Jago (8 page)

Teddy and Terry didn’t have maps yet, but Allison let Teddy share hers. He was only half listening anyway, since he’d heard most of it last year and it didn’t really apply to him. He assumed he’d be working in the crèche again. It was a laugh, and the kids liked his funnies.

The Gate House was a squashed cottage by the estate wall. James Lytton lived alone in it, well away from the Manor House and the loonies. Teddy couldn’t understand why such a straight-up bloke was with Jago’s crew. There were a few of
them
at the meeting, smiling placidly without apparently hearing anything, dressed smartly but out of style. He recognized Derek, who’d been in charge of the crèche last year. Teddy had got on all right with him, but there was something missing. They weren’t quite zombies, like most people said, but they weren’t living in the real world either. Derek was with his girlfriend, a loud and matronly woman, and two others, a muttering girl whose head was always bowed in prayer, and (his heart clutched) Jenny Steyning.

Her parents were up in arms about Jenny joining the Agapemone and had called in a lawyer, but she was over sixteen and could do what she liked. She didn’t seem to have changed much, but then she had always been cool. In a long white dress, she looked like a sacrifice waiting for a hungry dragon. All she needed was a floral headband.

‘…so, any of that, and we’re empowered to take their badge, give them a partial refund, and kick them out. And I do mean
kick.
Item fourteen: the Manor House. It’s off limits. No arguments, no special circumstances. Most of the Brethren will be involved in one way or another with the festival, but Mr Jago doesn’t want the event to shake up his routine. You may not share his beliefs, but this is a religious institution and that demands some respect. The general public are to be kept away from the house, and from all buildings on the estate not designated festival facilities. That includes where I live, by the way. Item fifteen: our old favourite, the bogs. We had a fiasco last year, so we’ve been rethinking our whole lavatorial setup, and…’

Each year the festival grew, and the preparations for it became more elaborate. Organizing it
was
a lot like setting up the invasion of France. At first, the Agapemone had tried to make do with the Brethren, but they hadn’t even been able to cope with the much smaller event it had been. Now there were maybe a hundred local people involved, and professionals from outside were being brought in to handle everything from food to first aid. There must be a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on. Teddy wouldn’t be at all surprised if the festival was making a lot of money for a few people. With this year’s lump of cash, he ought to have enough to buy a moped, and if he, a minor cog in the machine, was being so well oiled, the higher-ups must be bathing in it.

No one in Alder said much about the Agapemone itself any more. These days, the festival was much bigger news than the people behind it. A lot of the old farts were against the event, but it went ahead every year because it was too sweet for many local businesses to turn down. Douggie Calver, who owned the apple orchards and cider presses out on the Achelzoy road, made the bulk of his annual profit during festival week. His stall was always the busiest on the site. When Jago first came to the village, opinion had been split as to whether he was daft or dangerous. Now, people had got used to the Agapemone. Jago himself was so seldom seen he was almost forgotten. When Jenny joined the Brethren (Sistren?), Teddy had thought a bit about it and more or less decided there was something scary about the Agapemone. What disturbed him was that too many of the people connected with the place were obviously not crackpots. If someone like James was involved, he couldn’t write the setup off as a congregation of God Squad nutters. And the festival was run too smoothly to be the work of a bunch of loonies.

Usually, with the locals, the Brethren didn’t even mention their beliefs, but if pushed they’d come out with some serious strangeness. Last year, Derek had tried to explain it during a lull in the Lost Child season, but clammed up when Teddy asked him for his personal feelings. One thing he’d gathered was that, although they tried not to with outsiders, among themselves the Brethren of the Agapemone referred to Anthony Jago as ‘Beloved’. That had a nasty ring to it.

Maybe Jago was related to God after all, he thought, something between a shiver and a shrug shaking his shoulders.

‘…finally, the specific jobs. You’ve all been given assignments based on the questionnaires you filled in and your performances, if any, in previous years. No arguments please, my decision is final. I’ve had the job lists word-processed, and Sister Karen will now distribute the print-outs. So, let’s do it to them before they do it to us.’

There was dutiful laughter from the four or five people who remembered
Hill Street Blues
while a pretty girl fussed with the hand-outs. She slit open a taped cardboard box with a scalpel and took out an armload of papers, which she passed in wedges to the other Sisters. Quickly, the stapled documents were scattered among the crowd.

Jenny gave the papers to the little group Teddy was in. He said hello to her, and she smiled back without saying anything. He knew she’d heard, but she was treating him as if they’d never met.

‘No one home,’ Allison said, tapping her forehead as Jenny went on to the next group. ‘Jago’s been fucking her brains out. They’re all gone.’

It was as if Allison had started slapping him again; and he was turned back into a little crying kid, snot moustaching his face, hot tears on his cheeks. He recovered, and made himself look at the paper.

He was in the crèche again, but not with Derek. Jenny was also (his heart clutched again) down for the duty. He looked up and James was there. Everyone was standing up, comparing jobs, moaning or crowing.

‘You did a good job last year, Teddy,’ said James. ‘You should be able to handle the whole thing this time. You’ll have a full roster of volunteer mums under you. You might talk with Derek in the pub later, and get the benefit of his experience.’

‘Thanks, James. I ’preciate this.’

‘That’s okay. You’re good with kids. Just don’t let your idiot brother screw it up for you again.’

Loyally, he didn’t say anything. Terry was bitching because he was a lowly member of the car-park crew, which would keep him away from the music and whatever else was going on. Mainly, he would miss the drink, the dope and the nymphos. He’d done some pilfering last year. He hadn’t been found out for a change, but Teddy reckoned James must’ve had his eye on Terry and made a few good guesses. The news made Terry feel mean, and he wanted to take it out on Teddy.

‘Youm with they stupid kids, then?’

‘It’s okay, it’s a good laugh.’

Terry tried to sneer. ‘Raaahh! You’m a clown, my boy, a stupid clown.’

Last year, the kids had got into face-painting, and had coloured Teddy like a clown.

‘Leave off him, Car Park King,’ said Allison, which shut him up instantly. ‘You’re a one to talk. Everyone knows you’re thicker’n two short ones, an’ twice as dense.’

Terry tried to laugh but it turned sour in the back of his throat. His brother was scared of Allison. She had once done
something
to him in the copse by the primary school, something that still made him go white and treat her with respect. They had all grown up since primary school, but some things never change.

‘We’re off down the Valiant Soldier,’ said Kev. ‘You boys comin’?’

‘Might as well,’ said Terry.

Teddy was looking around, looking for someone. ‘Teddy?’ asked his brother. ‘You comin’ or goin’ or what?’

‘What?’

‘Pub. You comin’ or goin’?’

‘Oh, yurp. Comin’. I was just thinkin’.’

Kev laughed. ‘Your brother’ll go blind if he keeps up all this thinkin’, Ter. Gonna bust his brainbox proper.’

They left in several groups. Teddy looked back. Through the gates of the Agapemone, he could see the lawns in front of the Manor House. Jenny was crossing towards the huge doors. She was with people, but he could recognize her by the white dress and blonde hair.

In his head, he kept hearing Allison. ‘No one home.’ His memory added spite to every syllable. ‘Jago’s been fucking her brains out.’

His mind made up pictures to go with the words. Jenny, in and then out of her white dress, flowers falling from her hair. And Jago, half the darkly handsome man Teddy had seen several times, half the leather-winged dragon he had imagined earlier, folding her in his long, skin-sleeved arms, piercing her with a scaly, red-tipped cock. As they rutted, the life in Jenny’s eyes dimmed.

‘Jago’s been fucking her brains out,’ Allison had said. ‘They’re all gone.’

T
he main hall of the Agapemone was both chapel and dining room. The Brethren were assembled for the evening meal, but the great space felt empty. It was as if a light source had been removed; the absence of Him was as tangible as His presence. When Wendy was out of His gaze, the darkness crept in. Old panic stirred in the depths of her soul, waking like Leviathan, preparing to strike for the surface. They were very close to the End of Things, and she must be strong in her faith in the Beloved Presence. Sometimes she dreamed she was on an island in the mists, surrounded by strange shapes, and He was far from her. It was so easy to lose her hold.

She had come to the meal direct from the meeting, with Sister Marie-Laure and the new Sister, Jenny. She was struggling to put down the pique she felt at Derek’s desertion. He hadn’t needed to go to the pub with Lytton and the outsiders, but it wasn’t her place to instruct him in the path of perseverance. And his was not the absence she felt most keenly.

‘Beloved won’t be joining us this evening,’ Mick Barlowe announced as she took her place. ‘He’s tired, and is having His meal in His room. I’ve been asked to read His lesson.’

Wendy looked at His chair, no place laid before it, and at the wings of the altar which stood in the darkness beyond. In her memory she saw Him as a golden shadow presiding over the meal. Loving everyone through His words. The memory flashes were brief, and instantly gave way to the dark. When she was away from Beloved for even a few hours, Wendy found it hard to remember His face in detail. In her mind, He receded into His light and became indistinct.

Upon hearing the announcement, Marie-Laure swallowed a sniffle but did not look up from the carpet. Brother Mick led the girl to her place, touching her intimately in a manner he must think surreptitious. Wendy guessed that he must find it harder than most to forget the flesh…

Forget the flesh; for Beloved, the flesh is a temple, or else it is nothing…
but not as hard as she herself found that forgetting. She knew things about the flesh that most did not. Things as inescapable as the taste of water in her mouth.

In fire, flesh can blacken and crackle and shrivel from the bone, and flesh can scream…

There were many unfilled places at High Table this evening, as if the congregation were sundered and lost. With Beloved gone from his proper position at their head, an air of purposelessness had settled. Other absences went unnoticed. Everyone seemed to be sitting alone. Wendy was sitting alone; not only was Derek not in his place to her right, but Susan Ames was off somewhere as usual, ploughing her own peculiar furrow, leaving a vacant chair tucked under the table to her left. Beyond that were others, but she felt nothing in particular for them. The Love could never be constant, as she had imagined it, like a current in the third rail; rather, it ebbed and flowed like a tide, pulled and pushed by His light.

Marie-Laure sat opposite, between that bubble-headed Sister Karen and the quietly spiky Sister Janet, head down even before Mick began to read, curtains of hair hanging over her cutlery. She was muttering noiselessly, Ophelia trying not to make a scene. Under the table, her hands would be gripped in a prayerful death lock.

‘Brothers and Sisters, by the grace of our Beloved Lord and Benefactor,’ began Mick, flatly reading from a handful of stiff cards that he dealt from top to bottom as he worked through the lesson, ‘we break bread and take wine not only for the sustenance of our bodies but also for the fortification of our souls.’

Mick had been a performance poet before. He read well, but he wasn’t Beloved. Wendy reached into her head and turned down the volume control on her hearing. Mick’s voice faded to a backing track. Without Beloved, the familiar words were as meaningless as the school assemblies she had endured in her early teens, knees aching, head full of boys and pop music. That was more than years ago; that was decades ago. This wasn’t the life she had expected.

The hall hadn’t been built with electricity in mind. It needed a row of burning candelabra on the table, and candles in sconces in the many corners. The feeble overhead fluorescents barely established twilight, and the freestanding lamps were lost like streetlights in thick fog. With the altar lights off, the darkness was real.

Wendy’s sphere of concentration shrank. The walls, the altar and the ends of the table were lost to her. Beyond her field, white face-blobs spooned blood-red soup into mouth holes. Their conversations were muffled like the whispers of ghosts. If she looked up from her soup, she wouldn’t be able to see Marie-Laure as any more than an animated sketch.

She was tired, but she had to go through with the business of eating. If she neglected it, she would die. Although her perception of the world beyond was vague, everything within her reach was spotlit, as super-real as an
IMAX
image. Her knife and fork shone silver and were warm to her fingers. A herbal vapour rose from the bowl under her face, curling into her nostrils with stinging strength.

Could she smell meat? Roasted, burned, charred meat? It was impossible; the communal meals were vegetarian. Here, carnivores indulged a secret vice. There were unidentifiable black bits in her soup. One burst like a hot pepper between her teeth, and taste exploded. For a second, she was sure her shrunken gums had burst. She was harbouring a mouthful of hot blood. A spot of red on the blue tablecloth sizzled and sank in, a dark Rorschach stain spreading. Wendy spat out her soup and took a swallow of iced water. Her mouth chilled, but the stink of meat remained… the stench of burning flesh, the hiss of boiling fat. The memories would always be with her. They had fastened on her brain like black rats, and would not be shaken. Only Beloved could make her forget, His radiance soothing away the fears.