The End Of Mr. Y (28 page)

wanted to confiscate your computer, and get all your files from Personnel, too. Yvonne wasn’t happy about it, so they ended up having to try to get some sort of fax through from their offices in America to the Dean. Apparently they’ve had to investigate someone else from this department before. They said they never found him, but they would have done if the university could have given his details to them sooner. Anyway, the fax didn’t come yesterday and they went away in the end, saying they’d come back today. They weren’t particularly nice. Ariel, what on earth has happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m … I didn’t see Adam. I had no idea … Do you know where he is now?’ ‘No. But he left you a note.’

‘Has anyone read it?’

‘No. He told me to hide it, so I did. But I didn’t feel comfortable about it. He’s left his number, too.’ She scrabbles around on her desk until she finds a scrap of paper with an 07792 number on it. It seems strange – I wouldn’t have thought Adam would have a mobile phone. I’m not going to call the number, anyway: who knows who could be listening in? If those men are official in some way, then I’m more fucked than I’d thought. I’m certainly not phoning anyone, and I’m not using any cashpoints (not that I’ve got any money to draw out). I’ve seen enough of those action films to know the drill. The only trouble is that when I watch action films, I usually feel the excitement and fear at one remove, as a spectator. So the hero might die, and you might think ‘No!’, but you don’t really care. It’s just a story – and you know the hero won’t usually die in a story, anyway. But I am aware that I’m not in a story, and that if someone really wants to shoot me, or get into my mind or whatever, there’s no scriptwriter who’s going to make it all right for me in Act Three. I’ll be dead in Act Two, and it’s not as if Aristotle’s going to come along and say it’s all wrong.

And it looks as if I’m not mad. Not only is this definitely happening to me: it happened to Burlem as well. He’s surely the ‘other person from the department’ whom the men came to investigate. He’s the last person who had the book. So I’m certainly not going to the medical centre. I’m going to see if I can speak to Adam, and then I’m going to find Saul Burlem. I’m going to find him, find out everything he knows about what’s going on – and then I’ll work out what to do next. I guess he must have an excellent hiding place if he hasn’t yet been found, but then he doesn’t have the book any more: I do.

‘Have you got the note?’ I say to Heather, trying to stop my voice from shaking.

‘Yes. I think so. It’s here somewhere.’

Eventually she picks up a small blue envelope and gives it to me.

‘Thanks.’ ‘Ariel…’ ‘What?’

‘Do you think those men are going to come back? They really freaked me out.’ ‘I don’t know.’

‘I mean, I know we’re really just guests here in your office, and what you do is your business, and I don’t want to intrude or anything, but …’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s not very nice having the police turn up. If you are in trouble, don’t you think maybe you should sort it out?’

Fuck off, Heather.

But I actually say: ‘I’m not in trouble. And I’m going to stay with my aunt in Leeds, so I won’t see you for a while. Say goodbye to Adam for me – and enjoy the office space.’

Maybe she’ll send the psychos to Leeds, but I’m not counting on it.

SIXTEEN

Dear Ariel,

I spent most of the night banging on your door, and then all morning worrying that I led those men straight to you. You haven’t phoned me. I hope you are all right.

In case no one else has told you, the men said they were from the Central Intelligence Agency. I think that’s crap – but who knows? They wanted your address, but I didn’t give it to them.

Now they’re in my dreams. Not that it means anything: I had a nervous breakdown a couple of years ago, which has left me odd, vulnerable and liable to have nightmares.

I’m not feeling so good right now, so I’m going to the shrine to try to get myself back together. If you can, I think you should come, too. I can’t tell you everything now, but I can tell you everything when I see you.

If you think this is paranoid rambling, please ignore it. I can get paranoid sometimes. Your friend,

Adam

It’s half past three and almost completely dark by the time I get to the Shrine of St Jude. I didn’t have time to stop for directions or anything like that, so I simply drove around Faversham and waited for something to happen. Eventually I saw a chipped little sign saying
St Jude’s Shrine
and now here I am, outside the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I think the shrine’s inside. I’m estimating that I need to get away from here in the next half-hour or so and go somewhere completely random to collect my thoughts. So I haven’t got long.

There’s no one in the church when I walk in, probably looking insane, with my tatty old bag slung over my shoulder. The whole place smells dusty, like incense. I notice the holy water in a font on my left, and although it reminds me of everything I’ve done, and everything that’s going wrong, I dip my finger in it and touch my forehead. As I do this, I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons on a couple of rainy lunchtimes at school. In some versions of the game, you could go to a town and get holy water to cure all but the most serious ailments, and increase your health. In other versions, you could use it as a weapon against evil spirits or the undead. But no one ever said you could drink it and go to another world, or that this might, in fact, be a bad idea. I walk further into the church. It’s a small, cold, calming space, with oak-panelled walls and hard wooden benches for pews. A sign directs me down some stairs to the shrine.

And – oh – it’s so warm going down the stairs. Hundreds of candles are burning down below: there are several stands containing small tealight candles and a whole table covered with big candles in church-blue plastic holders, each with a picture – although I can’t see what the pictures are. Once I’m down in the shrine it’s actually hot, and I unwind my scarf. There’s still no one here. On my right, and surrounded by many more candles, is a statue of what I assume must be St Jude. The wall behind him is part mosaic, and part blackened brick. The statue is rendered in gold: a bearded man standing with his staff. There are bars separating me from him, and so for a moment he appears to be imprisoned. Of course, looking at it from his perspective, I’m the one in prison. I

wander around the room. On one side are the prayer requests on yellow Post-it notes.
Please help my aunt who is in so much pain. St Jude, please intercede for my son Stefan, who is only nineteen. Don’t let my brother die. Please bring my son back from war
. The requests are signed by people from Mauritius, Poland, Spain, Brazil… All over the world. A sign explains to me that St Jude is the patron saint of lost and hopeless causes. St Jude seems to be the saint you come to when all others have failed. Then, on the other side of the room, a printed leaflet explains to me that St Jude is a controversial saint, and may not even exist.

I’ve never prayed before in my life. But now, after lighting a candle and adding it to one of the blazing racks, I move back to the shrine and kneel in front of it. Once I’m there, I still don’t know what to do. Thinking something like ‘Oh, please, St Jude, help me and don’t let those men ever find me’ seems silly. Something tells me I should not pray for myself; I should pray for another person. But whom do I have to pray for? Even the last person I slept with doesn’t matter to me. I care more about the anonymous son from the yellow Post-it note coming back from war. Instead of praying for anyone, I just gaze at the statue until its edges start to blur. ‘Who are you?’ I think. ‘What do you do with all the energy that comes together in this place?’ Because there is an energy here: it’s crackling around me with an intensity that a million of these candles couldn’t match. What is it? Is it my hope? Other people’s hope? Simply the power of prayer? I feel St Jude looking at me, and I think that if he were really there he’d be telling me to stop speculating and asking unanswerable questions.

But I’m not sure I can do anything else.

In the end, I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language, there’d be no … what? I’m just thinking about Adam, and what he said about truth existing beyond language, when I hear voices coming down the stairs: one female and one male. For some reason I feel embarrassed praying on my knees, so I get up and pretend to look at the candles. I know I have to go soon: I look at my watch. It’s quarter to four. I feel so tired, though, as if I haven’t slept for days. And it’s icy and dark outside.

‘Yes, we’ve managed to get the shrine functioning again – at last.’ ‘It’s amazing. I was afraid the last fire would be the end.’

I recognise that voice, although it sounds tired, and almost broken. ‘It’s never the end for St Jude. He has so many loyal supporters.’ Poor Apollo Smintheus, I think, with his cult of only six people.

‘It’s … Oh. Ariel! You’re OK.’ ‘Hello, Adam.’

‘Maria, this is Ariel Manto. The one I told you about.’

Adam looks terrible. What’s happened to his face? His right eye is swollen and bruised like a piece of rotting fruit. And he’s wearing the same clothes I saw him in on Tuesday. Where are we now?

Thursday. I think it must be Thursday. He’s with a woman of about sixty or so. She’s wearing a long brown skirt and a purple blouse. Her grey hair is mostly covered with a brown headscarf, but a few silvery wisps fall down the side of her face. Her brown eyes somehow look younger than his.

She holds out her hand. ‘Hello, Ariel,’ she says softly. ‘I’m glad you got here safely. Adam has told us about your troubles. We made up a bed for you in the guest wing of the priory just in case you did drop by. You can rest here for as long as you need to.’

A bed? In a priory? But I can’t stay here. I have to go.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ I say, for some reason using the ‘polite’ voice I use only to speak to school teachers, traffic wardens and similar authority figures. ‘But I think I really am in terrible trouble and

I don’t want to involve you.’ I look at Adam, and point vaguely at his bruised face. ‘It’s already gone too far. They did that to you, didn’t they?’ Adam nods. I continue: ‘Those people… I don’t really understand what’s going on. I just came to say thank you to Adam. And sorry.’

‘How about some tea?’ says Maria, as if I haven’t just suggested that they are all in danger as long as I stay here. ‘We can go to the priory kitchens.’

Adam looks at me. ‘They can’t get you here,’ he says.

I sigh. ‘You can’t be sure about that.’ And I’m not sure about anything. I’m not sure about him. What has he done to make me trust him? Is there anyone in the whole world I would actually trust? I think of my mother, and the time that I tried to tell her that I was cutting myself. I had it all planned out. I was going to tell her about how I started plucking my eyebrows because the other girls at school did, but that I found it was so cathartic that I couldn’t stop. Then there was that evening in the bath when I realised that if I kept on plucking, I’d end up with no eyebrows, but I hadn’t given myself enough pain, not enough catharsis. So I took Dad’s razor and stuck it in my leg. ‘Not now, Ariel,’ she said, settling down with her CB radio. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.’ Perhaps Burlem. For some reason, I think I trust him.

Maria starts walking up the stairs.

‘Why don’t you show her the secret passage?’ she says to Adam. ‘There’s no point going outside if there are dangerous men around. I’ll see you over there.’ Then she looks at me. ‘We’ve been through worse than this, dear.’

Once the sound of her footsteps has gone, I look at Adam again. Shadows cast by hundreds of candles bounce off his sharp features and seem to rest on the softer, broken part of his face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I do have to go.’

‘Ariel …’

‘If I told you half of what’s been going on, you wouldn’t believe me. But the short version is that they can get me anywhere. This sounds mad.’ I sigh, frustrated that there’s no way to explain this. ‘Basically, if they can get near to me, they can get to me. Getting near to me is enough. I know I’m not making sense, and even I don’t know how it works … But I think that my only hope is to go far, far away, as fast as possible.’

‘I’m sure you’re safe here. At least come for tea. I’ll explain.’ ‘I haven’t got much time before they follow me here.’

‘Do they know you’re here?’

‘They’ll find out. Heather’ll tell them.’ ‘I told her not to read my note.’

‘But she probably did, anyway. I just can’t take the risk.’

My voice is rising in pitch as I speak, and it gets to a point where I realise that the next thing for me to do is cry. But I can’t cry. If I cry, then it’s over. All the adrenaline will wash away, and I think adrenaline is all I’ve got left. I don’t have any money, and I don’t even have much petrol in the car. But I can steal petrol: I’ve done it before. And I’ve got enough money to live on chips for a few days. As long as I get away, everything might still be OK.

I start walking up the stairs.

‘Ariel? Ariel! Please. You’re safer here, trust me.’ ‘You can’t know that.’

‘I know more than you think.’ I hesitate.

‘They didn’t follow me into the university chapel,’ he says. ‘I don’t think they could. And I haven’t dreamed about them since I’ve been here. Come on. I’ll explain downstairs.’

He takes my hand and leads me away from St Jude and into a room full of St Jude-related

merchandise. I’m not sure why I’m doing what he says, but I actually feel too weak to do anything else now. In this little room there are many unlit versions of the big blue candles, as well as postcards, pendants, lockets, prayer booklets and little brown pots with white lids. Adam’s hand feels cold in mine. He stops by one of the stands and, with his free hand, picks up one of the little brown pots.