Descent (7 page)

‘How?’ I asked, in a tone more belligerent than I felt.

This time, it was Mum who looked down, slowing her pace as she thought aloud.

‘Well … there’s the social aspect, and the psychological element of being taken out of yourself and caught up in the ritual, just like watching a performance on stage is mentally refreshing in a way that seeing it on screen isn’t. I suppose you would agree with me there, so far.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I wasn’t sure where this was going.

‘But there’s also, as I and almost all of the rest of the people there would see it, the spiritual side, the presence of God among us, which precisely because it’s real is bound to affect you whether you believe in it – in him – or not.’

‘Oh, Mum!’

‘What?’

‘That’s such a … you could say that of any religious service, in any church or mosque or synagogue or whatever.’

‘I’m sure you could.’ She sounded amused, but firm. ‘You might even be right – in fact, you almost certainly would be. Surely you don’t think we expect God to work only on Sunday, and not stretch to cover Fridays and Saturdays at the very least!’

This threw me a little.

‘But that’s so wishy-washy!’

She lifted her head, straightened her back, and quickened her pace.

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘It’s Christian. Whatever you come to think or believe, Ryan, don’t make the stupid, ignorant mistake of thinking that any believer who is not a fundamentalist is
soft
.’

I could hear in her tone that something rankled more than my lazy jibe. Looking back, it’s obvious now that she’d heard more than enough of that accusation in the controversies that had roiled the Anglican Communion for decades. But I had no idea of that at the time, never having paid the slightest attention to church affairs. I decided to try a different angle.

‘But there’s no evidence for any of it, anyway.’

‘That’s what your father says, yes.’

‘And he’s right, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Mum. ‘If you mean
historical
evidence – that, say Jesus rose from the dead. How could there be? History’s about probabilities, and that’s a very improbable story.’ She laughed. ‘As improbable as it gets, actually!’

‘So why do you believe it?’

She looked at me sharply. ‘Because of experiences like you’ve just had.’

For a moment I thought she was referring to the experience that was on my mind. I almost tripped. Then I realised what she meant.

‘Like feeling better for having been in church?’

‘That, and others. If you don’t feel like church again anytime soon, you can always join me for a stint at the food bank.’

For me, my mother’s Wednesday evening good works and occasional social activism were even more incomprehensible than her religious observances. As far as I was concerned, the best thing one could do for the poor was to not add one’s self to their number. The notion that one might get some spiritual benefit from associating with them disgusted me.

Something of that must have shown on my face.

‘Oh well,’ my mum said. ‘Just keep your mind open to the possibility, all right?’

We’d reached the junction at the bottom of our street, where the sandstone tenements gave way to sandstone villas. Ahead of us, on the outer curve of the street just as it began to slope up and to our right, was a stand of ancient beech trees on the steep side of a small hill, atop which one could just make out through the green spring leaves the cupola of a mausoleum. As a child I’d often enough squeezed through a gap in the rusty railings to play in the bouncy beech-mast floor of that coppice, which continued over the hilltop to merge with the wooded areas of Greenock’s vast cemetery. I’d climb onto broad boughs and venture outward until they bent, or straddle their groins with my back against the trunk and stare out through the dapple until my head swam.

Now, as we waited to cross the road while a police column trundled past, I looked at the trees and found myself struck by the thought of death. This may have been the first moment in my life when I realised that death really was going to happen to me. All possible paths from this moment, however long, however winding, would end in the same black hole.

We looked both ways and hurried across the wide, cambered road.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘if I don’t go to church, will I go to hell?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ryan!’ she said. ‘Can’t you take this seriously for once?’

We walked the rest of the way home in silence.

‘Ryan –’

‘Yes?’ I turned from giving my lunchtime soup mug an ineffectual cold-water rinse.

Dad gave his head an upward jerk, his eyes an upward glance and his eyebrows an upward twitch. From this I guessed he meant us to go upstairs. I left the mug in the sink, and slouched after my father to the main front room of the first floor. Nominally the master bedroom, it did indeed have a double bed, but its main use was as Dad’s home office and (I suspected) chill-out room. A desk with an old computer and an Anglepoise stood in one corner, between the guest wardrobe and the wall. Bookshelves overhung the mantelpiece above a fireplace long since blocked off and occupied by a radiator. The big bay window overlooked the roofs of the West End and afforded a broad view over the Firth to the Holy Loch and the hills and beyond them to the mountains.

Dad sat down on his desk chair and swivelled it outward.

‘Have a seat,’ he said.

There were no other chairs in the room. I sat on the edge of the bed.

‘So,’ Dad said, ‘you were going to tell me what happened yesterday.’

I took a deep breath. I felt an irresistible impulse to slide the palm of my hand across the back of my neck, as if I’d just had a haircut.

‘What I said, me and Calum going for a walk up the Cut, the fog and that,’ I said. ‘That all happened but I left something out.’

‘Go on.’

‘We were up the top of the hill, by the microwave mast. The fog came down, and we tried to walk downhill, then we saw we weren’t getting anywhere, so we stopped. And the fog kind of rolled down below us, so we were above it. I looked up to see where we were, and we both saw a light in the sky.’

‘In the bright, blue sky?’ Dad sounded sceptical.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very bright, and round, like a silver balloon. That’s what we thought it was, then we saw it was coming down fast, right on top of us. So we ran.’

‘Uh-huh. Sensible. And?’

I rubbed the back of my neck again. ‘The light … seemed to fall on top of us. That’s all I remember, a white light all round us. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground in a big circle of ash, and so was Calum, and it was an hour or more later. The fog had lifted and we could see where we were, not far above the Cut.’

‘A circle? Like, a ring?’ He outlined one in the air with a fingertip.

I shook my head. ‘A filled-in circle, about three metres across. We had ash all over on our clothes.’

Dad tipped the seat of his chair back and forth a few times.

‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘I put them in the wash this morning. More like soot than ash.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone else see this light in the sky?’

‘Not as far as I know. I checked the news. No other reports.’

Dad looked sceptical. ‘That’s unlikely, isn’t it?’

I shrugged. ‘We were above the cloud, and most people who might have seen it were below.’

Dad compressed and twisted his lips. ‘Hmm. Possible, I suppose.’ He stood up. ‘Well!’ he said, smacking his palms together and rubbing. ‘That circle should still be there. Think you could find it again?’

‘Uh, sure.’

I wasn’t sure at all, but how hard could it be?

Our bikes were out the back, in a low brick bunker that still had fragments of coal in its dark corners. When I was about twelve I’d blunted a good penknife blade carving lumps of the stuff into approximations of comic-book characters. Dad ducked half inside and wheeled out my bike, then his. We took our helmets from the handlebars and made our way down the path by the side of the house, brushed by wet branches of overgrown bushes, through the garden gateway and down the front steps.

The front gate clanged behind me as I swung my leg over and settled in the saddle. Down the street I free-wheeled, slewing the bend, and stopped at the junction as Dad caught up.

‘Take it easy,’ he said.

Another downward ride, around a roundabout and out along Inverkip Road. From the flow of traffic, I guessed that the blockade had been lifted. We zigzagged through back streets and up a steep slope to the Cut, then pedalled sedately along the path’s long curves. More people were out than there had been yesterday, drawn by the brighter day. We passed the school, then Branchton. Beyond it, down on the road, the tyres had been cleared, the fires were out. But the oil drums stood on the grass just back of the pavement, cylinders of tyres stacked beside them, ready for the next time.

I looked over my shoulder. ‘A bit along from here,’ I called. Dad waved acknowledgement. The bike wobbled as I slowed to eye the hillside. I could see the microwave mast on the skyline. On a bit, a couple of hundred metres before the plank across the Cut … that was where it had been. Just around the side of the hill …

The sound of an engine wavered on the air, becoming louder as I followed the bend around. A thickening and slowing of the path’s traffic made me weave in and out among walkers, wheelers and parents pushing buggies. Some delay in front, I guessed. I glanced up and to the side. Just ahead was the crumbled stretch of the banks where Calum and I had crossed on our return. Now it was bridged by a pair of flanged tracks, with a red-striped plastic barrier on trestles across the nearer side. From the far side, two parallel strips of chewed-up grass and heather marked the way to where, high on the slope above, a small yellow caterpillar-tracked JCB digger was busy tearing up turf and stacking sods into the skip of a small dumper. The two drivers, in hard hats and hi-vis jackets, were on their own up there.

My wheels spat gravel as I braked. Dad drew level with my shoulder and dismounted.

‘Is that where it was?’

I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

‘How bloody convenient,’ my father said.

I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic.

He dismounted. ‘Hold the bike, will you?’

And with that he was off, scissoring his legs over the barrier, pacing across one of the metal tracks with his arms out to balance, and striding up the hill. He approached the vehicles and waved his arms. Engines coughed off. I saw him talking to the drivers, and peering into the dumper’s skip. He loped back down and returned to my side, shaking his head.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘They’re fae the Cooncil.’ He mimicked the local dialect. ‘“No idea, pal. Just a job. Something to do wi’ drainage.”’

‘Did they say anything about the round black patch?’

‘Yes, they said it was ash from a fire some idiot had made with lighter fuel or such. I could see the stuff in the skip myself.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least that confirms –’

Dad sighed. ‘Doesn’t confirm anything, I’m afraid. But as it happens, Ryan, I don’t think you’re lying.’

‘Gosh, thanks, Dad!’

‘You’re welcome.’

He took his handlebars, and turned his bike round. As I followed suit, he glanced back up the hill and then at me.

‘Not exactly the Roswell debris field, eh?’

‘You know about that?’

‘Doesn’t everyone? I’m more surprised that you do.’

‘I used to read that stuff,’ I said, ‘when I was thirteen or so,’ I added, in a tone of disdain for foolish youth.

Dad snorted. ‘So that’s what was on the sites you used to tab away from as soon as you saw me or your mum coming?’

‘Yes. Well, usually.’

‘It’ll make you go blind. UFO stuff, I mean. Don’t start again. And don’t say anything more about it.’

I was about to protest this blatant collusion with the great UFO cover-up when Dad swung his leg over the saddle and pushed off. I followed, fuming at first, then gradually cooling down.

At least he didn’t think I’d been on drugs.

‘You fucking bastard, Sinky!’

Monday morning, and I was just off the bus to school. Calum, having arrived by a different bus, had waylaid me at my stop, about fifty metres from the school entrance. He’d met my good-morning grin with a furious look, followed by furious words as he fell in beside me.

‘What’s up, Duke?’

‘Don’t gie me that. You know fine well what’s up.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You telt my da.’

This sounded so primary school I almost laughed. ‘Did not.’

‘Some cunt did.’

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘What?’

‘It was my dad.’

‘Why the fuck d’yi have to tell him?’

‘Come on,’ I said. I glanced over my shoulder. The pavement behind us, as in front, was crowded with pupils, in clumps and couples and alone, but no one was closer than a few steps away. ‘You know. He thought I was tripping on LSD or something on Saturday night. Couldn’t let him think that, could I? That would have got us both into trouble, right?’

‘Aye, I suppose.’ Calum sounded grudging.

‘So I told him about the light. And the weird dream. I don’t think he believed me, but he went with me up to the Cut and—’

‘Saw the circle?’

‘No, saw it being dug up with a JCB.’

‘What?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Anyhow, he must have called your father, because I sure didn’t. What happened?’

‘Gave me a right grilling. He sounded dead worried. Wanted aw the details I could remember. Speed and size ae the light and that. He was very anxious tae know if I remembered anything from after it knocked us out.’

‘And did you?’ I asked.

‘Like I told you, and I told him – no. Then …’

We were just entering the school gates. As we paused to hand our house keys and fistfuls of change around the metal-detector, we were no longer out of earshot. Calum waited until we were halfway across the front playground before continuing.

‘The funny thing is, he started asking me about what state my head was in, like if I’d noticed any weird feelings or if my sight had gone funny just after or if I’d had any nightmares or anything. It’s like he knew exactly what had happened to you.’