Now I Know (15 page)

I don't know yet if my affliction will pass. I don't know what scars it will leave on my soul. I don't even know yet what good I can make of this evil.

[
Pause.
]

That's the hardest part. Something I can't think out yet. How to turn such crushing evil into something good.

[
Pause.
]

Except . . .

[
Pause.
]

I don't know . . .

Even while I'm saying these thoughts to you, Nik, something keeps coming back into my mind. Your hand. Remember? That awful time when they were sure I would die and they brought you here because I was calling your name?

Your hand was like a thought . . .

Like a message.

[
Pause.
]

Didn't I tell you the touch of your hand made it possible for me to believe I could live again? I can't remember exactly because I was still in a bad way and heavily drugged when I recorded the first tape.

Whatever I said, what I
meant,
I know now, was . . . What? . . . Well, here I am trapped in this bed like a creature in a zoo, having to live quite unnaturally, not at all the way I used to or want to, living a kind of horror, struggling against it, and I keep remembering the touch of your hand . . . And what it did . . . what it
does
. . . is make me want to love.

[
Pause.
]

The words fail. I'm tiring I expect. No wonder!

But that's the nearest I can get just now to what I mean. Your hand . . .
you
 . . . made me want to love. And there is nothing my affliction can do to stop that. It can't kill that part of me. The part that can love.

[
Pause.
]

Which means something very very important. I think. Or is it just sentimental rubbish? You'll tell me. But I can't say any more now. I've worn my thoughts out. The tape must be nearly full anyway. So I'll rest and think about what it means later and tell you about it another time.

†

Tom waited till Sharkey was well clear before leaving the car park. While he waited he considered the sun's heliographed message. Why should that bright flash of reflected light have so caught his mind as well as his eye?

He studied the houses across the valley, searching for the one with the swinging window. It wasn't easy for him to find at that distance because now they were all bathed in sunlight, anonymous boxes with few distinguishing marks. But then he saw it, an upstairs window swinging on its hinges like a lazy weather vane. And as he watched, a woman appeared and pulled it closed. As the window turned, it flashed another brief message from the sun.

At once Tom realized what it was telling him. Standish, the insurance agent, had said that his attention had been attracted by the early morning sun flashing on the boy's face. But does the sun
flash
on faces? It hadn't flashed on the face of the woman at the window. Light only flashes from hard shiny surfaces. Like glass.

He needed to make a phone call.

The nearest box was outside the railway station. He couldn't prevent himself sprinting across the car park into the back of the station, had to restrain himself from getting to the front by crossing the line instead of using the pedestrian bridge, and felt the omens were good when he found the phone box empty and in working order.

Stay cool, he told himself while he dialled. Don't let on.

The secretary connected him to Standish as soon as he said who he was.

‘Just another question, if you don't mind, sir. I wonder, can you remember, was the boy wearing glasses?'

‘Spectacles, you mean?'

‘Yes, sir. Specs.'

‘Wait a minute . . . Goodness!. . . Yes, I think he was. Fancy not remembering a thing like that.'

‘No matter, sir. But you're sure?'

‘Positive, now you mention it. How do you know? Found him, have you?'

‘Not yet. Just an idea, that's all. We'll let you know when there's any news, sir.'

Tom's next call was to the duty sergeant.

‘Sherlock Holmes is it?'

‘Maigret, sarge, no less.'

‘Margaret who? Is there something you haven't told me, laddie?'

‘Very witty, sarge. Listen, would you have a squint at the scene-of-crime report for the crucifiction and see if a pair of specs is listed.'

‘Wait.'

Tom heard pages being riffled. Then silence except for the sarge's habitual clicking of his tongue in a tuneless tattoo.

‘No, lad, no specs.'

‘Sure, sarge?'

‘Looked through twice.'

‘Damn.'

‘Onto something, are we?'

‘No. A dead end.'

‘Pity. But never mind, Margaret old girl. Even real detectives have their off days.'

‘Sarge, you're always so supportive. Like an old truss.'

‘You mind your manners, boy, or you'll be back in the blue and on the plod double quick instead of poncing about on the loose.'

‘How could you, sarge! That's professionally insulting as well as sexist!'

He put down the phone before there was time for reply.

†

LETTERS
:  

Dear Nik
: Thursday is my birthday. I'm taking the day off so that I can go to Norwich, as a treat, and visit the place where someone used to live who I admire. A kind of pilgrimage. Her name was Dame Julian. She had visions on the day of my birthday, 8th May, but a few years before I was born. In 1373 to be exact. Afterwards she wrote a book about them. She called it
Revelations of Divine Love.
You should read it. Good for your research. Might get a surprise as well. She called Christ Mother Jesus. ‘Jesus Christ, who sets good against evil, is our real Mother,' is what she actually wrote. Here's some more:

Interesting? Interested? There's lots more.

I thought I'd drive over after work on Wednesday evening, slum it overnight somewhere nearby, leaving all Thursday for sight-seeing. Drive back Thursday evening. Late back but worth it. For me anyway. How about you? Would you like to come? Would they let you off school? Be good for your education.

Let me know.
Julie

Dear Julie
: I can resist everything except temptation. Sure I'd like to come.

But I thought I'd better check up about Thursday before saying yes. Especially as I'll be mucking about with dames who have visions. Dead and alive. Dangerous stuff that.

So I've been doing some runic arithmetic. The results:

This old dame had her ‘visions' (really?) on the eighth day of the fifth month of the year one thousand three hundred and seventy-three. That is:

Reduced to their fundamental number (because I know you like getting down to fundamentals) this becomes:

Let's do the same with your birth date, which, if you are nineteen this year, must be:

Each of you reduce to nine!

The figure nine is a cardinal number composed of the prime number three, three times repeated:

I don't need tell you that three is a mystical number, and so is nine. According to your lot, God is 3-in-1. In your birthday and the date of the old girl's visions the three-in-one is three times repeated, making the religious magic even stronger because that makes nine.

Now take your age and reduce it to a single number as before:

Similarly, your birthday this year:

Also, find the difference between the year of the old dame's ‘visions' and your birthday year:

Three ones! And:

How about the difference between the old dame's vision year and your birth year?

Glory! Now we have three nines. 999. The emergency number.

And the three-in-one thrice repeated and thrice repeated. Strong magic this!

Let's get a grand total. Add up all the reduced figures and reduce them to one final all-inclusive Big Deal number.

BINGO!!! The mystic trinity: three-in-one!

Your God is in all the figures. How can I not go with you? Something stupendous is bound to happen.

But what about the day?

This year 8th May is a Thursday.

What do we know about Thursday?

1) Thursday's child has far to go.

This sounds okay. You plan a journey that day. (Well, you start on Wednesday, but after six, because you have to work till about then, don't you? And in ye olden tymes, the day always began the evening before, right?)

2) Thursday is the fifth day of the week, as defined in Collins English Dictionary.

What happened on the fifth day? Quote:

[First Book of Moses, commonly called Genesis,

Chap. 1, vv. 20–3, Revised Standard Version.]

So on Thursday life got started. A bit of the old how's your father sounds all right to me. Can't miss out on that.

Trouble is, there's all that stuff about how Thursday got its name. You know: Thor's Day. Quote (Collins E.D. again):

Wowee: Thunderbolt Day. Could be exciting.

Further: Funk and Wagnall (don't you just love the name?) tell much more about old Thor in their
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Myth,
which your ‘umble researcher naturally consulted:

Such as Thor being
one of the greatest of the Gods; God of yeomen and peasants and opposed to Odin, God of the nobility.
Which makes him a hammer of the people and an okay guy as far as I'm concerned.

Added to which, he was
large, strong
and
capable of epic rages
so bad even his own mother, bless her, couldn't stand them, so she gave him away to foster parents, motivated of course by that caring, supportive concern for their offspring's welfare we all expect from doting, selfless progenitors.

He was such a Jack-the-Lad among ye gods that, Fun-Wag report,
In many localities no work was done on this day.
Great. I'll tell them at school that I've joined the Thorians and can't come Thursday because it's our day off. Thursday's Thor's day, folks. Lay-about day. Bring your own hammers and rages and lay about all you want. Epic eppies are all the rage. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, etc.

STOCKSHOT
:  
There is only one definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist
.

More about Thursday, because there's more to Thursday than Thor, would you believe:

Apart from saying it is the fifth day of creation, your lot add:

a)
Maundy Thursday
: Christ washed the feet of his disciples the day before he died, right? The day before he died is supposed to be Thursday. So Thursday is the day your lot remember this.

I got all confused by the ‘maundy' bit. So 1 looked it up. Derivation: 13th century Old French:
mande,
meaning ‘commandment', which you'll know but I didn't came from JC's words:
Mandatum novem do vobis
: i.e., ‘A new commandment I give unto you'. The new one being, I guess, that they must love one another. (You see, I really was paying attention during RE, after all.)

b) Thursday is also supposed to be the day JC ascended into heaven. My grandad says they used to have Ascension Day off when he was a kid. They all did something together, as a school, like a seaside outing to Weston or a walk from Berkeley Castle to Quedgeley, all along the Severn, with picnics on the way and a bonfire and bangers and a singsong at the end, then buses home dead tired and filthy but happy. He says they were the nicest days he can remember, and they sound pretty good to me too. We don't do things like that now because Ascension Day isn't a holiday any more. Nobody thinks of celebrating somebody rising up into the sky by having a jolly jaunt. Not even astronauts any more.