The Gospel of Us (10 page)

Turning to the crowd he scanned the front rows, a twitching smile at the corner of his lips. He had a plan; I could tell, and I didn’t like the look of it.

‘You,’ he said, pointing to someone in the crowd. ‘You, the girl in the blue jumper. Can we get her up here please?’

I turned to the big screen, saw the camera run along faces until it landed on a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. Then some hands came in and picked her up. I looked back to the stage just in time to see Old Growler carry her up the steps and put her down in front of the Company Man.

‘Hello,’ he said, kneeling down to her height. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Katy,’ she said, her voice carrying on his lapel mike. She was wearing an oversized blue hoodie, the sleeves rolled up to show her small hands. I’d seen it somewhere before, but I couldn’t think where.

‘Well, Katy,’ the Company Man continued, one hand on her shoulder to reassure her. ‘I don’t want
you to be nervous. I’m just going to ask you three questions, is that alright?’

She nodded.

‘Just answer as truthfully as you can. Can you do that for me?’

She nodded again.

‘Ok. Well, let’s start,’ he said as if about to read her a bedtime story. ‘Katy, do you want to carry on living with your family?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice small and clear.

‘Of course you do. And do you want to live with them in your house? In your home?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, nodding. I looked at the hoodie, racking my brain where I’d seen it before. And then I remembered. On the beach, that morning, when the Stranger had dressed him. It was the hoodie the young lad had given him. And then again, right here, when the woman was shot. The Teacher had taken it off and lain it over her. It was his hoodie, on this girl. Suddenly, knowing that, I felt better. Perhaps, just maybe, the Company Man wasn’t pulling the strings on this one after all?

‘Last question Katy,’ he said, giving her a warm smile. ‘And in that house, would you like to keep all your toys, your TV, your games?’

She paused, thinking for a moment. But we all knew what was coming. The poor girl was just that, a little girl, and these question were ridiculous. Ridiculous and yet terrifying. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, returning his smile.

‘Thank you Katy,’ the Company Man said. ‘Thank you very much.’ He stood up, giving her a pat on the head. ‘A big hand for Katy everyone!’

As she was taken back down the steps the Company Man took a deep breath as if to say, ‘that was a close one, but now we’re back on track.’ He looked out over the crowd.

‘The verdict has been delivered,’ he announced. ‘And it is a good verdict. The freed man might be reckless, dangerous even. He is certainly outdated, but at least he is fighting to protect what you have here. At least he is trying, in his way, to keep things together.’

Without looking at him he pointed to Barry.
‘Free him.’ Immediately Old Growler’s men went to him, removing his cuffs. Barry looked down at his wrists trying to comprehend what was happening.

‘This one,’ the Company Man continued, pointing with his other hand, arm outstretched, to the Teacher. ‘He’s yours.’

Then he turned to look at him. The Teacher returned his gaze as the Company Man spoke again. ‘Make an example of him,’ he said. ‘In the old way.’

As soon as he spoke word became deed. Before the Company Man had even turned away Old Growler’s pack dogs were on the Teacher, sweeping him off the stage in a black swarm of body armour, helmets and gloves. Maybe the Company Man hadn’t known which of the two men would be charged that day, but Old Growler, he’d always known who he wanted. And now he had him.

They dragged him through the crowd and into the shopping centre. The camera followed but it was no use; he was gone. Someone else though suddenly
found it. A pair of hands grabbing the lens and swinging the image towards their face.

‘I know him! I can vouch for him! I’m his follower!’

It was Peter, shouting into the lens, crying, screaming what he hadn’t said just twelve hours earlier. But no one wanted to listen. Not even Growler’s men.

‘I am!’ Peter cried, as the screen went blank and he was swallowed by the crowd. ‘I am!’

When the screen flickered into life again it took a few seconds before we realised what it was showing. The images were coming from inside the shopping centre now, taken on a camera phone. But this was no accident, no leak. They wanted us to see this. They wanted us to watch as Growler’s men went to play on the Teacher’s head, body and face. As they tore his skin with the soles of their boots. As they broke his bones with their fists and their knees. As they showed him who he was to them. Which was nothing, nothing.

And then we heard it too. The Teacher’s screams,
echoing down those empty corridors, between those silent shop-window dummies, their blank faces looking on as he got free of their hold, staggered away, slipping on his own blood, only to be caught again and beaten again under the cheerful smiles of holiday posters.

It was all too much, too much. Where had this come from? Behind me I could hear the screams of his mam as her other sons dragged her away. The cries of the Legion Twins, rocking and rocking behind me as they discovered the beautiful world he’d given them could be darker, more cruel than anything they’d ever known before.

And it was too much for Sergeant Phillips too. After a minute of that footage up on the screen he broke ranks and ran towards the cordon of ICU security guarding the entrance.

‘Let me in!’ he bellowed at them. ‘Let me in! This is my town, my jurisdiction!’

But it was too late. Everything was too late.

Shortly afterwards one of Growler’s men came out, clipped off a run of barbed wire, then went back
in. None of us wanted to know what they were going to do with it, but it was the barbed wire that really told us, when they finally emerged again bringing the ravaged Teacher with them, what this had all been about. Power and fear.

They’d crowned him with it. Someone in there, no doubt Old Growler himself, had taken the time to weave that wire into a crown, then push it onto the Teacher’s head, so hard the barbs scraped against his bone.

‘Your king!’ Growler shouted to us as he held up the Teacher by the scruff of the neck. ‘The king of your town!’

Shoving him before him he began to walking back to the police van. ‘You!’ he shouted to Sergeant Phillips. ‘Bring your men. Follow me!’

He turned away again and walked three or four metres before he realised Sergeant Phillips hadn’t moved. ‘I said,’ he shouted back to him. ‘Follow me!’

Sergeant Phillips stood taller. Old Growler passed the Teacher to one of his pack dogs, then
strode back to face up to Phillips. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was an order.’

Sergeant Phillips stared down at him. Then, slowly, he lifted his hand to his head, removed his beret and threw it to the floor. Old Growler looked at it, then looked at the rest of Phillips’ men. One by one they all did the same, until there was a litter of berets at their feet, like dark petals shed across the civic centre’s floor.

Growler didn’t wait to see anything else. Turning on his heel he strode back to the van, hit it twice on the side, and then they were gone. They had taken him.

You’ll hear all sorts of stories about what happened next. But so few people were there it’s hard to know which are true. So I’ll just tell you what I heard, what people were saying in the days and weeks after, about what they did to him.

About how they’d taken him to the stonemason’s yard up by the road to watch his own gravestone being carved.

How the mason had asked him his name and when he hadn’t answered how Old Growler had said ‘he’s forgotten,’ and how that’s what the mason carved – FORGOTTEN.

How they made him a new crown, from brambles this time, and how they pushed its thorns into the wounds made by the first.

About how they’d made him carry his own cross from there to the front. About how Old Growler had said, ‘History, wasn’t it? What you taught? You should enjoy this.’

About how when he fell strangers came to help him.

How the Company Man had watched him stagger back into the civic centre, bent double under the weight, splinters in his back.

How he’d seen enough, so left with Growler and the rest to take up their front-view seats for the show.

How when he entered the shopping centre, everything changed.

The women of the town had made it theirs.

When Growler had taken him, they’d come. No one had called them, they’d just arrived, from streets and houses all over town. And after they did, they’d begun cleaning; washing his blood from the walls and the floors. And then they’d waited.

When he got to them he was broken. Bleeding from every limb, blinded by his own blood. His mam was there, and she led the women in the washing of his body. My girl was there too, and it was her who told me this. How they kneeled in a circle, passing the white towels from the bucket of water to his mam, then back to the bucket.

How that water turned from clear to pink to red.

How his mam couldn’t remove the crown of brambles, so she wove it instead; wove it with red flowers to hide his blood.

How the sound of the water running from the towels into the buckets was like bells, and how he never asked his mam, ‘Who are you?’ again, because he knew now, not from memory, but from what she was doing for him.

How she dressed him in that blue hoodie again and how when she bent low to listen to his whisper all he’d said was, ‘Look how I make the world new.’

And how that was enough.

By the time he reached the roundabout the light was already dying from the day. A crowd had gathered again, but was so quiet I could hear the fall of the waves down on the beach and the creaking of the ICU dignitaries’ chairs up on the balcony of the Four Winds.

They’d built a platform for his cross. Made out of doors it was, all the doors that they’d taken in the last few days.

When they laid him on it I couldn’t see him any more. But I heard the nails being hammered in. Tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap, tap.

He screamed. And when he did, it carried to the mountain I swear.

Then suddenly, there he was again, rising over the heads of the crowd. They’d stripped him so I could see his chest working quick and shallow, trying to keep the breath in his lungs. For a moment that was the only new sound; his breathing, falling between the turning of the waves. But then he began screaming again; long cries of pain, alone up there, screaming and screaming.

And then a voice started singing. A male voice, strong and proud. And as it sang, so his screams subsided, until he was screaming no more.

It was his younger brother. The sad one from the slip who’d joined him. He was standing at the foot of the cross, looking up at the Teacher, not singing him to sleep, but to death.

And then the Teacher spoke. At first I couldn’t hear what he said, but then he said it again. And again.

‘I remember. I remember.’

And then it happened. Still no one you talk to here will tell you how, or even exactly what. But what they will say is that was the moment, that was when we were saved.

It began with a low rumble. Like thunder several valleys away. Then the rumble became a sensation, a shiver under our feet. And all the time the Teacher up there saying, ‘I remember, I remember.’

The rumble got louder and as it did the first few planks of the platform broke off and fell to the ground. And it was then, too, that he raised his voice, and told us.

‘I remember,’ he cried, ‘Beech Hill! The Trafalgar Ball! The beach wreck! Tump number 9! The Majestic! The Regent! The Palace! Egan’s! Players! Bernies! The Forge Road Baths! The Starlight Club! Harvey’s Lake!’

And he went on. Like a torrent it was, a flow of the gone town pouring from his mouth. Everything
that had been taken, back. And as he spoke, so they came out of the ground from under him. What, you ask? Well, good question. How to tell you? I suppose the most simple way to put it is us. Us, we came out of the ground. Our memories, our parents’ memories, their parents’ memories. And with them our stories. Everything that made us, everything that made the town more than just bricks and glass and concrete.

It was like my bampa said, wasn’t it? Cleverest thing the Company ever did, to make us forget where we came from so as to make us blind to where we were going. Well, right then, as the sun sank over Swansea, as the wet sand on the beach turned the colours of an oyster shell, he made us remember. And in doing so, made us see.

But he could only hold on for so long. Soon the words were slowing, his voice getting quieter. And with it all those images and sounds coming out of the ground began to die down too. Until eventually they were gone.

And so was he.

In the silence that followed I don’t think anyone even breathed. We’d all, as one, been taken somewhere, and then suddenly we were back. Back, but different.

I looked up to the balcony of the Four Winds to where the Company Man had been watching with his lackeys from the Council. Then others turned to look at him too, until the whole crowd was staring at him, daring him to speak.

When he did, it was with the voice of a beaten man. He knew he’d done this to himself. In killing the Teacher he’d showed everyone what the wealth under this town was.

‘If that’s what matters to you,’ he finally called out, trying to muster some pride, ‘then there’s nothing of value here for us. We won’t be back.’

With a sweep of his arm he took them all off that balcony with him, disappearing out the back and into their cars. Old Growler didn’t need any other order. Calling his men to him he left too, quick marching them down the slip and out into the darkness of the beach and their waiting boats.