No iron bars are needed, for all the animals are at peace with the happy people. The lion and the lamb are friends. See those brightly coloured birds as they flit here and there! Hear their beautiful song and the children’s laughter filling the air! Smell the fragrance of those flowers, hear the rippling of the stream, feel the tingling warmth of the sun! Oh, for a taste of the fruit in that basket, for it is the best that the earth can produce, the very best, like everything that is seen and enjoyed in this glorious garden… The happy people, the flowers and animals and fruit, are brightly illustrated on the cover of the brochure. Flamingos stalk about, rabbits nibble grass but not the flowers. A child hugs a swan, yachts sail on a distant lake. ‘That, now, is the paradise earth,’ a black woman asserts, a long forefinger drawing Felicia’s attention to a trickling waterfall, to giraffes and then to cockatoos. The black woman is tall and slender, with rings on several of her fingers, and earrings. ‘That is the promise and the place,’ she states, ‘of the Father Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ Felicia agrees. ‘Come with us, child. You hear of the Flood, honey? Noah in his Ark? You hear of that?’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘The Flood is a proved event,’ the black woman reminds her. ‘Yes, I understand.’ Only a few other people are about. Gusts of wind blow the litter into the doorways of shops. It is colder than it has been. ‘Where you live?’ the black woman peremptorily demands. ‘You have rooms going spare there?’ Felicia replies that she is a stranger: she has been lodging in bed-and-breakfast places. She reaches for her carrier bags and says she must be getting on. ‘Where you go off to, child? Where you run in a hurry from the Father Lord?’ ‘I’m looking for someone.’ It is late in the day. She has to find another bed-and-breakfast place, in an area that isn’t familiar to her. The more she moves about the more chance she has of running into the person she is looking for: she explains that, but the black woman doesn’t understand. She doesn’t listen. She says there is happiness for the one who dies. ‘Child, we live in a miracle. Look here at this garden, honey. See the fruits of the trees and the peoples of all nations. See the juice to drink and the smiles of the children. Look, child, the Father Lord is gathering all things in.’ ‘I have to get a room for the night.’ ‘I can offer you a room, child. No charge made. Miss Tamsel Flewett is gone and I have the knowledge in my heart she is gone from us for ever. A lady from Jamaica don’t go down too well on her own when she rings folks’ doorbells.’ Again the leaflets are pressed on Felicia, the heavenly picture of fruit and flamingos and well-behaved rabbits. ‘No, really. I’m sorry.’ ‘What things you have to do, child? What things more important than the work of the Father Lord?’ ‘I’m looking for someone.’ ‘There’s all kinds stay at the Gathering House. You need a pillow for your head? Well, here we have it for you, honey. I do not like to see you sitting out here in the wind, a prey to the coming night.’ Felicia feels tired. She fell asleep, just sitting there on the wooden seat, and even dreamed: that they were in Sheehy’s again, the first time he took her there, that they were at the Creagh crossroads, in the warm little back bar. She should have insisted when she went to see Mrs Lysaght. She should have told her everything, and refused to leave without the full address. She should have screamed at her and made a scene. After all, it is Mrs Lysaght’s grandchild. ‘Come with me, honey,’ the black woman commands in her firm manner, and Felicia goes with her because it’s easier than looking for somewhere else. ‘Miss Calligary,’ the black woman introduces herself. ‘It isn’t far.’ She hurries them through deserted streets to a brick-built house in a row with others. She leads the way upstairs, to an attic with pictures on the walls that are similar to the brochure illustration. Miss Calligary’s clothes hang from two rows of hooks on either side of a casement window, dresses and skirts and coats. Her shoes are neatly in line along one of the walls. A suitcase, on the floor also, bulges with underclothes and other possessions. The only pieces of furniture in the attic are two upright chairs, a trestle-table and a narrow bed. ‘I’m forever on the move,’ Miss Calligary explains. ‘I gather in where the Message leads me.’ She prepares a meal of tuna fish and salad, and when they have eaten this food she makes tea. They drink it, then wash the dishes up in an enamel basin. Miss Calligary disposes of the dregs from the teapot, and the tea-leaves, in a small lavatory on a half landing, pouring away the washing-up water here also. No sound comes from the rooms below. ‘It’s quiet in the Gathering House tonight,’ Miss Calligary comments. ‘Each and every one is out and about.’ ‘Do a lot of people live here?’ ‘Black and white, child, old and young. All that are called to gather in.’ Later these people return. The hall door bangs frequently. Voices exchange greetings. A piano plays a hymn tune. An odour of food cooking rises to Miss Calligary’s attic. ‘Love! Joy! Peace!’ So exclaiming, a man in a maroon anorak smiles a welcome at Felicia when, an hour later, Miss Calligary leads her into a large, unfurnished downstairs room. Others come up and shake her hand: black and white, as Miss Calligary has said, old and young. A bed-roll, Felicia is told, will be spread out for her in the room where the people are now congregated, the Gathering Room it is known as. A girl called Agnes, with softly tinted fingernails and trim black hair, reveals that she’s in dental care, but would prefer to devote all her time to distributing the Message. ‘Mourning will be no more,’ Agnes avers. ‘Nor outcry nor pain. When we have gathered together, when it is known again by all that a future awaits the one who dies.’ Every evening, she further reveals, the people meet in the Gathering Room in order to exchange their day’s experiences. An elderly Ethiopian relates his to Felicia, most of them to do with the ringing of doorbells. ‘You are not amongst us by chance,’ he adds, ‘for there is nothing that can happen but by the Commandment that began in the garden of pleasure. Adam was taken from out of the ground of the paradise earth, and the Commandment was drawn in the dust. Look close and see the serpent’s spit.’ The old man’s face is as wrinkled as a walnut, his darting eyes bloodshot. He nods at Felicia and passes on. ‘Bob’s the name.’ Small and balding, the man who addresses her next is the man in the maroon anorak. ‘Ours is the bed-roll,’ he now declares. ‘Ruthie’s and mine. We keep it for newcomers, since not long ago we were newcomers ourselves. We met in this room, Ruthie and myself. We were married from this house. Our children were born in our upstairs room. Two beautiful children. It is they who will bring down the bed-roll.’ ‘Everyone is pleased that you have come to us,’ a tall woman assures Felicia. The woman’s breath is sweet, as if scented. She pushes her face close to Felicia’s, articulating her confidences clearly. ‘I was lost as in a forest until the Way was revealed to me through the Message.’ A Japanese man says his name is Mr Hikuku. Felicia can’t understand anything else he says, but the woman with the sweet breath explains that he works among the people of the East, bringing them the Message. He lives modestly in the Gathering House, the woman adds, in one small room, sharing lavatory and bath like everyone else. But in commercial terms Mr Hikuku is twice over a millionaire. A middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs Priscatt, wear rimless spectacles and are similar in appearance, pale-faced and brownly dressed. Mr Priscatt’s brown suit is carefully pressed, his shirt is fresh and clean, his tie has a business emblem on it. Mrs Priscatt’s cardigan is a lighter shade of brown than the jumper beneath it, perfectly matching her pleated skirt. Unlike Miss Calligary and the other women who have congregated, she wears no jewellery. Her husband, Mrs Priscatt informs Felicia, is in the claims department of the Eagle Star insurance company and is looking forward to retirement. She herself devotes all her time to the promulgation of their discovered faith. Mr Priscatt adds that it is heartening to welcome a new face. ‘You are pregnant with a child.’ The statement is neither a question nor an accusation. It is made by Mrs Priscatt, and both she and her husband nod their confirmation of the assumption before Felicia replies. ‘Yes,’ she agrees, feeling that in spite of their confidence in this matter some comment from her is required. ‘Mrs Priscatt can always tell.’ Accompanied by a sideways inclination of the head in his wife’s direction, Mr Priscatt’s tone is complimentary. ‘A girl child,’ Mrs Priscatt predicts, and Mr Priscatt suggests that Joanna is a lovely name. Felicia is questioned then, and she passes on details of the circumstances that have overwhelmed her. Everything she says is sympathetically received, and later, when she has talked to other people in the room, she senses that already all of them know how her troubles have come about, although only the Priscatts have questioned her on the subject. Without condemnation, the knowledge is there in their expressions. A child will be born in the Gathering House, Felicia hears Bob whispering to Ruthie, another child born, as their own two beautiful children have been. Listening, not saying much herself, Felicia feels that all of it is more like a dream than reality, she has never in her life met people like this before, nor even known that such people exist. One by one they bid her good-night and repeat that she is welcome. Pamphlets are left with her as reading matter, should she be wakeful. Her bed-roll arrives and thankfully she rests, her worries lost in oblivion.