“There, you see. What did I say? He’s just as soft as all the rest of you. You tell this nice lady and gent, Janice, you tell them what a real good man your daddy is—inside. You tell them, too, Billy.”
29
The Chronicle carried the story next day. Front page. Headlines. Gabriel over Scunthorpe? Above this, in smaller type, Brothers allege meeting with angel—Message for the world—Charge of apathy and needless suffering. Below, using a typeface somewhere between the two in heaviness and size, Heaven on the side of nuclear disarmament—and love.
The by-line was simply By Geraldine Coe.
There were two related photographs on the front page: William and Michael Heath standing in the car park and a much smaller one—just head and shoulders—of the boys’ father; while on the back page, where the story continued, there was a picture of the vicar of St Matthew’s processing with a donkey and a long line of out-of-focus parishioners in the previous spring’s Palm Sunday act of witness.
By mid-morning the phone at the vicarage was ringing incessantly. Simon wasn’t there but his mother had settled herself at his desk with a pot of coffee and a notepad and some knitting; and was being brisk and affable and joyous. “Yes, isn’t it marvellous!” she kept saying. “There’s hope for us all.” Sometimes, depending on whom she was talking to, and very conscious of her role as Mother of the Vicar, she added “Hallelujah!” and even “Praise the Lord!” The woman from Yorkshire Television received both of these, the man from Radio Humberside neither. But as a form of rating it was variable. At first it was given only to those who were clearly sympathetic but later only to those who were clearly sceptical (partly on the grounds that they required it more, partly because she wanted to annoy them). Paula Marshall, on the other hand, who was just too churchy by half but who’d have sacrificed the Holy Grail, given it to Oxfam, for the sake of one day becoming her daughter-in-law, hallelujah-ed her, and praise-the-Lord-ed her (and amen-ed her into the bargain!). She received a very crisp, “Well, thank you for telephoning, Paula, I’ve noted your offers of help and your suggestion of a round-the-clock vigil,” without a single laudatory response. Mrs Madison wrote down the names of all the newspapers that called, both national and provincial, with a system of asterisks indicating the degree of her approval—except in the case of one of them, where an asterisk’s range of expression appeared frustratingly restricted. “Give them the Turin Shroud,” she scribbled furiously, “and they’d use it for net curtains!!!” (That was the call which, in retrospect, she regarded with the greatest satisfaction.) The rings at the doorbell, insistent or not, she totally ignored, since she wasn’t anticipating any deliveries today and felt very thankful for their own net curtains, inferior though she reckoned them to be. At two o’clock, during a sudden lull, she removed the receiver from its rest (feeling on this occasion righteously justified), made herself a sandwich and lay down on her bed. She felt quite happy with her morning’s work but she knew when it was time to halt. She experienced an invigorating sense of power.
By mid-morning, too, the telephone at High Ridge was very busy. The school secretary found herself being asked continually to fetch the Heath boys out of class. Twice she was offered a bribe. Usually, when everything else had failed, she was asked to put the caller through to the headmaster or his deputy. (She didn’t.) Repeatedly she was invited to pronounce on the veracity of the two boys and on the prevailing mood in Scunthorpe and once she was actually implored to dispatch some child to the flat where the Heath family lived, with an urgent message for one of the parents to telephone: that optimistic gentleman hoped in this way not only to get in ahead of his own paper’s telemessage but of everybody else’s. Eventually, however, Mrs Nash received permission from the headmaster to do what Mrs Madison would do an hour or so later: simply take the phone off its hook.
By then the headmaster had already interviewed the boys, held an impromptu staff meeting, been harassed by the chairman of the governors and hastily convened a special full assembly at which he stressed the need for good behaviour, since the school would now be coming under widespread scrutiny, and for an open mind, since the possibility of God’s having chosen Scunthorpe (like Nazareth or Lourdes or the road leading to Damascus) as a setting for one of his major miracles could neither be ignored nor taken lightly. Mr Dane, more by his own example than by anything he said, managed to create a good atmosphere, fairly matter-of-fact but one which could readily absorb a miracle if called upon to do so; which in itself was something of a miracle; for inside their school at least, William and Michael were regarded, on the whole, with respect not with ridicule. In view of the tremendous pressure they were soon to be exposed to on the outside this was a doubly fortunate blessing.
Meanwhile, their parents had also come to be a centre of attention. Although the Chronicle was not one of the more popular papers in the town, the news of what it contained had travelled very fast, not merely through the agency of paper shops and delivery boys (as well as that of a few actual customers) but on account of Breakfast Time, Good Morning Britain and, for those who might still prefer listening to watching at such an hour, the radio too. Long before the boys had left for school, friends, neighbours, acquaintances and even a total stranger had come knocking on the door—the stranger to denounce. When Simon had called round the previous evening Dawn just couldn’t believe the warning he had given them but now she realized she had been naive. (“What else did he want?” Josh had inquired, coming out of the lavatory after the front door closed. “Only that,” Dawn had told him, “and no, he didn’t ask where you were and I certainly had no wish to advertise it, thank you very much!” Josh, who she knew would have had no inhibitions about keeping even royalty informed of where he was at such embarrassing moments, had stared at her sulkily and looked both studiedly indifferent and secretly put out.) Also, some of the nation’s more enterprising reporters had managed to coax from Directory Inquiries the telephone numbers of several nearby subscribers. Therefore Josh was constantly being called out to adjacent flats and on the one occasion when she herself had gone he’d seemed annoyed she hadn’t had the caller wait for him…which she would have done most willingly, since the man had been a bit unpleasant and Dawn—who didn’t enjoy talking on the telephone at any time, especially not in front of neighbours—had needed to remind herself she was a Christian and that others, even if she hadn’t already told them, ought to be able to divine it simply from her forbearance and her exemplary demeanour. (Josh, on the other hand, was very good at coping with these importunities. You had to admire him for it, the manner in which he hastened to deal with them, almost like one of the very first disciples—for although he would impatiently deny it she felt sure there was something of that inside him—ready to run forward into battle, “singing songs of expectation, marching to the Promised Land,” and she was proud of him, the way he handled this responsibility.)
The journalists, however, didn’t remain just voices on a phone. By lunchtime they or their colleagues, or competitors from other branches of the media, were actually interviewing people in the streets: soliciting the Scunthorpe point of view: although already they found they were sometimes holding up the mike to tourists, for not only had some of the overseas visitors who’d planned to spend the day in York decided on a sudden change of itinerary, a few even believing vaguely they’d find on show a kind of upper crust ET, but dozens of the curious from Hull and Doncaster and smaller nearby places were coming in off every bus and train—a mere foretaste of what the weekend and possibly brighter weather (according to the Met Office) might now be expected to bring. One Scunthorpe man, when questioned by the BBC, gave it as his opinion the whole shemozzle had been dreamt up by some chinless wonder on the town council. “Bonanza time for trade!” he suggested bitterly.
“Still, perhaps it does take your mind off things a bit,” he then added with a shrug. “A peepshow for the unemployed.”
30
Simon, having spent a highly unsatisfactory day in and around York, parked hi
s car outside the school at a few minutes to four in order to collect the boys. He had told Dawn he would do this—for whether they were going to be reviled, lionized, or only mildly pestered, it wouldn’t be pleasant for them to have to walk home in the usual way and he’d been worried about it long before Geraldine Coe had phoned him, on his return from the Heaths, casually to offer payment for a taxi morning and afternoon. This evening he meant to organize a rota of willing car-drivers from amongst his congregation but he had never felt so keenly the absence of a curate. (Several times he had requested one; though always, he supposed, in far too relaxed a fashion.) Tony, of course, gave invaluable assistance, yet a youth leader had neither the time nor the training to take care of all the parish work currently at risk of being neglected. Simon had already called on his brother ministers in the area, discussed with them what was happening, listened to their advice and asked for their help; but apart from such things as burial services—which ideally had to be conducted by someone who’d been on friendly terms with the deceased—and visits to the bereaved which also couldn’t be left to total strangers, there was still a number of people (like Sharon Turner, Mrs Beecham, Dick Evans, Molly Simpson, the list had at least a dozen names on it) whom he knew he couldn’t just abandon, no matter how much aid he had at his disposal. Yet to every problem, he told himself now, there had to be a solution. He bit his lip, then tried to concentrate upon the job in hand.
The phalanx of pressmen and television reporters assembled both at the front door of the school and near another entrance—one which the children used—was sizeable but not as great as Simon in his heightened state of expectancy had feared it might be. He got out of his car intending to go straight to the headmaster’s office, outside whose door he had arranged to meet the boys, but he had overlooked the fact he himself might be recognized.
“It’s the Reverend Simon Madison, isn’t it, vicar of St Matthew’s?”
Immediately, cameras were being trained on him, a microphone being held up. Later he’d be surprised at how little thrusting there had been, at the unity of their restraint and the logical sequence of their questioning: half a dozen voices co-operating singly or in concert to produce the next, most obvious point.
“Vicar, what do you feel about the alleged appearance of an angel in Scunthorpe?”
“I feel sure it took place.”
“Sure? Isn’t that a strong word in the circumstances?”
“No.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“My sense of conviction, arrived at after prayer.”
“Yet mightn’t that have been wishful thinking?”
“No. It isn’t what I wished for.”
“But as a vicar of the Church of England it’s certainly what you’d want?”
“If my own conviction could guarantee that of everyone else then naturally it would be different. But as it is…”
“Yes?”
Simon considered, shrugged. “Well, if we hear the specialist confirming cancer is it really wishful thinking that gives us our belief? And I can’t feel confident even in the face of this (God prove me wrong) that anyone in authority will be induced to prescribe the right medicine.”
“Which is?”
“Well, love thy neighbour in all its many forms and applications.”
“Why can’t you feel confident?”
“Because I’m afraid politics and religious principles seldom seem to mix. There’s no acceptable reason why they shouldn’t, of course.” He smiled.
“Surely you’re now arguing against your own case? Against the effectiveness of God?”
“God can only be effective—no, let me change that—God only chooses to be effective if people will allow him to be so.”
“Would yours be the view of the Church as a whole? Concerning this matter?”
“Concerning this miracle? I don’t feel qualified to comment on the view of the Church as a whole.”
“Then would you feel qualified to comment, unofficially, upon the content of the message?”
“I endorse it, clearly.”
“What about the style of it?”
“The style?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as undignified?”
“No. It says what it wants to and in a manner we can understand. I don’t imagine it was God’s aim to produce a piece of literature. He could easily have sent a poem.”
“Then what do you think the country should do now in the light of such a message?”
“What it should have done a very long time ago—and every other country with it. Get back to the great Christian truths as Jesus preached them. Remember that weakness can be strength. Show that at whatever the risk to itself it doesn’t mean to be a party to the destruction of mankind but a byword for loving and caring and doing, both at home and abroad. Release the billions being consumed by our defence programme to help get rid of deprivation wherever it occurs. Well, I think that ought to do you, as a start.”
“But what hope do you see for this message being effective in Britain if the nation’s leaders should prove unsympathetic?”
“Then my only hope would lie in the power of democracy. After all, in this country we are still a democracy. Aren’t we?”
As Simon moved away, to the nods and muttered thanks of several who had been busy with their notepads, one woman even made a smiling gesture of applause. He himself was pleased with his performance. Normally he believed that God sought to inspire him and—not simply that—actually to speak through him so long as he felt himself to be in a state of grace with his channels of communication unimpeded. (Well, any dedicated clergyman must surely feel the same.) But so often things got in the way, human things, and he was enormously thankful that today, just now, so far as he was honestly aware, they hadn’t seemed to do so.
Inside the building the bell had now rung and Michael was waiting at the appointed place. “They’ve got television out there,” he said. “I won’t know what to say.”
“Just tell them the truth, whatever it is they ask you.”
“I feel nervous.”
“Of course you do. But they’ll be very nice and as soon as it starts you’ll feel okay. And, obviously, God will be looking after you. When William comes the three of us will say a prayer together.”
Michael looked round furtively. There were now plenty of others walking down the corridor, with their satchels or their bags. “As long as no one sees us.”
Simon laughed. “Anyone who does, we’ll rope them in.”
“All right. Though actually I already feel a bit better.”
“Good. But that isn’t going to let you off a thing. What sort of day have you been having?”
The brothers acquitted themselves well. They jointly gave a straightforward account, neither embellishing their experience nor detracting from it. Simon saw very much why God had chosen them, or thought he did, and felt (more optimistically than he had yet felt about anything that day) that the many millions who would later on be watching could hardly help being impressed. He began to think that whatever the cynics and the intellectuals might have to say about it the bulk of the nation would be very much moved by such a patent display of sincerity and in its heart would not only want to believe but actually might start to do so. When William recited yet again the angel’s words (with just one brief omission—which was afterwards supplied by Michael—but with neither the flat delivery so often associated with recitation nor the injection of artificial stress) Simon could imagine that all over the country people would be nodding their heads, at least in spirit, and saying to themselves and one another, “That’s right, there’s a lot of truth in that, it’s the sort of thing I’ve always thought myself.” If only, he reflected, if only there was some way in which to channel all that sympathy before the whole episode became played out, its novelty and impact compromised. A tidal wave of simple human feeling, harnessed and irresistible, that was what was needed, and very quickly too: a tidal wave flooding along the very backbone
of the land, washing through it and down it and beyond it, from John O’Groats to the Houses of Parliament, from Land’s End to everywhere.
31
As it turned out, though, it was neither the boys nor Simon who got the most television coverage that night. Josh Heath was seen not only on every news broadcast that went out, from John Craven’s Newsround to Newsnight some six hours later, he was also interviewed on Sixty Minutes—a programme which claimed to ‘present the issues of the hour, and some stories with a smile’ and was a special, scoop, last-minute guest on the Russell Harty Show. Here he gave a graphic and fairly accurate account of recession-hit Scunthorpe, with some of its steelwork chimneys now smokeless and much of its machinery now silent, shops closed, dole queues longer, feelings of hopelessness growing. The account he gave, however, of the life of one particular family in the town was slightly less accurate: a cheerful, churchgoing unit, challenged, strengthened and united by its experience of unemployment over the past four-and-a-half years. When asked if its life style was likely to be greatly affected by the publicity, he said he hoped that neither he nor his wife nor children would ever exploit the fact of their having been singled out by God (at this point he needed to explain, with highly amused forgiveness, the misconception in that morning’s Chronicle about his not being a Christian: “part of the endearing charm of Fleet Street”) but that being only human, he couldn’t deny the emoluments for such little shows as this (much laughter: from the audience, the other guests, from Russell and himself) would certainly be highly welcome and come in rather handily for buying all those little things like pillowslips and tea towels and facecloths and shoes and clothing which the government clearly didn’t imagine the unemployed should ever need to have replaced. Beyond such parochialism, he said, he hoped that the life style of every family in the universe was likely to be greatly affected by the publicity. He was in his element, had all the makings of a television star, and Russell, covering his eyes as if to hide the tears, expressed a good deal of concern for the safety of his own job—would Josh, perhaps, give him a spot on the show after he’d been out of work for four-and-a-half years? Josh promised that he would, he’d remember all his old friends. The audience showed how warmly it had taken him to its heart by the length and energy of its applause and the credits went up with each man having his arm around the other’s shoulder and with the remaining guests capering self-consciously in attendance. The whole thing was a merry hoot and about thirty seconds of it was inserted by the BBC into its main news slot of the evening and was consequently the only part seen by Simon. He’d been celebrating a house communion with one of the discussion groups and his hostess had turned on the TV so that they could all watch ‘Scunthorpe’s red-letter day, its hour of fame and glory’. “Well, one hopes it’s going to be something a little more than that,” demurred Simon, drily, but he didn’t press the point. The clip was taken from Josh’s description of conditions in the town and Simon was very favourably surprised; he handed over to God, in a private word of thanksgiving, his still woeful lack of trust. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Such Men Are Dangerous Page 17
