by Alex Preston
*
As they walked down the gravel pathway towards the church, Lee tugged at the sleeve of Mouse’s jacket and hung back, her heels kicking up dust. She was slightly taller than him, and looked very slender next to his stout frame. Taking her hand in his and squeezing, he gave her a hopeful smile. Lee looked away. In her ears she wore stones of different colours: one lapis blue, one turquoise. Mouse dropped her hand and followed her eyes to the church’s bright spire. He decided that he liked September. It was a wistful month, a month to curse not having made more of the summer, a month when thoughts turned to night-living winter. Yet on evenings like this, when the sun slanted across the sky, picking out the wrought-iron balconies that hung like birdcages on the facades of the houses surrounding the square, September was magnificent.
‘Are you OK, Lee?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘A wee bit nervous?’
‘Oh, I suppose a bit. I’ve been working too hard. Not sleeping enough. Not sure that I’m up to being a leader.’
‘You’ll be brilliant, you know you will. The Course is going to pull you out of all this.’
‘I know. I’m hopeful, I really am.’
She squinted her blue-green eyes at him. Her legs, emerging from a frayed denim skirt, straddled the path. She was as thin and white as a wishbone. Mouse took her arm and led her past the gravestones of the ancient cemetery that encircled the church. Vines climbed over cracked graves, lichen dappled chipped stones, creeping into the cavities of letters no longer legible. They made their way into the shadow of the portico, through heavy oak doors that sighed in greeting, and into the cool church.
*
Abby was the only one who worked for the Course full-time, and she had been at the church since early that morning. She spent the first few hours of the day bustling around after Sally Nightingale, laying out copies of The Way of the Pilgrim on the chairs in the church, arranging candles in the tall brass holders that led down the aisle. When all of this was done, she made her way down into the crypt, found the room with its circle of wooden chairs and drew out her books. She made notes, read and reread the passages from The Way of the Pilgrim that would form the core of the discussion, but still she felt a jolt of nerves when she thought of herself actually teaching the Course. She rose from her seat and stood very still in the cavelike room, breathing the musty air.
She wore a tartan shirt with its sleeves rolled to the elbow and a grey vest underneath. When she stood, her black leggings seemed to cup her buttocks, holding them disdainfully away from the thighs beneath them. She knew from her mother, who told her often, that her large body would lose its bouncing firmness. That she would begin to sag and become doughy like her sisters. But for the moment, she wore her leggings with pleasure.
‘I thought you might be down here.’
She jumped and turned around. Marcus was standing in the doorway, the gloom of the crypt behind him. His black hair disappeared into shadows at the edges, his handsome face jutted out into the light cast from the spots in the ceiling. He stepped towards her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Warmth rose from her stomach to her chest and sat there until Marcus peeled himself away. His voice was quiet.
‘We should go upstairs. David wants to speak to us.’
She looked at him, frowning.
‘I’m sorry about last night. It was bad again, wasn’t it?’
‘No, it wasn’t bad. It’s too complicated to be bad. Some of it was fine.’
‘Did you think about your dad again?’
‘I wish I hadn’t told you. Not if you’re going to use it against me . . .’ Marcus turned and strode across the room. She followed.
‘I wasn’t using it. Why do you think I was using it?’
Marcus looked at her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just nervous about tonight. Have you seen Mouse and Lee?’
Ignoring his question, she took both of his hands in hers until his eyes softened. She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips moist and warm.
‘I love you. You know that, don’t you? I just want to have it all go right this time.’
‘I know. I do too.’
Marcus had reluctantly left work early that afternoon. He found breaks in the routine of the week difficult. He was used to building a protective shell around himself in the office, and had to peel this shell off in layers, slowly shaping his mind for a less combative atmosphere. He hated his job at the law firm, where he helped to restructure hedge funds that had gone bust in the Crash. Abby kept urging him to quit, taking his hand in hers in the shadows of 6 a.m. and begging him to stay in bed, phone in his resignation. But they needed the money, and although Marcus had inherited a small amount upon his father’s death, it wasn’t enough to pay for the mortgage, for their booze and dinner parties. So he stayed at the law firm, and every day that he was there he imagined another little spark of his youth fizzling out. He edged his phone out of his pocket and checked to see if he had reception.
‘Have you heard from work?’ Abby asked.
‘No. I don’t think we expect a judgement until tomorrow, perhaps Thursday. If we’re lucky they’ll settle next week.’
They could hear Mouse’s voice in the church upstairs. Abby placed her hand on one of the wooden chairs, took a deep breath, and then followed Marcus out and into the dark corridor. They made their way past the gift shop, whose illuminated windows were full of Course T-shirts and copies of David’s book, The Way of the Pilgrim, with its bright green cover. They walked past the room in which Mouse and Lee would host their own discussion group later, up the narrow stone stairs, and into the echoing church.
*
A line of chairs had been arranged in the space between nave and chancel, at the foot of the steps leading up to the sanctuary. Marcus and Abby hurried down the aisle. David Nightingale was sitting on the steps, facing the chairs. A jug of squash sat at his feet. He filled two plastic glasses.
‘Mr and Mrs Glass! Here, have something to drink. We’ve been waiting for you guys. Come and take a seat.’
Marcus took a glass of squash, passed one to Abby, and sat on a chair next to Mouse. The priest leaned forward on the steps, elbows on knees, and Marcus shivered as the full force of David’s smile was turned upon him. He made himself meet the very pale eyes for a moment, and he felt lost. The priest beckoned for them to pull their chairs closer towards him. When he leaned forward his chinos rose up from his ankles, revealing pale, hairless calves above black socks. He rubbed his hands together and began to speak.
‘It’s so wonderful to have you guys here. With just over an hour to go, I imagine you must be nervous. I can understand that – it’s a huge responsibility for you. But I’ve a very good feeling about tonight. About tonight and the next few months. You lot have been crucial to the growth of the Course thus far and it’s absolutely right that you should become leaders.’
He paused and frowned.
‘We need to make sure that nothing stalls the growth of the Course. Momentum is everything; keeping Course membership growing is all-important. Even those who try to do us down can’t argue with the fact that the Course is attracting people back to Christianity. Every lost member is a tragedy – a personal tragedy for the one that leaves, but also a serious loss to the Course. It’s up to you, my representatives at ground level, to make sure that we keep our new members. It’s not always easy; some of your group will stop coming, either because they can’t be bothered or because the intensity is too much. Keep these departures to a minimum. You should remember that often the most vehement atheists, the most dogged agnostics, end up being the most committed Course members. If they have thought hard enough about faith to have strong feelings in the opposite direction, then they have opened a small gap which will let God in.
‘Try to think back to when you first joined the Course. Remember how cautious you were, how uncertain about the size of the commitment needed. I want you to be very gentle with the new members. You must treat them as I treated you – as child
ren. By the end of the six weeks, you’ll be firm friends with the new members, but there’ll be ups and downs in the mean time. Keep your own emotions in check, keep your guard up at all times. You’re all passionate young people, but don’t let those passions distract you from doing God’s work. Now let’s tune up. May the Lord bless you all. I’m relying on you.’
He rose, turned, and strode up onto the stage. The four friends, fizzing with excitement, followed. Abby checked her microphone, ‘Bah, bah, one-two, one-two,’ then sat at the front of the stage, swinging her legs. Lee played an E chord as Marcus and David tuned their guitars. Mouse thumped the drums, adjusting the height of the snare and shifting his foot pedal slightly. Marcus put down his bass and sat on the stage next to Abby. David came and crouched behind them. The church was dim and vast. Mouse stopped drumming. Lee sat very straight at the piano, her right hand quietly picking out the melody from Pictures at an Exhibition. Chattering voices rose from the courtyard outside the church. People would be arriving soon. The Course was about to begin.
Three
David threw a switch and the main church lights came on, golden chandeliers that hummed when they were illuminated. Course members began to drift in from outside. Lee was lighting candles at the front of the church. The click of her lighter made Marcus want a cigarette. Abby stood behind a row of trestle tables at the back of the nave, a smudge of red pasta sauce on her cheek. She waved to him. Marcus walked towards the row of pews where his and Abby’s names were printed on a whiteboard, nodded at the altar, sat down and put his head in his hands as if he was praying.
Marcus had started coming to the Course because of Abby. She had made it clear that it was the only way she’d stay with him, and he attended at first in the same way that he’d gone to piano lessons as a child: resolved to perform everything asked of him as badly as possible in the hope of being swiftly excused. Only slowly did he realise that the church might offer a means of negotiating the fear that shot its bright splinters across his mind whenever he thought of death. In the quiet ritual, the music and, above all, the promise of an existence beyond the grave, Marcus found peace.
It was something to do with the high windows. He could only see sky through the windows, nothing of the grubby world outside. It enhanced the sacred feel of the place, the sense of safety. His father hadn’t believed in God, or rather he gave the impression of a man whose diary was too busy to consider something so putative, so far in the future, as an afterlife. Marcus didn’t want to die with that kind of uncertainty. And since his own death existed in a kind of eternal present for him, he needed to make sure that he was always prepared; the time he spent in church was a totem he held up against the fear. He would live on afterwards; unlike his father, whose cold, blue skin as he was heaved into the ambulance spoke of nothing but rotting and decay.
At university Marcus had attended chapel almost shamefully, happy to use Abby’s involvement in the college choir as an excuse to spend winter nights in the quivering candlelight of evensong. Still, back then, he wouldn’t have considered himself a believer. But things filter through. And slowly patterns revealed themselves until, on the first Course Retreat he had attended, he found himself more or less converted. Or, if not entirely converted, then at least able to hold in his mind at the same time the sane, rational view that belief in God was akin to belief in magic, an atavism that had no place in the bright, scientific now, and a quiet recognition that, somehow, irrationally, God was there. And the friends from his old life seemed to drop away as the Course increasingly filled his spare time with prayer weekends and charity days, and the problems and questions that his cynical rational mind raised were silenced by the sheer business of it all.
The buzz of voices in the church rose in pitch, pulling him back to the present. Marcus began to pray, the same prayer that, if he was not too tired or drunk, he repeated every night before sleeping: Lord, protect me. Give me good health. Look after my heart, my lungs, my bowels. Look after my Abby, too. Grant her the baby she wants. Don’t let me die just yet, God.
He opened his eyes to see that the room had begun to fill up. More candles had been lit and the spotlights at the back of the hall shone forward onto the stage with the altar glowing behind it. He rose and made his way to the back of the church. Abby was holding a clipboard now, directing people to different queues depending upon whether they had attended the Course before, whether they had been identified in her initial screening process as useful or prominent. Mouse and Lee were taking details of new members. Marcus thought how happy Mouse looked: his plump cheeks blushing with pleasure, his eyes goggling at the girls. He greeted each member with a broad smile, nodding and chatting as he noted down their email addresses, mobile numbers, jobs. The Course prided itself on the amount of information it had about its members.
‘Marcus, can you do something for me? Just stand in the aisle and stop old members sitting too near the front. They’ve had their time in the sun. Thanks, darling.’ Abby pushed him gently in the back and he stood and watched people stream past him, in awe of the Course’s ability to attract a constant supply of the young and wealthy.
When everyone was inside the church – perhaps seventy in total, of whom twenty were new members – the doors were shut with a deliberate bang. The lights dimmed and the candles fluttered as David stepped onto the stage. He grinned, blinking in the spotlight that leapt from the back of the church. He looked enthusiastic, friendly, youthful despite his grey hair; his eyes turned upon the congregation and there was a murmur, then total silence.
‘Welcome to the Course. If your experience of tonight is anything like that of the many hundreds of others who have attended over the years, then Tuesday nights will become an oasis for you, a way of escaping the grind and the grime of London and entering a place of peace, a sanctuary where you can explore some of the most fundamental issues, where you will be welcome, make friends, and get a free meal, if nothing else.’
He smiled and again there was a rustle of whispering followed by silence.
‘This is a community where all questions are welcome, where thought and exploration are encouraged, and hopefully where you’ll find people capable of answering your questions. My wife Sally and I are always happy to speak with you personally; you can email us; I even do a podcast thanks to my team here who are dragging me into the twenty-first century. You should also look out for our Course leaders, who will be guiding your discussions later. They are guys just like you, who a few years ago were sitting exactly where you are now, feeling and thinking exactly the same things. Although I had fewer grey hairs back then.
‘Tonight I’m going to tell you about a student at Durham University who was a committed atheist, a big fan of Pink Floyd, and the yard of ale champion of St John’s College bar. That student was me . . .’
Marcus listened to the priest’s voice. David was a great performer: not only the dazzling charisma, but also the softer moments, the wry humour, the dancing hands, the quick shift between puckish and earnest. Every so often a laugh to relieve the pressure, and then gravity. And always the world of the Course held up against terrifying London. In the priest’s own story, in the anecdotes and tangents that spun off it, everything returned to the promise of repose and release offered by the Course.
‘So I came to London when I left Durham. I suppose because all of my friends did, and because all of my friends were going into the City, I thought I should too. I imagine many of you had a similar experience. I became a merchant banker, and I found it a really dark and unforgiving existence. I remember getting terribly drunk in pubs on Saturday, just drinking for the hell of it, because the week had been so tough that we felt we owed it to ourselves. And so Sunday was a day of hangovers. We’d limp down to the boozer around lunchtime just to take the edge off with a pint or two. It was really a miserable life. I even thought about suicide once or twice, during the darkest days.’
He paused for a moment and took a sip of water. He looked down at his hands which were s
played out on the lectern, inhaled deeply and continued.
‘But, partly because I had the wonderful Sally at my side, I lived through it. I survived. And why I want you to know this is because you need to be clear that I am not here to judge you, or to pry into your private lives, but only to show you one path, a path that has been very fruitful for me. We are here to talk about the meaning of life . . .’
*
Lee was reciting poetry in her head. It was lines from a poem that she had studied at university and had become for her a mantra, a way of stilling her mind and dragging herself up from her slumps. She kept a notebook beside her as she worked in the library, jotting down things that seemed to carry some special meaning, that felt as if they might help. Now she wasn’t listening to David; instead she turned inwards, letting the cascade of words cleanse her mind as they passed through it. O Thou, that art the way, pity the blind, /And teach me how I may Thy dwelling find. She watched Marcus, saw the fine strong lines of his jaw, and how he glanced across at Abby, smiling, every so often. She drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, looking around in surprise at the noise of it. She could feel Mouse’s leg jittering against hers. She tried to ignore it, then attempted to find something soothing in the friction of her friend’s thigh. David’s voice kept intruding on her thoughts, though, and she bent her head forward and shut her eyes, laying a soft hand on Mouse’s knee.
Lee missed her dad. She spoke to him two or three times a week on the telephone, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. She felt exposed without him close by. The previous night he had rung off abruptly, and she thought she had sensed reproach in his voice. She knew he didn’t approve of her faith. She turned the conversation over in her mind, trying to work out if she had invented his coldness. She did that sometimes when she was down: saw hostility everywhere, imagined rifts with friends, heard criticism from her tutors when none was meant. She called the line of poetry back to her mind, and behind it layered the melody from one of her dad’s pieces of music. She smiled, eyes still tightly shut.