The Shell House (20 page)

‘Went to the pub with Gizzard. Met up with that girl I told you about. Tanya.’

‘Oh,’ Jordan said flatly. ‘And?’

Afterwards, Greg didn’t know what made him answer as he did; in that instant he wanted to hurt Jordan, and see him hurt. The words came readily. ‘You really want to know? Scored. Screwed. Shagged.’

Jordan’s eyes met Greg’s, searching his face as if to ascertain whether he was joking; then he looked down, studied his hands gripped on the handlebars, scuffed a foot on the road. ‘Oh,’ he said again. ‘I hope it was—a good experience.’

‘That’s the understatement of the millennium. You ought to try it. Get yourself sorted out.’

Later, when Greg replayed this conversation again and again in his mind and heard the hard, taunting note in his voice, what he most remembered was the way Jordan had betrayed neither anger nor shock, though he must surely have felt both, but had gazed steadily towards the end of the road as he said, his voice calm: ‘OK, Greg. I get the point—no need to hit me over the head with a sledgehammer. I suppose you haven’t read my email?’

‘No?’

‘I sent you one last night—this morning. But I’d prefer you not to read it after all. The problem with e-mails, you can’t unsend them, can you?’

And you can’t unsay. Greg had plenty of time, later, to wish his words unspoken. He watched Jordan turn his bike round and head back fast the way he had come. Greg, who had not expected the conversation to end as abruptly as this, considered following; but while he was considering, he sat on his bike by the roadside, and Jordan receded into distance, turning the corner out of sight. Greg shivered. It was much colder today, clammed with dampness, the mist hugging the ground, the air breathing the first hint of approaching winter. It seemed unbelievable that a few hours ago he’d been naked on a hillside, and still hot.

And now there was nothing to do but go back home and download that message. Indoors, he hurtled up the stairs and into the study, and logged on. He could do what Jordan preferred and delete the message unread. Or he could read it.

He clicked the mouse.

From: [email protected]
Date: 6 October 2002 02.45
To: [email protected]
Subject:

Greg,

I can’t sleep and can’t phone you in the middle of the night, so I’m doing this instead.

After you left the hospital I went home for my bike and went up to Graveney Hall. I thought you might have gone there, but you hadn’t, so I stayed there for a while by myself, by the Panless statue, where we talked. That was only on Friday but it feels like about two years ago. I wanted to go down to the lake and find that grotto you told me about, but it was too dark and I couldn’t find the way through the bushes and trees. So I went back to Pan’s place.

I can remember everything we said on Friday. Most of it came from me. I was talking and talking about everything except what I most wanted to say. It took Dean Brampton and his horrendous mother to bring that out. More about that in a minute. I was thinking of what you said about the power of wishing. (Doesn’t seem to work for me. More often it has the opposite effect.)

According to the fictional God we should love our neighbours. That would mean we have to love Dean Brampton, mouth and all. I’m not saintly enough to do that. You did better than me. You tried to break his fall, even though you could easily have got injured yourself. And you knew how to look after him. You did those things instinctively. That’s a kind of loving your neighbour, a practical kind. And I’m glad you did, because I wouldn’t have been so sure what to do or not do.

Since you asked, I’ve been wondering if I’m really, genuinely sorry about what happened to him. It was a shock, it would be if it happened to anyone. But I’m only as sorry as I would be if it were something I read in the paper—basically a what-if-it-were-me response. It doesn’t mean anything. Going to the hospital was only to make myself feel better. Which it certainly didn’t, as things turned out.

Perhaps the fictional God thinks that giving Dean Brampton a fright and sticking him in a hospital bed might turn him into a better person. But that’s too neat, isn’t it? All the evidence suggests that luck and bad luck are dished out at random. I might possibly have been a Christian if I lived a couple of hundred years ago, but for me the First World War and the Holocaust and Hiroshima and the World Trade Center have finished off all that. My dad told me this—in the concentration camps, the rabbis held a trial. God was the one in the dock, for cruelty and neglect. They found him guilty. Human wickedness wasn’t enough to account for what was happening.

What’s worse? For there to be a God, but one who didn’t care, one who could watch that happen and turn his back? Or for there not to be a God at all?

I’d rather there was no God.

So—I don’t blame any made-up God for Dean’s accident but I don’t blame myself either. We can’t be responsible for other people’s actions. Our own are enough trouble. I prefer Gaia and the will to live, which leaves guilt out of it. If Dean is a survivor, the will to live will keep him going.

I wish you hadn’t walked out. I wish we could have talked for longer. I wish I’d explained things better. Perhaps I’ll get the chance. I don’t think what I said could have been a total surprise to you, but I’m very sorry if it was. Thanks for reading this, if you have.

Jordan

Greg read the message, too fast, and a second time more slowly. His first thought: Jordan on his own at Graveney Hall last night. If Greg had thought of going there, then what? Reconciliation by moonlight? No. It couldn’t happen. Whatever Greg wanted from Jordan, it was less than Jordan wanted from him. It must have been eerie, the solid slabs of the house frontage broken by its black eye-sockets. No-one there but Jordan and whatever ghosts might haunt the place. Had he been afraid?

His second thought: Jordan going down to the lake, alone in the darkness. It made him uneasy. In case he fell in? But Jordan of all people was unlikely to get into trouble in the water . . .

His third thought: Jordan did not want him to read the message, not now.

He returned a single word:
Sorry
. But it was too late for sorry. He thought of the two bikes aligned in the road, himself wanting to hurt, succeeding; saw the horrible smug smile that had twitched at the corners of his mouth while he flung crude words at Jordan. It made him want to throttle himself, to choke off any more brutal things he might find himself saying.

I made it happen, he thought. I wanted to know, and now I do know. I wanted Jordan to tell me, and he did tell me. Why did I want it? So that I could chuck it back in his face.

The phone rang downstairs. He listened, held his breath. His mother called up, ‘Greg? Is that you up there? It’s Faith.’

Disappointed, relieved, Greg clumped down.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Faith’s voice said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Look, I can’t make it today—’

‘Please come. Now. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

Faith

Photograph
from
the
local
paper,
black
and
white:
a group of elderly people standing around
a birthday cake on a table. All are smiling. The
cake bristles with lit candles. At the centre, seated
in an upholstered chair, is a very old man. He is
smiling fiercely: an almost toothless smile.

Greg found Faith near the grotto, hacking with a curved blade at brambles and suckers that trailed over the path. When he called, she put down the sickle and walked slowly towards him. She had on a fleece jacket, bright red, which suited her so well that Greg stopped for a moment to look at the picture she made: dark hair flowing over scarlet, against a backdrop of berried shrubs.
Focus, click.
He was surprised she wanted to see him, after Thursday.

‘Hello,’ she said—rather aloofly, he thought. ‘Dad asked if we’d clear the path round the lake. They want to bring visitors down next Sunday, on the guided tour.’

‘Visitors? Down here?’

‘I know. I don’t like it either. It’s mine—ours—this place. I don’t want other people, with their noise and chat. But it’s only for one day.’ She fetched secateurs and a pair of long-handled loppers from the bench in the grotto. ‘Will you help? I’ve got a flask of coffee, so we can stay down here all morning.’

‘OK. All the way round, though? It needs one of your dad’s chain gangs.’

‘I’ve made a start,’ Faith said. Greg saw that she had already cleared a few metres of path, throwing the cut grasses and brambles onto a heap on the bank. ‘I’ll slash, you chop up the tougher stuff, then we can swap when my arms ache.’

‘What are we going to do with all that?’ Greg nodded towards the heap of vegetation.

‘Burn it, later.’ Faith began swinging the blade again. ‘I haven’t even seen you since the accident to that boy. What an awful thing to happen! Horrible to think about. Dad says you were heroic,’ she added.

‘What, for doing what anyone else would have done?’

‘You took charge. You knew what to do.’

‘Could hardly clear off and leave him, could I?’

‘Dad went to the hospital again this morning with some books and sweets for Dean. Poor thing—fourteen and never likely to walk again. How terrible! I know it was his own fault, and he shouldn’t have been here, and there are plenty of Danger notices and all that, but all the same it’s tragic, isn’t it? We’ve been praying for him at home . . .’ She stopped; Greg saw an expression of pain flicker over her face.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

He looked at her; she swished her blade fiercely. He picked up the loppers and severed a few elder saplings that were too near the path, then dragged them to the pile. When he returned, Faith said, ‘I wanted to say sorry for the other day. You know. I made a fool of myself, didn’t I?’

‘No,’ Greg said, embarrassed. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘It was wrong of me to throw myself at you like that. I got what I deserved,’ Faith said. ‘You were just . . . being kind, that’s all. You’re too nice to say
Leave
off, I don’t fancy you.
But don’t worry. I’m not going to humiliate myself like that again. And what makes it worse is that I was using you.’

‘Using me how?’

‘I wanted to—to be like other girls. I wanted a boyfriend. And I didn’t really tell you the truth before. I didn’t lie either, but I let you think I’ve been out with boys.’

‘You haven’t,’ he stated.

‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘With parents as strict as mine, and going to a girls’ school, I just don’t
meet
boys. People’s brothers sometimes, but hardly ever a boy I really like. Even if I did, Mum and Dad would never let me stay out late or go to parties, the way most girls at school do. I know it’s because they care about me, and I know it’s not right, the things some of the others do, but honestly, Greg, it’s hard being a girl! All the time, everywhere you go, there are magazines and adverts telling you how you should look, what you should wear, how you’re nothing if you don’t have boys flocking round you. And the stupid thing is I don’t even believe it! I know it’s wrong, and manipulative, and turns people into anorexics. But when it comes down to it, I want—
wanted
— to be a Christian
and
a normal teenage girl. And when I met you, and I thought you liked me a bit, and I liked you—I just wanted to see if I
could
be. It was wrong and stupid, and I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t put yourself down! Of course I like you. A lot. And don’t start thinking you’re not fit enough, ‘cos you are. The thing is . . .’ Greg reached for a handy excuse. ‘There’s someone else.
Was
someone else.’

‘Oh?’ Faith asked dully. ‘Who is she?’

‘No-one you know.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? We know each other well enough, don’t we?’

Greg pulled a dead branch out of the tangle of vegetation and hauled it over to the pile. Faith, resting for a moment, watched.

‘Is it a secret or something?’ she asked, her face sharp and curious.

He wished he hadn’t opened his mouth—thought of fobbing her off with Tanya, and decided not. Tanya was an obliging body, that was all; she didn’t figure.

‘Dad told me you were with Jordan McAuliffe on Friday night,’ Faith said. ‘Jordan as in river, McAuliffe as in Michelle. That’s something else you didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you let on that her brother’s your friend when we talked about Michelle? I asked Dad about him. Quiet, serious, he said. Rather handsome. You’re weird, you are, talking about the meaning of life but not even telling me who your friends are or who you’re going out with . . .
Oh!
’ She stared at him open-mouthed. ‘That’s not what you’re telling me—is it?
He’s
the someone else? You don’t mean—’

‘No! Definitely not. Do me a favour!’ Greg pulled out a mesh of dried goose-grass that had tangled itself round his legs. ‘It’s just—things have got a bit complicated, one way and another.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing. The accident and everything. The other girl—
girl
, OK, got it?—is just someone I met. It’s finished now.’

She glanced at him; they worked in silence for a few moments. Then Faith said, ‘That woman—the boy’s mother—was trying to blame you, Dad said, accusing you of all sorts of things. As if you could have made him break in here!’

‘I know. She’s got it all completely twisted, saying I terrified her poor innocent boy. I bet she’ll be at school first thing tomorrow complaining to the Head.’

‘He won’t believe her, surely?’

‘Well,’ Greg said, treading down nettles, ‘I did have a go at him once—that time I found them chucking stones at the caryatid. Didn’t exactly hit him—I grabbed him, he ducked away and I ended up ripping his anorak. But I could easily have ended up throttling him, arrogant little git.’

‘I don’t blame you for grabbing him. I’d have done the same if I saw him damaging my caryatid.’

‘If she wants to make something of that I suppose she will.’ Greg remembered the fury that had gripped him, the urge to hurt and to take pleasure in hurting—with hands and fists then, with words this morning. ‘You can pray for him in spite of that? I suppose it makes things easier, being a Christian.’

‘No!’ Faith said sharply. ‘It doesn’t and it didn’t! When I said we’ve been praying at home, I meant Mum and Dad have. Not me, because I don’t know how to.’

‘But you’re always praying!’

‘Not any more. There’s no-one there!’ Faith looked at him, fierce, accusing. ‘I talk to God and He’s not there to listen.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Would I joke about something like that?’ Faith carried on hacking the grass, swinging from her shoulders. Greg stepped back, well out of range.

‘But I thought—I thought it was part of you, your belief in God.’

‘Yes, so did I!’

‘What’s happened?’ he asked, dismayed. ‘Is it my fault?’

‘Of course it’s not your fault! You don’t think you said anything I couldn’t have thought of for myself, do you?’

That put him in his place. He worked in silence for a few moments, cutting bramble suckers, waiting for her to say more.

‘Tell me how it happened, then,’ he said, since she offered no explanation. ‘Was it . . . a sudden revelation, or what?’

‘The road back from Damascus? I suppose it was. A conversion in reverse. I don’t know if I can explain.’

‘Try.’

‘Well.’ She straightened, sighed. ‘In our house we’re always having conversations with God, and with Jesus, as if they’re extra members of the family. Always there. I’ve never known anything different. I’ve never even doubted it before, but last week I did.’

‘Why last week?’

‘It was something we were doing at school about the Arab-Israeli war. It’ll sound stupid—’

‘No, go on.’

‘We were watching a documentary. It was one still photograph that did it. There was a Palestinian woman whose little boy had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers. The boy was only about ten and his mother was quite young—beautiful, you could see that, even though she was crying, sitting on the ground, with two other women trying to comfort her. It looked sort of biblical: the weeping woman with her shawl draped over her head. And in her face there was—oh, it sounds stupid, but it struck me that in her face there was all the suffering the world has ever known, all focused on this one woman. One of the others was holding up her hands to Allah. But what could Allah do? What could God do?’

‘I don’t get it, though. You must have seen photos like that before, you must know—why should that one—?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. Knowing something isn’t the same as feeling it. Suddenly I felt as if I’d always been sort of buffered by this—this air-bag of faith. There was all that despair, the pointless killing of one little boy, and the gesture—hands up to Allah, asking for revenge, when it’s only humans who go out for revenge. It goes on and on and on. And this is happening in the holiest places in the world—Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, and Jordan, and Nazareth. It sort of underlines how useless it all is—how little difference Jesus made, when it comes down to it! I’ve always wanted to go to the Holy Land. I wanted to stand where Jesus stood and walk where He walked. But I can’t—because it’s a war zone, a modern war zone. And I know now that if I did, those places would be spoiled for me for ever. Not only because of the war—that’s just an excuse. War or no war, the real reason I don’t want to go is because I know those places will just be ordinary. I won’t find Jesus there. I won’t find Him anywhere. Like you said, I don’t even know what He looked like. The picture I’ve always had in my mind is completely untrue.’

She stared at him. He saw the look of glazed panic in her eyes.

‘But Faith—’

She gave a humourless laugh. ‘Yes, what am I going to call myself now? Faithless? I suppose my parents christened me Faith as a sort of insurance policy to keep me on the straight and narrow. It’s worked, so far. Now—’

‘Have you told them?’

‘Course not. How can I?’

‘You’ll have to, though, won’t you? Unless you go on pretending.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘But—perhaps it’s only a sort of temporary blip? Even saints had those, didn’t they—dark nights of the soul? Can’t you pray to get your faith back?’

‘I’ve tried that. But who am I praying to? To emptiness. To a black hole. It’s just words. I might as well try a Ouija board or reading tea-leaves. How can I pray to a God I don’t believe in any more?’

‘You’ve got to tell yourself there still is a God, even if the lines are out of order and you can’t get through at the moment.’

‘How can you say that?
You
don’t believe,’ Faith said angrily. ‘If you tell me to pretend there’s a God, you’re just . . . going along with it, like I’m a child with an imaginary friend, who needs to be humoured. The point is—the whole point is that if I can lose it so easily, it must mean I never really had it, mustn’t it? I’ve been kidding myself all my life.’

‘But you
did
have it—you did believe when we talked before, truly! You weren’t pretending then.’

Faith pulled off her scarlet fleece and chucked it on the bank, and carried on cutting grass with a wearied, mechanical motion. ‘No, I wasn’t pretending. That’s because I was like a trained parrot. I knew my lines. I knew what I was supposed to believe. And all that made me think I
did
believe, because there was no alternative, was there? But it’s only like a house built on sand—no, it’s hollow, a shell house, like the one up there!
In my father’s house are many mansions
, Jesus said. You could walk around in it, there’d be plenty of room for everyone. But it’s not like that! You might think so from the outside, but when you get close you can see it’s only a shell, no real rooms at all. Nothing inside except crumbling staircases, no warmth or life, no light at the windows. And I thought it was everything.’

‘You can get it back! I bet you can.’

‘There you go again. You can’t tell me that unless you’ve got it yourself, and you haven’t. How would
you
know? Without, it’s just like telling me to believe in Father Christmas, or looking for fairies at the bottom of the garden—you think if I want it badly enough, I’ll be able to hypnotize myself. The thing is, it’s all been so easy—too easy. Doing what I’m told to do, going to Sunday school, going to church, saying my prayers. And Jesus—He’s been everything, too much. I’ll be your friend, I’ll listen to you, I’ll do your thinking for you, I’ll die for you. I
wanted
that. I wanted Him to be everything, the centre of the universe—my universe, anyway, not yours; you prefer black holes. But now I don’t, because I need to think things out for myself, not lean on someone who saves me from having to and isn’t even there. He was just someone who died two thousand years ago, like you said. This—this thing I always wear, this cross—’ She threw down her blade and tugged at the crucifix round her neck. ‘It’s—it’s
too much
— it’s like Jesus is asking too much of me, the way I was asking too much of Him!’

‘But how can he if you’ve stopped—hey, don’t!’