‘Theresa told me not to. Theresa’s my sister, she – she didn’t want me to come here at all. She said the UHC’s a cult,’ said Robin apologetically.
‘And you listened to your sister.’
‘No, but I really came here just to explore things. I didn’t know I’d stay. If I’d known how I’d feel once I’d had my Week of Service I’d have brought my bank cards – but if you let me write to Theresa, I’ll be able to arrange a bank transfer to the church’s account. I’d like to donate a thousand pounds.’
She saw, by the slight widening of Mazu’s eyes, that she hadn’t expected so large a donation.
‘Very well,’ she said, opening a drawer in her desk and withdrawing a pen, writing paper and a blank envelope. She also pushed a template letter to copy and a card printed with the UHC’s bank account details across the desk. ‘You can do that now. Luckily,’ said Mazu, taking a ring of keys from another drawer, ‘your sister wrote to you just this morning. I was going to ask somebody to give you her letter at lunch.’
Mazu now headed towards the cabinet on which Daiyu’s portrait stood and unlocked it. Robin caught a glimpse of piles of envelopes held together with elastic bands. Mazu extracted one of these, relocked the cabinet and said, still holding the letter,
‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
When the door had closed behind Mazu, Robin took a quick look around the office, her eye falling on a plug socket in the skirting board, into which nothing was plugged. With the camera she believed was hidden in the air freshener recording her every move she didn’t dare examine it, but she suspected, having used such devices herself, that this innocent socket was also a covert recording device. Possibly Mazu had left the room to see what she’d do if left alone, so Robin didn’t move from her chair, but set to work copying out the template letter.
Mazu returned a few minutes later.
‘Here,’ she said, holding out the letter addressed to Robin.
‘Thank you,’ said Robin, opening it. She was certain it had already been opened and read, judging by the suspiciously strong glue used to reseal it. ‘Oh good,’ said Robin, scanning the letter in Midge’s handwriting, ‘she’s given me her new address, I didn’t have it.’
She finished copying out the template letter, addressed the envelope and sealed it.
‘I can get that posted for you,’ said Mazu, holding out a hand.
‘Thank you,’ said Robin, getting to her feet. ‘I feel much better for doing this.’
‘You shouldn’t be giving money to “feel better”,’ said Mazu.
They were the same height, but somehow, Robin still felt as though Mazu was the taller.
‘Your personal bar to pure spirit is egomotivity, Rowena,’ said Mazu. ‘You continue to put the materialist self ahead of the collective.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘I – I am trying.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Mazu, with a little waggle of the letter Robin had just handed her, and the latter surmised that not until the funds were safely in the UHC’s bank account would she be deemed to have made spiritual progress.
Robin left the farmhouse holding her letter. Though it was lunchtime, and she was very hungry, she made a detour to the women’s bathroom to examine the page in her hand more closely.
Robin noticed, tilting the paper beneath the overhead light in the toilet cubicle, there was an almost imperceptible line of strip Tippex: somebody had obliterated the date on which it had been sent. Flipping the envelope over she saw that the time and date of the postmark had also been blurred. So exhausted she could no longer estimate lengths of time with much accuracy, and having no recourse to any calendar, Robin couldn’t remember exactly when she’d requested the fake letter from Theresa, but she doubted she’d ever have known it existed had Mazu not wanted her to have Theresa’s address.
For the first time, it occurred to Robin that one reason for Will Edensor’s lack of response to the letters informing him that his mother was dying might be that he’d never received them. Will was in possession of a large trust fund, and it was surely in the church’s interests that he remain at the farm, meekly handing over money, rather than discover, on learning of his mother’s death, that he couldn’t see her as a flesh object, or treat her love as materialist possession.
58
Two daughters live together, but their minds are not directed to common concerns.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin knew Colin Edensor’s one thousand pounds must have reached the UHC’s bank account because a few days after she’d given Mazu her letter ordering the bank transfer she was reunited with her original group of high-level recruits. Nobody mentioned her Revelation session, nor did anyone welcome her back; all behaved as though she’d never been away.
This mutually agreed silence extended to Kyle’s unexplained absence from the group. Robin knew better than to ask how he’d transgressed, but she was certain he’d done something wrong because she soon spotted him doing the kind of hard manual work she’d just been allowed to give up. Robin also noticed that Vivienne now averted her eyes whenever her group and Kyle’s passed each other.
Robin found out what Kyle’s crime had been when she sat down opposite Shawna at dinner that night.
Following Shawna’s ill-advised recruitment of Robin to help with the children’s lessons, her head had been shaved. While she’d seemed cowed when she first appeared in her newly bald state, her fundamentally garrulous and indiscreet nature had now reasserted itself, and her first proud words to Robin were,
‘Oi’m increasing again.’
She patted her lower belly.
‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Yew don’t say that,’ scoffed Shawna. ‘Oi’m not doing it for me. Yew should be congratulating the church.’
‘Right,’ said Robin wearily. She’d deliberately sat with Shawna in the hopes of hearing more news about Jacob, because she had a hunch it was his fate she’d overheard Harmon, Zhou and Becca discussing in Mazu’s office, but she’d forgotten how exasperating the girl could be.
‘Did yew hear about him?’ Shawna asked Robin in a gleeful whisper, as Kyle passed the end of the table.
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘Hahaha,’ said Shawna.
The people beside them were locked in their own intense conversation. Shawna glanced sideways to make sure she wouldn’t be overheard before leaning in and whispering to Robin,
‘He says he carn’t spirit bond with, you know… women. Said it right to Mazu’s face.’
‘Well,’ said Robin cautiously, also whispering, ‘I mean… he’s gay, isn’t he? So—’
‘Thass materialism,’ said Shawna, louder than she’d intended, and one of the young men beside them glanced around and Shawna, greatly against Robin’s wishes, said loudly to them,
‘She thinks there’s such a thing as “gay”.’
Clearly deciding no good would come of responding to Shawna, the young man turned back to his conversation.
‘Bodies don’t matter,’ Shawna told Robin firmly. ‘On’y spirit matters.’
She leaned in again, once more talking in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Vivienne wanted to spirit bond with ’im and I ’eard ’e ran out there, loike, crying, hahaha. Thass proper egomotability, thinking people aren’ good enough to sleep with.’
Robin nodded silently, which appeared to satisfy Shawna. As they ate, Robin tried to lead Shawna onto the subject of Jacob, but other than Shawna’s confident assertion that he was bound to pass soon, because Papa J had decreed it, found out no more information.
Robin’s next letter to Strike was devoid of useful information. However, two days after placing it in the plastic rock, she and the rest of the high-level recruits, minus Kyle, were led to another crafting session by Becca Pirbright.
It was a hot, cloudless June day, and Becca was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the church’s logo instead of a sweatshirt, although the ordinary members continued to wear their heavy tracksuits. Field poppies and daisies had bloomed along the path to the Portakabins, and Robin might have felt uplifted but for the fact that fine weather at Chapman Farm turned her thoughts to all the places she’d rather have been. Even central London, never the most comfortable place in a heatwave, had a halcyon quality to her these days. She could have put on a summer dress instead of this thick tracksuit, bought herself a bottle of water at will, walked anywhere, freely…
A startled mutter issued from the group as they approached the Portakabin where they usually made corn dollies. The tables had been moved outside, so that they wouldn’t have to endure the stuffiness of the crafting room, but their surprise had nothing to do with the relocated tables.
Several church members were constructing a twelve-foot-high man of straw beside the Portakabin. It appeared to have a strong wire frame, and Robin now realised that the large straw sculpture she’d previously seen Wan working on had been the head.
‘We make one of these every year, in celebration of the Manifestation of the Stolen Prophet,’ the smiling Becca told the group, who were all contemplating the large straw man as they sat down at the crafting tables. ‘The prophet was a gifted craftsman himself, so—’
Becca’s voice faltered. Emily had just emerged from behind the straw sculpture, hands full of twine. Emily’s head was freshly shaven; like Louise, she clearly hadn’t been given permission to let her hair regrow yet. Emily threw Becca a cold, challenging look before returning to her work.
‘—so we celebrate him by the means he chose to express himself,’ Becca finished.
As the group reached automatically for their piles of hollow straws, Robin saw that her companions had now graduated to making Norfolk lanterns, which were more complex than those she’d previously made. As nobody seemed inclined to help her, she reached for the laminated instructions on the table to see what she had to do, the sun beating down upon her back.