Only Strange People Go to Church (18 page)

Once he waves off Maria and the girls Ray makes a start again on his sideboard. George King, the guy that commissioned them, phoned him yesterday. He had a laugh and a joke with him and put him off for another couple of weeks. He’s hardly made any progress on the cabinets since the rehearsals started. Every day someone asks him to do something or other, paint a backdrop or build a set. It’s getting out of hand.

Marianne is doing her usual thing of coming up with brilliant ideas. Her latest is to run a coffee bar during the interval in the show.

‘I’ll check it out, Ray, but as far as I know we don’t need a licence so long as we’re not selling alcohol.’

‘You weren’t thinking of selling alcohol, were you?’

‘Good grief! Believe me; absolutely the last thing I was thinking of was selling alcohol. We’ve got enough on our hands with this lot, never mind a load of drunken Hextors. Mind you, it might make them enjoy the show more.’

‘I think they’ll enjoy the show just fine.’

‘Well, thank you for your vote of confidence.’

Ray lets Marianne lead him towards the snooker table.

‘This thing is a bit of a liability. It’s the opportunity cost I’m thinking of.’

‘Opportunity cost?’ says Ray, baffled. She’s obviously forgotten who she’s talking to. He’s just a joiner.

‘Yes. It’s taking up valuable seating space – on the night of the show we could have at least six more paying customers in there. It’s costing us bums on seats.’

‘And you can never have too many bums,’ says Ray.

Coincidentally, as they approach the table he can see a magnificent example of quality bum, a perfect specimen. Some of the choirgirls are playing snooker, four of them at a time. One is leaning across the table trying to make a shot and meanwhile presenting a deliciously juicy young arse.

Jailbait. It’s exciting but unnerving to be around them. Ray will never understand teenage girls. It’s the giggling. What the hell do they find so hysterically funny? He always thinks they’re laughing at him and he doesn’t know why, or how to stop them. The girls are now standing around the snooker table bickering about whose turn it is. They hassle everyone else who plays snooker, the serious players, to get their turn on the table and then when they do get on they’re less interested in playing than in who’s watching them play.

The rest of the choir hang together in clumps, whispering with occasional noisy explosions of giggling, waiting their turn.

‘Excuse me please, Chantelle,’ says Marianne to one of the snooker players. ‘Could you let us in a minute here, please? Ray needs to measure the table. Thank you.’

All four girls move away and lounge around on one of the pews that have been brought from the church into the hall.

‘I thought if you could make some sort of lid that fits on top,’ explains Marianne.

Ray understands quickly and easily what it is she wants.

‘That way we could use it to serve coffee from on the night.’

Although he’s nodding his head, he has tuned into the buzz and increased volume from the choir girls. Something’s going on but as he’s trying to give Marianne his attention he can’t work out what it is.

An old sheet, more recently pressed into service as a dust cover, is draped over the pew the girls are standing around. It’s daubed here and there with the burgundy paint Ray used in the backdrop for the Hexton Hot Steppers. But there seems to be something moving beneath the sheet. The girls are giggling and pushing each other towards it. One or two of them prod it and then retreat giggling to their friends.

Marianne is deliberately tuning out the noise from the girls and raises her voice slightly to compensate.

‘Not only that,’ she almost shouts, ‘but it would mean the table was protected from anyone spilling anything on it. Alice gets really antsy if any of my lot go near it with their cans of coke.’

Ray has stopped listening. Something is about to happen. The girls are laughing and squealing, shoving each other towards the thing under the sheet. Agitation has risen to fever pitch until one girl runs forward and tugs the sheet off the pew.

The girls shriek in terror. They start crying. The burgundy paint was not paint but blood. There under the sheet, pinned to the pew by a six-inch nail through the neck, is one of the magician’s rabbits.

Amidst the screaming, Ray and Marianne run to the schoolgirls. All other activity in the hall ceases as people rush forward, jostling to get a view. One girl screeches and points.

‘Miss, the rabbit, the rabbit! Please, Miss, please!’

Marianne turns to Ray.

‘Can you deal with this? I’ll have to get the girls out of here.’

She moves forward with her arms wide, trying to sweep the girls together.

‘Girls! Come on now,’ she says, ‘let’s move outside.’

But Ray can’t deal with this. He’s not good with blood. He doesn’t like to get it on his hands, it scares him.

The rabbit is not dead. Though it is impaled through the neck and bleeding profusely, it is fully conscious. Just because he’s handy with woodwork doesn’t mean he can deal with this. If he has to touch it he might faint, here, in front of everyone.

‘Come on now, Alison, love,’ Marianne says in a soothing singsong voice to the most hysterical girl. ‘Let’s go outside and get a breath of air. It’s going to be all right, we’ll leave Ray to sort this out, shall we?’

‘Miss, we have to help it!’

‘We can’t leave it like this, we have to do something!
Please
, Miss!’

Despite their protests the headmistress gently puts her arm around Alison, but she fights her off, howling and clinging to her friends. Then Marianne’s shouting above the chaos.

‘Please pay attention, girls! Now we are going to leave calmly and quietly. I insist that you leave the building with me immediately!’

But this end of the hall is too congested now for them to push through the excited crowd. She’s forced to give up and let them weep and cling to each other, alternately watching the rabbit and burying their heads in each other’s necks.

The rabbit is lying on its side on top of the pew but as it struggles it slides off. Adults gasp, children scream. They’re all expecting him to do something, to fix it, Mr Fixit. Now the rabbit is dangling, its paws and feet swimming in the air, suspended by the nail which is slowly tearing through its throat. Blood is bubbling from the hole in its neck.

Ray grits his teeth and lifts the rabbit back up onto the pew, taking the strain off its neck wound while he tries to figure out what to do. He can feel its heart beating, the throb of its pulse through his fingers and with each throb he feels a hot quiver of nausea. He tries not to look at it, to avoid seeing its torn flesh as he takes his hammer from his tool belt. This increases the volume of the girl’s screams.

He’s going to be sick. The screaming is like two thin steel blades entering his head via his ears. He can’t think straight, the blades of noise are fighting a bloody duel, slicing and cutting his brain to chump meat. He hates to hear a woman scream, he’s heard enough screaming to last a life time.

‘Don’t hurt him!’

‘Ray, help the wee fella!’

He holds the rabbit with one hand trying to lever the nail out between the prongs of the claw hammer. His hand is shaking, knocking the hammer against the nail. He’s hurting the rabbit, making things worse. He pulls hard on the hammer trying to ease the nail out of the wood, out of the rabbit’s throat but it’s not working. To get any leverage he’d have to bear down on the rabbit and that would surely kill it. The nail is deeply embedded and although it bends, it won’t leave the wood. The rabbit’s blood flows more quickly now. It’s sticky and hot in his hands. Ray feels dizzy.

He’s bent the nail, he’ll never get it out now and still everyone is screaming at him. The rabbit is more trapped now than when he
started. Ray can’t save the rabbit. Its breathing is becoming more laboured, it’s drowning in its own blood. The kindest thing to do would be to end this slow asphyxiation. He has to kill it. He can’t deal with this.

The rabbit looks at him out of the side of its eye. It isn’t angry or scared or accepting, it just watches him as though gathering evidence. It seems to know how this scene will play out.

Ray has seen this look before.

He turns the hammer in his hands.

‘Miss, please don’t let Ray kill it! Please!’

‘For God’s sake put the wee thing out of its misery!’ a man’s voice shouts, setting off another round of screaming from the teenagers. The crowd have moved closer, crowding in on top of him, so close he hasn’t the elbow room to work.

Ray turns and faces them. ‘Would you just please move back!’ he shouts. ‘Look, what is it you want? You want me to take the nail out? Yes? No? Look, the rabbit’s going to die, whatever I do. I can’t work miracles, I don’t know what it is you expect. What the fuck do you people want from me? Eh?’

The crowd has fallen silent. Ray is wiping the sweat from his forehead when someone pushes through. Alice emerges and takes the hammer from Ray’s slack hand.

‘Give me the bliddy thing,’ she says.

As if practising a putting shot Alice puts the hammer to the rabbit’s head and then with one swift tap kills it stone dead. There is a squashing sound as its skull bursts followed by the sound of a hall full of people inhaling loudly. Eyes pop, hands fly to faces, teenagers wail.

‘Okay, show’s over, get back to whatever you were doing, the lot of you.’

Transfixed by the horror of the executed rabbit and the pony-tailed woman with the blood-streaked face, nobody moves.

‘You heard me!’ she yells.

This shout galvanises them and the crowd, mumbling and whispering their shock, begin to shuffle away. Marianne pulls her girls, still weeping and clinging, away from the scene.

What the fuck is he doing here? Why did he come to this place? These people expect too much. They don’t know him, they don’t know. When space has cleared, Ray turns and walks out the hall. He’s uncertain at this moment if he’ll ever return.

When Maria and the girls arrive back at the centre, there is no sign of Dezzie and the boys. Where are they? They left the church before her; they should have got here ages ago. It’s not as though she can ask anyone. That would be admitting that she doesn’t know where they are and, as Key Worker, she is responsible. Perhaps they went the long way back through the park. Half an hour later, when they have still not returned, she has to discount this theory. She imagines Brian’s mum and dad’s faces when she has to tell them she’s lost their son. Despite Brian’s difficult relationship with them, especially his dad Phil, they are devoted to him. He’s their only child. Like other parents of disabled children they blame themselves and ceaselessly try to make up for it by spoiling him with every indulgence they can possibly afford. Maria is scared of what Brian’s dad might do with his baseball bat if Brian was ever to come to any harm.

Martin’s parents are different; they’re elderly and very easygoing. Too easy-going. They make light of the fact that Martin has Down’s Syndrome and give him far too much freedom. This lenient attitude has led Martin to have an inflated idea of his own capabilities.

What if they’ve had an accident or been mugged? The streets of Hexton have, up to now, been a safe place for clients. Though the locals might not let them into their clubs, they don’t generally attack them on the street. But there’s a first time for everything.

If some doped up junkie, desperate for his next fix, thought they had a few quid between them they could get mugged. He’d only need to wave a kitchen knife, it would be that easy. Maria almost
weeps when she considers how defenceless they are. She knows exactly how Dezzie would react. He’d protect the boys, her boys, with his life if necessary.

Worst case scenario would be trouble from Martin. Martin is affectionate and fun-loving, especially with the women clients, but he hates people taking the piss and he can be aggressive. He’s young and physically powerful and has every arrogance of the strong young man. Over the years, through various disputes and tussles for dominance with the other men clients, Martin has become recognised as the alpha male. Centre staff do all they can to discourage these power struggles but they are inevitable. Unfortunately this has led Martin to believe that he’s a hard man. He’s unlikely, given the reputation he has to maintain, to allow anyone, even a crazed junkie with a kitchen knife, to mug him.

His tough guy standing is based on a few shouted arguments and a bit of pushing in the lunch queue. He’s not up to armed combat. Maria prays that he wouldn’t try any of his have-a-go-hero stunts he uses in the show.

She’s crying again. This is all her fault. If she hadn’t lost her temper with Fiona, they would all be here now, warm and safe inside the centre. The buses will be here in a minute to take everybody home. And still no sign of them.

What if Dezzie does put himself between Martin and a drug-crazed knife-wielding mugger? If he sacrifices his own sweet, firm, but nonetheless vulnerable, body for Martin’s flabby pink one? Would she still love Dezzie if he were disabled? If he were crippled and unable to have children?

Yes.

Or physically intact but brain damaged?

Of course.

Even if he was drooling and vacant?

Her love is unconditional.

If she was ever lucky enough to become Mrs Desmond Stewart, it would be for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Although making love to a drooling swivel-eyed husband doesn’t seem right somehow.

Buses are pulling up outside the centre. The drivers are opening the back doors and operating the lifts, making ready for the wheelchairs.

‘Time to go home,’ says Jane.

Distracted with thoughts of Dezzie lying on top of her, not like he is now, but with his eyes rolling and his saliva dribbling on to her, Maria gives her stock reply.

‘In a minute.’

‘But the bus is here!’

Jane is frightened. Every day she worries that she’ll miss the bus. Some clients, Martin and sometimes Fiona, for instance, don’t want to go home and have to be led persuasively, and sometimes with mild force, on to their bus, but Jane is always keen to get home.

‘I want to go home,’ she snivels.

‘She wants to go home,’ says Fiona.

‘Yes, okay Fiona, calm down, we’ll be going in a minute.’

‘Well, give her her anorak then!’

‘I want my anorak.’

‘She wants her anorak,’ says Fiona.

‘Okay, wait here. I’m getting it. And yours too, Fiona Simpson, you’re going home as well.’

‘Good,’ says Fiona.

Maria can’t put it off any longer; she’ll have to tell Bert that Martin and Brian are missing.

Leaving the girls unattended she runs along the corridor. Unusually, the door to Bert’s office is closed.

She knocks and rushes in.

‘With you in a second!’ Bert calls.

But it is too late. Maria bursts in to Bert’s office and turns and exits so fast she feels dizzy. She’s made a dreadful, dreadful mistake.

Bert is kneeling on the floor facing the Virgin Mary-shaped bottle he brought back from Lourdes. His hands are clasped and he’s wearing an expression of frantic supplication, but that’s about all he’s wearing. Down to his vest and underpants, his rest of his clothes are strewn about the office. The skin on his arms and legs seems weird: red and shiny, raw, but she is in and out so fast her
impression can be no more than blurry. Blurry and disquieting. Fear makes Maria’s hand fly to her chest. A dreadful mistake, yes, but she must prioritise; Brian and Martin are still missing and she has to
do something.

‘Maria!’ she suddenly hears someone roar.

Several hours later Ray gets off a bus that has pulled into Hexton. When he paid the bus driver he became aware, as did the driver, that his hands were covered in dried blood. He makes straight for the public toilets and scrubs the blood from his hands. It’s everywhere, between his fingers, under his nails, encrusted around his wedding ring. He looks at his left hand and pulls off the thick gold band that he has worn every day for fifteen and a half years. He puts it in his shirt pocket, the breast pocket close to his heart, and smiles at his reflection in the mirror. He’s changing.

When he left the church he walked out along the main road. He only wanted to be moving, he didn’t want to have to think about where he was going so it would have been easier to take the long straight road to Glasgow, but something made him choose the quieter country roads that circle Hexton. He must have circled the town three or four times before he got hungry and tired enough to come back. But he’s had a good think.

What freaked him out wasn’t the blood and pain and death of the wee rabbit. Well, yes, actually, when he thinks about it, that did freak him out. He thought he’d left all that behind, blood and pain and death have dogged him, but of course, that’s rubbish. He’ll never get away from it. What really freaked him was his own response.

Since he opened the doors of the church he’s had to take more and more responsibility for the people that come around and the fucking weird things they do. Some of these bozos know not what they do. Nailing a rabbit to a pew? What the fuck was that? How the hell is he supposed to deal with that? He’s only a joiner, not a fucking vet. And why is it his problem? He’s spent hours tramping
round the back roads of Hexton when he should have been working on his sideboard.

When he came to Hexton it was to leave all the shit behind and make a fresh start. Today, with the girls screaming at him and the rabbit bleeding on him, Ray realised that although he’d changed location, he hadn’t moved on. He was still feeling the guilt, still taking the blame. What happened today was that he let the hysteria of a bunch of schoolgirls infect him. That’s all. He shouldn’t read anything into it. He doesn’t have to do that anymore, he’s free to move on. It’s time now. As he heads back to the church he checks his breast pocket for the ring, it’s still there.

‘It was that sick nutcase McGraw that did it,’ explains Alice as she cuts the bread.

Ray had expected everyone to have gone home by now but Alice and Marianne are still in the kitchen waiting for him when he gets back. Alice heats him a plate of soup and relates the whole story as he sups greedily.

‘As a warning, apparently,’ she adds.

‘It’s pathetic but I suppose it’s Hexton’s version of waking up with a horse’s head in your bed,’ says Marianne.

‘Exactly,’ agrees Alice. ‘Magic Marshall owed him fifty quid and this was his strong-arm tactics. He said he couldn’t break Magic’s fingers because that would interfere with his income.’

‘Does Magic make any money from magic shows?’ asks Marianne.

‘Not as much as he needs to.’

‘But why did he ever go to a moneylender?’

‘He didn’t, it was his son, Peter. When the factory shut down, Peter left Hexton and he’s never been back but Magic had to take on the debt. He didn’t want to, but you don’t argue with McGraw.’

Ray is loath to interrupt this fascinating discussion and he’s really enjoying his soup but he wants to be sure he’s got the story right.

‘So: Magic Marshall was paying off his son’s debt, but he didn’t keep up the repayments so the moneylender mutilated his rabbit.’

‘As a warning.’

Ray shakes his head, as do Alice and Marianne.

‘I noticed Magic did a vanishing act when his rabbit was being crucified.’

‘Well, he’s a senior citizen now,’ says Alice. ‘He’s not fit to take on that big thug. He saw McGraw come in and scooted. Who was to know he’d do that to the poor wee thing?’

‘I can’t believe there was a moneylender operating from here.’

‘Ray, he’s been in here every other day since the café opened.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Excuse me, you’re the guy that dreamed up the great
come one
come all
philosophy.’

‘Well, I tell you, if McGraw or any other moneylender sets foot in this church I’ll fucking…sorry ladies. Well, you let me know if you see any.’

‘Anyway, it’s sorted now. McGraw’s been paid off, he’ll not be back,’ says Alice, ladling more soup into Ray’s now empty plate.

‘How come?’

‘Oh,’ says Marianne, smiling, ‘Alice was a bit naughty.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

Ray and Marianne look at Alice but they don’t say a word.

‘I bliddy wasn’t! Look, the kids wanted to make a donation. That’s what people do nowadays, if there’s a tragedy folk are falling over themselves to give money, God knows why but they do. I organised a wee tin in the café, that’s all.’

‘And you laid the rabbit out in state and gave him a name.’ adds Marianne.

‘Okay, so I gave him a name.’

‘What did you call him?’ asks Ray.

‘Colin.’

Colin the Rabbit?’

‘Listen, there was fifty-two pounds forty-three pence in that tin! Magic took it round and paid off McGraw.’

‘Well, at least the rabbit never died in vain.’

Ray and Marianne exchange smirks at this.

‘Nope,’ agrees Alice, swiping his plate away briskly.

He knows he’s annoyed Alice off now so as she passes he tries to take her hand but she dodges away. He’ll have to try something else.

‘That soup was fantastic, Alice, I’m not kidding, I think that was your best yet. What was in it?’

‘Och, nothing really, just a rabbit and a handful of veg,’ says Alice.

Ray is not entirely sure she’s kidding.