by Peter Laws
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was dark when Matt slammed his foot hard into the brake. He lolled against the seat belt and only just missed the car that sat in his usual spot. There on his drive was an old green Rover 200, with a registration plate from the late Jurassic Age – 1998. He sighed at the thought of company and had to back out onto the street to find another space. He parked under the church lamp post instead.
Back on his drive, he peeked inside the Rover as he passed it. The passenger seat was strewn with screwed-up tissues, and on the dashboard a packet of liquorice perched in an open position. A disgusting and nigh-on demonic flavour in Matt’s considered opinion, but this driver clearly loved to dip into these en route.
He felt the call of wine on his tongue and pushed through his front door. He heard a shriek of Wren’s laughter echo down the corridor followed by a huge guffaw of another woman. A laugh he recognised and knew. He groaned and clicked the front door shut. The laughter died away.
‘Matt? Is that you?’ Wren called out.
‘Yep, just a sec.’ He kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket on the peg. When he opened the kitchen door, he saw two heads swing to greet him. Both held large and very full glasses of red wine.
Miriam raised her glass. ‘Welcome home.’
Wren raised an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you get my text?’
The phone was in his hand, which made it even worse that he hadn’t bothered to look. He quickly glanced at it and saw the long string of eBay notifications he’d been ignoring earlier. And amongst it, a text from Wren saying Remember Miriam’s coming tonight. We’re eating at 7.30 p.m.
Matt glanced at the clock on the wall. A plastic Elvis – whose pelvis swung on each passing second – said 8 p.m. ‘Darn … sorry, ladies.’
Wren snapped up the oven gloves and opened the oven, but rather than shove him in it, she thankfully pulled out dinner instead.
‘I got caught up with something.’ He loosened his collar. ‘I really do apologise.’
‘No need,’ Miriam shook her head. ‘To be honest, I was late myself … I only just arrived.’ She raised a glass towards the oven and winced. ‘Sorry, Wren!’
‘No need for you to apologise,’ Wren said, while Miriam pulled a chair out for Matt. Without asking, she sloshed a hefty measure of Shiraz into the third empty glass, just as Wren set some skillet veal on the table, grating some parmesan across it. Tea lights twinkled in the centre of the table, and he noticed their best plates were out. She’d done that thing she did when she really made an effort too. The chef-style arc of olive oil, across the side of the plate. Just that thin splash. Seeing the trouble she’d gone too stoked his guilt at being late. So he decided to do something nice. He prepped himself to say grace along with her, figuring of all people, Miriam would be the type to appreciate that. But when he looked up at her, she’d already opened her mouth and was shoving a forkful of food in. ‘Dear me …’ she moaned, ‘this stuff is heaven.’
‘Thanks,’ Wren said, and they all got started.
Relieved of his prayer duties, Matt cut a chunk from his meat. ‘So, Miriam, how’s the injury?’
She swallowed. ‘It’s amazing. I don’t even need the pain relief they gave me. Course, if I press it, it hurts. But if I don’t, it doesn’t. So … ta-dah … I don’t press it.’
Wren eyed him over the candles. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Well, look … I just wanted to say once again how very grateful I am.’
‘Hey, it’s no big deal.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Wren said. ‘You’re a superhero.’
She shook her head and pointed upwards. ‘If anyone’s the hero, it’s him.’
‘Elvis?’ Matt nodded to the clock above her and she laughed.
‘Point higher.’
Matt raised a glass to the ceiling and nodded a cheers, then just as it touched his lips he added, ‘Oh, and guess what.’
‘What?’
‘He’s awake.’
‘Elvis?’
‘Reverend East … David … he’s woken up.’
She scooped some more food up. ‘Well, that’s lovely news.’
‘Isn’t it?’
She ate a little more and closed her eyes. ‘Wow, Wren, I need this recipe.’
‘To be honest, I thought you’d be there at the hospital,’ Matt said. ‘Your whole congregation’s camped out up there. They’re calling it a miracle.’
‘It is …’ She raised a glass. ‘Maybe I’ll pop in tomorrow.’
Maybe? She was surprisingly underwhelmed.
He hadn’t hidden his puzzlement very well, because Miriam ran a palm across the table. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to crowd him, would I?’
Wren nodded. ‘Quite right. And I bet you’ve had enough of hospitals for one day.’
Conversation lulled into the banal, including chats about Miriam’s work. She helped at a dry-cleaners in Chervil but seemed way too bored with her job to talk about it much. She preferred to keep talking about a prayer meeting at St Bart’s tomorrow night. Just an hour of thanks and praise that David hadn’t died, and that Matt was okay, too. Both he and Wren were, of course, invited, and Wren, of course, happily committed them to attend it.
Throughout the evening he noticed how Miriam tended to look at him and not Wren. Just a few sly glances at first, then lingering stares that he caught in the reflection of the dining-room doors. He’d look back and these stares were politely broken off, because as ever, she was really crap at straight-on eye contact. But he still caught her looking at him, or at least at his forehead, a fair bit. For a wine-fuelled moment, he wondered if Miriam might simply fancy him. Like the occasional student each year, who’d sit right up front and fawn whenever he opened his mouth. Who knows, maybe that explained everything. Miriam saved his life for love! What a slayer of hearts he was. This theory amused him, precisely because he could tell full well that it wasn’t true.
He noticed that Miriam lifted her wine to her lips a lot, but the level barely seemed to go down. He and Wren, on the other hand, were sinking the bottle at a steady clip. Drink was a necessity after the horrendous two days they’d had. Something to numb the memories of Sean, Micah and Mrs Ashton’s rifle. But neither he nor Wren could talk openly about any of these horrors. They were too busy discussing mundane subjects that Miriam started bringing up, like how hard it was to get grass stains out of jeans. Neither Wren nor he complained, since she was, after all, their hero. But Matt did often phase out of conversations and found himself thinking of Micah East instead. Sitting in his little cupboard of upturned crosses, working out ways he could stop the Father rather than his father … whatever the holy heck that meant … and all those eyeless magazines. And how …
And how …
Matt stared for a moment …
And how Micah seemed terrible with eye contact too.
He blinked. Miriam was talking to him.
‘Matt?’ Wren said. ‘She asked you a question?’
‘Oh, sorry, go ahead.’
Miriam leant on the table, eyes on his hairline. ‘I was just wondering how you could have been a Christian … an ordained pastor, no less … but these days’ − she scrunched her face up − ‘you’re not a big fan of the G-O-D.’
Wren laughed into her wine. ‘He’s not a big fan of the C-L-O-C-K. either.’
Miriam smiled gently, but she still went on. ‘What turned you away from your faith?’
For a moment, all he could hear was the generic dinner party playlist oozing from the speakers, and he saw Wren look over at him, sympathetically. They’d replayed this scenario a thousand times at dinner parties. The big reveal of why Matt Hunter left the church. But right now, he had no intention of talking about his mum’s murder and about him being suspended from the pastorate for almost beating her attacker to death. These may well have been the catalysts for his faith-drop, and they weren’t secrets either, he’d even mentioned them in his book – but he had no intention of talking about his mum with this woman. He wa
sn’t sure why, he just didn’t. So, he gave her a different reason instead. Just as a new track of slinky jazz began. Something he’d been pondering ever since hearing that tape recording of the attack.
My Father my Father, why have you murdered me?
‘Actually, what put me off Christianity was the Trinity.’
She looked up, ‘Oh?’
‘Yup. I don’t mean Jesus. He was progressive and wise. It was the other one I struggled with.’
‘The Holy Spirit?’
‘No … The Father. Or, at least, I struggled with how the modern church presents him.’
Miriam had plastered a smile across her face since the moment he’d walked in. It was only now that he saw it shrink at the edges. ‘And what problem did you have, exactly?’
The plates were now empty, but Wren had laid out some after-dinner mints. Matt grabbed one and bit into one as he spoke. ‘Well, I was brought up evangelical, right? And they’re always singing about the wrath of the Father. It’s like he had all this pent-up anger about sin and he had to let his fury out on someone … so he picks his own son and pummels him on a cross. If I met a dad like that in the street, I wouldn’t call him noble. I’d put him in anger management.’
Wren cleared her throat. ‘Isn’t this a little heavy for a Monday night?’
‘No, I’m fascinated. Go on, Matt.’
‘I’m just saying, in the New Testament Jesus forgives people and he repeatedly calls on his followers to forgive without expecting retribution. But according to the evangelicals, the Father only forgives after retribution … on his own son. That reading of the atonement always felt … contradictory to me.’
Miriam said it softly, ‘… like the Father and the son have different personalities.’
Matt clicked his fingers. ‘Exactly … In fact, you could say they have conflicting personalities. Like a good cop, bad cop situation. I mean, look …’ Matt pushed his seat back and went to the kitchen window, knowing he was oversimplifying the cross, but he kept going – because it seemed to do something to Miriam’s expression.
He leant over the sink and opened up the blinds to show the view they had. Every time he did the washing-up he had to stare at the symbol of the religion he’d abandoned. A stubby, stone crucifix was perched at the top of the church. He turned around, just to see her reaction to it. It’s not like she lurched back like a vampire. But she did narrow her eyes, and, for a very brief moment, she glared at it. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve with all this, but his mind was racing with Micah’s upturned crosses, and those Aramaic threats to the Father.
‘Millions of people have this symbol hanging round their necks, right?’ He leant against the sink, cross hovering over his shoulder. ‘Tattooed on their forearm, printed on tea towels for crying out loud … and they forget what it is … an instrument of execution. I mean, Wren … can you imagine if I bought you a necklace for Valentine’s Day and it was a little dangling noose … or a pair of electric-chair earrings? This isn’t a sign of love, it’s a symbol of aggression. Heck, you could even call it a sign of murder, from the Father to the Son.’
She was biting her lip, and nodding.
He went on, ‘But what’s interesting is that Christians weren’t always obsessed with the cross. The key symbol for the early church was the Ichthus, you know, the little fish you see on the back of cars? That fish was just a shorthand way of saying Jesus was God and Saviour, and that symbol defined Christianity. So, for the first millennium, sanctuaries were filled with images of Jesus in life. Teaching, preaching, healing. But then sometime in the medieval age the church started fixating on the idea of redemptive violence. Out went the fish and in came the cross.’
‘Are you saying the cross isn’t important?’
‘Not in the slightest. It’s still vital, but what if it wasn’t to satiate the bloodlust of an angry Father? To me, that sounds more inspired by the pre-Christian gods of the pagan world. No, the cross was still key, but we’ve made it too much about anger and punishment. What if it’s more like an amazing demonstration of God’s character? That the true way of life is love, forgiveness and sacrifice.’ He looked back over his shoulder at the window. ‘But when we spin it as being all about punishment, we start thinking God’s primary role is to judge and punish us. And shock horror, that’s what some Christians end up acting like. Follow a God who majors on judgement, and you major on judgement yourself. Follow a God who majors on love and sacrifice, and you see that instead. I think the Bible shows God as a Trinity … as a community of love, and the cross is the ultimate expression of that.’ He cleared his throat, conscious he’d been talking for a while. ‘So, um yeah … in answer to your question … that’s one of the reasons I left the church.’ He caught her eye. ‘I suppose as a Christian you’d find all that a little blasphemous. In which case, I apologise. It’s just, you asked.’
‘It’s not blasphemous at all.’ She set the glass onto the table and finally said, ‘In fact, I take your point. The Father is distasteful. And the cross too …’
He cleared his throat. ‘Miriam, do you think that Micah shared your distaste for the cross?’
Her eyes flicked to the table, as if a cog was falling into place in her mind.
Matt pressed again. ‘Did he?’
‘I wouldn’t know …’ Miriam said. ‘And just hold your horses, Professor. Just because you make a few interesting points about the Trinity doesn’t mean I’m anti-Christianity. I’m as traditional as the next person.’
‘But you say you’re not a fan of the cross. That’s a rather unusual—’
‘Course I’m not. No Christian is …’ She threw up her hands. ‘It’s what killed Jesus, for Pete’s sake.’
‘But I’m told that your church in Chervil is quite traditional. They revere the cross. You don’t share their theology?’
‘Matt,’ Wren put her hand up. ‘Rein it in.’
He looked at Miriam. ‘Listen, I’m not trying to be disrespectful but—’
‘Are you sure about that?’ She stared off into space like she was suddenly tempted to cry, but Matt could see it, he could see it in the way she was holding her jaw, and how she looked back and forth all dramatic and busy-eyed. She even held her side as if her wound was hurting, even though she hadn’t needed to do that for the entire evening. She was pretending to look sad, just to wrap the conversation up, but he knew he’d touched a nerve.
Wren had clearly fallen for it. ‘Bloody hell, Matt. Stop hounding the woman.’ She put a hand on Miriam’s forearm. ‘I’m sorry. He’s drunk too much.’
‘That’s okay,’ Miriam looked at her watch. ‘It’s getting late any—’
‘Why were you in Chesham this morning?’ Matt said.
Wren glared at him.
‘I told you,’ Miriam stood up, ‘I wanted updates.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘That’s enough,’ Wren snapped loudly. ‘I apologise, Miriam, but religion and wine clearly bring out the idiot in my husband.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘But I really better go.’
The two women vanished into the hallway and Matt heard them chatting. When he came out, he saw Miriam throw a huge hug around Wren.
‘Miriam, I didn’t mean to be hurtful,’ Matt said.
She smiled at him, and this one looked genuine. ‘You know you may have left Jesus, but he won’t leave you. I think you should just accept that he clearly didn’t want you to die today. You should thank him for that.’ She leant over and kissed Wren on the cheek. ‘So remember, prayer time tomorrow night. 8 p.m. at St Bart’s. It’d mean a lot to me if you both came.’
‘He’ll be there,’ Wren said then closed the door. Alone now, she turned and aimed her eyes directly at him. ‘You know something … you can be a real dickhead sometimes.’
‘Wow.’
‘Just because you have issues with religion, doesn’t mean you have to treat all Christians like they’re pieces of dirt.’
‘I don’t �
�� and it’s not even like that.’
‘Then what the hell is going on with you?’ She paused, softened for a second. ‘Is it the stress? These last few days?’
‘No, it’s just …’ He looked over her shoulder at the door. ‘I don’t trust her, Wren.’
‘But why?’
‘Because …’ He shrugged. ‘She can’t even look us in the eye.’
‘Who cares? She saved your life.’
‘And don’t you think that’s weird? She barely knows me.’
An exasperated breath crossed her lips, then she looked him up and down and shook her head. ‘I’m not doing this. I’m going to bed.’
‘Fine.’
‘And don’t come up to talk about it, either.’
‘Fine.’
He watched her stomp up the stairs then did his own, slightly staggered stomp to the kitchen, so he could swig a glass of water at the sink. The church cross beamed its fire at him. ‘Oh, don’t you start.’ He reached for the blind cord.
And paused.
Around this time last night … he thought to himself … Sean Ashton was digging a glass into his own wrist … right under that black-looking tree, right in the shadow of that damn crucifix that had once felt so beautiful to Matt, so hopeful. The cross his mother loved and ended up dying for. How can you expect people to believe, he thought to himself, when you just stand back and let people die, even your own son? He snapped the blinds shut.
He checked the front door was locked and slow-walked up the stairs. He and Wren passed in the hall. She took a leaf out of Miriam’s book and kept her gaze fixed forward.
‘Night,’ he said. He got back what he expected. Silence.
He brushed his teeth, clicked off the bathroom light and paused when he saw street light seeping through the curtain on the landing. He went to close the gap when something made him open them instead.
Just a touch.
He leant forward and looked down.
Miriam’s car. The Rover 200.
It was still in their drive. The bag of liquorice still sat on the dashboard.