Robin's Way 05

It felt good to be back in Suffolk, even if Lowestoft seemed a million miles away from my rural ministry. The refurbished rectory did me nicely, the only problem was its location near the town centre, which was not the most salubrious of areas. Many of the old hotels had become either places of multiple occupancy for those with problems, or places where you saw women with unfeasibly short skirts coming and going at all hours. My new "parish" was like no other.

From the start I realised I had a choice - or rather, if I was to do the job I had been sent to do properly, I had no choice. The area was bad enough during the daylight hours, but after dark it took on a threatening air, gangs of men roaming the streets, youths hanging around street corners; it was not a place for a woman to be out on her own. And yet, if I was to do my job, I would need to walk those streets whenever I was needed.

One of our hostels was ten minutes' walk from the Rectory, and it was the first place I visited.

"Ah, Mother Robin, how nice to finally meet you. I am Miriam, I manage the Retreat and two other hostels in the town. Can I get you a coffee?"

I knew that some women priests liked being called "Mother," the counterpart, of course, to men being called "Father;" but I was not fond of it. Miriam was a stout woman in her early forties with dyed brown hair (hiding the grey) and what my own Mama would have called a "bustling manner." I liked her from the start. She was open-hearted, cheerful, and clearly driven by a need to serve others. We bonded over that.

She told me about the women in the hostel. Everyone one of them was a refugee from Ukraine, though most had arrived unofficially via traffickers.

"I fear, Mother, that some of them still work for their old employers, we can't watch them twenty-four seven, though we can, and do, enforce a nine o'clock curfew."

"Oh Miriam, do call me Robin," I said, cheerfully, in the hope that she would stop making me look round every time she said the word "mother!"

"We hold an assembly every morning at eight, and it would be wonderful if you could lead us in prayers. Many of the girls are, or were, Catholics, and I think it would steady them to have something religious to start their day."

Miriam's guess was right. Although the Morning Prayer Assembly was voluntary, ten out of the fourteen women came regularly, and I soon got to know them. I made time for each of them to tell their story, and, where necessary, worked with Miriam and her small team to help them with Immigration.

I did the same at the other three hostels, and before long, it was beginning to feel as though we were a real little community. I only realised how much so after Morning Prayer at the Retreat a few days after I arrived, when Darnya, asked to see me.

Darnya was the sort of woman who you noticed. She was a natural blonde, with an enviable figure, and she carried herself with an air of confidence.

"What can I do for you, Darnya?"

"Well, it is more what some of us have done for you, Miss Robin."

We went to my office and sat down. Her long legs in that short skirt attracted my attention.

"You are a good woman, Miss Robin. It is not everyone who would spend time with us. I think Miriam will have told you some of us still do sex work."

"Yes," I replied, looking at Darnya and not being in the slightest bit surprised. But what came next did surprise me.

"Some of us work for a man called Dimitri who runs several brothels, he is not a bad sort, and he likes to keep things peaceful, so Yana and I had a word with him, and he has put out the word to his men. Anyone caught bothering you when you are about God's work will be beaten. I think, Miss Robin, the streets will be safe for you. He would like to meet you though, if that would be okay?"

It would have seemed ungrateful to have said no, and, after all, we are taught that no one is without the chance of redemption, so I agreed to a meeting. I received a message from Darnya asking if three o'clock at one of the cafés off the promenade would suit me. I texted back saying it would.

Perhaps it says something bad about me, but Dimitri was not at all what I was expecting. I think I had Ryan's associates in mind, men who looked thuggish and rather scary. Dimitri was none of those things. In fact, when he waved me over to his table, I actually looked round to see who he was waving to!

"You must be Robin? I am Dimitri. Can I get you tea and scones? That would be suitably English, would it not?"

I laughed, and agreed - as long as there was some jam and cream. That, in turn, made him smile.

"Thank you for seeing me. I wanted to meet the woman who is taking such trouble with my women. I am also interested that you have not forbidden them to work for me. Surely that is condoning sin?"

I nodded, and thanked the waitress as the cream tea arrived.

"It is recognising their right to choose. From what they have told me, they do this because they want to. I have known women forced to do this, and Darnya and those who have stayed with you are not, I think, being forced."

He nodded and, looking seriously at me, went on:

"Whatever happened at the start, they are not now. We pay them well, we give them health checks, we make sure that they are looked after; any man who hurts them will not do so again. We also, as Darnya will have told you, try to keep the streets safe; your police do not seem to be interested in this part of town."

"That almost sounds like you think you are doing good, Dimitri."

"I would say we do less harm than others. The Albanians over by the harbour are an example of what could happen here."

I had heard nothing good about the Albanians, who did seem to fit the stereotype.

"So you are the lesser of two evils?"

"You could put it that way. You have met Darnya, do you think we could force her?"

"Oh, I am sure there are ways of forcing even the Darnyas of this world, but if you are asking whether I think you are forcing her, no I don't."

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"I think it does the girls good to have a mother confessor, they are used to it from home, would you be willing to hear their confessions?"

For the second time, Dimitri had surprised me. I knew I'd have to seek permission from the Bishop, and told Dimitri that.

"You do know they are supposed to repent of their sins and amend their lives. What would you do if they did?"

"Give them the money we have saved from their earnings and let them go. There are plenty more Robin."

Alas, that I knew was the truth.

"Now, more tea? Where will you hear the confessions?"

"There is a confessional at St Mark's, and if I am allowed, I will used it between midday and two o'clock on a Monday."

"Thank you, Robin. Here, let me pour you another cup."

We got around to my asking him how on earth he became involved in this business.

"I defy your stereotype do I Robin?"

"You do."

"I did a degree in Business at the LSE, went back to Russia and worked there, and then worked in Ukraine - came here when Putin invaded Ukraine, and through a friend of a friend, got into this."

There was, I was sure, something he was not saying, but I did not intend to press him.

Reflecting on the meeting later, before phoning the Bishop, I felt ambivalent. Was I being played? At some level, yes. He presented as a "nice" man, who professed to "care" about his "employees," who were prostitutes, and who were protected by his thugs from worse thugs. Even if he was the lesser of two evils, he was an "evil."

The Bishop agreed.

"Robin, I'm glad you rang. It is a perplexing one. As you told him, confession is meant to be followed by amendment of life, and that is not happening. At that level the question of whether you should do it has an easy resolution - no. But if I ask the question what harm will it do to the women to be able to talk to you in confidence, I find none - for them. My worry is for you Robin. What happens if they confess something criminal?"

"What happens is what always happens, Jane. The confession is sacred, and I cannot reveal its secrets. But in the event of something criminal there are aways of indicating to the authorities that they ought to be looking at someone or something."

"Sophistry, Robin, but a good and acceptable answer. My question to you is, can you cope with all this?"

"All what?"

"Robin, you are a celibate young woman with sexual desires, and you will be hearing confessions from and working with sex workers. Are we asking too much of you?"

"Time alone will tell."

"What I would ask, Robin, is that at our meetings, we discuss this, and if you have any problems, phone or text me at once. Agreed?"

I agreed.

So it began.

Not all the women came, and not all those who came, came every week, but most did come.

Their sins were the usual ones of the flesh, and I gave them the usual penances as well as the absolution which adjured them to go and sin no more. But like the rest of us, they came back to confess the same old sins. Was it wrong of me to hear their confessions? Only if it was wrong of me to hear other confessions. We all mean to amend our lives, we all fail. Perhaps they did not mean to amend their lives, but perhaps that made them more honest than the rest of us?

There were no conflicts of interest, prostitution itself is not illegal. Their sins were, in some senses, simpler than others. They sold their bodies. They regretted it. But they did not seek alternative employment, mainly because there was nothing else offering them anything like the money they were earning.

My reports to Bishop Jane were received with satisfaction, and she told me that it seemed as though I was coping well.

In a sense I was.

Jesus had been the friend of sinners, and some of his followers may well have been ladies of easy virtue by the strict standards of the time, and that was the sense in which I was following in his footsteps and doing what I could to help. The women all told me that they felt better for being able to confess their sins, so why stop?

I knew the reasons I would be given, had I ever asked that question more widely, but I was content with my own conscience.

It was quite different from parish ministry, and the parishioners were very different from those in rural Suffolk. Or was it, and were they? They were people, different kinds to be sure, but all children of God and all deserving of care and love. Were they harder to care for, harder to love? If so, all the more reason to serve them and show them God's love. That is what Ministry is about, not what I or any other Minister wants. It is what God wants.

But Jane had been right, of course. One had to appreciate the irony of my situation. A single woman dealing with sex workers, one unemployed sexually, the others over worked. There had to be a happy medium.

Such were my reflections that cool late August morning when, as had become my habit, I walked along the prom to watch the sun rise. As the easternmost town in the UK, the sun rises here earlier than anywhere else. I was not a great believer in jogging, but liked to talk a daily walk along the beach, praying and meditating as I did my ten thousand steps. I was rather wishing I had put leggings on rather than shorts, but If I walked fast enough, I'd warm up.

I was listening to the Rosary on my phone and following, which explains my slowness; well, that, and the fact I was hardly expecting to see anything at that hour. My mind had, as ever, wandered, and I was trying to get it back to the meditative prayer when my eyes caught a commotion in the sea.

I strained to look and immediately dialled the emergency number. There were people in the water. I rushed down to the beach, to find two men staggering, soaked, and gasping for breath. They were speaking a language I could not understand. But what I could understand was that there were others in the water.

I rushed in, swam out a little to the first couple of women, helping them to the shallows, before diving back in to help a couple more.

I could hear sirens. I looked and saw the two men running, the four women I had helped were sitting on the beach, shivering in the cool mist. I swam out looking for others. One was struggling, I grabbed her and pulled her back to shore.

By this time there were policemen and women there.

"You the one who called it in?" A tall police officer looked at me.

"Yes," I spluttered, "there could be others out there."

"Okay," he said, stripping down to his underwear and diving in.

He pulled two more women out, but could find no trace of their boat.

By this time the ambulances had turned up, and a paramedic offered me some foil sheeting and something purporting to be coffee; well it was hot, and it was wet.

"Robin!" I turned to hear a familiar voice.

"Elena!"

"It's okay Sarge," she said to the tall officer, also now clad in foil to keep him warm, "this is the Rev Robin Topham, an old school friend."

"Well, Robin," he said, "you just saved these women's lives. We'd been tracking a boat, but lost it about half an hour ago, and God knows what would have happened if you hadn't happened to be here."

"Well," I said, "God had other plans for them."

"And, Sarge, she should know," Elena laughed; he laughed with her.

"Right, Robin, you better come with us to the hospital and get yourself checked out, and then we'd like to take a statement."

"Lead on Macduff," I replied.

"How on earth did you know my name?" he asked.

I giggled.

"Well, serendipity or what?" I replied. It would have been too tedious to have explained the reference to him. Elena just grinned.

The medics pronounced Sargent Macduff and me fit and undamaged by our early morning swim, and provided hospital scrubs to replace our wet gear. He and Elena took my statement then and there, but asked me to come down to the station when I had dressed.

Darnya, whom I had called, brought some clothes for me, and I was just preparing to leave when I got a call - it was from Dimitri.

"I hear you have been doing early morning swimming, Robin."

"I have."

"I have some information about those people which I am willing to share with you. I can't go to the police myself for obvious reasons, but I would like to help."

"Thank you, Dimitri."

"Meet you for morning coffee if you have nothing better to do at eleven?"

"Well, as I have to go to the police station sometime this morning, can we make it ten, as I can then give them the information you give me?"

"See you are our usual then."

I was just about to put my phone in my bag when it went again.

"Robin, what's this I see on the news?"

"The news?" I said, with the naïveté born of the fact I rarely bothered with the thing and had no television. But Bishop Jane did, had and was trying to find out what was going on.

"It says, 'women vicar walks on water to save.' What happened?"

I told her.

"This isn't to do with your women is Robin?"

"Quite the opposite, their pimp is going to tell me who did this. I am off to the police soon."

"Well, Robin, thank goodness you are safe. Well done my dear!"

It was only when I reached the hospital entrance that I realised what Jane had been talking about. There was a TV crew and some journalists waiting. How vain am I! My first reaction was to have wished my hair did not look such a mess and that Darnya could have picked something more flattering than the summer dress with the yellow flower pattern.

"Rev Topham, can you tell us what happened?" A journalist thrust a mic in my face.

Best get it over with. So I explained what I had seen and done, and went on my way.

I saw Dimitri at the coffee house at ten. For once he seemed less composed and sure of himself, but the moment he saw me, he adopted his usual suave manner.

"Pain au chocolat with your cappuccino?" He asked. "You look like that sort of girl."

"Oh," I smiled, "and what sort of girl is that?"

"The sort of girl who has that style," he parried.

"Why, thank you kind Sir," I giggled, as he went off to order them for me.

"You must tell me about your adventure," he began. So, yet again, I told him.

"That was brave. Did the police catch the two men?"

"No, they seem to have escaped into thin air."

"They'll be with Mehmet and the Albanians down in the centre of the town," he said. "They were smuggling girls in to challenge our supremacy. I can tell you where they will be if that will help."

I smiled, taking a bite of the pain au chocolat the waitress had brought.

"It will help you."

"Yes, it will, but it will help your authorities too. What happens to the girls?"

"Well they will be accorded temporary asylum. As it happens one group of girls moved from one of our homes, so we can probably put them up there."

"And then?"

"Then, well I am assuming some of them may decide to vanish into the community."

"We would look after any such," he said.

"Dimitri, you expect me to recommend you to them?"

"No, just not to stand in their way. And, of course, if you can help them as you do the others?"

"You know I am conflicted over this, Dimitri?"

"Ah," he said, the smile disappearing, "because you can't associate yourself with whores? Didn't Jesus?"

This, I thought, was no place to get into a discussion on the mistakes made by Pope Gregory over the Marys in the Bible, and in an event, he was not being totally unfair.

"It's not that. It's that it would be better if they really repented."

"And did what?" He asked, impatiently.

"Well you are not exactly Mother Theresa, are you Dimitri?"

That seemed to restore his good humour as his laugh attracted the attention of others.

"A fair point, and anyway, thank you, Robin. Will you be taking confessions later?"

"I shall," I smiled, happy to have averted an argument. I knew he was playing me, but it was the women who mattered.

It had turned unto a pleasant morning, so after coffee I tool a little stroll before going back home. When I turned into the street, I could see a crowd of people and vans, and wondered what on earth was going on. As I got closer I realised it was the press and TV crews.

Three of them dashed up to me when they caught sight of me.

"Robin, Robin, can you tell us what you saw?"

The questions piled in, but were all along that line.

Oh goodness, I thought, I really wasn't dressed for the media, but I did my best to answer the questions. As I got to the door, thinking I was done, a journalist buttonholed me.

"Robin, I'm from the Mail, could you do an interview? We'll donate a fee to a charity of your choice."

The second part of that sentence cancelled out my instinctive reaction of "no" to the first part, so I invited him into the house.

Over (yet more) coffee and biscuits, I recounted what had happened and, once he had gone, went about preparing for confession.

It was with a sense of shock, then, that walking past one of the shops on the high street, I saw myself on screen. That was compounded by the billboards at the newsagent's: "Red Robin rescues refugees!" Someone liked their alliteration.

Confession, or to give it its proper name, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, was always a draining process. What the women poured out seemed to pass through me, and I always prayed afterwards for them, and myself. It was the (by now) usual confessions of sins of the flesh, followed by the usual absolutions. I thought I had finished when, after a ten-minute delay, in which I had been praying for us all, someone else came in.

"I am here to confess something, but not in the way you think. You can't trust the police you are working with; they have an informant there who tells them everything. I don't know who it is, but they do, believe me or not. I am taking a risk telling you, but they allow us to have confession, and this is my only chance."