The Art of Standing Still

by Penny Culliford

  ‘Which you haven’t.’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘So what time did you get away?’

  ‘About eight this morning. I’ve been driving round since, trying to make sense of it all.’

  ‘So you’ve had no sleep and no breakfast; you must be shattered. Oh, Alistair, why don’t you go home to Amanda? We’ll manage here; I’ve appointed an understudy.’

  ‘There’s no point in going home.’ He rubbed his hand over his face, temporarily rearranging the crags and smoothing out the lines. ‘Amanda’s left me.’

  She felt a surge of compassion. ‘That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’ She was going to add, ‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’ but thought better of it. There were some things she couldn’t do. ‘The more reason not to be here.’

  ‘I’d rather be here with my . . . with friends.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  ‘I’ve decided. Where are we getting changed? And where can I get a coffee? I have a need for caffeine that borders on the clinical.’

  Ruth directed him to the marquee and left the three women fussing and brooding over him. If she could have found a solid brick wall she would have hit her head against it. The whole day was taking on a surreal, nightmarish quality. She headed back to the farmyard. Ronnie came jogging up behind her, puffing like an overweight pug dog.

  ‘Ruth, if you have a moment . . .’

  ‘Ronnie, this isn’t a good time.’

  He looked crestfallen. ‘I just wanted to show you something. You see, I had this idea – well, I’ll show you.’

  He led Ruth towards the abbey. As they passed a small copse of trees, he pointed.

  ‘Look, there.’

  She squinted through the tree trunks. There, twisting gently left and right, was an unclothed male mannequin, suspended from a branch by a rope around its neck. Ruth snorted a laugh.

  ‘What is that supposed to be?’

  ‘That,’ huffed Ronnie, ‘is Judas Iscariot.’

  ‘But he’s naked.’

  ‘I know he is at the moment, but once dear Alistair has finished his little exposé in the Garden of Gethsemane, he can whip off his costume, we’ll dress the dummy and behold – one hanged Judas.’

  ‘Gruesome!’

  ‘All we have to do is put a sign up here saying “Potter’s Field”. It all adds to the authenticity of the performance.’

  ‘Marvellous! Shall we see if I can get some animal guts to spread around for the bit where “he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out”?’

  ‘Great idea!’

  ‘Ronnie, these are supposed to be the renaissance of the medieval mystery play tradition. They are intended to point people towards God. They’re not some kind of gore fest.’

  ‘Point taken.’ He looked despondent.

  Ruth thought for a moment. They were going to be using half a gallon of stage blood on poor Josh for the flogging. What could be more grisly than the crucifixion itself? She looked at Ronnie’s crushed expression. ‘Okay, the dummy stays, but hang it well back into the copse. We don’t want to frighten the children.’

  By the time she arrived at the farmyard, the wise men had been and gone, Herod had slaughtered the innocents, and the boy Jesus had been lost and found in the temple. She sidled up to Harlan for an update. The only hitches were a nasty buzzing sound from the speakers and an indignant yelping from the Archangel Gabriel following a llama bite.

  After a tea break around four, complete with homemade cakes, the cast and crew shifted location once again to the lower field, then to the abbey for the crucifixion and resurrection scenes. The final judgement scene would take place back at the farmyard. Ruth looked at her watch. They were an hour and a half behind schedule. The rain that had held off all day looked certain to make an appearance. The air was still and heavy. Clouds of gnats gathered around the actor’s heads, and a dog on the farm began howling. Worst of all, the stench in the field by the river had got worse – a rotting stink of putrefying flesh that made Ruth’s stomach heave. She would mention it again to Bram and hoped that there would be a strong wind, blowing away from the audience.

  Ruth made careful notes during the trial-before-Pilate scenes. Here she had amalgamated several of the original plays but wondered if she should cut it further. Perhaps John Grisham could keep people enthralled through a lengthy courtroom drama, but she was not sure the same could be said for the amateur actors of Monksford.

  She found the next part of the play difficult to watch, even in rehearsal. Ronnie, Harlan, and Ruth had discussed at length how to stage the flogging scene. The four soldiers, dressed as medieval knights, describe in curt, graphic sentences, how they would flog him with reeds and a flail. ‘Let us drive at him hard with our dashes, All red with our blows we array him and rend him.’

  They tried it with Josh, hands bound with the knights thrashing him with small canes, but they couldn’t use enough force to make it look authentic without injuring Josh. One knight got carried away and swished a little too hard. Josh cried out and stumbled forward.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted.

  ‘No . . . no, carry on. Let’s get to the end of the scene.’ His back showed stripes of red.

  ‘I said, stop.’ The knights untied him. Ruth took Josh a drink of water and handed him his shirt.

  The sheer horror of watching a man stripped and vulnerable, mocked, and scourged was more than Ruth could bear.

  ‘We’ll have to take the beating out of view,’ Ruth decreed.

  ‘But it’s a powerful scene,’ Harlan said.

  ‘Why don’t we have his hands tied around a large pillar? That would obscure most of his body, then he could wear protective padding on his back and the knights can thrash away to their hearts’ content.’ Ronnie said.

  Josh agreed.

  ‘It looks totally ridiculous,’ Harlan said, ‘as if he’s hugging a tree.’

  ‘Why don’t we have the scourging offstage with Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene on stage reacting to what they hear? That way we get the drama and the sound effects, without Josh getting hurt.’

  They nodded in agreement. ‘Works for me,’ Josh said.

  The musicians began their sombre tune, and Jemma and the woman playing Mary, the mother of Jesus, took up their positions. There was a distant rumble of thunder. Josh’s face was intense with concentration. Ruth was captivated by the scene. Josh’s performance was worthy of the professional theatre, playing a man so beaten and abused, yet with such dignity. As the forty lashes hit their mark harmlessly on a chair, Josh’s cries of pain grew louder, then diminished, like a man numbed and semiconscious. She watched Jemma’s face. At first she was acting, acting proficiently but obviously acting. Then Ruth noticed that her distress was real. Tears flowed, and her cries to stop became almost hysterical. The woman playing Mary looked pleadingly at Ruth. She had no choice but to stop the scene. She rushed to the stage area and gathered Jemma in her arms like a child. Jemma clung to her until the sobs subsided. Josh ran from backstage and seeing Jemma, knelt next to Ruth and stroked Jemma’s hair.

  ‘It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault,’ choked Jemma.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked Ruth.

  Ruth shook her head and shrugged.

  Eventually, she was calm enough for Harlan to take her to the green room and revive her with sweet tea. The actors had started to disperse, and Ruth made an executive decision as she called for them to return.

  ‘We have to rehearse the crucifixion scene. I was not at all happy about it the last time, and we must practise with the actual crossbeam, and in costume. We’ll just walk through the part where Christ carries the cross, but we must do the tying, nailing, and hoisting tonight.’

  She dismissed those not directly involved and sent a runner to let Harlan know she wasn’t calling Jemma again. The first spots of rain started to fall. Large, heavy drops that meant business. There was a flash that lit up the Monksford skyline and another rumb
le of thunder.

  ‘We’ll have to hurry,’ Ruth called to the actors.

  Josh was shivering as he carried the solid wooden cross from the mockup of Pilate’s courtyard to where the scaffolding poles stood. Once again the knights took up their callous banter, complaining about the weight and the pain in their shoulders. ‘For great pain is gripping me, my shoulder is torn from its socket.’

  The scene required them to hoist, fail to locate the cross, then hoist again. Josh delivered his lines through gritted teeth, the ropes securing his arms, chafing against his skin and biting into his flesh. The wind whipped up the grass, and the rain started to fall more heavily. Ruth would have to admit defeat. Perhaps they would have another opportunity to run through the final scenes before Saturday’s performance.

  ‘Okay, get him down!’

  Thunder rumbled overhead. It was as dark as night.

  The knights lowered Josh to the ground and untied the ropes. Josh massaged the life back into his arms and shoulders, and Ronnie placed a jacket on him.

  ‘Let’s call it a day,’ Ruth said.

  There was a blinding flash and a sound like an explosion. Ruth was thrown off her feet. She lay stunned. Her ears were ringing and a green light persisted when she blinked. She looked round. Ronnie, Josh and the knights lay on the ground. They were not moving. The grass at the foot of the cross was smoking.

  ‘Oh no!’ she moaned. She climbed unsteadily to her feet. ‘Oh, please, God, no.’

  She staggered towards the first knight. She felt his neck for a pulse. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. ‘What was that?’

  ‘L – lightning, I think,’ stammered Ruth. The others slowly sat up. Ronnie climbed unsteadily to his feet, and Josh rubbed his head. Ruth ran from one to another. No one seemed to be injured, just knocked off their feet and stunned.

  ‘Perhaps the scaffolding wasn’t such a good idea,’ Josh said.

  Ronnie looked at Ruth. ‘Dear, do you think the Almighty is trying to tell us something?’

  Scene Eight

  JEMMA SLEPT BADLY. THE STORM HADN’T HELPED. SHE FELT PARTICULARLY vulnerable on the boat. Even though the worst of the storm had passed by mid-evening, the crashes and flashes had been far too close for her liking. When it rumbled off into the distance she lay in bed, the storm inside her raging as mightily as ever.

  Before the last peal died away, at around six, there was a knock at her door. As soon as she saw Josh’s face, she knew something had happened. He recounted the evening’s events.

  ‘Do you think God was trying to hit you or miss you?’ she said.

  ‘I think he would have hit me if he had wanted to.’

  ‘So, was it a warning?’

  ‘No, it was weather . . . and that doesn’t mean you can justify running it on the weather page of your rag.’

  She smiled and made him some tea. They sat together in the cabin and listened to the thunder.

  ‘I came to see if you were all right. You seemed pretty upset earlier.’

  ‘I thought I had seen it all, that I was tough. I’ve attended coroner’s courts, inquests, and scenes of violence and crime. I’ve seen court photographs that would make your stomach turn, but this – it was brutal. I couldn’t bear seeing them do that to you . . . to him.’

  ‘It’s just a play.’

  ‘But it isn’t, is it?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  She found her Bible. After Jemma had given up on the Old Testament, Ruth had pointed her to Psalms and the book of Isaiah, and her heart had started to melt.

  He was despised and rejected by men,

  a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

  Like one from whom men hide their faces

  he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

  Surely he took up our infirmities

  and carried our sorrows,

  yet we considered him stricken by God,

  smitten by him, and afflicted.

  But he was pierced for our transgressions,

  he was crushed for our iniquities;

  the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

  and by his wounds we are healed.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she had asked Josh.

  ‘It was Jesus’ willingness to give up his life, so that we, who are so helpless and corrupt, can be forgiven.’

  ‘So he suffered all that for us – for me?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘All that beating and flogging and abuse and when he was strung up on a cross . . .’

  ‘That too. He went through it all. He died for you.’

  ‘But that’s . . . unbelievable.’ The storm had returned, and a flash from outside lit up his face.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Josh said, ‘there comes the crunch. That’s our side of the bargain – we have to believe it.’

  Jemma had shaken her head. It was too difficult to accept. Why would any person, least of all, one that was supposed to be God, put himself through all that? Yet the words ‘by his wounds we are healed’ kept going through her mind. As she witnessed the scene, as she heard the lashes, she wanted to cry out, to scream. She just wanted it to stop.

  They had talked long into the night. Josh finally went home, the thunder grew distant, and Jemma finally drifted off in the early hours.

  She groaned at the screeching alarm, dragged herself out of bed, and peered into the mirror at her reflection. She was still getting thinner. At first, it had suited her, but now she looked gaunt with dark circles under her eyes, and her hair had lost its shine.

  She showered and pulled on the first clothes that came to hand, jeans and a black T-shirt. One of the kitten-heeled boots fell out of the wardrobe. A few months ago they had been the most important things in her life. She had been devastated when they got dirty. Having them cleaned would have cost nearly as much as she paid. She had anticipated that those heels by now would be clicking up the cultured pavements of Fleet Street on her way to her job on a national daily. The boot was still stained with mud, grass, cow pat, and a splash of tea. She flung it back in the wardrobe and dragged on some trainers.

  MOHAN WAS POURING HIMSELF A COFFEE WHEN JEMMA ENTERED THE OFFICE. She didn’t need to look at him to know that he disapproved of her attire. She plugged in her laptop. It was before eight; at least he couldn’t complain that she was late. She planned to ask for some leave but not until she had done a bit of digging to find out more about Alistair Fry and to see whether the police had traced the money to its owner. Just thinking about him made her shudder. How could Ruth even consider . . .

  She dialled the police station.

  ‘Can I speak to WPC Patel, please?’

  She was immediately put on hold. On the third time of listening to Pachelbel’s Canon, she was about to give up.

  ‘Patel here. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Jemma Durham, from the Gazette. Can you confirm you have been holding Alistair Fry?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t give any information about an ongoing inquiry. You will have to contact the press officer for any details about Councillor Fry.’

  Jemma clicked into the local radio website for their latest take on the case. All it said was that Councillor Fry had gone voluntarily to the police station to answer questions relating to an alleged assault. As Jemma had seen him at yesterday’s rehearsal, she was more up-to-date than her sources.

  She closed her eyes in frustration. She knew there was something going on, something potentially devastating.

  ‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ she muttered. But it was no good. This was big – bigger than a stolen kiss, bigger than a community play – and Jemma’s metaphorical dog was determined to unearth its bone.

  She had no alternative, she would have to go and see Fry herself. But she needed an excuse. She lifted the receiver to dial Josh’s number, then changed her mind and replaced it. She could hear his sensible voice in her mind, trying to dissuade her from talking to Fry. She was not in a sensible mood.

  She consulted
the contact list Ruth had passed to all the actors and crew. Fry’s address and telephone number were below hers, just under half way down. For the second time she picked up the phone to dial, then changed her mind.

  ‘For goodness sake!’ Mohan shouted. ‘Will you show a bit of decisiveness? Are you going to use that phone or not?’

  ‘Er . . . yes. I mean no. Mohan, would it be all right if I slipped out for a while? I’ll be back for the nine-thirty meeting, promise.’ She slid out of the door before he could answer. She wanted the element of surprise when she called on Fry.

  She drove first to the council chambers, but it was only eight thirty and the Town Hall did not open to the public till nine. Next, she stopped by his office. She knocked, and a woman in a green dress informed her that Mr Fry was on leave for a few days. Finally, she went to his house. Once again, all was locked up, but his car was in the drive. She knocked again. There was still no reply. She returned to her car and unlocked the door.

  She was about to drive off when she noticed Fry walking along the road. He was striding quickly and seemed to be wiping his hands on a cloth. She climbed out of the driver’s seat.

  He balked when he saw her, but quickly recovered his composure. ‘Oh, hello, Jemma. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone this early in the morning. How can I help you?’

  ‘Sorry, it is rather early. I have to get back to work. I didn’t want to bother you, but do you have a minute? It’s about the play.’

  He looked her up and down. ‘I am rather busy.’

  ‘Please, Alistair.’

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  He unlocked the front door, and the smell of stale air and Chinese takeaways hit her.

  ‘Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. I haven’t had time to clear up. Amanda’s . . . away.’

  He cleared a place on the sofa and she sat down. ‘Don’t apologise. I know the problem.’

  ‘And you probably heard, the police wanted to ask me questions following Mr Sutton’s little outburst the other night.’

  ‘Yes, I had heard. Was everything cleared up?’

  ‘I assume so. After keeping me all night, they said thank you and let me go. Of course, I could have left at any time,’ he added quickly.