Fifty-Minute Hour (59 page)

He heaved himself up towards the altar, lay stretched out flat on top of it. At least he had the space now to spread his legs and arms, felt less claustrophobic beneath the curving roof. No point cowering any longer in some cramped and choking niche when there was nobody to find him, not one single member of a party of two hundred even to realise he was missing, let alone to care. The stone felt hard and clammy underneath him. He longed for a soft pillow to relieve his aching spine; seemed to have no flesh nor clothing between the altar and his vertebrae, only rock embracing bone. He kept thinking of the Christians, not the fatuous pilgrims in his party, but that intrepid band of rebels in the first and second centuries, who had never been alone in life or death. The guide had pointed out their epitaphs, all so confident, assured – not the hopeless pagan ‘
Vale
', which bade farewell to life, but ‘
Vivas in Deo
', which welcomed Life Eternal. He envied them their faith, their sense of camaraderie, their dangerous secret meetings which must have bound them even closer, their shared beliefs and hopes. How different was his own case. He was dying as he'd lived – solitary and friendless; believing, hoping nothing.

Suddenly, he started, groped out both his hands. The chamber he'd called ‘murky' was now a terrifying black, as if he'd been swaddled in a winding-sheet made of dark and stifling serge, which was drawn so tight around him he could neither see nor breathe. They must have switched the lights off, those dim but vital lights which had kept alive the boundaries, given him his bearings, showed up the distinction between wall and ceiling, sarcophagus and niche. He was plunged now in a darkness so relentless and disorientating, he could only lie in horror, trying to tear away the blackness with his hands. ‘Help me!' he kept crying. ‘Mother! Mary! Anyone! Please come back. Please help.'

Nobody could help him, nobody could hear. He had courted death, and not been spurned, refused; except he was
alive
in death, still flinchingly alive, as every nerve and brain-cell in his body registered its panic and alarm. Surely fear would kill him. No one could experience such naked jolting terror and still survive. Yet he
had
survived, was still lying fully conscious, desperate, despairing; fearing fear itself as much as death. Perhaps he'd never die, just he here for eternity as time and terror both dragged on, dragged on; mocking him, enfeebling him, yet never actually granting him extinction.

The idea so appalled him he jerked up from the slab; felt he had to move, just to prove he still had power to do so; had to take some action, distract himself, exert himself, try to outwit fear. He inched down from the altar, feeling with his hands, a blind man without stick or dog, lost in a blind alley. Should he stay put in the chamber, where at least he had more space, or try to struggle down the corridor, in search of light, escape? Both courses seemed impossible. The dark itself had paralysed his brain, prevented any choices. He took a faltering step towards the passage, groping for its walls, shambled back immediately in panic, clutching at the altar as his only certain landmark. The silence was as total as the darkness. Yet would noise be any better – rustlings, shufflings, the stealthy tread of ghosts and wraiths, which must haunt this place, pace its endless galleries?

He could feel his legs trembling underneath him, sank down on the rough stone floor, crawling into a gap between the altar and the wall, which seemed to form another tomb. He closed his eyes, which made the darkness darker; a darkness made of centuries and of rock, both solid and unending, like his fear.

‘Bryan!' a voice called softly. He took no notice, must obviously be shifting from terror to derangement; imagining voices which weren't there. No one could have spoken when he'd heard no breath or footstep, felt no human presence. ‘
Bryan
,' the voice insisted – an English voice, a kindly voice, gentle, almost shy; the sort of soothing Mother's voice he'd imagined in his dreams, except it was softly male, not female. ‘Go away,' he muttered to its echo in his head, that tantalising whisper now threatening him with madness. ‘There's no one there. Nobody. You're just …'

His sentence petered out. A sudden fierce and dazzling light was shining in his eyes, half-blinding him, so he had to turn away. So someone must have found him after all, some pilgrim with a flashlight, or soft-footed furtive guide. He remained huddled where he was, still not quite believing it; sweet relief struggling with astonishment. How could they have reached him without the slightest noise or warning? Surely he'd have heard their steps, however quiet and muffled. The silence was so absolute he'd have almost heard an insect crawling up the rock-face. The soft voice spoke again, lingering on his name with affection, familiarity, as if he'd known him years. Bryan braved the dazzling glare, turned towards the speaker, who seemed to be hovering in midair, made not of flesh but light. A shortish, fairish, slimmish man with greyish hair and lightish hazel eyes was smiling down on him, the neatish nose and smallish squarish face-shape reminding him instantly of …

‘Skerwin!' he exclaimed. How in God's name had his Father ever got here, or even known he was in Rome? Shouldn't Skerwin be at the Winston Churchill Centre, starting a new term, or at least polishing up his lecture-notes?

‘Skerwin
Senior
,' the man corrected gently. ‘Your Heavenly Father, Bryan.'

‘My … My
what
?

‘Your Heavenly Father.'

‘You mean … God?'

The man nodded, smiled his ‘yes', seemed to shimmer in the light, a vibrant otherworldly light which had no source except itself.

‘But there isn't any God.' Bryan's voice was just a mumble, but he had to make his point. Science had destroyed God, chaos overthrown Him, every book he'd read denied Him, every new disaster mocked and undermined Him. He kept looking down, then glancing back, trying to clear his vision, pummelling his eyes, blinking them and rubbing them, shaking his whole head. Could he be hallucinating, suffering from some brainstorm? No. The man was truly there. He could see every smallest detail now – the knobbly wrists and broad blunt-fingered hands, the faint and palish eyebrows, uncertain weakish chin. Would God have a weak chin, though, or be wearing an old mac?

‘I'm afraid I'm extremely busy, Bryan, keeping things in order, but I just wanted to assure you that Order's the key word – everything's under control and working very smoothly.' He rummaged in his briefcase, brought out a cache of notebooks very like Bryan's own – feint-ruled with narrow margins, A5 and spiral-bound. He began leafing swiftly through them, displaying them to Bryan. Each page was neatly written, headings underlined, sub-headings in capitals, some pages ruled exactly down the centre, with lists each side of what looked like pros and cons.

‘Natural Laws,' he murmured, pointing to the largest book. ‘Universal Principles. First Causes. Basic Rules. Proofs of My Existence.'

‘Proofs of your …?'

‘Oh, yes. Some have tried to deny me, as of course you're well aware, Bryan, but logic and mathematics both come down on my side.'

Bryan struggled to his feet, agitated, mystified; objections tumbling out of him. ‘But I thought logic was discounted now and maths just empty figures, since the quantum revolution and chaology and … I mean, I understood you couldn't prove a thing – that we'd lost all sense of absolutes, and “proof” was just a play on words and …'

The man shook his head, reached out a soothing hand. ‘Ripples, Bryan, just ripples on the deep white pool of truth. Give them time to settle, and you'll see the surface steady and serene again, and know I am your God.' He started replacing all his notebooks, opening up his briefcase which looked not a little battered, a piece of hairy string wound round one broken handle. Bryan peered inside, glimpsed rulers and dividers, a time-switch and a tide-chart, compasses, a T-square, a chronometer, a calculator, three separate stiff-bound books labelled ‘Past', ‘Present', ‘Future', with attractive matching covers. And stuffed right at the bottom was a crumpled scholar's gown, black, with scarlet lining and an impressive ermine trim, the sort he'd imagined for his Father, B.K. Skerwin, and which he'd seen on
Dreaming Spires
. So this God was a scholar, an intellect, a brain; an Oxbridge man, who might be slightly shabby with his torn and bulging pockets and at least two buttons missing on his grubby chain-store mac, but a shrewd efficient Mastermind who had his adroit finger on the pulse of every system in the universe; had it measured and gradated, calculated, quantified, could plumb and probe its depths; outwit chaos, anarchy; probably even deal with miracles, make sense of them, account for them, fit them in his Scheme.

Bryan sank back on the floor, peace and sheer elation bubbling through his veins, as if he had just received a transfusion of champagne. The old universe he'd mourned with its certainties, its laws, its coherent truth and logic, was miraculously restored. Things had Causes once again, and two and two made four, not five – or zero. Past and Future had been rigidly nailed down, sequestered from each other, forbidden to encroach or even fraternise; held in check by sandbanks and ruled lines. And space and time were no longer spliced together, but each put strictly in its place in a separate (tidy) notebook. Time ran only forwards now, not backwards or in circles – did what it was told. Everything was labelled, everything in pigeonholes; antimatter banished, black holes filled and levelled, light-years trimmed to size.

He touched his face and body, felt them solid, real, defined. He could live again, hope again, believe in Sense and Shape again, take bold steps in a universe which would no longer flake and crumble, or threaten to extinguish him along with his surroundings. He clasped the man's firm hand, a hand so like his own in its shape, its bony detail, he realised he was part of God, truly this man's son.

‘We may not meet again, Bryan, but there's no more need for fear. I see every sparrow fall, you know, and any son or child of mine is worth more than many sparrows. My eye is on you always, and my right hand will be guiding you, as it guides the universe.'

Bryan stuttered out his thanks, so deeply moved his words were incoherent; then realised that the man had disappeared, left just his light behind. Yes, the crippling blinding darkness was no more. He could make out walls and carvings once again, as if some magic hand had switched back all the lights – still low anaemic lights maybe, but no longer choking blackness. He moved towards the rough-carved loaf gleaming on the wall, touched its crusty surface, as if it had the power to feed him and sustain him. The bread of life, the bread of his redemption. Where were all those other symbols the guide had pointed out – the flowering tree which stood for Hope, Noah saved from death and flood, Isaac spared from sacrifice? He had no more need to sacrifice himself, seek death, annihilation. He didn't even need his Mother, now he had a Heavenly Father; one who would watch over him for ever, maybe had a notebook devoted exclusively to him – the neatest book of all, with equal margins on each side, not one smudge or error in one single line of writing; beginnings, middles, ends, on every ordered page.

He was frisking, almost dancing down the corridors, hardly even caring that he was trapped there for two days. He had light now, and new hope, and water was no problem. He would strike it from the rock, as the great Moses had himself – or so the guide had told them; brought refreshment out of aridity and drought. He stopped a moment, frowning, suddenly remembering a session with John-Paul, at least three years ago now, when he'd asked his doctor if he could have a glass of water. He'd been feeling rather faint, after a disturbed and restless night, a panic on the tube. He'd never got the water. John-Paul had spent a good half-hour examining his reasons for requesting it. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the progress of his therapy, and thus demanding more than merely words; craving mother's milk, maybe, regressing to the infant state and begging to be fed. Or experiencing some inner sense of poison or pollution, which might make him ask for water as a symbol of purification.

He had sat in (thirsty) silence, quite unable to respond, until John-Paul tried another tack, exploring that word symbol. Water was a symbol of fertility, rebirth, so they'd sidetracked on to Lena's womb (he still dry and gasping); then plumbed the Seas of Chaos, and finally examined ‘healing waters', ‘troubled waters', ‘still waters running deep', the metaphor of ‘being in deep water', and the waters of the Spring (or Tree) of Life. In the end, he'd settled for a cup of tea in BRB's canteen, feeling baffled and defeated and still more faint and parched. He had forgotten the whole incident, merely shrugged it off, but now it had come surging back and seemed symbolical itself. John-Paul had never granted him a drop of healing water, not in all that time; not one draught of hope or life, nor one beaker, even trickle of refreshment; had merely threatened years and years more painful arid therapy.

He was standing in a corner, an ancient stone sarcophagus bulging to his right, its carving worn and crumbling, so that the figure in the centre had neither face nor eyes. John-Paul! The likeness was astonishing – both lean and foreign-looking men with elaborate snaky hair, and both obviously tyrannical, with vassals, servants, patients, cowering at their feet. He'd always seen John-Paul as faceless; his features just a bland impassive mask, his eyes black holes gazing into nothingness, his heart as cold as stone. Stuff his years and years! He would never see the man again, never stretch out on the couch for even half a minute, let alone an hour. A fifty-minute hour! That alone proved his shrink was bogus. In his Heavenly Father's Universe, every hour was exactly sixty minutes, give or take no fraction of a second. Once you started docking time, contracting it, insulting it, then you'd moved away from exactitude and truth; were misleading people, conning them, tampering with the basic rules and structure of the cosmos. No point seeking healing from a con-man, wasting money on a charlatan. ‘Shrink' was all too apt. John-Paul had shrunk too many things – his mornings, wallet, self-esteem; his bank account, his genitals – and even time itself.