Judgment Day

by Penelope Lively

  The date fixed, he put the receiver down. Agenda. Speakers. Me, I suppose. The Diocesan Architect, if he'll come, or at least send someone. Ring the Diocesan Architect's office. Posters. Nice big bright posters, to be lettered by Miss Bellingham's friend who was an artist, summoning Laddenham residents to a Public Meeting to launch the Save Our Church Appeal, for display in the public library, at the bus stop, in the newsagent's window, outside the vicarage…

  * * *

  The primary school playground was full, it being the mid-morning break, as the aeroplanes swept across the sky, and the whole place broke into cheers and an excited rushing about. Thereafter, for a while, groups of small boys zoomed around in formation until the interest subsided, the impression left by the incident faded, and anyway the bell went and everyone beat it for the school entrance and another hour of enlightened instruction.

  * * *

  Martin Bryan, coming home, couldn't remember what day it was. He stopped dead, outside the butcher's (the one with the sign he liked: Meat to Please You, Pleased to Meet You} and didn't know if it was Tuesday or Thursday or what. His head whirled. You needed to know things like that, it was like knowing who you were yourself: Martin Paul Bryan, aged 10, 3 The Green, Laddenham, nr. Spelbury, Oxfordshire, England, Europe, the World, the Universe. And knowing how many people you knew—their names and what they looked like, which was sixty-five he thought, not counting everyone at school which would have brought it up to two hundred and twelve.

  What had it been yesterday? It had been a school day, so not a Saturday or Sunday. And the day before had been school but the day before … the day before was Sunday, so now was Wednesday.

  Once more placed in time, he was able to start walking again. He wondered if she'd be at home, if she'd have remembered to get anything for tea. There might be beefburgers. Now, he thought, now at this moment, walking along the High Street, past the White Lion, past the corner where there was sometimes that Alsatian dog he didn't like, now he didn't know at all, it was all emptiness ahead, you couldn't know what there was, it was like looking into a fog. But quite soon, just in minutes, as long as it took the hand on his watch to get from there to there, he'd know, it would all be things that had happened, as though the fog turned into color, as though shape came from blankness, like Dad's expensive camera that he lost in Jersey last year made pictures come swimming onto squares of paper, just like that, in seconds.

  He'd been thinking of that on Sunday, when they'd been driving to see Auntie Judy, Mum and Dad arguing because Dad didn't want to go. He'd sat in the back and seen between their shoulders the dashboard clock saying twelve. When we come back, he'd thought, it'll be saying six, or something like that. I'll be sitting here, like I am now, only then I'll know what happened in between, I'll know things I don't know now, things will have happened that haven't happened yet. He stared over the clock out of the windscreen, at the road advancing and then vanishing. It will actually be like that: I shall sit here and it will be six o'clock. The thought amazed him. And later, when it was so, and he remembered, deliberately, he felt a curious wisdom. He felt older, more than six hours older.

  * * *

  Clare Paling, at her kitchen window, saw the child opposite, that wan-looking little boy, come round the corner followed by, at seven and twelve second intervals, her own son and daughter. All three had the disintegrating look of children at the end of a day's school—jerseys and satchels hung precariously about them, Thomas trailed the sleeve of an anorak in the gutter, the Bryan boy's shirt hung out of his belt at the back. Like swimmers nearing shore, they headed blindly for home, eyes down. Clare watched with detachment, peeling vegetables.

  She saw behind the palimpsest faces of her children their own previous selves, their infancy, a fleeting succession of Annas and Thomases slipping through her fingers, gone as soon as they had come. She saw the mobile features of babies settle to individuality; she saw the whole evolutionary process of growth, the curled fetus to the erect child; she heard the amazing flood of language—each precarious second heading for now, this June day, this light pouring through leaves to dapple their unknowing heads. Children live in the moment; the rest of us are saddled with the processes of time.

  Thomas, at the lych-gate, looks furtively round to see who may be watching (houses, alas, have eyes, which he has forgotten} and climbs upon the churchyard wall He balances his way along it, teetering once so that Clare's stomach lurches with him. He flaps his outstretched arms; he is fifty feet high; he towers above the Green majestic in daring and in panic. He is there forever, suspended at seven years old with the warm stone under his feet and the rolling clouds above his head, while his sister stares in disapproval and intended treachery and his mother goes to the door to call out, to jolt him back into the unyielding present, to bring him sliding down, protesting, denying.

  “I wasn't going to fall off. And anyway you never said…”

  And the moment has gone; the clouds have rolled on; the warmth is draining from the stone.

  “And anyway,” said Anna piously, “the vicar wouldn't like it. It's his wall.”

  Thomas, in triumph, retaliated. “It is not. It's God's wall. The church belongs to God, not the vicar, doesn't it Mum?”

  “Well,” said Clare, “technically … Never mind. Tea-time. Milk shakes?”

  In the early evening the front doorbell rang. Clare, reading in the sitting room, heard Thomas thump down the hall. Voices. Thomas bounced in to say Mrs. Coggan was there.

  Sue Coggan stood on the step flanked by her daughters. She contrived, interestingly, to look both neat and distraught at the same time. One child appeared tearful, the other excited. It was at once apparent that this was no routine social call. Sue had already burst into explanations. “… ever so sorry to bother you, but I just couldn't think what else to do, and I knew you've got your car, the mini, you can't help noticing being just opposite. I rang the surgery and they said if it's gone that far it's best to take her straight to the Casualty at Spelbury, because they'd have the right instruments there, the doctor wouldn't be able to do anything really.” She stared down at the smallest child; exasperation and embarrassment fought with concern. “Oh dear, what a silly girl! There we were, all ready for the baths, the water run and everything, and then this! I am sorry to bother you, but…”

  Clare said, “What's she done?”

  “She pushed a button up her nose.”

  Anna and Thomas had now gathered to stare. Anna said, “What kind of button?”

  “A pearl button actually. One of John's shirt buttons. Honestly, you wouldn't believe it, would you, I thought at first they were having me on, and then she started crying and…”

  Clare closed the front door. “Right. We'd better get going. Don't worry. Sweaters on, Anna and Thomas.”

  “I don't want to come,” said Thomas.

  “It is illegal,” said Clare, “to leave children under ten alone in a house, as I've told you before, much that you care. So it's one out, all out, I'm afraid. Coats.”

  Sue Coggan was now launched on another round of apology. “Oh dear, of course I didn't think … I'd forgotten it would mean taking them all. I feel awful dragging you out. Tracy do stop sniffing and don't hang on my arm like that. I rang Luxicars in Spelbury but they said forty minutes at least and the doctor said better go as quickly as…”

  “It's all right. Not to worry. Let's go.”

  In the car, Anna said, “If she breathed the button in further would it go right down inside her? Down into her tummy? And then would it …” Thomas interrupted, “It would come out in the end when she…”

  Clare crashed the gears, bawled, “Shut up! Be quiet both of you or I'll belt you when we get back.”

  There was a little indrawn hiss of breath at her side. Sue Coggan shifted Tracy from one knee to another: “And of course we had to come out just as we were, I didn't like to stop and tidy up for too long, Tracy's got filthy socks on, as I say I was just going to start on the baths. Thank
goodness I've got my bag, anyway, and a comb and things, we can have a bit of a cleanup when we get there.”

  “Socks?” said Clare. The windpipe of a five-year-old child—how wide? One doesn't know about these things, one just imagines, as one does everything, constructs a scenario. Like a hollow plant-stem? Bigger? But not very big. How many holes, the button? Which way round? I'm driving too fast. Think. Which direction is the hospital when you get to the roundabout? Left. Left and then that shortcut through the industrial estate.

  “It's going to make them ever so late for bed, I'm afraid, and your two, I am sorry. John'll have kittens when he gets in, no tea or anything, I left a note of course, explaining, the thing is it's his late night, he goes over to the other branch. Tracy don't fidget, just sit still, it's very kind of Mrs. Paling to take us like this. I turned the oven right off, I've got a cottage pie in, I wondered about leaving it on low but you don't know how long they'll take. I had Tracy in Spelbury General, Mandy was the John Radcliffe in Oxford, of course, before we moved.”

  “Mmn?” About another two miles. You can't stop outside the Casualty, it's ambulances only. Drop them off, then find somewhere to park.

  “What a thing to happen. You just never know, do you, what they'll think of? I mean, medicines, one's careful about, the bathroom cabinet's always locked, but a button … Honestly, I might have guessed, I walked under a ladder in the High Street this morning, not thinking.” A giggle. “I thought then, Sue my girl you've got something coming to you. Are you superstitious? I'm afraid I am.”

  Christ. Petrol. No, it's O.K. That's all we need.

  “Tracy don't kick Mrs. Paling's car seat like that. You don't want a smack, do you?”

  Clare said, “I should keep her as quiet as you can. Never mind the car seat.”

  “I love minis. Aren't you lucky. It's V registration, isn't it? I always say to John if only…”

  “Here we are. I'm going straight to the Casualty entrance. You get out, with Tracy, and go to the desk. I'll bring the rest when I've parked.”

  When she came through the doors, a few minutes later, trailing children, there was no sign of Sue Coggan or Tracy. They sat in a row on tubular chairs with canvas seats; Anna and Thomas fought over the single comic among tattered Sunday newspaper color supplements. The Coggan child sat docile, swinging her legs. There was no one else there except an old man, hunched into a raincoat, breathing noisily. Nurses clattered along corridors with trolleys.

  Anna said, “Will they cut her open to take it out?”

  “No. Be quiet. Give Thomas the bit you've finished with.”

  Either you lived with specters, or they simply were not there for you. Either you waited for the coin to be flipped, at any moment, or you were barely aware of the reverse side. There are two worlds: the real world, in which we live, and pretend we don't, and the world in which bed for little girls is always at seven and the cottage pie is forever cooking nicely in the oven.

  Somewhere, a child began to scream. Anna said, “Is that…”

  “Let's go and have a walk round outside, you've finished the comic. Come on, Mandy. I think I saw a sweet shop just opposite the hospital gates.”

  Mandy said, “Actually we aren't allowed sweets between meals.”

  She had got them outside now, was heading for the gate. “Never mind. Be a devil We'll have walnut whips all round, and blow the consequences.”

  The point being, of course, that for many the real world hardly ever does rear its ugly head, maybe never until the end and not then if it's short and sharp. You can pass through fairly unknowing, an easy ride. Hunger and pain and panic are somewhere else. In books and newspapers. On the telly. In the past, not nowadays. But for people like me they grin away from the other side of the road; there really is a skeleton at the feast. And yet, and yet … And yet given all that, knowing what one knows, there are still moments of absolute, of untouchable felicity. Now is that not curious? Is that not impossible? Account for that, please.

  “Can I have another?”

  “No. You'll be sick. We'd better go back and see how Tracy is.”

  A plastic disc, half an inch or thereabouts in diameter, lodged somewhere in a small pink flesh and blood passage, and which surely if mishandled, if pushed or jolted, must slip back and down instead of forwards and out and then … but she could still breathe through her mouth, or could she if it got stuck further down?

  Sue Coggan was in the reception hall. Tracy, clutching her hand, looked smug.

  “All well. Such a clever man, he fished away with a sort of hook and out it came! Tracy was ever such a brave girl, not a squeak. There, you won't do anything so silly as that again, will you! Honestly though, I didn't know which way to look—not until we got into the cubicle with the doctor did I realize I came out with my apron on, my kitchen apron. What he must have thought!”

  “He thought, presumably,” said Clare, “that you'd been understandably worried about your child.”

  “Yes, I s'pose so. Anyway, all's well that ends well, and I really am grateful, I don't know what I'd have done without you. Mandy, what've you got all over your mouth?”

  “Chocolate. I'm sorry, my fault. I corrupted her. Shall we go back, then, if Tracy's feeling all right?”

  Chapter Four

  George Radwell, looking round the village hall, thought they could have done worse. On the other hand, they could have done better. About forty to fifty. Out of three thousand or thereabouts. Well, it was what you would expect. He knew nearly all the faces: churchgoers, or local activists, or both. Mr. and Mrs. Paling, sitting at the end of the second row, were a surprise. Furtively, he observed them: they stood out, seeming taller and somehow in better health than everyone else. Mr. Paling was a good-looking chap.

  The Diocesan Architect's assistant presented a suitably gloomy picture, and sat down. George himself had spoken twice, first to open the meeting and introduce the Diocesan Architect's assistant, then to outline his own thoughts about the situation and the preliminary proposals of the Parochial Church Council. Miss Bellingham had interrupted, several times, to make corrections or additions of her own. The chairman of the Parish Council, also, had broken in to make some comment about building costs and estimates. George well knew that he lacked presence; that he was the kind of person who, if speaking, gets interrupted, who seems indeed to invite interruption. When he was young, and had first taken services, it had never ceased to surprise him that the congregation suffered these to proceed without interference. He half expected to have a sermon halted from a back pew; for that reason he always avoided looking at people when preaching, if you kept your eyes down, or trained on the roof, there seemed more of a sporting chance that you'd be allowed a clear run. He tried this now, fixing his gaze on the ladder of stacked chairs at the back of the parish hall. It didn't work. Indeed, the chairman of the Parish Council, rambling off on his own tangent, was only silenced eventually by Mr. Paling's crisp suggestion of the formation, here and now, of a working committee to take over the whole question of fund-raising.

  George thought, I should have said that.

  Names were proposed. Miss Bellingham. The chairman of the Parish Council, Harry Taylor. Mr. Coggan. Sydney Porter.

  Someone—someone rather deferential at the back, who knew, clearly, who Paling was, and what—wondered if Mr. Paling could be persuaded to join the committee.

  Mr. Paling, regretful but still crisp, said that unfortunately his business commitments took him away from Laddenham so much that he feared he would be somewhat of a broken reed on any committee.

  There was a silence. People rustled, looked round to check on who was there.

  Mrs. Paling, startling George into a twitch that almost overturned the glass of water in front of him, said she had time and energy and would be glad to help. Heads turned, not recognizing the voice, interested. George said er, good, well, thank you very much, Mrs. er…

  “Paling.”

  “Of course.”

  And
behold there was a committee.

  * * *

  Sydney Porter, as secretary of the Parochial Church Council, made a list of the names put forward. Knowing how things usually fell out, he would probably be secretary of this thing as well. And treasurer, because otherwise it would be Miss Bellingham, and Miss Bellingham couldn't do bookkeeping for toffee. He knew them all, except the tall woman from the other side of the Green. Well, they'd have their work cut out.

  * * *

  Peter said, “Was the dumpy chap in the green anorak the father of the child in the swallowed button saga?”

  “Not swallowed. Up her nose. Yes, that's right. He's the local estate agent. Coggan & Son. He's Son.”

  “Ah.”

  “You should live in these parts,” said Clare, “like me. You get to know a lot.”

  “You could come over to Brussels, you know, on one of these trips. Fix up the children with Mother, or something.”

  “Good. I'll bear it in mind.”

  “The vicar seemed a bit of a dimwit.”

  “Mmn. And he doesn't much go for me, I suspect. Will I be considered to have been pushy, do you think? Proposing myself.”

  “On the contrary, you're just what they need. Ginger things up a bit. More to the point, are you going to find it a drag?”

  “That remains to be seen. It'll keep me off the streets, anyway. And I probably care more about the sanctity of the building than they do. In a strictly non-religious sense, of course.”

  “Well,” he said, amused, “I'd never have thought it your scene. A church committee. Daniel in the lion's den.”