Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  Chapter Forty

  Bryan lay back in his tomb, wincing at the dank chill of the stone, drawing in his legs and arms to fit the cramped and narrow grave. Hundreds of thousands of bodies had been buried in this place, wrapped in lime-encrusted shrouds and racked in simple niches sculpted from the rock. The air smelt musty, fetid, as if the corpses were dissolved in it, or some left simply rotting. There was no chink or glint of daylight, just an unhealthy sallow glimmer from the crudely-wired lighting-system filtering down the black and bleary walls. He could just make out the carving of Jonah and the Whale, depicted on a sarcophagus above him. The guide had told them it symbolised redemption, deliverance from death. He shut his eyes to block it out, had no wish to be reminded of his own release from death, his own bungled suicide.

  This attempt would be surely more successful. Nobody could live long in the catacombs, survive a night unscathed. He’d deliberately lost his party, darted left while they were turning right, got entangled with another group of tourists – Japanese with cameras and interpreters – but had thrown them off as well; hurtled down a flight of steps marked ‘VIETATO ENTRARE!’, with a scarlet-painted hand held up in warning. No one had come after him, no one called his name – no Colin yelling ‘Bryan, mate!’, no frantic Lena searching for her son. This particular catacomb closed at five o’ clock, and it was already twenty past. They’d never find him now. There were seven miles of subterranean passages, on at least five different levels. Even if they dragged through every passage, climbed every stair and storey, they’d hardly spot him hidden in his niche.

  He rubbed his arm, which had developed pins and needles, wished he had his snake. He had always hoped to be buried with poor Anne, had even left instructions in his will. But the snake was dead already, its grave some dirty gutter or unknown rubbish-tip. Clive had tied it to a rocket, exploded it away on New Year’s Eve. He should never have brought it with him in the first place. Even at the airport it had proved a real embarrassment; dragged out of his suitcase as a possible security risk, held up by its tail for all the giggling pilgrims to deride. The only child he’d ever have, and he’d still failed to protect it. He was a useless mother, useless son as well. He hadn’t even said goodbye to Lena. He’d tried, in fact, but she’d been closeted with Father Smithby-Horne, receiving her first lesson on transubstantiation. Yes, his Mother was taking instruction in the Roman Catholic faith – a faith she’d disparaged and decried for over thirty years. It had genuinely shocked him, redoubled his resolve to seek extinction for himself. Once she was a Catholic, she would be even more cut off from him, shun him as an unbeliever, a danger to her new beliefs. He might join the Church himself, of course, as a last desperate bid to regain her attention and approval, but the prospect horrified him – not just the shabby compromise of all that he believed, but the thought of Lena hovering by the confessional box while he stuttered out his sins, reminding him of heinous ones he was too ashamed to tell.

  Was it a sin to worship Mary, still hope to …? No, he mustn’t dwell on Mary, had vowed to die without sparing her a thought. He had neither a mistress nor a Mother now, was orphaned and abandoned, a near-corpse in a lime-encrusted shroud. His clothes felt stiff already, stiff from cold, stiff from grime and rock-dust. This form of death took courage – no instant poison, merciful sharp knives. He might linger on all night before the airlessness and fetor, the total lack of drinking water, finally snuffed him out – maybe even two nights. The catacomb was shut all day on Thursdays, so no one would disturb him, no one interrupt his slow demise; no tramping bands of sightseers, no multi-lingual guides.

  He’d been impressed, despite himself, by their own old but ardent guide – the way he’d made those early Christians spring to instant life. Eighteen centuries had rumbled back and he’d seen them milling in these warrens, weeping for the death of some trusted friend, or child, yet rejoicing in the afterlife, the promise of reunion; living in a spirit of serenity and hope. Saints and Popes had been buried here, as well as ordinary men – even famous martyrs. He’d heard about the martyrs from yet another guide on their party’s recent expedition to the grisly Colosseum, where swarms of naked Christians had been thrown to ravening lions.

  He shivered, would have welcomed a fierce lion, to dispatch him sooner, remove the clammy aching chill spreading down his slowly numbing limbs. He really ought to move, even jog a pace or two to restore his circulation, and anyway, he was bursting to relieve himself. How undignified it seemed that even a man’s final hours could be so crudely interrupted by the need to obey basic calls of nature. He struggled from his niche, stood embarrassed, clutching at his flies. It seemed a desecration to pee in front of Jonah, and with so many graves surrounding him. A skull in the top niche seemed already to be staring, empty sockets wide with disapproval. He skulked along the passage, lowering walls threatening to engulf him, blackened roof pressing grimly down. He waited till he found a shadowy corner, then unzipped his trousers furtively, let his urine flow. Every time he peed now, he had to shut his eyes, couldn’t bear the sight of it, the humiliating memories. He tried – and failed – to quash them, blushed with shame and horror as he saw himself sitting on that toilet seat, just two days ago, gulping disinfectant. Except it wasn’t disinfectant – it was pee.

  Some cruel or cranky pilgrim had left a disinfectant bottle full of fresh-passed urine concealed behind the cistern – God alone knew why – a joke, maybe, or perhaps some test or sample needed for a doctor, or … Never mind the reason. He’d retched in sheer disgust as the first drops hit his tongue, bolted from the lavatory, bumped smack into the swarm of eager pilgrims surging up the stairs from chapel. They’d no idea how desperate he was, how close to death, extinction; had merely clucked with disapproval at ‘Payne in the Arse’ (as Clive had christened him) up to one of his silly little tricks again, the despair of his poor mother. He’d just started to explain, when suddenly, dramatically, the senna pods decided to take action and he’d dashed back to the toilet, remained there a good hour, as wave after wave of griping churning spasms reduced the entire contents of his body to an awesome liquid deluge.

  He shuddered at the memory as he shook off the last drops of shaming urine, rezipped his flies, wandered on forlornly down, the passage. He had no more heart for reclining in his coffin, could surely die as well in a common stretch of corridor, lying where he fell. There were at least fifty separate catacombs encircling Rome – or so the guide had told them – six hundred miles in all, if you placed their cavernous tunnels end to end; six million bodies buried there in toto. If the passages were linked, those tunnels all connected, he might stumble on for endless miles, haunted by six million ghosts, until he finally expired from sheer horror and exhaustion. Would his Mother miss him, even notice that he’d gone, or would she be too busy mugging up the Seven Works of Mercy or the Eight Beatitudes? He had tried composing letters in his head to the Government of Iceland, regarding the new volcanic island off its shores. Could a parcel (Mother) delivered there mistakenly be in any way retrieved? Could he call on their emergency services, helicopters, lifeboats? Never mind the cost – he’d find the money somehow. He’d also written to the Foreign Office, the Chairman of the Post Office, the Ministry of …

  His thoughts and feet faltered to a stop. The dark confining passage had opened out to form a murky chamber on his left, with an altar at one end of it, surmounted by a rough stone arch hacked crudely from the rock. The guide had told them that Roman Catholic Masses were still said in these small rooms; twentieth-century pilgrims recalling those of seventeen hundred years ago as they offered bread and wine. A large but artless loaf of bread was actually carved into the stone – the bread of life, the guide had said, the bread of our redemption – along with other Early Christian symbols of hope and resurrection, depicted by those second-century faithful. He was tired of resurrection, longed to see some symbol of certain foolproof death, unalterable, irreversible, mined with worms, crumbling into dust.

  He heaved himself up
towards the altar, lay stretched out flat on top of it. At least he had the space now to spread his legs and arms, felt less claustrophobic beneath the curving roof. No point cowering any longer in some cramped and choking niche when there was nobody to find him, not one single member of a party of two hundred even to realise he was missing, let alone to care. The stone felt hard and clammy underneath him. He longed for a soft pillow to relieve his aching spine; seemed to have no flesh nor clothing between the altar and his vertebrae, only rock embracing bone. He kept thinking of the Christians, not the fatuous pilgrims in his party, but that intrepid band of rebels in the first and second centuries, who had never been alone in life or death. The guide had pointed out their epitaphs, all so confident, assured – not the hopeless pagan ‘Vale’, which bade farewell to life, but ‘Vivas in Deo’, which welcomed Life Eternal. He envied them their faith, their sense of camaraderie, their dangerous secret meetings which must have bound them even closer, their shared beliefs and hopes. How different was his own case. He was dying as he’d lived – solitary and friendless; believing, hoping nothing.

  Suddenly, he started, groped out both his hands. The chamber he’d called ‘murky’ was now a terrifying black, as if he’d been swaddled in a winding-sheet made of dark and stifling serge, which was drawn so tight around him he could neither see nor breathe. They must have switched the lights off, those dim but vital lights which had kept alive the boundaries, given him his bearings, showed up the distinction between wall and ceiling, sarcophagus and niche. He was plunged now in a darkness so relentless and disorientating, he could only lie in horror, trying to tear away the blackness with his hands. ‘Help me!’ he kept crying. ‘Mother! Mary! Anyone! Please come back. Please help.’

  Nobody could help him, nobody could hear. He had courted death, and not been spurned, refused; except he was alive in death, still flinchingly alive, as every nerve and brain-cell in his body registered its panic and alarm. Surely fear would kill him. No one could experience such naked jolting terror and still survive. Yet he had survived, was still lying fully conscious, desperate, despairing; fearing fear itself as much as death. Perhaps he’d never die, just he here for eternity as time and terror both dragged on, dragged on; mocking him, enfeebling him, yet never actually granting him extinction.

  The idea so appalled him he jerked up from the slab; felt he had to move, just to prove he still had power to do so; had to take some action, distract himself, exert himself, try to outwit fear. He inched down from the altar, feeling with his hands, a blind man without stick or dog, lost in a blind alley. Should he stay put in the chamber, where at least he had more space, or try to struggle down the corridor, in search of light, escape? Both courses seemed impossible. The dark itself had paralysed his brain, prevented any choices. He took a faltering step towards the passage, groping for its walls, shambled back immediately in panic, clutching at the altar as his only certain landmark. The silence was as total as the darkness. Yet would noise be any better – rustlings, shufflings, the stealthy tread of ghosts and wraiths, which must haunt this place, pace its endless galleries?

  He could feel his legs trembling underneath him, sank down on the rough stone floor, crawling into a gap between the altar and the wall, which seemed to form another tomb. He closed his eyes, which made the darkness darker; a darkness made of centuries and of rock, both solid and unending, like his fear.

  ‘Bryan!’ a voice called softly. He took no notice, must obviously be shifting from terror to derangement; imagining voices which weren’t there. No one could have spoken when he’d heard no breath or footstep, felt no human presence. ‘Bryan,’ the voice insisted – an English voice, a kindly voice, gentle, almost shy; the sort of soothing Mother’s voice he’d imagined in his dreams, except it was softly male, not female. ‘Go away,’ he muttered to its echo in his head, that tantalising whisper now threatening him with madness. ‘There’s no one there. Nobody. You’re just …’

  His sentence petered out. A sudden fierce and dazzling light was shining in his eyes, half-blinding him, so he had to turn away. So someone must have found him after all, some pilgrim with a flashlight, or soft-footed furtive guide. He remained huddled where he was, still not quite believing it; sweet relief struggling with astonishment. How could they have reached him without the slightest noise or warning? Surely he’d have heard their steps, however quiet and muffled. The silence was so absolute he’d have almost heard an insect crawling up the rock-face. The soft voice spoke again, lingering on his name with affection, familiarity, as if he’d known him years. Bryan braved the dazzling glare, turned towards the speaker, who seemed to be hovering in midair, made not of flesh but light. A shortish, fairish, slimmish man with greyish hair and lightish hazel eyes was smiling down on him, the neatish nose and smallish squarish face-shape reminding him instantly of …

  ‘Skerwin!’ he exclaimed. How in God’s name had his Father ever got here, or even known he was in Rome? Shouldn’t Skerwin be at the Winston Churchill Centre, starting a new term, or at least polishing up his lecture-notes?

  ‘Skerwin Senior,’ the man corrected gently. ‘Your Heavenly Father, Bryan.’

  ‘My … My what?

  ‘Your Heavenly Father.’

  ‘You mean … God?’

  The man nodded, smiled his ‘yes’, seemed to shimmer in the light, a vibrant otherworldly light which had no source except itself.

  ‘But there isn’t any God.’ Bryan’s voice was just a mumble, but he had to make his point. Science had destroyed God, chaos overthrown Him, every book he’d read denied Him, every new disaster mocked and undermined Him. He kept looking down, then glancing back, trying to clear his vision, pummelling his eyes, blinking them and rubbing them, shaking his whole head. Could he be hallucinating, suffering from some brainstorm? No. The man was truly there. He could see every smallest detail now – the knobbly wrists and broad blunt-fingered hands, the faint and palish eyebrows, uncertain weakish chin. Would God have a weak chin, though, or be wearing an old mac?

  ‘I’m afraid I’m extremely busy, Bryan, keeping things in order, but I just wanted to assure you that Order’s the key word – everything’s under control and working very smoothly.’ He rummaged in his briefcase, brought out a cache of notebooks very like Bryan’s own – feint-ruled with narrow margins, A5 and spiral-bound. He began leafing swiftly through them, displaying them to Bryan. Each page was neatly written, headings underlined, sub-headings in capitals, some pages ruled exactly down the centre, with lists each side of what looked like pros and cons.

  ‘Natural Laws,’ he murmured, pointing to the largest book. ‘Universal Principles. First Causes. Basic Rules. Proofs of My Existence.’

  ‘Proofs of your …?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Some have tried to deny me, as of course you’re well aware, Bryan, but logic and mathematics both come down on my side.’

  Bryan struggled to his feet, agitated, mystified; objections tumbling out of him. ‘But I thought logic was discounted now and maths just empty figures, since the quantum revolution and chaology and … I mean, I understood you couldn’t prove a thing – that we’d lost all sense of absolutes, and “proof” was just a play on words and …’

  The man shook his head, reached out a soothing hand. ‘Ripples, Bryan, just ripples on the deep white pool of truth. Give them time to settle, and you’ll see the surface steady and serene again, and know I am your God.’ He started replacing all his notebooks, opening up his briefcase which looked not a little battered, a piece of hairy string wound round one broken handle. Bryan peered inside, glimpsed rulers and dividers, a time-switch and a tide-chart, compasses, a T-square, a chronometer, a calculator, three separate stiff-bound books labelled ‘Past’, ‘Present’, ‘Future’, with attractive matching covers. And stuffed right at the bottom was a crumpled scholar’s gown, black, with scarlet lining and an impressive ermine trim, the sort he’d imagined for his Father, B.K. Skerwin, and which he’d seen on Dreaming Spires. So this God was a scholar, an intellect,
a brain; an Oxbridge man, who might be slightly shabby with his torn and bulging pockets and at least two buttons missing on his grubby chain-store mac, but a shrewd efficient Mastermind who had his adroit finger on the pulse of every system in the universe; had it measured and gradated, calculated, quantified, could plumb and probe its depths; outwit chaos, anarchy; probably even deal with miracles, make sense of them, account for them, fit them in his Scheme.

  Bryan sank back on the floor, peace and sheer elation bubbling through his veins, as if he had just received a transfusion of champagne. The old universe he’d mourned with its certainties, its laws, its coherent truth and logic, was miraculously restored. Things had Causes once again, and two and two made four, not five – or zero. Past and Future had been rigidly nailed down, sequestered from each other, forbidden to encroach or even fraternise; held in check by sandbanks and ruled lines. And space and time were no longer spliced together, but each put strictly in its place in a separate (tidy) notebook. Time ran only forwards now, not backwards or in circles – did what it was told. Everything was labelled, everything in pigeonholes; antimatter banished, black holes filled and levelled, light-years trimmed to size.