William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

Damage control, Adam had thought the next morning over breakfast, sitting opposite his smart and pretty wife as they both prepared to go to their respective jobs. Yes, damage control, that was what was required: a meeting with Fairfield, sincere apologies issued, a moment of madness conceded, his fault entirely, affection expressed, a rueful comment on this unseemly breakdown in professorial — student relations. It would never, never happen again. But by then the first streams of texts — explicit, not obscene; passionate, not crazed — had already started arriving on his cellphone.

“Fucking hell,” Adam said to himself and opened his eyes to see a man staring at him a few feet away. Big guy, burly, built like a forward in a rugby team, fifties, with a square, lived-in face, semi-bald, longish hair, wearing a blazer and grey flannels and carrying a small leather bag over his shoulder.

“You all right?” this man said.

“Yeah, fine, thanks,” Adam said, managing a vague smile. And the man smiled back and went into the newsagent’s next door. He came out a few minutes later with an armful of newspapers and magazines and leant forward towards Adam, with something in his hand.

“Good luck, mate,” he said.

He gave Adam a £i coin.

Adam watched him stroll away. Adam thought: what’s going on here? He looked in some amazement at the small heavy coin in the palm of his hand, experiencing a kind of revelation. He had money now — and it had been given to him. He didn’t need to steal, he realised — he could beg.

When the Church of John Christ opened its doors at six o’clock Adam was the only potential parishioner waiting. The small door was ajar so he stepped through it into a vestibule where the toothless woman sat behind a desk.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “Welcome to the rest of your life.”

He noticed that she was wearing a plastic badge on her lapel that said ‘JOHN 17’. She scribbled something with a broad felt-tip pen and handed Adam a small card. In fact it was a cardboard badge, with a securing pin on its back. On the front she had written: ‘JOHN 1603’.

“You’ll get a proper plastic one like mine the next time you come,” she said. Adam fastened the badge to his white denim jacket. “Take a seat at the very front, John,” she said, indicating a door behind her.

Adam went through the door as directed and found himself in a large hall-like room with brick walls and an iron-girdered roof with skylights. Rows of simple wooden benches were set out — with padded prayer-stools in front of them — facing a dais with a lectern in the centre. The lectern had a microphone and wires from it led to a couple of loudspeakers on either side. On the wall behind was a richly embroidered, glowing cloth-of-gold banner depicting a stylised sun with long cursive rays emanating from it. There were no crosses to be seen anywhere. Adam took a seat in the front row, as instructed, and sat there patiently, his mind empty, hands clasped together on his knees.

Over the next few minutes a dozen or so other people — mainly men, mainly homeless men, as far as Adam could tell — shuffled quietly in and took their seats. All were wearing ‘John’ badges. The few women, similarly badged, sat at the very back, Adam noticed. He felt and heard his stomach rumble — his hunger was returning. At least it was all remarkably anonymous and discreet: no questions, no names required, no back story, nothing. Just become a member of the Church of John Christ and—

A man slipped in beside him. Adam saw he was wearing a cardboard ‘JOHN 1604’ badge. He had thinning frizzy hair — a small man in his forties with a big head and suffering from a condition Adam knew and recognised that was called, among other names, acropachyderma. The skin on his face was unnaturally coarse and thick, forming heavy, exaggerated creases, like elephant’s skin — hence the condition’s name. It was also known as Audry’s Syndrome, Roy’s Syndrome and, most exotically, Touraine-Solent-Gole Syndrome. Adam knew all about this as his father-in-law — his ex-father-in-law — Brookman Maybury also suffered from acropachyderma. There was no cure but it wasn’t fatal, just unsightly. The most famous acropachydermic was the poet W.H. Auden. The man sitting beside Adam, John 1604, was not as bad as Auden but would run him close, one day. His naso-labial clefts looked an inch deep; four striations, so marked they looked like tribal scars, ran across his forehead, even with his face in repose; odd creases that seemed to have no bearing on any potential facial expression descended vertically from below the swagged flesh bagging beneath his eyes and his mangled chin looked as if it had been mutilated by some childhood accident. He turned and smiled, showing long brown teeth with large even gaps between them. He offered his hand.

“Hello, mate. Turpin. Vincent Turpin.”

“Adam.” They shook hands.

“You get a decent meal, here, so they tell me, Adam.”

“Good.”

“You just have to sit through the service, that’s all.”

Adam was going to say that it didn’t seem too onerous a price to pay but was interrupted by loud rock music blasting out from the two speakers — rock music with shrill, blaring trumpets and other brass and many drums of varying types thumping out a strident, addictively rhythmic dance beat. A man in purple and gold robes came dancing down the central aisle between the benches and a few of the Johns began to clap in time. The man paused in front of the dais and continued dancing for a while, head wobbling, eyes closed. He danced well, Adam thought: a good-looking man with a thick neck and strong features and a boxer’s broken nose. This would be Archbishop Yemi Thompson-Gbeho, patron and founder, he reckoned.

With a wave of his hand Bishop Yemi caused the music to stop and he took his place behind the lectern.

“Let us pray,” he said in a deep bass voice and everyone knelt on the cushions in front of them.

The prayer lasted, by Adam’s rough calculation, almost thirty minutes. He ceased to follow it after the opening phrases, letting his mind wander, tuning back in from time to time, growing increasingly aware of Turpin’s effortful breathing beside him — a kind of wheezing and whistling as if his nasal cavities were clogged with dense undergrowth — brambles and tough grass. What Adam heard of the prayer ranged widely through world geo-political events, touching many continents, happy outcomes to the various global crises being devoutly wished for. By the time Bishop Yemi had said, “In the name of our Lord, John Christ, amen,” Adam wondered if his stomach’s borborygmi could be heard at the back of the hall.

Bishop Yemi eventually requested them to be seated.

“Welcome, brothers,” he said, “to the Church of John Christ.” He looked over his small congregation. “Who, amongst you, has sinned?”

Glancing round, Adam saw that everyone had put their hands up. He and Turpin promptly, though a little sheepishly, did the same.

“In the name of John Christ your sins are forgiven,” Bishop Yemi said and opened what looked like a bible and continued. “Our lesson this evening comes from the Great Book of John, Revelation, chapter 13, verse 17.” He paused, and then his voice grew theatrically deep. “No man might buy or sell, save that he had the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

After the reading Bishop Yemi used the text to begin a free-associating and apparently improvised sermon. Adam now felt exhaustion creeping up on him and struggled to stay awake. As he drifted in and out of concentration, certain phrases, certain tropes, managed to imprint themselves on his mind.

“Would you stone your father?” Bishop Yemi bellowed at them. “You say — no. I say — yes, stone your father…” Then, minutes later, Adam re-focussed to hear: “You feel despair, you feel your life is worthless — cry out. CRY OUT! John, John Christ, John, the true Christ, come to my aid. He will come, my brothers…” Later still: “John Christ would bless the European Union — but he would not bless the G8 summit…” And then, “You eat chicken for supper, lovely roast chicken, you clean your teeth. In the morning you find a shred of chicken stuck between two molars and with your tongue — or a toothpick — you work it free. Do you spit it out? No: this is the chicken you chewed and swallowed last night. Why would you spit it out? No. You swallow it. These are the tiny blessings bestowed on us, the brothers of John Christ, like shreds of meat trapped between your teeth, small deliveries of nutrition, spiritual nutrition…” Then it all went hazy: “Mao Tse-tung…Grace Kelly…Shango, God of Lightning…Oliver Cromwell…” The words became mere sounds, all meaning gone.