Despite the problems, Claire seemed remarkably cheerful. She insisted Rick was cured, although Rick had told him privately that he only pretended his stomach-pains were better, to be excused the odious potions. She had nothing to go home for, except the dole and an empty house, and, like Penny herself, enjoyed the company, the communal meals, and the sense of being part of a fraternity (or sorority he should say, since females still outnumbered males). The more he reflected on it, the more he realized he was out of tune with the others, woefully lacking in community spirit. In theory, he might endorse their principles. Indeed, the whole concept of collectivism and co-operatives struck a chord with his own socialist ideals. But it was much easier to approve such things on paper, or to support them in, say, Israel, or in a safely generalized Third World context, than to rethink one’s personal life and maybe lose one’s home and whole security.
He fidgeted on the seat, stamping his numb feet to restore the feeling to them. He had no idea what time it was – except it had been night for far too long. He fought a sudden panic. Suppose dawn never came, but darkness followed darkness for the entire rest of his life? He had felt the self-same terror his first night at Greystone Court, lying in his dormitory watching the black fanlight stay black, black, black, black, black. No, he mustn’t think of school – It would lead on to thoughts of Sayers, another source of darkness which he was determined to suppress.
He jumped out of the car, slammed the door behind him and dived into the back, shutting out the wind and rain which had seized their fleeting chance to beleaguer him again. He shook the wet off his hair, tried to get more comfortable spread across the seat, first removing all the clutter – the mouldy apples, rotting food, abandoned summer clothes and untouched books. He would relax here for a while, enjoy a brief respite before returning to the fray. He hardly dared imagine what might be happening in the lodge now: rebirthing sessions (Anita’s speciality), or Shiatsu massage (Andrew’s), or working out their astrological compatibilities? Claire had asked him only yesterday if he was Scorpio or Pisces, and when he’d told her neither, she’d seemed genuinely disappointed that his earth sign and her water sign were not altogether harmonious. He tried to keep his mind on fire signs, to provide a spark of inner heat to thaw his frozen limbs. He could scarcely believe it was August, rather than mid-February. He shivered at the allusion. February was Sayers again. Would he ever quash the memories, ever recover from this horrendous trip? Everything was dark – inside, outside, past and future.
He shut his eyes, hid his face in the musty-smelling seat. ‘Help me,’ he begged silently, wondering who the hell he was addressing – Great Spirit (who had departed with the Robins), his dead and buried childhood God, or that infuriating healer he seemed unable to escape.
Chapter Twenty Five
Daniel rubbed the steamed-up window and Stared out in astonishment at full impressive daylight, shreds of blue in the sky, even glints of sunshine. Once again he had slept – overslept, in fact – in impossible conditions, even in his boots! He had cramp in his left foot, his back was stiff, and his forehead ridged and furrowed from the imprint of the seat. Yet he hadn’t woken once – hadn’t so much as stirred – despite his uncomfortable position, his restricting waterproofs, and the fact that never in his life before had he managed to drop off in a car.
He refused to give the credit to the healer. It was a fluke, that’s all, a proof of how exhausted he was. He opened the door, stepped out and stretched himself, gulping down great draughts of clean fresh air. He was starving hungry, but had probably missed breakfast, if not lunch as well. His thoughts shouldn’t be on food, though, but on Penny and Pippa, whom he had abandoned in the middle of the night. Were they anxious, or annoyed with him for managing to sleep, while they’d been forced to stay awake till dawn?
He set off to find out, apprehension weighing on his mind in the same way as the mud dragged at his boots. The weather was much warmer, though; an airless, humid sort of day, which made him sweaty in his layers of windproof clothes. The camp-site looked a wilderness: Claire’s tent still horizontal, and several others sagging; plastic bags and empty tins scattered by the wind; branches broken off the trees, and a flotsam of small twigs and leaves clogging every surface. He was surprised that no one was around, clearing up the mess, but the place seemed totally deserted.
He crawled into his own tent, found Pippa curled up in a ball, lying on her sleeping-bag. She sat up as he entered, looking anxious and forlorn.
‘What’s wrong, darling?’
‘N … nothing.’ Her voice faltered on the brink of tears.
‘You’re not ill, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘In the Healing Dome. Everybody’s there.’
‘Everyone except you and me,’ he smiled, trying to create a link between them, however tenuous. ‘I’m sorry I disappeared. Believe it or not, I fell asleep in the car, and I’ve only just come to. Did Mum wonder where I’d got to?’
She shook her head, pulled down her crumpled skirt. He struggled out of his waterproofs, then sat awkwardly beside her on the sleeping-bag, shocked at how damp it was. He heard her take a deep breath in, as if preparing for some physical feat.
‘Once the rain had stopped,’ she said, her voice so soft he had to strain to hear it, ‘Mum and Corinna went to find you in the car and saw you were fast asleep. She said you looked so peaceful, she didn’t want to wake you.’
Again, he felt a twinge of disbelief. Could he really have continued sleeping with people peering in at him, or looked peaceful in that cold cramped car? But more important was the fact that Pippa had responded to him; actually uttered two long sentences – well, long compared with her usual terse replies. If only they could continue talking, he might find out what was wrong with her, get close to her once more. She was clearly tired and miserable, cowering here alone, with not so much as a book to distract her, and lying on wet bedding amidst a tide of dirty clothes. He was beginning to feel resentful that JB had done nothing for her. His cures might be spectacular, but they were few and far between. Penny had tried to convince him that their daughter would find healing through her bond with Bernard the dog, but now that bond was severed, any hope of a recovery appeared to have vanished with the dog itself.
‘Would you like to go home?’ he blurted out impetuously, feeling an instant sense of disloyalty to Penny. ‘I mean, all of us? Today?’
He was startled by her response: the way she gripped his arm and whispered ‘Can we?’ with such urgency, such a note of desperate longing, his guilt immediately redoubled, and he stammered out a promise to arrange it. He had obviously underestimated how much she loathed this offbeat way of living, without her beloved Bernard to compensate. He was determined now to leave, whatever Penny said. It was unfair to keep the child here when she was so utterly dejected and had no one her own age but Rick.
‘Look,’ he said, shifting in the restricted space and rubbing his stiff back, ‘this thing with you and Rick – he hasn’t hurt you, has he, or …?’ The memories of Sayers had made him inordinately suspicious, though it seemed unlikely that a shy lad such as Rick, who was usually tongue-tied in her company, would have abused her in any way. Yet he noticed her expression change, the look of fear, distaste. He had been miserable at her age, locked in his own nightmare world, but his parents hadn’t known about it. He still felt angry with those parents (or strangers, as they seemed now), who’d been so laudably overburdened with the sufferings of the entire Third World, his own woes had failed to register at all. He couldn’t bear to think that he was equally insensitive to what was going on in Pippa’s life; ignoring a weight of private pain. Somehow, he had to get through to her. She hadn’t answered his question, so he repeated it, rephrased it.
Any reply she might have made was drowned by shouts from outside – eager footsteps, shrill elated voices.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ he frowned.
Pippa shrugged, flinching back fr
om the disturbance into a corner of the tent.
‘It sounds like another pow-wow, God forbid!’ He ducked out through the entrance, saw all the others streaming from the Healing Dome, babbling with excitement. Andrew and Gerard had lifted Pat shoulder-high and were carrying her in procession. Megan followed with Tim in her arms; she crying, he laughing; both sounding near-hysterical. Claire and Happy were clinging to JB, Claire kissing his neck, twining her fingers through his long loose wavy hair. Penny and Corinna were almost dancing along, exchanging jubilant glances, while Dylan and Anita brought up the rear, leaning on each other, as if too dazed to walk without support. All the faces wore a look of triumph, like victors in a war, or devotees who had attained a state of nirvana. He felt totally excluded – the loser, the non-combatant, the uninitiate.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked Penny, sidling up behind her; his curiosity overcoming his embarrassment at being the only one in ignorance.
‘Pat’s been healed! Completely. Her tumour’s disappeared.’
‘Another miracle!’ Claire exulted, stroking the healer’s arm, to absorb his magical energies.
‘I prefer not to use that word,’ JB reproved her gently.
‘Why not, when it’s the right one? Pat’s doctor said her cancer was incurable.’
JB stopped, as if to give his words more weight, addressing not just Claire, but all of them. ‘ “Incurable” only means that medicine can do no more. It takes no account of higher forces. There are no limitations to healing, other than those we set ourselves. If we truly believe we can recover, then we will.’
‘That’s bloody nonsense!’ Daniel exploded, thinking of his father, who’d had almost superhuman confidence in his ability to survive a stroke and then a heart attack, but had died still fighting death. He backed away in confusion when he saw the hostile glances aimed in his direction. He had discredited their miracle; the once euphoric revellers now patently resentful, and Megan complaining fiercely about his rudeness to the healer.
He hardly knew whether to apologize or to return to the attack. These people had become his friends, or at least his comrades in adversity. The hazards of the last few days had created a sympathy between them. Yet now he was the killjoy who had stopped the joyous cavalcade; thrown cold water on their flames of triumph. Gerard and Andrew set Pat down on her feet, while Claire gazed at him reproachfully, as if he were Judas to the healer’s Christ. He was closer to Claire than anyone, yet when he watched her fawning on JB, smothering his neck with kisses, it aroused an incoherent rage in him. He was overreacting again, of course, but the horror of the Greystone Court affair had stirred up an inner ferment he found it impossible to control.
Penny reached out and squeezed his hand in an attempt to calm him down, include him in the group. He drew her back the other way, safely out of earshot. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he whispered, cursing the fact that it was virtually impossible ever to get her on her own.
‘Can’t it wait?’ hissed Penny. ‘We’re on our way to Pat’s tent, to celebrate her cure.’
‘No, it can’t,’ he griped, suddenly enraged at her obtuseness. If she was close to him at all, she should know he was upset; use her intuition to detect his inmost feelings. Couldn’t she see that something had happened to him, and what a bad state he was in? And what about her daughter? It didn’t appear to bother her in the slightest that two out of the three of them were loathing every minute of this so-called holiday.
Lowering his voice still further, he turned his back on the group, deliberately avoiding Corinna’s cold blue stare. ‘I’ve just promised Pippa that we’re going home today.’
‘What?’
‘Well, she really does seem miserable. And I honestly don’t think it’s fair to inflict another fortnight on her.’
‘Look, we can’t talk here,’ said Penny, frowning at Rick, who had pushed his way towards them and was trying to catch Daniel’s eye.
‘No,’ said Daniel, ‘you’re right.’ He took her arm and marched her away, she protesting at his vehemence.
‘Not so fast! I’ll break my ankle if you drag me along like that. Where are we going, anyway?’
‘Just somewhere we can sit in peace and talk without an audience.’
‘Well, I can’t be long. I want to get back to Pat.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Penny! We’ve hardly had a moment to ourselves since we arrived here.’ He strode on up the hill, making for a stump of wall – wreckage from the lead mine. He brushed the debris from it and sat down.
Penny panted after him, tripping on a half-hidden ledge of stone. ‘Listen, Daniel, will you? I’ve just witnessed something absolutely riveting; something which has changed my life – and might change yours as well, if you weren’t so self-obsessed – and you have to go and ruin it.’
‘That’s not fair,’ he countered, wounded by the ‘self-obsessed’.
‘Yes, it is. You’ve upset all the others by your attitude, and you’re so concerned with going home to your petty little comforts, you don’t seem to understand that we’re living in the company of an amazing man who can actually work miracles.’
He sprang up to his feet again, his anger surging back. ‘You’ve no proof it was a miracle. How the hell do you know the tumour’s gone? Did you rush Pat to the hospital for x-rays?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. And anyway I have got proof. I felt the lump myself, last night. It was really quite grotesque – very big and hard, rather like a cricket ball. And now it’s vanished – just like that.’
He began pacing to and fro, hands thrust in his pockets, brow creased in a frown. Penny might be scatty, but she had never been given to delusions. And what about the earlier healing he had witnessed for himself – Margot’s sight restored?
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘I just find all this miracle stuff pretty hard to take.’
‘Well, so do I, if you really want to know.’ She slumped down on a pile of shale, grimacing at the sharpness of the stones. ‘I was a bit suspicious when Pat said she had cancer in the first place. I mean, she looks so hale and hearty. But Megan told me that’s deceptive and she’s lost all her usual energy and had to give up her job. And she’s also in a lot of pain, but because she’s a real fighter, she tends to play it down, so that people think it’s nothing. Well, I misjudged her myself, didn’t I, and even Corinna had her doubts. I think that’s why Megan suggested we should all feel the lump for ourselves – to prove her sister wasn’t a fraud.’ Penny picked up a large stone, as if to demonstrate, running her hands across it. ‘Then, later on, Pat told me the whole story. Apparently the lump was only small when she first noticed it, and she thought she must have banged her leg or something. But it gradually got bigger and bigger, so after about six months she went to see her GP. He arranged a biopsy, and they told her at the hospital that it was what they call a sarcoma – a malignant tumour of the bone – and there was no hope of a cure. In fact, they even hinted that it could be fatal within a matter of months.’
Daniel wrenched out a fistful of grass and started shredding it between his fingers. ‘But how could anything as serious as that just … just melt into thin air?’
‘Search me! The whole experience was absolutely shattering.’ She drew him down towards her, placed her warm hand on his arm. ‘Oh, Daniel, let’s not quarrel. This is such a special day, it seems criminal to spoil it. I only wish you’d been there.’
‘So do I!’ How could he make a judgement, either favourable or hostile, if he hadn’t witnessed the proceedings for himself? It seemed ironic that he should have slept through Penny’s ‘shattering experience’, when his usual problem was insomnia.
Penny slipped an arm around his waist, gazing into the distance with a look of baffled wonder. ‘It wasn’t just the miracle, it was the extraordinary way it happened. You see, Stephen seemed to be struggling at first, as if the healing wasn’t easy for him, or he was being tested to the limit. In fact, it all got rather heavy, and we were sitting ther
e screwed up and tense, and hardly daring to breathe. And then gradually he changed before our eyes.’
‘Changed? What d’you mean?’
‘Became a different person.’ She noted his incredulous look, pounded her fist on her lap. ‘Oh, it’s so frustrating, darling! I knew when I told you, you’d say it was preposterous, and I honestly don’t blame you. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it either. Look, let me try to explain.’ She chewed her thumb a moment, straining to find words. ‘First of all, his voice changed. It went really deep and rumbling, which was uncanny in itself. I mean, he’s never spoken like that before. And it didn’t fit his age or build or anything, but seemed to be coming from someone else. And then his face and body changed. He became older, bit by bit, and his skin got dark and swarthy, like an Indian’s, and he even had a beard.’
‘Oh, Penny, that’s crazy! You sound as if you’re off your rocker.’
‘I know I do. But everybody saw it – not just me.’
‘Well, you must have been hallucinating – the whole damned lot of you. A case of mass hysteria, I reckon.’
‘That’s hardly likely, is it, first thing in the morning in the cold clear light of day?’
‘But you were awake the whole of last night, weren’t you? So it could have been caused purely by lack of sleep.’
‘No, it couldn’t. We all kipped down soon after you’d gone. The rain stopped very suddenly, and once I’d been to check you were okay, I came back to the tepee and went out like a light.’
Daniel didn’t answer. It seemed his wife had been bewitched, though he suspected it had less to do with the supernatural than with the compelling force of Eros. She was clearly infatuated with ‘Stephen’ – her father-figure/lover. And Claire, Corinna and Happy were all equally adoring, and could easily have convinced themselves that their hero had uncanny powers. As for Andrew and Anita, they were so way out themselves (believing in Tarot cards and angels, and refusing to wear shoes, for fear of harming the ground), that their testimony would hardly count in any case. But what about Dylan and Gerard? He had got to know them better in the last few days, and though they were both highly strung and shy, they were undeniably intelligent; not the types to swallow signs and wonders without demanding evidence. And Pat herself seemed very down to earth; a no-nonsense sort of woman, who, he’d heard from Megan, had a degree in biochemistry. A scientific training would surely make her wary of using words like miracle too glibly.
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