The Shell House (14 page)

‘Oh.’ Greg felt flattened with disappointment. ‘So where does that leave us?’

‘We found the deaths of both parents. It took us ages.’ Faith turned a page. ‘His father, April nineteen thirty-seven; mother, January forty-eight. She was seventy-three when she died—lived right through the second war. And we looked carefully for any other Pearsons, but the ones we found obviously weren’t anything to do with our lot—not at the right time, anyway. The Pearsons seem to have died out with Edmund.’

‘With his mother, you mean?’

‘Well, yes. But Edmund would have been the one expected to produce the next generation. That’s what I meant. And there wasn’t a next generation, not at Graveney. But we didn’t stop there. Dad had the idea of going along to the local newspaper offices, to check the story about the fire. They’ve got microfiche going back donkeys’ years.’

‘Good thinking. And?’

‘Here’s what it said. Basically the same as the guidebook—and look.’ She pointed to her notes.
‘It
was extremely fortunate that, the fire having broken out
during daylight hours, no-one was injured. “If the fire had
occurred at night there would surely have been fatalities,”
said the Chief Fire Officer.’

‘So he couldn’t have died in the fire,’ said Greg. ‘Can I have a copy of that?’

‘No problem. I’m going to type it up on my computer, for the exhibition. I’ll do a print-out for you.’

The waiter brought the cappuccinos; Greg explained about the
Shot at Dawn
book, and what Mrs Hampson had said about gravestones. ‘Another dead end.’

‘And here’s another one—I nearly forgot.’ Faith leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘You know you were asking about the chap who wrote the book? I asked Dad. He died six months ago—he was in his nineties.’

‘Only six months ago? If only we’d got onto this sooner! We could have talked to him. If he was ninety-something, he might even have been around when the house burned down and when Edmund disappeared—’

‘But the book doesn’t make it sound like he ever lived there or worked there. Anyway, he was a bit gaga towards the end, Dad said. Alzheimer’s.’

Greg rapped an impatient drum-roll on the table. ‘Oh, this is hopeless! We’re getting nowhere.’

‘But we’re eliminating things as well. We know Edmund’s not listed as dead in the war. We know he wasn’t executed for desertion. We know he didn’t come back here.’

‘We
think
he didn’t. Or if he did, he didn’t die here. So what are we left with?
Believed killed
, that’s what we’re left with. Where we started.’

After a moment of silence, Faith pushed back her chair. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

‘Where?’

‘On the common. Just for half an hour. You could leave your bike here.’

Well, all right. He wasn’t in a hurry, it was a warm afternoon, and he hadn’t got much homework.

The common was the farthest end of Epping Forest, Green Belt land that saved the Essex countryside from being swallowed up in the sprawl of Greater London. From here, rides and paths led off into thickets of ancient woodland, where the ground was strewn with beech leaves and threaded with streams. Greg and Faith walked past the old timbered cottages at the town end and along to where the common widened, by the cricket pitch. If they carried on, alongside the main road to London, they’d see Graveney Hall facing them on its shoulder of higher ground.

‘I’ve been thinking again,’ Greg said, ‘about why I can’t believe in God.’

Why had he opened his mouth? He’d told himself not to get into this kind of pointless discussion. She looked at him. ‘OK, let’s hear it.’

‘It’s the heaven and hell business. Not just that I don’t believe in hell—all those medieval pictures of people being pitchforked into fires and tormented by devils. I don’t believe in heaven either. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

‘But those pictures only show human ideas, human fears. I don’t believe in hell that way either. Hell to me is being cut off from God’s love. But that wouldn’t be a punishment so much as my own choice—my own chosen punishment—because I can have God’s love if I choose it. Heaven—you don’t believe in it because you can’t begin to imagine it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You might as well say you don’t believe in black holes because you can’t see them. They’d have been unimaginable a hundred years ago. There are things we just can’t know.’

‘Yes, but it’s not logical to put it the other way round—it’s beyond us to imagine something, therefore it must exist. And why
should
heaven exist? What’s the point of having an imaginary world that’s better than this one? Surely the point is that we ought to do a better job of looking after the world we’ve got, because it’s
all
we’ve got—not kid ourselves there’s going to be something better afterwards.’

‘But Jesus talked about heaven,’ Faith objected. ‘And Jesus doesn’t lie.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t deliberately lie, but who was Jesus anyway?’

‘He was the Son of God,’ Faith said in a tone that admitted no doubt.

‘He said he was.’

‘He
was
. Would he have said so otherwise? Are you calling Jesus a liar?’

‘How can I know if he was a liar or not?’

‘He said,
Before Abraham was, I am
. I think those are the most beautiful words in the Gospels. Not I
was
— I
am
. Am always, for ever.’

‘How can you prove he was telling the truth?’

‘Because He always told the truth. He said
I am the
way, the truth and the life
. His resurrection proved it—He rose from the dead, He ascended to heaven.’

‘I don’t believe that. Everything has to obey the laws of Physics.’

‘According to you. Materialist!’

‘According to physicists. I don’t know nearly as much about Jesus as you do—’

‘You can find out!’

‘— but obviously he did exist—at least someone called Jesus existed, who was a wise and clever man, a good leader, and obviously very charismatic. But just a man.’

‘Yes, just a man because that’s what God chose for him! But not
just
a man.’ Faith stopped walking. ‘What you don’t understand is that I’m not only talking about someone I’ve read about in the Bible. I
know
Him. And He knows me.’

‘OK, then—what does he look like?’

Faith gave him a look of exasperation. ‘Does it matter what He looks like?’

‘It might. You tell me. Could he be the same Jesus to you if he was ugly or disfigured?’

‘Yes, of course, but He isn’t.’

‘You don’t know that! And I don’t believe you.’

‘I know I don’t know. But I know what I believe. There was that computer-generated thing in the papers—it looked nothing like Jesus in paintings, but that’s been rubbished. Is it coincidence that so many painters have given Him the same sort of look, the
Light of the World
look?—you know what I mean, the famous painting?’

‘It’s not likely, though, is it, that he’d have looked like that? The real Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew. Why would he have white skin? What we get is Jesus made to look European, because we think the son of God would have to look like us.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Faith insisted.

‘But think about it! The son of God we get from artists is young and usually good-looking. There’s this painting by Salvador Dali,
The Crucifixion
, and it’s almost sexy. I mean, it would be from a female point of view. This real body stretched on the Cross. It’s like a bondage photo or something. There’s a kind of masochism about it.
Hey, I’ll get up here and die for you,
and you can have a good look and get a thrill.
’

Faith grimaced. ‘Oh, don’t! That’s a horrible way of putting it! Crucifixion was the most horrible torture.’

‘I know. But you look at the painting, then tell me if the Crucifixion would mean the same to you if Jesus was old and ugly.’

‘So? That’s Salvador Dali. People can do what they like with the image of the Crucifixion. It doesn’t change the truth of it.’

‘The truth is that a man was crucified the way hundreds and thousands of criminals were crucified by the Romans. People get what they want to believe. Jesus is a myth. The real Jesus, whoever he was, has been
made
into a myth.’

‘No. To you He is,’ Faith insisted. ‘That’s because you’re putting up barriers. You’re closing your mind.’

‘That’s what you always say when I don’t think the same as you.’

‘You’re entitled to think whatever you want, because God has given you free will.’

‘That’s another whole argument,’ Greg said. ‘Let’s not get into that.’

‘Some other time, then. We’ll put Free Will on the agenda.’ Faith linked her arm through his. ‘I like talking to you.’

‘Why?’ Greg asked, rather startled by the arm-linking; it seemed out of character.

‘Because.’

Relieved that she hadn’t taken offence this time, he made no move to detach himself. ‘I didn’t mean to get into all that again.’

Faith smiled but said nothing. He knew what her interpretation would be: she saw herself as missionary, him as the reluctant convert. She was welcome to carry on believing that if it avoided conflict. She didn’t seem to understand that sometimes he enjoyed arguing for its own sake. They had reached the farthest end of the common, where the open plain met the shrubby edge of the forest. The long grasses were end-of-summer bleached and there were ripe blackberries in the bramble bushes beside the path they had chosen. ‘Nothing to collect them in today,’ Faith said, looking. ‘Anyway, Mum’s had her blackberry binge.’

‘When is it, this Open Day?’ Greg asked.

‘Sunday week. You will come, won’t you?’

‘What would I have to do?’ he stalled.

‘You could help me sell stuff. The jam, and postcards and guidebooks. It’d be fun.’

‘I might,’ Greg said, wary of her idea of fun.

‘When I say
fun
, I mean it’ll be a lot more interesting for me if you’re there. Greg . . .’ She stopped walking, pulling him to a halt.

‘Mm?’

‘You know what I was saying the other day about boyfriends?’

‘What? Have you met someone?’

She laughed nervously. ‘I’ve met
you
, stupid! Do you . . .’ She looked away; he saw the rush of blood to her cheeks. ‘Greg, you do like me, don’t you—a bit?’

‘ ’Course I do. Would I spend all this time arguing with you otherwise?’

She flashed him a sidelong, almost coquettish look. ‘You don’t show it.’

‘Show it how? What do you want me to do?’

‘What do you think?’ She dropped her school bag, turned to face him, looked up at him; he felt her fingers curling round his hand.

‘Are you kidding? What about your rules?’ he said lightly. ‘No sex before marriage, that’s what you told me.’

She stepped back, eyes wide, appalled. ‘I didn’t mean
that
! Is that what you thought? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, does it?’

‘I thought we were just friends!’

‘Why? I never said so.’

‘Thought you preferred it that way.’

‘Because I’m a Christian?’

‘OK, because of that. And because I’m not.’

‘That doesn’t mean I have to go into a nunnery! Couldn’t we . . .’ She came close again, touching his arm. Awkwardly, because it was easier than talking, he put both arms round her. He bent his head; her face turned up to him eagerly. Their mouths met. He could tell she wasn’t used to being kissed, not like tarty Tanya, who had been all probing tongue and thrusting chest. Faith held herself quite still, as if she didn’t know how to carry on breathing. He held her gently, aware of the slenderness and strength of her body, and the clean fragrance of hair and skin. Inhibited by her innocence, he made the kiss a rather perfunctory one. What if someone from school was watching? What if her mum came along in search of fruit for jam? He stood looking over Faith’s head to where the broad forest track, marked and churned by hoofprints, dipped away from the common between holly thickets. She stood close and silent as if expecting something more. He released her, giving her shoulder a little pat as he might pat a well-behaved dog: dismissive.

‘What’s wrong?’ She looked up at him in dismay. ‘Aren’t I—aren’t I any good?’

‘It’s not your fault. I don’t know—it feels weird.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t feel right, kissing you.’

With a small sound of exasperation, Faith turned away. Greg stayed put, hands thrust into his pockets, looking down at the depths of trees behind trees that dipped and rose with the fall and swell of ground, and at the first leaves turning toast-coloured, as if scorched. He had messed this up, as he seemed to be messing up everything. He hadn’t wanted to hurt or upset her—again—but he had.

Into his mind, vivid and disturbing, slipped the moment yesterday morning in the changing room when Jordan had turned and looked at him. It had only taken an instant, but there had been a sort of connection. An exchange, an unspoken understanding. He had stared openly at Jordan as he stood there naked; he had gazed for too long, and Jordan had seen and not minded. Jordan’s glance had seemed to say:
I know. It’s all right.

God, what am I thinking? Is he—am I—does he think—
do I—

He swung round. Faith had gone: she was striding away round the edge of the cricket pitch, back towards the town. He thought of yelling, running after her, but stayed where he was and watched her go.

Gaia

Greg’s
mental
snapshot:
In the swimming-pool
changing room, Jordan stands beneath the shower,
his back to the viewer. Water bounces off his head,
shoulders and upraised arms. His body is slender
and strong; his wet skin gleams in the artificial
light. He is washing himself unselfconsciously,
not knowing he is being watched.

Greg watched Faith stomping along the edge of the common and out of sight.

It was her fault, wasn’t it? She’d started this. They were becoming good friends till she’d spoiled it. Let her go off in a huff if she wanted to. If he ran after her and said he was sorry, she’d get the wrong idea again.

Wrong? Right? Which was which? How could you tell?

Greg heard Dean’s taunt:
‘You’re gay!’
Well, I’m not, Greg thought. Definitely not. I could have kissed her properly if I’d wanted to.

Kids said that quite meaninglessly. Unless Dean could read Greg’s mind better than Greg could read it himself, and sort out the muddle, he couldn’t possibly know.

Know what? What is there to know?

Greg walked back slowly, kicking at leaves, thinking about Jordan. I am
not
gay, he told himself. Not even remotely. Just because I—

Just because he’s always on my mind. Just because I’d rather be with him than with anyone else. Just because it’s enough to be together, not even talking. Just because he obviously likes me the same way.

Again Greg thought of that glance, of what had seemed like a current running between them. But what had Jordan actually said?
Hi. Ready in a couple of
minutes, if you don’t mind hanging on.
Definitely not the words of someone who had just experienced a blinding revelation. Male bonding, Greg decided, that’s all. He picked up a conker that gleamed among fallen leaves, and put it in his pocket for the cats at home.

All this seemed so utterly stupid by the next day, that Greg couldn’t believe he’d given it brain-space. After lunch, when they both had a study period in the library before Physics last thing, Jordan said: ‘How about this evening?’

‘What?’

‘Shall we go up to that ruined house you’re always on about? I’d like to see it.’

‘OK, why not?’

They arranged to meet later on bikes at the church. At home, making himself a ham sandwich in the kitchen, Greg found himself the centre of attention.

‘Oh, you’re not honouring us with your presence later, then?’ Katy observed.

‘No, I’m going out.’

‘Who with?’

‘Who’s the lucky girl?’ asked their father, home early and rummaging in the bottom of the fridge for a beer can.

‘It’s not a girl. I’m meeting Jordan.’ Greg looked for mustard in the larder, mentally kicking himself as he waited for Katy to swipe back with the jibe he’d set up for her; but instead she made her eyes round and said, ‘Jordan,
mmmm.
Bring him home if you want.’

‘I wouldn’t subject him to that.’

‘I’d like to meet this Jordan myself,’ said their mother; ‘he seems to be mentioned quite a lot. Why don’t you invite him round some time, Greg?’

‘I might,’ Greg said cautiously. ‘But only if you can guarantee Katy’ll be somewhere else.’

By the time they reached Graveney Hall, Greg felt almost nervous. The place was deserted, the way he liked it best: nothing but birds and rabbits to disturb the lingering presence of the past. He and Jordan hid their bikes in the place Faith had shown him—well out of sight round the farthest side of the stables, behind the brick ice house. There was no-one else around. Since the vandalism, the front entrance was padlocked, and there were barbed-wire strands all along the fence that separated the front of the house from the gardens, but it was easy enough to get in for anyone with a mind to. They walked slowly around the main house, Jordan asking questions, Greg taking photographs: one with Jordan in it, just one. ‘Could you stand over there for a second, by the entrance?’ All very low-key. Friday evening, unwinding from school, thinking about the weekend; maybe a couple of beers at the pub later.

They wandered away from the house, their feet brushing the grass. Greg explained about the ha-ha; they stood there looking out over the curve of hillside, towards the woods. A pheasant screeched from the cover of the trees. It was a perfectly still evening. Jordan climbed down over the fragments of the steps that had marked the western entrance, where the magnificent gates had once been, and followed the ha-ha where it contoured round. Watching him walk, the way he placed his feet, the shape of his shoulder-blades through a thin sweatshirt, Greg caught himself deliberately lagging behind for the pleasure of looking, and felt newly disturbed. He’d speed up: have a quick look round, then suggest biking to the Forest Tavern, where they might find some of the girls from school and things would be more normal.

But Jordan wouldn’t be hurried. He walked on slowly, looking at everything. At the farthest end of the yew hedge that had once marked the boundary of the formal garden, there was a large hexagonal slab of concrete, about a metre high, with steps up. He stopped, seeing this.

‘What is it? A bandstand?’ He turned and waited for Greg to catch up.

‘There used to be a statue here. There were statues all over the garden, all gone now. This one was of Pan—I’ve seen a photo.’

‘Must have been a huge statue, then, going by the size of this base.’

‘It was. Larger than life.’

‘You’ve seen Pan in real life?’ Jordan said, so seriously that Greg didn’t immediately realize he was teasing. ‘He was the one with goat legs and horns, wasn’t he? Liked music and a lot of noise? I wonder which way he’d have been facing. Down towards those woods would have been best. He was always capering about through the woods, wasn’t he? I don’t think he was a tame god.’

‘But are any gods tame?’ Greg blathered. ‘I don’t think there can be such a thing as a tame god. God—capital-G God—isn’t tame.’

Jordan looked at him, puzzled. ‘I only meant I didn’t think he’d belong up here, near the house, where it was all smart and manicured from what you say. If I had a stately home and a Pan statue, I’d put Pan in a clearing, in the wildest part of the woods. I don’t know about capital-G God. As far as I’m concerned, he’s fictional, like Pan—a bit prone to sending down plagues of locusts and afflicting people with boils, wasn’t he?’

‘If God is fictional, then what? Do you believe in something else?’

Jordan gave him another quizzical look, paused, and said: ‘Really it’s odd we don’t spend the whole time wondering. Why don’t we wake up every morning and think, Hey! Here’s daylight again! And there’s oxygen for me to breathe! And I’m alive! And who’s arranged all this, and what’s it all for? We ought to be more
surprised
. But we get so used to it, we stop wondering how it happens, and clutter up our brains with what’s happening in
Brookside
or whether we’ve got the right kind of trainers. This is a good place to ask, really—Pan’s place. Because if I had to say I was anything—atheist, agnostic or whatever—I’d have to say pantheist.’

Greg raised his eyebrows. ‘You believe in Pan?’

‘It means
all
. God-in-everything. Only I wouldn’t call it God. A kind of spirit of the earth might be another way to put it. Gaia. It makes more sense to me than anything else. Have you heard of it?’

‘Yes,’ Greg said. ‘Only I thought it was a rock group.’

Jordan laughed. ‘Gaia means earth spirit. It’s a kind of energy, a will to live or to survive. It’s what keeps the planet going in spite of humans molesting it. Or
has
kept it going. Perhaps eventually Gaia will give up and the earth will suffocate in a cloud of greenhouse gases.’

‘Yeah, so where do humans fit in?’

‘Gaia must be in us, but only as in all animals—all creatures and all plants. Everything has the same will to live. But we’re not that important—no more than slugs or snails, only we’re a million times more harmful collectively. Gaia could manage a lot better without us. The problem is we can’t just
be
. We want more than we ought to have—we want cars and cinemas and swimming pools and continental holidays, and we don’t just want them, we take it for granted we’re entitled to them. If we could just
be
, just live off what the earth can give us, not by taking and taking, the rainforests would grow and the atmosphere would clear and the earth would find its own balance.’

‘So a catastrophic disease—a plague or something that killed off the whole human race—would be a good thing on the whole?’

Jordan considered. ‘Yes, for Gaia, for the earth and its survival—if we haven’t damaged it too much already. But it’s impossible to think on that sort of scale, isn’t it? We’re too wrapped up in ourselves, thinking we’re so important. We’re here and now.’

‘Yeah,’ Greg said. The hereness and nowness were very much on his mind.

‘And of course I want all those things too—the cars and holidays. Especially the swimming pools. I’m not really planning to live in a cave in the Outer Hebrides.’ Jordan sat on the statue plinth, elbows resting on his knees. ‘We can’t link up the two—the two scales we think in, or on. The us and the whole. They’re so vastly apart that we don’t even see the connection. Everyday stuff gets in the way.’

‘You’ve never said any of this before,’ Greg said, sitting too, a careful distance apart. In fact, he’d never heard Jordan talk so much about anything.

‘No. Well, you asked. I don’t think about this all the time because—well, what I said about everyday stuff. Anyway, most people would think I was a complete nutter. You know that Wordsworth poem we read,
Tintern Abbey
? He would have known what I’m on about. And I know what he was on about.
The spirit
that moves all things
. Bit of a pantheist, Wordsworth was. O’Donnell was having a job convincing everyone in the classroom on a Monday morning. Should have brought us up here.’ He turned towards the house. ‘This whole place is a kind of symbol of Gaia, really. Humans came and built on it, tamed it, made straight lines and put down concrete. Now the humans have gone and Gaia is taking it back. Things grow wherever they can. These blackberry bushes and tree saplings are full of the will to live. I like it like this.’

‘Me too,’ Greg said. He picked up a stone and chucked it over the ha-ha, then another. They sat in silence for a few moments. About to suggest they went down to the lake, Greg began getting to his feet when Jordan, absorbed in his own thoughts, said, ‘If I had to find the equivalent of praying, it would be swimming. That’s when I’m most me—do you know what I mean?—when I can
be
the most I can be. It’s a sort of pure, concentrated being—no room for anything else.
I swim, therefore I am.
No, perhaps what I mean is
I am, therefore I swim
. What would it be for you? The best way of being?’

Greg thought. ‘A physical thing? Riding down a steep hill on my bike—I don’t know—scoring a goal. Diving.’

‘Sex, I suppose, must be like that as well,’ Jordan said, ‘if you do it properly.’

‘Properly?’

‘With your whole self.’ Jordan leaned forward and plucked a grass stem.

The quietness hummed in Greg’s ears, blurring his thoughts.

Jordan looked at him. ‘Maybe that’s why you didn’t go with that girl at that party. You didn’t want it to be just a quick grope. It ought to be more than that. It ought to mean something.’

A burning silence. Greg fiddled with his bootlace. Where was this leading? Did he want to go where it might lead? He had to
know
, even if he didn’t want—

‘I have a dream—a fantasy,’ Jordan said, ‘of spending a night in the open, by the sea, with another person, on a warm, still night when the sky’s really clear. We’d lie all night looking up at the stars and listening to the waves, and then when the dawn came we’d wade into the sea and swim. That would be perfect enough to last my whole life. Stars and darkness and space and sand and waves and water and light.’

Another person? You mean a girl?
Greg wanted to ask, though he was almost certain by now that Jordan did not.

But Jordan was off in another direction. ‘You know I told you Michelle was waiting for a transplant?’

‘Mm?’ Greg was startled, half-disappointed.

‘My mum’s going to donate a kidney. Isn’t that incredibly brave? I think so.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Greg could barely make himself sound interested. ‘Is it risky, then? For your mum, I mean?’

‘Yes—well, there’s the small risk of something going wrong with the kidney she’s left with. And there’s no guarantee of the transplant being successful. Either way, it’ll take Mum two or three months to get over the operation. But it’s better for Michelle, not just because she won’t have to wait, but because the chances are higher than if she got one from someone not related. And she won’t have to live with the knowledge of someone dying before she can have their kidney. When you’re on the transplant list, you’re waiting—hoping—for a kidney to become available. And the most likely source is someone who dies in intensive care after a car accident or something like that.’

‘Mm, difficult. When will this happen?’

‘Soon, when they’ve finished all the tests to make sure it’s a perfect match, and the counselling.’ Jordan paused. Greg, sensing that he wanted to say more, looked at him encouragingly; he went on, ‘I did offer to give her one of mine when we first talked about it, but I only did it because I knew they’d all say no. My parents, the doctors, Michelle herself. And that let me off the hook. I’m not brave enough, or generous enough, when it comes down to it. I feel bad about that. It was cheating. I got the credit for offering when I knew I wasn’t really risking anything by opening my mouth.’

‘I don’t think you need beat your brains about it! It would be an awful lot to ask of you. Going through a big operation—losing fitness, when you’re in the middle of training—when it could turn out to be useless. Put on the line like that, I don’t think I’d volunteer for my pain of a sister—’

‘But no-one
has
asked it of me. I thought I should be able to ask it of myself, so that Michelle can have a normal life. Imagine what it’s like for her—tied to a machine she can’t live without, always having to watch her diet, never being able to go on holiday unless it’s near a hospital with a dialysis unit.’