The Story of My Face (21 page)

From lower down the field comes the sound of unorganised discussion, a varying density of voices. In the move downhill many people have abandoned chairs in favour of blankets and cushions, so that informal rows of these are broken by the few occasional chairs, with gaps behind. It's the older people, mainly, who have stuck with the chairs, positioning them further apart than they were before, as if in some vain attempt to encourage a breeze to spring up and circulate between them. Some have shades or small umbrellas that clip onto the framework of their chairs. Anna Herrick stands out wearing a simple shirt-waist dress in a colour somewhere between violet and blue. Mrs Thorn has changed out of her Service blouse into a sleeveless top, and she's put on some large sunglasses with white plastic rims. Timothy and Peter's grandparents, the Andertons senior, have identical Panama hats and seem for a brief moment almost to be twins themselves.

Anthony Thwaite, fresh-faced and dressed in khaki shorts and a white shirt, stands at the front, taking on, by virtue of his role in organising the camp, a semi-official, chairman-like role.

Athletic and energetic, he seems to be enjoying it. Periodically he dives into the audience to note some question or requirement, or solve a minor practical problem such as the support of a sunshade, the steadying of chairs on uneven ground.

At the river, we sink the milk crates to keep them cool, then hurry back. We take our place in the chairs at the front which have been kept for us, and the murmur of voices in the field dips, then falls away, as if it has rolled over a cliff. Anthony Thwaite takes some folded sheets of paper from his back pocket and studies them briefly.

‘The first thing to say,' he begins, ‘is that this is an important moment. Let's try to do it justice by –'

But Anderton has already pulled himself to his feet. ‘The first thing is,' he interrupts, ‘do we have this discussion at all with a non-believer, steeped in sin, in our midst? Answer me that.' I can see the rise and fall of his chest. He pushes a wedge of damp hair from his forehead, looks around the field.

‘If so,' he continues, ‘is she to participate? If yes, how? How can she? And given that, what is she here for?' He waits a moment, then sits back down heavily, next to his tiny wife.

He's four rows away, but I can smell him, and see the wiry hairs on his arms and in the V of his shirt – a proper hairycock, I tell myself, but it doesn't help. . . . All of a sudden I'm way out of my depth. I don't like the way any of them are talking about me, right in front of me but as if I was not here. And I just want to hold Barbara's hand, but Mark is sitting between us, and anyway she's not even looking my way – I grasp the seat of my chair and start kicking my legs, back and forth, back and forth.

‘An unbelieving child certainly doesn't trouble
me
,' says Helen McAllister, nervous but angry, her voice vibrating like a violin string. ‘There must always be one or two of us in a state of doubt or sin, and it's never been suggested that they be barred from meetings, not by Envall and certainly not by Christ Himself!'

‘Yes –' Barbara calls out. ‘And if the person committing a sin doesn't understand that –'

Anderton is up again, raising his hand:
doubt
within a commitment is an entirely different thing to
disbelief
. The early Christians, he reminds everyone, when persecuted, met in secret and took steps to avoid betrayal:

‘All year,' he says, ‘all year, we struggle to live according to our way in a hostile world. Everyone knows how difficult this is. Here we have one chance to be only with ourselves, in the company of the Lord, and renew our strength. But now, Service has been interrupted because a child has decided to go off and
watch television
–'

‘Yes. But Natalie did not realise what she was doing,' Barbara says. It's only half-true, and even she is talking about me as if I was not here. Kick, kick, kick, I bang into the grass with my heels.

‘Even a young child,' Elsbeth Anderton counters, ‘must learn to take responsibilities. Natalie,' she says, looking over at where I'm sitting, ‘should have declined the invitation to come. Or her mother should have done so. Or else, she should, out of respect, have refrained from doing something she knew would cause us distress. But she didn't do this, so how can we trust her now?'

I get to my feet, and tell them: ‘Everyone's been listening to it on the radio!'

‘Can you understand that we don't mind the journey itself, only the pictures.' It's Simon Thorn who replies, speaking calmly, as if reasoning with one of the children he and his wife would like to have had.

‘They were
live
pictures,' I tell him. ‘Anyway, the astronauts couldn't have got to the moon without pictures, they needed pictures to navigate.'

‘Is this what we've come here to listen to?' Anderton asks as I sit down again.

Barbara gestures at me in a loose, abstracted way.

‘Natalie', she says, ‘told us this morning how sorry she is for what's happened.'

‘Is that so?' Thwaite asks.

‘Yes,' I tell him, as if confirming a fact known, but which has little to do with me.

‘If anyone is to blame,' Barbara says, ‘it must be me. I didn't explain things well enough. And perhaps – I should have consulted others before. It's a misunderstanding. I'm sorry.'

Thwaite wipes his face with a large crumpled handkerchief. He thanks Barbara. He pulls out his papers again, clears his throat. ‘May we move on?' he asks. ‘There are many serious and fundamental issues to be discussed –'

‘What,' Anderton bellows, ‘could be more serious than protecting ourselves from sin?'

‘Well,' Thwaite says, ‘why are we meeting here, and not in Elojoki? Isn't it time to get to grips with what that means for the future? What, in the new circumstances regarding passports, does strict observance really mean? Consider the reality of the situation, in terms of human lives: my own predicament, for instance, being engaged to Eija, or that of the McAllisters regarding Alistair's scholarship with Pekka Saarikangas in Helsinki –

‘Surely, everyone must ask themselves whether, in the second half of the twentieth century, the nature of which Envall surely could not have predicted, whether the Lord God intended our ordinary lives to be as very difficult, even impossible for us as they are about to become? Surely it is time to open again the whole question of the differences between “making” and “bowing down unto” an image, the related differences between “letter” and “spirit”? Surely we can open up the meaning of “rendering unto Caesar” to include the carrying of such vital documents? Can there please now be a moment's silence, while everyone asks for God's help in addressing these important questions?' He bows his head; others follow suit.

‘If that child –' the familiar voice hisses now, rather than booms, ‘– if she remains among us, then I and my family cannot stay. How many others feel the same?'

‘Is that what you want?' Thwaite asks the meeting. ‘Is it?' He stuffs his papers back into his waistband.

And now, again without asking me, my legs are still. I can't move them. I keep looking at my knees and hold hard onto the side of my chair. I breathe shallowly, just enough and no more, even though what I really want is to gulp the air in and then bellow it out. When the tears start to fall, I just keep looking down at the grass-stained knees of my jeans because I don't want anyone to know how much this is getting to me.

‘All right,' Thwaite says. ‘Let's settle it. Those who want Natalie to go, please raise their hands.'

‘Mark,' Barbara says, ‘let me sit next to Natalie –' It's almost too late. The knees of my jeans are wet through now.

Thwaite begins counting aloud. Higher up the field small girls with bunches and hair slides and crew-cut boys splash in and out of a yellow pool, push a plastic ball down in the water and make it jump up, douse each other with buckets. They shriek and splash, watch the shadows of ripples on the bottom of the pool.

Forty-two people want me to leave: all the Andertons' closest friends, Josie Gardner but not her husband, Adrian Jowett and his elderly father, the Lattens, a block of two large families from the Hull congregation. But, to my surprise, not Mark. He sits there, looking at his hands the way I've been looking at my knees. I guess that he has given up being a prophet.

‘And who wants Natalie to stay?' Thwaite asks. Twenty-five people want me to stay. Twenty-seven, including Mark, won't say one way or another. This isn't what I came here for. Barbara's fingers, gripping my upper arm, start to hurt. ‘This is terrible. I'm so sorry –' she says. But she should stop it, right now! I pull away.

‘Where', Thwaite asks, ‘is the child supposed to go?'

‘With me, of course,' Barbara says. She reaches under her chair for her bag.

‘You belong here,' John tells her.

‘I can't –' she says, glancing at him angrily. ‘The poor child can hardly wander around on her own all day!'

‘One of the older girls could take her for a walk –' calls out Josie Gardner.

‘I'm not sending her off with someone she doesn't know, after all this. Anyone can see that –'

Barbara squats in front of me now, rubbing my shoulder, holding a hand. ‘Natalie –' she continues in a low, soft voice, ‘this
will
blow over. But now, you and I will walk to the village. We will have an ice-cream. Everything will be all right –'

But John Hern gets up and pulls Barbara away from me, holds her tight in a kind of embrace. She struggles, gets her arms free. She holds them, fists clenched, in the air, as if she might rain blows on his back or head.

‘Sit down – please, darling –' He pushes into her so that she staggers slightly. ‘Stay, please –'

Abruptly, Barbara obeys, sitting down so hard that the chair almost falls back. He takes her hands and looks steadily into her face. His eyes burn with a kind of mad gentleness.

‘I love you,' I hear him whisper, at the same time keeping a tight hold of her hands. ‘
I
need you, my wife, to be with me here, now. What happens today will be important –' She stiffens, pulls one hand free, bangs it on her knee – I can see how difficult it is and part of me almost wants to let her go. But only part. And then –

‘Mum –' Mark says, ‘
I
can go with Natalie. I don't mind. It's fine now.'

‘I don't want to go with
him
!' I yell at her, then wipe my nose on my arm. ‘I want to go with
you
. I want to go to the village. I don't like it here any more.' She looks from one to the other of us. Her face is damp with sweat.

‘If I stay it will only be because you've asked me to,' Barbara tells John. ‘I don't agree with what's happening. Is that what you want?' She shakes her head from side to side as if there was something buzzing in her ear.

‘Thank you,' John says, inclining his head. ‘I want you to stay.'

‘Please understand,' she begins, reaching out for me with her hand and her voice, ‘that none of this is your fault. But –'

There's no point in waiting to hear what comes after
but
. I get up and run, up the slope, past Thwaite and towards the gate into the lane. I let it fall back behind me, without once looking back.

I'm halfway up the hill before I hear Mark: ‘Natalie! Natalie! Natalie!' he calls in his silly voice that cracks open at the end. ‘Wait! I'm coming with you. Natalie –' It's the first time, so far as I know, that Mark has used my name. I should think that so far even in his mind I've been
her
, or
she
, or
you
. But the three syllables, the sequence of consonants, slip easily from his mouth and I expect they leave behind them an interesting disturbance, like the first mouthful of some complex but untrustworthy foreign food, accidentally taken in and as impossible to spit out as it seems to swallow down.

‘Natalie – please! Wait, please!' I hurry on and up, amidst the frenzy of flies and the crickets, smelling the pollen and the sap, my flip-flops slap-slapping against my heels.

21

Overnight, the birches are dotted with green and clumps of dill have sprung up in all the kitchen gardens. The air smells of moss and sap.

Heikki has returned from his holidays.

I've finished using his copier and am browsing through the official parish records and registers temporarily stored in an alcove of his room, row upon row of large leather-bound books with dates stamped on their spines and thick, woody pages: births, deaths, weddings, arrivals, departures, the stuff of our passage through time.

‘So, what happened with your ex-wife?' I ask him.

‘The usual thing,' he tells me, coming over to where I am sitting at the small table brought in for me to use when consulting the registers.