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‘I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague. For they have not listened to my words.’
That caught my attention.
‘Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name and when they call to me, I will answer them.’
I stared at the thick, gold cross on the altar. It reflected every one of us: the pious and the ungodly; the opportunist and the devout. Each of us had our reasons for being there, quiet and expectant, and secreted between the pages of a hymn book. How would God manage to answer us all?
‘Lamb of God,’ said the vicar, ‘who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.’
And I wondered if we were asking God to find Mrs Creasy, or just asking Him to forgive her for disappearing in the first place.
*
We walked outside into buttery sunshine. It had spread itself over the graves, bleaching the stones and picking out the names of the dead. I watched it creep up the walls of the church until it reached the stained-glass windows, where it threw splinters of scarlet and purple into a cloudless sky. Mrs Morton and her hand had been absorbed by a clutch of efficient women in hats, and so I wandered around the churchyard in careful, horizontal lines, in case anyone was to be accidentally stepped upon.
I liked the feel of the ground beneath my shoes. It seemed safe and experienced, as though all the bones that were buried there had made wisdom grow in the soil. I walked past Ernests and Mauds and Mabels, now beloved and remembered only by the dandelions which grew across their names, until a neat gravel path brought me to the chancel. The graves here were so old, lichen had eaten into who they used to be, and rows of forgotten people stared back at me from headstones that stooped and stumbled like drunks in the earth.
I sat on newly mown grass, behind a grave which was patterned with whorls of green and white. I knew the women in hats were inclined to be time-consuming and I began to make a daisy chain. I had arrived at my fifth daisy when the chancel door opened and the vicar appeared. The breeze caught the edge of his surplice, and he billowed like sheets on a washing line. I watched him march across the graveyard to retrieve an empty crisp packet, and when he returned to the doorway, he took off his shoe and banged it on the church door to get rid of the grass cuttings.
I didn’t realize something like that would be allowed.
‘Why do people disappear?’ I said to him, from behind the gravestone. He didn’t stop banging, but slowed down and looked over his shoulder.
I realized he couldn’t see me. I stood up.
‘Why do people disappear?’ I said again.
The vicar replaced his shoe and walked over to me. He was taller than he had been in church and very earnest. The lines on his forehead were carved and heavy, as though his face had spent its entire time trying to sort out a really big problem. He didn’t look at me, but stared out over the gravestones instead.
‘Many reasons,’ he said eventually.
It was a rubbish answer. I’d found that answer all by myself and I didn’t even have God to ask.
‘Such as?’
‘They wander from the path. They drift off-course.’ He looked at me and I squinted up at him through the sunshine. ‘They become lost.’
I thought about the Ernests and the Mauds and the Mabels. ‘Or they die,’ I said.
He frowned and repeated my words. ‘Or they die,’ he said.
The vicar smelt exactly the same as the church. Faith had been trapped within the folds of his clothes, and my lungs were filled with the scent of tapestry and candles.
‘How do you stop people from disappearing?’ I said.
‘You help them to find God.’ He shifted his weight and gravel crunched around his shoes. ‘If God exists in a community, no one will be lost.’
I thought about our estate. The unwashed children who spilled from houses and the drunken arguments that tumbled through windows. I couldn’t imagine God spent very much time there at all.
‘How do you find God?’ I said, ‘where is He?’
‘He’s everywhere. Everywhere.’ He waved his arms around to show me. ‘You just have to look.’
‘And if we find God, everyone will be safe?’ I said.
‘Of course.’
‘Even Mrs Creasy?’
‘Naturally.’
A crow unfolded itself from the roof of the church, and a murderous cry filled the silence.
‘I don’t know how God can do that,’ I said. ‘How can He keep us from disappearing?’
‘You know that the Lord is our shepherd, Grace. We are just sheep. Only sheep. If we wander off the path, we need God to find us and bring us home.’
I looked down at my feet whilst I thought about it. Grass had buried itself in the weave of my socks and dug sharp, red lines into my flesh.
‘Why do people have to die?’ I said, but when I looked up, the vicar was back at the chancel door.
‘Are you coming for tea at the church hall?’ he shouted.
I didn’t really want to. I would rather have gone back to Tilly. Her mother didn’t believe in organized religion and was worried we’d all be brainwashed by the vicar, but I had to agree, or it would have been a bit like turning down Jesus.
‘Okay,’ I said, and picked the blades of grass from my knees.
*
I walked behind Mrs Morton, along the lane between the church and the hall. The verge was thick with summer: stitchwort and buttercups, and towering foxgloves which blew clouds of pollen from rich, purple bells. The breeze had dropped, leaving us in a razor of heat which cut into the skin at the tops of my arms and made speaking too much of an effort. We trudged in a single line; silent pilgrims drawn towards a shrine of tea and digestives, all strapped into Sunday clothes and decorated with sweat.
When we reached the car park, Tilly was sitting on the wall. She was basted in sun cream and wore a sou’wester.
‘It was the only hat I could find,’ she said.
‘I thought your mother didn’t want you to be religious?’ I held out my hand.
‘She’s gone to stack shelves in the Co-op,’ Tilly said, and heaved herself down from the bricks.
The church hall was a low, white building, which squatted at the end of the lane and looked as though it had been put there whilst someone made their mind up about what to do with it. Inside, it rattled with teacups and efficiency. Sunday heels clicked on a parquet floor and giant, stainless-steel urns spat and hissed to us from the corner.
‘I’m going to have Bovril,’ said Tilly.
I studied Mrs Morton, as she ordered our drinks on the other side of the room. Early widowhood had forced her to weave a life from other people’s remnants, and she had baked and minded and knitted herself into a glow of indispensability. I wondered who Mrs Morton would be if she still had a husband – if Mr Morton hadn’t been searching for The New Seekers in the footwell of his car and driven himself head-first into the central reservation of the M4. There had been a female passenger (people whispered), who appeared at the funeral in ankle-length black and crimson lipstick, and who sobbed with such violence she had to be escorted from the church by an anxious sexton. I remembered none of this. I was too young. I had only ever known Mrs Morton as she was now; tweeded and scrubbed, and rattling like a pebble in a life made for two.
‘Bovril.’ Mrs Morton handed a cup to Tilly. We all knew she wouldn’t drink it, but we kept up the pretence, even Tilly, who held it to her face until steam crept over her glasses.
‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Morton?’ I looked up at her.
Tilly and I both waited.
She didn’t reply immediately, but her eyes searched for an answer in the beams of the ceiling. ‘I believe in not asking people daft questions on a Sunday morning,’ she said eventually, and went to find the toilet.
The hall filled with people. It was far more crowded than the church had been, and pairs of jeans mixed with Sunday best. It appeared that Jesus pulled a much bigger crowd if He provided garibaldis. There were people from our avenue – the Forbeses and the man who was always mowing his lawn, and the woman from the corner house, who was surrounded by a clutter of children. They clung to her hips and her legs, and I watched as she slipped biscuits into her pocket. Everyone stood with newspapers in their armpits and sunglasses on their foreheads and, in the corner, someone’s Pomeranian was having an argument with a Border Collie. People were talking about the water shortage and James Callaghan, and whether Mrs Creasy had turned up yet. She hadn’t.
No one mentioned Jesus.
In fact, I didn’t think anyone would have noticed if Jesus had walked into the room, unless He happened to be accompanied by an Arctic roll.
*
‘Do you believe in God?’ I asked Tilly.
We sat in a corner of the hall, on blue plastic chairs which pulled the sweat from our skin, Tilly sniffing her Bovril and me drawing my knees to my chest, like a shield. I could see Mrs Morton in the distance, trapped by a trestle table and two large women in flowered aprons.
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I think God saved me when I was in hospital.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘My mum asked Him to every day.’ She frowned into her cup. ‘She went off Him after I got better.’
‘You’ve never told me. You always said you were too young to remember.’
‘I remember that,’ she said, ‘and I remember it was Christmas and the nurses wore tinsel in their hair. I don’t remember anything else.’
She didn’t. I had asked – many times. It was better for children if they didn’t know all the facts, she’d said, and the words always left her mouth in italics.
When she first told me, it was thrown into the conversation with complete indifference, like a playing card. I had never met anyone who had nearly died, and in the beginning the subject was attacked with violent curiosity. Then it became more than fascination. I needed to know everything, so that all the details might be stitched together for protection. As if hearing the truth would somehow save us from it. If I had almost died, I would have an entire speech to use at a moment’s notice, but Tilly only remembered the tinsel and something being wrong with her blood. It wasn’t enough – even when I connected all the words together, like a prayer.
After she told me, I had joined her mother in a silent conspiracy of watchfulness. Tilly was watched as we ran under a seamless August sky; a breathless look over my shoulder, waiting for her legs to catch up with mine. She was protected from a baked summer by my father’s golfing umbrella, a life lived far from the edges of kerbs and the cracks in pavements, and when September carried in mist and rain, she was placed so close to the gas fire, her legs became tartanned in red.
I watched her without end, inspecting her life for the slightest vibration of change, and yet she knew none of this. My worries were noiseless; a silent obsession that the only friend I had ever made would be taken from me, just because I hadn’t concentrated hard enough.
*
The noise in the hall drifted into a slur of voices. It was a machine, ticking over in the heat, fuelled by rumour and judgement, and we stared into an engine of cooked flesh and other people’s feet. Mr Forbes stood in front of us, sailing a cherry Bakewell through the air and giving out his opinion, as warmth crept into the material of his shirt.
‘He woke up on Monday morning and she’d gone. Vanished.’
‘Beggars belief,’ said Eric Lamb, who still had grass cuttings on the bottom of his trousers.
‘Live for the moment, that’s what I say.’ I watched Mr Forbes sail another cherry Bakewell around, as if to demonstrate his point.
Mrs Forbes didn’t speak. Instead, she shuffled her sandals on the herringbone floor, and twisted a teacup around in its saucer. Her face had worried itself into a pinch.
Mr Forbes studied her, as he disappeared his cherry Bakewell. ‘Stop whittling about it, Dorothy. It’s got nothing to do with that.’
‘It’s got everything to do with that,’ she said, ‘I just know it.’
Mr Forbes shook his head. ‘Tell her, Eric,’ he said, ‘she won’t listen to me.’
‘That’s all in the past. This will be about something else. A bit of a tiff, that’s what it’ll be,’ said Eric Lamb. I thought his voice was softer, and edged with comfort, but Mrs Forbes continued to shuffle, and she trapped her thoughts behind a frown.
‘Or the heat,’ said Mr Forbes, patting his belly to ensure the cherry Bakewells had safely arrived at their destination. ‘People do strange things in this kind of weather.’
‘That’s it,’ said Eric Lamb, ‘it’ll be the heat.’
Mrs Forbes looked up from her twisting teacup. Her smile was very thin. ‘We’re a bit buggered if it isn’t, though, aren’t we?’ she said.
The three stood in silence. I saw a stare pass between them, and Mr Forbes dragged the crumbs from his mouth with the back of a hand. Eric Lamb didn’t speak. When the stare reached his eyes, he looked at the floor to avoid taking it.
After a while, Mrs Forbes said, ‘this tea needs more milk,’ and she disappeared into a wall of sunburned flesh.
I tapped Tilly on the arm, and a spill of Bovril escaped on to blue plastic.
‘Did you hear that?’ I said. ‘Mrs Forbes said they’re all buggered.’
‘That’s not very church hall-ey, is it?’ said Tilly, who still wore her sou’wester. She wiped the Bovril with the edge of her jumper. ‘Mrs Forbes has been a little unusual lately.’
This was true. Only the day before, I’d seen her wandering around the front garden in a nightdress, having a long conversation with the flower beds.
It’s the heat, Mr Forbes had said, as he took her back inside with a cup of tea and the Radio Times.
‘Why do people blame everything on the heat?’ said Tilly.
‘It’s easier,’ I said.
‘Easier than what?’
‘Easier than telling everyone the real reasons.’
*
The vicar appeared.
We knew he had arrived even before we saw him, because all around the room, conversations began to cough and falter. He cut through the crowd, leaving it to re-form behind him, like the surface of the Red Sea. He appeared to glide beneath his cassock, and there was an air of stillness about him, which made everyone he approached seem overactive and slightly hysterical. People stood a little straighter as they shook his hand, and I saw Mrs Forbes do what appeared to be a small curtsy.
‘What did he say in church then?’ said Tilly, as we watched him edge around the room.
‘He said that God runs after people with knives if they don’t listen to Him properly.’
Tilly sniffed her Bovril again. ‘I never knew He did that,’ she said eventually.
Sometimes I struggled to take my gaze from her. She was almost transparent, as fragile as glass. ‘He said that if we find God, He’ll keep us all safe.’
Tilly looked up. There was a streak of sun cream on the very tip of her nose. ‘Do you think someone else is going to disappear, Gracie?’
I thought about the gravestones and Mrs Creasy, and the fractured, yellow lawns.
