Chapter 7

“Helen?” Mr. Brindle sounded—how did he sound? Not angry. Almost afraid.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m coming back.” And one more time, to convince herself, “I’m coming back.”

“When?”

“Now.” Silence washed back at her from the receiver. “I wanted to say . . . if you would let me come home, I would be there in half an hour.”

“Let you?” His words were softening and softening, she could have mistaken him for someone else. “Let you? Come back. You really will? I thought . . . what I did . . . I thought. Thank God you’re back.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Thank God you’re back.”

The house made her ashamed. Mr. Brindle had kept the place neat, perhaps only a little more tired than when she left, but still, it compared badly with the Kensington flat. Helen realised her tastes had been changed. She had come to expect the kind of simplicity expense can sometimes lend to things. Helen had stayed with someone who led the life of a wealthy man and who could afford to be careful of quality and design. Material things hadn’t mattered to her before. They did now.

“I tried to be tidy.”

Mr. Brindle escorted her doggedly upstairs past rooms she already found too familiar. Bathroom, boxroom, bedroom. Outside the bedroom, Mr. Brindle stopped. He was keeping his distance—possibly finding her mildly repellent and she could understand that. Frowning towards her, he mashed his hands into the pockets of his jeans: very old jeans he wouldn’t normally have worn around the house unless he was doing some type of dirty work. “Cleaning up. Dusting. It was like, it was a way of thinking of you.” Everywhere smelt mildly of his sweat. “That thing that happened . . .”

Helen found she could meet his eyes quite firmly until his gaze withered away. He didn’t like it when she watched him.

“That thing. I lost my temper. You know when I lose my temper . . . I don’t mean it.” She watched. “I won’t do it again. You shouldn’t have just gone, though. I worried . . . your sister, she didn’t know . . . I won’t do it again.”

He nodded and retreated towards the head of the stairs, wiping his hands down the front of his shirt and Helen knew she did not believe him. Even if he didn’t think so, he would do it again.

Inside the bedroom, the mirror of the vanity unit blinked at her slyly and there was nothing she could touch or see that didn’t seem ready to trip, to leap, to start up the process of making her pay for every piece of every wrong that she had done. She had come here to submit and Mr. Brindle would do God’s will to her, even though he was an atheist.

There was, undoubtedly, the problem of her being a weak person in so many ways. She was susceptible to doubt and hesitation. When she opened her case to fetch out her bits and pieces, the atmosphere of that other place, of the flat, swam up to tug at her and make her current course of action seem confused and difficult to take. Almost all of her wanted to be in Kensington and maybe only lying on the sofa and feeling nice, at ease, and expecting that she would see someone she was very fond of quite soon, if he wasn’t already there with her. She wanted to be comfortable. She had always wanted to be comfortable. Helen didn’t like to be hurt. She enjoyed it when good things happened and she could show they pleased her.

When she’d been in that flat on her own, sometimes she’d put on the radio in the sitting-room and not exactly danced, but wriggled and bobbed, when she’d felt so inclined. Even if she hadn’t been alone, it would have been okay that she’d done this and not something she needed to worry about. She had forgotten how much space in her mind the worry had to occupy, it was already burrowing and smothering every image she was holding inside when she wanted the freedom to remember incidents and people she cared about.

“Helen.” Mr. Brindle was shouting from downstairs, although moderately loud speech would have been perfectly audible. “You going to be up there all night? You’re home now. Okay?”

She abandoned her case on the bed, still full.

Mr. Brindle was calm when she joined him in the dimness of the living-room. He sat in his usual chair, watching a documentary about something to do with crime, and was not especially fatter or thinner than before, but made out of something very minorly different. His flesh seemed more porous and less convincing.

“Sit down. You travel far? Tired?” He didn’t look at her.

“Not really. No.”

“Fine. You’ll sleep in the spare room. Sheets and stuff are out.” He didn’t look at her at all.

“Yes.”

For an hour, the television jabbered recklessly between them. They did not speak again, or draw the curtains, or turn on the lights. Helen watched the room coagulate around her under shrapnel bursts of light.

Whatever he was planning to do with her would clearly involve a wait. Helen knew that tomorrow Mr. Brindle might consult with the men he worked beside, or ask opinions at his pub on what he should do and how he should feel about his wife. The influence of like minds could very often make him angry with her, even if she had not.

Helen, because she could be so easily frightened, had hoped there would be no wait and no opportunity for her to break and run away to softer things again. Still, nothing was wasted in God’s economy and the time she was being offered could be put to use. She might be able to prepare herself.

But this particular part of her waiting—waiting in the fluctuating dark with the television noise and no hope of distraction from the man and the name and the telephone number she could not think about—it was no longer bearable. “You know—”

“What?” Mr. Brindle must have been pausing all that time, ready for when she would speak.

“I just thought I would go up now.”

“Well I won’t be long behind you.” He made a small, breathy laugh, either out of nervousness or disgust. “Not long now.”

“Fine. Good night.”

She didn’t attempt to kiss him because that would have given him the chance to turn his head away.

Mr. Brindle had done well for her in the boxroom. The old wardrobe had been emptied and then refilled with a tangled heap which was all of her clothes. A small stack of paint tins occupied the corner furthest from the unmade bed. The carpet had been hoovered and the walls were penitentially bare. He had left her sheets and blankets and a small electric fire to annoy the damp. When she switched it on, it clicked and rang and produced a fine, acid burning of dust.

All right, God. I’m here. What do you want me to do? Be my shepherd, be my father, let me know what I should do.

She stopped, didn’t open her eyes, but called a halt to herself. Her breathing raced towards a strange anticipation. She listened and could hear the jump of her heart. Careful, now, be careful—this could be nothing, wishful thinking and nothing more.

Helen was kneeling, because a person at prayer is intended to kneel, as a signal of humility and respect. Body kneeling, hands folded, eyes shut—all of her curled and closed to keep out this world and permit its better replacement to enter in. To enter in. For years she had knelt and protected the vacuum that she was, her absence of the convincing and the convinced.

She needed to be very careful and still. As she might be if she hoped to touch a nervous bird.

She should consider the degrees of pain. She should recall the degrees of pain that emptied prayer had caused her over time. To accept her loss of faith and fall silent in defeat had been a relief, but then a burden. God knew, she’d tried to be rid of it. God knew where that had got her, too.

And then a brief stab of inspection dropped through her. The house seemed to lurch around an axis and return almost before she could think. Quiet again. But an ordered stillness, packed and immanent, laid itself down on the backs of her legs like sweat, near as live hands cupping her face.

All right, God. I’m here.

While she opened her mouth to breathe, an inward rush took her and squeezed to her spine. This time the sensation dissipated as gradually as smoke in her veins.

Helen opened her eyes and the boxroom was unchanged. She couldn’t think what she’d expected.

A sign.

Stupid.

Might as well hope He might leave His umbrella behind.

And it wasn’t even that He’d been here. Not that. Only that He was close.

Close. The kind of word to make a person cry without knowing it. Close. A movement of hope behind glass.

Father, I’m here and I don’t know what to do.

After that the speed of everything went wrong. Helen performed what tasks she could remember were called for about the house, even performed them over again, and was still left surrounded by abandoned hours. Walking out to the park, the shops, up and down the stairs and corridors, made no impact on her energy or pace. Every morning Mr. Brindle left her and every evening he returned and she had no sure way of judging what had passed between those two directions— it could have been a minute, it could have been a week.

Maybe not really a week, she didn’t think they’d last a week before it happened.

“Cunt.”

Wednesday evening, meal over and at every point satisfactory, but then she’d tried to bring him a coffee in the sitting-room and dropped the cup. Her hand had forgotten itself. Mr. Brindle heard the impact of the china and the liquid as they came apart, stood and watched for a still moment as the dark, wet heat sank into his rug.

Then he stepped forward and slapped her. “Cunt.” Slapped her in the face where it would show because he wasn’t being careful any more.

Nothing followed, but in Mr. Brindle’s eyes, Helen saw the sharp start of intent, before he could pack it down again. Naturally, she was afraid, but she tried her hardest to accept that her fear had meaning; it was part of her Process. It would make her soft and open, the way she had to be.

Because each night she would kneel and be raced towards the increasingly completed fact of God. Larger than understanding, deeper than death and time, He would hood down over the house like snow, patient and immeasurable.

Father.