Bad Faith

by Gillian Philip

  Griff interrupted my thoughts. ‘Who could be bothered kidnapping Fat Todd?’

  ‘Anglican terrorists, they think.’ I shrugged. ‘Or Aikenheads, or extremist schismatics. Might even be atheists. Poor old Todd.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Griff, unsympathetic, prodded at his console. ‘Water still rising, is it?’

  For a moment I couldn’t think what he was talking about, and then I remembered that of course the low-lying streets of town were three feet deep in brown sludge, as they quite often were. Which was one of the nice things about living on the posh outskirts and halfway up a hill.

  The floods – a once-in-a-century meteorological event (according to the Council) – had now happened three times in the last five years. The Council insisted they were going to do something about it. Perhaps they would have done, had the rain not fallen for seven straight days (again), the tide turned at the wrong time of day (again), the river mouth been half-silted up (again), and the surrounding farmland so short of topsoil that the water ran straight off it (as it always had done).

  Griff and I were quite used to getting our wellies on and going to stare down at the river as it burst its banks in the gorge below the house, filled the valley with brown scummy water, and bulged into a torrent heading for the sea and the downstream, downmarket streets. One of our teachers had once tried to cross the valley by the back road during a flood and had been washed away in her car where the river gushed across the road. Fortunately for her she’d come to rest fifty yards downstream on a sandbank and some rubberneckers had made themselves useful and got her out, but it was a close-run thing and the rubberneckers themselves nearly went the way of all flesh when the car was ripped clear of the sandbank.

  It had a split personality, our river. Beautiful, tame, rippling on a summer day, and a killer when it felt like it. Down among the alders in a sharp bend of the river, the river had dug out a cave as it swirled and turned, and it was one of our favourite hideouts, but you wouldn’t believe the things we’ve found washed in there after a flood. Dr Shaw was nearly one of them.

  Now I said to Griff, ‘What if Todd went to look at the river and got washed away? He faffs around in the forest park. Rambling, pressing the flesh. You know what the riverbank’s like.’

  ‘Crumbly,’ said Griff. ‘Sandy. Wouldn’t be surprised. So I wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s making the search a bit difficult too,’ I said. ‘Dogs can’t get a scent. Ground’s treacherous. They don’t want to go too near the river themselves, a spokesman said so.’

  ‘You know why they’re not getting a scent,’ said Griff. ‘Todd’s on an impetuous retreat to pray for the poor and dispossessed, and will be reappearing before press time on Monday.’

  ‘Cynic,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Bishop Todd has gone to follow his conscience, and since it has no idea where it’s going either, they’re both hopelessly lost.’ He sucked on his Marlboro Light. ‘Till Monday.’

  ‘I thought you liked Bishop Todd,’ I said.

  ‘I did like Bishop Todd,’ said Griff, ‘and then I grew up.’

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ I said.

  ‘Out. Out, out, out.’ Griff rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, and singed his hair with the end of his fag. I could smell it.

  ‘You’ve just...’

  ‘OUT.’

  • • •

  My Dad was struggling to be sorry about Bishop Todd. He had a moral duty to be sorry, given what he does for a living, but I knew he wasn’t sorry and he’d be happiest if Bishop Todd never came back at all. His black hair had fallen into his blue, blue eyes and for once he was not pushing it irritably away, because he thought it might hide what he was thinking. I could still read his eyes, though. I always could, up to a point. And he wasn’t sorry.

  See, here’s the thing about Bishop Todd. While he’s in the room – or the pulpit or whatever – you believe every word he says, to the point where you’d be slitting your wrists to get to Heaven faster. But as soon as he leaves, you just blink at yourself in the nearest mirror (unless you’re my brother and you don’t throw a reflection) and you think: What made me fall for that? It’s like coming out of a shop with a pair of shoes you don’t even like, and when you look in your bag you’ve bought the spray-on cleaner and the shoe trees too. And you’re just way too ashamed of yourself to go back and ask for a refund.

  And here’s the thing with my Dad. He just stands up there looking not entirely sure of himself, and muttering the prayers a little darkly, and scratching his head and smiling sheepishly while he tries to make head or tail out of his Saturday-night handwriting. Then he gives everybody that devil-may-care grin, and shoves his hair out of his eyes, and races through the blessing. And you think: Who knows, there might just be something to all this.

  So Dad was popular with the Faithful. He was a gentle type, good at comfort and consolation. Dad won a lot of souls for the One Church, in the early days (or at least talked them into not making a fuss). Maybe that’s why he’d lasted so long, because he certainly wasn’t so hot at the fire and brimstone bit and he’d never got very far up the career ladder. He was a troublemaker, consorting with jakies and whores and addicts, and he was always down the prison talking to the inmates, even seditious atheists. All of which made him a bit suspect, and Mum was forever covering up for him, which mostly involved being nice to thoroughly horrible high-ranking clergy. Like me, Mum was small and pathetically fragile, snappable as a dry twig, but deep down she was stronger than Dad. So I thought.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Gabriel,’ she said now, quietly, carving up a lasagne as if she was carrying out a postmortem on someone she loathed, ‘you’ve got Evening Worship at seven and you’d better pray for Todd’s safe return.’

  Yes, my Dad was called Gabriel. With a name like that he had to be either a priest or a gangster. Mind you, he looked more like a fallen angel: too handsome, in a worn-out sort of way, and his eyes fairly danced when he was in a cynical mischievous mood.

  ‘I don’t think I can do insincere prayer,’ he mumbled now.

  Mum’s eyes flashed and I thought for a minute she’d snap at him. But she only said, very intensely, ‘You can and you have.’

  Dad glanced up at her and their eyes met again, that telepathic way they did at my grandmother’s funeral, but this time I couldn’t imagine what they were telling each other. I gave Griff a look but he was doing food-art with his lasagne and wouldn’t look back at me.

  ‘Yeah, Dad,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to know? It’s not like there’s anyone listening.’

  Practically choking on my lasagne, I put my hand over my mouth. I was really shocked. It was what I thought too, secretly, but secretly was the operative word; I’d never say it in front of the parents. Apart from anything else I was scared it would hurt Dad’s feelings. With my brother I thought Dad would blow a fuse, but all he did was look at Griff rather sadly, saying nothing.

  Mum did, though. Her knife and fork clattered onto her plate. ‘Don’t you dare blaspheme like that,’ she hissed. ‘Not in this house and certainly not outside it.’

  Even Griff hesitated nervously. My heart was fairly banging against my ribs.

  Griff recovered fast. ‘Cool it, Mum. They stopped burning heretics, you know.’

  ‘The way it’s going,’ said Dad, not quite sotto voce enough, ‘they’ll be starting again.’

  Mum shot him a killer glare, but she had her composure back. ‘You listen to me, Griffin. You have a nice enough lifestyle, and you may not appreciate it now but you would if you lost it. So don’t you go endangering your father’s career,’ she glanced at Dad, ‘any more than he does himself.’ There was affection in her voice, though, and Dad lifted his downcast eyes to give her one of his loveliest smiles.

  Mum wasn’t finished with Griff. ‘As for your own career, you’re seventeen years old, you’ll be leaving school soon. Get real, Griffin. Start thinking about it.’

  ‘Thinking for myself, you mean?’ Griff held up
a bit of pasta on his fork and examined it.

  ‘I take it you won’t be training for the clergy,’ snapped Mum, ‘but you’ll have to show a little more devotion if you want to get anywhere in life. You’ll have to get your faith back,’ and she added in a mutter, ‘or at least pretend.’

  ‘I haven’t lost my faith, Mum,’ said Griff, actually swallowing a shred of pasta. He gave her a beatific smile. ‘I lost my religion.’

  Mum looked at Dad but Dad only looked at his plate. I felt as if someone had hit me in the back of the head with a sock full of mud. I couldn’t believe my brother would say such things in front of Dad, and Dad would just sit there and smile secretively at his lasagne.

  Besides, I may think it’s all mumbo-jumbo but deep down, I’m hedging my bets. It’d be a nasty shock to get to the end of that tunnel of light, only to meet the glowering bearded face of my Sunday School nightmares, arms folded and fingers drumming on the desk. And suddenly remember that not only did the demon dog eat my homework, I’ve carved something blasphemous on my desk and he’s read it.

  Guilt. It’s my upbringing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Griff was saying, ‘I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a teacher.’

  ‘Are you trying to provoke me?’ said Mum wearily.

  ‘Mo-therrr,’ said Griff. ‘Teaching is a proud and respected profession.’

  ‘Unless you plan to do something provocative and get yourself killed.’

  Griff dropped his fork to his plate. I knew he’d really lost his temper because his face was stark white and his ears burned red. ‘The militias killed that woman in cold blood. She didn’t get herself killed, they killed her. And everybody acts like it was her fault!’

  ‘The killer’s been jailed, Griff,’ said Dad.

  ‘Three years! He’ll be out in eighteen months. He’s the criminal. What she did wasn’t illegal!

  ‘She offended a lot of people, Griffin,’ sighed Mum. ‘What did she expect?’

  ‘She told her class Creationism wasn’t proper science. That’s not a crime!’

  ‘Yet,’ muttered Dad.

  Mum rumpled his hair and Griff’s simultaneously. ‘That militia boy was a devout member of the One Church. There’s a lot of them about, and don’t you forget it, boys.’

  Dad slapped her rear end, then winked at me as she whacked the top of his head, but Griff wasn’t about to be bought off. ‘Murder’s still a crime, as far as I know, and whoever bombed that doctor’s surgery hasn’t even been caught. Know why? Because they’re not looking.’

  ‘Abortion’s a crime,’ I pointed out. Griff gave me a look of contempt.

  ‘Yeah, but they didn’t waste time with a courtroom, did they? And were the five people in the waiting room aborting anybody?’

  ‘Conversation closed,’ said Mum.

  ‘Here’s a new one, then. Why haven’t you joined the Schismatic Movement, Dad?’

  Dad’s sigh had a tone of overstretched patience. ‘I like my work, Griffin, and I do it quite well, and believe it or not there are people who need me, including a few in prison who’d agree with everything you say. And I’d rather not lose my job and the wage that goes with it. Okay?’

  Even I thought that was a funny remark from a Man of the One God, with a vocation and everything. Mum gave him an incredibly dark look and drew her finger across her lips in a zipping motion.

  ‘Griffin,’ said Dad, ‘what do you want? Sectarian wars? That’s how it used to be.’

  ‘Oh, okay. It sure is better now.’

  Dad rubbed his temples. ‘Religious wars are terrible things, Griff.’

  ‘Yeah, slaughtering infidels is much more morally satisfying.’ Griff’s sneer didn’t suit him. ‘One Church! All power and no principles! The strains aren’t sustainable.’

  ‘Jeez, Griff,’ I said witheringly, ‘Did you get that line off a website?’

  He slanted his eyes at me, just briefly enough to express his contempt. Then he pretended I hadn’t said a word. ‘The Church needs to split up. People should follow their own beliefs or none. And not get the crap beaten out of them for it.’

  Dad shot me a wink. He’d seen the look Griff gave me, and he felt bad about it, and he wanted to make me feel better. I flashed a grin right back, and for a moment we were the only two people in the world, just having a laugh. Because you had to, sometimes, or you’d cry.

  Left out, Griff reddened with rage and jealousy. There was a touch of desperation in his voice when he snapped, ‘You believe in schism, Dad, I know you do!’

  Dad gave him a warm smile. I think it was meant to reassure Griff, to include him, but the way things were round that table, it seemed a tiny bit patronising. ‘Yes, Griff, I do. Which doesn’t mean I have to broadcast the fact.’

  ‘I find you contemptible,’ said Griff. He cut his eyes away from Dad to glower at Mum. ‘Both of you.’

  I studied the tablemat and hoped this was going to be over soon. At least he hadn’t included me in that assessment, which I’d have expected him to do, but he was giving me a glare anyway: I could feel it on the top of my scalp.

  ‘You’re seventeen years old, Griffin,’ said Mum mildly. ‘Of course you find us contemptible.’

  ‘And one day you’ll be twenty-seven,’ added Dad, ‘and then thirty-seven, and you’ll be behaving contemptibly too. And know what? You’ll be justifying it beautifully to yourself.’

  There was a truly horrible silence that I couldn’t interpret. I had an overwhelming urge to slide under the table and clasp my hands over my ears till they’d all gone away.

  ‘Your wage!’ Griff pushed his plate away. ‘I’d rather live in a hovel than live in fear!’

  ‘No you wouldn’t, dear,’ Mum told him placidly. ‘You wouldn’t have Hell Breaker II or nearly enough cigarettes.’

  Dad snorted. Griff had no snappy comeback, so despite his vermilion ears, the conversation really was closed.

  2: Cancellations

  I was supposed to meet Ming that Saturday but I’d barely shouted goodbye to the parents and slammed out of the door when I came to a guilty halt. Chewing my nails, I pulled out my mobile. My Macbeth essay was already overdue and Dr deVilliers had made it plain yesterday morning that I was for extra detention if it wasn’t on her desk first thing Monday. Which would be worse? Detention, or not seeing Ming?

  My thumb hovered over his speed dial number as I pulled the gate closed. I hadn’t seen him since he got suspended for blasphemy (again). On the other hand, did I want to get suspended myself? It occurred to me what my mother would have to say to that, so I came to a halt. Sighing, I tensed my thumb on Ming’s number.

  Then my phone wailed the Rector Who theme, and I jumped.

  I put my hand to my heart. A reprieve. Might even be Ming himself. I punched a button and said, ‘Hello?’

  I frowned. Nothing but mumbled words and a distant clatter. A faint voice rose over some kind of interference. ‘Gabriel, what happened to you on Thursday?’

  Oh, for crying out loud. I raised my eyes skywards. Dad did this all the time and he’d never learn. He never locked his keypad and he kept his ancient phone stuck in his back pocket and then he’d lean his backside on something and it would call back the last number. One of these days he’d be slagging off Ma Baxter or something and his phone would call the Archbishop or the prison governor and then he’d really be in trouble.

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Oy, Dad.’ I didn’t want to shout into my phone because there were people walking past and I’d look a bit stupid.

  ‘What d’you mean, what happened to me?’ crackled Dad’s cross voice.

  ‘Hey! Dad!’ I said more loudly.

  The crash of a saucepan onto the drainer drowned me out, so I took the phone away from my ear, wincing. Sitting down on the low wall of our neighbour’s house, I waited for the racket to stop so I could catch Dad’s attention. He was making a fearsome amount of noise clattering the pans around, and there was a gurgling rumble of interference that I reckoned was the
dishwasher. I could have hung up but I couldn’t resist giving him a hard time about this again. Dad and his mobile had never really got along.

  Besides, it was quite sweet listening in on the parents. I liked hearing them banter and take the mickey out of each other, even when they were quarrelling. It was the sound of family, the sound of security.

  ‘What I mean,’ came Mum’s distant voice, ‘is what happened to your meeting with the Wardens?’

  Dad paused an awfully long time for such an innocuous question. ‘I hadn’t got those figures they wanted,’ he said at last. ‘No point without them, so I called it off.’

  ‘But you rang the accountants on Tuesday. I thought you said you...’

  ‘No. Yes. I called but they couldn’t give me the numbers. Okay?’ His voice was uncharacteristically sharp.

  Mum paused. ‘I see. Okay.’

  Silence fell, so I could have jumped in and caught Dad’s attention, but instinct made me press the phone close to my ear and suppress my breathing. The Wardens ran the church and the Wardens ran Dad. Some of them were all right: I liked Brother Jonathan, and Brother Darren, and Sister (Amazing) Grace. But three of them I didn’t like. They had hard little eyes that saw everything, right down to your soul, and they never stopped watching. Wardens were there, said Dad, because they were cheaper for the One Church than CCTV. Dad wouldn’t cancel a meeting with the Wardens, not unless he had a very good reason.

  Besides, Mum and Dad’s conversation was not the cosy back-and-forth banter of security, it was alien and scary and punctuated by dead moments. Now Mum took an audible breath. ‘If you’d let me know, we could have gone for a walk together.’

  ‘You’d already left when I got back. I came out looking for you but I didn’t know where to start.’ Silence. ‘Where did you go?’

  Silence. ‘Up to the fields beyond the steading. You didn’t see me at all?’

  ‘No, Brenna. No, I didn’t. I, ah... I didn’t go that way.’

  I did not like the way this conversation was going. I so did not.

  Mum’s voice trembled. ‘Gabriel, I want to talk to you about Griff and we never seem to get a chance.’