The Missionaries (v1.0), page 18
“The villagers are very simple.” He peered at her round his foxy nose. “We have to be very careful what we say. They could easily be…inflamed.”
Which was another excellent idea, she thought An idea with distinct possibilities. But not one, she suspected, that these two wishy-washy fools would ever dare to make full use of.
“If they were…inflamed,” she said, testing the ground, “mightn’t they do our job for us?”
“All too well, I fear.” Mr. Dunbarton spread his hands and stared a little smugly at their virtuous smoothness. “Civilisation is only skin deep in these parts; the stocks, the fire, the ducking stool, they have all been used almost within living memory. Which is why we have to be so careful. It must not be thought that we are hoping to incite a riot.” He paused, waiting for O’Hara, a little slow, to make confirming noises. “No, we merely hope to create a situation in which the missionaries, when they come, will be shown that public opinion is strongly against them. A boycotting of their meetings, perhaps. Or even a mild show of village hostility.”
“Mild, of course,” said O’Hara. “Very mild.”
The stocks, the fire, the ducking stool…and these two wishy-washy fools babbled on about boycotts and mild village hostility. But then, they had not heard her angel…and she could do with their help, she could do with somebody’s help. She was so much shrewder than they, they’d never guess what she was really up to.
“Alright,” she said. “If you’re really not planning anything too nasty, I’ll be delighted to do what I can to help you.”
Dacre would have liked to be at the Albert Hall rally. As a student of human nature and also because, now that he had seen his father again, now that he understood something of the pressures the old man was working under, he would have liked to be there simply to help—if the man on the platform, clothed in nothing but the words he could spin and the gestures he could contrive, was ever capable of being helped.
But Dacre knew he dared not leave his mother alone again. While he’d been away in London last time she’d torn the springs off an old pram she’d found up in the stable loft and attempted to make some obscure sort of catapult. When he’d asked about it she’d smiled and twitched and said they’d soon be so poor they’d have to shoot rabbits. Her hands were gashed from trying to make the thing work, and the ladder down which she’d carried the pram was so rotten that she might easily have fallen and broken her neck. More recently she’d taken to disappearing with the man O’Hara for hours on end, and when she got back she was always so jerkily overexcited that she couldn’t be trusted even to cut herself a slice of bread without drawing blood. He had remonstrated both with O’Hara and with Mr. Dunbarton, but with no success. They said he was exaggerating. They said her drives about the countryside, getting out and meeting people, could do her nothing but good.
And then there’d been the curious business of the electric towel rail. And the odd hoard of petrol in old paint tins that he’d smelt and found hidden under old sacks at the back of the garage. His mother was mad, and getting madder every day, and he didn’t know for how much longer he was going to be able to stand it.
He decided to persuade her to go down to the Hunter’s Moon with him. The Albert Hall rally was being televised live and he had to see it. He had, even at an electronic tenth remove, to be there to help.
She never spoke of his father, and pretended to have no interest in the progress of the missionaries’ campaign. But he’d several times caught her reading the papers he now brought regularly into the house. She’d scuffle them clumsily out of sight and start some harangue about the dishonesty of the tradesmen, defying him to have noticed. He was sure she would want to see the broadcast of the rally. The difficulty was going to be getting her to admit it.
He sought her out late in the day, leaving her as little time as possible in which to change her mind. She was standing by the paddock gate, staring down into the orchard.
“They’re going to die,” she said accusingly. “If you think I’m going to get myself stung all over for their sake, you’re mistaken.”
Dacre sighed. He knew nothing about bees. “I should leave them,” he said. “We haven’t been taking their honey away from them, so perhaps they’ll be alright.”
“No, no.” She shook her head wildly. “They’ll all die. Every one of them. It’s the penalty for innocence, you see.”
Dacre had never thought there was anything particularly innocent about bees. He changed the subject. “Father’s on television tonight. I thought of going down to the Hunter’s Moon to see him.”
“The brigadier must be quite a famous man these days. You know, of course, that he’s left me.”
“He’s been away a long time. But he’ll be back soon.” His mother didn’t answer but hummed a little tune, steering her fingernail to and fro in the worn grain of the gate. Dacre persevered. “Wouldn’t you like to see him? On the television, I mean?”
“Since you ask me, I prefer to answer honestly. No, I would not like to see him on the television.”
“Don’t you want to see how he does? If he’s good at it?” The fingernail stopped abruptly. “Your father is good at anything and everything he attempts. He is a man of many talents. He would have been a general by now, easily, if the top brass hadn’t been afraid of him.” She turned on him sharply. “You go to the Hunter’s Moon a lot, don’t you?”
“Quite often. It’s a good place to—”
“You meet your friends there?”
Friends? “People I know. You met one of them—Janey. I don’t expect you’d approve. They’re not…your sort of person.”
“I approve of more than you think. I should like to meet the rest of your friends very much.”
She was up to something. Exactly what, he was past caring. “Then why not come down with me tonight? “I’m sure they’ll all be there.”
“I think I will…yes, it would be interesting. Thank you very much, Dacre, for asking me.”
She turned away and walked back towards the house, clutching her elbows. He tried to see her from the outside, as the people at die Hunter’s Moon would see her. But she wasn’t always so completely disjointed. She could easily pull herself together when it suited her, when the vicar was expected, for instance, or when she went out on one of her rides with O’Hara. He hoped it would suit her that evening; things were hard enough for him with Rocky and Crud already without her and her bird’s-nest hair and boney knees.
Item from the Missionaries’ LG. Handbook.
Mass conversions depend entirely on a thorough understanding of indiginous mind processes. The probable absence of any common cultural heritage between missionaries and indigenes will be a serious barrier to such understanding. Even art forms will be different, assuming that they exist at all. It is suggested that missionaries’ prehistory may conceivably provide some meaningful contact point.
The noise of the audience came through the closed green room door like that of some gigantic engine. Gordon sat on a little violinist’s chair, and listened to it, and trembled. The groups he had talked to so far had been nothing, hardly more than one of those impromptu lecture audiences at Staff College, and they had been generally friendly. The faceless monster waiting for him out in the huge circular auditorium was utterly different, powerful, capable—if it wanted to—of drowning him in the force of its presence alone. He expected to be heckled, and the prospect was at least human, and didn’t particularly worry him. It was the sheer pressure that appalled him, the concentrated gaze of seven thousand pairs of eyes. He would be unable to move, unable to think, pinned out for dissection. He breathed deeply, and tried to remember how much worse the waiting before some terrible battle had been.
Mr. Wilcox came bowling in from the next room, wafting in teacups and loud—too loud—laughter.
“Zero hour minus three minutes, sir.” He spun his chair to a neat stop in front of the brigadier. “News is they just put out half a dozen agitators, banners, stink bombs, the lot. Pity, I say. Should’ve let ’em stay. I’d of give ’em stink bombs.”
“Your talents will still be needed, Sergeant Major. We’re in for a rough ride, unless I’m much mistaken.” “You’ll see us through, sir. Always did, always will.” Even as he watched Wilcox’s familiar technique for stiffening officers, Gordon felt it working: habit of a lifetime. Thank God, he thought, for a little personal discipline.
“They’ve asked me to say a little prayer, sir, just before we go on.”
“Of course, Sergeant Major. I’m just coming.”
He followed the wheelchair back into the adjoining room. It was tactful of George to give Wilcox his moment here, where it would do least harm. His heart might be in the right place, but his theology was shakey and he was given to long extempore prayers about nothing in particular.
This evening proved the exception. “Oh ustiliath,” Mr. Wilcox prayed, “bum in us all brightly now, so that thy flames may astonish the multitude and thy heat may warm and comfort all them as has come to the Albert Hall tonight Help us to talk sensibly and to remember to be humble. And give us strength to shout down all the lousy hecklers. Amen.”
They remained quiet for a moment. Gordon caught himself wondering what possible impression that sort of naivete would be making on their distinguished visiting speakers, and felt immediately ashamed. If they didn’t like it, then they had no place on the platform. Ustiliath was for all, not just for the sophisticated few. At a sign from George they formed up in a line and filed out, through the green room and up onto the stage. Gordon realised that for a full three minutes he had forgotten to be frightened.
Dacre’s ride down into South Molton had been hair-raising. His mother drove at a steady forty-five, the big Wolseley filling the entire width of the lanes and gouging mud from the banks at each blind corner. His left foot ached from pressing an imaginary brake pedal through the floorboards. Fortunately they met no other car during the whole journey.
Conversation in the cedar-wood annexe cut off sharply as the two of them entered. Of the eight people there, Dacre knew perhaps three. But they all knew him, and they also appeared to know his mother. They shifted, and whispered slyly among themselves. Dacre led his mother to the counter and set her on a stool where she could see the television set. He ordered coffee, and prayed that she wouldn’t make a scene about its nastiness.
It wasn’t yet time for the broadcast from the Albert Hall, and the television set was on another channel, the volume turned down, showing an overweight young man who ran up and down a ladder waving a bunch of plastic roses. Sylvia watched him indulgently, and felt very sorry for the way some people had to earn a living. She was enjoying herself. She enjoyed having done her hair and put on her best dress. She was being stared at, and she enjoyed that too. She hadn’t had an evening out in years, not since they’d come to the farm, in fact—though the Hunter’s Moon was hardly the sort of place one would have chosen, all other things being equal.
There was a restaurant she remembered in Cairo, and another in Athens…she smiled to herself, thinking of the brigadier in his fine uniform with the medal ribbons, and herself being such a travelled person. Then her smile hardened. The brigadier no longer wore a fine uniform. And Cairo and Athens were far away, part of another, a frivolous life. She was there in the Hunter’s Moon for a purpose.
She turned her smile on Dacre. “Which of these are your friends?” she said. “I’m longing to meet them.”
“They’re not here yet. Perhaps they won’t come.” If he had anything to do with it they’d be at home by their mums’ tellies, in their mums’ own little front rooms. Even though up to now his mother seemed to be on her best behaviour, the meeting was still something he could well do without.
“Now tell me,” she said. “One of them used to work in a quarry, didn’t he? Isn’t he the one called Rocky?”
“That’s right.”
She nodded, and went on smiling, defying him to ask her how she came to know so much. As if he was bloody interested. She could know the size of the mole on Rocky’s arse for all he cared. At that moment the man behind the counter switched television channels and turned up the volume. An extraordinary sound of drumming filled the cafe. And spotlights moved across a distant stage, outlining tiny figures. Dacre’s concentration sharpened to a pain. He found his hands were trembling, and he linked them together to keep them still. Something was going to go wrong. He knew that something was going to go wrong.
Ahead of Gordon went George, followed by the four visitors, then William and Cora and Sally, and Mr. Wilcox efficiently trundling his chair. And finally, glad to be last—and hopefully least—Gordon himself. During the prayer backstage, drumming had begun to be relayed from loudspeakers all round the auditorium. William had spent eighteen hours the previous day recording and rerecording in a nearby studio—taping the springs of his racial subconscious, he said, self-mockingly. Gordon had never imagined the result would be anything like this.
As he entered, last in the slow line, the sound bore over him like a force that had to be parted before he could move right leg in front of left or press his bowed head forward in the wake of the others. He was unaware of the audience, of light and dark, of the vivid curtained trappings of the stage, of the magnificent crystal dome that hung over them—unaware of everything but the beating rhythms. They circled the gigantic auditorium, circled the sky beyond, circled in his head, rolled and pounded and patterned, battled over him and into him, a black, never-ending wave. When briefly they paused, their silences were pain. And their continuance was an unbearable, ever to be bom, intoxication.
He resisted the drums and they mocked him. He fought their primal influence and lost. He withdrew, and was sought out in even his most secret places. He stood, not knowing where, unable to move. He was alone with himself and the battering, impossible sound of the drums. He was alone, circling with the drums. Circling.
Unbelievably, cruelly, the drums stopped.
And with them, his entire being. He hung, crying silently in the void for their return…and began to fall, dropping down and down, clawing at echoless walls, dying, deathless…and was caught up and made safe: safe in a towering, life-affirming unison of hammerstrokes. Ustiliath. Ust-il-i-ath. Ust-il-i-ath.
It grew in his mind, whispered, voiced, and shouted. And he could raise his head, must raise his head now to those around him, those above him and below him and around him, sharing with him the rhythm, the word, the cry, the truth. Ustiliath.
Item from the Missionaries’ I.G. Handbook.
The working of individual ‘miracles’ is to be discouraged. As a means of obtaining converts its effects are very short-term. As a means of obtaining easy popularity it is cheap and unworthy…Integrity losses have to be balanced against strategy gains. The final decision rests at all times with the missionary captain.
Dacre had marked where his father was sitting. A huge transparent dome was hung over the stage, with low platforms and screens beneath it, giving the area a contained, almost temple-like appearance, walled with darkness. Within it the ten people stood, on different levels, in a wide curve. Gordon was on a low platform at the extreme left.
With the ending of the drums, and the cry that had followed them, George had started speaking at once, his voice clear and powerful. But the moment was theatrically wrong, and mere words a cheat. The audience shifted ominously and began to murmur. Dacre, knowing that he had been right, sweated.
The camera wandered from George, moving round the circle. Suddenly Dacre was seeing his father in close-up, a face that could be looked at as a stranger’s, the light and shade impartially composed into an image that Dacre could judge and find well-boned, astonishingly noble.
Behind the camera the noise of the audience was rising. The face of the man on the screen was calm, the deep eyes seemingly untroubled. But Dacre knew otherwise. His father would be destroyed; he was too old and cared too deeply. He needed Dacre there to protect him, impossibly, with his presence, with his bare hands, to silence the insulting, dangerous murmuring of the crowd.
Gordon stood, very straight and still, staring at the motes that danced in the spotlight around him. He hadn’t believed in this, he hadn’t believed that this could ever happen. Ustiliath gave life where before there had been death; he couldn’t believe in its being mocked, disregarded, ultimately denied. Every murmur, every restless movement from the darkened, boundless auditorium made his disbelief harder to sustain. Every sound was a knife.
“For many centuries,” George was saying, “men have been alone, each man alone and powerless and afraid. To cope with their solitude and their fear they looked, not inwards, but outwards. To cope with their solitude and their fear they invented God.”
There was a rustle in the hall, and one woman’s voice dear, shouting “Shame!”
Others sniggered, and the cry was repeated. “Shame! Shame!”
George left his place and moved forward to the edge of the stage. Gordon watched him, tiny against the vast dim span of balconies and faceless faces.
“Don’t mistake me.” He spread his arms. “Don’t mistake me. I know, as you do, that God exists. But—”
“That’s very nice of you to say so.”
More sniggers, this time almost open laughter.
“But not,” George persisted, “as the omnipotent creator. Nor yet as our final judge. Some people will tell you that God is love. But I say no. God is life.” He lowered his arms. There was a silence. Gordon thought he almost had them. “God is human life. God is a part of an unimaginable whole. And that whole, every being, every planet, every ball of incandescent gas, every speck of dust in the entire universe, everything there is…all this is driven to survive, to grow, to perfect itself, by one thing and one thing only. It is driven, shaped, perfected, glorified, by ustiliath.”
