My Name is Legion

by A. N. Wilson

  Emerging from the dining room he passed Tuli, the young boy who had been sleeping on his floor for the last few weeks, and who had woken that morning, after about four hours’ sleep, with his head on Father Chell’s knees.

  ‘Father – I must speak to you,’ said the boy. There was real anxiety in his voice, and fear in his haunting grey-blue smudgy eyes.

  ‘I’m busy now, dear.’

  ‘Confession, Father, I must go to confession.’

  ‘Tuli, we’ve talked about this before. You don’t have to keep coming to confession.’

  ‘Oh bless me, Father.’

  Vivyan Chell reached out towards the boy’s head, and for a moment held his black hair in his long elegant fingers. Then he ruffled the boy’s hair and laughed. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I have to take Holy Communion to some people this morning. You can come along as my server. Then we can talk about this confession of yours.’ They paced off together to the church.

  ‘Can I wear the gear, Father, can I wear the gear?’ clamoured Tuli with the insistence of a much younger child.

  Vivyan Chell laughed. ‘If you like – we’ll go over to the church and kit you up. You can be my acolyte for the morning.’ From behind, he held the boy’s shoulders, breathing the words into his neck. ‘You can wear lace,’ he murmured, noting as he did so the beautiful way in which the thick black curls clustered about the nape.

  It was at this point that one of the young monks who had been saying the dawn mass at the shrine church came into the house.

  ‘Oh, Father,’ he said, ‘this lady was looking for you.’

  ‘Mum,’ whined the boy. Jeeves, Murderous Moron, the Guards officer and Sex Maniac all retreated and dissolved. It was the whimpering child, the one who was so afraid of Mr Currey, and so submissive with him, who looked up at Mercy Topling.

  ‘Mercy,’ said the priest. He smiled, but it was a forced smile. ‘I wondered when you were going to turn up.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  It was nearly seventeen years since they had met.

  Father Vivyan at once controlled the situation.

  ‘Tuli – Peter.’ He smiled, but there was no doubting that he expected to be obeyed. ‘Cut along with Father Aidan – is that all right, Father? You can take Peter to the church. He wants a cassock and cotta – he’s coming with me to take sick Communion.’

  ‘Peter?’ Mercy’s surprise was total.

  ‘You said I could wear the gear, Father.’

  ‘So you can. Father Aidan here will help you choose what you want to wear.’

  It looked as though the boy was hesitating, wondering whether he would allow himself to be palmed off in this way. Then he turned to Mercy and said, ‘Mum – look after my jacket.’

  ‘There are pegs in the vestry,’ said Father Vivyan.

  ‘There are funny people in this place,’ the boy replied. ‘Can’t be too sure.’

  ‘Have you got something valuable in here?’

  Mercy held up the denim jacket.

  ‘Keep it, Mum.’

  The younger monk took the boy off to the church. The elder said to Mercy, ‘We could take some coffee up to my room.’

  Mercy had never been in the house. At the time of the parish mission sixteen years before, the clergy house was being run on conventional lines with a lock on the front door, and two bachelor priests, a vicar and a curate, living there with a housekeeper. As a child and adolescent she had been taken regularly to the shrine church by Lily, but there had never been any reason to cross the threshold of the vicarage. The gaggles of extraordinary-seeming people, the atmosphere of chaos, and the mess were all astounding. Father Chell led her into the room he called the refectory and poured two cups of coffee from a large pot at the table, where several Irish tramps sat eating porridge, and where a couple of young families were conversing loudly in some Eastern European language.

  When they had walked upstairs to the first floor, he said, ‘We can talk in here.’

  Once again, his room was a source of astonishment. A few sleeping bags and bundles of old rags appeared to have been thrown randomly on the floor. The bookcase was the only solid-looking object of furniture, a large item against one wall, with glass-panelled doors. It was bursting with books untidily arranged. The desk, an old door, taken from a skip, and balanced on two tea-chests was littered with envelopes, letters, papers, and scribbles of all kinds. There were two deckchairs facing one another near a small one-bar electric fire at the far end of the room. Above the fireplace an enormous crucifix brooded. It was about half life-size – the great outstretched arms of the young man had veins sticking out.

  ‘I had to come,’ Mercy said.

  ‘I thought you’d come sooner. I waited for you to come.’

  ‘I slept last night at Mum’s flat – she had to do some emergency nursing in Intensive Care. She warned me that Peter sometimes did not come back at nights, but – where has he been?’

  ‘He came here last night – at about one in the morning. He quite often comes at night, sometimes to sleep, sometimes to talk. He’s a fine boy.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he is.’ She smiled broadly.

  ‘But he is not always happy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he is very much disturbed.’

  ‘Oh – I’ve been so worried. I didn’t sleep, and I didn’t sleep. I didn’t dare ring the police. You know he’s been stopped several times by the police? For no reason, as far as I can tell. If you’re a tall black boy and you’re out on the streets, then they think you’re probably a criminal.’

  ‘He’s told me about this. It’s certainly true. Only when Peter talks …’

  ‘You don’t always know what to believe?’

  ‘I call him Tuli. It’s Hausa. It means “My name is Legion because we are many”. It’s as if there are many different boys in that handsome head of his. Some of them are frightened, some of them are angry.’

  ‘The school insisted we sent him to this psychiatrist. Well, he’s not a psychiatrist, he’s a psychiatric social worker …’

  ‘I know about Mr Currey.’

  The priest now sounded angry.

  ‘We must be careful what we say, Mercy, but I was almost inclined to tell Peter not to go back to see that man. I did not want to upset your mother …’

  ‘Mum’s tough.’

  ‘I know she is. But – I have my suspicions about Mr Currey.’

  ‘You don’t mean he’s …’

  ‘I have my suspicions. I think you should keep Peter and Mr Currey apart.’

  ‘But this is terrible. A boy like Peter … He’s vulnerable, he’s so easily led …’

  ‘He is very vulnerable. He is very … Peter.’ The priest put his hands together and looked at the floor. ‘Peter is in danger. I sense that he is in danger.’

  There was a long silence. Then Mercy looked up into Vivyan Chell’s eyes.

  ‘Do you think he’s schizophrenic?’

  ‘I think it’s unhelpful to label people. But I think that Peter needs help. Proper help from a doctor. I know a number of good psychiatrists. I could put you in touch with them; or I could tell your mother … I knew you would come to talk to me, Mercy, but I quite understand … if you do not want to return.’

  She sat perfectly still, hearing him out. They both had things to say to one another, but neither was sure that the right words would come from the other, the words which would enable them to speak.

  ‘Mercy … I feel that I want to say something to you … If I have done something to you … something which hurt you … I am deeply, deeply sorry. Sometimes our passions are so strong that they are quite literally uncontrollable. Sex makes us into lunatics. But I abused my position of trust …’

  ‘Don’t say that … Please don’t say that. I don’t think that. I knew what I was doing.’

  She smiled in remembrance. It was an absolutely forgiving smile.

  ‘I wouldn’t come back to haunt you! I’m not a blackmailer.’

  ‘Just as
well,’ he grinned – and with an arm he gestured to the mess of the room. ‘As you see, I’m not a rich man.’

  ‘Do you remember that day – that day we were alone together – sixteen years ago?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I was a really, really naughty girl.’ She giggled at the thought of it. ‘I’ve been a good girl ever since – I’d never betray my husband. But then, then it was different. And I wanted to talk to you about sex, but I think it was because I’d seen you talking to the crowds round the clock tower and I’d really, really fancied you.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘But I did. I wanted to ask you lots of questions – like, if sex is such a sin, why God makes the appetite for it so, so strong …’ She smiled at the thought. ‘And I wanted to talk to someone about the mess I was getting myself into. I was sleeping around. I was sleeping with the boss, and with two or three other guys at the time.’

  ‘I see.’ His lips pursed.

  ‘And then I came to see you in church …’

  ‘And that happened. If you knew how I reproach myself.’ ‘Look – don’t … Look. Do you realize I’ve never called you by your name. Vivyan. I enjoyed it. What we did. I enjoyed it. I had a great time. Okay … It’s just …’

  ‘Is Peter my son?’

  ‘He’s told you about going to Mr Currey? How Mr Currey thought – like, maybe what’s wrong with Peter is that he hasn’t got an anchor. Maybe we need to know who our father is, even if we never see him. And … well, it was crazy, but I believed Mr Currey. I thought I had to tell Peter something, and I couldn’t tell him the truth, and I couldn’t tell Mum the truth.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is that I don’t know who his father is – that’s the truth. And I blurted out that it was Lennox Mark. And, you know, as soon as I’d said that I was, like, going, I really, really hope that’s not true. I don’t think Peter even knows who Lennox Mark is.’

  Suddenly, as if in his unworldiness a monk might not have heard of a tycoon she said:

  ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘Yes. I know who Lennox Mark is.’

  ‘It didn’t seem like it made any impression on Peter at all. He’s never talked about it to me or to Mum – I just wish I hadn’t told him. And I do wonder … You know it says how the sins of the fathers are visited on the children … You don’t think that Peter is like he is because of me being bad and wicked?’

  ‘You don’t think that?’

  ‘Not really. I just worry about that boy so, so much. And he’s been such a mystery. You know, like as a young boy he was a lovely kid, but he and Trevor – Trevor’s my husband – just rubbed each other up the wrong way. It got so bad at home, Peter had to move out. I don’t know where I’d’ve been without Mum …’

  The priest leaned forward and cupped her hands in his. Neither of them knew whether this was the gesture of a pastor or of a lover.

  ‘You’ve been a wonderful mother. You know that, Mercy? Don’t reproach yourself. If you ever want any help – of whatever kind – I’m here. Until I came back to England – to this parish – I’d no idea you’d had a child. I did not want to scandalize you or Lily by suggesting that I was the father. But if you need anything – money, help, a room in this house for Peter until he’s calmed down a bit …’

  ‘I hadn’t realized you’d become such friends.’

  ‘The door is open,’ said Father Vivyan. ‘We’re like the Windmill Theatre here – we never close.’

  She hugged him, and he hugged her in return.

  ‘Father!’ Peter was calling excitedly up the stairs. ‘Father Aidan’s found me … Mum! Look what’s he’s found me to wear!’

  He wore a long black cassock and a short lacy cotta. His fine bony head, with its new short haircut, its faint, sharply cut whiskers which made acute accents on the top of his angular cheekbones, and his aquiline nose bore in that light a strong resemblance to the priest’s.

  ‘Mum – got my coat – valuable stuff in there!’

  ‘I’ve got your coat.’

  She held it up.

  ‘What’s this – a little Walkman?’

  She held up the tiny tape-recorder and the mike, which dangled from a pocket.

  ‘I’ll take those.’ He grabbed them and put them in the pockets of his new robes.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Mary Much felt drawn from the very first to the irritation value of Hans Busch. She’d sniffed it afar, as others might nose out talent, seen its capacity to expose, even in those who considered themselves all irony, a last-straw quality. Gloss had gone big after Hans Busch. After that feature, the lesser magazines and supplements had followed: some with a baffled wonder at his work, others with that satisfying and so, so English mixture of envy and admiration for the sums he commanded. Mary Much considered herself responsible for having swayed the Royal Academy. The latest installation would be erected in the courtyard of Burlington House – not as part of the Summer Exhibition but as the most exquisitely funny commentary on the whole yawn, yawn, let’s dip a brush in a pot, daub, daub, draw, draw, yawn, yawn thing.

  Martina, anxious to keep up with her friend, had expressed full enthusiasm for Hans Busch – had even begged Lennie to sign him up to design the Daily Legion garden for the Chelsea Flower Show. (Poor Martina, Mary said, when recounting this information, it showed she hadn’t quite got there.) Martina, aware of the kind of games Mary had been playing throughout their friendship, was certainly not going to do anything so satisfying as to say that she disliked Hans Busch or his work. There were times when that fixed smile, stitched in place by the New York plastic surgeons, had its supreme value. She was certainly not going to say she minded that Mary had enrolled Piet in the project. She’d told Aubrey – poor Aubrey, knowing it would be repeated artlessly straight back to Mary Much – that the house-boy would hold his own with the artist.

  ‘Darling,’ said Mary, ‘he can hold his own, and Hans’s if he wants to.’

  Poor darling Aubrey and his lickle-ickle accident. (For some reason the conjunction of sex and violence made Mary Much think and speak in baby-talk.) The Legion had been told that he’d been mugged in a car park. Stabbed. The nature of the injuries was left vague.

  But – Piet and Hans! Mary knew that Martina really, really minded – which further extended Hans’s quite enviable ability to get under every skin.

  Both Legions had behaved according to type when, like obedient puppies, they had leapt at the leaked information. Mr Blimby had got his art critic on to the case, and been enterprising enough to create a mock-up of what the finished installation would be like. This imagined projection was photographed beside Rodin’s Thinker, and the art critic had then delivered a satisfyingly swingeing attack on the blatant commercialism which could create a concept such as this. If Hans Busch were to come up with this idea for free, said the critic, then no one would pay it the smallest attention. Because his works sold for princely sums before they were so much as finished, he was regarded as the prime alternative to art.

  Spies at Derek Worledge’s brutal features conferences also brought most satisfying reports back to Mary Much about the treatment he meted out to Rachel Pearl. It was bad enough that L.P. should still be wasting time and money on her: but that gorgeous Sinclo could also be breaking his manly, yummy heart over the little pseud was more than Mary Much could stand. Once again, one saw how stupendous Hans Busch was. Hitherto, since Worledge became editor, the Pearl (as Martina always dubbed her) had not suffered as much as the rest of the staff.

  That was simply because he did not know about art, and tended to leave her alone. Naturally, the amount of space in the newspaper devoted to exhibitions or plays had been slashed to almost nothing, and her only role as art editor had been to supply the morning conference with updates on the states of various Hollywood marriages. So long as an interesting love affair or bust-up among the stars could be timed to coincide with the premiere of some commercial feature film in Le
icester Square, Worledge appeared to be satisfied on what he called the Arts Front.

  Hans Busch, however, was another matter. Worledge only heard about him some two years after the rest of London had been ‘taken by storm’. It had actually been Esmé who first saw one of this fashionable person’s works, photographed in a magazine at the hairdresser’s in Esher, and remarked – Worledge had agreed one hundred per cent – that this just wasn’t art.

  The little Pearly pseud had piped up at a conference in reply to this rant. She’d been brave, bless her. She was, she had said, ‘troubled’ by the philistinism of Derek Worledge’s response to Busch, and tried at first to point out that Busch himself said that his work was not art. That was the point of it. Busch was asking us to reconsider the stereotypical, artificially ‘progressive’ Story of Art from the Pyramids to Picasso. He was not claiming to be the next thing after Francis Bacon or the next thing after anyone. Okay, he might be an incredibly tiresome, self-publicizing jerk, and the commercialism surrounding his work was nauseating. But, she had wanted to say …

  Worledge was a man who, during such discussions, knew no buts. When the Pearl had tried to explain what she thought of Hans Busch’s work, during that morning’s features conference, Worledge had wrinkled his nose. Then, in an insultingly laddish manner, he had started to snigger, and to look to the others, nearly all men, for support.

  The spy said that Sinclo had blushed to the roots of his hair, but he had not dared stick up for his little Pearly Princess. Bright pink flushes had appeared in those sallow cheeks – by Christ, Mary envied the purity of that woman’s skin, it just wasn’t fair – and she’d spoken up for herself:

  ‘I thought we were trying to take the Legion in a new direction – I thought we were trying to talk to the twenty-thirty-somethings whose interest in art is a bit more sophisticated than just wanting a block-mounted reproduction of Monet on their walls.’