My Name is Legion

by A. N. Wilson

  A life devoted to attempting in some small area of British society to iron out inefficiency would be a good life. That was what would inspire Rachel Pearl to join the civil service. It was absurd that in one of the richest nations on earth, the trains and buses did not work properly, the hospitals and schools were in chaos, the political system was so rightly by some reviled and by others disregarded.

  Equally, a life devoted to the decent and efficient working of some area of money, a life in which she herself helped a financial institution to generate the wealth which would pay for this well-ordered society, this would be a good life.

  In the background of her new life, whatever it was – whether a medic, an aid worker, a civil servant or a financier – Rachel would keep alive the life which had been so threatened, in her latter days with L.P. and the Legion: the inner life. She would keep up her languages, by reading German and French novels, Italian poetry. She would struggle with difficult books of philosophy, and try to read science. Poor L.P., who had begun his adult life as a clever person, someone who was aware of life’s imaginative possibilities, had deliberately shut down. The row they had about conceptual art now seemed entirely typical and revealing. Of course, there was no need for him to like, or even to understand, what Hans Busch had been up to with his meretricious installations. What had been so shocking was the drivel he wrote about it in the newspaper, in which he did not seem to think it mattered when his article confused Oscar Wilde with Ruskin. Everything about L.P. had grown stale and flat. He was corrupted, visibly, tangibly corrupted.

  Leaving the Legion had been like escaping some land in science fiction or mythology where the inhabitants were being lulled into a stupid lazy dream by money. The Sirens or the Lotus Eaters came to mind. Some of the more interesting employees of the paper actually hated themselves for taking the money. And to give him his due, this was Sinclo’s position. This, more than the fact that she and he had friends in common, was what had drawn Rachel to Sinclo. He made no bones about being ashamed of taking Lennox Mark’s expenses and salary. L.P., the archangel with furthest to fall, must have been fuller of self-hatred than any of them; but he had nulled his own sense of it by making everything into a cynical joke, a joke which had begun as sharp wit but which was now a predictable series of party-trick paradox.

  That marvellous feeling, if you have been drinking too much and you go on the wagon for a few weeks, drinking nothing but pure mineral water: that detoxification of the entire system, this was what Rachel had been undergoing, spiritually, since she told herself she no longer needed the Legion.

  She was sure, too, that it made her cleverer, not being there. Her detective powers greatly exceeded Sinclo’s, that was for sure. When she left him to his blushes in the kitchen, she had asked around among the tramps. Any ideas about the whereabouts of Peter d’Abo? With most of the old men, she had drawn a blank, but then one of them, a very thin old Scot with purplish cheeks through which the veins ran like rivers in a map, had said, ‘Ye’ll be from the polis?’

  ‘No, I’m not from the police. I’m a friend of Father Vivyan’s.’

  ‘That young mon up at the manse … Sinclair …’

  ‘Sinclo?’

  ‘I’d say he was from the polis … He’s the main reason they a’ went awa’.’

  ‘The Albanian boys.’

  ‘Them and the Michaels. We had the polis dune tae find a’ the guns and a’ …’

  ‘And…’

  ‘They funed what they wanted tae find – if ye ken what I mean.’

  ‘They found a lot – that’s what I heard.’

  ‘Mebbe … mebbe …’ He laughed. ‘I reckon he’s a military mon – that young Sinclair.’

  ‘He was in the army, yes.’

  ‘I said sae, tae Jock, but they dinna ken … I were in the army m’sel’ …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Och, aye … The polis dinna find mair than a fraction … In those caravans – they were jus’ a few … I’m tellin’ ye, they took it all awa’ and hud ut … That’s whair the puir lune is the noo … dune amang the tombs … like the puir lune in the Gospel …’

  Rachel did not ask the old Scots soldier how he knew these things. She was not wholly convinced that they were true, but it was surely worth a look, down in the cemetery.

  She had become gripped by the idea that before she started her new life – her useful, dignified life – she would clear up the mess and confusion surrounding the Father Vivyan affair. It would make an atonement for her years on the newspaper. She would find the boy who had made the allegations, and, with gentleness and firmness, she would confront him with his lies. Then she would ask him, in the presence of lawyers, to withdraw the allegations. If, as seemed likely, he was more than half crazy, she would do everything she could (here, her parents would be able to help) to get him the best medical care. Once the truth had been established, a chapter of life would be over. She was beginning to understand why she had come to the parish, and how this strange episode in her life could be turned to good purpose.

  In mittened hands, she held a rain-spattered A to Z map. She had come up the hill from the church, crossed a main road beside a 1960s primary school. She passed on one side of the road some flats, and on the other one of those down-at-heel parks with which outer London was scattered, places which at their opening must have seemed so full of hope, with their bandstands, their Swiss cottages, their aviaries and marigold-beds, and which now in their neglected state were emblems of what England thought of itself. Everything there meant for adults – the flower-beds, the birds, the cafeteria – had been handed over to vandals; the only new thing on which any money or thought had been expended was the ugly adventure playground which, with its rubber tyres hanging on chains from wooden climbing frames, its ropes and nets and shit-strewn paddling pool, could well have been an exercise ground for the younger apes at a zoo in some uninteresting European country such as Belgium or Luxembourg.

  Beyond the park were the allotments – again, all decayed. Forgetting the year-long monsoon, Rachel intolerantly saw in this scene of desolation confirmation of her view that modern Britons were too lazy to pick up a spade and fork.

  But another squint at the map confirmed that she was going in the right direction. Beyond the allotments, she saw the endless rows of graves.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Tuli was half asleep when he caught his first sight of her, coming down from the top of the cemetery. She was the first person who had been into the cemetery that day. Sometimes, if the rain let up for a bit, dog-walkers came, and sometimes sex maniacs prowled about for a bit. Tuli had already sentenced at least one of these men to death inside his head. Sentence would be carried out next time he dared bring his filthy, pot-bellied, leather-coated little body into sight.

  The queer in the multi-storey: how he’d begged for mercy! They’d come off as easy as a wog’s ear. God had been pleased. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. But now the war had started, and there wasn’t gonna be no more gentle stuff, no more fun and games. Revenge, that was the name of the game.

  Jeeves could forget his fucking dish tasted cold, they were ready for something hot: vindaloo, coming right up, sir.

  Just listen to me, my son.

  Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth you.

  Lay not thy knife to her pussy.

  No, my Lord.

  Keep her as the apple of thine eye.

  Yes, my Lord.

  Keep her in prison.

  Yes, my Lord.

  No guns, yet. If the Jews come to get her back, then you will have to kill her – you understand? She is the one who landed you in this shit – are you listening to me?

  Yes, O Lord.

  Where did she land you?

  In the shit, God.

  And where did she land your nana?

  In the shit, my God.

  By publishing?

  By publishing lies in my father’s house. In my newspaper. In the newspaper which I should own. W
hen I marry Madame Pussy.

  When you marry?

  Martina?

  That’s right. But first you must obey me. You must keep this one under supervision. She came as a spy. It was she who came down to spy on Father Vivyan, on me, on your God.

  Yes, my Lord.

  It was she who wrote lies about your nan in the paper.

  Yes, my Lord.

  It was she who blasphemed against your mother. It was she who made Mercy seem like a fucking whore.

  I’ll kill her for that.

  All in good time, my son. At present, you must keep her here. You understand? You must keep her here – and no one must know she’s here. This is the most important thing I have ever asked you to do, my son. Do you understand?

  Yes, God.

  Keep calm … For yea though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I am with you, my rod and my staff will comfort you.

  He looked up. The woman was now about a hundred yards away. She was wearing jeans, trainers, and an anorak with a hood, but, guided by the Divine Voice, he could easily recognize her as the cow from the Legion who had come to work as a fake volunteer at Father Vivyan’s house. She was looking this way and that. Sometimes she turned her back on him, and walked in the wrong direction entirely, stupid bitch. Sometimes she turned back, and walked towards him, and seemed to be looking in his eyes. Sometimes she disappeared, and he realized she was searching in some brambles or behind a tomb. Now she bobbed up again, and she was only fifty, thirty yards away. And now their glances had met, and her intense, bright eyes, as radiant as they were dark, lit up with recognition. With infuriating slowness, she made her way towards the doorway of the mausoleum.

  Remember, said God, capture but do not kill. Maim if you must, torture if you like, but do not kill.

  ‘Hi!’ she called. ‘Hi! Peter! You remember me? Rachel? Father Vivyan’s friend?’

  Bertie Wooster said, ‘What a nice surprise! What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’

  THIRTY-SIX

  Vivyan Chell reached the vicarage about three-quarters of an hour after Rachel left it. His vision of the Queen as a raddled old prostitute, of England as a pointless, amoral cauldron of putrescence, now possessed him totally. He had been in a very similar overwrought conditions on the day that he won the Military Cross for valour. Adrenalin coursed into his circulation. His heart beat so rapidly, and with such vigour, that the front of his frayed black jumper pulsated visibly. An extraordinary energy, like the energy of anger, but more controlled, both governed him, and exuded from him.

  When the young monk, Father Aidan, opened the front door to him, he mistakenly thought that the Father (as the younger monks all called him) was angry because they had reintroduced locks, and covered the broken door-panelling with plywood. Only when he recollected the moment, as he was to do many times in the course of his life, did Father Aidan realize that if Vivyan was ‘in a fury’, then this was true in a mythic, classical sense. The man, like the Maenads in a Bacchic orgy, appeared to be in a frenzy which soared above petulance.

  ‘What is this?’ He jabbed at the lock with his finger. ‘Get it off! At once!’

  While the young monk was running for a screwdriver, the elder strode into the dining room, Odysseus regaining his palace from the suitors, Beowulf striding into Heorot to banish the monster. In the corner of the dining room, there was an innovation. Television had been installed and, even at this afternoon hour, it was switched on, with a programme giving live coverage of Parliamentary reports. Several young men, Vivyan’s Zinariyan friends and lodgers, were gathered around the set. They were not normally addicted to Their Lordships’ House, as the programme was called. If they had become accustomed to watching daytime TV, then golf or snooker, tedious as they might be, offered more chances of entertaining interludes than the glimpses of empty red-leather benches, a somnolent Lord Chancellor on his woolsack, a few bishops in rochets and chimeres, quiet as chess pieces, being harangued by a stout life peeress on the subject of the regulation of pension funds.

  This afternoon, however, was different. A new peer of the realm was being introduced to their Lordships’ House. With many boos and hisses, the Zinariyan boys had already watched the new Lord Mark, supported by two former Prime Ministers, one Labour, one Conservative, being put through the arcane rituals of the place. Clad in robes of scarlet and ermine, there was Little Len, bowing and swearing fealty to the Old Whore, as, in his frenzy, Vivyan now considered her. The young Africans, who had hitherto in their year in London seen only the modern face of Britain – its petrol fumes, street crime, fast food and muggings – were now made aware, by the images on the television screen, of the primitive and ritual nature of tribal hierarchy which still persisted here. This man, for all his dependence on modern techniques of communications to make his millions, on plate-glass towers and computerized newspaper production, wanted nothing more than to drape himself with dead animal skins and, mumbling imprecations to the spirits, make obeisance to his tribal chieftainess.

  After the mumbo-jumbo was done, his lordship came out of the Palace of Westminster, most improperly still wearing his robes. He stood to be photographed on Palace Green, with the two old Prime Ministers, his pert, smiling German wife, and a very tall blonde woman who looked slightly sinister, whom none of them recognized. Some thought she was attached to Lord Mark. Others wondered if she was one of the Muslim Scandinavian wives of the President. For, yes, there was Bindiga himself.

  ‘President Bindiga, there are many people in this country who are worried about the human rights record of Zinariya …’

  A reporter cast out these formulaic words.

  Lennie Mark, slow and measured in his new-found aristocratic dignity, was telling the microphone, ‘I am proud of my adopted country, Britain; I am proud of my native land, Zinariya. Every country has a duty to defend its citizens against terrorism, and I am glad that Britain supports the President in his perfectly legitimate fight against those who, by violent means, would seek to overthrow the rule of law in Zinariya!’

  Mary Much sucked in her cheeks. Bindiga grinned. Martina’s perpetually stitched moue cast its doll-like smile on the world.

  ‘He’s at the Embassy?’

  This was Father Vivyan’s question.

  ‘He and two of the women …’

  ‘Those women?’ asked the monk.

  ‘We don’t know who the blonde one is. We just know he’s staying with two of his women at the Churchill in Portman Square. It’s for security.’

  The young man grinned.

  ‘Is Thimjo on alert?’ asked Vivyan, at last no longer needing to speak in a hushed voice, or in code.

  ‘Thimjo is in hiding.’

  They spoke in agitated, repetitive sentences, trying to tell the priest all that had happened since he was ‘taken away’ (this was how they understood it). Many of the Happy Band had dispersed. The plans to disrupt the Bindiga visit, if possible to assassinate the General while he was in London, were in chaos.

  ‘Well, we must get them out of chaos!’ asserted the priest.

  Everyone now began to talk at once. Some told Vivyan about the police raids on the camper-vans, and the seizure of weaponry. Others spoke of the Happy Band going into hiding. Others spoke of their fear that there was a spy in the vicarage. Some spoke of the arsenal of weapons which they still had left. And while they all talked, and Father Vivyan tried to make them speak one at a time, Sinclo had taken out his mobile phone.

  Lance heard him and shook his dreadlocks in disbelief. At a time like this, when the atmosphere in the house had suddenly become electric with menace and fear, the English public schoolboy was telephoning his tailor.

  ‘My suit is ready for fitting, but there’s no time to send a card … There’s no time,’ he was saying.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Yes. Yes … yes, my esteemed order … There’s no time any more … I would guess … yes. I’ll get down there.’

  Lance came up to him and
said, ‘Look – when you’ve finished ordering clothes – oughtn’t we to tell Father Vivyan that Rachel’s gone in search of Peter?’

  So it was that Lance told Vivyan about the young woman’s visit, and her quest for Peter, at just about the same moment that one of the Zinariyan freedom-fighters was telling the priest where they had stored the remainder of their armoury.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Who told you I was here?’ the boy asked.

  ‘No one told me exactly.’ She smiled. ‘I just thought I’d see if you were here.’

  ‘So, who’s following you?’

  ‘No one’s following me! Hey, aren’t you getting wet? I am.’

  ‘Got a bag.’

  ‘Yeah, well!’

  She grinned nervously. Then she added, ‘We could go for a coffee, if you felt like it.’

  ‘No coffee here.’

  ‘I didn’t mean here – I meant in a cafe.’

  Tuli looked down. Wrapped in his dripping bin bag, and hooded, he could have been a very beautiful young monk lost in contemplation.

  ‘At least you’ve got a shelter,’ she said. His failure to respond to her was disconcerting. Back at the vicarage, although he had often seemed a strange boy, he was always polite. That was what had made his mad outburst, half an hour before Vivyan’s arrest, all the more disconcerting.

  ‘Have you been sleeping here? Peter?’

  ‘Want to see?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He gingerly stood up, so as not to get too wet from the drips all over his protective plastic bag.

  She was reassured to find his sweet smile lighting up his face.

  ‘You crawl in,’ Jeeves was saying to her.

  This, she knew as she was doing it, was a stupid idea.

  ‘There’s more room than you think,’ he said. ‘Just keep on crawling.’

  From behind her, when she had penetrated the confined space of the mausoleum, she heard him say, ‘They’re coffins.’

  ‘I can see,’ she said.