by John Samuel
14
Dinner is a far more successful meal than lunch was, due in no small part to the wine that is brought out. Izzy practically has a whole bottle to herself. Even Will’s father allows himself to be talked into trying a glass, despite there still being work to do on tomorrow’s sermon.
‘Cheers!’ we all say, glasses raised like nothing is wrong.
‘So what’s it about?’ I ask Will’s father. ‘Your sermon – what are you going to say to them tomorrow?’
It’s an uneasy moment – clearly they all think we’d be in much safer waters if I hadn’t broached the subject of religion. All, that is, except for Will’s father, who has either not noticed or else simply doesn’t care about the tension my question has caused. He seems to be the only one who isn’t afraid of Will on some level, of what he might say.
‘It’s an opportunity to speak about inequality, I suppose,’ he says, not seeming hugely enthused by the prospect. The down-lighting above the kitchen table has put deep shadows under his eyes. He looks worn out. What he needs, as Will’s mum has pointed out several times, is an early night. But he finds the energy to rouse himself, and as the animation returns to his face I begin to see a resemblance to Will – same intensity in the eyes, same face, just older.
‘Scripture has much to say about those who have and those who have not. The lessons of the past have not changed – there is still a great deal for us to learn.’ He’s beginning to sound as if he may be about to launch into a mini version of his sermon.
He straightens up in his chair and leans forward to better look at us all. Izzy pours herself another glass of wine.
‘If Christ were alive today …’
And that’s where I let myself tune out. I simply can’t bear to hear what the next part of that sentence might be. I let the unheeded drone of his words carry me along, a weightless spore borne by the river. I remember the professor’s house in Jersey, lying cradled in darkness, wrapped in fresh linen, ready for sleep …
The noise of his voice has stopped. They are all looking at me. Clearly the father, who is looking most intently of all, has just asked me a question.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
Will’s mum tries to put a stop to it there. ‘Let’s not spoil a perfectly lovely supper with any silliness.’ She looks at her husband. ‘Now is not the time,’ she tells him. ‘Please.’
But he pays no attention to her. ‘I asked what you think the right message would be.’ There’s a challenge in his voice, nothing aggressive, just serious. These aren’t topics to be treated lightly, and he can see that I feel the same.
‘The right message – what, for harvest time?’
I know, I know – I shouldn’t even be engaging with this stuff, it’s a waste of my time – but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that feels grateful that someone actually wants to hear what I think. It’s tragic, really. Abaddon would love it.
‘The first thing I’d say,’ I tell him, ‘is that it cuts deeper than just some rich/poor morality tale. I mean, share, feed, clothe …’ I raise my eyebrows in a Really? kind of way ‘… love enemies, hug neighbours – that’s just the surface story. It’s kids’ stuff.’ And since it was me who went round preaching it all in the first place, I feel justified in saying so – although, sadly, that’s not really a point I feel I can make right now.
‘So what am I missing?’ His face is capable of a watchful, almost hawkish quality – the same look that has sometimes surprised me in my own reflection.
Will’s mum shakes her head and starts clearing the plates. Luc mutters something about helping and slips away too. Only Izzy sticks it out with us, eyes down, hands in lap.
‘You shouldn’t be telling them that greed is ruining the world – they know that already. But what they don’t know – and what you should be explaining to them – is where that greed comes from. You should be talking to them about gold.’ He looks like he’s going to interrupt but I talk over him. ‘Think about it: what is it about gold that has always fascinated mankind? It’s something more than just greed. Gold isn’t about wealth, not really. It’s a symbol, a seam of light in the dark, closed earth. We look up at the sky and we see how very far from our reach are the sun and the stars. And yet we long to be near them, to bring our beastly lives closer to their orbit.’ I hear my chair scrape. I feel giddily high above him, on my feet, looking down from the vast height of my knowledge. ‘The call of God: that is why men burrow into the ground – so they can chip out the golden light of heaven. They emerge from their holes with their gold, their rubble of diamonds, so they can …’ I hunt for the words ‘… it’s an attempt to be with Him. You see that don’t you? It’s a way of showing that we love Him.’
‘Billy!’ He’s had to raise his voice to be heard. I’ve been shouting. Staring and shouting. I let go of the napkin I’ve been twisting and sit back down in my seat. All my energy has ebbed away. I slouch forward, elbows on knees. Izzy stands at my side, holding me against her, making a gentle shushing noise.
‘Take a breath, Billy,’ he says. ‘It’s okay.’
‘No, Dad, it’s not.’ For so many reasons – because I have failed, because I am reduced to calling this stranger my father, because no one will ever care about the truths I carry – I just let it all go. My back, my shoulders, everything heaves with the force of my crying.
Many hands lead me from the room.
‘Gold, Dad, you must tell them about gold.’ My words are so urgent but they all act like they can’t hear them. They look through me. ‘Please.’ It’s Luc, that’s his arm I’m gripping. ‘Please, Luc.’
He too tells me that it is okay.
‘Please,’ I weep.
Maia is transferred, limp and mumbling, from Will’s bed. It is the mother who undresses me. She cries a little too at the sight of my bruises and the skin drawn so tightly across my bones. The bed is warm and smells of the little girl. In the small circle of lamplight I can see the cover of her storybook, a picture of a rabbit in a swimming costume leaping along a strip of unnaturally yellow sand.
The mother leaves the room for a moment. There are voices in the corridor. I think about what the pages of the book might look like. It is called Bérénice au Bord de la Mer. I see colourful umbrellas and sea and rocks and gulls that wheel overhead.
Luc comes in and sits on the side of the bed. He gives me two blue tablets and a glass of water. I prop myself up on my elbow and swallow the pills without a word.
‘It’s okay,’ he says again.
I roll over on my side. There is a small audience of stuffed toys arranged on the carpet, a couple of them have been knocked over, their wide-eyed grins now aimed at a blank strip of skirting board. I feel Luc’s weight lift off the mattress.
‘It’s not gold – remember that. It’s God.’
Will’s mother is still here, in the background somewhere. She tells me to rest, to save my talking for the morning.
‘Just an L between them …’ I slur ‘… the twelfth letter … His twelve legions …’
‘Try to get some sleep,’ is the last thing I hear as the light clicks off. Then the door is quietly closed, sealing me in with the darkness.
I am the first one to rise, awake even before Maia. I feel sick and muddled from the pills, and there’s a bruised soreness where Luc did his manipulations. As I begin to move about, the ache radiates from my back into the pit of my gut. In the bathroom spots of light cavort in the air around me. I have to steady myself against the cold porcelain of the basin.
I dress myself quietly in the clothes I was given yesterday and I prepare myself, once again, to sneak away from a sleeping household. In the hallway downstairs a movement catches my eye – through the glass panel of the door I see Will’s father at the far end of the garden, bundled up in a coat and hat against the chill of the dawn. He is among a copse of apple trees, gathering the fallen fruit. I try to ignore him but it’s no good. I pull on some shoes and go to the garden door. I borrow
an old wax jacket that’s hanging there – one of his. It smells of damp earth and lawnmower fuel. As I walk towards him, I leave behind me a trail of footprints in the dew-sodden grass. My silvered approach. When I’m just a few feet away, he looks up at the sound of me. There is a curious blankness to his face – the slow, mechanical work of collecting the apples and laying them in the basket has taken him beyond himself.
‘You’re up early,’ he says, finding his smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile. It’s a beautiful thing, as natural as the bird-song that is now beginning to swell and repeat around us, pushing out far into the distance.
‘I’m not much of a one for sleeping these days.’
‘You never were.’ He picks up the basket and moves across to the next tree, the last in his circuit. ‘Me neither.’
I help him find the best of the windfalls, examining each one before adding it to the basket. If it has been chewed or is too badly bruised, then I follow his lead and toss it towards the longer grass where the boundary fence signals the beginning of the neighbouring farmland.
‘The mice will have those,’ he tells me.
When we’re finished with the apples there are other jobs to be done, and we continue to work in an amiable silence broken only by his occasional remarks about this plant or that. But after a while the spell is lifted and he stops what he’s doing to take a long look at me.
‘What is it you’re so afraid of, Billy?’
We’ve been tying back the wisteria where it has managed to pull itself free at the side of the house. I’m standing there holding a ball of twine.
‘The same thing as you,’ I tell him. ‘I fear for mankind.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I mean you, Billy – what are you afraid of? In your own life. What is it that makes you keep returning to these same worries?’
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we have been here a number of times before. It’s the sense I get, from all the talk of doctors and the concern that seems to inhabit every look and remark. Will’s is a life that has been scarred by the crash sites of emotional breakdowns. It has left everyone expecting to find disaster around the next corner. But that wasn’t me. That was him.
I hold up the ball of twine. ‘I want people to understand that this is the true shape of life. They have been led to believe otherwise but this is how it is: tightly wound, turned in on itself – nothing at the beginning, nothing at the end.’
It pains him to hear me say this. I can see he wants to reach out and hug me but he doesn’t move. The feeling stays trapped in his body.
‘But why do you feel the need to take this on your shoulders? People will believe what they’re going to believe, Billy.’ There’s a hard-won wisdom of his own behind this statement. ‘It’s not your responsibility,’ he tells me.
‘But it is. That’s exactly what it is. My fear for them is more personal than yours. It’s in me, it never lets go.’
‘No.’ This time he does manage to bring himself closer to me. He takes the ball of twine from my hands and places it gently on the ground. ‘It’s not your battle to fight. You need to concentrate on getting yourself well before you start thinking about everyone else.’
He takes my right hand in his. This loosens another of those memories from Will’s body – climbing across some rocks on the beach, his father reaching down to pull him up. Give me your hand.
He searches my eyes but doesn’t see whatever it was he was hoping to find. ‘You’re not hearing me, are you?’
‘I hear you, but you have to understand that I know things you cannot possibly know. You believe that your church can save people, but I know that it cannot. It’s not your fault – I’m not blaming you. Far from it – I blame myself. But people need to understand that they have been misled. If they don’t, then I’m afraid they will always believe in magic.’
‘But Billy, there is a mystery to life. This is God’s way. You cannot force people to believe one thing and not the other. They either choose to let the truth into their hearts or they do not. There is nothing that you can do to change that. God gave us all free will for a reason. So that we can choose Him, Billy. That’s what faith is.’
I can feel that same pressure from last night starting to build in me again. I have no clue how to release it. I need to make myself clearer. Plainer speech. That was something else I got wrong last time, with Jesus – all those parables, too much aphorism and metaphor. It was too baggy in the end, left too much room for others to stuff their own meanings into it.
‘You’re right,’ I tell him, because it’s always the best way to start when you want to show someone how hopelessly and profoundly wrong they are. ‘The mystery of God is real – and not just to those of us who have Him in our hearts …’ I try to ignore the icy vacuum of His absence at the centre of my own self ‘… but also for those who deny His hand in the universe. To them, the mystery is just given another name – the unexplained dark matter that ignited the big bang, the elusive mathematics of coincidence and chance … it doesn’t matter what you call it. The point is, whether you accept Him or not, it is still a mystery. And I have no argument with that. It is enough simply to recognise that there is a larger hand at work. But what I do object to is the storybook of the church – the codices, the bible verses, the liturgies, the promises of more, the fixation with perfection. This is wrong. I’m sorry to say it, and I mean no disrespect by it – but these are all lies, which you have in turn been teaching. And they are corrosive lies. They nourish a belief in magic and miracles, which power the larger machines of misery and conflict.’
He has been watching me with a mounting look of impotent sorrow. To him, I am the man trapped beneath the ice – there in plain view, suffering, drowning, and yet completely cut off. Not even words can carry between us. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I press harder. I tell him that it is cruel to teach people that the life we have now is flawed, that it is just something to be endured until the final prize arrives. I explain to him how it stops us from loving one another, from loving our world. And when still he says nothing, and all there is to look at is the lonely end of string trailing away from the ball at our feet, I find my words continue to spill out. Because the idea that this is my legacy, that this mess is my doing and will never be put right, is too much to bear in silence.
‘I wanted to put a stop to it,’ I say, although I am no longer talking to him. I am reminding myself. I am overwriting the sourness of Abaddon and the coldness of His disownment of me. Or at least I am trying to. ‘It was going to be my one true gift to the world. It came to me in the firing of that single second, as I watched Will poised to take his own life, and I realised that I could save this boy and that maybe, just maybe, I could use this second chance to achieve something amazing. To end the lies that I began so long ago. When you think about it,’ I smile bitterly, ‘it’s what everyone would expect from me – the alpha and the omega. What begins with me, ends with me.’
But he doesn’t smile back. In fact, he doesn’t move a single muscle, not in his face, not anywhere in his body. He is frozen with the effort of what he is about to say.
‘Billy, do you …’
But he sort of folds in on himself and falls quiet again. It takes a few moments for him to try again.
‘Do you think that you’re Jesus Christ?’ he seems barely able to believe he’s actually uttered those words. ‘Is that what you are saying to me?’
What would be the point in trying to make him understand? An apparition of this kind is just not compatible with modern faith. The angels and prophets belong to the heat and the robes and the wild eyes of the bible. There is no place for God to move openly among you now. Abaddon was right about that at least. Besides, I can see that Will’s father has already turned his thoughts to medicine, and the promise of a more contemporary kind of miracle.
Sure enough, he asks me, ‘Will you see Dr Bundt with us? I will be there with you, Bill,’ he puts both hands on my shoulders, ‘there at your side. I
will always stand by you.’
‘Abba,’ I say to him. ‘Father. I am so sorry I let you down.’
When the others go to the church service, it is agreed that I should wait for them at home. It is also agreed, in a separate conversation, that Luc should wait here with me. No one actually says this but it is obvious that he has been appointed as the one who stays behind to keep an eye on me.
I find him sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open. Paco is on a blanket on the floor, gurgling at some blocks.
‘Hey,’ he says when he sees me. ‘I expect you want some coffee.’
Without waiting for an answer, he gets up and busies himself with filling the kettle, rinsing out the coffee pot and so on.
‘Are the others up at church already?’
‘Yes, but this one was feeling a little grumpy so …’ we both look at Paco burbling contentedly on his blanket.
‘Right.’ I take a seat at the table.
When Luc comes over with my coffee he turns his laptop towards me so I can see the screen. ‘I wanted to ask your advice about this,’ he says.
It’s the perfect prop, saving us from having to discuss any of the real issues at hand. That conversation will have been scheduled for after the church service – with a different doctor, the kind I need.
‘I’m uploading some témoignages de client.’ He looks at me to check that I’ve understood.
‘Client testimonials.’
‘Exactly. For our new medical centre – I don’t know if Isobel has told you but I have made a collective with many partners, in the quatrième. All kinds of practices take place there and … What?’
It made me smile, the way he said that last part. Like they’ve partnered up with witches and palmists and whatnot. Talking with him like this is having a pleasantly relaxing effect after the morning’s events. I’m afraid I ended up in what Will’s mother termed a bit of a state again after my encounter with his father, and it has taken a good couple of hours for me to get myself back on an even keel. It’s funny, I’ve observed it many times before, this vacillation between fear and acceptance, but this is the first time I’ve actually experienced what it feels like. Mostly I’ve seen it in people who are terminally ill or who, like me, have experienced the scourge of loss or defeat. Until now, the closest thing in my own experience had been the dread and anxiety that poisoned my final few days with Christ, but even that at its very height lacked the weight of the feeling I have now. It lacked the force of permanence. I guess it’s something I’m just going to have to get used to, for what little time there is left.
