by A. N. Wilson
Now, as she lay awake at midnight in her flat, she knew sadly that he would not come: she told herself that she must not now imagine where he was, or what he was doing. Above all she must resist the fantasy, or fear, that he was in fact perfectly happily married; that she, Rachel, was nothing more than his little bit on the side, that at that moment he was at home in bed with his wife, who was still very beautiful, making happy marital love. Such torment was caused by this idea that this alone, more than any other consideration, made her sometimes want to end her relationship with L.P., and to start again with someone else, someone normal, someone with whom she could go about openly, someone like Sinclo, who was clearly nuts about her.
It was at moments like this that she most intensely missed Kitty.
She tried to concentrate on reading. She was doing something she had never done before – reading the Odyssey. She had known many of the incidents and stories before – at her primary school, she had even acted a small play based on the scene when Odysseus slays the Cyclops and his men escape the giant’s cave under the belly of the sheep. She had never, until actually reading Homer, appreciated how intelligently the story was arranged. In particular, she liked the fact that when the gods came to earth, they came in disguise – so that the bright-eyed goddess Athene (played at her school, she recollected, by a clever girl called Rose) arrived, for example, at the court in Ithaca in the form of a stranger, Mentes, leader of the Taphians. ‘Chaire, xeine!’ was Telemachus’s greeting to this ‘man’, not knowing that ‘he’ was really the goddess who was directing his destiny. (Rachel was reading the Loeb edition: she had forgotten half her schoolgirl Greek, and so she read the English translation and dipped occasionally into the language of Homer him- or herself.)
Hail, stranger! What a brilliant way of mythologizing the strange shape life took, the way that our own lives, and those of our friends, appeared as stories. There were certain key moments of life-changing destiny in the existence of everyone – which could very well, if retold by Homer, be seen as points when a god landed from Olympus in the shape of another human being. At school, she had hummed and hawed about university until her French teacher, Miss Rice, simply told her to try for Oxford. It was a chance – but thereafter had come the friendship with Kitty Chell (her most important emotional attachment aged nineteen, far more important to her than boys she’d been ‘seeing’); and then – because she was in Oxford – she met L.P., and the rest of her life had been as it had been.
Rachel could not believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Sinai whom her ancestors, time out of mind, had worshipped. The Book of Job seemed to her a primary atheist text, because the arguments put forward by the one and only God for how He could allow such suffering as Job’s were so inadequate. Monism, the thought of one God, one Creator, one Shaper of human destiny, was not compatible with the idea of His also being one giver of Justice. Jewish history alone (quite apart from the general suffering of humanity) simply was not just. If you posited the idea of a God who was like the God of her spiritual ancestors, purity of mind and conscience forced you to an absolute atheism.
Yet, the human sense that there were destinies, patterns, even purposes, shimmering and hiding behind Nature’s curtain, and behind the events of our lives – the sense that coincidence was sometimes so strong as to be incomprehensible – this made, to Rachel, a very strong imaginative case for seeing the world as Homer saw it: for supposing ‘The Divine’ to be not a single entity, not a Monist conception, but a pluralist one, in which the raging of the sea, or the pains of love, or the gnawing of conscience were in the control not of one God but of many.
As she held the small green volume in her hand and sleepily had these thoughts (Telemachus and Nestor had just reached the palace of Menelaus, and encountered Helen herself, the cause of all the Trojan wars, and now returned to her husband), she heard the key in her lock. (Was Rachel’s obsession with the Odyssey partly derived from the obvious fact that it was a story of the aftermath of the calamitous consequences of adultery? Yet Helen was not like a medieval penitent. In Homer, she and Menelaus seem like a ‘modern’ couple, who had lived through the calamity of her elopement, and the ensuing wars, and her return …)
‘Anyone awake?’
L.P.’s head poked round the door.
She dropped her book – she was propped up in bed wearing one of his shirts – and extended her arms. Rather than running into them, and embracing her, which was what, at that moment, she wanted more than anything in the world, he said, ‘Is there a drop of whisky?’
‘I’ll get you some.’
She swung her elegant bare legs off the bed.
‘No need …’
But she hoped, once she was upright, bare-legged, beautiful, that he had enough good manners, if not libido, to hold her in his arms. It was evident from his voice that he had already had too much to drink, and his breath, as she came to kiss him, was not simply vinous: the stomach juices had been at work digesting a meat dinner, making his breath into a pungent halitosis laced with fruit.
He was fumbling, in the sitting room, with glasses and bottles.
‘I couldn’t face going to dinner with the others,’ she said. ‘I came home, ate some toast. I’ve got to Book Fifteen …’
‘Book Fifteen?’
When she had first met L.P. – that first dinner at the Oxford Union, their first date à deux at Mon Plaisir, he had talked eagerly about literature – she’d been impressed by his unaffected interest in, memory of, Corneille. She knew from his facial expression that he was not going to allow her so much as two sentences about Homer, or the thoughts which had been passing through her head.
‘Well – big changes ahead,’ he said, as he took a swig of whisky.
‘Hallo,’ she said. She squeezed him, and he squeezed her back in a perfunctory way, while fumbling with his other hand in a pocket. Momentarily she allowed herself the rash thought that he was looking for a condom; but when the inevitable cigarettes came out, she was surprised to discover within herself the sensation of relief. And when he began his analysis of the evening chez Mark, Rachel asked herself with a coolness which she found shocking, whether she was beginning to be free, to wean herself from loving him.
‘As you know,’ he began, ‘Martina wanted me as editor. I’m convinced of that. She wouldn’t play games with me …’
Oh no?
‘It was Kurtmeyer who put a stop to that, I’m quite sure. So they went looking among the red-tops. You see, Lennie and Martina are both the victims of a false syllogism.’
He just about managed to say the word without spitting.
‘Red-tops make a lot of money. Red-tops are edited by shits like Worledge. Therefore, if you get a shit like Worledge to edit the Legion, you’ll make a lot of money. But it doesn’t work like that.’
‘Come to bed, old thing.’
Unable to rise to the courtesies of either interesting conversation or sex, he was doing perhaps the only thing of which he was capable: he was delivering orally one of the famously witty paradoxes which were his hallmark.
‘The Legion has its own ethos, its own especial magic … It even has – or had, until tonight – its own extraordinary power. You know I’ve often thought that whoever you asked to write for the Legion, they’d sooner or later start writing in a Legion-ish way.’
‘Yeah, yeah, Proust’d start writing in snappy sentences – A la recherche would become a why-oh-why … Come to bed, baby, it’s one in the morning.’
She’d heard this one so often. He used to speak like a man who read books. Now he sounded like a man who was so used to mixing with, and writing for, people stupider than himself that he was in a world where just to know the names of great writers was something for which you expected applause.
‘If Dostoevsky’ – he paused for the unseen fans to gasp with amazement – ‘were asked to write for the Legion, he’d write – Legion-ishly …’
‘Come on – bed.’
Soc
ks, shoes, trousers, tie lay in a huddle beside the bed.
‘Worledge is a bastard’ – said to the pillows – ‘going to change that ethos. That special Legion-ish. You know something – if Marcel Proust himself …’
He was asleep. His head was on her shoulder making her uncomfortable. When she stretched across him to switch out the lamp on his side of the bed, he let out a loud fart.
‘Do you know something?’ she asked his sleeping form, receiving no reply but snores. ‘I hate the Legion.’
THIRTY
The sodden dawn arrived imperceptibly, the sun invisible in the grey, rain-filled sky over Crickleden.
Ali Hussein jabbed and stabbed at the parcels beside his back door, cursing their weight. Thick pungent armpit sweat filled the shop with a smell redolent of cat pee as he humped the large cellophane-wrapped bales; and after the Stanley knife had chopped, he began the tedious daily task of sorting the different papers into piles, and making sure that the correct number had been sent by the wholesalers.
TRUST ME OVER ZINARIYA PM TELLS COMMONWEALTH – the Daily Express.
LAST CHANCE SALOON FOR BINDIGA – the Daily Mail.
For no discernible reason, Mr Hussein thought of the verses in the Holy Qur’an (Part 3, Chapter 3, 46) when Allah gave the glad tidings of a son to Mary. And he recalled that his two younger children, who attended the local primary school, St Mary’s, had told him the things their priest had told them: how Mary had known, as soon as she had been told by an angel that a child was in the womb, that a new age had dawned. The mighty and powerful were to be dethroned. The humble and meek would be raised up.
Well, it had not happened. The Husseins had received no compensation for the attack on Ahmet. The boy now hid in his bedroom, afraid to go out. His mother was having a nervous breakdown. Mr Hussein tried to pray for his son’s attacker, but when he thought of him, his heart was filled with murderous hatred, a heaviness of spirit which produced nauseous gasps. Mr Hussein tried to recite to himself the opening verses of the Holy Qur’an about being guided along the right path.
The priest, the old man at Mary’s shrine, had been to the mosque to pray with the imam. He said, this Father Vivyan, that they were all children of Abraham: but how the mighty were to be toppled from their thrones, this Mr Hussein left to the wisdom of the Almighty.
COPPER PRICES FALL – Financial Times.
And the business pages of The Times had HOW LONG CAN LENNIE SURVIVE?
The Daily Legion had IS YOUR VICAR A PERV? PERV HOTLINE 0800 *** ***. Mr Hussein respected Father Vivyan who sometimes came into the shop. But he was worried by the thought of his children attending the shrine, which was full of niggers. To think that he had made the long and perilous journey from Bangladesh to settle in Crickleden, leaving behind him his beloved parents, the village where he had grown up, with all its familiar sights and sounds, the mosque where he had prayed, the smallholding where his forebears had tilled the land, just in order to send his kids to school with a lot of black bastards. Mary the mother of the Prophet Jesus conceived her child when still a virgin; such is the power of God who creates what He pleases …
The bell jingled on the door. Fucking hell, he had not opened, not officially, and some fucking woman was coming into the shop.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
Mr Hussein looked up and blinked. For a moment he thought she must be a hooker, making her way home after a busy night. She brought into the shop a sweet odour. Her large lips were scarlet, and she smiled with an open mouth to reveal gap-teeth. Her round, sensual face was framed with gilded, elaborately braided hair. Mr Hussein had an inbuilt prejudice against Afro-Caribbeans. You only had to read the fucking Daily Legion, nearly all the fucking crimes in London were committed by black boys – and not surprising if their shameless mothers were all … But this woman’s intelligent smile stopped the cycle of predictable rant which churned through Ali Hussein’s head. Her eyes, one of which had a very slight glide, fixed him with a friendly smile.
‘Hi ya! Listen, I know it’s early, and you’re probably not open yet …’
‘No, no.’ He gestured expansively as if she was welcome, not merely to enter the shop, but, if she so desired, to come and live there. Her short leather skirt and her PVC mac were – extraordinary. Raindrops covered the mac, and her knee-length boots, and on her head she wore a hat with a brim which also dripped.
‘… I just felt desperate for a fag – if you could sell me twenty Silk Cut, I’d be ever so—’
‘Course, lady, for you …’
Mr Hussein got to his feet and rummaged behind the counter for the cigarettes.
‘You wouldn’t let me have a paper, would you?’
She’d placed a crumpled note on the counter.
‘That’s what we’re here for.’ He beamed at her.
She took her Daily Legion and her cigarettes and went out into the grey smudge of the wet morning.
THIRTY-ONE
By seven thirty, the day was as light as it would ever become. The clouds were lowering and the drizzle was turning to a steady downpour. The light was enough to reveal Father Vivyan’s dwelling-place. It was a redbrick house, purpose-built as the rectory at the same date, 1906, as the shrine church beside it. The house was set back from the street behind a shrubbery. By the standards of Crickleden it was a large house, but although the diocese had redecorated it before the arrival of the new priest four years ago, it already bore every sign of Father Vivyan Chell’s occupancy. Three camper-vans were parked in the drive, inhabited by a floating population of migrants. At present, they seemed to be chiefly composed of refugees from the Balkans. On the mud patches which had once been a lawn, several large bell tents, army surplus, had been erected, also containing migrants. More of these characters, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims who spoke little or no English, were to be found inside the front door of the house. Although it was never locked, the front door showed every sign of having been kicked, charged, battered and even on occasion lifted off its hinges. One of its panels had been bashed through and replaced amateurishly with some makeshift plywood.
Inside, the visitor unaccustomed to Father Chell’s manner of life might have been forgiven for supposing either that the house had been recently gutted by builders in preparation for demolition, or that it had been the subject of criminal attack. For though there was, technically, furniture, it did not seem like a furnished house. Chairs, sofas, piles of bedding, and blankets seemed to have been tossed hither and thither. They were all ‘jumble’, donated by well-wishers or rescued from skips. In the large room directly opposite the front door, a trestle table was erected, seating perhaps twenty or two dozen people at a variety of makeshift seats, upended tea-chests, deckchairs, office stools, and some Lloyd Loom chairs which were coming unwound, and whose painted cane backs, burst and broken, stuck out in porcupine spikes. Breakfast was being served at this table, two huge tureens of steaming porridge, from which two teenaged black boys ladled portions into chipped bowls and passed them down to the others. Most of those present were boys, aged between twelve and sixteen, but there were also about six unshaven and red-faced ‘Gentlemen of the Road’, as Father Chell always insisted upon their being called, who ate their porridge with greedy, grateful slurps. Some of these men were sane, and merely enjoyed the total independence which being homeless offered them. Most, however, were in some way disturbed, either by alcohol, mental illness, or a mixture of the two, so that there was a cacophony of sound at the table, with the Gentlemen conducting conversations with themselves or with invisible personages eight yards from their purple noses.
Sitting beside one such, and meekly accepting his bowl of porridge from a boy waiter, Vivyan Chell shut his eyes momentarily in prayer, a silent grace, and then prodded his neighbour.
‘Matthew, my dear.’
Matthew was balding, scarlet in the face, and very dirty even by the standards of those sitting round that table. He made a particular contrast with the priest who, though he was
dressed in the scruffiest old black jumper and black jeans, with Doc Marten shoes, had, as customary, showered himself at six a.m. and was impeccably clean.
‘They never come,’ Matthew said desperately. ‘They never come – they never …’
Vivyan Chell’s voice, manner, general bearing was less sacerdotal than soldierly. He did not seem as he sat there like any vicar you’d ever met. He retained all the bearing of a Guards officer; and in his conversation with these waifs and lunatics, he could have been a good-humoured colonel gently ribbing the more disgruntled of the majors or captains in his mess.
‘You might not like it if they did come,’ he said, his face creased in a smile.
‘But they never come.’
‘Count your blessings. Listen. Matt, my dear, there’s something you can do for me.’
‘They never come.’
‘You’re not on washing-up duty today, are you, Matt?’
‘No, Father.’
Suddenly the wild red eyes of the vagabond focused and he was called to order.
‘Well, we’ve been given quite a lot of new jumble – several boxes of clothes at the back of the shrine. So after breakfast, be a good man. Cut along and help me shift them. They all need bringing back to the house.’
‘But they never—’
Vivyan Chell put his arm round Matthew and held his shoulder. He shook him with three jerky hugs.
‘Cheer up!’ he insisted briskly. ‘Cheer up!’
The priest then concentrated on his porridge, eating the contents of his bowl in about one and a half minutes. Then he closed his eyes in prayer once again and rose from the table. He had a busy morning ahead – some sick communions in the council flats; then he had to go to the juvenile court and be a character witness for some young friends who were charged with armed robbery; then he had to come back and say the mass at noon.
