Aftershocks

by A. N. Wilson

  Here, however, are a few thoughts. Jesus on the Cross, in his moment of total desolation, cries out from the Psalms – ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ It is the cry of religious humanity, time out of mind, when calamity strikes. It is the cry of the women of Troy in Euripides’ great tragedy. It is our cry now, as we assemble in our ruined city. Why did my child, my lover, my father, have to die in this pointless way? Where is God when you need Him?

  I don’t know what Matthew meant by his Gospel, I’ll be honest with you. But this is what I extract from this passage now, as we stand in the ruins of Aberdeen, as we remember our dead, as we look at our Cathedral, our art gallery, so many of the familiar city landmarks in ruins.

  Wounded humanity, innocent humanity, has always looked to Heaven for justice, for explanations, for consolations – for consolations which are not there. They have hoped that a religious explanation of the world will somehow make the pain and unfairness of things easier to bear. And this illusion actually makes the pain worse. A complete atheist could not EXPECT blind Nature to be fair or kind or loving. We know from a purely material point of view how and why earthquakes happen, and we do not think they happen because God has forgotten to be kind, or because God is a secret sadist. Things just happen. For geological, scientific reasons. Our city was not destroyed by God or the gods, it was destroyed by geology, blind Nature.

  Jesus cries out to a God who has forsaken him, and you could say that the human being closest to God in the world at this point in history here takes leave of God. The holiest prophet takes leave of religion. The veil of the Temple is torn down. ‘That vast moth-eaten musical brocade’ – religion – is demolished in the earthquake at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, just as, in real life, the Temple and all the rituals of Jewish worship had been expunged by the Roman Army which levelled the city to the ground in AD 70, a decade or so before Matthew wrote.

  So where does it leave us, who call ourselves Christian, and who meet today in God’s name? It leaves us without the old God, that is for sure. The God that William Blake called Nobodaddy. Nobodaddy forsook Jesus, and Jesus, on the Cross, forsook him. He asks us to forsake him because he is an illusion. A tortured human soul, crying out from the Cross, is the emblem of all suffering humanity, the figurehead of all abused, innocent victims. He is our symbol as we try to come to terms with the Quake, just as he is the unrepresented millions who have died in famines and wars and plagues throughout history.

  Our Godhead is not to be found in the forces of Nature, or in some supposed male Creator figure. Rather, we try to enter into what the first Christians discovered. That is, that the Glory of God can only shine out of a human face; and the face on the Cross is in the greatest possible pain. We are not going to try, at this point in the cycle of our grief and rage, to be like Job’s comforters and say that Nature, still less Jehovah, punishes humanity for its sin. On the contrary, we are going to say goodbye to the Temple, and the priestly veil, and the legends about Jehovah or the immortal gods of Olympus. We embrace instead the divinity within each human being. What is divine is to do good. What is divine is to love. What is divine is to make a good vision out of these terrible events.

  Some of us will want to go on, struggling to reconcile the vanished theologies of the past with the perceptions which have been granted to us since the Earthquake here in Aberdeen. That is their privilege. It is not my way. I find in the Four Gospels an everlastingly rich set of stories, liberating me to become more human. It does not worry me in the least whether they are what you would call true – if by that you mean whether they actually happened in history.

  Jesus died. And the Fourth Gospel says that this was his Glory. The moment of Glory was not the moment when he burst from the tomb. It was the moment when he gave himself up to death. That is not to glory in death. It is to say, in death, or in life, our glory is our humanity. It is by belief in one another, belief in the power of love to overcome greed and hate, that this city will pick itself out of the ruins and rubble and build itself up, turn itself into an abode of love.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER FIVE YEARS, CHARLIE AND Pamela Nicolson had felt togetherness, in a great wave of joy when their daughter returned from the trip to the zoo. Somehow, in spite of the chaos and disruption of that day, both Charles and Pamela had found their way home to their large house in Kensington, and, as we all did that afternoon and evening, they had been exchanging experiences. Charlie did not know at that point that Harriet, his PA, had lost her fingers, but he did know that his offices had been destroyed, and that all the staff had escaped. Pamela’s building, quake-proofed, had survived intact, without injuries to the occupants or damage to the structure. She knew how lucky she was. Stories had circulated Aberdeen for hours about the effects of the Quake on the zoo, and they had, obviously enough, been thinking of nothing but Ella and the school trip. They did not know, at that time, that, had she stayed at school, she might well have been among the children who were killed by the collapse of the new concrete classroom block in Opportunity One.

  Their only anxiety had been for Ella. So, when she appeared, looking as she nearly always did, so cool and collected and on top of things, they had both wept with relief. Pamela surprised herself by throwing herself at Charlie, hugging him with a greedy ecstasy before enfolding Ella in her arms. Charlie had bustled round the kitchen trying to prepare the little girl’s favourite high tea – fish fingers and frozen peas – and her mother had quizzed her for questions, and a happy half hour in which Ella mercilessly and exactly recited the events of the day, the incompetence of Mr Pollard, the common sense of Mrs Chambers, the erratic behaviour of Stig, the timorousness (in comparison with herself) of the crocodile, the elephants being thrown to one side, the screams of the monkeys, the animals running amok. Much of this was becoming the common parlance of our city, but Charlie and Pamela knew nothing of it, because there was no television, radio signals flickered and most people’s phones were still down, and there was only sporadic contact on social media. It was strange to think that, as the little six-year-old narrator told her parents about what had happened, the lions and tigers, the giraffes and orangutans were making their bewildered way through the ruins of our streets and squares, peering at cinemas and department stores which had burst into flames, wondering, as they surveyed half-demolished churches and theatres, where the next food would come from, and, in some cases, feeling homesick for the security of cage or compound.

  —Anyway, said Ella, nobody can say that zoos are for babies NOW.

  Her parents had not forgotten their son, of course they had not. But they had no reason to suppose that he was in danger. Some neighbours, whose sons also attended St Augustine’s, had come round only an hour before to share the good news that his school had remained, robust Victorian building, upright. It would have been surprising that Josh had not yet come home, had they not picked up on the general panic, which was being passed around the neighbourhood, about the zoo – the collapse of the flimsily built cages, the escape of the animals, the deaths of a number of children beneath the wreckage of buildings. Josh’s entry into the most highly regarded boys’ school, not only in Aberdeen, but on the Island, had caused them joy and his membership of that exclusive and envied band made them doubly glad when the Johnsons had been round to reassure them that all was well. The school had lost a few panes of glass, but no buildings had collapsed – they heard – everything was fine.

  —I wonder why he’s so long, said Pamela.

  —He’ll be fine, Mrs Johnson – Sue – had said.

  There had been no reason, especially, to doubt this.

  Nevertheless, when Ella’s relentlessly self-congratulatory account of her day at the zoo had progressed for the better part of half an hour, both parents had begun to think more about Josh. Public transport (he normally came home by the school bus, which dropped him off only a few streets away from the house) was, like everything else, in abeyance. B
ut he would, surely, soon be home.

  The normal telly news was down. The IBC building had fallen, after all. But it was possible to get some reception online, and they managed to hear some of the news which was being broadcast from Carmichael, while Ella, with callous hunger, devoured four fish fingers and a small mountain of frozen peas.

  It is quite hard for anyone to know what happened, precisely, after that. Time passed, but whether it was five minutes or two hours after the little girl had satisfied her hunger (and neither parent had any appetite), the two grown-ups began to be gnawed by anxiety. The lateness of Josh was to be explained by the Quake, the appalling travelling conditions . . .

  —We should have gone to the school?

  Charlie’s question.

  —But David Johnson made it home on the bus.

  Pamela began this as a simple reply, but it turned into a gulp, almost a yelp. And from that moment anxiety gripped them.

  —I’m going to the school, Pamela said suddenly, after half an hour of pacing about the kitchen, vainly tapping at her phone, going to the Johnsons to ask David whether he had any idea why Josh had not come home.

  —Let’s all go to the school, said Charlie.

  And Ella said,

  —Can I come?

  Then the doorbell rang.

  —He’s forgotten his key, said Charlie, as relief flooded through them all.

  He stood back in the kitchen and allowed Pamela the pleasure of greeting their son. There would be another recitation of a child’s day – this time, Joshie’s – the maths test, the cricketing practice, the man’s talk about the school’s prospects for the coming season, the preparation of a favourite meal. Charlie was hoping there was a steak for the boy in the fridge.

  These thoughts, if they were thoughts exactly, flitted through his brain in a matter of seconds and were instantly dispelled by the voices he heard from the hall.

  —What is it? What have you come to say? – Pamela.

  And a man’s voice saying,

  —Am I speaking to Joshua’s mum?

  —Yes – yes, I’m his mum, what is it, what’s happened?

  They looked up, Charlie and Ella, as Pamela followed a uniformed policeman into the room.

  Nellie was sobbing. Waves of incoherent, howling grief.

  —Oh, DAD!

  —Well, Nellie. The distorted face on the screen smiled, but she could not see it.

  —There’s nothing more awful than a child’s death, he said, nothing.

  —They were both so, so HOSTILE . . . Oh God! It doesn’t matter how I feel, but I was just standing there on their doorstep and I . . . of course I had to go round there . . . of course I did . . . Bob drove me.

  —How is the arm, by the way?

  She sniffed away some of the tears.

  —It’s fine, Dad. It’ll be fine. I was in hospital a few days, that was all. You know that. I’ve got a small fracture in my left arm. Think of what other people are going through. Think of Ingrid and Cavan – oh my God! And Charlie and . . .

  More tears.

  —And Bob was so discreet, so kind, he stayed in the car. I went up to the front door. It’s strange, for some reason almost none of the houses in Kensington have been much affected by the Quake. The house next door had broken windows, but . . . well, maybe the Nicolsons’ place did too, I wasn’t looking.

  —Of course not.

  —And she opened. Pamela. Dad, he was in the choir . . .

  Another outpouring of tears.

  —I know, I know.

  —I just didn’t know what to say, when I saw her standing there. I did not recognize her at first. Her face was not twisted or anything, but it was like a kind of mask. I honestly wondered if she was some distant relation of Pamela’s, or perhaps a sister who had come to be with them at this . . . to be with them . . . but it was her. And she looked at me as if I was an encyclopaedia salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness or something, the sort of annoying person who turns up on a doorstep, and just repeated, ‘Yes?’ And I asked if I could come in, and she said, ‘No’.

  —What did she actually say?

  —She said they wanted to be alone together.

  —That’s understandable.

  There was a very long pause.

  —Dad, I’ve handled things so badly.

  She had never told him about ‘her and Charlie’ – whatever there was to tell. She had told him about accompanying the man to concerts; she’d told him about Josh in the choir, and the amazing Top Cs his lark-treble hit during Stanford’s Te Deum; and she’d told him about Pamela’s unfriendliness, and . . . well, perhaps she had, on occasion, ‘gone on’ about the Nicolsons.

  —Lesley always says that it’s the unforeseen hazard of parochial life. People projecting on to the clergy. I mean, even Lesley! Can you imagine being in love with Lesley?

  Here the light laugh was almost turning into a hoot.

  —It would be like falling in love with a chair, her father announced in a still voice. But people can fall in love with chairs, just as a duckling thinks a shoebox on a string is its mother.

  The implied snub shook her out of her tears.

  —Charles is not one of those pathetic people who fall in love with the vicar, Dad. We got together . . . He developed this sort of crush on me . . . quite independently of church.

  Ignoring the pardonable vanity of this, her father said,

  —Lesley thought Charles Nicolson was getting in too deep. Do you remember Mrs Ballard?

  —Well, I remember you telling me about her, said Nellie, quite literally sniffily. She could remember, at the time when her crush on Miss Firebrace was raging at the grammar school, that Mum and Dad had gossiped, not maliciously exactly, but with a heartless humour, about one of Uncle Lesley’s parishioners, who could not be dissuaded from knitting him socks and mufflers.

  —Dad, I don’t think you or Uncle Lesley . . .

  She was not angry, exactly, but she was taken aback that the whole Charles and her ‘thing’, which she did not completely understand herself, should have been discussed by the two old gossips. She went on,

  —I mean, I think it all had more to do with Charles and Pamela having difficulties, rather than . . . He honestly wasn’t knitting me mufflers.

  —He was doing the masculine, sophisticated equivalent.

  —I suppose we – the clergy – we are prone to . . . I know what you mean about projection, but he hadn’t been to the Cathedral much when . . . I mean, it began very early, very soon after I arrived here.

  —Poor Nellie. I’m sure you did not encourage it.

  —The awful thing is, Dad—

  —Or not really, he added quickly, to signal the unnecessity of going into detail. And now they are lost in grief, poor souls, lost in that unbearable pain together; and it is a pain which binds together and rips apart at the same time, and neither of them want to be reminded of something which was so . . . well, so unimportant, so . . . silly! as his infatuation. So they froze you out.

  There was a long silence.

  She was aghast at his words, and yet, at the same time, she was grateful for them, and as the weeks passed after he had said them, she came to realize how much they had learnt, he and Uncle Lesley, in those fogbound places, about the secrets of the human heart.

  —You know, we’re both cool under fire, you and I. Probably too cool. And maybe you’re not admitting to what a shock it has all been. Not just poor little Josh, but all of it. You’ve been through an earthquake, Nellie! You’re bound to be horribly upset.

  —I’m fine.

  —No one could be fine in such a situation. I don’t suppose, um . . . I don’t imagine you’ve been in touch with . . .

  Doug had, as it happened, sent an email. All it said was ‘You OK?’ with two xx. She had read Auden’s poem about the Old Masters being ‘never wrong’ about suffering, and everything turning away quite leisurely from the disaster, but she felt, even by Doug’s standards, that this was taking things a little far.
So she chose to ignore her father’s inability, even at this moment, to say her husband’s name.

  —But, Dad.

  —Yes, angel?

  —What am I to do? Josh was in the choir. If the Cathedral had not been . . . oh Lord . . . if we had a Cathedral, of course we’d have the funeral in the Cathedral, and I’d have taken the service . . .

  —I think you should write to them. Say that you are always there for them. Say how utterly devastated the whole choir is to have lost him, and how they want to honour him. Have the service in their parish church, and ask the incumbent if the choir can come and sing for the child. Offer to take the service, but say that you quite understand that this is their choice. And don’t just say you’ll pray for them. Do it.

  There was another long pause.

  —I haven’t found prayer very easy since they took me out of the tower.

  —It would be most peculiar if you had.

  The next pause was even longer.

  —I miss you so much, Dad.

  —Yes, well. Darling girl.

  She wrote the letter, Abel delivered it by hand, bless his heart. Some hours later came an email from Charles to say that they would like her to visit them after all. She would dearly have loved someone to go with her. Going alone, by taxi, was the bravest thing she ever did. She wore her clerical collar, a black linen trouser-suit and black espadrilles. It was still very hot.

  Ella was watching television with a grandmother – Pamela’s mother – so it was with the two parents that she was engaged. Charles made mugs of tea for each of them, the default comfort drink despite the heat. There was a terrible stillness about the pair, and for much of the time, none of the three said anything, so that the noise of Finding Nemo blared from the neighbouring room and swallowed their unsayable words.