Hearsay 8 The End is Nigh?

As a baby Dominic Robb had been dedicated like all good Baptists, no christening water for him. Baptism came later in life when a person had decided it was right for them. Dominic went down the steps and into the waters of baptism many years ago.

Bought up as a Baptist but long since fallen away Christianity for him was now just another dogma that divided, not united. Like that boat opposite it was obsolete. Both had run out of steam.

Why had he been a Baptist? He would say he liked that simple type of Christianity, but no. The truth was he had been a Baptist because his parents were, until finally all those questions kept coming into his head.

“ Where did dead B C people go?”

“What happens to someone with no access to Christianity?”

“If I have free will surely a loving God won’t reject me for honestly exercising that freedom?”

But he still retained a bond with Baptists. He liked the simplicity of the buildings in which they met. He felt it so much nearer to what Jesus would have wanted, if he had wanted anything, and it was in this frame of mind he had taken himself into the Dartmouth Baptist church that morning to celebrate the life of a little-known Baptist and not that well known an inventor. He continued to sit by the quayside for quite some time. The down flow of the river here near the mouth of the estuary slowed. Although his own original faith had long since evaporated away, fascination with religion was still very much alive.

Maybe the tide was turning.

“ No home to go to Dominic?”

He turned round to see Captain and Mrs Steer.

“ See old Compton over there.”

“ Yes, and I was recalling happy times.”

“ Do you see what’s not there? Well you know what I mean.”

“ Yes I do, and no I don’t. I see what you mean , but I don’t see what you don’t see”

“ The wheelhouse, That lovely teak wheelhouse, My second ‘ome that was. And it’s gone. Next thing, you’ll see, she’ll be broken up. She’ll be gone too. Poor old dear.”

When, a few days later Dominic looked across the river she was no longer there .