The Book of Strange New Things. Michel Faber
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know . . . In the car. It feels unfair, unfinished, and today of all days . . . I hate to leave you like this.’
‘It’ll be awful,’ she said. ‘But not because of that.’
‘The angle, the unfamiliar angle made me . . . ’
‘Please, Peter, there’s no need for this. I’m not keeping a score-card or a balance sheet. We made love. That’s enough for me.’
‘I feel I’ve . . . ’
She stopped his mouth with her finger, then kissed him. ‘You’re the best man in the world.’ She kissed him again, on the forehead. ‘If you’re going to do post-mortems, I’m sure there’ll be much better reasons on this mission.’
His brow furrowed against her lips. What did she mean by ‘postmortems’? Was she just referring to the inevitability of encountering obstacles and setbacks? Or was she convinced that the mission as a whole would end in failure? In death?
He stood up; she stood up with him. They held each other tight. A large party of tourists poured into the hall, fresh from a coach and keen to travel to the sun. Surging towards their appointed gate, the babbling revellers split into two streams, flowing around Peter and Bea. When they’d all gone and the hall was relatively quiet again, a voice through the PA said: ‘Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Unattended items will be removed and may be destroyed.’
‘Do you have some sort of . . . instinct my mission will fail?’ he asked her.
She shook her head, bumping his jaw with her skull.
‘You don’t feel God’s hand in this?’ he persisted.
She nodded.
‘Do you think He would send me all the way to – ’
‘Please, Peter. Don’t talk.’ Her voice was husky. ‘We’ve covered all this ground so many times. It’s pointless now. We’ve just got to have faith.’
They sat back down, tried to make themselves comfortable in the chairs. She laid her head on his shoulder. He thought about history, the hidden human anxieties behind momentous events. The tiny trivial things that were probably bothering Einstein or Darwin or Newton as they formulated their theories: arguments with the landlady, maybe, or concern over a blocked fireplace. The pilots who bombed Dresden, fretting over a phrase in a letter from back home: What did she mean by that? Or what about Columbus, when he was sailing towards the New Land . . . who knows what was on his mind? The last words spoken to him by an old friend, perhaps, a person not even remembered in history books . . .
‘Have you decided,’ said Bea, ‘what your first words will be?’
‘First words?’
‘To them. When you meet them.’
He tried to think. ‘It’ll depend . . . ’ he said uneasily. ‘I have no idea what I’m going to find. God will guide me. He’ll give me the words I need.’
‘But when you imagine it . . . the meeting . . . what picture comes to your mind?’
He stared straight ahead. An airport employee dressed in overalls with bright yellow reflective sashes was unlocking a door labelled KEEP LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. ‘I don’t picture it in advance,’ he said. ‘You know what I’m like. I can’t live through stuff until it happens. And anyway, the way things really turn out is always different from what we might imagine.’
She sighed. ‘I have a picture. A mental picture.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Promise you won’t make fun of me.’
‘I promise.’
She spoke into his chest. ‘I see you standing on the shore of a huge lake. It’s night and the sky is full of stars. On the water, there’s hundreds of small fishing boats, bobbing up and down. Each boat has at least one person in it, some have three or four, but I can’t see any of them properly, it’s too dark. None of the boats are going anywhere, they’ve all dropped anchor, because everyone is listening. The air is so calm you don’t even have to shout. Your voice just carries over the water.’
He stroked her shoulder. ‘A nice . . . ’ He was about to say ‘dream’, but it would have sounded dismissive. ‘Vision.’
She made a sound that could have been a croon of assent, or a subdued cry of pain. Her body was heavy against him, but he let her settle and tried not to fidget.
Diagonally opposite Peter and Beatrice’s seats was a chocolate and biscuit shop. It was still doing a brisk trade despite the lateness of the hour; five customers stood queued at the checkout, and several others were browsing. Peter watched as a young, well-dressed woman selected an armful of purchases from the display racks. Jumbo-sized boxes of pralines, long slim cartons of shortbreads, a Toblerone the size of a truncheon. Hugging them all to her breast, she ambled beyond the pylon supporting the shop’s ceiling, as if to check out whether there were more goodies displayed outside. Then she simply walked away, into the swirl of passers-by, towards the ladies’ toilets.
‘I’ve just witnessed a crime,’ Peter murmured into Beatrice’s hair. ‘Have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you might be dozing off.’
‘No, I saw her too.’
‘Should we have nabbed her?’
‘Nabbed her? You mean, like, a citizen’s arrest?’
‘Or at least reported her to the shop staff.’
Beatrice pressed her head harder against his shoulder as they watched the woman disappear into the loo. ‘Would that help anyone?’
‘It might remind her that stealing is wrong.’
‘I doubt it. Getting caught would just make her hate the people catching her.’
‘So, as Christians, we should just let her get on with stealing?’
‘As Christians, we should spread the love of Christ. If we do our job right, we’ll create people who don’t want to do wrong.’
‘“Create”?’
‘You know what I mean. Inspire. Educate. Show the way.’ She lifted her head, kissed his brow. ‘Exactly what you’re about to do. On this mission. My brave man.’
He blushed, gratefully swallowing the compliment like a thirsty child. He hadn’t realised how much he needed it just now. It was so huge inside him he thought his chest would burst.
‘I’m going to the prayer room,’ he said. ‘Want to come?’
‘In a little while. You go ahead.’
He stood up and walked without hesitation towards Heathrow’s chapel. It was the one place in Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Dublin and Manchester airports that he knew how to find without any bother. It was always the ugliest, dowdiest room in the entire complex, a far cry from the glittery hives of commerce. But there was soul in it.
Having found it again, he perused the timetable posted on the door in case he’d arrived just in time for a rare Communion. But the next one wasn’t scheduled till Thursday afternoon at three, by which time he would be an unimaginable distance away from here, and Beatrice would have started her long months of sleeping alone with Joshua.
He pushed the door open gently. The three Muslims kneeling inside didn’t acknowledge him as he walked in. They were facing a piece of paper attached to the wall, a computer-printed pictogram of a large arrow, like a traffic sign. It pointed to Mecca. The Muslims bowed, thrusting their rumps in the air, and kissed the fabric of the brightly coloured mats provided. They were immaculately dressed men, with expensive watches and bespoke suits. Their polished patent-leather shoes had been tossed aside. The balls of their stockinged feet squirmed with the enthusiasm of their obeisance.