Beyond the Rainbow
David Forrest
David Forrest is the pen name of writers David Eliades and Forrest Webb. They have also authored And To My Nephew Albert I Leave The Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan In A Poker Game and The Great Dinosaur Robbery.
The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any living person.
First published 1972 as After Me, The Deluge by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.
This edition published 1979 by Pan Books Ltd.
© David Forrest 1972
ISBN 0 330 25854 0
It was ten thirty-five on a snowy March night when the ancient village of St Pierre-des-Monts received the telephone call. ‘You want Father Benoir?’ repeated Toto Barbusse, wiping his nose on the cloth he used for polishing the glasses on the shelves behind his bar. ‘He’s taking confession. He always does at this time of night. Can he call you back? ‘
The line went quiet for a moment. Then, patiently, the voice spoke again. ‘It’s taken me three hours to get through. I could wait till doomsday for his call. Bloody French telephones . . .’ the voice grumbled. ‘This is a matter of life and death. Run along to the church and get him.’
Toto Barbusse looked at the falling snow outside and pulled a face at the receiver. He sighed. Occasional errands on unpleasant nights were the penalty for owning the only telephone in the village.
‘Very well,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘Who shall I say wants him?’
There was another long pause. ‘God,’ said God.
One
The wind was blowing now, sweeping like a harvester down the Auvergne Mountain Range. The snow, lifted by the gale from the twin peaks known to all as Right Tit and Left Tit, swirled across the night sky, obscuring a near-full moon, and dropped like fine talcum on the walled village.
Toto Barbusse stood in the doorway of his bar and shuddered. He took half a dozen quick breaths to tune his lungs to the ice-hard air. He wore no coat. His shirt was stretched tautly across his enormous chest, each button dragging against the thread that held it in position. His sleeves were rolled high on his arms, the bundle of cloth held in place by biceps that needed two hands to encircle them.
The marks that Toto Barbusse’s feet left in the snow looked like the tracks of a man wearing snowshoes. Each footprint was a third of a metre in length. Had there been soft earth underneath the snow, instead of granite cobbles, the footprints would have been deep, for Toto Barbusse weighed eighteen stone. Everything about Toto was gigantic ... everything, that was, except for one thing.
He bent against the wind, and made for the church entrance, beyond the statue of Grand Admiral Charles Dordogne, which occupied the centre of the square. The Grand Admiral, favourite son of the village of St Pierre-des-Monts, President and leader of the New France, war-time hero and controversial statesman, stood theatrically pointing a cement sword to some unseen future, while his head looked in the other direction. His tricorn hat provided useful shelter to the pigeons that roosted on his huge ears, giving the statue, even in midsummer, the appearance of an ice-clad arctic explorer wearing feathered ear-muffs.
Toto Barbusse shouldered open the oak door of the church and looked inside. Several candles near the doorway fluttered. Effigies of carved wood moved in their niches. The ten thousand alpine flowers fashioned in the wooden beams overhead swayed in an unfelt breeze. The angels, sitting at the end of each pew, nodded. The church was alive with the work of a hundred generations of the village’s woodcarvers.
It was dark inside the confessional. So dark that Father Benoir had no need to shut his eyes, but even so, he had them screwed up tight. He was involved in a complicated mathematical calculation, his mind concentrating on doubling the previous number he had arrived at.
‘Four thousand and ninety-six,’ thought Father Benoir, clenching his hands and pressing his knees hard together.
Outside the small carved-wooden booth knelt the voluptuous figure of seventeen-year-old Claire Laplace, daughter of the village baker, and secretary to the Mayor. Her lips were close against the mesh of the confessional grille. Her soft, tantalizing voice, and her perfume, drifted inside. Father Benoir could feel her girlish warmth penetrating through the darkness.
‘Then, Reverend Father, because I was dressed again, I began to leave his bedroom.’
Father Benoir mentally sighed and stopped his counting. His fingers uncurled as he relaxed. He opened his mouth to speak. But the girl’s soft tones stopped him again.
‘But I changed my mind and turned back and took off my knickers ...’
Father Benoir’s fists snapped shut again. He tried to close the mental door once more, fighting for his self-control. ‘Four thou ... er... er.. . double that is ... er ... is eight thousand ... and yes, one hundred and ninety-two.’
‘Then I woke up,’ said the girl.
Father Benoir relaxed.
‘They’re very wicked thoughts, aren’t they, Father? ‘
The young priest licked his lips. Only a year out of seminary, he found Claire Laplace’s weekly erotic confessions his hardest cross to bear. He wiped the palms of his hands down the sides of his cassock. ‘A penance, my child, I think.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Twelve Hail Marys,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ the girl’s voice sounded disappointed. ‘Is that all? ‘
‘Fifteen, then. And goodnight.’ Father Benoir waited and listened. He heard her footsteps fade away across the church. He shook his head.
Toto Barbusse stood in the shadows just inside the church door and watched Claire Laplace walk towards him. Watching Claire Laplace was a village pastime for the men. He pushed the door open for her, and she smiled up at him as she ducked under his thick arm, and made her way down the snow-covered steps.
He stifled a wicked thought, remembering his surroundings, and crossed himself, again, making the movement big and obvious. The candles flickered in the draught. The wood-carvings shuddered. He grinned as the countless wooden eyes seemed to wink understanding.
‘Father Benoir . . .’ called Toto Barbusse. The curtain over the door of the confessional moved and the young priest’s head appeared.
‘Who calls?’
‘Me, er, Barbusse, Father.’ It seemed incongruous to Toto Barbusse that he should have to address so young a man as Father. Even stranger that the boyish priest should call him, his son. ‘You’re wanted on the telephone. It sounded urgent. They said, life or death.’
Father Benoir reached for his cloak and shook his long hair over the collar. It was surprising how many of his recently-acquired flock chose to do their breeding or dying in the cold hours of night.
Father Benoir took the telephone receiver and put it to his ear.
‘And about time, too! ‘ roared a voice in the earpiece. Father Benoir jumped.
‘This is Father Benoir,’ he said.
‘I know, you young fool. I can tell the difference between one of my children and another.’
‘Who’s that? ‘ asked Father Benoir, testily..
‘God,’ said God.
‘Very funny,’ said Father Benoir.
’Funny?’
‘Of course it isn’t, cretin! And it’s less funny to drag a priest away from his churchly duties in the middle of a freezing night. Now who is it and what do you want? ‘
‘I’ve told you once. And I want to talk with you. About the end of the world. Doomsday, you know.’
‘Be your age,’ snapped Father Benoir, and slammed the receiver down on its rest.
‘What did you do that for, my son?’ God’s voice was still speaking in the young priest’s ear. It had a plainly hurt tone.
Father Benoir blinked and stared at the telephone. Yes, he had replaced it properly. He looked aro
und the tiny telephone compartment at the end of Barbusse’s bar. The glass door to the booth was shut, and there was no room for anyone else to hide.
‘One of the few remaining advantages of being God,’ said God, ‘is that no one can hang up on me. Now stop being stubborn and listen.’
Father Benoir banged his fist against his ear in exasperation. ‘God! God?’
‘Now, you’re beginning to understand!’ exclaimed God. ‘Call it what you like, this is a visitation, baby.’ He giggled, then growled. ‘Modern methods of communication ... I never had this trouble with Saul and the others. There’s a lot to be said for the old-time visions, writing fingers and flaming messages.’ Father Benoir sank to his knees, clasped his hands before his face, raised his eyes, and began the Lord’s Prayer.
God waited patiently until he’d finished. ‘Would you mind repeating the Gloria? You can sing it, if you prefer.’ Father Benoir meekly obliged. ‘Now,’ said God, ‘as we’ve got the preliminaries over, please stand up. We’ve got business to discuss. Big business.’
‘Oh, dear Lord, have I offended you? ‘
‘No, it’s more a question of the end of all flesh. My children have again failed to show any signs of maturity, of sense, of enlightenment...’ God’s voice became louder, it seemed to fill the cubicle and swirl around Father Benoir’s head. ‘Yes, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’
‘Genesis, chapter nine, verses eight to thirty-six,’ muttered Father Benoir, helpfully.
God coughed, politely. ‘Chapter six, verses fourteen to twenty-one, in fact.’ Father Benoir blushed. God continued. ‘Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch--’
‘I believe I know the passage,’ broke in Father Benoir, humbly.
‘Don’t interrupt,’ thundered God. ‘And this is the fashion thou shalt make it of: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits and the height of it thirty cubits--’
‘I, er ...’ began Father Benoir.
‘Oh, hell . . . someone always has to complicate things. All right, I understand. I’ll metricate that. One hundred and seventy metres long, thirty metres wide and eighteen metres high. Metres . .. phui. . . not half as poetic as cubits, are they? But that’s the way the wafer crumbles . . .’
‘You’re going to drown everybody? Again, Lord?’ asked Father Benoir with horror. ‘That’s dreadful punishment. It’s inhuman.’
‘Precisely,’ said God, coldly. ‘But it’s not punishment. Just look on it as spring cleaning. Another chance.’ God’s voice became filled with enthusiasm. ‘I’m offering you the gift of peace, Benoir. My kind of peace. No wars, religious, territorial or ideological. No pollution. Won’t that be super? ‘
‘You’re offering me?’ Father Benoir’s voice trembled.
‘Not just you, the whole village,’ said God.
‘Us ... but, why ... how?’
God groaned. ‘What do you think I did? Used a pin and a map of the world? Such obtuseness. Anyway, it’s none of your business.’
‘But what about all those innocents who’ll die?’
‘Innocents!’ roared God. ‘What about the million and a half of my children who will die of starvation next year? Aren’t they innocent? What about the hundred million people killed in war in your lifetime? Weren’t they the innocent? What about the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars, pounds, marks, francs, roubles, spent on nuclear weapons. Resources that I give to improve my children’s lives. Ppssht. . . Even your damned chariots manage to kill and maim countless numbers of humans every year. And you ask, why you? Well, why not? ‘
‘But when?’ asked Father Benoir.
‘July the fourteenth. Noon.’ Father Benoir wondered if he detected the slightest hint of irony in the voice. ‘So you have only four months and the odd day or so.’
Father Benoir pursed his lips and whistled softly. ‘Not much time, Lord.’
‘Enough. Just enough. You’ll see. Have faith. Anyway, you’re a young and lively lad. Just have to run around a little. Shift your arse, I believe is the current expression.’
‘It’s not going to be easy making everyone believe me,’ said Father Benoir. ‘Could you perhaps give me a sign of some sort? Something I could use to convince the others.’
God sighed once more. ‘Children, children! They’re all children. What would you like, sonny? Red snow? No, that would be too political. Burning bushes? Your President has legislated against that sort of thing. Another immaculate conception? No, that wouldn’t be very original. That’s what every girl claims.’
‘I’d be satisfied with something simple but impossible.’ Father Benoir thought briefly of his regular encounter with Claire Laplace. ‘Like the Pope reversing his edict on celibacy.’
‘Give me a break,’ chuckled God. ‘I’ve more chance of making a pig fly.’
‘Well, anything. Just anything. I’ll leave it to you, Lord.’
‘I’ll be in touch again. Probably afterwards. When it’s all over,’ said God. ‘Meanwhile I have to think about drafting some new Commandments. The old ones need certain modifications.’
‘Bless you,’ said Father Benoir.
There was a crackle of godly laughter. ‘And you, too, mate.’
Jules Ignatius Benoir stood in his cold bedroom and shivered as he undressed. Still unused to his priestly dress, this was a time of the day he normally enjoyed. A time when in the privacy of his room, he could shed the veneers of priesthood and settle down to a glass of cognac and an hour’s reading. It was his own time . . . the seconds, minutes and hours when he sometimes tried to analyse himself and his feelings. He was still amazed to find himself a priest. Even more surprised that he enjoyed it. He had been halfway through dental college when family pressures, and the death of his elder brother had almost forced him into the seminary. There had always been a priest in the family and they weren’t going to allow him to let them down now. The step from gas to mass had been difficult.
He thought about the telephone call ... the voice that spoke from the air around him. Of course, one believed in God. A priest had to. Only other people said God was dead. But to have God suddenly chatting to you, like your neighbour, was not at all what he had been led to expect. God only spoke to saints and Father Jules Benoir could think of nothing in his past life that would put him in that classification.
He shrugged to his reflection in the mirror. The tall, rather athletically-built reflection shrugged back at him.
‘What now?’ he wondered. ‘More important, what then? What afterwards.’
He pressed his glasses against his nose, threw himself down into the armchair and twisted himself so that his long legs hung over one of the thickly-padded leather arms. He grinned to himself. Yesterday ... no, even this afternoon, he would have thought himself going insane if someone had suggested he would hear the voice of God. But now that it had happened, it seemed almost ordinary. The God who had always been so distant, a mysterious and fatherly figurehead, was human ... well, almost human. He sounded like ... no, that was impossible. Father Benoir smiled. Yes, God did sound a little like his uncle, Grand Admiral Dordogne.
‘I’m sorry, Lord,’ said Father Benoir, aloud. ‘I didn’t mean to insult you. Uncle is a terrible bore, even though he’s President of France.’ He reached out and pulled his Bible from the shelf. He flicked through it, half expecting it to fall open at some page which would offer him advice . . . direction for the future. It didn’t. He shut it again and relaxed in the chair, the book resting on his thighs.
‘A spring cleaning,’ God had said. ‘A fresh start . . .’ That meant just that. There would be nothing. It would be like an astronaut setting foot on a fresh and sterile world. But a world containing no evil, no threat to the small community of mankind who would grow to populate it afresh.
‘Pioneering,’ thou
gh Father Benoir. ‘But surely there would be some buildings left? Something? No, there would be nothing, God would see to that. It would be a New World. Green woods and forests. Fertile plains and valleys.’
Father Benoir looked at his hands. They were young and strong. He could swing an axe, build a house, till a field. He picked up his Bible again. He must read it with a fresh eye. He stood and walked over to his bed. He climbed in and pulled the bedclothes around him, and began to read.
Towards dawn he lapsed into sleep. He was awakened by a descant of shouts, loud exclamations and laughter echoing through the village, magnified by the natural resonance of St Pierre-des-Monts.
Father Benoir squinted short-sightedly at the calendar hanging alongside the crucifix near his bed. He could just make out that it was Tuesday. He frowned. Market day was always Wednesday, so why so much noise in the village today? He yawned and scratched himself. The noise in the village square below grew. Father Benoir rolled out of bed and padded towards the narrow window. He pushed it open. The louvred shutters swung outwards, and dropped their cargo of snow. He yawned again, stretched and looked downwards. He could see a number of figures moving about indistinctly around the statue of the Grand Admiral. Father Benoir picked up his thick-rimmed spectacles from the wash-stand. He pushed them into place on his nose. The villagers stood looking up at the statue. It took a few seconds for Father Benoir’s eyes to focus properly. As the mists cleared, he saw that the Admiral, his uncle, now had a pink head. A moving, pink, human head. Father Benoir peered harder. Yes, the head really did move!
Hurriedly, he pulled off his nightclothes and clambered into a suit of combinations. He drew his cassock over his head, wriggled into it, and then pulled on a pair of wooden-soled knee-length boots. He clumped out of the room, his glasses set crookedly across his face.
There were more people in the square by the time he’d opened the door leading to the street. The brittle voice of a woman startled him.
‘The poor thing, a wicked, wicked trick,’ shrieked the voice of Madame d’Arle, wife of the village butcher. ‘Don’t frighten the poor creature, that’s good bacon it’s sweating off.’
Beyond The Rainbow Page 1