‘That’s excellent, Meryl. Now who can tell us what happened next?’
Another girl supplied the answer. Two of the sisters, overwhelmed by the majesty of their vision, founded the Church of Our Lady of the Paper Bag. But because many people were too ignorant to see the beauty of the vision and said it didn’t sound very nice they needed to be forcibly persuaded for their own good, and thus was born the military arm of the Church of our Lady of the Paper Bag, the Soldiers for Jesus. Their job it was to open the eyes of the unbelievers. The third girl, seeing the message of the prophet as confirmation that all routes through this vale of tears are useless, took the third fork in the path, the route to Aberystwyth. She embraced the gaudy life and began to make seaside rock.
As Eleri showed us back out to the yard I said, ‘That was quite an interesting vision of Heaven. I’d never pictured it like that before.’
She giggled. ‘Yes, I expect you saw it more as angels and harps and puffy white clouds.’
‘Isn’t that how most people see it?’
‘Well, I expect parts of it are like that. The bit revealed to us was just the Welsh section.’
‘Do they have sections in Heaven?’
‘Oh yes, they have to. You see, it used to be nondenominational but it caused too many problems. People felt short-changed when they arrived and found that all paths to God were equally valid. It just didn’t seem fair if some people could wear brightly coloured clothes and take drugs and stuff and still get to Heaven, whereas people like us had to get fifteen hundred Sunday School attendance credits and wear shoes made of slate, and every Christmas get a stocking filled with rotten fruit to stand a chance. Especially if someone you hate also gets to be with God and you know they didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Him when they were alive. Don’t you agree? It’s an outrage really – I mean, it makes you wonder why you bothered. So now everyone arrives in their own segregated cordons and has the satisfaction of knowing that, of all the faiths and ways of believing, the one they chose was the only one that worked.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘One of our saints told us, Mrs Llanfihangel. She was ever such a holy lady, so when she died we made her a saint and she turned up one day at a séance and told us all about Heaven. She said for a while she thought the Welsh were the only ones there, until one day someone left the gate in the fence open and she wandered out and met some Amish.’
We strolled back across the quad towards the car.
‘Do you know a girl called Tadpole?’ I asked. ‘She’s a Soldier for Jesus, too.’
‘In Aberystwyth, you mean? I’ve heard of her. I wouldn’t say I knew her – I don’t go to Aberystwyth very often, especially at this time of year. It’s such a bother finding a hat to wear.’
‘Why do you need a hat to go to Aberystwyth?’
‘Oh, come on, Mr Knight, don’t pull my leg.’
‘I’m not. Plenty of people don’t wear hats there.’
‘Yes, but we’re students, aren’t we? What happens if we see a student from Aberystwyth and we’re not wearing a hat? We won’t have anything to doff.’
‘You need to doff your hat when you see a student from Aber?’
‘Of course. It’s a college rule: we must always take off our hats when see a fellow scholar.’
I pulled a face and she continued, burning with conviction, ‘Oh, come on, Mr Knight. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen someone doff a cap before.’
‘I’m familiar with the custom, but not in this context. The normal way to make a man remove his hat in that town is to punch him on the jaw.’
We arrived at a construction like a medieval well; it had a bell hanging beneath the little roof.
‘This bell is from Patagonia,’ Eleri explained with evident pride. ‘It was rescued from the Mission House, and presented to us. It’s one of our most treasured possessions.’
‘What happened out there?’ I asked. ‘I hear things didn’t go quite according to plan.’
Eleri looked sad. ‘Oh. The Soldiers for Jesus had quite a difficult time of it, I’m afraid. The Indians had a vision of Heaven that featured orgies and human sacrifice and lots of cocaine. It was very hard to make them see that ours was better. Besides, their language didn’t contain a word for gift shop.’
‘Your version does sound a bit austere.’
‘It’s not really. Our Heavenly Father loves us, of course, but He also likes us to do what we’re told. We step out of line and we get smote.
Oh God of remorse
In your heaven of gorse
Who sent Noah a boat
While the rest got smote.
‘That’s our best prayer.’
‘And the Indians didn’t like it?’
‘They were strange heathens. They said, “In our heaven we’ve got Tequila and cocoa leaves and we have sex all day. And we eat people. What have you got in yours?”
‘And we said, “Well, we get to sing hymns all day – what could be nicer than that?” But they just sneered, so the schoolmarm showed them a picture of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Of course, she tried to point out it was like that without the train but they wouldn’t listen. They all pointed at the little steam train and said, “What’s that?” And she said, “It’s a puffing billy,” and they looked at her blankly so she asked for a Welsh–Spanish dictionary and translated. “El gran tren del choo-choo,” she said, and they all fell about laughing. Apparently, choo-choo is a very bad word in their language. After that news spread like wildfire: in the Welsh gringo heaven they have a big choo-choo. They used to come for miles just to laugh. The schoolmarm fainted when she found out what it meant.’ She stopped and looked slightly embarrassed at the failure.
We tut-tutted sympathetically. At least, I did.
‘I heard the chaplain went nuts,’ said Calamity.
Eleri blinked in surprise. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We heard something terrible happened and the priest went bananas.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite—’
‘Lost his marbles,’ she explained. ‘Cuckoo. We heard the priest went mad. Is that true?’
‘I . . . I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss military matters.’ Eleri had lost some of her composure and stammered slightly. ‘But I’m sure that couldn’t have happened. You must be careful about some of the things you hear. A lot of people are jealous of us and try to undermine our reputation with calumnious remarks.’
I changed the subject. ‘Tell us about your studies at Jezebel College.’
‘What’s there to tell? It’s really boring. We don’t get cadavers to dissect or anything, like the guys on the undertaking course. It’s just the usual stuff, mostly theory.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, you know, about the differences between a trollop, a tart, a slattern, a flibbertigibbet . . . that sort of thing. It’s very boring. Mostly textbook.’