Willem shrugged. ‘A dull Barnardo’s Boy, that’s all he is. Dull, dull, dull.’
‘Still.’
‘Don’t blame me if he leeches the fun out of everything.’
I had won the battle. And I had learned that Stu was an orphan, which went some way to explaining his neediness.
Willem’s mischievousness knew no bounds. Somehow he managed to persuade some of the students from the mountaineering club to put cones on all four spires of King’s College chapel – they had to be taken down by steeplejacks at great expense. At his instigation, a Robin Reliant was punted down the river; it was he who organized a streak around Cambridge, taking in the Round Church and Jesus Green Lock, ending with a naked punt along the River Cam. He himself didn’t take part, but such was his charisma he was able to persuade others. Including us five. Including Roger, who’d had a phobia of water since his father had thrown him in the deep end of a swimming pool. And Stu, often the butt of Willem’s cruel jokes – Stu took part as well.
I remember standing shivering on the corner of Adams Road and Wilberforce Road just as the sun was rising, fervently hoping that no one would see my white goosebumped flesh. We all avoided each other’s eyes, yet we did it.
‘One, two, three, go!’ shouted Willem. ‘Remember it’s for charity.’
Was it? I don’t remember, but we ran naked down that track, down pavements, across roads, not looking at one another, wanting it to end, but wanting Willem to be proud of us and reward us with his good humour.
I think Stu stuck around out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He knew Willem didn’t like him, but he was damned if he was going to give him the satisfaction of going away, however many times Willem told him to ‘fuck off, darling’.
Then came the evening we went to the church.
‘An event,’ Willem exclaimed one evening as he burst into my room without so much as a knock on the door. ‘I want you to come.’ He flung his arms around me. I wriggled. I wasn’t too keen on these physical displays of affection, particularly when Stu was around, as he was that evening.
‘Gerroff … I’m trying to come to terms with Kant.’
‘Aren’t we all? Oh, I’m sure he’s a jolly good fellow, but put him away and come with me.’
I looked up at him. ‘An event? What sort of an event? And on a Tuesday night?’
‘Yes. A Tuesday night. Monday, Friday, Sunday, why not? The week is so dreary, so endless otherwise. The others are waiting. Come, come.’
‘And Stu,’ I said pointedly.
Willem opened his mouth to object. I stared him down. He shrugged, but a sly expression flashed across his face and for a moment I wondered if we were all going to regret this evening.
Squashed into a battered Hillman Imp Willem had borrowed from someone, or perhaps stolen, I left Immanuel Kant and his morality theory behind and drove out of Cambridge and into the countryside. Derek, Roger, Jen, and Stu were in the back, practically sitting on each other’s laps. As the lights of the city faded behind us, the fog grew thicker and the roads dark and narrow, overgrown hedges to one side, trees with bare branches twisting up to the fog on the other. Willem, hunched over the steering wheel, could hardly see where he was going. I spied one signpost.
Devil’s Ditch.
‘Here.’
We turned off the road and parked up on a grass verge.
‘Come on,’ said Willem, putting on the steering wheel lock so no one could steal the heap of junk that called itself a car. ‘Let’s go and see what’s happening.’
We piled out and walked up to the wrought-iron gate.
‘It’s a church,’ I said, rather unnecessarily. It was built, as far as I could make out, from brick and flint. There was no tower only a stump of bricks where that should have been – it looked as though it had collapsed in times past. The leaded arched windows were lit from inside: candles, I guessed from the muted quality of the light. Either side of the overgrown pebble path to the door were tombstones – some standing, others listing perilously to one side. I saw a smashed angel on the ground. The fog swirled, making my skin and hair damp. I heard singing. No, not singing but chanting that was vaguely hypnotic. It all made me uneasy. Jen slipped her hand in mine. Both our hands were sweaty.
‘What is this place?’ she whispered.
‘I told you,’ said Willem. ‘A church.’ He rubbed his hands together, whether from the cold or with glee I wasn’t sure.
‘You didn’t tell us we were going to a church. You know I’m not religious and nor are you. Anyhow, I want to go back.’ Jen tossed her hair behind her shoulder.
‘Here,’ he said, handing round some white pills. ‘Take these.’
Jen hesitated, then took one, swallowing it obediently, her earlier half-hearted defiance dissolved. Roger and Derek swallowed theirs without a murmur. Stu hesitated. The look on Willem’s face dared him to take it. He did. I didn’t like Willem’s smile.
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘Something to help you enjoy the party more. Heighten the experience.’ He grinned at my discomfort. ‘Don’t be so parochial.’
I frowned. ‘You know I don’t—’
‘Oh, stop arguing and get on with it.’ This from Derek. ‘We’re here now; it’s only one little pill and quite honestly I need something to get me in the mood.’
My friends were behaving oddly. It was as if the fog and the chanting and the flickering lights had got to them. I swallowed the pill.
Willem led us to the doorway and into the church porch, with its stone seating on either side and the noticeboard with pieces of paper still stapled to it. I tried to peer at what they said. I could pick up something about church service times and a flower festival, but the notices were faded and torn.
Willem put a hand on Derek’s arm. ‘No pictures, okay?’ He nodded at Derek’s rucksack that he took everywhere with him. ‘Leave that here.’
‘I can’t, man,’ he said. ‘I’ve got expensive gear in here.’
‘Then you should have left it in the car. I told you earlier, no pictures.’ He looked coolly at him.
Derek dropped his gaze first. ‘Okay.’ He bundled his rucksack underneath the stone bench.
Willem nodded with satisfaction, then pushed open the heavy wooden doors, putting his finger to his lips as he did so.
The church was indeed lit by candles, hundreds and hundreds of black candles. I could see people in the nave – I don’t know, maybe forty of them – dressed in black robes with black hoods. A fire that emitted an odd, bitter smell was burning, and I wondered if they had used any of the old wooden chairs lying discarded around the church as fuel. In the dim light that spiked across the walls, I could see the plaster was blown, marked with damp and streaked brown where the rain had found its way in. At the end of the chancel was a magnificent stained-glass window. There were no statues or holy pictures. Definitely an abandoned church, then. Or something more sinister.
The chanting was becoming louder and louder but I couldn’t make out the words. I started to laugh. ‘What is this?’ I asked in a stage whisper. ‘Are we on a film set?’ Because that was what it felt like to me. It was as though I was looking at it all from outside of myself.
Willem frowned and shook his head, holding out a restraining hand. ‘Ssh,’ he said. ‘We’re not supposed to be here.’
‘What is it?’ hissed Roger.
Instead of answering, Willem crept into the church, his shoes making little noise on the flagstones. We followed behind.
The people in the robes were chanting so hard they didn’t notice us. We crouched behind the cracked and mildewed baptismal font. There was a makeshift altar in front of one of the old dirty windows. A goat was tethered to it. A goat? This was like something out of the Dennis Wheatley novels I used to read and be terrified by as a teenager. What was the goat for? A sacrifice? Come on.
Yet there were prickles of unease across my scalp.
Then, out of the blue, my heart felt as though it was speeding up a
nd I felt alert and ready for anything. I wanted to tell Willem how much I loved him. I wanted to tell Jen I loved her. Christ – inappropriate word in this setting – I wanted to hug Roger and Derek and tell Derek to live his life as he wanted, and I wanted to tell Roger to relax. I wanted to say to Stu that he was my friend even though he was a bit nerdy. The chanting filled my head. The bitter smoke from the fire wreathed around our heads, until I could smell nothing else but its bitterness with an undertone of sweetness. I was euphoric.
I could distinguish the words of the chant now:
Do what thou wilt
Do what thou wilt
Do what thou wilt
I found myself mouthing the words, and I heard the others chanting also – Willem’s deep voice, Roger’s quiet voice getting louder, Derek almost shouting, and Jen determined. And Stu. Stu was swaying from side to side, his eyes bright and unfocused. He was chanting the loudest of all of us while the candlelight danced and writhed across the walls, became spiders, locusts, snakes, yellow, green, red, so much red. I saw faces on the walls, faces with contorted mouths and black holes for eyes. Bodies, blackened by fire, twisting and turning. My head, my limbs, my brain were filled with the chanting.
I stood up and danced my way towards the nave.
21
It was odd, mused Alex as she walked up the track to her parents’ home, you didn’t think of your mum and dad as having a life before you. As a teenager she could remember being totally self-absorbed, looking up only when she had to deal with Sasha. Her parents hardly came into the equation at all, except to provide meals and a taxi service. She had taken their love for granted.
Something made her stop – a sound, perhaps? The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. She was being watched. She turned quickly, hoping to catch whoever it was off guard.
Nothing.
She scanned the trees and hedges around her. Could someone be hiding? Perhaps in the field beyond, but tracking her steps? She hadn’t heard a car or been aware of one following her, and surely she would have noticed something as she drove down the narrow country lanes to her parents’ house?
Was that a shadow behind the tree?
She stood absolutely still. ‘Hello? Is there anybody there?’
There was nothing but the singing of the birds in the trees and the distant sound of an aeroplane, high in the sky. There was no strange noise, she was alone, and with too much imagination.
‘Alex!’
Her mother looked surprised to see her when she answered the door. And no wonder – she didn’t usually visit more than once a month, and now here she was, for the second time in less than a week; but it had been nagging at her, the thought that her father had been at Cambridge at the same time as Fleet and Daley, and she wanted to find out if he had come across them. A long shot, given the state of his memory; though, often he remembered things from the distant past as though it were yesterday.
‘Mum. I thought—’
Her mother held the door open wider. ‘Come in, come in. It is the day we normally go shopping, have a bit of lunch, that sort of thing, but your father, well, he didn’t feel up to it.’ Her mother smiled; it didn’t reach her eyes.
Alex hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’ Her mother appeared anxious, careworn. Hair was escaping from her normally tidy bun, and her cardigan was buttoned up the wrong way.
‘Of course, of course. I haven’t tidied up yet—’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Alex, leaning in to hug her mother. ‘As if that matters. It’s only me.’
But she wasn’t prepared for just how untidy and dirty the place was.
There was a musty smell and an air of neglect in the usually immaculate kitchen. The sink was piled high with greasy plates and dirty glasses. The usually clear worktops had open packets of rice and pasta and sugar spilling out their contents. A blackened saucepan sat on top of the cooker with what looked like mouse droppings in the bottom, but were hopefully only burnt baked beans.
‘As I said, I haven’t had a chance to—’ Her mother was hovering behind her as Alex looked around with dismay. ‘It’s been a difficult couple of days.’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said, pity twisting in her heart. She opened the fridge to see if there was enough food, and found a packet of soap powder, a roll of bin bags and an old copy of Good Housekeeping in there instead. ‘Mum—’
Her mother reached around her, shutting the fridge door, and then stood with her back against it. ‘I’ll get them out later. Your father – he likes to tidy up, but he doesn’t always remember where to put things, and I told you, we usually go shopping on a Tuesday but today we haven’t. Too busy.’
‘You said Dad wasn’t up to it.’ Her father was deteriorating faster than she’d thought.
‘Too busy,’ her mother said, defiantly.
Alex looked at her mother and was shocked all over again at how much she had aged in the last few months. Her hair was thinning, her skin was grey and her wrinkles cut deeper grooves down her face. She was not eating enough, that was certain. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Had she been so desperate to get away that she hadn’t bothered to look at her mother properly?
‘Mum—’
Her mother moved away from the fridge, took a ragged cloth from beside the sink and began to wipe the worktops, folding the tops of the food packets down and shoving them in cupboards. ‘Why are you here? I mean, it’s lovely to see you …’ The rest of the sentence, the ‘but you usually only come when you absolutely have to’ was left unspoken.
Something like shame filled her. It was true that she had found it much more difficult to visit her parents since her dad had become ill. She could hardly bear to see him deteriorate. A selfish emotion – especially as her mother had it far worse.
‘I—’ Why was she here? Because something had been nagging at her that she wanted to find out about, but she also genuinely wanted to see how her parents were coping.
‘Who’s there?’
Her father’s voice came from upstairs.
‘It’s me,’ called Alex, going to the foot of the stairs.
‘Who’s me?’ He was in the bedroom.
‘Alex.’
‘Alex who?’
Alex looked at her mother who gave her a tremulous smile.
‘Your daughter Alex.’
‘Oh.’
She tried again. ‘Are you coming down?’
‘Of course not. I’m in bed.’ Querulous. ‘And I’m busy.’
Her mother’s shoulders sagged. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Alex smiled. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘At least it’ll be made a bit quicker,’ her mother said lightly, busying around the kitchen.
‘Have you actually got milk in that fridge?’
Her mother laughed. ‘Oh yes. And when I get the milk out I can take my magazine out too. Saves walking into the sitting room to get it.’
They smiled at one another, united by circumstance.
‘Mum, you’re not eating properly, are you?’
‘We’re managing fine, thank you. You don’t need to worry about us. It’s time you stopped taking all the cares of this family – especially Sasha – on your shoulders.’ Her mother poured the tea, and pushed a mug across to Alex. ‘And talking of Sasha, how is she?’ There was sadness in her mother’s eyes.
‘She’s, well, she’s, you know, Sasha.’
‘I’m glad she’s with you.’
‘Are you? I’m not sure I am.’ There. She’d said it.
Her mother took her hand. ‘We would have had her here, gladly, but she wanted to be with you. And that gives me some comfort. I know how … up and down she can be. And don’t ever think we didn’t know how much Sasha relied on you growing up. How much we relied on you. It was too much for a child, and I’m sorry for that.’
Alex stared at her mother, more aware than ever she was responsible for her parents now, they weren’t responsible for her anymore. Yet the child in her
wanted to tell her mum about all the times she would lie awake at night worrying about Sasha. How she had protected her against the bullies. Washed her sister’s arms when she cut into her flesh trying to control one thing in her life. Tried not to mind when Sasha walked off with her boyfriend. And then married him.
She drained her mug. ‘Here,’ she said. She went over to the sink and filled it with hot water, putting in a squirt of washing-up liquid, ‘let me.’
‘I couldn’t possibly—’
‘Mum,’ she said. ‘Let me.’ They were a family who didn’t talk easily to one another about the serious things in life, but she could do the washing-up for her mum. She began to scrub away at the dried-on food.
Her mother sat down heavily on a kitchen chair that creaked as it took her slight weight. ‘Alex, I …’
Alex looked over to her mother and saw the tears rolling down her face. She put down the saucepan she was trying to rescue, dried her hands and bent over to give her a hug.
‘Two hugs in almost as many days, that must be a record,’ her mum said with a smile. She traced a pattern on the pine table. ‘On his good days, his lucid days – and he still has a fair few of those – your dad says his illness is a punishment.’
‘“A punishment”? What on earth does he mean by that?’
Her mum closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering herself. ‘We were young when we met. We were on the same accountancy course. Boring, I know, but there we are. He never liked talking about his past, used to say what was done was done and he wanted to lead a good life. Though he could never define what a good life was.’
‘Mum, you have led a good life.’
Her mother laughed mirthlessly. ‘As long as you don’t count Sasha. A difficult child who grew up into a difficult adult.’
‘I’d say that was just Sasha. You brought us both up the same.’
‘Did we?’
‘Look, we don’t want to have a debate about nature versus nurture, do we?’
‘I suppose not. But we must have done something awful for this to happen to us.’
‘Mum, you must stop punishing yourself. What’s done is done, and whatever happens to Dad was going to happen.’
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