At Euston I limped to the underground station as fast as I could, clinging to the handle of my four-wheeled suitcase on the escalator. I remembered hurrying to meet Jim and Bobby after her book launch—remembered how much fitter I’d been then. Nobody could smoke on the station now, and yet the subterranean platform that was trapped between two mouths of the dark felt even more oppressive than the memory. A train took me to London Bridge, and another one to Hither Green. However poetic the name sounded—a summons to verdure—I had to tramp through a suburb, having found no bus or taxi to the crematorium. My route took me and the rumble of my luggage through a Victorian cemetery, where stone angels with upraised hands appeared to be directing visitors. At least one angel was accompanied by a sculpted victim of the First World War, and thoughts of Christian Noble’s father pursued me all the way across the graveyard.
The crematorium was a wide low block with a peaked porch and a rudimentary tower elevating an aerial, which might have been designed to invite inhabitants of the ether. A pale angel was flattened like a specimen against glass above the entrance. Dozens of mourners, none of whom I knew, had gathered in groups beside the porch. I loitered nearby in the vague hope that someone might ask who I was, but nobody did. Well after I regained the breath I hadn’t needed to expend in hastening across the cemetery, a hearse appeared, followed by a solitary limousine. When Carole climbed out, slowed down by age or grief or both, she was on her own. I almost went to her, but several people did at once.
She hadn’t even glanced at me by the time she led the procession after the casket into the crematorium. Where as a child I would have expected an altar to be, a plinth for coffins stood in front of a triptych of tall stained-glass windows full of a reiterated circular symbol that meant nothing to me—an all-purpose motif, perhaps. The area was flanked by a low podium and a door beneath a sign composed of a stick figure out for a walk and an arrow like a download icon. Having brought up the rear of the solemn procession, I took my place on an empty pew near the back.
I had very little sense of Bobby’s presence at the funeral. Given the horrors I’d seen visited upon the recently dead, I supposed I should be glad for her. The mourners had been greeted by the sound of Frank Sinatra vowing to see us in familiar places, not least a children’s carousel. This put me in mind of Bobby’s first encounter with Tina Noble at the playground in the park, but otherwise the choice of music seemed to represent an aspect of my friend I’d never known. During the secular service Bobby’s colleagues reminisced about her from the podium, and the combative dauntless character they brought to life sounded more like the person I’d known. Carole read from The Fashion for Offence, Bobby’s unfinished book in progress, where Bobby observed how words forbidden in our childhood were routinely heard in public these days while words and phrases then in common use were censored now. According to Carole she’d planned to question fashionable squeamishness, but we would never have her thoughts.
The ceremony ended with a silence designed to conjure memories, although it reminded me too much of entering a trance in Starview Tower, and then we were treated to Ferry Cross the Mersey while curtains drew together to hide the coffin. Had Bobby meant the song to evoke her hometown and her childhood? No doubt all the music was her choice, but I couldn’t help recalling the ferry from which I’d thrown the icon into the river.
Carole was waiting fiercely dry-eyed to receive hugs and condolences outside the crematorium. When I delivered a two-handed shake that perhaps I should have halved she said “Won’t you be staying? Bobby would want you to stay.”
She was inviting me to the wake at a nearby pub, the Greener Woman. An unobtrusive plaque established that the timbered building used to be an inn, long known as the Green Man. The interior was split into small irregular rooms under low oak beams, and Carole had commandeered the largest space, which barely accommodated a buffet and the congregation from the funeral. I’d just finished collecting token items on a paper plate when a towering angular woman with a silvery moustache—an editor who had commissioned books from Bobby and spoken at the podium—handed me the glass of wine I’d planted on the narrow elongated table. “How did you know Bob?” she said.
“Dominic was an old friend of hers.” Carole had made her way skilfully and swiftly through the crowd. “Frankie, Dominic Sheldrake,” she said. “Dominic, Frankie Borne.
Frankie Borne dealt me a hefty handshake while she scrutinised my face, a process that led me to expect more of a question than “Didn’t you want to speak, Dominic?”
“I’m glad to meet Bobby’s editor,” I tried saying.
“No.” As if she might be addressing someone of limited wit she said “At the funeral.”
“I wasn’t asked.”
“I didn’t ask anyone,” Carole said. “They all asked me, and of course I said yes.”
I felt as if the room had grown hot and oppressively cramped. I was trapped in a corner with burdens in both hands, and took rather more than a sip of my drink, which enabled me to say “I mightn’t have been up to it. I’m afraid I’d have been too emotional.”
“Nothing wrong with feelings,” Frankie Borne said. “They’re why we’re here.”
“Dominic may have been the last person to see Bob.”
The editor’s scrutiny grew keener, though she spoke to Carole. “He saw what happened to her, do you mean?”
“She panicked, Frankie. That cult and its founder I encouraged her to write about, she started thinking they had more power than she’d thought. She’d tried to investigate them years and years ago, remember, but I’m afraid she was indoctrinated even though she didn’t realise. Now the people responsible are gone too, and at least that’s the end of it.”
I might have welcomed this interpretation if Frankie Borne hadn’t continued to examine my face. In a kind of reluctant triumph she said “I know your name.”
“Bobby dedicated a book to me and Jim, our other friend.”
“Was that you? I wonder if she still would.” Before I could react she said “Didn’t you just try and tempt people to join your cult?”
“It isn’t mine and it never will be. I’d like to know what on earth you mean.”
“Didn’t you post any amount of verbiage about it online? I could have sworn the name was Sheldrake.”
I took no pleasure in clearing myself. “That was my son.”
“And how did he become involved?”
“He was fed their beliefs from the earliest age they could work on him. A lot of children were, and when they grew up they helped to set up what they call their church.”
“I don’t understand how you could have allowed that to happen if you knew what Bob knew.”
“I didn’t just know it, I told her about it. I was why she went after the cult in the first place.”
“Well, that’s left it unharmed and her dead. What do you intend to do about it now, if anything?”
My rage seemed to darken the room and shrink it as well. “What did you ever do about it? Would you have published a book about it if she’d written one?”
“Most emphatically. We always supported Bob’s right to say what she thought. If you wrote a book along those lines we’d give it a good look.”
I couldn’t judge how serious she was. If her offer was genuine, just now it felt more than grotesque, which made me retort “I’ll be visiting the church tomorrow to find out what they’re up to now.”
“You keep calling it a church, I hope you won’t let yourself be taken in just because your family’s involved.” As she moved away, having loaded a plate in a few deft movements, Frankie Borne said “Be sure to keep us informed, won’t you? Carole, you can pass on the developments.”
Carole gave me an apologetic look and lowered her voice. “Dominic, do you think I could have helped?”
“I expect I deserved some of that. Perhaps I deserved it all.”
“Not with Frankie,” Carole said, producing an approximation of a laugh. “Could I have done more to s
ave Bob?”
“I don’t see how.” Despite feeling unduly eager to vindicate myself I said “I don’t think any of us could have stopped her, ever.”
“Do your best to save your son instead,” Carole urged me, instantly adding “Excuse me if I have to circulate.”
I lingered for a while, sharing childhood memories and later ones of Bobby with her friends, and felt as though I was trying to justify attending the wake. I’d booked a room near Euston for the night, since my age had left me unequal to travelling both ways in a day. By the time I reached the hotel off Tottenham Court Road my fingers ached from hoisting and trundling the dwarfish case. I ate at the nearest restaurant, a Turkish where a waiter kept asking me how it was good, which was to say the hearty dips with plump hot bread and hefty kebabs and carafe of dense red wine. I could have thought he was trying to keep me company, this solitary ageing diner with just a phone for a companion. Whenever I glanced at the screen there was no message. There weren’t many people left to send me one, but I was making sure I hadn’t heard from my son.
The hotel room was efficiently anonymous and mostly white: the walls decorated with sketchy abstracts, the sheets stretched taut on the bed, the furniture, the tiles in the decidedly compact bathroom. I could only hope all this had sufficient presence to anchor me in the moment. I hadn’t been away since Lesley’s death, and felt incomplete for not phoning her to say goodnight. I was tempted to call Toby if that mightn’t have wakened my granddaughter. I switched off my phone and set the bedside alarm.
I didn’t expect to sleep much. I found myself recalling the dream on the train, unless it had been some kind of vision—Jim and Bobby declaring they had been forgotten. Since they hadn’t seemed to be protesting, might it mean the Nobles had lost interest in them? I hoped—indeed, as good as prayed—this was the case. Perhaps the Nobles had even forgotten about me or at any rate no longer found me worthy of attention. Before I knew it, the possibility let me sleep.
A voice wakened me. I wasn’t alone in the room. The word my visitor was repeating sounded unpleasantly reptilian, since it seemed to commence with a hiss. My eyes struggled open to see a face leaning close to mine. “Sir,” it was whispering. “Sir.”
I’d bruised my scalp against the headboard by the time I grasped that I was looking at a chambermaid. “What do you want?” I demanded. “What time is it?”
“Sir, time you are gone.”
I was preparing to argue, by no means politely, as I grabbed the clock beside the bed. Either I’d slept through the alarm or inadvertently silenced it while setting it, and the time was just past noon. “Few minutes,” I declared, waving her out of the room.
As I stumbled to the bathroom I switched on my phone. Toby had left me a message a few minutes old. Dad, we have to start now. I think Claude’s right and you needn’t be here because you weren’t involved enough. You’ll learn more but not now. I phoned at once, but he’d turned off his phone during the retreat, of course. On way, I typed and did my best to be at once. The hotel receptionist, an unreasonably burly Russian, tried to charge me extra for a second night. I didn’t waste time arguing or paying, since they’d already charged me for one night and the notion of a breakfast. I left him with the card that did duty as a key, and as he continued to demand my credit card I made for the exit. When the glass door remained stubbornly shut I thought he’d locked me in. I was about to pound on it when it slid aside, releasing me and his rant as well.
My fingers were numb with tugging the suitcase by the time I reached Euston, which was rather less close than the hotel alleged. At least a train to Liverpool was waiting by the platform. For two hours and quite a few more minutes I watched fields and houses pass beneath a pale brittle sky that made me feel the train was inside a shell. Beyond Crewe I began to grow tense, but I might have missed where Jim had died, since the barrier had been repaired, if I hadn’t glimpsed shattered glass glittering beside the track. The sight renewed my guilt at having failed to attend his funeral.
Throughout the journey I kept checking my phone, but Toby hadn’t been in touch. I assumed the retreat would last for hours, and as soon as we arrived at Lime Street I headed for the underground. Two stops brought me to James Street, where I limped down to the waterfront accompanied by constant thunder. It was just the progress of my suitcase, but I could have fancied it was hinting how temporary the bright flat sky was—how vulnerable to a storm or to darkness.
As Starview Tower came in sight among the skyscrapers along the waterfront it reminded me more than ever of an unnatural bloom sprouting beside the river. It looked as if the blackness on the topmost floor had made the concrete stalk swell outwards, blossoming to feed upon the dark beyond the sky as flowers reach for the sun. I tramped fast into the shadow of the tower, which surely wasn’t colder than it ought to be, or darker. I was nearly at the glass doors when I realised Joe wasn’t to be seen.
Had he locked the doors against intruders? I marched up to them, to be greeted by stillness. Even my suitcase had fallen silent, and the only sound was the passing of traffic on the road, which seemed irrelevantly remote. I was searching for a bell to ring for admission when the doors gave a small impatient shudder and glided apart. I crossed the lobby, accompanied by a prolonged peal of indoor thunder, and thumbed the button between the lifts. There was no response.
I poked the button and kept it pressed, but the light above it stayed unlit, and I heard no sound from the lift shafts. In desperation I made for the reception desk, hoping to see how to activate the lifts. Security monitors surrounded a computer screen, and I clutched at the back of an abandoned swivel chair. While some of the monitors displayed empty levels of the tower, several showed extensive rooms—office floors from which the inner walls had been withdrawn—full of seated people. Every one of them had splayed their limbs in the posture I remembered all too well from Toby’s childhood.
The monitor for the floor beneath the offices of the Church of the Eternal Three showed him and Macy and Claudine in the leather chairs at the far end of the vast room. His and his wife’s limbs appeared to be reaching for Macy between them, but even though she’d adopted the same pose she was out of range. I felt cut off from them and desperate not to be. Was one of the icons on the computer screen meant to resemble the doors of a lift? I clicked on it and limped back across the lobby to jab the button. The indicator flickered alight, and I heard a lift stir high up in the tower.
As soon as a pair of doors offered enough of a gap I stumbled in, dragging my suitcase. I had to wait for the doors to open wide before I could shut them and send the lift upwards. The mob of my reflections seemed to be avoiding one another’s eyes so as not to aggravate their fears, but this failed to assuage mine. Apart from the faint creak of a cable and a repetitive metallic twang as the lift climbed past each floor, the building was utterly silent. Retreats were supposed to be mute, I kept telling myself. At least Toby and his wife and child weren’t intoning any of Christian Noble’s occult formulas, unless they were doing so inside their heads. On the monitor I hadn’t seen their lips move—in fact, I’d seen no movement at all.
At last the doors opened, and I lurched between them. The instant I let go of my suitcase, silence closed in. It reminded me of the sleeping room at Safe To Sleep, or perhaps of the way the house had felt when Jim and I explored it after the Nobles fled. It hushed my breath, or apprehension did. I had to force myself to cross the lobby and ease the nearest door open.
It gave onto the expanded room composed of all the offices. Hundreds of figures were propped in folding chairs with their limbs thrown wide as though to embrace emptiness, yet the room felt as vacant as space between stars. I hadn’t time to glance at them as I limped rapidly across the room, but I knew none of them stirred. Nor did my son or his wife or my granddaughter—not when I gave up trying to be silent while I approached, not when I seized his hands and gazed into his emptied eyes, which darkness appeared to have forced wide. I could feel a hectic pulse, but it was onl
y mine. “Toby,” I said, quietly at first, but even when I cried it out my voice was the solitary sound in the room, and the only sign of life.
24 - The Newcomers
To every last one of our family in the faith: These will be our final words to you, to everyone attending the retreats we have called across the world and the few members the church was unable to reach. We urge anybody who is left to heed our message and act as we have at once.
Some of these truths you already know. We are all born to the future, and some of us were privileged to be singled out by it, when it took the name of Noble and later of Bloan and then resurrected Le Bon. My wife and I, and many of the early members of the Church of the Eternal Three, were chosen by Christian’s trinity at birth if not earlier. They saw our future, which they had already created. They revealed the secret shapes of space and time to us as soon as we had minds, and grew our minds in the process. Few people would have dared even to dream of the experiences we took for granted from our infancy, but we have devoted our lives to sharing them with the faithful.
All these adventures only hinted at the revelations granted to our founders. They came from the creator and the soul of our church, Gahariet Le Bon—not just the revelations but the trinity itself. He was at the heart of our faith when it bore the name he gave it, and when it regained life as the Trinity Church of the Spirit and Safe To Sleep. He was within Christian when he was conceived, and he was the essence of Christian’s daughter and son. Perhaps Gahariet was seeking to resume humanity, having been transformed by his encounters with the truth beyond the dark. We believe that, having been extended through time and space to the end that is always the beginning, Gahariet had become an avatar of that whose secrets he sought to learn. Be aware that we should no longer speak or write its name.
We of the faith know that death is a transformation, never an end. The deaths of the bodies of Christian’s trinity may have helped them to grow whole, to rediscover their primal core. The form in which they walked among us was merely a stage in their evolution, the larva of their ultimate state. Since they have yet to descend on our church, we conclude that it is carrying out their purpose. We have reluctantly agreed that they failed to make that purpose clear to us, and may have deliberately withheld it from us and from other leaders of the church. The faithful shall be one in D----th,” Christian used to say, but we never fully understood.
The Way Of The Worm Page 27
