Chapter 17
Revelations
Ed was desperately worried for his friend, but he had already booked a flight and his place at the Open University’s Camden residence, where he hoped to learn an enormous amount at the summer school, breeze through his courses with flying colours and then wrap up his degree in double-quick time. Ed had a plan for that, and he had a plan for Ção, but he did not yet have a plan for rescuing Mark. Although he was tempted to stay in Lisbon, devise an ad-hoc scheme and put it into practice straight away, Ed decided that distance, time and fresh perspectives would help him both to avoid the risk of making the situation worse in the short term and to devise a better strategy to act upon when he did return. Besides, he fancied another taste of his homeland. He packed and flew to England.
Ed was happy to see his parents again, to shed a little of the responsibility for ordering his own life, a responsibility he had sought with eagerness and determination since he had hit adolescence, or that of others around him. Stevenage was as bland as ever, but its very blandness relieved him: a place that was impervious to change and progress, and immune from disaster, was useful to have as a fall-back, or even as a temporary respite from a world where the stakes were higher. The rain fell more slowly here, and was colder. He and his father walked under it to the local pub, the We Three Loggerheads, on the evening Ed returned.
The landlord’s eyes rose when they walked in. He quickly lowered them, and turned his face first blank, then affable.
“Evening, Reverend. Lad looks like your son Ed.”
“It is me, Dick, you twerp. Now pull us two pints of proper bitter, none of your keg rubbish.”
“I think I’d best stick to water. Don’t want my parishioners gossiping.”
“They’ll gossip anyway. The first round is on the house, Reverend.”
“Like the lad said, Dick, two pints of proper bitter. There’s free wine waiting for you every Sunday in St. Catherine’s.”
“I hear you’re a bit stingy with it, though.”
“At that time in the morning, I have to think of the health of my flock. Ah, thank you, Dick. Your health!”
They took their beer and sat in an alcove by a leaded window through which they could watch the rain fade the remaining colours in the street outside. The beer tasted of malt and hops, and it warmed them. For once, Ed told his father the troubles that were weighing on his heart, and for once he was ready to absorb his father’s advice.
“I don’t have any easy answers for you, Ed. I have to churn out pat solutions for my parishioners, because that’s what they expect and want. But for my family, no. If you do my job, even in a quiet place like Stevenage, you pretty soon realise that things rarely work out the way people plan. Things are nearly always more complex and more complicated than they seem. Not to mention people. I’d just ask you, not advise you, just ask you, not to give up on your wife.”
“Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll never give up on Ção.”
When Ed bought up the subject of Mark, his father was more forthcoming.
“It’s an occupational hazard of mine, coming into contact with cults and sects. England’s full of them, as you probably remember. They aren’t always entirely bad, but they are always rivals to the Church of England, so we take them very seriously.”
“Dad, my friend’s wife is desperate. Even if this Pangaia is not entirely bad, she doesn’t want to lose him to it. He’s already left their home to live with the sect.”
“Well, you need to get your friend back in his own home before they brainwash him. If they haven’t already done so.”
“They’ve started. How can we get him back, though? That’s the question.”
“Well, the cults that I’ve known generally share two features that make them strong: greed and secrecy. The greed – for power or money, usually both – motivates them, and the secrecy stops outsiders from finding out about the greed.”
“That doesn’t sound like Pangaia. They put out leaflets and don’t ask the public for money.”
“Do their leaflets say that they break up families? I thought not. Where does the money come from that keeps their community running?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not from tilling the fields, I’d guess.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do, apart from kidnapping Mark?”
“Don’t do that. It would put you on the wrong side of the law. Which is where you want to put them. There are things you can do, though they won’t necessarily succeed.”
“Tell me, Dad.”
“Well, those strong points I mentioned are also weak points. Greed makes people irrational, so they make mistakes. And they usually have a reason for loving secrecy, so if you can bring their dirty secrets to light, you stand a chance of bringing the whole edifice down.”
“I see what you mean. But isn’t that kind of a long-term approach? We’re losing Mark now!”
“Yes, I’m sorry. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to free your friend from his captors – because that’s what they are even if he doesn’t see it. But there are ways you can try. First of all, keep him in touch with the real world, with the people he knows. Get them to write to him, not asking him to leave the cult, or you can be sure the letters won’t get through. Just chatty little letters that will remind him that there is a world outside, there is an alternative.”
“Will it help if people express an interest in Pangaia in those letters?”
“Yes, but without prying. And tell people about the cult, as much of the truth about it as you can dig up. Just don’t put yourself in danger, Ed, do you hear me? Cults can turn very nasty.”
Later, well after closing time, they staggered home together. Ed’s mother was not best pleased to see her husband under the influence.
“How much has he drunk?”
“Only three pints. I guess he’s not used to it.”
“Not any more, he isn’t. Help me to get him up to bed.”
“Who’s ‘him’? Is that me you’re talking about, Lynne? I’ve got a name, haven’t I? And I can get myself up to bed.”
But he could not, not by himself. Between them, Ed and his mother helped him up, Ed supporting his back and taking the weight, Ed’s mother clasping his elbow and guiding them. They left him on top of the broad bed, muttering thanks below the scornful gaze of a crucified Saviour. Mrs. Scripps’ displeasure had turned to fury.
“Don’t you ever do that again, do you hear? Getting your father drunk!”
“What do you mean, Mum? It was only a few pints! He knows when to say no, if he wants to stop.”
Ed himself felt stone-cold sober. His mother sighed.
“Come downstairs, Ed. There’s something I have to tell you.”
They sat in the living room of the vicarage, with its spartan, tasteful mahogany furnishings.
“Ed, before I knew your father, before he entered the Church, David was a registered alcoholic.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“He says the Church saved him. Not Jesus, mind you, the Church, with its hierarchies and rituals and guidelines for good behaviour.”
She registered her son’s distress.
“I’m sorry, Ed. I should have told you before, a long time ago, probably.”
“He should’ve told me.”
“Yes, he should. You would have understood.”
“Yes, I would. I do. It just puts him in a new light. I don’t think any the worse of him for it.”
“Well, let him know that. Never put him in that position again. And, Ed, you might think about your own drinking behaviour, too.”
“I will, Mum. You don’t want another alcoholic in the family.”
“No, I don’t. It’s a good job I prefer cannabis, myself.”
“What?!”
“Yes, I do. Really. I haven’t used it for years, not since David became a vicar, in fact, but I love it. Just to let you know I’m not so holy, if you ever thought so.”
They talked long into the night. Ed’s mother could not tell him anything more about cults, but she did offer solace and sympathy over Ção. And she said the words he most wanted to hear.
“I know you’ll get her back.”
The next morning, Ed got up early and cooked breakfast for his parents. Ção had got him out of the habit of eating a “full English” at home, but he still remembered how to make one. His father was shamefaced, but he was jolly. His mother seemed content to see them happy in each other’s company.
Ed accompanied them to church. With his new knowledge, the Church of England no longer seemed quite so much the enemy, the purveyor of quaint folk tales underlying an irrational belief system that drove people to self-abnegation and passive acceptance. Now it was also a source of strength, for his father anyway, and that meant he owed it. The least he could do was pay the occasional visit.
His father’s evening in the pub was already top of the local gossip charts, but nobody took him to task for it when he greeted each of them after the service, and although he complained of a headache once home, the Reverend Scripps was cheerful over lunch. Ed spent most of the afternoon writing to Simone, passing on his father’s comments, asking for news of Mark and urging her to be positive. For once, he was reluctant to leave the vicarage, and it was only after a long and emotionally cosy family tea that he forced himself to grab his rucksack, say his goodbyes and head for the train to London.
No janitor was on duty at the hall of residence in Camden Town, but there was a notice saying whom late arrivals should contact to get their keys. Ed located the room, and knocked. No answer. He put his rucksack on the floor, sat down next to it, leaned his back against the wall of the corridor and waited for F. Callenthorpe to arrive. A few people came down the corridor, offered a “Hello” or “Hi” or “Evenin’” as they passed and walked on. Finally, someone stopped beside him.
“You looking for me?”
Ed had been dozing. He opened his eyes and found himself looking up the short skirt of a young woman. He tilted his head so that he could see her face instead. Whereas the thighs had been chubby, the face was thin. Hollow cheeks sat under slim glasses, framed by a dark mass of curly hair.
“I’m Frances Callenthorpe. I run the logistics of this show. If you tell me your name, I’ll give you your keys, assuming that’s what you want.”
Ed got to his feet. Now he could look down on her, slightly.
“Yes, it is, thank you. I’m Ed Scripps.” He followed her into the study-bedroom.
“Oh, the man from Portugal. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” She handed him a pair of keys on a ring.
We?
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? The pubs are shut but our bar is still open.”
“Er, no, thank you, Frances.” She looked younger than him. Probably a student, earning some holiday cash.
“What do you eat in Portugal? Fanny.”
“Lots of good things, actually. Including fanny. My wife likes it, too.”
“Good, I’m glad.” She laughed. “What I meant was that most people call me Fanny. As in Frances. Fanny Brawne? Fanny Keats?”
Ah, an English Literature student.
“Can I call you Frances? I like that even better.”
“Do you? People tell me I’m especially tasty. Want to try?”
It’s England. I’m alone. No-one here knows me.
“Sure.”
They dined on each other. Frances was both succulent and juicy. She stripped naked, as did Ed, but insisted on keeping her glasses on “So that I can see you properly.” After Ed had bought her to orgasm, she said she wanted him inside her vagina. She asked Ed not to put on a condom; instead, to pull out of her well before he reached his climax. When he did pull out, she twisted her body round until he was astride her face, then drew his penis into her mouth, sucking on the tip of it until she could feel that he was ready to explode, when she jerked it out of her mouth and directed the warm spurt of his semen on to her glasses. Then she at last took them off, lay back, held them up and let the semen drop from the lenses into her open mouth, before swallowing it. Ed found the sight so arousing that he was ready for an immediate encore. Frances was happy to oblige.
Ed overslept, in his own room, so he skipped breakfast in order not to be too late for his first class. He located the seminar room, opened the door softly and tip-toed in. Twenty faces turned to stare at the intruder. One of them belonged to Frances.
Oh, Jesus, I’ve screwed a classmate before we’ve even started.
“Come in, Ed,” she said, smiling at him. “Everybody, this is Ed Scripps. He normally teaches at Lisbon University, but here he’s just a student like all of you. Ed, grab a chair, I’m sure you’ll find out everyone’s names soon enough.”
Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I’ve bedded the bloody tutor!!
Ed took a seat in the circle between a balding man he deemed twice his age and a shaven-headed girl he thought half his age. When the seminar ended and they all got up to go, the man leaned in to him and whispered “Teacher’s pet!”. Ed looked at the girl, who narrowed her icy blue eyes and hissed at him. He turned back to the man, ready to let his tongue loose, but the man smirked and winked at him. Ed laughed and headed for some fresh air.
A year ago, he had been oblivious to the charms and attentions of the women taking a break from their real lives and eager to try out new selves and new, brief liaisons. This year, he was up for anything, but found himself already marked as off limits. He found it unfair that the property of a distant Portuguese woman should be fair game, whereas the teacher’s pet was not even to be stroked or fondled by anyone else.
Frances took his new role seriously. As long as Ed anointed her regularly and as per her instructions, she bestowed special attention on him both in and out of bed. She guided his studies and encouraged him, and made sure the other teachers knew of their bond. She also helped him search for offshoots of Pangaia in England. In the process of failing to find any, Ed learnt a good deal about cults that did exist in his native land. Their modus operandi followed a pattern that became familiar to him.
Frances’ pillow talk tended to concentrate on the matter in hand, so Ed was surprised when she asked him, “Does your wife know you’re here?” Frances had insisted that Ed come inside her this time, and stay there until he was ready to make love again. The question tarnished the glow of inter-coital tenderness in which they were luxuriating and deflated his nascent re-erection.
“My wife? She doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. She’s with someone else at the moment.”
“She’s left you? Ed, I’m sorry.”
“No, she hasn’t left me. She’s just taking time off. I’m going to get her back, so don’t be sorry.”
“And then you’ll be faithful to her.”
“Of course.”
“But in the meantime –”
“I’m not going to play the victim.”
Frances laughed. “I’m never going to get married.”
“That’s easy enough to say at our age. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three. Younger than you, but wiser.” She kissed him tenderly and caressed his testicles, then bit the inside of his lower lip and squeezed the base of his penis. Ed felt her vagina tightening around him as his erection returned.
Frances could persuade Ed to do anything for her in bed. She could not, however, persuade him to come away for the weekend with her, neither to her family home in Harrogate, where he would have to take off his wedding ring and pretend to be single, nor to South Coast hotels, where wearing it would help them to register as man and wife. He was adamant.
“I want to be who I am! I don’t want to pretend. I don’t want to be single again, and I don’t want to be married to you, lovely as you are.”
Frances looked at him scornfully.
“Better get used to it, kiddo.”
“What?!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Forget I said it.”
To make it up to him, Frances took Ed shopping. The one thing he really missed in Lisbon was books in English. The only place he had found them there was at “Holt’s Books”, where Tinkerbelle Holt welcomed her few customers with tea and biscuits, and gently persuaded them to purchase from her small selection of generously marked-up paperbacks. Ed thirsted for books to read for their own sake, books to help him complete and follow up his Open University studies, and books to help him develop his knowledge of how to teach English as a foreign language. Frances knew the best places in London to find all of those.
Ed saw Frances off on her train from King’s Cross before catching his own to Stevenage for the weekend. She cut a forlorn figure as she shuffled up the platform: pale and over-dressed for August, though perhaps she would need the coat in Yorkshire. Ed imagined she would have friends there who would cheer her up, if her family could not. He himself had a hefty bag of new books to keep him company in Hertfordshire, as well as a budding new understanding with his parents.
On the Sunday evening train back to London, Ed searched the day’s papers in vain for news of Portugal. He hoped to see a headline like “Guru Arrested” or “Sect Dismantled”, but if any such event had taken place, its distance from London meant that Fleet Street deemed it as un-newsworthy as anything else in a country experiencing the first month under its newly sworn-in First Constitutional Government. Ed wondered why he expected more of editors who accorded far fewer column inches to the earthquakes that had caused thousands of deaths in the Philippines and in China than to Keith Moon, a rock band’s eccentric drummer, who had collapsed and been taken to hospital in Florida. He guessed it was because people like him still bought what they were offered, and wanted to know about Keith Moon. He started to dream of a day when new technology might make it possible to buy English-language versions of Philippine and Chinese newspapers in London as easily as English ones, and to dwell on the distribution issues involved.
Frances did look happier after her weekend back home. Ed found himself mighty pleased to see her and to be welcomed back into her bed, where something at the back of his mind came to the fore and landed them in another argument.
“Frances, I was just wondering, do you do this with all your students?”
“Only the ones who want top marks.”
“I don’t care what bloody marks you give me!”
“Hey, I was joking. I’m choosy, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I thought I chose you.”
“Think again.”
“You knew I was a student. Don’t you have any reservations about that kind of thing?”
“Not many. Besides, I don’t think you knew I was one of your tutors, did you?”
“No, but seducing a student is not something that I would do. In my book, it’s an inappropriate exploitation of an unequal power relationship.”
“Sure, if you say so, Ed. Look, just leave that mumbo-jumbo in your book for once, okay? I’ve got a mouth that needs filling with something better than harsh words, if you know what I mean. Please.”
Ed obliged, though it was he who had a bitter taste in his mouth as, afterwards, he lay awake beside her.
Ed had to take some flak from his fellow students for the high marks he got at the end of the course. He pointed out that the marks he received from the other tutors were as high as those he got from Frances. Besides, all the material they had covered was dead easy. He went to say goodbye to Frances. She had already gone: the room was empty. On the writing desk was a sealed envelope addressed to him. Inside was a slip of paper with her address and phone number, and a drawing. Ed recognised himself, naked and erect, ejaculating tiny hearts that had somehow amassed to outline the body at his feet, recognisable by the glasses that sat atop the hearts which covered her body, waiting to be covered in their turn. Ed placed the envelope in his shirt pocket. He could feel his real heart beating against it.
On the last day of his holiday, Ed went to the morning service at St. Margaret’s again. He hoped his appearance there would boost his father’s standing among his parishioners a little. He could play the returning prodigal son as well as be a real son and his own man.
On the plane home to Lisbon, Ed wondered why Simone had not answered his two letters. He hoped that no news was good news, because he did not think that between them they could do much to dent Pangaia. He did not want salvaging Mark to sidetrack him from the more urgent task of winning Ção back, which he was determined to do sooner rather than later. As northern Spain came into view, he began to contemplate how he might make money by selling English books abroad at a reasonable price. It was probably a question of distribution, logistics and scale. However, by the time Lisbon was below them, he had decided to start small: he would write to the publishers of language-teaching textbooks to persuade them to offer teachers free samples. That would be good for everyone. As he stepped from the plane into the welcome humidity of the Lisbon evening, his heart beat faster against Frances’ wistful fantasy.