He drove down to the station, collected a file and returned home. ‘You’ve been a long time,’ Louise said. He didn’t even know the lie he was going to tell before it was on his lips. ‘That pain came back,’ he said, ‘so I waited for a while.’
‘Do you think you ought to have a drink?’
‘Yes. until anybody tells me not to.’
‘And you’ll see a doctor?’
‘Of course.’
That night he dreamed that he was in a boat drifting down just such an underground river as his boyhood hero Allan Quatermain had taken towards the lost city of Milosis. But Quatermain had companions while he was alone, for you couldn’t count the dead body on the stretcher as a companion. He felt a sense of urgency, for he told himself that bodies in this climate kept for a very short time and the smell of decay was already in his nostrils. Then, sitting there guiding the boat down the mid-stream, he realized that it was not the dead body that smelt but his own living one. He felt as though his blood had ceased to run: when he tried to lift his arm it dangled uselessly from his shoulder. He woke and it was Louise who had lifted his arm. She said, ‘Darling, it’s time to be off.’
‘Off?’ he asked.
‘We’re going to Mass,’ and again he was aware of how closely she was watching him. What was the good of yet another delaying lie? He wondered what Wilson had said to her. Could he go on lying week after week, finding some reason of work, of health, of forgetfulness for avoiding the issue at the altar rail? He thought hopelessly: I am damned already -I may as well go the whole length of my chain. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course. I’ll get up,’ and was suddenly surprised by her putting the excuse into his mouth, giving him his chance. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘if you aren’t well, stay where you are. I don’t want to drag you to Mass.’
But the excuse it seemed to him was also a trap. He could see where the turf had been replaced over the hidden stakes. If he took the excuse she offered he would have all but confessed his guilt. Once and for all now at whatever eternal cost, he was determined that he would clear himself in her eyes and give her the reassurance she needed. He said, ‘No, no. I will come with you.’ When he walked beside her into the church it was as if he had entered this building for the first time - a stranger. An immeasurable distance already separated him from these people who knelt and prayed and would presently receive God in peace. He knelt and pretended to pray.
The words of the Mass were like an indictment. ‘I will go in unto the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.’ But there was no joy anywhere. He looked up from between his hands and the plaster images of the Virgin and the saints seemed to be holding out hands to everyone, on either side, beyond him. He was the unknown guest at a party who is introduced to no one. The gentle painted smiles were unbearably directed elsewhere. When the Kyrie Eleison was reached he again tried to pray. ‘Lord have mercy ... Christ have mercy ... Lord have mercy,’ but the fear and the shame of the act he was going to commit chilled his brain. Those ruined priests who presided at a Black Mass, consecrating the Host over the naked body of a woman, consuming God in an absurd and horrifying ritual, were at least performing the act of damnation with an emotion larger than human love: they were doing it from hate of God or some odd perverse devotion to God’s enemy. But he had no love of evil or hate of God. How was he to hate this God who of His own accord was surrendering Himself into his power? He was desecrating God because he loved a woman - was it even love, or was it just a feeling of pity and responsibility? He tried again to excuse himself: ‘You can look after yourself. You survive the cross every day. You can only suffer. You can never be lost. Admit that you must come second to these others.’ And myself, he thought, watching the priest pour the wine and water into the chalice, his own damnation being prepared like a meal at the altar, I must come last: I am the Deputy Commissioner of Police: a hundred men serve under me: I am the responsible man. It is my job to look after the others. I am conditioned to serve.
Sanctus. Sanctus. Sanctus. The Canon of the Mass had started: Father Rank’s whisper at the altar hurried remorselessly towards the consecration. ‘To order our days in thy peace ... that we be preserved from eternal damnation ...’ Pax, pacis, pacem: all the declinations of the word ‘peace’ drummed on his ears through the Mass. He thought: I have left even the hope of peace for ever. I am the responsible man. I shall soon have gone too far in my design of deception ever to go back. Hoc est enim Corpus: the bell rang, and Father Rank raised God in his fingers - this God as light now as a wafer whose coming lay or Scobie’s heart as heavily as lead. Hic est enim calix sanguinis and the second bell.
Louise touched his hand. ‘Dear, are you well?’ He thought: here is the second chance. The return of my pain. I can go out. But if he went out of church now, he knew that there would be only one thing left to do - to follow Father Rank’s advice, to settle his affairs, to desert, to come back in a few days’ time and take God
with a clear conscience and a knowledge that he had pushed innocence back where it properly belonged - under the Atlantic surge. Innocence must die young if it isn’t
to kill the souls of men.
‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.’
‘I’m all right,’ he said, the old longing pricking at the eyeballs, and looking up towards the cross on the altar he thought savagely: Take your sponge of gall. You made me what I am. Take the spear thrust. He didn’t need to open his Missal to know how this prayer ended. ‘May the receiving of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I unworthy presume to take, turn not to my judgment and condemnation.’ He shut his eyes and let the darkness in. Mass rushed towards its end: Domine, non sum dignus ... Domine, non sum dignus... Domine, non sum dignus.... At the foot of the scaffold he opened his eyes and saw the old black women shuffling up towards the altar rail, a few soldiers, an aircraft mechanic, one of his own policemen, a clerk from the bank: they moved sedately towards peace, and Scobie felt an envy of their simplicity, their goodness. Yes, now at this moment of time they were good.
‘Aren’t you coming, dear?’ Louise asked, and again the hand touched him: the kindly firm detective hand. He rose and followed her and knelt by her side like a spy in a foreign land who has been taught the customs and to speak the language like a native. Only a miracle can save me now, Scobie told himself, watching Father Rank at the altar opening the tabernacle, but God would never work a miracle to save Himself, I am the cross, he thought. He will never speak the word to save Himself from the cross, but if only wood were made so that it didn’t feel, if only the nails were senseless as people believed.
Father Rank came down the steps from the altar bearing the Host. The saliva had dried in Scobie’s mouth: it was as though his veins had dried. He couldn’t look up; he saw only the priest’s skirt like the skirt of the mediaeval war-horse bearing down upon him: the flapping of feet: the charge of God. If only the archers would let fly from ambush, and for a moment he dreamed that the priest’s steps had indeed faltered : perhaps after all something may yet happen before he reaches me: some incredible interposition ... But with open mouth (the time had come) he made one last attempt at prayer, ‘O God, I offer up my damnation to you. Take it. Use it for them,’ and was aware of the pale papery taste of an eternal sentence on the tongue.
Chapter Three
THE bank manager took a sip of feed water and exclaimed with more than professional warmth, ‘How glad you must be to have Mrs Scobie back well in time for