‘Do you ever exercise there?’ Peter asked. The woman still hadn’t volunteered her name and it felt awkward to ask it now.
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But my job is more physical than some other people’s, so… ’
‘You’re a friend of BG’s?’ said Peter. They would be back at the base within seconds and that would be it, conversation over.
‘He’s a fun guy,’ the woman said. ‘They should have called him BS. You never know what will come out of his mouth. Keeps things interesting.’
‘Where did he stand on the fuel question?’
She snorted. ‘No opinion. That’s BG! It takes a lot of muscle to be that weak.’ She slowed the vehicle down and parked it neatly in the shade of the main building. ‘But he’s a great guy,’ she added. ‘We get along great. Everybody gets along great. It’s a great team.’
‘Except when you disagree.’
She reached forward to pull the key from the ignition. Her upper arm, just below the shoulder, sported a tattoo. ‘Sported’ was probably the wrong word, since the tattoo involved the vestiges of a name, rendered illegible under a later design of a snake crushing a rodent.
‘Best not to think about winning and losing here, Mr Preacher Man,’ she said, swinging the door open and heaving her body out. ‘Take a deep breath and count to a million.’
9. The choir resumed
Peter did not wish to count to a million. He was ready now. Pacing his quarters, itching for his rendezvous. His rucksack was packed and he’d already tested its weight on his shoulders. As soon as Grainger was ready to take him, he would go.
His Bible, much annotated, dog-eared and interleaved with paper place-markers, was stashed in the rucksack along with his socks, notebooks and so on. He didn’t need to consult it just now: the relevant verses were deeply engraved in his memory. Psalms was the obvious resource, the first port of call if you needed courage in the face of a huge, possibly dangerous challenge. The valley of the shadow of death. Somehow, he doubted that he was about to be taken there.
But then, he had a very poor instinct for danger. That time in Tottenham when he almost got knifed — he would have just kept talking to that street gang as they grew in number and pressed more closely and aggressively around him, if it hadn’t been for Beatrice whisking him into a minicab.
‘You are completely insane,’ she’d said to him as the doors slammed shut and obscenities ricocheted off the car’s surface.
‘But look, some of them are waving to us,’ he’d protested, as they accelerated away from the mob. She looked, and it was true.
Dear Peter, she wrote.
What thrilling news, that the Oasans have already heard of Jesus. It doesn’t surprise me, though. Remember when I asked USIC what contact there’d been with Christians so far? They were cagey, keen to maintain their ‘USIC is non-religious’ stance. But there must have been quite a few Christians among the personnel over the years and we both know that if you put a real Christian anywhere, things happen! Even the smallest seed can grow.
And now you’re there, my darling, and you can plant more. Many more!
Peter noted that she wasn’t mentioning Kurtzberg. Evidently, when she wrote this, she hadn’t yet received his most recent message. Maybe she was reading it right now, at exactly the same moment as he was reading hers. Unlikely, but the thought of such synchronous intimacy was too seductive to resist.
Don’t agonise about the fact that I’m not there with you. If God had meant us to go on this mission together, He would have fixed it so we did. I have my own little ‘missions’ here, not as ground-breaking or exotic as yours, but worthwhile all the same. Wherever we are, life throws lost souls into our path. Angry, frightened souls who ignore the light of Christ while cursing the darkness.
Mind you, Christians are capable of ignoring the light of Christ, too. There’s been a ridiculous fuss in our church since you went away — a storm in a teacup but it has caused me some grief. A few of our congregation — the older members, mostly — have been grumbling that we’ve got ‘no business’ preaching the word of God to ‘aliens’. The argument goes that Jesus died for humans only. In fact if you pressed Mrs Shankland on the issue, she’d probably tell you that Jesus died for white middle-class English people from the Home Counties! Geoff has been doing a reasonable job as pastor overall but he’s acutely conscious of being a ‘stand-in’ and he wants to be popular. His sermons are sincere but safe, he never lays anything on the line like you do. So… the grumblings go on. ‘Why not China? There’s millions needing it there, dear.’ Thanks, Mrs Shanks, for those words of wisdom.
Well, my darling, I really must go now and have a shower (assuming the plumbing hasn’t gone bung again) and rustle up something to eat. Supplies of my favourite comfort foods continue to be conspicuously absent from the supermarket shelves (even the horrid but serviceable ‘lo-fat’ rollettes have been out of stock for days!) so I’ve been forced into the arms of another dessert, a sort of chocolate and raisin éclair made by the local baker. Probably just as welclass="underline" I should be supporting local businesses anyway.
On which edifying note, much love from your excited and admiring wife!
Bea
Peter tried to picture Mrs Shankland. He had obviously met and talked to her; he’d met and talked to everyone in the congregation. His mind was a blank, though. Maybe he knew her as something other than Mrs Shankland. Edith, Millicent, Doris. She sounded like a Doris.
Dear Bea, he wrote,
Let’s groom Mrs Shankland for a mission to China. She could convert a thousand people per hour with a few well-aimed words.
Seriously, things have begun moving quickly now, and I may not have another opportunity to write to you for some time. A couple of weeks, even. (A couple of weeks for you — a few days for me, if you know what I mean.) It’s a scary prospect but I feel I’m in the Lord’s hands — ironically at the same time as I’ve got the feeling that I’m being used by USIC for some purpose that has yet to be revealed.
Sorry to sound so mysterious. It’s USIC’s secrecy about Kurtzberg and their caginess about the indigenous people in general that’s made me feel this way.
To my great relief, I’m finally over my jetlag or whatever it should be called in the circumstances. I’m sure I would benefit from some more sleep and I’m not sure how I’m going to manage that with 72 hours of sunshine coming up, but at least the sense of disorientation is gone. My urine is still bright orange but I don’t think it’s dehydration, I think it’s something to do with the water. I feel quite well. Rested, if a bit restless. Actually, I’m buzzing with energy. The first thing I’m going to do (once I finish this letter to you) is pack a bag and get myself driven back to the settlement (officially called C-2, although some of the men call it ‘Freaktown’ — charming, eh?) and just be left there. Dumped, if you like. It’s no good being ferried about in some sort of protective bubble, venturing out for a quick meet & greet while a USIC chauffeur is parked nearby with the motor running. And if I have my own vehicle, that still seems to say, I’m paying a visit, and I’ll leave when I’ve had enough. Bad message! If God has a plan for me here, among these people, then I must deliver myself into their hands.
OK, that might not have been the wisest course of action for Paul among the Corinthians and Ephesians, but I can hardly claim to be in hostile territory, can I? The most hostility I’ve had to endure so far is Severin being in a bit of a snit with me on the way over. (Haven’t seen him since, by the way.)
In my excitement about what’s to come, I must try to remember what I have & haven’t described to you so far. How I wish you were here with me, seeing it with your own eyes. Not because it would save me the trouble of trying to describe it (although I must admit my lack of skill in that department is becoming ever more obvious!) but because I miss you. I miss living through the visible moments of life with you. Without you at my side, I feel as though my eyes are just a camera, like a closed-circuit camera without film in it, registering what’s out there, second by second, letting it all vanish instantly to be replaced by more images, none of them properly appreciated.