by Peter Laws
Matt frowned. ‘Oh. Sorry. Just a bit busy. It was nice to see Ben here the other day.’
‘Ah, yes. Dropped off a bit of muzak, I hear? Always willing to help, that lad.’
Chris padded into the kitchen and Matt followed. He poured out a couple of coffees while Chris grabbed plates and knives. He seemed to know where everything was.
They headed outside onto the patio and Matt sat at the table, carved from teak wood. It was small and rectangular. Social etiquette would normally dictate that Chris would grab a seat on the opposite side. But he didn’t. He scraped up a chair next to Matt, fairly close, so that the two of them were looking out across the garden and the deep woods beyond.
For a minute or two they didn’t speak. They just ate the food. There was just birdsong in the air along with the tongue slaps and swallows, knives clinking the plates. Silence wasn’t a problem for Matt but Chris was the type who’d fill gaps in conversation like they were holes in a boat. Yet it was Matt who finally spoke first.
‘What’s with all the crosses,’ he said, ‘in the shop windows?’
‘Ah, you noticed them?’
‘They’re everywhere. I feel like I’m in Transylvania.’
‘The crosses are just us raising our profile. It’s part of the vision to grow the church. Anyone with a cross in their window is a member of our congregation … and you’ve heard how many people we get on a Sunday, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ but he’ll tell me anyway.
‘Three hundred. But then you’ll see it all for yourself tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘You are still coming in the morning, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll stay for the whole thing?’
‘Yes, chef.’
‘And the videogames tournament today … Billy the youthworker says your girls are coming?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,’ Matt nodded.
‘Perfect.’ Chris sat back and popped his lips. ‘Bottom line is the crosses are there because we’re proud of Jesus and refuse to hide him. We want him … everywhere.’ He ran his palm across the air like a magician’s assistant. ‘Everywhere!’
‘There’re so many of them I half expect to see Jesus creeping through the woods at night.’
Chris screwed up his face. ‘Jesus doesn’t need to creep.’
‘No?’ Matt cleared his throat. ‘What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?’
‘What a horrible thing to say.’
‘Relax, it’s a poem. And it’s by Yeats, not me.’
They were quiet for a moment.
‘Funny you should say that though …’ Chris flicked his eyes to the woods and back. ‘I reckon things do creep around here. Despite the prettiness and the waterfall, this place has … a dark heart. Like there’s something under the surface. Something demonic. There’s lots of places like that. My last place was definitely like that. And here too. There’s still a lot of unsaved people in this village. Lots of shadows.’
‘And it’s the non-believers that are automatically in darkness, is it?’
‘Of course.’
‘You ever think it might be the other way around? That maybe you’re wrong and everyone else is in the light?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Never. The kingdom of darkness is for people who haven’t got time for God or who’ve turned their backs on him.’
‘Like me?’
Chris didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. Just like you. But now you’re here, who knows? Maybe the church might rub—’
Matt pushed back his seat, looked at him straight, glad that the time had come for him to finally ask his next question. ‘Is that why you got Wren up here? Did you Google me or something and find I was married to an architect? Did you get me here just to save me from hell? To save her?’
Chris bit his lip, almost smirking. ‘And if I did? What if God told me he wants you back?’
Matt blew out an uneasy breath, suddenly feeling deflated on Wren’s behalf. He looked back at the house where she was still sleeping, and whispered, ‘Look, if that’s the case then I suggest you save your renovation money for some other backsliders … or on second thoughts, give her the job and pay her extra.’
‘You are incredibly jumpy about God.’ Chris sniffed. ‘I mean, do you even believe in him any more?’
‘Nope.’
‘But your kids. You still had them baptised, right? Even if you don’t—’
‘Wrong.’
Chris actually gasped and clattered his knife loudly on the plate. ‘Very funny. Ha, ha.’
‘They aren’t baptised. Neither of them. So what?’
Chris shook his head slowly. ‘Then you’re playing with fire. I mean they’re your kids.’
‘Exactly. They’re people, not Tamagotchis I have to program. If they want to be baptised one day then fine. But I’m not going to force it on them. I think they call that brainwashing. Which is only one step away from drinking the Kool-Aid, as they say.’
‘And if they get hit by a bus tomorrow? Or have a heart attack? They could wind up dead like poor little Nicola Knox.’
Matt shot him a look. ‘Who hasn’t been found. Who might have just run away.’
‘You believe that?’ Chris actually laughed. ‘Seriously, though, how would you feel if your unbaptised daughters died without—’
‘Alright, Chris,’ Matt slammed his empty coffee cup down on the table, ‘number one. Talking about my daughters’ possible deaths is not my idea of croissant-worthy chit-chat. And second, would splashing them with water really make any difference anyway? I mean, since when did baptism become the be-all and end-all? They didn’t teach us that at college. It’s a symbol. Nothing more.’
‘I’m finding that there’s a lot of things they didn’t teach us.’ Chris brought his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his fist. ‘Something must have happened to make you like this. Come on, you can tell me.’
‘Let’s just say I got a chance to stare long and deep into that dark heart you keep talking about.’
‘And what did you see?’
Matt paused for a moment, and then thought, oh what the hell. At least telling Chris the story would get him off his back. Make him understand. And besides, some stupid delusional cell of his brain was making him see his mum over by the roses with her hands clasped together, nodding eagerly for him to tell.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Just shifting his focus onto the subject seemed to make the forest grow quiet.
‘So after college I got ordained … and I started working for a church in Luton. An Independent Evangelical Church. Not linked to any denomination. Thought I could do some good work there.’
‘And did you?’
‘Well, I prayed for a lot of people, preached a lot of sermons. Buried or cremated about two minibuses-worth of pensioners. A few younger ones as well. And a baby called Shenoa.’
‘Ouch.’ Chris twisted his mouth into a grimace. ‘I’ve done a few of those. Small coffins.’
An image of the little box with a pink tulip on it scuttled across his brain like a persistent spider he could never get rid of.
‘So did you like it? Being the minister I mean?’
‘I liked it less and less because everyone kept wanting me to be black and white all the time. They wanted absolute truths, constantly. God absolutely exists. Jesus is absolutely the only way to heaven. Homosexuals are absolutely raging perverts.’
‘And you struggled with that?’
‘Yes! Because doctrine gets more … well … it gets more grey the older you get.’
‘Interesting. I find it’s the opposite. The older I get, the more clear it all is.’
Matt looked at him for a moment, studying his face and eyes.
‘But,’ Chris said, ‘you can be grey in the Church, surely? You can be honest about your doubts in a pulpit, don’t you think?’
‘No, you can’t. Peopl
e don’t want that. They don’t want to hear someone preach a sermon about God and then admit he’s not even sure if the guy exists. They want absolutes, more and more these days they want that.’
‘So that’s why you jacked it in?’
‘It’s half of the reason, yes.’
‘Your suspension …’ Chris poured them both another coffee while he waited for the answer. Classic pastoral gambit, that was. Grease the wheels of sorrow with caffeine. He heard his mother whispering in his ear.
Go ahead, son. It’s okay.
‘I’d been a minister for about five years and my mum still lived in the house I grew up in. Up in Dunwich, overlooking the sea.’
Chris audibly moaned. ‘Oh, I’d love a pastorate by the sea.’
‘Yeah, well the church she went to started this hosting programme. The congregation took homeless people into their houses until government accommodation came up.’
‘What a wonderful idea.’
‘It was a bloody stupid idea. Stupid. Totally irresponsible. This little church had no idea what they were doing. They were trying to be good Samaritans to some seriously messed up people. It was completely naïve.’
Chris sat quietly.
‘She was assigned one of these “lodgers”. A guy in his late twenties called Ian Douglas Pendle. From Glasgow. As far as the church knew, he was just some young bloke down on his luck. Said he needed a place to stay for a few days until his sister could take him in. But of course he had no sister. The church had no idea what they were doing. They did no research on him.’ Matt turned to Chris. ‘Turns out he was a paranoid schizophrenic and they asked my mum to take him into her home. Her home.’
Chris seemed to know enough to keep quiet, and Matt realised that for the first time that he could remember Chris Kelly had given somebody else the centre stage.
‘She told me about this Pendle guy on the phone. I said I wasn’t keen on her taking him in but she said to stop being so selfish, and that she was only doing what Jesus would have done. The church were behind it. She got upset on the phone. Said she was “worried for my soul”. So I decided to drive up there.’
‘And something happened?’
‘I turned up late on a Sunday afternoon. I would have got there earlier but I had a church service. Harvest festival … I mean, what a joke. Sixty minutes of wasted time praising God for local farmers, even though every one of us bought imported apples from the nearest Tesco. By the time I finished and drove up to Dunwich … it was already too late.’
Matt took a breath and was surprised at how fast his heart was beating. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d told this story but as he sat under these trees, in this strange little village, it almost felt like the place itself was dragging the tale out of him whether he liked it or not.
‘The radio was on. Elvis was singing “Love Me Tender”. I could hear it coming from the kitchen diner but straight away I knew something wasn’t right.’
‘Go on.’
‘I pushed the door open and there she was. My mum. Two plates of food sat on the table untouched. She’d cooked Pendle a Sunday roast. A little pile of presents sat on the table for him. A woolly hat, a pair of gloves. Some deodorant. The salt shaker was knocked over and had spilt against her hand. It must have happened just as they were starting to eat.’ Matt lifted both hands and placed them flat on the table. He wasn’t sure why. ‘For whatever reason Pendle opened up her kitchen scissors and attacked her with them.’
Chris pulled in a quick breath.
‘There were three wounds. In the front of her throat.’ Matt reached up, pointing a finger an inch to the right of his windpipe. ‘Pendle reached over the table and just shoved it in her. Just like that. She fell forward and he stabbed her two more times. One in her left shoulder, the other in the top of her scalp. She bled to death. Never even moved from her chair.’
‘And Pendle. Did they catch him?’
‘Oh, he was still there. I could hear him breathing heavily in the lounge. I went in and he was sitting on her chair, stark-naked with a raging hard on. He was talking and pointing at the TV when it wasn’t even switched on. He spotted me come in and he saw my dog collar. I’d left it on because I knew my mum loved to see me in it—’ Matt suddenly paused and saw her face. The tilt of the head, the chin out with pride. The look she had on Sizewell beach, as she held out the towel after he was baptised. The first time he’d told Wren this tale, this was the point he’d cried. But he wasn’t about to do that now. He moved on. ‘Pendle saw the dog collar and he just … well he just stopped talking and he laughed at me.’
The memory of it slipped its fingers around Matt and tugged him backwards. Pendle sitting there on that high-backed chair with his balls resting on the lip of the same seat his mum had sat on through weekly phone calls to him. Where she’d watch old episodes of Dallas and Columbo.
He couldn’t see it, but the unmistakeable smell of faeces was mixing with the blood-metal reek from the kitchen. He remembered how he’d jumped when the kitchen scissors slipped off the arm of the chair and bounced on the carpet. Pendle creaked his eyes up to meet his and started singing that damn, disgusting, presumptive little hymn. Laughing in the gaps.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.
That saved (not ‘will save’ but saved – past tense) a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found.
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Pendle opened up his hand and showed me what he was holding,’ Matt said, quietly. ‘It was my mum’s bottom lip. He’d cut them both off. He’d eaten the top one already.’
‘Dear God.’
‘I grabbed the bastard’s throat. Yanked him out of the chair and I beat the living crap out of him. I mean, I went for it. At one point I even got the scissors from the floor and pushed them up under his chin. And I would have done it, you know? Shoved it right up there. But someone from her church turned up at the house and saw me doing it. Dragged me off and checked if he was alright. Then they reported me. Despite the circumstances, the church suspended me for what they called my lack of forgiveness and restraint.’
‘Man, that’s harsh.’
‘Yeah, weird isn’t it? That I struggled to forgive the guy who cut my mum’s lips off.’ He looked down at his lap and slowly brushed the food crumbs away.
‘And Pendle?’
‘He was charged. Put in a secure psychiatric ward. He asked some chaplain to pray with him to become a Christian, which apparently I was supposed to be pleased about. Then another inmate strangled him one afternoon and killed him. When I heard that it was the only time I thought that maybe God might be real after all.’ Matt leant back. ‘But that thought didn’t last long. Anyway, after a while I just thought screw them and I never went back. Bummed around for a bit. Then got into teaching instead. And that’s that.’
Chris paused. ‘Listen, can I ask you a question?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You say that you don’t believe in God any more.’
‘Yeah. Funny, that.’
‘Then let me ask you this. Do you want to believe in him? Despite what you’ve been through. Despite your doubts. Do you still want to believe that there’s … something else?’
Matt waited. ‘That’s an irrelevant question.’
‘No, it’s not. Maybe that’s why he brought us back together. So I could show you he still—’
‘It’s irrelevant,’ Matt said with a snap. ‘He either exists or he doesn’t, regardless of whether I want him to, or anyone else. And when you see your mother for the last time and you lift her head and there’s a ragged little hole where her mouth used to be, you start being more logical about life, Chris. Because a world where that happens makes more sense when there isn’t a God in it.’
The back stable-style door of the cottage suddenly rattled on its hinge and Wren stepped out in a dressing gown, holding an empty plate and cup. ‘I smell calories!’ she said, but then she slowed, and her smile faltered. Sh
e’d walked into the tension as if it were a tangible fog.
She looked at Matt for a long moment and saw something in his face that she hadn’t expected.
She silently mouthed, you okay?
Before he could answer Chris reached over and took Matt’s hand and covered it with both of his. ‘Well, all I can say is thank you, Matt. I really feel privileged that you could tell me all that. I bet you’ve barely told anyone.’
Matt stared back at him and a realisation started to blossom in his mind, like a toxic flower. This is about him. He’s making this about him. This is another notch on his pastoral headboard.
Matt snapped his hand back and for an uneasy second he felt like swinging his fist into Chris’s jaw and splaying him out across the roses. But he saw Wren and the hopes of a job in her eyes, so instead he got up from the table and grabbed another croissant, feeling kind of embarrassed for being so … bothered. He munched it in big chunks and looked off into the woods. The taste filled his head.
‘So how are you liking Wren’s designs?’ Matt said in a monotone. ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’
It turned out to be the right question because it sparked Chris off on a new tangent. He and Wren started talking enthusiastically about load-bearing struts and graveyard relocation. Eventually, after a string of polite nods, Matt made his excuses. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He nodded a thanks to Wren for helping him escape.
He headed back inside and the cottage felt surprisingly dark to his sun-scorched eyes. It almost made him dizzy as he headed to his laptop and flicked it open at the kitchen table. He checked his watch.
Okay, forget the run. He could get showered and dressed and be able to get a few writing hours in this morning. And right now he was in the mood to write it. Today’s target: fifteen hundred words on personality type and its effects on religious suckerdom. When that was done and his breakfast went down, he’d definitely go for a run before lunch. Pound out some of that tension on the forest floor.