35
Nine at the top…
One attains the way of heaven.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The recruits got to their feet as the lights went up. Wace descended and walked through them, pausing here and there to greet certain people by name, even though he’d never been introduced to them. Those who were so honoured looked stunned.
‘Rowena,’ he said, smiling at Robin. ‘I’ve heard wonderful things about you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Robin weakly, letting him clasp both her hands in his.
People around Robin looked at her with envy and increased respect as Wace walked on, leading the way back up the stairs into the farmhouse.
The recruits followed him. As Robin neared the top of the stairs, she saw sunset through the windows: they’d spent the entire day in the dark, stuffy room. She was aching with hunger, and her body was sore from physical labour and from sitting on the uncomfortable floor.
Then the sound of loud rock music reached her ears, blasting out of speakers in the courtyard. Church members had formed two lines, making a path between farmhouse and temple, and were singing and clapping along with the song. As Robin emerged into the damp evening air the chorus began.
I don’t need no one to tell me ’bout heaven
I look at my daughter, and I believe…
Robin walked with her fellow recruits between the rows of singing church members. Spots of rain hit her and she heard thunder rumbling over the music.
Sometimes it’s hard to breathe, Lord,
At the bottom of the sea, yeah yeah…
Wace led the recruits up the steps into the temple, which was now illuminated by many lamps and candles.
The central pentagonal stage had become a five-sided pool. Robin realised that the pool had been there all along, beneath a heavy black lid. The water beneath looked jet black due to the dark sides. Mazu stood facing them, reflected as though in a dark mirror. She was no longer wearing orange, but a long white robe matching that of her daughter on the ceiling above. Now Wace climbed the steps to stand beside her.
The rock song finished after everyone, church members as well as recruits, had entered the temple. The doors closed with a loud bang. Those who’d led the recruits into the farmhouse instructed them in whispers to remain standing facing the pool, then filed into the surrounding seats.
Hollow with hunger, aching, sweaty and emotionally wrung out, Robin could only think that the cool water looked inviting. It would be wonderful to sink beneath the surface, to experience a few moments of solitude and peace.
‘Tonight,’ said Jonathan Wace, ‘you have a free choice. Remain with us, or rejoin the materialist world. Which of you will step forwards and enter the pool? Be reborn tonight. Cleanse yourself of the false self. Step out of the purifying water as your true self. Which of you is prepared to take this first, essential step towards pure spirit?’
Nobody moved for a second or two. Then Amandeep pushed past Robin.
‘I will.’
The watching church members exploded into cheers and applause. Jonathan and Mazu held out their arms, beaming. Amandeep walked forwards, ascended the steps at the side of the pool, and Jonathan and Mazu gave him unheard instructions. He took off his trainers and socks, then stepped forwards into the pool, sank briefly beneath the surface before reappearing, his glasses askew, but laughing. The cheers and applause of the church members echoed around the temple as Jonathan and Mazu helped the sodden Amandeep climb out on the other side, his tracksuit now heavy with water. He collected his trainers and socks and was led away by a pair of church members through a door at the back of the temple.
Kyle was the next into the pool. He received the same rapturous reaction when he re-emerged from the pool.
Robin decided she didn’t want to wait any longer, and sidled through the other recruits to reach the front of the group.
‘I want to join,’ she said, to a further eruption of cheers.
She walked forwards, climbed the steps and took off her socks and trainers. At a sign from Jonathan, she stepped into the surprisingly deep pool and let herself sink into the cold water. Her feet found the bottom and she pushed upwards again, and the glorious silence was shattered as she broke the surface to loud clapping and shouts of approval.
Jonathan Wace helped her out. Now weighed down in her soaking wet tracksuit, hair in her eyes, Robin was handed her socks and trainers by a smiling Taio Wace, who escorted her personally to the back of the temple and through a door into an anteroom where Amandeep and Kyle were already dressed in clean, dry tracksuits and towelling off their hair, both evidently elated. More clean, folded tracksuits lay waiting on wooden benches that ran around the walls. Opposite lay a door that Robin knew must lead outside.
‘Here,’ said the smiling Taio, handing Robin a towel. ‘Take a tracksuit and change.’
Amandeep and Kyle both looked courteously away as Robin peeled off her top, very conscious that her underwear, too, was soaking wet, but Taio watched openly, smirking.
‘How many more d’you think will join?’ Amandeep asked Taio.
‘We’ll see,’ said Taio, not taking his eyes off Robin as she sat down, trying to remove her wet tracksuit bottoms and pull on dry ones without anyone seeing how translucent her pants had become. ‘We need all the people we can get. This is a fight of good against evil, pure and simple… better get back,’ Taio added, as Robin, now dressed, began pulling on her socks.
‘I can’t believe this,’ said the breathless Amandeep, as the door closed behind Taio. ‘I came here thinking, “This place is crazy. It’s a cult.” I was gonna write an article for my student paper. And now… I’ve joined the damn cult.’
He began to laugh uncontrollably and so did Kyle and Robin.
Over the next half hour, more and more people entered the room in a similar condition of near hysterical laughter. Walter Fernsby came in, a little tottery and shaken, followed immediately by Penny Brown, whose green hair was plastered around her face like algae. Marion Huxley appeared, shivering, apparently disorientated, but also inclined to giggle. Soon the changing room was packed with people excitedly discussing the materialisation of Daiyu in the basement, and their own pride at having joined the church.
Then came ten minutes when nobody else appeared. After taking a quick, silent headcount, Robin estimated that there were half a dozen hold-outs, including the girl with the heart-shaped face who’d refused to criticise her family to Fire Group, and Penny’s blonde friend. Indeed, Penny was looking around anxiously, no longer laughing. A further ten minutes passed, and then a door to the outside was opened by Will Edensor.
‘This way,’ he said, and he led the new church members out of the temple and towards the dining hall.
It was dark now and gooseflesh crept up Robin’s body and under her still-wet hair. Penny Brown was still looking around anxiously for the friend who’d come with her to Chapman Farm.
The newly joined church members entered the dining room to a standing ovation from the church members who’d left the temple ahead of them. Evidently there’d been a lot of activity during the hours the recruits had been shut way in the basement beneath the farmhouse, because scarlet and gold paper lanterns of the kind that swung in the breeze in Wardour Street had been strung from the rafters and an appetising smell of cooked meat filled the air. Kitchen workers were already moving between the tables, wheeling their enormous metal vats.
Robin dropped into the nearest free seat and gulped down some of the tap water already poured in a plastic cup in front of her.
‘Congratulations,’ said a quiet voice behind her, and she saw shaven-headed Louise, who was pushing along a vat of what smelled like chicken curry, which she now ladled onto Robin’s tin plate, adding a couple of spoonfuls of rice.
‘Thank you,’ said Robin gratefully. Louise smiled weakly, then moved away.
Although it wasn’t the best curry in the world, this was certainly the most appetising and filling meal Robin had been given since her arrival at Chapman Farm, and contained by far the most protein. She was eating fast, so desperate for calories she couldn’t pace herself. Once the curry was finished she was given a bowl of yoghurt mixed with honey, which was the best thing she’d tasted all week.
An air of festivity filled the hall. There was far more laughter than usual and Robin guessed that this comparative feast was the reason. Robin now noticed that Noli Seymour had joined the top table, dressed in orange robes, and for the first time Robin realised that the actress must be a church Principal. Beside Noli sat two middle-aged men, also in orange robes. Upon enquiry, the young man sitting beside Robin told her that one was a multi-millionaire who’d made his fortune in packaging, and the other was an MP. Robin stored up both men’s names for her letter to Strike.
Jonathan and Mazu Wace entered the dining hall to renewed cheers after most people had finished eating. There was no sign of the girl with the heart-shaped face, or the other recruits who hadn’t entered the pool, and Robin wondered where they’d gone, whether they were being held somewhere without food, and whether the Waces’ prolonged absence had been due to a last attempt at persuasion.
She dreaded the prospect of another Wace speech, but instead music started up out of loudspeakers again as the Waces took their seats, and with a wave of his hand, Wace seemed to indicate that informality was now permitted, that the party should begin. An old REM song blasted across the dining hall, and some church members, now full of meat for the first time in who knew how long, got up to dance.