Текст книги "Vows of Silence "
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
And then Chris Deerbon. Cat had told her before she hung up. He had a brain tumour. They would operate. After that they would know more.
Jane had told the abbess the bare details of the conversation. Karin and Chris would be in the abbey prayers night and day from now on.
“That’s our job,” Sister Catherine had said. “Yours is to go and be with them.”
Jane had expected to be in Lafferton by late afternoon but the storms caused such traffic chaos that she was still on the road well after eight, inching forward in a queue several miles long. It gave her time and solitude in which to pray but, inevitably, she also had time to think. Lafferton meant many things to her, some of them extremely painful. But she had made some warm friendships during her time there and she hoped they would be enduring ones.
She had also met Simon Serrailler.
She had run away from Lafferton and she could admit now that Simon had been one of the main reasons for her flight. Simon had assumed an importance, had somehow got under her wire, in a way she had not yet fully acknowledged.
The traffic did not move. She switched off the engine and took her Bible out of the glove compartment. At odd times such as this, she liked to rediscover the Books she did not know well and which were not a familiar part of the church services.
“ The word of the Lord came to me saying, Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said, I see a branch of an almond tree.”
She loved the Bible when it was at its most direct and matter-of-fact, when it spoke of everyday. “ I see a branch of an almond tree.” It scarcely mattered what you believed or did not.
She was still reading, occasionally looking up, over an hour later and by then she had found a notebook and jotted down comments on the text.
When the lights of the car in front showed red and it began to move, she was relieved not only to have studied all of Jeremiah, but to have put Simon Serrailler firmly out of her mind.
He came back to it as she drove on, free of the traffic eventually and taking side roads and short cuts, to try and make up time. She tried to picture him. Tall. White-blond hair. Long nose. But his whole face would not click into place, he hovered some where, shadowy and vague. Why was she trying to remember exactly what he looked like?
She switched on the car radio and tuned in to a discussion about Chinese babies abandoned in the countryside. The story might have been biblical.
She drove on down the dark roads.
Thirty-six
At first they had all been cut out and stuck into a scrapbook and the scrapbook was still there, to be consulted, in a box file on the shelf, but lately he had bought a scanner and scanned the pieces straight onto his computer. Easier to organise.
He had a routine. When he got in he went straight to the shower, then changed into clean clothes, usually combat trousers and a T. Tonight the T was an old olive-green one with a faded picture of Che Guevara. Retro. He hadn’t much idea who Che Guevara was.
Food. Lamb chop, carrots, peas, fried up mashed potato from the day before. Banana. Apple. Four squares of chocolate. Two mugs of tea. He liked his food. He ate well. Always cooked. You were what you put into yourself. Too much putting in of junk—that’s what did for them. Did for their brains and their behaviour and their attitude and their bellies.
He watched the news. Watched half an hour of random sport on Sky. Pulled the ring off a can of lager. Opened up the com puter. Switched on the scanner.
FORTHCOMING MARRIAGES
The wedding between Andrew Hutt and Chelsea Fisher,
both of Lafferton, will take place on Saturday 22 October at
Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, Dedmeads Road,
Lafferton, at 2.30 p.m.
All friends welcome at the church.
He filed it under “Additional.”
NOTICE
The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of
St Michael, Lafferton, give notice that the Cathedral Close
and the area of Cathedral Lane, Old Lane and St Michael’s
Walk will be closed to the public and to through traffic
between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday 10 November.
Diversions will be clearly marked. The Cathedral Close will
remain accessible to residents.
Which was filed under “Primary.”
He pressed Save, closed the files. Changed the password, as usual every evening.
Tonight’s was “woodcock.”
Time scale, detailed plan, schedules, routes—were in a second box file, marked “Tax Receipts’, kept in the wooden chest on which the television stood.
The chest was locked. The key was in the freezer buried in a full tub of margarine. If it took five minutes to get at it that didn’t worry him. Precautions. Plans. Schedules. A routine.
That way there was less chance of anything going wrong.
Thirty-seven
Simon left his office and ran.
He was stopping for nothing and for no one. He had been on duty for fourteen hours. Bethan Doyle’s former partner had been questioned and was in the clear. Whiteside had taken it upon himself to drive him to see his baby son. Craig Drew had been driven back to his parents’ house by Louise Kelly. Simon had never been up against so many blanks. He felt as if he was wading through clouds. The one thing he could get his teeth into was the job of giving the Jug Fair the highest police profile it had ever received. The Chief was certain the fair would draw the gunman. “Nothing,” Paula Devenish had said, “and I mean nothing, can be allowed to happen.”
Simon got into his car and dialled from his mobile.
“This is the Deerbon residence, who is speaking please?”
“Hi, Sam.”
“Oh.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes. Only Dad’s had an operation. On his brain. So I’m not really OK.”
“I’m coming over now, I’m just leaving the station. Will you tell—”
“Mummy’s upstairs with Felix and she’s crying a lot. Grandpa and Judith were here but they’ve gone to the hospital. Hannah’s on a sleepover. So there isn’t anyone.”
“Ten minutes, Sam.”
“In your own car?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. No siren.”
“No. But I’ll screech the tyres round the corners.”
“Cool.” Sam put the phone down.
He was at the door as Simon drew up. He looked suddenly older; his legs were longer, his face was changing, the baby softness firming and sharpening. His resemblance to Chris was clearer. Not long ago he would have raced to Simon, arms outstretched, ready to be lifted up and swung round. Now, he waited, his face serious.
“Hi, Sam.”
“Mum’s still upstairs. How’s the shooting investigation coming along?”
“We’ll get there.”
They went inside.
“I saw you on the telly. How old do I have to be to come and do work experience with CID?”
“Sixteen.”
“That’s not fair.”
Simon heard Cat’s footsteps on the stairs. “Many things aren’t fair,” he said.
Sam had the new Alex Rider book but he was reluctant to be left, asking anxious questions about Chris, chattering pointlessly about whether dogs could see in the dark and if his brother would grow up to get better marks than he had in maths. His eyes moved between Simon and Cat, looking for reassurance. They sat with him, talking, answering. In the end, he had simply opened the book, turned away from them and said, “I’m going to read now.”
Felix was asleep, face down on the pillow, knees drawn up as if he were about to crawl away. Simon laughed.
“Yes,” Cat said. “They keep me going. Sam is so sharp, he susses too much.”
“But you have told them?”
“As much as they need to know. Which is probably all there is to tell.”
Simon went to the fridge and found a bottle of white wine.
“No,” Cat said, “I’m not. Not just now.”
He put the bottle back and went to the kettle. “They can’t take everything but I can, you know,” he said.
Cat leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She looks older, Simon thought, like Sam. Her face has changed, too. Something like this happens and we slip down a rung or two and we can never go back. He wanted to draw her.
“Peppermint tea,” she said. “It’s in the blue jar.”
“How did the operation go?”
“They took quite a lot of the tumour out, but of course they can never get it all—too dangerous. They did the biopsy. It’s a grade-three astrocytoma. They’ll give him a course of radiotherapy.”
“Which will help?”
Cat looked at him as he handed her the tea. “For a while.”
He sat next to her. There wasn’t anything to say. He couldn’t produce platitudes.
“You’re staying off work?”
“Oh yes, I have to. He’ll be home in a week and then he’ll need me all the time. There isn’t much of that. You know, when patients used to tell me they couldn’t take in what I’d just told them, I didn’t really know what they meant. But I sat there this afternoon listening to the neurosurgeon explaining everything and he was talking Greek. I couldn’t understand it. It didn’t go in. When I came out of the room I stood in the corridor and repeated what he’d said to me. “Your husband has a grade-three astrocytoma, I have removed what I could. That will relieve the pressure for a time and we’ll give him ten days of radiotherapy. It will buy him time. But this is only palliative, you understand.” I actually said all that to myself aloud. A couple of people went by me and c”
Cat set her cup down carefully on the table and started to cry.
Cat. Crying. Simon remembered when she had cried after falling off a horse and breaking her arm, and at the funerals—their mother’s, Martha’s. But they had not been tears like this, not tears fetched up from somewhere he could not reach, tears of despair and pain and desolation. He sat, his hand on her back as she leaned forward sobbing into her cupped hands.
Chris would die. Cat would stay here, bring up the children, resume her job eventually. The world would go on turning. Nothing would change.
Everything would change. Chris. He loved his brother-in-law, had always got on easily with him, had taken his presence for granted over thirteen years. Chris was not a complex man. He liked his life, loved his family, did his job, could be contrary. An ordinary man. And now, an ordinary man with something eating into his brain. Lying in hospital tonight after his head had been sawn open.
The ground seemed to shelve away in front of Simon, exposing a crater.
Thirty-eight
She’d sounded odd. Not herself. But he hadn’t been able to put a finger on it.
“Can we go another night?” she had said.
“What’s wrong? You not well?”
“No. Yes. I mean, I’m not ill, just a bit—I’d rather go another night. Or just have a drink.”
“But I’ve booked.”
She had sighed. There had been a silence.
“Come on, do you good, you’ll feel better for it.”
“Where is it anyway?”
“Somewhere you’ll like.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.”
Silence. A long silence. He hadn’t been able to make it out.
“Alison?”
“Yes, yes, right. I’m sorry. Fine, it’s fine, of course, we’ll go.”
“You sure?”
“I just said.”
“I want you to like it. I want you to enjoy yourself, it’s special.”
“I will. Sorry. What time do you want to go?”
“Pick you up at seven.”
“As early as that?”
“There’s things to look at, then we can have a drink and then we’ll eat.”
“Is it far, this place, wherever it is?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Right. Fine. See you then.”
“Love you.”
But she had already gone.
He sat, now, over his tea, Scotch egg and green beans, plums and cream, hearing the way her voice had been. In his head. He’d known but he hadn’t known. Of course he hadn’t. They were engaged, they were getting married in six months. She’d got a cold coming or the curse.
He’d known.
He stared at the egg on his plate. Neatly halved, the pale crumbly yolk, the rubbery grey-tinged white, the sausage meat, the orange crumbs.
He’d known.
When he’d got there she hadn’t been ready and her sister, Georgina, had been there, looking at him and then looking away. Afterwards, he realised that Georgina had been embarrassed. Because Alison had said something.
But he’d ignored it. Of course he had. Nothing was wrong. How could there be? They were engaged. They were going to be married. There was no one like Alison who had ever been born. That was how he felt, the extent of it. No one who had ever been born.
She’d come into the room and the sun had come out. It’s what happened, what she did. She wore a blue frock and a white jacket and her hair was down, floating round her head somehow, gauzy hair. The light showed through it as she came into the room.
Alison.
Georgina had looked at her. Alison hadn’t wanted to catch her eye.
There was something.
But when he pulled away from the kerb, he could have laughed with happiness.
“The Compton Ford Hotel,” she had read aloud as they drove through the gates and up the drive. The gravel crunched under the wheels. “I’ve heard about this place.”
“You’ll like it. I came and sussed it out.”
“What for?”
“Us. You wait.”
He handed her out and she had looked round slowly, taking everything in, the inch-thick gravel and the lawns, the stone urns full of white flowers, the terrace and avenue between the trees.
“Come on.”
“It’s very smart here. It’s got to be expensive.”
“So what?”
The staircase curved round and there was a marble floor in the entrance, a glass-roofed dining room, with doors open onto the lawn. White tablecloths. Waiters in long white aprons. Flowers.
“Look at the flowers,” Alison had said, her voice a whisper.
“You wait—they’ll be yours. Ours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our wedding.”
“We can’t get married here!”
“Why not?”
But she had turned away. She had gone to the Ladies while he went to order their drinks and find a table on the terrace in the evening sun. He sat, imagining it, picturing her. The garden full of their guests, Alison in the centre of it all.
She came back after what seemed a long time.
“I asked for a brochure,” he said, “when I came before. The sort of things they do. You can have anything you want. You ask, you can have it.”
She had looked at him and looked away quickly. She had picked up her glass of wine and taken a small sip and put it down.
“What do you think?”
He could still see the way the sun had been shining on her face and on the table and her glass and his glass, and feel the warmth from it. A few other people had come in. Behind them there was the soft sound of someone putting cutlery down on linen.
“I’ve got something to say.”
That was all. Odd. That was all he’d needed. “I’ve got something to say.” And his world had fallen apart. He’d watched the pieces of it floating away slowly like leaves down and down and out of sight and all there had been was a dark hollow space and a cold wind blowing.
Just that one thing she had said and the way she had looked, but not at him, the expression on her face. I’ve got something to say.
The pale gold lager and the paler wine had soured and curdled in the glass and his fingers had turned to ice.
He had heard her out and said nothing. Nothing at all. Just got up and paid the bill, cancelled the table. “Not feeling too good.”
“Say something, please say something. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I don’t know how it happened, I didn’t mean it to, only it did, I’m really sorry.”
On and on. She was sorry. Didn’t know how. But it had happened. He had said nothing.
It wasn’t that he had not heard her or taken it in. He had. She was not going to marry him because she wanted to be with Stuart Reed. His friend Stuart Reed. Now her lover Stuart Reed.
“I’m sorry.”
He had not driven too fast or carelessly. He had gone straight to her house, walked round, opened the car door for her. She’d stood on the pavement outside the house, her eyes big, mouth working.
Alison.
“Say something, for God’s sake.”
But he had simply stood and, in the end, she had walked unsteadily towards the gate, not looking back.
He had caught sight of Georgina. Looking down from the window upstairs.
Georgina. She knew.
He had got back into the car and driven off, driven for a long time and as he drove, he allowed the anger to seep out of the place where he had penned it. Drop by drop. He could not let it come too fast because it was so strong and so deadly, so concentrated. It would have set the car on fire.
The grief came much later and was so confused in his head with the anger that he barely recognised it for what it was. What shocked him was how the love he had felt for her had shrivelled to nothing and been burned up. He still felt passion but in a way which had twisted inside out, turned in on itself.
He sat beside a railway line watching the trains which flashed by every twenty minutes and pictured her lying on the rails. Her eyes were open and she saw everything and knew that he was watching her die under the wheels of the train. In the time he spent there, an hour or more, he planned what he would do and when and how he would do it and where he would go afterwards. He planned it so meticulously, in such careful steps, that he knew that he would succeed. He could not fail.
And none of it would be his fault. He would not be to blame and he would explain that to anyone. He was not to blame. She had done it. To him. To herself.
Alison.
It had taken two days and then he had woken in the night crying. He cried for her and for himself and what he had lost, knowing surely that he would never love again as he had loved her. It had taken him so long. Others did it so easily, girlfriends, partners, wives, but he had never got it right, never had the knack. She had been his miracle and he had never quite believed in her. Maybe that was it, he had thought, lying in the dark, maybe she had not been believable. Maybe it had not been true, as he had felt it. He had always been amazed that she had responded to him but then, why not, he’d got lucky, it was bound to happen, people had always told him so.
So now? Go to her. Go and ask and plead and beg.
No way. It had been hard enough. He wasn’t about to risk that, losing his pride as well as everything else.
He knew what he had to do. He had thought it all out, hadn’t he?
He knew.
He had turned over and slept but in his sleep the tears still came.
He stared at his plate. Then he took up his knife and fork. He gouged out the hard-boiled yellow iris of the Scotch egg and dissected it into minute crumby pieces on his plate. The white of the eye came next, prised out as a single flabby half-moon. He cut that into slivers. The rest, the sausage meat and the outer crust, he mashed with the back of his fork, pressing it down hard and flattening it onto the surface of the plate.
He did the same with the other half of the egg until the whole was a turgid mess, the iris of the egg and the white mashed together and stirred round and round, round and round.
He sat there for a long time, remembering. Reminding himself.
Angry.
Thirty-nine
Helen put down her fork. “The thing is—given the play discusses such serious issues, it always surprises me how funny it is.”
“Have you seen it before?”
She shook her head. “I used to belong to the Lafferton Players.”
Phil made a face.
“All right, I know c It was all very am-dram and I left but I did get to know some brilliant plays, like the David Hare trilogy. I thought then how funny some of Racing Demonis.”
“Funniest line?”
“Easy. When he’s challenging God, telling him He’s not up to much, He’s like some low-down football team.”
“Accrington Stanley.”
“Yes, and the supporters are like those who sort of support God but it’s OK ‘because they’re Accrington Stanley in their daily lives—they just don’t go to the games.’”
“Do you?”
“What, go to the Accrington Stanley games?”
“No, to God’s.”
It was not a subject that had arisen in their half-dozen meetings but after seeing the Hare play about clerical crises and the state of the Church of England, it was inevitable one of them would raise it and Helen had known it would not be her. She had almost declined the theatre outing just because of it.
She ate more of her saltimbocca, very slowly.
“Is that not all right?”
“It’s delicious. I’m savouring the last mouthfuls.”
“Right.”
She had to tell him about Tom. Of course she had to. And why not? She would defend her son to the gallows. But it was difficult. She’d veered away from it. But this was Phil. She looked at him across the table. He raised an eye brow. Phil. The Phil she was growing to like very much, whose company she loved, who c
She put her knife and fork together and drank the last of her wine.
“Wonderful.”
“You needn’t worry.”
“What about?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. Religion and politics, you know.”
“Well, we’ve done politics.”
“We have.”
They were both Gordon Brown Labour voters, both glad to see the back of Blair, both from families who in the past had been militantly left wing. As a student, Phil had sold the Socialist Worker, he said, had even become a Trotskyite for two terms.
“But you grow up, don’t you? Real life breaks in.”
The waiter came to clear and bring the dessert menu. Phil ordered another glass of wine for her and more mineral water.
“I couldn’t eat anything else,” she said.
“How disappointing. I could.”
He ordered a pudding for himself, then said, “I’m an atheist. I cannot understand how anyone of intelligence believes in a God. It baffles me. I also think religion is dangerous. A force for ill. And if you’re a Scientologist we’ll have to agree not to mention Thetans, that’s all.”
“So c”
“So?”
“Oh, I’m just getting my head round being a person without intelligence.”
“You believe in God?”
“I think so. Anyway, I sing with the cathedral choral society. I go to the Easter service, Christmas, the Advent carols c That’s about it, though, I’m not a very good churchgoer.”
“Ah. Accrington Stanley in fact.”
“It’s Tom you should know about. Not that I mind, not that it makes any difference at all to c anything.”
“Tom. Tell me.”
He leaned closer and put his hand on top of hers on the table. “What is so dreadful about Tom?”
“No, not dreadful c” She sighed. It was difficult and it ought not to be but she still felt uncomfortable sometimes with what had happened.
“When he was sixteen one of his friends asked him to go on holiday with him and his family. Tom said yes and then it turned out to be some sort of Christian holiday—in tents on a showground. Anyway, by the time Tom realised, he said he’d better go as he’d said he would. It would be a laugh and there were bands, he’d get through it. There were beaches nearby for surfing, which he loves. It was in Cornwall. So off he went. Lizzie and I went to walk in Northumberland—Hadrian’s Wall. We laughed a lot about how poor Tom was coping. But when we all got back he’d coped by joining up.”
“You mean they brainwashed him?”
“Not exactly. But the atmosphere was so highly charged and emotional and he was under a lot of pressure. He said it was like a light going on. He did nothing but read the Bible and go off with these people. They have very extreme, fundamentalist beliefs and they’re pretty ferocious about everyone who isn’t one of them. I was angry. I tried to talk to him. But you can’t. Their brains seem to be rewired and you can’t get through. Lizzie gave him hell. But I assumed it would fizzle out, like all these teenage things.”
“And it hasn’t.”
“On the contrary. And I’ve been trying not to tell you.”
Phil started to laugh.
“Not funny. It really isn’t. You should hear him—he’s so earnest and serious about it. He isn’t the Tom I know, Phil—he never talks about anything else, he has hardly any other friends. He went to one of their conventions in America this summer and he came back quite terrifyingly right wing and even more fundamentalist. We’ve had to agree not to talk about it at all. I find it pretty difficult to live with.”
“So would I.”
The restaurant was emptying. Phil had finished his pot of wine-soaked cream. They agreed to pass on coffee. Phil asked for the bill. But what he had said seemed to drop heavily onto the space between them. So would I.
Helen got up and went to the cloakroom, furious that she had had to tell him, furious with Tom. Now everything would go wrong. Fall apart.
She looked in the mirror. “You love him,” she said.
Lizzie was at a friend’s. Tom’s motorbike was in the passage.
“I won’t stay,” Phil said. “Come to my place at the weekend.”
“No. Come in now. I’m not going to have my life ruled by my son.”
Phil touched her arm. “It won’t be. But I’ve a long teaching day tomorrow.”
She watched until his car had turned the corner. Tom’s light was on, and the lights downstairs.
Helen looked up at the half-moon. The air smelled cold, with a touch of winter. So now he knew. It seemed hopelessly wrong that it was not drugs or bad company, not drink or giving up on school, but a narrow sectarian religious faith which divided her from Tom, made life with him difficult and might drive Phil away. Would she be scared off, in his position?
No, she thought. No, actually, I wouldn’t. I’d say what Phil said. That it was Tom’s life and she shouldn’t let it affect hers.
But that was easily said.
Tom was at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal, a booklet propped on the milk jug.
“Hello.”
Tom grunted. “Good time?”
“Very. The play was excellent and so was the Italian dinner. So yes. Tea?”
“No thanks.”
Helen glanced sideways at what he was reading. “Is that something they’re keen on then? Chastity?”
“No sex before marriage.”
“Same difference. Goodness.”
“What?”
“Oh, just—goodness. Not very fashionable.”
“No, fashionable is promiscuity, fashionable is casual sex, fashionable is gay, fashionable is at the root of social breakdown. The Bible says—”
“Ouch!”
He looked up.
“Sorry—splash of hot water. It’s fine.”
She wished she hadn’t started the conversation, but what conversation with Tom could she start which didn’t head in the same direction?
“Don’t expect too much of people, Tom.”
“I don’t.”
“Not everyone has your take on it. And when you meet a girl you’re very keen on you might see things differently.”
“I’ll make sure I don’t. Anyway, we all see it the same way.”
“We?”
“My friends. We don’t compromise.”
How had the sturdy, pragmatic but gentle little boy who had been Tom turned into this narrow and unfeeling person who read pamphlets entitled “Satan Works Through Sex’? What kind of people had him in thrall?
“Do you give them any money, Tom?” she asked suddenly.
“Give who?”
“Your—the church.”
“Of course. How do you think we fund our outreach? How do you think the Word is spread? It costs.”
“Right.”
He got up from the table.
“Put your bowl in the dishwasher, Tom.”
She looked at his long, thin back, the blades of his shoulders through his T-shirt, his pepper-coloured hair. Terry’s hair.
“You should come,” he said. “You never have. You go to Lizzie’s orchestra, you go to your choir. You never go to my things. How do you know what it’s about? You’d be fired up. You’d see everything differently.”
“That’s what I’d be afraid of.”
She was ready for bed but she didn’t go. There was a tension about Tom, a nervousness. She waited, fiddled about putting things away and wiping down the work surfaces. In the end he said, “Might go back to the States next year.”
“See some more of the country? Good idea.”
“Thing is, we’ve got this college in Carolina. A kind of Bible college. For training.”
We.
“I can train there.”
“A training college. I get it.”
“Don’t wind me up. I want to be an outreach minister, it’s what I think I’m called to do. To bring others in—to spread the faith.”
She said nothing. The questions that came to her lips could not be asked. What would your father have said? How are you going to pay for this? Don’t you think you’re too young? Are you sure?
“Mum?”
“Yes. Well, it’s your life, Tom. But just think hard about this. It’s a big commitment.”
“I think hard and pray about it all the time.”
She wanted to hug him, tall, bony, worried-looking, some thing of the ten-year-old still lingering on his face.
“Goodnight, love.”
“Mum c”
She waited.
“This Phil guy.”
“You have to meet him. Lizzie has. You’ll like him.”
“Thing is c I know I was cool about it to begin with c”
The kitchen was quiet. Wait, Helen told herself. Just wait.
“I just think maybe you should watch yourself. What’s he like? You don’t know really. He might be anyone.”
“He’s Phil. He teaches history. I’ve been out with him half a dozen times. I’ve been to his house. What’s to know?”
“Just think you should be careful.”
“At first. I met him over the Net so I was careful. But you know that, Tom. I honestly don’t think you’ve anything to worry about now.”
“OK.”
“No, it’s obviously not OK with you so talk to me.”
“What if he wanted you to go and live with him? Or get married?”
“I’d think about it very carefully.”
“He could be anyone.”
“But he isn’t. Tom, next year, Lizzie will be off to Cambridge, we hope, you say you’ll be in America. That leaves me here.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to hitch up with someone.”
“Please let me make my own choices.”
“I could have found you someone. I’d have picked the right person.”
“What, from that sect of yours?”
“It’s about truth. It’s about being on the inside, not out there.”
Helen sighed. They had reached the brick wall again.
In her room she found that she was shaking. Tom wanted to pick a partner and presumably a husband for her from the sect, to make sure she was saved, “on the inside” as he put it. Presumably Phil, like Lizzie, would never be “on the inside.”
How could this have happened to Tom in one summer week, how could his mind have been so altered, his whole view of life tampered with, by these people? Lizzie had said it was like living with an alien and Helen had been angry, made her take her words back. Tom was her brother. But Lizzie was right. This new Tom was alien.
Helen lay awake for a long time, distressed and troubled, longing for the old, easy-going, cheerful Tom, the Tom who mucked about. The Tom who laughed.
Forty
They were crammed into the conference room.
“OK, guys and gals, Lafferton Jug Fair, Saturday 27 October.”
Armed Response Bronze Command pointed to the map on the wall.
“Timing first. The fair set-up commences on the Friday evening, goes on till midnight. We have a list of fairground operatives—that’s official ones, those who travel with the fair, family members mainly, the ones who come year in, year out. There won’t be a problem there, it’s the casuals, odd bods who might get one-off employment, cash in hand, no names, no pack drill. Every fairground operative on the list has been given an ID badge. Whether they’ll wear them or not is another matter but uniform will be trying to enforce. Normally the fairground is open to the general public at any time but this year the entire venue will be closed off until one p.m. on the Saturday. Barriers will be up, uniform will be attending. No vehicles other than fairground authorised, of which we have a list of reg numbers. One o’clock the barriers come down—can’t be left any later on safety grounds, we don’t want them charging in like a herd of elephants or we’ll have kiddies and old ladies crushed in the stampede. The procession is due to arrive in the square at four twenty-five, Jug Fair Queen and retinue first, floats behind. Assembly for departure from the rec. Entering down here. Four thirty, the fair is officially opened, the Fair Queen and the Mayor get onto the merry-go-round at four forty for the first ride. Then it’s everything go. I wouldn’t anticipate any trouble there but we will have Vehicle B on standby. As soon as the procession moves off, so does Vehicle B and follows at the back. Now you’ve all got smaller versions of the map, shout if you were away with the fairies and didn’t pick one up as you came in, sorry about the quality, printer cartridge was running out.”
