Heartland

by Neil Cross

  After the alley, we turned on to Collington Road and I began to relax because from that point, nobody was likely to see me.

  For a couple of weeks, I got away with it. But soon, the news got round that I was attending the weird church, the one with all the Americans. Not only that: I went there using another name. There was the whiff of insurgency to that, the aroma of something not-right. And there was the coincidence of the surnames. That I was attending a bizarre church was peculiar enough, but that I went there calling myself Cross–of all things, Cross–was too alluring.

  I began to discover crosses everywhere. Little Christian runes were scrawled over every page of my exercise books. Plasticine crosses were left in my desk drawer. Crosses were chalked on the blackboard when I walked into class after lunch. They were the insignia of universal suspicion and their power was amplified by anonymity. I never knew who was responsible, and it didn’t matter, because everyone found it funny. Crosses turned up in my bag, in my coat pockets, in the pages of the science-fiction books I kept in my drawer. It went on for months.

  One morning, I noticed that some new graffiti had appeared on the wall of the park. You could see it from the window of the flat. Whoever wrote it probably knew that. They’d used white paint and a paint brush and made the letters two feet high. The words said:

  NEIL GO HOME

  Every morning, I vomited before leaving the house. In the classroom I ground my teeth until my jaw ached. Sometimes, the ache squirmed up behind one eye and cramped there. Back home, I lay in bed, perfectly still, until the migraine had passed. I waited for sleep, the opalescent Jesus at my bedside in the throbbing darkness, my grandfather beside him.

  That year, I’d been in several scuffles with a boy from my class. He was new, and he was a fighter. But I wasn’t really scared of him, because he had no friends.

  Then, one afternoon, he waited for me at the school gates. There was a crowd with him. Some of them were big kids. Some of them were unfamiliar. They were the friends I thought he didn’t have.

  He walked up to me. He put his hands on my chest and pushed me into the high gate. This is how fights always began.

  I held up my hands and said, ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  He punched me in the face. There was a detonation, but no pain. The crowd pressed in, like a held breath.

  He grabbed my hair and pulled back my head. Behind me, somebody reached through the gate to grab my wrists. They tugged and twisted until my arms went through the bars. Then they bent my arms up, behind my back. I bucked and writhed.

  Someone else gave my hair a sharp tug. There was a crack, and a slow, wet spreading, like when someone pretended to break an egg on your head.

  I couldn’t stop laughing. I was laughing and laughing.

  When it was finished, I walked home. My coat was ripped; white stuffing was coming out of it. There was blood on my knees and in my hair, and on my face and elbows. My bag was torn at the strap.

  I walked past Susie the nervous dog, who showed me her teeth and her trembling lips. I walked through the smother of chip fat and piss and went upstairs. I knocked on the door and waited, looking at the nameplate that read Cross, white on navy blue, until Mum answered the door.

  At first, I saw the usual exasperation: I’d torn my clothes again. Then the expression slipped off her face, leaving nothing behind it.

  Sobs backed up in my throat and jammed there. I stood in the doorway. I spoke in canine yelps. I remembered what Derek had told me about speaking in tongues: sometimes, when people were possessed by the spirit of God, they thrashed and contorted and uttered forth in a strange language, the pure tongue of Heaven. I stood there, in the doorway, with blood on my head and clothes, and I spoke it.

  Even in his rage Derek first established that I didn’t need to go to hospital. Then he went to the phone box and called David Chapple. David Chapple was a friend from church. But he was a policeman, too.

  He came round that night, still in uniform. He was a very tall man, a Londoner. He sat down and took off his hat and asked me to sit next to him. He ruffled my hair. He asked what had happened.

  I told him. I was moved by the gentleness of his concern. And I was ashamed that I hadn’t defended myself. I began to cry.

  The next day, David Chapple spoke to my headmaster. The headmaster spoke to my teacher, Miss Galloway. She cried because she hadn’t noticed what was going on. I supposed she’d erased all those post-lunch crosses from the blackboard without ever really seeing them. Neil is a very lively and cheerful member of the class, she had written in my autumn report.

  It was nearly the end of summer term, but I took a fortnight off school anyway. On my way to Bobby’s Bookshop on Saturday, I saw Babs and Colin Fairgreaves. They affected a very adult concern. It made them feel grown up, to knit their brows and ask how I was. They agreed that I was looking pale. I heard them talking about me as they walked away, about how pale I was.

  The next week, after the children had gone home, I went in to see Miss Galloway. We all thought her pretty. She wore Scholl sandals. She sat with her hands clasped between her knees and told me if anything like that happened again–anything–then I should tell her immediately. I nodded, ashamed because it hadn’t really been that bad. It had just been more visible because I cried when I got home. Now I just felt stupid.

  On my first day back in class, a beam of light shone down upon me. The joke with the crosses stopped.

  I’d seen other new kids come and go. One of them was also from Bristol. His name was Seamus Neagle, and one day his mum sent him to school in tight grey shorts, long socks and sandals. Nobody wore shorts, long socks and sandals. Seamus Neagle got laughed at, and he never wore the shorts again. But that was it. He stayed for about two terms. And there was Debbie, a quiet blonde girl, from South Africa, who also stayed a term or two, then evaporated.

  The children in my school were just kids. And on that first day back, I felt their embarrassment on my behalf, for my inexplicable and self-renewing oddness. I ached for their small acts of kindness–passing the coloured pencils, the glue.

  I’d learned that it all happened not because of them, but because of me: because of something about me that rendered me broken and askew. I didn’t know what it was, or how to fix it, and I was ashamed.

  For most of my summer visit, Dad was very jolly. We spent a week in a caravan at Great Yarmouth: cricket on the beach, fish and chips and lager shandy in pub gardens. It was followed by a week in Bristol, much of which involved sitting next to a bowling green, picking apart cigarette butts.

  Then, on my last evening in 92 Bifield Road, Margaret took Gary and Wayne to the pictures. The house was empty. In the big, square living room, there was just the table and the storage heater and the sofa and the swirly carpet. And there were the windows that overlooked the long garden: twilight, going dark. And there was me and Dad, and all the space around us.

  He said, ‘Sit down, Nipper.’

  I sat at the table and so did he. He had a tumbler of whisky and water. He was in shirtsleeves.

  He said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  I said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘What’s all this about a church?’

  Mum must have told Caroline or Lin about it, in one of her letters.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s just a church.’

  ‘What do you do there?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Do you pray?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And sing hymns?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘The sacrament is passed round—’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Bread and water.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve heard about them. The Mormons.’

  ‘Its proper name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.’

  ‘But people call them the Mormons.’

  ‘Yeah.’

 
He sipped whisky. He leaned his elbow on the table and massaged between his eyebrows with two fingers and thumb. The whisky had made him pink under his white hair.

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew he wouldn’t understand. And down there, in Bristol, neither did I. Bristol was a different colour. The sunlight came at a different angle.

  In Bristol, I didn’t fear that Jesus was judging my every move. I feared being elbowed in the face by Gary or Wayne, when nobody was watching; or being half-suffocated by them under the bedclothes. I feared one of Margaret’s rages, when she came rushing in, moving quickly for a big woman, and beat Gary or Wayne with a beanpole or a slipper. When that happened, Gary and Wayne wailed biblically. It didn’t matter which of them was bent beneath the butcher-armed onslaught, raising an arm to protect himself. Margaret’s shrieks echoed round the room.

  When that happened, Dad carried on reading the Western Daily Press, or watching the sports results or the weather. He never hit any of us, never even threatened to.

  These were the things I feared in Bristol. Most of all, I feared the cryptic frigidity of Margaret’s contempt.

  He said, ‘And how did you get involved? Derek was it?’

  ‘It was these missionaries. They came round.’

  ‘The blokes who come round, knocking on people’s doors.’

  I nodded. I was embarrassed on the missionaries’ behalf, and I was embarrassed by them and I was ashamed of my embarrassment.

  ‘So, these Mormons come round and you go to church with them and what?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Well, not really, Nipper, no.’

  ‘It’s just a church.’

  ‘And do you have to do things? They don’t drink tea or coffee or anything like that, do they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve drunk tea since you been here.’

  I shrugged. I wasn’t supposed to drink Coca-Cola either, because it had caffeine in it. I wondered if I should mention that, just so he knew.

  There was a long silence. Dad was thinking about something. We sat at the table, thinking.

  He said; ‘And Derek?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What do you call him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what do you call him? Do you call him Derek? Or do you call him Dad?’

  I kept my body still. ‘I call him Derek.’

  ‘That’s what you call him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me. ‘And what about your surname? What are you called at school?’

  ‘Neil Gadd.’

  ‘And at church?’

  ‘Neil Gadd.’

  ‘And you’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sipped the whisky.

  He said, ‘All right then, Nip.’

  Soon, Margaret, Gary and Wayne came home. It was my last night and there was all the packing to be done. Dad and Margaret came to the bedroom to do it with me. They dry-mocked Derek’s prissy note: 1 × kagoul, 5 × sox, 2 × sweaters.

  Then I lay in bed, lit yellow by the streetlight. I was all wrong inside.

  The next day, I flew back to Edinburgh, back to the older light. Mum and Derek met me at the airport.

  I said, ‘Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad.’

  At home in Duff Street, Derek said, ‘And while you were away did you keep your promise? Did you obey the Word of Wisdom?’

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘No tea, no coffee?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No Coke?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Good chap.’

  He ruffled my hair. And that night, I slept under Jesus’s gaze.

  Unpleasant knowledge passed between Jesus and me like heavy traffic. But Jesus understood. Jesus always did.

  A few weeks later, Bishop Steele approached me after the sacrament meeting. He lay a frail hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Brother Cross.’

  I turned. Bishop Steele offered his hand. I shook it. It was like damp twigs wrapped in tissue paper. He used the gesture to press upon me a folded square of paper. I crushed it without looking. I knew it was an assignment to give my testimony at next week’s service.

  That afternoon, I was so quiet that Derek asked if something was wrong. When I told him, he laughed and clapped my shoulder. It was a big moment: my first testimony.

  I said, ‘But I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just listen to that still, small voice,’ said Mum.

  ‘And say your prayers,’ said Derek. ‘Ask our Heavenly Father.’

  I asked Heavenly Father. And I listened for the still, small voice. But when I thought about giving the testimony, my heart beat so loud in my chest, it drowned out their response.

  On Saturday, I sat down with a pad of paper. It was the pad I wrote stories on. I stuck the tip of my tongue through the corner of my mouth and I began to work.

  When it was done, I gathered up the paper; thick with my heavily smudged, blunt-edged, left-handed graffiti: the writing that all my teachers said I must work hard to improve and which never did. I ran to Derek.

  I said, ‘Done it.’

  He said, ‘Come here.’

  He gave me a hug. He said, ‘You see. Trust in your Heavenly Father.’

  On Sunday I was fidgety, unable to concentrate on the sacrament meeting. I didn’t hear what the other speakers were saying. I jolted when the room proclaimed its communal Amen.

  Then bishop Steele announced my name. I stood and edged down the pew. Members intercepted me as I passed them, in order to take my hand and squeeze it. They smiled and nodded encouragement.

  I walked to the front. There were so many faces, all of them smiling: even the missionaries who stood at the rear, guarding the double doors.

  I took the paper from my pocket and unfolded it.

  I said: ‘Good morning, brothers and sisters. It’s a privilege to be up here bearing my testimony to you this Sabbath morning.

  ‘I’d just like to say that I know this is the true Church of Jesus Christ on the Earth today, that Spencer W. Kimball is a true prophet of God. I’m grateful to the missionaries that knocked on our door that night, Elder Follett and Elder Baxter and for the words they spoke to us.

  ‘I’m grateful for the Church in our lives and the difference it has made to it, for the Word of Wisdom and especially for the scriptures. I can’t say I read them as often as I should, but it is a great comfort just knowing they are there when we really need them.

  ‘Joseph Smith was truly a prophet of latter days. The Book of Mormon is God’s word.

  ‘I’m grateful to my family for the very special love we share. I’m thankful for our knowledge of the church and the scriptures, for the teachings of the church–which are just, plain common sense: we believe in God the eternal father and in his son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. We don’t drink or smoke or take any habit-forming substances. We don’t steal or commit adultery. We believe in the family unit. We believe in being honest and true, chaste, benevolent and in doing good to all men.’

  I paused: a beat before the big finish.

  ‘Where is the weirdness in that?’ I said.

  17

  In fact, I never read the scriptures. There was no need. I had memorized the twelve Articles of Faith, which summarized Mormon doctrine to an extent I found more than adequate.

  Sometimes, Derek surprised me with a test. He stood up and turned down the TV. He said: ‘Neil, what is article 10?’

  I scrolled through them in my mind. Then I said: ‘“We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisaical glory.”’

  ‘Very good,’ said Derek, and turned up th
e TV again.

  Nevertheless, I lacked any perception that God was present in my life. He was too remote, too judicial. Being unable to imagine his personality, I found his motives inscrutable. God was difficult to love. Instead, I was intensely attuned to the living presence of Jesus Christ.

  In sunlight, Christ walked always beside me. He was relaxed when I was relaxed. He hurt when I hurt. When I was afraid, his infinite and gentle affection enveloped me. Sometimes the thought of him made me want to weep, because he was so perfect and because he loved me so much.

  But even in his tenderness and mercy, Jesus was untouchable: he smiled upon me from a distance. It wasn’t like that with the Devil. The Devil wasn’t distant. The Devil dogged my footsteps. He flickered in the shadows beside me. In darkness, he slipped into my skin. He grinned behind my eyes. The Devil knew me as utterly as Jesus knew me. But the Devil was closer.

  Our best Mormon friends were David Chapple, the policeman, and his wife Pat.

  Pat worked in a lunatic asylum. She told Mum about secret rooms in the basement; rooms she had never visited herself, but whose existence was an open secret. They contained grotesque malformations, half-human monsters. Most were the issue of men who looked on with pleasure while their wives were pleasured by rutting dogs and squealing pigs. And later, driven mad by the sight of their terrible offspring, these debased fathers became inmates of the asylum. They were silent in the rooms above, moving their chairs to follow the fall of sunlight while their monster children howled and wept in the darkness below.

  The Chapples had three children. Richard was autistic. His hair was neat and he wore tank-tops and National Health spectacles. Everyone ignored him. And there were two teenage girls who were identical twins. They wore dark pageboy haircuts and the same clothes. Pat and David Chapple could tell them apart without hesitation. Either that, or the girls didn’t bother to correct them.