On the Third Day

by Piers Paul Read

  Yet, even as he thought this, Henry found himself kneeling at the foot of the altar, just as he had done at St Patrick’s in Soho. Then, he had not prayed; he had merely been curious to see how it felt to adopt such a posture before an invisible deity who might or might not exist. Even now, he did not pray, but looked at the stone table at the top of the flight of steps. Behind it was the tabernacle – a little cupboard covered with embroidered cloth; and beside it, on a bracket set into the wall, was a brass lamp in which burned a candle in a red glass bowl – the sign, Henry knew, that there was consecrated bread in the tabernacle.

  So this, he thought, is the Holy of Holies of the new Covenant, just as the innermost courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem was the Holy of Holies of the old one. That had been at the heart of one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world; this was at the centre of a decrepit old church in Paddington. Yet the first, for all its magnificence, could hardly be compared with the second if it did indeed house the living God.

  He looked above the tabernacle to the figure of Christ on the cross. He imagined Andrew kneeling before this same cross, begging to be forgiven for the sin of loving Anna. As he imagined this, and thought with despair of his own inability to help her, or to save his brother, he found himself speaking, not to the figure on the cross nor to the man it depicted, but to the presence hidden in the tabernacle. ‘Let him go,’ he said in the silence of his mind. ‘Let him go, and I will believe in you, in what you taught, yes, even in your Resurrection. Let her be happy with Andrew, and let Andrew be happy with her, and, if you need a life to atone for the wretched Father Lambert, then take mine. Show him the way out, as you show me the way in. Cut through his guilt and neurosis as you cut through my egoism and doubt. Is it much to ask? Didn’t you walk on the water? Didn’t you feed five thousand on a few loaves and fishes? Didn’t you bring Lazarus back to life? Didn’t you raise yourself from the dead? Then please perform a small miracle – raise Andrew from this gloomy mausoleum and let me give my life in his stead.’

  Twenty-seven

  Among the delegates to the Congress of Biblical Archaeologists at Oxford there was a Jesuit from a Canadian university, whom even Father Lambert in his most charitable frame of mind had found difficult to endure – not because he was malicious or cantankerous, but because he was a tenacious and indefatigable bore.

  He had once been told that he looked like Teilhard de Chardin, and the comparison had gone to his head. He walked with a furrowed brow, as if he were considering the deepest mysteries of our existence, and he spoke with the slowness and the solemnity of a sage. During the first days of the Congress, Andrew had always to have his wits about him to avoid being cornered by this Father Stephen Driffield in one of the halls or quadrangles for one of his ‘little chats’. Luckily, having taken on Father Lambert’s duties as one of the coordinators of the Congress, he had an excellent excuse to move away whenever the old priest approached him.

  His duties also distracted him from the more painful presence of Anna, who was there with her father as a member of the Israeli delegation. He did what he could to avoid her, since every glimpse provoked anguish of a most confused kind. He could see that she too did what she could to shun him. This compounded his remorse – it seemed to prove that he still caused her to suffer. There were moments when he thought they should meet on their own, but became afraid that if they did all his pious resolutions would crumble – that he would feel powerless not to embrace her and kiss her and drag her to his room in the college where he was lodging.

  Every night during the Congress, he lay awake on the narrow bed which belonged to a student during the term, tormented no longer by gentle fantasies of laying his head upon her bosom, but by savage, unsubtle sexual desire. Even when he was able to banish these coarse fantasies from his imagination, he could not rid himself of the memories of her perfect face and sour smile.

  He knew, of course, that they were sent by the Devil to tempt him. So, too, the longing he felt to care for her, to protect her, and to make her laugh, which came over him when he caught sight of her across a quadrangle or at one of the lectures, was merely a subtler wile of the same Satan who, with Father Lambert within his grasp, was determined not to be cheated.

  His resolution to save the soul of his patron and mentor was bolstered by his role as his understudy at the Congress. The delegates had been told that Father Lambert had died of a stroke the month before. Many of them had known and admired him, and came to Andrew to express their sorrow – among them, the dreary Father Driffield. Luckily, there were so many others around that Andrew could escape from him without seeming impolite. He avoided him again when the old Jesuit tried to collar him after Andrew had delivered the paper that Father Lambert was to have given. On this occasion, too, there were many others who crowded around him to discuss the paper or to talk of Father Lambert – among them, Michal Dagan, who clasped Andrew’s hand and held it, saying in a low, hoarse whisper: ‘What I would give to have had him read that paper.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘But at least there is no Cardinal Memel.’

  ‘No.’ He glanced at Anna, but she had moved behind her father so that her face was hidden.

  Dagan turned to his daughter. ‘Have you arranged to see Andrew while we are here?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s very busy,’ said Anna drily.

  ‘But not so busy, are you,’ asked Dagan, turning back to Andrew, ‘that you can’t have supper with old friends?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Andrew.

  ‘This evening, come this evening, and we will have supper.’

  ‘That would be kind but …’

  ‘No buts. Come to my room in Balliol at seven. We will drink a glass of sherry – isn’t that the thing? – and then go out to a restaurant.’

  Andrew looked again towards Anna. She remained hidden behind her father. ‘Thank you, yes,’ he said lamely. ‘At seven. I’ll be there.’

  They moved away. Andrew turned to the other delegates, and then went to the organizer’s office to deal with a furious quarrel which had broken out between a Frenchman and an Iraqi as to which of them had first uncovered the entrance to a Hasmonean tomb. He had intended to listen to a paper by an American archaeologist – an old friend of Father Lambert’s – on cuneiform tablets from Carchemish, but, realizing that he had already missed the first half-hour, decided to go back to his room.

  As he passed through the gate, he saw the figure of Father Driffield walking slowly along the other side of the quadrangle, holding his conference papers in one hand, and his empty pipe in the other.

  Since the route to Andrew’s room led through the passage between the two quadrangles, he stopped and stepped back into the shadows of the porter’s lodge for fear that the Canadian Jesuit would see him. When he saw him disappear beneath the arch, he cautiously continued.

  The senior common room of the college, in which the delegates to the conference could, if they wished, take tea, gave on to the passage between the two quadrangles. As he passed it, Andrew saw through the door the solitary figure of Father Driffield sitting alone at a table. The sight of the garrulous old Jesuit – whom the other delegates undoubtedly found as boring as he did, and so went to the same pains to avoid – gave Andrew a pang of bad conscience. So, although neither hungry nor thirsty, and with a number of other things he wanted to do, he went into the common room himself, filled a cup with tea from the urn on the trolley, and sat down on a chair next to the priest.

  ‘Ah,’ said Father Driffield, his face lighting up as he saw Andrew. ‘Playing truant too, eh? Couldn’t face old Dormer riding his hobby-horse about the Hittites.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’ve always thought he made much too much of that find of his which was, what, fifteen years ago? And he’s been giving the same paper ever since.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Father Driffield glanced from his half-drunk tea to his empty pipe – the prop he used to string out his endless
stories, sucking it, lighting it, puffing at it in the middle of a sentence to prevent anyone else breaking in. Now, however, because he was in the common room, he hesitated to light it, but instead took up his cup of tea. ‘You know, Lambert didn’t think much of him – Dormer, that is. He never said as much, in so many words – he was too charitable a man to do so – but I could tell, I could tell … No, he didn’t think much of Dormer.’

  ‘He had to be invited.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You couldn’t avoid it but’ – he sipped his tea – ‘there are a great many men in our field who hold chairs at important universities, but who, when you come down to it, have accomplished very little, while others, like Lambert – well, of course, Huntingdon is important, very important, but he should have been here at Oxford – Regius Professor, if there is one.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Andrew, scorching his tongue in his impatience to finish his tea.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Father Driffield, ‘that I must have been one of the last people to have seen poor Father Lambert alive?’

  Andrew put down his cup. ‘When was that?’

  ‘I’ve been in Rome, at the Institute, but I stopped off here on my way from Montreal – when was it? About a month ago – to see a colleague at Farm Street, and as I was leaving I ran into Father Lambert. He was leaving, too, so we walked up into Grosvenor Square and sat on a bench and had a chat.’

  ‘But when was that?’ asked Andrew again.

  ‘I can’t remember the date exactly, but he’d just got back from Israel, and someone told me he died later that very day. If he did, he certainly went straight to Heaven, because he’d just received the sacrament of Reconciliation from that old priest of ours – I forget his name, a severe old man. Father Lambert said he always went to him, because he was one of the few who didn’t make your excuses for you.’

  ‘But what time of day was it?’ asked Andrew. ‘Can you remember that?’

  Father Driffield picked up his cup and slowly sipped his tea – delighted to have aroused Andrew’s interest and determined to spin out the story. ‘It must have been, well, around four or five in the afternoon, and overcast, a little cool for that time of year, so after we parted, I went for some tea at the Connaught. You know, it’s part of my English heritage as a Canadian that I always like a cup of tea around four or five in the afternoon …’

  ‘And you say he’d been to Confession?’

  ‘Yes, although we call it Reconciliation now …’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, of course I’m sure, because he told me about that old priest – I wish I could remember his name – and then went on for some time about the sacrament – how important it was, and how neglected these days. He said hardly anyone goes – they’re happy to settle things in their own conscience. Yet it’s one of the promises which Our good Lord made to his disciples – ‘those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven’ – which proves to us that he really was the Son of God.’

  ‘Did Father Lambert say that?’

  ‘Sure he did. He was in a funny mood. As you probably remember, he wasn’t usually very talkative, but that afternoon I could hardly get a word in edgeways. He went on about faith and doubt and Almighty God retiring, momentarily, from our lives to teach us that we are lost without him. Then he returns, and you feel the warmth of Grace all over again, and all doubt and confusion vanish in the light of Grace, and you see all over again how extraordinary and wonderful it is that there is a God who loves each of us enough to bring us into existence, not just as an animal or an insect or a plant but as an eternal being who can choose to love him or reject him, but who, even if he does reject him by sin, just as St Peter did, and St Paul and St Augustine – in fact, almost every saint has sinned in his time – how, even then, one can repent and know with absolute certainty, after the words of absolution, that every sin is forgiven.’

  Andrew was silent, his head bowed. Father Driffield glanced at him, as if expecting an interruption, but, seeing there was none, he drank from his cup and continued: ‘He was also very interesting about Grierson’s discoveries in Ugarit. I’d wanted to tackle him on that for a long time, and as soon as he’d said his piece about Reconciliation, which was, I have to admit, a little pre-Conciliar for my taste, I managed to get him onto the question of Grierson’s method, which I criticized in a paper you may have seen in the Saskatchewan Archaeological Review …’

  Andrew left him talking and staggered back to his own room, his mind grappling with all that he had just been told. How could he make sense of what had happened? Father Lambert had returned from Israel convinced that Christ had not risen from the dead. In his despair, he had turned to Mrs Dunn. Had he then repented? Had he then believed? If he had believed, repented and then confessed his sins, how could he, in the space of an hour, have fallen back into a state of such despair as to buy a clothes-line and hang himself from his window?

  But if he had not hanged himself, then someone must have killed him – and all that hope returned which Andrew had felt at the beginning. If Father Lambert had been murdered, it must have been to prevent him from denouncing the find. It followed that he must have died for his Christian witness, and his soul, far from being ensnared by the Devil, was already in Heaven wearing a martyr’s crown.

  Andrew knelt and prayed as he had never prayed before – a mixture of thanks and pleading for what he now suspected to be true. For, if it were true, he was released, and he could run to Anna as he had so longed to do, and beg her to have him after all. How could he find out? How could he know for certain? Who could have killed him and why? The thoughts and prayers ran round and round in his head until he realized, suddenly, that it was seven o’clock when he was expected by the Dagans at Balliol College.

  He washed, changed his shirt and combed his hair, and walked from his college to Balliol, his mind still filled with confusing thoughts. Some of the delegates returning from Dormer’s lecture greeted him as he passed but Andrew did not see them. Indeed, so pressing was the riddle which obsessed him that, no sooner had Michal Dagan admitted him to the large panelled room which he had been assigned for the Congress, and poured him a glass of sherry, than Andrew blurted out what he had heard from Father Driffield.

  Michal Dagan was alone – Anna was expected – and he listened to what Andrew said with a bowed head.

  ‘Of course, it must all seem nonsense to you,’ said Andrew, ‘but to me, it is completely confusing because, if Father Lambert had really repented and confessed his sins and believed them forgiven, then why on earth should he hang himself from the window of his cell?’

  For a while Michal Dagan sat in silence, his head still bowed, his face hidden. Andrew, who had, until then, been so preoccupied with his own agitation that he had not noticed the old man’s reaction, realized that his words had had a considerable effect. He waited in silence for Dagan to reply.

  Eventually, Dagan looked up. There were tears on his cheeks. ‘I shall tell you,’ he said slowly, ‘no matter what happens as a result. Lambert – your Father Lambert – did not hang himself. We killed him – not me, but Ya’acov on the orders of Louvish – because Lambert telephoned me in Jerusalem that afternoon to say that he now believed that the skeleton I had found could not be that of Jesus of Nazareth. But my telephone was tapped. Louvish heard this and he thought that his purpose would be served just as well if he made it seem that Father Lambert had taken his own life in despair. There was his notebook, you see – he thought he would have written in it that he accepted the find – but Ya’acov found that he had written nothing in it, so he took it away to forge some entries and plant it, if they needed to, on someone they could make responsible for his murder.

  Andrew was weeping.

  ‘Poor Father Lambert,’ said Dagan.

  ‘No, no,’ said Andrew. ‘You cannot imagine how happy he must be.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Yes, now, in Heaven.’

  The old man shrugged. ‘In Heaven, yes, perhaps, who
knows?’

  Half an hour later, Anna came to her father’s rooms to find Andrew and the Professor laughing together, having drunk two-thirds of the bottle of sherry.

  ‘You know, I think it is because he is drunk,’ Michal Dagan said to his daughter, ‘but this crazy young man says that he is no longer going to be a monk and wants instead to marry you. I warned him that life would be more peaceful as a priest, and that you aren’t at all an easy person to live with, but he says he knows you very well, and he thinks you will get along, and he asks me if I will let you get married.’

  ‘I asked him, I mean,’ said Andrew, ‘if he minded if I were to ask you.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Michal Dagan. ‘But what notice would she take of my opinion now, when she has never paid any attention before?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Andrew, blushing, and hardly daring to look at Anna, ‘but might you – I mean, after everything – might you consider, well, marrying me after all?’

  This time she did not hide behind her father, but with a shrug and one of her sour smiles said, ‘Sure.’

  About the Author

  Piers Paul Read, third son of poet and art critic Sir Herbert Read, was born in 1941, raised in North Yorkshire, and educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College. After studying history at Cambridge University, he spent two years in Germany, and on his return to London, worked as a subeditor on the Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx, was published in 1966. His fiction has won the Hawthornden Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Two of his novels, A Married Man and The Free Frenchman, have been adapted for television and a third, Monk Dawson, as a feature film. In 1974, Read wrote his first work of reportage, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which has since sold five million copies worldwide. A film of Alive was released in 1993, directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke. His other works of nonfiction include Ablaze, an account of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl; The Templars, a history of the crusading military order; Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography, and The Dreyfus Affair. Read is a fellow and member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Council of the Society of Authors. He lives in London.