The Resurrection of the Body (11 page)

T
he Trouble with Harriet

When I got home Harriet had not made lunch and the boys had gone to play with a neighbour. Harriet was sitting in the garden smoking. Her hand was shaking, not quite steady, and her face looked white and hard.

‘Harriet,’ I began, knowing what was coming, ‘It’s all a misunderstanding.’

‘I don’t see how it could be.’

‘I did kiss her,’ I said, ‘I can’t explain why, I forgot myself. We were talking very honestly together and … somehow I got mixed up in my mind and thought it was you.’

How could anyone have said anything more pathetic and incomprehensible? I could hear as I said the words
how absurd they sounded. ‘Me?’ she echoed back at me. She stared at me, as if I were crazy. ‘How could you possibly think that Tessa was me?’

‘I can’t explain. I was distracted. She was sitting there, in front of me …’

She interrupted me. ‘Tessa has told me everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes, everything. How she has been in love with you for two years. How she’s tried to conceal it, to keep her
position
in the parish. How she realised, finally, that you felt the same way about her. That she didn’t want to hurt me, that she couldn’t let us face the scandal, and how she is resigning from the parish at once.’

I sat down on the chair next to her. This was a disaster. How could I have seen it coming? It had never occurred to me that the warmth Tessa had always shown towards me was anything other than an expression of her loving and generous nature. In the church it was normal to be
physically
demonstrative, to hug and kiss one another. How could I explain myself to Harriet? Surely she would listen when I tried to explain?

‘I knew,’ said Harriet, ‘that there was something the matter with you. All this time you’ve been so secretive, not telling me where you were going, what you were doing, going around in a daze, being impatient with the children. I knew that there was something the matter, but I thought it might have been to do with the murder. I know that upset you terribly, that you might have been having doubts, lost your faith, that kind of thing. I didn’t want to trouble you, I’ve always trusted you, I knew that if I gave
you enough time you would come to me and tell me what was the matter. But I never imagined that it could be
anything
like this.’

Her voice, which she had kept under control, now broke and tears flooded her eyes. She put her hand in front of her face, her lips trembled, and she buried her face in her hands, leaning forward over the table. The teacup was knocked from its saucer and fell on to the stone terrace where it smashed into tiny fragments. It was her own special cup, that had come from her grandmother, the very last of the set, but she seemed not even to have noticed.

‘Harriet,’ I said, ‘Harriet.’ I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Harriet, it’s not true that I love Tessa. I think it’s true that she’s got a thing about me, I realise that now, I should have seen it before, but I don’t think I’ve ever done or said anything that would give her the impression that I returned her feelings. And I don’t return them. Harriet, this is terrible. The last thing I could ever want is to hurt you.’

‘Go away. Don’t touch me! You are odious.’

‘Harriet!’

She leapt to her feet. She was wearing a close-fitting dress and a string of beads and I noticed the sun brought out red highlights in her hair. She must have had it
hennaed
the other day when she went to the hairdresser’s and I hadn’t even noticed. She turned and ran back into the house. I followed her in terror. ‘Harriet!’ I yelled. ‘Harriet!’

She ran upstairs and locked the door to our bedroom. I bolted up the stairs behind her and pounded on the door. I have always had a terror of locked doors. My mother had
locked the door when she killed herself and I had been unable to get into the room. She did it because of my father’s infidelity; I had understood nothing of it at the time, and my father afterwards held that she had only done it so as to render the rest of his life intolerable. I can remember standing there, banging and banging and my mother not answering, and finally lying down to cry on the landing till my father came home.

‘Harriet,’ I said, in desperation, ‘You can’t do this. Open the door or I’ll break it down!’

She opened the door and looked at me. We were both crying. She suddenly took hold of me and we clung to one another, sank down on the bed, and sobbed in one another’s arms. I stroked her hair and soothed her like a child and said all kinds of things, I can’t remember, that I would never leave her, that I would never be unfaithful, that I would never love anybody else. I think that she believed me.

In the silence that followed this storm of emotion, I also told her that I had seen the man again and followed him to his house.

T
he House in St Mark's Rise

Harriet had told me that what I was doing was dangerous, that I must not become obsessed. She was afraid that I would stumble into something evil. Harriet does not believe in evil. She always says that human beings are capable of anything and the extraordinary thing is not that so many awful things happen in the world but that these things tend to happen rather less often than one might expect. So for her to use this word meant that she was very frightened indeed.

On Sunday Tessa was at the church well before the service. I asked her to come into my office. I said that I had kissed her because I was so very fond of her and that
her support had meant so much to me over the years we had worked together. I said that I didn't love her in the way that she hoped and that I loved only Harriet, that I understood why she had said what she had to Harriet and that I had perhaps not behaved quite properly towards her in the past, that Harriet and I had talked it all over and that everything was all right between us, and that I hoped she would not resign, at least not immediately.

I think that I handled it rather well.

In the afternoon, after lunch, Harriet took the children off to visit some friends. I said I was feeling stressed, there was a lot of paperwork that I had left unattended for too long, and I would rather stay behind to catch up with things. Harriet tried to persuade me to go with her, and I asked her if it was because she didn't trust me. I gave her my word that I was not staying behind to see Tessa. When they had gone I sat in my office and waded through bills and letters but the time dragged terribly. I felt hot and
restless
, almost ill. I decided to take a walk in the fresh air and perhaps drop in on somebody.

It was a warm afternoon. I took off my jacket as I walked, and swung along at a brisk pace and soon, almost before I realised it, I was in St Mark's Rise.

I looked at the house. I went up to the door and rang a bell, one of the unlabelled ones. At once my heart started pounding. There was another bell and I rang that. A woman in her sixties came to the door.

‘I've come to see the young man upstairs.'

‘Oh, yes, of course,' she said, looking at me with the
respect I often encountered from people of that age. ‘That's all right, vicar. Come in.'

She went back into her own flat and I went up the stairs. The carpet was old and frayed and the wallpaper was dirty and scratched and slightly mouldy. Someone was playing music loudly on the second floor and there was a stale smell of fried food on the staircase.

The door to the top flat was ajar. I knocked on it.

Nobody came. I knocked again, louder. Then I pushed the door open and walked into the flat.

Afternoon sunlight was coming into the room through the grimy windows and it dappled the walls. They had been painted white, quite recently. The floorboards were bare, dark, old wood, unvarnished, and there was a small worn rug on the floor. The room contained some cushions and a futon-style mattress on the floor, an old table and chairs of the sort you might get out of a skip, roughly mended, and a bookcase crammed with books. I went over and looked at them. There were books on Buddhism, Judaism and Christian philosophy, works by St John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich, a Bible, the Penguin Quran, a book on Sufism and Eastern mysticism, Evelyn
Underhill's
Mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Dead Sea Scrolls,
the sermons of Meister Eckhart and
The Myth of God Incarnate
. On the shelf stood a little crucifix, a
candle
, and a small statue of the Buddha. A joss stick had been burned and there was still a faint scent of it on the air. The room had that atmosphere that you could sense, that someone prayed here. It was very strong.

The room was divided from a tiny kitchen by a curtain. In the kitchen were some shelves, an old cooker, and a white enamel sink. Above the sink was a cracked mirror and a shelf, and that was all.

I went to the table and opened its one drawer. There was nowhere else to put papers or any personal effects. The drawer contained some blank pieces of paper and some banknotes but nothing more. I slid it shut silently. I walked around the room but there were no papers there at all, no bills, none of the usual letters or documents. There was nothing in the room to identify him at all.

I was about to go out when I heard footsteps on the stairs. My heart thumped; I couldn't stay, but then I
couldn't
go either. Perhaps the people were going into another flat. I hid behind the curtain and waited. There were voices, talking quietly, and the footsteps came on steadily until finally they came into the room.

I shrank back against the wall, but found that I could see quite clearly through a small tear in the curtain. It was the man, dressed in a black shirt and trousers, and with him was the girl. She was wearing a man's old dressing gown in a dull kind of brown. It was too big for her and suited her much better than the leather outfit she had worn the other day. Her hair was loose and she looked prettier than before, especially in the soft sunlight coming through the window. They stood in the centre of the room and looked at one another.

He gestured to her and she slipped off the dressing gown. She was wearing nothing underneath. She was a big-boned girl but too thin, and her skin was very pale; her
arms were knotted with needle marks and there was a scar on her lower belly, probably from a Caesarean. Naked and with no make-up she looked vulnerable and almost shy. Opposite her, the man took off his shirt. Then he slipped off his trousers. He took her by her shoulders, then he turned her round, so that her back was towards me, and he was standing there, against the light, so that I couldn't see his features clearly.

He bent and kissed her. Then he stepped forward and sat down on the corner of the futon. Now the light was shining on his torso and I could see two scars, one of them running from the breastbone round under his arm, and a second starting at the throat and running down to the navel. The scars were red and puckered and together made the form of a cross. As he put his arms around her back, I could see that the hands were marked with red, puckered lines, like a spider.

I knew that what I was seeing was impossible and yet there I was, seeing it. This man was the same man, he had been dead, and now was living. Not only was he alive and able to walk in the fresh air, to talk and breathe, he was so quick that he was capable of sex. I could see his erect penis, standing out from his body, and the vigour that ran through him. He sat on the bed with his knees apart, and invited her to come and sit astride him.

I knew that I should not have looked at this. After a few moments I lowered my eyes. I felt dizzy, and there was a buzzing in my ears. I was so afraid that I thought I would faint and be discovered. I wanted to run past them, but I was afraid to. I thought that if she saw me the
woman might go to the police. Stone would love it. I could see the headlines:
PEEPING TOM VICAR IN TART'S FLAT
. Yet how could I avoid discovery? I pulled back deeper behind the curtain. I thought of Polonius's death, and wondered if the same dramatic and justified end would come to me. The woman was moaning, the man cried out, and I heard their heavy breathing. I put my hands over my ears, but I couldn't blot it out, standing there
overwhelmed
by a terrible mixture of desire and shame.

After a while the sounds came to an end. There was a long period of peacefulness, and then I heard someone moving barefoot around the room. I heard a match strike, and then, after a pause, a whiff of incense. I heard a soft male voice ask, ‘Would you like some tea?'

She murmured something. He came into the kitchen. It was getting dark now and the room was in deep shadow. I was afraid that he would switch on the light, and that then I would have no hope of concealing myself. But he lit the gas under a saucepan of water and went back into the room. I heard her say, ‘Have you got anything to eat?'

‘No, there's nothing.'

‘I'll go down and get something. Do you want to come and help me carry it up?'

I heard the rustle of clothes being pulled on, footsteps on the floor, and then on the stairs. There was silence. I had to hope that both of them had gone, that he was not sitting there, silent, in the gathering darkness. I peeped out from behind the curtain. The room was empty. I
tiptoed
to the top of the stairs, but there was no one there. I walked cautiously down, past a half-open door on the
landing from which light spilled, and down into the dark gloom of the entrance hall. I fumbled with the door catch, let myself out and closed the door quietly behind me.

I was soaked with sweat, and the cool evening breeze made me shiver. I walked down the street, half stumbling in the dark. One or two people looked at me oddly as I went past them. I was mad with fear and shame and couldn't understand what was going to happen to me. I tried to pray, but couldn't, because I had no image in my mind of anyone to pray to. Was I to pray to this young man in the house? Who, or what, was God or Christ? I was filled with emptiness.

I tried to think clearly. I should resign from my
position
, that was plain. God was not real for me, I couldn't pray to him for help or understanding, he had become for me a mere cipher, something meaningless, terrifying, hostile even. I thought that I should go and see a doctor, and that Harriet and I should go away at once, perhaps to her parents, for a week or two, until I felt better.

She was waiting for me in the hallway. I could have sworn that when I entered she was wringing her hands. She said, ‘Oh God, where have you been? I nearly called the police.'

I was horrified at the implications of this. I said, ‘You must never, never, call the police.'

‘Why?'

‘Because they are not to be trusted.'

‘Richard, you are ill.'

‘Yes, yes, I think I am ill, Harriet. I feel terrible. I think I am getting the flu.'

She came up and put her hand on my forehead. Then she said, quickly, ‘Go up to bed. Do you want to eat
anything
? I can get you some soup.'

I took her hand in mine and pressed it against my cheek. I said, ‘Bless you, Harriet, you are my salvation.' I went upstairs and started to run a bath. At the side of the bath were the children's toys, a plastic duck, a boat, a
bobbing
apple, a frog. They were all so familiar, so comforting. The door to the airing cupboard was hanging open and inside were the piles of towels, the children's clothes, the bedding, neatly folded. I leaned forward and put my head under the tap to feel the sensation of the water rushing over me.

Harriet came up with the soup and put me to bed. She tucked me in like a child and lay down beside me, and in a little while I was asleep.