by Robert Gott
‘I know you’re the trained detective, Joe, but I’m not actually stupid.’
Joe turned to Guy.
‘I know that, but there are possibly very unpleasant people inside, and I don’t like the idea of you being here on your own.’
‘Listen, Joe, everything that is wrong with me will work in my favour. They’ll know I’m damaged goods when I have my first nightmare, or when I suddenly lose consciousness. And I can carry off the ecstasy of belief much better than you could, because you’ve never felt it.’
‘And you have?’
‘Every good little Catholic boy has felt the pleasurable rush after Confession, until common sense intervenes and intelligence asserts itself.’
‘I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon and check the stump.’
‘No. Give me 48 hours to get settled and get some idea of the rhythm of the place. Check the stump on Sunday night.’
Guy shook Joe’s hand, collected his suitcase from the back of the car, and entered Prescott’s property. Joe watched as his friend walked towards the house. He saw Prescott emerge and stand on the front step. Joe’s heart began to beat erratically, and the familiar onset of nausea forced him from the car and onto all fours on the ground, where he vomited up the sour dregs of his breakfast. When he returned to his seat behind the wheel, dizzy and sweating, Guy and Prescott had disappeared into the house. Joe was filled with foreboding.
ANTHONY PRESCOTT DIDN’T shake Guy’s hand when he entered the house. Instead, he placed an open palm on his shoulder and slowly folded it over so that Guy could feel that here was strength withheld. He took Guy into the room that served as the chapel, and insisted that Guy leave his suitcase outside. The seats had been pushed to one side. Prescott said very little beyond a carefully modulated, ‘Welcome.’
Here in the chapel, he stood behind the lectern and indicated that Guy should stand before him. Prescott took hold of a rough shepherd’s crook and rapped it three times on the floor. The old man, whom Guy and Joe had seen on their first visit here, entered. He was accompanied by a younger man. They each wore a simple tunic, similar to the tunic worn by the women, but the cinch was more masculine than the cinch that gathered the women’s tunics. A tunic was draped over the arm of the older man. They approached Prescott and stood beside him.
‘Guy Kirkham,’ Prescott said, ‘do you come here of your own free will?’
‘I do.’
‘Your friend isn’t with you.’
‘He thinks I’m a fool.’
Prescott smiled, and despite being wary of this man, Guy felt its warmth. It would be easy to be beguiled by him, and difficult to believe that he might in any way be implicated in the deaths at Fisher’s property. Prescott came to Guy and placed his hands on his cheeks. He leaned in and kissed him gently on the forehead. Guy smelled lavender. Very quietly, Prescott said, ‘You will shed the skin of the man named Guy Kirkham. Close your eyes. Trust in me. Do you trust in me?’
‘I do.’
‘You must close your eyes and shed your clothes, and I will make sure that there are no marks of the devil on your body. Then you will don your tunic. Do you understand?’
‘What is the mark of the devil?’
‘I will know it if I see it.’
Guy had not been expecting this and he knew its purpose was to disempower him, perhaps even to humiliate him, but he’d never been physically shy or modest, so the act of disrobing in front of three strangers was inconsequential to him. He had no tattoos and no birthmarks, so he guessed he’d get the all-clear when it came to devil’s marks. He took off his clothes, keeping his eyes closed, and without being asked, raised his arms in the attitude of the crucified Christ. He heard Prescott move around him, searching for satanic signs.
‘Raise your arms above your head,’ Prescott said. Guy felt the surprisingly soft cloth of the tunic being fitted over his arms, and when it had fallen over his body and tied at the waist, Prescott said, ‘Open your eyes. You are welcome here among us, Absalom.’
Guy opened his eyes. The three men who stood before him bowed their heads, and Guy found himself affected by the solemnity of the gesture.
‘Nepheg will take you to your room,’ Prescott said. The young man stepped forward, and Guy reached down to retrieve his clothes.
‘Leave them,’ Prescott said. ‘Someone will bring them to you later.’
Guy followed Nepheg out of the chapel. He noticed that his suitcase had been removed.
The room to which Guy was taken was in a bungalow behind the main house. It reminded him of convict quarters attached to grand squatters’ homesteads. The room was sparsely furnished, but clean. There were two beds in it.
‘This is our room.’
‘I didn’t realise we’d be sharing,’ Guy said.
Guy’s suitcase had been placed on his bed. It was open and empty. The door to a small wardrobe had been left ajar, and Guy could see that his clothes had been hung up and his toiletries placed on a shelf. He couldn’t see the notebook or the bottle of ink he’d brought with him. He crossed to the wardrobe and checked. He decided to say nothing to Nepheg.
‘If you want to be alone for a while, I’ll leave you.’
‘No, no. I’d like to ask you some questions and maybe have a look over the place.’
‘I won’t be able to answer all your questions. Only the Master can guide you properly.’
As he said this, a woman brought the clothes that Guy had left in the chapel. He took them from her, and, as he placed them in the wardrobe, felt for his fountain pen. It wasn’t there.
‘I think my pen must have fallen out of my pocket. It was a gift from my father.’
‘The Master will have your pen. It will be quite safe. For the moment, you don’t need a pen. Writing is a distraction from prayer.’
‘Fair enough.’ For the first time, Guy felt a small fizz of trepidation. There was something about this young man, Nepheg, that unsettled him. He lacked warmth. There was nothing about him that spoke of contentment, nothing that suggested that proximity to Prescott had raised him to a state of grace. He wasn’t surly, exactly, although perhaps that was what surliness ameliorated by faith looked like.
‘Nepheg is a strange name.’
‘It’s the name the Master chose for me.’
‘How many people live here on the property?’
‘There are five, and many more come to worship.’
‘Five?’
‘Three men and two women. Yes. We tend the fruit and the chickens and the livestock.’
Guy thought this self-consciously biblical turn of phrase might try his patience.
‘Can I have a look around?’
‘I’ll come with you. There are some areas men are not allowed to trespass.’
Nepheg didn’t take Guy into the main house, but showed him the outbuildings, and indicated the various plots and what was growing in them. Guy counted three women and the man named Abraham at work. In the distance there was a small structure, shed-like, but with a roofline that made it look more substantial.
‘What’s that?’
‘That is a place where men are not permitted. That is where the women must retreat to until their bleeding has passed and they are clean again.’
Guy had a vague memory of having sniggered when he was a boy at a passage in Leviticus that insisted that everything a menstruating woman touched or sat upon was befouled. There was a great deal of washing involved.
‘We all work in the fields,’ Nepheg said, ‘even the Master, and you will be expected to do your share.’
‘Of course. I wasn’t expecting to be pampered. I want to be a part of this community.’
‘There’s a tunic of rough cloth in our room. You’ll wear that when working. The one you’re wearing now is to be worn at all other times while you’re on the property. You’re not required to wear
it outside the Master’s demesne, although you may wish to if attending a service at the house of another disciple.’
‘There are others?’
‘The Church of the First Born has many followers, too many to fit in our small chapel. We worship wherever we are, and the Master visits where and when he can.’
Until he felt the hand on his shoulder, Guy hadn’t been aware that Anthony Prescott had come up behind them.
‘Absalom, walk with me and I will show you who we are, and who I am. Nepheg has been away from his work for too long.’
Nepheg nodded and headed back to the room he now shared with Guy — presumably, Guy thought, to change his tunic. Prescott and Guy walked around to the front of the big house.
‘We’ll have tea,’ he said, and invited Guy onto the veranda, where they sat opposite each other across a sturdy table. A young woman came out of the house carrying a tray, which she placed on the table.
‘This is Justice,’ Prescott said. ‘And this is Absalom.’
‘I’m happy that you’ve come to us, Absalom,’ Justice said. Guy had been expecting her voice to be meek. It wasn’t. It was harsh, confident, and nasal, with no hint of subservience in it. Guy guessed she might be 22 or 23 years old, although the sun had already etched lines around her eyes and mouth. If the look she was going for was plain and simple, Guy thought, she’d achieved it. She didn’t stay to pour the tea.
‘Justice will cook our meal tonight. It will be palatable, but not as pleasant as the meals prepared by Prudence. Still, she does her best, and I don’t demand more than that.’
‘I don’t know what questions to ask you.’
‘I can hear your unasked questions, Absalom. You want to know why the others call me Master.’
Guy manufactured a startled look.
‘I was afraid to ask you that,’ he said.
Prescott smiled his warm, inviting smile.
‘I didn’t choose this path. It was chosen for me. There was a man I’d been told about who claimed that he was Jesus Christ and that he had the power over life and death. I was searching for some kind of truth and I met this man, and for a while I believed in him. He was false. His falseness was shown to me in a dream. God’s arm came down to me, draped in white, holding a book. In you is the spirit of David and the spirit of my son, Jesus Christ. This is my book and you are chosen to unfold my law. You are anointed, and you alone. Go and claim my kingdom. You are David, and who you save will be saved, and who you damn will be damned. This is the power I invest in you. I reached out and took the book, and the laws came into me and I knew them.’
He paused to gauge the effect his words were having on Guy. Guy had opened his eyes to be marginally wider than usual — creating, he hoped, an illusion of enthralment.
‘My followers call me Master because God has named me so. I have never insisted on it. You may call me David, but I hope you will also come to see me as your Master.’
Prescott took a sip of tea.
‘I can cure you, Absalom. If you believe in me, I will cure you.’
For a fleeting moment, Guy wondered if this might be true after all. This momentary lapse bothered him. He’d never thought of himself as being available to the crude seductions of religious shysters, and yet there it was, a sudden glimpse of weakness. Illness, he reminded himself, makes you vulnerable to hope.
‘I believe you, David.’
Prescott seemed to accept this, and began to explain to Guy the arcane practices of the Church of the First Born. He began with the tunics, explaining that in accordance with God’s law one must not wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material. Much of what he said was vaguely familiar to Guy, because it was drawn from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the two Old Testament books that schoolboys trawled for its unfettered violence and darkly erotic references to rape, testicles, and menstruation. Where else but in the Old Testament could you read with a clear conscience about incest, bestiality, and masturbation? He and his friends had sniggered often about Onan spilling his seed on the ground. When Prescott used Leviticus to justify stripping him naked, Guy recognised the passage. Prescott’s mellifluous voice, as he recited it, failed to disguise its ancient grotesqueries:
None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No man who is the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to the Lord’s food offerings; since he has a blemish he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.
‘SO YOU SEE, Absalom, why it was necessary to uncover your nakedness. My father is not a soft God.’
‘God shouldn’t be soft, but will he cure me?’
‘God’s mercy flows through me. I am holy, and you shall be holy.’
In the course of the conversation, Prescott never explicitly claimed that he was Jesus Christ, but he came close. He didn’t reveal the position of the women in the house. The theology of the Church of the First Born, apart from the as-yet-unspoken belief that Anthony Prescott was God incarnate, was closely aligned with the Old Testament and seemed to draw selectively from its bizarre laws, with a smattering where convenient from the New Testament. After 15 minutes, Prescott saw that Guy’s concentration was waning.
‘It’s a lot to take in at once. You’ll come to understand us slowly, but don’t be afraid to come to me with any questions. You will have doubts. Don’t be troubled by them. Doubts are a sign that your mind is alive. I will banish your doubts.’
How good are you, really, Guy thought, if you haven’t seen through me?
‘We eat together at 6.00 pm. There will be a place set for you’
Again, Prescott exercised his smile. Guy stood up and left the veranda. Prescott leaned back in his chair and said quietly, ‘Absalom, Absalom. I think I’ve named you correctly.’
‘I LIKE HIM,’ Tom Mackenzie said. ‘I don’t believe he’s a spy, but if he is, he’s a bloody good one.’
Tom was rolling out the pastry for a steak-and-kidney pie. Maude Lambert was in the kitchen with him. Titus hadn’t yet arrived. He was often late, so this was normal, and besides, Maude had arrived early — in order, as she said, to offer her clumsy help in preparing the meal. As always, Tom didn’t require any help, although he’d telephoned her just after lunch and asked her to use her meat ration to fill out the small amount of beef and lard he’d been able to buy. It wasn’t good-quality meat, so Tom planned to cook it slowly for a couple of hours before putting it inside the pie. This meant that they wouldn’t eat until 8.00 pm, but he had beer, and Maude had brought a bottle of sherry.
Winslow Fazackerly arrived just after 6.30. The house smelled pleasantly of the rich stew. Winslow, apart from the cognac, had brought a gift for Tom. It was a small, squat figure made of papier-mâché and painted red. It had the face of a rather fierce-looking bearded man, with two blank, white circles for eyes.
‘It’s called a daruma,’ he said. ‘It’s meant to bring you luck and help you achieve an ambition.’
Tom took it and balanced it on the palm of his hand. Winslow flicked it with a finger. It swayed, and righted itself.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ Tom said.
‘You draw in one eye and only draw in the other when whatever you wanted to achieve has been achieved. Then you can ceremoniously burn the daruma.’
‘How marvellous,’ Maude said. ‘Do you have one yourself?’
‘I have several. They each have one eye drawn in. When I meet my wife again, I’ll draw in the other eyes.’
Winslow’s easy, unguarded reference to his wife made it comfortable for Maude and Titus, when he arrived, to as
k questions about Japan. As he had earlier been with Tom, Winslow was honest about the fact that his status in Japan would always be that of an outsider.
‘That feeling of not belonging was good training, because that’s exactly how I feel here.’
‘Do you speak good Japanese?’ Titus asked.
‘It’s reasonable. I’d never pass for a native, but it’s better than conversational.’
‘Surely that would be useful to our intelligence services.’
‘Oh, they approached me, but I was feeling bloody-minded at the time, so I turned them down, which made them suspicious of me, of course. No one was willing to say anything out loud. That’s the advantage of coming from a rolled-gold family.’
‘Do you mind if I ask what made you bloody-minded?’ Maude asked.
Winslow took out his wallet, and unfolded a piece of paper from it. It had been creased and uncreased so often that the folds were now on the point of tearing.
‘I’ve had this in my wallet since 1942. And I look at it from time to time to remind me that this is how Australians view my wife. Read it out loud.’
Winslow slid the page towards Maude.
‘I remember seeing these on telephone poles, after Darwin was bombed,’ she said. She began to read:
Every one a spy. We saw plenty of them in Australia. They followed many lines of business. One sold silks, another chinaware, one bought wool, another wheat, one fished for whales, the other for pearls — they asked lots of questions; they took plenty of photographs. They smiled, bowed, scraped and though we tolerated them we hated their obvious insincerity, their filthy tricks of snide business, and we weren’t so very impressed with the ‘Co-prosperity sphere’, which sounded to us mightily like a policy of forced annexation, murder and rapine. How right were our instincts. The Japanese who came to spy out our land now attempt to return and enslave it. Every one a killer. The record in every conquered country is one of falsity, violence, demoralisation and hateful brutality. In Formosa it has driven the aborigines again and again to rebel. Each time the Japs have put them down by massacring them in thousands. In Korea a reign of terror still persists as the Japanese attempt to totally subdue the inhabitants. In Manchuria it has meant the complete harnessing of all manpower and resources of the Son of Heaven’s chariot. In the Marshall and Caroline Islands it has meant criminal neglect and the degradation of the people. Half the deaths among the natives are caused by tuberculosis; venereal disease is widespread. In Nanking it meant murder, rape, unbridled, unlicensed looting and robbery. In Hong Kong, 50 British officers were first bound then bayoneted. This is Japan’s New Order, worked out to include Australia too. But it won’t get here. Every white Australian, backed by the generous help of our allies, is ready to carry the war right back to Japan. Every man and woman is at his post — determined, forever, to halt Japanese aggression and throw back the Jap where he belongs. We’ve always despised them — now we must SMASH them.
