Bad Faith

by Gillian Philip

  The downpour was unrelenting. Ming’s shabby little street was murky with rain, the broken tarmac pockmarked with puddles, the terraced houses miserable and wet-stained. I was shivering and soaked by the time I got to Ming’s door, and only when I’d knocked and stood waiting for some time did I realise I’d been stupid. Just because I happened, on the spur of the moment, to need Ming like I needed oxygen, he wasn’t guaranteed to be there for me.

  Except that he always had been.

  The sky was a big dark bruise from horizon to horizon, and there was no sign of the rain letting up. Water dripped down my back and lashed my face. I couldn’t get any wetter, so I might as well head on home. Where Griff would be waiting for me, and Dad wouldn’t. Where the cops might already have come to interview Mum.

  Oh, no way. I felt sick at the thought of going home. Oh please, I begged, ringing the bell one last time. Please, Ming, be here. Teleport yourself from wherever you are and be in.

  The door whipped open and his pale face peered round it.

  ‘You’re soaked.’ He dragged me in and slammed the door, then stood staring at me in the cramped hallway. There was hardly room for both of us, and I nearly fell over the brass artillery shell that was stuffed with old walking sticks. Ming shunted it against the wall, out of my way. ‘You’re soaked. You’re mad.’

  Almost roughly he shoved me into the tiny lounge his parents insisted on calling a sitting room, then disappeared upstairs. From his armchair Keyser Soze lifted his scarred ginger head and glowered at me, lazily extending five twinkling claws as if daring me to move him. Not there, then.

  The massive old sofa took up most of the room, like an uneasy guest, but it was very comfy. Shivering, I sank gratefully into its embrace, trying not to squirm under Keyser Soze’s feline glare as I watched the TV news and waited for Ming.

  That bloody woman again. Her falcon-eyed spokesman was doing the talking this time. He stood a little in front of Ma Baxter, almost protectively, and he was describing the intense anxiety of the Mother of the Nation for her spiritual guide and close personal friend, Bishop Todd Lamont. She had spent the morning at prayer for his safe return, along with her entire Cabinet. Fears were growing that the much-loved holy man had been kidnapped and perhaps murdered by fanatics linked to the Schismatic Movement, or even secularist radicals. Feelings were running high among followers of Bishop Todd, indeed among devout One Church members nationwide. The government was extremely concerned that violence might erupt. The Faithful must try to control their understandable emotion, but it would be hardly surprising if...

  The camera cut to a montage of demonstrations across the country, demanding Bishop Todd’s safe return. Candles lit. Placards waved, not all of their sentiments religiously forgiving. Behind flimsy barriers, a crowd of angry faces screamed insults at the junior Transport Minister, famously sympathetic to schism and now wearing a look of panic on his scrawny face as he plunged through the mob towards his car with the help of his less-than-diligent police escort. One of the cops smiled as a flung missile hit the man on the cheek, and that made me think of what Jeremiah had said about the police.

  Ming came back into the room and chucked two bath-towels at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard the bell but I didn’t think it could be anyone I wanted to see. I was watching this.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Standing behind me, he began absently to rub my hair with another towel, and I heard the cat hiss. ‘God. Look at that.’

  I looked. The mob faces were filled with manic hate, half of them unable to keep the grinning glee off their faces. Their eyes fairly shone with the thrill of righteous grief. One of them was very recognisable, probably because that twisted expression was his natural one. He stood at the very front of the crowd, shoving against a barrier, and brandished a placard that said Death for Godless Murdrers. Justise for Bishop Todd.

  ‘Jeremiah Maclaren,’ said Ming bitterly.

  ‘Yeah. Bishop Todd’s biggest fan.’

  ‘They probably bussed in the whole Scripture Corps.’ Ming shivered: I felt it even through his fingertips. ‘How fanatical would you have to be?’

  ‘That’s Jeremiah for you.’ I shrugged. ‘He never shuts up about Todd, y’know. Always quoting him. He reckons he’ll get some important job in Todd’s office when he leaves school. Stupid jerk.’ I couldn’t resist adding, ‘He’s had it now.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Ming stared dully at the baying mob. ‘Jeremiah doesn’t need Todd. He’ll be an Assembly Member within five years of graduating. Guaranteed. After that the only way is up.’

  Yeah, the polar opposite of Ming. I tried to give him a sympathetic look, but he draped the towel over my head and I heard the sighing click of the TV being turned off, then the remote being dropped onto the floor.

  In distracted silence, Ming rubbed at my hair. I liked his fingertips massaging my scalp. I liked it very much. I liked the deep echoing tick of the ancient clock that had belonged to Ming’s great-grandmother. I liked the smell of dog that still impregnated the sofa, even though they’d lost their dogs when they lost their land. I wasn’t mad keen on Keyser Soze, smuggest cat in the world for outlasting all those friendly floppy hounds, but I liked the way this horrible little house felt like a home, just because of the people who lived in it.

  ‘You’re soaking,’ Ming said again, as if he’d just noticed. That line was getting lame.

  ‘I forgot to take a coat.’

  ‘How could you forget? It hasn’t stopped raining since you went home.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  His fingers paused in my hair, then pulled off the towel. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Abby’s been arrested,’ I said in a small voice.

  He stood quite still, twisting the towel in his hands. At last I turned my head to stare up at him. He was very close to crying.

  ‘So have my parents.’

  ‘Ming.’ Terrible as it sounds, I forgot about Abby on the spot. ‘Why?’

  Ming nodded at the blank television screen.

  ‘Todd?’ My stomach clenched. I thought I was going to be sick.

  ‘They’re rounding up everybody.’ He found his voice. ‘Usual suspects. Y’know? Questioning secularists. Trying to scare people.’ He sounded choked. ‘Managing.’

  ‘We’ve got to...’ I began. I tried again. ‘We’ve got to...’ Then I stopped, because I didn’t know what we had to do. ‘Ming. Oh, hell. Oh, hell.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Shut up, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Come on, I’ve got to find you some clothes.’ He said again, like a mantra: ‘You’re soaked.’

  I didn’t want to stay with the gangster cat so I followed Ming upstairs and sat on the edge of his bed while he moved around the room like an automaton. He rummaged in a drawer till he found a t-shirt and jeans and a big jumper of indeterminate colour. I took the bundle of clothes in my arms, trying to inhale without looking too obvious. The jumper smelt great. It smelt of Ming.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. I really was. I felt like an idiot, dumping myself on him just when he wanted to curl up in a miserable ball and shut out the world.

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ He knelt beside the bed and ducked his head under it. ‘I know I’ve got a clean pair of socks somewhere. You need socks. Your feet’ll get cold.’

  ‘I don’t need socks. Forget it.’

  ‘Yeah, you do.’ Without even looking he reached out a hand and clasped it round my cold damp left foot. ‘Feel that.’

  Mm, yeah. Feel that.

  I told myself I thought he’d be scrabbling under that bed for ages. I told myself he wasn’t looking. I told myself I wasn’t thinking. But I was, I was thinking just fine when I undid my shirt and slipped it off just as he resurfaced with one sock in his hand.

  His eyes opened wide. Half-heartedly I drew the jumper against me, and we stared at each other. Ming clasped his hands behind his neck, then unclasped the
m. He put his hands over his face, then brought them down again.

  He sat back on his hunkers and watched me solemnly. ‘I’m sorry about Abby.’

  A little embarrassed now, I pulled his t-shirt over my head. ‘I’m sorry about your mum and dad.’

  It wasn’t the first time they’d been arrested, of course. Happened every now and again. You could set your watch by the government crackdowns, and Ming was good at living alone. He could cook and clean and iron for himself, do all kinds of things I wouldn’t begin to know about. He’d get doggedly on with life till they came back many days later, thin and worn out, shame-faced and smiling and promising not to get into trouble again. It must have been like looking after a pair of teenagers. But I liked his mum and dad, I really did. So did Ming, for all his rolling eyes and snide remarks. Between the three of them they always made out it was no big deal, that was life, what could you expect, these things happened.

  But it felt different this time, it really did. I knew it, and so did Ming.

  ‘The thing is, I’m worried. I’m thinking about them,’ he said. ‘All the time.’

  ‘Yeah. Course you are.’ I tugged off my jeans, and pulled on his dry ones instead. Hopeless. They floated round my scrawny hips, but at least I was decent. Retrieving my own belt, I yanked it through the belt loops and cinched Ming’s jeans tighter.

  ‘Cause, see, despite Mum and Dad saddling me with the most embarrassing name on the planet, I do actually love them. Y’know?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ I was kind of fond of them, too. ‘And I mean, it could be worse. Your surname could be, um... Sidebottom.’

  ‘Smellie,’ he suggested. ‘I could be Minger Smellie.’

  ‘Pronounced Smiley.’

  We both snorted, and giggled for a while, and then we fell silent. To fill in time I stuck my arms into his old jumper and dragged it over my head. The sleeves were so long I had to go looking for my hands, but the wool was soft and scratchy and cosy. I didn’t want to take it off, ever again. Except under very specific circumstances.

  ‘Look, Cass.’ Ming wriggled uneasily. ‘It’s just that...’

  ‘What?’

  He raked his hands through his hair. ‘If I kiss you or something,’ he barked, ‘doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about them. Doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten them. See?’

  ‘Of course.’ My heart crashed in my chest.

  ‘Cass,’ he moaned. ‘Will you stay for a bit?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

  He pulled aside the duvet and flopped back. I thought for a moment about being reticent and modest, and preserving my pride. And then I thought about Aunt Abby, lonely and cold in a police cell with only her dignity for company, and I lay back beside him. Ming put his arm round me, pulled me against him, and with his other arm flicked the duvet back over us both.

  I snuggled against him, belatedly cold from my soaking. His body was warm and familiar and I could feel the thud of his heartbeat through his ribs. I could feel the thud of my own, too. But we were both fully clothed, except that I’d never got around to putting on that wretched stupid sock. It wasn’t like anything could happen.

  His body heat seeped into me till I stopped shivering. I felt completely relaxed, but not sleepy. Not sleepy at all. I splayed my fingers across his chest and stared at them, curling and straightening against him almost of their own volition. He was thin but as strong and taut as a length of rope, and wound just as tight. I watched my fingers flex and curl against him, felt him tense even more.

  ‘Cass...’

  ‘M-hm.’

  He laid his hand over mine, interlinking our fingers. ‘Stop doing tha...’ he began, then hesitated.

  The threatened kiss was not forthcoming, and never would be at this rate. Time to take a bit of initiative. I pulled myself half on top of him, touched his lips with my fingertips – I don’t know why, to test for resistance or something – and kissed him. For a moment he didn’t react, then he threaded his hands into what there was of my hair and kissed me back.

  My left leg was hooked over his and I could feel his hips kind of arching up towards me. That made me kiss him more fiercely. He made a helpless sound in his throat, seized my shoulders and turned me onto my back. He did that quite gently, and when he put his trembling hand between my legs that was done gently too. He wasn’t the least bit rough when he rolled over and lay on top of me. And I did love him to distraction.

  So God alone knew why I kicked him in the nuts.

  I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t a conscious thing. Panic looped round my throat like a garrotte, that was all, and I jerked my knee up before I knew what I was doing. I don’t think I got him too hard, since I was at a bad angle for it and the duvet was tangling my legs, but he was so shocked I didn’t even have to shove him off. He tumbled off me but when he reached for me I backhanded his fingers so hard he yelled and clutched them with his other hand. He looked at me with pain and disbelief in his eyes. No. Not disbelief. Guilt.

  It was his hands on me, you see. It was his hands I couldn’t bear, his fat grub hands, and his sweaty grunting weight, and his sticky grinning breath, and – no! No, Ming didn’t have grub hands, Ming’s body wasn’t fat and sweaty, no no no no no and the voices were loud and clear in my head, screaming at me, and –

  I was gasping for breath, but that was just the remnants of animal terror. The back of my hand hurt where I’d hit him, but I’d hurt him more. I could tell by the way he had both his hands between his legs and his lip caught between his teeth, not to mention the tears stinging his eyes.

  I reached up to grab handfuls of my hair, pull and wrench it, but there wasn’t any there. There just wasn’t enough hair to grab –

  – and there was a reason for that –

  – and I say God alone knew why I’d kicked Ming, but that wasn’t true, not any more. Not God alone. Me too. I knew. I knew.

  Todd’s hands, Todd’s breath, Todd’s slug body –

  Somebody had snapped the ringpull, the pressure in my skull had burst, and you know how it is when the contents are erupting out of the can like Krakatoa and you can’t stop them going everywhere? That’s how it was. I didn’t say anything, couldn’t make a sound. There was no hair to wrench but I put my hands on my head like I was trying to stop the fizz coming out – I think I can be excused a weird reaction here – and then I got free of the duvet and staggered up, turned and ran.

  I could hear Ming pounding down the stairs behind me, yelling my name, but I was way ahead of him. I heard another sound coming from the opposite direction but I didn’t recognise it, didn’t even register it until I’d flung the front door open and saw Griff’s hand poised halfway to hammering on it again. He managed to stop his fist in mid-air – just – and I caught one glimpse of his shocked face before I shoved him aside and pelted out into the rain, barefoot, straight between two parked cars and into the road.

  Did it happen like this the first time? Probably something very similar, except that this time the driver had better reactions. That was better luck than I deserved, especially in this weather. The scream of brakes finally cut through the jumbled wasteland of my brain but instead of flinging myself out of the way I just turned on my heel and stared at the car bonnet as it jolted to a halt against my thighs, the wheels sending up great curving fans of rainwater. Streams of water ran off the paintwork, which was a pale metallic green: a very calming, restful colour. I didn’t want to look up at the driver but I did, meeting his eyes almost sheepishly through the steady to-and-fro beat of the windscreen wipers. His mouth was open, sagging horribly, and his skin looked drained and taut, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Amazing how much information the surface of your brain can register in a single instant, even while it’s trying to process all those files you lost earlier.

  Then I sat down in the sodden road, right in front of him.

  I’m sure that driver was a nice responsible guy and I’m sure he’d have stayed to see I was all right. In fact he started to take off hi
s seatbelt, but he never got any further. Griff wrenched his door open and shouted, ‘Piss off! Go on, beat it! She’s okay! Just piss off!’

  The poor man, I remember thinking. What had he ever done? He tried to protest, but Griff screamed right in his face this time. ‘Her father’s clergy! One Church! Now get out of here, okay? Beat it!’ He slammed the door again and kicked it for good measure, and this time, the panicking driver started his stalled engine with a horrible noise and the car reversed down the street through pools of water. He did a seven-point turn in a clumsy squeal of tyres and got out of there as fast as he could.

  Ming was on his knees beside me in the drenching, deafening rain but Griff grabbed him by his collar and hauled him to his feet. I thought for a moment he was going to kill him but I couldn’t do anything. My brain was still filing, still defragmenting, and I couldn’t move.

  Griff was swearing incoherently at Ming, but Ming didn’t even react. His face was drained of blood, rain sluicing down it and dripping off his chin.

  ‘What have you done?’ yelled Griff, his words suddenly comprehensible – and repeatable – once more. ‘What have you done? I told you this would happen, you stupid, stupid – ’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ I managed to say, but I could hardly hear my own voice against the batter of rain on parked cars. ‘Leave him alone.’

  Clasping my hands behind my neck, I watched as Ming shook Griff off and stood there trembling. There was a huge gaping void around me where there was no noise and no wind, like being in an invisible pod, protected by a forcefield of lies. I couldn’t even feel the rain that lashed me. The only sound I could hear was my own voice, and I was amazed how clear and calm and level it was.

  ‘It wasn’t you.’ I smiled at Griff. ‘It wasn’t you at all. Was it? It was me. Bishop Todd raped me.’

  13: What Todd Did Next

  Now here’s how I felt.

  You know that film Demon, the one with all the sequels: Demon II and Demon Invasion and Demon Resurrection and so on? And you know that terrible moment in the first film, when the very first demon comes out of the space missionary’s ribcage? It’s been living in there unsuspected, ever since he got attacked by the thing in the egg, and he’s happily living his life and eating his breakfast or whatever and it just bursts out.