The Book of Strange New Things (54 page)

Another voice said: ‘He leave uสี in need of him.’

Another voice said: ‘You no leave uสี.’

‘I will have to go home eventually,’ he said. ‘You understand that.’

‘Home here.’

‘My wife is waiting for me,’ he said.

‘Your wife Bea.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Your wife Bea: one. We are many.’

‘A very John Stuart Mill observation.’ At this, they twitched their shoulders in fretful incomprehension. He should have known better than to say it. The สีฐฉั did not ‘do’ witticism or irony. So why had he bothered?

Maybe he was saying it to Bea, as if she were here to hear.

Solemn truth: If Bea hadn’t been OK, he wouldn’t have come. He would have postponed his visit, stayed at the base. The disappointment his flock would have felt was a far less serious thing than the distress of the woman he loved. But, to his enormous relief, she had listened to his pleas and prayed.

And, of course, God had come through.

I went to bed frightened and angry and lonely, I must confess, she’d written to him. I was expecting to wake up in a state of suppressed panic, as usual, my arms folded around my face to ward off whatever nasty surprise the day had in store for me. But next morning, the whole world was different.

Yes, that’s what God could do. Bea had always known that, but she’d forgotten it, and now she knew it again.

I may have mentioned (but probably not), her morning-after-prayer letter went on, that the central heating has been gurgling/thumping/stuttering all day & night for weeks, and suddenly the house was quiet. I figured the boiler must have given up the ghost, but no, it was fine. Everything working smoothly. As if God just laid a finger on it and said ‘Behave yourself’. Joshua seemed more at ease, stroking himself against my shins the way he used to. I made a cup of tea and realised I had no morning sickness. Then there was a knock on the door. I thought it was the postman, until I remembered that deliveries have been coming in the afternoon if they’ve come at all. But it was four fresh-faced young men, maybe mid-20s, very macho. For a moment I was scared they might rape me and rob me. A lot of that’s been going on lately. But guess what? They wanted to remove the piles of stinking garbage! They had a four-wheel drive and a trailer. Their accents were Eastern European, I think. They’ve been driving all over the area doing this.

‘The system is gone to hell!’ one of them said, big grin on his face. ‘We are the new system!’

I asked them how much they’re charging. I expected them to say 200 quid or something.

‘Give us 20 pounds!’

‘And a bottle of some kind of nice drink!’

I told them I didn’t have any alcohol in the house.

‘Then give us . . . 30 pounds!’

‘And think in your mind that we are good strong amazing guys!’

They cleared the lot in two minutes flat. They were showing off, tossing heavy bags into the trailer with one hand, doing leapfrog on the wheelie bins, stuff like that. It was bitter weather, I was shivering in a parka, and these guys were in thin sweatshirts, skintight so that their muscles were well displayed.

‘We come to your rescue, yeah?’

‘Every day you think, When is somebody gonna come, and today . . . we come!’

‘Don’t trust the government, it is bullshit. They say, You want the mess cleaned up but it’s too much problem. Bullshit! It’s not problem! Five minutes work! Good strong guys! Finished!’ He was beaming, sweating, he seemed perfectly warm.

I gave them a 50 pound note. They gave me 20 change, then drove off with the garbage, waving bye-bye. The street looked and smelled civilised for the first time in weeks.

I wanted to tell someone what had just happened, so I phoned Claire. I almost didn’t – I’ve hardly used the phone for ages, there’s been this hideous crackling on the line, you can barely hear the other person. But this time it was totally noise-free. Again, I thought it must be dead, but it was just working as it should. Claire was not surprised by my news; she’s heard about these guys. They make a fortune, she says, because they visit maybe forty homes every day at £20 a pop. Funny how a service you’re accustomed to paying a few pence for (in tax) suddenly seems cheap at a hundred times the price.

Anyway, the story gets better. Claire said she’d had a strong mental picture of me ever since she went to bed last night – ‘as if someone beamed it into my head’, she said. She and Keith are moving to Scotland (they got a third of what they originally paid for their house and feel lucky to have sold it) to a much smaller, scummier (Claire’s word) place because at least they have a support network there. Anyway, they packed up their possessions and Claire decided she no longer needs half the clothes she’s accumulated over the years. So, rather than putting them into a charity bin, which is risky nowadays because people use them for garbage, she brought over three huge bin-bags full. ‘Take what you want for yourself, Bee Bee; the rest can go to the church,’ she said. When I opened the bags I almost cried. Claire is exactly the same size as me, if you recall (you probably don’t) and I’ve always loved her taste in clothes. I’m not a covetous person but there were things in those bags that I used to lust after when I’d see Claire wearing them. Well, I’m wearing one of them right now! – a lilac cashmere pullover that’s so soft you keep touching it to make sure it’s real. It must have cost 10 x more than anything I’ve ever had on my body apart from my wedding dress. And there are fancy leggings as well – beautifully embroidered, works of art. If you were here I would give you a little fashion parade. Can you even remember what I look like? No, don’t answer that.

I start back at work tomorrow. Rebecca tells me that Goodman has gone on holiday! Is that good news or what! And my hand has healed up very nicely. There was still some tingling in the nerves before but that’s completely gone now.

I went out to the supermarket today and there was more stock on the shelves than there’s been for ages. I remarked on it to the manager and he gave me such a smile. ‘We aim to please,’ he said. I suddenly realised what a nightmare he’s been living through; it’s only a lousy supermarket but it’s his baby. Speaking of which – did I already mention No Morning Sickness? Just cravings, cravings, cravings. But in the supermarket, I scored – wait for it (I certainly have!) – a chocolate dessert! I suppose it’s kind of trivial to claim that God delivers chocolate when you really, really want it. But maybe he does.

Chocolate and cashmere pullovers. Weirdly exotic things they seemed to him, under the vast sky of Oasis, observing the incremental progress of ڇ from horizon to horizon. And of course he’d been reminded of
Matthew 6:25
when he’d read Bea’s letter. But he knew she was touchy lately and might not appreciate being reminded of Jesus’s cautions against getting too concerned with food and clothes. The main thing was that she felt encouraged and restored. She’d been in danger of slipping adrift from God’s protection and now she was back in it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you
,
Lord
, he prayed. He trusted she was doing the same.

USIC had promised him that they would build a transmitter for Shoot access right near his church very soon, maybe even before his next visit to C-2. So this was the last time he would be out in the field without the chance to share his day-to-day impressions with Bea. Once the Shoot was in place, neither of them would be unreachable anymore.

Bea’s mention of Claire and Keith troubled him slightly. He couldn’t remember ever having met them. Were they members of the church, or acquaintances from somewhere else? People from Bea’s hospital? She spoke as though their identity didn’t need explaining. Claire, apparently, had a body almost identical to Bea’s. He strained to recall seeing his wife standing next to another female who looked very similar. A woman in a lilac cashmere pullover. Nothing came.

Jesus Lover Nine padded over to him, cradling a small pot of whiteflower sweetmeats. She angled the pot forwards, to indicate:
have some
. He took one. It was delicious but marinaded in a saucy paste that left dark brown marks on the fingers. Lover Nine’s gloves were filthy; they would need washing when she got home. Her robe was grubby, too. Quite a few of the สีฐฉั were a bit soiled today, because before the language lesson they’d been digging a hole for the transmitter.

Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these
, he thought.

The communion came to an end, and the สีฐฉั went back to their homes, and Peter went into his church and slept for a spell. How long? A while, a while. He’d lost touch with whether it was technically day or night or ‘2200 plus’ or whatever stupid formula the USIC people expected him to use, but he was attuned to the rhythms of the สีฐฉั by now and when he awoke he had a sense that it must be very early morning and it probably was.

A shaft of light illuminated his lower body, emphasising the sharp contours of his pelvis and the concave valley under his ribcage. He was all bone and sinew, like a dancer or an inmate of a concentration camp. The taut flesh pulsed with his heartbeat. He wasn’t hungry, though. Just thirsty. The light was flickering on his abdomen. Why was it flickering? Rain must be on the way. He decided to leave the water bottle untouched by his pillow and to wait for the heavens to open instead.

Outside, naked, he stood watching, his hair flapping with the force of what was approaching. It would be a particularly heavy downpour, he could tell. Four gigantic bodies of water, stacked in a vast pyramidal formation, rolled forwards, constantly threatening to merge into one but somehow remaining discrete. Three of them swirled in slow, stately fashion and the fourth spun with centrifugal frenzy. Best to hold tight to something. He braced himself against the wall.

When the deluge hit, it was exhilarating but also scary. The wind rushed past him through the church and he heard the thump and clatter of loose objects being thrown about. One gust almost lifted him off his feet. But the rain was cool and clean and luxurious. He opened his mouth and let it pour in. He felt as though he was diving and swimming – and surfacing, always surfacing – without having to move a muscle.

When it was over, he was dazed and numb and unsteady on his feet. A cursory inspection of the church interior showed no serious damage. Jesus Lover Seventeen’s painting, a recent arrival he hadn’t yet had time to attach to the ceiling, had been hurled across the floor and the edges of its cloth were frayed, but the picture was unharmed. An Expressionist still-life of a flower, he’d thought at first, but no: what he’d perceived as flower-petals was a circle of robed figures bent backwards in astonishment, and what he’d perceived as the stamen was a man growing from the ground: Lazarus.

He stowed the painting back behind the pulpit, ready for hanging. The rainburst had left him pleasantly sated, and his natural inclination was to lie down and allow his skin to tingle for a while. But he knew there was work to be done. Not the Lord’s work, but manual labour. The whiteflower fields would be sodden, and within a couple of hours many of the plants would have swelled to maturity, while others would be in danger of collapsing into sludge. The time to act was now.

‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er.’

He waved, but wasted no time saying hello to everyone he knew. Many of the สีฐฉั gathered here for the harvest were not Jesus Lovers, and they had yet to accept him fully in their midst. It was diplomatic to save the conversation for later. He got down on his knees, and within seconds his hands were caked to the elbows with muck.

The plantation had turned into one big bog, like a pig farm. The soil was more retentive of moisture here than in the open scrublands, and there was also a lot of decaying whiteflower scattered about, from the remnants of plants that had been uprooted last time. A fine, almost imperceptible fog began to rise from the ground, rendering everything less than fully distinct. It didn’t matter. The plant in front of you: that was all you needed to see.

Peter enjoyed working in the fields. It took him back to his younger days of strawberry-picking for cash-in-hand, except that this was honest toil and he wasn’t doing it because he was on the run from drug buddies he’d robbed. It wasn’t mindless drudgery, either, because you had to evaluate each plant to decide whether to leave it alone, tear bits off it, squeeze it, or pull it out.

The สีฐฉั harvested patiently and with quiet deliberation, more like gardeners than slave-driven serfs. They wore their gloves as usual. Whenever these became too muddy, they would stop for a while to wipe them free of excess dirt or adjust the fit. Sometimes they just sat back and rested for a few minutes. When they’d accumulated a basketful of plants, they would carry it to the edge of the field, where half a dozen nets were spread out. Onto these nets they would distribute the different parts of the plants, each part according to its destiny. It had taken Peter quite a while to get the hang of which bits went on which pile, but he believed he had it sorted now. He was no longer a liability; he was a fellow-worker. And he worked harder and faster than any of them.

After an hour or two, despite the fact that there were probably still lots of moribund plants hiding in amongst the resilient ones, the harvesters – mindful of their limited energy – moved on to the next phase. This was the part Peter liked best, because it really did require vigour and stamina – two qualities the สีฐฉั were not overly endowed with. They were all right at carrying the produce from the fields back into the settlement, for each net could be carried as slowly, and as haltingly, and by as many people, as the weight of its contents demanded. But there was a task which allowed no slack: the making of meat. Beefsteak, lamb, bacon, veal: cunning simulacra of these were favourites among the largely carnivorous USIC personnel, but they weren’t easy to create. They required violent effort – not the killing of an animal, but the relentless pounding of whiteflower plants that were on the brink of death. Only the most swollen, senile specimens were chosen. When the water-gorged flesh was pummelled with a stone, the weakened capillaries of the plant diffused a characteristic flavour through the pulpy mess. With each pound, the mess became more elastic and homogenous, until it could be left to solidify into dense lumps which, when carved and seasoned, looked and tasted uncannily like meat. The สีฐฉั pummelled gingerly, one or two blows at a time. Peter pummelled like a machine.