by Adam Thorpe
He tries different positions along the bank, either side of the alder, but can’t pierce the surface sufficiently. There’s always a challenge to delusion: it’s called reality. He looks about him, thinking he heard a twig crack above the lapping of the lake, desperately hoping he hasn’t been followed. The bushes look innocent but could easily hide a man. So what? He’ll say he’s discovering nature, the multiple rivarian delights of a summer’s day. Please go back to your Pharisaic card index of mortal sins and multiple transgressions. Something’s whispering in his ear. It does this sometimes. Your own voice telling you what to do. High and insistent.
Nowt but your scanties.
He pulls off the postulant smock via his head, the rough cotton scraping his gums accidentally, unbuckles the sandals, stands naked to his underpants. He wades into the water with the determination of a Channel swimmer. After a moment’s reflection, the water shifts from cold to liquid steel blade. The only ground is slime of uncertain depth, as in the origins of the universe; he finds it hard to keep steady. He has no idea where he is: from a yard or two out, the grassy bank from where he started appears different. His ankles are being nibbled at. The slime envelops his feet, the soles heavy against sharpnesses and hidden knobs, as if someone’s discarded a console, given it a lake burial.
His lower legs up to his middle thighs have ceased to exist. He stares down at the water, ferociously unhelpful now it has the white sky clamped to it. He’s there, grinning back up, mouth agape, while underneath, in the unseen depths, a slippery mass of dark red tendrils clings to his right foot, pulling on it, pulling him down.
Flounder towards the bank, trip on a rock, crash forward full length, shattering the surface; pain hurts happily now it has something to do. Is gainfully employed. Scramble to feet, wipe face with silt hands, smell the sulphurous foulness of rotting matter, taste the said rottenness in mouth, clutch self where a sharp rock poked the rungs of the ribs as the horizontal was lost.
Tussocks, grabbable for lift and leverage. Out onto the dry tickly wickerwork of grass, where a pair of sandals is occupied by human flesh, rising to the white hem of a tunic.
For once the creature has thrown back the black hood; the expression is stern but not nasty. A human hand is offered. Tang of sharp breath. The man known as Chris, seldom as Christopher, clambers to his feet unaided, clutching himself and shivering.
Brother Lawrence, strict about listening rather than talking, makes no exception for the emergency. He gestures, I’ll fetch your clothes if you tell me where they are. Or, What the fuck are you up to? Or, Look about us at the Almighty’s wonderful creation.
Chris can’t speak, anyway. Teeth are chattering instead. Brother Lawrence is staring at something on his body, below the right breast. True, watery blood is fleeing a small gash on the side of his torso. His nipples are white and hard and uncomfortable. The hands hurt, just to make life more difficult: he checks the palms like a Muslim praying. Maybe there was broken glass, or sharp pebbles, or the spikes of shattered branches when the hands selflessly broke his fall. Brother Lawrence takes his hands and holds them by the fingers, palms still up.
Chris wishes he wouldn’t, frankly. He half-heartedly attempts to pull away, but the grip tightens. His hands shake as they are held, wired up to some sort of generator. He wants to get dressed and run away. He wants to be normal again, a normal person, but he can’t remember how. Look at those goosebumps on his arms! The miracle of flesh!
What were you doing?
Need to get dressed, Chris manages to mouth through bodily shudders he can’t control.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
The voice seems horribly blatant, couched in its smoke and flames of hidden decay. The little round spectacles have dropped like a butterfly nut further down the bridge of the nose. The eyes look over the rims, their black gleams resting on the postulant, on his near-nakedness.
‘I think I know something,’ Chris stammers.
Tell me.
Chris looks down at the stigmata, the worthless scratches, one of them bruised blue with a little manhole cover of bloodied skin. They hurt. Nobody has touched him for months. He can’t possibly tell this man anything. Open his box of secrets. I am hetero, I am hetero, he hears himself silently hissing.
What do you know, exactly? says Brother Lawrence’s expression.
‘Just let me get dressed; I’m seriously cold,’ comes the whisper. Or shout. Hoarse, anyway.
His hands are freed and he lopes over to the alder, where his clothes cower against the grey trunk. The other watches him as he dresses. The smock clings loyally to the wet flesh.
The monk is approaching him over the grass at an even pace. He clears his throat, crosses his hands behind his back as if handcuffed. The lupus is bad again, worse in the outdoors light. Get it seen to, lad. ‘When we’d go for a dip here, and we did do so occasionally, we’d either be naked or in our swimming trunks. Now we are advised not to. Health and safety. You should have asked. Or did something impel you?’ Voice more up in the nose than usual.
‘I just felt like it,’ Chris replies. Why is the gorgeous silence being broken so casually?
‘You said you knew something. It can remain between us, Chris.’
Chris. Who looks out over the water. Not Brother Chris. Nigel would wheedle his way in like this, soft-snouted. As if he had every right. The fellow producer but younger, still in the first form, Chris in the sixth. Made no difference. Young Nigel always had to know what you knew. Everything. Clambering into your skull. Looking out from its bunker eyes. So maybe Nigel did fancy him, deep down: Emily thought so. ‘But then everyone fancies you, Chris, male or female. Don’t know how you do it.’
The other waits patiently. The lake is an even sheet of peroxide white, the odd water bird in silhouette. The ash trees and the black Scots pines are a gathering of shadows under the false ceiling of translucent cloud. His core thermostat is fucked. God is supposed to touch everything here. Only on monastery land? Supposing it’s rented out? How far does the sacred stretch? How far down, for that matter?
One thing God is not supposed to be: aloof.
‘Mayflies,’ says Chris, pointing at the flickering forms, eager to shift subject, draw him away. ‘A day or two of life. Brother Odilo says their sole aim—’
‘I know. Procreation.’ There is a silence. Which is now the norm. Chatterbox, the rest of the world. Never stops. Nature weaves in softly. Eventually: ‘You saw something that frightened you? In the water.’
‘My own face.’
‘You’re feeling overwhelmed? Very common among postulants. Most leave after a few months.’
Chris knows he doesn’t have to say anything, but he ought to take the initiative. There is no monstrous thing in the lake. It is all projection. Above his work desk there was one of those goofy signs: BETTER OUT THAN IN. His damp bum reminds him of skiing, snow collecting in his ski pants. The kids in their Ray-Bans squealing on their sledges, or curving down the nursery slopes with their arms out wide, then in a matter of no time snowboarding with acne. Shit. What right has the man to decide? He says, looking out over the water to the raggedy pines, ‘You ought to get medical attention. Possible case of lupus. I’m only saying. My late dad was a GP.’
The monk frowns slightly, blinks as if his eyelids are being blown on by a child. He straightens a little and says, ‘There is Dettol in the sickroom. You need to wash those cuts thoroughly. Apart from anything else, the pesticide and fertiliser residues and so on, the water has fecal run-off from cattle in the pasture further up – it’s full of bacteria.’
‘Lupus can eat out your innards, if left untreated.’
Brother Lawrence’s frown is a reef knot. He has taken off his specs. He meets Chris’s gaze head on. His knot slips into smoothness. ‘I do not have lupus,’ he says. ‘I have HIV.’
The sting of the Dettol is all he deserves. Brother Lawrence insists on administering it properly, cleaning the cuts with a sterile wipe. He w
as a medical orderly once. Chris has apologised and the subject hasn’t come up again, mainly because they haven’t talked since the lake. Better is one handful with quietness. The man is hypersensitive to UV of course, but now the hood is down. The puncture wound in Chris’s side is properly dressed, and in silence. The one-room infirmary has a single picture, a faded Victorian effort with tiny flies in the glass: Archangel Raphael lifting great kingfisher wings. The healer. St Raphael, pray for us! There’s an empty drip stand and a hospital trolley. The spider plant needs watering.
Brother Lawrence clears his throat and says, ‘Would you like to use the Conversation Room?’
Chris stands and pulls his smock gingerly back on, being careful with the cuffs. ‘Yes.’
The room hasn’t seen anyone since he was last there, you can tell. It needs a vacuum and a dust. Santiago de Compostela. Now that would be a good idea, taking the road to Santiago, rucksack and boots, don’t forget the water flask. He has no idea how to unscrew things with Brother Lawrence, who is boiling the kettle. ‘Tea? Nescaff?’ Trying to prise open the tin’s lid. Rusted, probably. ‘There’s no milk up here.’
Start with an apology. Brother Lawrence waves a dismissive hand. ‘You followed me,’ Chris goes on. The tea is chamomile, dried leaves from the herb garden, tasting of straw and old socks. Yes, it’s vital to air this whole thing out.
‘You seemed in a flap. I was concerned. We once had a suicide among the retreatants.’
Eventually but softly, Chris confesses: ‘I had this dream. It got muddled up with reality. Or vérité, as we’d say in my former life.’
He summarises, from his dream of the angel to the MISSING poster and all the way to what he imagined he’d seen in the lake. The whole thing wouldn’t pass a sense check, but it is such a relief. A short silence. ‘Dipping deeper, though, I think I know what really lies underneath.’
Brother Lawrence raises a quizzical eyebrow. ‘In the lake? We can always dredge it. Get a police frogman.’
‘No, no. Metaphorically. Psychologically. Concealed monsters.’ Perhaps the monk is slightly Asperger’s, incapable of metaphor. Of getting jokes. That fits.
‘Did you know the poor child, then?’
‘Not at all. It’s auto-suggestion. She’s probably still alive. I hope so.’
‘The dead are never far from us in our daily life. Those we were close to.’
He doesn’t appear to have got the point. ‘My son,’ Chris says in a firmer voice. ‘Eighteen. And a half. My son is having difficulties. He might be having a breakdown.’
‘Because of your decision to obey the call?’
‘And the divorce proceedings. My wife. I’m getting divorced. OK. Which I don’t want to go into.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Joey. As in Joseph. His twin is called Flo, as in Flora. Joey and Flo. Like a double act on kids’ T V. Rosie and Jim. Bill and Ben. Bad idea, possibly. Not one you can hug.’
‘Do you feel you should be at home with Joey?’
He shrugs. The chunky mug is warm. He’s glad he has something firm to hold, and he grasps it by both handles. He never used to when he first came, just found the extra handle irritating, craved his old tomato-red mug at home. King of Awesomeness. Birthday present from Flo. Brother Lawrence watches him for a moment, then takes off his round specs and idly cleans them on his scapular. ‘When family are in trouble and need us, we can go. Temporarily or permanently. Follow them, if you know what I mean. You just need to let the abbot know.’
‘After breakfast tomorrow,’ Chris says eventually, staring down into his chamomile, where the withered leaves have plumped out again, pretending to be fresh, poised in the amber liquid. All his life he’s been on the wrong latitude. His wounds are telling him this. Landsman at sea. ‘Actually, I’d like to stay at least for None. I mean, I have to be around for Brother Barnabas’s apple and blackberry crumble.’
The monk stretches a smile as far as it can go. His eyes without the specs are bleary, short-sighted, soft.
‘You bet,’ he says.
11
FAY
27 January 2012
After the shop she goes back up to the playground, not caring about the boys: only two on ’em, she says to Pooch. She has something called a caution. One more time, my beauty, and it’s an ASBO. Davos Man twitching his trousers up to bend at the knees and give her a talk about the retail sector suffering because of thieves like her, people losing their jobs, if she didn’t go to school she’d end up on benefits and stay stupid. His face was too close. They were in his weeny office with a desk and computer. He said, ‘What’s your name? Apart from Ginger?’ ‘Fay.’ ‘How are you feeling today, Fay?’ ‘I’m great ta, how’s you?’ ‘I’m feeling cool today, Fay. My shift’s nearly over. I’m getting married this weekend to the girl I love.’ What a tosser. Zit on his ugly nose. Gay perfume like.
He took out a form and she had to fill it in. Name, address, school, parents. Phone number. She wrote rubbish for the phone number. She put ‘England, the World, the Univerce’ after ‘Lincoln’.
He looked at it and then he said, ‘Actually, I’m pulling your leg. I haven’t yet met the girl I’m going to marry. Unless you want to volunteer, like.’
She couldn’t help saying it, but she said, ‘That’s pervie talk.’ Instead of calling the bizzies and arresting her, he chuckled, showing his white teeth.
Then he reached in his jacket pocket and gid her a packet of best Lincolnshire sausages. She tried not to think of Janice’s older brother’s story about them, about how he’d used a Lincolnshire sausage in his girlfriend’s ma’s fridge as a condom in an emergency. After emptying out the meat, of course!
She thanked Davos Man and he’d not touched her. Otherwise she’d have done him for abuse. They’d been told that at school: don’t be afraid to report abuse. Even a close family member. Just stroking your leg. Whatever. Grooming with best Lincolnshire sausages. Nobody has called her ‘my beauty’ before, not ever. Nor ‘kitten’, even. Not with them freckles, her bony body. Her tooth. Retard.
‘Take care then, eh? On your journey. My name’s Truth, by the way.’
‘Yeah. Thanks. Bye. Have a good weddin.’
There is a whole gang of lads outside the old warehouse now, about ten on ’em, sounding like wolves, looking for trouble. She wishes she could go to West Common, like they do with the school to see wildlife, but Ken said two dogs from round here dropped dead of poison off the golf and probably more were done, the owners were gutted. Rochelle said who were the owners but Ken looked shifty and said it don’t matter who they are, they’re gutted. Next to the common with all them horses is Whitton Park. It is outside the estate and she’s only been there once with Janice and her friends, but she could trot it now. Never mind it is mizzling. This is when she wishes she had her own mobile, but Mum said not likely, they can’t afford it, not before she’s sixteen.
It takes her twenty minutes, hurrying past Suicide Towers without looking up in case she meets one of Ken’s mates, who scare her, especially the one Rochelle calls the Nazi. And the other one with the red Land Rover who pretends to be an old gent. ‘Never get in it,’ says Ken. ‘Just scarper.’ Then that long dead-straight stretch down Burton Road that’ll probably never end. She looks back at the beginning but the overpass is not even a dot. Pooch doesn’t like the lorries.
The park is bigger than she remembers. It’s on a slope and has a load of trees and bushes and a duck pond and swans and the main part is really quiet: the play area for kids is busy, but it’s in the middle and fenced off. Even the goalposts are hardly ever used. The houses around are new and only for the quality. She opens up the packet on one of the big grassy areas away from the playground. It has stopped mizzling and the grey has been pushed away, like that advert for milk. But it’ll be getting dark soon, before you know it. She wouldn’t mind swarming up a few trees, but there en’t time.
Pooch runs helter-skelter over the grass, not minding the cold and the
wet. She waves the Lincolnshire sausage about in front of her, but he only stops to sniff at it once and then takes no notice, even though his tongue is hanging out as he hurtles about – so fast he sends bits of mud and grass shooting up behind him. When he comes close she can hear his panting and the thumps of his paws, but he isn’t hungry. Dogs are always hungry, that’s not normal for a dog. She’s not often hungry, but that’s because a lot of food makes her feel manky. What the heck. He only stops once for a piddle and then is off again, chasing birds and squirrels then chasing invisible birds and invisible squirrels in and out of the trees. He reaches the big pond and has a good jabber at the swans, who spread their wings and hiss, coming closer so he actually gets frit and runs off back to the squirrels. The swans’ heads keep moving left and right like there’s a person’s arm up their neck. Necks like socks with a hand stuck up in the head. Kids’ telly. Jabber jabber like.
After half an hour of this she is shouting at him, aware of her teeny little voice disappearing into the sky. It is the cold air that does it, there is too much of it, her breath is showing in a mist and her neck is cold and wet. It’s different in a room: she pictures a gym, like the one they use near her school for sports lessons. Echoing shouts. Mr Jackson, the new sports teacher, with his whistle that goes straight into your brain like a needle. He is dead fit but knows it: even Janice drools over him, never answers him back. ‘Wish I were his missus,’ she’d say. ‘I bet he keeps her busy, like proper busy every night.’
It is probably Mr Jackson’s lesson today that she’s missed.
Pooch has not returned this time; vanished into the trees. She runs, calling, towards the dark area on a slope under the trees where you get these old rusty swings without the swings.