by Liz Jensen
‘Get me a cup of tea, please,’ she says briskly. ‘And could you tell Norma in Phase Two Marg. that I’m fed up with her memos. Her spelling is appalling, especially in view of her much-vaunted degree in English Language and Literature.’
Trish skims out on her sexy little legs, flinging the Gridiron Echo on Linda’s desk. Trish has already asked for a transfer. Nothing against Miss Sugden in herself, she’d explained to the personnel officer, her mascara gaze frank. It’s just that I prefer men. Even if they’re wankers, you know. I just know how to handle them. I can’t deal with Miss Sugden. I think she may have Mercury in her Ascendant or something.
‘Champagne,’ Linda mutters, attacking her in-tray with venom. ‘Cuddles afterwards. That girl comes from fucking Mars.’
She rips open letters, crushes and hurls the envelopes at the bin, signs memos in threatening black ink. Writes a sarcastic letter to deal with a long-standing débâcle in Polyunsaturated. Makes a brief but effective phone call to Jonathan Higgins vis-à-vis his sorry performance at Wednesday’s Rancidity Forum planning meeting. Writes a list. Sits back, breathes in deeply, exhales, waits for her tea, reaches for the newspaper. And freezes suddenly in concentration. The photograph on the front page is of a man with a moon face, wearing a peaked cap inscribed with the words ‘God’s Gift’.
‘CULT REV IN TOWN’, says the headline.
Linda stares at the photograph. The eyes are shaded by the cap, but the smile is the same fat-lipped Mummy’s-boy smile she has seen on television, and more recently on billboards around Gridiron City. Inside, on page five, is a full-page ad inviting worshippers to join the Reverend Carmichael in Jaycote’s Park tonight. Glancing up to check the door, Linda speed-reads the ‘Message to the Lonely’, doodles a moustache on the evangelist’s upper lip, and gives what Hazel calls ‘one of her snorts’.
Miles up, outside, the atmosphere spins and waits, while beneath, below ozone, like a bottom on a seat, the weather shifts uneasily. The cloud sinks and broods over Gridiron. The flattened city hugs the planet, a chemical trap.
At midday, Linda is in the supermarket. She is buying eggs.
‘Seen the size threes anywhere, luv?’ asks a wind-cheatered blob next to her in the aisle.
The smell of furniture polish seems to leak from his glands.
‘Between size four and size two,’ snaps Linda, spurning the attempted pick-up. ‘Confusing, isn’t it?’
And turns her back. Linda has selected five packets of free range. She checks the date-stamp and her mouth twists bleakly. LAID ON JANUARY 20TH. Call it a ‘project’.
At the checkout, she helps herself to a packet of Love Hearts from the sweetie counter. Call it ‘the greed of emptiness and the emptiness of greed’.
That evening, sitting on a plastic seat in the auditorium, Leningrad hat resting on her lap heavy as a dead cat, knitting needles devouring a ball of mohair, another dream comes back to Linda. It’s the one before the one about the wildebeest. The one she’d forgotten. She and Ma and Hazel are walking along a bumpy road looking for a giant rock which is somehow extremely significant, but there are no signposts. The rain begins to wash away the road, and Hazel’s husband Gregory appears naked with a platter of offal he’s cooked, but he refuses to say whether it’s factory-farmed. Only Hazel eats any, and with such a look of smugness it makes you puke. The dream ends in something sexual and disturbing, which sets Linda off knitting even more furiously. She does not notice people squeezing past her as the auditorium fills, or Carmichael entering. Or even that, suddenly, everyone except her is cheering – until the woman sitting next to her, who has a bad case of eczema, gives Linda a violent nudge.
‘Someone else could have had your seat if you’re not interested. They’re turning them away at the gate, you know.’
‘I can do what I like,’ hisses Linda. But she puts down her knitting (Ma called it her ‘habit with wool’) and reaches for something from her briefcase, before fixing a long hard gaze on the preacher.
Words are plopping from his mouth in dollops.
‘Welcome tonight, my children. Everyone got a seat now? Everyone comfy?’
Linda recoils. From where she is sitting, the evangelist is the height and breadth of a patio shrub. As he paces about the stage, his purple robes flap in the breeze, showing white trainers beneath. He has a tiny microphone clipped to his dog-collar and carries a silver tambourine.
‘Is this your first time, sir? Yes? Ah, so you’re a virgin, so to speak! Yo! Almighty Alrightey!’
He jingles his tambourine at a man in the audience. A giggle scutters through the crowd, and the woman next to Linda nudges her and whispers, ‘Quite racy, isn’t he?’
Linda gives a dead smile that shows teeth.
‘Welcome children, welcome all of you. Hallelujah.’
The accent is transatlantic, and there is a faint reverberation on the microphone as he speaks. Charisma loads his words like extra ketchup.
‘God’s with us today, right?’ (A cheer.) ‘I didn’t hear you, boys and girls! Is God with us today?’
‘Yeah!’ roars the crowd, and the eczematous woman next to Linda adds, ‘Alrightey!’
Linda shifts in her seat and nestles something in the belly of the hat.
‘Who wants a miracle today?’ yells the Reverend Carmichael.
‘We do!’ chants the crowd, and the woman next to Linda begins to call, ‘mi-ra-cle, mi-ra-cle!’
Others near by take up the cry, and soon the whole of Jaycote’s Park is ringing with pantomime yells. A chorus of gobbledegook sets up at the back, mixed in with Hallelujahs and Praise-the-Lords.
‘Yo, ye! Yeah!’ comes Carmichael’s voice, booming with juicy reverb. ‘Me too! And God’s gonna make us one today, for sure, because the big threesome is here tonight, I’m talking about God the Father (Lord be praised), Jesus his one and only son, and the third member of the Big and Awesome Threesome, Mr X the Holy Ghost. Here in Jaycote’s Park, Gridiron. Let’s hear it for Gridiron City!’
‘Weigh! Woy!’ yells the crowd. ‘Weigh, wey-heigh!’
They punch the air, applaud, pop open cans of diet drinks. Then the purple-clad figure on the platform swivels himself round so that his back is to the crowd. When the cheers die down, he spins round and faces the expectant silence. He waits, immobile, for what seems like minutes. Tension buzzes and crackles across the auditorium. When he speaks, the smile has gone, and the voice has changed.
‘Hey, you know what, folks. Jesus is telling me he might be doing a bit of healing tonight, for any of you folks with back pain. He’s telling me he’s focusing on back pain this week. And loneliness. Yup, I said it. That big L word. And you responded. Yeah. Yo. Wow, it hurts. Loneliness. Ouch. And don’t you just hate to admit you’re lonely?’
A sympathetic murmur spreads through the throng.
‘A lot of lonely people here tonight? Don’t be afraid of it. We’re all lonely. Jesus was lonely. You can be lonely in families too, sir. Yes, madam, I can feel that loneliness coming through. And that back pain. Don’t deny your loneliness tonight, folks. Don’t pretend you haven’t got that back pain. There’s a cure, and it’s Jesus speaking to me about it. Hands up, you back sufferers.’
A field of hands sprouts and sways in the air.
‘Hands up, you lonely people.’
More hands blossom.
‘A lot of loneliness in Gridiron City tonight. And a lot of back pain. I see a lot of you with two hands up. Now Jesus is telling me that your loneliness and your back pain may be connected.’
A few sobs float up from the crowd, and the hands begin to sway in the night air. Suddenly, high, high, high above them, a thing they take to be a strange bird soars in a celestially perfect and unpretentious arc to land with a splatter of yolk at the feet of the preacher. There is a shallow silence, the silence of a pan just before boiling-point, and then the crowd’s murmur breaks in shock at the sharp yellow guk of treachery in their midst.
Carmichael’s voice changes. ‘
Lots of lonely people,’ he murmurs. He is gravel and honey now. ‘And one very tormented soul.’
The outraged murmur rises an octave. Panic spreads. Hands shoot down to check wallets and handbags, then seek further reassurance in mints and hankies. Necks strain to catch a glimpse of the infidel. The woman next to Linda wheels round and hisses something at her, then straightens her back and calls out in a confident, teacher’s voice that pierces the night air, ‘Hey, Reverend! The lady with the egg! She’s here!’
From nowhere, a spotlight swings to the aisle seat of row sixteen, where Linda sits defiantly upright, her hands fondling another missile. On the ground next to her, in the aisle, is her open briefcase and the packets of free-range size fours she bought during her lunch hour. A hiss goes up from the crowd, but Carmichael, raising a stubby index finger, silences them.
‘A tormented soul,’ his breathy whisper reverberates. ‘In need of love.’
The tambourine rattles ominously.
Linda stands up. Yells, ‘You’re a fraud! Religion is the opium of the people!’
And hurls another egg, which skims the evangelist’s cassock and lands with a splat on a footlight beside him, where it quickly fries, blackens, and smokes with a brief whiff of bed-and-breakfast. Linda reaches for another, but Carmichael strides on his trainers to the middle of the stage and raises a hand in the stop gesture of a lollipop man.
‘Wait,’ he commands. He pulls himself to his full height of five foot six and faces Linda. The folds of his cassock spread behind him like the wings of a giant bluebottle. A man in the audience begins to cheer, and from a corner of the auditorium a slow hand-clap spreads across the crowd. Linda hesitates, but only for a second. She is just taking aim with another egg when the preacher speaks. His lips are soft pillows of flesh, and the voice he pours into the microphone is ineffably gentle, like oil.
‘Come here, my child, and throw your eggs.’ A gasp comes from the audience. ‘Yes, young woman. Come here. Hurl eggs. Hurl abuse. Show the folks here all that pain that’s inside you. Get that devil out.’ He gestures to Linda to mount the stage. ‘Come on up.’
Blinded by the glare of the spotlight, Linda stands motionless for a moment until the excitable woman gives her a shove.
‘Off you go then, you pathetic bloody attention-seeker,’ she hisses through clamped teeth. ‘And take your eggs with you.’
Linda can’t believe her luck.
‘Just watch this then,’ she mutters.
She strides towards the stage clutching two packets of a dozen, and mounts the steps to the sound of hoots and jeers.
Who would have thought that such a small woman could contain such oceans of hate, they said afterwards. All those eggs. Such suffering. Ten omelettes’ worth, at least. The next day it was the talk of Christian Gridiron. Those who had seen the spectacle boasted of it to their friends, who wished they had been there and in some cases pretended they had.
Conscious of the eyes on her, Linda took careful aim with her first egg. Carmichael stood with his arms outstretched, his eyes closed, a human coconut shy. Linda savoured the moment, sizing him up, weighing the egg in her palm, ignoring the jeers and taunts from the crowd. And then she threw. She aimed for the centre of his torso, and as the missile whizzed towards him, there was a sharp collective intake of breath. It seemed destined for a hit, but by some quirk, it fell short by a couple of inches and landed with a soft crunch at his feet. There was a murmur and a cheer from the crowd. Carmichael opened his eyes, but his face remained impassive.
‘More!’ he commanded.
Linda couldn’t see him properly through the glare of the lights, although by now he was only a few yards away. His face was as bland and amorphous as pastry.
‘No problem!’ she screamed.
She wasn’t going to allow one missed shot to deter her. She reached down for another egg, and took another step forward. The crowd hissed again. A man at the back yelled out, ‘Communist!’ and a snigger went up. The crowd brayed louder. Her heart was thumping.
‘Bastards!’ she yelled. ‘You’re all bastards!’
‘Lesbian!’ shrieked a woman’s voice.
Another egg. Aiming, she focuses. This one is for Kenneth, who told me he loved me while he was getting that girl from the anthropology faculty pregnant. And hurls. It misses by a yard, and splats on to the stage, a streak of sticky yolk. Never mind. Have another go. Plenty of ammunition. This one’s for Fergus who kept porn mags under his bed and once – Linda exhales in a tennis champ’s grunt as she projects the egg high, high into the placid cow’s belly of night. The crowd holds its breath as the egg lands with a candid little plop on the grass verge behind the stage. Fergus, who once called her Susie by accident, right at the moment of –
‘More,’ breathes Carmichael into his microphone. ‘There’s more anger in there, my poor child. Get it out. Get those devils out.’
SPLAT! A near miss, that one. Very near.
‘Again, my child,’ exhales the Reverend. ‘Again!’
So here’s one for Bobby, who was married and wouldn’t tell her he loved her because that was something you only told your wife and four kids, and that day she’d bumped into them in the park, practically walked straight into them here in Jaycote’s Park, a sunny smirky family, and he’d walked straight by, not even noticed, and she’d just crumpled then and there behind a laurel bush that smelt of air freshener and bawled her eyes out – there. That’s for you, you self-satisfied, lousy, selfish –
It lands at the far side of the stage, but Linda doesn’t see, because her eyes are streaming. Another, and another, and another. Jamie. Pete. Douglas. John One. John Two. John Three. Derek. More, more, more. More than the heart can stand. Finally, after a dozen eggs, she’s getting up to date. This is for Duncan last night, and the humiliating spectacle of – splotch. A feeble shot. Now family. Hazel first. Cowardly Hazel. Brainless Hazel. Ma always preferred you deep down, Hazel. Nice pine furniture Hazel, married to a man who serves up offal in the nude and – fuck you, Hazel.
‘Hey! A double-yolker!’ someone yells from the crowd, but Linda doesn’t hear.
Ma’s turn. Ma, Ma. Can’t forget Ma. Linda is sobbing now, deep racking sobs that strafe the crowd like the random light of a wild search-lamp. Ma, who tried to wreck my life, Ma who –
Linda almost dislocates her arm with the force of the throw, and she’s past caring about targets. The throwing is all. It lands she knows not where. The crowd is in a frenzy now – cheering, booing, singing snatches of hymns, ordering french fries and frankfurters from the hospitality vans, clapping, speaking in tongues.
‘Shhh! One left,’ murmurs the preacher through the bubble of voices. ‘Throw the last egg, my child. You know who it’s for.’
A soft voice. Gentle, fatherly, loving. The voice of healing balm. Ah, the peace of it.
‘Be brave, my child. Release the devil and let Jesus in.’
She clasps the egg so fiercely she can feel the physics of its shell resist her. She heaves her breath in and lifts her arm slowly to throw, but it’s trapped. Can’t move, won’t move. Dad, Dad, Dad. Oh Dad. This one’s for you. Two diseased goldfish and a broken heart are all you left me. She’s weeping and sliding about in a slippery mass of yolk and white; the stage is a puddle of grief with a man standing in the middle whose arms are outstretched like the crucified Christ. I can’t throw it. I can’t, I can’t. Dad. She staggers forward, slips, stumbles and falls, crashes down, hardly noticing the shell break like a mouse’s skull and the trickle of egg through her fingers, and she’s on the floor, slithering and helpless in a pool of slurp, her face up against a pair of white trainers flecked with yellow and the wet hem of a purple robe, and she’s grasping for it now, grabbing wildly at air, and there’s a hum in her ears which is the bleating and cheering of a hysterical crowd, distant as foreign radio, and she is choking, and begging the trainers: God help me, God help me, God help me.
‘Rise, my child!’ says the steady voice of conviction, a
nd a hand, short-fingered and thick as iron, pulls her to her feet, and forces her arm aloft in a gesture of triumph.
Suddenly, no longer gentle but hard-edged, and with ruthless victory in his voice, ‘Praise the Lord, a miracle!’ shouts Carmichael, the reverberation knocking Linda flat again as she weeps and weeps, flooding out her heart’s ocean, and offers him her frail and battered soul.
FOUR
My day had been less ‘successful’.
I should have put two and two together a long time before, but I just didn’t get round to thinking about it. About Greg, and Ruby, and that weird psychic remark of my mother’s about voluptuousness. And their work together on that drug that obsesses him so. I’d always had a bad instinct about that drug. But I thought about it a lot that night of the miserable dinner party with the lemon mousse. I don’t think I slept a single minute. At the beginning of the night, my head was reeling from the dinner party and those gins I’d downed to take the edge off it, but as the hours wore on things became clearer. By about five-thirty I was pretty sure. I got up and showered and warmed Billy’s bottle, with Good Morning Gridiron on the radio, and the cold shard still jabbing at my insides.
At breakfast, I poured two bowls of cornflakes, and mixed some Fiba-mash for Billy.
‘I know you’re having an affair with Ruby Gonzalez,’ I said.
Gregory lifted his eyes from his coffee and looked at me steadily.
‘What?’
‘I said I know you’re having an affair with Ruby Gonzalez.’
He put down his coffee and smiled condescendingly.
‘Really, Hazel – ’
‘Shut up. Don’t bother denying it. Is it because she looks like the Virgin Mary, or just because she’s pregnant?’
I hadn’t expected it to come out quite like that, so obviously loaded with bitterness, but I hadn’t slept, had I. He raised his eyebrows higher and higher, then laughed. Just laughed.
‘First you’re invisible, and now I’m committing adultery with the Mother of God. These are some pretty severe delusions, Hazel. Are you serious?’