Blind Faith (24 page)

'In that case,' Sandra Dee replied, 'perhaps we should
make love.'

'A farewell gift?'

'If you like.'

'Well, yes then. I do like.'

Once more Trafford and Cassius made the journey to
Hampstead and found themselves in Connor Newbury's
splendid reception room, where again Trafford addressed
the Humanist Senate. He explained to them his idea of
using Ev Love as the unifying symbol and reported that
the first mail shot had been prepared and the trigger
mechanism put in place.

'The DegSep search engine has identified our target
audience,' he told them, 'and we are ready to reach out and
make contact.'

'How many of them are there?' Billy Macallan enquired.

'Twelve million,' Trafford replied.

The big man nearly dropped the teacup he was holding.

'Twelve
million
?' he spluttered. 'Strewth, that's half the
population!'

'I know,' Trafford agreed. 'I tried running a number of
different searches and the results were even more
staggering. For instance, when I asked the computer to
find those who had been blogged as sometimes avoiding
Gr'ugs the figures went up to fourteen million. My belief,
based on this evidence, is that the majority of people in
this country are privately discontented and harbouring a
secret self who is frustrated, unfulfilled and unhappy.'

'Well then,' Cassius observed, 'if our search profile is
right then the Temple's house is indeed built upon
shifting sand.'

'Absolutely,' Trafford said eagerly. 'If we can tempt
people into displaying the Ev Love symbol then they will
find their courage in numbers! My idea is that once we
have begun the mail shots the next thing we do is start
giving out times and locations and see if people turn up. If
we've got our psychology right, pretty soon we'll be able to
gather enough people to issue a Wembley Law!'

The idea was huge, so big that the room fell quiet for
a moment.

'Well,' Professor Taylor observed, 'it's possible, I suppose.
Most revolutions appear hopeless until they begin. A year
before the Russian Revolution Lenin was a fringe exile with
only a handful of followers. Christianity itself went from
underground cult to official religion of the Roman Empire
in scarcely a generation.'

'Exactly!' said Trafford eagerly. 'And I believe we have
the perfect trigger with which to start our revolution. We
should send our emails on the eve of the next Faith
Festival, the one at which the Temple plans to display
my daughter as evidence of the mercy of the Love.'

Trafford then told the Senate the plan which he had
already outlined to Sandra Dee. 'I intend to confess to
having had Caitlin Happymeal vaccinated but before that
I shall lead the crowd in the Ev Love chant. I shall be
wearing a shirt with the words "Ev Love" printed on it.
Every one of the millions who have received our email will
recognize that sign! By then some of them will have read
our digest of the theory of evolution, and then they will
see a person wearing the evolution slogan and explaining
how science, not faith, can save children and that the
Temple is preventing it from doing so. We will never get
such a great chance to make so persuasive a beginning.'

They were understandably nervous. Trafford could see
that their little movement had been static for so long that
so radical an idea was hard for them to absorb.

'It sounds dangerous to me,' Newbury said nervously.

'Well, Newbury,' said Cassius, 'after Trafford himself, the
person in the most danger from this plan is me and
personally I think it's brilliant.'

'I'm telling you,' Trafford exclaimed, 'the need is out
there! The
hunger
. Our profile search proves it. The people
are a ticking time bomb and we have the chance to
explode it right in the Temple's face.'

Trafford convinced the Senate of his plan and left the
meeting in a state of high excitement. His job now was to
begin working on the speech he would make at Wembley.
It was clear that this must be planned with enormous care,
beginning innocently, revealing its agenda subtly and
delivering its bombshell so surprisingly that by the time
people realized what had been said it would be too late for
any Temple elder to intervene. Everything depended on
the moment in which he explained why Caitlin
Happymeal was still alive: that was the key.

Sadly, however, Trafford was never to be called upon
to offer an explanation as to why his daughter was alive
because, on the very morning after his meeting with
the Humanist Senate, poor little Caitlin Happymeal
developed severe diarrhoea and vomiting. Something had
got into the water supply at Inspiration Towers and the
whole building succumbed to a dose of cholera-plus.
Everybody was extremely sick but there was only one
fatality: the building's sole remaining infant. Caitlin
Happymeal wasn't a miracle baby after all.

The Temple moved swiftly to limit the damage to its
credibility. Within twenty-four hours of the child's
death, all traces of the
Miracles Do Happen
campaign had
disappeared from the streets and from cyberspace. The
tragedy was not even reported on the news. Now that
Caitlin had died, it was suddenly as if she'd never lived.

Trafford and Chantorria were so blinded by grief that for
a few days they did not notice the radical change in their
position in the community. They kept to their apartment,
numb with shock, struggling to come to terms with the
empty cot and the baby clothes and the toys which would
never be played with again. If they noticed that there had
been no callers and that nobody seemed inclined to
stream in for a web chat, they put it down to people's
embarrassment and reluctance to deal with the scale of
their grief.

On the fourth day Chantorria went out. Her pain was
not receding but growing and she had decided to visit
Confessor Bailey. Surely he would be able to find some
words of comfort to help her through the torment of
bereavement. But the girl who only the previous week had
been privileged to anoint the Confessor's feet with
precious oils now got no further than his front door. There
at the entrance a servant who had previously bowed and
scraped before her informed her brutally that she was no
longer loved by the Love, and that if she wished to see the
Confessor she could do so at the Community Confession
like everybody else. What was more, she was never, repeat
never, to approach the Spirit House uninvited again.

Chantorria was an embarrassment to Confessor Bailey.
He had bigged her up from the pulpit and now she was
an affront to his credibility. She had made him look
fallible and he wanted nothing more to do with her.
She turned away and began slowly to make her way home.
She was recognized on the route and people sneered and
whispered and pointed. Some laughed.

On the steps of Inspiration Towers she met Tinkerbell.

'So Caitlin's dead then, is she?' Tinkerbell said bluntly
without bothering even to say hello. 'Well, you'll have
plenty of time on your hands now, won't you? Perhaps you
could run a few errands for me.'

Still dazed with grief, Chantorria did not immediately
comprehend the scale of animosity that her brief period as
an exalted Temple favourite had provoked. Surely Tinks,
her bestest mate, was not like all the rest?

'It's very lonely in our apartment now,' Chantorria
said weakly.

'Is it really?' Tinkerbell said with heavy sarcasm.

'Trafford and I don't know what to say to each other.'

'Well, he always was a bit of an arsehole, wasn't he?'

'Could you pop down for coffee some time or a glass of
wine, Tinks? I don't really know how I'm going to cope at
the moment.'

'Coffee and a glass of wine?' Tinkerbell repeated coldly.

'Yes, or anything really.'

Tinkerbell shoved her face up close to Chantorria's and
spat out her reply.

'Now you listen here, you stuck-up bitch,' she hissed.

'You were all high and mighty when you thought you were
God's bloody favourite, weren't you?'

'No! No, I wasn't . . .' Chantorria protested.

'Yes, you fucking were. You had the whole bloody
building running round after you. Well, now it turns out
you're no better than anybody else. The Lord and the Love
doesn't give a shit about you. And he didn't give a shit
about your little brat either, did he? Because she's dead,
isn't she? Just like the rest of our kiddies. Except at least
none of us went around claiming our kiddies was saints.
We never thought we was the Virgin fucking Mary and our
kiddies was Jesus fucking Christ. No! But you! You,
Chantorria, and your precious little Caitlin fucking
Happymeal, you was the chosen ones, wasn't you? Well,
not any more,
babes
. So deal with it!'

'Please don't!' Chantorria pleaded, tears running down
her face.

'Just because the Confessor was sorting you out you
thought the sun shined out of your arse. Well, you know
now, don't you! So just you keep out of my way, all right?
Because you made a fool of us, you did. I even had my
Lexus running round trying to fix your shower. I even
spruced up your scrawny manky muff for you. Well, you're
on your own now, because you've brought disgrace on the
whole of Inspiration Towers, you have. You've made fools
of us and everybody wishes you'd just do what your kid
did and fuck off and die.'

Chantorria ran weeping from her tormentor. When she
entered her apartment there was no respite. Barbieheart
was waiting for her, on the wall.

'Well, well, if it isn't the Holy Mother of God herself,'
Barbieheart sneered.

'Barbieheart, please,' Chantorria pleaded, 'why is
everybody being so cruel? I just lost my baby!'
'They all lost their babies, love, but they didn't use it to
claim they was special like you, did they?' Barbieheart
replied, twisting the truth without a thought. 'They didn't
turn our building into a laughing stock by claiming that
their snotty kiddie was the bloody new Messiah. No, love,
you did that, didn't you? You made your precious bed and
now you've got to lie on it because nobody wants to know
you any more.'

With that, Barbieheart muted her sound and on the
screen made an exaggerated performance of turning away
– or at least as far away as her vast, stationary bulk
would allow.

'Please, Barbieheart, please!' Chantorria wept, shouting
at the camera, but Barbieheart opened a sack of cheesy
fried corn snacks and ignored her.

Chantorria sank to the floor, crying uncontrollably.
Trafford did not look at her either. He was sitting beside
Caitlin Happymeal's empty cot, where he had sat for most
of the previous four days. When he spoke he addressed
empty space.

'Let the stupid bitch go, Chantorria,' he said. 'Who cares
what Barbieheart thinks? Who cares what anybody thinks?
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.'

Chantorria looked up and began to stare at Trafford. For
fully a minute she stared in silence until finally Trafford
raised his face to hers.

'What?' he said.

'You.' Her voice was filled with bitterness. 'You. You
bastard. This is all your fault.'

Trafford was astonished. He had not thought he was
capable of feelings of any kind that day but Chantorria's
accusation stunned him.

'What the hell do you mean?'

'Everything started to go wrong when you did what
you did!'

'It started to go wrong when you began to believe that
you were the chosen one. If we're a target now it's because
you made a spectacle of yourself, because you chose to
believe that God had saved Caitlin.'

Chantorria flew at him.

'Well, you certainly didn't save her, did you, you bastard!'
she screamed. 'Your precious vaccination didn't save her!'

'It saved her from measles and mumps! She died of
cholera
, Chantorria. She wasn't vaccinated against cholera.
A vaccination isn't magic, it's not like your bloody Temple,
it's a scientific process that—'

'Shut up! Shut up! I don't want to hear! I tell you it all
started to go wrong when you did what you did. We were
all right till then!'

She was trying to beat her fists on his chest; he was
forced to hold her off.

'Caitlin is dead!' he shouted into her face. 'Nothing else
matters, not you, not me, certainly not those imbeciles out
there' – he made a gesture to the webcam. 'Caitlin is dead
and there is nothing we can do about it. She wasn't a
miracle angel but she was
our
angel and she's dead.'

Slowly Chantorria's violent anger subsided. She sank
back down to the floor and they did not speak to each
other again that evening. Eventually, as the gloom
gathered in the room, Chantorria went to lie on the bed,
leaving Trafford still sitting beside Caitlin's cot. Neither of
them slept; they simply began the process of enduring
the night, separate and alone, locked in grief.

About two in the morning there was a sudden blast of
noise and light as Tinkerbell and some of her girls exploded
on to the wallscreen. They were all drunk, their faces flushed
and ugly, and they had decided to drop in for a web chat.

'Hi, Chantorria,' Tinkerbell shouted, as usual leading the
pack. 'Are you saying your prayers? Me and the girls were
wondering what a saint does at night. Not much by the
look of it, eh? Won't get another little kiddie with you in
bed and him in the kitchen, will you? Or at least, if you do,
that one really
will
be a miracle!'

The girls shrieked with laughter, clustered around
Tinkerbell's webcam.

'Will you come and bless us, Chantorria?' another of the
gang sneered. 'Why don't you put that halo on and come
up and sing us a hymn!'

Trafford sat with his eyes closed listening to the laughter
and the shrieking, which seemed to go on for hours. He
did not even have the energy to reach over to the control
and mute the sound. Bullied or not bullied, it was all the
same to him now that Caitlin Happymeal was gone.
Chantorria lay silently also, too devastated, it seemed,
even to beg for mercy.

Eventually the pack tired of failing to get a reaction and
lost interest in their fun. Peace returned but it did not
bring rest. For yet another night Trafford did not sleep at
all and from the sound of sobbing in the bedroom he
knew that Chantorria was not sleeping either.

The following day was a Fizzy Coff and so Trafford was
forced to get up, eat something and prepare for work.
Bereavement was far too common an occurrence for it to
be used as an excuse for absenteeism. Quite the opposite
in fact; people were expected to seek out an audience with
whom they could express their grief.

Chantorria was still lying on the bed as Trafford made
ready to leave.

'Well, I'll see you later then,' he said as he began
unlocking the door. 'I'll get some food and stuff on my
way back, shall I? Unless you feel like doing some
shopping?'

Chantorria turned to look at him, her eyes hollow. For a
moment Trafford was taken aback. She did not look
anything like she had ever looked before. She looked like
a zombie.

'I mean,' Trafford continued, 'I don't mind doing it
myself. I just thought it might give you something to do,
get you out of the apartment.'

Still Chantorria did not reply. More and more her face
looked to Trafford like the face of a corpse.

'Well,' he said finally, 'I'll see you later then. Call me if
you need anything.'

As his hand was on the latch she spoke.

'We deserve this, you know,' she said in a strange, deathly
monotone.

'Please, Chantorria. Don't.'

'We tried to defy God.'

'We did
not
try to defy anyone . . .'

'He had a plan and we tried to cheat. Now he's punished
us for it.'

For a moment Trafford thought about continuing to
reason with her but one look at the lifeless, soulless,
hopeless apparition that had previously been his wife and
he realized it was pointless.

'I'll come straight back after work,' he said.

When Trafford arrived at the office, Princess Lovebud
was lying in wait, clearly anxious to exact revenge for the
brief period of self-assertion that Trafford had enjoyed
during his time as a Temple favourite. He had been
expecting unpleasantness but he was nonetheless
surprised at the form which her initial attack took. She
actually hit him. She marched across the room and
slapped him in the face with all the strength that her
elephantine arm could muster. The blow sent him reeling.

'You little shit,' she shouted at him. 'We're the joke of the
whole of DegSep, we are. I must have had a thousand
emails already! I told them we were blessed, I told them
we had a prophet on our floor! Now what do I look like?
Well, I'll tell you something right now, you little wanker.
I'm watching you, I am, and when you put a foot wrong,
which you will, you're dead.'

Trafford said nothing and went to his desk. He passed
Cassius, who gave him a tiny nod of sympathy. Sandra Dee
was nowhere to be seen.

Ever alert to weakness of any kind, Princess Lovebud
noticed Trafford looking.

'Yes,' she sneered, 'I notice that ginger bitch you was
sticking up for hasn't had the guts to show her face. No,
because she knows I'm after her too. Well, let's face it,
you're not a lot of use to her now, are you? Not now it
turns out that the Lord and the Love don't care about you
at all.'

Trafford was sorry that Sandra Dee was absent; he had
been hoping to see her, hoping for a smile of encouragement
to help him through the day. With his daughter gone
his love for Sandra Dee was the only positive emotion he
had left in his body. Not that it could ever fill the void left
by Caitlin Happymeal and it was unreciprocated anyway,
but he would have liked to see her.