Blind Faith (16 page)

This invitation led to Madonnatella assuring the
Confessor that she would not only put her house in
order but that she would do it immediately. Pulling off
her brassiere, she strode across to Ninja and shook her
enormous breasts in his face.

'These good enough for you?' she screamed. 'I'll show
you amazing sex. I'll make Angel Delight look frigid! I'll
make that cow look like a stick of wood!'

The crowd's mood shifted once more and this gesture of
self-confidence won the day. They cheered and stamped
their feet and Ninja, having punched the air a number of
times in celebration, fell upon his wife, declaring that he
loved her so much that he would never look at another
female member of her family again.

The following two testifications progressed along
similarly hysterical lines. The congregation showed
enormous interest in the conflict between a distraught
woman's personal inclinations and the insistence of her
tarot reader that she must leave the man she loved. After
considerable agonizing, Confessor Bailey ruled that the
woman must take her spiritual guru's advice. It was, after
all, impossible to ignore the workings of fate and clearly
the planets and the stars (which were the creation of the
Love) were pulling the woman towards new horizons that
did not include her current love. Confessor Bailey
expressed his confidence that new love was just around
the corner.

Next up, Confessor Bailey summoned to the stage a
couple for whom the wife's reluctance to allow her
husband anal sex was causing issues in their marriage. Not
only was the husband becoming frustrated but it was also
putting him at a social disadvantage down the pub, where
he was the laughing stock of his mates, whose partners,
he claimed, were up for anything. There were numerous
interjections from the floor on this subject, both for and
against the husband's position. A number of women
and some men stated that if the wife had issues with
taking it from behind then she should not feel pressurized
to do so. Many people pointed out that, as there was no
possibility of begetting children from such a practice, it
should be a matter of personal taste whether one indulged
in it. The husband was loudly booed for claiming that a
lack of interest in sodomy indicated frigidity. On the
other hand a large body of opinion in the room felt that
the woman should simply grit her teeth, stop moaning
and get on with it. After all, it was well known that what
a man could not get at home he would get elsewhere
and there were plenty of bitches out there who would
think nothing of stealing a woman's husband. Eventually
the Confessor announced that, having taken into
consideration the feelings of the assembly, he would rule
in favour of the wife.

'A woman's big arse is a gift that she may bestow or
withhold,' he intoned solemnly. 'It is not given to this
congregation to suggest otherwise.'

Trafford's head was splitting. The heat and the stench of
sweat in the room were overpowering and the frenzied
emotions and hysterical shouting of the congregation
battered his eardrums like an artillery assault. He was
asking himself how much more he could take when
finally Confessor Bailey summoned him and Chantorria
to the stage.

'Trafford has stopped giving Chantorria that which any
respectable woman has a right to expect from her
husband,' the Confessor announced to a smattering of
boos, 'and what's more, it appears that he gets his kicks
perving on the blogs and video diaries of other women!'

Confessor Bailey tried to make it sound exciting but the
crowd knew a bog standard break-up when they saw one.
Trafford and Chantorria were no star couple. They were
unknown outside the tenement in which they lived and
pretty much ignored within it. Conservatively dressed
and clearly uncomfortable to be the focus of so many
eyes, they were not glamorous either. The crowd liked
their testifiers to strut, to big themselves up and to play
to the gallery and Trafford and Chantorria were a
major disappointment.

'Hey! Be proud!' Confessor Bailey admonished as they
shuffled to their places. 'Don't you want to emote to the
congregation of which you are a member?'

'Yes, yes, of course we do,' Trafford said as he took his seat.

'Well then, let's get to it! Chantorria,' Bailey asked, 'tell
us why your marriage is on the rocks.'

'We've grown apart,' Chantorria replied. 'It just feels like
it's over, that's all.'

This was not a testification likely to provoke much
excitement in the crowd.

'What about his perving on blogs and other girls' vid
diaries?' Confessor Bailey demanded, clearly hoping to
add a little spice to the proceedings. 'Doesn't it make you
uncomfortable that he finds other girls more attractive
than you? Don't you have issues with that situation? Don't
you feel threatened by it?'

'Not girls, Confessor,' Chantorria explained. 'He's always
looking up this one girl, her name's . . .'

And as Chantorria said those words, Trafford saw her.
Sandra Dee.

She was a member of his own congregation! He knew
instantly why he had never spotted her before. This was
the first time in years that he had testified, the first time in
as long as he could remember that he had viewed
the whole room from the stage. Normally he never saw the
faces of his fellow worshippers, only the backs of their
heads. He saw their faces now though – and there she was,
sitting crushed in at the rear of the tiered seating. Crushed
in but clearly alone. That was why she had caught his eye
among the crowd: she was so very different. She wasn't
shouting or shaking her fist. She had not leaped to her feet
and her face was not contorted with rage; she was just
sitting there, alone. A still figure in a frenzied crowd, her
face calm, blank even. Giving nothing away.

'Sandra Dee,' said Chantorria, completing her sentence.

Now Sandra Dee's expression changed as it dawned on
her that a colleague had been cyberstalking her. She
looked shocked of course but also, Trafford felt, scared.

'Who is this Sandra Dee, Trafford?' Confessor Bailey
thundered. 'Is she the reason you are no longer interested
in your wife?'

Sandra Dee was staring at him, her face glowing red.
Now their eyes met and instead of looking away as he had
expected her to do, she continued to stare. Her gaze
burned into him, a silent, furious accusation. Here was a
woman who had gone to extraordinary lengths to remain
private and he had caused her name to be cited publicly
from the stage of a Community Confession; what was
more, cited as the only tangible evidence in a divorce case.
In the end it was Trafford who looked away, unable to
meet her eyes any longer for the guilt and remorse that
they provoked in him.

'No!' Trafford shouted. 'Absolutely not! I don't know
her at all. It was just a random blog, a hit that . . . a hit that
intrigued me.'

Trafford and Sandra Dee might have been finding this
exchange intense but for the crowd it was a very dull
business. They wanted passion, sex, blood even. They
weren't interested in some nonentity net-perving on a
girl he had not even had sex with. Confessor Bailey
could see that the congregation was getting restive and
decided to move on, granting them their notice of
intended separation and dismissing them from the stage.

As Trafford crossed the room to resume his seat he did
not look up towards where Sandra Dee was sitting but he
was certain that she was still staring at him. He could
almost feel the heat of her eyes burning holes in him.

'Well, that's over with,' Chantorria said as they sat down.
But Trafford knew that she was wrong.

The measles-plus epidemic, when it came, was shocking in
its suddenness and severity. These epidemics always were.
The Lord and the Love, as Confessor Bailey often said, had
no time to mess around.

'Oh, he's got a temper,' the Confessor assured his
congregation, 'and when he smites, he smites hard. Some
people call it vengeance, which of course it is, but I like to
call it tough love.'

There were those who believed that other factors were
causing the ever-increasing severity of the epidemics. The
reckless overuse of antibiotics had played a part, they felt,
as had appalling diet, sinking standards of public
hygiene and deteriorating water quality in what was now a
subtropical climate. These issues were discussed on the
more serious chat shows and various health-orientated
websites. Never for a moment was it suggested that these
factors were anything other than God's work; people
merely hinted that man in his sin might like to consider
eating more fruit and vegetables, and completing the
courses of those antibiotics that were still being prescribed.

The truth was that the deadly potential of all the major
diseases grew with each new plague and measles, or
measles-plus as it was now known, was no exception. The
virus was constantly evolving so that each time it returned
it was more violent and more deadly than before.

It was the same with mumps-plus, whooping cough-plus,
meningitis-plus and all the other diseases of childhood.
For it was in pre-faith-school illnesses that the deterioration
in public health was most alarming. Infant afflictions that
had once been survivable had steadily become more and
more lethal. Conversely, those who survived the first few
years of their lives seemed better placed to fight off the
plagues of adulthood. As Confessor Bailey said, those who
were chosen to survive were clearly righteous and strong
and favoured in the sight of the Lord. Or, according to the
health websites, they had developed viral immunity due to
some fortunate minor exposure (which had of course been
arranged, in his wisdom, by the Lord). But infants, in their
innocence, had developed neither righteousness nor viral
immunity and therefore a great winnowing regularly took
place in the cot and the nursery.

Trafford and Chantorria became aware that there was
measles-plus in their building one morning as they sat
down to breakfast. Just as the news was being broadcast to
the wallscreens in their kitchen, Trafford and Chantorria
heard the first mother sobbing through the thin fabric
of Inspiration Towers. A new strain of measles-plus had
been identified and it was ripping through their little
community like a hurricane, borne upon every cough,
every sneeze and every breath. The authorities were already
setting up a quarantine zone around the half-dozen tower
blocks that made up the estate.

Chantorria looked at Trafford, her face a picture of
alarm and misery. This was the moment every parent
dreaded, to be trapped on the wrong side of a quarantine
fence, imprisoned in a hotbed of infection. The authorities
would not lift the barriers until the disease had run its
course.

'Caitlin looks fine!' she wailed. 'They have to let us out
before she gets it!'

'You know they won't,' Trafford replied. 'They never do.'

It was true: everyone had heard stories of distraught
parents trying to storm quarantine fences with their
children in their arms. It never worked. The police were
prepared to shoot rather than risk infection escaping.

'But she looks well!' Chantorria lamented once more.

'That's right, she does.'

'They have to let us out!'

'Chantorria.' Trafford spoke quietly. 'They are not going
to let us out. We're quarantined. But all the same, I think
she will be OK.'

Chantorria was hardly listening. Already she had placed
a mask sprayed with air freshener over Caitlin
Happymeal's face and she was now stuffing wet rags into
the crack at the foot of the front door in an effort to keep
out the germ-laden air.

'Chantorria,' Trafford repeated, 'I said I think she may
be OK.'

His wife looked up at him angrily.

'Think!
Think!
' she shouted. 'What's fucking
thinking
got
to do with anything? We need to
pray
!'

'Don't you think they're all praying, Chantorria?'
Trafford asked. 'In every room in this building they're
praying to the very same God who they claim sent the
damn plague in the first place.'

Chantorria was crying now, tears of impotent panic.

'Well, we have to do
something
,' she wailed. 'Help me seal
the windows . . . or go and buy some lavender . . . or just
shut up and read one of your stupid manuals! Anything.
We have to do something. We can't just let her die.'

'I don't think she is going to die,' Trafford replied. 'You
see, Chantorria, I already did do something.'

Chantorria looked at him, hope starting in her eyes.

'You mean . . . ?'

'Yes. I had Caitlin inoculated.'

Within hours the tenement was filled with the sound of
weeping, as baby after baby succumbed to the fever and
mother after mother succumbed to despair. Toddlers and
little children had more strength to sweat it out but the
smallest all quickly became very sick. All, that is, except
Caitlin Happymeal.

In and out of the streets and corridors of the estate and
all through every building mothers watched helplessly as
their infants' eyes grew redder and throats grew more
painful. As long as the symptoms were similar to those of
a cold or flu there was still hope, slim hope but hope
nonetheless. Each parent tried to believe that their child
had only caught a chill and would prove miraculously
resistant to the carnage enveloping the community. But
once the spots arrived people knew in their hearts that
hope was lost and all that remained was prayer. The spots
began around the ears and spread to the body, growing
in size and number until they formed a solid rash, a rash
that sucked the life out of the infected babies as their
temperatures rose and rose. With the rashes the weeping of
the mothers decreased, to be replaced by the deep sadness
of silence as parents sat over cots awaiting the inevitable.
Such was the suddenness and ferocity of the epidemic that
almost every child suffered simultaneously, and thus the
numbing pain of the mothers was synchronized also. On
the Dying Day, as such days had come to be called, a
terrible hush descended across the whole estate as in the
space between two sunsets a tiny generation succumbed.

When the local health department finally lifted the
quarantine, one month after the fevers had begun, in
Inspiration Towers no child under one survived.

No child, that is, except Caitlin Happymeal.

Caitlin had remained unaffected and oblivious to the
tragedy going on around her, and as the tiny coffins were
carried from the building she played happily in her cot.

With Caitlin's miraculous survival came a change in
Chantorria. The month that the family had spent cooped
up in their apartment while the air rang with the agony
of dying babies had affected her deeply. The long nights of
watching Caitlin, scarcely daring to hope that Trafford's act
of heresy might save her, had also left their mark.
Chantorria became rather distracted and, to Trafford's
astonishment, bearing in mind the nature of Caitlin's
deliverance, more spiritual.

Their divorce had been only days away from finalization
when the plague struck. But the couple had put everything
on hold during the quarantine period and now it seemed
that Chantorria had changed her mind. She wanted
reconciliation.

'You made a miracle,' she said on the evening when the
authorities officially declared the plague to have run its
course, 'and I love you.'

'I didn't make a miracle,' Trafford replied. 'Miracles can't
be explained. You know exactly why Caitlin survived. Her
immune system had been primed to withstand the
epidemic.'

'I don't care how it was achieved, it's still a miracle,'
Chantorria said, 'and I think it's a sign.'

'A sign?'

'Caitlin's survival means she wants us to stay together.'

Trafford was astonished. 'Please tell me you're not
serious,' was all he could think of to say.

'Of course I'm serious. She's here because she wants to
help mend our marriage.'

'Chantorria, Caitlin is less than one year old. She
doesn't "want" anything apart from more booby.'

Trafford was horrified at the direction Chantorria's
mind had taken. How could it be that the very thing which
should have turned her away from bogus self-serving
spirituality seemed to be drawing her towards it?

'Our daughter,' he said firmly, 'is alive today because of
the intervention of man-made science. Her survival has
nothing to do with her wanting us to stay together.'

'I still don't want a divorce. Not now. Not after what
we've been through.'

But Trafford did want a divorce. He wanted his freedom:
freedom to read and to learn. That was his passion now.
Every moment spent in the real world, working through
the mundane detail of day-to-day life, was a moment lost in
his search for knowledge, understanding and experiences of
the imagination.

He wanted privacy and time to concentrate. If he and
Chantorria split up he would get it. She would keep their
flat because of the child and he would have to find a roof
elsewhere. Most men would have viewed this prospect
with horror; the housing shortage was permanently acute
and single men usually ended up in a hostel or at best a
bed-and-breakfast. In terms of physical comfort this would
be a huge step down for Trafford: family apartments were
cramped certainly and damp, rat-infested and insanitary,
but compared to the tiny plasterboard cupboards offered
in bed-and-breakfasts or the sardine-can dormitories of
the hostels they were palatial. But it was not comfort for
the body that Trafford needed, it was comfort for the mind
and the soul. He wanted simply to be left alone. A
cockroach-infested bunk in a crowded dorm would be fine
by him as long as he could shut out the world by tuning
his communitainer to some bland, forgettable New Age
chillout and disappear into the vast unmapped universe of
history, science and literature.

Besides, he was in love with Sandra Dee.

After the night at the Community Confession when
Chantorria had named her in the divorce testification,
Trafford had restrained himself from visiting Sandra Dee's
site. Even so, she remained at the forefront of his mind
and the fact that at the last Fizzy Coff she had furiously
avoided his eye had only served to increase his fascination.
In his mind all the heroines in the stories that Cassius
gave him to read looked like her. Elizabeth Bennet was
Sandra Dee, Heathcliff's Cathy was Sandra Dee, Anna
Karenina, Juliet and Ophelia were Sandra Dee. Even
the women in the history he was reading took on her
likeness: Marie Curie developing radium, Emily
Pankhurst ensuring female suffrage, Elizabeth I, all had
the face of Sandra Dee.

'I just think we should continue as we planned,' Trafford
said to Chantorria. 'After all, we've made the public
announcement and everything.'

'That doesn't make any difference,' Chantorria said.
'Some couples break up and make up once a fortnight.'

'We're not them. We should see through what
we've started.'

'Don't you love me any more?' Chantorria asked, tears
welling in her eyes.

'Chantorria, we both agreed to divorce. You don't love
me either.'

'But in these last weeks, we've been so close again.'

'Because we thought our daughter might die.'

'I thought . . . I thought . . . there was more to it than that.'

And the tears came. Chantorria wept and wept and of
course Trafford went to comfort her.

'Don't cry,' he said, hugging her. 'Let's leave it a day or
two and see what happens.'

'Caitlin needs us,' Chantorria sobbed. 'She wants us to
be together.'