Ritual (28 page)

As they headed
towards New York City, Robyn tried to translate the leaflets that Mrs Kemp had
stolen from Sheriff Podmore’s office. It was
Le Recreation
text which interested her the most. It was dense and
obscure and smudgily printed, and neither she nor Charlie could decide why Mrs
Kemp had decided to take it.

‘It could be
that it just happened to be lying on his desk, and she picked it up because it
looked important,’ Charlie suggested.

‘I don’t know,’
said Robyn. ‘It looks like it’s been folded and kept in an envelope. Maybe the
envelope was marked confidential or
something,
and Mrs
Kemp thought that it might contain something which would incriminate him.’

They made a
short detour off the parkway to White Plains, and stopped at Macy’s on
Mamaroneck Avenue to pick up a Concise French Dictionary in the book
department. While Robyn paid for the dictionary, Charlie found himself glancing
left and right like a criminal.

Afterwards,
they picked up two Big Macs and some hot black coffee, and they ate and drank
as they drove south-westwards on the Hutchinson River Parkway towards New York.

Robyn said, ‘I
thought I’d never be able to eat anything again, after what happened this
morning.

Now all of a
sudden I’m starving.’

‘It’s delayed
shock,’ Charlie replied. ‘Just make sure you chew it properly.’

‘You’re the
food expert. Although it beats me how you can be a food expert and still eat a
Big Mac.’

Charlie
swallowed, and sipped coffee. ‘Let me tell you something, if you compared the
hygiene in most high-class international restaurants with the hygiene at
McDonald’s, you’d never want to eat anything but Big Macs for the rest of your
life. After about five years as a restaurant inspector, you realize that in spite
of all the cockroach bodies and the rat droppings you might have been eating
along with your veal parmesan and your chicken a la whatever, you’re still
alive and still comparatively healthy and you haven’t had a day’s sickness
since you can last remember.

I guess that’s
when you begin to understand that the human constitution is pretty resilient,
and that you could probably eat a codfish pie out of some Bowery bum’s back
pants pocket without any noticeable ill effects.’

Robyn stared at
him for a long time and then returned her Big Mac to its polystyrene carton.
‘I’m not sure that I can eat the rest of this.’

They drove
through New York and the spires of Manhattan glittered grey and silver in the
last light of the day. Then they were heading south-westwards through Jersey
and Pennsylvania, along Route 22 to Harrisburg. At Harrisburg, Robyn would take
over the driving, but meanwhile she pored over Mrs Kemp’s leaflet with her
French dictionary open on one knee.

As they drove
through the Musconetcong
mountains
, she closed the
dictionary and said, ‘Do you know what this is?’ ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to
translate it if I did,’ Charlie replied. He glanced in his rear view mirror. So
far he was pretty sure that they weren’t being tailed.

‘This is a kind
of Celestine newsletter. It gives a list of some of their up-and-coming
meetings as well as their calendar for the year.’

‘When do they
have their church cookout?’ asked Charlie bitterly.

‘They have more
important dates than that. In fact – according to this – the whole year is
significant. This is the year of
Le
Recreation
.’

‘What does that
mean?
Sports, games, that kind of thing?’

‘You’ve got to
be joking.
Le Recreation
literally
means The Re-Creation. This is the year they attempt actually to recreate Jesus
Christ in physical form.’

Charlie looked
at her. He was more tired than sceptical. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me what it
says.’

Robyn angled
the leaflet so that it was illuminated by the Buick’s interior light. ‘Brothers
and sisters, Guides and Devotees...’ Something something – I don’t quite
understand that bit. ‘This is the year when the Prophecies of Sainte De-siree
come to pass; when the Lord and Master will rise again, as was promised in les
temps anciens; when the Body and Blood of Christ the Lord will be formed again
out of the sacrificial flesh of all who worship Him. For three centuries,
Devotees have devoured themselves, and what has remained of them has been
devoured in turn by other Devotees until
au
bout de
ses
vies
– at the end of their lives –
these Devotees are devoured by their Guides.’

Charlie
overtook a westbound livestock truck, and then turned to Robyn and said, ‘Go
on, I want to hear it.’

‘It’s so
bizarre?
said
Robyn. ‘I find it hard to believe that
it’s true.’

‘Go on, it’s
important. This may give us the information that we’ve been looking for.’

Robyn rubbed
her eyes. Then she lifted up the leaflet again, and read, ‘“Each human soul
which has been devoured has been recorded in the Ledger; and now we are
approaching at last the sacred number that forms the very centre of the
Prophesies of Sainte Desiree. That is, one thousand times one thousand souls.”‘

Charlie
whistled. ‘Do you know what that means? Since the Celestines got started,
nearly a million people have eaten themselves. A million! It’s a holocaust!’

‘Wait,’ said
Robyn, ‘there’s more. It says here that on the holiest of all weeks the
Celestines will gather together and observe a last sacrificial convenant. All
of the remaining Devotees will devour as much of themselves as they
can .
..
and
the remaining Guides
will devour what’s left.

At the very end
there will be nobody left but one Devotee, who will become the Last Supper for
the Master of Guides. When he has eaten the last of the Devotees, the Master
will be transformed into the Lord Jesus Christ incarnate, whose body is the
all-embracing temple of human souls. That’s kind of a free translation, but
it’s near enough.’

‘And when is
this last supper scheduled?’ asked Charlie. ‘Whenever they reach the sacred
number, I guess,’ said Robyn. ‘The leaflet doesn’t give a specific date.’

‘Well – that’s
one of the things we’re going to have to find out in New Orleans,’ said
Charlie.

Robyn switched
off the car’s interior light and watched Charlie driving through the darkness.
‘I still don’t really understand why we’re going to New Orleans at all. I mean
– aren’t you wasting time?’

‘If I’m
supposed to interpret that as ‘Martin could be chewing his own fingers and toes
by now’, then I get your point. But you saw how things worked out this morning.
I’m not cut out for that kind of a rescue. If I tried it again, I’d almost
certainly wind up killed, and that would leave Martin completely at their
mercy.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘For most of my working life, 206

I’ve been
eating at other people’s tables without them realizing j
who
I am. I guess you could say that my greatest asset is my anonymity.’

‘So what are
you going to do?’

‘I’m going to
New Orleans and I’ll join the Celestines, in disguise. A moustache and tinted
spectacles and a haircut should do it. Then I’m going back to
Le Reposoir
and get Martin out from the
inside.’

Robyn said, ‘I
suppose that’s as good a way as any.’

‘For me, it’s
the only way.’

‘I don’t quite
see where I’m going to fit in.’

Charlie reached
across the seat and held her hand. ‘I’m going to need somebody on the outside
to keep in touch with. At the very last moment, I’m going to have to get out of
that place like Roadrunner with his ass-feathers on fire, and there has to be
somebody there to do the driving.’

‘You still want
to me to drive, after the crash?’

‘The crash
wasn’t your fault.’

‘What happens
if the Celestines discover who you really are, and kill you? What am I supposed
to do then?’

Charlie made a
face. ‘You forget you ever heard about the Celestines, or Martin, or me, and
you go back to your job and your parents and maybe a new boyfriend who doesn’t
give you a hard time, and you live out the rest of your life in peace and
happiness.’

‘You’re
suggesting that I never mention it, ever again?’

‘Not if you
want a long life.’

Robyn thought
about that for a moment, and then said, ‘There’s one thing more. If you join
the Celestines, won’t you have to start eating yourself?’

‘I was actually
hoping that I could be a Guide, rather than a Devotee. I don’t know what
qualifications a Guide is supposed to have, but I guess I could fake them.’

‘But then you’d
have to eat other people.’

Charlie gave
Robyn a tight smile. ‘Let me cross that bridge when I come to it, huh? I’m hoping
to get away without eating any human flesh at all.’

‘This scares
me,’ said Robyn.

‘You don’t
think it scares me too?’

Robyn took over
the wheel just past Harrisburg, and drove into the night while Charlie lay on
the back seat of the station wagon and tried to sleep. It took him until two
o’clock in the morning to close his eyes. The smell of the vehicle was
unfamiliar, so was the way it jolted over every bump and join in the highway,
and the songs that Robyn was playing on the car radio all seemed to be songs of
regret. He thought of Martin, lying naked on that plain bed at
Le Reposoir
, and he tried to touch him
with his mind. / love you, Martin, don’t despair. Don’t let them take you away.

They stopped
for an early breakfast at Buchanan, VA, a few miles short of Roanoke. They sat
in a small drugstore drinking black coffee in silence and staring at
themselves
in the mirror behind the counter. They both
looked exhausted.

‘Are you sure
we’re doing the right thing?’ Robyn asked, as they stepped out into the chilly
morning air, and climbed back into Mrs Kemp’s old Buick.

Charlie said,
‘We could use some more gas. There’s only quarter of a tankful left.’

Robyn leaned
across and kissed Charlie’s unshaven cheek. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m with
you.’

They drove into
New Orleans on a humid, thundery morning, with the clouds hanging low over the
city, and lightning flickering out over Lake Borgne and the Gulf beyond.
Charlie had taken the wheel at Meridian, and Robyn was lying asleep in the
back. For the past hour, the radio had been turned to a Louisiana station
playing plangent Cajun and Zydeco music – high, shrill voices and accordions
and fiddles double-bowed. Charlie had called from Atlanta the previous evening
to make a reservation at the St Victoir Hotel, which was quoted in MARIA as
being ‘inexpensive, discreet, and authentic’. He knew that after more than
thirty-eight hours of driving, the first priority for both of them was going to
be sleep. It was no good regretting the time that they would lose. Their
exhaustion had reached the point where they could see the highways unravelling
in front of them even when they closed their eyes.

The St Victoir
was a narrow-fronted nineteenth-century building between Bourbon and Royal, but
it lacked the distinctive cast-iron balconies that characterized the finest
architecture in the French Quarter. It was wedged between an over-expensive art
gallery and a Creole restaurant called Jim’s Au Courant. Inside, there was a
cool air-conditioned lobby with potted palms and a marble floor and old sofas
upholstered in damp green velvet that could almost have been moss.

A fat lady in a
floral frock sat behind a curved mahogany counter and smiled at Charlie and
Robyn like Jabba the Hutt.

‘Mr and Mrs
McLean,’ said Charlie. ‘I made a reservation yesterday from Atlanta.’

The fat lady
opened up her file drawer and picked her way through the reservation cards with
tiny hands. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Double room, looking to the back, for
three nights provisional. May I take an impression of your card?’

Their bags were
taken up by a black porter in a peaked cap
who
said
almost nothing but hummed all the time. Robyn had brought a change of clothes
from her parents’ house; Charlie, of course, had taken his travelling-kit out
of his Oldsmobile, before parking it right at the back of the Harris house and
covering the licence plate with a plastic shopping bag so that it couldn’t be
identified by any passing police patrol.

Charlie had
told Mr Harris that he and Robyn were taking a few days’ vacation together in
Canada. He had winked at Mrs Harris and Mrs Harris had obviously been pleased
that Robyn had found somebody so quickly.
Especially somebody
so nice.

Charlie tipped
the black porter and then closed and chained the door. The room was high-ceilinged
and cool, with a huge mahogany bed and two massive mahogany chairs. There was a
view from the back over the St Victoir’s courtyard, shaded by layers of
foliage. It had already begun to rain, heavy warm drops, and the palm leaves
nodded in acknowledgement of the coming storm.

Robyn lay back
on the bed and kicked off her shoes. ‘I don’t think I ever felt so tired in my
whole life.’

‘Do you want
anything to eat?’ Charlie asked her.
‘How about some beignets
and a pot of coffee?’
‘I think I just want to sleep,’ said Robyn.
Charlie went into the large tiled bathroom and slowly undressed. He took a long
shower, standing for almost five minutes with his eyes closed, letting the hot
water spray into his face. He shaved, but he took care not to shave the bristling
beginnings of his moustache. Then he wrapped himself in a towel and went back
into the bedroom. Robyn was already asleep, lying on her side with one hand
against her cheek as if she were thinking. Charlie sat on the bed beside her
and dried himself. She was a pretty girl. Even though she was wearing a
crumpled checkered shirt and faded jeans and her hair needed washing, she had
a femininity
about her which Marjorie had always lacked. He
rested his hand on her sleeping hip for a little while, and then returned to
the bathroom to find himself a robe.