Alex Preston - The Revelations

‘I thought you’d like to be up here. The rest of the members will be in the servants’ quarters on the lower floors, but these rooms are so nice and light. Bit of a climb, but worth it, especially in the mornings. Now you four get settled in and then do come down to the kitchen for some tea.’ She picked her way carefully downstairs.

Marcus and Abby took the room in the centre. Mouse carried his bag into the smaller bedroom on the right, while Lee stood reading a tapestry on the wall before entering the room on the left. Marcus looked again at her short hair and saw how dark roots now made up the bulk of it; just the tips were still blonde. Her hair was returning to the colour it had been when he first knew her. He turned and walked into his room. Abby flopped onto the large bed as Marcus closed the door and crossed to the window. The light outside had begun to fade. The room looked eastwards and Marcus saw darkness gathering on the horizon. Below he could make out an ancient chapel whose dormer windows gave it the air of an enormous dovecote. Beside it he could see the roof of the dining hall which stretched out from the main house like an arm. The hall’s roof had been turfed over, a black iron railing around the perimeter and spiral stairways leading down into the garden. The ground dropped away swiftly after the hall, down to the lake that was now almost hidden in the gloom of the valley. It was five o’clock.

Lee and Mouse were already in the kitchen when Marcus and Abby came down. They sat beside one another at the long table in the centre of the room. A fire burned in one corner. Mrs Millman stood by the wide black Aga buttering toast while Mouse held forth on the frieze of mermaids he had seen carved into the wall of a room he entered by accident on the way down to the kitchen.

‘. . and they seemed to be swimming towards you, beckoning you somehow. .’ He waved his teacup as he spoke, the dark liquid slopping close to the rim of the cup with each frantic movement. Then the Earl and the Nightingales arrived and a sense of seriousness descended. Mrs Millman retired to a chair by the window to polish a box of silverware. David sat at the head of the table and placed his fingers around his mug, fixing each of them in turn with his pale eyes.

‘This Retreat is going to be an entirely new experience for each of you guys. Not only because you are Course leaders this time. There’s something special about this place, something holy. When I decided to leave my job as a banker, to devote myself to God on a full-time basis, I came up here for a week to think about it. You can feel the history here, a history of strongly held faith. So spend time with the new members, help them on their path to conversion, but also spend time with yourselves, take this time to push your own spiritual development a little further along.’

The priest leaned forward over the table and lowered his voice.

‘The Retreat is the decisive moment in any Course. It’s where we find out how we’ve done, whether the seeds we’ve planted will sprout or not. This is where we get our new members to commit to the Course, where we lay foundations that will last a lifetime. Any drop-outs from here on hit us very hard. If new members leave after the first few sessions, it’s unlikely they would have seen it through to the end in any case. If they come away with us here, then we should be able to complete the conversion. Don’t let up, don’t allow yourselves to relax. Make sure that you look back on your first Retreat as Course leaders as a successful one. We won’t tolerate failure. We can’t.’

Marcus had been aware of something nagging at him for a while, something dimly perceived, at the verge of his consciousness. Only when David paused in his speech to sip his tea did Marcus realise that he could hear traffic. Not the road they had come in on, but the relentless drone of a motorway: articulated lorries and caravans, car transporters and pantechnicons. Dusk had fallen outside and, looking out of the kitchen window, he could see a thin belt of yellow light above the trees fading into the night sky. David continued to talk for the next twenty minutes, reminiscing about previous Retreats. Then it was time to go out and greet the new members who had come up from London in a coach that barely squeezed its way through the gates and under the canopy of trees.

The front of the house was illuminated by the coach’s headlights as the new members stepped blinking from the vehicle’s dark interior. Neil was first, followed by Maki and the twins. Philip was the last to make his way down to join the cluster of twenty or so who stood close together in front of the large doors. Marcus could see their breath caught in the lights that blazed from the coach. He walked out and picked up the twins’ suitcases as David bounded out to welcome the new arrivals. The priest swept his pale eyes over the Course members.

‘Hi guys. This is where it begins for you. For many this weekend will be one of the most important experiences of your lives. Savour it all. Prepare yourselves for miraculous things. Approach the weekend with an open mind and you’ll find yourselves changed beyond recognition.

‘Now come on inside, make yourself at home. We’ll have a brief service of thanksgiving before dinner. The Course leaders have been getting to know the layout of this extraordinary place, so do ask if you get lost.’ The Earl stood bearlike behind him, nodding every so often.

*

The chapel was very cold. Candles had been lit along the aisle; otherwise the small church was dark. Marcus’s hands felt stiff and unresponsive on the frets of his guitar. Only he and Lee were performing that evening. The whole band would play together for the main ceremony on Saturday night. They had tuned up, and now they were waiting for the members to come down from the house. Lee was fidgeting notes from the piano with her right hand.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked, resting his bass on the ground in front of him and going to sit next to her at the piano. She shuffled thin buttocks up the bench and he began to play along with her, watching her fingers and trying to copy the melody. He realised that she was playing Pictures at an Exhibition .

‘I’m OK,’ she said.

Marcus felt her swaying slightly as she played. Without missing a note, she placed her left hand on his and helped him to find the melody. Her hands were colder than his, the frosty pressure of her fingers made him shiver slightly.

‘You love this piece of music, don’t you?’

She stopped playing for a moment and looked over at him.

‘Yes. My dad taught it to me when I was very young. It makes me think of him.’

She started to play again, now extemporising a harmony over his refrain. She closed her eyes.

‘It reminds me of what my dad’s music used to be like, before he got depressed. His new composition is so bleak, so empty. The stuff he doesn’t burn, I mean. It seems to me that all of his new music aspires to silence. When I speak to him on the phone, he’s often silent for a long time. We sit and listen to each other breathe. Sometimes he’ll hang up without saying anything.’

Marcus stopped playing. He sat back and watched Lee nod her head in time to the music.

‘It’s like he has used up all of the ways of saying what he needs to say through music and language, and silence is the only voice left to him.’

‘Do you think that you inherit your slumps from your dad?’

Lee stopped playing and turned towards him, her hands folded in her lap.

‘Of course. But he’s further along than me. I’m certain that my dad will kill himself soon. It’s something that I have known for a long time. And I miss him already. Because this silence — that’s what it is. It’s a kind of suicide. He’s backing away from the world and finally he will make his move complete.’