I might have welcomed all this if I hadn’t felt expected to impress the Nobles and their equally indifferent followers. “I’m glad if they did.”
“Have you written about any other matters?”
I was reminded of my tales of the Tremendous Three. “Really nothing worth mentioning,” I said at once.
“You haven’t published anything investigative.”
At last I saw what he meant to establish, and tried not to show I did. “Only criticism.”
“Let us move on to the issue before the court,” the lawyer said, bending his thumbs outwards like a secret sign. “How did you come to record a conversation between the defendants?”
For an instant I was tempted to pretend it had been accidental, but I wasn’t such a coward. “I’d been recording a sermon they gave.”
“What was your purpose, Mr Sheldrake?”
“I wanted a record of the kind of thing they said.”
“Why did you feel you needed that?”
“Because my son is a member of their church.”
I saw no point in admitting I’d had a larger aim. I glanced at Toby, only to wish I’d refrained. If his eyes contained anything apart from darkness, it didn’t favour me or my testimony. Every eye around him was just as pitilessly dark, as though a contagion had spread from the watchers in the dock and from their son. I felt dismayingly grateful to return my attention to Raymond Garland, who was saying “What did you intend your recording to achieve?”
“I was going to confront my son with it. I might have let some experts hear it too,” I said and felt compelled to add “It isn’t just my son. His wife and their small daughter are in the church as well.”
“But you recorded more than the sermon.”
“I thought I could catch what they might say when nobody else was present.”
“Had you any preconception what that would be?”
“None at all. I was as shocked as everybody else.”
A glance at the spectators showed me not the faintest trace of shock, just dull hostility trained on me. “Please tell the court what you did with the recording,” Raymond Garland said.
“I got it to the police and sent it to a journalist. Bobby, that’s to say Roberta Parkin.”
“The court has heard from her.” As I wondered if I was about to learn any of her testimony, the lawyer said “Why did you send it to her?”
“In case she thought it should be written up.”
“We have seen she did. I remind you that you’re under oath, Mr Sheldrake.” Before I could find this too ominous he said “Can you assure the court that the recording wasn’t edited or tampered with in any way?
“It certainly wasn’t by me. The only people who could have had access to it besides me were the Nobles, and it makes no sense that they would.”
Speaking their name let me meet their eyes—in feet, it made me have to do so. They gazed expressionlessly at me, or darkness wearing three variations of a face as masks did. I felt close to frozen by the confrontation until the judge said “Mr Sheldrake, will you swear that there was no doctoring?”
I groped for the Bible and laid my hand on it. “I absolutely will.”
“Please do not touch the holy book.”
I supposed this meant it was to be used solely for the initial oath, but I felt as if my disbelief had been exposed, casting me out from any faith. When I lifted my hand from the book a leathery suction seemed to resound throughout the courtroom. As I watched my sweaty handprint dwindle on the cover before vanishing, Raymond Garland moved away from me. I could have thought he was ensuring nobody associated him with me or my behaviour until he turned to the defence lawyer. “Your witness.”
Regina Dane’s thoughts appeared to be slowing her down as she came to stand by the witness box. She blinked at me, looking unsure how high to raise her eyebrows if at all. “Mr Sheldrake, will you tell us a little more about your published work?”
“What would you like to know?”
“Some of the titles, if you remember them.”
“Of course I remember. I’ll tell you them all if you like.” Perhaps I was wrong to find her request patronising, since her tone was impeccably neutral. “Watching the Audience: Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films,” I said.
“What was your concern in that?”
“How his films often turn the audience’s gaze back on itself, Psycho in particular.”
“Psycho, yes.” She might have been judging the word rather than repeating the title. “Could you give us another?”
“Between Laurel and Hardy” When her inviting look didn’t falter I felt prompted to add the rest of the title. “H.M. Walkers Intertitles as Sufficient Narrative.”
“I think you’d have to explain that to the court.”
“Harley Walker wrote the onscreen dialogue for Hal Roach’s silent comedies.” Though I’d begun to wonder how relevant any of this was to the trial, I said “The continuity titles too. They’re famous for their wit, visual as well as verbal. I showed that in many of the films they can be read as separate narratives or at any rate additional.”
“Would you say your aim was to find meanings everybody else has overlooked?”
“I’d like to think some of my essays have achieved that. It’s certainly one of the functions of criticism.”
“My learned friend singled out your thoughts on religion in films. May I remind you of a title?
“Any you like.”
“A Child Shall Lead Them,” the lawyer said, and I thought she’d finished until she supplied the second half. “ET the Second Coming. I understand it was quite controversial.”
“It did generate a correspondence in the journal.”
“And rather more when it appeared online.
“I didn’t realise it had. Appeared, I mean.”
“Or caused a stir, presumably.” When I agreed Regina Dane said “Some of your ex-students were reminded of your teachings on religion.”
“I didn’t see that.”
“Here are some of their comments. I wonder if you recognise their names.” She strode to her desk, revealing a good deal of concealed purposefulness, and brought sheets of a printout over to me. “Alysha Martin says you treated religion as a joke,” she said, “and Brendan Dowd remembers you as constantly questioning other people’s faiths. Kary Davies thinks all this forced your students never to take their beliefs for granted, but the others say that wasn’t what they signed up for.”
I felt as if the darkness I’d been trying to ignore had crept up to take me off guard. “I think making students examine views they’ve taken for granted is a crucial element of teaching,” I said.
Regina Dane gave me an unhurried blink before she said “Was that your purpose in your poetry as well?”
“Poetry,” I said and understood too late.
“Will you confirm this is your work?”
She leafed through the printout and handed me two sheets—a copy of the verses that had brought me and Lesley together. “I wrote those when I was a student,” I said.
“Please read them to the court.”
“Your honour,” Raymond Garland protested at last, “surely this is irrelevant to the proceedings.”
“I believe I may see some relevance, Mr Garland,” Inigo Arnold said and tilted his bewigged head towards me. “Please read to us, Mr Sheldrake.”
The Nobles leaned forward in unison, which put me in mind of the three-headed snake so prevalent in myth. The spectacle couldn’t entirely distract me from the lines I was being made to recite to an utterly unresponsive audience. I kept my head down and had pronounced several verses as neutrally as possible when the judge spoke. “I think you have made your point,” he said, perhaps to me.
I’d just exhorted worshippers to supplicate the third person of God for a bung. Regina Dane retrieved the pages and handed them to the clerk. “The jury might like to examine these, your honour.”
“Let them be passed. Pray continue, Ms Dane.”
“Undecided.” This hardly helped, and I fumbled for the truth. “As I grow older, I said, “I’m more anxious to find something to believe in.”
“Does that mean you believe in nothing at the moment?”
“No, it means I’m searching. It means I hope there’s something to believe.”
I’d barely finished speaking when I felt as though darkness had craned up to loom over me. Three heads had inched forwards, perhaps to remind me how much they’d given me that I yearned to disbelieve. As I tried to fend off memories of those experiences, Regina Dane said “Was that a reason why you joined the Church of the Eternal Three?”
“I suppose you could say that.” I met Toby’s eyes while I said “My wife had just died and my son invited me to join.”
“Did he believe it would benefit you?”
“I can’t speak for his beliefs. I shouldn’t think the court would want me to.” When nobody responded, not least Toby, I said “But yes, I’m sure he did.”
“And did it do so?”
I regretted letting her lead me down this path, and could only say “It helped me deal with my grief.”
“Can you say how?”
“It gave me more to think about.”
I should have known this wouldn’t satisfy the lawyer. “I understand the church offers to bring your past alive,” she said. “Was that the case for you?”
“I think it uses some kind of hypnotic regression and that’s what I went through.”
While this wasn’t even close to what I thought, I couldn’t imagine telling that truth in a courtroom. I’d begun to grow acutely frustrated with the dogged commonplaceness of the questions, with how far short they fell of everything the Nobles represented. Toby’s eyes were dark beyond interpretation, like all the eyes around him, and I looked away as Regina Dane said “What can you tell us about the sermon the defendants gave?”
“I think it showed how far their organisation is from anything most of us would call a church.”
“Why would that concern you, given your views?” Before I could object to this she said “Forgive my not asking you earlier why you’ve ceased to be published.”
“The journals I wrote for have been, and so I don’t write any more.” Not much less defensively I said “I’m concerned for the people who are being fed these beliefs by the church.”
“Is that why you set out to discredit its founders?”
“I’d say they discredited themselves.”
While I hadn’t answered the question directly, the lawyer’s responses seemed increasingly haphazard. “You could have published online,” she said.
“I’d run out of thoughts, I’m afraid.”
“Quite an admission, Mr Sheldrake.” Her eyes had grown as unfathomable as my son’s. “We aren’t talking about your film reviews,” she said. “I’m saying that you could have put your recording out yourself.”
“As I said before, I sent it to a journalist for her to judge if it should be published.”
“A childhood friend you’d influenced in the past.”
“She’s certainly a friend, but I don’t know about influenced.”
“In her online piece concerning the defendants she says she was duped.”
“Not by me,” I said and stared past her at the dock. “By Tina Noble.”
The triple gaze met mine, and at once I was unable to make out the faces. They appeared to merge into a single visage that was close to abandoning any pretence of the human. The darkness that was using them to watch me filled the courtroom and loomed at the windows, blotting out the world. I managed to fend off the illusion, if this was all it was, by wrenching my attention back to Regina Dane in time to hear her say “Your friend seems to have been easier to influence than she would like to think.”
“That’s how the Nobles work on their victims. It must be how Christian worked on his daughter.”
“You’re asking the court to believe that Christina Le Bon was able to exert control over adults of more than average intelligence and yet under control herself.”
“Yes, because the Nobles, they’re all—” The composite face seemed to dart at the edge of my vision like the swollen head of a snake, and I searched for words the jury might accept “Her thoughts and her son’s, they’re all the father’s,” I said, an inadequate approximation.
Regina Dane scrutinised this or my face. “Did you hope Roberta Parkin would publish the information you sent?”
“If she thought it should be published, yes.”
“Or were you afraid to put it out yourself and used your friend to do so? What were you afraid of, Mr Sheldrake?”
I was seized by guilt that felt as if it had been lying in wait for me. I wanted to think the accusation was unfair, but I was certainly too inclined to put Bobby in danger, at Safe To Sleep and now in disseminating the truth about the Nobles. It was partly anger with myself that made me blurt “What would you say I ought to be afraid of?”
“Perhaps an action for defamation.”
“I haven’t defamed anyone, and Bobby Parkin hasn’t either. We’ve just told some of the truth the Nobles claim they’re committed to.”
This fell so far short of the reality the Nobles represented that it might as well have been false testimony. I felt bereft of words I could risk uttering, and afraid of having trapped myself into silence or else recklessness. I could only wait for Regina Dane to respond, and she said “When did you first become suspicious of the defendants’ relationship?”
“I know when I should have been.”
“When was that, Mr Sheldrake?”
“The first time I saw Tina Noble. Her father was calling her a mother even then.”
“When and where was that?”
“When she was still in her pram. I overheard him talking outside my house, when he must have thought nobody else could hear.”
“You say you should have been suspicious. Do you recall any other occasions of the kind?”
“Yes, when I met them all at Safe To Sleep. That’s the facility they used to run that was supposed to help children like my son. They were very secretive about the identity of Christopher’s father, but they didn’t mind boasting how unusual their family was.”
“So you would say you’ve had reasons for suspicion almost as long as you’ve known any of the defendants.”
“Earlier than that. Before I even knew Christian Noble was a teacher at my school.”
Could I really have had so little sense of my own words and how they might be interpreted? Perhaps the relentless presence of the Nobles—loitering at the limit of my vision without owning up to a shape or indeed a size—had driven me to say too much. Regina Dane looked regretful or at any rate saddened as she said “So your preoccupation with the defendants dates from childhood.”
“That’s when I first met them.” I felt indefinably uneasy to have to add “At least the ones who were alive then.”
“And you’ve tried to undermine their reputation ever since.”
“I’ve told nothing but the truth about them, and I still am. I don’t think anyone can disprove that.”
“Did you not steal a journal belonging to your teacher when you were at school?”
“I’ve never stolen from anyone.” This was a truth I should have told my father on his deathbed. The memory threatened to overwhelm me—to entice me out of the present—and my voice grew fiercer to compensate. “His father took it,” I said, “if you call that stealing. He hid it at the school for somebody to find.”
“Why would he have done such a thing?”
“Because he was scared of his son and what he was teaching the granddaughter.”
“So you were the child who found the journal.”
“Yes, and I took it to the headmaster.”
“What did he make of it?”
“He didn’t read it. Christian Noble came for it and the head gave it back.”
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br /> “You’re saying the headmaster had no chance to read the journal. Had you?
“No, I’m saying he chose not to, but I did.”
“And what did you find in it?”
“The same kind of occult stuff the Church of the Eternal Three is selling now.”
“I gather you were educated as a Catholic.” When I agreed as neutrally as I could, Regina Dane said “Are you aware how Christian Le Bon’s father died?”
“I saw it, and my friends did. He fell under a tram.”
“Are you able to tell the court how this happened?”
“He was chasing us to find out where we lived so he could ask our parents to help him deal with his son.”
Once again I was menaced by a recollection—by a dauntingly immediate vision of the unstable monstrous shape Christian Noble’s father had borrowed from the fog. “Have you anything more you would like to tell the court?” Regina Dane said.
“Not that I can say.”
“Then let me sum up your testimony. I suggest, Mr Sheldrake, that you have been obsessed with the defendants for most of your life.”
“So people keep telling me, but you ought to see it makes no sense.” I was regarding the jury, who returned my stare, having denuded it of all expression. “Some of them weren’t even born,” I said.
“I put it to you that your fixation was born the first time you saw Christian Le Bon. When you learned that he didn’t share your religion, you tried to cast him as a heretic. You did your best to turn his employers against him, but your headmaster proved to be more tolerant than you.”
“That isn’t how it happened. I told you the head didn’t look at Noble’s journal.”
“You’re asking the court to believe that a headmaster wouldn’t examine an item that had been presented to him as evidence of wrongdoing. A Catholic principal at that, and in the nineteen-fifties.” With too little of a pause to let me speak Regina Dane said “I understand that Mr Le Bon’s father was of unsound mind when he stole his son’s journal, which may very well explain the manner of his death. I take it you and your school friends claim no responsibility for that,”
“We weren’t responsible, but anything wrong with his mind was his son’s fault.”
“Mr Sheldrake, you seem bent on blaming Mr Le Bon for everything you can. Even losing your religion only made you more determined to defame his.”
The Way Of The Worm Page 15
