The Gospel of Us

by Owen Sheers

  Johnny and me hung around the centre for a few more hours after the raid, just to see what was going to happen next. But not much else did. It seemed like the happening had all slowed down for a bit by then, and in its place there was a sense of waiting instead; the whole town waiting for the next trigger, the next move – by us or by them, by the Company Man or by the Teacher.

  We were on our way out, heading back to Johnny’s to finally have that practice, when I got a clue as to what that next move might be. A flyer, palmed into my hand by a kid in a black hoodie, walking past me as quick as a whippet. By the time I looked round he was already gone, melted into the crowd.

  ‘What’s it say?’ Johnny asked.

  I looked down at the flyer. There was nothing fancy about it, no illustrations, printed in a hurry by the looks of it. Just some words on a page.

  But that was enough.

  TONIGHT

  Sandfields Social and Labour Club

  THE LAST SUPPER

  Be There

  They’d started closing the social clubs the year before all this happened. At first no one really noticed. After all, the kids and grandkids of the men who’d founded them had moved on to the pubs now, hadn’t they? There were no Sunday drinking laws any more, so who needed them old clubs? The Naval, the Social and Labour, The Royal Legion. The first ones were taken under the story of property developers. The lights were turned off, the bar equipment sold off, the pool table auctioned off. Boards went up on the windows and the club went quiet, waiting for the bulldozers. Only the bulldozers never came. The ‘development’ never happened, as if those companies weren’t developers at all, more like assassins.

  It was around then, with people starting to complain, starting to miss the gone socials, that the Resistance realised the clubs left might still be of some use to them. Handy fronts for organising meetings, recruiting, getting their pamphlets out among the people. And it worked for a while too. Council didn’t want to be going in and mess up a good honest working man’s night, now did they? Not likely. ICU, however. Well, they weren’t so touchy-feely about the clubs. They soon got wind of the connection between the socials and the Resistance. They had their people, their eyes, their ears, their spies. They had their cameras and their recording equipment, so no surprise when they started closing down the clubs themselves. No developer story needed any more either. Just straightforward ‘support of an illegal organisation’ notices, papers served, then sweetened a few weeks later with empty offers to set up meetings for a new ‘leisure facility’.

  By the time all this happened with the Teacher the Sandfields Social was the last club left in town. But even the Sandfields’ time was up now. The committee had been issued with an eviction order and a hefty fine if they didn’t comply. Like so much else they’d had to accept, but there was no way they were going quietly.

  The party for the last night of the club had been planned ever since we got news of its closure. A proper send-off for the old girl, that’s what the committee decided to do, and for the old boys who’d sailed in her for all those years, weaving their way across her floors, unsteady as regular sailors on a real ship at sea. And at first, that’s all that night was going to be. The best bloody party the town had seen for ages; half celebration, half wake. But not any more. Not now, not with what was stirring in the town, with the shooting in the civic centre and with these crowds the Teacher was gathering. No, with all that going on the closing dinner had become something else instead. It had become the next move in this new game. And I’m telling you, after what I’d witnessed so far, there was no way in hell I was going to be missing it.

  The club looked beautiful for her send-off. Fair dos, the committee had sunk their hearts and souls into this party, and, no doubt, the last of the club’s coffers too. Now, nobody can say she’s the prettiest looking thing from the outside, the Sandfields Social. I think even her most dedicated drinkers would have to admit that. Big lump of moulded plastic slumped at the end of a weed-ridden car park. But step through her swing doors upstairs and it turns out under that grey exterior she’s only wearing the club equivalent of pink frilly knickers, isn’t she? Decked out like a regular 70s crooners palace she is, little stage and all. And for the party that night they’d really gone to town. Fixed the lights, taped up the slipped gels, even got two big screens up and the old disco ball turning again, like a glittering moon above us all.

  I was at the bar, staring up at that disco ball when I saw the balloons up there too. Helium balloons they were, in silvers and reds and electric blues, still stuck up against the ceiling from the parties gone by – an unofficial archive of all the moments marked in there. ‘60 Today!’, ‘Congratulations’, ‘Newly Weds’, ‘Happy 80th’, ‘Happy 21st’, ‘Happy 18th’. Yes, the Sandfields Social had been there for all of us at some point, giving all of us a little bit of escape and memories, if only for one night.

  To begin with the closing party was just that, a regular party. A fair bit of crooning and even some old blokes getting up on stage to share their best memories of the place. There was food too of course, carried six plates to an arm by waiters out the banging swing doors of the kitchen, while the drink flowed from the taps so quick the barmen spent half their night down the cellars changing the barrels. Yes, a regular night in the social it was, with the volume and colour all turned up to make it the best night she’d ever seen.

  But then the Teacher showed up. Whenever he did, trouble wasn’t far behind, it hadn’t taken us long to learn that one. So while he was welcomed with a cheer when he entered, a sense of unease shivered through the room at the same time too. He was with a bunch of his followers. At the time I didn’t know this, but turns out they were the ones he’d approached to follow him, not some of the hundreds of randoms who’d done it the other way round. Being an old-time club man, Peter led them in, shouting across the room with the confidence of a lifetime membership.

  ‘Garry? Garry! Just putting some of my mates up on the committee table. That alright? Great, champion, thanks Garry!’ Then there was the Teacher himself, Joanne, looking all doey-eyed at him, Alfie from Llewellyn Street, the Legion Twins, Simon my old music teacher and, lastly, one of his brothers. The younger one, the sad-looking one from the slipway, only he didn’t look sad any more.

  I watched them from where I was propped up at the bar as they sat down round one long table. A regular dirty dozen they were, a right old patchwork of oddballs. As for the Teacher, well, I reckon I was one of only a handful who’d seen him from the very start, from that first moment when he’d appeared on the beach. As such I’d been able to track his changes from the beginning. And he was changing, make no mistake about it. Like he was living a full life in just a few days; learning and soaking up everything at the speed of light. It was in his eyes, that’s where the change was happening. In the way he looked at us all, and the way he looked at his followers around him.

  Or was it?

  I still can’t be absolutely sure, but in the years since it’s crossed my mind more than once that perhaps he wasn’t changing after all. That perhaps it wasn’t him, but us. The way we looked at him, the way we saw him, the way we watched him. Maybe, after everything, this whole story isn’t about what he did to us, but about what we did to him. Not for me to say, I suppose. We all see things different, don’t we? Remember things different. You’ll have to ask Johnny for his version, or his mam, or anyone else who was there. It’s all different ways of seeing and believing isn’t it? And like I said, I still can’t work out most of it for myself – I’m just telling you what I saw and felt, that’s all, so don’t shoot the messenger.

  One thing’s for sure though, the Teacher and his followers were having a rare old time at that party, no doubt about that. Tucking into the scampi, chips and pints, laughing good and hard at Peter’s stories about how he’d vouched so and so into the club, and him, and him. It sounds odd, I know, but for all their strangeness they looked like a regular family up there. A regular family enjoyi
ng a night out at the social. I only mention this because the Teacher already had a real family. For some reason though, apart from his younger brother sat beside him now, he didn’t want anything to do with them. I saw as much just before I left the shopping centre with Johnny, just after that whippet boy palmed the Resistance flyer into my hand.

  We were making our way into the street when I saw him again, the Teacher, down below among the red-blanket families and their shrines. No surprise there, I suppose, him sitting down with them, listening again. But what happened next, well that was a surprise alright.

  I saw her coming through the crowd just before she got to him, moving as quick as she could, shoving people aside, wide-eyed, head moving from side to side to see around the bodies in the way. I recognised the desperate look on her right off, and the frowns of the two big fellas striding behind her too.

  I grabbed Johnny by the arm to stop him. ‘Hold up,’ I said. ‘She’s found him.’

  ‘Who’s found who?’ he said.

  ‘The Teacher’s mam,’ I replied, pointing down at the shopping-centre floor just as she got to him. ‘She’s found him.’

  When she did she flung her arms round his neck and buried her face in his chest as if she was drowning and he was the last piece of driftwood for miles.

  ‘My son! Oh my son! I told them!’ she cried into his shoulder. ‘I said you’d come back. Where have you been? I knew it was you. My son!’

  I’m telling you, the look on her when she pulled back – you’d have to be a hardhearted bastard not to have welled up at it. She must have thought him dead and now all of a sudden, after all those months, here he was again, brought back to life, back with her at last.

  One of the brothers, the older one, was soon pulling on her sleeve.

  ‘Mam. Not here. Come on. Come on now.’

  But she wasn’t budging, not now she’d found him, so she clung on, weeping into his clothes. So the brother turned his attention to the Teacher instead.

  ‘Look at the bloody state of her! Look what you done to her! Come on now, let’s get out of here.’

  The Teacher glanced at him, but said nothing. Which is when his mam looked at him properly, really properly.

  ‘There’s something not right. Look at him. There’s something not right.’

  Then he said it. The worst thing she could have heard.

  ‘Who are you? I… I don’t know you.’

  For a moment she was stunned, looking up into the face she’d watched all those years, only to see her own unrecognised in his eyes. When she finally spoke, it was through a scream, a primal, heart-wrung scream.

  ‘Don’t say that! Don’t say that! I’m your mother! Your mother!’

  Well, then it really kicked off. The older brother having a go at the Teacher, his mam pleading with him, and trying to stop her other son from shouting, everyone stopping and staring. To top it all the police had started clearing the centre, making announcements over the tannoy…

  THE SHOPPING CENTRE WILL CLOSE IN THREE MINUTES. PLEASE VACATE THE BUILDING.

  But you know what? In the middle of it all, in the very centre of that storm of people, the Teacher was still and calm as you like, with eyes for only one person; his other brother, the sad one from the slip.

  I couldn’t hear a thing by now, not from where we were up on the balcony, but I saw the Teacher speak to him, and the younger brother say something in reply, something that sent the older one even deeper into his rage, and made their mam grasp and grab at her hair.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight, so in a way I didn’t mind that we had to start moving on. ICU security were locking the place down, so we had to head. But I wanted to know too. Why was he being like that? Why was he saying those things to his own mam? Shouting after her as the older brother dragged her away,

  ‘Who are you woman? Who are you?’

  And her replying, with all the anguish of a wounded animal,

  ‘I’m your mother! I’m your mother!’

  Again and again, her voice raw and red, echoing down the centre’s polished corridors.

  Watching the Teacher at his long table in the club I still wanted to know, and I figured I might find out too, because not long after he entered with his followers, his mam came in with the older brother, still wearing a face like thunder. I was expecting her to start her screaming again, but she didn’t. It seemed like she’d changed tack and was going to try a different way to get to him.

  Peter offered them seats at the table, but she refused.

  ‘No love, no, it’s Ok. You’re with your friends. We’ll be fine on our usual table, won’t we Rhys? No, you stay here. But maybe we can have a little chat later is it? Just us?’

  And then she went, taking Rhys with her to sit on another table up by the wall. The Teacher didn’t bat an eyelid. Just let her go. Though he must have remembered her somehow, because of what he did later.

  Garry had brought them all some sandwiches he was getting rid of from the bar. There weren’t enough to go round so the Teacher split them between the whole table then, when they’d eaten them, he stood up and made a little speech. I couldn’t hear what he said from where I was, but he spoke to all of them, and to each of them one by one. And whatever it was, it worked, because they all nodded and looked proper content when he was done. Before he sat down he made a toast, raising his glass and getting them all on their feet.

  ‘Yesterday we were many,’ he said. ‘But today we are one. To Us!’

  Then all the followers drank. But he didn’t, at least not yet. Not until he’d raised his glass across the room to her too, to his mam. And not until she’d raised hers back. Then, and only then, did he drink from his.

  It was after the raffle she finally got to him. I’d seen her try twice before, getting up from her table clutching a photograph, only to be beaten by someone else each time; someone else wanting to tell him their story. So she’d had to sit it out beside her other son, sit it out through the bands, the MC’s jokes and the local opera singer belting out Nessun Dorma. But then the raffle came and she saw her chance.

  Kev, the MC, had asked Peter to come and pull out the tickets. But Peter put the Teacher forward instead, shouting out as he made his way to the stage, ‘It’s alright Kev, I’ll vouch for him!’ releasing a groan across the whole room. It was as he was leaving the stage again that she caught him…

  ‘Hello,’ she said, all polite, like she was talking to a stranger. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I do. You’re the woman from the shopping centre, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ She thought for a moment, then said ‘Do you mind if I tell you a story?’

  She must have seen how he couldn’t get enough of people’s stories, how he’d been devouring them ever since he’d arrived in town the day before.

  ‘Is it your story?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, it’s more our story,’ she said, a hint of hope lifting her voice. ‘It’s a story about us.’

  She didn’t give him a chance to ask any more, but just went straight on, making the most of this chink in his forgetting.

  ‘You must have been, oh, I don’t know. Eight? Nine maybe? Well, I’d been looking for you all over the house. It was late see, way past your bedtime, when I saw you out the window. And there you were, in the garden, on your own. Wearing your pyjamas you were. So I opened the window and shouted down to you. “What you doing there? I’ve been looking for you for ages! Stay there!” You remember that? Me shouting down to you? In my nightie? We still don’t know how you got out there. The door was locked! You must have got out somehow though, because there you were, on your own in the garden. Me in my nightie shouting down at you.’

  She paused then, looking for the ripples in his expression she’d hoped her words might make. But there were none. Only that question again, the question he kept asking her, like torture.

  ‘Who are you woman?’

  I saw she wanted to scream at him again, b
ut this was her one chance, so she held it in, held herself tight, laying a hand on his arm and speaking to him soft, low.

  ‘I’m your mother, love. That’s what I’m saying. Your mother. You don’t remember? Me coming out to bring you back in? You didn’t want to come at first. But you did in the end. You came inside, you came home with me. Come on love, let’s go home is it?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m with my friends. I can’t leave them.’

  She bit her lip, looking hard at him, as if her sadness was becoming anger. Then she pushed that photograph she’d been carrying into his hand.

  ‘What about her? You remember her, don’t you?’

  He looked down at the photo. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, still looking at it. ‘Who is she?

  ‘She’s your daughter.’

  And there it was. The ripple. She saw it, and so did I. A flicker of another man. A man who remembered. She grabbed his arm with her other hand too, holding on.

  ‘That’s your favourite photo of her. You remember that day. Down on the beach we were. She’d just come out the sea, all wet she was, and she came running up the beach calling at you, “Daddy, daddy!” And you picked her up, and you threw her in the air. And then I took this photo. As you were drying her off. You remember that? Look at her now. Look at her.’

  And he did. Looked like I’d never seen someone look before. The whole club was still having a party, people getting back in their seats for the second half, the band warming up on stage, but he was somewhere else. He was on a beach again. A beach he remembered, drying a little girl he loved, a girl who was his daughter from a life he’d once lived.