by Gill Mather
"I….er….I'll have to see," said Orielle weakly. But she knew there was no escaping her mother when she got a bee in her bonnet. "All right then. But I'll have to ask Triss."
"Ooh. Triss! Such a lovely name. Is it short for Tristram? So romantic. Is he posh? Have you met his family yet? Where do they live? What qualifications has he got?" And the questions had gone on and on and on. Orielle hurriedly found an excuse to end the call and then immediately started to worry whether the family would recognise Triss as the "strange young man" who had hung about outside the house before Christmas. They would have to cut Triss's hair and beard and get him some smarter casual clothes. She hadn't told her family anything about Triss's involvement in Will's prosecution being dropped. It would have been impossible to explain and the police might even have found out and have started to investigate Triss. No. It was a can of worms best left firmly shut.
It was a long journey to Newcastle-upon-Tyne especially for a Friday evening drive and they decided to break it by spending the evening and night in Boroughbridge which was blissful. And it shortened the time they'd have to spend with the family.
So now, Saturday midday, Orielle was upstairs getting washed and neatened up after nearly two hours in the car while Triss sat in the sitting room to be interrogated and scrutinised for suitability by the parents. In truth Orielle had been so dreading this first encounter that she'd purposely made sure she wouldn't be present. But she couldn't avoid it forever and as she came down the stairs she heard her father say:
"So how did you meet my lovely daughter?" She could hear the strain in his voice and her heart sank.
"That's not relevant," said Triss. As she entered the room, she saw her parents looking meaningfully at each other. "But she is very lovely. Very lovely indeed," Triss continued. Luckily this melted her mother's heart and at least partially thawed out her father. As she stood in the doorway, Triss watched her, noting the way her feet were perfectly together, the toes in her lovely pure white socks pointing exactly forward, the perfect soft curve of the calves of her legs through her tight jeans, the way her legs narrowed towards her knees and then the taut muscles of her thighs widening towards the tops of her legs, the gap between her legs at the top, and her arms slightly proud of her body with the fingers of her hands outstretched waggling a little in her agitation, her adorable, treasured body, the cascade of her golden hair onto her shoulders catching the sunlight from the large bay window, the rise and fall of her bosom, noting too her anxious expression and thinking that he must try somehow with these very uptight curious people, with their absorption with the mundane and trivial, to behave in a way that didn't let Orielle down. He would, he thought, have to lie if necessary, to invent some plausible past and background that they would find satisfactory since this seemed to be their primary concern. Having eschewed previously an elaborate attempt to deceive the authorities with a fake past, he reasoned that it would hurt no-one to do so now on such a limited basis to satisfy this couple. He would have to discuss it with Orielle so that their stories coincided.
Her father coughed, breaking the spell and Orielle and her parents chatted amiably while Triss listened politely. It seemed they'd already covered many small details while she was upstairs. Difficult points such as the fact that Triss didn't drive, that he hadn't got a driver's licence, that he hadn't been to university. The atmosphere seemed to her to be claustrophobic but Triss apparently didn't notice. Her parents had however taken in the way Triss looked at her. Her mother got out a hankie, blew her nose loudly and went off to the kitchen saying that she'd serve the lunch soon.
Oh no, thought Orielle, another minefield to negotiate. "Come and look at the garden Triss, it's my parents' pride and joy and it looks lovely at this time of year." For a second Triss looked at her as though she were mad to suggest such a thing to him but, recovering himself instantly, he said, "Yes. Of course."
Thankful she was able to get away, as she led Triss down the garden path, he took her hand and smiled down at her. Something about his manner as he made this universal gesture spoke volumes to Orielle’s mother as she stood at the kitchen sink and again she reached for her hankie and blew her nose noisily.
HAVING BETWEEN THEM concocted a makeshift past for Tristram, they were spared the necessity to relate much of it over lunch since Orielle’s mother had too much to drink and started to wax sentimental over her offspring, going into detail in particular about Orielle’s childhood, her foibles and, curse her, her various boyfriends. She became watery-eyed several times such that, when she was in the kitchen after the main course getting the pudding, Tristam whispered to Orielle whether he was somehow upsetting her. No, Orielle said. It was because she liked him and was happy.
When Orielle’s mother started on the subject of Will and Ben’s childhoods, Will coughed and butted in loudly to Tristram:
“So what exactly is it that you do?”
“Asset management and tax planning,” he replied then launched into a long detailed explanation littered with references to statutes, statutory instruments and case law during which Will and Ben feigned total unconsciousness and at the end of which Orielle’s mother said faintly:
“I think I’ll go and have a lie down once I’ve cleared away.”
“Of course,” added Tristram, “this overwhelming obsession with money and tax saving’s completely obscene.”
“Why do it then?” said Ben.
“It’s reasonably mentally absorbing. And one has to have a job apparently. I do it for Orielle.” Her mother’s hankie came out again.
“Don’t worry about the clearing up,” said Orielle quickly. “We’ll do that.” And everyone escaped from the table.
Later she and Triss spent the afternoon walking in the beautiful Jesmond Dene near the house and strolling along by the river Ouseburn. They decided to visit the Sunday morning arts and crafts market on Armstrong Bridge the next day if possible. However at tea time, Orielle’s dad expressed the wish that the family should all go to church the following morning.
“Oh, I don't know about that,” said Orielle looking worriedly at Triss. But he said that of course he’d go.
“I doubt we’ll be able to,” said Will. “We’re off out tonight. I shouldn't think we’ll be up in time. And we might crash somewhere else anyway.”
“I don't know!” said Orielle’s mum. “Well be careful. We all know how nights out can end sometimes.” Then she suddenly looked piercingly at Triss and for a horrible moment, Orielle thought that she’d recognised Triss as the “strange young man” from the previous December. Triss looked innocently back and for a second Orielle saw her mother’s face go blank then she looked away, poured more tea and started to ask them about their walk.
IT WAS ACCEPTED that Triss would share Orielle’s room. Although her father could be censorious at times, it wasn't so long since he’d considerably misspent his own youth and he wasn't that much of a hypocrite that he was going to try to stop others enjoying themselves. Nevertheless, Triss was the first boyfriend Orielle had ever had to stay over with her at her family home and Orielle felt distinctly uncomfortable about anything more than a bit of a cuddle. It didn't seem to affect Triss however and later on that night when the house was quiet long before Will and Ben might be expected to make a loud and unsteady entrance that is if they came back at all, Orielle gave way to her accustomed overwhelming desire for Triss and as ever, he filled her up, her mind as well as her body, with a stream of golden light, a river of glittering erotic pleasure that banished all rational thought and after that, despite the warmth of the night, they lay entwined together in the small bed until the soft noises of the house coming to life again woke them up and Orielle’s mother brought them in a cup of tea which, for once, Triss drank.
“This has been your room since you were a baby hasn’t it,” said Triss after she had gone out.
“Yes it has. After my parents bought it and once they’d done it up a bit and started to have children, they didn't see any need to le
ave.”
Triss got out of bed and kneeled down. He kissed the floor and said: “I worship the ground you walk on. This room is a blessed place, a shrine to you.” Very moved, Orielle sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on his back and felt a heat penetrate her skin, move up her arm and into the rest of her. “This thing we have, you and me, it should last forever,” he said. “It should be timeless and without physical boundaries.”
“Well. We’ll have to try and do our best to make it so,” she said and he got back into bed again.
CHURCH WAS NICE, calming and only a walk away and the parents knew lots of people there. Will and Ben who had obviously made it home at some point were left snoring in their rooms but magically revived to meet them later in the local restaurant booked for their lunch. Orielle started to relax in earnest. The weekend was going so well. They had somehow negotiated the difficulties over Triss’s past and how they had met and he was behaving as nicely as he could though it had to be said that this meant him staying silent on most subjects. There was a tricky moment when her parents suggested a family holiday abroad in the summer. Having no driver’s licence and being unable to drive was one thing. No passport nor any other official documents would take some real explaining away. Triss covered it by saying that as a relatively new member of staff at PWT with no children, he was expected to cover during the summer holidays therefore he couldn't commit himself.
It was when her father started on religion that things showed signs of deteriorating.
“You know,” he said to Triss looking at his glass of still water, “there’s no need to be afraid of alcohol in moderation. Jesus drank wine. If it was good enough for the son of God, then it should be good enough for us.”
“Hmm. But that’s just a fairy story. Admittedly there’s no doubt some historical evidence for Jesus having existed, but as for being the son of God, well……” he stopped as Orielle kicked him. “….I wouldn't like to say.”
“Surely you’re not a non-believer! Or, God forbid, a follower of one of these half-cocked, loony sects,” said her dad having had a couple of glasses of wine by now.
“Er no. Not at all. Certainly not a member of a sect of any kind. Definitely not.”
“So you are a believer then.” Orielle’s dad knew this young man was the nearest thing he’d had so far to a candidate for his son-in-law and since Will and Ben showed no signs whatever of settling down, the eggs, so to speak, had to be in Orielle’s basket at the moment. He and Orielle’s mother had reached that rather selfish point in their lives where they craved for grandchildren and had started to be alert to the possibilities. And if this slightly odd evasive but so far pleasant young man was to be the begetter of these grandchildren, he rather hoped that they might have at least one or two fundamental principles in common. And one of them was his firm belief in God and Christianity.
“Well. You know. I like to keep an open mind.”
“So are you a believer or not? Do you believe in God or not? And if not, why wouldn't you?”
Tristram sighed and Orielle’s heart sank. “I’d have to say not why wouldn't I but why would you? There’s no tangible evidence for it. Not a scrap. As they say, it’s not possible to prove a negative, therefore I couldn't prove to you that God doesn't exist, but perhaps you could prove to me why he does, what the evidence actually is.”
Orielle’s dad blustered. “I don't have to produce evidence. I feel in here,” he put both hand on his chest at a point where presumably he thought his heart was, “that God is in and around me.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Well then are you saying that’s not real?”
“Perhaps,” ventured Orielle, “you could talk about it later. Or another time.”
“No,” insisted her dad. “I want to know what he thinks.”
“I’m sure as the opiate of the masses, it works very well,” said Tristram. “What I think is that people’s minds play tricks on them. Where there’s a vacuum, peoples’ thoughts and imaginations rush to fill it.” He looked at Orielle’s dad. “Surely it must have occurred to you at some point that everything humans experience is through the medium of their brains. Your eyes see things upside down but your brains adjust it to the right way up. At a simple level, when you look at a new moon, your brain fills in the rest of the orb so you think you see an outline of the rest of the sphere. If you ask a hundred different people to describe an event they’ve supposedly witnessed, you’ll probably get a hundred different versions of it. Some people think they see ghosts for example. But of course they’re not really there. If they were then science by now would have found a way of recording their presence. Or they think really seriously that they’ve been abducted by aliens. Again not a shred of evidence for it. We dream at nights. And while we do, it seems very real to us. Some people think they hear voices. Some people experience tastes as colours, others experience colours as tastes. Some people are colour blind. Some people feel no pain at all. And while we’re on the subject of pain, why do you think a beneficent God, because presumably your God is beneficent, would have made us evolve to feel pain. Pain is a mechanism to keep us safe from harm, but a very blunt edged one, one liable to be grossly misused. Think of the torture perpetrated using it throughout history. Think of the horror of drowning for example. If it wasn't so horrible, people and animals might just let themselves drown. Why let mammals evolve to experience something so awful as pain and fear just as warning systems. Would you do that if you were devising the best way to arrange for the majority to survive? You’re a nice man. So what about God? Is he nice? It doesn't seem like it.”
Orielle’s dad gasped at this blasphemy. The brothers had their heads buried intently in the pudding menu and didn’t appear to be listening. Orielle’s mother appeared on the verge of tears, the wrong sort this time and Orielle herself had given up all hope.
“Quite honestly,” went on Tristram, “though the Christian religion is held in such high esteem, it really has no more basis than say spiritualism or witch-doctory, voodoo. And if the planet is running out of resources, which it is, think of all the precious resources devoted to and used up in the pursuance of organised religion. A million people are reckoned to have attended the canonisation of Popes John Paul the second and John the thirteenth. There must be better ways to spend such vast resources as that must have used up or better still to have simply saved them and avoided all the pomp and ceremony. Why weren’t those people in the church today, instead of having a nice congenial time with their friends doing things they all like to do, out on the streets instead actually practically helping people? Or just sitting at home saving resources. Did you see the number of cars outside that church today? This earth will certainly perish if people don't stop reproducing in such numbers and using up the world’s resources. Do you think that’s part of God’s will? It certainly appears to be at the moment if you think God’s responsible for everything.”
“Triss,” said Orielle quietly, seeing the weekend dissolve into at best a glacial silence until they had the decency to leave and take themselves back to the sinful, Godless south of England.
“All I’m actually suggesting is that we think things through logically and don’t simply act and base beliefs on impulse and how we want things to be.
“Sorry,” he said to Orielle.
“No. Don’t be sorry, Triss,” said her dad unexpectedly. “You only spoke your mind and only then because I pushed you but of course you’re right. We are selfish. I like my comfortable existence and would rather sit in a beautiful building today listening to a choir of little angels singing glorious hymns than go out and get my hands dirty doing something useful to help people. And d’you know,” he looked at Orielle’s mother, “that parochial church council are talking about trying to get money out of honest hard-working householders to help repair the chancel of the church. Like the C of E aren't rolling in cash already.”
Oh no, thought Orielle, the dreaded chancel repair liability. Who in Englan
d hadn't heard of it by now!
“Nonetheless,” her dad chuckled at Triss, “I still believe in God. Can't help it.”
“Of course you do!” Triss smiled gently.
“Hang on,” said Orielle’s mum, “how much money? This chancel business.”
“Well I don't know,” said her dad.
“I mean is it hundreds? Thousands?”
“Actually in the case that brought the issue to prominence, the initial amount was over ninety five thousand pounds but it went up to over a hundred and eighty six thousand pounds,” said Tristram. Orielle’s mother looked as though she was going to faint. “Er…plus VAT and costs. But that was quite a few years ago now,” he assured her.
“Mum don't worry. The minute I get back into the office, I’ll sort you out an insurance policy. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. They’re only about fifteen quid for a million pounds of cover.” She’d discovered this when doing her conveyancing stint at PWT.
“Oh would you? Would you love. Oh, that’s such a relief.”
“Don’t worry mum. Claims by the church are actually very rare anyway. But I’ll do the policy on Tuesday I promise.”
THE REST OF THE day passed pleasantly and before they knew it, it was eleven on Monday, their bags were packed and it was time to leave to go back to Essex. They said their goodbyes to the family and when he kissed her, Will whispered in Orielle’s ear: “You should give poor Triss a rest in the sack sometimes you know or the next time you come up here, he’ll look like an old man.” Orielle blushed scarlet.
As they went round a bend in the road, the house she’d lived in most of her life disappeared from view and they drove beside the lovely Jesmond Dene for a time but before long they were on the A1 southbound and the weekend had to all intents and purposes finished. The delightful weekend she would remember for many years to come.