Deirdre peers at it. ‘But that’s…’
‘Yes.’ Django nods eagerly as if it’s the lesson for the day and she’s the first to get it.
‘That’s… the boy. The Elmbridge boy.’
‘Of course. Now look what’s above his head.’
‘In this house? The Elmbridge boy?’
‘Yes. In this house. But look.’
Aleksy leans across to pull the paper from Deirdre’s hand. ‘What is it, Django?’
‘It’s a sign.’ He’s immensely pleased with himself.
‘It’s a pub sign, Django,’ I tell him. ‘We all remember pub signs.’
‘It’s the sundial.’
‘Yes, that’s the name of the pub – the Sundial.’
‘There are no accidents.’
‘There are accidents all the time.’
We’re locked in this argument, Django and me, and it already feels as if lives depend on it – Simon’s life and mine too, maybe. But so far no one else knows what we’re talking about, and I’m not even sure I do. The ground is shifting under us and we’re all scrabbling for a foothold. Except Django, who seems to have swallowed every candle in the room and to glow with the accumulated light.
‘I will cause the sun’s shadow to move ten degrees backward on the sundial.’
‘Yes, Django, it’s in the Bible. I could find the page in about thirty seconds. Listen, all of you – just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it means anything. Anything’s in the Bible if you look hard enough. So there’s a sundial in Isaiah, and here’s a sundial. So what? The shadow on this sundial isn’t going anywhere. It’s a picture somebody’s painted of a sundial because that happens to be the name of the pub.’
‘I didn’t say it was a miracle, Jason.’ Django gestures towards me for everyone’s benefit, because my anger is a count against me, a warning that I might lose control of myself again and go for his throat. ‘I said it was a sign. And why is it so important to you to deny it?’
‘I’d like to know this, actually.’ It’s Aleksy grunting his way into the argument. ‘Why is this so important to you that you get all excited – that this is a sign or not such a sign?’
‘Not to me. It means nothing to me one way or the other. It’s Django’s cutting. I say we put it on the fire with the books.’
Deirdre has taken it back from Aleksy and is studying it. ‘It is our Simon. Look Aleksy.’ She holds it for Aleksy to see and looks at me bewildered. ‘Our little Simon is the Elmbridge boy?’
‘Yes.’ I’m relieved that’s he’s our little Simon – that’s two reasons not to lynch him.
‘So his mother…’
‘Yes.’
‘She was your sister.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she was one of them?’
‘One of who?’ Abigail asks, looking at Deirdre, then at me. ‘Who is the Elmbridge boy?’
Deirdre is amazed. ‘You don’t remember? Where were you?’
‘It was the sundial I saw first.’ Django is still telling his story. ‘And he had this canvas bag over his shoulder, see. And what was in it? It says, here, in the fifth paragraph, look. A honey sandwich. And I saw that the prophecies were being fulfilled. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse evil.’
‘But Abigail, you must know about the Elmbridge gang, surely. Everyone knows. It was all their fault. They released the virus.’
‘No, Deirdre,’ I say, ‘that was never proved.’
‘Only because all the people trying to prove it kept dying.’
‘And you never knew this?’ Aleksy is intrigued by this fresh evidence of Abigail’s isolation. ‘They kept this from you? You were in a Cistercian convent, or how?’
But Abigail is looking at me. ‘They’re saying Simon’s mother did this?’
‘No, not Simon’s mother. She was as much a victim…’
‘Oh come on, Jason,’ Deirdre says, ‘for God’s sake.’
‘As much a victim as anyone.’
‘And there I was, on the top deck of the number 68 with this discarded newspaper in my hand, and I started sweating. I’d been given a glimpse of the light that would lead us out of this darkness even as the darkness fell.’
‘So this boy,’ Aleksy says, ‘this boy who walked away unharmed from Elmbridge Farm. This boy is Simon? Your nephew?’ He’s looking at me and he’s having difficulty focusing on my face, or I am on his. His eyes grow and shrink and are their own size again.
And Django is still talking. ‘It just felt like flu to start with, nothing out of the ordinary. But as soon as I got home I wheeled my bike out from under the stairs in my building and hung it from the light in the stairwell. I put a broom through the spokes and hung more things from it, so it was like a mobile – round things, saucepan lids, a clock. Wheels within wheels, see, like in Ezekiel. And the wheels were angels, and I heard their wings like the noise of great waters. Then I couldn’t stand up any more and Mrs Burgess from the ground floor flat put me to bed.’
‘You’ve had it.’ Deirdre stares at Django as if she’s just seen one of Ezekiel’s angels.
‘No one knew what it was. By the time I’d come through Mrs Burgess was past help and it was everywhere.’
‘You’ve had it, the blessing and everything, and you never said.’
‘You never asked.’
‘No one survived.’
Aleksy nods at me. ‘Jason survived.’
‘No one at the beginning, though.’
‘Not many perhaps,’ Django says. ‘But not many saw the sundial. Saw it for what it was, I mean.’
We’re looking at the newspaper cutting again, which shakes in Deirdre’s hands. I have to shut my eyes and take another look to be sure the shadow on the sundial isn’t moving.
‘Wait though, Django.’ Deirdre says. ‘This means you knew Simon before we got here? You knew him already?’
‘I’d never met him.’
‘But you had this picture of the Elmbridge boy in your pocket. And now here we are. And here’s the Elmbridge boy.’
‘We were guided.’
‘By you. You knew where to find him. You lied to us.’
‘I never lied. You assumed….’
‘I assumed you were telling the truth.’
‘I was led, Deirdre. We all were.’
‘You let me think you didn’t know where we were going. That this road, and then this road just felt right. And then this road. Until, hey look, a big house. Let’s see if anyone’s there.’
‘Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire.’
I ask him, ‘How did you know where to find us?’
‘It was all there for anyone who wanted to know – back then when the internet worked – where you lived, what properties you owned.’
For no reason I can see, Deirdre is weeping.
‘And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.’ Django rubs Deirdre’s back, kneads her shoulders, rocks in sympathy with her. His voice is low. ‘I never lied.’
‘Well what would you call it?’
‘Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar and he laid it upon my mouth.’
‘What does that mean?’ She’s still arguing but the fight has gone out of her. ‘That’s just words. You don’t even make sense.’
‘It’s the only sense I can make. I saw Simon and I knew, and I was burned up with the knowledge. My mouth was on fire. I said to the angel, here am I, send me.’
‘Which means what, exactly?’
‘Which means we’re in the exact middle of a living miracle. I will give a child to be their prince, it says. And here he is, asleep upstairs in his bed. Which means this is written. Our lives are written. Doesn’t that make a difference?’ He laughs, and it’s an infectious shout of laughter.