Alex Preston - The Revelations

Marcus and Abby had breakfast in the kitchen, where Mrs Millman stood over the Aga stirring a pot of porridge. David and Sally sat side by side, very close together. Marcus wondered if they had had sex the night before. He and Abby slouched opposite them feeling somehow seedy, still swimming in the pleasure of their night together. The Earl was wearing a tweed jacket and a dark blue tie. He perched low over his bowl of cornflakes, his narrow eyes surveying the Course members as they came in to eat. David smiled at Marcus.

‘Mouse and Lee have already been down. I think they’re in the chapel preparing for this evening.’

Marcus couldn’t tell if there was reprimand in his voice.

‘What’s the plan for the day?’

‘Some discussion groups this morning, lunch in the dining hall at one o’clock and a walk this afternoon if the weather holds out. Then, of course, the service.’

‘The forecast isn’t that good, I’m afraid,’ Sally said, buttering a slice of toast.

Marcus and Abby ate quickly and in silence, then hurried back upstairs. They took a bath together as they had at university, carefully adjusting their limbs in the ancient iron tub with its rusty lion’s-claw feet. Abby ran her fingers slowly down the inside of his thighs as they lay in the hot water, singing softly to herself. Marcus watched as the thousands of tiny bubbles that clung to the nest of his pubes were dislodged by her fingers and rose swiftly through the water like champagne. By the time they had dried and were down in the chapel it was ten o’clock and the Course members sat around chatting.

Marcus still couldn’t remember the names of the girls in his discussion group; one was Lizzie and another Sarah, but he didn’t know the others and the remaining boyfriends were just flushed cheeks on vague faces. He was glad to see that most of his group were surrounding David and the Earl. David was standing in front of the Stations of the Cross describing the meaning of each scene while the Earl interjected occasionally with stories about the artist he had invited to paint the images directly onto the walls of the chapel. Philip sat with Mouse and Sally in one corner. Mouse was talking very quickly, his hands dancing as he spoke. Lee sat apart from them, her legs stretched out along a pew, her arms around her shoulders. A beam of sunlight fell into her short hair and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the brightness. Marcus took Abby’s arm and they made their way to the front of the chapel, where Maki and Neil were inspecting engravings on the pillars in front of the altar.

‘Morning.’

‘Morning, Marcus. Hi, Abby. Have you seen these inscriptions? The lettering is exquisite.’ Neil ran his finger over the text, which Marcus recognised as a chapter from Ecclesiastes: ‘Rejoice, O young man in thy youth. .’ The letters were like runes, difficult to read at first, but once his eyes had become accustomed to the jagged shapes, Marcus saw how perfectly they expressed the regretful wisdom of the words. Abby stood behind Neil and reached over to run her own fingers over the inscription.

Neil and Maki sat down on the steps leading up to the altar while Marcus and Abby leaned back against the front pew. Marcus began to say something, but Abby cut him off.

‘It’s about getting rid of your inhibitions, this weekend. All those things that get in the way when you’re in London. It’s why we always come out to the countryside. Silence, music, peace. This is what we need to get closer to God.’

‘I’ve been reading the Bible,’ said Neil, ‘and I keep feeling like I almost get it. As if there’s something very obvious that I’m missing. But I’m almost there. I know I am.’

‘Let today carry you in its current. Don’t try to force it, just let yourself be open to whatever happens.’ Abby was glowing; she reached out a hand and laid it on the arm of the older man, who was dressed in stiff smart-casual: chinos and a blue button-down shirt. Maki, who had been hidden in the shadow of one of the pillars, leaned forward.

‘What about the tongues? I heard David last night and I just can’t imagine a situation where I’d be able to do that.’

‘What did you think when you heard it?’ Abby tilted towards Maki, mirroring her.

‘I suppose it was beautiful. It sounded like just another part of the music. It’s the thing I like best about the Course, the music. So it was nice to hear, but I don’t know if it meant any more to me than that. I certainly didn’t understand it.’

‘I don’t think you need to understand it. And you certainly don’t need to join in. I think the way that it’s presented, people expect the Course to change everything. It doesn’t need to. It can be the start of a journey; it doesn’t always take people all the way to their goal.’

‘Hmm. . I’m just not sure it’s for me.’

‘Why did you first come to the Course, Maki?’ Marcus asked, aware that he should be supporting Abby.

‘I suppose it was to make friends, mainly. But also to find somewhere, I don’t know, spiritual. I’ve always felt that I needed to believe in something, I just never discovered exactly what.’

‘Well, you have friends here. And the Course is an extraordinarily spiritual experience. It seems to me that you just need to allow yourself to believe. Feel good about the fact that you found exactly what you were looking for. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the search that we don’t allow ourselves to accept that we’ve reached our destination.’

They spoke for another hour; Philip came over to join them after a while. They leaned back against the stone pillars, spread themselves out across the pews, listening carefully to each other as they talked, each awaiting their turn to speak, measuring their words precisely. Sally and the Earl sat down, smiling, as Marcus told the members about C. S. Lewis’s conversion.

‘He was travelling down to Whipsnade Zoo. He set out on his trip as an agnostic and arrived a believer. You need to realise that the conscious mind is the last thing to change. The more you read and the more you think about God, the more He works behind the scenes. It’s why the kind of epiphany that Lewis describes isn’t as instantaneous and unreasoning as it first appears. If you lay the groundwork then God will do the rest. And here at the Retreat, we try to do as much as we can to create an environment that allows that change to take place.’

Only Lee still sat apart from the various groups. The beam of light had moved across the room and now she was in the shadows, dust thick in the air around her, her short hair flat on her head. Marcus could see that she was looking at the pines through the high windows, watching them dance in the gentle breeze. She turned and caught his eye for a moment and he shivered and reached out for Abby’s hand. When he looked back at Lee her head was tilted back again and she seemed miles away from any of them.

At one o’clock, Mrs Millman arrived at the door of the chapel and called them for lunch. They made their way through to the dining hall, where they continued to talk as they ate baked potatoes piled high with grated cheese and baked beans. After lunch, Marcus walked over to Lee and laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Are you coming for a walk? Do you remember when we used to walk in the meadows at university? We’d always go on ahead. I used to love just listening to you talk.’

‘I was thinking about those walks just the other day. Doesn’t it seem like a long time ago?’

‘In a way, I suppose.’

‘It feels like a lifetime to me. We were so young back then. Everything felt ahead of us.’

The Course members were slowly filing out of the hall, disappearing upstairs to collect coats and boots ready for the walk. Marcus gave Lee’s shoulder a final squeeze and they made their way up to their rooms. The Earl and David were waiting at the front of the house when Marcus came back downstairs. Abby, wearing a blue Husky and hiking boots, was handing out thermoses of hot chocolate with Sally. The wind had picked up and the sound of the pines blocked out the noise of the road. Marcus pulled his scarf tightly around his throat. Rooks swirled in the air above him, whipped into hurtling arabesques by the wind.