Being Here (16 page)

‘I tried. It has become a habit of mine to read every book through to its end. I work on the principle that a writer has taken considerable effort to write the words and not to follow the path he or she has laid is, in some ways, a betrayal. But mother's book … it was unreadable. I abandoned it after five hundred pages, a quarter of the way through.'

‘What happened to it?'

I raise myself up in bed. My muscles are aching and there is a tingling down my left arm. It is strange. The longer I spend in the past, the fainter becomes the pain of the present. Story as painkiller. When Carly isn't here, all the frailties of my body clamour for attention. Now I find it easy to push the aches to one side.

‘I still have it,' I reply. ‘How could I not? And not just because it would be cruel to dispose of something that was the product of so many thousands of hours of labour. In many ways, it
is
my mother. Passionate, unyielding in its conviction, sharp, hard and wholly lacking in subtlety. But, threaded throughout, almost undetectable at times, is a seam of love. Real love, not the transfigured, otherworldly love of the spirit, but the kind that has its source in the pulsing of blood that manifests as flushed skin.'

My voice trails away. I see an image, a familiar image. I look through a dusty window at the blurred form of my mother bent over the kitchen table, her hand moving steadily, relentlessly across a page. Her brows are furrowed. The eyes of a child look upon her as a living mystery, a puzzle that
could
be solved if only one found the key. And then, suddenly, the child experiences an epiphany. It's not, as most epiphanies are, profound, but it explodes like a star. There is a person in there, in the moving arm, the crook of the neck, the fixed stare of piercing eyes. And a mother is only a small part of that person. There are hopes, dreams and ambitions. They may be alien to the child. They
are
alien to the child. But for all the harshness and severity, there is someone trapped in that body. And that someone is small, alone and scared.

It makes it easier to love. It makes it impossible not to love.

‘It's time to take up my story again,' I say.

CHAPTER 14

A
BOUT A YEAR AFTER
Pagan died, we walked to church on yet another hot, dusty Sunday.

Mother, as always, strode with purpose, the hem of her black dress swinging in the humid air. I walked twenty metres behind with Adam. Occasionally, I glanced back. There were three sets of footprints in the dirt road, though any observer would have noticed only two people travelling through the landscape. If that observer had come closer he would have been disconcerted, possibly terrified, to see a set of footprints appear as if by magic, spreading in sequence across the earth. I worried that mother would notice. But mother never looked back. Never. It was a matter of pride with her. Her eyes were always fixed on her destination, be it literal or metaphorical. And she didn't appear to notice when we returned a few hours later. Sometimes a breeze would obscure the prints or other travellers would disturb the trail. Even so, I tried to make Adam walk on the edge of the track where his footprints were less likely to appear. But he always returned to my side after a few minutes. He just forgot.

When we arrived in town I knew something was different, though nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I understood that was an advantage of routine. When it was broken, however subtly, it screamed for attention. I gazed at the usual groups of worshippers making their way to church. They seemed as normal, but I sensed small changes in the way they held themselves slightly more erect, the way their steps seemed almost imperceptibly more determined. And when I noticed that, I noticed also a change in mother's bearing. She was more charged than normal.

Something was going to happen.

I understood when we approached the church. I had sent Adam away as I always did when other people were around. I was keen to lessen the chances of his detection. He would wait outside the church until the service had finished. Afterwards, mother would talk to some of the congregation before we started the long walk home. Only when we became lone travellers once again on the dusty track would he fall in step beside me.

So mother and I walked into the church alone.

A new pastor stood at the entrance, greeting his flock as they filed in.

This was inconceivable. Nothing changed in town. Nothing. There were deaths, of course. And births. And very occasionally, someone would move away for reasons I never understood. Only later did I see this as the inevitable ebb of people from the country to the city, from poverty to the promise of riches, from dull routine to the illusion of excitement.

A new pastor.

The old one had been a hook-nosed person of advanced years. He reminded me of a crow in his sleek black robes and his sharp predatory eyes. Solemnity was a word that might have been coined for him. He rarely smiled, as if pleasure in the world was something of suspicious provenance, that a smile might lead to a laugh and a laugh to … God knows what. It was better not to take the risk. His sermons were like him. Dark, humourless and solid.

The new pastor was much younger, about my mother's age. He had a small moustache and neat hair. He was good-looking. Even at that age, I knew it. And he was smiling as we stepped closer. My blood tingled with the excitement of the new, the unpredictable.

‘Good morning,' he said, extending his hand towards my mother. ‘It is lovely to see you here.'

‘Thank you, Pastor,' said my mother, shaking his hand. She smiled in turn. ‘Welcome to your new church.'

‘And who is this?' he said, crouching down so his eyes were on a level with mine. ‘How are you, young lady?' His smile broadened. His teeth were very white.

I didn't know what to say. The old pastor had never spoken to me in all the years I had attended his church. He paid no attention to the young. They were below the level of his gaze and he was content for them to stay there. And now this new man not only acknowledged my existence, but expected communication. My tongue froze to the roof of my mouth. I nodded. And then I blushed. If he thought this an inadequate response to his question he didn't show it. He touched my shoulder with a slender finger and continued to smile. I was hypnotised by his expanse of teeth.

‘Well, I am delighted you are here today. My name is Michael Bauer, but please call me Michael.'

‘Thank you, Pastor Bauer,' said mother. She introduced both of us and we slipped into the cool darkness of the church. Others were queuing behind us, waiting their turn to be greeted. I liked him. I liked that he'd talked to me. The church seemed brighter somehow. And warmer, as if it had absorbed something of his smile.

Mother did not share my view. That was apparent in the way she sat in our usual pew, the way her head bent in prayer, the way her hands clenched each other. She radiated disapproval. We sat in a cloud of cold distaste.

Most of the service was as normal. We sang. We prayed.

But the sermon was different. Very different.

Pastor Bauer stepped to the pulpit, which had been stripped of the gold paraphernalia we were accustomed to. The huge gilt lectern that carried the Bible had been in the form of a massive bird – an eagle, I'd always supposed – and I had quite liked it. On drowsy Sundays I'd occasionally imagined it taking flight, with me on its back hanging on to feathers for grim death as it swooped over strange lands. Now it was gone. In its place was a plain wooden block. Other furnishings had disappeared too. Nothing sparkled. It was almost as though some of the spirit had left the place. But, strangely, I liked the new arrangement. It seemed homely. I breathed easier.

The pastor gazed at the congregation for a few moments. His smile was permanent. A few people coughed. Somewhere at the back a baby cried and then stilled.

‘Good morning,' he said. ‘As you will have noticed, I've made a few changes to the interior of our church. Now, no one could call me a professional decorator …' He paused for a moment as if waiting for laughter, but it didn't materialise ‘… yet it struck me that this house of God was sorely in need of a small spring clean. A little simplification. You may wonder why and, hopefully, in this, my first sermon, I will explain.'

He did. He talked about Christ and the moneylenders. He talked about wealth as something that was of the spirit. He mentioned the Gates of Heaven, a camel and the eye of a needle. Mother, perched on the pew at my side, stiffened with every passing word. I relaxed with every passing word. I understood Pastor Bauer. He talked about love and kindness and charity and simplicity. And he spoke as if he were talking to us as individuals, in language we knew, in language we used in the world outside. His voice did not ring, as his hook-nosed predecessor's had, with anger and violence and retribution.

He did not mention Hell once.

At the end of the service, he stood at the entrance offering a personal farewell to each member of the congregation. Mother strode past him. She was coiled with energy and anger. In thirty minutes I trailed her by a hundred metres. She brought up clouds of dust with each determined footstep. At least it gave me an opportunity to talk to Adam.

‘What's got into the old buzzard?' he said.

‘Adam,' I hissed. ‘Don't talk of Mamma that way.'

We walked in silence for a few minutes.

‘She's angry,' I said.

‘She's always angry.'

‘That's not true.'

‘It's nearly true.'

It was, but I said nothing. We followed her along the track. She was like a force of nature, a small dust-devil, a pocket of pent-up energy searching for release.

Later, we prayed on the verandah for two hours. Mother muttered to God throughout.

I caught the word ‘temptation' a good many times. ‘Pride' also featured prominently.

Later, in my own bed, with Adam curled up at its foot, I puzzled over the source of Mother's anger. I didn't make progress, but I knew something, maybe everything, had changed.

I didn't know it, but my world was about to contract yet again.

‘So,' says Carly. ‘She didn't like the new guy, huh?'

I have to wrench myself from the past. It is becoming more and more difficult to do so.