Evensong

1

Olivia was given the news about Marek as soon as Anwar got it,in the early morning of October 10.Her reaction was quiet, almost uninterested. It was, of course, a story from the past that had no reason to concern her as personally as it concerned Rafiq or anyone else from UNEX. But she told Anwar, after a short pause, “I need to be sure you’ll stay until the summit’s over.”

“I already told you—”

“Tell me again.”

“Yes. I’ll stay.”

“Until the summit’s over.”

“Yes. You know I won’t walk out on a mission.”

“I’m taking tonight’s Evensong service in the Cathedral. I want you there. I’m giving the sermon.”

The news spread like wildfire: she was actually taking a service. She hardly ever took services, at least not routine ones like Evensong.

The media attention was huge. Reporters packed the Cathedral.Someone (Olivia herself, or the New Anglicans’ PR people) had told them it would be her biggest public statement since the Room For God broadcast. The Cathedral filled up. Gaetano and several of his staff were placed strategically, and Anwar had chosen an aisle seat in the pews, five rows from the front.

She wasn’t known for observing details of ceremony and ritual,andhalfthecongregation(themediahalf)werehoping for her to slip up somewhere and give them some good footage. She didn’t, though. She took the service impeccably.

The choir was singing the evening’s first psalm. She recognised the words from other Evensongs at other churches. The New Anglicans had regular Evensongs. She’d seen to that after the one she attended at Rochester Cathedral five years ago. She remembered meeting Michael Taber there. A nice man, and also very smart. She’d seen him only a few days earlier on her banks of screens, when Rochester Cathedral was occupied.

For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter.

He shall defend thee under his wings,

And thou shalt be safe…

October had turned cold and grey. No copper evening sunlight. A biting wind, a choppy pewter sea. The effect of the cold evening light on the Cathedral’s white and silver interior, the plain pale wood, the altar with its plain silver cross on which no figure was nailed, was to turn it colder.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace...

The words of the Nunc Dimittis always sounded like they should be the closing words, but they weren’t; there were some responses and collects, and then a brief silence during which the noises from Brighton’s foreshore could be dimly heard as she walked up to deliver her sermon. The New Anglicans didn’t do pulpits; she simply stood, a small figure in a dark red velvet dress, in the space before the altar where Anwar had fought Bayard and Proskar and six others, and where she’d ridiculed him. And where he’d met her on October 6. She spoke without notes.

“These last few days, I’ve found an unexpected companion. Someone who’s shown me some unexpected things. This companion told me recently I should hate our enemies less and understand them more.”

Anwar felt a thrill go through him.

“I was walking along the seafront, past those arches between here and the Palace Pier, and past some arcades with games. There was one where things popped up and you had to knock them down with a rubber mallet, only for others to pop up, also to be knocked down. My companion asked ‘Remind you of fundamentalists?’”

There was a faint ripple of laughter in the congregation.

“Yes, that’s how I should have reacted, but I didn’t. I went into a rant about fundamentalists everywhere. Filth, I called them, and scum. ‘I hate their beliefs,’ I said, ‘more than I love mine.’ My companion said, ‘If you hated them less and understood them more, maybe even more people would support you. Including some of them.’”

She looked around the Cathedral. The sounds of the Brighton foreshore and the gulls and the sea, which had been waiting outside for just such a moment, crept into the Cathedral as she stopped speaking.

She knew exactly where Anwar was sitting and carefully avoided looking in his direction when she went on. “That was important for me. More important than my companion suspected. It’s come back to me several times since. And for several different reasons, some of which I’ll share with you this evening.”

But only some, Anwar silently prayed, and nothing which gives any clues about me.

“I’ve seen injustice and suffering and it should make me compassionate, but it doesn’t. It makes me furious. My first instinct isn’t to comfort the victims but to strike at the perpetrators. I’m an Archbishop, but compassion doesn’t come easily to me. Hatred comes easier.

“Which brings me to our enemies. You know what I call them. Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance. I hated all of them, leaders and followers; followers because they’re weak and stupid, leaders because they make use of weakness and stupidity. But my companion’s remark made me look again at the followers.

“So to everyone who’s ever been duped or brainwashed or bullied into these ghastly fundamentalist cults, we’ll offer something new: an Outreach Foundation. It’ll be like everything else we do, businesslike and properly funded. And it’ll offer something better. Dignity. Self-esteem. Purpose. Not superstition and guilt and blind obedience–they can get those from any of our competitors.

“But if they don’t take it, then they’ll have what I still offer their leaders: my hatred.”

There was a murmur around the Cathedral. She’d said it with relish.

“Yes, you heard me. Hatred. We can’t love everyone. We can’t make heaven on earth. We can’t make everything perfect, but we can make some things better.”

She sounds so much like Rafiq, Anwar thought. Why haven’t they ever got into bed, either politically or literally?

“And we must make them better, because we may be all there is. We exploit space, but we’ve stopped exploring it. Is it because we think that nothing’s out there? We’ve turned inwards. Maybe there really is nothing except us. And God.”

This is new. They’ve never heard her say things like this. Where’s she going?

“Maybe we really are alone as a species. Often enough we’re alone as individuals. Think about our relationships: the line where an individual ends and a couple begins. A secret can mark that line. If one half has a secret they can’t share, maybe they should never become a couple. Maybe it would be better if they both stayed alone.”

There was a puzzled murmur from the congregation, and she didn’t elaborate. But for Anwar, it struck a chord. A cold and sickening one. He knew exactly what she meant. He’d said it to her himself, when she almost offered him something real and he rejected it. Not only rejected it, but laughed it into nonexistence. What have I done?

And later, when she gave him that book, he’d sensed she was again moving in and he’d felt a copper tang of fear. He felt it now, but a different fear: the fear that he was wrong. What have I done?

“Stayed alone,” she repeated softly, as if talking to herself. “Individual identity. It should be the last line, the one never crossed. The place where the soul lives. But I’ve seen it invaded…”

Even Anwar didn’t understand that reference. Maybe he wasn’t the only one here to whom she was addressing cryptic remarks.

She shook her head violently, as if to clear it.

“Our society is capable of great things. Technology hasn’t cured all our problems, but it has solved the food and fuel shortages that people feared fifty years ago would bury us. And yet, there’s always the thread of selfishness and selfobsession. While we work to solve the remaining problems, like the water rights that are why the UN is coming here, we see everywhere, on every screen, advertisements showing people putting things in their mouths.”

Again, a surprised murmur. Again, she didn’t elaborate. And again, Anwar was the only person in the Cathedral who knew what she meant.

Anwar, when he was Rashad, was fascinated by advertisements. His classmates talked about their favourite programmes, but he preferred the advertisements. An unconscious commentary on society. Have you ever thought, he asked repeatedly, how many of them show people putting things in their mouths? Burgers, chocolate, pies, lividly-coloured drinks? People putting things in their mouths: a logo for our society. His classmates chewed their burgers and stared at him, open-mouthed and uncomprehending.

Just like tonight’s congregation. They probably think she’s veering all over the place, but there’s no mistake. She’s been waiting to say this as long as I’ve thought it.

“Yes, the New Anglicans are a political movement. We’ve had to be, because established politics has too often chosen to appease fundamentalism rather than challenge it. Yes, the New Anglicans are a corporation. We’ve had to be, because having a better way than the Dark Ages isn’t enough unless you have the wealth and organisation to put it out there and make it work. And yes, the New Anglicans are a Church! More than ever. So we’ll reach out to the bullied and disenfranchised and marginalised and brainwashed, and bring them into the light where they can question anything and everything, including us, because we aren’t infallible. We don’t promise to make everything good. But we do promise to make some things better.

“I may not always be out here, in front of you, but God is always out there. And you know what our God wants from you. Not worship, but ambition. Remake youselves! TakeHim into you!”

2

After the service she left quickly, going through a small door behind the altar. Gaetano stood there to prevent anyone following. People and press remained in the Cathedral for some time, milling around and discussing her sermon—the parts they understood, and the parts they didn’t.

One by one, wristcoms were flipped open and journalists started calling in their reports. A few went outside to call, hunching their shoulders against the cold—the wind from the sea had become more biting as evening turned into night—but most preferred to stay in the relative warmth of the Cathedral. Anwar, wandering dazedly among them, thought they were speaking in tongues.

Their reaction to her sermon was mixed. They didn’t know if her tone was optimism or despair. And they were puzzled about some of her references: relationships, for example, and people putting things in their mouths.

Along with the puzzlement Anwar heard annoyance and even scorn. Her sermon had been pitched as her most significant public statement since the Reith Lecture, and most reporters thought that, well, frankly it was nothing of the sort. The Outreach Foundation was significant, but hardly on a par with the huge policy and strategic initiatives she’d taken with Room For God. And many New Anglicans, below Olivia’s level, were already doing similar things, albeit informally and piecemeal.

Some of them were doubly annoyed because they’d expected her to say more about the summit, in view of everything that had happened in the last few days—her sudden cancelled meetings, rumours of rows with Zaitsev over the Signing Room, and the strange occupation of Rochester Cathedral with the failed ultimatum. More than once he heard the phrase “the Troubled Summit.”

And then, there was the Companion. That prompted a feeding frenzy. Who was it? Had she got one of The Dead, maybe there ahead of the summit to protect Zaitsev? He even heard someone likening the Companion to Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, but perhaps with the roles reversed. It was only a passing remark, and wasn’t picked up by anyone else. It didn’t even make it to that journalist’s channel. Some fat subeditor, between uncomprehending mouthfuls of burger, took it out.

And finally, her closing remark about not always being here. Some of them took it to be just an expression, but others wondered if it hinted at an attempt on her life. Most of them, however, tied it in with her suddenly-cancelled meetings, and wondered what was going on. Was she planning to leave the New Anglicans?

All these elements were enough to make the sermon a good story, but it didn’t get automatic top ranking. It was upstaged on most channels by the brief but breaking news about the discovery of Parvin Marek’s remains—which, by now, had been rushed back to Kuala Lumpur and definitively identified. It was an old story, but now it had returned strangely, and prompted speculation about the effect it might have on the families of Marek’s victims. And on Laurens Rafiq.

3

When he’d heard enough, Anwar walked up to the door behind the altar. Gaetano was still there.

“What did you make of that?” Anwar asked him.

“It sounded like Goodbye.”

“Where is she?”

“She went into the Garden.”

Anwar passed through the door and out of the Cathedral. He found her standing under a spreading laburnum tree. The Garden was darkening, and wind rushed through the shrubbery. Noises from the Brighton foreshore across two miles of ocean—music, people, traffic, laughter—made an unsuitable counterpoint to the weather, and to his mood.

A couple of Gaetano’s people were standing nearby, but when she saw him she waved them away. He took off his jacket and offered it. She draped it over her shoulders.

He began “I think I was wrong—”

“Didn’t you hear me in there? You’ve won. You can have your comfort zone, I won’t violate it. And I won’t try to trick you, or suck you in. So that’s my part of the deal, and your part, which you’ve already told me you’ll honour, is to stay for the summit. For the whole of the summit.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“It all kicks off in four days. October 14, the eve-of-summit reception. Then October 15 for nine days or however long it lasts. Are we still agreed?”

“Is this because of the news about Marek?”

“They were saving Marek for later, but something made them decide to reveal him now. They’re still active. You stopped their plans for the Signing Room, but they’re still coming for me.”

“That book you gave me. You went out and looked for it yourself, didn’t you? Not your staff, but you.”

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s done anything like that for me before, except maybe Arden.”

“Who? Oh yes, her...Well, you tore a page out of your book, and nobody’s done anything like that for me. Not even Gaetano. But they’re both gestures and they both belong in the past.”

He wanted to argue, but couldn’t find the right words. Her sermon, the part of it intended for him, had hit him like one of his Verbs. He saw her differently. He was beginning to think he understood her.

“What if I was wrong?”

But she wasn’t listening. She had already decided she understood him. “Your obsession about—what do you call it?—The Detail. That’s in the past too. If we both survive this I’ll tell you. But it’ll wipe out what you think you feel for me...”

“How do you know what I think?”

“Because you’re looking gormless. God knows what you’d have said if I hadn’t interrupted you...And it’ll wipe out everything I’d planned for getting closer to you, some of which I’d almost believed would work. But it won’t, not with a Consultant. You were right about that. So you’ve won and I’ll leave you alone.”

He didn’t reply.

“Oh, come on. We can still do the fucking if you want, that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll each take what we want from it.”

“You said that once before.”

“This time I mean it.”

“You said that once before too. Why are you talking like this?”

“Because you’re starting to sound as gormless as you look. I understand you better now. You changed after your meeting with Rafiq, but only on the surface. Underneath you’ve still got the same one-person comfort zone. And that’s just you, I haven’t even started about me.”

He didn’t reply.

“Too much keeping us apart, Anwar. On both sides. Think about it. Me? And a Consultant? You were right the first time. That train’s left the station.”

“Maybe it hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Don’t be crass. It’s gone. Like I wrote in your book, you mistimed.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“Yes it does. Listen to yourself. You’re in denial. When your head’s in the sand, you know what you’re talking through.”

Again he didn’t reply.

“Why do you think I promised to tell you The Detail afterwards? Because we won’t be here afterwards. You really mistimed. When I thought I wanted you, you were scared to commit. Now you think you want me, but in a few days we won’t be here. Even you can’t defend me against what they’ll send. It will kill you, Anwar! Rafiq knows that. That’s why he’s left you here on your own. He’s saving his best Consultants, however many there are, for when they come for him. He’s next, and he knows it.”

A noise behind made him whirl round, and both of them gasped. Gaetano was coming towards them, and with him was Arban Proskar.

4

Back at Fallingwater, Arden briefed Rafiq about events at the villa.

UN Intelligence had told her that what happened to Proskar was bad news because, to them, it was. They’d missed him. They traced his entry into Croatia easily enough, as he was travelling openly on his passport, but because of the way he’d left Brighton they expected him to go into Zagreb, where his flight had landed, or on to Dubrovnik; he had family in both cities. They didn’t expect him to leave Croatia directly after entering; but that was what he did, slipping over the border into Slovenia, where he used his passport to get a flight back to Britain. For UN Intelligence it was an almost unheard-of error, though his change of mind was a genuine act of impulse. As his plane touched down at Dubrovnik he’d simply decided that he shouldn’t walk out on her.

Rafiq’s usual courtesy almost slipped during all this. He had trouble concealing his boredom, since it was all academic now. She’d previously told him that the examinations carried out exhaustively on Marek’s body at Kuala Lumpur confirmed conclusively the findings of the field examinations carried out at the villa at Opatija. Beyond any doubt it was Parvin Marek, and beyond any doubt he’d been dead, and kept in cold storage, for at least three years. Carefully-worded news releases were already breaking in the media.

While he gazed at Arden, Rafiq saw a number of scenes passing behind his eyes; scenes from ten years ago which he couldn’t repeat to her, but didn’t need to.

“I know what you’re feeling,” she told him, and immediately regretted how empty it sounded. For once, her famous empathy had deserted her.

“I was going to tell you,” he said, “to let me have an hour privately with the body so I could do things to it. No,” he waved down her reply, “it was only a passing thought. Get forensics to take the body. And get them to do things to it.”

“They already have,” she reminded him. “I told you earlier.”

“And the families of his other victims? They’ve been contacted?”

“Yes, all of them. I told you that earlier too.”

“Thank you.”

5

Olivia rushed past Anwar to Proskar. She took both his hands—those unusual hands—in hers. “Thank you for coming back.”

“I couldn’t walk out on you, Archbishop.”

She kept his hands in hers. “I missed you. And,” cocking her head back at Anwar, “he has something to say to you.”

“I owe you an apology,” Anwar said. “And however I word it, it’s going to sound inadequate.”

“I’m just glad to be back,” Proskar said awkwardly. “Let’s leave it, we have a lot of work to do.”

Olivia still hadn’t released his hands. They dwarfed hers. “Are you finally sure,” she asked Anwar, “that he isn’t Marek? Maybe Arden what’s-her-name isn’t what she seems. Maybe she switched the bodies. Proskar could be the one getting cut up in Kuala Lumpur while here, before us, we have the real Parvin Marek.”

Laughing, the three of them walked away and left him in the Garden. He heard her call back to him over her shoulder, “You mistimed, Anwar.”

He thought about her sermon. He’d thought of little else. What she said about her meanness of nature. She didn’t do compassion, she preferred to strike at perpetrators rather than comfort victims. Anwar, despite his physical prowess, had never behaved with any particular meanness towards any opponent. He’d just done what was necessary. There, he thought, there’s an example of how we could fit together, how we could become more than the total of our individual parts.

He was still in denial. Before, he told himself, there was nobody. Now, there’s nobody else. He walked over to where she’d dropped his jacket. He picked it up, dusted it carefully down, and put it back on. “Now, there’s nobody else?” he thought. “Now, there’s nobody else?”

When you’re in denial, you tell yourself ridiculous things. When your head’s in the sand, you know what you’re talking through. He started laughing at himself, the way he’d laughed at her.