The Loney (34 page)

Equality. It was laughable. It wasn’t equality at all. Not what he understood by the word. Only in the eyes of God were people equal. In the eyes of God each person had the same opportunity to be rewarded with everlasting peace, even the most hardened sinners. They could all walk the same path together if the people of the Other world would only repent. But they never would.

He detested leaving Saint Jude’s or the presbytery and dreaded any meeting that would necessitate the use of the Tube, which at rush hour really did seem to be a place from Hell.

The only way to cope was to think of himself as Dante, documenting evidence of this Other world’s iniquities to share with his flock on his return. That way, as he was swept along in its currents, he might lift himself out of the tide of filth that pressed up against the doors of the train, the way the gulls were pressing against one another now to get at whatever it was that had become such a prized catch.

***

At first it was an old fishing net rolled up by the sea into a cocoon; no, a beached seal, he decided, when a gull lifted off and he caught a glimpse of pale skin.

But then he saw the boots tumbling in the edge of the water.

He went down the dune, slipping and almost falling, grasping the marram and feeling it hold firm for a moment before it came loose in his hand. At the bottom he took his shoes from around his neck and started across the sand, running for the first time in years, shouting and waving his hands, scattering the gulls.

It was as he had feared. The man was drowned. The thought that he might yet be saved had crossed his mind as he ran towards him, but it was far too late for that. The gulls had pecked deep holes in his neck and slit the tattoos there, but had drawn no blood.

The man’s hair was half covering his face, but when he knelt down and bent his head close to the sand he could see that it was the old tramp they had been talking about at the dinner table. The wretch he had seen asleep in bus shelters and leaning against the gates of cattle fields, his body limp with drink, his eyes slow to follow what was passing. Well, now his eyes were as blank as mushrooms.

A fresh wave broke and surged up the beach and washed under the body, leaving little bubbles in the tramp’s hair and in his beard as it ebbed away.

So this was death. A brief, salty sousing and it was done.

The next wave came soon after and as it retreated again the sand gave way and broke into little runnels, the grains pouring down into the gouges.

He looked around, but there was no use in calling for help. Not here. There was no one. He thought about going back up the dune and waving his arms to try and attract their attention back at Moorings, but it was unlikely they would see him. He would seem a tiny figure to them, obscured to shadow by the sun. And if they did see him what would they think? Would they come? If they came what use would they be? There was nothing they could do now. And was it fair to compel them to see what he had found? The women especially. It would cast a shadow over the whole trip.

Faster and faster the sand was liquefying around the tramp’s body, running away from under him and making him turn slowly on to his side. A larger crack appeared, running out of the top of his head to where Father Wilfred was kneeling. The water filled it on the next wave and widened it so that a great cake of sand broke and the body suddenly rolled and fell and floated. He hadn’t realised it until now, but the tramp had been lying at the very edge of a deep trench.

What made him reach out and grab the shirt, he wasn’t sure. It was instinctive, he supposed. He caught a sleeve and taking it firmly in his grip he dragged the body towards him, feeling for the first time—and with a shock that made him take hold with his other hand as well—the strength of the sea as it was pulling away from the land.

As the water in the trench lowered, the walls became apparent. They were made of a grey substance that was neither sand nor mud. He slipped down, dug in his feet, and slipped further. The outgoing water was moving apace, its speed increasing as it neared the narrowing bottom of the gulley, where he now found himself up to his knees. A section under his foot gave way and disappeared and he fell and ran the side of his face down the wall, tasting the gritty sulphur of the sludge. He let go, floundered, felt the water sucking him, tried to regain his grip, but the body was hurried away. He pushed himself upright and waded after the body a few paces before it was clear that it was pointless and although it was washed back towards him a few times as the tide engaged in its last ebb and flow, it was with the same mockery as a child who holds out a ball for its playmate only to snatch it away. Eventually the body sank out of sight.

He got out of the water and went up the beach and crossed the line of weed. He leant against the pillbox and wiped the mess off his face and stared at the sea, wondering if anything might reappear. But already it seemed that what had happened was unreal. That only minutes before he had been clinging to the sleeve of a corpse. There was no evidence of the old tramp at all now. Even his boots had gone.

It was shock, he supposed, the cold that was making him shiver, but he was terrified. He had almost been dragged into the sea, yes, but it wasn’t the sea that he was afraid of.

He felt alone.

More alone than he had ever felt in his life. It was a kind of nakedness, an instant disrobing. His skin prickled. A cold eel slithered in his stomach. Feelings that he thought he had left behind in childhood on those nights he had cried himself to sleep over another dead brother or sister surfaced and spread and overwhelmed him.

Was it pity? No, he felt nothing for the tramp. He was from the Other world and had got what he deserved. Wasn’t that so?

Why, then, did he feel so altered? So abandoned?

It was the place itself.

What was it about this place?

And then it came to him.

He had been wrong about everything.

God was missing. He had never been here. And if He had never been here, in this their special place, then He was nowhere at all.

He tried to dismiss the thought as quickly as it had come, but it returned immediately and with more insistence as he stood there watching the gulls flocking for the crustaceans left behind, and the clouds slowly knotting into new shapes, and the parasites swarming in the carcass of some thing.

It was all just machinery.

Here there was only existence coming and going with an indifference that left him cold. Life here arose of its own accord and for no particular reason. It went unexamined, and died unremembered.

He had fought with the sea for the dead drunk’s body with the same futility with which Xerxes had flogged the Dardanelles with chains. The sea had no concept of quarrel or possession—he had only been a witness to its power. He had been shown the perfect religion. One that required no faith. Nor were there any parables to communicate its lessons, because there were none to be taught. Only this: that death was blank. Not a doorway, but a wall, against which the whole human race was mounded like jetsam.

He felt like a drowning man himself, flailing about for something to hold onto. Just one thing that might help him stay afloat a little longer, even if it was bound to sink in the end.

After what seemed like an age, he put on his shoes, and walked for an hour back and forth, as the dusk settled, from one end of the beach to the other, searching the dunes, the rock pools, the deep channels.

Finding nothing.

M
ummer had corralled everyone into the sitting room to listen to Hanny read. The elderly folk sat on the sofa. The rest stood behind them. The armchair that Father Bernard had been given that rainy night when we’d first decided to go back to Moorings, was now set out for Hanny instead. He sat down and Mummer kissed his face and handed him our Bible.

Hanny smiled and looked around the room. He opened the Bible and Mummer knelt down at his side.

‘There,’ she said, turning a few pages and pointing.

Hanny looked around at everyone again. They were all waiting for him to begin.

He stared down and put his finger on the page and began to read. It was from the end of Mark—the passage that Father Wilfred often branded onto our mortal souls as we sat in the vestry after Mass.

The disciples had refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, but we were not to be like them. We could not be afraid to see Him in all his glory.

‘“These signs will accompany those who believe,”’ Hanny read. ‘“In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”’

As Hanny spoke, a murmur of excitement ran through the room, and they knew that God was among them. Mummer was sobbing. Farther went over and put his arms around her. Mr and Mrs Belderboss had their heads bowed and were praying quietly, encouraging others to do the same. Miss Bunce and David stared as Hanny read slowly and carefully, but never once faltered on a single word.

Father Bernard glanced over at me. One day I thought I might be able to explain to him, to everyone what had happened, or have to, but what I would say I didn’t know. I would only be able to give them the facts as I remembered them, as I’m writing them now.

***

I’ve left this part until last, but it must be set down as well as everything else. When they come asking questions, as they surely will, I need to have things straight, no matter the horror.

Doctor Baxter says I ought to worry less about the minutiae of life and look at the bigger picture, but I have no choice and the details are important now. Details are truth. And in any case, I don’t care what Baxter says. I saw what he scrawled on my notes. It was only a few words that I glimpsed before he closed the file, but it was enough.
Some improvement, but continues to exhibit childlike worldview. Classic fantasist
. What the hell does he know anyway? He wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t know what it means to protect someone.

***

I’ve walked down those cellar steps again and again for the last thirty years, in bad dreams and small-hours insomnia. I know every footfall, every creak of wood. I can feel the damp plaster under my hand as I did on that foggy afternoon as Clement and I inched down in the dark, holding the wall, holding Hanny.

He had lost consciousness by the time we reached the bottom and we had to drag his full weight to a mattress in the middle of the floor that had been freshly stained around the buttons. He slithered from our grip and fell heavily. Clement knelt down and placed a grubby pillow under his head.

There was a smell of burning. A table by the mattress was covered in a black cloth, and the bunches of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling were turning in the heat from the candles. The air was thick and stagnant and the walls glistened with condensation. Here and there, thin stalactites had formed and roots of weeds sprigged through where the mortar had dissolved. It was nothing more than a cave clad with white bricks. It was the place Alice Percy had taken all those sea-weary sailors to be bludgeoned and eaten.

By the mattress was a heap of dirty towels and an enamel bowl of instruments coated in blood that had turned dark and resinous: a scalpel, scissors, a pair of forceps. Else had given birth down here. The child had never seen the daylight.

At the end of the room was a wicker basket, which shook as the baby kicked and screamed itself hoarse. Clement put his hands over his ears. In the low room, the noise was terrible. Parkinson and Collier stood against the wall. The dog lay with its chin on its paws, its frightened eyes looking up for some comfort. It whimpered once and was silent.

Under the screaming there was another sound, a soft thudding coming from somewhere, something like thunder heard from a distance. It rolled and scattered and returned. And I realised that it was the sea pounding the rocks under Thessaly.

‘You can go back upstairs now,’ Leonard said to me as he went over to the basket and took out the baby which was wrapped in a white sheet.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to be with Hanny.’

I bent down and squeezed Hanny’s hand, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He had been sick down his new white shirt. His whole body was shaking as his leg seeped blood. He was dying moment by moment.

‘Clement,’ said Leonard.

Clement put his hand gently on my shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Tha’d better do as they say. There’s nothing tha can do for him now.’

‘I want to stay.’

‘Nay,’ said Clement, his voice almost at a whisper now. ‘Tha doesn’t. Believe me.’

I knew Clement was right and that I had to go with him, but I didn’t want to leave Hanny alone with them.

Leonard came past me with the bundle. The baby was still screaming in a ferocious way, terrified and violent, like a trapped animal. It was so strong that Leonard had to hold it close to his chest.

‘Go on,’ said Leonard, raising his voice. ‘You can’t stay.’

I felt myself being pulled out of the room as Clement dragged me up the stairs and out into the hallway, where he stood against the door so that I couldn’t go back down.

‘They’ll tell you when it’s been done,’ he said.

‘When what’s been done?’

‘When he’s better.’

‘What will they do to him?’

‘Them?’ said Clement. ‘
They
don’t do anything.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Clement looked at me in a way that suggested he didn’t either.

How long I waited there, I don’t know. An hour, two maybe. The fog pressed close to the house and the hallway was filled with a pallid light. All the while Clement stood with his back to the door, eyeing me nervously, until finally we heard Leonard calling us down.

Clement stood aside as I went down the steps two at a time into the darkness. The main bulb had been turned off and the cellar was lit only by the candles that had been placed around the rim of a chalk circle that had been drawn on the floor. Leonard, Parkinson and Collier were standing inside the circle. Collier’s dog lay by his feet shivering.