The Vows of Silence (18 page)

“All right, I know … It was all very am-dram and I left but I did get to know some brilliant plays, like the David Hare trilogy. I thought then how funny some of
Racing Demon
is.”

“Funniest line?”

“Easy. When he’s challenging God, telling him He’s not up to much, He’s like some low-down football team.”

“Accrington Stanley.”

“Yes, and the supporters are like those who sort of
support God but it’s OK ‘because they’re Accrington Stanley in their daily lives—they just don’t go to the games.’”

“Do you?”

“What, go to the Accrington Stanley games?”

“No, to God’s.”

It was not a subject that had arisen in their half-dozen meetings but after seeing the Hare play about clerical crises and the state of the Church of England, it was inevitable one of them would raise it and Helen had known it would not be her. She had almost declined the theatre outing just because of it.

She ate more of her saltimbocca, very slowly.

“Is that not all right?”

“It’s delicious. I’m savouring the last mouthfuls.”

“Right.”

She had to tell him about Tom. Of course she had to. And why not? She would defend her son to the gallows. But it was difficult. She’d veered away from it. But this was Phil. She looked at him across the table. He raised an eye brow. Phil. The Phil she was growing to like very much, whose company she loved, who …

She put her knife and fork together and drank the last of her wine.

“Wonderful.”

“You needn’t worry.”

“What about?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. Religion and politics, you know.”

“Well, we’ve done politics.”

“We have.”

They were both Gordon Brown Labour voters, both glad to see the back of Blair, both from families who in the past had been militantly left wing. As a student, Phil had sold the
Socialist Worker
, he said, had even become a Trotskyite for two terms.

“But you grow up, don’t you? Real life breaks in.”

The waiter came to clear and bring the dessert menu. Phil ordered another glass of wine for her and more mineral water.

“I couldn’t eat anything else,” she said.

“How disappointing. I could.”

He ordered a pudding for himself, then said, “I’m an atheist. I cannot understand how anyone of intelligence believes in a God. It baffles me. I also think religion is dangerous. A force for ill. And if you’re a Scientologist we’ll have to agree not to mention Thetans, that’s all.”

“So …”

“So?”

“Oh, I’m just getting my head round being a person without intelligence.”

“You believe in God?”

“I think so. Anyway, I sing with the cathedral choral society. I go to the Easter service, Christmas, the Advent carols … That’s about it, though, I’m not a very good churchgoer.”

“Ah. Accrington Stanley in fact.”

“It’s Tom you should know about. Not that I mind, not that it makes any difference at all to … anything.”

“Tom. Tell me.”

He leaned closer and put his hand on top of hers on the table. “What is so dreadful about Tom?”

“No, not dreadful …” She sighed. It was difficult and it ought not to be but she still felt uncomfortable sometimes with what had happened.

“When he was sixteen one of his friends asked him to go on holiday with him and his family. Tom said yes and then it turned out to be some sort of Christian holiday—in tents on a showground. Anyway, by the time Tom realised, he said he’d better go as he’d said he would. It would be a laugh and there were bands, he’d get through it. There were beaches nearby for surfing, which he loves. It was in Cornwall. So off he went. Lizzie and I went to walk in Northumberland—Hadrian’s Wall. We laughed a lot about how poor Tom was coping. But when we all got back he’d coped by joining up.”

“You mean they brainwashed him?”

“Not exactly. But the atmosphere was so highly charged and emotional and he was under a lot of pressure. He said it was like a light going on. He did nothing but read the Bible and go off with these people. They have very extreme, fundamentalist beliefs and they’re pretty ferocious about everyone who isn’t one of them. I was angry. I tried to talk to him. But you can’t. Their brains seem to be rewired and you can’t get through. Lizzie gave him hell. But I assumed it would fizzle out, like all these teenage things.”

“And it hasn’t.”

“On the contrary. And I’ve been trying not to tell you.”

Phil started to laugh.

“Not funny. It really isn’t. You should hear him—he’s so earnest and serious about it. He isn’t the Tom I
know, Phil—he never talks about anything else, he has hardly any other friends. He went to one of their conventions in America this summer and he came back quite terrifyingly right wing and even more fundamentalist. We’ve had to agree not to talk about it at all. I find it pretty difficult to live with.”

“So would I.”

The restaurant was emptying. Phil had finished his pot of wine-soaked cream. They agreed to pass on coffee. Phil asked for the bill. But what he had said seemed to drop heavily onto the space between them.
So would I
.

Helen got up and went to the cloakroom, furious that she had had to tell him, furious with Tom. Now everything would go wrong. Fall apart.

She looked in the mirror. “You love him,” she said.

Lizzie was at a friend’s. Tom’s motorbike was in the passage.

“I won’t stay,” Phil said. “Come to my place at the weekend.”

“No. Come in now. I’m not going to have my life ruled by my son.”

Phil touched her arm. “It won’t be. But I’ve a long teaching day tomorrow.”

She watched until his car had turned the corner. Tom’s light was on, and the lights downstairs.

Helen looked up at the half-moon. The air smelled cold, with a touch of winter. So now he knew. It seemed hopelessly wrong that it was not drugs or bad company, not drink or giving up on school, but a narrow
sectarian religious faith which divided her from Tom, made life with him difficult and might drive Phil away. Would she be scared off, in his position?

No, she thought. No, actually, I wouldn’t. I’d say what Phil said. That it was Tom’s life and she shouldn’t let it affect hers.

But that was easily said.

Tom was at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal, a booklet propped on the milk jug.

“Hello.”

Tom grunted. “Good time?”

“Very. The play was excellent and so was the Italian dinner. So yes. Tea?”

“No thanks.”

Helen glanced sideways at what he was reading. “Is that something they’re keen on then? Chastity?”

“No sex before marriage.”

“Same difference. Goodness.”

“What?”

“Oh, just—goodness. Not very fashionable.”

“No, fashionable is promiscuity, fashionable is casual sex, fashionable is gay, fashionable is at the root of social breakdown. The Bible says—”

“Ouch!”

He looked up.

“Sorry—splash of hot water. It’s fine.”

She wished she hadn’t started the conversation, but what conversation with Tom could she start which didn’t head in the same direction?

“Don’t expect too much of people, Tom.”

“I don’t.”

“Not everyone has your take on it. And when you meet a girl you’re very keen on you might see things differently.”

“I’ll make sure I don’t. Anyway, we all see it the same way.”

“We?”

“My friends. We don’t compromise.”

How had the sturdy, pragmatic but gentle little boy who had been Tom turned into this narrow and unfeeling person who read pamphlets entitled “Satan Works Through Sex’? What kind of people had him in thrall?

“Do you give them any money, Tom?” she asked suddenly.

“Give who?”

“Your—the church.”

“Of course. How do you think we fund our outreach? How do you think the Word is spread? It costs.”

“Right.”

He got up from the table.

“Put your bowl in the dishwasher, Tom.”

She looked at his long, thin back, the blades of his shoulders through his T-shirt, his pepper-coloured hair. Terry’s hair.

“You should come,” he said. “You never have. You go to Lizzie’s orchestra, you go to your choir. You never go to my things. How do you know what it’s about? You’d be fired up. You’d see everything differently.”

“That’s what I’d be afraid of.”

She was ready for bed but she didn’t go. There was a tension about Tom, a nervousness. She waited, fiddled about putting things away and wiping down the
work surfaces. In the end he said, “Might go back to the States next year.”

“See some more of the country? Good idea.”

“Thing is, we’ve got this college in Carolina. A kind of Bible college. For training.”

We.

“I can train there.”

“A training college. I get it.”

“Don’t wind me up. I want to be an outreach minister, it’s what I think I’m called to do. To bring others in—to spread the faith.”

She said nothing. The questions that came to her lips could not be asked. What would your father have said? How are you going to pay for this? Don’t you think you’re too young? Are you sure?

“Mum?”

“Yes. Well, it’s your life, Tom. But just think hard about this. It’s a big commitment.”

“I think hard and pray about it all the time.”

She wanted to hug him, tall, bony, worried-looking, some thing of the ten-year-old still lingering on his face.

“Goodnight, love.”

“Mum …”

She waited.

“This Phil guy.”

“You have to meet him. Lizzie has. You’ll like him.”

“Thing is … I know I was cool about it to begin with …”

The kitchen was quiet. Wait, Helen told herself. Just wait.

“I just think maybe you should watch yourself. What’s he like? You don’t know really. He might be anyone.”

“He’s Phil. He teaches history. I’ve been out with him half a dozen times. I’ve been to his house. What’s to know?”

“Just think you should be careful.”

“At first. I met him over the Net so I was careful. But you know that, Tom. I honestly don’t think you’ve anything to worry about now.”

“OK.”

“No, it’s obviously not OK with you so talk to me.”

“What if he wanted you to go and live with him? Or get married?”

“I’d think about it very carefully.”

“He could be anyone.”

“But he isn’t. Tom, next year, Lizzie will be off to Cambridge, we hope, you say you’ll be in America. That leaves me here.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to hitch up with someone.”

“Please let me make my own choices.”

“I could have found you someone. I’d have picked the right person.”

“What, from that sect of yours?”

“It’s about truth. It’s about being on the inside, not out there.”

Helen sighed. They had reached the brick wall again.

In her room she found that she was shaking. Tom wanted to pick a partner and presumably a husband
for her from the sect, to make sure she was saved, “on the inside” as he put it. Presumably Phil, like Lizzie, would never be “on the inside.”

How could this have happened to Tom in one summer week, how could his mind have been so altered, his whole view of life tampered with, by these people? Lizzie had said it was like living with an alien and Helen had been angry, made her take her words back. Tom was her brother. But Lizzie was right. This new Tom was alien.

Helen lay awake for a long time, distressed and troubled, longing for the old, easy-going, cheerful Tom, the Tom who mucked about. The Tom who laughed.

Forty

They were crammed into the conference room.

“OK, guys and gals, Lafferton Jug Fair, Saturday 27 October.”

Armed Response Bronze Command pointed to the map on the wall.

“Timing first. The fair set-up commences on the Friday evening, goes on till midnight. We have a list of fairground operatives—that’s official ones, those who travel with the fair, family members mainly, the ones who come year in, year out. There won’t be a problem there, it’s the casuals, odd bods who might get one-off employment, cash in hand, no names, no pack drill. Every fairground operative on the list has been given an ID badge. Whether they’ll wear them or not is another matter but uniform will be trying to enforce. Normally the fairground is open to the general public at any time but this year the entire venue will be closed off
until one p.m. on the Saturday. Barriers will be up, uniform will be attending. No vehicles other than fairground authorised, of which we have a list of reg numbers. One o’clock the barriers come down—can’t be left any later on safety grounds, we don’t want them charging in like a herd of elephants or we’ll have kiddies and old ladies crushed in the stampede. The procession is due to arrive in the square at four twenty-five, Jug Fair Queen and retinue first, floats behind. Assembly for departure from the rec. Entering down here. Four thirty, the fair is officially opened, the Fair Queen and the Mayor get onto the merry-go-round at four forty for the first ride. Then it’s everything go. I wouldn’t anticipate any trouble there but we will have Vehicle B on standby. As soon as the procession moves off, so does Vehicle B and follows at the back. Now you’ve all got smaller versions of the map, shout if you were away with the fairies and didn’t pick one up as you came in, sorry about the quality, printer cartridge was running out.”

“When isn’t it?”

“True. Right, heads down and take a long look, at your own map, at the map on the wall. I want everyone more familiar with the fair site than with the proverbial back of. I know some forces do this with fancy PowerPoint presentations but I haven’t the know-how and in my experience the old-fashioned way is the best—it gets it engraved on your minds which is what I want. This has to be as familiar to you by Friday afternoon as the layout of your own houses. I want you to be able to go in there blindfold and find your way about. This is Map One—we’ll look at Map Two in a
mo—which gives us the position of every fairground ride and stall … it’s always laid out to exactly the same plan as any of you who went to the fair when you were five and went again last year will know. But here you’ve got the area as it is today. It will be like this from midnight on Thursday—i.e. there will be no parked cars, in fact no vehicles at all.”