The Blasphemer: A Novel
BLASPHEMER
NIGEL FARNDALE
LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG
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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Nigel Farndale 2010
Nigel Farndale has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
For my grandfather, Private Alfred Farndale,
who died in the mud of Passchendaele,
and again seventy years later in his bed
By the same author
A Sympathetic Hanging
Last Action Hero of the British Empire:
Commander John Kerans 1915–1985
Flirtation, Seduction, Betrayal
Haw-Haw. The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce
‘
Monkeys make men. Men make angels
.’
Charles Darwin
Ypres Salient. Last Monday of July, 1917
WITH A FIVE-DAY BEARD AND A CRUST OF YELLOW MUD WOVEN INTO
the fabric of his breeches, Peter Morris does not look like an officer. Instead of a peaked cap he wears a loose-knit trench hat. On his back is a sleeveless leather jerkin. His skin is grey with fatigue and his hooded eyes, as he raises his head and stares at the entrance of the dugout, are shot with blood.
He has heard a scrape of metal. Now he sees the corrugated iron door open wide and a hairless hand push back the blanket on a string that serves as a gas curtain. A waxy-faced young private in a relatively clean tunic appears in the doorway, stamps in a tray filled with chloride of lime, and adjusts his eyes to the gloom. With his downy moustache and his narrow shoulders that slope down like a Russian doll’s, he looks his age, twenty. ‘Private Kennedy,’ he says in a flat-vowelled voice. ‘Shropshire Fusiliers. I’ve been told to find a Major Morris. You seen him? He’s with the Rifle Brigade.’
The major lowers his gaze without answering. There are words vibrating in his head but they are random and meaningless. Someone has asked a question. A movement distracts him; it is his own hands coming together on the desk in front of him, the fingers steepling. Next to them, he notices, is a field telephone and a studded cosh with fibres of hair and cartilage attached to it, and alongside this an empty bottle of HP sauce with the label half picked off. They are acting as paperweights for a trench map. He places them carefully on a shelf, takes a sheet of folded paper from his wallet and
smoothes it out over the map. It is a musical score, annotated in German. He nods to himself as he studies it. There is meaning in these patterns. There is order and beauty.
‘What’s that?’
Kennedy’s question does not reach Morris.
‘Is it a sheet of music?’
All morning the sky has been buckling with noise. Now the barrage that has been creeping closer finds them. A Pissing Jenny – identifiable by its whistle – lands within forty yards of the trench. As the air compresses and a shower of soil falls from the gaps between the beams in the ceiling, the private cowers, but the major does not react. The score and the map are littered with dirt, making the cartographic trench system appear three-dimensional. A lantern hooked to a nail above the desk sways, pitching the map in and out of shadow. Morris brushes the soil away with the side of his hand, his movements mechanical and slow, as though underwater. A smell of cordite and damp, freshly turned earth crowds the space between the two men.
‘I’m with the Shropshire Fusiliers,’ Kennedy repeats, ‘Eleventh Battalion.’
Morris remains silent.
‘We’ve just got here.’
The older man levels his eyes at the younger. They are cold and bestial; the eyes of a man who has killed before and could, without hesitation or conscience, kill again. Kennedy steps backwards involuntarily. Makes as if to speak. Leaves.
As Morris stares down once more at the sheet of music in front of him, his right hand rises lightly and, with gradual undulations of the wrist, begins to conduct.
London. Present day
DANIEL KENNEDY STOOD NAKED IN FRONT OF HIS BATHROOM
mirror and rehearsed in his head the lie he had told, the one he was about to tell again. His reflection was indistinct, more a shadow in the violet-edged dawn. As he stared at it, he felt behind his back for the light cord. Tug.
Click
. Release.
Clack
. When the darkness continued, he reached forward and gave the fluorescent tube above the mirror a double tap with his fingertip. It crackled for an instant before casting a sallow light over one half of the bathroom. Mounted to the left of the sink was a round, extendable mirror. He examined his magnified skin in it, captivated by the layers of epithelial tissue, by the orange peel, by the inherited, unchanging size of the pores. After half a minute he blinked, washed with a tea-tree-oil facial scrub and dabbed with a towel before applying moisturizer. This rubbed in, he rinsed his hands and teased his tufty hair with matt clay, spiking it in a way that looked dry and natural. He plugged in his shaver next, on a setting that left a suggestion of stubble. Its electric buzz was soon joined by the aggressive purr of Nancy Palmer’s toothbrush. Nancy was his dentist, the mother of his child, the woman he loved.
As an associate professor of nematology – a branch of zoology involving Petri dishes, microscopes and steady hands – Daniel felt he had an excuse for occasionally studying Nancy as though
through a powerful convex lens, observing her movements, analysing her behaviour. He watched her now as she lowered the lavatory seat, sat down and stared at the floor. She was running the oscillating head of the toothbrush over her tongue. The tendons on her neck were rigid. Her eyes were avoiding contact with his. After two minutes – her brush had a timer – she wiped, stood up and pushed the flush-lever. He admired the way she could multitask like that.
‘Don’t wake the baby,’ he said as he clicked off his razor and drew attention to the rushing water.
‘Wasn’t going to,’ she countered too evenly, her voice tight.
‘We should let her sleep for as long as possible.’
‘
I know. I wasn’t going to wake the baby
.’
(Although their daughter Martha was nine, they still sometimes referred to her as ‘the baby’.)
Nancy was wearing the T-shirt she had slept in. It was too big for her – one of Daniel’s – and her frame looked adolescent in it. When she tugged it off in order to stand as lightly as possible on the bathroom scales, her hair tumbled gently and the faded barbed-wire tattoo around her bicep became visible. This, along with her stretch marks and neatly trimmed pubic triangle was, to Daniel, incongruously adult-looking. As he sprayed under his arms with deodorant, he allowed himself a furtive smile, more a twitch of the lips. He couldn’t afford to let Nancy gauge his mood yet. She hadn’t: she was looking the other way, reaching for the main light switch.
‘Don’t turn that on,’ Daniel said in a muted voice, crossing the bathroom and lifting the seat. ‘You’ll wake the baby.’ His plan was to goad Nancy in such a concealed way she wouldn’t understand why she was feeling annoyed. It would, he reasoned, make her appreciate the moment of unknotting all the more.
‘But I can’t see the scales.’
As Daniel relieved himself, he balanced on one foot and, behind
Nancy’s back, pressed his toes down on the scales.
‘Unbe-fucking-lievable,’ Nancy said flatly. ‘I’ve put on four pounds.’ She looked over her shoulder and noticed Daniel’s toes.
‘Hey!’ She was laughing now. ‘Bastard!’ The tension that had been building between them was dissipated temporarily. Still smiling, Nancy flipped the seat back down, flushed again and reached the bathroom door at the same time as Daniel. When she opened it, Martha was standing on the other side, rubbing her eyes.
Three quarters of an hour later, Daniel was sitting in the driver’s seat of what the advertisements had called a ‘green but mean’ hybrid utility vehicle. The engine was running, the heater was on, and he was worrying whether Martha was now too old to see him naked in the bathroom. It had, after all, been more than a year since he had stopped her getting into the bath with him. Making a mental note to consult Nancy – she always had a good steer on these matters – he unfolded his
Guardian
and turned to the sports section. England on tour in India. Batting collapse. What a surprise. When a council lorry hissed by in the slush, spraying salt on tarmac and parked cars alike, he noticed that his windscreen was icing up again where he had emptied the kettle over it. He turned the heater on as high as it would go and watched the glass steam up. The hot air was making him feel claustrophobic. He loosened his scarf, opened the window and looked out. Beyond the amber halo of the streetlights, blackness was shading into grey. It had been snowing steadily throughout the night and, in the absence of a breeze, flakes had settled on the tree next to the car. The phone lines that crisscrossed the square had also turned white, the extra weight causing them to belly. Daniel turned off his engine so he could appreciate the nakedness of the silence.