It was January and she wouldn’t start work at the Centre again until the end of March. These winter breaks were usually welcome because they meant she could become Lillian again, but this time she couldn’t settle. Thanks to Rory’s persistence she had a smattering of computer knowledge, and if she didn’t exactly surf the net, at least she could dip a toe in it now and again. After a few defeats she managed to find some information about the Higher Seekers, just to satisfy her curiosity. They were an elite little organization, they believed in salvation through culture, and they didn’t just accept any passing refugee from the days of Flower Power. No standing at bus stations picking up lost teenagers with suspect promises for the Higher Seekers, they accepted only university graduates. Brain power mattered to the Higher Seekers, because they were ‘the chosen’ whatever that meant, and therefore no mongrels would be entertained, only pedigree stock. She wondered if some escapees from the Third Reich might have started it. Their headquarters was a commune in the middle of the Mojave Desert that they called Gabriel’s Gateway. She wondered why the Angel Wally hadn’t called it after himself, but maybe even he had spotted the consumer difficulty of putting that above the door. Behind the gate the Higher Seekers bought and sold international art collections and, in their spare time, meditated with ‘teachers’ until they too reached the status of angels. She had to admit that that was quite an eye-catching offer, it beat the Reader’s Digest selling techniques into a cocked hat, no problem! Other cults waited to be beamed up by some passing spacecraft and transported to Nirvana, but she’d never heard of one that promised each follower their own pair of wings! Other, lesser mortals, collected stamps, ran marathons or followed football teams, but not the Higher Seekers, they thought themselves towards personal means of flight! True, there was only one to date, dear old Wally who’d thought the wheeze up, but if the others were good, he had decreed, if they studied with their gurus and worked hard to rid themselves of outside influences, especially family and friends, one day they too would become angels. Not could, but would. Kathy kept thinking that for Peter the Messiah this would be a bit of a comedown, but still, he would look fetching in feathers. The group was self-sufficient and self-protective, and those who were permitted to join the so far solitary celestial ranks underwent a long apprenticeship, being sent to hellholes all over the world, but hellholes carefully and strictly controlled by the cult. She remembered odd reports of Peter being seen in various countries, Canada, Alaska, though no one ever knew what he actually did for a living, even those who had encountered him in these unlikely locations couldn’t say, because Peter had managed not to fully answer their questions. Well, cult orders could certainly explain his globetrotting. And there were those postcards that arrived less and less often, much prized by Old Aggie as proof that her grandson was special, was somebody. There had been something about that too on the Internet, something written by an ex-Higher Seeker. She clicked on the ‘back’ symbol, and there it was. In the first three years contact with family and former lives was scaled down to the minimum, but after five years there was a rule that it must stop completely. If they survived this weeding process they were excused duty in the far-flung cult spots of the globe and taken to Gabriel’s Gateway, which sounded like Heaven, Valhalla and Utopia rolled into one. There were strict rules governing how many pictures could be put on walls, and what sort; pop art was strictly banned. The only approved music was classical and, of course, the staple of all dictatorial regimes, newspapers, magazines and books were banned, as were radio and TV, and marriages were only permitted from inside the cult. It was very difficult to see what possible attraction any of this held for anyone and, inevitably, there were some who did escape, poor, disillusioned souls, still partly brainwashed, who were pursued and told in writing that they would die horrible deaths.
When Harry had first told her about Peter’s life in California, Kathy had laughed at the thought of him being involved in anything so bizarre, but the more she learned, the more uncomfortable she felt. There must be an angle, she decided. Peter couldn’t have fallen for anything like this unless he was making something out of it, unless he was the first and only angel, for instance, reaping the rewards as the drones laboured in the vineyards. Still, it would be nice to know. Swallowing her pride she called one or two religious organizations and, bit by bit, was put in touch with groups that kept tabs on cults. The chap on the other end of the phone was kind and patient as she told her story. She explained what Peter was like, said it had to be a mistake, and finally the chap sighed wearily at the end of the phone.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me he’s the last person you’d expect to join something like this. That’s what every relative in your position says.’
‘But, honestly,’ she protested, ‘Peter has a very strong character, he had big ideas, he was going places.’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said sympathetically, ‘that he’s perhaps being held against his will. Every relative thinks that too. But the fact is that it’s the strong characters who get caught up in these things. They’re the ones who have high expectations of life, high ideals, and they’re on the lookout for something, for an alternative outlook on life, even if they don’t know what it is. Often they’re caught at a vulnerable time in their lives, a turning point of some sort. Along comes this nice person, usually attractive, articulate, persuasive, and that’s that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned working in this area, it’s that we don’t know people as well as we think we do, even if we’re close to them they can do things that astound us.’
‘So, you’re saying, “Never say ‘Never’“, are you?’ Kathy asked.
‘I suppose I am,’ he said. ‘There have been times when I’ve said about my own family that he or she would never do this or say that, but these days I stop myself, because I know better. Believe me, nobody really knows anybody, very few of us even know ourselves come to that, and I’m not being philosophical, I’m being realistic. I’ve done and said bizarre things in my life that I’ve looked back on years later and thought how out of character they were. I’m sure you’ve done just the same.’
At her end of the phone Kathy nodded; the man spoke no lies. She thought back to a conversation she had had with her aunt. Jessie, who missed nothing, had remarked approvingly that there had never been any gossip about her niece’s morals, that Kathy had been too smart to give anyone grounds to question her good name. What might Jessie say if she knew about her out-of-character stupidity with Jamie Crawford, and the contents of Lily’s red box? And Kathy was sure Jessie didn’t know, because if she had, she would have said so. A whore Jessie might once have been, indeed there was no doubt about it, a whore she had been, yet Jessie Bryson was the most honest and strangely moral individual Kathy had ever known, her only regret was that it had taken so long to get to know her. And add to that all the other people she’d got wrong in her life, and how many people had got her wrong. When you really thought about it, human beings, unlike cats, were generally rotten judges of character.
‘And there’s something else you should consider,’ the cult chap broke into her thoughts. ‘It may seem incredible to you, you may think your brother’s been hoodwinked and brainwashed, and he probably has, because groups that take over complete control of other people’s lives and minds, down to telling them what they can read, have to be suspect. But perhaps this cult suits your brother, perhaps he’s actually happy.’
‘I never thought of that,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t managed to get past the disbelief yet.’
‘That takes time,’ he said. ‘Relatives find it hard to come to terms with losing someone, because that’s often what it’s like, a death in the family. Often that’s how it will remain. We usually advise families to keep writing letters, to maintain one-sided contact if that’s what it turns out to be. Even if they get no replies it reminds those inside cults that there is a life outside, and even if they seem to have rejected it, it does still exist. But from what you’ve to
ld me, your brother’s been with the Higher Seekers for a very long time. My honest advice to you would be to settle for the death-in-the-family approach.’
What she hadn’t told the helpful, sympathetic chap was that she was still quite likely to collapse with laughter at the thought of it. There was a part of her that thought if it had to happen to someone, then it couldn’t have happened to a better bloke than Peter Kelly. It was so ironic; Peter Kelly who knew everything better than anyone, everyone else, even about their own lives, was now living a regimented life and being ordered about himself. But gradually she laughed less and wondered more; there had to be something wrong. She had examined Harry’s business card many times, looked at the telephone, then looked away again. It was in the early hours of one morning, with the ghostly strains of ‘Pedro the Fisherman’ having once again roused her from her sleep that she finally dialled Harry’s mobile number. He answered on the first ring.
‘Ah hope ye wernae asleep?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Harry replied mystically. ‘I was pondering a client’s problem. I never sleep until the answer has been revealed to me by the forces.’
‘For God’s sake shut it, Harry,’ she thought. ‘Harry, son,’ she said kindly. ‘This client o’ yours, the wan that’s Peter’s mother-in-law, I need ye tae put me in touch wi’ her.’
There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone. ‘I can’t do that!’ he replied, aghast.
‘Course ye can!’ she said encouragingly. ‘Look, it’s simple, son. Tell her the forces brought me tae you, the same forces that brought her tae you. It’s the forces that want us tae meet. See whit Ah mean?’
From the silence at the end of the phone she guessed that she had half-convinced him. ‘We won’t tell her that we’re related, or that you’re related to Peter, see? It’ll be, um—’
‘Irrelevant,’ he offered helpfully.
‘Exactly! An’ it’s true, isn’t it, Harry? Somethin’ higher than oorsels must’ve preordained this.’ She closed her eyes and cringed. ‘Ah mean, there’s her, worried aboot her lassie, an’ here’s me, worried aboot ma brother, an’ we’re baith in touch wi’ you, the wan person that knows where they are an’ whit they’re daein’. Noo, if there’s no’ mystic forces involved in that, well, Ah don’t know!’
‘I could give her your number and tell her that you’ve come to me with similar concerns, and that I think you could help each other through me,’ he mused. ‘But I can’t see that she needs to know that we’re cousins, it might make it sound as if there’s some kind of collusion.’
‘An’,’ Kathy continued the thought, ‘we know it’s they mystic forces, daen’t we?’
‘OK, I can do that!’ he announced.
Kathy put the phone down. ‘Just as well, son,’ she muttered. ‘Ma next move was to threaten tae tell yer Mammy!’
It was two days before Margery Nairn called from Bearsden. She sounded like her name, and she sounded like Bearsden, a no nonsense lady of means from a respectable suburb of Glasgow. Kathy’s number had been passed to her by ‘Hari’ – there was a subtle difference in the pronunciation, a kind of breathless note. Kathy assumed her best polite accent.
‘I believe that you and I may be related in a way,’ she said. ‘My brother Peter is, if I understand Hari –’ ye gods! – ‘correctly, married to your daughter Rose?’
‘Yes! Isn’t Hari wonderful? How does he know these things?’
‘You should see him with Find the Lady, sweetheart!’ Kathy thought. ‘I know what you mean!’ she lied in her affected voice. ‘And there are some people who refuse to accept there’s anything in what he does, that he’s a crank. Would you believe that?’
‘I know, I know!’ said Margery Nairn. ‘But they’re in denial, the thought that he’s in touch with powers beyond the normal is too much for their closed minds to take in, that’s how I think of it!’
‘Could I perhaps come and see you, Mrs Nairn?’
‘Margery, please.’ She was talking to a fellow believer, after all.
‘Margery,’ Kathy beamed down the phone, hoping the aura would arrive undimmed at the other end. ‘I have concerns too, perhaps we can help each other now that Hari has acted as our conduit?’
‘Absolutely! You and I are fellow travellers, Miss Kelly.’
‘Oh, please, Kathy!’
‘Kathy, then. With Hari’s help I know we can get to where the forces want us to be!’
‘My thinking precisely, Margery!’ she said. ‘Kathy Kelly, ye’re a right bloody liar!’ she said to herself as she laid the receiver down again. ‘An’ ye wondered where “Hari” got it frae?’
When she told Rory she was going away again, he greeted the news with a look. She needed to finalise matters arising from her father’s death, she said, and he nodded, though she knew he didn’t really believe her. But would he, she wondered, believe the real story if she told it to him? Brother Peter? Sister Rose? Mystic Hari? Margery Nairn’s house was very similar to Jessie’s, though neither would’ve accepted that, given the traditional and neverending antipathy that existed between those who lived on Glasgow’s South and West sides. There might be no visible dividing wall running down the city, but it was there. Margery was a tall, thin woman in her late sixties, with pale, lined skin and huge glasses covering a fair part of her face. She was neat and ladylike in a grey skirt and pale blue twin set. Her hair had been dyed a discreet blonde and carefully coiffed in an immaculate French roll at the back of her head. Looking at her, Kathy doubted if Margery had financed the buying of her house in quite the same way as Jessie had hers, and it came as no surprise that she had once been a teacher, as had her husband, though she had been a widow for almost twenty years now. Was that, Kathy wondered, the beginning of her interest in the likes of her daft cousin, a turning point of loneliness and grief in her life? Still, better mad Hari than some winged wonder, surely? Her only child, Rose, a student of archaeology, had been on an exchange year at a Californian University in 1967. There she had met a psychology lecturer, Peter Kelly, and after a very short courtship Rose had called to say they had been married. Naturally, Margery had been concerned about this. Rose was barely nineteen and away from home, while Peter was an experienced twenty-five-year-old whom Margery had never met, so to satisfy herself she had gone out to meet her new son-in-law. For her part, Kathy was shattered. He had been home in the mid-sixties, just before Lily died in 1968, so Peter was a married man by then. Margery had been reassured, apparently. She had been afraid that Rose had married some weird American, but Peter was Scottish and, what was more, he was an intelligent, ambitious young man. ‘He was very charismatic, very much the toast of the campus, always surrounded by students, and very young to be in the position he was in,’ Margery smiled. Kathy could see that; it was definitely her brother they were talking about. He and Rose looked to have a good future ahead of them, and at first they had travelled, taking part in unspecified ‘projects’ in universities across America. Gradually their travels had taken them outside the United States, and there had been reasonable enough contact, given their busy, nomadic life, until some years ago. Letters from Rose and Peter had become fewer, less frequent, and those that did arrive never seemed to tally with the letters Margery had sent, as requested, to a PO Box number. Questions she had asked in her letters remained unanswered, and her growing concerns unaddressed. ‘The letters seemed to me,’ Margery said, ‘like the sort of thing some people send out with Christmas cards. You know the kind of thing, newsletters rather than personal letters to your own mother.’ So Margery had consulted Hari, knowing that his mystic powers were legendary, and he had been able to tell her that the PO Box number she had been given was the address of some group calling themselves the Higher Seekers. Intrigued, she had tried to find out who or what this was. She had contacted some of Rose’s old university friends at home, and was shocked to find out that in the intervening years, her daughter and son-in-law had been back in Scotland several times, often on lengthy sta
ys, and she had known nothing about it. The friends too had concerns, they felt Rose’s behaviour towards them had been vaguely odd, though they couldn’t say why, it was hard to put a finger on. At a recent university reunion a number of her old friends had got together and were swapping gossip, and when they related their individual tales of her odd behaviour they realised it hadn’t been personal, that it was common to all of them. But they didn’t know what any of it meant, and even if they did, what could they do? All they had was an uneasy feeling that things weren’t quite, well, right. What did they have any right to do? She was a grown woman who had made her own choices just like the rest of them, what right did they have to nosey into her life and ask her to explain herself? The Higher Seekers had never been mentioned to any of them, but some of them had formed the impression that Rose was involved in ‘something’. And that, Margery Nairn said, was as far as she’d got, though dear Hari had told her that her daughter was content and happy and, of course, she believed him. But still.
Chasing Angels Page 30
