“Did you look at the kids?” she asked a few minutes later.
“No. Why should I?”
“I hope they were all right,” she said, lugubriously.
Despite Jack’s solid reassurance, and even Dulcie’s own smiling acknowledgment that when her Harry was a baby she’d looked in on him six times an evening to make sure he wasn’t being gassed by fumes emanating from the radiator, or the steelworks, or the oil rigs in the North Sea, Simon felt so stricken by what he thought of as an oversight that, on leaving, he seriously wondered if he ought to see the police. It wasn’t that he visualized the children with their throats cut; he imagined them, rather, as having slipped into a coma, weak from lack of nourishment and incessant yet unnoticed crying.
He was tired; he knew that he was tired.
Notwithstanding the usually sympathetic presence of his mother, he didn’t for the moment wish to go home. Instead of the police station he pulled up outside a pub and as soon as he had walked into its noisy, welcoming and warmly lit interior he was sure he had done the right thing. Better tonight a double Scotch in company, soothed by the hum of Friday night vitality, than an even larger one in the seclusion of his study.
He revived. Things returned into perspective.
Then he realized that, oddly, neither Alison nor Robert had once mentioned the angel. Nor Jack. Nor Dulcie.
But, come to that, neither had he. So why should it seem odd?
“Good evening, vicar!”
No collar; no clerical black; and this was a pub he’d never been into. He looked in perplexity at the thinly fair-haired man standing with a pint of lager in his hand.
“Benson,” the man said. “High Ridge. Religious Education.”
“Oh, yes! Forgive me.”
They shook hands. Simon, who’d spoken at Morning Assembly on two occasions and had, on the strength of this, played in the staff-versus-school football match last April, would still have supposed he was looking at a stranger.
What made it worse, the fellow then inquired, smilingly, “And how are you getting on with that book?” Evidently they’d shared a conversation. Simon seldom had time to read and couldn’t think what book was being referred to.
“No,” said Benson, “nothing that you’d been reading. The book you were thinking of writing.”
And then he remembered. He had passed on a remark made by Paula, who, at round about Easter, had been looking for a Life of Jesus to enthral her dozen or so charges on a Sunday. “Simon, everything I come across is either utterly turgid or hopelessly sentimental; there seems to be nothing in between. And yet our Saviour’s life should be the most dramatic and exciting on record, wouldn’t you agree?” Yes, he had certainly agreed, although he hadn’t passed on the remainder of her comment. “Simon, you could do it! You’d have the proper magic touch! I know you would! And only think of all those little ones you would be leading closer to the Lord!”
Oddly, Benson had made the same suggestion. “If there’s a gap in the market, why don’t you try to fill it?”
“Well…who knows?” He’d been intrigued by the idea but had rapidly pushed it aside (along with, apparently, the whole encounter). Now he felt embarrassed and experienced no wish to reopen the topic. Such a project might have proved satisfying but it would surely have entailed too great a sacrifice. He couldn’t consider it.
“I wonder,” he said now, to minimize the danger of his companion pursuing it afresh, “do you happen to know either of the Heath boys?”
He asked this both for the sake of something to say and possibly because his failure to remember any of their faces had somehow linked the three of them as positively as their shared scholastic background. He habitually tried to remind himself that everyone he came across was special; therefore it was worrying, this new awareness of not recognizing people whom he had most likely seen on at least a couple of occasions. He swirled the whisky at the bottom of his glass and endeavoured to give his companion the whole of his attention.
“Yes, I know them quite well,” Benson replied. “Taught their sister, too.”
“I wasn’t aware they had one.”
“I think she’s now a trainee nurse. Outstandingly…well-favoured girl; high-spirited; you’d never take them for the same family.”
“The boys certainly seem…” Simon hesitated over his choice of an adjective.
“Earnest?”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that. You must be thinking of their mother. Beside her, I can assure you, they seem positively frivolous.”
“Well, in school, let me assure you, they are not frivolous. Thank God! For instance, only a few days ago I let their joined classes hold a debate on nuclear disarmament and some of the facts and figures I gave out seriously alarmed them, while most of the other kids just shook them off like water.”
Simon asked tonelessly:
“When was this?”
“When?” Mr Benson looked puzzled. “Well, like I say—”
“I mean, was it before Wednesday? No, don’t worry. Forget it.” Simon left his drink unfinished on the counter.
“As a matter of fact, now you mention it, it was last Wednesday.”
“Yes. Well. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it really makes no odds. Good to have spoken to you.”
Glancing back from the doorway, he saw the man watching his exit, curiously. He knew he’d behaved badly but didn’t much care. Or, rather, he did—yet what was one more care among so many others?
Disgustedly, he found that his predominant feeling was one of self-pity. Still. Even more disgustedly, he found the mere fact of having recognized this did nothing to dislodge it.
Why did God play these little games?
Or even…This was hardly a thought new to him of course (and, indeed, hadn’t it fleetingly crossed his mind within the past hour?) but nowadays he found it difficult to give it entry, let alone respect. Couldn’t people simply be fooling themselves when they said that God existed?
It was a terrifying notion. Too terrifying. Apart from all else…the sheer waste! Of time, money, effort, passion, dedication. The sheer waste of every life sacrificed; of every life lost through a billion acts of cruelty.
But thankfully it was a notion which for years he had known he would never be able to accept—and he pitied those for whom it had become a truth. In what small things did they find meaning? Comfort?
When he reached home his mother was in the kitchen filling her hot-water bottle. “My poor love, you do look done in! I thought Fridays were supposed to be your day off?”
He answered apathetically: “We can forget all about that angel business. It was just some sort of…well, freak hallucination.”
“Oh, no! No, it can’t have been! And after all that hard work you put in! Darling, I am sorry. What a shame! Still, I don’t suppose they meant it.”
“It seems they’d been very much affected by some debate in school. Nuclear disarmament. But if only they had said so.”
“They probably thought it would lessen the impact.”
“That in itself then was a form of deception.”
She was now hugging the hot-water bottle to her chest. “Tonight, shall I build up the fire?”
“Why? What’s so different about tonight?” He didn’t say it with a good grace.
“Well, if you’re quite sure? But please don’t be downhearted. Shall I bring you some cocoa in bed?”
“No, I don’t want cocoa. I’m off into the study.” He kissed her, very perfunctorily, on the cheek.
“Just don’t stay there for hours; you need your sleep. Oh, by the way…How was the Turner girl?”
“None too good. She wants looking after.”
“Oh, my darling, don’t we all?” The cry was humorous, not unfeeling.
The phone rang.
Oh God, he thought, who’s dying now? That’s all I need. For the instant before he lifted the receiver he looked up at the crucifix. Help me, Lord—give me strength. He changed the pronoun, made it plura
l.
“St Matthew’s Vicarage.”
He listened drearily to the pips; it was either a faulty coin box or some idiot trying to work it. Occasionally the telephone rang as many as six times before there was finally a voice at the other end.
“Oh, Simon. It’s Dawn here. Dawn Heath.”
He had an eerie sense of déjà vu. He remembered a film where someone had been relieved to wake from a bad dream, only to find the circumstances of the dream beginning to repeat themselves in real life. In a moment she was going to say she had something wonderful to tell him. Could she pop round?
“I’m sorry if it’s late. But…Well, we thought you ought to know.”
“I’ve got to be at the youth club at six.”
He realized with a shock what he’d just said.
“Know what?” he asked quickly. He saw his mother standing in the doorway.
Dawn obviously hadn’t been listening. “Two things. One of them’s incredible.” Yes. The scenario was clearly by the same scriptwriter. “You see, they suddenly remembered, both of them, wholly out of the blue, a scripture lesson they’d had last Wednesday. One of the teachers was away; their classes had to double up. Well, it doesn’t really alter anything, I told them that but they were worried that it did. ‘It’s still a miracle,’ I said. ‘Mr Madison knows far more than we do and even he thinks it’s a miracle.’ William said, ‘But when we tell him what we’ve remembered he won’t go on thinking it. Nothing will make him believe it any more. And then we’ll just be on our own.’ And after that he started to cry.”
Dawn paused, perhaps for breath. Simon said: “Poor lad. It isn’t anyone’s fault. These things…happen. If he’s with you could I speak to him?”
It seemed that Dawn was trying to take this in; her pause extended itself.
“But you don’t understand,” she said, at last. “You see, I haven’t told you yet about the second thing. And, Simon, it really is a miracle. Because we’ve had a sign. God’s given us the proof.”
“Oh, yes?” said Simon. He decided this was hardly the moment to point out God wasn’t in the business of providing tidy bits of proof. Quod erat demonstrandum was not, noticeably, in God’s vocabulary.
“You see, it was when William started to cry because he thought it wasn’t a miracle. Suddenly he clapped his hands to his face as though his tears were scalding him. At first that didn’t occur to me. I just supposed he didn’t want us to see. Afterwards he said it was like a great tingling sensation, like little currents of electricity shooting here and there beneath the skin. Not in the least bit painful.”
“And?” Simon was scarcely paying attention.
“Well, it was when he took his hands away. He wasn’t crying any more. That only lasted for a few seconds, maybe six or so. But his tears had washed him clean.”
He imagined she was using blood-of-the-Lamb type language. He somewhat listlessly repeated her last three words.
“Well, don’t say you didn’t notice!” she laughed. “Up until this happened, there was nothing we could ever do about it, no matter what the doctor gave. Well, now it’s all gone, every last trace.”
“What has?”
“His acne. He’s got the best complexion in Humberside. Even Josh can’t come up with anything to explain it away.” She giggled. Dawn—Dawn Heath! She was giggling like some giddy and triumphant ten-year-old. “And, truly, you mustn’t think he hasn’t tried!”
11
Oh, yes. He had certainly tried. Even at half-past-two in the morning he was still trying. It was about then that Dawn mumbled:
“You all right, Josh?”
“Yes.”
“Wondered if…some pain or something?”
“Go back to sleep.”
He listened to her turn over and before long resume her regular breathing; listened with relief, listened with resentment. He confessed himself unreasonable. In some ways it was this very placidity of hers which made her a good wife, and often he felt grateful to her. But his gratitude was more of the mind than of the heart and in his heart she irritated him.
Even on Gabriel-night she had soon achieved soft snores.
He had a favourite fantasy: his moon-and-sixpence trip. But tonight he felt nothing could have soothed him into sleep.
What’s more, it didn’t have to be Tahiti. London would do. Anywhere that gave you the feeling of life being lived, of possibilities being possible. Forty-six wasn’t old.
In any case, if he were starting out anew, he believed he could get away with forty. Even thirty-eight.
The obstacle, of course, was money. He did the pools. He was trying to write an English textbook. Textbooks could be lucrative but…Well, he only wished he had the nerve to rob a post office. Something like that.
Dawn wouldn’t miss him. Nor would the boys. He couldn’t fool himself he’d been much of a father—not since they’d moved out of childhood, become teenagers, learned to rely more on friends than fathers. Not since they’d no doubt grown ashamed of him.
And none of them, financially, would be any the worse off. The opposite. If he ever got the money to escape he’d make sure he had enough to send some home each payday.
Sometimes he saw it as a real possibility. Even when he didn’t, hope hadn’t fully died. Every time he went walking through the town he was vaguely on the lookout for a new relationship: something with depth and durability. At bottom it wasn’t just a carnal thing he was after, although Dawn no longer attracted him and seldom wanted sex. In truth it was more a friend he hankered for. Somebody to hug, yes—a ready hand to hold—yet still, in essence, more a two-way flowing of concern, support and understanding. Only when depressed did he tell himself this wasn’t realistic.
Even one-night-stands eluded him. From all he read he would have supposed that to pick up a girl in 1984 was an easily achievable aim for any man who was at least averagely attractive; and he knew that he was probably more than that. He hadn’t got those film-starry looks which, for instance, the vicar from St Matthew’s had. Nor did he have his height. Yet on a one-to-ten scale he would surely be amongst the sixes or the sevens.
He had envied him this afternoon, that vicar. Envied him his stature, envied him his certainty and singleness of purpose.
Envied him his singleness.
But since then, somehow, his other feelings had completely changed. In fact, it now made him cringe, the memory of how he had buttered him up on the stairs. The man was nothing but a prig. Josh could neither understand his own attitude at the time—he wasn’t normally a person who fawned—nor, to be honest, what had afterwards enabled him to get things back into perspective. He was only thankful that something had.
“Josh, what is the matter with you?” Dawn yawned lengthily. “Do you want me to get up and make some tea?”
“No. Go back to sleep.”
“You keep on saying that. But how can I? With you so restless?”
“Sorry. I’ll stay still.”
“You’re not worried about money, are you? I tell you and tell you, Josh. God will take care of all of that.”
“Yes. You tell me and tell me.”
“‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’”
At least once every week Josh was urged to consider the lilies of the field. He had never before been urged to consider them at two-fifty-five in the morning. He felt seriously tempted to suggest that the lilies of the field go screw themselves. After all, what else had they to do in all that stupendously undeserved free time? But he found that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not to Dawn.
My God, she tried though. In a way, you had to admire her for it; feel sad to see such effort misdirected.
“‘And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’”
“Sod Solomon.”
“What?”
Four years ago she wouldn’t have been able to recite that. Probably the extent of her biblical quotation
then would have been Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me went down to the river to bathe. Now she had whole passages by heart. The fact that many were in rather pleasant English did little or nothing to compensate.
“Sod Solomon in all his glory.” Yes. Why not? Even to Dawn.
“Please don’t blaspheme. It’s childish. Just because you’re cross at being proved wrong! Yes, that’s why you can’t sleep, suddenly I know it is. Well, Josh, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be down on your knees and thanking God for all his goodness. You ought to be pleading for forgiveness, you ought to be begging for salvation.”
“Is that right?” he said. No. I ought to be getting the hell out of here. I ought to be doing something with my life. I ought to be getting the very most out of every fleeting minute, hour and day.
He turned his bedside lamp on and thought about, as a first step, going to make them both that cup of tea.
Dawn lay her head back on the pillow and looked towards the ceiling. “The wondrous thing is,” she said—and the note of reproach had entirely disappeared—“that I could sleep. I mean, after I’d just witnessed…”
Perhaps, then, it wasn’t mere placidity. “It must be the sleep of the innocent,” he told her, gently.
She turned her face towards him.
“Oh, Josh, I don’t see how you can fly in the teeth of all the evidence like you do. I really don’t. It’s like when we watched that programme on the Turin Shroud. Only more so. Are you going to spend the whole of your life just running?”
“Probably.”
He got out of bed and started pulling his clothes on.
“Right now,” he said, “I’m going to spend it, at any rate, just walking. Building up to it, you see, in easy stages. Whatever you may think about my present showing I’ve not yet reached the top of my bent.”
“Oh, but that’s silly. Where can you go at this time?”
Nowhere. He would have liked to walk to London, before his energy wore off. He got as far as Ashby—two miles? Here he finally acknowledged the uselessness of it all; turned round; feet dragging. He encountered scarcely anyone: a cyclist; an old man in too large an overcoat shuffling along in gym shoes; a very occasional car. The wind had acquired an extra edge. As a last gesture of hopelessness coupled with defiance, he deviated from the road home, trudged recklessly across hilly, hillocky, pitch black common land—“I couldn’t give a fuck, not a fuck, whether I stand or fall!”—found himself, ironically, outside St Matthew’s Vicarage and shuddered violently several times, while continuing to cry out loud at intervals, “I couldn’t give a fuck, not a single fuck!” (He wished that precious, posing, pontificating hypocrite might have heard—and, indeed, if the study hadn’t been at the back of the house, Josh would have seen its light shining through the thin curtains.) On the last stages of his journey home he began to see some daylight. Incredibly, he was relieved to get back into the snugness of his bed. “You stubborn man,” murmured Dawn. “I’m glad you’re back…” Her hand reached out for him. This didn’t often happen. Almost against his will he responded.
Such Men Are Dangerous Page 6
