*
A line of chairs had been arranged in the space between nave and chancel, at the foot of the steps leading up to the sanctuary. Marcus and Abby hurried down the aisle. David Nightingale was sitting on the steps, facing the chairs. A jug of squash sat at his feet. He filled two plastic glasses.
‘Mr and Mrs Glass! Here, have something to drink. We’ve been waiting for you guys. Come and take a seat.’
Marcus took a glass of squash, passed one to Abby, and sat on a chair next to Mouse. The priest leaned forward on the steps, elbows on knees, and Marcus shivered as the full force of David’s smile was turned upon him. He made himself meet the very pale eyes for a moment, and he felt lost. The priest beckoned for them to pull their chairs closer towards him. When he leaned forward his chinos rose up from his ankles, revealing pale, hairless calves above black socks. He rubbed his hands together and began to speak.
‘It’s so wonderful to have you guys here. With just over an hour to go, I imagine you must be nervous. I can understand that — it’s a huge responsibility for you. But I’ve a very good feeling about tonight. About tonight and the next few months. You lot have been crucial to the growth of the Course thus far and it’s absolutely right that you should become leaders.’
He paused and frowned.
‘We need to make sure that nothing stalls the growth of the Course. Momentum is everything; keeping Course membership growing is all-important. Even those who try to do us down can’t argue with the fact that the Course is attracting people back to Christianity. Every lost member is a tragedy — a personal tragedy for the one that leaves, but also a serious loss to the Course. It’s up to you, my representatives at ground level, to make sure that we keep our new members. It’s not always easy; some of your group will stop coming, either because they can’t be bothered or because the intensity is too much. Keep these departures to a minimum. You should remember that often the most vehement atheists, the most dogged agnostics, end up being the most committed Course members. If they have thought hard enough about faith to have strong feelings in the opposite direction, then they have opened a small gap which will let God in.
‘Try to think back to when you first joined the Course. Remember how cautious you were, how uncertain about the size of the commitment needed. I want you to be very gentle with the new members. You must treat them as I treated you — as children. By the end of the six weeks, you’ll be firm friends with the new members, but there’ll be ups and downs in the mean time. Keep your own emotions in check, keep your guard up at all times. You’re all passionate young people, but don’t let those passions distract you from doing God’s work. Now let’s tune up. May the Lord bless you all. I’m relying on you.’
He rose, turned, and strode up onto the stage. The four friends, fizzing with excitement, followed. Abby checked her microphone, ‘Bah, bah, one-two, one-two,’ then sat at the front of the stage, swinging her legs. Lee played an E chord as Marcus and David tuned their guitars. Mouse thumped the drums, adjusting the height of the snare and shifting his foot pedal slightly. Marcus put down his bass and sat on the stage next to Abby. David came and crouched behind them. The church was dim and vast. Mouse stopped drumming. Lee sat very straight at the piano, her right hand quietly picking out the melody from Pictures at an Exhibition. Chattering voices rose from the courtyard outside the church. People would be arriving soon. The Course was about to begin.
Three
David threw a switch and the main church lights came on, golden chandeliers that hummed when they were illuminated. Course members began to drift in from outside. Lee was lighting candles at the front of the church. The click of her lighter made Marcus want a cigarette. Abby stood behind a row of trestle tables at the back of the nave, a smudge of red pasta sauce on her cheek. She waved to him. Marcus walked towards the row of pews where his and Abby’s names were printed on a whiteboard, nodded at the altar, sat down and put his head in his hands as if he was praying.
Marcus had started coming to the Course because of Abby. She had made it clear that it was the only way she’d stay with him, and he attended at first in the same way that he’d gone to piano lessons as a child: resolved to perform everything asked of him as badly as possible in the hope of being swiftly excused. Only slowly did he realise that the church might offer a means of negotiating the fear that shot its bright splinters across his mind whenever he thought of death. In the quiet ritual, the music and, above all, the promise of an existence beyond the grave, Marcus found peace.
It was something to do with the high windows. He could only see sky through the windows, nothing of the grubby world outside. It enhanced the sacred feel of the place, the sense of safety. His father hadn’t believed in God, or rather he gave the impression of a man whose diary was too busy to consider something so putative, so far in the future, as an afterlife. Marcus didn’t want to die with that kind of uncertainty. And since his own death existed in a kind of eternal present for him, he needed to make sure that he was always prepared; the time he spent in church was a totem he held up against the fear. He would live on afterwards; unlike his father, whose cold, blue skin as he was heaved into the ambulance spoke of nothing but rotting and decay.
At university Marcus had attended chapel almost shamefully, happy to use Abby’s involvement in the college choir as an excuse to spend winter nights in the quivering candlelight of evensong. Still, back then, he wouldn’t have considered himself a believer. But things filter through. And slowly patterns revealed themselves until, on the first Course Retreat he had attended, he found himself more or less converted. Or, if not entirely converted, then at least able to hold in his mind at the same time the sane, rational view that belief in God was akin to belief in magic, an atavism that had no place in the bright, scientific now, and a quiet recognition that, somehow, irrationally, God was there. And the friends from his old life seemed to drop away as the Course increasingly filled his spare time with prayer weekends and charity days, and the problems and questions that his cynical rational mind raised were silenced by the sheer business of it all.
The buzz of voices in the church rose in pitch, pulling him back to the present. Marcus began to pray, the same prayer that, if he was not too tired or drunk, he repeated every night before sleeping: Lord, protect me. Give me good health. Look after my heart, my lungs, my bowels. Look after my Abby, too. Grant her the baby she wants. Don’t let me die just yet, God.
He opened his eyes to see that the room had begun to fill up. More candles had been lit and the spotlights at the back of the hall shone forward onto the stage with the altar glowing behind it. He rose and made his way to the back of the church. Abby was holding a clipboard now, directing people to different queues depending upon whether they had attended the Course before, whether they had been identified in her initial screening process as useful or prominent. Mouse and Lee were taking details of new members. Marcus thought how happy Mouse looked: his plump cheeks blushing with pleasure, his eyes goggling at the girls. He greeted each member with a broad smile, nodding and chatting as he noted down their email addresses, mobile numbers, jobs. The Course prided itself on the amount of information it had about its members.
‘Marcus, can you do something for me? Just stand in the aisle and stop old members sitting too near the front. They’ve had their time in the sun. Thanks, darling.’ Abby pushed him gently in the back and he stood and watched people stream past him, in awe of the Course’s ability to attract a constant supply of the young and wealthy.