The Revelations (16 page)

Marcus smiled ruefully.

‘I can see that. You’d have cats.’ He could make out David and Abby ahead through a hatch of branches. Philip and Neil were striding behind them. It looked as if they were arguing. Marcus tried to make Lee walk faster, keen to catch up with the others. Her hand was damp in his.

‘Margery Kempe went to visit Julian of Norwich for guidance, did you know that?’ she asked, turning to look at him.

‘No.’

‘It’s an astonishing thought, that Margery, the great visionary, spent time in the cell of Julian, the first woman to write a book in English, the wisest of all the anchoresses.’

Marcus thought what a good teacher Lee would make. Whenever she talked about her schoolwork her voice came alive, her eyes lit up and she seemed to come out of herself. He thought that this was a possible future for her: if she could make it through to the end of university, get a job at a girls’ school somewhere, teach and think and make music. Just as when he saw her on her bike, he sometimes imagined a child seat on the rear mudguard, a nodding blond head, creating for Lee a happy future as a balance against her present sadness. She dropped Marcus’s hand and walked a little way in front of him, gesturing as she spoke.

‘Margery was amazing. She would have been one of those ball-breaking City traders if she was alive now. Or a television entrepreneur. She set up a brewery in King’s Lynn – it was one of the few jobs that women were allowed to do – she had fourteen children, then, at the age of forty or so, decided she wanted to give herself over to religious life. She struggled to get her husband to take a vow of chastity, describes all his objections in great detail in her book, but finally she succeeded and then set off on pilgrimages all across Europe, having increasingly violent visions at each new shrine.’

Lee continued in a distant, dreamy voice.

‘She wrote down her visions, or probably dictated them to someone. Some of them are really trivial, she talks about this great miracle when a vision helped her to find a ring she’d lost, but parts of her text are very moving, particularly her visit to Julian, who must have been at least eighty when Margery came to see her.’

They were moving downhill. Lee took Marcus’s hand again. Through the trees, Marcus could see thunderclouds raising their dark hoods on the horizon.

‘I like to think that one day I could be like Julian. That people struggling with their faith might come and see me, and I could use all of this bad stuff I’ve gone through to help them.’

‘You will, I’m sure of it. I know what you mean about this being an in-between time, too. I’m sure our parents were grown up by this age. Mine had two kids by the time they were in their mid-twenties. And they were so incredibly happy together, happy in a settled, grown-up way. I still feel like a teenager.’

‘It’s because we had it so easy,’ Lee said, swinging the arm that held Marcus’s hand. ‘I think one of the reasons my father has these terrible fits of depression is that he can never live up to the memory of his parents. They made it through the war, helped to hide Jews in the lofts of churches in Budapest, then they were these great heroic figures in the resistance against the Soviet occupation. They gave up their lives for an ideal. My father just writes music about it. He gets so frustrated because he wants his music to achieve something impossible: he wants it to match up to the physical heroism of his parents.’

Marcus could hear Mouse’s voice somewhere through the trees ahead. Lee continued.

‘I don’t even have enough of a connection to that history to be able to make music about it. Our generation is so divorced from that time of action, that time of strong idealistic belief. I think it’s one of the reasons that the Course has been so successful. It allows us to feel noble, to imagine that we’re aspiring to a higher ideal.’

‘I’m sure that’s right,’ Marcus said. ‘Humans aren’t used to being so comfortable: it goes against our nature. It’s maybe why I still feel like an adolescent. Because nothing has happened to make me a man yet.’

Lee smiled shyly at Marcus.

‘I’ve never shown you this.’

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her wallet. Opening a flap, she drew out a small photograph. They stopped in a small clearing and looked at the picture. It was a photo of Lee as a child, six or seven, standing on a beach in a red polka-dot swimming costume. Her father stood at her side, the sand sloping steeply away behind them to the sea. One of his hands gripped the young girl’s shoulder. Lee was smiling in the photograph, a missing tooth blacking her smile, her nose wrinkling.

‘I look at this picture all the time. I just can’t believe that I was ever this child, that there is any link between the person I am now and that happy, smiling kid. My problem is that I can’t recapture what it felt like to be young like that, I can’t draw a thread between now and then. A lot of the time, I’m trying to thrust myself back into the person I was then, or as a teenager. Trying to be anyone else but the me I am now.’

Marcus squeezed her hand and they walked on in silence. The others were waiting for them at the edge of the wood. Abby and the Earl were perched on a tree stump sipping from their thermoses; David and Sally were looking through a book, attempting to identify a toadstool that was growing at the foot of a gnarled elm. Mouse stood further off with Maki. Black clouds blotted the sky behind them.

Marcus didn’t see the cows in the next field until they were almost upon them. The ground undulated deceptively, with hillocks hidden by clumps of hawthorn, declivities concealed by brambles. Marcus was walking at the head of the group, Lee and Abby following slightly behind him. The cows seemed to rise out of a dip in the ground and then there they were, almost surrounding Marcus, their large heads turning very slowly to regard the Course members. There was a barbed-wire fence running along one side of the field. A narrow passage led between the fence and the cows. There were perhaps twelve of the beasts. Marcus didn’t know what sort of cows they were, but they were enormous: huge, swinging heads on thick necks, massive haunches. There was something prehistoric about them.

‘Oh, look at the cows,’ he heard Abby say behind him. ‘I never know if they’re black with white patches or the other way around. What d’you think, Marcus?’

He stared into the cows’ bloodshot eyes. He edged towards the channel between the cows and the fence and then gestured for Abby and Mouse to pass behind him. The gate leading out of the field was fifty feet away over rough ground. Abby didn’t move. He gestured again and hissed.

‘Get moving. Quickly.’

‘What? Oh, Marcus, are you scared of the cows?’

Mouse scampered past, cheering, and then stood on the other side of the herd, dancing on the spot. The cows swung their heads from one side to the other, as if weighing their options. Two cows began, with great deliberation, to trot towards Mouse. He backed away, still calling out to the others. The cows increased their pace. It didn’t look as if they were moving any faster than a slow trot, but Marcus could see that they were gaining on Mouse. One of the cows nearer Marcus edged towards the fence, looking to close off the passage through which Mouse had passed. Marcus watched as Mouse realised that they were going to catch him. Head down, arms pumping furiously, Mouse plunged towards the gate at the edge of the field. The cows’ hoofs pounded the earth, sending up damp clods of turf. Diving, tumbling, Mouse rolled under the bottom of the gate and lay on the ground, panting. Marcus watched the cows come to a disappointed halt and then turn and trot back towards the herd.

David came to stand beside Marcus.

‘Bloody stupid animals, aren’t they?’ The priest was carrying a walking stick with a duck’s head carved into the handle. ‘Let’s clear a way through.’

David stepped towards the nearest cow, raised his stick above his head and brought it down hard on the animal’s neck. The cow didn’t move, hardly seemed aware of the blow. The priest hit the cow again and began to shout, providing a commentary to the Course members between yells.

‘Get on! You need to make it very clear who’s boss. Get on with you, I say! Show no fear, don’t allow yourself to be intimidated. Yah! Get on now! They’re more scared of you than you are of them.’

Marcus doubted this last point. The priest was bringing his stick down with regular, vicious strokes on the forehead of the nearest cow. The animal backed away slowly, drawing into the heart of the herd. Marcus took the opportunity to pass closely along the fence and then, walking very swiftly, he moved towards the gate where Mouse was sucking on a straw. Marcus pulled himself up alongside his friend and called out to the others.

‘Just follow me. It’s fine. Don’t run or panic and you’ll be OK.’

He saw Maki and Philip come next, then a group of nervous-looking girls, then Sally and Neil. Lee and Abby hung back with the Earl and David. The cows continued to stare at the priest. He had adopted an aggressive stance, one arm holding the stick poised ready to strike in the air, the other raised in a kind of salute, a universal gesture of
thou shalt not pass
. It was the success of this macho pose that undid them. For as soon as the Earl and the girls had passed, David dropped his arms and turned to follow the others. The cows, as if released from a spell, charged.

‘Look out,’ yelled Marcus, standing up on the fence.

Abby was at the head of the group, her long legs eating up the ground, bounding over tussocks of grass, leaping blackberry bushes. Next came Lee. Her face was set in frightened concentration. She had gathered up her skirt in her fist and ran with her legs splayed, the pink boots swinging out sideways as she charged forward. The Earl moved very swiftly, his head lowered bullishly. David brought up the rear. Perhaps to save face, he was trying to drive the cows back as he retreated, turning every so often and lashing out with his stick, yelling furiously at these beasts of the field who were conspiring to challenge his authority. Marcus could tell that Sally, who was perched on the gate beside him, was holding her breath.

Abby reached the gate first. Marcus held out an arm and helped her over, taking care that she didn’t tear her jeans on the nails sticking out of the wooden gate. When he looked up, David had fallen. Lee and the Earl reached the gate and turned. Lee held her hand to her mouth. Sally let out her breath in a yelp. The cows charged towards the priest, who was struggling to get to his feet.

‘His foot’s trapped,’ said Mouse, a kind of fascinated horror in his voice.

Without pursuing his thoughts far enough to reach a conclusion, Marcus leapt from the gate and ran towards David. The cows had slowed somewhat as they approached him, and reduced their pace further as they saw Marcus’s sprinting form heading towards them. But still they moved towards the priest, who was now curled in a ball, unaware of the approach of his putative saviour. Just as they were about to close over him, Marcus arrived, throwing himself down over the priest. With his arms up to cover his own head, Marcus felt David’s bony body beneath him, could smell the priest’s woody aftershave, feel the coarse wool of his tweed jacket against his cheek. The earth thundered around them, and Marcus found himself praying, mouthing the Lord’s Prayer through gritted teeth as mud and grass flew over them. He heard the thump of flesh against flesh as the cows crowded around them. Then silence. Hot, sour breath. A wet muzzle against his ear. Marcus looked up to see the cows trotting away from them. He was suddenly embarrassed to be sprawled over the priest. He rolled away from David and then helped him to prise his boot out of the rabbit hole that had trapped it. They made their way together over to the fence. David smiled bashfully as Sally ran to embrace him. Lee and Abby surrounded Marcus. The others cheered.

‘What a hero!’

‘That was amazing.’

Marcus batted away their praise and, taking Abby by the hand, set off along the footpath. There was energy in the air, a sense of celebration, of danger averted. David hurried to catch up with Marcus and laid a matey hand on his shoulder, rephrasing the incident as a moment of shared danger met face-on. The others crowded round as the priest spoke.

‘I heard you praying, Marcus. Even with the noise of those animals charging towards us, I could hear your prayers. Did you feel God there? Did you feel Him coming down and placing a barrier around us, something those dumb beasts couldn’t break through?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I guess. I wasn’t really thinking. I just did it.’

‘But you know that is when God is at his most visible, when you’re in a moment of emergency. That’s when He’ll show Himself.’

The path brought them out on the other side of the footbridge above the motorway where they had stood the night before. Marcus hung back with Abby. David walked ahead with Mouse to the centre of the bridge, and the two of them leaned far forward over the rail, looking down on the traffic roaring past below. There was a classic car rally taking place at Silverstone, and Marcus could see drivers in open-top vehicles gripping their steering wheels as their cars plunged through the cut in the hillside. Their eyes were narrow slits behind old-fashioned driving goggles. As Marcus and Abby made their way over the bridge, Mouse shouted across to them.

‘Look! Look, it’s Mr Toad! Poop-poop!’

They followed David up through the wood. Birds called out in the dark shadows around them, unseen creatures scuttled across the red earth, the wind caused the trees to groan. Marcus put his arm around Abby’s shoulders. Mouse and David had disappeared up the hill, seemingly racing each other to the house. The rest were far behind. They came out into a clearing by the lake. Lee caught up with them and the three friends stood by the choppy water and looked up at the large, dark house. The turret pierced the low clouds. At the narrow window halfway up, Marcus saw Mrs Millman’s bony face pressed against the glass, sharp eyes looking down at them. She edged away into darkness.

Marcus looked at Lee and there, behind her, was a sight that dried his stare. Above the green cylinder of a pheasant feeder, suspended on a wire from the lowest branches of a tree, hung the rotting body of a rook. Hanging by its claws, the rook’s wings still stretched outwards, feathers clinging to the spindly bones. It spun slightly in the breeze. Lee turned and let out a muffled scream.