Facing the Tank

by Patrick Gale

  ‘I love you when you’re angry,’ he jeered at it, blowing a kiss, and everyone had laughed.

  After eating his burnt fish fingers and while waiting for the Angel’s Delight to set a little more, Evan had returned to his desk. He had covered four pages of his diary yet if he were to write to even a distant colleague in his present state, he could still be sure of revealing too much. Despite his denial he had spied on her that morning. He had hidden in the kitchenette so as to be sure of having breakfast with her and not her mother. He had seen her rush downstairs to snatch the newspaper. Her dressing gown had flown out as she turned to run up again. Her thighs were voluptuous rather than athletic, he knew this now. He also knew their shade of pink and the unexpected delight of her tiny feet. It had taken two years for him to persuade Miriam to let him kiss her feet with any seriousness. She had claimed that she was ticklish but when she finally deigned to let him suck at them on a deserted beach one day he had found that she had hard heels and nasty horny bits on the undersides of her toes where her preposterous shoes had squashed and rubbed them. Evan could tell that Madeleine’s feet would be soft; not only could one see at a glance that she gave them nothing to do, but she was plainly more an earth child than a stiletto wearer. Forced into high heels, she would be sure to teeter and say ‘bugger’ a lot. Yes indeed, she was fine when she was angry. He might even say that anger was her element, had he not been struck this morning by her silence. After Mrs Merluza had left, he had crept up to sit on the stairs and listen while Madeleine had her bath. She was a big girl who bumped into things and cast a shadow, but her bathing had been terrifyingly silent. She had not hummed or sighed, talked to herself or made any of the relaxed, splashy noises of most people’s bathtimes. At least she was a heavy smoker; that made her human. Evan met the stare of his reflection in the dark garden windows and wondered whether she had made a lot of noise in bed with the Cardinal. He smiled at his imaginings then, disgusted with himself, reached for Sukie Lark Rosen and sobriety.

  24

  It was Wednesday morning and the alarm clock was turning circles on the floor like some poisoned fly. Groaning, Gavin Tree shoved aside the bedding which had twisted itself around him, pulled on his dressing gown and slippers and shuffled to the barn-like episcopal bathroom. He had always groaned on waking. The sound bore no relation to his state of mind but was as purely physiological as a baby’s first cry. As he shaved, brushed his thick white hair, gargled with Listerine, replaced his plate and shuffled to his dressing room, the groans gradually modulated to hums and progressed, via snatches of half-remembered melody, to a full-blown pom-pomming rendition of something (usually by Handel or Stanford) as he walked down to his mother’s apartment to wake her.

  Mrs Chattock had been awake on most mornings, long before his knock on her sitting room door (the waft of scented bathroom steam betrayed her) but on retiring, one always asked the other when she wished to rise and made a promise to wake her. This was part of the family closeness they had confected since her retirement into her son’s pious household from the knocks of an uncaring world.

  Gavin liked the effect that his mother and her interior designer friend had created in what used to be a guest flat. The Palace was a minor architectural delight, but less than a joy to inhabit. Successive generations of bishops had worn away any quirks that might serve to make such a building human and left only tide marks of pomp, and memorial encrustations. There were three principle rooms which spanned one side of the building on the ground floor. Neither Gavin, nor his mother, nor his secretary were musically able so the piano which should have been the feature of the music room was draped in a silk shawl and shunted into one corner as a support for photographs and a vase of ever-changing flowers. The dining room was far too large to make dining à deux anything but sinister, so all but rare official meals were taken in the backstairs fug of the kitchen. The third main room was the library. The original episcopal collection had long been at the convent for rebinding and the making of copies when the Dissolution arrived. The nuns had locked the books in the cellars for protection but these treasures were then purloined, in a masterly sleight of hand that no one had since dared undo, by Thomas Tatham when he turned the convent into his famous school. The present Palace library contained therefore little beyond an Encyclopaedia Britannica, a vast dictionary of Catholic thought (‘for mugging up on the Enemy’, Mrs Chattock said), bound copies of all editions of The Church Times, The Barrowcester Chronicle and minutes of meetings of the General Synod and Lambeth Council. These were fleshed out by a generous and supremely unapproachable collection of ecclesiastical memoirs and biographies (few in one volume) donated by Bishop Herbert Thrush in 1939. The furniture here was slightly more comfortable than that of the music room, there was oak panelling and the blacks and navy blues of the spines were most soothing, so the room made a good setting for the obligatory Christmas punch and pies party. The sprinkling of rugs and the anti-draught sausages by the doors also suited the bodily needs of Mrs Chattock’s meditation group. The plasterwork on the ceilings of these great ground-floor spaces was exquisite, especially in early morning when, with the connecting doors thrown open, a whole side of the house was bathed in cool light. However these salons were impossible to heat well and, to fit them for the reception of large numbers, they had acquired a hardwearing industrial carpet and an array of strong, charmless furniture.

  While his mother styled herself a homely snug in her flat, whence she descended only for meals, her groups and to walk in the garden, Gavin retreated from the assessing stare of the portraits downstairs into frequent spells in his study. This small, low-ceilinged room was placed off a halfway landing over the front door and so enjoyed a fine view along the plane tree avenue of the drive, and across to Tatham’s chapel tower. Gavin had there the desk he had bought off his Oxford landlady and the ragged Turkey carpet which had lain beneath it in every lodging since. Apart from a forbidding copy of Thring’s Uppingham Sermons that had mysteriously strayed thither from the library and which he had never had the courage to return, he was surrounded by his own books. Bound editions of The New Statesman and New Society shared a bookcase with his pride and joy; complete first edition sets of Simenon and Dorothy Sayers. On a shelf out of reach in a less important corner, lay the twelve free copies of Less by More sent him by his publishers and which he had always lacked the nonchalant poise to give away to friends.

  Gavin looked into his study now after ‘waking’ his mother. He drew the curtains. The Dean had been here for an urgent council last night concerning the ever-swelling publicity for the miracle and how he and the Chapter could best turn this into profits for the cathedral appeal. The Dean chain-smoked on a pipe and the air was rancid with its stale fumes. Gavin threw open both windows and, pom-pomming Britten’s Jubilate – a new departure, this, inspired by yet another morning of brilliant sunshine – he continued his descent to the kitchen.

  Normally a peaceful haven at that time of day, the kitchen had already been invaded by Mrs Jackson. Dispense though he might with the handful of gardeners, maids and cleaners engaged by his higher-living predecessors, it seemed that Gavin had to accept Mrs Jackson the housekeeper and Mr Jakewith the gardener as built-in. Even Bishops with wives were not trusted by the powers that were, it seemed, to keep house, garden and table in good order. Having no female companionship but that of a twice-widowed mother, Gavin was in no position to do anything but waive his principles, it seemed. Mrs Jackson and Mr Jakewith were siblings, cast in the same dourly industrious mould. Like her drear cuisine, Mrs Jackson, who now had one arm up to the elbow in a chicken, was especially lacking in the leaven of joy. Of all his flock, she was possibly the one to whom addressing one’s bishop as plain Mr Tree came easiest.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Jackson. What a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Morning, Mr Tree. Your breakfast’s in the dining room.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No room for you both to have it in here. I’ve got to get ready for th
at black priest as is coming to lunch.’

  ‘Goodness! Is that today? I believe you’re right. Well, thank you, Mrs Jackson.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Our Judith’s helping out with a spot of cleaning, so don’t mind her.’

  ‘How nice,’ Gavin said. ‘No. I won’t.’

  He had indeed forgotten that Nigel Okereke, Bishop of Bantawa, an African diocese adopted by Gavin on Barrowcester’s behalf, was coming to lunch. Leaving Mrs Jackson to brutalize the chicken, he walked back to the hall and crossed to the dining room. The pom-pomming had regressed to the less confident, fragmentary stage. Judith Jackson, an anaemic teenager as shy as her mother was sullen, scampered, duster in hand, through the doors to the library as he entered. A rack of toast and a coffee pot enfurled in an insulating towel waited at one end of the table, along with two meagre glasses of orange juice and the mail. Already sustained by tea and biscuits, Mrs Chattock would not come down for another fifteen minutes, thus to uphold the charade that her son had woken her. Gavin took a seat and, sipping some juice, picked crestfallen through his letters. He took out the envelopes addressed by hand and opened the unfamiliar one first.

  ‘St Dunstan’s Holt

  Amberwoods

  Clough

  Nr. Barrowcester,’ he read,

  Dear Bishop

  I have no hesitation in supplying my name and address since I am quite unabashed of the strength of my feelings. Your accession to the diocese of Barrowcester, indeed your original entry to the church of Christ, our General and Blessed Sacrifice, and of Elizabeth, our Queen was a blight on our land. You are a curse to the spiritual welfare of many helpless parishioners.

  My wife and I have no doubt that you are an emissary of our lionlike enemy the Devil. We are not deceived by the holy robes you wear, knowing you to have obtained them through your evil powers and the deceits of which your chief is father. Your presence in our midst is a lie and a desecration and we abhor the manner in which you seek to infect clean minds with your abominable false doctrines. The Devil has many names with which to lead us astray and communism is one of them.

  When you appear on Faith Forum later this week we shall foregather with ten other True Christians – thus echoing the number of the blessed disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ (may his name burn your devilish eyes!!) and we shall conduct a rite of exorcism to rid the diocese of your presence. We pray daily for divine intervention in this matter and know we are not the only ones.

  May the pains of Hell be multiplied on your swift return to from whence you came.

  I remain in Christ,

  Kenneth Kirk (Church Warden)

  p.s. We know the so-called miracle was a hellish invention to assist the re-entry of moneychangers into the Temple. The sweet-seeming canary is a well-known posture of Him Whose Name Is Legion.

  Gavin pushed the letter over to his mother’s plate. Messages of its kind came daily and it amused her to read them. She would perch her reading glasses on her nose, the better to glance up and watch his reactions and, cigarette in hand, she would recite them. Her mimicry of suitable voices was extremely funny. Gavin tried not to be intimidated by his hate mail – it was compensated for by a few letters of support – but it was only human to suspect that his mother’s mockery was a temptation to fate. On second thoughts, he took the letter back and thrust it into his jacket pocket.

  He heard a familiar smoker’s cough and footsteps coming from the hall and poured a cup of coffee for his mother as she came in.

  ‘Morning,’ he called out over the tail-end of her bout of coughing. She waved a handkerchief in reply, calmed her raging lungs then came to take her seat before him.

  ‘Very grand this morning, aren’t we?’

  ‘Mrs Jakewith needs the kitchen to herself so she can do something to a chicken for Nigel Okereke’s lunch.’

  ‘Does she, indeed?’ She sipped at her coffee and made a face as it scalded her tongue. ‘Any letters?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ He waited for her to refuse toast then took a piece himself and buttered it. She looked appalling this morning; decades older than her sixty-whatever. She had tried to mask her hangdog pallor with rash dabs of blusher. It looked as though her ancient surface had begun to rust. ‘Bad night?’ he ventured.

  ‘Christ,’ she swore softly and spooned another sugar into her cup.

  ‘Tell me,’ he told her. She reached for a piece of toast after all, but only so as to have something to tear up on her plate.

  ‘I …’

  ‘What?’

  She looked across at him suddenly. He had never seen such fear in her eyes.

  ‘I know you’ll think me a stupid old bat,’ she went on cautiously, her own accent surfacing, ‘but … Petal, do you believe in werewolves?’

  ‘Werewolves? Just misinterpretation of rabies symptoms, weren’t they? Hydrophobia; fear of water, walking on all fours, bellowing like a dog.’

  ‘Not werewolves, then, but a kind of possession?’

  ‘That’s more serious.’ She was beginning to shake. ‘Don’t have another stroke,’ he prayed. ‘Don’t let her break down on me. Not now.’

  ‘Possession by some kind of beast. Worse than possession; more a sort of opening out – as if there was this ravening beast inside you and it only needed the right words to make it come to the surface and make you sort of lose control.’ Her hands shook with sudden violence. One knocked her coffee cup over in its saucer, sending a shock of black across the white linen. Her other hand swept and scrabbled on her plate, scattering torn chunks of toast. Gavin jumped up, helpless, uncertain whether to run to her or run for help. With a visible effort she tugged her hands to her breast, against each other. They quivered still, but their violence was contained. She looked up at him and he knew she saw his fear. ‘Gavin.’ She had not called him by his name in years; he was always ‘Petal’ to her, or ‘Poppet’ or the pleasantly Elizabethan ‘Chuck’. ‘Gavin, I had a dream,’ she said. The hands broke loose again and fluttered under her astonished gaze. For a moment it looked as though she might applaud.

  Gavin raced round the ridiculous expanse of the table, feet sliding on the polished wooden floor. He seized her hands and crouched before her. She smiled down at him and her hands, calm now having passed their wildness into him, rose and pressed gently against his cheeks. He smelt gin on her early morning breath. The door behind her opened and Mrs Jakewith’s absurd daughter stepped in and paused with a barely audible ‘Oh’.

  ‘Poor Gavin,’ his mother whispered. ‘You’re so bloody pure!’

  25

  Brooklea Rest Home nestled in the laburnum heart of Friary Hill, the suburban sprawl beyond the Roman Bridge. This district, which also held the crematorium and Garden of Remembrance, was named after the red-brick mansion built there in 1880 by the Prossers, a family of sanitary porcelain barons who had since moved south. The Prosser estate had been sold to developers after the last war. Its fanciful baronial pile had been converted into flats and now loured from the midst of a tangle of cul-de-sacs strewn with postwar villas, boat trailers and sunset gates. Brooklea was a four down, five up which had put forth bungaloid extensions to its rear and on each side. From the rockery on the front lawn a small motorized stream trickled into a lily pond. There were flowering cherries at war with a laburnum and a forsythia bush. Prison walls of leylandii to the sides and rear protected neighbours and inmates alike from embarrassment. The three steps up to the front door had been half-covered by a wheelchair ramp.

  Obeying the polite request mounted above the doorbell, Fergus rang then entered. There were two sets of doors. The first let him into a glass-topped porch housing a rubber plant in rude health and an umbrella stand full of sticks, the second, with a blast of overheated air and disinfectant, let him into the hall. The Matron was waiting for him, a capable, sympathetic-looking woman, her well-coiffed brown hair surmounted by the white crown of her authority.

  ‘Mr Gibson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello. I’m Cla
ire Telcott, the Matron.’

  ‘How do you do?’

  Her hand was cold and no doubt often scrubbed. She led him into her study-cum-sitting room which abutted the porch and so had a view like any other house in the road, free of wobbling white heads.

  ‘Now,’ she said once they were seated on either side of her desk. ‘It’s your mother you wish to bring to stay with us?’

  ‘Yes. She’s only seventy-two and was perfectly fit and spry. She worked as a missionary in Africa, teaching in a bush school until last autumn. Then she had her first heart attack and had to come back to England. I thought it best to bring her down to live with me rather than let her go back to living alone in her flat in Scotland.’ Claire Telcott hummed and made a face to show that she thought this a wise and admirable action. ‘Then she had another attack soon after Christmas and her mind seemed to go.’

  ‘It happens.’ She sighed. ‘Can she walk?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s refused to leave her bed for any length of time since I brought her to live with me and frankly, with her … well, it’s very difficult for me to cope because I have to work and …’

  ‘I gather from Dr Morton she’s incontinent?’

  ‘Yes. And she’s very confused.’

  ‘The poor dear. Does she have many other relatives?’

  ‘Not now. My father died fifteen years ago. There are some cousins in Canada and nieces in Scotland but we’ve all lost touch.’

  ‘Fine. Did Nurse Drake mention fees?’

  ‘Yes, and I applied to my solicitor for power of attorney this morning.’