to notice that some of our church members were
missing meetings they'd come to regularly before, and when I asked them
why, the reasons they gave seemed like pretty feeble excuses to me. Things
like: the car won't start, the children were tired, they'd had a long day. The
thing is, these were people who'd always put a great deal of effort into
getting to meetings, normally. On top of that, they seemed to be avoiding
other members of the church that they'd always spent a great deal of time
with. This problem got worse, and then the whisperings among the Elders
began. But the worst thing that happened was what I did, and at the time I
didn't even think about the downward slide... Looking back, I can't believe
how stupid, how foolish I was, but back then I thought, at first anyway, that
I was doing the right thing..." He looked up again, his eyes deep with great
sadness, and Carl wondered what terrible thing the man had done. He went
on, in the same subdued voice.
"One of the Elders has a teenage daughter who'd been having problems
at school—she's a bit of a rebel, you know, like many teenagers. She's
seventeen years old, and that's a difficult age sometimes. Anyway, he asked
me to have a chat with her, and she was agreeable to that, so I took her out
for lunch—I figured she'd feel more at ease that way than sitting in my
office. It was supposed to be just a friendly, informal chat, just to ask her
why she felt the way she did, what was bothering her about school, parents,
and so on."
He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment before continuing.
"I'm not sure what happened. Looking back, I can only surmise that she
had some Personality Pills with her and that she put some in my tea. I don't
want to go into details, if you don't mind, it's too awful. It's enough to tell
you that I finally came to myself in a strange bed with a strange woman next
to me carrying on about how wonderful I was, and so on. I was horrified,
and I jumped out of that bed and looked for my clothes—they were just
there on the floor, fortunately—and I got dressed as fast as I could and ran
out the door, and this-this woman just yelled the whole time that I mustn't
go, please would I stay, and so on. I got the first taxi that came along to take
me home. Only I had him drop me off at the shops down the street rather
than at my house. I walked the rest of the way. I needed to get my bearings."
"Your bearings? Didn't you know where you'd been?" Carl asked.
"Oh, yes. I recognized the motel. It's on the other side of town, near the
mine museum. I've no idea to this day how I got there. The restaurant I'd
taken Mandy to is near the Civic Centre. I don't even remember leaving it.
There's just a blank in my memory."
"What did you do then when you got home?"
"I just sat there, trying to figure it all out. I couldn't understand what had
happened. The woman—I didn't even know who she was!" The pastor
brushed his hand through his hair agitatedly several times again before
adding, "But I couldn't stop thinking about her..." He toyed with his glasses
for a few moments, not saying anything.

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"What I haven't told you yet," he continued presently, "is how we'd all slid
backwards—yes, me too—in our Bible reading, our praying, our reaching
out, our evangelising. It happened very subtly. At one of the Bible studies,
after they'd been going there a few weeks, one of the newcomers suggested
we study a particular book about the life of the church. Quite a good book,
really—published in Kawanyama—quite Scriptural, referred constantly to
the Bible, and so on. So we did that. The next book suggested was a bit
different, but still good. There were a few things in it which disturbed me
some, but I just shrugged them off and concentrated on the good stuff. The
third book had far fewer references to Scripture, but it seemed okay. Can
you see what was happening?"
"I think so... You were all reading the Bible less and less."
"That's right. We were filling our minds with more and more half-truths,
and we didn't want to admit to it. We got to a point where we didn't even
want to check out what the Scriptures said, you know. Two or three people
objected to the books, and warned us about them, but we didn't listen. In
fact, we didn't want to hear! Eventually we were spending most of our time
studying psychology and philosophy, and very little time reading God's
Word. One of the effects of all this side-tracking was that we all started
getting these feelings of false guilt, and that led to suspicion of others, and
victim complexes. Parents were worried that they hadn't been doing the right
thing by their children or that they'd been abusing them. These are model
parents I'm referring to! People whose family life would be considered
exemplary! Children accused their parents of giving them a low self-image—
that's a fashionable term again, you know—wives accused their husbands of
taking them for granted, husbands accused their wives of being unfaithful,
employers called their workers thieves, teachers said their students cheated,
and so on and on and on. And there was I, their pastor, completely unable
to help them or guide them, because I was just as bad as them, if not
worse." He sighed and absent-mindedly stirred his tea, which had been
stone-cold for over an hour.
The young woman who had served them their food, now properly dressed,
her hair-curlers gone, came over to them. "Wasn't the food any good?" she
exclaimed, seeing their untouched meal, "You don't seem to have eaten
anything!"
Carl looked down at their plates in surprise, then grinned at her
sheepishly. "We were rather engrossed, I'm afraid," he said apologetically,
"I'm sure it was fine, we just forgot it was there..."
He looked back at his plate. The eggs and sausages, shining with cold
grease, now looked distinctly unappetizing. The cold tea looked just as bad.
"Would you take it all away, please?" he asked her, "Don't worry, I'll pay for
it. And please bring us a fresh pot of tea, won't you?"
She looked at them oddly, nodded, and began clearing the dishes of food
from their table.
Henry had been silent during all this, following it all with a bewildered
look on his face.

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Carl turned back to him and smiled. "So far what you've told me doesn't
seem to me so terrible that it should drive you to thinking of suicide, Henry,"
he said gently, "It's pretty awful, I agree, but not irreversible."
"I haven't told you the worst, yet," Henry replied slowly, not smiling at all,
"I'm not sure I want to tell you—your opinion of me must be low enough as
it is by now."
"My opinion of you is that you are a man whose deepest desire is to 'love
God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and to love
your neighbour as yourself,'" Carl said quietly, "and you've done something
of which you are terribly ashamed and you think you've committed the
unforgivable sin. Whatever you've done, Henry, believe me, it's not
unforgivable. You love God. It's obvious to anyone who cares to talk with
you. You are my brother in Christ."
"I don't see how I can be forgiven—I've led my church astray, I've been
involved in adultery and worse, I've considered killing myself. I'm beyond
God's forgiveness, Carl. The Elders even told me so."
Carl didn't answer right away, as he saw the waitress coming over with
the tea he'd ordered. She put the teapot down and went to get them clean
cups.
"Thank you very much," Carl smiled as she put the cups in front of them.
"Do drink it this time, won't you?" she said, looking concerned, "Do you
want something else to eat?"
Carl glanced at his companion. "Uh... Not right now, thanks," he replied,
"Maybe later."
"Okay," she said, and went back into the kitchen.
"How do you have your tea?" Carl asked Henry as he poured the tea into
their cups.
"Tea? Oh. Uh... milk and two sugars, thanks," the pastor replied.
Carl put the milk and sugar in his cup and slid it across to him. "Drink
your tea," he said to Henry, who gave him a curious glance then obediently
did as he said.
Carl drank his own tea slowly as he thought about all that Henry Smith
had just told him. How in the world had the believers here so quickly
forgotten the horrors of the Protectorate? How had they let themselves be so
thoroughly led astray? Only three short years since the fall of Brent
Denson's rule!
When they'd finished their tea, Carl took up Henry's question. "Henry,
you're a pastor. Yet you can't see how God could possibly forgive you..." he
said softly, "Have you really forgotten King David, Zaccheus, Matthew, Peter,
the thief on the cross, the soldiers who killed Jesus, Saul of Tarsus? Come
on, Henry, God is merciful—surely you know that only the sin against the
Holy Spirit is unforgivable? And surely you know that whatever it is you've
done, it's not the sin of denying and cursing God?"
Henry didn't say anything. He just stared at Carl in disbelief. He opened
his mouth as if to say something, then shut it again. He looked down at the
table, seemed surprised as he saw his glasses there, put them on, then

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looked up at Carl again. There was a hint of hope in his eyes. "You really
think so?" he whispered, "Do you really think He'll forgive me?"
He probably has already, Carl thought to himself. To the pastor he said
simply, "Yes."
Suddenly the hunted look came back to Henry's eyes. "But you don't
know what I've done, Carl!" he exclaimed, "You don't know what I've done!"
Carl reached across the table and grasped his hands, and saw the look of
terror in Henry's eyes as he did so. "Then tell me what you've done, Henry,
and get it off your chest!" he said fiercely, "Then tell the Lord you're sorry,
that you'll never do it again, and accept His forgiveness!"

22
 CHAPTER 4

"What was it Henry did that he thought was so terrible?" Emma asked.
She and Carl had sat down on one of the many benches scattered
throughout the park.
"Apparently he felt guilty about the woman at the motel," Carl said, "He
felt that somehow he'd taken advantage of her. That just tells you the state
of mind those people down there are in! If you ask me, it was the other way
around—she took advantage of him, and that girl Amanda, the Elder's
daughter, certainly had something to do with it, as you'll see. Both women
were involved in something rather sinister, whether they were aware of it or
not."
Carl got up and paced back and forth as he spoke. He was becoming
agitated again.
"Henry went back to the motel," he continued, "to look for the woman
and—would you believe!—apologize to her! He found her, all right, and this
time she well and truly seduced him, and over the next few weeks led him
into worse and worse. It was only a matter of time before someone from his
church came across him there—he was by no means the only one in his
congregation to be in such a mess—and they reported him to the Elders.
They kicked him out there and then, in the middle of a Sunday service, and
forbade him ever to come back. He spent the next few days wandering all
over town in a daze, and over that time people from his congregation who
encountered him actually spat at him. They spat at him, Em! In public!
These are the same folk who surrounded him with love when his wife died,
during the Protectorate! What kind of madness is that?"
Carl stopped, his hands in his pockets, and gazed across the Lake at the
Government Assembly Building.
"It's as if Jack were to commit some sin," he said quietly, "and you and I,
and Ted and Anne, and Rob and Liz, and all the others were to spit at him
every time we saw him, while at the same time, none of us were talking to
each other..." He turned back towards Emma. "Em, the church down there
is so sick only a drastic operation will save it!" He flung himself down on the
bench. "And then I saw him in the park there... That was a week after they'd
thrown him out."
The two of them sat in silence, thinking of Henry Smith and of God's
grace in bringing Carl to his side just in time.
"But Carl," Emma said shortly, "What is it that so frightened you?"
"That was the end result of an accumulation of events, Em," he
answered, "and I have to tell you all that happened first for you to
understand why it frightened me so. It still scares me every time I think
about it." He shuddered.
Emma moved closer to her husband and took his hand. He looked at his
wife fondly, and thanked God for her again, and for getting him safely back
to her. "Tell me all that happened," she said.

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He shifted his position and placed his other hand over hers. "That first
day in Goldridge," he said, "Last Monday, remember? I'd been invited to
preach in one of the churches—supposedly the Lutherite church. Now this
seemed rather odd to me by this point, considering what Henry had told
me—and I was quite sure he was telling the truth. So I decided to do some
probing. Once he'd calmed down somewhat I told him I would order some
more breakfast and this time we would eat it. He nodded, so I asked the
waitress to bring us some more food and more tea, which she did after a
while. Henry didn't say anything while we waited, and I prayed silently. A
few more customers had come in by then, but they tended to sit near the
front of the cafe—the back was rather dark. Henry was facing the back of
the shop, so he didn't see people coming and going. One or two glanced at
us, but mostly they either ignored us or were unaware of us. No-one showed
any sign of knowing who he was."
"When the food came I gave thanks to the Lord and we started eating. I
wanted to make sure Henry'd got some food in him before I asked him any
questions which might cut his appetite again—you see, I had the feeling he
hadn't eaten for a while. When we were almost through, I poured us another
cup of tea and when we'd drunk some of that, I decided it would be all right
to ask him my question."
"What did you want to ask him?"
"The letter inviting me to preach at the Lutherite church was signed by
someone called Alfred Greenstone. I thought I'd ask him if he knew the
man."
"Did he?"
"When I asked him, he stared at me as if I'd blasphemed in the middle of
a prayer, or something equally shocking."

!!!

The name obviously had unpleasant connotations for Henry.

"Well, do you know him?" Carl asked again, gently.
"Wh-Where do you know him from?" the pastor stammered.
"Never met him," Carl replied, "His signature was on a letter I received."
"He's one of them!" Henry blurted out, "One of the tare-sowers. What on
earth did he write to you about?"
"He invited me to preach in his church this afternoon," Carl told him,
"The Lutherite church."
"The Lutherite church?!" Henry exclaimed, "But there is no Lutherite
church here, I told you what happened to it!"
Carl took the letter out of his pocket and handed it to him. Henry read
the letter and turned pale. "D-Do you know where he's asked you to p-
preach, Carl?"
"At his church, I understand from the letter."
"N-No, Carl, not his church—my church."
"Your church? But your church isn't a Lutherite church!"

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 Concerto for Flute and Orchestra

"That's right, it isn't, but this is the address of my church. Twelve,

Eucalyptus Street. However, that's not the main problem here." He pointed
to the date under the letterhead. "Look at the date of the letter."
"The 14th of— But that's two months ago! And you say that's your
church, at that address?"
"That's right, Carl," Henry nodded, "That's right."
He gave the letter back and leant his head on his hands, his elbows
resting either side of his plate. His eyes filled with tears as the implications
of the letter sank in. "The whole thing was planned, the whole thing..." he
moaned. He covered his face with his hands. "Oh, my God, why?" He looked
up at Carl. "Why?"
Carl was staring at the letter. This kind of thing... There was something
familiar about it... No! Surely not! Surely not! "I don't know why, Henry," he
said, "but we're going to find out! And we're going to do something about it,
what's more." He put the letter back in his pocket. "Henry—the most
important thing to do right now is pray. So, let's pray!"
The two men bowed their heads and talked to God about this
unbelievable situation, asking for wisdom in dealing with it. And Carl prayed
for Henry, that he might be able to ask for and accept God's forgiveness for
what he had done, and that he might have the strength to face the
challenges ahead.
When they had finished, Carl called the young woman over and asked
her for the bill. When she brought it he paid her and thanked her. As she
walked away he turned to Henry. "Is your home far from here?" he asked.
"It's not walking distance," the pastor replied, "Why?"
"I was wondering if we could go over to your place to talk about what
we're going to do about this situation."
"Well, my car's just over at the park—we can drive to my place."
"Could we do that, then?"
"But someone might see you with me—it wouldn't help you at all if they
did."
"Look, Henry, as far as that's concerned, we can ask the Lord to make
seeing eyes blind when necessary. I'm not especially worried about what
other people think about the company I keep. Only God's opinion matters to
me there, and He got me to talk to you in the first place!" He smiled at the
pastor. "By the way, how are you feeling?"
"Much better," Henry replied, and gave him a strange look, "thanks to
you..."
"Thank the Lord," Carl said quietly, "He's looking after you." He slid out
from the booth and stretched. "Let's go, Henry."
His companion also got up and they made their way to the door. Carl
waved to the young woman who had served them, and she smiled at them
as they left the cafe. They started walking along the road towards the park,
at a much quicker pace than on their walk to the roadhouse earlier that
morning.
As they walked along, Henry was telling Carl about the lake in the middle
of the park and how it had been dug above an abandoned mine. When it had

25