Alex Preston - The Revelations

‘Margery was amazing. She would have been one of those ball-breaking City traders if she was alive now. Or a television entrepreneur. She set up a brewery in King’s Lynn — it was one of the few jobs that women were allowed to do — she had fourteen children, then, at the age of forty or so, decided she wanted to give herself over to religious life. She struggled to get her husband to take a vow of chastity, describes all his objections in great detail in her book, but finally she succeeded and then set off on pilgrimages all across Europe, having increasingly violent visions at each new shrine.’

Lee continued in a distant, dreamy voice.

‘She wrote down her visions, or probably dictated them to someone. Some of them are really trivial, she talks about this great miracle when a vision helped her to find a ring she’d lost, but parts of her text are very moving, particularly her visit to Julian, who must have been at least eighty when Margery came to see her.’

They were moving downhill. Lee took Marcus’s hand again. Through the trees, Marcus could see thunderclouds raising their dark hoods on the horizon.

‘I like to think that one day I could be like Julian. That people struggling with their faith might come and see me, and I could use all of this bad stuff I’ve gone through to help them.’

‘You will, I’m sure of it. I know what you mean about this being an in-between time, too. I’m sure our parents were grown up by this age. Mine had two kids by the time they were in their mid-twenties. And they were so incredibly happy together, happy in a settled, grown-up way. I still feel like a teenager.’

‘It’s because we had it so easy,’ Lee said, swinging the arm that held Marcus’s hand. ‘I think one of the reasons my father has these terrible fits of depression is that he can never live up to the memory of his parents. They made it through the war, helped to hide Jews in the lofts of churches in Budapest, then they were these great heroic figures in the resistance against the Soviet occupation. They gave up their lives for an ideal. My father just writes music about it. He gets so frustrated because he wants his music to achieve something impossible: he wants it to match up to the physical heroism of his parents.’

Marcus could hear Mouse’s voice somewhere through the trees ahead. Lee continued.

‘I don’t even have enough of a connection to that history to be able to make music about it. Our generation is so divorced from that time of action, that time of strong idealistic belief. I think it’s one of the reasons that the Course has been so successful. It allows us to feel noble, to imagine that we’re aspiring to a higher ideal.’

‘I’m sure that’s right,’ Marcus said. ‘Humans aren’t used to being so comfortable: it goes against our nature. It’s maybe why I still feel like an adolescent. Because nothing has happened to make me a man yet.’

Lee smiled shyly at Marcus.

‘I’ve never shown you this.’

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her wallet. Opening a flap, she drew out a small photograph. They stopped in a small clearing and looked at the picture. It was a photo of Lee as a child, six or seven, standing on a beach in a red polka-dot swimming costume. Her father stood at her side, the sand sloping steeply away behind them to the sea. One of his hands gripped the young girl’s shoulder. Lee was smiling in the photograph, a missing tooth blacking her smile, her nose wrinkling.

‘I look at this picture all the time. I just can’t believe that I was ever this child, that there is any link between the person I am now and that happy, smiling kid. My problem is that I can’t recapture what it felt like to be young like that, I can’t draw a thread between now and then. A lot of the time, I’m trying to thrust myself back into the person I was then, or as a teenager. Trying to be anyone else but the me I am now.’

Marcus squeezed her hand and they walked on in silence. The others were waiting for them at the edge of the wood. Abby and the Earl were perched on a tree stump sipping from their thermoses; David and Sally were looking through a book, attempting to identify a toadstool that was growing at the foot of a gnarled elm. Mouse stood further off with Maki. Black clouds blotted the sky behind them.

Marcus didn’t see the cows in the next field until they were almost upon them. The ground undulated deceptively, with hillocks hidden by clumps of hawthorn, declivities concealed by brambles. Marcus was walking at the head of the group, Lee and Abby following slightly behind him. The cows seemed to rise out of a dip in the ground and then there they were, almost surrounding Marcus, their large heads turning very slowly to regard the Course members. There was a barbed-wire fence running along one side of the field. A narrow passage led between the fence and the cows. There were perhaps twelve of the beasts. Marcus didn’t know what sort of cows they were, but they were enormous: huge, swinging heads on thick necks, massive haunches. There was something prehistoric about them.

‘Oh, look at the cows,’ he heard Abby say behind him. ‘I never know if they’re black with white patches or the other way around. What d’you think, Marcus?’

He stared into the cows’ bloodshot eyes. He edged towards the channel between the cows and the fence and then gestured for Abby and Mouse to pass behind him. The gate leading out of the field was fifty feet away over rough ground. Abby didn’t move. He gestured again and hissed.

‘Get moving. Quickly.’

‘What? Oh, Marcus, are you scared of the cows?’

Mouse scampered past, cheering, and then stood on the other side of the herd, dancing on the spot. The cows swung their heads from one side to the other, as if weighing their options. Two cows began, with great deliberation, to trot towards Mouse. He backed away, still calling out to the others. The cows increased their pace. It didn’t look as if they were moving any faster than a slow trot, but Marcus could see that they were gaining on Mouse. One of the cows nearer Marcus edged towards the fence, looking to close off the passage through which Mouse had passed. Marcus watched as Mouse realised that they were going to catch him. Head down, arms pumping furiously, Mouse plunged towards the gate at the edge of the field. The cows’ hoofs pounded the earth, sending up damp clods of turf. Diving, tumbling, Mouse rolled under the bottom of the gate and lay on the ground, panting. Marcus watched the cows come to a disappointed halt and then turn and trot back towards the herd.

David came to stand beside Marcus.

‘Bloody stupid animals, aren’t they?’ The priest was carrying a walking stick with a duck’s head carved into the handle. ‘Let’s clear a way through.’

David stepped towards the nearest cow, raised his stick above his head and brought it down hard on the animal’s neck. The cow didn’t move, hardly seemed aware of the blow. The priest hit the cow again and began to shout, providing a commentary to the Course members between yells.

‘Get on! You need to make it very clear who’s boss. Get on with you, I say! Show no fear, don’t allow yourself to be intimidated. Yah! Get on now! They’re more scared of you than you are of them.’

Marcus doubted this last point. The priest was bringing his stick down with regular, vicious strokes on the forehead of the nearest cow. The animal backed away slowly, drawing into the heart of the herd. Marcus took the opportunity to pass closely along the fence and then, walking very swiftly, he moved towards the gate where Mouse was sucking on a straw. Marcus pulled himself up alongside his friend and called out to the others.

‘Just follow me. It’s fine. Don’t run or panic and you’ll be OK.’