Those Benignant Eyes

The stories in Those Benignant Eyes, though often showing people doing their worst, showcase characters radiating the love and compassion that should form the bonds of human fellowship. Double Vision In the space of a few minutes, a Catholic priest thinks he sees, and then really does see, the woman from his distant past who has proved to be both his nemesis and his godsend, the first sighting having foreshadowed the second. Fragments A newcomer to a town finds fraternity and fellowship there, only to find himself amid the heat of smouldering emotions, the release of which leads to tragedy, of which he becomes the unwitting messenger. Getaway Two people find love by the sea, only for one of them suddenly to disappear, and to disappear without trace. Healing A successful man in his thirties, with a turbulent childhood behind him, embarks on a course of sessions with a psychotherapist to find out why he emerged unscathed from his ordeal, whilst his brother, only a year younger, remains deeply troubled. The therapist, puzzled, suggests that the wrong brother has submitted himself for analysis. By chance, after many years apart and at odds with each other, the brothers are reunited, and Providence quickly leads them to their childhood nemesis for a mutually cathartic showdown. Proposal A ruthless man does what he must to protect his marriage, which itself is the product of a proposal gone yet more wrong in its execution that it was perverse in its very conception. The Long Eclipse In a world in which darkness reigns (literally), not only goodness and fraternity have been eclipsed, but memory too. Blogger An aphoristic polemicist and diarist, a provocateur - in short, a controversialist - finds himself both challenged as a blogger and misunderstood as a person, with unfortunate consequences. Churchgate A couple, estranged for five years, are brought back together after an unlikely convergence of circumstances.