The Courage Consort

by Michel Faber

  Except Mack and Hadrian.

  She looked at the alarm clock. Half past twelve. Mack surely had better things to do than wait for her: she could sense in him that typically male combination of hunger for female companionship and impatience with women for wasting men's valuable time. Perhaps he would go so far as to wander up the church steps, hoping to run into her. Perhaps he would even pay £1.70 to look for her at the abbey. Or perhaps, contrary to her instincts, he was head-over-heels in love with her, and would wait in the Mission coffee lounge until it closed and the Christian ladies shooed him out into Haggersgate, a sad young man with only a dog for company.

  All she knew was that she was relieved she'd never told him where she was staying. She needed a sanctum, even if it was a hotel room that smelled of booze.

  Strangely, despite feeling that there were toxic fumes rising from her body and that she must breathe very shallowly to give the pain in her head all the skull room it demanded, she was a lot less miserable than she'd expected to be today. She hadn't had any nightmares, for a start, unless you counted the hallucination on the summit of the hundred and ninety-nine steps. For the first time since her accident, she'd survived a night's sleep without being pursued or mutilated. The notion of a few hours of benign unconsciousness, so taken for granted by other humans when they laid their heads on a pillow, was a novelty for Siân, and she hoped it might happen to her again sometime.

  The despair she'd felt last night, the extremity of disgust and disillusionment with human nature, seemed to have faded too. She felt purged, hollow and airy inside, as if everything she'd ever known was no longer stored there. Like an infant, she knew nothing much about anything, and must wait for some clues from the universe before she could make any judgment of what sort of world she was in.

  It was the strangest feeling, but not unpleasant.

  As the afternoon progressed, Siân got herself ready for going out. She washed her hair, dressed nicely, applied Band-Aids to the abrasions on her palms and wrists, even though she knew they'd peel away in no time. Setting off from the White Horse and Griffin at three-ish, she thought she might go to the East Cliff and throw herself off the edge, hopefully dying instantly on the Scaur below, but instead she crossed the bridge to the West Side, walked to Springvale Medical Centre, and asked to see a doctor.

  'I thought you'd decided you never wanted to see me again,' said Mack, when he found her waiting for him in the Whitby Mission & Seafarer's Centre on Monday, forty-eight hours after their original appointment.

  'Thanks for coming,' she said, choosing her words with care. 'It was bad of me not to show up on Friday. I really wasn't well enough, though.'

  He scrutinised her face, clearly unable to decide whether he should respond as a doctor or a lover, torn as he was between voicing professional concern and praising her feminine charms regardless of how ghastly she looked.

  'You look very tired,' he said, after some deliberation. He himself was in the usual fine shape, though so immaculately groomed and blow-dried today that he reminded her of a male model. She pictured him doing the rounds of hospital wards, accompanied by more nurses than strictly required. Or what about when he graduated to private practice? Female patients would discover hitherto unsuspected talents for hypochondria, no doubt. 'And I have to say…' he told Siân hesitantly, 'your face is rather flushed.'

  'Oh, I really am sick,' she assured him, dabbing at her cheeks with the cool back of one hand. 'It's under control, though. Nothing for you to worry about.'

  They were sitting in the Mission's alternative coffee lounge, the one with the sign above the door saying, 'Customers wishing to smoke or accompanied by a pet please use this room'. Hadrian was snuffling and whining under the table, doing his best not to bark, beating his tail loudly against the floor and the table legs, and laying his head repeatedly in Siân's lap, for her to pat. Despite the animal-friendly sign above the door, he was the only dog in the room just now, and flirting shamelessly. Mack seemed nervous, rolling a cigarette from a crackling plastic pouch of amber tobacco.

  'I didn't know you smoked,' said Siân.

  'I don't—much,' he replied, indicating, with a shrug of his eyebrows, the slightly hazy atmosphere created by the folk at the other tables. 'I just get the occasional urge, when there's a lot of it in the air.' A sly, disarming grin spread slowly on his face, as though he were the town's most respectable schoolboy caught puffing on a fag behind a rubbish bin. 'Not a very good example for a doctor to set, eh? But at least I don't smoke the mass-produced kind.'

  'Your big moral stand,' she remarked drily.

  The sparring between them was beginning again, only a few minutes after their reunion. Magnus relaxed visibly, perhaps taking heart from this—or perhaps it was the nicotine.

  'I've missed you,' he said.

  She licked her lips, opened her mouth to reply.

  'Hush!' said Hadrian, his skull clunking against the underside of the table.

  Mack lifted the tablecloth and peered underneath, half-amused, half-annoyed. 'Hadrian disgraced himself here on Saturday, you know that?' he said, grabbing at the animal's tail to force him to turn around. 'Whimpered the place down, didn'tcha, eh, boy? That's the last time I take you anywhere.'

  'Rough!' retorted Hadrian, as softly as his canine vocal cords allowed.

  Mack allowed the tablecloth to drop, and Hadrian returned to Siân, only his tail showing, a thick plume of white plush sweeping the smoky air. The other diners, mainly elderly couples, were smiling and nudging each other; this dog was better than the telly.

  'Are you hungry?' said Mack.

  'The ladies are making some warm milk for me,' said Siân. 'They're going to bring it when it's ready.'

  He stood up and walked to the main coffee lounge to study the menu. Siân knew perfectly well that nothing would be to his liking. He would, she predicted, come closest to considering the slabs of quiche, but then reject them because the choice of 'flavours' was described, in the Mission's bluff un-Londonesque fashion, as 'cheese & onion' and 'bacon & egg'.

  While waiting for him to return, she alternated between stroking Hadrian and flipping the pages of Streonshalh, the Whitby Parish magazine. The hot news was the latest ecclesiastical Synod—not the one Saint Hilda hosted in 664, obviously, but a forthcoming one. There were advertisements for videos and colour laser copies, but also long articles about the merits of the alder tree and the willow-herb. Since last month, a startling number of parishioners had died—more females than males, too, despite the supposedly superior life expectancies of women. Four different funeral directors offered Siân their services.

  On a positive note, a mixed-voice choir called the Sleights Singers, founded in 1909, serenaded her thus: 'New lady-and-gentleman members always made welcome'. Sure it was quaint, but behind the quaintness she sensed the genuine tug of human welcome, a reminder that if she were to show up at a particular house in Sleights on a particular night, she could have new friends instantly, and start singing with them. Siân committed the address to memory. If she was still alive next Thursday between 7:15 and 9, maybe she'd drop in.

  Mack ambled back to the table and sat down.

  'Nothing for Magnuses?' said Siân, deadpan.

  'Nothing for Magnuses,' he agreed. 'Look, I know you've been ill and everything, but have you had a chance to … ah…'

  She pulled her Star Wars notebook out of her jacket and held it up to her mouth, enjoying the loudness of this silent action. Indeed, she was thinking that all the words they'd spoken up to now had been superfluous, an elaborate verbal game, and could have been replaced with a few decorous hand gestures.

  'I've got the whole thing now,' she said. 'It's all done.'

  A matronly woman came to the table and set a tall glass of warm milk in front of Siân. She also laid down a cold pasty wrapped in a paper napkin.

  'Wow,' murmured Mack when she'd walked back to the kitchen. 'If you pay extra, do you get a plate?'

  'I told her the customer wouldn
't need one,' said Siân, immediately conveying the pasty under the table, where Hadrian scoffed it noisily.

  Mack squinted at her in bemusement. 'Were you so sure we'd come?'

  'No, I wasn't,' she said, and took a careful sip of her milk while, at her feet, the dog went gronff, snuffle, flupp, and so forth. 'But I liked the idea of giving Hadrian this treat so much, that I bought it for him and hoped it would happen. And it has.'

  He frowned, as if her rationale were a mystic riddle too thorny—or too stickily sentimental—for him to wish to grasp.

  'OK—read,' he said, motioning towards the notebook. 'Please.'

  She leaned forward, and he did, too, so their faces were close together, causing a murmur of gossip behind them. Siân delivered the testament of Thomas Peirson in a soft voice, softer still during the more sensational bits, pausing every few sentences for a sip of milk. When she reached the part where Mary's body had been fished out of the River Esk, and her father was weeping for all he was worth, Magnus shook his head in admiration.

  'Wow,' he said. 'Thomas Peirson, take a bow. Hollywood awaits.'

  'I don't think so,' said Siân. 'There's more. I did the final page and a half last night. It's going to disappoint you, Mack.'

  She cleared her throat, and continued reading, in the same soft tone as before. But these were new words, words she had uncovered in the wee small hours, when her sober hand had wielded the knife for the final time and she had wept tears of pity onto the frail old paper.

  Of the events that followed, I have not the time to write. This Confession must be hid in the earth while I have yet strength to bury it. I will say only, that our Mary's funeral was one ofthe grandest this town has ever seen. She had a coach, drawn by six coal-black horses, and a long train of mourners bearing torches, for in those days burials were done after dark. When we carried her up the Steps, she had servers all dressed in white, carrying a maidens garland afore her coffin, with ribbons held by all her friends. The Vicar spoke with full sureness of her place in Heaven.

  Now, in my own dying days, I know not if I shall meet my daughter again. If she be in Hell, I pray that God finds reason to send me there; if she be in Heaven, I beg His forgiveness. These last years, folk have taken to calling me Bible Thomas behind my back, for I have read the Scriptures more than most Clergie-men, and there are some who say, He should have been a Monk, & a host of Whales would be the happier for it! None can guess why I have studied the Holy Book so earnestly, leaving not a word of it unturned—but I must be certain that no case like mine was ever judged before!

  Under the strict terms of Scripture, I broke no Commandment—this much I know. I can also be sure of one other thing: that if I had left my daughter even as I found her, with the powder of poison on her dead lips, and the name of her faithless lover writ on her belly, she should have been buried in unhallowed ground with a stake through her heart. Now she lies among the Blessed, and soon I shall join her. For how long? Only at the Last Trump shall we know.

  You who find this; You who read this—Pray for her, I beg of you!

  Thomas Peirson,

  father and Christian, as best he could be.

  Siân laid the notebook on the table, and drank the rest of her milk. Hadrian had settled down to sleep on her feet, his warm flank breathing against her left shin. Magnus was frowning even more than before, his dark eyebrows almost knitting together.

  'I don't get it,' he said. 'Was she a vampire after all? This stake-through-the-heart business…'

  'It's how they used to bury suicides,' said Siân. 'Mary killed herself, Mack. She was already dead when her dad found her.'

  His frown only deepened. 'So…'

  'So he did what he had to.'

  'Slashed his own daughter's throat so she'd score a place in the correct patch of dirt?'

  Siân picked up her empty glass and shifted it to one side of the table, as if clearing the way for an embrace—or an arm wrestle.

  'Magnus,' she said as calmly as she could, 'I'm starting to wonder if you have everything it takes to be a good doctor. Can't you see that for our man Thomas, defending his child with a bit of twenty-first-century sarcasm just wasn't an option? As a suicide, she'd've been an object of disgust and shame; instead, he managed to get her buried with love and respect. You can't blame him for that.'

  Mack leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair, flustered, it seemed, from the effort of understanding such rank idiocy.

  'But … what difference does it make? God's not fooled, is he? If Mary killed herself, she goes to hell, right?'

  'Maybe Thomas was hoping God would turn a blind eye.' Siân winced at the ugly vehemence of the sound Mack interjected—something between a sneer and a snort. 'Please, Mack: just once, try to put yourself into the mind of a person who believes there's an afterlife and a loving and just God. Imagine the end of the world, when the last trumpet sounds and all the dead rise from their graves, all the millions of people who've ever lived. Imagine God looking down on Whitby, at Saint Mary's churchyard, and there, in amongst all the resurrected souls, there's Mary, standing hand in hand with her father and mother and sister, all of them blinking in the light, wondering what happens next. Imagine. God and Mary's eyes meet, and suddenly each of them remembers how she died. The door to eternal life is open, the other townsfolk are walking through, all the drunkards and the gossips and the men who broke women's hearts. But Mary hesitates, and her father puts his arms around her. Now, tell me, Mack. If you were God, what would you do?'

  Magnus pouted, scarcely able to believe what she was asking him, discomfited by the shiny-eyed intentness of her stare. 'I wouldn't've taken the job in the first place,' he quipped. 'I would've told the Deity Registration Board to go shove it.'

  He flashed a grin, a pleading sort of grin painfully at odds with his sweating forehead and haunted eyes. He was evidently hoping the wisecrack would break the tension and restore an atmosphere of warm banter, but that hope died in the chill between them.

  'Well,' said Siân with a sigh. 'It's a good thing nobody asked you, then, isn't it?' And she folded the notebook back into her jacket.

  Alarmed at the prospect of her preparing to leave, Mack searched for a reentry point, a way to prolong if not redeem their conversation.

  'The bit … the bit about Mary having her lover's name written on her belly is weird, isn't it? Do you think she may have been mentally ill?'

  Siân rested her chin on her clasped hands, half-closed her eyes. 'I think she was very, very unhappy.'

  'That's what I was getting at. Clinically depressed, if she'd been diagnosed today.'

  'If you like.'

  'Or maybe she'd found out she was pregnant?'

  'With a little test kit from the pharmacy?'

  'I'm sure they had ways of knowing, didn't they, in the eighteenth century?' He looked at her hopefully, as if to call attention to his willingness to concede the wisdom of past ages.

  'I don't think Mary was pregnant,' said Siân. 'Or if she was, she wasn't aware of it. I think this William Agar fellow deflowered her, and then rejected her, and she couldn't cope with the loss of her honour.'

  'Wow. That's so Victorian. Or Romantic. Or something.'

  'We all need a sense of personal integrity, Mack,' she said, finally pulling her feet out from under Hadrian's sleeping body. 'These days more than ever. There's far more people committing suicide now than at any time in history. What have all those people lost, if not their honour?'

  'Yeah, but come on … To link whether you live or die to being dumped by a boyfriend…'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Siân. 'Who we give ourselves to is very important, don't you think?'

  'Oof,' came a voice from under the table.

  Siân shifted in her chair, and started laughing—ticklish, involuntary laughter. Her right leg, having gone to sleep some time ago, was suddenly buzzing with pins and needles; the lump in her thigh was giving her hell; in fact, the only part of her that didn't feel lousy was
the part that was manufactured by Russian technicians.

  'Are you all right?' said Mack, smiling nervously, keen to share the joke.

  'No, I'm not all right,' she groaned, and giggled again. To make matters worse, Hadrian had woken up, and was pawing gently against the leg whose nerve endings were going berserk. 'Have you ever been dead, Mack?'

  'What?'

  'Have you ever been clinically dead? You know, in an accident, before they revive you.'

  He shook his head, dumbfounded.

  'I have,' she went on. 'And you know what? I saw the light that people always talk about, the shining light on the other side.'

  Before he could stop himself, Mack blurted, 'Yes, I've read a couple of investigations into that: it's actually the brain's synapses flaring or something…'

  This, for Siân, was quite enough, and she rose from her seat.

  'Sorry, Mack,' she said. 'I have to go now.'

  ***

  A week later, when Siân had just been released from hospital, she walked gingerly up the hundred and ninety-nine steps to the abbey. The ruins were still standing, large as life, despite a summer storm that had damaged roofs and satellite dishes on Whitby's more modern buildings. Siân walked all the way around, making sure nothing was missing that hadn't been missing already, then stood for a minute in the shadow of the abbey's towering east front, enjoying the Gothic symmetry of the great tiers of lancet windows and the scarred perfection of the ancient stonework. Maybe God still had plans for this medieval skeleton after all.