Maybe I will be run over by a speeding car, she thinks. It would be worth a broken leg. Or a few ribs. She doubts that will actually happen, though. Then it occurs to her that if the Pentecostal fire they were always asking for fell on the congregation at this very moment, everyone would be so occupied with praising the Lord and dancing and being slain by the Spirit they wouldn’t notice the time until it was too late to go out. And surely the flames of the Holy Spirit would engulf the whole village, not just the new estate, and then everyone would be saved. Now the fellowship takes up the hymn her mother has started. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, they all sing. Praise Him with the cymbals.
Tirzah decides to absent herself from the rest of the meeting; her body will be there, playing the tambourine and handing out tracts, but the real her will be off somewhere else, lying in the bouncy little whinberry bushes on the summit of the mountain maybe, looking up at the clouds rolling across the grey sky. She is going to make the journey, in her mind, from the chapel schoolroom, all the way to the mountain top, noting every small thing as she travels. This will take ages. Especially if she stops to look at the view or pick berries or make a flower chain. So off she goes with the group, looking at her shoes as they walk to the door, a part of her brain aware that the outreachers are marching forth from the schoolroom. There is Osian and another big boy firmly holding up the banner, and everyone falls in behind. She can hear murmurs as they talk amongst themselves, but by the time they get to the new estate they are silent. With the other part of her brain, Tirzah can sense herself withdrawing, hovering high above the knot of outreachers. As if from far away, Tirzah hears Mr Pascoe ventilating his squeezebox and playing an introductory line. People struggle to find the right note. It’s surprising how weak the sound is outdoors, even though they are singing And Can It Be, which is a belter. The voices waver up to her like damp campfire smoke, and disappear in the fresh air. Even the bass lines of the deacons can scarcely be heard. In her imagination, Tirzah has reached the long, steep lane she and Osian always used to take to the derelict pub near the boundary of the forest. Today she has so much time she decides to push through the overgrown hedge that surrounds the pub garden and have a look around. It’s like being a ghost; she can drift easily from one place to the next, and no one can stop her. The hymn dies away, almost as if the fellowship had forgotten the tune, and Pastor starts to preach. Tirzah can see net curtains moving and a group of children on bicycles coming to listen. This level of interest is surprising; in the old village, all doors stay firmly closed. Even the kids playing in the streets are indifferent when an outreach meeting is on. Tirzah concentrates on the pub garden. Two sheep are grazing the lush, dandelion-studded grass. It’s so quiet, she can hear their jaws working, and the juicy scrunch as they chew. Crows are sitting in a dead tree like scruffy ornaments.
Tirzah can make out, over the squawks of the watching birds, the voice of Pastor shouting reedily that all have sinned and come short of something. Hell is real, lost ones! she can hear him yell, his voice almost plaintive. Repent ye! But on the mountainside, sin and punishment, hymns and prayers and Bibles all seem irrelevant. The mountain is ancient and knows other things, she thinks, gazing round at the tall bracken leaning over the hedges. And who’s to say they are not true? Its folds and green nooks, the little glades and runs no one sees, are always giving out something she can’t quite understand. But she can sense it, smell it even. The open spaces, the short, gnarled hawthorns rooted in the red earth, the old, empty sheep skulls with their wind-fingered jaws, the secret nests of animals, all fill Tirzah with a sense of the limitless, ungraspable splendour of the world. It’s as if a new dawn had split the sky, now, towards the end of a ghastly, ordinary day, and she is a glowing, freshly hatched creature. I wish poor Osian could see. This has nothing to do with the God of our chapel.
Tirzah can just make out Pastor summing up his message. God bless you all, dear friends, he’s shouting. Remember, God is love. Hell is real! Then Mr Pascoe starts the last hymn. How anyone who is not born into this could swallow these teachings, Tirzah does not know, feeling uncomfortable to countenance such a thought. Now she is being drawn back down into the valley by an invisible thread that is snagged around the chambers of her heart. She wants to hold on to the glow emanating from her body, clutch at the derelict garden, the draggled, peaceful sheep and the crow-hung tree, but they all recede. She can hear a jingly, whacking kind of sound, and with a shock, realises she is playing her tambourine with energy and commitment. Crash! go the metal cymbals around its wooden rim. Up and round fly the ribbons. The song winds on and on, and soon they are back at the schoolroom.
Sit down, beloveds, Pastor shouts, sit down all. He has his usual patches of paler skin on each cheekbone. Ladies come out of the kitchen with trays of cake. There is a party atmosphere. I think we all agree who should have the biggest portion of cake and the first cup of tea, he says, walking towards Tirzah. She is confused when he hands her a triangle of Victoria sponge on which the icing sugar sits like untrodden snow. You of all people, dear Tirzah, he tells her, you alone played your humble instrument with grace today. Never have I seen the tambourine played to the glory of God in such a way. Like King David, you were, before the Almighty. Let this be a lesson to us all. The Lord can use even the weakest vessel to do His will. Tirzah looks around at the bright-eyed congregation. You were a conduit today, Pastor says. A conduit for love. Let us pray. Tirzah sits with her cup in one hand and plate in the other, aware of her staring, open-mouthed parents, as Pastor gives thanks for her witness, and imagines she is standing on the mountain top. She sees herself, a doll-like, shining figure, her heart bubbling with joy, walking towards an immense Something with her arms raised, looking at what might be the face of another sort of god.
Any That Pisseth Against the Wall
(1 Samuel 25:22)
The day after Tirzah’s tambourine and cake experience, she is finishing breakfast. Dada has left for work, and her mother sits down and says they are going to have someone to stay. Her parents have never volunteered to give a room to one of the needy before; her mother always said their house was too small whenever Pastor made one of his appeals. It would be nice to have a girl, Tirzah says. Not a girl, her mother answers, looking a little shifty. A boy actually. But where will he sleep? Tirzah asks. Your father will explain tonight, her mother says, now busy at the sink. It’s the right thing to do, and I thank the Lord for revealing it to me. But, Mam, Tirzah says, carrying things to be washed, you must know more than that. Don’t I have a right to know? Her mother turns the hot tap off vigorously. The right, child? she says. What right? I’ve heard it all now. I’ll rights you a smacked bum sandwich if you are not careful. Big as you are. She raises her hand as if to strike Tirzah’s cheek. No, count up to ten, Mair, she says under her breath. Tirzah is tickled by her mother and can’t help smiling. Go, now! her mother shouts. Before I really let go. Naughty girl! Rights indeed. I knew your recent blessing wouldn’t last.
The girls meet in the tree house to talk. Are you having anybody? Tirzah asks. Nope, Biddy says, nibbling on a biscuit. This is typical, Tirzah thinks. Only my parents will go the extra five hundred miles. It’s not fair. Uncle Maldwyn and Aunty Ceinwen don’t seem to get bothered by the Lord’s revelations. I s’pose he’ll be put up in your box room, Biddy says. The box room is tiny. Tirzah wonders if a bed would even fit in it. I hope he’s a small boy, Biddy adds, licking her fingers. For his sake. Through a gap in the wooden slats, Tirzah squints at the tiny green plum blobs clustered all over the branches that not long ago were pillowed with blossom. Everything is suddenly irritating; her house will be uncomfortable with a stranger in it. She won’t like it. Perhaps he’ll be a bit of all right and you’ll fall in love with him, Biddy suggests. Don’t be so stupid, Tirzah says. I’m going home.
The boy arrives on Saturday. Tirzah and her mother have been hard at work, sorting the box room out. Someone has donated a narrow bed, and the old chair is a bedside table. Ti
rzah found a copy of Biggles Learns to Fly, and an old Dandy annual in the attic for the boy to read. She doesn’t know if he will be interested, but it’s the best she can do. There is no lamp, though – just the ceiling light. Well, says Tirzah’s mother, we’ve never claimed to be the Ritz, but it’ll do. Clean and paid for, and better than the street. She is flapping about with a duster, doing a final once-over when there’s a knock at the door. They both run downstairs and are just in time to take their places behind Dada in the narrow hall. Through the dimpled glass they can make out a tall, bulky shape. Tirzah suddenly feels an extreme reluctance to see who it is. Dad, she says, pulling her father’s sleeve. Don’t open it. Her father doesn’t reply. Oh, Gwyll, her mother whispers. Are we doing the right thing? Silence, both of you, he says; remember, this is one of the lost, and he flings the door open. Tirzah peers round her father and sees a pockmarked, underfed young man leaning against the doorframe, carrying a duffel bag. O’right? he says, baring his uneven teeth in a grin. This isn’t a boy, Tirzah thinks. Her mother sways, and Tirzah has to support her.
Later, the three of them sit around the kitchen table with the door closed. Now then, Tirzah’s father says in a loud whisper, exaggeratedly moving his lips, eyebrows rising and falling rapidly. This is a test of our faith. It would be vain to deny it. Derry is not as we expected him to be. The Lord has His mysterious ways. Tirzah can hear the music from Derry’s radio tumbling down the stairs and seeping under the door. Never before has this sort of sound been allowed in the house. The beat is keeping time with her heart. But we were told a little boy, Gwyll, her mother says, starting to cry. I was looking forward to a nice little boy. It isn’t seemly to have a grown man under our roof. Enough, her father says in his normal voice. Dry up, please. He isn’t a grown man. He is nineteen. Still a boy until twenty-one in my eyes. Mind you, what Pastor was thinking, handing something like this our way, I don’t know. If I were a lesser man, I would suspect him of having a laugh at our expense. We will have to trust the Lord to protect us. And especially you, Tirzah. You must be on your guard at all times. Why me? Tirzah thinks. I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning. She blushes, thinking of the Dandy and Biggles she put in his room before they knew he was Derry-the-man.
Her father begins a sermon about the Devil’s wiles. Tirzah sits, looking exactly as a good girl should. Just as she expected, her father starts on about stupid old lust, boring old sin and the terrible flesh. Let us pray, he concludes. She and her mother clasp hands and bow their heads. Oh Lord, her father starts, his voice vibrating with emotion, protect us, thy most humble servants. He lays a sweating hand on Tirzah’s head. Especially this pure, untouched maiden, dear Father. Tirzah struggles to control the desire to shake his hand off her head and give him a piece of her mind. Amen, they all say. Going up to bed, Tirzah can smell dirty clothes, cigarette smoke and what must be some sort of deodorant spray in the stairwell. On the landing she pauses; the bathroom door is open and she can sense the man is in there.
She decides to walk to her room as if nothing is wrong, but when she passes the bathroom she can’t help herself, and looks in. Derry is peeing through the gap in his Y-fronts, his discarded trousers in a heap behind him. The sound is like someone throwing a full bucket of water down the toilet. She can see he is holding his penis in his fist, the arc of urine bursting from its tip a deep yellow. Derry swivels his head to look at her, keeping his chin tucked in, and watches her as she watches until the flow dwindles and finally stops. O’right? he says, giving his penis a small shake, as if to include it in the greeting. Howzit goin’? She can’t move for a moment. The scars on his face look like fork marks in uncooked pastry. Well, well, well, he adds, as if speaking to himself, giving her a good, slow, up-and-down inspection. Things in by here are takin’ a turn for the better, don’ you think? The sight of his grin releases her and she stumbles past to her room.
Tirzah slams the door and leans against it. In the dark, she stills her breathing the better to hear what’s happening on the landing. First the toilet flushes, then the light is clicked off. Derry’s footsteps move towards the box room, but then she senses him changing direction. For a few paralysed moments she listens to him whistling between his teeth outside her door, and then he walks away. She can’t move until she’s sure he’s in his room. When she’s convinced he has gone, she allows herself to slide down and sit on the floor. Tirzah isn’t at all sleepy now. It’s as if someone has given her a shot of something and now she is more alive than usual. Looking round the room, she searches for something to secure her door with and decides the chair will be perfect, wedging its top bar under the handle. Then she quickly undresses and lies down to ponder on what she saw in the bathroom. So, that’s a penis, she thinks. That thing like one of Mr Bayliss the butcher’s raw pork sausages? How could I have just stood there and gawped like that? She busies herself with plaiting her hair, trying to think of other things. But when she’s drifting off to sleep she thinks about Derry’s penis with its helmet-shaped tip. Well, admit it, girl, she sleepily concedes. You are a little bit disappointed.
In her dreams, Tirzah is in a chapel both like, and strangely not like, her own. She realises the walls are the trunks of immensely tall fir trees. Up where the roof should be is a small rectangle of white sky. If Tirzah cranes her neck and squints, she can just make out a bird circling far above. There is a sermon going on, but no one stands in the pulpit. All the congregation are present, still and quiet. When Tirzah studies them, they are like wooden replicas of themselves. There are the little kneeling wooden figures of the Pastor’s boys, bending over their notebooks, and sure enough, Pastor’s wife sits beside them, strangling herself with a stiff hand. Everyone is in their place, blank faces upturned to the empty pulpit. Tirzah looks at her own hands below the cuffs of her blouse; she is the only one made of flesh and blood.
Then she becomes aware of a slow, lumbery movement at her feet and looks down. Coiling and uncoiling on the floorboards is a short, strong-looking snake. The snake’s blunt mouth end has no eyes but seems to know the route. Up it moves, pink scales winking, around and around Tirzah’s naked leg, with a firm grip. Tirzah stares, wide-eyed as the snake noses its way under her skirt, and observes the demure smile on its mouth. She squeezes her thighs together, but the snake is too strong. Slowly she relaxes her muscles. I suppose this snake is harmless, she thinks, and rests her head back. The snake is butting his head on the gusset of her pants. She can feel herself melting into the pew, her breathing slow, her legs slack. Then there is a cataclysmic flash and the smell of burning. The moment before she wakes, Tirzah realises that this time, where the sky had been, a huge eye, lashless as a bird’s, has appeared and, not unkindly, is examining her.
Flee Also Youthful Lusts
(2 Timothy 2:22)
Derry slips into their lives, with them, but not with them. Tirzah’s mother makes his meal and keeps it warm for him in the oven. When he gets home from work around seven o’clock, he takes the dried-out plate of food to his room. In the morning he’s up and out before anybody is awake. So apart from encounters on the landing or at the front door, Tirzah hardly ever sees him. Still, the smell of him, his hissy sort of whistling and the sound of his radio remind her there is a stranger in the house. If she comes downstairs in her nightdress, her mother sends her straight back to her room to put a dressing gown on. She can’t relax like she used to. He was out all last Sunday, but today he is hanging around.
Earlier, her father had told Derry the times of the services. Derry was out in the back garden, squatting against the empty rockery wall having a smoke. Tirzah watched from the bathroom window as her father, in his dark Sunday suit, came out and theatrically took several sniffs at the thin, early air, pretending to survey the catastrophic garden for a while before addressing Derry. Poor Dada, she thought, looking at the way his Brylcreemed black hair shone, please don’t say anything. But he’d issued the invitation to Derry and called him dear boy. Tirzah’s cheeks flamed as she heard
Derry say without emphasis, Isno’ gonna ’appen, mate, save your breath. He hadn’t even troubled himself to stand when he spoke. Tirzah wanted to cry at the sight of the brave, dipping movement of her father’s chin, and the way he stood for a minute, humming, before disappearing back into the house. She’d stayed at the window and breathed in the smoke from Derry’s cigarette, watching him cough up phlegm and spit it into the garden’s only patch of flowers.
Later, as the congregation stands to sing, Tirzah clutches a hymn book to her coat. Horeb is full this morning, and the men thunder away at the bass line. This usually makes Tirzah shiver with delight, but she is locked into a new way of thinking and can barely hear the singing. The memory of the dream is still with her, and it makes her self-conscious. It’s as if the fellowship has only to look at her face and they will guess her shameful, secret thoughts. She feels again the knocking of the dream-snake at the gusset of her pants. Something is happening to Tirzah, and she understands she is becoming a different person. You can never unknow something once you know it, she thinks. And I can’t look at any man in the same way now I know what a penis is like. She had never really thought of Osian as having a penis. The idea of him carrying around a little pink thing in his trousers like all the other men in the world makes her dejected and anxious. Anyway, it isn’t right, thinking about Osian in this way any more. He certainly would not like her to.
Tirzah and the Prince of Crows Page 10
