Hungry Moon (4 page)

^{Craig gave a noncommittal murmur as Benedict drove back to the hotel. The women had already left. 'Do remember I'm not asking for the money purely for myself,' Benedict said on the way to the cottage, mist drifting across the deserted main street into the headlights.}

^{Vera had gone to bed, and was asleep. Craig found that he'd wanted to talk, and felt lonely. He lay beside her, feeling the aches start in his bones, trying to fall asleep before their nagging prevented him. A stab of pain in his left calf brought him lurching awake, gasping. The plunge into sleep had felt like his fall into the disused mineshaft, his boyhood fall that was always waiting in his dreams when he was nervous. He peered at the room as moonbeams probed the curtains. He closed his eyes and drifted until an impression startled him. In the hotel restaurant he'd thought fleetingly that the diners didn't just all know one another. The feeling lingered that they all knew something he didn't know, and were waiting.}

^FIVE

^{'What's that we just backed into, Mr Gloom?'}

^{'Some silly fool standing on the pavement, Mr Despondency.'}

^{'Must have missed him, he's still standing. Great balls of fire, what's he doing now?'}

^{'Banging on the car boot as if we hadn't noticed him. Hey up, he's banged it open.'}

^{'Here, here, what's the game? Get your hands off my car or I'll have the law on you.'}

^{Too late Eustace realized that he shouldn't have started improvising, because now he couldn't think of a punch line. 'That really happened to me here today in Sheffield, but don't tell anyone, will you?' he said, reverting to his normal voice. It didn't sound much like his in the headphones they'd given him; it was high-pitched and over eager and more regionally accented than he'd thought possible. He could see his face reflected in the studio window beside the patient face of the producer, his hair sticking up above his perspiring forehead, his mouth only a little wider than his broad nose. He made his mouth into an O, his features turning into an exclamation mark, and for the first time the producer laughed. But this wasn't television; Eustace was auditioning for radio. Above all, he had to keep talking.}

^{He shouldn't have brought Gloom & Despondency on so soon. He should have told the incident with the car as it had happened - him slapping the boot and the driver accusing him of trying to steal from the car - because then he could have led into what had happened at the bank. The teller hadn't been convinced that the signature on the cheque he'd made out to cash was his, and when he'd signed it again for her it had looked even less like the signature on his cheque card. As for the photograph on his union membership card, she'd stared at it as if he must have bought it in a joke shop. So far it had been a pretty average day, but he'd missed his chance to use it now. All he could do was go into another routine, the one he'd meant to save until the end. 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' he said solemnly, and couldn't bear the sound of his amputated voice any longer; he pulled off the headphones and let them dangle from the table. 'One. . . Two. . . Two and a bit on Sundays. . . Four if you count the times when I have a touch of the old trouble. . . Five when you do. . .'}

^{He could still hear his other voice, squeaking mouselike beside his thigh. He felt parched for a laugh, even a smile from the producer. 'Don't tell anyone, will you?' Eustace said, hoping that this time the man would realize it was his catch phrase, and wondered why the producer was holding up one finger, drawing circles in the air. When the producer sawed it across his throat, Eustace said 'Thank you' and stumbled to his feet, knocking the earphones to the floor, tripped over a cable and wrenched at the door until he realized he was trying to open it the wrong way. He struggled past it in time to hear the producer say, 'You'll agree that wasn't worth the tape, let alone my time.'}

^{'He needs a proper audience, Anthony,' said his colleague, who'd invited Eustace.}

^{'What do you want me to do, Steve, drag them in off the street?'}

^{'No, I'd like you to see him on his own ground. You were the one who said we ought to be giving more local talent a chance.' He turned to Eustace, who stopped mopping his forehead. 'When are you next on at that pub I saw you in?'}

^{'The One-Armed Soldier? Thursday week.'}

^{'We've got to go to Manchester that week anyway, Anthony. Come on, trust me. We'll stop off to watch Eustace on the way back, and if you still don't see what l saw in him I'll treat you to dinner.'}

^{'I'll let you know. By the time these auditions are over I may well be ready to punch the next clown I see on the nose.'}

^{'Hear that, Eustace? He made a joke, there's still hope for him.' Steve guided Eustace out by one elbow. 'I know you won't let me down.' Steve said.}

^{He wouldn't, Eustace vowed as the bus climbed out of Sheffield. Yellowish gouges of mines scarred the grassy slopes; a reservoir, a fallen slab of the cloudy sky, stretched to the horizon, sinking as the bus laboured upward. Thursday week might change his life. No longer just the Moonwell postman and a treat for the customers at the pub, he'd be the man who was hiding inside him waiting to be noticed. He'd be worthy of Phoebe Wain-wright's notice.}

^{The bus let him off at the edge of the pine woods. He walked through the green calm, breaking into routines when he felt like it. 'Tea in the pot, Mr Gloom.' 'Best bloody place for it, Mr Despondency.' They summed up Northern dourness at its worst; their behaviour wasn't even that much of a parody, to judge by the way his audiences at the pub recognized them.}

^{A sharp wind met him as he emerged from the old forest. Above him the ridge overlooking the town looked charred against the lumpy, piebald sky. 'Don't miss Eustace Gift at the One-Armed Soldier,' he announced, blowing himself a fanfare as he gained the ridge, 'but don't tell anyone, will you?' He swallowed his last word, for he'd been overheard. A man was resting on the ferny bank beside the road.}

^{The man placed his long hands on his knees and stood up as Eustace faltered. He wore a denim suit, shoes with thick soles, a rucksack. His face was angular, cheekbones thrusting forward; his hair was clipped close to his head. His eyes were unnervingly blue. Shyness made Eustace speak before he was ready. 'Heading for Moon-well?'}

^{'Sure am.'}

^{Californian, Eustace thought, having been educated by television. Eustace made to hurry past, but the man fell into step with him. 'I hope you weren't thinking I was crazy,' Eustace said eventually, awkwardly, 'because I was talking to myself.'}

^{'Not at all. I knew who you were talking to up here.'}

^{Eustace didn't like to ask who. 'What brings you to Moonwell?'}

^{'Good news.'}

^{'Oh, good. That's good news,' Eustace babbled, unwilling to risk anything else.}

^{'And the greatest challenge of my life.'}

^{'Really? That must be -' Eustace blundered, and gave up. Thank heaven they were entering Moonwell. Noticing how dusty the man's shoes and trousers were, he wondered how far he could have walked. He made to stride ahead, but the man took hold of his arm. 'How do I get above the town?'}

^{'Along here," Eustace said reluctantly, and led him off the High Street. At the end of the unpaved side road, a stepped path led up to the moors. 'You'd be doing me a favour if you'd help me to the top,' the man said.}

^{Eustace took pity on him, since he seemed exhausted. Yet as soon as they reached the moor, wind hissing down the grassy slopes to set the heather scratching, the man revived. 'I know my way now,' he said, and when Eustace made to retreat, 'Come with me. It isn't far. You won't want to miss this.' He waited until Eustace stumbled after him along the path, wondering what he'd been talked into. The man's face pressed forward into the wind until the skin turned pale with stretching, and Eustace began to feel he'd rather hear at secondhand about whatever was coming. But he hadn't thought of an excuse for turning back when the crowd of people appeared above them on the slopes, cried out, and started singing.}

^SIX

^{Nick drove away from the missile base and wondered how best to contradict himself. There were fewer protesters at the base today than there had been last week. Most of them came from Sheffield or farther away, very few from the Peak District, and none at all from Moon-well. It looked as if the Defence Minister had been proved right after all.}

^{The site of the base had been moved away from Sheffield into a dale at the edge of the Peaks. There had been protests that it was too close to the reservoirs, and a few that it was too close to Moonwell. When the couple who ran a bookshop in Moonwell had written to the Defence Minister, they'd received a letter that all but said Moonwell was small enough to be expendable. That had brought protesters out of the Peaks, but not for long. Today's demonstration had been entirely peaceful - too much so, Nick thought, for its own good. Whatever report he wrote, he could imagine its carrying some headline as PEAKS ACCEPT MISSILE BASE. Looks like another job for the masked man of the airwaves, he thought, his wry grin fading as he wondered how hard a time Julia would give him.}

^{He'd been broadcasting anonymously on her pirate waveband in Manchester for almost a year. They'd met at a fund-raiser for Amnesty International, not long after she'd started broadcasting. When she'd learned he was a reporter she'd begun to probe his feelings, his frustration at seeing his reports toned down or distorted, how he'd resigned himself to being satisfied when the newspaper let a token left-wing observation of his slip through into print - the best you could expect when the newspapers were owned by fewer and fewer proprietors and were becoming mouthpieces for bigger and bigger mouths. But there was an alternative, she'd told him, her eyes sparkling. He wouldn't be the only reporter who was using her radio station to say what his paper refused to let him say.}

^{He turned off the Manchester road and drove across the moors. There ought to be a town on the moorland road, if he wasn't mistaken, or at least a pub for a late lunch. He'd grown fond of Julia; over the months during which he'd visited her sagging Victorian house in Salford, with the radio equipment in the cellar, they'd made love several times. But recently her attitude toward him had changed: people must know who he was on the air, she kept saying. He ought to name himself and see what his editor did then - Nick's name would make the authorities think twice about closing her down. Nick doubted that his name carried much weight, and touched though he was by her promise that she would always have a job for him, he didn't think he would achieve anything by putting his career at risk. Lately, to placate Julia, he'd taken to attacking himself by name on the air.}

^{He switched on the car radio in case he could hear her, but her waveband was swamped by an American evangelical station, a rock group singing 'Have a nice day, Jesus, have a nice day.' He turned the radio off and planned how to scathe Nick Reid. He thought of Julia's soft lips, long, cool arms, long legs wrapped around his. The car sped across the moors, miles from the main road now, and he wondered if he'd been mistaken about the pub. He'd stopped the car so as to consult the road map when he heard the singing.}

^{He rolled the window down. Moors divided by infrequent drystone walls glowed sullenly under the packed sky. A bird caught by the wind plummeted and swooped, water trickled in the ditch beside the road. A shift of wind brought him another snatch of song from somewhere ahead. It sounded like a choir.}

^{He put away the AA book without consulting it. There must be a town ahead that was conducting an outdoor service of thanksgiving, as the townsfolk often did in the Peaks. He drove up the next slope and saw the town, past a couple of farmhouses and a blue-and-white cottage. It looked typical, terraces built of limestone and gritstone, small gardens brimming with flowers, a narrow main street that cut off his view of the rest of the town as soon as he drove in. The shops were locked, the streets deserted.}

^{He parked the car in the town square and got out, stretching. A telephone rang somewhere, a dog barked. The pub was locked too, he saw. It didn't seem worth driving in search of another so close to closing time. The choir was still singing, out of sight above the town. He locked the car and went up.}

^{A path at the end of a terrace of cottages led him onto the moor. As he stepped over the edge, the singing surged toward him. There was a moment when it seemed to come from everywhere on the empty slopes, then from the churning sky. He went along the trampled grassy path through the heather toward a stretch of bare rock from beyond which he thought the sound was welling. He wasn't prepared for what he saw as he reached the top.}

^{The barren land sloped down to a large pothole surrounded by a drystone wall. The stony bowl outside the wall was full of hundreds of people and the sound of a hymn. Opposite Nick, by the wall where the lip of the pothole was highest, a man was kneeling by himself.}

^{Dozens of people had turned to stare at Nick. He stepped down into the crowd so as to be less conspicuous. Not everyone was singing; some people looked bewildered, even suspicious. Nick had almost reached the front of the crowd when, with a shout that echoed from the slopes and startled birds out of the heather, the singing ended.}

^{Nick halted between a plump woman with a cheerful, delicate face and a couple with a restless child. The kneeling man had closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky, lips moving silently. He gazed at the crowd then, his keen blue eyes searching out face after face. 'I am Godwin Mann,' he said in a light yet penetrating voice, 'and that's why I'm here.'}

^{The plump woman snorted, whether derisively or not Nick couldn't tell. 'He means he's here to win people for God, Andrew,' the woman on his other side murmured to her son.}

^{'Please don't kneel unless you want to,' Godwin Mann said, 'but I'd like you to be seated until I ask you to stand up for God.' When people stared at him or at the bare rock they were being asked to sit on, he added, 'If anyone would like a chair or a cushion, just raise your hand.'}

^{Many hands went up, rather tentatively. In response to that, a large wedge of the crowd behind Mann headed for a nearby line of tents, came back with armfuls of cushions or folding chairs. Some of the crowd spread coats to sit on, though they still looked dubious. Nick suspected that some of them were sitting down because they resented having to stand, perhaps resented having been brought here at all. He was beginning to wonder what precisely he'd stumbled onto, all the more so when the Californian said, 'I guess some of you may think I was discourteous because I didn't tell you I was coming, but I didn't know how long it would take me to walk.'}

^{'From America?' a man wearing a butcher's apron muttered.}

^{Mann gazed at him. 'No, from Heathrow Airport. I wanted to be sure I was worthy to speak for God.'}

^{Nick sensed how those who'd grumbled about sitting on the ground felt ashamed of having complained. Score one for the evangelist, Nick thought as Mann went on. 'Don't think I'm saying I'm better than any one of you. Listen and I'll tell you how I was until I asked God into my life.'}

^{He took a deep breath and glanced at the sunless sky. 'I was brought up in Hollywood. My father was a British movie actor, Gavin Mann.' When a murmur of recognition went through the crowd he said a shade more loudly, 'I'm not here to speak ill of my father, but I was brought up in the worst ways of Hollywood. At five years old I was drinking alcohol, at ten I was smoking marijuana, at twelve I was snorting cocaine. Fifteen years old and I visited a prostitute. And one year later a man came into my bedroom who used to swim naked with my father. I'm afraid my father only remarried after he divorced my mother because his fans would have expected him to. Well, I found out that night what my father did with his men friends, and the next morning I cut my wrists, as you can see.'}

^{He held up his arms, displaying the pinkish scars like stigmata, to the audible dismay of the crowd. 'My father got me to the hospital, but I wouldn't tell anyone why I'd done that to myself. All I wanted was to be left alone to get well so I could go someplace by myself and finish myself off.'}

^{The woman beside Nick was dabbing at her eyes and jerking her son's hand when he asked her what was wrong. Nick felt uncomfortable, and suspicious of Mann's weepy technique, especially when Mann said, 'The morning of the day before I would have left the hospital to kill myself, God saved me.'}

^{He gave a wide self-deprecating smile. 'Maybe that sounds presumptuous, thinking God would take the trouble for someone like I was, but let me tell you He'd do the same for anyone just so long as they ask. See, every day a counsellor from Mission America came to the hospital, and I'd turn my back on her not knowing I was turning my back on God. Only that last day I heard God telling me not to turn away, and I told that counsellor everything and accepted God into my life.'}

^{The wedge of the crowd behind him whooped and waved their hands. They were the main choir, Nick realized. 'Some of you may be thanking God you aren't like I was,' Mann said to the townsfolk in front of him. 'But are you really without sin? As God looks down on this unspoiled landscape, do you think He takes pride in everything He sees, or does He grieve for his greatest creation, you and me? Can anyone here stand up and say that sin has passed your town of Moonwell by?'}

^{He let the silence answer him. 'You see how much you know but don't like to talk about. These days it isn't fashionable to talk about sin or even about God. Rock musicians turn hymns into sex songs, sacred music gets used in television commercials, churches are turned into markets as if man no longer needs God. But people still need to believe, and that's why they're turning to magic and drugs and worse stuff to fill the gaps in their lives, but all that does is widen the gaps to let in sin. How could they face God if the bomb dropped now? What sort of eternal life do you think they can expect? I'm not here to argue the rights and wrongs of nuclear war, but if that missile base on the other side of these moors were to be nuked right now, I know that I shall go to heaven, because Paul's gospel tells me so.'}

^{Some of the townsfolk nodded at that. 'Maybe some of you are saying to yourselves that it's okay for me, because I have faith. But so have you. You had faith when you got up this morning that your house hadn't been burgled. You had faith when you went out into the street that you wouldn't be run down by a stolen car or a driver high on drugs. You have faith now that we won't see the nuclear cloud over these moors and there won't be an earthquake that will spill us all down this evil hole.'}

^{He stared down into the cave with what seemed to Nick unnecessary vehemence. 'Let me put it another way,' Mann said, raising his blue eyes again. 'How many of you can say you have no faith at all? Are you really prepared to die alone in the dark, rejecting God? Christ died on the cross for you, He made that act of faith to show you how much God loves you and wants you to accept Him, and if you reject that, you're condemning Him to die alone without you, condemning Christ to die alone in the dark, crying out "Why have you forsaken Me?" You may call yourself a Christian, you may believe you lead a good Christian life, but hear this: you can't take what you need from Christ and leave the rest, you can't say, "Thank you, Jesus, I've got all I want from you now, just give the rest of that stuff to someone who needs it." You can't think your way to God. Unless you let God into your life to show you how to live, unless you accept Him whole like a child does, you're turning your back on Him and your name is Judas.'}

^{He was hitting his stride now, Nick thought, not sure whether some of the crowd were restless with resentment or guilt. 'But God wants you to know this,' Mann said. 'He wants you to understand that He sees your doubts, He sees if you're afraid to confess your sins, He sees if you aren't sure of your faith, and He wants you to know you needn't doubt any longer. One act of faith will bring God into your life. Remember, the thief on the cross had only to turn to Christ and all his sins were forgiven, he was that day with Christ in Paradise.'}

^{His voice was rising, echoing in the cave. 'Can't you feel God looking at you now? He's looking at you and loving you as if you're the only person in the world, knowing all your problems and doubts and temptations and sins and wanting to help you if you'll only let Him, only turn to Him for help. He knows if you think you can't live up to Him, can't live by His Commandments. That's why the Commandments ask so much of you, to make you turn to God, because unless you let Him into your life you can't live up to them. Can you feel Him loving you now, praying that you'll turn to Him? That's right,
God
is praying for
you.
All He wants is a sign that you'll let Him into your life, and I'm going to ask you to give Him that sign now. I'm going to ask you to stand up for God.'}

^{He put his hands on his thighs and shoved himself painfully to his feet. As he stood up, his legs wavered, and he stumbled against the drystone wall, dislodging a fragment of stone. It skittered down the barren slope and over the edge of the cave.}

^{It struck rock twice on the way down. Nick sensed that the crowd was holding its breath, as Mann appeared to be. They heard a faint chink far below, and a fainter sound that might have been the stone slithering further into the dark. Mann gripped the wall, staring down.}