I climbed through a metal doorway, almost as though I were emerging from a picture frame. The two men standing on the deck were grappling with each other, but when they sensed my presence they stopped and gaped at me, their heads twisted in my direction, their hands still clutching at each other’s throats. I glanced over the guard-rail at where the sea should have been. A dense white fog pressed in all around me.
One of the men broke free and took a step towards me. He was wearing a red baseball cap with the brim flipped back. ‘Who the fuck –’
‘Did we hit something?’ My voice sounded muffled, as if I were still inside the container.
The man in the baseball cap hurled himself at me with such power that he appeared to have been propelled. Taking fistfuls of my jacket in his raw hands, he began to shake me. ‘Who are you? What the fuck are you doing here?’
His lower lip had deep vertical cracks in it, and his breath smelled sour – a mix of fish and beer. Though he didn’t seem to be any taller than I was, he loomed above me, forcing me backwards and downwards, and for a moment I didn’t understand what had happened to my sense of perspective.
Then I realised that the deck itself was sloping.
‘Are we sinking?’ I said.
The man threw me away from him so fiercely that I staggered against the bulkhead. ‘Get a dinghy,’ he yelled at his colleague. ‘There’s got to be some kind of dinghy.’
The other man, freckled and ginger, with a pale mouth, stared at him for a few long seconds, and then yelled back. ‘I already – fucking – told you –’
I moved sideways to the rail. The sea had appeared just a few feet below, opaque and colourless, ominously still. As I stood with my hands on the rail, the boat creaked, and then a shudder passed through it, and I thought of the moment when a slaughtered animal drops to its knees, that sudden fatal heaviness, that somnolence …
Water swirled across my shoes.
Then I was beneath the surface, with no idea which way I was facing. I couldn’t see or breathe. There was a sound in my ears like someone turning over in a bed. I reached up with both hands, tugging at the water. I kicked and kicked. My foot struck something that seemed to give, and one of my shoes detached itself. I imagined it dropping away into the dark, the laces still tied in a neat bow. It looked unhurried, leisurely, almost weightless. A feather would have fallen faster. My shoulder knocked against a solid object, but I fought to get past it, upwards, always upwards. At last, when I no longer believed it possible, I burst out into a small round space. Whiteness enclosed me on all sides. Air wrapped itself around my skull like a cold rag.
‘Hello?’
I had shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the fog. There was no point calling out. I tried to think instead. It was already light. A new day. Even if it was only dawn, the ship would have been under way for fifteen hours. We should be somewhere off the coast of the Blue Quarter – but where exactly? Which direction was the land? And how long before I succumbed to fatigue or hypothermia?
Just as panic was rising through me, I was struck a firm blow on the side of my head, behind the ear. Crying out in shock as well as pain, I swung round in the water. Jesus was floating on his back beside me. His mournful eyes, his crown of thorns. His arms lifting vertically into the air, the tips of his fingers lost in fog. I began to laugh, then stifled it, not out of respect, but simply because it sounded inappropriate, even sinister, in the small dead patch of water we were sharing. I reached out for the statue and held on. It was larger than life, at least eight or nine feet long, and carved from solid wood. It would take my weight quite easily.
The first time I attempted to clamber on, the statue rolled in the water, and I fell back. This kept happening. The white paint they had used for the raiment was slippery as ice. In the end, sapped of nearly all my strength, I heaved myself across the legs and hung there, like a pannier slung over a mule. I was cold now, and my head ached, but at least most of me was out of the water. I waited a few minutes, then I clawed my way up on to the statue’s chest and sat facing the feet, the bearded chin behind me, the outstretched arms on either side.
Once, I thought I heard someone call out. I answered with a cry of my own, but there was no reply. The silence descended again, padded, claustrophobic.
Maybe I dozed off, my head resting on my knees, or maybe I blacked out, I couldn’t have said. The next time I glanced up, though, the fog had cleared. I had expected bits of wreckage to be drifting about close by, but there was only the whiteness of the sky and the greyness of the sea, heaving and empty, drab. I felt exposed. Defenceless. I swallowed once or twice, then gripped the statue’s arms. What had become of those two men? Had they drowned? My narrative had blurred patches, jump-cuts, pieces missing. I rubbed at my eyes, then looked over my shoulder and saw a slab of muddy green on the horizon.
Land.
I began to try and steer the statue in that direction. I had to lie face-down and use my hands as paddles. I paddled hard, but when I lifted my head and squinted beyond the statue’s toes it didn’t seem as if I’d made much progress. Still, the exercise had stirred my blood, warming me a little.
Time passed. The sun burned with more conviction, showing through the cloud cover as a sharp-edged silver disc. Though I had stopped paddling, the wedge of land appeared to have grown in size. Either currents were ferrying me shorewards, or else I had latched on to an incoming tide. Staring at the land, where low cliffs were now visible, their brows fringed by wiry scrub, I coughed twice and nearly vomited. I was hungry – ravenous, in fact – but the remains of my provisions were in the container. I didn’t even bother to go through my pockets, I knew they would yield nothing. I fell to paddling again, if only to distract myself.
As I floated a few yards out, I heard a bell tolling, the sombre notes resonating across the lazy, almost oily waters. Perhaps, after all, I had drowned, just like the other two. Perhaps I was arriving at my own funeral. I slid down off the statue and waded through the shallows to the beach. Using my last reserves of strength, I hauled the statue on to a steep bank of grey and orange pebbles, where it lay on its back, appealing to an utterly indifferent sky. The land felt unsteady beneath my feet. I sat down, forearms on my knees, and gazed at the waves from which I had been delivered. Something was rocking on the swell out there, something that gleamed in the dull light. The minutes passed, and it drew closer. At last I recognised the swollen golden belly. Jesus wasn’t the only one to have escaped from the hold of that tramp steamer. Buddha had freed himself as well, and he was making his own way, patient and unruffled, to the shore.
A crunching sound came from further up the beach, and I glanced over my shoulder. A man in dark-blue robes was striding towards me. His tall scarlet hat had the look of a bishop’s mitre, and in his right hand he held a long stick or staff that curled at the top like a fern. A crowd of people followed in his wake – maybe as many as a hundred, maybe more.
I tried to stand, but all the power drained out of me. The sky lurched sideways. Darkness poured into the corners of my eyes. The man bent over me, bright colours flashing from his ring finger like shafts of sunlight glimpsed through trees.
Chapter Five
Lying in bed with blankets drawn up to my chin, I was looking at a ceiling, delicately vaulted, white as chalk. The smoothness of the surface made it hard for me to focus, so I turned my head to the right. Set deep into the wall was a single window, its tiny panes framing a sky of blended grey and gold. There would be a garden out there, I thought, a place where one could read or dream. I turned my head the other way. The man from the beach was sitting on a chair beside the bed. He was clean-shaven, with high cheekbones, and his shorn black hair showed traces of silver. He was still wearing his blue robes, but his mitre was resting on his lap.
‘How do you feel?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Weak.’ Actually I felt like a child who had been sick for a long time – or perhaps I was being distantly reminded of my boyhood, the lost years, an
illness I had concealed from myself. ‘Are you a bishop?’
The man smiled faintly, lowering his eyes. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
There was a stillness about him, as if he had retreated from the outer edges of his body into a place that was private, inaccessible.
‘When we found you on the beach,’ he said, ‘you needed medical attention. We brought you back here, dressed your injuries –’
‘I was injured?’
‘You must have hit your head. You don’t remember? You were suffering from exhaustion too.’
‘Were there any other survivors?’
‘Not that we know of.’
The man reached behind him for a glass. I should drink, he said; it would help me to sleep. I lifted my head off the pillow, and he held the glass to my lips. I had swallowed half the medicine when a panic began to unfold inside me, heat flooding across my skin.
‘Is this the Blue Quarter?’ I said, looking up into his face.
He nodded.
I sank back with a sigh. Sleep took me.
A bell hauled me to the surface once again. This time a woman was sitting beside the bed. Something about her complexion, some papery quality it had, made me think she must have suffered. She wore her brown hair cut short, like a boy. A book lay open on her lap, the words arranged in blocks. Poetry, I thought. Or hymns.
‘Were you one of the people on the beach?’ I asked.
She looked up at me and smiled. ‘Yes, I was there. We were all there.’ She closed her book. ‘You probably don’t realise this,’ she said, ‘but you have performed a kind of miracle by coming here. You’ve saved the whole community.’
Ever since the vernal equinox, she told me, they had been waiting for a sign, something that would confirm the fact that they were living in the right way, that they had chosen the correct path. All summer they had watched the skies, but they had seen nothing out of the ordinary – no comet, no shower of meteors, no eclipse. In the gardens and the orchard everything grew as it had always grown, the fruit trees bearing fruit, the soil yielding a rich variety of vegetables; eggs were provided by the hens, milk by the goats, honey by the bees. Had times been different, they would have given thanks for this abundance. Instead, it had only caused anxiety, as though the gods of nature were procrastinating, as though they had already made up their minds but couldn’t work out how to break the dreadful news.
Then, early one morning, a young member of the community had been walking along the cliffs when she noticed what appeared to be a wooden figure in the waves below. She ran back to the main house, where she reported the sighting to Owen Quayle, whose community it was. He led his followers down to the coast to witness the sign for which they had all been waiting with such eagerness and trepidation. It was more conclusive than they could ever have expected. The figure the girl had seen was just one of many figures washed up on the beach that day, and the manner in which they had chosen to manifest themselves – dislodged, toppled, overturned – allowed of only one interpretation. They were false gods. They no longer deserved obedience. They should be summarily cast out.
‘And it was you who delivered the sign to us,’ the woman said, ‘in person, as it were, and for that we’re profoundly grateful.’
‘I was shipwrecked,’ I said.
Smiling, she shook her head. I had been too literal. I hadn’t understood that facts were only the servants of some far greater message. ‘So long as you remain here,’ she said, ‘you’ll be treated as an honoured guest, a benefactor.’
I lay back, trying to make sense of this strange information.
‘I’ve talked too much,’ the woman said. ‘You should rest now.’ She rose to her feet and moved across the room. Then, with one hand on the door, she turned to face me again. ‘My name’s Rhiannon, by the way.’
For days, it seemed, I slipped in and out of consciousness. Usually, when I came round, there would be people in the room, and they would ask me how I felt or whether there was anything they could do for me. I didn’t always have the strength to answer. I would close my eyes, surrender to the bed’s embrace, my body without weight or substance.
I couldn’t even be sure, at times, if I was awake or asleep. Once, at night, I became convinced that I was lying on a car seat with a warm rug over me. Through the window I could see black trees rushing past at a steep angle. Above them was the sky, paler, and in much less of a hurry. Stars showed dimly. My parents had been talking in hushed voices, but now they were silent. Soon my mother would look round. I would pretend to be asleep. She would reach down and adjust the rug, then gently brush the hair back from my forehead. It felt like the beginning of a holiday – or it could have been the end, the long drive home … Another time I sat up to get a drink of water, and there on the bedside table were the cigarette-lighter and the silver ring – all that these people had found on me, presumably, when they took me into their care. I picked up the lighter and ran my thumb across the flint. To my amazement it produced a flame.
Occasionally I would hear laughter coming from outside, or footsteps, or snatches of conversation, and I remembered what I had read about phlegmatic people, that they were ‘dulcet’ or sweet-tempered, but not necessarily equipped to deal with life’s many tribulations, and gradually I became curious about this community that I was supposed to have saved. I began to question Rhiannon, who seemed to be in charge of my recovery. She told me I should speak to Owen, the man in the blue robes. As founder of the Church of Heaven on Earth, he would be able to give me the answers I was looking for. When I felt well enough, she would arrange an audience.
‘The Church of what?’ I said.
She smiled, the dry skin creasing at the edges of her eyes.
‘It’s true that we call ourselves the Church of Heaven on Earth,’ Owen Quayle said, ‘but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. We don’t pretend that things are perfect here. The name expresses an aim – or a yearning, perhaps – not a fact.’ He gestured towards a crystal decanter. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
I adjusted my shirt collar, which chafed a little. I was dressed in clothes Rhiannon had laid out for me, my own having been ruined by the sea, apparently. On leaving my room that evening – the first time I had ventured beyond the door – I followed her across a cobbled yard, then down an unlit path and out on to a wide two-tiered lawn. To the left of us was a walled garden. To the right lay a swimming-pool, drained for the winter. The lawn swept up to the back of a large country house whose many windows glowed in the dusk. The place had once belonged to an arms dealer, Rhiannon told me, and, before that, to a duke. She took me as far as the door of the library. Go on in, she said. You’re expected. It was a comfortable room, filled with well-worn furniture, oriental carpets, and reading lamps with green glass shades. Three walls were lined with books, and against the fourth, between a pair of heavily curtained windows, stood a leather-topped writing desk and a chair whose cushions were moulded to the shape of Owen Quayle’s body.
When we were settled on adjacent sofas with our wine, he began, in concise and elegant language, to explain the precepts on which his community had been founded. They believed in God, not as a judge or an avenger, but in the abstract sense, as the seed from which the universe had grown, the source or fount of all existence. They were prepared to accept Jesus Christ too, though they saw him as a teacher rather than a divinity; in their opinion, he was simply a man who had encouraged people to treat each other well. They didn’t believe in the resurrection or the life everlasting, and they rejected the notion of an immortal soul. All life was here, on earth. Though they had set themselves apart, on this remote property, they weren’t puritans or ascetics. Far from it. The purpose of their ‘church’ – a word they used in the loosest sense – was not to renounce the world but to savour it, to relish it – to embrace it in all its rich variety. If they had an aim, it was probably happiness, which they tended to define negatively as freedom from distress and pai
n. In philosophical terms, the system with which they identified most closely was that of Epicurus, whose teachings could be summarised, Owen thought, as follows: to live in tranquillity, to appreciate the gift of life, to have no fear of death. It was an approach that was at once spiritual and rational. Respect remained a fundamental principle, as did a sense of awe and wonder, but faith didn’t really play a part.
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