Alex Preston - The Revelations

‘We have enough old men in the church. It’s time to give youth a chance. I think sometimes we forget how young Jesus himself was. These young people. .’

David remembered how Lee’s fingers used to look when she played. He recalled placing his hands over hers, feeling the delicate bones moving, nursing the notes from the piano. Her head nodding as she swayed with the music. He remembered that, just before she had died, she had cut her hair. Then he saw her skin peeling from her scalp in his nightmare.

‘. . It’s amazing to see the devotion in the eyes of these young people, before they have been ruined by the world. .’ David’s breaths came fast and shallow. His heart seemed to be skipping beats, dancing across his chest in jags and stutters.

‘. . While they still have hope. .’ Suddenly, terribly distinctly, he pictured the moment when the hairless skull in his nightmare turned towards him. Hollow sockets where Lee’s eyes should have been, pinkish flesh clinging to bone in the corners.

‘It’s. . Working with these young people is so. .’

His mind was blank. He could see his irregular pulse in the corners of his eyes. He looked down at the Earl, whose face had turned very red. He saw one of the Americans glance at his watch. He leaned forward onto the lectern, which began to wobble. His water glass fell to the floor, spilling its contents onto the wooden stage and then rolling off to land at the Earl’s feet.

‘Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. . thanks very much,’ he said, lifting his hand and waving half-heartedly to the audience. He walked from the stage. A few people clapped. Silence followed by the scraping of chairs, muttered conversation. Sally was waiting for him. He hugged her distractedly, looking over her shoulder for the Earl.

‘What the fuck was that, David?’

The big man’s face was purple. He loosened his tie with one hand and pushed Sally aside with the other.

‘You knew what you had to do. I thought you were up to this. I told you. I told you we only had one shot. Fuck!’

David and Sally sat in the rectory later that day. Sally had made them both a cup of tea. They were side by side on the sofa. Sally picked at an embroidery on her lap, pausing every so often to lift her tea to her lips. David stared out into the rain that fell through yellow light.

‘I expect you had too much coffee. It can do that, you know,’ Sally said.

‘Yes, I expect that was it.’

He sat as the light began to fade. Sally went through to the kitchen to make dinner. David knitted his fingers together and started to pray. But where in the past the words of his prayers had come easily, now there was just silence. He once again felt as if the walls of his throat were closing in. He couldn’t find any way to speak to God, to the God who had been beside him for so long, whom he had addressed as a favoured employee might speak to his managing director. He fell down onto his knees, then forward onto his elbows. He lay on the thick carpet and sobbed, words stumbling over each other in his foggy mind: Our father who art, Our father, Our father who art in, Our father. .

*

Mouse sat on the bus as it snaked along the narrow Oxfordshire lanes, his rucksack clutched on his lap. It was raining and the rain was pulled along the windows of the bus, tracing wandering paths like rivers seen from the air. Mouse followed one with his finger. He had travelled up that morning. Sitting on the swaying train as it made its way haltingly out of London, he had fingered the earrings in his pocket, pricking his thumbs with the sharp ends, committing to memory the rough surfaces of the stones.

He was still living in the hall at Senate House. When he visited the boat, it seemed as if it didn’t belong to him any more. He found that he could think much more clearly high in the library tower. He had stood at the window that morning and looked out onto the world and planned. There were a few things he needed to do before he left London. He wrote a letter to Lazlo Elek. It was brief and unsentimental. He had been listening to Lee’s father’s music recently, blasting the famous cello concerto through the empty corridors of the fourteenth floor. The music somehow fitted the place. He wrote to D.I. Farley. He considered writing to Marcus.

He had sent the book to Abby a few days earlier. He imagined her reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to a blond child in her lap in years to come. He thought about the baby a great deal. He wondered if it was his. He hoped that it was. He remembered that momentous night at the Retreat when they had realised that Marcus and Lee were no longer with them, and they both guessed what was happening up in the woods above them, that their friends’ disappearance wasn’t accidental. There was a beautiful symmetry about it. Taking him by the hand, Abby had led him away from the path to a small glade. She had leaned back on a pile of damp ferns and lifted her skirt for him. He remembered the mist that snaked up between her legs. Her nipples had bloomed like pale flowers on her chest as he lifted her blouse and clamped his lips down around them. Her large hand had closed around his cock and guided it into her. An owl had hooted just as he came. They both laughed. It was cold, but they were so drunk that it didn’t seem to matter. She had nuzzled his ear. I love you, my little Mouse. I love you so much. Mouse smiled. He knew that this was the biggest betrayal for her, these few meaningless words.

He hadn’t loved Abby, knew that she didn’t really love him, or not any more than she loved her other friends. But when she had come to see him on the boat in the days following the Retreat, and he had told her what had happened between Lee and Marcus, and how Lee died, he felt a great weight lifted from him. They had fucked again on the small bed. Abby had taken his cock in her mouth and moaned, barely audible, I love you, I love you . Later, when he was inside her and their stomachs slapped together with each thrust, and the boat rocked and her tits swayed with the rocking, she had reached round to cup his balls as he came. Afterwards, she had begged him not to tell anyone about Lee. That it would destroy the Course, but worse, it would destroy her. And out of loyalty, he obeyed her. He felt himself getting a hard-on. It was almost his stop.

He stepped from the bus and walked along the bare ridge, turning up the collar of his jacket against the cold. He swung his rucksack over his shoulder. His hair was damp and he ran a hand through it, sweeping it out of his eyes. He walked down the gloomy driveway. Lancing Manor stood at the end, glowering under its slate gables. Rooks huddled on the roof, heads tucked under wings. Mouse walked around to the side of the house. The Earl was in London, watching Nightingale give his big speech. No lights shone in the mullioned windows. Mouse made his way down to the lake, carefully stepping over the writhing roots that reached up from the damp red earth.

The water of the lake shuddered in the breeze. Rain swept across it, ruffling the surface. At the edges, Mouse could see green fronds of pondweed unravelling from the spongy mud bottom. He walked over to the boathouse, untied the boat and pushed off from the small platform. His hands ached with the cold, but it was a distant pain, easy to ignore. He steered the boat towards the centre of the lake. The rain had begun to fall more heavily and it was hard to judge where the lake ended and the rain began. It was like rowing through mist.

Mouse had a sudden picture of that dark early morning, when Lee’s body had seemed so heavy as he heaved it onto the floor of the little rowboat that he thought the boat might sink. The mist had been very thick as he steered the vessel through it. He had felt close to breaking down, to throwing himself into the water with her. He saw how the fishing wire bit into the skin of her neck, her ankles. After he had threaded the heavy lead weights onto the fishing wire, he had kissed her hard on the lips and tipped her into the lake. For an instant he saw her sinking, dappled by the water that closed around her, and then she was gone.