Alex Preston - The Revelations

They set off up the driveway, crossed the road that they had driven in on the day before, and descended into the next valley on a worn footpath. The sky’s earlier blue was now a patchwork of clouds at varying altitudes, each level represented by a different colour: dark stratus against lighter cumulus, and far above, a blanket of white cirrus. The Earl and David strode out in front with Sally and Neil following closely behind them. Lee walked a few paces ahead of Mouse, who jogged every few steps to keep up with her. Abby held Marcus tightly by the hand. Soon they climbed to the top of another hill; Chipping Norton lay to the south, the chimney of its abandoned mill standing over the town like an accusing finger. They crossed the Banbury road and made their way alongside an old stone wall and down through high-piled leaves at the feet of ancient horse chestnuts.

The ground was soft beneath their feet as they walked down into the dell ahead of them. Marcus helped Abby to climb over a stile that stood in the shade of a huge old oak. He saw that Philip and Maki were walking together, deep in conversation. There was a village at the bottom of the hill. A church was lost within a protective circle of dark trees, a large gloomy house with shuttered windows blindly overlooked the village. The walls that crossed the fields here were crumbling, nettles swamped the verges of the road. Nothing moved.

The Earl led them down a narrow path between the church and a row of tumbledown cottages and then over another stile and into a small wood. They came out on top of a grassy mound looking down over rolling fields, a stream which wended along the bottom of the valley, silver birches that climbed the opposite hillside. Marcus caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a doe crossing the stream, pearls of water thrown up by its long legs. By the time he had raised his arm to point it out to Abby, it had disappeared. They marched on.

Marcus found himself walking with Lee as they headed down towards a wooden footbridge that hung haphazardly above the swirling waters of the stream. She was wearing a Barbour jacket, pink wellingtons beneath her long skirt. She took his arm.

‘You and Abby seem happy. Go on — you can tell me — is she pregnant?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Are you trying? I’d love it if you were trying.’

‘Maybe. Maybe we’re trying, yes.’

Over the bridge and into the woods they went. In the dubious light under trees that creaked in the wind, Lee gripped his hand.

‘I’m really struggling with my thesis at the moment. I was thinking I might chuck in the PhD.’

‘Really? I always thought it was perfect for you. I liked to imagine you shut up in the library reading ancient manuscripts written by crazy saints.’ The others had disappeared, and Marcus led them along what looked like the path; a circle of rooks blackened the air above the trees, cawing.

‘I look around the reading room and I see so many girls like me. It’s a way of backing away from the world, I think. To be more comfortable in the past than you are in the present. There’s a kind of competition for obscurity between these girls. How arcane a subject can you feasibly write about for eighty thousand words? How little could it possibly relate to the real world? I used to think it was a balance; that the Course and my schoolwork were a balance against the rest of life. But it feels like things have become too heavily weighted in that direction, that real life doesn’t stand a chance when measured against all that history, all that abstraction.’

‘You’ll be fine. You think too much. I can see how much you enjoy it: it’s something you’re really good at. We all need something like that. And it obviously helps with the Course.’

‘I don’t know about that. One of the things I realise when I read Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich is just how conventional the Course’s idea of God is. It seems strange that David is so heavily focused on redefining the spiritual side of faith — the way we feel and think and act — but doesn’t try to challenge that tired Sunday School image of God. The Course’s way of thinking about Him just seems so banal — there’s no sense of mystery there.’ Lee stooped to look at a clump of small white mushrooms that were growing between a delta of roots that shot out from the foot of an oak. Marcus stooped alongside her, placing his thumb into the feathery fronds that sat beneath the tight caps.

‘It does feel like we’re still being asked to buy into the idea of an old man with a beard,’ Marcus said, as the cap of the mushroom broke from its stem, sending up a puff of white smoke that drifted and dissipated on the breeze.

‘Exactly. It’s childish,’ said Lee.

‘But who do you talk to, when you pray, I mean? If you don’t picture God like that?’

They continued down the thickly wooded path.

‘I don’t think of God. I say prayers in the way we were originally intended to: as a way of emptying the mind, readying us for the presence of God. In The Cloud of Unknowing there’s a line that says “of God Himself no man can think”. It’s in the stillness when you empty your mind that you get closest to God.’

‘And that works for you?’

Lee looked at him through narrow, serious eyes.

‘I’m not sure. Sometimes silence makes things better; sometimes it’s where I feel most trapped. Because the most awful things can creep into that silence.’ Her words faded at the end. They walked a little further; then she continued.

‘This voice starts speaking to me. I’m not going mad, don’t worry. But this voice is very critical, totally unforgiving. It tells me not to be such a goddamn idiot, that it’s all my fault, that I need to pull myself together. And it’s not my dad’s voice, and it’s not my mother’s. But it’s there and it’s making me very unhappy.’

Marcus squeezed her hand and looked over at her. With her thin face and small nose, Lee looked very girlish. He thought that she would always look girlish and, although she wasn’t as doomed as she liked to pretend, that there would be a time when that girlishness would grow spinsterly and unbearably sad. She brightened her voice and rested her head playfully on Marcus’s shoulder for a moment.

‘I’ll be all right. Of course I’ll be all right. I just feel that I’m in this in-between space, where I’m no longer a girl, but I don’t really know how to be a woman yet. Part of me wants to skip straight to old age. I think I’d make a fantastic old lady.’

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.