The Last Summer of the Water Strider (18 page)

I was heading for the road home when I became aware of singing coming from the church, St Jude’s. I stood outside it for a while, just listening. I could hear the strains of ‘He Who
Would Valiant Be’. The sun was already blistering the tarmac and my head was crammed with broken glass. I craved cool and shade. I made my way through the porch and into the transept. I sat
uncertainly, but gratefully, on one of the pews that lined the nave. As far as I could make out, no one had noticed me.

The hymn stopped. Wesley Toshack was in the pulpit. His skin tone had calmed down – it was now the colour of Mateus Rosé, the only wine I ever saw my father drink. Toshack owned his
space like a prize fighter scoping out the ring. He began to deliver his sermon – some story set in Galilee and Judea, the point of which was lost on me. His voice, like his skin, had come
down in tone. Although it carried easily, unamplified, throughout the space, it was measured and musical rather than the hectoring, brittle barrages of the day before.

The interior of the church was simple, with wooden pews and a flagstone floor. The temperature was so much lower than the outside air, I found myself shivering as the sweat condensed on my skin.
The congregation was larger than I expected – maybe fifty heads. From what I could tell from the florid, balding pates and spun-coconut-macaroon hats, most of them were middle-aged or
elderly. A sprightly congregant was beginning the collection – a ragged purple cloth bag was being passed along the rows. In the third row I saw Ash, or at least the back of her head. I was
close enough to notice a mole just between her left shoulder blade and her neck.

The smell of seasoned wood and damp stone was in the air. Behind the altar there was a large stained-glass window showing Jesus suspended on the cross, with angels flitting rhapsodically in the
middle distance. Although in this depiction nails clearly penetrated the Messiah’s hands and feet, he didn’t look as uncomfortable as you would expect. His expression suggested he was
entirely at ease with his situation.

It was peaceful, sitting there. As I watched the sunlight push through the glass panels of the Crucifixion, tattooing patches and puddles of light on to the floor, I felt some of the weight that
had been on my shoulders begin to lift slightly. My hangover likewise seemed to lose some of its force.

Toshack finished his sermon. There was another hymn, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, which seemed to stir the congregation into a bit of a lather, with voices waxing martial and keen.
When it finished, he began offering communion. One by one the congregation rose to kneel and be fed wafers and wine. The acoustics were sharp – I could hear Toshack whispering, like a stuck
record, ‘The body of Christ . . . the body of Christ.’

Ash was queuing with the other congregants. I had an urge to take communion myself, to atone and be blessed, but it passed, to be replaced by an urgent need to get out of the building before
either Ash or her father noticed me. I had a vision of some bodged and embarrassing attempt at my recruitment into the fold – by either Toshack or Ash herself. At the same time, I imagined
that my otherness, even my surliness, was a factor in me seeming to have some purchase on Ash’s affections. I felt sure she wouldn’t let a member of the fold anywhere near that
provocatively moulded, poured-liquid body, that beckoning red mouth; yet I sensed that there was a need in her to transgress. Sitting at the back of her father’s church wasn’t going to
help my cause.

I slipped out of the door, and took off around the town for half an hour. My hangover had miraculously lifted, so the minutes passed tediously rather than painfully. I bought a copy of the
News of the World
and a packet of cigarettes and sat down by the riverbank to smoke and read. But I found it hard to concentrate. Somehow the church – or the idea of the church
– kept tugging at me.

I cautiously made my way back towards St Jude’s. Neither voice nor music could be heard within. I edged into the building, and poked my head around the corner. It appeared to be deserted.
I walked inside and sat in a pew at random, staring at the patches of sunlight. The feeling of peace I had experienced earlier returned.

I sat there in complete silence for maybe ten minutes. At one point I closed my eyes and offered up a prayer – but not to God. I had a sense instead that some part of my mind might find a
way of forgiving some other part.

I found myself wondering about the church, and churches everywhere, and what they represented – what they
really
represented – and how there were thousands upon thousands of
them, and how such effort and money had gone into them over nearly two millennia, all in the cause of a dream or a fantasy. Or
was
it a dream? Could so many people, some of them with
brilliant minds, be so misguided?

I was about to rise and leave when I heard a slight noise. I turned and Ash was there, a few yards behind me, standing perfectly still as if afraid of startling me. Seeing me turn, she smiled
and came and sat down beside me.

‘This is a surprise.’

‘Don’t misunderstand,’ I said.

‘Meaning?’

‘I’ve hardly been into a church in my life. I’m not into this stuff. I just like the quiet. The quiet and the light.’

‘The light is special in here, isn’t it? Like being inside a kaleidoscope.’

‘I don’t like sermons.’

‘I get that.’

She lapsed into silence. But the peace I had enjoyed previously had dissipated. Conversation of some kind felt obligatory.

‘You’re a believer?’ I said.

‘After a fashion. Can I ask you something? If you’re not a believer, why are you here?’

‘I already told you.’

‘Is there any more specific reason?’

I shook my head. I sensed Ash’s gaze brushing my face like a searchlight.

‘I heard about your mother, Adam.’

I turned and stared at her. She looked sad.

‘What do you know about my mother?’

‘Henry told me. Before my father and he fell out. Or rather, he told my father. So I knew someone was coming down to the boat. Someone who was troubled.’

‘What makes you think I’m troubled?’

‘Anyone who watches his own mother die is going to be affected. You must be very distressed.’

I got up from the pew.

‘I just had a hangover and needed a bit of cool air. I have to go.’

Ash reached out and touched the back of my hand. I recoiled.

‘Are you trying to recruit me?’

‘I’m trying to help. Don’t you feel there’s a weight that needs lifting? Something beyond grief? Henry said that you might have . . . if you had known more . . . about
what was wrong with her.’

I took a step towards the door.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ said Ash, looking away. ‘Do you still want to meet on Tuesday?’

‘Sure.’

‘OK.’

She looked up at me again, this time holding my gaze. She seemed to be asking me something, but I wasn’t sure what.

‘Look, Ash. I don’t mean to be mysterious. It’s just that I don’t know you. You’re just someone I keep bumping into.’

‘OK. I overstepped.’

I looked up at the image of the hanging Christ. A long moment passed before I spoke again.

‘You want to know the truth?’

‘Only as much as you feel comfortable telling me.’

I searched my mind for what the truth actually was.

‘I feel scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Are you afraid for your future?’

‘No. Not exactly. More of everything just . . . stopping. Now I know that it happens. Really, really happens. Lives ending. In the middle of breakfast. On an ordinary day. It makes
everything seem so fragile. The whole living world, it . . . it’s
disposable.
Temporary.’

Ash started playing with a small silver crucifix that hung round her neck on a slender chain.

‘My father says God—’

‘I don’t want to hear about God. And don’t tell me that Christians never die. Because they do. They just die in a cowardly way. They die not looking at things the way they are.
Same as everyone else, filling their heads with shopping and sports and shuffling paper every day in an office. I can’t do that any more. I can’t sleep for thinking about it. Nothing
cures it. It won’t go away. It won’t ever go away. Not unless you can make death go away. And you can’t, however much you pretend.’

With that I left Ash behind me in the church, and walked out on to the pavement. I set off in the direction of the
Ho Koji.
As I walked, I could hear my footsteps echo in the air.
Fading into nothing, and disappearing, each one, for ever.

I
t was Monday – the morning I had arranged to meet with Strawberry. I asked Henry if he wanted to join me, but he seemed unusally absorbed in
that morning’s mail. He was making pencil marks on a letter he had just opened. I noticed the crest of the local council heading it. Without looking up, he vaguely replied that he might come
and join us a bit later.

Strawberry’s shack was no more than five minutes’ walk from the boat. There was no track leading to it – Henry had given me directions, but I got lost several times. I
eventually found it in a clearing where a number of trees had been chopped down and the undergrowth cleared.

Henry had been harsh describing it as a shed. Certainly, it was small, but much sturdier and larger than a shed – perhaps twenty feet square, constructed of raw-looking planks. It had a
pitched green tar roof. There was a pole erected on the roof, and hanging from it, limp in the still air, was a flag decorated with the black and white symbol of yin and yang. A narrow metal
chimney stood parallel to the flagpost at the opposite corner.

There was a makeshift barbecue made out of old bricks and a rusty grill, along with a white-painted folding chair – now weathered into yellow – standing on the scrub outside. The
shack had plastic-framed windows, which looked incongruous in such a rustic construction. There was no sign of curtains inside. There was an outhouse that I assumed held a toilet and perhaps a
shower. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the door, so I walked round to what I presumed was the front. The door, made of rough pine, was aerosol-painted with the inscription
COME IN
! and a red, blurry heart about the size of a real heart. There was no knocker or bell, so I rapped on the small window that was set in the door.

The door swung open. Strawberry stood there, wearing a shapeless, billowing cream-coloured smock. Her feet were bare. She smiled and reached up – she was four or five inches shorter than
me – to give me a kiss on the cheek.

‘I’m glad you came. Wondered where you’d gone when we got up yesterday.’

‘Took the bus. Didn’t want to hang around. Didn’t want to be a hassle for anyone.’

‘You wouldn’t have been. Having said that, we didn’t get up till the afternoon.’

She beckoned me inside. I stepped across the threshold. The cabin was full of light. There was a smell of resin, and something like sour milk. I noticed an open carton of yoghurt standing by the
sink, and presumed that was where the odour came from.

The interior was rudimentary. A futon was on the floor, pushed up against the far wall, with a square of violently coloured Indian fabric on top. In the corner of the room there was a tiny
kitchen area, and in front of that a couple of generously sized pillows. There was a trestle table with a some candles on it, a bookshelf and two tatty folding metal chairs. There were posters on
the wall secured by drawing-pins – one an Escher print that she had presumably got from Troy. A tiny line of single type at the bottom identified it as ‘When Falls the
Coliseum’.

There were two more posters – one showing the phases of the moon, the other a Maxfield Parrish print of a modestly posed but naked pre-Raphaelite woman sitting with her legs pulled up to
her chest on a rock, with the blue of the sea beneath her and the paler blue of the sky above. Other than a pine wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a pile of firewood, a wood-burning stove and her
guitar, that was the whole thing.

Strawberry sat down on one of the cushions and indicated for me to do the same.

‘What do you think of my crib?’

‘I like it.’

I did, despite its rudimentary character and the nasty plastic windows. The light that came through the windows was dappled green. The shack was basic, even spartan, but held the space within it
somehow very peacefully.

‘Not too fancy?’

‘Not so much. But it has a good air about it.’

‘I think so. It’s a place where you can just . . . sink into the moment. You know?’

She started coughing, as usual. I could see her ribcage struggle under the fabric of her smock. After around ten seconds the fit passed.

‘Impurities are still coming out,’ she said. ‘It’s a tough diet regime I’m following. Here, take a look.’

She picked up a dog-eared book from the table and passed it across to me. The words
Zen and the Macrobiotic Way
were written in a Japanese-calligraphy-style font.

‘My boyfriend in California, Jerzy, he turned me on to this. I say he was my boyfriend, but really we just hung around together for a while – he used to get the most terrible
headaches. Plagued him for years. He found out about this diet. His healer told him about it. Three days on it – well, it was hard. It is hard. But the headaches went. They never came back.
And he’d tried everything up until then. You know? So he stayed on the diet. Said he never felt better in his life.’

‘So what is it you’re trying to cure?’

Strawberry looked at me as if I had asked a ridiculous question.

‘It’s not really about cure as such. It’s about balance. The yin and the yang, you know?’

‘Like the flag on the roof.’

‘Exactly. And purity. It takes quite a lot of willpower.’

‘Isn’t it possible that it’s making you ill?’

‘Oh no. That’s what Pattern says. I mean, I know it can look that way. To the untrained eye. But any good alternative practitioner will tell you: you’re going to feel worse
before you feel better.’