The Revelations

One

Marcus parked on the crest of the bridge and looked down the canal. To the right the horse chestnuts of Kensal Green Cemetery trembled in the breeze. The graveyard’s wall was crumbling and Marcus could see through a gap to the rising ground which stretched up from the shrunken tombstones of the children’s garden to the vast mausoleums of colonial grandees. Marcus occasionally came up to visit Mouse on Sundays in summer, when they would sit and drink cans of cider on the roof of the boat and then wander through the cemetery inventing stories for the dead. Foxes would leap surprised from undergrowth as they passed, woodpeckers sweeping in bouncing flight over their heads. Now Marcus could see Mouse making his way up the towpath pulling his old suitcase with one hand, holding his snare drum and high-hat over his shoulder with the other.

Abby was trying to get the car’s radio to work. A long blare of static came from the speakers. Lee sat in the back pressing her temples with her fingers, taking controlled breaths. She had cut her hair very short the previous night. She told Marcus and Abby how she had been suddenly infuriated by the long blonde hair and had cut it herself in the bathroom sink. Jagged edges stuck up on top of her head; Marcus thought she looked like an adolescent boy. The shortness of her hair made her blue-green eyes and angular cheekbones seem unearthly and disturbing, shorn of the softening frame of her long hair. Lee’s neck, where she had cut the hair in a severe line at the back, was as slick and white as a scar.

Marcus was impatient to be on the road, to head westwards and shake free of the grim city. He leapt from the car when Mouse appeared on the pavement and squeezed the suitcase and drum into the boot. Mouse climbed in beside Lee, lifting Marcus’s guitar onto his lap.

‘Blimey,’ he said as he caught sight of Lee’s hair. ‘Auditioning for the Sex Pistols?’

‘I wanted a new look. Now be nice about it.’ She leaned over and placed a breathy kiss on his cheek.

Abby switched off the radio and suddenly they could hear the ducks on the canal, the birds singing in the cemetery. Then Marcus started the engine and they pulled out onto Harrow Road and were away. The skies were heavy unbroken grey above them. Marcus drove haltingly along the A40, braking for speed cameras, nosing from lane to lane, trying to cut a clear path through the traffic. Just before the widening of the road at Hillingdon, a traffic jam snaked back from the charred carcass of a burnt-out car. A lane was closed, and people edged past the scene, noses glued to their windows, looking for bodies.

‘So who’s not going to make it through the Retreat?’ Mouse asked. ‘I know you’ve all been thinking about it. There are always drop-outs at the Retreat.’

There was a silence. Marcus looked into his wing mirror and waved as the car behind let him through.

‘Of course we’ve been thinking about it.’ Marcus looked across at Abby. ‘The twins will be fine. Neil’s a good bet. I think most of our group are in for the long haul. What do you think, Mouse?’

Mouse lit a cigarette and opened the window.

‘Maki’s hard to read. She seems spiritual, to understand the need for faith, but we should keep an eye on her.’

‘What about Philip?’ Marcus asked. ‘Do you think he’ll stay?’

Mouse paused, drew on his cigarette, and spoke.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Partly because I think he’s thought more than anyone else about it. He’s laid the foundations of the revelation. But also, he’s nervous, and those nerves can be helpful, they bring you to that fine point where you just have to let yourself go.’

Marcus saw Lee take a drag on Mouse’s cigarette. Her voice was low and tired.

‘I’m not so sure. I think we might lose him,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘It seems to me that Philip wants everything that goes with being a Course member, but I don’t know that he wants God. He’s just a bit too eager. And thinking about faith doesn’t do any good without feeling it first.’

Marcus frowned in the rear-view mirror.

‘I’ll have a word with him. We have to make sure we don’t lose anyone else. David is depending on us. If you feel like anyone’s wavering you have to leap on it. It’s not just keeping them here, but making sure they’re fully converted. We need to deliver, to prove to David that we can do this.’

The clouds had begun to break up as they drove through the cut in the Chilterns and the world unravelled itself beneath them. They came off the motorway at Banbury and then they were almost at Lancing Manor, and Marcus felt a surge of pleasure in his stomach.

The Earl had been at school with David and was reported to have financed the Course’s initial sessions, supported the priest as he wrote The Way of the Pilgrim and took his orders. He was on the boards of a host of City corporations, had links to shady business ventures in offshore tax havens, hedge funds that had benefited from the Credit Crisis. He attended most Course sessions and played the organ at St Botolph’s on Sunday mornings. His house was said to be astonishingly grand.

They got lost around Chipping Norton. Abby had been reading the directions but, during the discussion about the new members, she had let the map fall to the floor. After they had negotiated the sandstone wiggle of the town for the third time, Marcus stopped the car outside a truckers’ cafe and looked at the map. Heading back on the main road towards Banbury, they came upon David’s silver Mercedes plodding slowly northwards. Marcus could see the priest leaning forward over his steering wheel as his wife stared out at the passing countryside. Marcus honked and the priest looked in his rear-view mirror and raised his hand. Marcus followed David as he took a right turn and drove along a ridge between two valleys. Marcus watched the priest’s eyes, which whipped back to the pursuing car in the mirror every so often. They made their way through a number of windswept hamlets; a wood appeared on the left. Nightingale slowed, began to indicate, and Abby let out a cheer.

Nightingale’s Mercedes turned into a shadowy driveway through black iron gates. Marcus followed down the gravel track above which trees clasped a thick canopy. The track ended in a turning circle in front of a high, dark house. Lancing Manor had two large wings that shot off from the main building, further outbuildings and laundry rooms that were linked by covered cloisters. The rickety gables and turrets seemed to be climbing the body of the house, clambering over one another, reaching up to the low clouds. Rooks perched monkish on the gabled roof, their beaks the colour of bones. The ivy that grew up the front of the house seemed to be gathering itself for some great effort, balling itself into a fist in an attempt to pull the building into the ground, sending out single vines as scouts snaking along the brown Hornton stone. The house was perched on the brow of a hill looking down over thickly planted pine trees and, halfway down the hillside, where the ground flattened out before plunging down into the misty valley, a lake that was bright with weed in the midday sunlight. A boathouse stood in the shadow of overhanging trees at one end. The Earl came out of the oak doors, rubbing his large hands.

‘Welcome to Lancing Manor. You found the place without trouble? Good, good.’

He was wearing a thick brown jumper and corduroys, his heavy body somehow more at home in front of the vast, dark house than it was in London. David embraced him and turned to help Sally with their luggage and his guitar case. Marcus and Mouse hefted their own belongings into the entrance hall. Marcus watched as Abby and Lee looked upwards, slowly realising the size of the great room they had entered, a room whose shadows were punctuated by etiolated stems of green-white light that fell down from stained-glass windows set high above. A staircase reared in front of them from the black-and-white chessboard marble of the floor. Embers dimly glowed in the fireplace, along whose mantel carved stone vines extended themselves between armless caryatids. Doors led off the hall, interrupting bookcases filled with dusty works of philosophy, Latin and German texts whose names Lee revealed with a sweep of her thumb down leather spines. A thin woman with short grey hair came through a swing door and nodded severely in their direction.

‘This is Mrs Millman,’ said the Earl. ‘She’ll show you to your rooms. I’ll walk with you, David. I thought we’d put the youngsters in the east wing. Keep all the trouble in one place.’ Mrs Millman made her way up the staircase with the delicate steps of a wading bird. The four friends followed her.

The dust increased as they climbed the staircase to the gallery that encircled the hall. The fan-vaulted ceiling was hung with giant pendants. Shards of sunlight fell into the dusty air, shimmering with the colours of the stained glass. Marcus could make out the pictures depicted in the glass of the high windows, scenes of martyrdom and religious heroism: Sebastian pierced by arrows, Moses on the Mount, Daniel among the lions. On the walls hung portraits of what Marcus assumed were the Earl’s family. He saw a young girl with a bright parrot perched on her thin hand, a dog sleeping at her feet. He thought she looked like Lee. Further along there was a stern Roundhead, a jovial Victorian slumped behind an enormous belly, a pale woman with an Elizabethan ruff dandling a baby. Then the Earl, perhaps twenty years younger, his hair — longer then — a dark flame atop his head. Behind him Lancing Manor, presented against a fantastical background of mountains and ravines, rose dark and gloomy. The artist had ignored any sense of perspective and so the painting looked primitive, wild, the Earl the master of a dismal kingdom, rooks circling above him.

They passed through white doors and then in single file down a long corridor whose windows looked out over a courtyard on the right-hand side that reminded Marcus of the quadrangles at university. But the courtyard was empty and the fountain that bubbled in the centre served only to highlight the stillness of everything around it. The wallpaper of the corridor was pale yellow and the walls here were hung with photographs of stiff Edwardians in formalwear. There was something ghostly in the stare of those long-dead people, their faces trapped in forced joyless smiles or stern Imperial frowns. The photographs had faded in the evening sunlight that had fallen through the windows over the decades. Some of the lost-looking women holding pudgy babies seemed almost to have disappeared into the walls behind them. Marcus tried to work out which of the mewling infants was the Earl. Finally, they came out to a landing at the top of what looked like a maid’s staircase. Three white doors opened to light-filled bedrooms. Mrs Millman turned and stood in front of one of them and smiled. Her face was transformed; pinched disapproval was replaced by something warm and welcoming. Colour rose to her grey cheeks.

‘I thought you’d like to be up here. The rest of the members will be in the servants’ quarters on the lower floors, but these rooms are so nice and light. Bit of a climb, but worth it, especially in the mornings. Now you four get settled in and then do come down to the kitchen for some tea.’ She picked her way carefully downstairs.

Marcus and Abby took the room in the centre. Mouse carried his bag into the smaller bedroom on the right, while Lee stood reading a tapestry on the wall before entering the room on the left. Marcus looked again at her short hair and saw how dark roots now made up the bulk of it; just the tips were still blonde. Her hair was returning to the colour it had been when he first knew her. He turned and walked into his room. Abby flopped onto the large bed as Marcus closed the door and crossed to the window. The light outside had begun to fade. The room looked eastwards and Marcus saw darkness gathering on the horizon. Below he could make out an ancient chapel whose dormer windows gave it the air of an enormous dovecote. Beside it he could see the roof of the dining hall which stretched out from the main house like an arm. The hall’s roof had been turfed over, a black iron railing around the perimeter and spiral stairways leading down into the garden. The ground dropped away swiftly after the hall, down to the lake that was now almost hidden in the gloom of the valley. It was five o’clock.

Lee and Mouse were already in the kitchen when Marcus and Abby came down. They sat beside one another at the long table in the centre of the room. A fire burned in one corner. Mrs Millman stood by the wide black Aga buttering toast while Mouse held forth on the frieze of mermaids he had seen carved into the wall of a room he entered by accident on the way down to the kitchen.

‘. . and they seemed to be swimming towards you, beckoning you somehow. .’ He waved his teacup as he spoke, the dark liquid slopping close to the rim of the cup with each frantic movement. Then the Earl and the Nightingales arrived and a sense of seriousness descended. Mrs Millman retired to a chair by the window to polish a box of silverware. David sat at the head of the table and placed his fingers around his mug, fixing each of them in turn with his pale eyes.

‘This Retreat is going to be an entirely new experience for each of you guys. Not only because you are Course leaders this time. There’s something special about this place, something holy. When I decided to leave my job as a banker, to devote myself to God on a full-time basis, I came up here for a week to think about it. You can feel the history here, a history of strongly held faith. So spend time with the new members, help them on their path to conversion, but also spend time with yourselves, take this time to push your own spiritual development a little further along.’

The priest leaned forward over the table and lowered his voice.

‘The Retreat is the decisive moment in any Course. It’s where we find out how we’ve done, whether the seeds we’ve planted will sprout or not. This is where we get our new members to commit to the Course, where we lay foundations that will last a lifetime. Any drop-outs from here on hit us very hard. If new members leave after the first few sessions, it’s unlikely they would have seen it through to the end in any case. If they come away with us here, then we should be able to complete the conversion. Don’t let up, don’t allow yourselves to relax. Make sure that you look back on your first Retreat as Course leaders as a successful one. We won’t tolerate failure. We can’t.’

Marcus had been aware of something nagging at him for a while, something dimly perceived, at the verge of his consciousness. Only when David paused in his speech to sip his tea did Marcus realise that he could hear traffic. Not the road they had come in on, but the relentless drone of a motorway: articulated lorries and caravans, car transporters and pantechnicons. Dusk had fallen outside and, looking out of the kitchen window, he could see a thin belt of yellow light above the trees fading into the night sky. David continued to talk for the next twenty minutes, reminiscing about previous Retreats. Then it was time to go out and greet the new members who had come up from London in a coach that barely squeezed its way through the gates and under the canopy of trees.

The front of the house was illuminated by the coach’s headlights as the new members stepped blinking from the vehicle’s dark interior. Neil was first, followed by Maki and the twins. Philip was the last to make his way down to join the cluster of twenty or so who stood close together in front of the large doors. Marcus could see their breath caught in the lights that blazed from the coach. He walked out and picked up the twins’ suitcases as David bounded out to welcome the new arrivals. The priest swept his pale eyes over the Course members.

‘Hi guys. This is where it begins for you. For many this weekend will be one of the most important experiences of your lives. Savour it all. Prepare yourselves for miraculous things. Approach the weekend with an open mind and you’ll find yourselves changed beyond recognition.

‘Now come on inside, make yourself at home. We’ll have a brief service of thanksgiving before dinner. The Course leaders have been getting to know the layout of this extraordinary place, so do ask if you get lost.’ The Earl stood bearlike behind him, nodding every so often.

*

The chapel was very cold. Candles had been lit along the aisle; otherwise the small church was dark. Marcus’s hands felt stiff and unresponsive on the frets of his guitar. Only he and Lee were performing that evening. The whole band would play together for the main ceremony on Saturday night. They had tuned up, and now they were waiting for the members to come down from the house. Lee was fidgeting notes from the piano with her right hand.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked, resting his bass on the ground in front of him and going to sit next to her at the piano. She shuffled thin buttocks up the bench and he began to play along with her, watching her fingers and trying to copy the melody. He realised that she was playing Pictures at an Exhibition.

‘I’m OK,’ she said.

Marcus felt her swaying slightly as she played. Without missing a note, she placed her left hand on his and helped him to find the melody. Her hands were colder than his, the frosty pressure of her fingers made him shiver slightly.

‘You love this piece of music, don’t you?’

She stopped playing for a moment and looked over at him.

‘Yes. My dad taught it to me when I was very young. It makes me think of him.’

She started to play again, now extemporising a harmony over his refrain. She closed her eyes.

‘It reminds me of what my dad’s music used to be like, before he got depressed. His new composition is so bleak, so empty. The stuff he doesn’t burn, I mean. It seems to me that all of his new music aspires to silence. When I speak to him on the phone, he’s often silent for a long time. We sit and listen to each other breathe. Sometimes he’ll hang up without saying anything.’

Marcus stopped playing. He sat back and watched Lee nod her head in time to the music.

‘It’s like he has used up all of the ways of saying what he needs to say through music and language, and silence is the only voice left to him.’

‘Do you think that you inherit your slumps from your dad?’

Lee stopped playing and turned towards him, her hands folded in her lap.

‘Of course. But he’s further along than me. I’m certain that my dad will kill himself soon. It’s something that I have known for a long time. And I miss him already. Because this silence — that’s what it is. It’s a kind of suicide. He’s backing away from the world and finally he will make his move complete.’

She was chewing on the inside of her cheek. Marcus could see blood on her teeth when she opened her mouth. He took her hand, feeling horrified and helpless.

‘You talk about my slumps, but none of you know what it’s like. When I’m in one of them it’s like being in a dark cell with one other creature, and then you find out that dark creature is yourself. It’s a bond between me and my dad — that we both go there — but it doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make you want to go on surviving.’

Marcus saw that people were beginning to come into the chapel. He stopped playing and looked down into the shadowy nave. Mouse and Abby sat in the front row, huddled together for warmth. He smiled at them and then turned back to Lee. Leaning towards her, he spoke in a low voice.

‘I’m so worried about you.’

‘Don’t be.’ Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘Please stop worrying about me. And stop telling me that you’re worried. Sometimes if you think about something all the time, and harp on about it, it can make it real. I’m fine, really I am. I’m finding ways of coping.’

Marcus saw David come into the chapel, followed by Sally and the Earl.

‘Now let’s just play some music,’ Lee said. ‘Worry about yourself, about Abby. I can look after myself.’

Marcus lifted up his bass and began to pick out a series of notes, following Lee, who was playing a rousing tune that marked David’s passage down the aisle. The priest turned and stood in front of the low altar, his white shirt and chinos bright in candlelight. The new members looked nervous and excited. The atmosphere was constructed to be as fertile for revelation as possible; nothing should feel forced. Each of the new members had been given a candle to hold as they entered the small chapel. Marcus watched the careful way each of them held the flames, trying not to allow the wax to spill from the white cardboard collar that formed the handle.

David read a passage from St Luke — ‘He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray”.’ The cold dark room echoed with the sound of his long vowels, the stentorian manner in which he declaimed the Lord’s Prayer. Marcus laid his guitar across his knee and sat on his hands to keep them warm. While the priest talked, Marcus thought back to his first Retreat. He had travelled down with Abby to a tatty hotel near Exeter where chickens pecked in the yard outside their window. Those days in the balmy air of an Indian summer had changed Marcus. They had brought him closer to Abby, but also made him face up to the creeping realisation that someone — God, perhaps — was trying to win him over.

The coincidences had been occurring with disturbing regularity in the days leading up to that first Retreat. Phrases from the book he was reading on David’s orders — C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters — had been appearing on billboards, in graffiti on the sides of buildings, were spoken in meetings when he was half-listening, leaping from the surrounding drone. The number sixty-two cropped up everywhere: receipts, payslips and telephone numbers, page numbers in books that seemed full of hidden meaning, whispered significance. He would find a song repeating in his head on the way into the office; on the way home he’d sit next to a tramp singing the very same song in a voice far too beautiful for his grizzled face. But the biggest coincidence, the moment that had shocked him into belief, had occurred on the Saturday morning of that first Retreat.

Marcus and Abby had been arguing in her room. Because they were not yet married they had separate bedrooms and Abby didn’t think they should sleep together during their time at the Retreat, should obey the laws of the Course at least here. Marcus had shouted at her and stomped from the room. Outside it was warm enough for him to take off his jacket and sling it over his arm. An estuary swept across the horizon and he strode purposefully down towards the sea. He was twenty-three and he walked with the bouncing steps of an athlete. The sea was further than he thought but he pressed on, past low cottages and cows watching him with stupid curiosity. Down a narrow lane with flint walls overgrown with ivy he came upon a small church. Norman, with a leper gate and crumbling roof. The door bore a heavy padlock; looking in, with his hand cupped to the grubby window, Marcus saw that the inside was empty, the church disused. The graveyard had been overtaken by nature. Nettles grew in thick clumps above red-veined dock leaves, brambles were knotted around teetering gravestones and rabbits scuttled under apple trees as he made his way further into the cemetery.

Marcus liked to look at dates. When he went to art galleries he spent as much time calculating the ages of the artists when they died as he did looking at their paintings. Picasso filled him with hope, Toulouse-Lautrec terrified him; Dalí was a beacon, Jackson Pollock a tocsin. It was the same in cemeteries. Whenever he walked around Kensal Green with Mouse he looked hungrily for signs of extreme longevity, but was often brought up short by the graves of teenagers, people dead in their twenties and thirties. He watched particularly for family tombs where parents had outlived their children. So in the little churchyard in Devon, Marcus tore back brambles and scraped away lichen, bringing his face down close to the dappled gravestones. Most were very ancient, almost unreadable, telling of plague-deaths and children snatched by smallpox and dropsy. Then, as he was about to leave, he saw a newer stone in the corner of the graveyard, the sandy earth seemingly fresh-dug. A bunch of tulips lay upon the earth below the stone. The engraving upon it made Marcus’s throat close up in fear.

‘Marcus Glass. Taken from us aged 23. Grant him rest, O Lord.’

He staggered backwards, the few wispy clouds in the blue sky above him circling wildly for a moment. He had a sudden and vivid picture of his mother and sister at his father’s funeral, their faces pinched with sadness. He found his finger returning to trace the path of his own name, his own age. He knew that it was a sign. After the series of coincidences that had marked the last few days, this was the heavy-handed proof. When he returned to the hotel he went to find David and told him everything, told him that he was ready to really believe. David embraced him and he felt a shadow lift from his mind.

*

Lee nudged Marcus. He jumped. Lost in memories of his early days in the Course, he had missed the end of the reading. He began to strum a succession of quiet deep notes as Lee played slow descending chords. Abby sang a solo first, then the congregation joined with her. The plainness of the song suited the dark little chapel. Marcus could see the faces of the twins as they sang, twin mouths beaming, twin cheeks shining. It was a simple refrain, a prayer repeated over the same chord sequence.

‘I must become God,

And God must become me,

So that we can share

The same “I” eternally.’

Abby swayed from side to side as she sang, her eyes closed. There was something hypnotic in the music. Just as it felt that the hymn was fading into monotony, David began to improvise in the spaces between words, singing a descant in a high, fragile voice.

‘Yalullialla. Yaweahalalla. Hanna, hanna. .’

It was the sound of the desert, the sound of ancient civilisations, and Marcus took a deep breath, trying to inhale its extraordinary purity. David was standing with his arms held out, his face turned up to the roof, a wide smile showing his bright teeth. Almost before it had begun, it was over. David muttered a final blessing and then led them up the aisle and back up to the main house. Marcus could see the dazed expressions of the new members. There were glasses of white wine on the round table in the centre of the entrance hall. Maki came over to Marcus and handed him a drink.

‘That was amazing. Was that. .? I mean, is that what speaking in tongues sounds like?’

‘That was it. Or at least how David speaks. I guess everyone has their own way of doing it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

Maki just looked at him with wide dark eyes.

After the wine, they made their way down to the dining hall, where Mrs Millman was standing in the corner stirring pots of stew and vats of rice. The Course members sat down at the long tables in the candlelight. They seemed lost in the vast dining hall. The hall had mullioned windows and dark tapestries of hunting scenes. A mahogany armoire stood along one side of the room, its front inlaid with elaborate carvings of Greek myths. Wooden doors at the far end gave onto the garden. Marcus sat next to Abby and Maki and they talked and drank and he felt a sense of optimism sweep over him. Abby looked happier than she had for weeks and even Lee was smiling, laughing along with the twins and Mouse, while Sally Nightingale spoke to Neil and Philip at the other end of the table. The Earl sat down opposite Marcus and ate in silent concentration, spearing pieces of beef aggressively. When he had finished, he leaned forward towards Marcus and Abby.

‘How do you like the old place?’

‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Abby. ‘I’ve never been anywhere quite like it.’

‘It’s perfect for the Retreat. Don’t know why we haven’t had it here before. David was always a little nervous about it. This was where he underwent his own epiphany, you see. He wrote The Way of the Pilgrim here, so Lancing Manor has always held a special place in his heart. I think it’s a huge compliment to you lot that he agreed this year.’

‘I think it’s a good bunch. The new members, I mean. And I suppose he has seen us grow up with the Course. I like to think that this group of Course leaders is quite special to him.’

Marcus put his hand on his wife’s arm.

‘I have been working a great deal on the US expansion,’ the Earl said, his heavy eyebrows lowering as he spoke. ‘Over there, of course, it’s even more important that people shouldn’t worry about their wealth. It’s a society that is shaped by money and we have to recognise that. Particularly in the areas we’re targeting: the North-East and California. Greed has temporarily replaced faith for these people, but they remain believers. You can see it in their eyes. We need to let them know they can have both.’

Neil had come to sit beside Marcus. He leaned forward to listen to the Earl, his mouth hanging slightly open.

‘People don’t grasp the meaning of the story about the camel and the eye of the needle,’ the Earl continued. ‘They think it means that it is impossible for a rich man to enter heaven; it doesn’t. What Jesus is saying is that we will be held to higher standards. If we have gained wealth and power during our days on Earth, then we need to make sure that we behave impeccably. To those who have, more will be given. But only if we use our gifts correctly. Fitting a camel through the eye of a needle is child’s play for God. Indeed it may be that the verse is just a mistranslation, that the “needle” referred to a gate in the walls of Jerusalem through which it was perfectly possible to drive a camel. Whichever, there’s nothing to stop you being a good Christian and rich.’

Neil was nodding. David came to stand behind the Earl.

‘The Course has been so successful in the City because it doesn’t seek to judge people on how they behave in the office. It would be ridiculous to expect people to live like saints in a world that is as dog-eat-dog as ours. Christians would quickly be wiped off the map. So we ask people to come to the Course and ask God’s forgiveness when they have done wrong, and to use their money where they can to help further the Course’s good work.’

David looked hard at Neil.

‘You know,’ David said, raising his voice so the other members would hear, ‘the Bible is clever enough to know that the pursuit of wealth presents major problems for Christians. You should use it to guide you. There are twice as many verses in the Bible about money as there are about how to pray. Did you know that? Almost half of Jesus’s parables deal with cash. It isn’t easy to be rich and godly, but look to the Bible and you won’t go far wrong. And then, when you’re spectacularly rich, remember to give a good lot of it back to the church. Christians can’t afford to be squeamish about wealth — it is, as the Earl says, a horribly competitive world.’

After dinner, the Earl and the Nightingales left the Course members to drink and talk in the dinner hall. Some of the girls from Marcus and Abby’s group made their excuses and went up to bed at the same time. Marcus waved at them as they said goodnight and opened more bottles of wine, passing along the tables and filling empty glasses, smiling and chatting to the Course members. Someone found an ancient stereo with a pile of old CDs and the twins pulled Neil and Philip up to dance, singing misremembered lyrics in raucous voices. It grew darker in the hall as the boys blew out candles while moving tables to the side of the room to clear space for the dancers. Only the fire illuminated the dancing figures. Abby and Lee swung each other around energetically; Abby’s hands seemed huge on Lee’s frail body. Mouse and Marcus walked out into the garden for a cigarette, closing the heavy wooden doors behind them.

The night was clear and cold, the noise of the motorway loud in the still air. Marcus followed Mouse up a winding spiral stair whose steps were carved into the stone of the wall. At the top they made their way through an archway and onto the grassy roof of the dining hall. Mouse’s face was surprised by the flame of the lighter; seemingly about to speak, he drew back from Marcus, his eyebrows raised, the cigarette slack in the corner of his mouth. He then moved towards the flame. Marcus lit his own cigarette, and two red coals glowed in the darkness. They leaned on the metal rail that ran around the edge of the lawn and looked over towards the shimmer of the motorway that sat above the pines.

‘He was good tonight,’ said Mouse.

‘Pretty good. It’s a wonderful song. It’s the best song for the tongues.’ Marcus exhaled a long stream of smoke. He had been smoking too much recently. His lungs felt like old plastic bags. Abby was always complaining about his smoking, asking how one who was so scared of death could smoke. He had tried to explain to her once. How smoking was something he did because he was young. As soon as he gave up smoking, it would be a recognition of the fact that he was ageing, that he had left behind the eternity of adolescence. She had rolled her eyes the way she always did when he tried to explain the way he rationalised things she didn’t agree with.

‘I need to quit these things.’ He also liked to talk about quitting and had done for as long as he could remember. He coughed and spat into the bushes below. A sad moon rose over the trees, slowly ripping itself free from the motorway lights.

‘Imagine how he must have felt when they built the road. Imagine how peaceful it would have been before. I suppose motorways have to go somewhere, but it seems strange that they’d put it here, among all this.’ Marcus swung his cigarette hand out over the invisible view. The flashing ember left traces across his retinas.

‘The Earl hasn’t been here that long,’ said Mouse. ‘I did some research on Lancing Manor in the library. He bought it in, I don’t know, 1992 or something. He made an awful lot of money in one of the privatisations. Electricity, perhaps. It was when he bought his title. I looked it all up.’

‘Really? But what about the pictures, the photographs? It felt like his family had been living here for generations. It seems a bit fraudulent.’

Mouse paused. ‘I don’t think it’s fraudulent. Or no more fraudulent than the building itself, you know? The Earl just wanted to get the whole thing right. Because his family couldn’t have lived here for that many generations. Lancing Manor was only built in 1890. None of it is older than that. It’s why it manages to feel so authentic. It’s new enough to be convincing.’

‘I always find him a bit sinister. I know he does amazing things for the Course, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s only in it for the money, that all the talk of building the Course into a global franchise is just so that he can somehow make more cash out of it. I’m sure he gets backhanders from the hedge funds we use for the Course’s investments. I can never understand why we stick with some of the funds that are clearly going down. Except that the managers are Course members.’

‘But that’s it, isn’t it? The Earl is sending out a message that he’ll stick with people as long as they keep attending the Course. I think he wants to make it so that you can’t get anywhere in the City unless you’re a Course member. You’ve seen how the bankers all get together after services. They look after each other. Anyway, the Earl doesn’t need money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard him talking to Neil earlier. He’s just made twenty million pounds on his Chinese stamp collection.’

‘What?’

‘When everyone else was buying up the Chinese stock market, the Earl sat down and tried to work out what else would rise in value when the economy took off there. He settled on stamps. Stamp collecting is a very middle-class hobby there, as it was here, I suppose. The Earl realised that as the middle class grew, stamps would rise in value. He bought up some major private stamp collections in the late nineties. Sold them at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last week.’

‘That’s amazing.’

They smoked in silence for a while. Mouse put his arm around Marcus’s shoulder and spoke softly in his ear.

‘Will you speak to Lee? I’m so worried about her at the moment. She’s worse than ever. I can barely look at her.’

‘I’ve tried. It’s hard to get through to her. She seems so distant.’

‘It’s not just her promiscuity. Although have you noticed how that side of things always flares up when she’s in one of her slumps? Sometimes when I see her face the sadness just swamps me. The poor thing needs help.’

‘Should we tell David?’

‘I think he’s already spoken to her. He knows everything.’

‘Of course he does, he’s David.’

‘Will you try again? We all look up to you. You know that, don’t you, sport?’

‘That’s. . that’s really sweet. Thanks.’

Mouse squeezed Marcus’s shoulder and then let his hand fall to his side. Someone coughed in the darkness.

‘Marcus? Mouse? Are you up there?’

It was Maki. She walked across the grass and leaned between Marcus and Mouse on the metal rail. Drawing out a packet of thin menthol cigarettes, she lit one as Mouse sent his own spinning down into the shrubbery.

‘My friends told me that the Course would be a good way to meet real English people.’

Marcus liked the softness of her voice, the kindness in her dark eyes.

‘But I hadn’t realised quite what a small world it would be. I feel very foreign among so many girls who look alike.’

‘It’s not surprising though, is it? Given where the church is, where it draws its followers from?’ Marcus tried to read her face in the dim light as he spoke. ‘The church is supposed to represent its local community, and even though people come from all over London to join the Course, to worship at St Botolph’s, the place necessarily attracts a type of person who feels comfortable in that square among those high, disapproving houses.’

‘Or wants to feel comfortable there,’ Mouse said, fiddling with his signet ring. ‘When I first joined the Course, I found it very intimidating. It was like being at university again, all of these rituals that everyone else seemed to know inside out. But I wanted to be part of that world. It was glamorous and the people were so grand-looking.’

‘Don’t you find it a bit claustrophobic, though?’ said Maki. ‘I do wonder how effective the Course can be when it draws from such a narrow group of people.’

‘St Botolph’s is just the beginning,’ said Mouse, lighting another cigarette. ‘It’s the base for our global expansion. And at the moment we do need people who are able to finance this evangelism, who can work for free or very little while we get the thing established. Remember that St Botolph was the patron saint of travellers and missionaries. We won’t be stuck in Chelsea for ever — we’re getting out into the world and spreading the word.’

‘I suppose so. .’ She stared out into the darkness.

‘You’re part of our family now,’ Mouse said quietly. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘We’re incredibly fond of you. I really don’t know what we’d do if you left.’

‘I didn’t say I was leaving. Just that I don’t feel totally comfortable yet.’

‘You will, though. Because we love you, and we want you always to be one of us.’

‘That’s really sweet. Thank you.’

Marcus and Mouse waited for Maki to finish her cigarette and then the three of them made their way back down the spiral stairway and into the dining hall. Abby and Lee were standing in front of the open doors of the armoire. The twins were only visible from the waist downwards as they burrowed among the dark shapes hanging in the cupboard. Marcus saw Abby running her hands over one of the shapes and realised that it was a long fur jacket. Maki walked over to join the girls and the twins emerged, fox stoles wrapped around their throats.

‘Let’s put them on,’ said Mouse, running over to the cupboard. ‘Why don’t we get dressed up and go and find the motorway?’ His words tumbled out as he pulled down a rabbit-skin jacket and wrapped it around himself, seized a bottle of red wine and threw open the doors of the hall, turning around with a laugh. He dragged a chair over to the cupboard and rummaged along the top shelf until he found a blue three-pointed hat.

‘I’m going to be Napoleon,’ he said, pulling it down over his head. It was far too big for him and covered his ears. His eyes bulged from the shadow cast by the brim.

Invigorated by Mouse’s enthusiasm, the other Course members jostled to find coats that fitted them. Only Abby hung back for a moment.

‘Should we really be taking these? It seems rude, without asking.’

‘We won’t damage them. Come on, Abby, no one will know.’ Mouse was shouting now, already down the steps and pointing towards the haze of synthetic light that hung over the pine trees.

There were enough jackets for all of the members, although Philip’s was too short and meant that he held out his arms like a zombie as he walked. The twins had to hitch up the long tails of their own jackets, making their way daintily down the steps of the dining hall and onto a path that ran between thickly planted pine trees downhill to the lake. Mouse used his lighter to illuminate the path as he scuttled wheezing ahead, past the lake and the boathouse whose roof was brushed by pine branches. The earth at their feet was red; Marcus drew in a breath, savouring the scent of the soil and the pines and, faintly, woodsmoke. Or the woodsmoke might have been a scent-memory, a smell that had at some previous time existed strongly for him alongside the smell of the earth and the pines and was therefore repeated here.

The hill steepened as they descended. Ferns trembled in damp clumps above clusters of mossy rocks. Marcus slowed to help Abby climb over the knotted roots that spread from the bases of the trees. Then down into a gully where the ferns grew very thickly, and without the light of the bright moon that fell between the trees they would have surely had to turn back. Mouse roared ahead with the twins following closely in his wake, fur coats flying like capes behind them. Mouse had one hand pressed down on his head to keep the hat in place. Marcus felt Abby slip her arm inside his jacket and about his waist. Lee had her camera around her neck and was taking photographs of the group, the flash pausing time for a moment, freezing them as they made their way down the hill. Neil brought up the rear with Philip. Looking back, Marcus laughed at Philip’s horizontal arms, at the expression of dignified discomfort on his face as Lee took his picture. The roar of the road was now very loud in their ears and seemed to quiver in the needles of the pines.

Without warning they came out of the wood and were standing at the top of an escarpment that led down to the motorway. The road was cut deep into the hillside, so that they looked down onto the bright street lights. Marcus could see that Mouse was already heading towards a footbridge that crossed the road half a mile to the south. His stout frame was outlined against the ridge of the hill, purposefully striding, his cap like a ship atop his head. The twins still followed behind him, although they were finding it hard to keep up with his bounding steps. The motorway below them was six lanes across, busy despite the late hour with articulated lorries thundering freight through the night. He turned and followed Mouse along the escarpment, Abby still clutched close against him.

The bridge was suspended a hundred feet above the motorway. It seemed very flimsy to Marcus as he led Abby along it. There was no wind from above, although the machines rushing beneath them seemed to create their own strange currents, sucking the air from around the Course members and then a sudden rush as the lorries surged past. Mouse was standing at the centre of the bridge, leaning far forward over the handrail, waving his hat to the vehicles below, a cigarette pointing downwards from his wildly grinning mouth. Marcus caught some of his friend’s exhilaration. He slipped out of Abby’s embrace, danced forward, then turned back and took his wife’s hand before leading her out to the middle of the bridge.

The noise from the traffic below made speech impossible. The roar whipped thoughts from their minds and the breath from their chests. The bridge shuddered when the largest lorries passed beneath, hummed and trembled the rest of the time. Marcus saw Philip come up behind Lee and place his strange zombie arms around her shoulders. He gripped Abby’s hand tightly in his own. He could see that Mouse was shouting, screaming down into the roar of traffic below. It felt as if they were linked by something, as if a chain of feeling hung between them like bunting out there in the high and dangerous sky, as they stared down on the man-made sublime.

A convoy of military vehicles passed beneath them: Land Rovers and tarpaulin-covered trucks followed by transporters carrying tanks and amphibious vehicles. Through the open backs of the trucks, Marcus could make out soldiers leaning against the shuddering material, some of them trying to sleep, some talking over the roar of the engines. One of them looked up and Marcus imagined that the soldier might carry the image of the young people silhouetted on a bridge away to battle, that it might rest in his mind like a talisman, a reminder of home. Looking down on the military vehicles, Marcus thought of toys he had collected as a child and arranged in careful formation to show his father when he arrived home from work, battlefronts drawn out on the kitchen floor. When the convoy had passed something in the air changed, and Marcus was aware that Abby was shivering beside him; he saw Lee slip gracefully out from under Philip’s arms. Only Mouse was still standing braced against the roar below, his chubby cheeks livid in the glare of the street lights, the hat now back on his head giving him the air of a mad general leading his troops on a final suicidal mission. Lee knelt at the entrance to the bridge and took Mouse’s photograph. Finally, Mouse joined them, his large eyes wet, his mouth hanging stupidly open.

Making their way back up the hill towards the house, there was a sense of deflation, but also of a communal recognition of this deflation, a feeling that they were together in feeling rather disappointed by the natural world, by the inconsistencies of the sloping ground when compared to the tarmac and metal perfection that they had just witnessed. Marcus drew his rabbit-skin jacket closer around his shoulders and pressed his lips down into the worn fur of the shoulder. He breathed in the greasy softness of the pelt. Abby looked dazed and had to lean on him every so often to catch her breath. They skirted the edge of the lake, whose waters were an oily reflection of the night sky. Philip came to walk beside Marcus and Abby.

‘I’m nervous about tomorrow,’ he said. Marcus looked over at him. His face was very pale in the moonlight.

‘Why’s that?’ Marcus felt Abby squeeze his hand in his pocket.

‘It feels like it’s going to be a test of everything that has gone before. That if we can’t embrace it all, we’ll somehow have failed. I’m worried I’ll be standing there in the service and I’ll feel as uninspired as I always did, back when I was a choirboy and I used to see church services as a kind of endurance event, used to long for the sermon because it meant we were entering the home straight.’

They were walking through the darkest part of the wood now, and Marcus could barely see Philip beside him. Abby stumbled on a root and then spoke, leaning across Marcus to address Philip’s shadowy outline.

‘When I spoke in tongues for the first time, all of the rest of the service suddenly made sense. We become a community when we pray, or sing together. In that comfortable, familiar space it’s amazing what you can do.’

‘I really hope so.’

‘Try to think of it as abstract art. You know the way a painting can be terribly moving, even though it is just a few splashes of paint on a canvas? The way something by Pollock can be more powerful, and beautiful, than a Constable landscape? It’s because it entirely bypasses our consciousness. The tongues, the music, the words of the service — you should think of them like that. As something beyond the scope of your rational mind.’

‘That’s helpful. I’ll see if it works in the chapel tomorrow.’

Finally, they broke free of the woods and saw Lancing Manor looming above them, a black shadow against the starlit night behind. A turret rose up like a coil of smoke from the house, a light burning in its narrow window.

Back inside the dining hall, Mouse initiated a half-hearted drinking game, but Marcus could tell that everyone was tired. He made sure the coats were hung back in the cupboard and drank a glass of water. He wanted to leave while there was still a feeling of community hanging between them. It was something he remembered from his first Retreat, when the Course members, who had until then seemed somehow suspicious, distant and self-satisfied, gathered around him and he felt warmth radiating from them.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, looking over at Abby. She smiled at him and they walked down the dining hall holding hands. They made their way through the heavy doors and into the main hallway, where a single lamp stood on the mantelpiece, a solitary point of light in the darkness that reared up above them. Abby shivered as they crept up the stairs and down the long corridor past the ghostly photographs. Their room was warm. Mrs Millman had lit a fire in the grate earlier when she came in to close the curtains. Their duvet was turned back and the bedside light cast a cosy glow across the white sheets.

Marcus helped Abby with her zip. She let the dress fall to the floor and stepped out of it. She wore white pants, a black bra that was fraying under the arms: Marcus could see a safety pin holding one strap together. Her thighs were milk-white as she took down her pants, bending to place them on a chair. She turned towards him, carefully unhooking her bra, and he lost himself in the wide expanse of her face. She undid his belt with a flourish and helped him take down his boxer shorts. They lay down together on the bed, which creaked and sagged reluctantly beneath them.

Abby kept laughing as they fucked; at one point he looked down at her and saw a smile flash across her face, igniting in her eyes and then exploding across her pink lips. Every time they moved, the bed groaned and Abby squealed laughter. Marcus thrust into Abby, stopping when he was entirely inside her, feeling their bodies intersecting at so many distinct points, hot skin against hot skin. They fell asleep and woke still pressed close together. Abby cradled Marcus’s head in her arms, hugged his face to her chest. He had no idea what time it was, nor for how long Abby held him. He lay and listened to her heart and the distant moan of the motorway. They slept again and when they woke it was growing light outside. Marcus could hear people moving downstairs. Milky sunlight fell into the room through the gap in the curtains.

Two

Marcus and Abby had breakfast in the kitchen, where Mrs Millman stood over the Aga stirring a pot of porridge. David and Sally sat side by side, very close together. Marcus wondered if they had had sex the night before. He and Abby slouched opposite them feeling somehow seedy, still swimming in the pleasure of their night together. The Earl was wearing a tweed jacket and a dark blue tie. He perched low over his bowl of cornflakes, his narrow eyes surveying the Course members as they came in to eat. David smiled at Marcus.

‘Mouse and Lee have already been down. I think they’re in the chapel preparing for this evening.’

Marcus couldn’t tell if there was reprimand in his voice.

‘What’s the plan for the day?’

‘Some discussion groups this morning, lunch in the dining hall at one o’clock and a walk this afternoon if the weather holds out. Then, of course, the service.’

‘The forecast isn’t that good, I’m afraid,’ Sally said, buttering a slice of toast.

Marcus and Abby ate quickly and in silence, then hurried back upstairs. They took a bath together as they had at university, carefully adjusting their limbs in the ancient iron tub with its rusty lion’s-claw feet. Abby ran her fingers slowly down the inside of his thighs as they lay in the hot water, singing softly to herself. Marcus watched as the thousands of tiny bubbles that clung to the nest of his pubes were dislodged by her fingers and rose swiftly through the water like champagne. By the time they had dried and were down in the chapel it was ten o’clock and the Course members sat around chatting.

Marcus still couldn’t remember the names of the girls in his discussion group; one was Lizzie and another Sarah, but he didn’t know the others and the remaining boyfriends were just flushed cheeks on vague faces. He was glad to see that most of his group were surrounding David and the Earl. David was standing in front of the Stations of the Cross describing the meaning of each scene while the Earl interjected occasionally with stories about the artist he had invited to paint the images directly onto the walls of the chapel. Philip sat with Mouse and Sally in one corner. Mouse was talking very quickly, his hands dancing as he spoke. Lee sat apart from them, her legs stretched out along a pew, her arms around her shoulders. A beam of sunlight fell into her short hair and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the brightness. Marcus took Abby’s arm and they made their way to the front of the chapel, where Maki and Neil were inspecting engravings on the pillars in front of the altar.

‘Morning.’

‘Morning, Marcus. Hi, Abby. Have you seen these inscriptions? The lettering is exquisite.’ Neil ran his finger over the text, which Marcus recognised as a chapter from Ecclesiastes: ‘Rejoice, O young man in thy youth. .’ The letters were like runes, difficult to read at first, but once his eyes had become accustomed to the jagged shapes, Marcus saw how perfectly they expressed the regretful wisdom of the words. Abby stood behind Neil and reached over to run her own fingers over the inscription.

Neil and Maki sat down on the steps leading up to the altar while Marcus and Abby leaned back against the front pew. Marcus began to say something, but Abby cut him off.

‘It’s about getting rid of your inhibitions, this weekend. All those things that get in the way when you’re in London. It’s why we always come out to the countryside. Silence, music, peace. This is what we need to get closer to God.’

‘I’ve been reading the Bible,’ said Neil, ‘and I keep feeling like I almost get it. As if there’s something very obvious that I’m missing. But I’m almost there. I know I am.’

‘Let today carry you in its current. Don’t try to force it, just let yourself be open to whatever happens.’ Abby was glowing; she reached out a hand and laid it on the arm of the older man, who was dressed in stiff smart-casual: chinos and a blue button-down shirt. Maki, who had been hidden in the shadow of one of the pillars, leaned forward.

‘What about the tongues? I heard David last night and I just can’t imagine a situation where I’d be able to do that.’

‘What did you think when you heard it?’ Abby tilted towards Maki, mirroring her.

‘I suppose it was beautiful. It sounded like just another part of the music. It’s the thing I like best about the Course, the music. So it was nice to hear, but I don’t know if it meant any more to me than that. I certainly didn’t understand it.’

‘I don’t think you need to understand it. And you certainly don’t need to join in. I think the way that it’s presented, people expect the Course to change everything. It doesn’t need to. It can be the start of a journey; it doesn’t always take people all the way to their goal.’

‘Hmm. . I’m just not sure it’s for me.’

‘Why did you first come to the Course, Maki?’ Marcus asked, aware that he should be supporting Abby.

‘I suppose it was to make friends, mainly. But also to find somewhere, I don’t know, spiritual. I’ve always felt that I needed to believe in something, I just never discovered exactly what.’

‘Well, you have friends here. And the Course is an extraordinarily spiritual experience. It seems to me that you just need to allow yourself to believe. Feel good about the fact that you found exactly what you were looking for. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the search that we don’t allow ourselves to accept that we’ve reached our destination.’

They spoke for another hour; Philip came over to join them after a while. They leaned back against the stone pillars, spread themselves out across the pews, listening carefully to each other as they talked, each awaiting their turn to speak, measuring their words precisely. Sally and the Earl sat down, smiling, as Marcus told the members about C. S. Lewis’s conversion.

‘He was travelling down to Whipsnade Zoo. He set out on his trip as an agnostic and arrived a believer. You need to realise that the conscious mind is the last thing to change. The more you read and the more you think about God, the more He works behind the scenes. It’s why the kind of epiphany that Lewis describes isn’t as instantaneous and unreasoning as it first appears. If you lay the groundwork then God will do the rest. And here at the Retreat, we try to do as much as we can to create an environment that allows that change to take place.’

Only Lee still sat apart from the various groups. The beam of light had moved across the room and now she was in the shadows, dust thick in the air around her, her short hair flat on her head. Marcus could see that she was looking at the pines through the high windows, watching them dance in the gentle breeze. She turned and caught his eye for a moment and he shivered and reached out for Abby’s hand. When he looked back at Lee her head was tilted back again and she seemed miles away from any of them.

At one o’clock, Mrs Millman arrived at the door of the chapel and called them for lunch. They made their way through to the dining hall, where they continued to talk as they ate baked potatoes piled high with grated cheese and baked beans. After lunch, Marcus walked over to Lee and laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Are you coming for a walk? Do you remember when we used to walk in the meadows at university? We’d always go on ahead. I used to love just listening to you talk.’

‘I was thinking about those walks just the other day. Doesn’t it seem like a long time ago?’

‘In a way, I suppose.’

‘It feels like a lifetime to me. We were so young back then. Everything felt ahead of us.’

The Course members were slowly filing out of the hall, disappearing upstairs to collect coats and boots ready for the walk. Marcus gave Lee’s shoulder a final squeeze and they made their way up to their rooms. The Earl and David were waiting at the front of the house when Marcus came back downstairs. Abby, wearing a blue Husky and hiking boots, was handing out thermoses of hot chocolate with Sally. The wind had picked up and the sound of the pines blocked out the noise of the road. Marcus pulled his scarf tightly around his throat. Rooks swirled in the air above him, whipped into hurtling arabesques by the wind.

They set off up the driveway, crossed the road that they had driven in on the day before, and descended into the next valley on a worn footpath. The sky’s earlier blue was now a patchwork of clouds at varying altitudes, each level represented by a different colour: dark stratus against lighter cumulus, and far above, a blanket of white cirrus. The Earl and David strode out in front with Sally and Neil following closely behind them. Lee walked a few paces ahead of Mouse, who jogged every few steps to keep up with her. Abby held Marcus tightly by the hand. Soon they climbed to the top of another hill; Chipping Norton lay to the south, the chimney of its abandoned mill standing over the town like an accusing finger. They crossed the Banbury road and made their way alongside an old stone wall and down through high-piled leaves at the feet of ancient horse chestnuts.

The ground was soft beneath their feet as they walked down into the dell ahead of them. Marcus helped Abby to climb over a stile that stood in the shade of a huge old oak. He saw that Philip and Maki were walking together, deep in conversation. There was a village at the bottom of the hill. A church was lost within a protective circle of dark trees, a large gloomy house with shuttered windows blindly overlooked the village. The walls that crossed the fields here were crumbling, nettles swamped the verges of the road. Nothing moved.

The Earl led them down a narrow path between the church and a row of tumbledown cottages and then over another stile and into a small wood. They came out on top of a grassy mound looking down over rolling fields, a stream which wended along the bottom of the valley, silver birches that climbed the opposite hillside. Marcus caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a doe crossing the stream, pearls of water thrown up by its long legs. By the time he had raised his arm to point it out to Abby, it had disappeared. They marched on.

Marcus found himself walking with Lee as they headed down towards a wooden footbridge that hung haphazardly above the swirling waters of the stream. She was wearing a Barbour jacket, pink wellingtons beneath her long skirt. She took his arm.

‘You and Abby seem happy. Go on — you can tell me — is she pregnant?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Are you trying? I’d love it if you were trying.’

‘Maybe. Maybe we’re trying, yes.’

Over the bridge and into the woods they went. In the dubious light under trees that creaked in the wind, Lee gripped his hand.

‘I’m really struggling with my thesis at the moment. I was thinking I might chuck in the PhD.’

‘Really? I always thought it was perfect for you. I liked to imagine you shut up in the library reading ancient manuscripts written by crazy saints.’ The others had disappeared, and Marcus led them along what looked like the path; a circle of rooks blackened the air above the trees, cawing.

‘I look around the reading room and I see so many girls like me. It’s a way of backing away from the world, I think. To be more comfortable in the past than you are in the present. There’s a kind of competition for obscurity between these girls. How arcane a subject can you feasibly write about for eighty thousand words? How little could it possibly relate to the real world? I used to think it was a balance; that the Course and my schoolwork were a balance against the rest of life. But it feels like things have become too heavily weighted in that direction, that real life doesn’t stand a chance when measured against all that history, all that abstraction.’

‘You’ll be fine. You think too much. I can see how much you enjoy it: it’s something you’re really good at. We all need something like that. And it obviously helps with the Course.’

‘I don’t know about that. One of the things I realise when I read Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich is just how conventional the Course’s idea of God is. It seems strange that David is so heavily focused on redefining the spiritual side of faith — the way we feel and think and act — but doesn’t try to challenge that tired Sunday School image of God. The Course’s way of thinking about Him just seems so banal — there’s no sense of mystery there.’ Lee stooped to look at a clump of small white mushrooms that were growing between a delta of roots that shot out from the foot of an oak. Marcus stooped alongside her, placing his thumb into the feathery fronds that sat beneath the tight caps.

‘It does feel like we’re still being asked to buy into the idea of an old man with a beard,’ Marcus said, as the cap of the mushroom broke from its stem, sending up a puff of white smoke that drifted and dissipated on the breeze.

‘Exactly. It’s childish,’ said Lee.

‘But who do you talk to, when you pray, I mean? If you don’t picture God like that?’

They continued down the thickly wooded path.

‘I don’t think of God. I say prayers in the way we were originally intended to: as a way of emptying the mind, readying us for the presence of God. In The Cloud of Unknowing there’s a line that says “of God Himself no man can think”. It’s in the stillness when you empty your mind that you get closest to God.’

‘And that works for you?’

Lee looked at him through narrow, serious eyes.

‘I’m not sure. Sometimes silence makes things better; sometimes it’s where I feel most trapped. Because the most awful things can creep into that silence.’ Her words faded at the end. They walked a little further; then she continued.

‘This voice starts speaking to me. I’m not going mad, don’t worry. But this voice is very critical, totally unforgiving. It tells me not to be such a goddamn idiot, that it’s all my fault, that I need to pull myself together. And it’s not my dad’s voice, and it’s not my mother’s. But it’s there and it’s making me very unhappy.’

Marcus squeezed her hand and looked over at her. With her thin face and small nose, Lee looked very girlish. He thought that she would always look girlish and, although she wasn’t as doomed as she liked to pretend, that there would be a time when that girlishness would grow spinsterly and unbearably sad. She brightened her voice and rested her head playfully on Marcus’s shoulder for a moment.

‘I’ll be all right. Of course I’ll be all right. I just feel that I’m in this in-between space, where I’m no longer a girl, but I don’t really know how to be a woman yet. Part of me wants to skip straight to old age. I think I’d make a fantastic old lady.’

Marcus smiled ruefully.

‘I can see that. You’d have cats.’ He could make out David and Abby ahead through a hatch of branches. Philip and Neil were striding behind them. It looked as if they were arguing. Marcus tried to make Lee walk faster, keen to catch up with the others. Her hand was damp in his.

‘Margery Kempe went to visit Julian of Norwich for guidance, did you know that?’ she asked, turning to look at him.

‘No.’

‘It’s an astonishing thought, that Margery, the great visionary, spent time in the cell of Julian, the first woman to write a book in English, the wisest of all the anchoresses.’

Marcus thought what a good teacher Lee would make. Whenever she talked about her schoolwork her voice came alive, her eyes lit up and she seemed to come out of herself. He thought that this was a possible future for her: if she could make it through to the end of university, get a job at a girls’ school somewhere, teach and think and make music. Just as when he saw her on her bike, he sometimes imagined a child seat on the rear mudguard, a nodding blond head, creating for Lee a happy future as a balance against her present sadness. She dropped Marcus’s hand and walked a little way in front of him, gesturing as she spoke.

‘Margery was amazing. She would have been one of those ball-breaking City traders if she was alive now. Or a television entrepreneur. She set up a brewery in King’s Lynn — it was one of the few jobs that women were allowed to do — she had fourteen children, then, at the age of forty or so, decided she wanted to give herself over to religious life. She struggled to get her husband to take a vow of chastity, describes all his objections in great detail in her book, but finally she succeeded and then set off on pilgrimages all across Europe, having increasingly violent visions at each new shrine.’

Lee continued in a distant, dreamy voice.

‘She wrote down her visions, or probably dictated them to someone. Some of them are really trivial, she talks about this great miracle when a vision helped her to find a ring she’d lost, but parts of her text are very moving, particularly her visit to Julian, who must have been at least eighty when Margery came to see her.’

They were moving downhill. Lee took Marcus’s hand again. Through the trees, Marcus could see thunderclouds raising their dark hoods on the horizon.

‘I like to think that one day I could be like Julian. That people struggling with their faith might come and see me, and I could use all of this bad stuff I’ve gone through to help them.’

‘You will, I’m sure of it. I know what you mean about this being an in-between time, too. I’m sure our parents were grown up by this age. Mine had two kids by the time they were in their mid-twenties. And they were so incredibly happy together, happy in a settled, grown-up way. I still feel like a teenager.’

‘It’s because we had it so easy,’ Lee said, swinging the arm that held Marcus’s hand. ‘I think one of the reasons my father has these terrible fits of depression is that he can never live up to the memory of his parents. They made it through the war, helped to hide Jews in the lofts of churches in Budapest, then they were these great heroic figures in the resistance against the Soviet occupation. They gave up their lives for an ideal. My father just writes music about it. He gets so frustrated because he wants his music to achieve something impossible: he wants it to match up to the physical heroism of his parents.’

Marcus could hear Mouse’s voice somewhere through the trees ahead. Lee continued.

‘I don’t even have enough of a connection to that history to be able to make music about it. Our generation is so divorced from that time of action, that time of strong idealistic belief. I think it’s one of the reasons that the Course has been so successful. It allows us to feel noble, to imagine that we’re aspiring to a higher ideal.’

‘I’m sure that’s right,’ Marcus said. ‘Humans aren’t used to being so comfortable: it goes against our nature. It’s maybe why I still feel like an adolescent. Because nothing has happened to make me a man yet.’

Lee smiled shyly at Marcus.

‘I’ve never shown you this.’

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her wallet. Opening a flap, she drew out a small photograph. They stopped in a small clearing and looked at the picture. It was a photo of Lee as a child, six or seven, standing on a beach in a red polka-dot swimming costume. Her father stood at her side, the sand sloping steeply away behind them to the sea. One of his hands gripped the young girl’s shoulder. Lee was smiling in the photograph, a missing tooth blacking her smile, her nose wrinkling.

‘I look at this picture all the time. I just can’t believe that I was ever this child, that there is any link between the person I am now and that happy, smiling kid. My problem is that I can’t recapture what it felt like to be young like that, I can’t draw a thread between now and then. A lot of the time, I’m trying to thrust myself back into the person I was then, or as a teenager. Trying to be anyone else but the me I am now.’

Marcus squeezed her hand and they walked on in silence. The others were waiting for them at the edge of the wood. Abby and the Earl were perched on a tree stump sipping from their thermoses; David and Sally were looking through a book, attempting to identify a toadstool that was growing at the foot of a gnarled elm. Mouse stood further off with Maki. Black clouds blotted the sky behind them.

Marcus didn’t see the cows in the next field until they were almost upon them. The ground undulated deceptively, with hillocks hidden by clumps of hawthorn, declivities concealed by brambles. Marcus was walking at the head of the group, Lee and Abby following slightly behind him. The cows seemed to rise out of a dip in the ground and then there they were, almost surrounding Marcus, their large heads turning very slowly to regard the Course members. There was a barbed-wire fence running along one side of the field. A narrow passage led between the fence and the cows. There were perhaps twelve of the beasts. Marcus didn’t know what sort of cows they were, but they were enormous: huge, swinging heads on thick necks, massive haunches. There was something prehistoric about them.

‘Oh, look at the cows,’ he heard Abby say behind him. ‘I never know if they’re black with white patches or the other way around. What d’you think, Marcus?’

He stared into the cows’ bloodshot eyes. He edged towards the channel between the cows and the fence and then gestured for Abby and Mouse to pass behind him. The gate leading out of the field was fifty feet away over rough ground. Abby didn’t move. He gestured again and hissed.

‘Get moving. Quickly.’

‘What? Oh, Marcus, are you scared of the cows?’

Mouse scampered past, cheering, and then stood on the other side of the herd, dancing on the spot. The cows swung their heads from one side to the other, as if weighing their options. Two cows began, with great deliberation, to trot towards Mouse. He backed away, still calling out to the others. The cows increased their pace. It didn’t look as if they were moving any faster than a slow trot, but Marcus could see that they were gaining on Mouse. One of the cows nearer Marcus edged towards the fence, looking to close off the passage through which Mouse had passed. Marcus watched as Mouse realised that they were going to catch him. Head down, arms pumping furiously, Mouse plunged towards the gate at the edge of the field. The cows’ hoofs pounded the earth, sending up damp clods of turf. Diving, tumbling, Mouse rolled under the bottom of the gate and lay on the ground, panting. Marcus watched the cows come to a disappointed halt and then turn and trot back towards the herd.

David came to stand beside Marcus.

‘Bloody stupid animals, aren’t they?’ The priest was carrying a walking stick with a duck’s head carved into the handle. ‘Let’s clear a way through.’

David stepped towards the nearest cow, raised his stick above his head and brought it down hard on the animal’s neck. The cow didn’t move, hardly seemed aware of the blow. The priest hit the cow again and began to shout, providing a commentary to the Course members between yells.

‘Get on! You need to make it very clear who’s boss. Get on with you, I say! Show no fear, don’t allow yourself to be intimidated. Yah! Get on now! They’re more scared of you than you are of them.’

Marcus doubted this last point. The priest was bringing his stick down with regular, vicious strokes on the forehead of the nearest cow. The animal backed away slowly, drawing into the heart of the herd. Marcus took the opportunity to pass closely along the fence and then, walking very swiftly, he moved towards the gate where Mouse was sucking on a straw. Marcus pulled himself up alongside his friend and called out to the others.

‘Just follow me. It’s fine. Don’t run or panic and you’ll be OK.’

He saw Maki and Philip come next, then a group of nervous-looking girls, then Sally and Neil. Lee and Abby hung back with the Earl and David. The cows continued to stare at the priest. He had adopted an aggressive stance, one arm holding the stick poised ready to strike in the air, the other raised in a kind of salute, a universal gesture of thou shalt not pass. It was the success of this macho pose that undid them. For as soon as the Earl and the girls had passed, David dropped his arms and turned to follow the others. The cows, as if released from a spell, charged.

‘Look out,’ yelled Marcus, standing up on the fence.

Abby was at the head of the group, her long legs eating up the ground, bounding over tussocks of grass, leaping blackberry bushes. Next came Lee. Her face was set in frightened concentration. She had gathered up her skirt in her fist and ran with her legs splayed, the pink boots swinging out sideways as she charged forward. The Earl moved very swiftly, his head lowered bullishly. David brought up the rear. Perhaps to save face, he was trying to drive the cows back as he retreated, turning every so often and lashing out with his stick, yelling furiously at these beasts of the field who were conspiring to challenge his authority. Marcus could tell that Sally, who was perched on the gate beside him, was holding her breath.

Abby reached the gate first. Marcus held out an arm and helped her over, taking care that she didn’t tear her jeans on the nails sticking out of the wooden gate. When he looked up, David had fallen. Lee and the Earl reached the gate and turned. Lee held her hand to her mouth. Sally let out her breath in a yelp. The cows charged towards the priest, who was struggling to get to his feet.

‘His foot’s trapped,’ said Mouse, a kind of fascinated horror in his voice.

Without pursuing his thoughts far enough to reach a conclusion, Marcus leapt from the gate and ran towards David. The cows had slowed somewhat as they approached him, and reduced their pace further as they saw Marcus’s sprinting form heading towards them. But still they moved towards the priest, who was now curled in a ball, unaware of the approach of his putative saviour. Just as they were about to close over him, Marcus arrived, throwing himself down over the priest. With his arms up to cover his own head, Marcus felt David’s bony body beneath him, could smell the priest’s woody aftershave, feel the coarse wool of his tweed jacket against his cheek. The earth thundered around them, and Marcus found himself praying, mouthing the Lord’s Prayer through gritted teeth as mud and grass flew over them. He heard the thump of flesh against flesh as the cows crowded around them. Then silence. Hot, sour breath. A wet muzzle against his ear. Marcus looked up to see the cows trotting away from them. He was suddenly embarrassed to be sprawled over the priest. He rolled away from David and then helped him to prise his boot out of the rabbit hole that had trapped it. They made their way together over to the fence. David smiled bashfully as Sally ran to embrace him. Lee and Abby surrounded Marcus. The others cheered.

‘What a hero!’

‘That was amazing.’

Marcus batted away their praise and, taking Abby by the hand, set off along the footpath. There was energy in the air, a sense of celebration, of danger averted. David hurried to catch up with Marcus and laid a matey hand on his shoulder, rephrasing the incident as a moment of shared danger met face-on. The others crowded round as the priest spoke.

‘I heard you praying, Marcus. Even with the noise of those animals charging towards us, I could hear your prayers. Did you feel God there? Did you feel Him coming down and placing a barrier around us, something those dumb beasts couldn’t break through?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I guess. I wasn’t really thinking. I just did it.’

‘But you know that is when God is at his most visible, when you’re in a moment of emergency. That’s when He’ll show Himself.’

The path brought them out on the other side of the footbridge above the motorway where they had stood the night before. Marcus hung back with Abby. David walked ahead with Mouse to the centre of the bridge, and the two of them leaned far forward over the rail, looking down on the traffic roaring past below. There was a classic car rally taking place at Silverstone, and Marcus could see drivers in open-top vehicles gripping their steering wheels as their cars plunged through the cut in the hillside. Their eyes were narrow slits behind old-fashioned driving goggles. As Marcus and Abby made their way over the bridge, Mouse shouted across to them.

‘Look! Look, it’s Mr Toad! Poop-poop!’

They followed David up through the wood. Birds called out in the dark shadows around them, unseen creatures scuttled across the red earth, the wind caused the trees to groan. Marcus put his arm around Abby’s shoulders. Mouse and David had disappeared up the hill, seemingly racing each other to the house. The rest were far behind. They came out into a clearing by the lake. Lee caught up with them and the three friends stood by the choppy water and looked up at the large, dark house. The turret pierced the low clouds. At the narrow window halfway up, Marcus saw Mrs Millman’s bony face pressed against the glass, sharp eyes looking down at them. She edged away into darkness.

Marcus looked at Lee and there, behind her, was a sight that dried his stare. Above the green cylinder of a pheasant feeder, suspended on a wire from the lowest branches of a tree, hung the rotting body of a rook. Hanging by its claws, the rook’s wings still stretched outwards, feathers clinging to the spindly bones. It spun slightly in the breeze. Lee turned and let out a muffled scream.

‘Jesus,’ Marcus said. Abby gasped.

Lee stumbled back and he caught her. He could see that along the side of the lake there was a line of the grain drums that the gamekeeper used to feed pheasants for the shoot. Above each one hung a dead rook, feathers falling from breasts and wings, eyeless, their bodies slowly growing to resemble the bone grey of their beaks. They all rotated eerily in the gloomy light under the pines, stirred by the fingers of the wind. He could follow the path of each gust in the quivering dead birds. Marcus led the girls hurriedly away from the water.

Back in the house, they took off their boots and made their way up to their rooms. They met Mrs Millman coming down the stairs. She smiled when she saw them.

‘Hello, young ones. Did you have a nice walk? You just missed the weather. It gets into my bones when it’s like this. I wish it would just break and be done with it. There’ll be tea and scones in the hall at four thirty, if you fancy it.’

Marcus and Abby left Lee at the door of her room. The hem of her skirt was black with mud and she looked very tired suddenly.

‘Have a sleep, love,’ Abby said, hugging her friend.

‘I will. I’m done in.’ Lee smiled at them and closed the door behind her.

Marcus and Abby lay on their bed reading for an hour as the light faded outside. Recently there had been a number of books published by high-profile academics and journalists attacking Christianity specifically or religious belief in general. Abby had a high pile of these books beside her bed at home and was currently working through one that had a picture of the author in the centre of the back cover, fixing the viewer with his notoriously piercing gaze, the high sweep of his equally famous hair barely contained within the photograph. Marcus put down the novel he was half-reading and nuzzled into the soft skin of Abby’s neck.

‘Don’t you worry about reading those? That you might be persuaded? I can never pick them up.’

Abby laid the book down on her lap and reached over to stroke Marcus’s hair, pulling his head onto her chest and running her nails across his scalp.

‘No, I don’t mind reading them. There are places where I think they’re spot on. Some of the rituals around faith are outmoded and ridiculous. Some of the more literal interpretations of the Bible are daft. But they use those examples to reject everything about Christianity. And that’s as idiotic as the people they’re trying to discredit. What I find most interesting, though, is that sometimes I feel these atheists have a closer relationship with the God they say they hate than a lot of believers. It takes a lot of heart to really hate someone.’

Marcus turned to face her and she placed a long kiss on his lips, slipping her tongue into his mouth. They both kept their eyes open and he could see thoughts moving through her mind like eels at the bottom of a pool. She drew away and smiled down at him.

‘It’s only recently that the big minds have been on the side of the enemy. You just have to read Milton or Bunyan or C. S. Lewis and they provide everything you need to defend against these books. They’re a fad, a way for these vain old men to pay for dental work, ensure that they have beautiful coffins to house them for their disenchanted eternities.’

Marcus liked it when Abby got angry. Her cheeks flushed bullfinch red and she breathed very quickly, her face creasing into a frown of concentration. Her anger always passed swiftly; now her face was once again centred upon her wide smile. Rain began to spot on the windows. Marcus could see it streaming down from the clouds over the woods.

‘I feel a bit sick,’ Abby said.

‘I’m really nervous, too.’ He took her hand.

‘I just feel like there’s so much pressure on us. I really want David to be proud of us. I want him to feel like the Retreat has been a success.’

Marcus was quiet for a moment.

‘It’s different for you, I think. Because you work for the Course. I worry about some of the ways we keep people attending. Sometimes I think the Course should live and die on its own merits. Poor Maki clearly isn’t feeling comfortable, but I think we’ve almost persuaded her to stick it out.’

‘If people stay for long enough, they’re converted. You know that. The Course just needs time to do its work, and if we have to be a little disingenuous in order to buy that time, I can live with that. Maki will end up thanking us for it. Sometimes you have to commit a few small sins to achieve something as good and holy as conversion to the Course.’

‘You’re right. I know you are. But you can see why it makes me uncomfortable.’

Abby smiled distantly at him and rose from the bed. ‘We should go downstairs,’ she said. ‘It’s time for tea.’

Marcus knocked on Lee’s door on the way down. She answered it wearing a black blouse that clung tightly to her ribs; the sleeves were fitted around her thin arms and the décolletage dived low, showing a thin strip of mauve bra. She was still in her pants, and turned away from Marcus to pull on a new skirt. While Abby waited in the hallway outside, he watched Lee bend to tug the skirt up over her spindly legs. He imagined stepping behind her, pressing himself against her thin body, feeling the flimsy delicacy of her. She looked quizzically over her shoulder at him, thrust her feet into a pair of white trainers and shut the door behind her.

They ate tea in the hall as the rain roared down around them. Mrs Millman brought out plates of buttered scones. The twins toasted marshmallows by the fire and dropped them into mugs of hot chocolate which they passed around the other Course members. Neil had changed into a blue blazer with nautical gold buttons which he polished absent-mindedly with his handkerchief as he listened to David and the Earl, who were sitting in armchairs by the fire. The Earl was speaking loudly about a mine he had invested in after a tip-off from a priest.

‘He’s out at the Anglican mission in Baku. Does a service every now and then for BP executives and their wives, but mainly he’s quietly lining his own pockets. Tipped me off about this uranium find a couple of years back and it has been quite spectacular. .’

Philip and Maki chatted quietly in a corner. When the scones had disappeared, a comfortable lull fell over the group. Marcus lolled in an armchair in one corner with Abby perched on the arm; Mouse, with his nose pressed against the window, watched the rain fall in the darkness outside; Lee sat at his side, her hand on his back. After a few minutes, David rose from his chair, stood next to the fire and spoke, his white shirt very bright above khaki chinos.

‘It’s time for me to go down and prepare for this evening’s service. This is the centrepiece of the Retreat, the heart of the whole Course, really. You guys should make your way down when you feel ready. It is a good idea to sit down there and prepare yourselves to speak to God before we begin. We’ll be playing some gentle music to help get you in the mood before we start the service proper at six. I’ll be praying for all of you. Good luck and God bless.’

He strode towards the doors, flung them open and stepped out into the darkness and the rain. The Earl followed him into the deluge and Marcus watched them scurry down to the chapel. He stood up, took Abby by the hand and led her outside. Mouse and Lee followed, with Mouse’s velvet jacket tented above them. Inside the chapel it was very dark. Marcus and Abby still held hands. Someone flicked a switch and a spotlight cut along the aisle, exploding onto the backcloth behind the altar. David stepped into the circle of light. Marcus followed the beam to its source and saw the Earl perched behind a lighting desk in the shadows at the back of the chapel, his fingers moving swiftly over the controls. The beam falling on David faded imperceptibly, until there was only a golden aura surrounding him. Then another spotlight shone onto the stage to the left of the altar, and the four friends walked together down the aisle and took up their positions. Marcus picked up his bass guitar, Mouse sat behind the drum kit, Abby sat on the edge of the stage swinging her legs. Lee started to play the ‘Promenade’ from Pictures at an Exhibition, imbuing the music with great sadness. Finally, the priest stepped up to join them, and picked out a series of minor chords on the guitar which he strapped around his neck.

Marcus saw the Course members coming into the chapel in twos and threes, picking their way self-consciously down the aisle. Neil and the twins were first, then Philip and Maki, then a cluster of younger girls from his group, followed by their boyfriends. Finally, Sally and Mrs Millman entered, shaking the water from their umbrellas. The members sat in the pews at the front of the chapel, again holding candles that the Earl had handed to them on the way in.

Abby hummed quietly, her eyes shut, her feet still swinging. Marcus turned his bass down until it was scarcely audible. Mouse circled his brushes over the snare so that the noise from the drum was barely distinguishable from the sound of the rain falling on the chapel roof. The Earl was back behind the lighting desk and he brought the spot up very slowly so that the group on the stage seemed to be at the centre of the room. The music rose gradually and Abby climbed to her feet, stretching her arms upwards as she began to sing.

‘We can never know You,

Until we know ourselves,

And we’ll never find ourselves

Until we find You, Lord.’

Mouse had picked up his drumsticks and began to crash out a driving military beat. Marcus turned up his volume switch and, moving into the middle of the stage, David played a series of explosive power chords. The rest of the Course members joined in with the song’s chorus, the mix of voices swirling around the small church.

‘All shall be well,

And all shall be well,

And all manner of things

Shall be well.’

When the music ended, David put down his guitar and stepped into the beam of light that fell upon the altar. The four musicians left on the stage — now in darkness — turned to watch him. The priest pressed his hands together and unleashed his vivid smile. The rain was still falling. Marcus saw that one of the twins’ candles had gone out. He watched her light it from her sister’s flame. The silence continued. Then David’s voice, low and full of power:

‘Welcome. This is a very special night. Each Course has its own character, its own concerns, its own life. This group has grown to be very special to me. Not only is it the first Course to be looked after by our new Course leaders, but I also feel a great sense of holiness among you, a great urge to be close to God. This service will help some of you make that leap. Let us be quiet for a moment. Let us allow silence to work its magic around us, let us dwell with God in that awesome silence that was everywhere before He said Let there be light.’

Marcus worried at the strap of his guitar. Threads were coming loose, the leather buckle was cracked and peeling. He looked out into the bent heads of the congregation, downward-turned faces illuminated by the candles they held in their laps. He watched Maki tuck a black ribbon of hair behind her ear to stop it from catching in the flame. After the prayers, there was another long silence and the wind moaned above the sound of the rain. The priest began to talk again, walking down the aisle and facing the Course members as he spoke. Fixing each of them in turn with his bright, pale eyes.

‘Don’t be afraid of letting yourself go. We are brought up to believe that losing control of ourselves is wrong; but only by letting go of yourself will you find yourself. Turn towards the child in you, the innocent in you. Jesus said: I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Let us remember what it was like to have the hope, the optimism of children. Help us, we who are blind like the beggar in Jericho, gain our sight. Help us Lord to open up our hearts to you, to step aside from the sinful, corrupt people we are and move towards the people we wish to be. Let us open our arms to you, Lord.’

David placed his hands on Philip’s shoulders and turned him to face the aisle.

‘Philip, I see good in you. Open yourself up to the Lord. Will you, Philip?’

Philip looked at Maki beside him, then over towards Lee on the stage. ‘I will,’ he mumbled.

‘Alice, Ele.’ He took each of the twins by the hand and raised their arms into the air. They held their candles towards him and the priest’s face glowed. ‘You are the Lord’s children now. He loves you with a great love. Will you follow Him?’

‘We will,’ the twins replied.

David walked back down the aisle and stood facing the altar for a moment, then turned to face the members again, speaking very quickly, his head nodding as he spoke.

‘Let the Holy Spirit into your hearts, lose yourself in the love of Jesus, fall into His arms and let Him take the weight of your sins, your heartache.’

Lee, still in darkness, started to play the same series of slowly descending chords as the night before, and Abby, her voice clear and powerful, sang alone.

‘I must become God,

And God must become me,

So that we can share

The same “I” eternally.’

David stood trapped in the beam of light that fell upon the altar. His white shirt shone as he held his arms up to the roof, turned his head upwards and opened his mouth to sing. The light around him increased again until Marcus found it hard to look at the priest. David began to shake in the light, his thin body stretched out, his long fingers reaching up to the sky. He started to chant, again inserting his words rhythmically into the interstices of Abby’s song.

‘Weilala, shanti, shanti, leilala.’

The music grew louder. Marcus and Mouse began to play, the drums and bass picking up the rhythms of the priest’s song. The light came up on the stage and Marcus blinked out over the audience. The Course members in the congregation started singing along with Abby. All eyes were trained on the priest. The sound was beautiful, a language that hid its meaning behind the words, that danced and swooped and shone around them.

Sally shuffled past Philip and out into the aisle. She held up her hands towards her husband and began to speak in tongues, her eyes tightly shut, her head shaking violently from side to side as she moved in time to the music. The words — like the priest’s — seemed ripped from an ancient world, the chanting of a forgotten race. Marcus watched the Earl behind the lighting desk train the spot down the aisle. Mouse was the next to be seized by the Spirit. He yelped and squealed, called out in a high voice as he crashed his cymbals and rolled the snare. Abby fell down on her knees. She tried to keep singing the words of the song but, possessed, strange phrases fell from her lips. She twitched like a compass needle and held her hands up to the sky, shaking them in trembling ecstasy.

The twins were the first of the new members to let themselves go. The girls blew out their candles and made their way out into the aisle to join Sally. Ele took her sister by the hand, held it upwards and began to scream. Alice lifted her own voice alongside that of her twin. Slowly their words came through, the screaming softened into the beauty of the tongues. Sally wrapped her arms around them and hugged them to her chest as they laughed and chanted.

Marcus had never spoken in tongues. He had not been able to give himself up to the Spirit during the first Retreat, and ever since he had found the whole process rather embarrassing. As he played his guitar he yodelled every so often, trying to copy David’s voice as closely as possible. He would have liked to be able to abandon himself the way Abby did, rolling on the floor at his feet, a grin of utter exultation on her face, but he knew he would never be able to embrace this central part of the Course. Marcus was surprised that Lee hadn’t joined in yet. She was usually one of the first to go, said that she felt as if she was falling into a warm nothingness when the tongues got hold of her. Marcus looked over at her and saw that she was hitting the chords automatically, her shoulders slumped, none of the usual intensity that surrounded her when she was playing.

Neil moved into the aisle, walking with his head held up as if in challenge to his own shyness. He sank to his knees and lifted his trembling arms, fixing his eyes intently on David, who was still stretching skywards. Neil began to keen gently, his cheek pressed to his shoulder as he cried. The girls from Marcus’s group chanted as one, leaning heavily against their braying boyfriends, weak from the Spirit. By the end only Philip, Maki and Mrs Millman stood unaffected in the congregation. Even the Earl let out a brief series of grunts and barks.

With a nod to Marcus and Mouse, Lee stopped playing. The Earl, startled from his reverie, brought the lights down so that the priest was held in a golden glow; the rest were in darkness. Abby continued to call out for a while longer, there was the sound of the voices slowly abating, the occasional yelp from Mouse or Neil. The storm raged outside, but its tone was altered. Marcus thought that the deluge seemed somehow tamed by the power of what he had witnessed in the little chapel. As the lights came slowly up, Neil stood, head bowed, in the centre of the aisle. Marcus reached down to help Abby to her feet. The twins pressed themselves against Sally’s chest, shoulders heaving. The priest’s wife hugged them closely to her, whispering quietly in their small, pointed ears. Then David spoke, his eyes turned seriously upon the congregation.

‘For those of you who have just experienced the tongues for the first time, congratulations. It is an immense feeling, to have the Holy Spirit come down upon you and speak through you. For those who weren’t moved by the Spirit this time, don’t worry. It’s not for everyone; it certainly isn’t required. Now please take your seats again and let us pray. God, thank you for moving among us in this place. Thank you for blessing us with the presence of your Holy Spirit. May you not leave us now, but continue to speak to us, and through us. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.’

After a long silence, the priest walked down the aisle shaking hands with the congregation, smiling and laying his hands on their heads, blessing them and welcoming them into the church. Marcus saw Philip drift away from the group, pretending to admire the ogees that lined the columns alongside the nave. Marcus tried to move towards him, but David was shepherding people towards the door and Marcus was swept up in the happy babbling surge of Course members. The priest led them out into the night, where the rain had finally stopped and mist was curling up towards the house from the lake. Marcus walked up to the hall with Lee, who looked at him with a strange complicit glance as they left the chapel. She insisted on sitting beside him when they got to the hall, perching on the arm of his chair as Abby had earlier, occasionally smoothing his hair distractedly with her cold, thin fingers.

A sense of exultation fizzed around the new Course members as they waited for dinner. The Earl and David poured wine into glasses on a table that had been laid along one side of the hall. A huge vase of heavily scented lilies sat on the main dining table. Sally kept fidgeting with the arrangement, and each time she touched them, orange pollen stained her fingers. The twins stood at the centre of a circle of members, falling over each other to describe what they had just experienced.

‘And it was like everything dropped away. .’

‘And you were falling, but you knew someone was there to catch you. .’

‘It would have been scary but. .’

‘But it wasn’t. It felt wonderful. I remember taking Alice’s hand and it was like we were one person.’

‘Exactly, Ele, like we were one person falling together.’

‘It was so beautiful. Not just the sound of the singing, but the feeling of love.’

‘It felt like we had spent all our lives until that point searching for something. .’

‘And we didn’t know what it was we were searching for until the tongues came along. Then we knew. It was that. It was giving ourselves up to the Holy Spirit.’

Neil stepped forward, his bald head shining, and put his arms around the twins. There was a great deal of hugging that evening. The twins gripped Neil passionately, and Marcus was distressed to see the older man’s body shaking with sobs. David stepped towards the group and laid his hands on Neil’s shoulders. Neil turned from the twins and embraced the priest. Abby strode over to them and wrapped the pair in her long, strong arms. They stood for a while, breathing deeply. Mouse was talking with great intensity to Sally and a couple of the girls from Marcus’s group next to the fire. He scurried over to the table to refill his wine glass every so often. Whenever a bottle was finished, the Earl or Mrs Millman opened another. Abby and Lee were also drinking heavily. Lee would give Marcus’s hand a squeeze each time she left him to refill her glass. Marcus realised he hadn’t seen Philip for a while.

Dinner found most of the Course members drunk. Even David was flushed and beaming, an extra button open on his shirt revealing a hairless white chest beneath. Sally was sitting next to Mouse and they continued to speak very earnestly. Marcus had only had a couple of glasses of wine, partly because he found it hard to stir himself from the comfortable armchair, and partly because he was tired and full of conflicting emotions after the drama of the service. He noticed that Maki was sitting alone at the head of the table. She picked slowly at her food, making ridges in her mashed potato with the tines of her fork, lifting up a piece of lamb and then allowing it to fall back to her plate. Marcus pulled a chair over to the corner of the table and sat down.

‘Don’t worry, Maki. It’s not everything. Some people never speak in tongues.’

Maki was quiet, made another slow tour of her plate with a fork held like a dagger, sending runner beans writhing in its wake.

‘It’s not that. I just feel this has been a waste of my time. I should have been doing something useful, should have learned another language, or at least gone out and made some real friends. I sat there, looking at you all, and it just struck me as very funny. And a little bit sad.’

‘I guess it’s not for everyone.’

‘It was so un-English, all that emotion. It seemed bizarre to me.’

‘It really works for some people.’

‘Not for me. You’re too bright for this, Marcus. You know that, don’t you?’

She looked at him quizzically. He met her gaze and then stared down at the plate of food. He felt hands gripping his shoulders.

‘Hey guys, what are you talking about?’ Lee brought her face close to Marcus’s ear, her breath hot against his skin, sweet with alcohol. Her fingers kneaded the muscles in his neck.

‘Maki wasn’t carried away by the service. She didn’t speak in tongues.’

Lee laughed. When she spoke, her voice was manic, interrupted by stutters and giggles.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, dear. Half of us fake it anyway. It’s all just part of the game. I bet you David fakes it sometimes. I always find it a bit fishy that the Holy Spirit can be called up on demand like a genie in a lamp. And each performance so perfectly controlled. I always got the feeling that true revelation needed a bit more work than that. And got a lot messier. Now, who wants another drink? I’m going to get shitfaced.’

‘Sorry. I’m going upstairs. Goodnight.’

Maki made her way slowly down the hall towards the steps, her head held up, a melancholy half-smile on her lips. Marcus was about to follow her, but Lee draped herself further over his shoulders, the blinking of her eyelashes flashing across his cheeks, her lips dangerously close to his own. He reached for his glass of wine and drank from it, then held it up for Lee to take a swig. She giggled as red liquid spilled down her chin.

Lee sat down in Maki’s place and began to eat her meal, chewing the lamb stew loudly, shovelling fluffy white potato between her wet lips. Abby was further down the table between David and Mouse, and Marcus watched her turning from side to side, joining Mouse’s discussion with Sally and then, catching something that David was saying to the twins or to Neil, turning back to the new members. Lee had begun to tell Marcus about her visit to Lindisfarne earlier in the year. She gripped hold of his hand as she spoke and he could feel the bones of her fingers through her skin.

‘The church has these amazing buttresses that face out to the North Sea, so worn away by the wind and the rain over the years that they seem to be made out of coral, to grow out of the land. When I was there in March there was a storm blowing up and the waves were crashing over them. It was amazing, it really was.’

Marcus, who had only been half-listening, saw Philip standing in the doorway looking over towards him.

‘Sorry, Lee. Give me a second, will you?’ he said, and rose from the table. He walked over towards the door where Philip had already backed away into the shadows. He was standing in the entrance hall beside a ragged blue holdall, his leather jacket fastened to his throat. He smiled at Marcus and shook his head.

‘Sorry to interrupt your dinner. Do you think you’d drive me to the station? There’s a train from Banbury at ten. I’ll call a taxi if it’s a problem.’

‘Have you told David you’re leaving?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you think you should? I mean, he might want to speak with you. I know that it can be frightening to hear the whole tongues thing, and not manage to do it yourself. I almost walked out after the Saturday night service on my first Retreat.’

Philip picked up the holdall and turned to look towards the front doors.

‘I’d prefer not to see him, if that’s OK. I’d just really like to go.’

Marcus stood leaning against the frame of the door. Philip watched him through narrow eyes. A few moments passed and then, with a sigh, Marcus spoke. ‘Fine. I’ll take you. I don’t think we should force anyone to stay here that doesn’t want to.’ They walked out into the night.

The mist was now thick in the air outside, licking itself around the gables and turrets of the house, snaking between the trees and lying out along the gravel of the driveway. The lights that shone at the front of the house caught the mist and sent bright swirling haloes up into the air above them. Dampness dripped down from the trees as they crossed to where the Audi was parked.

The mist fell away behind them when they pulled out of the driveway and the night on the crest of the hill was vast and bright above the little car. They drove along the narrow ridge in silence and then turned onto the Banbury Road.

‘I felt awkward in there earlier. Awkward and very lonely,’ said Philip, staring away from Marcus into the darkness. The moon was dimmer than the previous night, but its light was enough to discern the outlines of the surrounding valleys, farmsteads, villages.

‘Sometimes it can take a few attempts before you manage the tongues.’

‘It wasn’t that. Or it wasn’t only that. It was just that nothing had changed. I felt that I had come all this way, sat through all these sermons and discussions and heard all this high talk and then, when it came down to it, I felt nothing. I was in the same boring service listening to the same meaningless words.’

‘You just need to give it more time. I’m not completely there myself yet, and I’ve been doing this for years. You should try to stick it out.’

‘I have. I’ve spent so much time in St Botolph’s. And the time I’m not there, I think about you all. It’s very appealing for someone like me, someone who you guys wouldn’t even consider as a friend in the real world, to find himself in the middle of such a bright, beautiful gang. Tempting for me to just fake the religion to stay part of it.’

‘Oh, come on, Philip, that’s not fair.’

‘Isn’t it? Look at Lee. She’s always talking about love and forgiveness, but she used me. She didn’t think of my feelings for a moment once she had what she wanted, and you’ll all be the same. You’ll cast me aside because I won’t let myself become some gibbering fool in praise of a God that I don’t believe in.’

They continued to drive in silence. As they reached the outskirts of Banbury, Philip spoke again.

‘I think Lee’s really close to the edge. Please watch her, will you? Some of the things she said that night we were together really frightened me. You need to take care of her, Marcus. If you don’t, no one will.’

‘There is a whole community of us looking out for her, don’t worry.’

‘I’m just not sure that everyone has her best interests at heart.’

They turned into the station car park and Marcus switched off the engine. They sat in silence for a while. Marcus watched taxi drivers smoking with gloved fingers beside their cabs, a family pulling luggage towards the station, a bus slowly disgorging its sleepy passengers onto the forecourt. He could smell something sweet and industrial in the air. Philip opened the door and set his holdall on the ground outside. He reached over and shook Marcus’s hand.

‘Thanks for driving me. I liked you best of all of them. You and Abby are good people. I’m sorry I couldn’t see it through. I would’ve liked to be friends with you.’

‘We can still be friends.’

‘No. No, we can’t. Maybe you don’t realise it, but you won’t ever really be friends with someone who isn’t in the Course. You look down on me now. Perhaps you’re right to.’

He stepped out into the night and a blast of cold air came into the car when he shut the door. Marcus watched him walk across the forecourt. Philip turned and half-raised his hand before passing out of sight. Marcus switched on the radio and listened to old soul songs, feeling guilty for having let David down, but also, at a deeper level, that he had done the right thing. The signal faded as he turned off the Banbury Road and he drove along the ridge in melancholy silence, spotting the entrance to the driveway by the plume of mist that reached out into the road.

The sound of raucous voices and loud music blared from the hall when he came back into the house. He stood at the steps leading into the long room and saw people dancing, chairs overturned, bottles and glasses everywhere. The Nightingales, Mrs Millman and the Earl had gone to bed. Neil was passed out in the chair that Marcus had sat in earlier. The wardrobe doors were open and Marcus saw that the twins were inside. One or other of them would poke a head or an arm out, calling to Abby or Lee to come and inspect the treasures they had discovered. Mouse was striding up and down the main dinner table, the Napoleon hat on his head, a white fox stole around his shoulders. He was carrying a bottle of red wine from which he swigged as he recited from The Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland. Lee sat below him, laughing and clapping. She waved at Marcus, her blue-green eyes flashing wickedly. Marcus heard snatches of Mouse’s words as he passed, and he remembered the books from his childhood and felt suddenly nostalgic and full of love for his friends.

‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late. . How doth the little crocodile. . Poop-poop!’

Marcus walked over to Abby, who was sitting at a table on her own. She had taken a lily from the vase on the table and wore the white flower behind one ear.

‘The Earl’, she said, looking up at him with a grin, ‘was so delighted by the service that he gave me the key to his cellar. I’ve been drinking port. Port makes me feel very silly.’ Her lips and her large teeth behind them were stained purple. Marcus shook his head and sat down beside his wife.

‘Let’s have a glass then,’ he said.

Hours passed. Neil made his way groggily up to bed. The twins fell asleep in the wardrobe. Marcus looked in to see them curled up on a nest of fur coats. Only the four friends were still awake. Mouse and Abby were talking in a corner, surrounded by bottles of wine. Mouse waved his hands as he spoke, taking off his hat and brandishing it every so often to emphasise a point. Marcus was in his favourite armchair with Lee perched once again on the arm. She was very drunk, slurring as she spoke. She leaned against him, one arm around his shoulders, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. Her earlier melancholy had entirely disappeared, replaced with a kind of manic enthusiasm.

‘We should go on a proper retreat. I’ve been reading about this one in north Wales. You go up into the mountains, stay in tents pitched around an old chapel, spend the days praying and walking and swimming in ice-cold lakes. I think that’s maybe the best way to get close to God.’

‘It sounds amazing,’ Marcus said.

‘I don’t know if David would get jealous, us going on someone else’s retreat.’

Mouse strutted over to them, carrying an armful of lilies, the pollen running orange streaks through the white fur of his stole.

‘Abby and I would be delighted if you’d join us for a trip to pay homage to our great lords of the high road, the titans of the tarmac. I want to drop flowers down on the lorries, let the blessing of nature purify their sooty hearts.’

Abby was already gently easing a fur out from beneath one of the sleeping twins. Lee wrapped herself in a rabbit-skin coat that hung down to the ground. She left the front open, revealing her low-cut black top. Marcus pulled a bearskin around his shoulders like a cloak. He thought it was probably supposed to be a rug: it trailed behind him as he walked out into the misty night. Mouse and Abby had already started down the path ahead of them. The mist deadened sound as they made their way down into the valley; Marcus could no longer hear the motorway. Lee stopped to light cigarettes for both of them, struggling to get the flame to catch in the damp air. Marcus helped her and took a long drag, blowing the smoke out to meet the misty air. When he looked up, Mouse and Abby had disappeared. Lee took his hand and scurried along the path, making her way fleet-footed over the red earth, skipping above half-hidden roots and tree stumps. Marcus thrust his cigarette into his mouth and struggled to keep up with her.

There was no definite point at which Marcus realised that they were lost. The mist had an extraordinary disorienting effect, and Lee’s scampering flight had been so swift that he hadn’t noticed that the path, which had seemed well-worn and familiar in the daylight, had merged into the surrounding earth. He let go of Lee’s hand and looked around. She turned back towards him, laughing, gesturing him onwards.

‘We’re not on the path any more,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, ‘we just need to carry on down until we reach the motorway embankment. We can make our way along to the bridge from there. Come on, this is fun.’

Marcus stopped. He peered further into the trees around them. It had grown lighter, and when he looked closely he could see that all of the trees around them were dead. The spindly skeletons of pines stretched skywards, the wizened fingers of branches white in the moonlight, the trunks reaching up from the mist that swirled around their roots. There was no foliage on the branches, nothing but mist to impede the searing white light of the moon. Bark peeled back like diseased skin. Marcus pressed his hand against one of the trees and felt the crêpelike wood dissolve under his touch. The world was only whiteness and shadow and the skeleton fingers of the trees all seemed to point at Marcus. He made out a darker shadow in the distance.

‘What’s that through there?’

He took her hand, which was damp and hot, and led her across the uneven ground, around the rotting trunk of a fallen tree and over a small ridge into a clearing. They were beside the lake, whose surface was trapped under a thick cushion of mist. The shape that Marcus had seen was the boathouse. One of the grain drums stood next to them, its rook corpse turning slowly in the mist above.

‘How did we end up here?’ He looked up and could just make out the dark mass of the house above them. ‘I thought we were much further down. At least we know that this path leads to the motorway.’

Lee didn’t answer. She was standing on the bank of the lake, looking out into the thickly packed mist, which glowed where it was illuminated by moonlight away from the shadows of trees. Marcus came up behind her and put his arms around her, pulling the bearskin rug about them both. She was breathing very quickly, and he saw her breath on the air in front of them. She half-turned her head and leaned back against him. He could feel his own heart beating as it pressed against her back.

‘It’s like the Morte d’Arthur,’ she said.

‘It’s beautiful.’

She pulled away from him, walked over towards the boathouse, hesitated for a moment, and then stepped out into the mist that sat above the lake. Marcus jumped towards her, ready to pull her from the cold water. Only when he was beside the boathouse did he realise that she had stepped out into a rowing boat that was moored to the deck in front of the small wooden building.

‘Come in. Let’s row out into the lake. I want to look up at the moon through the mist.’ She moved up to the prow of the small boat and lay back, her legs folded beneath her.

Marcus stepped unsteadily onto the boat. The misty air was a cold blanket around his shoulders. He sat down upon the central bench and felt on the floor for the oars. He rowed them slowly out into the centre of the lake. The water slapped gently against the sides of the boat. After a while he let them drift and made his way towards Lee. The mist was very thick around them; it was as if it were something solid that re-formed each instant to accommodate the gentle passage of the boat through the water. The moon was a faint silver smudge above them, the surrounding trees were shadows. Marcus lay down on the floor of the boat, his head in Lee’s lap. He pulled the bearskin over them. He felt the shifting of the water beneath him, imagined the fish moving among the weeds below. Lee ran her long fingers through his hair.

‘We could be anywhere. Anywhere, at any time. Floating through an endless night.’

The boat rocked as Lee shifted and leaned over him. He looked up at the halo of her short, damp hair, then shuffled further into the warm darkness of her lap.

‘Do you ever think about that time at university?’ Her voice was a whisper. He heard her light a cigarette. After taking a drag she held it in his mouth. With one hand she continued to stroke his hair. He spoke into the coarse hair of the rug.

‘Yes. I mean, I try not to think about it. It makes me guilty. But it was only a kiss.’

‘Yes, it was only a kiss.’

They lay and felt the air thicken around them. Marcus tried to work out whether she could also feel whatever it was that was building in the mist, grabbing hold of his heart and his groin, making his breaths come in shallow gasps. One of her hands continued to caress his hair, finding new paths to trace across his scalp, exposing new trails of nerve-ends that thrilled as her nails travelled across them. His face was pressed against the softness of her belly. A night bird called somewhere in the trees over the boathouse. She stopped stroking Marcus and pushed him gently away from her, lifting the bearskin and wrapping it about herself. He moved back to sit on the central bench. Lee’s voice came at him as if from a great distance, as cold as the mist that surrounded them.

‘You fake it, don’t you, the speaking in tongues? I can tell. I can tell when I watch you because I fake it, too.’

Marcus drew in a cool, damp breath.

‘I don’t know, Lee. It’s tough. Have you ever done it, you know, properly?’

‘Maybe once, at the very beginning. I felt like I was drifting away. It was like I get sometimes when I listen to a really beautiful piece of music, or read a poem that really speaks to me. But recently, I haven’t felt anything at all. I so wanted it to be this big revelation. I’ve been waiting and waiting for it, my Damascus moment, but it has never arrived. I think tonight I might have given up.’

A gust of wind skimmed across the lake, billowing the mist. Marcus shivered.

‘It always made me feel close to you,’ Lee said, ‘that neither of us could do it. That we were both faking it. It was a secret we shared.’

Now the moon had disappeared entirely; its only relic was the silver glow that suffused the air. Everything was mist, so thick that Marcus felt that if he reached his arm out from his shoulder, he might never see it again. He could hardly make out Lee across the boat. He grabbed one of the oars and paddled listlessly at the water, moving them in slow circles. He felt Lee shifting around in the boat, caught a glimpse of movement from the prow when he strained his eyes towards her.

‘Come over here.’ Her voice a heavy whisper. As he sank to his knees, she began to appear more clearly through the gauze of mist. The first thing he noticed was her eyes. They sparkled dangerously and fixed upon him, drawing him towards them. He kneeled on the floor of the boat between her legs. Lee was lying back on the warm pile of furs, bare from the waist down. Her skirt was rolled beneath her head as a pillow. Her black blouse served only to accentuate the pale legs that stretched out from the shadowy mound between them.

‘I’ve always wanted you to go down on me.’ She leaned forward and knitted her hand into the hair at the back of his head. He eased himself down until all was blackness and the slick saltiness of her against his tongue. Goose pimples on her thighs. He closed his eyes. The boat rocked as he flicked his tongue over her; she twisted his hair between her fingers as he moved faster. She began to arch her back, pressing herself against him, grinding his head down into her lap. He tried to stretch up and cup one of her breasts. She gently batted the hand away. He buried his face further into the bulge of her pubic hair. He remembered when, as a child, he had built himself a den in the middle of a clump of ferns in the woods at the back of his house, tramping down a circle at the centre and then pulling the encircling green fronds over himself. It was damp and the ferns tickled his skin, but he had felt very safe there. He thought of the den as he whipped his tongue over the soft tufty dampness of her pussy. Lee let out a sighing squeal like air released from a bicycle tyre. Marcus rose back up to kneel at her feet; leaning over, he tried to place a kiss on her lips but she turned away, presenting him with a cold hard cheek. Her teeth were chattering. She pulled on her pants and unrolled her skirt, snaking her way into it on the floor of the boat.

Marcus rowed them back to the shore and tied the boat to the deck in front of the boathouse. He reached out an arm and helped her to step onto the bank. They walked in silence down the path towards the motorway. Marcus lit two cigarettes and passed one to Lee. She took it without thanks. Finally, they heard the noise of the surging traffic in the distance. She quickened her pace, walking a few feet ahead of him as the slope steepened. The mist still wove its fingers between the trees, and Marcus kept thinking he saw shapes forming in the corners of his eyes, figures watching him from behind the adumbrated trunks of the pines. He scurried to catch up with Lee.

‘Is it true Philip left earlier?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I drove him to the station.’

‘Did you tell David?’

‘No.’

‘He’ll be cross.’

‘I know. I think he has the impression that all he has to do is get people as far as the Retreat and then any reservations will be blown away by the beauty of the voices, by the sense of community and friendship and safety. But Philip was just, I don’t know, disappointed.’

Lee sighed and flicked her cigarette into the misty foliage that surrounded them.

They rounded a bend in the path and saw Mouse and Abby coming up the hill hand in hand. Mouse was carrying a bottle of wine. Each time he took a swig he would pass it to Abby, who gulped in turn. They were both laughing and Mouse raised the bottle in the air when he saw Marcus and Lee on the crest of the hill above them.

‘Hey you two! Where did you get to? You missed an inspiring ceremony. Abby and I scattered lily petals onto the roofs of the lorries. We allowed nature to cover over the abomination of the motorway-beast.’

He stood before them, panting, and held out the bottle. Lee took it and swigged greedily. Marcus, whose head was beginning to pound, smiled and looked at Abby. Her cheeks were flushed and she had turned up the collar of her coat so that her wide face nestled in a frame of fur. Her eyes were soft and kind and she reached out her arms to him. Marcus stepped into her embrace and tried to return the love that he felt flowing from her, but all he could think about was the boat’s hard floor against his knees, the taste of Lee that still flooded his mouth and his nostrils, the sin he had committed. The four made their way back up the hill towards the house, Mouse still chattering wildly.

Lee and Abby went up the stairs together while Mouse and Marcus struggled to impose some sort of order on the chaos of the dining hall. Marcus woke the twins, who stretched and yawned like cats, smiling up at him as he attempted to eject them from their wardrobe lair. Mouse collected glasses and bottles, stacked chairs and straightened the tables. They worked quietly, the house heavy and silent around them. When they had finished, Mouse clapped Marcus on the back and they made their way upstairs together.

‘I’m just having the most brilliant time. I live for this, you know?’

Abby was already asleep when Marcus came into their room. The curtains were open and a banner of moonlight fell down across the bed, illuminating Abby’s pale skin, her white pyjama bottoms. He crossed to the window and looked out into the night. The mist had receded and now hung only over the lake, which was a silver cloud in the valley below. He pressed his hands against the cold glass of the window. Abby turned over in bed and sighed. Marcus took off his clothes until he was standing naked in the bright whiteness of the moon. There was something purifying about the light, and it was with a sense of regret that he pulled the curtains closed, the darkness covering Abby. He crossed to the sink and brushed his teeth in a thin needle of water, keen not to wake her. He slipped into bed next to his wife, who groaned in her sleep and turned over again, gathering the duvet between her legs. Marcus lay on his back, not minding the cold, and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

He woke twice in the night from nightmares where the decomposing rooks, oscillating in the misty air above the pheasant feeders, came suddenly alive, screeching and flapping their bone-wings, trying to escape the wire that held their feet. Each time he woke, his heart racing, his face hot despite the coldness of his uncovered body, he felt that someone had been in the room until just a moment before he opened his eyes. His mouth was dry but he couldn’t move from the bed, frozen by a creeping horror that unfurled in his mind when the night’s events came back to him. He heard noises echoing around the dark house, thumps and creaks and, once, the faint sound of someone crying out. He slept fitfully until the sky lightened outside his window. When the hands of his watch moved around to seven o’clock, he rose and dressed silently. He needed to speak to Lee.

Three

The curtains of Lee’s room were open, revealing a grey world where the pine trees huddled in conspiratorial conference above the still waters of the lake. The abandoned nests of rooks and jackdaws hung in the trees’ tallest branches like lookout posts on ships’ masts. Marcus saw Lee’s clothes strewn across the carpet and thought that she too, on returning to her room the night before, had crossed to look down upon the lake. Her bed had been slept in. The sheets were crumpled and the duvet kicked to the floor. He could see streaks of the orange pollen from the lilies scattered across her pillow. He wondered if she had taken one of the flowers up to bed with her.

He walked along the corridor and looked down on the empty courtyard below. The photographs of the Earl’s ancestors seemed to pass judgement upon him as he crossed in front of them. He stepped down the main stairway and the silence and the gilt-framed portraits and the cool light coming down from the atrium roof made him feel like he was in a museum that had been closed to the public for many years, a repository of dead memories. When he came into the kitchen the lights were off but Mouse was sitting at the table with a mug of steaming coffee, staring out into the bleak morning. His hair was a wild shriek above his head, his shoulders slumped as he sipped at the coffee.

‘Hi, Mouse. Are you OK?’ said Marcus.

Mouse jumped and turned to look at Marcus.

‘Hello, sport. What are you doing up?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Me neither. It was a big day yesterday. I feel a bit sad that it’s over.’ He spoke very quickly, and Marcus noticed that his hands were shaking enough for coffee to spill from the mug.

Marcus sat down next to Mouse and felt his friend’s leg jittering beneath the table. He gently put his hand on Mouse’s knee. Marcus could smell body odour, vegetation, coffee. The bags under Mouse’s bulging eyes reached down his cheeks.

‘You know Philip went home?’

Mouse took a sip of coffee.

‘Did he?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a shame, but there’s always a few who get freaked out. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much. I always thought he was a bit flaky.’

They sat together in silence as the house slowly woke around them. They heard doors banging and voices and then Mrs Millman came bustling into the room.

‘Well then you two, sitting here in the dark. Let’s have some lights on and I’ll make bacon and eggs for you both.’

The light surprised Mouse and he turned quickly away from Marcus. The smell of the rashers sizzling on the stove brought down most of the Course members. Abby was wearing one of Marcus’s jumpers over her pyjamas and helped Mrs Millman to serve breakfast. She sat down next to Marcus.

‘I wonder where the old folks are?’ she whispered to him. ‘I can understand Lee having a lie-in, but David and Sally went to bed really early.’

Marcus was about to speak but took a mouthful of bacon instead. After a while the Earl and David came into the room together. David hadn’t shaved and the stubble made his face look grey and drawn. Marcus wondered if they had carried on drinking after leaving the younger members the night before.

‘Morning, guys.’ David clapped his hands together as he sat down. ‘Doesn’t this look splendid? Thanks so much, Mrs Millman.’

After breakfast the Course members went up to their rooms to change for the morning service. Marcus shaved in the small sink, trying not to look too hard into the age-spotted mirror. Abby sang under her breath as she dressed. He watched her move around the room. She stood in a white bra and passed a deodorant stick under her arms, reached across him to wet her toothbrush under the tap and stood looking out of the window as she brushed her teeth. Finally, she pulled on a shirt and a red pullover and came up behind Marcus as he finished shaving. She hugged him from behind, reaching around to stroke his smooth damp cheek with one hand.

‘I should go and wake Lee. It isn’t like her to sleep in: she’s usually the first one up.’

He waited and listened as Abby went out of the room. He heard Lee’s door squeak as it opened and he realised that he had heard the same sound repeatedly in the night — it brought back the dry-mouth panic of his nightmares. Abby came back in.

‘She’s not there. Maybe she went down to the chapel early. I tried her phone but it went straight to voicemail.’

They walked down the stairs together. The Earl and Mouse were talking in the centre of the entrance hall. Mouse watched them descend with a thin smile on his lips. The Earl turned towards them.

‘Young Mouse and I were discussing the paintings here. I bought them on Cork Street over the years. No idea who they are or who painted them. Unless it says on the frame, of course. They come, I suppose, from country-house clear-outs; I like to think of them as my family. Who knows, some of them might be.’

They made their way out into the damp morning air and down to the chapel. The Earl walked beside Marcus, leaning towards him conspiratorially.

‘I don’t know if you heard me last night telling Neil about this uranium mine in Azerbaijan. Astonishing money to be made out there. And some useful tax loopholes to exploit. Let me know if you’d like to put a bit of cash in. Wouldn’t have to be a lot. I like to throw a bone the way of you youngsters every so often. . ’

Marcus hardly heard him, mumbled something, and then let the Earl’s long strides carry him on ahead. Marcus stopped at the entrance to the church and looked back up at the huge house. Smoke drifted from the high chimneys, rooks squabbled on the roof. He made out the window to Lee’s room. The glass reflected the grey streaks of the sky. Abby called his name and he walked through the dark archway and into the chapel.

Lee wasn’t inside. Marcus and Abby walked to the stage where Mouse was already sitting behind his drum kit, spinning his sticks and making rat-a-tat noises with his mouth. David and Sally Nightingale were sitting in the front pew, both of their heads bowed in prayer. The Earl made his way in to sit beside them. Abby and Marcus sat on the edge of the stage. She took his hand and whispered to him.

‘Where’s Lee? We can’t play some of the songs without her. It’s really very bad of her not to turn up.’

The remaining Course members filed into the church and David walked slowly up to the stage. Marcus thought he detected a slight limp as the priest climbed up behind the lectern.

‘Welcome, all of you. I hope there aren’t too many sore heads. The Retreat will be formally over after this service, but we’ll all be around to chat, to answer questions, to have a cup of coffee afterwards. Now let us pray.’

The service dragged by. Marcus felt as if he was watching it from a great distance, that time was being spooled out terribly slowly. Each time he looked at his watch he couldn’t believe that only three or four minutes had passed since his last surreptitious glance. David insisted on the Sunday service being a formal Holy Communion, and the Earl and Sally acted as sacristans, preparing the bread and wine. Marcus knew how different the words of the service would sound to the new members now that they were fully initiated: charged with extraordinary meaning and significance, no longer the repetition of stale prayers but rich with the promise of greater revelation. He looked over at Abby, whose mouth hung eagerly open, as if inhaling the words, preparing for the joy of Communion. The twins sat in the front row, beaming, barely able to keep their heads lowered during the prayers. Only Maki looked bored. Marcus saw her flicking through the pages of the hymnal, a sad smile on her lips. The band played songs that they knew well enough to cover Lee’s absence and then the service was over and the Course members filed out into the grey morning.

Mouse offered Marcus a cigarette and they walked over to the edge of the woods, looking down through the trees to the lake. Abby, continuing up the hill towards the house, called down to them.

‘I’m going to find Lee. What time are you thinking of heading home? We should probably offer to stick around and help clear up. We might even get a bite to eat.’

Marcus drew on his cigarette.

‘I think I’d like to get back. Let’s head off as soon as we can without being rude. You OK with that, Mouse?’

‘Sure, grand. I’m going to sleep all the way home.’

They stood and smoked. Mouse had picked up a stick and was tracing patterns in the ground with it. Marcus tried to read something in the runes that Mouse left in the red earth at his feet, but lost himself in the snaking furrows. He found a stone and threw it as hard as he could towards the lake. It landed well short, plunging down through the canopy of trees, sending a pair of jackdaws up squawking into the sky. He saw Abby standing at the back door as he came up towards the house. She scurried down towards them.

‘I think she’s gone. I think Lee has left like Philip did. Her handbag is gone. Some of her clothes, too. We should tell David. Will you come with me?’

Marcus, feeling suddenly sick, ground his cigarette out in the damp grass.

‘Sure, I’ll come.’

The Nightingales were packing in their room when the three friends knocked on the door.

‘Come in!’ David’s voice was husky. He was standing over the bed folding a pair of identical white shirts. ‘Hi, guys. How can I help?’

Abby stepped forward. Marcus could see that Sally Nightingale was packing her underwear and was attempting to manoeuvre the black lace pile into a suitcase and out of sight.

‘It’s Lee. We can’t find her anywhere. She was, well you know how she gets sometimes. . She was on the edge of one of her slumps last night. I worry that she might have gone home.’

David stood up straight and looked directly at Marcus.

‘I know about Philip. You should have told me before taking him away from here. Sometimes the people who have the strongest reaction against the Retreat are those who are closest to letting God into their hearts. I should have spoken to him before he went. I would have made him stay. We can’t afford to lose people. You know that.’

Marcus, feeling his hangover throbbing behind his eyes, stared back at the priest.

‘I just don’t agree with keeping people here against their will. He would have taken a taxi if I hadn’t driven him. At least the car journey gave me some time to work on him. He may come back, and at least then it’ll be his choice.’

David narrowed his eyes.

‘If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Lee’s. I could wring her neck. But let’s find her first. Didn’t she do something like this a few years back? Someone found her curled up with a book out of sight somewhere, as I remember it. Has anyone tried calling her mobile? She’s probably still drunk from last night.’

‘It’s turned off,’ Mouse said. ‘I’ve tried a few times.’

They made their way back downstairs together. The Earl and Mrs Millman were waiting in the gloomy hallway. David went to stand beside them and turned to face the three friends.

‘You take the top floor, Marcus. Mouse and Abby, why don’t you have a look in the woods? She might have gone for a walk. We’ll search the ground floor.’

Marcus took the steps up two by two, reached the landing and turned right, away from the east wing where they had been staying. He walked along another long corridor whose doors opened into empty, silent rooms. A rocking horse stood against the wall halfway along the corridor. He stood and placed his hand on its cool, mottled haunches. A child’s hand had ripped clumps from the mane, the tail was now just a few white hairs. The saddle was worn slick, the bridle broken and hanging down from between the horse’s square white teeth in two ragged strands. Marcus gave the horse a gentle push and it lurched forward, a painful shriek of protest coming from the rust-sealed joints. He walked on, and the eerie screeching of the horse pursued him as he went.

A spiral staircase led up to the tower he had seen from the lake. He ran up the steps and into a dust-filled study. Books lined the walls and a cluttered desk stood against the far wall. In the centre of the desk there was a half-drunk bottle of brandy next to four crystal glasses. One of the glasses was still full. Marcus went over to the desk, sniffed the brandy in the glass and downed it. He cleared the burn from his throat and went back down the steps.

Through a pair of white swing doors, and around a corner, he found himself in a corridor identical to the one that led to their rooms. He looked out of the window onto the courtyard below and realised that he must be in the west wing. The rooms here were largely unused, full of crates and piles of books and furniture covered in dust sheets. Paintings in chipped frames were stacked facing the wall. He came upon the room with a frieze of mermaids that Mouse had spoken about. The frieze was set in the wall above a huge four-poster bed that sagged when Marcus knelt upon it. The fish-tailed women were very beautiful, breasts jutting out from the tresses of hair that fell around them, stomachs flat and swimming-toned. Marcus ran his hand slowly over the bas-relief carvings. Sea horses and dolphins frolicked behind the women, and in the background whales lurked in the depths. Marcus eased himself off the bed and crossed to the gabled window, opened it and leaned out. From his lofty vantage point he looked down on the gravel driveway below. The day had all the grey hopelessness of late October.

Nightingale’s silver Mercedes saloon was parked next to the Earl’s Bentley. The bus that was due to take the Course members back down to London was sitting with its engine idling on the other side of the turning circle. But his car, which he had parked under the branches of a pine tree when he had come back from dropping Philip at the station, was gone. He ran back down the blank, cold corridors, past the staircase leading up to the tower, and along to his room. He looked on the dresser for his car keys. Then, flinging aside Abby’s neatly folded clothes, he searched for the jeans he had worn the previous day. The pockets were empty. He walked down to the entrance hall where David and the Earl were standing drinking mugs of tea.

‘She’s gone,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ David looked at him with raised eyebrows.

‘She’s gone. She has taken my car. Let me try her phone again.’

He reached into his pocket and dialled her number. Lee’s voice asked him to leave a message. Mouse and Abby came into the hall.

‘Lee has taken the car.’

‘Really? She’s a terrible driver. I mean, not to worry you or anything, but she honestly doesn’t know one end of a car from the other. She drove me back from the pub once when I went to stay with her. Terrifying.’ Mouse smiled at Marcus and started climbing the staircase. ‘I’m sure she’ll be full of contrition when we get back to London. Now I’m going to finish packing.’

‘I would offer you three a ride home with us, but I’m afraid we’ve got my guitar and our suitcases. There’s plenty of space in the bus.’ David patted Marcus on the shoulder. ‘I know it’s a pain, but I’m afraid it’s just the price we pay for knowing someone as unique as Lee. She gets these mad spells. But Mouse is right, she’ll be fine back in London. She was probably just missing Darwin.’

*

Marcus pressed his cheek to the cold window as the bus edged through shuffling traffic along the Banbury Road to the motorway. Abby had made them ham sandwiches. He gnawed listlessly at a corner, his mouth dry. He slept for a while. When he awoke they were at Hillingdon, creeping along in the slow lane. Maki was staring out at the traffic crawling along the grey motorway, headphones on. She tapped her nails on the glass. The twins were chattering at the front, trying to catch the driver’s attention, laughing wildly at private jokes. It had started to rain and the rhythmic swooshing of the wipers lulled Marcus back to sleep. When he woke again they were back at the church.

He lifted his suitcase from the rack above the seats and made his way down the aisle. As he stepped from the coach into the cold rain, Maki took his elbow.

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said. ‘I thought I should tell you. You’ve been very good to me. Goodbye, Marcus.’ She smiled at him, turned, and walked down the path, lifting a small black umbrella over her head.

Marcus and Abby took a taxi home. Abby went to bed as soon as they were in the door, kissing him and trying to drag him with her. He pulled away, called Lee’s mobile again and then decided to walk down Kensington Church Street to her flat. Sunday sadness enveloped Notting Hill Gate. Tramps huddled in the entrance of the Tube as he passed, their breath steaming, hand-rolled cigarettes held up to emphasise their words as they shouted at each other. Italian tourists stood with their hands stretched out, bewildered by the rain: they had heard that the English weather was bad, but this? Marcus held his law-firm umbrella over his head, imagining himself inside a protective bubble. The rain pattered down on the stretched fabric. The sound seemed to move in time with his footsteps, rippling through the patterns of his thoughts until everything was dominated by the syncopated rattle of the rain. Marcus started to look for his car where the road described a dramatic chicane and began its descent to Kensington High Street. When he came to Lee’s door, he rang the bell, stood back, and waited.

Her flat was at the top of a tall building whose ground floor housed an antique bookshop. Marcus could make out a first edition of Surprised by Joy in the window, alongside a series of framed etchings of famous composers. Higher up, the building was striped with red and white bricks. It was a feature of many of the houses in the area and always put Marcus in mind of a series of lighthouses standing sentry over the sweep of Kensington and Chelsea below them. Marcus rang the bell again. A face peered out from a window on the second floor, then disappeared. Marcus was about to leave when the door opened a crack.

‘Are you a friend of Lee Elek?’ The voice was that of an old woman. She was lost in the shadows of the hallway and Marcus couldn’t see her face. He walked up as close as he could to the door and peered inside.

‘Yes, I am.’

The door opened for an instant and the woman dropped something into Marcus’s arms. It was Darwin. The dog, recognising a friend, gave a contented yelp and reached up to lick Marcus’s face.

‘I looked after the dog all weekend. She said she’d be back by lunchtime. I’m going to my book club tonight and I simply can’t have the thing yipping around my heels. Goodbye.’

The door shut firmly in Marcus’s face. He carried Darwin under the shelter of the umbrella as he walked back home, letting the small brown dog nuzzle against his cheek. His fur was sleek and soft. Marcus let Darwin tumble onto the floor of the flat as he came inside. Abby was still asleep and so Marcus placed some slices of salami and smoked salmon on a plate for the dog in the kitchen and stretched out along the sofa, his head and joints aching. He dialled Lee’s mobile again. He listened to her message, was about to hang up, and then stopped. He spoke in a whisper, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

‘It’s Marcus. If you get this, please give me a call. I’m sorry for what happened, I really am. Please come back.’

Abby walked into the room and he hung up quickly.

‘What’s Darwin doing here?’

‘I went down to Lee’s. The batty old woman who looks after the dog when Lee isn’t there literally threw him at me.’

‘So she isn’t back yet?’

‘No.’

‘Are you worried?’

Marcus paused.

‘I’m always worried about Lee. But you know somehow that she’ll always be OK. She has a weird resiliency. She’ll turn up and be charmingly repentant and we’ll all have to forgive her.’

Abby made dinner and they went to bed early, Darwin slumped across their feet. In the middle of the night the dog woke and scratched at the door. Marcus realised that there was nowhere for the animal to crap and so, wrapping a dressing gown around himself and slipping a pair of trainers on his feet, he carried the dog downstairs. In the emptiness of the early hours of Monday morning he stood watching the quivering buttocks of the sausage dog as he forced out a stringy shit. The first planes were queuing to land at Heathrow. He thought about how he used to sit with Lee on her tiny terrace and watch them cruise across the sky. He could tell that Darwin missed Lee. He scooped the dog under his arm and made his way back to bed.