(Psalm 22:6)
Behold, I see the Lord descending as a dove, Pastor says. The gathering of brothers and sisters in the vestry turn their palms up and make encouraging noises. Tirzah is peering at the fanlight above the curtained double doors, her eyes the merest slits. Come, we beseech You, Heavenly Father, Pastor goes on, enfold us in Your wings, transport us to the heights. Sometimes, Tirzah sends herself up to the ledge just under the narrow, grubby window. That’s as far as I want to go when I’m in the prayer meeting, thank you, she thinks. It’s a nice way of passing the time. Up she goes now, like a spider on a strand of silk, and settles to survey the room. From this angle, some people’s hair looks sparse. And that’s not only the men; Mrs Stanley’s scalp has a broad, straggly seam, the pink flesh breaking through. It’s surprising, because at floor level, she has rows of dry, mousy curls crowding her forehead. Vain, she is, thinks Tirzah, watching as she tweaks her fringe. And going bald, poor dab.
Apart from Pastor, who is still doggedly coaxing the Holy Spirit as if it were a nervous budgie, her parents look by far the most holy. Tirzah’s mother is smiling tremulously, perched on the edge of her chair, ready to run into the arms of Jesus, should He beckon. Her father is wrestling with something as usual. Although he is quite still, there is a sense of contained movement about him, evidence of a struggle only she can detect. Amen, Lord, he says, at intervals, mechanically. Verily, whispers her mother. Come, oh precious Jesus. We are waiting. Tirzah watches as her mother raises her arms towards the buzzing strip light. Fill us to overflowing, Lord, she calls, and everyone steps up the intensity. Tirzah’s armpits prickle at the way her mother’s voice throbs for Jesus, and immediately she is back in the circle.
None of the women shows even the smallest glimpse of a knee, and some not even an ankle; the flesh is fallen and the portal for sin. If you give it an inch, Tirzah knows, it will spill out and go rampaging over everything like bindweed in a rose garden. Tirzah’s legs are covered with thick black tights. She can feel the rash of woolly bobbles meshing on the insides of her thighs. Across the semicircle, her cousin Biddy is resting on her mother’s shoulder. Tirzah has a proper look: Biddy is actually really asleep. Her mouth is relaxed, each outward breath puffing her lips so that it seems as if she is blowing kisses to the room. Biddy has new shoes, with the most lush little heels and buckles. It’s just not fair. Tirzah’s mother insists she wear boy’s lace-ups. We do not follow the world, you silly, shallow child, she always says. We are in the world, but not of the world. Never forget it. And don’t talk to me about Biddy, that girl is spoilt to death. Her mother’s antique shoes are maroon leather affairs with fringed tongues on the fronts and stubby stacked heels. In them, her ankles still manage to look like delicate branches from a rare type of tree.
It doesn’t matter how much Tirzah explains about the other girls in school, and the tidy two-tone shoes they wear, her mother is unmovable on the subject of suitable footwear for growing feet. These will last you; boy’s shoes are sturdier, she states, with little variation, twice-yearly in the shop. And I’ll get my money’s worth. Then she goes on about all the daft fashions around. You’ll thank me one day, madam, she’s always saying, when everyone is hobbling out for their old age pension with snaggly tootsies and bunions. All Tirzah can see are her ugly, indestructible boy-shoes, and how fist-like her own woolly ankles look. Some of the sixth form girls are even wearing platforms to school, though they are banned. And meanwhile she has to stomp about in sponge-soled, wipe-clean lace-ups. The idea she is still growing makes her want to weep; the girls in class say she has feet like Olive Oyl already.
She gazes around again. Most of the brethren keep their knees together, as is only polite. All that equipment, Tirzah thinks, straining to see the bulgy crotch of Pastor as he rocks his lean buttocks into a more comfortable position and starts to sing in his nasal voice: I tried the empty cisterns, Lord, but, ah! the waters failed. Everyone joins in, swooping up and down over the tune. Tirzah automatically hums the contralto, wondering what a cistern actually is. But, more importantly, what does it look like down there, behind those zips? Hideous, she doesn’t doubt. Coiled up, but ready to unleash itself, like that bothersome bindweed maybe, and smother all the sisters, herself included. Dada’s legs are always spread apart, though, his boots rooted to the spot. Thank goodness his trousers are so roomy you can’t see any bulges or odd shapes under his zip. Otherwise she would swoon regularly at the sight. The hymn continues, and Tirzah ups the volume: E’en as I stooped to drink they fled, and mocked me as I wailed. The moment it’s finished her mother starts to pray, already gasping between each word, her hat brim rising like a hungry mouth from its hat-pin pivot at the back of her head, her eyes rolling up under quivering lids.
Tirzah counts slowly, and gets to three hundred and twenty-seven before her mother finishes; there are often dips in her flow of praise, but always a quick acceleration before the end, so Tirzah doesn’t have to pay too much attention to her counting. She inhales deeply, aware of her mother subsiding, and realises someone has broken wind. How rude, she thinks. And extremely unchristian. The Son of God never broke wind, she’s sure. Suddenly she wants to get out. It’s disgusting, having to breathe the air from inside someone’s behind. Doesn’t matter how holy they are. She diverts herself by trying to guess who did it. Some people you just know would not. Mrs Edwards, though. She’s looking more restless than usual. And she has covered her nose with an embroidered hankie, shifting around in the too-small chair.
Thinking about Mrs Edwards’ soft bottom inside her pants, and the way her fart must have silently curled out from the gusset, Tirzah starts to heave. Immediately her mother’s eyes fly open, and she stares at Tirzah. I’m poorly, Tirzah mouths, and startles herself by making the most guttural kind of burping sound. She smacks a hand over her mouth and runs towards the curtained doors. After a fight with the long paisley drapes, she’s out, the doors banging shut behind her. Lovely, lovely open air, she thinks, at once feeling more herself. Even though her chin is wet and her hands are sticky, it’s only spit. Thank the Lord, she thinks. Being ill in prayer meeting would have been so awkward. She clears a final putty-like wodge from around her tonsils. Ych-y-fi, she says aloud, bending to examine the tiny, glistening mound on the pathway. Human beings are revolting.
She straightens and shakily inhales the cleansing, night-shrouded air. There is another, purer world out here. The graveyard sweeps downhill, the shale path glowing in the dark like the Path to Glory. Amongst the headstones, yew trees mass in black clouds, their secret, slow-beating hearts crouched deep inside. She imagines unloosing from her body again and fluttering up through the top of her own head like a newly born moth. Leaving behind the stuffy, holy room, the dust-rough curtains and threadbare carpet, she can feel the weight of the moisture-laden air on her millions of wing scales. On she flies until she reaches the graveyard wall. The stones give off a sharp smell, and as she lands, the lichen opens its thousands of tiny blossoms and they explode, sending out spurts of perfumed powder. Tirzah makes believe she has settled in a gap between two stones, and listens to the twig-like scratches of small brown birds hopping on the wall above her. She hears the squelch of fungi spreading along the base of the wall.
This is the kind of God I would like to have, she thinks, surprising herself. Someone who could lie quietly between these stones with me. It is soothing to merge into everything, here in the wet, forsaken graveyard with its lumpy grass and cross-hatching of buried bones. The sky pressing against the mountain’s edge is both dark and pinkly glowing, punctuated by a solitary crow that looks like a stab wound in its tender flank. She waits, absorbing the violet’s talc-scented breath as it runs around the grave margins, and the sheen on the ridged burdock leaves, and thinks if she is still enough, and small enough, maybe she will learn something important. She can see the spotted, luminous throats of the cuckoo-pint with their columns of berries left over from winter, bright as tiny headlamps. Just as she begins to understand, she is yanked back into her damp dress, somehow still clutching her Bible, still slumped against the chapel wall.
Like a radio being switched off, the shutting doors silence a hymn abruptly. Then Osian is kneeling beside her. You poor little dab, he says, trying to hold her hands. Are you feeling iffy? Tirzah is suddenly tired. Come on, you, he says, heaving her into his arms and standing her upright. No one will know we’re together. I slipped out when they were all going at it hammer and tongs. They’ll be yonks. Tirzah looks at Osian. He is taller than her now, even though they are the same age. The wing of his black hair falls forward over one eye. She strokes her dress into some sort of order, and wonders how he always knows what to do. They’ve made you a matter for prayer again, Osian says, his head on one side. Am I in for it? Tirzah asks. Your mother says that even though you appear devout to the world, you have an ungovernable heart, he replies. Those were her exact words. An ungovernable heart? Tirzah asks. That’s you, Osian says as he grabs her hand and pulls her towards the path. Now let’s go to my house.