The Summer We All Ran Away (21 page)

He stood in the hallway for a moment, undecided what to do. He wanted to go after her, if only because he wanted to be there when she realised how insane she was being. But the memory of the panther out there in the garden – that sleekly-muscled killing machine, covered in black velvet, padding on silent paws through the trees and shrubs – was like a hand on his collar, dragging him back.

“Don't be such a spineless - a spineless
twat,”
he said out loud, and took a determined step towards the door.

Except there really was a hand on his collar.

“Do you mean me?” asked Tom. “Or you?” Davey struggled to get free. “No, I'm sorry, Davey lad, but I can't let you go out there too.”

“But Priss is g-g-g - ”

“Priss is old enough to make her own decisions,” said Kate, coming up behind Tom and putting a consoling hand on Davey's arm. “That's no reason for you to get into trouble as well.”

“But you were just saying a few minutes ago she's only a kid! Can't you m-m-m - ” Davey took a breath, “make up your
m-m-m-mind?”

“Davey,” said Kate, surprised and reproachful. “That's not very nice, is it? I'm only looking after you.”

Davey looked hard at Kate. “Are you?”

“Well, of course I am!”

“You're not just, you know, trying to get rid of Priss because she um, you know,
knows
something about, um - ”

“Do you honestly think, that I'd actually
want
Priss to go charging off into the night and get attacked?”

“Killed, you mean, it wouldn't attack her, it would kill her.”

“Killed
, then, by a wild animal? What's the matter with you? What have I done to make you and Priss hate me so much?”

“I don't hate you! I just - ”

“Just what?”

He just knew that, however much he wanted it to be true, there was no such thing as Paradise. He just knew there had to be a good reason – or more accurately, a bad one – for two adults to hide themselves away like this, in an empty house in the country. He just knew it wasn't natural for those two adults to welcome in the children of strangers as calmly, as effortlessly as he and Priss had been welcomed; like an act of atonement. He just knew there had been something strange and false about Kate's smoothly-executed persecution of Priss in the kitchen just now. He just knew that Priss had, in fact, been onto something.

He considered telling them all of that, but it seemed far too complicated, and besides, he was tired and unhappy, and he wasn't sure he would be able to get the words out. He glanced at Isaac, who had crept in behind Kate. When Davey caught his eye, he raised an eyebrow. Not for the first time, he wondered if Isaac actually had the power of telepathy. The message arrived in his head as cleanly and simply as a letter dropping onto a doormat.

Come on, then. What are you going to do?

He took a deep breath, and then, just as Priss had done, he bolted for the door.

Tom leapt after him, but for once Davey's youth was on his side, and he easily evaded him. The gravel crunched beneath his shoes as he ran, but he could hardly hear it for the humming in his ears. Would a wild animal come this close to the house? Surely not. It would be in the woods if it was anywhere, maybe lying peacefully on a branch, just waiting for someone to walk beneath a tree and provide an easy meal.

He rounded the corner of the house. Now there was soft grass under his feet, smelling bewitchingly clean and fresh. He wished he could simply enjoy the pleasure of being out in the darkness. Across the lawn, trees loomed like sculptures.

“Priss?” he whispered, then realised that was ridiculous, she would be way ahead of him by now. “Priss?” he called, louder. Would the sound of his voice attract the panther, or frighten it off? He began to make his way through the trees.

The woods looked totally different by night, and they smelled different too, wilder and more earthy, leaf mould tickling in his nostrils, unidentifiable stuff squelching under his feet. He wondered for a wild moment if the entire landscape had somehow been replaced. How was he ever going to find his way? Someone who knew what they were doing would be able to follow the signs of Priss' reckless passage, but someone who knew what they were doing would probably have stopped to grab a torch first. He thought about going back, but the prospect of having to face Isaac's cool, amused stare and admit that yes, he'd got this far, but then turned back because it was dark and scary, seemed somehow even more unbearable than going on.

What was it with Isaac, anyway? It was ridiculous the way he never spoke, probably the most pretentious affectation he'd ever come across in his life. Unless he couldn't speak, of course, there was always that. Or unless he had some sort of social phobia and just didn't dare - but then there was the way he always seemed to be everywhere, watching everyone, and
those sly little drawings, and the way he clearly knew Kate from a previous life but wouldn't share anything he knew. And what was the deal with the tent, why was he so unhappy about being in the house? It was like he believed Priss' stupid theory about the house being haunted -

Besides, wasn't Isaac his rival for Priss' affections? He had often seen Isaac looking at Priss appreciatively. Of course, she was unbelievably, scarily beautiful, easily the most physically perfect girl he'd ever seen in his life. And Isaac was an artist. Maybe it was just that. But then, who wouldn't fancy Priss? The important thing was whether Priss fancied him back. Surely he, Davey, was a better prospect than a man Isaac's age.

Feeling cross about Isaac's peculiarities distracted him enough to make his way into the heart of the woods, and then to get himself thoroughly lost and disoriented. Guided by the small amount of moonlight that filtered grudgingly in through the trees, he cast around for a while, whispering Priss' name occasionally in the vain hope that she would hear him, until he fell heavily over a fallen branch.

As he sat swearing quietly under his breath and trying to work out if he had cut his leg or merely bruised it, from somewhere behind him came a terrible, inhuman scream of triumph. It coiled up into the night sky like smoke, chilling him to the bone. As it faded, he found he had leapt to his feet, clutching a half-rotted wooden branch in his hand.

Priss
, he thought,
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so useless I should have, I wish -

Was there any chance Priss was still alive?

And who had screamed? Was it Priss, as she died? Or was it the panther, having killed her?

He blundered through the trees in the direction of the sound, aware this was possibly the most insane thing he could be doing, but unable to stop himself. Sweat dripped down his back. He could actually smell it, sour and unpleasant, and realised this was the smell of fear, this was what people talked
about when they told him that their scary dogs could smell he was frightened, and that's why they were reacting so badly to him. He wondered if the sound would have carried as far as the house; if the three who remained there, cowering behind the closed doors, would have heard the sound of the panther's successful hunt.

As he pushed through the tough curtain of rhododendron branches, he realised that he had, after all, been on the right track. He was on the far side of the little clearing - he must have actually stumbled past it. There was the little cluster of rowan trees that grew in a tight clump near the doorway to the panther's cage. Up ahead was the huge tree with branches like a Menorah, where he and Priss had sat that lazy afternoon. Which meant that right ahead of him must be the clearing where he had seen Isaac lay flowers.

The ground beneath the tree was disturbed, as if an almighty fight had taken place there. No, it was more than disturbed, it was
dug up
. Something had been digging in the ground. There were leaves and greyish-brown sticks scattered all around.

“Priss,” he croaked.

“Right here, you wanker,” said her voice, from behind him.

Hardly believing it, he turned around. Her beautiful face was streaked with dirt and her hair was full of leaves, but she was alive.

“Maybe you're not such a pussy after all,” she said. “Did anyone else come after me?”

“No, just me, I think, what was that awful noise?”

Priss looked bewildered. “What awful noise?”

“That scream, you must have heard it. It was like - ”

“No-one screamed, soft lad.” Priss paused. “Well, okay, I might have yelled a bit when I found it.”

“Found what?”

Priss' face was white and triumphant. How could she possibly have made that noise? How could that sound have come out of her and she still be alive afterwards? He suddenly
noticed she had one hand behind her back.

“Don't freak out, okay?”

Slowly, Priss brought her hand out from behind her. She was holding a human skull.

chapter fourteen (then)

Like Saul, he could pinpoint the exact moment of his revelation. It was Vespers on the longest day of the year, and the sunlight and the soft singing created a dreamy peace so enveloping it felt like drowning. He closed his eyes and waited for the moment when he would feel the presence of the Divine passing among them.

What came instead was like cold clean air on his face.
But there's nothing here
, he thought.
It's all a lie
.

His name at birth was James Michael Hurst, part of a nice, well-to-do, moderately observant family near Halifax. Church was part of the fabric of the year, like school sports day and the town carnival; not his favourite, but not horrible either, just something you did because everyone else did too.

At fifteen, his feelings changed. Overnight, church became significant, meaningful, desirable. He attended assiduously, and joined the Young Voices bible study group. He was aware of his parents discussing it (“Is it
normal?
” “Oh, come on, love, it's not like he's out drinking and raising Hell, he's only at the church after all.” “Yes, I know it's just a bit strange for a fifteen year old, that's all.”) and wondered if they'd be more or less reassured if they knew the reason.

There was a girl in the study group called Eleanor. She was slender and dark, subtly beautiful, subtly enchanting. All by themselves, beneath the cover of the study group, she and he staged a quiet teenage rebellion. They borrowed the library
books their parents wouldn't approve of –
The Shining, The Thorn Birds, The Amityville Horror
– and exchanged them at the coffee-break. She lent him the albums she loved in secret,
Damned Damned Damned
and
SAHB Stories
and
Lust for Life
and
Violet Hour
, bought with babysitting money and hidden from her parents. Walking home from study group, they found a quiet place behind some bushes in the park where they could lie on the damp, mossy ground. Her breasts were firm beneath his fingers, her nipples tender and rosy. When she murmured with pleasure, he felt that murmur travel through his chest and into his groin. Her hand pressed shyly against him for an instant and he heard himself groan, felt himself press forward into her palm.

October brought sixteenth birthdays and a torn sheet of newsprint.

“He's touring
Violet Hour,”
she said. “Look. April next year. The Phoenix in London.”

“That's Easter Study week,” he said. “We'll be down there. We'll actually be in London.”

They looked at each other.

It was only because their public personas were so faultless that they got away with it, but get away with it they did. They crept out via the hotel fire exit, navigated the tube, found their way to the Phoenix (the easiest part - follow the crowds and the screams). They shared a flask of Ribena laced with a nip of everything from her father's drinks cabinet and lost themselves in the pure beauty of the music.

Afterwards, Eleanor insisted on trying to get backstage. Somehow they did that too, slipping past harassed doormen who had far too many people to cope with and not enough support.

The noise was incredible, a continuous inarticulate wailing he could hardly believe was coming from people. Angry, sweaty roadies carried amps and speakers off the stage and out of the doors. A man in a duck egg blue suit with no tie
and his shirt open at the neck beckoned girls out of the crowd with an imperious finger. They were crushed and pushed and jostled. Eleanor was beside him, then suddenly she wasn't. Had she been summoned to join that line of girls?

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A man's voice behind him.

He'd never heard the words
Jesus
and
fucking
spoken together before, and he was surprised by his own outrage. When he turned around, the man behind him looked familiar.

“Sorry,” the man said.

“It's okay.”

“Just out of interest, which was worse?
Fucking
, or
Jesus?”

“Um, both - ”

“Sorry,” the man repeated. He shook his head dazedly. “It's just, I'd never really - does this look as utterly fucking awful to you as it does to me?”

“Erm, I'm just looking for my girlfriend, she's in there somewhere, oh, she's there.” The man in blue was beckoning Eleanor through the crowd, pointing towards the end of the growing queue of girls.

“Your girlfriend.” The man followed Tom's gaze. “That's your girlfriend?”

“Yes, and I think I'd better go and get her - ”

“Jesus God, how old are you both? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Sixteen! We're sixteen, we're old enough to be here - ”

“Shit.” The man's face was unhealthily pale and the pupils of his eyes were huge. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's alright, I'm not a kid, I've heard people curse before.”

“I wish cursing in front of a schoolboy was all I had to be sorry for. I never realised, I mean, I thought maybe they just sort of, oh, shit, if I'd known - ”

The man in the blue suit was pacing out the line of girls, studying, examining. Behind them was a door stapled with a sheet of paper that said
Dressing Room
.

“Right,” said the man with great decision. “That's it. Game over. Time to cash up.” His smile was unexpectedly sweet. “And when you grow up, mate, you can tell everyone you
were the very last person to speak to Jack Laker alive. Just try and be a better man than I was, okay?”

He had no idea how to respond, but it was too late anyway. Jack was disappearing through the crowds, head down, shoulders hunched, unmemorable, like a man who had willed himself to become invisible.

“I love you,” he breathed in her ear, as they lay wrapped in each other's arms, their clothes scattered on the hotel room floor.

“I love you too,” she whispered back.

“I'm sorry,” he said a month later. She cried, which felt bad. But he couldn't ignore the command laid on him. Seven words, spoken by a man lost and frantic, a man who was carried unconscious from a sordid hotel room six hours later. A man who might well be dead now.
Be a better man than I was
. A strange way to hear the call, but then what way wouldn't be?

“What did I do wrong?” she asked. “Was it because I wouldn't - ”

“No! No.”

“What, then?”

“I think I have to be a priest,” he said. It was the first time he'd spoken the words out loud.

His family were baffled, briefly angry, then proud and resigned. He obtained the recommendations he needed. Seminary was hard work but satisfying. He waited patiently to discover God's plan. Almost on a whim, he made a retreat to an Abbey in Hertfordshire.

At the age of thirty-one, he became Brother Andrew.

Then, on 21st June more than two decades later, Brother Andrew quietly and painlessly died. The man who raised his head in the church and thought:
But there's no-one listening. There really is no-one listening
, was someone entirely new.

He did the things they all did when their faith was weak, and he did them many times over. It was like trying to make himself believe in Father Christmas. The door in his head had opened and he'd walked into a new place. There was no going back. The year rolled on; the garden disappeared back beneath the ground, the swallows flew south, the frosts and the robins came. The Abbey was cold, and the light grey. His faith did not return.

In the spring
, he thought. He loved the slow triumphant swell of returning life as the year turned towards Easter, the terrible mystery of the Passion and the glory of the Resurrection. This year, he looked at the crucifix above his bed and thought,
You poor bastard. You poor, poor, lonely bastard, dying up there alone and in agony for what you thought was true
. Easter Sunday came and they sang the hymns of Resurrection, and he thought:
This is a lie
.

The pressure of pretending was becoming unbearable, but to his angry bafflement, no-one seemed to notice. In the enforced intimacy of their daily lives, how could these other men not see that he was in Hell?

And yet, he was desperate to contain the impurity within him. His greatest terror was that he would share his doubt (he called it
doubt
, although it felt exactly like
superior knowledge)
with the others, and they'd see he was right. What if he did that? What would happen then? What if he single-handedly brought down the community?

Time crawled on, hour after hour, day after day. This must be how a bad marriage must feel, twin demons of Guilt and Loathing tearing at your insides every minute. He fantasised about going to the Abbot.
I've lost my faith. I need to leave. Let me go to Rome so I can make my plea for laicisation
. He never got further than the door of his cell. How could he look into the face of a man he had worshipped alongside for so many years and admit it was all a lie?

A rainy October Sunday; the end of harvest, the smell of bonfires in the air. If he was free to choose, he would have spent the day in the garden, letting the rain soak into him while he put things to bed for the winter, but of course he was not free. He made the rounds of the Abbey before Vespers, making sure everything was secure. He had to smile at the irony of a man locking the door to his own prison.

As he squatted to shoot the bolt on the door to the outside world, someone knocked on the other side of it.

“Yes,” he said cautiously.

“I, um - ”

It was a man's voice, strained and exhausted.

Like all religious institutions, they attracted their share of the wanderers, the lost and the mentally ill. There were clear policies for this, balancing compassion and charity with personal protection.

Fuck that
, he thought, relishing the strong Anglo-Saxon sound reverberating in his head like a sword dropped on stone. He unbolted the door.

The man on the doorstep was thin, tired, and soaking wet. He wore a t-shirt, jeans and flip-flops and had a canvas bag and a guitar slung over his shoulder. They gazed at each other in perplexed silence.

“Hi,” said the man on the doorstep at last. “I'm really sorry, I don't know the right way to, um, address you.” He held out a hand and then dropped it. “Christ, is it even okay to shake your hand? Sorry, I didn't mean to start out by blaspheming. I'm not usually this uncouth, it's just been kind of a bad night and - ”

“Do you need help?”

“I was wondering if I could spend the night in the church,” said the man on the doorstep.

“You mean you want to make a retreat? There's a procedure - ”

“Actually I was just looking for shelter for tonight. I don't know if that's allowed?”

Despite the clothes, the man didn't look homeless. There
was a certain bone-deep grubbiness that came after a while, a stain that nothing but the confidence of a roof over your head seemed to scrub off.

You're supposed to be back in your cell. You're supposed to be asleep. This isn't your job. You're supposed to pass this along
.

“Why not?” he said, and held the door open.

The presence of the forbidden visitor was like a klaxon screaming. Any minute now they'd come boiling out of their cells and bombard him with questions. And then what? Time to own up? Maybe they'd throw him out. Or maybe they'd just turn on him and kill him. That might be a relief – his own shame washed out by the tidal wave of someone else's crimes – but no-one came to investigate. No-one heard the creak of the Abbey door. He closed it carefully behind them, and guided the pale and shivering visitor into the nearest pew.

“Sorry,” the strange man muttered. “It's just been a - ”

“Don't apologise.”

“Thanks so much for letting me in. You don't have to stay, I'm sure you've got better things to do.”

Even without Seminary training, he would have recognised the desperate plea for someone to talk to.

“No, I don't,” he said. “I'll get some food and keep you company for a bit. Can I ask your name?”

The man's smile stirred a sense of memory within him.

“I'm Jack.”

When he returned – still amazed at the ease with which he had smuggled a stranger into a closed monastic community – Jack was gazing up at the exquisitely painted ceiling. When he turned around, his face was awed.

“How did they do that?” he asked.

“It's egg tempera and gold leaf.”

“But how did they
do
it? I mean, they were just normal blokes, right? They didn't pick you to be a monk because you
were good at art, did they? So how did they make something so beautiful?”

“Are you an artist?”

“No, I don't paint.”

“But you're a musician,” he said. It was a statement, not a question. He already knew who he was talking to. “Well, yeah. I am.”

What did it mean that this man had come back into his life, now, at this moment? Did it mean anything at all? Or was it just an enigmatic coincidence?

“Are you working at the moment?”

Jack's shoulders slumped in what could have been defeat, or relief. He reached for the canvas bag by his feet. Without speaking, he unpacked six bottles of vodka and a cornucopia of pill bottles brimming with vivid, gleaming capsules.

“My major occupations right now,” he said, “are Not Drinking, and Not Taking Pills. Not exactly productive, but, you know. And today, today - ”

He saw Jack's shoulders heave. “It's alright,” he said softly.

“I just don't know how much longer I can do this,” Jack managed, and buried his head in his hands.

He waited patiently for Jack to speak again.

“There was a girl I loved,” Jack said at last.

“What was her name?”

“Mathilda.”

The syllables hung in the air.