Felicia's Journey (13 page)

It is then, when her spirits are low, that she notices a girl in a red coat on an isolated seat in a walkway, with litter blowing all around her. Miss Calligary observes this figure from a distance, noting the two green-and-black carrier bags and the tired hunch of the girl’s shoulders. There is unhappiness here, Miss Calligary silently remarks to herself, and strides forth to gather the girl in.

For three days Mr Hilditch dwells upon the fact that anyone can make a mistake. Anyone can attempt to advance a friendship too quickly: enthusiasm, he supposes, a surfeit of keenness. He recalls the one he ran into once in a Debenham’s Coffee Bean, who said she’d rather not when he suggested meeting up again, and the one who told him she came from Daventry: Samantha, whom he’d assisted when her car wouldn’t start. It could happen to a bishop, he reflects, recalling this expression of his Uncle Wilf’s: advancing too swiftly is an understandable human error.

Since he has never felt the need of a telephone at Number
Three, and does not wish to be overheard in his office, Mr Hilditch telephones the barracks on Old Hinley Road from a call-box during the lunch hour. The voice at the other end is matter-of-fact and cold.

‘Who’s making inquiries about this soldier?’

Mr Hilditch states that he is a family friend. There has been an emergency of a personal nature: the young man’s father in an accident at a level-crossing, signal failure.

‘What are you asking me?’ the clipped, uninterested tones inquire.

‘The family’s uncertain which barracks the lad’s stationed at owing to the father being unconscious in a hospital. We’re ringing round all barracks in the area.’

‘Name and rank?’

‘Lysaght, J. A squaddy I’d say he is.’

‘A what?’

Mr Hilditch says a private and is told to hold on. Nearly ten minutes go by, during which time he repeatedly feeds money into the coin-box.

‘We have a Lysaght here,’ he is told then. ‘We’ll pass the message on after fatigues.’

‘Excuse me, but maybe it’d be better if the family broke the news to the lad. Now that we know where he is we’ll contact him pronto.’

Mr Hilditch smiles agreeably, projecting this bonhomie into the mouthpiece, but the receiver is replaced at the other end without further effort at communication. He extracts his unused coins and steps out of the telephone-box. No way there isn’t a chance that the girl could run into the tough who got her up the pole, no reason why she shouldn’t if she continues to wander about the place. Even so, knowing his location is somehow a comfort: being a jump ahead, as the expression goes.

Since he has half an hour to spare, and in order to avoid having to shop later on, Mr Hilditch drives slowly to Tesco’s car park. Finding a trolley, he pushes it through the chromium swinging barrier and makes his way to the refrigerated area, where he chooses cod in batter, faggots, garden peas, broccoli spears, four
bags of chips and two tubs of strawberry and vanilla ice-cream. In the fresh meat section he picks out pork chops, chicken portions and prime steak, adds celery and carrots and more potatoes from the fresh vegetable shelves, and bourbon creams, custard creams, lemon flakies, chocolate wafers and chocolate wholemeals from the biscuit shelves. Since Mr Kipling’s Bakewell Slices are reduced, as are Mr Kipling’s French Fancies and McVitie’s treacle cake, he helps himself to a selection, and to packets of jumbo-size crisps and Phileas Fogg croutons near the pay-out, as well as a six-pack of Bounty bars. He smiles at a woman who ungraciously pushes in front of him, saying it doesn’t matter in the least.

In the car park he stacks his purchases in the boot of his car, and returns to his catering department, consuming a Bounty bar on the way. Most of the lunch hour has gone, but something hot will have been kept back for him in the kitchens, as he requested earlier. ‘Sorry to give you the bother,’ he apologizes when a plate of gammon and parsley sauce, creamed potatoes and sauced cauliflower is placed in front of him. ‘Had a bit of business to attend to. I’ll have to stay late to catch up on the figures.’

He does not intend to do that. He intends to drive down to the Marshring area in the hope of a sighting. As he eats, and afterwards in his cubicle of an office, an anger he has suppressed gradually begins to seep through his defences. Anyone could have seen her hurrying away from Number Three. He broke his rule for her, and then that: hardly evidence of gratitude, after she’d been driven upwards of a hundred and ten miles, with cups of tea paid for, and all that guff about some woman left a widow seventy-five years ago patiently listened to. And although it should be, it’s no satisfaction to know that the boyfriend has been guilty of porkies.

Unable to help himself, Mr Hilditch imagines this soldier, tidy in his uniform and engaged in cheerful afternoon fatigues. He envisages him off duty later on, relaxing with his mates, feet up on a table in the day room of the barracks, the kind of camaraderie he had once looked forward to himself, before the recruiting sergeant with the bladelike moustache rejected him because of his feet and his eyesight. With his legs still cocked up in front of him, ankles crossed, the young thug guffaws that keen bints like the one he had
are two a penny, pick them off the bushes, no problem at all. And one of his companions looks up from
Big Ones
and recalls the first time he’d had it, with a fat nurse behind a public house, the Flight of Birds up Scunthorpe way, a summer’s evening. Another of them throws in that the first time he had it he was thirteen, a plumber’s wife.

At a quarter to six Mr Hilditch drives down to the Marshring area and waits for a while in his parked car. ‘Thanks very much,’ was what she said as she scuttled off. ‘I hope it’ll be all right about your wife.’

At ten past six he drives away again, disappointed.

No iron bars are needed, for all the animals are at peace with the happy people. The lion and the lamb are friends. See those brightly coloured birds as they flit here and there! Hear their beautiful song and the children’s laughter filling the air! Smell the fragrance of those flowers, hear the rippling of the stream, feel the tingling warmth of the sun! Oh, for a taste of the fruit in that basket, for it is the best that the earth can produce, the very best, like everything that is seen and enjoyed in this glorious garden…

The happy people, the flowers and animals and fruit, are brightly illustrated on the cover of the brochure. Flamingos stalk about, rabbits nibble grass but not the flowers. A child hugs a swan, yachts sail on a distant lake.

‘That, now, is the paradise earth,’ a black woman asserts, a long forefinger drawing Felicia’s attention to a trickling waterfall, to giraffes and then to cockatoos. The black woman is tall and slender, with rings on several of her fingers, and earrings. ‘That is the promise and the place,’ she states, ‘of the Father Lord.’

‘Yes,’ Felicia agrees.

‘Come with us, child. You hear of the Flood, honey? Noah in his Ark? You hear of that?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘The Flood is a proved event,’ the black woman reminds her.

‘Yes, I understand.’

Only a few other people are about. Gusts of wind blow the litter into the doorways of shops. It is colder than it has been.

‘Where you live?’ the black woman peremptorily demands. ‘You have rooms going spare there?’

Felicia replies that she is a stranger: she has been lodging in bed-and-breakfast places. She reaches for her carrier bags and says she must be getting on.

‘Where you go off to, child? Where you run in a hurry from the Father Lord?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

It is late in the day. She has to find another bed-and-breakfast place, in an area that isn’t familiar to her. The more she moves about the more chance she has of running into the person she is looking for: she explains that, but the black woman doesn’t understand. She doesn’t listen. She says there is happiness for the one who dies.

‘Child, we live in a miracle. Look here at this garden, honey. See the fruits of the trees and the peoples of all nations. See the juice to drink and the smiles of the children. Look, child, the Father Lord is gathering all things in.’

‘I have to get a room for the night.’

‘I can offer you a room, child. No charge made. Miss Tamsel Flewett is gone and I have the knowledge in my heart she is gone from us for ever. A lady from Jamaica don’t go down too well on her own when she rings folks’ doorbells.’

Again the leaflets are pressed on Felicia, the heavenly picture of fruit and flamingos and well-behaved rabbits.

‘No, really. I’m sorry.’

‘What things you have to do, child? What things more important than the work of the Father Lord?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘There’s all kinds stay at the Gathering House. You need a pillow for your head? Well, here we have it for you, honey. I do not like to see you sitting out here in the wind, a prey to the coming night.’

Felicia feels tired. She fell asleep, just sitting there on the wooden seat, and even dreamed: that they were in Sheehy’s again, the first time he took her there, that they were at the Creagh crossroads, in the warm little back bar. She should have insisted
when she went to see Mrs Lysaght. She should have told her everything, and refused to leave without the full address. She should have screamed at her and made a scene. After all, it is Mrs Lysaght’s grandchild.

‘Come with me, honey,’ the black woman commands in her firm manner, and Felicia goes with her because it’s easier than looking for somewhere else. ‘Miss Calligary,’ the black woman introduces herself. ‘It isn’t far.’

She hurries them through deserted streets to a brick-built house in a row with others. She leads the way upstairs, to an attic with pictures on the walls that are similar to the brochure illustration. Miss Calligary’s clothes hang from two rows of hooks on either side of a casement window, dresses and skirts and coats. Her shoes are neatly in line along one of the walls. A suitcase, on the floor also, bulges with underclothes and other possessions. The only pieces of furniture in the attic are two upright chairs, a trestle-table and a narrow bed. ‘I’m forever on the move,’ Miss Calligary explains. ‘I gather in where the Message leads me.’

She prepares a meal of tuna fish and salad, and when they have eaten this food she makes tea. They drink it, then wash the dishes up in an enamel basin. Miss Calligary disposes of the dregs from the teapot, and the tea-leaves, in a small lavatory on a half landing, pouring away the washing-up water here also. No sound comes from the rooms below.

‘It’s quiet in the Gathering House tonight,’ Miss Calligary comments. ‘Each and every one is out and about.’

‘Do a lot of people live here?’

‘Black and white, child, old and young. All that are called to gather in.’

Later these people return. The hall door bangs frequently. Voices exchange greetings. A piano plays a hymn tune. An odour of food cooking rises to Miss Calligary’s attic.

‘Love! Joy! Peace!’ So exclaiming, a man in a maroon anorak smiles a welcome at Felicia when, an hour later, Miss Calligary leads her into a large, unfurnished downstairs room. Others come up and shake her hand: black and white, as Miss Calligary has said, old and young. A bed-roll, Felicia is told, will be spread out
for her in the room where the people are now congregated, the Gathering Room it is known as. A girl called Agnes, with softly tinted fingernails and trim black hair, reveals that she’s in dental care, but would prefer to devote all her time to distributing the Message.

‘Mourning will be no more,’ Agnes avers. ‘Nor outcry nor pain. When we have gathered together, when it is known again by all that a future awaits the one who dies.’

Every evening, she further reveals, the people meet in the Gathering Room in order to exchange their day’s experiences. An elderly Ethiopian relates his to Felicia, most of them to do with the ringing of doorbells. ‘You are not amongst us by chance,’ he adds, ‘for there is nothing that can happen but by the Commandment that began in the garden of pleasure. Adam was taken from out of the ground of the paradise earth, and the Commandment was drawn in the dust. Look close and see the serpent’s spit.’ The old man’s face is as wrinkled as a walnut, his darting eyes bloodshot. He nods at Felicia and passes on.

‘Bob’s the name.’ Small and balding, the man who addresses her next is the man in the maroon anorak. ‘Ours is the bed-roll,’ he now declares. ‘Ruthie’s and mine. We keep it for newcomers, since not long ago we were newcomers ourselves. We met in this room, Ruthie and myself. We were married from this house. Our children were born in our upstairs room. Two beautiful children. It is they who will bring down the bed-roll.’

‘Everyone is pleased that you have come to us,’ a tall woman assures Felicia. The woman’s breath is sweet, as if scented. She pushes her face close to Felicia’s, articulating her confidences clearly. ‘I was lost as in a forest until the Way was revealed to me through the Message.’

A Japanese man says his name is Mr Hikuku. Felicia can’t understand anything else he says, but the woman with the sweet breath explains that he works among the people of the East, bringing them the Message. He lives modestly in the Gathering House, the woman adds, in one small room, sharing lavatory and bath like everyone else. But in commercial terms Mr Hikuku is twice over a millionaire.