He stopped his pacing to slump down on the rock again. There was no point in asking help for Pippa. If she could find her tongue for a different set of parents – dance a jig with Judith, let Tony hold her hand – then it wasn’t healing she needed, but the love and understanding he had withheld from her himself. His only course of action was to tell JB he’d changed his mind, phrasing it in some tactful way which wouldn’t sound ungrateful. ‘Actually, we … er … can’t stay long in any case. I’m already rather worried about problems in the office. So it’s probably best if I get back and …’
‘Still running away?’
‘I’m not running anywhere, dammit! I’m a busy man, with certain responsibilities I can’t just leave behind.’
‘But that’s the problem, Daniel, isn’t it? You can’t leave anything behind – not the past, not your pain and suffering as a child. I’ve been trying to understand why you’re so desperate to escape, and it came to me this evening that you associate this part of Wales with death. It’s not completely clear to me as yet, but I had this image of a child of seven or eight or so, who died not far from here – a child with your own name.’
Daniel simply stared, too shaken to respond. It had been a sort of death – the death of childhood, death of hope; the darkness and incarceration. But how on earth could JB have known? No amount of heart-to-heart with Penny could explain his insights this time, because Penny didn’t know herself. He had told her very little; despised those men who kept banging on about the horrors of their schooldays, in search of easy pity. Such memories should be buried, or discarded with the uniform, the rugby kit, the tin trunk. There was something mawkishly self-indulgent about displaying childhood wounds and expecting people to rally round with the emotional equivalent of cold compresses and Band-Aid.
He stole another glance at JB, whose face expressed the same fierce and almost frightening concentration as when he’d been healing Margot. The word ‘work’ came to mind again, although muddied with less flattering words – fanatic, preachifier.
‘You see, if it was a death, you’ve probably never mourned it, Daniel, never even faced up to it before. We all prefer to run away from death, but life is actually a whole series of deaths. Though it’s also a series of births. You can be reborn into the present, which is a sort of resurrection. Living in the present moment is the only form of deathlessness worth having.’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do. You understand extremely well – far better than I’d hoped.’
‘What d’you mean, better than you’d hoped? You keep making out that you know me, when we’re complete and utter strangers.’
JB laughed. ‘Human beings are never that.’
Oh no? thought Daniel bitterly, remembering Greystone Court again. The only reason he’d been sent to that particular school rather than one less isolated was that his father knew the chaplain there, and perhaps assumed that he’d befriend his son, or even be something of a substitute father. But the Reverend Mr Hanbury-Webber had proved as icily remote as the school itself; a punctiliously strict man who was determined not to expose himself to accusations of favouritism. ‘Complete and utter strangers’ seemed precisely the right phrase to describe both him and most of the staff – tyrants ten foot tall who inhabited a different world and flew into terrifying rages over nothing.
But he didn’t want to dwell on all these memories, nor on pain or death or childhood, or any of the other things he had managed so successfully to confine in locked compartments, but which this dangerous man was now dragging out for inspection. He grabbed a fistful of sand, let it trickle slowly through his fingers, then rooted for a pebble, sat tapping it against the rock. He was unable to stop fidgeting, whereas JB preserved a total stillness, as if hewn from rock himself.
The muffled chink of the pebble seemed magnified in the silence of the night. Daniel strained his ears, listening for some other noise – a restive sheep or rustling bird, the faintest plop or stirring from the lake. But there was nothing save his own stealthy tap-tap-tap, which only emphasized the fact that he hadn’t really responded to JB’s last remarks. He cleared his throat, trying out various openings in his mind, but dismissed them all as threatening – too likely to lead on to further inquisition. All subjects seemed taboo, in fact. If he returned to Pippa there would only be more blame, and if he started probing Margot’s cure he would be trapped in awkward questions about acceptance and belief.
It was a relief when JB spoke himself, even accompanying his words with a slight gesticulation, as if to prove that he was flesh, not stone.
‘You see, I too was living in the past, and actually became quite ill because I couldn’t seem to let go of it. I was very closed like you, Daniel, and it took something really violent to shake me out of my misery – a shock to the whole system.’
‘What was the shock?’ asked Daniel, jibbing at the label ‘very closed’.
‘My life changed – totally.’
‘But what happened?’ Daniel persisted, considerably relieved that the focus appeared to have shifted from his problems to the healer’s.
‘It’s difficult to find the words.’ JB leaned forward and brushed his hand across the sand, as if smoothing out some obstacle in his mind. ‘And anyway most words are misleading when it comes to spiritual change. I suppose you might say it was a question of grace breaking and entering my soul.’
Daniel only grunted. Religious terminology always made him defensive. He’d had enough of it at school – the Reverend Hanbury-Webber expatiating on the soul when he clearly lacked a heart. And as for grace, he had never really grasped it as a concept: not surprising, perhaps, when his initial introduction to it was as ‘the grace of God which passeth all understanding’. He was aware of JB’s eyes on him – that penetrating gaze again, which seemed to bore through to his marrow, or to the soul he wasn’t sure he had.
‘I have an intuition that the same will happen for you, Daniel. That may be why you’re here. Often, there’s a higher consciousness which plans things out for us, so perhaps you needed to come to Wales to confront that early death. In fact, it would probably be enormously helpful if you returned to the place where it happened …’
Daniel sprang up to his feet. No! he shouted silently. Never in a million years. Keep your crack-brained notions to yourself. He realized he was shivering. It must have turned cold suddenly; the night storage-heater running out of power. ‘I … I’d better get to bed,’ he said aloud, already striding from the shore towards the path. ‘It’s bloody chilly up here in the wilds.’
‘It’s actually quite warm,’ the impassive voice corrected. ‘Surprisingly muggy, considering it’s the middle of the night.’
‘Okay, it’s warm,’ Daniel muttered, anger surging up in him, exploding through his body, as if he were breaking out in shingles or a rash. ‘Have it your own way! Black’s white, isn’t it, and blind people can see.’
‘Yes,’ JB said softly. ‘Just occasionally they can.’
Chapter Twenty
Daniel put his foot down, watching the speedometer climb to seventy-five, then eighty. It was exhilarating to roar along a decent stretch of road, after his tortoise-like manoeuvrings on the narrow country lanes. He was out for the whole day, footloose and fancy-free. The radio was playing a jaunty piece for strings by a seventeenth-century French composer whose name he hadn’t caught – perfect for the occasion since it matched his sense of spree. He’d been released from boarding-school and allowed to visit the real world again – a peculiar and wicked world, containing all the things discouraged by JB, and where people wore conventional clothes, instead of bikinis teamed with Wellingtons or (in Happy’s case this morning) a caftan and a coolie hat.
He could hardly believe how strange things looked around him. Passing through a town, he had gazed afresh at supermarkets, petrol stations, video arcades, marvelling at their novelty like an alien from another planet. He had been out of circulat
ion only for a week, but the daily round of life in the camp had become almost second nature, so that it was so-called ordinary life which now seemed unfamiliar. He’d been tempted to sneak out before, but there was always some compulsory meal, or vital communal meeting to attend, and he’d found himself increasingly caught up in interests and activities which his more inhibited London self would never so much as contemplate. One attraction was the company of Claire. Penny and Pippa might have written him off, but she and Rick thought otherwise, and seemed actively to seek him out. He’d spent a good deal of his time with them, discussing life or God or Greenpeace with the mother, or damming streams and watching birds with the son. He had to admit he’d actually quite enjoyed it, and the weather was so blazing hot, there was every incentive to stay put and laze around.
It was JB who’d suggested that he break free of routine, take himself off for a drive or an excursion – all day if he liked. He’d been suspicious of the suggestion at first. Did the healer want him out of the way, so that he could deepen his relationship with Penny? No. Penny simply wouldn’t have the time: too busy with Corinna, or learning overtone chanting and the theory of the chakras. After his initial hesitation, he had agreed with growing enthusiasm, and had set out after breakfast (heavy gritty muesli, washed down with fennel tea). Now it was nearly twelve and he was watching out for a decent pub, where he could stop and have a drink – not some fig and rhubarb brew, murky and lukewarm, or colon-cleansing liquorice-root, but a pint of ice-cold lager.
He retuned the radio to catch the midday news. He had heard it twice already, at ten and then eleven, hungry for information after seven newsless days. But it was only a repetition of the previous two bulletins – mostly bombings, muggings, shootings, strikes and wars. Perhaps there was something to be said for banning newspapers and radios: without them you could almost believe in universal brotherhood and peace. And he no longer even missed his watch, but was beginning to appreciate the freedom from all time-pressures; the sense of days being baggy, shapeless, voluminous things, like comfortable old clothes, instead of rigidly restricting corsets stretched to breaking point.
He coasted down a hill, slowing to a stop as he saw a pub sign on the left – the Plough and Harrow, a pleasant grey-stone building softened by a flowering creeper, with more flowers on the curtains and a board outside announcing ‘home-cooked meals’. As he walked into the bar, he could smell the rich aroma of roast beef, and realized how he’d been missing good red meat. The pub was almost empty, and much more peaceful than the camp – no children, dogs or chanting – yet he felt a frisson of unease at being there at all. Things he would never normally notice sprang out at him as crimes: sandwiches made with sliced white bread, oozing mayonnaise; sugar-loaded chutney, bars of chocolate, crisps. A man was sitting at the bar, peeling the cellophane off a glistening Walls pork pie. He looked remarkably complacent, considering the offences he was committing: cruelty to pigs, adulterating his body with preservatives and additives, consuming saturated fat, and despoiling the environment with non-biodegradable packaging.
Daniel watched him bite into the crust, the smell of greasy pastry tantalizing his nostrils, so that it was all he could do not to reach across and take a bite himself. Instead, he ordered his lager and scanned the menu chalked up on the blackboard. Damn the guilt – he’d enjoy himself for once: tuck in to steak and chips, or roast beef and spotted dick. Penny was learning not just healing methods, but a new philosophy (taught by gurus Happy and Corinna) for developing her ‘real’ self, as against the self which served man or child or state. He found it extremely threatening, but today, he decided, he would follow her example and develop his own ‘real’ self; indulge his gluttony to the full.
He took his beer to a table in the window and rummaged for his handkerchief – already unpleasantly damp. He’d gone down with Gerard’s cold. In fact, half the camp had caught it, which seemed a shade ironical when not only was the weather so benign, but they were all expending so much energy on living a healthy life. It also gave Penny another reason to banish him and his germs from the tent. He was still sleeping in his lonely shack – sometimes even contemplated asking Claire to share it.
He booted Penny from his mind again, and turned his attention to the middle-aged brunette who had come to take his order. Her top half and her lower half didn’t seem to match – the neat white blouse and stylish chignon spoilt by veiny legs and down-at-heel scuffed shoes. He spent some minutes with her discussing the relative merits of the chicken, beef and steak, partly for the pleasure of listening to her musical Welsh lilt, and partly because he was determined to spin out the rare treat of a normal meat-based meal. He was already savouring his beer, revelling in the taste of each slow mouthful, its tangy coolness soothing his dry throat.
He glanced across at the bar once more. The man had finished his pork pie and was now lighting a cigarette. He felt no envy this time, but a smug glow of satisfaction. In the last few days, his once desperate urge to smoke had dwindled into nothing more than an occasional wistful pang. Claire had been a great source of encouragement, telling him about an article she’d read which said it was more difficult to stop smoking than to come off heroin, and that a smoker on twenty a day raised his hand to his mouth seventy-three thousand times a year, which – according to her calculations – meant that he was seventy-three thousand times healthier than he had been a year ago.
Instinctively, he raised his hand to his mouth, though only to take another swig of beer. He wasn’t totally convinced by her claim, nor by the accuracy of her maths. Still, she’d meant it well, and had even mixed him up a herbal potion which she assured him would alleviate any last faint cravings. Who knows? – it might actually have worked. Certainly he had no inclination now to go rushing up to the bar to buy a stash of Camels.
He lounged back in his chair, admiring the simple room. No video games or jukeboxes, but an interesting collection of old farm implements hanging on the walls: a primitive-looking hay-rake, an elaborate leather horse-collar and some ancient scythes and gin-traps. A couple of equally ancient codgers had just come shuffling in – regulars, by the looks of them – dressed in heavy tweed jackets despite the heat. They ordered pints of scrumpy and stood leaning against the bar, conversing loudly in Welsh. Daniel cocked an ear. What an extraordinary language it was – r so utterly foreign-sounding, so unlike any other tongue he knew – a private language, spoken by a mere half a million people, compared with the hundreds of millions of English-speakers across the globe. He itched to learn it, to penetrate its secret structure, understand its sagas and its songs. One of the men was speaking with great emphasis, his face solemn and intense. Was he expounding the meaning of life – or merely complaining about his prostate?
Daniel blew his nose again, concealing the grubby handkerchief as he saw the waitress heading for his table with a tray. There was almost too much luxury to take in all at once: a proper china plate on a proper wooden table, instead of a chipped enamel dog-bowl on a groundsheet or a cardboard box; a sizzling slab of meat which didn’t taste of wood-smoke; a bread roll so light and soft he half-expected it to float up to the ceiling; real forbidden butter, and a pile of chips so large it reminded him of the firewood he was constantly chopping at the camp, although on this occasion his hands weren’t red and aching from the axe. And – bliss! – no vegetables at all, save for a minuscule parsley sprig and half a sliced tomato. He’d had enough of vegetables – soggy marrow, worthy swedes, so-called ‘edible’ fungi, flatulence-inducing beans – all cooked without salt or fat.
He showered salt on his steak and bit into it with relish, imagining Rick beside him, shovelling in a cheeseburger and chips. It was strange, the bond between them – a surprise to him as much as to Claire – the rebellious teenage boy and the middle-aged recluse. Except he was no longer a recluse, but had been out and about with Rick, helping him hunt bones, or explore foxes’ holes and rabbit warrens. Rick was a true country boy and his interest in the natural world had brough
t back happy memories of his own time in the bush. He’d forgotten the simple pleasures of messing about in streams, identifying footprints in the mud – stoat and weasel, vole and heron – even climbing trees, which he hadn’t done since the age of nine or ten. His only regret was that Pippa refused to join them, despite his continual efforts to include her on the expeditions, his attempts to arouse her interest by showing her rare bird feathers or treasures from the abandoned mine. She hadn’t simply declined: she’d been uncharacteristically rude, shunning Rick completely as if he had some infectious disease, and resisting any overtures even from good-natured Claire. He’d suspected she was jealous, and had contrived to talk to her on his own, but had only been resisted in his turn. Finally he had complained to Penny, who had merely shrugged and said if the child was happy with her dog (and the two were indeed inseparable), then why not leave her be?
It was stupid to harbour a grudge against an injured slobbery boxer; but it did hurt to see her conferring with the dog’s confounded owners, discussing canine matters with placid Judith and ever-cheery Tony while she cold-shouldered her own father. He had also seen her talking to JB, and immediately feared that the healer might be influencing her against him – that baneful ‘someone’ who threatened her well-being.
Well, he mustn’t let her spoil his steak, nor his cup of strong black coffee which had never seen an acorn or a dandelion, and which he sweetened with two spoonfuls of wonderfully poisonous white sugar. By the time he’d drunk a second cup, he was in urgent need of a pee, so he slipped out to the gents, nodding to the two old men en route. He shut himself in a cubicle just for the joy of having peace and privacy; peeing in a proper porcelain toilet-bowl behind a locked and solid door, rather than a fly-infested hole-in-the-ground with dogs sniffing and kids sniggering if he took his trousers down. He flushed the cistern gratefully: so much more hygienic than covering up one’s droppings with a handful of damp sawdust or a few tastefully arranged leaves. And what luxury to have a proper basin, with unlimited hot water gushing out at the flick of a tap, when he was used to boiling it in a slow and stubborn billy-can over a temperamental fire.
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