Cain's Redemption

by A J Chamberlain

  “Yes I think she is,” said Poppy. “So tell me about Alex.”

  “Well, she is passionate, and determined, and kind of fragile, as well. She loves young people. She wants to bring something to them. She has a hunger to bring Christ into popular culture.”

  “Is she married, or does she have a partner?”

  “No. She keeps busy with the firm of course, but she’s on her own.”

  The food arrived and they both discovered they were hungry. They ate for a few minutes before continuing their conversation.

  “How did Alex end up living with your family?” said Poppy.

  “She lost her parents in a car crash when she was just ten, so I kind of gained a big sister.”

  “You seem to be surrounded by adopted sisters, Conner.”

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way!” he said. “I love them all.” And it was true now that he came to think about it. First Alex, and then Daisy; they were both precious to him. He found he could love Daisy even more once he had worked out that his true feelings were for her as a brother not a lover. And as for Alex, she had always been special to him.

  “Alex is very precious to me.” He felt tears forming at the corners of his eyes again as he spoke about her and he clamped down on them, he didn’t want to get too emotional this evening

  Poppy watched him closely.

  “It’s good that you care so much for her,” she said, and smiled.

  And as she spoke, Conner experienced a sensation, like falling over the rim of a great waterfall; and now he wanted to tell Poppy everything, all the secrets, all the desires, all the hopes and fears.

  “I have always cared about Alex,” he said, “I even went through a phase when I didn’t know what I thought about her. For a while I forgot that she was my sister.”

  Poppy looked at him, waiting for him to say something more.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he said and laughed, “but there it is. I remember that she had just bought her flat. She had a little money from her parents’ estate and she had a job. It was enough for a deposit and she moved out of our home.”

  He was whispering now, beneath the level of the softly flowing jazz. She almost had to lip read to make out what he was saying. He never usually talked about these things, and he didn’t know why he was doing so now.

  “When she moved away I missed her so much, and I didn’t really know why; it was just the way I loved her, I had to work it through. I’m okay about it now.”

  He couldn’t believe he’d shared this deepest and most intimate thing with a stranger, but he had done.

  “Relationships are so complicated,” she said. “On the television, characters are thrown together like little play bricks, stick them together and then pull them apart, as if it was that simple. But people can’t live like that. People can’t just be ripped apart and stuck together.”

  “Does anyone really believe it is that simple though?”

  “Yes, I knew some people at college,” she replied, looking sadly at her plate. “They carried on thinking we were all just pieces of biology, able to fit together and pull apart. They ignored the pain in themselves, and others.”

  “Sometimes people ruin what would have been a good friendship,” he said, “spoiling it with lust and regret

  “Is that why you and Daisy never really got together?”

  He was surprised by her question, and he looked at her.

  “She’s told me a lot about you, Conner,” said Poppy.

  “Yes,” he said, “I suppose so, I mean my faith stops me from going too far with someone, even if I do like them, and I did think I liked her like that, for a while. I mean, I wanted to sleep with her, at one stage, I always knew it would be wrong, but the thought was sweet.” He ate a mouthful of food to stop himself saying any more.

  “What about you?” he said after a moment. “Since we are being honest here; you must have had some relationships, or at least the potential for them.”

  Poppy smiled and said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” said Conner quietly, sensing this really was a sensitive subject. “I mean it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. Let’s not turn being honest into a kind of macho game.” He placed his hands on his heart.

  “I’m gonna reveal more about myself than you are!”

  “No I’m going to be more honest about myself than you’ll ever be!”

  “What are you doing?” she laughed.

  “Oh no you won’t. You don’t know how honest I’m going to be.”

  Some of the other diners glanced at him.

  She laughed. “Daisy said you were like this sometimes, a bit of a clown. But I don’t mind telling you about my relationships, not that there is much to tell; the conversation would be finished well before dessert. I have only had one boyfriend.”

  “Well, no I tell a lie, I have had two boyfriends, but the first one was at primary school and I was six at the time,” she said. “I remember playing with him in his garden once and we cuddled each other for ages. We were sitting under a tree and we just hugged each other. To us the whole thing was a huge secret and I never told anyone. His mother had seen us from the house and thought it was quite endearing.”

  “Wow, young love!”

  “Yes, but that one didn’t hurt.”

  “Oh,” said Conner, “so maybe the other one did?”

  “In my last year at sixth form college, and my first two years at St Martins I was with a guy, another Quaker. His name was Marcus, and we had grown up together and one day we were friends and the next we were more than that.”

  Conner remained silent and raised his eyebrows.

  “We’re not together now,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s okay. The summary of it is that we just grew apart, it was a bit sad but we both got over it.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think I have experienced life like Daisy and you have,” she said. “When I was at college I was aware that there was this great circus going on with boyfriends and girlfriends, all that sex and intensity. But I spent my time watching it rather than getting involved, and by the time I got to my third year at St Martins I’d missed my chance in some ways; and then there was the fact that I was a Christian, and I only wanted a relationship with another Christian. It rather narrowed the field in terms of partners.”

  “I can imagine,” he said.

  “That’s it really, so like I said, I certainly haven’t lived life like Daisy has,” she said.

  “Well, the sin and the sorrow it causes isn’t anything to be pound of,” he said. “If you’ve got this far without being damaged too much, that’s a good thing.”

  “So what about you then, Conner,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  He fiddled with his cutlery as he spoke:

  “I left school at eighteen, and over the summer after my exams I was in a band. We played in some pubs and it was fun. One time we went on a tour. We just had a week away, but we called it a tour. It was a laugh. I started doing the things the others did. I mean drugs; we did grass, and E and to be honest with you we were just messing around, certainly I didn’t care.”

  He stopped and forked up the food in front of him.

  “Then I found out a couple of them stole things from shops. It was really stupid, and I told them as much, stealing is such a cowardly, selfish thing to do. I never did it, and it was one of the reasons I moved on from that group, that lifestyle.”

  He looked at her, trying to pick up any hint of disapproval, but as far as he could see there was none.

  “Let’s settle the bill and then we can walk down to the Arc de Triomphe,” she said. “You can tell me some more as we go.”

  “I’m not sure there is much more I can tell you, is there?”

  “I don’t know, is there?”

  “Maybe there’s more we can say to each other,” he said a
nd smiled.

  They came out onto the street. The traffic created its own breeze as the bitter cold of the night set in. In the distance they could see the floodlights shimmering around the Arc de Triomphe.

  “So tell me about the band you are in now,” she said.

  “Well, it’s different from the crowd I was with after school. We have released two albums, put some of our music onto the internet, on iTunes, and now we are about to go on tour, a proper tour this time. And then if that’s a success we’ll stay together and put out a third album, we have most of the material for it.”

  “So are you going to be a famous rock star?”

  He laughed. “There are no really famous rock stars these days,” he said. “Most successful musicians get famous in their own niche and that’s where they stay. That’s what I want to do. Life is fun at the moment, but I don’t know things are going to work out, it could all fall apart, if Alex’s business doesn’t survive.”

  “I think you’ll be okay,” she said, and somehow he simply believed her.

  They walked on and the Arc loomed ahead of them, an island in a sea of traffic. Conner and Poppy took the pedestrian subway to reach it, passing through an underground bubble of trapped warmth beneath the road.

  When they climbed the steps, Conner stood beneath the vast stone pillars and looked up at the bulk of stone arching overhead. Carved into the walls, like shadows in the floodlight were the names of the places where French blood had been spilt and French lives lost. He found it helpful to look at it, to bring his own problems into perspective, and to remind himself that at the most basic level he was still alive, and there were still opportunities out there. His courage returned and he found himself smiling against the wind and roar of the circling traffic.

  Poppy stood at the foot of the grave of the Unknown Soldier, and Conner stood next to her. His eyes were drawn down the Champs Élysées where the white headlights moved towards them and red lights moved away. He was about to make a comment when he saw the light reflected on Poppy’s face, the glow reflected in the tears on her skin.

  Her eyes were fixed on the flickering flame that bobbed and fluttered at the centre of the tombstone. He wondered whether as a Quaker she was also a pacifist, and this thought threw the impact of the Arc into perspective. She would mourn the soldiers and consider their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their enemies as such a vast pointless waste. Conner could see in her face a reflection of all the loss, all the young men, smashed and wasted.

  Just above the roar of the circus of traffic he whispered in her ear, “I know. I’m sorry. This futility.”

  She turned to him, tears still reflecting on her cheek. “Futility?”

  “I’m guessing you are a pacifist.”

  “I hope to God it’s not just the pacifists that are moved by this.”

  “So do I,” said Conner. “If this doesn’t make us think, then we’ve lost something precious that makes us human.”

  She nodded and then reached out and took his arm in hers; comforted by the evidence of their understanding.

  The wind pulled at them, whistling across the stone. Holding on to him, she leant in against his shoulder, and they stood still together.

  “This is beautiful as well,” she said at last, gazing at the flame. “It’s a sad beauty, but some of life’s colours are dark.”

  Conner stared at the flame and felt tears coming to his own eyes as he was transformed by the poignancy of the moment. The elements conspired to create beauty out of the sorrow. The race of the wind against the stone, the fire flickering unquenched before her. Poppy’s presence made him pay attention to the colours around him, the navy ink darkness of the night, the yellow folds of the flame, and the white and red of vehicle lights sailing back and forth before them.

  “We have enough darkness in the world, Poppy, so you do what you can to add to the beauty for us, that is your gift.”

  She waited a moment and then she leaned in close to his ear and whispered.

  “In his third year Marcus had to choose between a Commission in the Royal Air Force and me. The man I loved went off to war, just like these young men did. I understand he has done very well for himself. I am pleased for him.”

  Conner closed his eyes and a shapeless jealousy appeared in his heart, but he refused to entertain it, and it passed.

  “In the restaurant,” said Poppy, “I think I said something like ‘it was a bit sad’ when we parted. That wasn’t true, it was actually devastating, it hurt me so much. It wasn’t just that I lost him, it was like I never had him at all.”

  She held on tightly to his arm.

  “For a while I didn’t know what to do, what to think,” she continued. “I was surprised at how much it hurt me, it made me wonder who I was, what my identity was. But I found a way through it.”

  “Maybe one day,” he said, “if you’ll come with me, I will take you to the place where I go when I need to remember who I am. It’s not the most awesome spectacle in the world, but it’s where I find myself again.”

  She looked up at him and he could see the question in her eyes.

  Where? Where is this place?

  He leant forward and whispered to her over the traffic:

  “Harrison Stickle.”

  “What?” She stepped back and frowned in puzzlement. “Harrison who?”

  “Harrison Stickle; it’s a mountain in the Langdale Pikes, in the Lake District. Although strictly speaking,” he continued, “it’s a fell, not a mountain, but we won’t worry about the technicalities.”

  “No let’s not,” she said, smiling.

  “From the top,” said Conner, “you can see Scafell Pike, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell; and on a clear day if you look to the northwest you can see Scotland, Dumfriesshire. I love that place. Like I said, it’s not the most spectacular view in the world but like all of the Lakes the Pikes have their own kind of intimacy.”

  “Can a mountain be intimate?” she asked.

  “Have you been to the Lakes?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  He smiled.

  “I’ll take you there one day,” he said, “and then you’ll see what I mean. You’ll be designing things the colours of grasses and heather, mosses and slate for weeks afterwards!”

  He stepped back from her and put his hand on his heart

  “I promise,” he said, “that one day we will be at the top of Harrison Stickle, standing on the little grass ledge that faces out to the northeast, behind the rocks of the main summit. I’ll take you there and show you.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “I’d like to see the colours there.”

  “I haven’t told this to anyone before,” he said. “Alex knows I love going to the Lakes, I mean we all did as a family, but that specific place; I’ve never told anyone just how much it means to me.”

  He turned away, staring again at the whirl and roar of the traffic.

  * * *

  Poppy looked at him and wondered at the intimacy between them. They had each given something of themselves, risked a bit of their private lives with each other, and it had worked, they had each accepted what the other had to offer. She tried to evaluate the consequences of it but found that she couldn’t, not right here and at this moment. So instead she gave herself one more thing to reflect on when she thought it all through later, and she kissed him on the cheek, and when she did so her lips lingered on his skin for a just a fraction of a second longer than when she had kissed him earlier that evening.

  “I think it’s time for us to head back now,” she said, and she took his arm again and they went back down to the subway.

  7

  While Conner went to the Lake District to find his place of peace, Poppy found it by gathering with her people. She found peace when she needed it at the Friends Meeting House where she had grown up, amongst familiar faces and a gentle style of worship and reflection. There was no embarrassment for her to be here with her family, no sense of regression to something of c
hildhood. She had been to college, she had flown the nest and seen all that the city had to offer, and now she was an independent person. And it was still a pleasure for her to sit with her parents and her sisters, and the wider company of Friends.

  In the silence she nurtured her ideas about beauty and simplicity. She could see these values in the symmetry of the plain wooden panels that made up the walls of the meeting room; and the four groups of chairs, each facing in towards a central point where the Bible stood open on a square table. For Poppy, God filled this place, His presence was manifest in the quiet peace that makes everything perfect, balanced, whole.

  But on the Sunday after Première Vision, Poppy’s mind was not peaceful. She was plagued, again, by the old restlessness and fear that incubated inside her, and manifested itself when she felt doubt, or even sometimes, as now, when she dared to hope.

  In her imagination the designs for all kinds of garments came to her, another, and then another, abstract in form. The colours were clear and bright and obvious, and as she imagined each item, she could see those colours, bold and sure in the light; but up close each garment was elusive, as they always were when she conceived them like this. Poppy knew colours, they were her companions, she lived with, slept with them, ate with them; but the simplicity she craved in design was only something she could recognize, and never fully emulate.

  Of course, Poppy could design clothing, she could create anything, but she never seemed to be able to capture the essence of that beauty, and order and symmetry that was the quest of her heart.

  She closed her eyes and tried to centre herself in the reflective calm of the Meeting House.

  “Come, my Lord,” she whispered, under her breath, expecting to sense that familiar peaceful presence.

  But not this time.

  Wholly unbidden by the conscious thoughts, she saw not the symmetry and order that she craved but Conner Adams! The disorderly boy, whose voice she enjoyed listening to; the boy who looked as if he couldn’t be neat and orderly if his life depended on it.