‘You’ve put on a bit of weight,’ he said. ‘Is it the sedentary lifestyle?’
‘I’m on a diet,’ she confessed. ‘Not tonight, though.’
‘You’d just written a book last time I saw you…’
‘They’re already published and I’m on my third.’
‘You managed to find a publisher?’
‘No, I didn’t want them to spoil the book by making me write something longer.’
‘Fair dos,’ said Nigel as he took a sip of Diet Coke. He licked his upper lip. ‘You could bring something along to the next meeting and we could swap drafts.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t afford a printer,’ said Matilda.
‘Still on benefits?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘And you?’
‘I’ve got a nice little job at the District Hospital,’ he said. ‘I get tax credits, so I work part-time and write four hours a day.’
‘I thought you couldn’t. Work, I mean,’ she marvelled. ‘How’s Suzy doing these days?’
‘Working at Lidl,’ said Nigel.
‘Are you still going out together?’
‘I’ve been single for the past four years.’
‘Me, too,’ she said, with more warmth than she should.
‘I can’t believe we’ve met up again after all this time,’ said Nigel.
Neither Nigel nor Matilda got to the Christmas dinner of the local writers’ group. Instead, they sat together, chewing the fat and supping diet colas.
They drank into the night. Matilda was working her way through her forty pounds with remarkable ease but she did not care; she was glad to have bumped into Nigel again and was pleased he was prospering. They talked on until the bell was rung for Last Orders. Occasionally Nigel would nod to someone who walked past and Matilda guessed they were writer-friends of his.
Finally, they put on their coats, gloves and hats.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ Nigel offered.
Matilda felt a spasm of excitement at the prospect.
‘You don’t need to,’ she assured him. ‘I live just off Convent Lane.’
‘Whereabouts?’ he asked.
‘Benny Road.’
‘It’s well lit, right enough,’ said Nigel. ‘You’ll be safe enough over that short distance. It’s not as if it’s a Friday night, either.’
‘You could come back for a coffee,’ she said.
‘Thanks but I’m up early in the morning for work.’
‘Will we see each other again?’
‘If you come to next month’s meeting.’
They left the tavern and came into Southgate. The ice was not too treacherous along the main road. Matilda contemplated the walk home.
‘It was good to see you again,’ said Nigel.
‘You, too,’ said Matilda.
She picked her way down Convent Lane in the orange glow of sodium lamps and got home without slipping on the ice.
The next weekend, her youngest sister phoned to find out whether she had gone to the writers’ group. It was three weeks before Christmas and Matilda’s time was taken up with buying presents for her family.
‘Did you go?’ her sister asked.
‘I met someone I know.’
‘Small world,’ marvelled her sister.
42
It was a subdued time, that first Christmas without Mother. The family went around to Matilda’s younger sister’s house, the one with all the children, to open their presents and eat turkey.
‘What are you doing, now that we don’t see you for weeks on end?’ her father asked as he gnawed on a turkey drumstick.
‘I’m writing a novel,’ said Matilda.
‘What, another?’ he said.
‘It’s what novelists do, write novels,’ said Matilda.
‘What’s this one about?’ Father asked.
‘It’s my breakdown narrative. I’m reworking it as a novel.’
At six o’clock, after the turkey had been reduced to a skeleton and her sister’s sherry trifle demolished, Matilda climbed into the back of a taxi clutching the bag of presents from her family. The frost winked in the moonlight.
‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,’ she said to the driver.
It was what Mother always said.
When she got home, she took off her things, opened a bottle of Diet Coke, poured herself a glass and sat at her writing desk.
‘Ho hum! No rest for t’wicked!’ she said as she picked up her pen and started to write the latest instalment of her novel.
A spirit of anxiety descended after New Year. The consultant increased her risperidone script by 2 mg a day. Much was made of the coalition government’s cuts and while this had worried her over the summer, now she was too depressed to care. Down and down she went, seemingly into the very bowels of despair.
And, while the blasphemous thoughts made no return, she was tormented anew by various compulsive aspects of her illness. She obsessed about Satan and was constantly tempted to blaspheme. So powerful was the last that she lay on her sofa with her jaws clamped shut lest she should indulge herself. She knew she had been there before but this time, it felt much worse than the last.
She petitioned the Lord with all her might during her waking moments and sought the presence of the Lord’s people. Val, Karen, Jan and the whole church were praying for her, interceding to the Lord for her.
The effort of it weighed on her soul. She decided to come to an agreement with the devil: she would leave him alone if he agreed to leave her alone.
Shortly after this, Val phoned her to see how she was.
Matilda related her truce with the devil.
‘But he’s a liar and the father of lies,’ Val countered. ‘How can you trust him? He’s only lying to you.’
‘But I’m so weary,’ said Matilda.
‘Ask the Lord and he will give you strength.’
One Sunday afternoon, when her torment was at its height, Matilda got off the sofa in a spirit of expectation – would the Lord deliver her? But instead of the Lord, the Wicked One coalesced in front of her. Matilda sensed, rather than saw, his presence in the living room by the Ikea room-divider on which she kept her collection of novels.
‘Worship me!’ he commanded.
Matilda felt a weakness, a trembling, in her left knee. She was just about to kneel in stupefaction but righted herself at the last moment.
‘No!’ she thought and Satan’s leering face was swept away, out of her living room, into the dustbin of the spirits.
She threw herself onto the sofa and bawled, ‘I was just about to obey him, Lord! I was just about to kneel in worship, O Holy Father!’
The anxiety bubbled and boiled within her as she implored the Lord to forgive her for this egregious act. And, realising it was time for church, she got up, put on her shoes and fleece and went to church to get prayer and help.
Out, she went, out into the murky darkness, the icy cold slapping her face, pursued by the very hounds of hell itself, imaginary monsters that snapped and gnashed at her heels. Finally, she came to the church, its lighted arch windows proclaiming business within. It was six o’clock and the evening service had yet to begin.
Matilda threw herself into the arms of a deacon’s wife and, in juddering and hiccupping sobs, regaled her story. Two or three pairs of hands surrounded her in prayer.
Much later – after the service – Matilda was calm.
‘Suppose it – he – returns?’ she asked the deacon’s wife.
‘He won’t,’ said the deacon’s wife. ‘We’ve had it prayed over.’
‘And to think, I was just about to bend the knee in worship!’
‘But you didn’t,’ said the deacon’s wife.
‘If the Lo
rd hadn’t come to rescue me, to sweep him away,’ said Matilda with a shudder, ‘goodness knows where I’d be!’
The fact that she had been so close to yielding to the devil dismayed her; it robbed Matilda of her joy in the Lord. She sensed, moreover, that her trial was not yet at an end.
The days wore on. Matilda wrapped herself in the Lord like a blanket. How she thanked him for rescuing her! She rested at his feet.
On the Friday after his untoward appearance, Satan appeared again, this time as a consciousness within her own. He told her that she was going to die that very night and be cast into the pit of hell.
She immediately sought the Lord: surely not, O Holy One, etc., etc. No matter how hard she tried, she could not shake off the idea that she was doomed.
She lay down on the sofa and wrapped herself in a quilt. She prayed.
On and on, the accusing voice went.
‘I love you, Lord,’ Matilda said. ‘If it’s true I’m going to die, remember that I love you, O Holy One. Remember me now that you are in your kingdom, Lord Jesus…’
And so, uttering these prayers, she fell into a dreamless sleep.
She woke, did Matilda, at half past eight on Saturday morning, curled up on the sofa.
Her first thought?
‘Hey, Satan, you liar, you said I was going to die!’
She thanked the Lord for waking her, for the resurrection of her soul.
It was true: as Matilda thanked the Lord, she felt something detach from her like the uncoupling of a consciousness…it fell into the Abyss. Her mind’s eye saw the living room floor open to reveal the Abyss and swallow this consciousness whole.
‘Good riddance!’ she said as the floor recomposed itself. Her spirit soared.
Matilda got up and drew back the living room curtains. The sun shone. It was a beautiful day.
43
After a few years, Matilda finished work on her breakdown novel. She typed the words “The End” in bold letters across the bottom of the page, then put the novel to bed.
In those weeks, she reread her literary biographies. She had quite a collection now of nineteenth and twentieth-century French greats. When she was frustrated, she would take down Cronin’s biography of Samuel Beckett and read of his struggle to find an audience, working as he did in obedience to his Muse. If she was hard-up and struggling to pay the bills, she would read of Henri Murger burning his furniture for warmth or of Alfred Jarry existing on a diet of absinthe and white wine.
And now that Matilda had finished her third novel, she felt an era in her own life had come full circle. Now that it was completed to her own satisfaction, she found it easier to ignore the summons to the writing desk of a morning. She was happier to meet friends for lunch at the local bistro than contemplate a fourth novel.
After a while, she spurred herself into action and turned to the files on her laptop. Over the next few weeks, she was content to box it into the shape of opening, complication, crisis and resolution. She got busy with her red Biro, inserting or deleting words where necessary. She had long got into the habit of going to bed early so she could get up to work for four hours each morning on her manuscript.
Liberation from obsessive thought-patterns came slowly. Each step was remarked upon in the blank pages at the end of her Bible: the ability to sit through a sermon without scurrilous thoughts; the ability to read the Bible without the same.
She had been living in Mother’s old flat for some time now, getting to know the neighbours and the local children. There was the girl next door and the woman upstairs with whom she exchanged cards and gifts at Christmas time and chocolate at Easter. There was the church in Amen Corner where she had now been worshipping for some time and it felt like she was one of the family.
The Lord had given her so much. He even provided a way back into paid employment. The year after she was discharged by her psychiatric nurse, she was hired as a literacy and numeracy tutor working out of the local primary school, teaching adults their ABCs and 123s. It was rewarding work. She worked two afternoons and two evenings a week, building up her hours until she had no need of benefits to keep herself afloat. It was good to be earning again.
As for the writers’ group, Matilda attended this off and on, largely for the privilege of being consoled by Nigel, from whom a series of romantic and science fiction novels issued. Now he was branching out into crime. She tried to entice him away from his desk. He remained steadfastly single, however, and she was never able to get him to agree to anything more than a quick coffee at the local café. She was better off sticking to the Lord, she told herself after the latest rebuff.
It was while preparing the manuscript for publication that she heard about Mary’s death. Mary had died from cancer at a ripe old age and the family had come across Matilda’s details in her address book. She had to take unpaid leave to attend the funeral. It entailed meeting people she would have much rather avoided but, rather than luxuriate in anger and bitterness, she prayed for grace.
On the appointed day, she took a taxi to the crematorium. There were many old faces – Paul, Lawrence McBride and his wife Verity and Zeke Darbyshire among them. Each one Matilda firmly grasped by the hand, looked straight into his eye and said, ‘It’s good to see you again. You’re looking well.’
She felt a tremendous release. Feelings of inadequacy and rancour melted away and were replaced with warmth and good fellowship.
There was a reception and meal at the racecourse. After the meal, Matilda went up to the bar and bought a large Diet Coke. The glass she carried back to her table. She sat and waited for people to come up to her.
Zeke Darbyshire took the initiative and came up.
‘What have you been doing with yourself since we last saw you?’ he asked. ‘You were thinking of writing a book.’
‘I’ve just finished my third novel,’ she told him.
‘Is that what you do now, write?’ he asked.
‘In between working as an adult literacy tutor.’
And so, one by one, they all came up to talk to her, starting with Lawrence and Verity McBride. Towards three o’clock, when the numbers started to thin, Verity – who worked for the city council – announced that she was leaving and Matilda cadged a lift.
Verity drove Matilda home, which was about a mile from the racecourse.
She started up the car and said, ‘Well, that was a good funeral.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Matilda agreed.
‘It was good to see you again, good to hear you’re standing on your own two feet again,’ Verity said as she drove out of the racecourse compound.
‘The Lord is good.’
‘Of course, of course.’
‘I prayed for the ability to overcome my bile for the funeral,’ Matilda said. ‘And I felt a tremendous sense of release.’
‘Yes, I did seem to recall you left the church with a feeling you’d been hard done by,’ Verity said. ‘Was it anything that was said or done to you?’
‘If you want the truth, I’ve forgotten. There may have been a reason I was so down on the fellowship but I’ve now forgotten it. It was good to see people again, as much for my own sake as anyone else’s. Now I know the Lord makes all things new.’
‘Indeed, he does,’ Verity agreed.
They came to Scar Top and the local branch of Greenberg’s Express. The car slowed and Matilda unbuckled her seatbelt. When the car stopped on the kerb, Matilda got out. Thanking Verity once more, she slammed the door shut and turned towards the store. She went in and grabbed a basket. She would buy something nice like an individual portion of sirloin steak to celebrate the new things the Lord was doing in her life.
Also by the Author
A Slapper’s Guide to Chastity (2014)
Burmese Daze (2016)
bsp; Virginia Weir, Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come Page 13