The Revelations

by Alex Preston

  ‘I suppose so . . .’ She stared out into the darkness.

  ‘You’re part of our family now,’ Mouse said quietly. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘We’re incredibly fond of you. I really don’t know what we’d do if you left.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was leaving. Just that I don’t feel totally comfortable yet.’

  ‘You will, though. Because we love you, and we want you always to be one of us.’

  ‘That’s really sweet. Thank you.’

  Marcus and Mouse waited for Maki to finish her cigarette and then the three of them made their way back down the spiral stairway and into the dining hall. Abby and Lee were standing in front of the open doors of the armoire. The twins were only visible from the waist downwards as they burrowed among the dark shapes hanging in the cupboard. Marcus saw Abby running her hands over one of the shapes and realised that it was a long fur jacket. Maki walked over to join the girls and the twins emerged, fox stoles wrapped around their throats.

  ‘Let’s put them on,’ said Mouse, running over to the cupboard. ‘Why don’t we get dressed up and go and find the motorway?’ His words tumbled out as he pulled down a rabbit-skin jacket and wrapped it around himself, seized a bottle of red wine and threw open the doors of the hall, turning around with a laugh. He dragged a chair over to the cupboard and rummaged along the top shelf until he found a blue three-pointed hat.

  ‘I’m going to be Napoleon,’ he said, pulling it down over his head. It was far too big for him and covered his ears. His eyes bulged from the shadow cast by the brim.

  Invigorated by Mouse’s enthusiasm, the other Course members jostled to find coats that fitted them. Only Abby hung back for a moment.

  ‘Should we really be taking these? It seems rude, without asking.’

  ‘We won’t damage them. Come on, Abby, no one will know.’ Mouse was shouting now, already down the steps and pointing towards the haze of synthetic light that hung over the pine trees.

  There were enough jackets for all of the members, although Philip’s was too short and meant that he held out his arms like a zombie as he walked. The twins had to hitch up the long tails of their own jackets, making their way daintily down the steps of the dining hall and onto a path that ran between thickly planted pine trees downhill to the lake. Mouse used his lighter to illuminate the path as he scuttled wheezing ahead, past the lake and the boathouse whose roof was brushed by pine branches. The earth at their feet was red; Marcus drew in a breath, savouring the scent of the soil and the pines and, faintly, woodsmoke. Or the woodsmoke might have been a scent-memory, a smell that had at some previous time existed strongly for him alongside the smell of the earth and the pines and was therefore repeated here.

  The hill steepened as they descended. Ferns trembled in damp clumps above clusters of mossy rocks. Marcus slowed to help Abby climb over the knotted roots that spread from the bases of the trees. Then down into a gully where the ferns grew very thickly, and without the light of the bright moon that fell between the trees they would have surely had to turn back. Mouse roared ahead with the twins following closely in his wake, fur coats flying like capes behind them. Mouse had one hand pressed down on his head to keep the hat in place. Marcus felt Abby slip her arm inside his jacket and about his waist. Lee had her camera around her neck and was taking photographs of the group, the flash pausing time for a moment, freezing them as they made their way down the hill. Neil brought up the rear with Philip. Looking back, Marcus laughed at Philip’s horizontal arms, at the expression of dignified discomfort on his face as Lee took his picture. The roar of the road was now very loud in their ears and seemed to quiver in the needles of the pines.

  Without warning they came out of the wood and were standing at the top of an escarpment that led down to the motorway. The road was cut deep into the hillside, so that they looked down onto the bright street lights. Marcus could see that Mouse was already heading towards a footbridge that crossed the road half a mile to the south. His stout frame was outlined against the ridge of the hill, purposefully striding, his cap like a ship atop his head. The twins still followed behind him, although they were finding it hard to keep up with his bounding steps. The motorway below them was six lanes across, busy despite the late hour with articulated lorries thundering freight through the night. He turned and followed Mouse along the escarpment, Abby still clutched close against him.

  The bridge was suspended a hundred feet above the motorway. It seemed very flimsy to Marcus as he led Abby along it. There was no wind from above, although the machines rushing beneath them seemed to create their own strange currents, sucking the air from around the Course members and then a sudden rush as the lorries surged past. Mouse was standing at the centre of the bridge, leaning far forward over the handrail, waving his hat to the vehicles below, a cigarette pointing downwards from his wildly grinning mouth. Marcus caught some of his friend’s exhilaration. He slipped out of Abby’s embrace, danced forward, then turned back and took his wife’s hand before leading her out to the middle of the bridge.

  The noise from the traffic below made speech impossible. The roar whipped thoughts from their minds and the breath from their chests. The bridge shuddered when the largest lorries passed beneath, hummed and trembled the rest of the time. Marcus saw Philip come up behind Lee and place his strange zombie arms around her shoulders. He gripped Abby’s hand tightly in his own. He could see that Mouse was shouting, screaming down into the roar of traffic below. It felt as if they were linked by something, as if a chain of feeling hung between them like bunting out there in the high and dangerous sky, as they stared down on the man-made sublime.

  A convoy of military vehicles passed beneath them: Land Rovers and tarpaulin-covered trucks followed by transporters carrying tanks and amphibious vehicles. Through the open backs of the trucks, Marcus could make out soldiers leaning against the shuddering material, some of them trying to sleep, some talking over the roar of the engines. One of them looked up and Marcus imagined that the soldier might carry the image of the young people silhouetted on a bridge away to battle, that it might rest in his mind like a talisman, a reminder of home. Looking down on the military vehicles, Marcus thought of toys he had collected as a child and arranged in careful formation to show his father when he arrived home from work, battlefronts drawn out on the kitchen floor. When the convoy had passed something in the air changed, and Marcus was aware that Abby was shivering beside him; he saw Lee slip gracefully out from under Philip’s arms. Only Mouse was still standing braced against the roar below, his chubby cheeks livid in the glare of the street lights, the hat now back on his head giving him the air of a mad general leading his troops on a final suicidal mission. Lee knelt at the entrance to the bridge and took Mouse’s photograph. Finally, Mouse joined them, his large eyes wet, his mouth hanging stupidly open.

  Making their way back up the hill towards the house, there was a sense of deflation, but also of a communal recognition of this deflation, a feeling that they were together in feeling rather disappointed by the natural world, by the inconsistencies of the sloping ground when compared to the tarmac and metal perfection that they had just witnessed. Marcus drew his rabbit-skin jacket closer around his shoulders and pressed his lips down into the worn fur of the shoulder. He breathed in the greasy softness of the pelt. Abby looked dazed and had to lean on him every so often to catch her breath. They skirted the edge of the lake, whose waters were an oily reflection of the night sky. Philip came to walk beside Marcus and Abby.

  ‘I’m nervous about tomorrow,’ he said. Marcus looked over at him. His face was very pale in the moonlight.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Marcus felt Abby squeeze his hand in his pocket.

  ‘It feels like it’s going to be a test of everything that has gone before. That if we can’t embrace it all, we’ll somehow have failed. I’m worried I’ll be standing there in the service and I’ll feel as uninspired as I always did, back when I was a choirboy and I used to see church services as a kind of endura
nce event, used to long for the sermon because it meant we were entering the home straight.’

  They were walking through the darkest part of the wood now, and Marcus could barely see Philip beside him. Abby stumbled on a root and then spoke, leaning across Marcus to address Philip’s shadowy outline.

  ‘When I spoke in tongues for the first time, all of the rest of the service suddenly made sense. We become a community when we pray, or sing together. In that comfortable, familiar space it’s amazing what you can do.’

  ‘I really hope so.’

  ‘Try to think of it as abstract art. You know the way a painting can be terribly moving, even though it is just a few splashes of paint on a canvas? The way something by Pollock can be more powerful, and beautiful, than a Constable landscape? It’s because it entirely bypasses our consciousness. The tongues, the music, the words of the service – you should think of them like that. As something beyond the scope of your rational mind.’

  ‘That’s helpful. I’ll see if it works in the chapel tomorrow.’

  Finally, they broke free of the woods and saw Lancing Manor looming above them, a black shadow against the starlit night behind. A turret rose up like a coil of smoke from the house, a light burning in its narrow window.

  Back inside the dining hall, Mouse initiated a half-hearted drinking game, but Marcus could tell that everyone was tired. He made sure the coats were hung back in the cupboard and drank a glass of water. He wanted to leave while there was still a feeling of community hanging between them. It was something he remembered from his first Retreat, when the Course members, who had until then seemed somehow suspicious, distant and self-satisfied, gathered around him and he felt warmth radiating from them.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, looking over at Abby. She smiled at him and they walked down the dining hall holding hands. They made their way through the heavy doors and into the main hallway, where a single lamp stood on the mantelpiece, a solitary point of light in the darkness that reared up above them. Abby shivered as they crept up the stairs and down the long corridor past the ghostly photographs. Their room was warm. Mrs Millman had lit a fire in the grate earlier when she came in to close the curtains. Their duvet was turned back and the bedside light cast a cosy glow across the white sheets.

  Marcus helped Abby with her zip. She let the dress fall to the floor and stepped out of it. She wore white pants, a black bra that was fraying under the arms: Marcus could see a safety pin holding one strap together. Her thighs were milk-white as she took down her pants, bending to place them on a chair. She turned towards him, carefully unhooking her bra, and he lost himself in the wide expanse of her face. She undid his belt with a flourish and helped him take down his boxer shorts. They lay down together on the bed, which creaked and sagged reluctantly beneath them.

  Abby kept laughing as they fucked; at one point he looked down at her and saw a smile flash across her face, igniting in her eyes and then exploding across her pink lips. Every time they moved, the bed groaned and Abby squealed laughter. Marcus thrust into Abby, stopping when he was entirely inside her, feeling their bodies intersecting at so many distinct points, hot skin against hot skin. They fell asleep and woke still pressed close together. Abby cradled Marcus’s head in her arms, hugged his face to her chest. He had no idea what time it was, nor for how long Abby held him. He lay and listened to her heart and the distant moan of the motorway. They slept again and when they woke it was growing light outside. Marcus could hear people moving downstairs. Milky sunlight fell into the room through the gap in the curtains.

  Two

  Marcus and Abby had breakfast in the kitchen, where Mrs Millman stood over the Aga stirring a pot of porridge. David and Sally sat side by side, very close together. Marcus wondered if they had had sex the night before. He and Abby slouched opposite them feeling somehow seedy, still swimming in the pleasure of their night together. The Earl was wearing a tweed jacket and a dark blue tie. He perched low over his bowl of cornflakes, his narrow eyes surveying the Course members as they came in to eat. David smiled at Marcus.

  ‘Mouse and Lee have already been down. I think they’re in the chapel preparing for this evening.’

  Marcus couldn’t tell if there was reprimand in his voice.

  ‘What’s the plan for the day?’

  ‘Some discussion groups this morning, lunch in the dining hall at one o’clock and a walk this afternoon if the weather holds out. Then, of course, the service.’

  ‘The forecast isn’t that good, I’m afraid,’ Sally said, buttering a slice of toast.

  Marcus and Abby ate quickly and in silence, then hurried back upstairs. They took a bath together as they had at university, carefully adjusting their limbs in the ancient iron tub with its rusty lion’s-claw feet. Abby ran her fingers slowly down the inside of his thighs as they lay in the hot water, singing softly to herself. Marcus watched as the thousands of tiny bubbles that clung to the nest of his pubes were dislodged by her fingers and rose swiftly through the water like champagne. By the time they had dried and were down in the chapel it was ten o’clock and the Course members sat around chatting.

  Marcus still couldn’t remember the names of the girls in his discussion group; one was Lizzie and another Sarah, but he didn’t know the others and the remaining boyfriends were just flushed cheeks on vague faces. He was glad to see that most of his group were surrounding David and the Earl. David was standing in front of the Stations of the Cross describing the meaning of each scene while the Earl interjected occasionally with stories about the artist he had invited to paint the images directly onto the walls of the chapel. Philip sat with Mouse and Sally in one corner. Mouse was talking very quickly, his hands dancing as he spoke. Lee sat apart from them, her legs stretched out along a pew, her arms around her shoulders. A beam of sunlight fell into her short hair and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the brightness. Marcus took Abby’s arm and they made their way to the front of the chapel, where Maki and Neil were inspecting engravings on the pillars in front of the altar.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning, Marcus. Hi, Abby. Have you seen these inscriptions? The lettering is exquisite.’ Neil ran his finger over the text, which Marcus recognised as a chapter from Ecclesiastes: ‘Rejoice, O young man in thy youth . . .’ The letters were like runes, difficult to read at first, but once his eyes had become accustomed to the jagged shapes, Marcus saw how perfectly they expressed the regretful wisdom of the words. Abby stood behind Neil and reached over to run her own fingers over the inscription.

  Neil and Maki sat down on the steps leading up to the altar while Marcus and Abby leaned back against the front pew. Marcus began to say something, but Abby cut him off.

  ‘It’s about getting rid of your inhibitions, this weekend. All those things that get in the way when you’re in London. It’s why we always come out to the countryside. Silence, music, peace. This is what we need to get closer to God.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the Bible,’ said Neil, ‘and I keep feeling like I almost get it. As if there’s something very obvious that I’m missing. But I’m almost there. I know I am.’

  ‘Let today carry you in its current. Don’t try to force it, just let yourself be open to whatever happens.’ Abby was glowing; she reached out a hand and laid it on the arm of the older man, who was dressed in stiff smart-casual: chinos and a blue button-down shirt. Maki, who had been hidden in the shadow of one of the pillars, leaned forward.

  ‘What about the tongues? I heard David last night and I just can’t imagine a situation where I’d be able to do that.’

  ‘What did you think when you heard it?’ Abby tilted towards Maki, mirroring her.

  ‘I suppose it was beautiful. It sounded like just another part of the music. It’s the thing I like best about the Course, the music. So it was nice to hear, but I don’t know if it meant any more to me than that. I certainly didn’t understand it.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to understand it. And you certainly don’t
need to join in. I think the way that it’s presented, people expect the Course to change everything. It doesn’t need to. It can be the start of a journey; it doesn’t always take people all the way to their goal.’

  ‘Hmm . . . I’m just not sure it’s for me.’

  ‘Why did you first come to the Course, Maki?’ Marcus asked, aware that he should be supporting Abby.

  ‘I suppose it was to make friends, mainly. But also to find somewhere, I don’t know, spiritual. I’ve always felt that I needed to believe in something, I just never discovered exactly what.’

  ‘Well, you have friends here. And the Course is an extraordinarily spiritual experience. It seems to me that you just need to allow yourself to believe. Feel good about the fact that you found exactly what you were looking for. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the search that we don’t allow ourselves to accept that we’ve reached our destination.’

  They spoke for another hour; Philip came over to join them after a while. They leaned back against the stone pillars, spread themselves out across the pews, listening carefully to each other as they talked, each awaiting their turn to speak, measuring their words precisely. Sally and the Earl sat down, smiling, as Marcus told the members about C. S. Lewis’s conversion.

  ‘He was travelling down to Whipsnade Zoo. He set out on his trip as an agnostic and arrived a believer. You need to realise that the conscious mind is the last thing to change. The more you read and the more you think about God, the more He works behind the scenes. It’s why the kind of epiphany that Lewis describes isn’t as instantaneous and unreasoning as it first appears. If you lay the groundwork then God will do the rest. And here at the Retreat, we try to do as much as we can to create an environment that allows that change to take place.’