He thinks he knows now and says, 'Yes, there's a sort of mental block that stops us, most of the time, from being able to simply get our heads round the fact that down and outs don't want to be down and outs. And I think this is because to accept the idea that they don't want to be there means accepting that we're all just a run of bad luck away from our own cardboard box in a doorway.' He thinks he knows but he doesn't, and now I can't bear things being cut and dried.
'Father, I need to talk.'
'A confession?' He is late twenties, early thirties (they seem to get younger all the time!). He has big expressive eyes, a lively, open face and a one-piece eyebrow. Irish, fey. When you 'fess up to the priest, though, you don't really want to sense his human delineaments. You don't want a 'smashing feller' or a 'great bloke'. You want him to be possessed of more than mortal knowledge, you want a heavenly father.
'No, not a confession.'
'Shall we go to the pub, or … ?'
'No.'
We walk the mile or so to his church. On the way he passes parishioners he knows just like I used to on my beat and stops and chats just like I did when I saw a known face. But banter with the civilians he knows is tinged with good, whereas talk with the faces I knew was always tinged with evil. He gets to look for their better selves and wait for them to do the good he's always known they could. Me, I had always to keep in mind their worse selves and wait for them to do the bad I always knew they might.
He has a little office (is it called the vestry?) off the altar. He goes into a kitchenette to fix us both a coffee. Spotless white surplices hang from a row of pegs and some more hang from the door. They remind me of the brilliant white space-suits which forensic officers wear at a murder scene: white gloved and white booted, eyes behind the perspex visor like astronauts in raw evil and me standing on the other side of a knotted blue-and-white plastic tape that says, POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE.
Mine is a Power Rangers mug and his is a Lourdes mug.
'Do you know Paul Kenealy?' he asks.
'No.'
'He's an Inspector at Kentish Town station. Lovely bloke.'
'Well, that's another division, not my nick.'
He can tell by my curt reply that I want to cut to the chase and he gives me a high-quality silence.
'Is this all confidential?' I ask.
'Yes, of course.'
'Even though it's not a confession?'
'Mm-hm,' he nods.
I tell him the worst. We finish the coffee and go on to a well-expensive brandy and I'm still talking. I finish by saying, 'I don't know why I've come to see you.'
He ignores this and thinks for a while with his little finger in the side of his mouth. Who is he? Who have I just told everything to?
'If for some reason they defrocked me tomorrow, I would still be a priest — I just wouldn't have a ministry. I would still be a priest because nothing would've changed in terms of having devoted my life to the service of God. You are a policeman in terms of having devoted your life to justice, and, uh, as you say, to fighting evil. You just don't have a beat or a division — and this is, I suspect, why you felt that affinity with Ray Dunney still in his uniform, as it were. Although in another way you do. Your beat is wherever you encounter evil — and it may be that the frontline is within your own soul. Your division.'
'I don't think I'm a particularly bad person though.'
'That's not quite what I'm saying. Jesus says we should love one another as ourselves and that second part is often forgotten: we are told to love ourselves. I was once like you in that I didn't love myself as a man, only as a priest.'
I sigh noisily, a big huff. He presses on through the gale. 'You have — John? — put yourself in the way of perdition, by going out on this … long walk. You have opened the door to all the terrible temptations which accrue when we set ourselves up as more than human.'
'No, I'm not, that's not what — '
'You're marching around town stuck in the past and going nowhere really,' — careful son, I'm a killer — 'because you won't go on the real journey to find out who you are as a man rather than as a policeman. You are being asked to go on a real journey on behalf of the Holy Spirit, but you think there's nothing worth finding at the other end.'
'No, there's not a plan. I don't believe in a plan.'
'Nor do I. I'm not saying it's part of a plan.'
'Well, what then. What?'
The length of time he takes before answering is in proportion to how het up my last remark was. And three, and four. Just like a cop that, calming down a drunk outside the betting shop. Very good, padre. And nine, and ten. And now continues: 'I was speaking only last Sunday about phrases which have fallen out of use or out of fashion without our noticing. Phrases like "putting yourself in the way of perdition", or "to enter a world of cares" — people don't say them any more. And I was asking why is this? Why is it that we don't hear them nowadays? Why is this? I was wondering. Why is there no longer a sense of every action having a consequence? In the past, in what I call "the old days of belief", people had a clearer sense of every action having a consequence. To the simple believer this was seen in terms of punishment and reward, but even the undogmatic, the secular souls, understood that if they put themselves in the way of perdition they must expect certain woes, or to enter, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, a world of cares. Simple wisdom. Homely prudence.
'Belief is a map, a map of the spiritual landscape, I was saying, but the ancient signposts have gone so that now we only recognize a place when we're in it. That's why people are always surprised by how they feel. They're surprised all the time. That's what was in the back of my mind when I wrote this particular sermon: most of the people who come to see me are surprised by how they feel: "Father, why do I feel so empty?" They're baffled, everything seemed so tickety-boo. You know what I mean?'
'Yeah,' I say, a tad pissed-off. Yeah, I'm just trying to do good and everyone's having a pop at me: him, Beverley. Why is this, I wonder; why is this?
'There's no sense of everything you do being connected because … because most people's jobs are … you can't see how what you're doing at your desk, in an office or a bank or wherever, is connected to the whole. And our jobs aren't connected to the past and the future either because we may be sacked tomorrow or next year. There's no sense of the interconnectedness of our actions, because we don't live integrally, we are literally "without integrity" in how we live together. The rich live there and the poor live here, polarized cities full of strangers, commuters, the submission of morality to market forces … And the end of it is, the end of it is, is this, is that the loss of a sense of the interconnectedness of our actions means that whether we do good or evil can sometimes feel like a matter of etiquette.'
'One simply isn't the sort of person to beat up a Paki.'
'Er, yes. We choose what things we're going to take the trouble of being conscientious about, rather than having a fixed conscience that informs and shapes everything we do according to its own template.'
I take a sip more brandy. 'None of the other officers want to talk about evil. They deal with it. Black humour and strong whisky.'
'You keep talking about evil but that might not be it. Uh … it might be your own despair you have to police. Let's put it another way — it sounds to me that with these vigilante antics of yours you have stripped your job down to its spiritual essence; that is, down to why you became a policeman in the first place.'
'Hit me.'
'To prevent the evil you say you feel so capable of.'
'No, I just want to get back to the job! I wish I was still doing it. To be able to do something about it was the best thing. To take prisoners. That sort of reversed the charge of all the bad stuff coming in.'
'Well, did it? It did a bit, I suppose.'
'I just want to do the job!'
'Yes, I know, but I'm saying, I'm wondering whether you haven't been feeling the loss of something else for much longer.'
'What?'
'Faith.'
'Oh right. I came to you man to man, and you just wanna recruit!'
'No you didn't.' I go quiet at that, lean forward in the red, polypropylene stacker chair and rest my arms across my knees, looking sideways to the door. 'This brandy is the business,' he says. 'Will you have another?'
'Yeah,' I laugh, straightening up. I look for my glass but he finds it first and tops me up. And then, as casually as if he was saying 'Lovely weather for the time of year,' he says, 'We cannot conquer evil in the world, we can only resist evil in ourselves,' then leans back in his chair.
'And just let the bad guy run around town all night doing what he likes, then?'
'No, what I mean is that joining the police-force or becoming a priest gives us a grafted-on, fake identity. Now you have to let the old self die, for a new one to be born.'
I can't agree and so, in imitation of an absent friend, I nod earnestly and reply, 'Yes … '
He gives me a look, then adds, 'But instead of letting the old self die you're just trying to get yourself killed.'
'What can you have faith in? There's nothing that can't be destroyed. Faith is lying to yourself — '
'Oh no,' he said, shaking his head like this was a venial one. 'Oh no, no, no, no, no.' The lowest notes in his dulcet Dub accent.
'Yeah, people who can believe the lie are happier, but it's still a lie.'
'Faith is not some abstract tenet of the Catholic Church, it's what stands between you and despair. It's having a pattern, a frame — in the way that work used to be for you — and this frame, this bigger picture, faith, means that when things hit us they are easily absorbed by the frame and don't strike us nearly so hard. It doesn't have to be Catholic or even Christian. In fact — and as it's just the two of us and strictly off the record — I've been wondering lately whether it even has to be what we usually mean by religious. Although it is religion in another way.'
'Is it all right to smoke? Ta. There's the devil, you see. When people are drunk or high on crack or all lads together in a crowd at night, that's when the devil can enter them. But more than that, there are certain things you say — like what you'd like to do to a nonce — and as you say them you feel engorged, carried along by something else … oh, I dunno.'
He says nothing.
'That's all I see all the time, those moments when they're taken up by that. I mean, most of the time it's just petty shit: a metal bin through the window of McDonald's, or the lies, but it's the same force, the same feller, and it's just as soul-destroying as the big stuff. All those scuzzy little lies. But, the point is, because I see this all the time it's so hard to believe that the opposing forces are any more than isolated incidents … Yeah.'
'"Wherefore"' he says, smiling while quoting like he doesn't really believe, like he's embarrassed to be quoting scripture, what with it being so, well, priest-like, "'seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.'"
What's he on about now? He stares at me from under his beetly brows without blinking his brown eyes. Poufter, I think, forgetting to put that thought in a TSG voice.
I look up at him, then down at the floor, then up at him again.
'A cloud of witnesses?'
'I think there is,' he replies, and stands up with a secular, game-over smile.
'Yeah, but if you asked them to come forward, they'd say they didn't see anything!'
He drops the smile and says, 'Well, they did in your case that night.'
Walking back through the spitting rain on to Kentish Town High Street, an empty Royal Variety Sunshine Coach drives past. Suddenly it seems like all those unsound jokes me and Kieran told are real weights on the scales of justice, of whether I'm a good man or not.
I wait patiently at the lights to prove to him that I'm not trying to get myself killed. I stand at the pedestrian crossing with people who are by chance all about a foot shorter than me, which makes me feel a bit heroic. I wonder whether I am, like he said, a representative of some sort. Was that what he meant or am I putting a vainglorious Ben Hur gloss on it? Let me think. How did he put it?
A Metro with two cops in crawls past in the thick traffic.
Something is being asked of you, he said. The demand of not being able to take prisoners, of not, then, being able to reverse the charge, the electrical charge of all this bad stuff coming in. Is that what he meant?
The two cops get out the Metro and walk up to me putting on their caps. 'Hello,' one of them says.
'Hello.'
'Where's your radio?'
'Division.'
'Where's that?'
'E.H.'
'East Holloway. What are you doing out here?'
'I've just been to a funeral.'
'I'm sorry. Who was it?'
'Some tramp.'
'Right.'
'A tramp?' says the other one, the passenger.
'Yeah, I found the body.'
'Right,' says the other one and looks at his mate who asks, 'Do you wanna lift?'
'No, I'm gonna walk home. Think,' I say, pointing at my head.
'Is it far?'
'Not really. Well yeah, actually, Archway. But I'm OK.'
'Look,' he says, changing stance so he's standing side-on to me. Hendon, Week One: harder to push over. 'I don't want to be rude but you understand, I'm sure, and would want to do this yourself in my position … Would you mind just showing me your warrant card, please?'
My skin turns cold. 'Which relief are you from?' I ask them. 'Kentish Town.' The other officer moves round so he's just on the edge of my field of vision. Trouble brewing, eh, lads?
'Oh, do you know an Indian DS called, um, oh … what is it … um, Nanda, yeah, Nanda?'
'No.'
'Oh, maybe he's somewhere else then.'
'Your warrant, sir.'
'I haven't got one.'
'Are you impersonating a policeman?'
'No, I'm suspended.'
'For what?' asks the passenger.
But then the main man clicks his finger and points it at my face. 'John Manners.'
'Yeah,' I croak.
'Oh Jesus,' he says. 'Get in. We'll take you home.'
I want to say something funny like 'I'll drive,' but I start crying. My crying sounds loud in the cramped Metro and I'm saying 'Sorry' over and over. I keep thinking I've stopped crying but then I find I've just eased up to resume crying in another key. There are no paper hankies in the car and I get snot all over my sleeve.
New Dawn Fades
Big Stuart is in the car park and radios Mickey down for me. Mickey says I'll have to see Sandra Rowse the Super, but first he agitatedly leads me upstairs, downstairs, along corridors, looking for an empty office where we can talk. Eventually he settles for two plastic chairs in the corridor quite near the Super's own office.
'What were you thinking of?' he asks, perched sideways on the chair.
'Well, I'm sorry, sir, I know it's strictly out, but it was just because it was ceremonial. It's not as if I was making an arrest or anything. I just wore the uniform as a mark of respect for this down-and-out who I knew from the beat. He was quite a character — '
'Whoah, whoah! Stop! Slow down! Didn't catch a word of that. I can't understand you. Just start again. Slowly. Take a deep breath.'
'Well, all I was saying was that it was a one-off which I won't repeat again. I mean, I was the only mourner, and I just felt it gave things a — '
Mickey tightly pinned my upper arms. 'Stop! Stop! Stop! It's no good. Calm down. Do you feel all right?'
'Oh yeah, I feel very well actually.'
'What was that? Can you understand me?'
'Yeah, of course.'
Mickey breathes out heavily. 'OK, just stay there. I'm gonna go in and have a word.' He gets up and knocks at the Super's office. She tells him to wait a second. I hear her
saying exciting stuff that makes me wish to be back in the force again: 'Was it the same man who spoke to you? … No, no, but they're all the same — all public school straight into MFI and they think we're just street sweepers … Eh? Did I say MFI? Yeah, I did. Ha ha. Well, I think I'll make that same mistake on purpose next time he deigns to call me. OK. I'm needed — we have some crime in this division, unlike you … Ah no, that's where you're wrong, we're eighteen per cent solved on Eagle Eye and the target's only thirteen. But don't worry, they'll all start going to you 'cos it's easier. Sorry, gotta go. Bye.'
Mickey disappears into the Super's office and I hear only mumblings. But I'm worried all the same that they'll think I'm eavesdropping, so I tum-te-tum drum on her wall as I sing this tune I'm making up as I go along.
The Super comes to the door with Mickey. Her hair is darker now. It used to be blonde and shorter, but now it's chestnut brown. Dry, thick brown hair, which doesn't go quietly into hairgrips. Her face still has that same look of concentration and focus, however, which always made me want to copy it — as if that would somehow double my own powers of observation, awareness and energy, make me as sharp as her. She shakes my hand, briefly, scrutinizing my eyes closely.
'That's something I've never been able to do,' I start trying to tell her, 'you know, to actually be able to tell, you know, from someone's eyes … ' I stop. I give up explaining how, whenever I've tried looking into someone's eyes to gauge something, all I see are the concentric circles of inscrutability, like when you throw a rock into a lake.
She looks at Mickey — 'What's he saying?' — and then back at me. 'John, I want to be able to have you back after the trial.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Is there anyone you can go and stay with?'
'No.'
'No one at all?'
'Well, there might be, ma'am.'
'Mickey thinks you should take advantage of another couple of counselling sessions and I agree.'
'No, that's fine, ma'am. I spoke to her the other day but it would be, you know, still good to, you know, have a couple more, yes certainly.'
'I didn't catch a word of that. John, you've got a very strong future in my opinion, you've just gotta sit tight, yeah? And don't get me wrong. Even though I have every respect for you as an officer, if I don't think — if I honestly don't think you're fit to return I'm gonna say so. All right? That's all.'
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