Purged

by Peter Laws

  Matt felt like scooping Chris by the legs and chucking him over the top of the bannister. He could have done it in one fluid movement. But instead he spoke in calm, measured tones. ‘Smashing plates wouldn’t have brought her back, would it?’

  ‘Not her. But you … it could have brought you back.’ Chris turned his head and leant over the balcony. Looking through the broken window onto the car park. He was watching Isabel stuffing herself into her Mini, still in her wedding dress. Billy was pleading for her to let him drive.

  ‘You said this was the penultimate part of the programme,’ Matt said. ‘So what’s left?’

  ‘The best part. The entire point of it all.’ He kept watching Izzy, his eyes fixed and intense. ‘Though I assume that these days it’ll mean very little to you.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘That’s when we baptise them. Tomorrow morning, on the lake. Right after the service. It’s what all this leads up to. The Purging, the healing sessions … all roads lead to water. You’ll see it at church tomorrow, providing you don’t dive in and save them. And maybe God will speak to you and tell you how insanely narrow-minded you’re being.’

  The sound of Isabel’s Mini fired up outside. Chris moved onto his tiptoes to watch it buzzing out of the car park, and up the hill. His hands were gripping the railing, tight enough to turn the knuckles white.

  ‘I’ll pay for the window,’ Matt said, then turned to Chris. ‘Are you going to be alright?’

  ‘Of course I’m not. I’m going to be incredibly sad for her.’ He wasn’t just sad. The gaunt look in his eye was more like devastation. ‘She was so close. If she’d just reached a little further. Touched Jesus’s fingers. Maybe …’

  Through the second-floor window they watched her car hit the top of the hill and she vanished behind the stone monolith of the church.

  ‘Maybe there’s still time.’ Chris started heading for the stairs. Then stopped mid step. ‘Hang on a minute.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why were you here, Matt?’ He still didn’t turn. ‘Why did you come down here today?’

  Matt swallowed. Then asked his question to the back of Chris’s head. ‘There’s a concern that a lady called Tabitha Clarke might be unwell. She lives just out of Hobbs Hill and I was wondering if you knew her. I heard you know everyone. Maybe she’d come to you for help?’

  ‘The artist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The lesbian artist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we all have our cross to bear, don’t we?’

  ‘And hers is that she’s dying of cancer.’

  Chris started to walk down the steps. He didn’t appear curious as to why Matt might be asking these things. ‘Well, I’ve heard of her, but I’ve never had the pleasure.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I need to pray now. See if I can salvage what you ruined.’ He headed for the door. ‘And I’m sorry, but I can’t guarantee I won’t pray for you.’

  ‘You say it like a threat.’

  He stopped walking and he finally turned, shaking his head in sadness. ‘A threat? You see prayer as a threat? That’s how you feel, these days?’

  Matt said nothing.

  ‘Do you really want a threat? As much as it breaks my heart? Then how about this …’ His eyes held the shimmer of tears. ‘You have no faith. And neither does your family. Your beautiful wife, your wonderful children. Which means that when their hearts stop beating, the flames are going to start. And they will never, ever stop burning. Shoot me if I don’t want that for you, Matt.’ He sniffed and a tear suddenly ran down his cheek. He announced his next word like a promise or a prophesy. Like a curse, lifting a trembling finger to point. ‘… Entropy.’

  Chris moaned, turned to the door and left.

  Matt stood there for a whole minute, watching Chris leave. Then for a moment he thought he could smell that fox again, dead and mangled. Its metallic, meaty stench floating on the air. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before: how much that slit fox had smelled like his mother, in the kitchen that day.

  And he knew then that she was behind him, in the doorway with her ragged mouth opening. So he left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Wren tilted the second bottle of Shiraz towards him and he thrust his glass under it like a man parched in the desert. He checked his watch as she sloshed some into each glass: midnight. The rain today seemed to have sucked a little heat from Hobbs Hill, so the night was the coolest so far. But it wasn’t exactly chilly. Still, this hadn’t stopped them from setting a fire going. They had a house-sized pile of logs in the garden after all, which he’d been itching to use all week. And they had this old stone fireplace, straight from a Grimm’s Fairytale, with a row of old clocks lined up on the crooked mantel. The swaying flames in the hearth were worth the effort.

  ‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘that we’re going to wake up tipsy for church.’

  She held up her glass and wiggled it. ‘Might make it more fun.’

  It had always been the plan to go to an actual church service here. Wren wanted to see the building in full swing so she could get a feel for what people wanted from the place. Matt was curious too, especially since the church website described the services here as ‘lively, unconventional and contemporary’. He wondered how true that was. Some churches claimed that simply because they had flushing toilets.

  Her face suddenly cringed into worry. ‘They won’t put us into holy huddles, will they? Make us pray out loud?’

  ‘Of course. Plus there’s a goat sacrifice … and some interpretive dance. And the live crucifixion of fornicators—’

  ‘Fornicators. What a great word!’

  ‘Isn’t it!’ he nodded. ‘And copulators.’

  She laughed and threw back a mouthful. ‘Seriously, though, you’ll have to talk me through all the church-speak. Translate it for me.’ She took another swig of her wine then paused, looking genuinely nervous. ‘They won’t do that speaking in tongues thing, will they? That would seriously freak the girls out.’

  ‘Agreed. Pingu is the only life form who should ever talk like that.’ He laughed into the wine glass and some of it splashed onto his top lip. He wiped it with his hand. ‘I can’t believe Lucy’s actually coming. I thought she said church was for …’ he did air quotes, ‘“paedos and losers”.’

  ‘Oh, she’s changing her tune on the whole church thing. It’s ever since she met the boys at this church and realised Bible-bashers could be good-looking.’

  He dropped his mouth in mock surprise and pointed to himself with both thumbs. ‘Er … see figure one. I used to bash the Bible like it was going out of fashion. And I’m crazy-hot.’

  ‘Mr Inferno!’ She leant over, kissing him with salted breath and laughed against his lips. She sank back into the couch. ‘Who knows, by the time we go back to London we might have a couple of converts.’

  He sniffed a little laugh but the thought of it made him stare off into the fire. Wren saw the shift in his face.

  ‘Which wouldn’t be the biggest deal, if it happened … would it?’ The flames gave her eyes an odd shimmer.

  ‘Oh, great. The Hobbs Hill whirlpool’s sucking you in too.’

  ‘It is not!’ She closed her eyes, put her hands together in prayer and spoke in a long monotone voice. ‘Dear Lord, please get my husbandeth to chilleth out about ye. And have him poureth me another glass of wineth. Cos I’m in it for the whole botteleth. Amen.’

  By the time she opened her eyes, he was topping up her glass. He waved a mystical jazz hand in the air. ‘Praise de Lord. He provides!’

  She snorted a laugh. ‘Well, don’t fret. I’m not joining the church anytime soon. I think you’re supposed to believe in the big guy for a start. So you needn’t worry yourself.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  She shorted again. ‘Of course you are. You’re freaking out being here.’

  He stopped looking at the fire. ‘What are you talking about?’ />
  ‘Every time someone talks religious round here there’s this flicker in your face. Like you just sat on a syringe.’ She paused, eyes fixed on the ceiling for a moment. They widened as an epiphany struck. ‘Bloody hell, that’s it!’

  ‘That’s what?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘You! You see God the way other people see heroin.’

  ‘Huh?’

  She patted her knee excitedly. ‘No, that’s it. God’s like this drug you got hooked on for a while. But he let you down and screwed you up. And now you’re paranoid your kids are going to want a sniff and get let down too.’ She hiccupped, and her words started to slur. ‘Maybe sometimes … you even feel like a sniff too. For old time’s sake?’

  He slapped one of the cushions across her legs. ‘Stick to blueprints, Wren. Your psyche assessments are way off.’

  ‘Yeah. Way off.’ She raised her eyebrows and smiled smugly. They were silent for a while, until she cleared her throat and said, ‘Right … I’m about to mention Chris Kelly. Don’t vomit in protest.’

  He looked sheepish. ‘Chris is alright, really. Just lives on a different Earth than I do.’

  ‘All I was going to say is that maybe seeing Chris is bringing it back. You know. What you used to believe. It was a big part of your life, so maybe you do miss it a bit.’

  ‘Like people miss the mind-altering, life-destroying drug heroin?’

  ‘Exactly.’ She slapped an I-rest-my-case hand on her lap. But her smile sank a little when he said nothing back. She put her hand over his. ‘There’s no shame in it, you know. To at least … want it to be true. Everyone wants a bit of … I don’t know … enchantment.’

  ‘Which is another word for bewitchment …’ He looked at her. ‘But the main point is that it just isn’t true. There’s nothing in the sky but stars … which are nothing more than big balls of gas. Which I just reckon is very beautiful in its own way.’

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, making a mental note. ‘You just said balls were beautiful.’

  They laughed again, but then they sat in silence for a while gazing over at the flames that were dancing and crackling in the fireplace. Eventually she asked him for a glass of water so he padded through to the kitchen in his socks and poured her one. By the time he got back to the lounge she had that vibe about her that he’d seen many times before. She was sitting upright, chewing her lip, drawing spirals on the arm of the sofa with her index finger. It was her signal that she had something important to say but Wren was the type who needed to brew up to such things.

  Just before she’d first said she loved him, they’d sat in an Italian restaurant in a similar gaunt quiet. She was gawping at her olives, prodding them with a breadstick for four minutes of silence which, in date terms, is the Grand Canyon. He thought it was turning into the worst night of his life. But by the time she spoke it ended up being the best.

  I’ve fallen in love with you, Matthew, she’d said, then she finally popped an olive into her mouth and said, How about that?

  So he knew the procedure. He just waited, watched the fire, smiled at her every now and again.

  She sipped her wine then water in sequence, then finally spoke. ‘About the fox. And the way you spoke to Lucy.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about that—’

  ‘Don’t be. I’ve given it some thought and she might not share your genes but she can’t expect to walk all over you. I didn’t like you swearing at her, but you were right to tell her off. She’s really giving you a hard time lately.’

  He gave her a thankful nod. ‘I guess the bottom line is that she just … well, she just doesn’t like me very—’

  Wren pretty much slammed her finger against his lips and shushed him. ‘Don’t say that. She loves you, Matt.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘She’s just testing you again. You know, like when we first met?’

  In a flash he saw all those moments back at the beginning of their relationship. When Lucy was eight. The naughtiness, the arched-back screaming she would do when he tried to get her out of the car to go swimming. The food thrown, the toys he bought – broken, even the screen of his TV cracked with a toffee hammer. This was in the days before Amelia was born. When he felt that there could be nothing worse than being a father. He’d started reading up on the Internet about vasectomies, like they were the very epitome of liberation.

  ‘I think it’s cos she’s getting older,’ she said. ‘She’s going to end up going to university and leave home in the next few years, so she’s testing you.’

  ‘To see what limits I might cross … make sure you’re safe with me?’ He tried to hide his frustration. ‘Did she tell you about the fox?’ He grabbed his drink, and looked at it. ‘That I—’

  ‘Killed it with your foot? Yes.’

  ‘Bet she thinks I’m Norman Bates, now. I was going to tell you.’

  ‘I’d have been more worried if you’d left it to die in the rain. And I think deep down, she would too.’ She squeezed his hand again. ‘She just saw a lot of crappy things growing up so she’s protective.’

  If Wren was talking about some other family, he’d nod his head sagely and say things like, ah yes, childhood wounds cut deep. You can’t expect them to just vanish. But this wasn’t anyone else, damn it. It was him. And after ten years of things getting better and better, of actually being called Dad for a while, the thought of Lucy testing him again, of having even a little distrust, was as deflating as it was understandable.

  An image of the photographs taken of Wren (after Eddie Pullen’s final beating) flickered in his mind. The attack had almost killed her but at least it finally put Pullen behind bars. Matt had broken all policy last year and managed to get Larry Forbes to dig up the old file with the pictures. Call it morbid curiosity, call it wanting to confront the truth of what she’d been through, but when he’d sat looking at those photographs in Larry Forbes’s office he remembered how the wind had rattled the windows inwards, so much he thought they might crack. He’d been horrified. And then, as the horror had sunk deeper, he’d wiped a tear from his cheek. Right in front of Larry.

  Because he saw his amazing wife, younger yet somehow much, much older, with swollen slits for eyes and skin that looked like she’d been rolled in purple and red paint. Eddie Pullen’s art.

  Which meant that Lucy had trust issues. Wasn’t that, like, the norm? Matt looked back at the fire and didn’t say anything for a long moment. They hadn’t discussed this for a while. Hadn’t needed to.

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘Just be patient.’ She reached over and held his hand. ‘And for God’s sake, Matt, keep being you.’

  ‘I’ll always be me. And I’ll never be him.’

  It felt strange, assuring her of his lack of violence, while at the same time relishing the thought of slamming Eddie’s forehead into the corner of a wall.

  A peanut suddenly slipped from her hand and bounced on the floor. They stared at it. Then, eager to climb out of the intensity of the last few moments they both lunged to get it, toppling off the sofa and onto the rug. The wrestling became laughs, became kisses, became something else.

  They made love in front of the fire, giggling into each other’s necks like a couple of babysitters, clothes strewn across the floor.

  As Wren kissed his shoulder, he happened to look over at the curtainless window above the dining table. Outside, the jet-black woods hung like a dark sheet against the criss-crossed pane, up-lit branches swayed from the glow of the cottage.

  For a second he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Couldn’t peel them away from that dark rectangle in the wall.

  He even heard what sounded like the crack of twigs out there.

  ‘Matt?’ she said in a breath. ‘You’re slowing down.’

  Just branches, probably, rolling in the night wind. Either that or all the people of Hobbs Hill were marching through the trees towards the cottage, with pitchforks and burning torches shouting
Fornicators! Copulators!

  ‘Sorry.’ He turned his eyes from the window and kissed her hard on the lips. Then moved to her shoulder and the cruel streak of scars that crept across it and up to the back of her neck. Shiny whip marks from a length of electrical flex Pullen had used on her. Like they were his signature, a sort of tribal mark to say he’d always own her. That she’d never truly be Matt’s.

  She crushed her lips into his and all dumb thoughts were instantly blown away.

  When it was over they lay for a while listening to each other breathe.

  She stumbled a lot when they climbed the stairs to bed and shushed herself with a finger across her laughing lips. As they lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, she spoke, clearly slurring now. ‘If you ever … you know … did decide you believed in God again. I … I could handle it, you know.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, so there’s nothing to handle.’

  ‘And all this stuff with Lucy,’ she hiccupped, ‘you do know that … we really, really love you. All three of us.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That I love you. Very much. And you helping look for this girl …’ she put her head on his shoulder. ‘I’m so glad you’re that guy. That type.’

  He kissed her forehead.

  ‘So I love you. Like every day and every night.’

  He laughed. ‘Wren, go to sleep.’

  ‘Mmmmm.’ She turned over.

  He lay awake long enough to hear her breathing sink into waves of heavy sleep. And just long enough for him to turn on his side, hand under his pillow, eyes closed like the shutters were down, brain in recharge mode. Face muscles relaxing, limbs sinking into the mattress.

  He heard the crackle of twigs outside again.

  It was like feet walking through the forest, underneath their window. Lazily he slid out of bed and shuffled to the curtainless window to look. He saw only shadows out there, and trunks and layers of black around the cottage. He considered heading down to check it out, but he was drunk enough to leave it. Forests made noises. That was the country way.