Jago (37 page)

Beloved planned an exodus. He announced that the Agapemone would find suitable premises. Everyone contributed whatever they had, whatever they could. Some apostates left rather than part with their worldly goods, but most gladly gave all. Bequests arrived from Beloved’s former parishioners in Leeds, from mysterious but doubtless devout well-wishers, from a few elderly ladies in Hove to whom Beloved had been a comfort in their last days. The Agapemone became temporally as well as spiritually wealthy. He was more earthly in those days, taking part in the practical organization of the community. With Mick and Wendy, He set out to find and purchase a home, finally coming upon Alder and declaring the Manor House predestined to be the site. Wendy remembered Beloved wandering into these woods after first looking over the property, and coming across a clearing, barren and shingly, where He took a deep breath and went into a trance. She had to support her Saviour, and let Him gently down. Eventually, He awoke, and the business was decided.

‘This shall be our Canaan,’ He told them.

Since then, His trances were more frequent. Once installed in the Manor House, the Agapemone ran smoothly.

‘This one man, myself, has Jesus Christ selected and appointed His witness to His counsel and purpose,’ Beloved preached, ‘to conclude the day of grace and to introduce the day of judgement, to close the dispensation of the Spirit and to enter into covenant with the flesh.’

The Great Manifestation became a regular occurrence. The ranks of the faithful swelled. For a while, for over ten years, the Agapemone had been a paradise for Wendy. Then, Badmouth Ben came back.

* * *

Wendy stood up, and stepped into the gallery. ‘Beloved,’ she said, spreading her arms.

He looked at her with compassion, understanding and sorrow.

‘We share Love,’ she said.

‘Love,’ He agreed.

He had not apparently aged in over fifteen years. She imagined a hat on his head, water pouring out of the halo-sized brim. She heard the steady beat of rain on sand, the whoosh of surf, the calling of seabirds.

‘Beloved.’

She stepped towards Him. He did not move. My Lord, but Beloved was a handsome man. Water coursed down the walls, discolouring the plaster. Wendy looked up. Water was flowing across the ceiling, gathering at the beams and falling floorwards. She took another step, but got no nearer Beloved. The gallery was stretching. Beloved was yards further away. She walked, ran. The walls cracked as the gallery became a corridor. Lumps of plaster fell from boards. Doors flowered like fungus, and lolled open.

‘Beloved!’

She ran hard, heavy pain in her heart. There was water in her eyes, and she couldn’t see Him clearly. She rubbed her face, wiping away water to no purpose. Shapes came through the doors. Water ran cruelly against her ankles. Her shoes were filled, her feet heavy. It was difficult, pulling her feet out of the icy stream and putting them down again. She tripped and fell, shoulder first, into the running river. There was carpet under the water, squelchy and loose.

Beloved stood, miles away, still.

A filthy seagull, wings edged with oily muck, dove at her, beak thudding against her skull. It bounced away, wings backpedalling against the wind and rain, and lurched upwards. The bird had stabbed her scalp, and there was blood in the water pouring from her hair.

‘Beloved!’

There were people standing over her. Someone stepped between her and Beloved. A girl, thin, with a fringed jacket, long tangled dark hair and shining eyes. Allison Conway. Wendy took hold of the girl’s legs, and pulled herself to her feet.

She turned, and saw three, maybe four young people. The nearest was the thick-faced lout James had fired from the carpark crew, Terry Gilpin. He shot a fist into her stomach, and put his weight behind it. She lost her wind and bent double.

Terry looked around to his friends for approval, grunting a laugh. One of them was wearing a soaked panama hat, and looking out of his depth. The other was a girl with a tall hairstyle, a skeleton draped with a black spiderweb shawl, chains around her neck and waist.

Allison put an arm around Wendy’s shoulder and pulled her up. ‘This the one, Ben?’ Allison asked.

The familiar figure pushed its way through the rain, elbowing aside Terry and the others. Water pooled in Badmouth Ben’s sunken eye sockets, running down deep grooves where his cheeks had been.

Ben nodded. ‘Sheep,’ he said, chilling her.

She twisted her neck, looking for Beloved. She could see the far door of the gallery, but there was only darkness.

‘Sheep,’ Ben repeated, spitting the word out with difficulty through his mess of a mouth. He put his bone-and-scrap hand on her throat, not squeezing but kneading, and ripped downwards, tearing at her blouse. Buttons scattered, and his ragged nails scored her skin. Terry sniggered at her jelly-mould breasts, but Allison shut him up with a slap and said, ‘This is
serious.’

Panama Hat bit his lip and reached out. He pinched Wendy, taking a handful of loose skin from her ribs and pressing it tight between his fingers. It was an experimental cruelty. He laughed in relief as he let go, finally believing he’d done it and nothing had happened to him.

‘Happy now?’ Allison asked.

Panama Hat nodded and shrugged at the same time, then he stepped away, deferring to Ben.

His patchy flesh shrivelled on to his skull, bone soot-blackened. Wendy saw through the ragged skin, saw how the jawbones locked together, how the shrunken muscles worked.

Ben took a huge knife from a sheath on his belt, balanced it in his hand in front of Wendy’s face, and then shook his head, rejecting it. He tossed it away. The taller girl unbuckled some of the thongs at her waist and thigh, and pulled a nine-inch stiletto out of its sheath. She handed it to Ben like a nurse passing a scalpel to a neurosurgeon.

‘Fuck,’ Ben said, tongue running between his black teeth, wet knife sparkling in the rain.

‘Fuck. Kill. Eat. Wear.’

Wendy shut her eyes and prayed.

P
aul was on the main road again, without really knowing why. That was a lie. He knew why. Hazel. But he hadn’t found the mohican kid on his last expedition and didn’t want to set out seriously after Hazel, just in case he failed this time too. The Agapemone sat quiet and calm on its hill. Hazel must be there. In Jago’s clutches? It was hard not to think of it like that. Clutches. Would she be more annoyed with him if he barged in there like Eliot Ness and hauled her out? Or would she feel rescued? As it too often was with Hazel, he was in a nowin situation.

Ben’s voice had stirred up in him the stomach-twisting panic he’d felt when the Martian war machine loomed out of the woods. It had been the same phenomenon, something totally unnatural, like the fish on the bush.

It was nearly evening. The sun was not down, but the skies to the west were shading orange. The flow of traffic slowed. The people who’d arrived today were settled and the road was passable again. The main road, with pavement on only one side most of the way through the village, was as thick with pedestrians as Oxford Street in December.

Paul ambled towards the Agapemone, trying to feel casual. When the sun set, would the Martians come out? The garden of the Valiant Soldier was thronged. The general feeling was of a lot of people standing around waiting for something to happen.

‘Weather’s about to change,’ someone nearby said, ‘storm coming.’

The doom-sayer was shouted down. If it rained now, farmers would sacrifice first-born children in gratitude. And the festival would be a wash-out, with probably the beginnings of a cholera epidemic thrown in.

A monk-hooded young man with Buddy Holly glasses and Doc Marten boots sat on the wall by the garden, picking at an acoustic guitar, baseball cap out for small change. He was singing a strange sort of revivalist hymn.

‘Don’t you mess round with the Moonies,

Send your guru back to Tibet,

Ignore those orange-clad loonies,

My new religion is the best you can get.

I’m renting holiday villas hereafter.

Self-catered cabins in the clouds,

Holiday villas hereafter,

Book early and you miss the crowds.

I’m selling front-row stalls in Heaven,

At a price you can afford,

Front-row stalls in Heaven,

Plus a dinner date with the Lord…’

The kid scooped up enough to buy a half of bitter. Obviously, he wasn’t a candidate for the Agapemone. Paul wondered whether the bulk of the crowd felt the same way. There must be plenty of people only here for the beer, the music, the laughs. But Jago sat up on the hill and got something out of it. Paul didn’t doubt that. Front-row stalls in Heaven. Was that what the Brethren were trying to sell Hazel? Most cults ran on fund-raising scams, with tin-rattling foot soldiers required to turn over worldly goods to the master. If that was the deal, the Agapemone was in for a disappointment. As a part-time student, Hazel was even poorer than he was. Of course they might not just want money.

A tall, pretty young woman in a light-blue dress walked by. She wore a pectoral cross. There was no mistaking her. The Sister of the Agapemone looked like a cross between a nun and an air hostess.

‘That’s not a convent,’ someone muttered, ‘that’s a harem.’

The girl turned. Paul thought she might be annoyed, but she laughed and flounced her dress.

‘Miss?’ he called. ‘Sister?’

She turned. ‘Yes?’

He had to ask a straight question. ‘Have you seen my girlfriend, Hazel? Hazel Chapelet? She went to the Agapemone today.’

She looked at him, weight on one leg. People made comments, but she ignored them. Looking as she did, she must have had practice.

‘Sister… ?’

‘Janet.’

‘Sister Janet. Have you seen Hazel? Brownish hair, eyes. Not tall. Overlapped front teeth.’

The Sister gave it thought, so much so that Paul thought she was stringing him along, imagining this an elaborate pick-up.

‘No,’ Janet said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like that. Holly, you say?’

‘Hazel.’

‘Hazel? Nice name. Natural. Aren’t you the man who had the fire last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lucky escape. The whole county could have burned. No wonder your girlfriend has bolted.’

He was about to tell Janet she didn’t understand, but the girl wandered off, whistles following her, walking towards the Agapemone.

He followed her for a few steps, but something grabbed his leg.

‘Mister?’

It was a small boy, with grazed knees and a dusty face.

‘Mister?’

The child looked up at him, just wanting someone to pay him attention.

‘Have you lost your parents?’

The boy wasn’t sure, and chewed his thumbnail.

‘Well?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

‘I’ve run away,’ he said, solemnly. ‘My name is Jeremy.’

Paul had the impression he was on the edge of a precipice, toes nudging air, looking down, feeling the ground crumble.

‘I’m Paul.’

‘I’ve seen you. You’re at the Pottery.’

‘That’s right. Do you know the girl who lives with me?’

Jeremy nodded.

‘Have you seen her?’

Jeremy shook his head.

‘It’ll get dark soon,’ the boy said, ‘and the dwarf will come out.’

‘The dwarf?’

‘Dopey.’

‘Why have you run away?’

‘Daddy’s penis got funny.’

Paul didn’t need this extra shit. He didn’t even like children much. They were beneath reason and he wasn’t sure how to handle that. Kids made him uncomfortable, self-conscious.

‘Daddy tried to hurt me with his penis.’

What?

‘Jeremy,’ Paul said, dropping to a crouch, looking the child in the eye, ‘do you know what you’re saying?’

Jeremy nodded.

‘You’re not making up stories?’

Jeremy shook his head. Paul could never tell if children were lying. There was a difference between what was true and what they believed.

‘Have you told your mother, your mummy?’

‘Daddy hurt her with his penis, and she grew ivy in her hair.’

There must be some weird explanation. Maybe a leftover flower child had dropped acid into Jeremy’s Tizer. From what he understood about child abuse, kids who suffered were more likely to lie and claim that it hadn’t happened than tell total strangers about it. Jeremy was probably one of those kids who made things up. The story sounded made-up.

‘Daddy and the Evil Dwarf are ganging up on me.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Maskell Farm.’

‘Are you lost?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to go home?’

‘No,’ Jeremy insisted. ‘Daddy’s there.’

Paul looked around, trying to find someone in authority he could pass the child on to. He had his own problems. Why had Jeremy picked him out? His tooth stabbed pains into his jaw. There were people around, but none of them looked like a social worker or a policeman.

‘Daddy put his hand through Jethro and stuck his fingers out his bum.’

‘You’re making up stories, aren’t you?’

Jeremy shook his head violently. ‘No,’ he said, eyes screwing up. ‘I
told
you.’

Paul was losing patience. He always did with children. Their logic was so far beyond him, their demands so insistent.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

Jeremy didn’t know, really. He wiped his eyes, and gave Paul up as a bad job. He walked away, slowly.

‘J
esus fuck,’ said Mike Toad, swallowing to keep from vomiting. ‘Jesus, Jesus fuck.’

Allison laid a hand on the boy’s cheek, leaving bloody fingerprints. ‘Calm,’ she said. ‘You’re no use if you panic.’

‘No use,’ Badmouth Ben growled.

The Toad was shaking, but got himself under control. Only Allison had known how far Ben would take the sheep-worrying. She’d been prepared.

It wasn’t any different from watching her father killing a ewe. Ben did most of the hard work. Allison was mainly there to keep the others from bolting. Terry was excited as Ben fucked the fat woman, knife to her throat to stop her crying, but Allison knew he could lose interest afterwards. He’d have to be watched closely. Pam’s sister, Jazz, was a cool case. She popped tablets under her nose and paid attention like a good student, doing what she was told. Only the Toad showed up gutless.