A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  “He looks like a pedophile,” Maria said. “Just like his priests.”

  Glenys Peters’ mouth dropped. But then apparently pulling herself together she said, “You’ve a gob like a toilet. Ah, what can be going on in your mind! My daughter, a woman who uses the c-word.”

  “Cunt? I use it in my act. I don’t generally toss it around in normal conversation.”

  Maria Peters smiled, but her face reddened in what could have been embarrassment too. In spite of what Lee had told Mumtaz about the comedian having found God, clearly His influence had not yet stopped her from goading her mother.

  Mumtaz had thought that Lee might be in the house with her, but he wasn’t. He wanted to get her view on who came and went, and how Maria interacted with them, and with her surroundings when she was alone. She was something of a jumble. Apparently involved with an evangelical Christian group of some sort, she demonstrated nothing but contempt for the Roman Catholicism that she’d been brought up to respect which, to Mumtaz, didn’t seem to make much sense. Weren’t they both kinds of Christianity? But then there were different types of Muslim; Shia, Sunni. Nations had been to war over such differences. They mattered.

  “Anyway, cunt is just a word,” she heard Maria say.

  Mumtaz looked down at the floor plan of the house that Lee had given her and tried to concentrate on where the microphones and cameras he had installed were positioned. Ideally, no creak of a floorboard, nor vague shift in the quality of the light was to go unrecorded—not that that was actually possible. But he, she or it was hopefully going to be apprehended, if he, she or it actually existed. Out of the corner of her eye, Mumtaz observed the glee that Maria derived from goading her mother fight with the shame that uttering that word clearly made her feel. In her professional life, on stage, she broke down. She’d told Lee this was because her new-found faith made her feel guilty about saying words like “cunt,” about laughing at the misfortunes of others, about blasphemy. She was a comedian at war with her own material.

  “I’ll say something for them happy-clappies, they don’t swear,” Glenys said. “Can’t be in their good books with your effin’ this and c-ing that.” Her voice was what Mumtaz would have described as recognizably cockney but there was just a haze of some sort of southern Irish in there too.

  Mumtaz noted that there were two microphones and cameras, both hidden in books, in Maria’s vast lounge, and then she looked up in time to see the comedian’s face fall into a bitter expression that made her appear much older. “Don’t call them—us—happy-clappies,” she said. “It’s insulting.”

  Glenys’s pale blue eyes flashed. “Then don’t call the Holy Father a pedophile,” she said.

  Maria sat down. “He is and he’s a purveyor of superstition. All that Catholic superstition you brought us up with. I still can’t get it out of my system, even now. Touch this statue of the Virgin and it’ll bring you good luck. Beware of witches and jujus and nonsense. Father this, that or the other always knows best.”

  “You used to love going to Mass,” Glenys said. “Couldn’t keep you away. Then you got into showbusiness …”

  Maria ignored her and turned to Mumtaz. “Would you like a cup of tea or something?”

  “No.” Mumtaz smiled. “Thank you.”

  She saw Glenys looking at her as if she had a bad smell underneath her nose. “What is it you’re doing, love?”

  “I’m looking at where Mr. Arnold has sited the surveillance equipment,” she said. The principle thing about Miss Peters’ living room was the amount of ornaments that were in it, mainly china cats; they all looked as if they had been very precisely positioned.

  “She’s learning,” Maria interjected.

  “Oh.” Glenys took her eyes away from Mumtaz and said to her daughter, “Anyway, once that church has been demolished, you’ll lose interest. I know you. If it ain’t on your doorstep …”

  “The church is being rebuilt,” Maria said.

  “Not where it is at the moment.”

  “No. We’ll have to move to a temporary building for a while.”

  “Then where? This new church? Where’s it being built?”

  “Why do you want to know? You’re not interested, are you?”

  The older woman went silent. The ticking of a large baroque clock on the mantelpiece above the fireplace suddenly sounded almost deafeningly loud. This went on for at least a minute until Maria said, “Barking.” Then, pointing at her mother who was now just beginning to smile, she added, “Say nothing, Ma! Say nothing! The church, as in the people, are my friends, they support me. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

  Her mother snorted. “You managed before they come along. I’d put money on you still having your rosary and still saying it. They’re just pulling you in so they can get your money. They’re all the same these so-called ‘new’ churches!”

  Maria’s fury bubbled over. “I went to them, Mother,” she said, “because I needed some support. You didn’t give me any—ever! I learned not to even ask it from you. But they did. I sought them out, not the other way around!”

  “Ah, have it your own way,” her mother said dismissively.

  “If you don’t like it, then don’t bother to come here,” Maria said. “Don’t talk to me.”

  Her mother stood up. “Maybe I won’t,” she said.

  When she later reported back to Lee, Mumtaz said that she felt that some of Maria’s responses to her mother were excessively confrontational. “To me, she seems to be as much in conflict with herself as with anyone else,” she said.

  “So could a person in a state like that imagine things, for want of a better word?” Lee asked.

  “Yes, it’s possible. Very possible.”

  They both looked at the computer screen that gave them visual on the inside of the house and they watched Maria feed her cat in the kitchen. It was cramped and airless in the back of the surveillance van and Lee felt stiff and tetchy—people paid a lot of money for round-the-clock surveillance with good reason.

  “So all this stalking thing could be in her head?”

  “It’s plausible.”

  Lee looked back at the screen and wondered what to feel. If Maria Peters was unhinged in some way—and to him anyone in touch with God had to be a bit barmy—then she needed the sort of help only a doctor could give her. But, in the depths of winter, in a recession that the government was insisting was not a recession, she was paying him very well.

  VI

  “As you sit and you listen to the words of the Lord your God, I want you to bear in mind your prayer. This isn’t a prayer that anyone has taught you. It isn’t even a prayer that you have learned from the pages of the Holy Bible. This is your prayer, your conversation with your God and with His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Eyes closed and heads bowed in supplication, you nonetheless know that the might of God is nothing for you to fear. Among the Elect you are safe, you feel warm and at your ease in the grace of His Holy presence.

  “We all know that the glory of his Rapture is almost come upon us. We feel a yearning for it and yet at the same time we experience a deep sense of calm. Because we know it’s coming. Jesus is coming, ‘as a thief in the night,’ to take all of those who have been faithful to His name, who have toiled and have witnessed and have given freely to the coming of His glorious kingdom. Safely gathered to His bosom, we will every one of us escape the Day of Trouble, the Apocalypse, when finally and completely the Lord Jesus Christ will rid the universe of Satan and all his manifestations of evil. When death and pain and blasphemy and perversion will be washed away forever and Jesus will build a paradise on earth with us, his pure children.

  “I want you to pray for that, pray for that now, Chosen People of Christ. Ask him to usher the time in now. You, me, all of us, we’re all ready. Yearning, reaching toward the right words that will please Him, that will allow Him to pour His grace down upon us, to hasten His return. Mouths forming sounds that only God and His Holy Son Jesus can understand, words
that …”

  A boy of about fifteen convulsed in his seat, his thick blond hair flapping down across his face as he muttered, “Ya Ha’Mashiach! Bethel! Da ach, waa kaarch, veton Israel!”

  And then in that cold, mist-shrouded place, people began to come to the boy and they all tried to hold him. Many of them wept, a few said they felt their souls begin to ascend.

  Betty Muller was among them, but she didn’t go to the boy. She made straight for Pastor Grint and she said, “Oh, Paul, again you’ve called the Spirit and it has come!”

  Her big, violet eyes burned with fervor and Paul Grint smiled.

  “I love you, Paul!” Betty said, a blurt, pouring out of her mouth almost unconsciously. Then she blushed.

  “But you love the Lord above all else, don’t you, Betty?” Pastor Grint said.

  “Yes. Yes of course I love Jesus,” she said. “Of course I love him too. And we must get Marie to the Lord too, mustn’t we, Paul?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “we must get Maria saved as soon as we can.”

  The cold had hit Lee like a wall as soon as he’d jumped out of the van. Neil was on for the night shift, and so he began to walk home. He put his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and trudged toward the flat. Another evening with Chronus, the telly and Mr. Muscle (bathroom)—the shower cubicle was a disgrace. The names of three local pubs—not his “safe” bolthole the Boleyn—popped into his mind and so he called his mum.

  “How’s Roy?” he asked as soon as she picked up the phone. He knew full well how his brother was, he just wanted his mother to say it.

  “Pissed,” she said.

  Lee sighed with that weird kind of fearful relief he always experienced when he talked to her about Roy. There but for the grace of God went Lee himself. He’d been a drunk and shoved painkillers down his neck like sweets. He knew why Roy boozed, even if he didn’t approve of how lairy it made him.

  “Where is he?” Lee asked.

  “Christ knows.”

  It was dark already and a thin drizzle dampened his hair and his eyelashes. As he walked away from the van he turned and saw Maria Peters looking at him through her dining room window. She looked genuinely afraid. Even with Neil monitoring her every move from the van, she looked scared. He turned onto Capel Road and felt the wind from Wanstead Flats slap against the side of his face.

  “Mum, you have to ask him to go,” Lee said.

  Rose Arnold snorted. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation. In a minute he’d bring up the angina and then she’d have to put the phone down on him. “Where’ll he go to, Lee? Eh? Where?”

  “That’s his problem. He’s a piss head …” He just stopped short of saying like his father.

  “Oh, I know what he is,” Rose said. “A piss head, a waste of space, a pain in the ass …”

  “Mum, he makes you ill, iller …”

  And there it was: the angina. Lee knew he’d blown it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Rose liked to live in denial about her illness—it was the only way she could deal with it. She cut the connection and Lee said, “Fuck!”

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! It was enough to make you fall into the nearest pub and drink the bastard dry. Except that he wouldn’t, couldn’t. It was cold and wet and the bathroom needed a damn good scrubbing and anyway Chronus would be waiting. It was coming to something when your best friend was a bird, but at least he had the bloody thing. When he got through the front door of the flat he saw that the local paper had been delivered. On the front page was a large photo of the Olympic site over at Stratford with the headline SEX PEST THREATENS 2012. Then he caught sight of the name DI Violet Collins and realized that Vi was in pursuit of a flasher. Some poor sod addicted to waving his cock at anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity was a bit of a low-level gig for Vi.

  Lee sat next to Chronus’s perch in the living room and thought about it. Mercifully, for once, the bird was asleep. Maybe it was the flasher in Maria Peters’ garden? The Olympic site wasn’t far away. But then in Lee’s experience some randy old bollock with his dick hanging out was not the kind of person who stalked others with any degree of subtlety. Every flasher he’d ever nicked had been more interested in exhibitionism than in actually assaulting anyone. Getting the knob out in public was, for some, all of the thrill.

  Lee picked up his phone and called Neil West in the van to check that everything was quiet on the Maria Peters front.

  “Her friend Betty Muller, the pastor bloke and another woman called Rachel have just arrived,” Neil said.

  Lee was aware that Betty Muller, Maria’s gray little friend in Jesus, came and went frequently.

  “Who’s Rachel?” he asked.

  “Rachel Cole. Another churchy type. They’re all at prayer right now.”

  “What? On their knees? On the floor?”

  “In the living room. Yup.”

  The picture that came into Lee’s mind was, to him, odd. Maria, the comedian with a mouth like a bag of dirty washing, on her knees praying with dowdy women in a room that looked like it had been designed by some clueless Premier League footballer, but he didn’t share any of that with Neil. “Leave you to it?”

  “Yeah,” Neil said. “I’m on it.” He sounded resigned. Surveillance was generally boring.

  Lee took his jacket off and began to make his way to the bathroom. That skanky shower was waiting. As he passed in front of Chronus’s perch, the bird woke up and yelled, “Goal!”

  “You could actually see the moment the spirit entered the boy’s body,” Betty said as Maria put a mug of tea into her hands.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “It’s a pity you couldn’t be there, Maria,” the man with the long, ascetic face, Pastor Grint, said.

  Maria had been obliged to spend time with her mother. “Yes, it’s a pity,” she said.

  She gave Pastor Grint and Rachel mugs of coffee and then handed around a plate of biscuits. “But it’s really good of you all to pop in.”

  They, or rather the pastor and Betty, usually did if Maria couldn’t manage to make one of the services. Betty had been round the previous day as well. It was nice because it made Maria feel included and involved even when she couldn’t attend.

  “Young Peter Randall had a terrible fight when he first came to church,” the pastor continued. “Satan had taken root in his soul and it was only due to the persistence of his mother that he is where he is with God today.”

  “He spoke in tongues,” Rachel said.

  Maria saw Betty close her eyes as if in the act of wishing for the power to speak in tongues too. It was the sort of thing Maria had done when she was a child—closing her eyes and wishing for something. “The Spirit may descend upon any of us at any time provided we want it enough and are prepared,” Grint said. He looked at Maria. “I think that you, particularly, want it badly.”

  Instinctively Maria lowered her gaze. One never looked any priest in the eye back in the old days, even though she knew that Pastor Grint was very different from them. “Yes.”

  “Of course she does.” Betty put a hand on Maria’s shoulder and smiled.

  The sense of guilt that swept over Maria was instant. “I’m so sorry about that gig in Camden.” She began to cry.

  “Oh, there’s no need for that. There’s no need for that.” Pastor Grint put his mug down, walked over to Maria and placed his arms around her. “You stopped. You couldn’t carry on, God couldn’t let you. He knows what you really want and he’s trying to help you to achieve it.”

  Maria put her arms around his neck and wept into his collar. Betty, who had been touching Maria too, whipped her hand away as if she’d just been scalded.

  Martin knew what the score was with those Muslims! There was a young bloke who looked like he fancied himself rotten outside the house of that smart woman whose husband had been murdered. A right preening peacock with his gelled-up hair, big silver trainers, his shiny leather jacket and his jeans so tight you could almost see
his sperm. Randy shit was lurking about after that young daughter of hers. Bloody Asians! They couldn’t sniff about after women could they? Had to be little more than kids! The dead man’s wife was far more of a catch than that gangly girl was, to Martin’s way of thinking. She was a proper lady. The girl was just a bit of a kid. Pretty though … And sweet …

  But still the bloke stood in the drizzle looking up at that house, hands in his pockets. Probably playing with himself. Martin smelt that familiar cumin-scented tang waft in from the room of the family who lived next door and he frowned. It was at times like this that he was sorry that pie and peas smelt of so little. How would they like it if they had to share the smell of his every meal?

  The bloke lurking outside in the drizzle looked at his watch. What was he doing that for? That girl had been home from school for over an hour. Martin had seen her go indoors. Had she told him to wait for her? What were the two of them going to do? The woman would be home at any minute and she’d be none too pleased to see some wide boy like him hanging around the place.

  The trees that lined the street were heavy with water and if Martin squinted he could see how each leaf groaned under the weight of so many days of accumulated drizzle. Night had already fallen and, if you ignored the modern street lamps and all the Asians’ brand new Mercedes, you could easily think yourself back to the end of the nineteenth century when the houses had been built. There was even a woman in a long skirt, rustling along underneath an umbrella. Squinting still, Martin realized it was the smart Asian woman. Oh, now there’d be fireworks! She wouldn’t like that man outside her house one little bit.

  But to Martin’s surprise when the woman saw the man she just stopped dead in her tracks and she stared. He saw her, the bloke, and Martin did think that he may have smiled. But if he did, then she didn’t return it—she walked forward, into her driveway, pushing past him as she went. She didn’t say anything to him nor he to her. She didn’t even ask him to leave or bugger off or anything. When she’d gone he just carried on standing there looking up at that house.