In the car park he stacks his purchases in the boot of his car, and returns to his catering department, consuming a Bounty bar on the way. Most of the lunch hour has gone, but something hot will have been kept back for him in the kitchens, as he requested earlier. ‘Sorry to give you the bother,’ he apologizes when a plate of gammon and parsley sauce, creamed potatoes and sauced cauliflower is placed in front of him. ‘Had a bit of business to attend to. I’ll have to stay late to catch up on the figures.’
He does not intend to do that. He intends to drive down to the Marshring area in the hope of a sighting. As he eats, and afterwards in his cubicle of an office, an anger he has suppressed gradually begins to seep through his defences. Anyone could have seen her hurrying away from Number Three. He broke his rule for her, and then that: hardly evidence of gratitude, after she’d been driven upwards of a hundred and ten miles, with cups of tea paid for, and all that guff about some woman left a widow seventy-five years ago patiently listened to. And although it should be, it’s no satisfaction to know that the boyfriend has been guilty of porkies.
Unable to help himself, Mr Hilditch imagines this soldier, tidy in his uniform and engaged in cheerful afternoon fatigues. He envisages him off duty later on, relaxing with his mates, feet up on a table in the day room of the barracks, the kind of camaraderie he had once looked forward to himself, before the recruiting sergeant with the bladelike moustache rejected him because of his feet and his eyesight. With his legs still cocked up in front of him, ankles crossed, the young thug guffaws that keen bints like the one he had are two a penny, pick them off the bushes, no problem at all. And one of his companions looks up from Big Ones and recalls the first time he’d had it, with a fat nurse behind a public house, the Flight of Birds up Scunthorpe way, a summer’s evening. Another of them throws in that the first time he had it he was thirteen, a plumber’s wife.
At a quarter to six Mr Hilditch drives down to the Marshring area and waits for a while in his parked car. ‘Thanks very much,’ was what she said as she scuttled off. ‘I hope it’ll be all right about your wife.’
At ten past six he drives away again, disappointed.
No iron bars are needed, for all the animals are at peace with the happy people. The lion and the lamb are friends. See those brightly coloured birds as they flit here and there! Hear their beautiful song and the children’s laughter filling the air! Smell the fragrance of those flowers, hear the rippling of the stream, feel the tingling warmth of the sun! Oh, for a taste of the fruit in that basket, for it is the best that the earth can produce, the very best, like everything that is seen and enjoyed in this glorious garden…
The happy people, the flowers and animals and fruit, are brightly illustrated on the cover of the brochure. Flamingos stalk about, rabbits nibble grass but not the flowers. A child hugs a swan, yachts sail on a distant lake.
‘That, now, is the paradise earth,’ a black woman asserts, a long forefinger drawing Felicia’s attention to a trickling waterfall, to giraffes and then to cockatoos. The black woman is tall and slender, with rings on several of her fingers, and earrings. ‘That is the promise and the place,’ she states, ‘of the Father Lord.’
‘Yes,’ Felicia agrees.
‘Come with us, child. You hear of the Flood, honey? Noah in his Ark? You hear of that?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘The Flood is a proved event,’ the black woman reminds her.
‘Yes, I understand.’
Only a few other people are about. Gusts of wind blow the litter into the doorways of shops. It is colder than it has been.
‘Where you live?’ the black woman peremptorily demands. ‘You have rooms going spare there?’
Felicia replies that she is a stranger: she has been lodging in bed-and-breakfast places. She reaches for her carrier bags and says she must be getting on.
‘Where you go off to, child? Where you run in a hurry from the Father Lord?’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
It is late in the day. She has to find another bed-and-breakfast place, in an area that isn’t familiar to her. The more she moves about the more chance she has of running into the person she is looking for: she explains that, but the black woman doesn’t understand. She doesn’t listen. She says there is happiness for the one who dies.
‘Child, we live in a miracle. Look here at this garden, honey. See the fruits of the trees and the peoples of all nations. See the juice to drink and the smiles of the children. Look, child, the Father Lord is gathering all things in.’
‘I have to get a room for the night.’
‘I can offer you a room, child. No charge made. Miss Tamsel Flewett is gone and I have the knowledge in my heart she is gone from us for ever. A lady from Jamaica don’t go down too well on her own when she rings folks’ doorbells.’
Again the leaflets are pressed on Felicia, the heavenly picture of fruit and flamingos and well-behaved rabbits.
‘No, really. I’m sorry.’
‘What things you have to do, child? What things more important than the work of the Father Lord?’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘There’s all kinds stay at the Gathering House. You need a pillow for your head? Well, here we have it for you, honey. I do not like to see you sitting out here in the wind, a prey to the coming night.’
Felicia feels tired. She fell asleep, just sitting there on the wooden seat, and even dreamed: that they were in Sheehy’s again, the first time he took her there, that they were at the Creagh crossroads, in the warm little back bar. She should have insisted when she went to see Mrs Lysaght. She should have told her everything, and refused to leave without the full address. She should have screamed at her and made a scene. After all, it is Mrs Lysaght’s grandchild.
‘Come with me, honey,’ the black woman commands in her firm manner, and Felicia goes with her because it’s easier than looking for somewhere else. ‘Miss Calligary,’ the black woman introduces herself. ‘It isn’t far.’
She hurries them through deserted streets to a brick-built house in a row with others. She leads the way upstairs, to an attic with pictures on the walls that are similar to the brochure illustration. Miss Calligary’s clothes hang from two rows of hooks on either side of a casement window, dresses and skirts and coats. Her shoes are neatly in line along one of the walls. A suitcase, on the floor also, bulges with underclothes and other possessions. The only pieces of furniture in the attic are two upright chairs, a trestle-table and a narrow bed. ‘I’m forever on the move,’ Miss Calligary explains. ‘I gather in where the Message leads me.’
She prepares a meal of tuna fish and salad, and when they have eaten this food she makes tea. They drink it, then wash the dishes up in an enamel basin. Miss Calligary disposes of the dregs from the teapot, and the tea-leaves, in a small lavatory on a half landing, pouring away the washing-up water here also. No sound comes from the rooms below.
‘It’s quiet in the Gathering House tonight,’ Miss Calligary comments. ‘Each and every one is out and about.’
‘Do a lot of people live here?’
‘Black and white, child, old and young. All that are called to gather in.’
Later these people return. The hall door bangs frequently. Voices exchange greetings. A piano plays a hymn tune. An odour of food cooking rises to Miss Calligary’s attic.
‘Love! Joy! Peace!’ So exclaiming, a man in a maroon anorak smiles a welcome at Felicia when, an hour later, Miss Calligary leads her into a large, unfurnished downstairs room. Others come up and shake her hand: black and white, as Miss Calligary has said, old and young. A bed-roll, Felicia is told, will be spread out for her in the room where the people are now congregated, the Gathering Room it is known as. A girl called Agnes, with softly tinted fingernails and trim black hair, reveals that she’s in dental care, but would prefer to devote all her time to distributing the Message.
‘Mourning will be no more,’ Agnes avers. ‘Nor outcry nor pain. When we have
gathered together, when it is known again by all that a future awaits the one who dies.’
Every evening, she further reveals, the people meet in the Gathering Room in order to exchange their day’s experiences. An elderly Ethiopian relates his to Felicia, most of them to do with the ringing of doorbells. ‘You are not amongst us by chance,’ he adds, ‘for there is nothing that can happen but by the Commandment that began in the garden of pleasure. Adam was taken from out of the ground of the paradise earth, and the Commandment was drawn in the dust. Look close and see the serpent’s spit.’ The old man’s face is as wrinkled as a walnut, his darting eyes bloodshot. He nods at Felicia and passes on.
‘Bob’s the name.’ Small and balding, the man who addresses her next is the man in the maroon anorak. ‘Ours is the bed-roll,’ he now declares. ‘Ruthie’s and mine. We keep it for newcomers, since not long ago we were newcomers ourselves. We met in this room, Ruthie and myself. We were married from this house. Our children were born in our upstairs room. Two beautiful children. It is they who will bring down the bed-roll.’
‘Everyone is pleased that you have come to us,’ a tall woman assures Felicia. The woman’s breath is sweet, as if scented. She pushes her face close to Felicia’s, articulating her confidences clearly. ‘I was lost as in a forest until the Way was revealed to me through the Message.’
A Japanese man says his name is Mr Hikuku. Felicia can’t understand anything else he says, but the woman with the sweet breath explains that he works among the people of the East, bringing them the Message. He lives modestly in the Gathering House, the woman adds, in one small room, sharing lavatory and bath like everyone else. But in commercial terms Mr Hikuku is twice over a millionaire.
A middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs Priscatt, wear rimless spectacles and are similar in appearance, pale-faced and brownly dressed. Mr Priscatt’s brown suit is carefully pressed, his shirt is fresh and clean, his tie has a business emblem on it. Mrs Priscatt’s cardigan is a lighter shade of brown than the jumper beneath it, perfectly matching her pleated skirt. Unlike Miss Calligary and the other women who have congregated, she wears no jewellery.
Her husband, Mrs Priscatt informs Felicia, is in the claims department of the Eagle Star insurance company and is looking forward to retirement. She herself devotes all her time to the promulgation of their discovered faith. Mr Priscatt adds that it is heartening to welcome a new face.
‘You are pregnant with a child.’ The statement is neither a question nor an accusation. It is made by Mrs Priscatt, and both she and her husband nod their confirmation of the assumption before Felicia replies.
‘Yes,’ she agrees, feeling that in spite of their confidence in this matter some comment from her is required.
‘Mrs Priscatt can always tell.’ Accompanied by a sideways inclination of the head in his wife’s direction, Mr Priscatt’s tone is complimentary.
‘A girl child,’ Mrs Priscatt predicts, and Mr Priscatt suggests that Joanna is a lovely name.
Felicia is questioned then, and she passes on details of the circumstances that have overwhelmed her. Everything she says is sympathetically received, and later, when she has talked to other people in the room, she senses that already all of them know how her troubles have come about, although only the Priscatts have questioned her on the subject. Without condemnation, the knowledge is there in their expressions. A child will be born in the Gathering House, Felicia hears Bob whispering to Ruthie, another child born, as their own two beautiful children have been. Listening, not saying much herself, Felicia feels that all of it is more like a dream than reality, she has never in her life met people like this before, nor even known that such people exist.
One by one they bid her good-night and repeat that she is welcome. Pamphlets are left with her as reading matter, should she be wakeful. Her bed-roll arrives and thankfully she rests, her worries lost in oblivion.
11
Mr Hilditch has seen them about: nutters, is his view. He has noticed them on the streets, imposing their literature on people, bothering people with religious talk.
Somehow or other the girl has become entangled with them; certainly she’s lodging in their house because he has seen her entering it. An innocent girl from the bogs of Ireland, susceptible to any suggestion they’d make: what chance would she have under pressure like that? The only consolation is that the house she’s in is well away from the Old Hinley Road barracks, two miles at least, maybe two and a half. The lads from the barracks use the Goose and Gander, and Hinley Fish ‘n’ Chips at the Stoat roundabout, or else the Queen’s Head down Budder way. Mr Hilditch remembers that from the Elsie Covington days, when a young thug from the barracks had her out a couple of times. The area isn’t part of the town, never was. Apart from the barracks, there’s nothing much doing there: weekends or a heavy night out, the squaddies are on the motorway down to Brum.
Mr Hilditch plays ‘Falling in Love Again’ on his gramophone, then ‘Stella by Starlight’ and ‘Makin’ Whoopee’. The records are old seventy-eights: being an antique, the gramophone doesn’t play anything else. Mr Hilditch relaxes in an armchair, the Daily Telegraph – all of it read – on the carpet beside him, the melodies a solace in his worry about the well-being of the girl he has befriended. ‘Ev’ry rolling stone gets to feel alone,’ sings Doris Day, ‘When home sweet home is far away.’
Mr Hilditch calls this room his big front room, the expression used privately to himself because there never has been a call to use it to anyone else. The oil paintings of other people’s ancestors gaze benignly down at him. His billiard table, rarely used, is in a corner; a cabinet contains someone else’s collection of paperweights. Two grandfather clocks, wound every Thursday evening and adjusted daily, tick agreeably, one between the heavily curtained windows, the other by the door. On the black marble mantelpiece, above a mammoth electric fire with glowing coals, there are china mugs, and ornaments: a seal balancing a ball, ballet dancers, a comic orchestra of Dalmatians, highland cattle. The room’s wallpaper is mainly crimson, roses on a trellis. Books of military history, back numbers of the National Geographic magazine, bound volumes of Punch and the Railway and Travel Monthly fill a bookcase.
‘Never thought my heart could be so yearny,’ sings Doris Day. ‘Why did I decide to roam?’
The song concludes and the needle whines softly as the record continues to revolve. It’s a pleasant sound, Mr Hilditch considers and listens to it lazily, much calmer now than when he entered the room an hour ago. Tomorrow he’ll try again for an encounter.
For several days Felicia lodges in the Gathering House, leaving it every morning to make inquiries, to scan the faces on the streets and to travel to factories she has heard about, in other towns. Often she is sent in error to a factory that has changed its function, and in this way she becomes familiar with plant-hire yards, and sheds where diggers and tracked excavators are repaired, and engineering works where compressors and rammers are manufactured. In her continuing search for anywhere that has to do with lawn-mowers she passes by scrapyards in which old motorcars are disembowelled before being heaped on top of one another, and timber yards and builders’ yards and brewers’ yards. When she asks, she is sometimes told – if she happens to ask an elderly person – about the great mowers of the past: the days of the Dennis, and the Ransome and the Atco in their prime. Nothing is as it was then, such informants agree, shaking their heads over her hopeless task as if it, too, is an aspect of nothing being as it was.
Every evening in the Gathering Room the other inmates ask her if she has found her friend yet and she says no. No one comments and still no one condemns. She eats with Miss Calligary, as she did the first evening, and every morning Miss Calligary makes tea for both of them, and offers cornflakes and toast. Felicia guesses that Miss Calligary has been in touch with the Father Lord on her behalf, that Mr Hikuku has, and the woman with sweet breath, and the Priscatts, and Agnes and Bob and Ruthie, and the old Ethiopian whose face resembles a walnut. Joyful expectation g
reets her every evening when the people congregate, their concern for her apparent all over again, their forgiveness offered afresh: hers is the soul that has been saved on the premises; she is the sinner whose redemption is present for each and every one to witness. In the shining brightness of the Gatherers’ love an infant will be made aware of the Message and the Way, its infant’s inheritance the future of the one who dies, a girl child who shall be called Joanna.
The heady, unreal atmosphere becomes cloying in the end. Aware that her mute presence has misled the people of the Gathering House, Felicia does her best to dispel the illusion her arrival has engendered, but no one listens. And the more they do not do so the more it is borne in upon her that she is accepting their hospitality under false pretences. She is a pregnant girl who is desperately hunting for the father of her child: there’s no more to it than that.
So early one morning she goes, leaving a note on her bed-roll, thanking everyone. As she did before she was taken in at the Gathering House, she moves about then from one bed-and-breakfast place to another, changing districts in the hope of finding herself by chance in the neighbourhood of the missing address, still travelling by day to factories she has been advised about. You have all been good to me, the note she left behind in the Gathering House says, but when she catches a glimpse of Mr Hikuku on the street she feels guilty about leaving in the way she did. Once she catches a glimpse of the little green humpbacked car, and she feels guilty then too.
At the very last moment, when she is suddenly there one afternoon, asking directions of a couple with a guide-dog, prudence restrains Mr Hilditch from the encounter he has been anticipating with some fervour. All he has to do is to cross the street and say hullo when the couple have moved on. If he’s noticed by a local person to whom he is known, by sight or otherwise, the chances are that not much significance will be read into it, the assumption made that further directions are being given. But the fact remains that this is still home ground and you never know. No way could they walk an inch together on the street. And what if she turned her taps on, or acted familiar? And how much of value could be exchanged in the minute or two it would be safe for him to stand there in the broad light of day, gesturing as he supplies the directions the guide-dog couple have been unable to assist her with? It is contact enough, Mr Hilditch decides during his hesitation, to know she has left the religious set-up, which he can tell she has from the fact that she’s on the streets with her carriers again. Patience will bring her back to him. Sooner or later she’ll turn to him for help, since he has offered it.
Felicia's Journey Page 10
