In Search of the Blue Tiger (21 page)

Sometimes God will sacrifice his enemies, especially if they come from the North (Jeremiah 46:10) (Tidetown is in the North!).

God wants love more than sacrifices (Matthew 9:13)

It is better to be a living sacrifice than a dead one (Romans 12:1) (But I bet it hurts more)

God lets animals feed off sacrifices that have been given to him (Ezekiel 39:17)

Jesus sacrificed himself for all our sins, once and for all, and if we sin once we know the Truth, no sacrifice can take away our sins (Hebrews 10:12)

We must not make sacrifices like Worldlings who burn children for their Pagan Gods (Deuteronomy 12:31) (Did the Father and Mother and Great Aunt burn the baby for a pagan god. Is there a pagan god of the horse?)

Everyone will be purified by fire, just as a sacrifice is purified by salt (Mark 9:49) (Was the Great Aunt Margaret's baby purified in the coach-house?).

If you know a soldier who's been to war, don't be the first person to come to their house or you'll be sacrificed (Jude 11:31)

If you give sacrifices to God, make sure there's some left over for the priest (Daniel 9:27)

The moon is high. The church spire points out the stars for any to see. But all the townspeople are asleep. It is the dead of night. An owl turns its head in a deserted barn. It winks one eye; the other is covered by feathers. The clusters of houses nestle together, lights out and no reading. But one candle burns on. In the corner of a room, beside the big wicker bed, barely lighting their twin heads on the duck-down pillow, quietly whispering in each other's ear, Perch and Carp keep their own counsel.

‘Sacrifice', whispers Perch.

‘Like Isaac,' whispers Carp.

‘The sins of the father.'

‘Recompense, in sure hope of the resurrection.'

‘When the tombs will open and give up their dead for the thousand-year reign.''

‘The prince of peace.'

‘Our witness to him.'

‘To free our father from the sin of the flesh.'

‘Kill the demon in him to give him life.'

‘And we will take the demon and skewer him to the tree.'

‘Which tree?'

‘The big tree.'

‘The big tree by the babbling brook.'

‘And his blood?'

‘His blood will run, his blood will flow.'

‘Where?'

‘To the sea.'

‘To the ocean, never to dry.'

‘And if he screams for mercy?'

‘No mercy, the demon.'

‘There can be no mercy.'

‘No mercy where redemption's due.'

‘How?'

‘The fishcutter's knife, from the wooden block.'

‘Cut from oak.'

Who will do the deed, the cut and the thrust?'

‘The boy.'

‘Which boy?'

‘The Oscar boy.'

‘Oscar.'

‘Oscar.'

The moon sends a wind through the open window. Out goes the flame from the candle. Asleep goes Perch. Asleep goes Carp.

‘The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.'
Reverend Caleb Colton

‘Have you thought?' says Perch, the two of them at the back of the class, Mrs Teachwell scratching out theorems on the blackboard.

‘Of her?' whispers Carp, copying out the omegas and betas, sigmas and deltas.

‘The wicked Stepmother, in disguise, to corrupt him.'

‘The she-devil.'

‘Satan, the devil.'

Mrs Teachwell looks back over her shoulder, the chalk still moving in one hand, a geometry book flapping in the other. She glowers over the top of her glasses, but is unsure what her radar has picked up. Satisfied that a generalised mine-sweep will do, she scans the sea of expectant faces and returns, with a dusty cough, to the chalkface.

‘She made him do it,' says Perch, her voice as soft as a scratch on the wooden desktop.

‘Everything was good before she came,' replies Carp without moving a muscle.

‘Sent by Lucifer to be his wife.'

‘The devil for a phantom mother.'

‘Suckling the demons at her breasts.'

‘Her three breasts.'

‘I've seen her, in the bath.'

‘Six nipples.'

‘Six, six, six.'

‘The sign of the beast.'

Mrs Teachwell turns from the blackboard. She has a chalk mark on her chin. All the children see it. Each one notes it for jokes at playtime. Each, except for Perch and Carp. Distractions are of no interest to them. They have their own world to deal with.

Mrs Teachwell closes her book with a bang and readjusts the glasses on the end of her nose.

‘So then,' she says, an outstretched arm pointing to the sea of lines and symbols festooning the board. ‘Where do two parallel lines meet?'

Today, 29th November, we remember the dead sailors of Tidetown. We have a Religious Assembly and Mr Manning, the Headmaster, tells us stories of all the famous shipwrecks off our coastline and all the brave acts done by sailors.

I love the story of Billy Bones, the cabin boy, who gave his own life to save the ship and all aboard. He climbed the main mast in the eye of a thunderous storm and secured the rigging of a broken sail that threatened to drag the ship under. On his way back down he was hit by a monstrous wave and swept to a watery death. A memorial was erected to him in the town square, as the fair-haired boy who sacrificed his own life so others could live on.

At Assembly we sing ‘For those in peril on the sea.' For years I thought it was a place, like ‘Clayton-on-Sea,' where all the souls of the dead sailors gather. Once I asked the teacher where ‘Peril-on-Sea' was and could we visit it. She looked confused and then explained it was not so much a place as a danger, and I wondered if it was a dangerous place, but then she was distracted by some children in a corner of the playground and said she would explain later. But she never did and for a long time, until I saw the word ‘peril' in a comic, I was scared of ‘Peril-on-Sea' and for once was glad my parents never took me anywhere in case we might end up there on a holiday.

Later in the playground, hoops try to escape their masters and mistresses, balls bounce frantically to clear the high brick walls. Children point to chins and bums and laugh. Small chunks of slate are thrown to the ground and hop is scotched. The sky has that yellowing quality presaging snow. The gulls squawk above the heads of the children to remind them they are there. In the shelter next to the caretaker's house sit the Twins, duffel coats buttoned up to their chins, hoods pulled tightly over their heads.

‘The stepmother must live to see Armageddon.'

‘To die at Armageddon in the flames and the floods.'

‘When all living unbelievers and sinners will descend to the graves of Hades.'

‘Never to know the peace of His presence, when all the demons are cast away.'

‘Death and Hades to be her judgement.'

Like a spirit, a solitary hoop-la wheels past them. Two young boys, short trousers, snake belts and scabby knees, follow in hot pursuit. A whistle is blown, everyone freezes. A second shrill on the whistle releases the children. Lines begin to form at the entrance to the school building. In unison, Perch and Carp rise from their bench and walk in step towards the afternoon.

All the children's heads turn to the sky as the first snowflakes of the winter flutter gently earthward.

Mrs Fishcutter sits at the kitchen table. It is just before dawn, an hour before her husband will set off for the quayside to meet the boat, full of whitebait, in from the North Sea.

She is reading her Bible, imagining the apostle John on the tiny island of Patmos receiving the Revelation. As she often does, she comforts herself in the knowledge Jesus will soon be coming back to earth to free his Witnesses from their trials and tribulations. All the signs of the last days are here. The wars and rumours of wars, Communism, false religions, floods, famines and droughts. The
Watchtower
magazine has been running a series on the fulfillment of prophecy, ancient and modern. The signs of the times to witness the last days, blighted with godlessness and Satan worship, the plague and pestilence.

Each morning she reads something from the
Watchtower
and something from
Awake,
the other magazine produced by the Brothers in Brooklyn. She flicks through the new edition of
Awake,
settling on a piece headed: ‘Nothing new in Jehovah's World'. She reads and rereads the scripture highlighted in a box straddling the double pages.

‘Nothing is new,' she ponders, ‘everything has been done before, thought before. We just keep repeating thoughts, events, actions.'

The kettle boils and she rises to make a pot of tea. Leaving the tea to brew on the stove, she returns to the article and rereads the verses, trying to commit them to mind. Quietly to herself, she mouths the words.

‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'

She gets up and pours herself a cup of tea. She stirs in the milk, thinking all the while of the thoughts she is thinking and of those who thought them before.

Upstairs, her husband is wide awake. He lies in the marital bed, listening to his wife moving around in the kitchen below.

His thoughts distil and condense. Images of Mrs April float before him. For years he had seen her around town, the elegant, slightly distant widow whose husband had been plucked from the brink of peace. Thinking back, he realises he was always pleased to see her, in the distance, passing by. One clear memory is of her standing in the park. It must have been summertime or early autumn, for she was holding a cream-coloured parasol to shade herself from the sun. She stood alone, looking out across the boating lake. Something made her smile: a ripple on the water; a duck bobbing below the surface; someone fooling around in a boat. But there was something in the tenderness and lightness he saw in her smile which he carried through the years. He saw the smile again when he went to the library one day to find out how he might run his own accounts. The two images connected deep inside. A smile in a park and a smile in a library.