Author's Note: I know that Javert is a little *too* free and open here. All I can say in my defence is that tight-lipped guarded Javert would have made for a fairly boring (more boring than it already is?) story so I've decided to run with inappropriate rambling Javert. It also strikes me that, honourable stickler for playing by the rules that he is, Javert probably wouldn't give even an activity as silly as Confession less that 100%
"I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, in word, in deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault . . ."
The confessional box judders slightly as the Inspector shifts his weight. It had clearly been built in an age when people weren't expected to be quite so inconveniently tall. The trouble is that he doesn't really have anywhere to put his legs – he tries curling one of them tightly under the seat and sticking the other straight out, which succeeds only in kicking open the confessional door and knocking over the cane he'd propped outside.
Oh for goodness sake! thinks Father Thomas
"Oh for God's – sorry Father – oh for goodness sake!" hisses Javert, tight lipped, as he uncurls his legs.
Father Thomas feels his own seat in the confessional booth rise up by a good inch with an almighty squeak as Javert kicks open the confessional door, creeps out with his broad shoulder still hunched over, props the stick up again before folding himself back into the confessional. There are a few more protesting groans from the confessional's ancient timbers as he once again tries to arrange his large frame into the small space, finally deciding to sit leaning forward like a jockey with his elbows on his knees. He coughs and then carries on unapologetically as if nothing had happened.
". . . through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel. . "
Once again the bench of the confessional squeaks and tilts as the Inspector shifts his weight to gain access to his greatcoat pocket.
Oh, here we go again! Thinks Father Thomas, He has – he bloody has – he's brought a list! Again!
When Father Thomas visits his own confessor there is one thing which he never, ever admits to - how tiresome, how wearisome, how downright bloody irritating he finds taking the confessions of the good people of his Parish. Sometimes this sentiment of dislike approaches almost to heresy – there are some days, some people, who make him wonder whether the whole ritual isn't actually . . . pointless.
The town's Inspector of police, though Father Thomas ruefully acknowledges him to be a good man after his own fashion, is such person. Their weekly appointments, he feels, would be enough to drive any man to the sin of despair.
I wonder if he's reorganised the sins on his list this week? Thomas thinks impishly, It might be refreshing to have them in alphabetical order for a change?
"Last Sunday I fell asleep in Mass."
Evidently not.
Javert always opens their little interviews by confessing to drifting off in Mass the previous week. He has, in fact, been making the same sheepish admission for the past three years
"Oh really?" Father Thomas asked mildly.
Inside, he is trying to suppress his increasingly sarcastic and hysterical inner monologue; You don't say Monsieur Javert! Because here's the thing - I already know! You know it's not just God that can see you – I can see you too! You have fallen asleep every Sunday for the past three years, and your predecessor, Monsieur Taillefer, sat in the exact same seat as you and fell asleep for five years prior to that!
Maybe it's something to do with being a police officer, Thomas mused. After all, the seat customarily set aside for the chief of police was at the end of a pew, tucked neatly behind a pillar. Easy to feel you weren't being watched in a spot like that. Messieurs Taillefer and Javert were both in habit of rolling in to church having scarcely been to bed the night before (in M. Javert's defence, for him at least this was actually work related). They would, for the first time in who knows long, find themselves sitting down in relative warmth and comfort and . . .Bam! Out like a candle! It was especially easy for Javert, what with his habit of wearing a stiff leather stock with an over starched shirt collar a l'anglais which poked up into his whiskers in two sharp points. This allowed him to fall asleep sitting bolt upright like a narcoleptic Beau Brummel.
At least, unlike Taillefer, he doesn't snore. And at least, unlike Taillefer, he admits he does it. Still . . .
"Is there any particular part of the service you find it hard to stay awake in?"
"If I say the sermon then I'm going straight to Hell aren't I Father?"
That's not funny – mustn't laugh
"And also, well, on Thursday last, well, Sergeant Jacquemin . . . . He really pissed me off - sorry Father! He really angered me, and I had to really fight not to, y'know, punch him in the face"
Pity us, Monsieur Javert, most of us have known him since we were knee high to a grasshopper and we all want to punch him too. I'm really not sure it would even be a sin . . .
"I'm pretty sure that counts as Wrath, and it's not the only occasion this week – not by any means"
Oddly, none of Javert's confessions of Wrath ever result in him giving anyone a well deserved slap in the face. He just fumes and simmers quietly to himself like a kettle which never quite comes to the boil but which will, never-the-less, let off an unpleasant burst of steam in the face of anyone unlucky enough to lift its lid at an inopportune moment. The Inspector was, in truth, far more renowned for free with a very sharp and inventive tongue than his – admittedly large and intimidating – fists.
Halfway through Javert's account of people he'd considered swatting with his walking stick that week (three prostitutes, two pickpockets, a drunken soldier who vomited violently in the lock up, Jacquemin, the Mayor, Jacquemin, the Mayor . . .) Father Thomas has a realisation about Javert's list He arranges his sins in order of perceived seriousness! Name of a Dog – he is actually mad, God bless him!
Surfacing from his private reverie, Father Thomas notices that the good Inspector is giving a serious of embarrassed little coughs, as if the next item on his list is stuck in the back of his throat like a troublesome fishbone.
Oh, so we're at this part of proceedings already are we?
"Father I am ashamed to admit that, not infrequently, I find myself looking at some of the women of Montreuil . . . well, less than appropriately. If you understand what I mean."
Feigning obtuseness, Thomas remains silent.
"Do you see, Father Thomas? But of course you wouldn't! How ridiculous of me! What I mean, not beating about the bush, as it were, is that I look at them lustfully, Father."
"And, do you – do you act on these impulses My Son?" Father Thomas enquires.
Thomas is a good five years younger than Javert, and fully aware of how embarrassing this question will prove. But, safe in the shadows of his half of the confessional, he allows himself a moment of roguish humour.
"But no! Of course not Father! I am not that sort of fellow at all! Although I suppose I must be or we would not be sitting here at all. It's just that, say . . . Well, take little Renee La Bosse. No one could deny that she's a hussy, but then no-one could deny either that she's very pretty. It's simply a God given fact. Or, the other day, I happened to run into – not literally I must add – Mlle Manchon. You know, the oldest of Manchon's girls, the one they say will never marry? What a clever woman she is – virtuous and yet so amusing! Well, you can see where all this is going Father, can you not? I wish I could just not notice these things, but in my profession one is trained to notice everything and sometimes it can be difficult to filter out those stimuli which are . . . extraneous. Whence the, ahem, lust. And, I suppose, the wrath too, now I come to think about it."
One day. Father Thomas thinks to himself, one day when it comes to the point in the ritual where he asks Inspector Javert to make restitution for his sins, instead of suggesting however many Hail Marys or Glory Bes, he will simply snap "Go to bed earlier, propose to a girl and do us all a favour and box Jacquemin's ears"
Except he won't. Because, for all Inspector Javert is a clever man – an exceptionally clever man in his own sphere – Thomas has noticed that there's something innocent and naïf about him which passes dangerously close, at times, to utter idiocy. Father Thomas worries that, if he were ever to say such things to Javert, he would be taken quite literally, He can almost see Javert cocking his broad jaw to one side, knitting his thick brows as if to say "Oh, is it really as simple as all that?" and striding of to do exactly as the priest had bade him.
Or maybe not, maybe he doesn't give the Inspector enough credit. He's just extrapolating from watching Javert perform the penances which he does give him. Now, it had been very easy for Father Thomas establish that Javert is no sense a religious fellow. Of course, he attends Mass and confession regularly – but who knows why! Because the Paris Prefect insists that all his Inspectors attend Mass and Javert desires to return to the capital? Habit? A desire to appear respectable? Because he has a fine voice and enjoys belting out the hymns? Only the Good Lord himself can see into men's hearts but Father Thomas very much doubts that He would find any deep spiritual leanings in the heart of Sieur Javert, should He care to look.
But you still do the penances I set you, don't you? Hardly anyone else ever does – they forget, the make excuses, the start but never begin. Not you though Javert – you sit like a diligent child at his lessons until you're done, making reparations to a God in whom you very possibly do not believe because those are the rules of the game and you feel honour bound to play by them. I would admire you tremendously if you did not infuriate me utterly!
All Thomas says aloud is, "Well then Monsieur Javert, Restitution and Penance – "
"If you please, Father, there is one thing more – a most serious thing, I fear – "
Father Thomas nearly, very nearly, lets out a pained groan. He stops himself just in time, noting that there is something in the Inspector's tone that is different from what he's heard today, something that signifies that they've just stepped up a pace. He can hear Javert tapping an irregular beat on the confessional wall as if to dissipate an excess of nervous energy. If he could see Javert, he would also have noticed the Inspector mechanically undoing and doing up the top button on his redingote.
"Go on."
"Father I suppose you're aware that a few weeks back I had an altercation with Monsieur le Maire over a woman of the town – well, it was over of Police regulations really, La Fantine was only the thing that set it in motion."
"La Fantine . . . ?" Oh, yes! Yes of course! That poor little woman dying up in hospital, the one of whom Sister Simplice speaks so very highly – I shall be performing her funeral before the month is out I feel.
"Yes, I had heard. And you feel guilty for arresting the girl without following proper procedure and wish to make amends to her now she is sick, is that it?"
"Well not at all Father! Well, I suppose yes, but. . . Well – it's just that wasn't actually what I was going to say at all! It's a very different story that I have to tell you. Nothing half so simple as walking up the hospital to apologise to a dying tart – would that it were!"
"Go on" Thomas breathes, by now genuinely interested.
"The facts are these: As you know, I quarrelled with the Mayor and, as you also know, he dismissed me from my post in front of my men. You can imagine that I was furious and humiliated in equal measure – I cannot remember the last time I was so livid. What you can neither know nor imagine Father is what I did next. I denounced him to the Prefect in Paris that very night."
Father Thomas finally loses his running battle to keep his interior monologue interior, "We all knew you wrote a letter that night – everyone in the town assumed it was your resignation!"
There are a few moments of horrid, curdling silence and then Javert begins to laugh.
"Ha ha! That's good! Oh – ha! – That's very good! I love this town! You know I only wish it had been. Ha ha!"
Detecting an air of hysteria beginning to descend over proceedings, Thomas tries to steer Javert back to the matter in hand
"But what did you denounce him as man?"
"As an ex-convict Father!"
Another appalling silence.
"Ha! You didn't see that coming did you Father! Ha ha ha!" Javert laughs, clearly hysterical and beyond the pale of appropriateness. He spends several minutes trying to suppress this laughter, which ends up coming from his nose in a series of strangled snorts which sound like a horse with hiccups. Finally, he recovers a more sober tone and continues, "I thought it for a while, for a whole host of circumstantial reasons but I never had any real proof or hard evidence so I never did anything about it. Until that night, when I was so blinded by fury that all I cared about was wreaking my vengeance as quickly as possible and evidence be God-Damned to Hell!"
Engrossed as he is in the story, Father Thomas still manages a pointed cough and the blasphemy.
"Sorry Father. Anyway I sent my letter to the Prefect and yesterday I received a reply."
"And?"
"Thing is", Javert continued dejectedly, ignoring the question, "Doesn't much matter whether he's guilty or innocent – I still only denounced him out of spite, and I still don't have any evidence to prove that he is what I say he is – not a jot that would stand up in court."
"But is he or isn't he?"
"Isn't he what?"
"Is or isn't Monsieur Madeleine guilty of breaking his parole? For goodness sake Javert!"
"I have no idea Father. I haven't opened it yet – I can't quite bring myself to yet. It's in my pocket."
Father Thomas is seized by a sudden urge to drag Javert out of the confessional by his lapels, snatch the letter and open it himself. He is only dissuaded from this by considering how slightly he is built next to Javert, and how much the people of Montreuil would enjoy the spectacle of their parish priest and inspector of police having an undignified tussle on the floor of the church.
"Still, I suppose it's fairly obvious what I have to now," Javert remarks.
"Yes, yes it is!"
"I must go and confess my actions to Monsieur Madeleine"
"My dear Monsieur Javert", cries Father Thomas in tones of the utmost exasperation laced with, for the very first time in three years, with a suspicion of affection, "I was rather more thinking that you might want to open the letter!"