Oh Jesus.
‘I’m not putting any pressure on you. Whatever decision you make I’ll support that, and your coach will too. He’s not going to mention this to anyone in the school, he won’t talk to you about it either unless you want to. But he wanted you to know that if you did change your mind, if you did, there’s still a space for you on the bus.’
‘You’re not going to come.’ Knowing the answer in advance.
‘We can’t, Danno. I know I promised we would, and I feel terrible. But Dr Gulbenkian’s saying it might be unwise. Just at the minute he says he couldn’t advise it. And I don’t… I don’t want to be away from the house right now. I’m sorry, sport, I really am. But you don’t need me to have fun, right?’
‘Was that her? Was it Lori?’ they ask when he comes back into the shop.
He shakes his head. ‘Just my dad wanting to wish me luck for tomorrow.’
‘Champs don’t need luck!’ Geoff Sproke declares.
Soon they are leaving, zagging down the escalators. A man in a top hat and white gloves reluctantly gives them sample chocolates from a silver platter. At the sliding doors, carollers are gathered, swaying arm-in-arm and singing, ‘Winter Wonderland’.
‘Help fight cancer!’ One of their number, a young man in glasses and a green anorak, thrusts a bucket under Skippy’s nose; then, ‘Sorry,’ he says, and takes it away again.
Back at school, the bad feeling grows and grows. The pills call to you from under the pillow. Speeding out of control, Skip? The brakes are right here! Wouldn’t you like to be Danielbot again? Cool as a cucumber?
You try Lori’s phone but it goes straight through to voicemail.
‘Has she called you yet, Skippy?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Oh, well, maybe she’s out of credit.’
‘Here we go again,’ Dennis says tartly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Dennis keeps mum, looks out the window.
‘She’s going to call,’ you say.
His schedule so falls as to leave Father Green’s Fridays free of classes after two o’clock; typically, he will spend this time in his office, attending to various administrative duties that arise from his charitable work. This afternoon has been passed on the phone to the biscuit factory, trying to confirm a donation for this year’s Christmas hampers. The company has always given generously in the past; now, however, the man with whom Father Green is used to dealing has moved on, and his replacement – younger, bored-sounding – insists that charitable donations come under PR, which has been ‘outsourced’ to another company. So Father Green calls this other company, where he speaks to a woman who does not understand what he wants. Is it T-shirts? TV coverage? Celebrity endorsements? It is simply a donation of biscuits to be delivered to households in poor areas, Father Green tells her. Oh no, that would be a decision for the biscuit company itself, she tells him, and, after tapping at her keyboard, she gives him the name of the man he spoke to earlier.
He hangs up the phone, checks his watch. Twenty past three. Classes will be over soon.
Jerome.
Switching on the kettle, he sits down to open a drawer of correspondence.
I can hear your heartbeat, Jerome. When is the last time it beat this fast?
Old ladies’ handwriting, pitifully frail. Reaching across the desk for his reading glasses.
In Africa?
The kettle has boiled. He pours the water into a cup, places the bag in the water, watches the umber clouds billow forth.
He knows your desire, Jerome. He trembles whenever you look at him. So uncommonly beautiful, so desperate for love.
Spooning out the bag, pouring a little milk, just a splash, from the small carton.
You will show him how to pack the hampers, how each object must be arranged. He will kneel here, working quietly while you read through the accounts. Then, absently, you start to stroke his hair. He makes no protest or complaint. Instead his head slowly comes to rest against your thigh, you see his eyelashes flutter closed – then you fuck him in his little rosebud, over this desk, you fuck him!
The cup overturning, tea pooling on the varnish, devouring the letters of his parishioners –
Ha ha ha ha!
And the air is filled by that burning wind, that roiling stew of carnality: animal sweat, the fetor of unwashed loins, white eyes rolling at you while black arms hammer languorously at the walls of the church, that tiny outpost of decency, so laughably flimsy in the relentless heat –
How you missed it, Jerome. The voice, that Old Familiar, so close now its words and his own thoughts are almost indistinguishable. Why deny what is in your heart! Why deny yourself life?
The heat! He feels it now, again, as if he were in Hell already! Waves of it, beating in through the metal walls of his hut, all night long, dreams and desert melted into one overpowering carousel, sweat soaking the bedclothes and he with the cold blade to his flesh, tears in his eyes as he implored God for the strength to do it, to rid himself once and for all of this ever-flourishing root of wickedness, this lightning rod for all that is unholy –
But you did not.
He did not – could not!
Because you knew the truth.
He could only flee Africa, batten the door on those memories, those flames of desire and their quenching! And every day since he has heard it rattling!
Open it, Jerome.
Has he not prayed for it to be silent? Has he not prayed to be cleansed? Has he not begged God to show him the light, to lead him to goodness? And yet there is only desire, temptation, the Devil, gleaming at him from every grain of sand, calling from every pair of plump, incarnadine lips, and Christ not once, not the faintest glow of a presence, not the vaguest adumbration in a dream, not once in nearly seventy years!
You knew that there was no one watching.
How is a man to win that battle? Where is he to find the strength?
The hour arrives, Jerome. This is my last gift to you. Once more, to feel a body touching yours. Love. And after that, perhaps, peace.
In the corridor he hears a bell, doors opening, a thousand youthful footsteps rushing free.
Trudging back down the hall towards the priest’s office, every Loriless step like getting cut up into shreds. You take out your phone. It gazes back at you blank and placid. You imagine being with her and telling her what Dad said, maybe telling her everything, her saying kind things, wise things. It’s just a swim meet, Daniel, no biggie. Hey D, don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine. You imagine her being with you, a bandage over a wound.
WHERE ARE YOU?
You write the text and then delete it, you’ve already left two voice-mails, there are rules about these things, you don’t want to seem desperate. But you are desperate! And the unsent message bounces around inside you agonizingly,
WHERE ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU?
like a scalding ping-pong ball. You descend the steps into the basement, past Ruprecht’s laboratory. Silence from the priest’s door. Then, weirdly, as if just for a second you had X-ray vision, it’s like you see him waiting on the other side, a praying mantis poised there motionless. You unlock your phone again. Fuck it anyway! Type in the message and send it,