The Hope Page 8

  The door sprang open and Walter lurched out with a sack slung over his shoulder. Seeing Arthur he stopped and there was nothing recognisably human in his expression, not hate, certainly not comprehension.

  Arthur tried to speak, tried again, and succeeded: “Walter, where’s Reverend Chartreuse?”

  Nothing in Walter’s appearance altered perceptibly. Arthur might as well have asked him to recite the whole of the New Testament.

  “Walter,” said Arthur, attempting to sound threatening. As the chapel organist, surely he had some of the Reverend’s authority about him. “Where is he? The Reverend? Man with white collar?”

  “Dunno.” Walter’s slightly parted lips had not even moved.

  “What are you carrying?” It was hard to sound stern when at any moment you expected to be swatted flat and he would never have dreamed of talking to Agnes in this matter.

  “Dunno.”

  “I wish to see the Reverend. Is he here? That’s all I want to know. I have important business to discuss with him.” Not really a lie, was it?

  “Not here.”

  “Eh?”

  “S’not here.”

  “Well, if it’s all right with you, I’ll check that for myself.”

  Arthur made to enter the vestry but Walter shifted his bulk to block the way and Arthur retreated.

  “Not here.”

  “I shall tell Reverend Chartreuse tomorrow about your behaviour, Walter. You can be sure of that. You’re hiding something and I think the Reverend will want to know what. He’s a patient and just man, but I think this will try him a little too far. He may just throw you… out… of …”

  The words trailed off. Walter had taken a step forward so that their faces were a few inches apart and a wart on his chin loomed large, blurred double, in Arthur’s vision. Walter grinned mirthlessly, revealing a single diseased tooth hanging from his gums, and out came his breath like a pernicious fart. Arthur coughed politely.

  “Say they know not what they do,” Walter said and looked quite satisfied. That was it, as far as Arthur was concerned. Turning, he took to his heels and reached the end of the aisle faster than a newlywed couple. He was at his cabin door before he could allow himself the luxury of wondering what in God’s name Walter’s last words had meant.

  Walter seek and Walter he shall find yeah yeah yeah bet you take Jesus take Jesus lovely little pretty baby Jesus he dead don’t cry

  Walter lumbered along his route to the outer rim.

  His known nobody know route

  The sack bumped against his back and every hundred yards or so he needed to readjust it, shift it around and heft it again, to ease his aching wrists and shoulders. Thoughts of obeying, of pleasing, of loving, sang in his tiny brain.

  Lo we come bring out your dead not dead but sleeping

  At the outer rim he slung the sack overboard to go the way of the crucifixes, disappearing from sight long before hitting the water. Then he strolled back to the chapel along walkways knee-deep in mist, service lights flickering, shedding latticework patterns of swirling white down on to the walkways below. The few people around after dark kept themselves to themselves and certainly were not going to bother Walter.

  Holy Scripture all down in writing Rev say so and say nothing to organ man too late what’s done is done Holy Writ all down in writing who’ll know he’ll know

  “Do you know?”

  From Walter’s left, a voice, a hiss.

  Serpent head bruise heel crawl belly

  “Do you know?”

  Walter stopped and the owner of the voice revealed himself from the fractured shadows.

  Serpent scars in coils criss-crosses the mark of the serpent the mark of the beast Amen Amen Amen Hail Mary full of grace

  The owner of the voice was as thin as a hermit, cheeks puckered inward as if he was sucking them in for vanity’s sake, and the skin of his arms was a waxy wrapping for etiolated muscle and bone. The arms were raised, either to hug or to pounce.

  “Do you know?”

  What Jesus know Jesus love is all you need to know yeah yeah but Christ way

  “Say they know not what they do,” said Walter.

  A blur of movement between them. The thin stranger could have been flicking ash off Walter’s sleeve. Walter screamed in primitive agony, staring at the gush of blood where half of his arm had been, and the stranger clasped Walter’s face, palm flat against his nose, two fingers depressing his eyeballs. The muscles in the thin stranger’s arm tensed beneath their flesh-coloured wax coating so that every fibre was visible, every rope of vein, every sinew. Effortlessly, he raised Walter up until his twitching feet were several inches off the deck and said, “Sorry.”

  Three days later Agnes told Arthur about Walter’s death.

  Sitting at the mirror in their cabin’s bedroom annex, which amounted to four plain walls surrounding a double bed with just enough space to walk round the sides, she was giving her hair the regulation one hundred stout brush strokes. To judge by the thinness of her hair, this practice of a lifetime had done more harm than good. Arthur was in bed reading the Book of Common Prayer, not concentrating on it because he was hoping Agnes might fiddle with him tonight. The ceiling light dimmed and brightened again.

  “Heard about the simpleton?” said Agnes, as if it had only just occurred to her.

  “You mean Walter? What about him?” Arthur recalled their encounter in the chapel and his mind conjured up a series of violent scenarios: Watler pulping his head, Walter stuffing him into a sack, Walter carrying his body God knew where, perhaps tipping him into a furnace and leaving him to burn for ever…

  “Dead.” As far as Agnes was concerned, that was the end of that conversation.

  “Dead? How?”

  Agnes signed. “Well, if you insist on knowing, he fell off a walkway and landed at the bottom, his head all caved in and one arm snapped clean off. Can’t say I’m particularly sorry for him. He was an … unusual sort. But maybe it was all for the best. I mean, he can’t have been aware of very much in life, can he? Not like you or me. Well, maybe not you. What I’ll never understand is why William kept him around all the time. But then he is a kind-hearted man, William.

  “They haven’t found the arm yet,” she added.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” It was all Arthur could think of to say, as he remembered the way Walter’s expression had changed from brute ignorance to appalling understanding in the space of a few seconds, as shocking as your dinner suddenly coming alive and saying it didn’t want to be eaten.

  “Indeed,” said Agnes, hoping Arthur didn’t want her to fiddle with him tonight.

  Reverend Chartreuse held a memorial service the next Sunday for “a dear, simple friend whose value to me was as personal as it was exceeding great”. All the hymns were of the slow, solemn variety and Arthur made only one glaring error (and several minor ones).

  It was after the service, while he was closing up the keyboard, that a scrap of paper fluttered out into his lap from where it had been wedged between two pipes. Greasy brown smears ran along the folds, and inside, Arthur found words etched in crayon:

  ARFER

  THE REVEREND HAV SUFRED THE LITEL CHILDREN CUM UNTO HIM

  WALTER

  What on earth was Walter doing writing to him? Arthur had cleaned the organ thoroughly last Saturday, so the message must have been sent within the past week, and, since he had never exchanged a word with Walter until he found him coming out of the vestry that night, it had to have been then, between his leaving Walter and Walter’s death a few hours later. It was written on official chapel notepaper, which struck him as particularly odd as they had run out of the stuff years ago. Did the Reverend have a secret cache?

  Walter had taken Arthur into his confidence about something, even going to the immense effort of writing it down and hiding it here, but what was it? A warning? A cry from the heart? A joke, perhaps? The rambling mind of a halfwit had construed the words of the Bible and mad
e a hybrid sense out of them, supplanting Reverend Chartreuse for Jesus Christ (not so great a stretch of the imagination, thought Arthur). He read the message over again and he was troubled by the language, by the fact of the message’s existence, words from a dead man. Indefinable doubts kept nagging at his brain. The back of his scalp itched and scratching it, he discovered the short hairs there had gone stiff.

  “Arthur.”

  Arthur snapped the paper into the breast pocket of his shirt and he twisted himself around on the stool.

  “Yes, Reverend Chartreuse?”

  Flame-haired and a face so benevolent, so benedictory.

  “Haven’t you gone yet? I’d like to lock up.”

  “Yes, of course. I was lost in thought. Your sermon. Most moving. We ought to rejoice that Walter has gone to the Lord’s bosom, and yet it’s so sad to lose anyone, especially a friend.”

  Chartreuse filled his eyes with tears, quite a feat considering he had been weeping for most of the service. If he detected anything peculiar in Arthur’s tone, he ignored it.

  “I wasn’t aware you knew Walter.”

  “Oh yes, we chatted now and then. But I mustn’t keep you. You must be terribly busy. You’re probably going downstairs to bring comfort to the less fortunate.”

  “That I am, Arthur. Off you go, then. ’Bye.”

  Chartreuse waited until Arthur had reached the doors, then switched out the main lights and ducked into the vestry. Arthur paused, fearful of what he was about to do, fearful of the danger of discovery, fearful of the breach of faith involved. He gripped the door handle set just below Christ’s navel. He could easily slip away, be none the wiser, but what was it Reverend Chartreuse had said? “Man should ever seek the truth.”

  Arthur clanged the door shut, remaining inside the chapel. He did not move for several minutes to make sure Chartreuse thought him gone.

  The luminous glow from the vestry reminded Arthur of the colour of the faces of yellow-fever victims. He stumbled over a discarded hassock, stifling an exclamation, and scraping echoes skittered and sniggered into the far corners, into the altar cloth, into the dog-eared hymnals. As Arthur drew closer the glow assumed the rectangular shape of the doorway, through which he could see the spare cassocks hanging in their rows, white folded in black. It was not too late to turn back. Surely.

  Walter’s message: THE REVEREND HAV SUFRED THE LITEL CHILDREN CUM UNTO HIM.

  What had disturbed him so much about it? The misspelling, the scratchy lettering, the awkward misquotation, raw like an open wound.

  SUFRED.

  He would show it to Reverend Chartreuse. The priest would understand and would allay his fears and would bless him and absolve him. This was what Arthur had intended to do all along, yes. To tell it to the priest.

  The vestry was empty.

  But beyond, the locked-shut door in the wall opposite was unlocked and open. And Arthur heard voices, one high and panicked, the other low and even (Chartreuse’s). Arthur could not make out what they were saying but there was urgency in both of them. And fear.

  There was the box which had contained the package of crucifixes. Arthur knelt down beside it and peeked through the crack in the door. Inside…

  Two naked figures moving together, violent, jerking. One on its knees, hunched over the other, as if protecting it from harm. The other spreadeagled on the floor. Bound hand and foot. To a makeshift cross. By shreds of white and black cloth.

  The kneeling figure: “Say it! Say it!

  The crucified figure: “Jesus, fuck me…”

  “Louder!”

  “JESUS FUCK ME.”

  “Say, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Say it, damn you!”

  SUFRED.

  A spearpoint of metal in the hand of the kneeling figure, a smaller cross, rammed into the back of the crucified body, which was writhing, and the spearpoint was a crucifix like the ones Arthur had hurled overboard – what was he guilty of now? – and two people were screaming and Arthur found that one of them was him.

  The kneeling figure shot his head up and fierce blue eyes glittered beneath flames of red hair.

  Stumbling. Falling backwards. Clutching cloth (white and black cloth) and feeling it tear. Running into darkness. Hearing the sound of surf breaking against a million shores, tide rising, the sea reaching and retching waves which were the size of whole cities, whole Hopes, bringing them crashing down to crush the land, grey foam on a night-time ocean…

  Agnes complained she had not slept a wink for all his moaning and groaning. Arthur murmured an apology and for once she let it stand. He did not eat his breakfast. Weak tea with reconstituted milk and mackerel paste on dry biscuits had lost their customary appeal. He took a stroll along the deck, taking aimless turns again and again in the hope of losing himself but, as he had suspected might happen, he eventually found himself outside the chapel. Its windows were lifeless by day, the images sleepy, muddied. He let himself in using his key. It seemed as if the suffering Christ and the Holy Virgin were watching his back with their blind eyes, their eyes of salt-corroded brass. He sat in a front pew, resting his forehead on the rail, but no prayers would come. His forehead went numb but he did not have the energy to raise it, even when he heard footsteps approaching.

  “Arthur?” The voice radiated a soothing power. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Go away.”

  “Arthur, I know what you’ve seen. I won’t try to justify myself because it is the Lord’s will and God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. His wonders, Arthur.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything.”

  “Of course.” He felt Reverend Chartreuse sit down beside him, so close that their elbows brushed. “Of course, Arthur. You’re very upset, but it’s only because you have no understanding of what you’ve seen.”

  “How many?”

  “How many what?”

  “Boys. How many boys?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe thirty. Not only boys. Girls, too.”

  “And what about Walter?”

  “Yes, poor Walter. So loyal, so useful.”

  “Loyal and useful to blasphemy.”

  “No, no, Arthur, not blasphemy, nor sin, but the message of Christ writ loud and clear. It came to me in the night, a voice calling out amidst the sound of the engines, telling me that there were better ways than preaching to save the souls of the innocent.”

  “Not Christ…”

  “Yes, Arthur. Don’t you see? Those children, Walter found them for me on the lower decks. Except the last one, I had to find him myself. Drifters, orphans, losers, ignorant of the Word of God. Walter took them to me and I showed them Christ in all His glory, I gave them to Him, delivered them unto the Lord, in a state of rapture. ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ Matthew. I saved their souls, Arthur. I made them angels. You can’t comprehend the wonder of it when I feel the souls leaving those young bodies, feel them stiffening in death and know that death is only the beginning for those … pure …souls. It is rapture. There is no shame in that feeling. God has told me to feel no shame.”

  Without meaning to, Arthur said, “Amen.”

  “And now,” continued Chartreuse, “I need another man like Walter, another willing to do the Lord’s work.” He paused for effect. “Do you know of any such man, Arthur Wade?”

  The question hung between them for a full minute.

  “I … may do,” said Arthur.

  Chartreuse touched him gently, warmly, on the shoulder and left him alone.

  Arthur heard Walter’s note crinkle in his pocket, disfigured words the truth of which could not be twisted, moulded or altered to suit the times. It was Walter’s admission of guilt. Even a halfwit could feel guilt, and it was not that surprising since he had been indoctrinated into a religion that celebrated guilt, worshipped guilt, made a perverse love out of guilt. With Walter’s confession Arthur
had the power to condemn or exalt Reverend Chartreuse. He tingled with the thought. The Reverend was a great man, a greater preacher.

  Arthur Wade sat and pondered the future and prayed for guidance.

  READING HABITS

  It had been twenty years before the librarian decided books were a load of crap, years spent sorting, coding, rearranging, stamping, filing, shuffling, reading…

  He would go mad if he did it much longer. He huffed on his spectacles for the fifth time that morning, his breath cold steam, and rubbed around the lenses with his mitten. Didn’t they know the cold was bad for books? Balancing the specs on his nose, he found he could see even less than before.

  His eyes had got worse over the years while the specs had stayed the same, and that was another thing. Why had they not allowed for an optician on this bloody boat? Silly buggers, they should have asked him to design the thing. He could hardly see to read, and what was the use of a blind librarian, eh? Tell me that. About as much use as an atheist priest.

  The trouble with books was that, contrary to popular belief, you could not lose yourself in them. Reading was a shallow experience at best. While the reader was meant to be a passive spectator, he could in fact play God – jump from page to page, re-read favourite bits, miss out whole chapters, close the book if it was boring, never pick it up again if it was really boring. And although books brought a form of immortality for the author, the books themselves were far from immortal. Paperbacks browned with age were shrugging off their cardboard skins and losing pages like an old man loses teeth. Hardbacks parted company with their bosom companions, the slip-covers, to reveal scratchy cloth bindings. Moreover, in twenty years of reading, how many plots and characters could the librarian remember? Really remember? They were no more immortal than him.

  Twenty years was a lot of your life, a lot of time spent sitting and growing fat and bald and not screwing around or pulling the birds in one of the bars, not that there was much to pull, the odd tart with laddered tights or hags old enough to be his mother’s mother. That cow with the inane grin who came in so often, she was all right in a wrinkled sort of way, and he could have fucked her at a pinch – tits like dewlaps, no doubt, but beggars can’t etc., etc. But she was only interested in books and he only recommended to her the weedy, romantic-type novels, Austen, Brontë, James, the sort of thing old biddies lapped up. In time, he might wean her on to Dickens or one of the great satirists, Swift, Thackeray, but it was unlikely she could cope with their vitriolic attacks on civility. At least she was a regular.