Lights in a Western Sky

by Roger Curtis

  ‘What troubles you, Mary?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Not now, Thomas.’

  ‘I think…’

  ‘I said, not now.’

  ‘No. I’ll tell him,’ Mary said aggressively. ‘It was because of what I was. They would never accept me. He would tell them to, but when his back was turned…’

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘And when he came,’ she said, pointing at Thomas, ‘they all saw. Except me, pushed upstairs by that oaf…’

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘And the worst of it. After he’d gone they couldn’t be bothered to tell me. If his wounds had healed, whether the holes in his forehead… The look on their smug faces as they went out.’

  ‘Mary, you had no reason to feel excluded.’

  ‘They relished it!’

  ‘You were the favoured ones, you and John. Were you not the very first to see him?’

  Mary pointed at Thomas. ‘He’s shown me I wasn’t.’

  ‘Mary, Thomas has shown you no such thing.’

  ‘James,’ Thomas said. ‘You’re confusing us.’

  ‘You, Thomas, wonder why I asked you here. What was it that I realised when I met…’

  ‘…your mysterious fisherman in Galilee? Who was he? What did he say?’

  ‘Who he was is insignificant. What he told me was… that he’d seen you, Thomas.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You went there from time to time, did you not?’

  ‘We had work there – repairing the quayside.’

  ‘And got to know the locals.’

  ‘Some of them.’

  And when the Twelve fled Jerusalem and returned to their villages along the shore where they would have known everybody and everybody knew them and what had happened here in Jerusalem… And you saw them on the beach, and invited them to join your meal…’

  ‘It was a… momentary encounter.’

  ‘Possibly. But some thought it confirmed what they still doubted… that Jesus was alive.’

  ‘Including John the priest…’

  ‘…who reported it to me when I came here, just before he left for Ephesus.’

  ‘And gave me hope,’ Mary interjected.

  ‘Yes. Now look, our food will be getting cold. Pass me your plates.’ James spooned some of the fish stew into their bowls. ‘They say the fish takes only a day and a half to reach us from Galilee.’

  ‘Surely it’s quicker from the sea.’

  ‘But then it wouldn’t be the same, would it? Now, let’s taste it together.’

  They each raised a portion of fish to their lips. Suddenly Mary dropped her spoon, stretched out her hands and grasped Thomas’ wrists, staring at them intently. Then she fell backwards in her chair and scuttled, whimpering, to the far corner of the room. Thomas, distraught by what he saw, was staring at his wrists. James looked on, concerned and thoughtful.

  ‘You went too far, James.’

  ‘I think you should make your peace with Mary.’

  Thomas walked across to Mary, helped her to her feet and guided her back to the table. Once more Mary took Thomas’s hands, this time gently, and examined them, turning them over with her own.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ she said’

  ‘What have gone, Mary?’

  ‘Where the nails were. Just for a moment.’

  ‘Then be thankful that you’ve seen him. Now, I think you should rest.’

  James rose, and Mary walked slowly from the room. After the door had closed James said, ‘I have a task for you, Thomas – a kind of penance I suppose – but I think it will give you some satisfaction.’ He left the room and returned carrying an open box. ‘You see, since I came here I’ve been trying to recall our brother’s teachings. What he actually said, human memory being so fallible. So I’ve been asking those who knew him to write down what they remember… and they have. He took out handfuls of the sheets and spread them on the table. They’ll have you crying, Thomas, I tell you.’

  Thomas took up one sheet after another and read them. ‘Look at this. Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Remember that? And this. They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to him, Caesar’s men demand taxes from us. He said to them, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give God what belongs to God, and give me what is mine.’

  James smiled. ‘I was asked to interpret that only yesterday.’

  Thomas continued reading: ‘His disciples said to him, is circumcision beneficial or not? He said to them, if it were beneficial their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother.’

  ‘Oh,’ said James, ‘not sure about that one. But Paul would be glad to hear it.’

  ‘And here,’ Thomas continued: ‘The disciples said to Jesus, we know that you will depart from us, who is to be our leader? Jesus said to them, wherever you are, go to James the Righteous for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.’

  ‘Praise indeed! But it took a while to happen.’

  ‘And so on.’

  ‘Enough I think, don’t you? You say you’ll be leaving tomorrow?’

  ‘In the morning.’

  ‘Time to walk up to the second tomb? To take a look? I don’t believe it’s ever been disturbed.’

  ‘No… no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘And if I were to tell you for a fact it’s empty?’

  ‘Then I would tell you for a fact that that’s good enough for me.’

  James moved to the portico, where Thomas joined him. ‘The light has left Golgotha. How splendid the city looks.’

  ‘I wonder if it will always be so.’

  ‘Who knows.’

  The Runners of Afton Jail

  They sometimes ask – the thick black line of death having been crossed – why I would wish to revisit people and places so integral to my demise. Did expiation work? Or, in the great scheme of things, does it matter at all? I leave that to others of us to judge. Perhaps it is that we just need to carry over with us a compelling story.

  It was not difficult to spot him, in Fenner’s Café, staring ahead at nothing in particular, moodily stirring his tea. It was the same image I’d had of him in Afton Jail, sitting at a long table amongst other mobsters and the like, before the parole board had been persuaded, somehow, that he’d shown remorse. What he’d done didn’t interest me; what linked us was his friendship – if that’s the right word for cell-mates thrust upon one another – with my brother. He was the only one Harry ever mentioned during my visits – those fraught, infrequent visits when we were allowed just twenty minutes to chew over past demeanours with – thankfully then but regretfully now – no time left to consider… well… deeper issues.

  Without looking up or apparently seeing me, Grimston – I never knew his given name – stopped stirring. Perhaps in prison one becomes sensitive to approaching footsteps, as like as not spelling danger. Then he showed me a face bearing the mental scars of a potential lifer, unexpectedly cast adrift in an unwelcoming world. And I saw there the dregs of the same hopelessness that I’d begun to see in Harry.

  ‘I got your message,’ I said, taking the seat opposite.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. His tone implied reluctant compliance with an instruction, as if he’d been thrust into an action that didn’t come easily. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘You said you had something of my brother’s.’

  He picked up a brown paper package from the seat beside him. I expected him to push it across the table but he just fidgeted with it. I judged his reluctance to part with it as having significance: a sole momento of someone who had meant something . And I couldn’t imagine there had been many of those in his bleak life.

  ‘He’d worked on it, y’see. Days at it he was, before his… before he came to grief. Never told me why. Made no se
nse.’

  ‘May I see it,’ I said.

  He kept his hand on the parcel.

  ‘Look when I’ve gone. It’s nothing I can help you with. Give it to my brother,’ he said. ‘Make sure you give it to Michael. He’ll understand.’

  It didn’t quite make sense. ‘That suggests he knew something was going to happen to him.’

  ‘Don’t know how he could. Always kept his head down. I couldn’t see anything coming.’

  ‘And you don’t know who did it?’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t tell you if I did. But nah, no idea.’

  ‘And he had no enemies, that you know of?’

  ‘Beaten up, a couple of times, long time ago. Respect thing. Meant nothing. It happens.’

  ‘When they found him, were you there?’

  ‘Soon after. On my knees, bloody crying.’

  And indeed that was not difficult to imagine, for I could see his eyes were glistening. Suddenly he got up and made for the door. I called after him, ‘If there’s anything I can do for you…’

  He stopped in the doorway and turned.

  ‘Like you did for Harry? No thanks.’

  Seeing me alone at the table the waitress – who had perhaps wisely kept her distance – came up to me. ‘You want something?’

  I felt like saying, my brother back, but that would have needed an explanation and she didn’t look the type. ‘A coffee,’ I said. ‘No milk.’

  I fingered the brown package, then tore it open. I withdrew a notebook – of poor quality, with the Afton Jail stamp – that I imaging was issued to prisoners to fend off boredom. I felt the pulse at my temple quicken. A diary, I thought at first. But on turning the cover it was nothing of the kind. The few used pages were covered in what appeared to be calculations, and geometric shapes based upon the circle. Before his arrest he’d worked in a surveyor’s office and my first thought was that they related to a building, for here surely was a dome. And yet… It made no sense and I replaced the notebook in the bag.

  As the waitress bent over my shoulder I caught the drift of a perfume more subtle than her status suggested. ‘Your coffee. You look as if you need it.’

  ‘I do. Just lost my brother. He died in prison.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Topped himself, did he?’

  ‘No. Got attacked.’

  ‘Know how you must feel. Mine was a suicide.’

  ‘At Afton?’

  ‘Yeah. Years ago though.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Me partner. Left me with two kids.’

  I suddenly felt a desperate need to talk. ‘Can you sit for a minute?’

  ‘No, but we close in five minutes. When I shut the door you can finish your coffee and I’ll join you.’

  But under her searching eyes I still couldn’t tell her my great secret, which from the moment I entered the café and saw Grimston had expanded within me like a flesh-consuming infection. Yet wasn’t this girl a lifeline too valuable to throw away? ‘Can I ring you sometime,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’

  Without invitation she wrote her number on the paper that had enclosed Harry’s book. As she held the door for me our eyes engaged and I felt an unexpected warmth flow between us.

  On the way to my mother’s – our mother’s – I passed St Peter’s Church, where the funeral was to be. I saw myself in the pulpit spouting about loyalty and respect and family values. But how do you speak about someone with love and affection – even if that was the case – when you’ve sinned so much against them? I felt already the lump that would creep into my throat and the tremor in my speech, and imagined the accusations in the eyes of the congregation, even though no such thoughts yet troubled their minds. I had volunteered a reading, which I thought I could manage, but Mum had said, no, you owe it to Harry. And so I had agreed, knowing that embarrassment – and pain – would surely be my lot.

  I was still grasping Harry’s notebook and felt a compelling urge to study it, to get inside his mind during those last bleak days. Did I not owe him that – to understand? I retraced my steps to the church and went in. The sepulchral gloom seemed appropriate to the task and I sat at the foot of the pulpit, to contemplate my Armageddon.

  The light was dim but I could see enough of the numbers and drawings to make more sense of them. Here was a circle, with arrows against it, as might represent the dome of a building subjected to the stresses of overlying concrete. And in the equations supporting this were surely coefficients relating to stress. A link with his former life, perhaps? A mental exercise to stimulate a soul reduced to immeasurable boredom tipping over into the intolerable?

  I recalled my last meeting with him three months before, after the regularity of my weekly visits had tailed off – the effect of a trade-off between brotherly duty and hypocrisy. Yet the regret was on all my side. Nowhere did I see the resentment that was my due. He’d looked at me with those soft child-like eyes. Don’t worry about it, Michael, it’s okay, it’s in the past. What’s done is done and can’t be undone. Now I just want you to live your life and be successful.

  And successful I had been, if a big house, a wife and kids, and a Range Rover in the drive were benchmarks. And a business – if that’s what you call a… well, let’s say an activity in the pharmaceutical supply industry – as yet unlikely to be rumbled.

  A faint cough from behind made me turn. The girl from the café was sitting two pews behind.‘I happened to be going the same way and saw you come in here. I’m a good listener, if that’s what you want.’ But it was still too early to tell. As she walked away I doubted if I would see her again.

  In the kitchen my mother was cutting vegetables at the table. In her grief the image of Grimston in the café came to me and I could see there were elements in the tragedy they both shared. ‘Grimston?’ she said. ‘Yes, he came here just after… I made him tea and he said how close he and Harry had been. It’s a pity you didn’t visit more often, Michael. He once said he’d do anything for you. Did you know that? He was so proud of having a brother he could look up to. Made up for his own deficiencies, he said.’

  I turned away, not able to look at her, groping for something to say. ‘Did Grimston say why Harry had changed?’

  ‘Well, it seemed to him Harry’d had a new lease of life. Which makes the thing so difficult to understand.’ She paused to wipe away a tear. ‘You know he’d joined a fitness class? He’d even started running when they let them do it in the yard. Quite good at it, Grimston said, considering he was never the active one of you two. And he’d even started writing. Michael, why couldn’t they have left him alone, when he seemed to be doing so well? What had he done to deserve it?’

  I couldn’t show her Harry’s notebook. Not yet understanding its contents I knew there was a risk if it ever got passed around. On the other hand I felt an obligation to seek an explanation for her. It was then that I went to the next room and telephoned the prison for an appointment with the governor.

  Was it the forlorn hope of seduction or expiation of guilt that made me pass Fenner’s Café, the next day, on my way to the station? She looked up from wiping a table as I approached the window, then opened the door, with that little half-smile I’d carried in my head from the day before; and what – if I was honest – had drawn me back now. But I was taken aback by her first words.

  ‘You weren’t straight with me yesterday, were you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said your brother had killed a man.’

  ‘I said…’

  ‘He came back, you see. That bloke you were talking to.’

  ‘Grimston?’

  ‘If that’s what you call him.’

  My body chilled as she motioned me to a table in the darker depths of the café. ‘This Grimston said your brother was innocent. That’s
not what you told me.’ Then she said, ‘I’ll bring you your coffee.’

  My thoughts raced. By the time she’d returned I’d rehearsed what to say. ‘What I said was he’d been arrested for killing someone. It was never proved but his prints were on the knife. It was enough to convict.’

  ‘But did he do it?’

  What had Grimston told her, or for that matter known? I tried to adopt an explanatory tone. ‘My brother told the police he had, under interrogation…’ I said, looking down at the table.

  ‘You believed that?’

  ‘The bar was packed. In the confusion it was impossible to see what happened. The witnesses – if there were any – didn’t hang around.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think they did, but that’s not what I asked.’ She lowered herself into the seat opposite me, elbows on the table, chin resting on her interlocked fingers, waiting.

  Under normal circumstances I would have switched on the charm. But not now. ‘Why are you so concerned?’

  ‘I told you about my partner.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘But not about my affairs, while he was banged up.’ There was a brief catching of breath. She lowered he voice. ‘So I know what makes people do such things… and the hell you go through after.’

  I looked at my watch and jumped to my feet, suddenly relieved I could claim only just enough time to catch my train. ‘Shall I see you again?’ I said. ‘That depends on you,’ she replied. I looked back to see her still sitting there.

  At two-thirty I rang that familiar and innocuous-looking bell at the prison gate. But instead of passing through the usual series of clanking doors I was shunted along a less forbiddingly grey corridor, into the beige neutrality of the governor’s office.

  ‘The thing that puzzles me about your brother,’ governor Robinson said, ‘is that he seemed to have no enemies. Bullied sometimes, maybe. Depended on what others were passing through. But certainly nothing recently. In fact about a month ago his demeanour seemed to change for the better. He got quite motivated when we introduced changes in the PE sessions and made a small running track around the yard. Brought out all their competitive instincts – and made them more subdued when they came back in. But Harry, he seemed obsessed by it. Not just in winning, but in bettering his own achievements.’