Alex Preston: The Revelations

Mouse watched Lee, taking advantage of the fact that her eyes were tightly closed. Her chest rose and fell very slowly, quivering as her lungs emptied. He looked at the threads that snaked down her thighs from her frayed skirt. When she was drunk and let him stay over in her tiny flat with its air of girlish chastity, he would creep into her room in the darkness of 3 a.m. She always slept with the duvet tucked between her legs, and Mouse would stand in the pale orange light of the London night and look at whichever leg was visible. He would strain his eyes against the dimness, trying to see into the shadows where her thighs disappeared inside the frilled shorts she wore to sleep. He kicked her chair with one particularly forceful jerk of his leg. She very deliberately laid her hand on his thigh and squeezed. He smiled a broad and hopeful smile.

*

‘I always worry about doing this so early on the first evening. .’ Abby watched the priest with wide eyes as he spoke. ‘I’d like to ask everyone to be quiet for a moment. Just think about what you have heard so far. If you’d like to pray, then I encourage you to do so. But if not, just enjoy the silence here. Enjoy a bit of time away from that constant noise outside.’

Abby thought back to when she first attended the Course. She didn’t go just because Lee was a member, although she saw the change it worked on her friend: a greater seriousness, a sense of commitment. Nor did she go because she felt any profound spiritual need. It was because she had been standing in the rain on Battersea Bridge after an argument with Marcus. The rain was falling so hard it was as if the river was trying to reach up to the clouds. It was a terrible argument: they had screamed at each other until she ran from the flat, out of the front door and down to the river. She stood on Battersea Bridge and thought about jumping. Not in the way that someone seriously considering doing so would think about it, but in a way that tried to shape her mind into that of someone who might. To Abby, this was as good as doing it. She stood there, imagining the rush of the air, the downward plunge, the shock of the water. At that moment a bus had rumbled past, throwing up the contents of a large puddle, soaking her. Part of her thought that she must have jumped, she must have lost her mind and jumped. But she looked up, saw the bus, and on its back was an advert for the Course. The cool, smiling eyes of David Nightingale. Shouldn’t there be more to life than this? in bright red letters. She signed up the next day.

Abby prayed that the evening would pass well. She prayed for Marcus. She prayed that she might be pregnant. That the butterflies in her stomach might signal that something was being created. And she prayed that if she was, she might keep it this time. That in nine months she’d lie listening to a baby’s moth-flutter breath. She would make David godfather. She opened her eyes for a moment, saw him with his head bowed and closed her eyes again.

She remembered the night she had lost the first baby. Very early on. Not even a baby. A clot, a smudge of cells. She had been working late with Sally Nightingale on a proposal for exporting the Course to other Christian denominations. It had felt just like the return of her period, a pain which built from nothing into a sharp twisting of her gut. Sally had taken her into the rectory and waited outside the door of the bathroom, asking in a reedy voice what she could do. When she saw the blood Abby had known immediately. She was businesslike and brave about the whole thing, biting her lip and wincing to stop herself crying out. She found painkillers in the bathroom cabinet, bundled up tissues to stanch the flow and mopped up the bluish drops that were falling onto the tiled floor.

When she came out of the bathroom it was the priest and not his wife who was standing there. The light from the bathroom falling into the darkened hallway cut a bar across him, illuminating the whiteness of his teeth and his hair. She realised that he already knew everything and slumped into his outstretched arms. It was such a relief that nothing more needed to be said. They had descended the stairs, David’s arms still around her, and he drove her to the hospital. They sat in silence in the white light of the waiting room until the doctor had called her into the curtained cubicle, checked her over with brusque, efficient hands, and sent her home.

The priest’s tenderness had reminded her of the first time she went on the Retreat. It had been held that year at a down-at-heel hotel in the West Country whose burly proprietor was a Course member. There were chickens in the courtyard outside the rooms. Abby had heard the fox in her sleep, had dreamed the terrified shrieks of the hens, the sound of jaws snapping shut. She woke early and went out to the henhouse, which was a silent mortuary, blood and feathers. David was sitting in the dust cradling a chicken. It was still just alive, its bare neck white and raw, blood darkening its breast. David spoke to the chicken in a quiet voice, stroking the bird’s broken wings, murmuring into its feathers. He was like that with her when she miscarried; after the hospital, he drove her home. He waited until Marcus had let her in, sitting in his purring car and watching them embrace in the doorway.

*

The lights in the church brightened suddenly, and David raised his head and opened his eyes.

‘Music is the closest of the art forms to God — when you lose yourself in a piece of music, it’s a truly spiritual experience. The music here at St Botolph’s is justly famous. So sit back and enjoy. Let me introduce: The Revelations.’

Spotlights swept the stage, focusing on the band’s name which was spelled out in blue letters on the skin of Mouse’s bass drum. David stooped to pick up his guitar, nodding to one of the helpers who sat at the side of the stage adjusting the settings on his amp. The four friends rose from their seats and walked together down the aisle. The air around them hummed as they climbed the steps and took up their instruments. Mouse spun his drumsticks several times before beginning a thrusting, military beat. Then Marcus came in with a bass line that roared through the church. Lee sat at the piano, her visible cheek stained with a vivid pink blush at being so observed. The priest strummed power chords and then Abby sidled up to the front of the stage, her hips moving slightly. She hunched her large shoulders forward, brought her hands up either side of the microphone and began to sing.

The music was not spectacular in itself: choruses cribbed from stadium rock anthems, verses that strained against the weight of the meaning they attempted to impart. But there, in the warm light of the church, with some of the older members joining in at the back for the choruses, arms held out, eyes closed, it was hard not to be moved. The four young people were earnest and beautiful, still retaining enough of their youth to touch the audience. The priest played a brief and nimble guitar solo, one leg raised on his amplifier, his eyes staring up into the shadows that clustered in the roof of the church. Abby looked extraordinary on the stage. As if she was made to be seen among such expansive scenery. She didn’t seem awkward or heavy or masculine there. Marcus watched the young men in the audience stare up at his wife as she sang and tried to see her reflection in their eyes.

The second song was much softer than the first. The lights on stage were dimmed so that only Abby was clearly visible, with Marcus and David shadowy figures either side of her. Mouse and Lee were both lost in the darkness. Lee started to play a series of arpeggios, the music rising out of the silence. Mouse tapped out a gentle rhythm, the drumstick struck against the rim of the snare. Then Marcus and David came in, and Abby began to sing.