‘Thanks Dad, but I’m not gay. Max is winding you up.’
I’m not! Look at his vest top.
This is a T-shirt! I signed angrily.
It’s a cutaway at best. And you’ve got the church trying to convert you before it’s too late. When have you ever shown an interest in women? You didn’t even watch that porn I sent you.
I very much had watched the pornography,34 and felt a flush of righteous indignation.
As a matter of fact I met a woman today. Her name is L-I-EV-E. I made a sign close to ‘beautiful’ to stand for Lieve’s name.35
Max snorted.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Dad looked a bit confused at this new development. Presumably it had taken some persuasion to convince him that I was gay, and now I was clambering back into the wardrobe of heterosexuality before his very eyes.
‘Well, you know that I’m here for you if you are gay, and we’re not going to judge your choices,’ said Dad. ‘But if you’re not gay, that would be ideal.’
‘I’m not sure people choose to be gay, Dad.’
‘They bloody do. Some of them have kids, so it’s not as if they can’t get it up.’
‘Dad, please.’
You’re making him uncomfortable talking about his people like that.
‘They’re not my people! I mean, they aren’t not my people, but I’m just not – look, the point is I’m not gay. I like women.’
Give him time. Anyway, I should go. Hey Günter, look at my new Mido. Swiss-made. It’s a work of art. He proffered his watch. I have to say, it did look very nice. But if he could afford Swiss watches, why was he letting his own father drown in red letters? I shrugged at Max and he sloped off down the hall, slamming the front door loudly on his way out.
I wonder when I stopped liking my brother. Perhaps I never liked him. I just never really understood why he had to talk about how much money he was making all the time.
‘I made five hundred pounds today,’ I announced to Dad, showing him the cheque. His eyes filled like fish bowls, and he hugged me.
‘Good lad, good lad,’ he cried, and I felt how fragile he was in my arms. He was getting older now. I would look after him. I patted him on the back, unexpectedly disturbed that there was no one left who could look after me, no safe place, no more summer holidays, no one to pat my back. I didn’t really want to have to provide for myself. Perhaps I should give God a try. I didn’t much like the idea of giving up my weekend lie-in, but I supposed it was all quid pro quo.
When Sunday came round, I found myself awake at dawn. I looked across at the clock. 07.04? I didn’t know times like that existed on a Sunday. I could even get up.
I sat in the kitchen for a while eating my waffles. Sunday morning. What a surreal thought. I could go to church. I could just get dressed and go to church. I’d woken up; anything was possible.
I didn’t want to wear my black funeral suit ever again, if I could avoid it, so I went into my dad’s room, where he was snoring face down into a pillow, picked an inoffensive-looking work suit and squeezed myself into it. He was not quite so broad as me, so I developed a cunning way of pulling back my shoulders so as not to rip the material. I reasoned that, as it looked like a warm day, I could probably take off the jacket once I was safely installed in a pew.
It was a pleasant walk to the cathedral, and for the first time in days no one bothered me for my autograph, or snapped me on their phone. I simply walked, shoulders back, head held high, past the school, over the green, and joined the patient worshippers queuing for entrance. It was cool when I got inside, and no one took off their jackets. I would just have to keep mine on. The young man who had been staring at the screen before now stood near the lectern, dressed in gold and red and white, staring at the people passing like an angry customs official. I hoped he didn’t expose me as a charlatan. I felt he would be the kind to cast people into the flames.36
Everyone was filing in with quiet, almost-fearful reverence. The bishop stood taciturn in an imposing golden gown with a white hood draped back over his shoulder blades. Lit candles illuminated pools of light around the young choir, who wore white gowns over green with little ruffs. The powers that be seemed to have chosen a particular moment in history to stop moving with the times. They must have felt that their age captured the very essence of religion. I wondered if God would wear a ruff and light his way round houses with candles. If so, what did he do before ruffs? Was he just waiting until they were invented? And if so, why wasn’t Jesus born then?
Oceanic blue light poured from the windows at the end of the hall, magnifying the artificial feeling of twilight, and everything, everything pointed upwards. I must have looked out of place, because a nice old lady took my arm and led me on to a pew. Her face looked like a parched desert, the skin cracked into slabs, and her lips seemed to have imploded in on her mouth, but she led me with silent understanding and I was grateful. We were seated while the bishop spoke and I had a good deal of time to look around me. I noticed a little crystal prism inside a cabinet to the side of the hall and wondered what it was doing there. A memorial, probably.
I was just beginning to get used to the gloom and the strange uniformity of the participants when the congregation stood. Everyone’s expressions were caught between the purposeful and the downright miserable, and so I set my face in the same way. But then the choir started and I couldn’t help but perk up. Their young voices sailed up in such beautiful harmony, echoing round our heads with an intertwining sound that seemed to lift itself out of all worldly ceremony and gloom. I was so transported by this glimpse of purity that I forgot who I was, what I had grieved for and what I meant to achieve. So lost was I in the holy rapture that my Lady of the Slabs had to prod me rather viciously in the ribs before I would open my eyes and acknowledge the bishop. He glared contemptuously, rubbed his thumb in a bowl of the Godly era and then made a wet cross on my forehead, saying, ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.’ The mark itched immediately. I was irritated that the bishop had interrupted the music. Frankly, it was too dark in here and everyone was behaving strangely; on top of which my shoulders were starting to cramp up. But I realised, caught in these tight pews with only one, very public, escape route, they had made leaving impossible.37
This was a bad idea. These people repelled outsiders. They lived off rites and customs and reverence and deference and acted as one; I was in a cult. A cult with beautiful music, but a cult nonetheless. This was what cults did, wasn’t it? They trapped you and then they brainwashed you with their weird repetitive rituals and then you gave them all your money. I saw a collection plate being passed around. I tried to breathe carefully through my nose and mouth and focus on the music but now the deep bass of the organ was filling the air and people were taking wine and bread with one hand cupped under the other and I didn’t want to be a part of their mind games, their chanting, their low words. I looked across at my Lady of the Slabs, and she was crying, wiping tears from the wrinkly channels in her cheeks. For all I knew those channels were cut by tears over many debilitating years of worship. I couldn’t hear anything over the deafening crescendo of the choir but I could see that, two rows away, a baby was crying. It wasn’t natural to want this.
My eyes darted around for exits and there were none. Doors had been closed, a service was in progress. The collection plate edged closer. The bass of the organ enveloped me. I stood wedged in the middle of a line of ten and prayed – to whom, I don’t know – that I would not be sacrificed as an unbeliever. Everyone around me turned to prayer books and recited together while I tried to peek at the page number over the shoulder of my Lady of the Slabs. The same words, repeated in endless permutations by endless voices. This was entrapment.
I moved my Lady of the Slabs aside and said, ‘Excuse me,’ at the other worshippers on the pew until they let me past. People had started turning around to look at the troublemaker. The bishop and his retinue were patrolling the main aisle so I t
urned back the other way, nudging people aside, and bolted along the side of the building, ripping the shoulders of the jacket, tearing out of a small door and into the cool, fresh air as cries of consternation rose up behind me. I supposed I must have violated some holy sanctum on my way out, but it was too late now: I was off across the open field and free. I looked back and saw the aircraft light flashing, turning the cathedral into a beacon and dragging it into a century it had never wanted to be a part of. That building stood as a monument to the unbounded ambition of humanity. Its stonework, the stained glass and the wrought perfection of the choristers were eyewatering, but it had all been achieved for one purpose. I supposed that I had been drawn to the cathedral because it was a place where a certain kind of art had been perfected, without realising that its art was persuasion. They were a tribe, united by the unbelievers circling them around. I was looking for something else, something high up in the rafters. I supposed that I wouldn’t come back, and that I would miss it, in a way. But then, I supposed a lot of things.
I had to get away. Not just from the cathedral – from Salisbury, from my life here. Since my mother had died, I had begun to see what a life might look like if I were to choose it for myself, no longer relying on the world I had inherited. I might live where skyscrapers defied the downward pull of time, standing out against the chaotic jumble of mere buildings. I might find someone to love and to make memories with, so that there might be some brief record of my existence. High up, away from the earth, I had had some glimpse at my purpose, my permanence, and I had to chase it, because it wouldn’t be there forever.
11
Calling
I waited for the call from Blades, but it didn’t come. I kept getting calls from people who lived miles away, who had heard how well I had treated poor Mrs Dorman, or had seen me in the paper and were pleased to see a good Christian at work in the neighbourhood. Those were the worst calls, the ones that implied that it wouldn’t do to have one’s windows washed by the ritually unclean.
And so, with nothing to get up for, I slept. We all sleep, but like my father, I do not believe in half-measures. Sometimes I would wake at 10 a.m. to find that my father and I had fallen asleep together in our dinner fifteen hours before. At least he could plead senility – I had no excuse. I would only wake up because my phone was ringing through to my dream. Another unknown number, another suburban semi-detached. To get a cold call was annoying enough, but to interrupt the unburnished beauty of a good dream was unforgivable.
I did try to call Blades. His phone rang, rang and rang. I wanted to leave a voicemail but it just kept ringing. I hung up.
About half an hour later, I got a text from him, just saying:
I’m busy don’t ring again I’ll call you
I went downstairs, disheartened, to heat dinner.38
Hours later, at the kitchen table, Dad prodded me awake and, wiping ‘chilli con carne’ from his cheek, asked me:
‘Why aren’t you out there working? You’re not just going to give up again like last time are you? Sit around here all day playing on your computer?’
‘Calm down, Dad,’ I said. ‘You’re confused because you just woke up.’
‘You calm down! You ingrate!’
‘Dad—’
‘Don’t “Dad” me!’
‘You’ve got a kidney bean in your nose.’
‘Don’t change the subject. I want you out of the house and working tomorrow.’
I looked at the pink rashers of dawn streaked against the sky. I took up our plates.
‘Go to bed, Dad. Let’s speak when we wake up.’
‘I mean it, Günter. I want you out there in the morning—’ he looked out the window ‘—tomorrow morning. And pulling in a wage.’ As if to emphasise his point, he put an index finger over one nostril and ejected the kidney bean.
I went upstairs and took a shower, watching the white fat of the chilli mince melt from my eyelashes and blur into the stream by my feet. I vowed never to tell anyone how many times I had slept face down in food. I wondered if it was possible to drown in chilli con carne. I thought about the way my mother had gone.
When I woke up later that morning, I decided I was ready to check my phone. I had many missed calls from many unknown numbers. Three were missed calls from Blades. First new message. Received today at 9.30 a.m. ‘Günter, hi, it’s John here, John Blades. I’m going to send Frank over to get you, I’ve got a great job coming up in London, I’ve pinged the details across by email so you’ll have it all there but we should meet mano-a–mano. I know you check your mail regularly so I’ll send Frank now and you’ll have a couple of hours to pack.’ I looked out of my window. The heavyset man was standing outside my front door, reading a little book which he held open with one meaty hand. He was about halfway through the book.
I felt a familiar rush of excitement as I grabbed all my gear and stuffed a few bits and bobs into an overnight bag. I scribbled a note to my dad saying that I’d gone to London to work (here, perhaps spitefully, I underlined the word) and didn’t know when I’d be back. I walked my bike round the side of the house and saw the heavyset man. He looked up from his book and bobbed his head appreciatively.
‘Frank?’ I asked. He looked at me, neither confirming nor denying, and put his book in a large jacket pocket. Then he reached out and grabbed my bag with one hand and the bike with the other. I had decided to cycle everywhere from now on. London wasn’t that big, really, and I could use the exercise. ‘Oh! One last thing.’ I ran back inside and grabbed my new grappling hook, still in its box, and brought it out to the car. As I sank into the soft leather, I felt my nervousness sink into obscurity. There is no need to worry now, the seat seemed to say as it massaged me with the rhythms of the journey. You are in safe hands.
Frank was humming along to an epic, swooping piece of classical music. I stared into the tinted glass. It could almost have been a sulphur-based smoked glass, but something told me it was photochromic, and reacted to how bright the day was. Very tasty. I chuckled to myself and saw Frank glance at me in the rear-view mirror. I decided that I would make him talk to me. Unless he spoke sign, in which case I wanted him to keep hold of the steering wheel. I looked at his eyes in the mirror. They were sunken and the surrounding veins had risen to the surface like dead fish.
‘What were you reading, Frank?’
‘A book.’ He spoke softly from the throat, as if unwilling to make use of his huge lungs in a confined place.
‘What’s the book about?’
He didn’t reply, so I watched the countryside. It was all much of a muchness, fields of green and beige. We continued winding down a quite lovely stretch of the M3, which had been dug through a hillside where rare butterflies were once found. England held a very broad definition of progress.
‘My nan used to live in Salisbury,’ Frank offered.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yeah. She’s dead now.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Doesn’t bother her, does it?’ said Frank. ‘So you German or something?’
‘My mum was German, but I don’t really know anything about it. The country, I mean, or the language.’
‘So you’re not German?’
‘Well, I’m half German. Half Welsh, actually.’
‘Blades likes Germans. Probably why he hired you. In his book, Germans are the next best thing to a born and bred Englishman.’
‘Right.’
We watched more scenery pass. I declined to stop at the service station. I found them odd and disturbing places. I preferred not to think about who had developed them, or where their employees came from.
‘So where are we going?’ I asked.
‘London,’ he said.
‘Where in London?’
‘London Bridge.’
He swerved out of the way of a car in the fast lane, undertaking it at pace. I noticed that Frank had a habit of almost doubling the prevailing speed limit. The car was so silen
t inside that it was hard to believe the speedometer, although the blur of traffic outside suggested that it was accurate.
That, and the fact we arrived in London almost before we left Salisbury. I was glad, because the conversation wasn’t exactly flowing. Just as I spotted the great spike of the Shard up ahead, we veered off the main road and down an alley, stopping in a concealed car park from which I could see the Thames and a warship that seemed to be lodged between two bridges. Frank got out and opened my door wordlessly, as he was wont, and led me out through a small path to the main promenade and then into a neat little bar which was sandwiched between two restaurant chains. Blades sat alone at a table by the window, enjoying an ale, watching the football. I suppose I had thought that, because we both cleaned windows, we must be similar people. But I am no lover of football. I was once shouted out of a pub during an international match because I asked what colour kit we were wearing.
Nevertheless, in the important spirit of camaraderie, I sat down and turned my head to the screen. After a few minutes someone kicked the ball at the wrong colour player and Blades slammed his fist on the table.
‘That’s right, just hand it to him on a plate you silly black bastard.’
‘He is a silly … bastard, isn’t he?’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I was thinking that last game.’ Was this too far? I hoped the bad player had been on the pitch last game.
‘Palace fan, are you?’
‘Well … I suppose I’ll be watching the jubilee. Quite fond of them, really. Though I’d hardly call myself a Loyalist.’
‘How can you be when they play like such – THROUGH BALL, YOU – OUT LEFT – I SAID LEFT—’ Blades threw his hands up in dismay. ‘Well they’ve given them the game. They don’t know their arse from their elbow. Half of them don’t even speak the same language. How are they supposed to work as a team if they don’t speak any bloody English?’ He turned away from the TV set as the waiter approached. ‘What can I get you? Scotch? You a Scotch man?’
I thought about Dad drinking whisky at the kitchen table and gradually shrivelling like a prune.
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