27
Thunder comes resounding out of the earth:
The image of ENTHUSIASM.
Thus the ancient kings made music
In order to honour merit,
And offered it with splendour
To the Supreme Deity…
The I Ching or Book of Changes
‘Did you see that?’ breathed Penny in Robin’s ear, as they descended the temple steps. ‘She opened the doors without touching them!’
‘I know,’ said Robin, carefully astonished. ‘What was that?’
She was certain the door opening must have been a trick, using some kind of a hidden mechanism, but the thing had looked unnervingly convincing.
Ahead, in the otherwise deserted courtyard, stood Becca Pirbright. Glancing back, Robin saw that Mazu had retreated inside the temple again.
‘How was the Joyful Meditation?’ Becca asked.
There was a small chorus of ‘it was great’s and ‘amazing’s.
‘Before we go to dinner – ’ thank God, thought Robin, ‘– I’d like to just say a word about another of our spiritual practices at the UHC.
‘This,’ said Becca, gesturing towards the statue in the pool, ‘is the Drowned Prophet, who in life was called Daiyu Wace. I actually had the privilege of knowing her, and I witnessed her performing extraordinary spiritual feats.
‘Each of our prophets, when alive, exemplified a principle of our church. The Drowned Prophet teaches us, firstly, that death may come to any of us, at any time, so we should hold ourselves always in spiritual readiness to rejoin the spirit world. Secondly, her self-sacrifice shows us the importance of obedience to the Blessed Divinity. Thirdly, she proves the reality of life after death, because she continues to move between the earthly and spiritual planes.
‘Whenever we pass her pool, we kneel, anoint ourselves with her water, and acknowledge her teachings by saying, “The Drowned Prophet will bless all who worship her.” By which we do not mean that Daiyu is a goddess. She merely embodies the pure spirit and the higher realm. I invite you now to kneel at the pool and anoint yourselves before dinner.’
Tired and hungry as they were, nobody refused.
‘The Drowned Prophet will bless all who worship her,’ muttered Robin.
‘All right, Fire Group, follow me!’ Becca said, smiling, when all had made the tribute to the Drowned Prophet, and she led them back towards the dining hall, Robin aware of the cool spot of water on her forehead as the breeze hit it.
Fire Group was the last to enter the room. Robin estimated that a hundred people were already sitting at the tables, although there was no sign of any small children, who presumably had been fed earlier. Free spaces were dotted about, so the members of her group were forced to split up and find places wherever they could. Robin scanned the room for Will Edensor, finally spotting him at a crowded table which had no free spaces, so she took a seat between two strangers instead.
‘Here for your Week of Service?’ said a smiling young man with wavy blond hair.
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘I thank you for your service,’ he said immediately, pressing his hands together and performing a little bow.
‘I – don’t know what to say back to that,’ said Robin, and he laughed.
‘The response is, “And I for yours.”’
‘With the bow?’ asked Robin, and he laughed again.
‘With the bow.’
Robin pressed her hands together, bowed and said,
‘And I for yours.’
Before either could speak again, music started from hidden speakers: David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. The blond-haired man whooped and got to his feet, as did nearly everyone else. Cheers broke out, as Jonathan and Mazu Wace entered the room, hand in hand. Robin spotted Marion Huxley, the undertaker’s widow, pressing her hands to her face as though she’d just seen a rock star. Jonathan waved at the excited church members, while Mazu wore a gracious smile, the train of her robes sliding over the paved floor. There were many cries of ‘Papa J!’ as the pair climbed up to the top table, where Taio Wace and Becca Pirbright were already sitting. Glancing around, Robin saw Jiang sitting in front of his clean tin plate among the ordinary members. The similarity of Jiang’s and Mazu’s narrow, dark eyes made Robin suspect that he was, at the very least, Taio’s half-brother. As she watched, Jiang’s eye began to twitch uncontrollably again, and he concealed it swiftly with his hand.
Mazu took her seat at the top table, but Jonathan walked in front of it, hands raised, gesturing for the church members to settle down. Robin was once again struck by his striking good looks, and how little he looked like a man in his mid-sixties.
‘Thank you,’ he said with his self-deprecating smile, wearing a wireless microphone that amplified his voice over hidden speakers. ‘Thank you… it’s good to be home.’
Will Edensor, who was easy to spot given his height, was smiling and cheering with the rest of the room, and for a moment, remembering Will’s dying mother, she found herself completely in sympathy with James Edensor, who’d called Will an idiot.
‘We shall replenish our material bodies, and then we’ll talk!’ said Jonathan.
More cheers and more applause followed. Jonathan took his seat between Mazu and Becca Pirbright.
Kitchen workers now appeared from a side door, wheeling along large metal vats, from which they ladled food onto the tin plates. The four at the top table, Robin noticed, were being brought china plates already full of food.
When her turn came, Robin received a dollop of brown sludge that seemed to comprise overcooked vegetables, followed by a ladleful of noodles. The vegetables had been flavoured with too much turmeric and the noodles had an overcooked, gluey consistency. Robin ate as slowly as she could, trying to fool her stomach into believing it had consumed more calories than it had, because she knew the nutritional value of what they were eating was very low.
Robin’s two young male neighbours kept up a steady stream of chat, asking her name, where she was from and what had attracted her to the church. She soon found out that the young man with wavy blond hair had been at the University of East Anglia, which had hosted one of Papa J’s meetings. The other, who was wearing a buzz cut, had been to one of the church-run addiction centres and been recruited there.
‘Have you seen anything, yet?’ the latter asked Robin.
‘You mean the tour of the—?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean – you know. Pure spirit.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, cottoning on. ‘I saw Mazu make the temple doors open, just by pointing at them.’
‘Did you think it was a trick?’
‘Well,’ said Robin cautiously, ‘I don’t know. I mean, it could have—’
‘It’s not a trick,’ said the young man. ‘You think it is at first, then you realise it’s real. You should see the things Papa J can do. You wait. You think at first it must all be a load of bull, then you start seeing what it means, being pure spirit. It blows your effing mind. Have you read The Answer?’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘I—’
‘She hasn’t read The Answer,’ said the man with the buzz cut, leaning forwards to address Robin’s other neighbour.
‘Oh, dude, you’ve got to read The Answer,’ said the blond man, laughing. ‘Wow.’
‘I’ll lend you my copy,’ said the man with the buzz cut. ‘Only I want it back, because Papa J’s written something in there for me, OK?’
‘OK, thanks very much,’ said Robin.
‘Wow,’ he said, shaking his head and laughing, ‘Can’t believe you haven’t read The Answer. Like, it gives you the tools and it explains – I can’t do it as well as Papa J, you need to read his actual words. But I can tell you first-hand, there’s life after death, and a spiritual war raging here on earth, and if we can win—’
‘Yeah,’ said the wavy blond young man, who now looked serious. ‘If we win.’
‘We have to,’ said the other intensely. ‘We have to.’
Through a gap between the two diners opposite her, Robin spotted the shaven-headed Louise, who was eating very slowly, and kept glancing up at the top table, ignoring the chatter of those on either side of her. There were many other middle-aged women dotted around the hall, Robin saw, and most of them looked like Louise, as though they’d long since abandoned any interest in their appearance, their faces deeply lined and their hair cropped short, though none of them were entirely shaven-headed like Louise. Watching her, Robin remembered what Kevin had said about his mother being in love with Jonathan Wace. Had the feeling survived all these years of servitude? Had it been worth the loss of her son?
One of the people who came to clear away the plates was the teenaged girl Robin had noticed earlier, with the long, mousey, sun-bleached hair and large, anxious eyes. When the plates had been cleared away, more kitchen workers appeared with stacks of metal bowls on their trolleys. These proved to be full of stewed apple, which Robin found very bitter, doubtless because refined sugar was forbidden by the church. Nevertheless, she ate it all, while her neighbours talked across her of holy war.
Robin had no idea what time it was. The sky outside the window was black, and it had taken a long time to dish out food for a hundred people. Finally the bowls, too, were cleared away, and somebody dimmed the overhead lights, though leaving the top table spot lit.
At once, those at the trestle tables began clapping and cheering again, some of them even banging their tin water mugs on the table. Jonathan Wace stood up, walked around the table, his microphone switched back on, and once again calmed the crowd by making a dampening motion with his hands.
‘Thank you, my friends. Thank you… I stand before you tonight with both hope and fear in my heart. Hope and fear,’ he added, looking solemnly around.