Alex Preston - The Revelations

The twins bounced in front of them, squealing. Neil slipped Marcus a business card with a sly nod. All the pale, quiet girls from Marcus’s group came up to him and hugged him. David opened some bottles of champagne and they toasted each other, toasted the missing members. Neil suggested they toast Jesus. When the last members went home, Marcus and Abby walked out into the night with David.

‘Well done, you two.’ The priest sounded a little drunk.

‘It was a good way to finish,’ said Marcus.

‘I always knew I could count on you guys. Lee and Mouse were too young, too fragile. I should have realised that. But you two are my stalwarts, you have repaid the faith I showed in you.’

‘It does feel good, to see the new members like that, to know that the Course is now central to their lives. I feel like we have achieved something, that maybe it was worth all the pain, worth losing Lee and Mouse.’ Marcus smiled at the priest and took Abby’s hand.

‘I’m glad you feel that way. Have you heard from Mouse?’ David asked.

Marcus shook his head. ‘I’ll go up to the boat at the weekend. I’ve left him a few messages. I’m sure he’s just feeling shell-shocked by the whole thing. He’ll be back.’

‘He’ll want to see you before you go. And he always loves Christmas at the church. I’m sure he’ll come to the service on Sunday. We’re singing carols.’

Marcus and Abby got into the car just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

*

On Saturday morning, when the snow had been reduced to a grey dusting on slate rooftops, Marcus and Abby walked up to the canal. They would have to leave Darwin behind when they went to New York, and they looked at the dog fondly as he capered alongside them. Sally Nightingale would care for him until they returned. Marcus led Darwin along the towpath, allowing him to burrow into mounds of wet snow, where he’d draw his muzzle out dripping and dirty and fix Marcus with an accusing glare. When they got to the Gentle Ben there were no lights on. Marcus tried the door, but this time it was firmly locked.

‘Shall we call his mother?’ Abby asked, as they walked back towards Ladbroke Grove.

‘I don’t know. I think if he wanted to see us, he would.’

As they walked back, Abby took his hand.

‘Do you think you'd ever give up smoking? It would mean a lot to me.’

He reached into his pocket, drew out a packet of cigarettes and crumpled it into a ball. He hurled the ball into the canal.

They made their way up the ramp and onto the bridge. The canal was healing over with ice. Darwin poked his nose through the bars of the railings and sniffed the cold air. Marcus looked up through skeletal trees into the graveyard. He could make out the roof of the chapel in the distance, the peaks of the obelisks that lined the avenue where he had slipped. Abby was watching a pair of Canada geese waddling sedately along the towpath.

‘They look like old women,’ she said. ‘Querulous old women complaining about the weather.’

The geese, seeing a gaggle of their companions squabbling over husks of bread thrown from a narrowboat moored further up the towpath, started to run. Flapping their wings and squawking like old-fashioned bicycle horns, they rose up into the air and were suddenly majestic as they wheeled over their comrades. Marcus and Abby walked arm in arm down Ladbroke Grove, inexplicably cheered by the sight of the geese transformed in flight.

Days passed in busy preparation for their move. They would be spending Christmas with Marcus’s mother in Surrey and then flying to New York on the twenty-seventh. There was still no sign of Mouse. Marcus tried his mobile every few days, but it always rang through to the answerphone. He had stopped leaving messages. Snow began to fall again, and this time settled in heaps outside the front door of the block of flats. Marcus persuaded himself that he could see Abby gaining weight. He kissed her very carefully in the mornings before he set off for work. Barely allowing his lips to graze her skin, he’d lean down over her and watch as she smiled in her sleep.

Marcus had handed in his notice to Michael Faraday, his senior partner at the law firm.

‘But you’re doing very well here,’ the sharp-faced little man had said, running his eye down Marcus’s evaluations. ‘There’s a big future for you at the firm if you stick at it.’

Marcus just grinned and shook his head. It was agreed that he would work until Christmas.

In the event there was very little for Marcus to do. No one wanted him to start a case when it was known that he was leaving. The Chinese bank had dropped its case against Plantagenet Partners due to lack of evidence. Marcus spent his days organising the move. They would let the flat in Notting Hill to a couple from the Course. With this income and the salary that he had agreed with David, Marcus worked out that they wouldn’t be much worse off in New York than in London. As he strolled out for long lunches during those weeks in early December, he thought ahead happily to the life they would build in another city, to the child who would come.

*

On the Wednesday afternoon before Christmas, Marcus set out for Senate House. He had spent the morning on the telephone to the removals company that was transporting their books and clothes out to the US. After lunch he sat throwing a tennis ball against his window until the partner in the office next door hurled a book at the wall. Marcus reached for his phone and started to dial Mouse, then stood up and pulled on his coat.

He walked up through the City, along High Holborn and up Farringdon Road. Snow blew in gusts along the wide roads. He saw the flushed faces of lunchtime drinkers, ties loosened around fat necks, hands clasping pints as they braved the weather to smoke. He drew out a piece of nicotine gum and chewed it, realising that he didn’t miss smoking. It had become a chore, the need to make chilly forays into the freezing winter for the diminishing hit of his super-light fags.

When he came to Russell Square he looked up at the tower above him, straining his eyes to see the misty summit. There were strange runic designs in copper set into the front of the tower. It looked to him like the headquarters of a cult. He walked through the heavy metal doors and into the entrance hall. It was gloomy inside. The marble floor was wet with muddy footprints, blown-in snow.

Marcus followed signs for the Special Collections Reading Room. He knew this was Mouse’s domain. The lift was an ancient contraption, and it moaned and clunked as it took Marcus up to the fourth floor. He stepped out and walked over to a bank of turnstiles. It was silent in the wood-panelled hallway. He stood at the desk and rang a bell; it trilled loudly enough to make him jump. Finally, a girl wearing thick glasses and a green cardigan walked through the swing doors behind the desk and nodded at him.

‘Can I help you?’

In the instant that the girl moved through the doors, Marcus had seen Mouse. His friend was in the room behind the doors, his feet up on a table, a mug of tea in his hands.

‘I’m looking for Alastair Burrows. If you wouldn’t mind telling him that Marcus is here to see him.’

‘Um, yes, OK. I’ll go and get him.’

The girl disappeared behind the doors again into what Marcus presumed was a staff room. Several minutes passed and then Mouse came out, alone.

‘Hi, Marcus.’

‘Hi.’

They stood looking at one another in the yellow light of the old library.

‘I can do you a day pass if you’d like to come in?’

‘That would be good.’

Marcus waited while Mouse tapped away at a keyboard. The turnstile opened and he walked through. Mouse stepped out from behind the desk and held out his hand to Marcus. Marcus shook it, then reached over to hug him. They stood in this awkward half-embrace for a moment and then Mouse drew back.