by John Samuel
‘Yeah well, sorry, but it had to be done.’
He cocks his ear towards me. Not sarcastically – I genuinely believe he thinks might have misheard me.
‘I had to do it,’ I tell him again. ‘I’ve discovered something – something important.’
What little composure he had burns off in another flash of righteous anger. He’s standing again, the chair upturned beside him.
‘Only He shall determine consequence!’ he bellows at me.
The barmaid disappears out the back. Now the police really will be on their way. Or worse, some guy with a bat. I need to make this quick.
‘Listen – you have to listen to me. I need you to explain this to Him: you tell Him –’
He holds up a silencing hand. It’s a jerky movement, sudden but mechanical – the body control is virtually nil in these situations (this is not a jump-in, you understand: these types don’t do that, far too grubby for them, they just push through to say their piece, then they’re gone again).
‘Mankind hast paid for thy foolishness once before,’ he thunders. ‘It shall not be repeated.’ Simon’s face is contorting under the pressure. It’s like the bones are moving around in there.
‘Look,’ I hiss at him, ‘I don’t need you to lecture me about the past. Okay? I’m well aware of what’s happened. What I’m trying to tell you is I’ve seen a chance to change things – to make good on all that. It’s different this time. I can see what needs to be done.’
He’s looking at the glass on the table like it’s a potential weapon. He’s thinking about smashing it and thrusting its jagged edge into my throat.
‘I will not,’ I tell him, ‘be forced to live under the shadow of that mistake forevermore. You understand? I am worth something. I don’t care what you people …’
I choke the last few words. I’m getting a bit upset.
His expression has changed to one of sneering contempt.
‘Thou art weak and wretched,’ he whispers.
Then slowly, intimately, he begins to smile, which feels far more threatening than the shouting.
Still whispering, but reverting to Aramaic, keeping it between us, he asks, ‘You do know what will happen, don’t you?’
I wipe my nose and cheeks with the back of my hand. I do my best to appear unconcerned.
‘He will do it. You know He will.’ That hating smile, sharpening the words like a lathe. ‘You will be cast out.’
Cast out, garash, that phrase in particular, he works into me like a stiletto.
In as calm a voice as I can muster, I say to him, ‘You just tell Him what you have heard. You tell Him I’m making amends.’
One last look, then he releases a wordless sound and Simon is left to collapse down into his seat, a puppet whose strings have been cut.
Slowly the bewildered Simon begins to stir. ‘I feel … I don’t …’ His pale face is shining with sweat.
I have a quick check to see what the others are doing. The two drunks are still watching us in appalled fascination. No sign of the barmaid, though.
‘I need to get out of here,’ I tell him, not giving him a chance to process what’s just happened. Not, of course, that he’d be able to – in a few seconds he’ll have no recollection of it. He has more chance of holding on to the gravity that transfixes him to the earth.
‘I must have eaten something …’ he says weakly as I head for the door.
See what I mean?
I go stomping off in the general direction of Natalie’s office. I’m trying hard not to think about that vicious old prig and all his threats and his bluster. But the truth is it’s rattled me – the way I started blubbing, more than anything, as if deep down I agree with him, that I’ve lost my right to an opinion, that I’m never again to be trusted with anything.
I swing my foot at a can and send it whizzing into the road. A man on a bike looks up to say something to me, sees my face, then decides against it.
‘Woe betide you if you ever make a mistake,’ I tell a gaggle of school kids. ‘It’ll never be forgotten.’
When I’m about ten paces past them they erupt into fits of laughter. Mockery wherever I go.
By the time I’m coming down on to York Way, I’ve calmed down enough to think about making a phone call. Near the overpass, I stop and find a step to sit on, with a view of the weed-sprouted railway sidings. I get out Will’s phone and give NS Mob another try.
This time it’s picked up on the second ring.
‘Will?’
I’m silent for a second. It seems an odd thing to ask. Then I remember that that’s my name now.
‘Hi, sorry – yes, it’s Will,’ I confirm. ‘I tried you earlier.’
‘Yes, I know, I got your message – I’m on my way to you now. I should be there in a couple of minutes.’
‘No, don’t go there!’ It comes out crazy and loud. She goes all quiet on the other end. ‘Sorry, Natalie – didn’t mean to shout there. I’m having a very stressful day,’ I put some of that smiling at my own silliness type of sound into my voice (like a half-sigh but with a wider mouth and a slightly higher register). ‘What I meant to say was I’m not at The Lamb anymore, I’m right near your office. I was actually on my way to you.’
‘Okay sure, no problem.’ Clearly I’m free to sound as loud and crazy as I want – Will is a once in a lifetime source and she’ll take him however he comes. ‘So where are you?’
I look up from the patch of ground I’ve been studying, where a hairline fault in the tarmac is running at a seventy-eight degree angle to the kerb. (I’ve been having to focus pretty hard to block out some of the taunts that have been jostling for my attention. One, in particular – two slowly dispersing vapour trails crossed high up in the sky – is still determinedly hanging there.)
‘I’m right next to where the road crosses the railway lines, down the side of King’s Cross Station.’
Ha! I hadn’t noticed that part before I just said it – not only is it the King’s cross but it also manages to get station in there too. A station of the cross. Oh bravo!
‘I think I see you – sitting on the pavement.’
I get up and peer into the distance. There she is, holding up a hand.
‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘I’ll be with you in two secs.’
I spend that time smoothing down Will’s suit jacket and brushing the dirt off the knees of his trousers, or trying to brush it off anyway – whatever it is, it’s not budging. Must have knelt in something.
When she arrives we shake hands. There is a tiny, almost imperceptible scar on her left wrist.
‘Sorry about all the drama. As I said, it’s been a strange morning. Things at work are …’ I shrug – what can I say?
‘I can imagine.’ When she smiles her whole face smiles with her, if you know what I mean.
She is completely different in the flesh. Her eyes, for example, are the colour of honey – I hadn’t noticed that when I was watching. Not the honey you get in a jar, but the kind that Ovid described to you, oozing from the black oak. The luminous kind.
‘So …’ I go rummaging in my pocket and produce the memory stick between thumb and forefinger ‘… I have something for you.’
‘Thanks.’ She takes it and immediately pops it into her bag. ‘What’s on it? More about InviraCorp?’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’
‘Yes, of course – we can go to my office. There’s a café there, we can grab a –’
‘Actually, no.’ I suddenly feel very uncomfortable at the thought of being cooped up inside again. I think I’d rather stay out here in the open. ‘Do you mind if we just walk? We can walk and talk.’
‘No problem – whatever you feel most comfortable with.’
I wonder how often she finds herself in these kinds of situations. She seems very relaxed.
‘Let’s head up that way,’ she tosses her head back slightly, meaning behind us. ‘We can get down to the canal. The towpath goes all the way to Camden.�
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Walking next to her I find myself thinking about my darling Maryam. I don’t know why – they look nothing alike, there’s none of that dusk in Natalie’s skin. Maybe it’s just the sense of having an ally, a soft womanly companion who will bear witness to my suffering.
‘It must be difficult for you,’ she says, right on cue. She is looking past me, at the slow trains approaching and cautiously departing the station. ‘But you’re doing the right thing.’
Actually, I think it’s the way she sounds – or the way she’s saying what she’s saying, if that makes sense. It carries the tiniest echo of my little Magpie. You are my lamp. How I remember the way she pronounced that word, noohra, lamp. And now this woman’s words are running into me the same way, that same cool stream into the darkness of me. It really does show, though, just how much you miss when you’re only watching. I’d never have been able to pick up on something like this just by looking on – things have an antiseptic quality to them when you’re off site, as it were. It’s like looking at a photograph. No, actually, not like a photograph – it’s like the world’s coming at you through an old television set or a … You know what? It’s not really like anything. I guess that’s the point.
We’ve been walking for a few minutes now and I’ve yet to say a word. We’ve just passed the monolithic headquarters of Natalie’s newspaper and are about to turn down on to the steps that will take us to the canal. She is patient, also quiet at my side.
‘I don’t really know where to begin,’ is all I can think to say.
I really don’t. It’s kind of overwhelming now that I’m actually here. Also, I’m feeling profoundly exhausted again. I’m not too sure that walking was such a good idea after all. I might look for a place to sit down.
‘Why not start by telling me what’s on the USB you handed me?’
It’s very gently put, like how you are with someone you know is trying their best but just isn’t quite managing to get there. I wish more people would talk to me like that.
‘Okay, look: InviraCorp isn’t the story. It’s part of the story but it’s not the really bad part. You need to follow the money to get to that …’ I put a hand on her arm. ‘Do you mind if we stop here?’
The here in question is one of those heavily vandalised benches you tend to see at the side of canals. It has the look of a structure that someone has recently been murdered on. I flop down. She perches a little more gingerly on the edge. Next to us the canal is motionless, the colour of old silver.
‘Do you have any idea,’ I ask her, ‘where it’s coming from? The money, I mean – the tens of millions that fund InviraCorp’s manufacturing and distribution?’
She looks slightly exasperated by this question. It’s obviously something they’ve been hitting a dead end on, just as I knew they would.
‘The company’s run through offshore vehicles – that’s all we’ve managed to find out. You know what these places are like – it’s impossible to get any information. So what are you saying? Is it government funding or …?’
‘No,’ I wave that suggestion away. ‘I wouldn’t even …’ What? Wouldn’t jump out of exile for something as footling as that? ‘No, it’s much worse than government money. It’s the church. And not just any old church – the Roman Catholic Church.’
I give her a second or two to start working through the gears.
‘The same people,’ I continue, helping her along with it, ‘who spend all their time …’
She jumps in and completes it for me ‘… telling people in Africa that using condoms is a mortal sin. The same people who are fuelling the HIV pandemic.’
‘Exactly. With one hand they’re allowing the disease to flourish, with the other they are milking enormous profits from its treatment.’
‘Can you prove this?’
I glance at her bag. ‘What I’ve given you there gives times and dates of meetings between key players at InviraCorp and members of the Vatican administration. Signed minutes of board meetings, placing those people together. Also, you may have noticed that the Vatican Bank decided to publish its accounts for the first time a few weeks ago. Some bullshit PR stunt to show the world how transparent they are …’
I shift forwards in my seat a little so I don’t have to look anymore at a jagged acrostic in the graffiti across the water from us. U fall, it says.
Her attention is riveted on me.
‘… well, before I decided to send you that data last week, getting the ball rolling on InviraCorp, as it were, I printed off the Vatican accounts – the full version. There were offshore assets referred to in the annexes that I happen to know are trust vehicles for InviraCorp profits. But of course, if you were to look at those accounts now, you’d see that all mention of any offshore money …’
Again she completes it for me ‘… has been removed.’
I smile and sit back again in my seat. ‘Yup.’
She had shuffled round on the bench while I was explaining it to her, one leg tucked under the other, so she could look at me straight on. Now, though, she sits round like me, staring at nothing.
‘This is a lot to take in,’ she says.
Then she gets up and turns back in the direction of her work. ‘I’m going to need to have a good look at what you’ve given me.’ She wants to be getting on with this now. Every moment that passes out here is a waste. ‘I’ll need to take it to my editor.’
When I make no move to follow her, she tells me, ‘Will, you’re going to have to come too.’ I must look a little lost because she goes back to her gentle voice. ‘I’m going to need you to stay close.’
So I go with her, docile as a child.
‘Bloody hypocrites,’ she says as we start climbing the steps.
I make no reply. I’m just pleased to be leaving the accusing graffiti behind us, and that glowering crow I saw just now, fixing me with its cocked head, putting a little of its darkness in me.
‘If this is God’s work, I’d hate to see what the devil can do.’
The devil. Now there’s another of my foolish utterances come back to haunt me. A few passing references to the ha-satan, that was all it was, and the next thing I know everyone’s spinning yarns about the devil.
It was just a metaphor I feel like yelling, although in fairness, she looks like she already knows that. There are people, though, I would like to yell it to – countless congregations of them. It’s amazing really, when you think about it – the dark prince, the hoofed avenger, Old Itchy Scratchy himself … there really is no end to their nonsense. They’ll be talking about drinking my blood next – oh no, wait …
‘There is no devil,’ I tell her. ‘It’s just people doing it to themselves.’
When we get to her office this precise point seems to leap from every page as I sit in the reception area leafing through the day’s paper while she goes off to arrange somewhere quiet for us to talk.
When she re-emerges, my mind is fizzing with thoughts I’d like to try to get across to her (it can be a little over-stimulating reading through the news on a global scale – I find, anyway). There are so many different things happening at once and yet the common themes that bind these events are surprisingly few.
‘Okay, I’ve got us a meeting room,’ she tells me, before I have time to begin talking about the article I was just reading.
Then by the time I’ve finished filling out the information in the visitor book, I’ve pretty much forgotten what it was I wanted to say to her anyway. That’s how it is, I guess – the business of getting things done always pulls it back into a nearer focus. Who has time for the big picture?
Not me, not us, that’s for sure, as we’re whisked up the escalator surrounded by the light and glass and busy people of the atrium, where the bright autumnal sunshine is allowed in to fill every corner. Even as we move away into the guts of the building, the corridors remain bright and wide. You get the feeling that there is more than enough oxygen for the truth to survive in here. No need to be afraid that it�
�ll be suffocated in a closed circuit of rooms and tunnels, like what I saw at Abelwood, the cloistered stage for Will’s creeping paranoia.
‘In here.’ She shows me into a small meeting room. ‘I’m just going to fetch a laptop. Do you want a drink of anything?’
‘I’m fine thanks.’
I sit down in a chair that turns out not to be as comfortable as it looked.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Thank you, Will.’ The heat of her hand radiates through me, softening me with its understanding. ‘Thank you for everything.’
When she’s left the room, the afterglow of her touch remains. Her scent too, like a summer orchard. I find it deeply comforting. All this time, I’ve longed for physical contact. Abandoned like that in the shadow of His disappointment, I felt so little warmth. If it hadn’t been for you, for my watching of you, I would have cracked.
But it pulls too. I’m here, and I have no right to be. Will showed me something I couldn’t turn away from. Not the worst thing I’ve seen, not by any means, just the last in a very long line of things.
Everyone has their point they need to reach. That much we know. It’s a knowledge we all share, a knowledge we have drawn from the earliest light of His universe. Electrons clamour for the nucleus, their nature drives them to it. And yet, not all of them manage it. Some find themselves jostled to the perimeter.
It is here, too distant from the nuclear centre, that they become susceptible to detachment.
All that’s required is a conductor strong enough to pull them away.
4
She closes the lid of her laptop and rests her elbows on the table. The tip of the memory stick continues to glow hopefully in the machine’s side.
‘I don’t think there’s enough here – not yet,’ she adds, wanting to keep it upbeat.
Looking at the pieces Will has scraped together, I have to agree with her. It’s suddenly all seeming a little thin.
‘But it’s a starting point – an excellent starting point,’ she reaches across and folds her hand over mine. ‘We just need to work it up a bit.’
