by Simon Parke
‘And did you have any dates in mind?’ he asked. Frances clearly had.
‘Saturnalia was celebrated at the Winter solstice in December, but that’s no good for us - it would just get lost in Crimbo.’
Barnabus winced.
‘So I wondered about Halloween night, something to give it a little edge: the time of chaos in heaven, when danger stalks the earth.’
‘Beats trick or treating... just.’
‘Oh come on, Barney Boy, let’s have some human enthusiasm here! Your name’s Hope not Despair!’
Barnabus said he was happy to proceed with the idea. A bit of a gimmick but harmless enough, and who knew what might arise from it? ‘Not even God can steer a stationary car,’ as his old vicar said. So why not drive the car recklessly and see where we get?
‘I’m happy to handle the sessions, Frances, if you look after the organisation of the Feast.’
He felt the need to go, the need to be moving, to be somewhere else, away from here and away from Frances... the sea air of Stormhaven would be nice and he moved towards the office door.
Frances: ‘I’ll do better than that: I’ll instruct Bella in the matter.’
‘Who’s Bella?’
His departure is postponed.
‘I’ve been a little naughty, Barney,’ says Frances, as she mimes slitting her throat. ‘The Mind Gains clinic has a new administrator!’
‘What?’
‘Yes, and before you say anything, she’s going to be just what we need, I know it.’
Barnabus finds a chair and sits down.
‘You’ve employed someone without my knowledge?’
‘Barney, don’t take it all so seriously! Lighten up!’
‘I’m noting you telling me to do something you wish you could do yourself.’
‘Look, she just rang me up and offered herself - along with her fantastic CV, I might add, and we could do with one or two of those.’
This was a veiled attack, without much veil. Barnabus had only a limp diploma in counselling from a year-long course in Brighton. It wasn’t the Institute of Psychiatry, not a qualification on any brass plaque in Harley Street.
Frances continued: ‘And I knew if we didn’t snap her up, someone else would very quickly.’
‘She sounds like the messiah.’
‘There’s no need to be bitter.’
‘Why not? I feel it’s the least I can do in the circumstances.’
‘And you’ve been away, of course.’
‘Only for a week.’
‘Life goes on.’
‘As does recruitment apparently. How are we going to pay her?’
‘Trust me, Bella will be excellent.’
‘And my question about pay?’
‘She seemed to know all about us.’ This puzzled Barnabus.
‘All about us? No one knows all about us. We barely exist.’
‘She gets it, that’s the thing. She just gets Mind Gains. And she’ll free us to do what we do best.’
Was this the first time Barnabus scented danger? Possibly. And now he was thinking of Abbot Peter, though he wasn’t sure why. How strange that their lives had crossed once again amid the peeling paint and seagull cries of Stormhaven. After all, they’d first met years ago beneath the blazing desert sun, in the rocky arms of the monastery of St James-the-Less.
‘And what do we do best?’ asked Barnabus. ‘I’ve temporarily forgotten.’
‘We rid people of their demons.’
‘I don’t believe in them.’
‘You will after the Feast of Fools!’
Six
And news of the Feast of Fools did reach the people of Stormhaven, though the idea was not always greeted with warmth. Virgil Bannaford heard about it from a friend, because he was having trouble with his marriage. It was going the same way as every relationship had gone in Virgil’s life: Suzanne didn’t seem to understand him anymore, leading to excruciating conversations:
‘You can’t even look at me, Virgil,’ she’d said.
‘Not true.’
‘It is true.’
It was true. He couldn’t look at Suzanne.
‘You look at Emily, you can manage that,’ she added.
‘She’s my daughter, for God’s sake!’
‘And I’m your wife.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re supposed to be able to look at your wife.’
Virgil knew Suzanne might say that, and yes, you ought to be able to look at your wife, it’s expected, a traditional view of marriage and he was all for tradition - but she was making it pretty damn impossible.
‘You used to be able to look at me,’ she said.
What could Virgil say? There had been a time when he could look at nothing else, when Suzanne was everything to him and he’d been everything to her.
‘So why is it so hard to look at me now?’
He couldn’t really say why, merely confirm it was so. And this wasn’t ideal. So Virgil had moved out of the family home - well, he was pushed really, that’s how he saw it, and now lived a mile away but visited twice a week for Emily-time: tea, bath and bedtime stories. And Suzanne hoped he’d return, she really did, she liked Virgil, though things were getting worse not better. They now talked through their daughter, through the five-year-old Emily: ‘What does mummy mean by that, I wonder?’ That sort of thing, and not good for anyone.
Why couldn’t Suzanne just love him and think he was brilliant like she used to?
‘The courtship was magnificent,’ a mystified Virgil had confided to a friend called Justin.
‘It usually is,’ said Justin.
‘But marriage? Marriage feels like one long judgement, she used not to judge me, she used to adore me!’
‘And you her, no doubt.’
Virgil adored anyone who adored him.
‘And what happened to the sex?’ he continued. Justin waited to be told.
‘I mean, it isn’t about the sex, Justin - well, not all about the sex, but it’s a sort of barometer, isn’t it? I mean, the old sex bit matters somewhat!’
‘You need to see someone, Virgil.’
‘You mean a shrink?’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not bloody seeing one of those.’
‘Mind Gains, it’s a new clinic.’
‘Mind Games? Yes, well that says it all. The last thing I need is any bloody mind games.’
‘Mind Gains. I read about it in the Silt.’
‘The Sussex Silt? That rag? You’re not selling it to me, Justin.’
‘They’re organising a Feast of Fools, along the lines of the old medieval practice - which being an historian, you ought to know all about.’
‘Feasting, boozing, dressing up and the inversion of social norms for one night of the year.’
‘Plus free therapy, before and after.’
‘A strange mix.’
‘Maybe, but what’s to lose?’
Virgil thought about Emily. He could walk out on an ungrateful, griping woman - but his daughter?
‘Mind Gains, you say?’
‘I don’t know if they’re any good.’ Justin was back-peddling slightly.
‘Therapy is run by the mad for the mad,’ declared Virgil. ‘You pay someone to tell you how rotten you are - don’t need it!’
Justin was losing interest. He’d done his best, but Virgil, as ever, was all over the place and stubborn in his dysfunction. He’d known him since their Eton days and he hadn’t changed, still the same ball of confused and garrulous energy.
‘So where are they, the Mind Games people? Lewes probbers! They like that sort of nonsense in Lewes. Is it Lewes?’
‘Stormhaven - well, Henry Hou
se.’ Virgil went quiet.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Justin.
‘Fine, fine!’
‘Another drink?’
Silence was so rare with Virgil, you noticed it when it appeared.
‘Might give it a try,’ he said.
‘The wine?’
‘No, I mean the other thing.’
‘Mind Gains?’
Virgil nodded.
‘I think it’s the Halloween weekend,’ said Justin, surprised. ‘So it could be a treat!’
‘And if it’s a trick, I’ll bloody murder them... a seasonal murder by the sea.’
Seven
The seventeen-year-old Shams-Ud-Din, schoolboy and breadwinner, had returned home in shock, elation and terror. And one thing was certain amid the collapse of everything else: nothing in his life had prepared him for such beauty. And another thing, for these were confusing times: nothing would ever be the same again, absolutely nothing, so all in all, not an insignificant evening for young Shams, with two astounding certainties catapulted into his life by Shakh-e Nabat - yes, he now at least knew her name. Well, he knew more than that. He knew of her beauty and knew where she lived, so that was three things he knew, three more than a couple of hours ago. But if that was clarity, the rest of his life was confusion. What now to do with the religion he’d faithfully learned and followed? And what now to do with the sweet girl to whom he was engaged? For the past year, these had been the twin pillars of his life, the pillars of every young man’s life. But they’d collapsed in less than a moment, dissolved by the presence of a woman who did not say a word, nor acknowledge him in any way at all.
What had happened? The desire to make sense of no sense had him retracing his steps. He’d turned up for work at the bakery after a dull day at school. He’d hung around for an hour doing not very much, and had then been sent to the rich quarter of the city to deliver some Barbari bread to a new customer - and gone gladly, because he preferred work to standing around. He’d arrived there at dusk, elegant streets, different from his, and approached the house, thinking of something, he couldn’t remember what. She’d stood in the porch - the woman in question - looking across the Musalla Gardens, but made no move as he climbed the steps and left the Barbari bread on the table beside her. There must have been a moment when he noticed her, a point in time when he perceived her green eyes, elusive scent, flawless skin and the serene life beneath the skin. And then suddenly, nothing he’d ever known meant anything anymore. His legs buckled and his arms locked as he placed the bread by her side. The metal tray seemed to crash and bang unnecessarily, how could he be so clumsy? And then a loaf fell to the ground and he sweated with embarrassment as he returned it to the tray, muttering to himself and perhaps to her.
Would she now turn and greet him? He fervently hoped not, while wishing she would. But she never moved, why would she, no movement at all, perhaps a slight glance towards him as he made his awkward exit, his body disturbed with the noise of passion and awe.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ said his mother, as he crept in later.
He’d walked and walked and then walked some more, knowing only the chaos of his heart. He’d returned to the bakery, declared himself ill and been sent home. His boss had also said he looked like a ghost, so he must look like a ghost, not that anyone had ever seen one. So he looked like something that no one had ever seen.
‘Just a late delivery,’ he said to his mother. ‘I went to the rich quarter.’
‘What was it like?’
The rich quarter would not be well known to the widow of a bankrupt coal merchant.
‘Wonderful,’ he said.
‘Don’t start imagining money will make you happy.’ She imagined this every day.
‘I wasn’t.’
‘All those big houses. It can turn a young man’s head.’
‘Not mine.’
‘You’ll never be rich.’
‘I’m the richest man on earth.’
‘I hope you haven’t been drinking.’
***
‘Do you believe in love at first sight, Muhammed?’
Muhammed Attar was the only person Shams-Ud-Din could ask. And it was a question that needed asking, such was the inner turmoil.
‘Love is a ridiculous word, Shams-Ud-Din - though you may speak of beauty.’
‘I speak of both.’
‘Then you are too confused to speak of either.’
Muhammed Attar was like that: unforgiving of human emotion and profoundly suspicious of passion. God help Gulalai, his wife! Shams could imagine it:
‘I love you, Muhammed!’
‘And I contemplate you too, Gulalai.’
A seller of fruit and perfume, Muhammed was a quiet man ‘who kept himself to himself’, as they always say of the odd; and a man who invited no one beyond the shop front of his life. His love of privacy had created its own set of opinions on the streets, most opting for ‘dullard’ or ‘idiot’ - descriptions they’d shout down the street and then run.
‘And what is an idiot?’ he’d once asked Shams, as a further insult hung in the dry air.
Shams had thought carefully and replied by saying that an idiot was someone who was stupid, adding hastily that he didn’t think Muhammed was stupid or an idiot... even if others said that he was.
‘It is a word from ancient Greece’ said Muhammed, stacking the purple grapes with care.
‘Really?’
How did a fruit and perfume seller know about Greece? But then this was the Athens of Persia.
‘A word used by the Greeks to describe a private person uninvolved in public affairs.’
This seemed strange to Shams.
‘Why is such a man an idiot?’
‘The Greeks thought, and not without reason, that a free man who took no part in politics, who failed to interest himself in his own present and future, was stupid, an idiot.’
Shams could find no polite way out of this conversation, for if this was an idiot - a man who took no interest in politics or public affairs - then yes, Muhammed was truly described. He didn’t get out a great deal and was not in the front row at public meetings - or indeed any row. Muhammed seemed to sense his line of thought:
‘But what if public affairs are themselves mad?’ asked Muhammed.
‘Who is the idiot then, eh?’
Shams thought he must answer, but it turned out he didn’t - for it was a rhetorical question. Shams had never heard of such a thing but learned of it that day: a rhetorical question is a question that demands awe but no answer. This was definitely an idea he could use in his poetry.
Oh yes, he was becoming a poet. He wasn’t telling his friends, but he was now writing poetry, and idiot or otherwise, he liked Muhammed, the only adult to listen to him as he grew up. Never a father-figure of the warm, loud and hearty type - he wasn’t cold, just not hearty; but always there when his own father died, a significant rip in the fabric of his young life. They would sometimes talk as he washed fruit or sniffed the perfume. And then one day he’d met him on the banks of the Ruknabad river, but when he greeted the fruit seller, Muhammed had hurried on, saying they must not be seen talking here... as if he was scared of something or someone.
Today, however, his question to Muhammed was simple: ‘So what must I do?’
His house had been burgled, he said, and his sanity stolen by the beauty of Shakh e-Nabat. So what must he do?
‘Go home and carry on with your life,’ said Muhammed.
‘And if I can’t?’
‘You can.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
‘I mean I can’t!’
Muhammed winced a little at the passion displayed. But the boy continued:
‘I cannot eat, I cannot sleep - and I have begun to write poems about her.’
Muhammed winced again, a deeper pain.
‘Poems?’
‘Poems!’
‘Each of which will give you exquisite embarrassment in later years. God spare us from the poetry of young men.’
But the boy was rather pleased with his work and had even bestowed on himself a new name to accompany this calling.
‘I write now under the name of “Hafiz”.’
‘What’s wrong with your own name?’
‘We need something more timeless.’
‘We?’
There was nothing quite as pompous as literary ambition in the young.
‘And you’re embarrassed by your family?’
‘Not at all, not at all.’ Silence.
‘A little perhaps.’
‘Hafiz, you say?’
‘That is now my name.’
‘And a name for those who have learned the Koran by heart.’
‘Which I have,’ said the boy with strange authority.
Muhammed stared into his eyes, drilling for gold. He then put down the melon he was slicing, looked around the street, up and down, long ways and sideways and ushered the boy beyond the shop front, through the work tent and into the small courtyard beyond. Hafiz had never been this far before. No one had been this far before! He was then guided up some stone steps which led to an upper room with nothing but a few old cushions scattered around the floor.
‘Sit,’ said Muhammed and Hafiz obeyed.
How strange this was! As if he’d passed from one world to another, as if something had changed between them, as if he could never go back to former things. Muhammed didn’t look like an idiot now and Hafiz didn’t feel like a boy. It was as if, when he walked past the fruit into the courtyard and climbed the stairs, Shams had become a man.
‘Would you like to touch beauty?’ asked Muhammed in a matter-of-fact sort of a way.
