The Virgin in the Garden (29 page)

Here, he dropped off immediately. Dropped off was an accurate description; he felt himself plummeting pleasantly through feathered dark down and down, in a kind of free fall that he knew, safe in that dark, was a dream suspension which would have no event, no end. Usually, when he found himself in dreams wrong way up he was tormented by intermittent intellectual assessments of his situation, the
realisation that he was unprovided with moscan equipment or suckers for roof-walking, that there must be a hard bottom to the well or funnel he was descending so casually. But here he felt safe. When he woke to Lucas’s dawn-shaking, he was informed almost grumpily that he had slept so sweetly that Lucas had seen no cause for disturbing him. But that it was to be hoped that they would do better on a subsequent occasion.

As, of course, they did. So well, that Marcus began to suffer seriously from sleeplessness. Like Lucas’s other ministrations the providing of warmth, cocoa and bed turned out to exacerbate problems akin to those from which he offered temporary shelter or relief. If the firm grasp of Lucas’s hand under his elbow guided him in one piece, neither spread, nor shattered, nor very much afraid, across Far Field; if, concentrating on the intellectually tiring and frequently pointless or obfuscating spiritual exercises, he was no more invaded by seas of light or supersonic trumpets, a series of methodically broken nights, no matter how lovingly accompanied by material sustenance and spiritual cheerfulness, began to act on him like nights in a brainwashing cell. There was a cold, harsh light behind his eyeballs, even in the dark. He saw stars, not celestial, but physiological. He heard rushing winds, not Aeolian, but like radio interference crackling in his proper eardrums. What do you
see
, What do you
see
, the various voices wheedled, sang, threatened, begged, warmly awaited. Nothing, he hoped to be able to answer, and in his soft sleep honourably could. But the soft sleeps were so short.

So it was that Stephanie found him the third time, spreadeagled on the stairs at five in the morning, his face wet as before, his shoes and socks glistening with dew and slivers of grass beneath his pyjama-legs. Her first thought was to get him out of the way of Bill. Her second was that he now was scarecrow thin. She shook his shoulder, gently. He said, no, no, no, no, no, on a rising protest, and began to judder and jerk, all over, so that she had to grab both his armpits to prevent him falling downstairs. He began to mutter:

“Whipping things, in rather orderly wheel-shapes. Going into hard shapes. Ammonites mebbe. Light whizzing round ’n round ’n solidifying into ammonites. Lots of little … lots of little … little … Can I stop?”

“Marcus. Hush. Marcus.”

“Wool, oh, white wool, yellow wool, red wool …” She shook him.

“Soft,” he said and woke, staring at her without recognising her, sliding down a step.

“
Get up
, Marcus. Or Daddy …”

Galvanised, he pulled up his legs, staggered again and came up the stairs. She followed him into his bedroom.

“Marcus – is anything badly wrong? Can I do anything?” His cheeks were all muddy and grubby like those of a small boy who had wept and rubbed his eyes. He stared at her without answering.

“Something
is
wrong,” she said. He gathered himself, wrinkled his brow with effort, leaned forward on clenched fists as he had been used to do with the asthma, and informed her in a voice of gentle despair that she knew not the day nor the hour. Then he turned his face away and pitched into a sleep from which she judged it wisest not to wake him.

Stephanie went round to the Vicarage. She went straight up the stairs and knocked on Daniel’s door before it struck her that a man so busy was unlikely to be in. However, he came and opened the door. He was wearing a huge fisherman’s sweater in natural wool over green cord trousers. He looked ruffled, both in appearance and in expression.

“Oh. You, is it? What can I do for you?”

“I wanted your advice. About a religious problem. At least, I think that’s what it is.”

“You don’t have religious problems,” he said roughly.

“It isn’t my problem. But I think I have to deal with it. And I think something terrible may be going to happen.”

“O.K.,” said Daniel. “Come in.”

His room in daylight was sadder than in the dark, the bleak clutter emphasized, the mystery of heat and shadow gone. He offered her a chair and sat opposite her, his hands on his knees.

“Right,” he said. “Tell me.”

“It’s about my brother. I saw – when I came to church that time, I saw – he was there with that man, Simmonds, from Blesford Ride, the biology man. He was talking about God’s work. I thought you might know what was going on.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of religious … religious … I don’t know. I mean, obviously, I wouldn’t mind
that
, in itself …”

“You would. But you’d not interfere. Go on.”

“Anyway, whatever it is is having a terrible effect on Marcus. He’s losing weight, and in his sleep he cries continually; I’ve gone in and
watched him. He goes out at night, I’m sure with Simmonds, I’ve seen him waiting in the dark like a dog, like Lady Chatterley’s lover … well, I wouldn’t mind
that
, either, necessarily, but …”

“You wouldn’t mind anything on principle. But.”

“No, if you’d seen him, you’d not mock me for ineffective liberal views or whatever. He’s terrible, and ill. I wouldn’t really mind if it was just a homosexual phase – I even thought that might be good for him –”

“Or even not a phase?”

“Don’t jeer at me. He’s never had a friend, Daniel, he’s never had a friend, nor anyone. I came to you because I thought you might know something.”

“You put me in a very difficult position …”

“Please, forget about you and me. This is too awful.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m in a difficult position because Lucas Simmonds has already discussed – well – tried to discuss – this matter with me. And I don’t feel able to break a confidence.”

He watched her blush: and noticed that she looked desperately tired herself: and felt the old, steady, violent, useless love.

“Can’t you – in that case – indicate
something
I could do or say? I can’t let him go on like this –”

“No. I didn’t know how he was. Nothing was said about how he was.”

He thought back to the curious confession or statement or prophetic utterance of Lucas Simmonds, who had sat where she was sitting now, talking very fast, not, as she did, looking with puzzled eyes into his own, but babbling and chattering to ceiling and window, hand in trembling hand in his crotch.

He said, “Also, of course, there are people who come to tell you things, who want to have told someone a certain thing, to have talked about it – but can’t actually bring themselves to say what the real matter is. Some people are very oblique – partly because they daren’t say – partly because they’re not prepared to trust anyone who can’t guess what they only hint at – partly because they don’t know what they
are
on about, and hope if they go on talking it’ll become clear to them. They don’t care so much if it’s clear to me. So in a sense – not being a mind-reader – I’m not as knowledgeable as Mr Simmonds maybe thinks – or hopes – I might be, by now. And I don’t know what of what I did gather I’ve got any right to pass on to you.”

“It all sounds sinister.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s sex. Or at least – he went out of his
way to tell me it wasn’t. To tell me he didn’t approve of sex. He seems to believe in celibacy. He talked a lot about Purity. He didn’t actually name your brother. Only about Others. I mean, he said he had to ensure no harm came to Others. What sort of harm wasn’t clear, either.”

“Marcus hates you – hates anyone – to touch him. Even as a baby, you couldn’t cuddle him. He got asthma.”

There was an awkward silence. Daniel remembered Simmonds’s garbled discourse, which had touched on dangers to Others from spiritual forces unleashed by invocation, or by impurity, which had asserted plaintively that the Church had the forms to contain such forces, and had complained sullenly that the Church had abandoned living religious Power, for dead shells and empty echoing buildings. There had been digressions on chastity, science, Steps Forward in consciousness, the superior powers of Others, Simmonds’s own known inadequacies. To Daniel’s attempts to question he had answered always querulously that Daniel knew already all he needed to know, didn’t he, he was well-informed, he must watch and pray. At the end, after a good three quarters of an hour of this recurrent, recapitulating speech, he had suddenly thanked Daniel for his wisdom and counsel and left in a hurry. It was possible that his thanks were ironic. It was equally possible that he supposed he had successfully unburdened himself to Daniel.

What to say to Stephanie was another matter.

“I got the impression it was to do with religious exercises – prayers and visions and things. But it seemed to be scientific experiments too. He seemed to be afraid of the effects of the experiments on Others. I honestly don’t know if he meant Marcus. I could ask, if you’d like me to. I don’t like meddling.”

“There seems to be so much scope for unintentional damage. I can’t understand it – Marcus has never,
never
shown any sign of interest in religion and all that. I can’t see what’s got into him.”

“Maybe as you said, he needed a friend. Maybe he always did need religion and didn’t know it, not with his upbringing, until it was brought to his notice, like. That’s been known. It seems odd to me. But I’m not very religious myself.”

“What?”

“I’m not very –” Daniel said. Then he smiled sheepishly. “Well I’m not, not religious in that way, the real way. I don’t see signs or hear voices or experience great peace or all that, nor I shan’t.”

“I’ve never met anyone more religious.”

“Nay, but you’ve no idea, if you don’t mind me saying so, no idea at all of what the word means, let alone the thing itself.”

She bridled, “I was trained to deal with words.”

“Words,”
said Daniel, and laughed. “I’m a glorified social worker, only I don’t do it for society, which I’m not that bothered about as an entity. I just want to work, flat out. T’ Yorkshire work ethic confuses that wi’ religion, but it’s not, and you know better, and so does Simmonds, for all his guff.”

She laughed nervously. “So I came with my religious problem to an irreligious religious man. That’s a joke.”

“Not really. Th’ problem’s still there. Can I make you a cup of coffee? Will you stay? I like talking to you.”

“I should love coffee. I like talking to you too. If only you weren’t so formidable.”

He busied himself with powered coffee. “Formidable?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” said Daniel, a believer in truth. That particular truth left him peculiarly exposed. He was accustomed to be treated, to treat himself, as a man well over thirty.

“Nobody behaves as though you were only that.”

“It’s my weight. In both senses. Fat and representative function.”

He could feel her attention on him: she was thinking that he was young and saw everything, pain, illness, terror of death, horror of bereavement, feeble-mindedness, raving madness, loneliness and metaphysical anguish, all the things most people successfully avoid, much of the time, or suffer, unprepared, on their own account, once or twice. Well, so did doctors. So did Mr Ellenby. So, professionally,
must
Mr Ellenby. He only seemed, he seemed only, concerned with parish politics, precedence and prettiness of altar-piece and bazaar. Mrs Haydock had been there before Daniel came and no one had badgered herself, or anyone, into sitting with Malcolm.

“Why did you go into the Church, Daniel?”

“Because I can’t do wi’ half-measures. I’m scared of sitting on my backside and doing nothing. I’m scared of relaxing. I need a good shove, I need it to be
required of me
that I don’t stop for a minute. I need unthinking discipline.”

“You’re a born rebel –”

“Doesn’t exclude the other, does it? I need forcing. The Church forces you. Do you see?”

“Partly,” she said, imaginatively caught by the combination of terror of lassitude and inexhaustible forced energy. She had never seen the church as anything other than a centre of drowsiness, an ossified exo-skeleton containing an organism almost inert, pleasantly ruminating sustenance long champed dry of its vital juices. “But I feel the church isn’t the best place, not the liveliest place …”

“We’ll not go into that again, or you’ll be having me in the Town Hall behind a pigeonhole.”

He could not see what she objected to, not truly. He knew as well as she did that Mr Ellenby was a lazy snob, and he knew that she knew that charity was enjoined but he could not see how she did not see how the strength of the Church did not lie there. He could not imagine the whole force of her simple disbelief of the Christian stories themselves, though he had been trained to deal with Bill’s peremptory theological opposition. Bill would, and could, dispute the who, how, and why of the rolling away of the stone in the garden. Stephanie was simply not prepared to be interested in it, so clear was it to her that the truth of events was not as the New Testament declared it to be. Psychologically acute, Daniel was doctrinally simple: he needed to be: and to him Stephanie’s obvious virtues were Christian virtues, her scrupulousness, her gentleness, part of what he valued in Christ, and were derived from Christ, and that was that. You could have good Christians who thought they weren’t, and into that category she indisputably and tiresomely came. He had an inkling, nowhere near the full force of distaste she would in fact feel, that she would find this concept distasteful.

“Were you always in the Church, Daniel?”

“Well, no. It began when I was a boy, the only time I’ve ever been part of a body of people that was moved as one. Terrifying, that, actually. Hitler or the Mirfield Father.”

“Tell me.”