into the light. And it wasn’t only the young. More and more people were seeking the company of their own kind, deserting the lonelier villages even before prudence or official decree made it necessary, and moving to those designated urban districts where the Warden had promised that light and power would be provided, if possible, until the end.
The solitary house which he remembered still stood in its garden to the right of the church and Theo saw to his surprise that it was at least partly occupied. The windows were curtained, there was a thin trail of smoke from the chimney and to the left of the path some attempt had been made to clear the earth of the knee-high grasses and to cultivate a vegetable garden. A few shrivelled runner beans still hung from the supporting sticks and there were uneven rows of cabbages and yellowing, half-picked Brussels sprouts. During his visits as an undergraduate he remembered regretting that the peace of the church and the house, which it was difficult to believe were so close to the city, had been spoiled by the loud, ceaseless roar from the M40 motorway. Now that nuisance was hardly noticeable and the house seemed wrapped in an ageless calm.
It was broken when the door burst open and an elderly man in a faded cassock precipitated himself out and came squawking and stumbling down the path, waving his arms as if to repel recalcitrant beasts. He called out in a quavering voice: “No service! No service today. I’ve got a christening at eleven o’clock.”
Theo said: “I’m not attending a service, I’m just visiting.”
“That’s all they ever do. Or so they say. But I shall want the font at eleven. All out then. Everyone out except the christening party.”
“I don’t expect to be here as late as that. Are you the parish priest?”
He came close and glared at Theo with fierce paranoid eyes. Theo thought that he had never seen anyone so old, the skull stretching the paper-thin, mottled skin of his face as if death couldn’t wait to claim him.
The old man said: “They had a black Mass here last Wednesday, singing and shouting all night. That’s not right. I can’t stop it, but I don’t approve. And they don’t clear up after themselves—blood, feathers, wine all over the floor. And black candle-grease. You can’t get it out. It won’t come out, you know. And it’s all left for me to do. They don’t think. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.”
Theo said: “Why don’t you keep the church locked?”
The old man became conspiratorial. “Because they’ve taken the key, that’s why. And I know who’s got it. Oh yes, I know.” He turned and stumbled, muttering, towards the house, wheeling round at the door to shout a final warning. “Out at eleven o’clock. Unless you’re coming to the christening. All out by eleven.”
Theo made his way to the church. It was a small stone building and with its short twin-belled turret it looked very like an unpretentious stone house with a single chimney stack. The churchyard was as overgrown as a long-neglected field. The grass was tall and pale, as hay and ivy had leached over the gravestones, obliterating the names. Somewhere in this tangled wilderness was the well of St. Frideswide, once a place of pilgrimage. A modem pilgrim would have difficulty in finding it. But the church was obviously visited. On either side of the porch was a terracotta pot containing a single rose bush, the stems now denuded but still bearing a few starved winter-blighted buds.
Julian was waiting for him in the porch. She didn’t hold out her hand or smile, but said, “Thank you for coming, we’re all here,” and pushed open the door. He followed her into the dim interior and was met by a strong wave of incense overlaying a more feral smell. When he had first come here, thirty years ago, he had been transported by the silence of its ageless peace, seeming to hear upon the air the echo of long-forgotten plainsong, of old imperatives and desperate prayers. All that had gone. Once it had been a place where silence was more than the absence of noise. Now it was a stone building; nothing more.
He had expected the group to be waiting for him, standing or sitting together in the dim rustic emptiness. But he saw that they had separated themselves and had been walking in different parts of the church as if some argument or a restless need for solitude had forced them apart. There were four of them, three men and a tall woman standing beside the altar. As he and Julian entered they came quietly together and grouped themselves in the aisle facing him.
He had no doubt which one was Julian’s husband and their leader even before he came forward and, it seemed, deliberately confronted him. They stood facing each other like two adversaries weighing each other up. Neither smiled or put out a hand.
He was very dark, with a handsome, rather sulky face, the restless, suspicious eyes bright and deep-set, the brows strong and straight as brush strokes accentuating the jutting cheekbones. The heavy eyelids were spiked with a few black hairs so that the lashes and eyebrows looked joined. The ears were large and prominent, the lobes pointed, pixie ears at odds with the uncompromising set of the mouth and the strong clenched jaw. It was not the face of a man at peace with himself or his world, but why should he be, missing by only a few years the distinction and privileges of being an Omega? His generation, like theirs, had been observed, studied, cosseted, indulged, preserved for that moment when they would be male adults and produce the hoped—for fertile sperm. It was a generation programmed for failure, the ultimate disappointment to the parents who had bred them and the race which had invested in them so much careful nurturing and so much hope.
When he spoke his voice was higher than Theo had expected, harsh- toned and with a trace of an accent which he couldn’t identify. Without waiting for Julian to make any introductions he said: “There’s no need for you to know our surnames. We’ll use forenames only. I’m Rolf and I’m the leader of the group. Julian is my wife. Meet Miriam, Luke and Gascoigne. Gascoigne is his forename. His gran chose it for him in 1990, God knows why. Miriam used to be a midwife and Luke is a priest. You don’t need to know what any of us do now.”
The woman was the only one to come forward and grasp Theo’s hand. She was black, probably Jamaican, and the oldest of the group, older than himself, Theo guessed, perhaps in her mid- or late fifties. Her high bush of short, tightly curled hair was dusted with white. The contrast between the black and white was so stark that the head looked powdered, giving her a look both hieratic and decorative. She was tall and gracefully built with a long, fine-featured face, the coffee-coloured skin hardly lined, denying the whiteness of the hair. She was wearing slim black trousers tucked into boots, a high-necked brown jersey and sheepskin jerkin, an elegant, almost exotic contrast to the rough serviceable country clothes of the three men. She greeted Theo with a firm handshake and a speculative, half-humorous colluding glance, as if they were already conspirators.
At first sight there was nothing remarkable about the boy—he looked like a boy although he couldn’t be younger than thirty-one—whom they called Gascoigne. He was short, almost tubby, crop-haired and with a round, amiable face, wide-eyed, snub-nosed—a child’s face which had grown with age but not essentially altered since he had first looked out of his pram at a world which his air of puzzled innocence suggested he still found odd but not unfriendly.
The man called Luke, whom he remembered Julian too had described as a priest, was older than Gascoigne, probably over forty. He was tall, with a pale, sensitive face and an etiolated body, the large knobbled hands drooping from delicate wrists, as if in childhood he had outgrown his strength and had never managed to achieve robust adulthood. His fair hair lay like a silk fringe on the high forehead; his grey eyes were widely spaced and gentle. He looked an unlikely conspirator, his obvious frailty in stark contrast to Rolf’s dark masculinity. He gave Theo a brief smile which transformed his slightly melancholy face, but did not speak.
Rolf said: “Julian explained to you why we agreed to see you.” He made it sound as if Theo were the supplicant.
“You want me to use my influence with the Warden of England. I have to tell you that I have no influence. I gave up any such right when I relinquished my appointment as his adviser. I’ll listen to what you have to say but I don’t think there’s anything I can do to influence either the Council or the Warden of England. There never was. That’s partly why I resigned.”
Rolf said: “You’re his cousin, his only living relative. You were more or less brought up together. The rumour is that you’re the only one in England he’s ever listened to.”
