‘Don’t want them,’ said Strike.
‘You don’ wan’ kids?’ said Shanker, his tone suggesting this was akin to not wanting to breathe.
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘You miserable bastard,’ said Shanker, contemplating Strike with incredulity. ‘Kids is wha’ it’s all abou’. Fuckin’ ’ell, look at your mum. You free was everyfing to ’er.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike automatically. ‘Well—’
‘You should see fuckin’ Alyssa, wiv Angel bein’ ill. That’s fuckin’ love, man.’
‘Yeah – well, give her my best, OK? And Angel.’
Strike got to his feet, bill in his hand.
‘Cheers for this, Shanker. I’d better get going. Got a lot of work on.’
Having paid for the coffees and the bacon roll, Strike headed back up Bethnal Green Road, lost in not entirely productive thought.
You free was everyfing to ’er.
Strike never thought of Leda as having had three children, but his old friend had reminded him of the existence of somebody whom Strike probably thought about once a year at most: the much younger half-brother who’d been the product of his mother’s marriage to her killer. The boy, who’d been given the predictably eccentric name Switch by his parents, had been born shortly before Strike left for Oxford University. The latter had felt literally nothing for the squalling baby, even as a beaming Leda insisted her older son hold his brother. Strike’s most vivid memory of that time was his own feeling of dread at leaving Leda in the squat with her increasingly erratic and aggressive husband. The baby had been merely an additional complication, forever tainted in Strike’s eyes by being Whittaker’s son. His half-brother had just turned one when Leda died, and had then been adopted by his paternal grandparents.
He felt no curiosity about Switch’s current whereabouts and no desire to meet or know him. As far as he knew, Lucy felt the same way. But then Strike corrected himself: he didn’t know how Lucy felt. Perhaps Switch was one of the half-siblings with whom she maintained contact, hiding this from the elder brother who’d arrogantly assumed he knew everything about her.
Strike re-entered Bethnal Green station, burdened with guilt and unease. He’d have called Robin had she been available, not to bore her with his personal problems, but to let her know Shanker was prepared to help loosen Jordan Reaney’s tongue, that Shanker, too, thought the police were wrong about Pirbright’s murder, and that the Frank brothers had gone out in disguise to buy rope. Once again, the fact that she was unavailable, and likely to be so for the foreseeable future, made him realise just how much the sound of her voice generally raised his spirits. He was ever more conscious of how much he, the most self-sufficient of men, had come to rely on the fact that she was always there, and always on his side.
34
It is a question of a fierce battle to break and to discipline the Devil’s Country, the forces of decadence.
But the struggle also has its reward. Now is the time to lay the foundations of power and mastery for the future.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin was craving solitude, sleep and food, but the routine at Chapman Farm was designed to give as little of all three as possible, and some recruits were starting to show the strain. Robin had witnessed green-haired Penny Brown being berated by Taio Wace for dropping some of the large pile of clean folded sheets she’d been carrying across the courtyard. Becca Pirbright ushered Fire Group quickly onwards towards the pig pen, but not in time to prevent them seeing Penny break down in sobs.
In subtle and not so subtle ways, an apocalyptic note began to creep into the critiques of materialism and social inequality with which new recruits were being bombarded. The lack of contact with the outside world served to heighten the sense of being in a bunker, with church members delivering regular bulletins on the horrors of the Syrian war and the slow death of the planet. A sense of increasing urgency permeated these briefings: only the awoken could possibly head off global catastrophe, because the bubble people were continuing, selfishly and apathetically, to hasten humanity’s doom.
Papa J and the UHC were now openly described as the world’s best hope. Though Wace hadn’t appeared since the first dinner, Robin knew he was still present at the farm because church members made frequent mention of the fact in hushed, reverent voices. The infrequency of his appearances seemed to fuel rather than quench his followers’ adoration. Robin assumed he was holed up in the farmhouse, eating separately from the mass of members who, in spite of the church’s stated allegiance to organically produced and ethically sourced food, ate meals largely composed of cheap dehydrated noodles, with small amounts of protein coming in the form of processed meat and cheese.
On Wednesday morning, Mazu Wace, who unlike her husband was often to be seen gliding through the courtyard, conducted a joint session in the temple with Fire Group and Wood Group. A circle of lacquered chairs had been placed on the central pentagon-shaped stage, and when all had taken their seats, Mazu gave a brief speech about the need for spiritual death and rebirth which, she said, could only take place once past pain and delusion had been accepted, healed or renounced. She then invited the group members to share injustices or cruelties perpetuated on them by family members, partners or friends.
After some prompting, people began to volunteer their stories. A young member of Wood Group called Kyle, who was thin and nervy-looking, gave a detailed account of his father’s furious reaction on hearing that his son was gay. As he told the group how his mother had sided with her husband against him, he broke down and cried. The rest of the group murmured support and sympathy while Mazu sat in silence, and when Kyle had finished his story, she summarised it while eradicating any words relating to familial relationships, substituting the terms ‘flesh object’ and ‘materialist possession’, then said,
‘Thank you for being brave enough to share your story, Kyle. Pure spirits are untouchable by materialist harms. I wish you a hasty death of the false self. When that’s gone, your hurt and your suffering will depart, also.’
One by one, the other group members began to talk. Some were clearly struggling with profound hurt caused by outside relationships, or the lack of them, but Robin couldn’t avoid the suspicion that some were dredging up and even exaggerating trauma, so as to fit in better with the group. When invited by Mazu to contribute, Robin told the story of her cancelled wedding and her family’s disappointment, and admitted that her fiancé’s abandonment had left her bereft, particularly as she’d given up her job to go travelling with him once they were husband and wife.
Those in the circle, many of whom were already tearful after sharing their own stories, offered commiseration and sympathy, but Mazu told Robin that placing importance on professions was to connive at systems of control perpetuated within the bubble world.
‘A sense of identity based on jobs, or any of the trappings of the bubble world, is inherently materialist,’ she said. ‘When we firmly reject the cravings of the ego and begin nourishing the spirit, hurts disappear and the true self can emerge, a self that will no longer care if flesh objects pass out of its life.’
Mazu turned last to a skinny girl with a heart-shaped face who’d remained conspicuously silent. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest and her legs were crossed, the upper foot hooked behind her lower.