When everyone was inside the church — perhaps seventy in total, of whom twenty were new members — the doors were shut with a deliberate bang. The lights dimmed and the candles fluttered as David stepped onto the stage. He grinned, blinking in the spotlight that leapt from the back of the church. He looked enthusiastic, friendly, youthful despite his grey hair; his eyes turned upon the congregation and there was a murmur, then total silence.
‘Welcome to the Course. If your experience of tonight is anything like that of the many hundreds of others who have attended over the years, then Tuesday nights will become an oasis for you, a way of escaping the grind and the grime of London and entering a place of peace, a sanctuary where you can explore some of the most fundamental issues, where you will be welcome, make friends, and get a free meal, if nothing else.’
He smiled and again there was a rustle of whispering followed by silence.
‘This is a community where all questions are welcome, where thought and exploration are encouraged, and hopefully where you’ll find people capable of answering your questions. My wife Sally and I are always happy to speak with you personally; you can email us; I even do a podcast thanks to my team here who are dragging me into the twenty-first century. You should also look out for our Course leaders, who will be guiding your discussions later. They are guys just like you, who a few years ago were sitting exactly where you are now, feeling and thinking exactly the same things. Although I had fewer grey hairs back then.
‘Tonight I’m going to tell you about a student at Durham University who was a committed atheist, a big fan of Pink Floyd, and the yard of ale champion of St John’s College bar. That student was me. .’
Marcus listened to the priest’s voice. David was a great performer: not only the dazzling charisma, but also the softer moments, the wry humour, the dancing hands, the quick shift between puckish and earnest. Every so often a laugh to relieve the pressure, and then gravity. And always the world of the Course held up against terrifying London. In the priest’s own story, in the anecdotes and tangents that spun off it, everything returned to the promise of repose and release offered by the Course.
‘So I came to London when I left Durham. I suppose because all of my friends did, and because all of my friends were going into the City, I thought I should too. I imagine many of you had a similar experience. I became a merchant banker, and I found it a really dark and unforgiving existence. I remember getting terribly drunk in pubs on Saturday, just drinking for the hell of it, because the week had been so tough that we felt we owed it to ourselves. And so Sunday was a day of hangovers. We’d limp down to the boozer around lunchtime just to take the edge off with a pint or two. It was really a miserable life. I even thought about suicide once or twice, during the darkest days.’
He paused for a moment and took a sip of water. He looked down at his hands which were splayed out on the lectern, inhaled deeply and continued.
‘But, partly because I had the wonderful Sally at my side, I lived through it. I survived. And why I want you to know this is because you need to be clear that I am not here to judge you, or to pry into your private lives, but only to show you one path, a path that has been very fruitful for me. We are here to talk about the meaning of life. .’
*
Lee was reciting poetry in her head. It was lines from a poem that she had studied at university and had become for her a mantra, a way of stilling her mind and dragging herself up from her slumps. She kept a notebook beside her as she worked in the library, jotting down things that seemed to carry some special meaning, that felt as if they might help. Now she wasn’t listening to David; instead she turned inwards, letting the cascade of words cleanse her mind as they passed through it. O Thou, that art the way, pity the blind, /And teach me how I may Thy dwelling find. She watched Marcus, saw the fine strong lines of his jaw, and how he glanced across at Abby, smiling, every so often. She drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, looking around in surprise at the noise of it. She could feel Mouse’s leg jittering against hers. She tried to ignore it, then attempted to find something soothing in the friction of her friend’s thigh. David’s voice kept intruding on her thoughts, though, and she bent her head forward and shut her eyes, laying a soft hand on Mouse’s knee.
Lee missed her dad. She spoke to him two or three times a week on the telephone, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. She felt exposed without him close by. The previous night he had rung off abruptly, and she thought she had sensed reproach in his voice. She knew he didn’t approve of her faith. She turned the conversation over in her mind, trying to work out if she had invented his coldness. She did that sometimes when she was down: saw hostility everywhere, imagined rifts with friends, heard criticism from her tutors when none was meant. She called the line of poetry back to her mind, and behind it layered the melody from one of her dad’s pieces of music. She smiled, eyes still tightly shut.
Her dad, Lazlo Elek, was a composer, the child of Hungarian dissidents who had died in jail in Budapest. He was sent to live with relatives in Suffolk at the age of nine when his parents were implicated in the 1956 uprisings. He found early fame with a cello concerto dedicated to his parents, began to be spoken of as the next Bartók. He married a girl from Ipswich and wrote prodigiously, although he never quite lived up to the promise of that early concerto. As he aged, his work became more abstract, more mathematical; he became prone to fits of depression and repeatedly burned near-finished scores. When Lee played the piano, she imagined her dad’s fingers placed over hers, guiding not only the correct note and tone, but also the feeling of the music, the touch that took a piece from a work of human creation to something divine. Only when she was playing with him did she truly live the music. She sometimes wished she had never come to London.
‘We are all looking for meaning,’ David continued. ‘Life can feel very empty sometimes. With all the rush and bustle, we can get lost, become rudderless. It’s why you’ll find yourself asking certain fundamental questions as you lie awake at four in the morning. Why am I here? Wasn’t I meant to do something more than just get up, go to work, get drunk, go to sleep, and then repeat it until death? I feel, many of us here feel, that there’s something wrong with the modern world. That our age is one of greed and grasping and selfishness. We need a new way of living, a new way of negotiating life. The Course will give you a road map, it’ll show you guys a clear and fulfilling way to make sense of life in this mad, bad world.’
*
Mouse was moving his leg frantically, bouncing on the heel of his brown loafer. He looked eagerly up and down the rows around him, noting with appreciation the delicate girls with blonde hair. A good crop of new members. He imagined what it would be like to press his tongue against the damp parts of their bodies: the nooks and declivities, the creased skin at the joints of their long limbs. Whilst his love for Lee existed as a dull but constant ache, he made sure that there were always other girls. Girls of a certain type — blonde, tall, distant. Always unavailable, they’d already have boyfriends or husbands and would treat Mouse with a kind of little-brotherly fondness that he both played up to and loathed. He’d spend long night hours on the boat fantasising about these girls, knitting their faces into surprised masks of pleasure or pain, knowing that they’d always be out of his league.
Mouse watched Lee, taking advantage of the fact that her eyes were tightly closed. Her chest rose and fell very slowly, quivering as her lungs emptied. He looked at the threads that snaked down her thighs from her frayed skirt. When she was drunk and let him stay over in her tiny flat with its air of girlish chastity, he would creep into her room in the darkness of 3 a.m. She always slept with the duvet tucked between her legs, and Mouse would stand in the pale orange light of the London night and look at whichever leg was visible. He would strain his eyes against the dimness, trying to see into the shadows where her thighs disappeared inside the frilled shorts she wore to sleep. He kicked her chair with one particularly forceful jerk of his leg. She very deliberately laid her hand on his thigh and squeezed. He smiled a broad and hopeful smile.