Girl A(32)

Attendance at the Gatehouse was poor. There was a group of indistinguishable men in overlong suits, all of whom played the guitar. There was a straggle of mothers, picking at the biscuits and the squash, who waved at Father as we arrived. Babies tumbled down the aisle. There were a few silent widows who sat towards the back and enjoyed the music. One of them, Mrs Hirst, was blind. Her eyes rested always on some distant past, which, at four foot five, was just over my right shoulder. We argued over which of us would have to lead her to the refreshments at the end of the service. We were frightened of her, we said, in the way that children say that they’re frightened as an excuse for being cruel.

At the Gatehouse, my parents acquired the status of minor celebrities. Our family filled a whole pew, and the old women stroked our hair as we passed. One of the youngest mothers asked Ethan if we were albinos, which he didn’t dignify with a response. Father delivered guest sermons on certain Sundays, which were just as popular as Pastor David’s. When Pastor David contracted the flu, Father led his Tuesday-evening prayer group – and kept it.

CG Consultants had closed just after Evie’s birth. The fact was that nobody in town – and very few people in the country – owned a computer. ‘It’s the pioneers,’ Father said to us, ‘who get slaughtered, while all of the settlers finish first.’ Father had always been a religious man, but he had also been a businessman, and a teacher, and a man whom women liked to watch. We were learning about pie charts at school, and I saw Father’s life allocated to a circle. As his other identities diminished, the slice of religion eclipsed the rest.

There were theatrics. The first time that somebody fell to their knees on the floor of the aisle – overcome, I assumed, with the Holy Spirit – Ethan caught my eye and looked away again, as fast as he could. I could feel his shoulders shuddering against the pew. It was less funny the next time, and the next; and less funny, still, when Father knelt at the front of the room, his heavy arms stretching to the cross, as if awaiting an embrace. Delilah knew just what to do. She danced in a circle, with her face thrown back to the sparse, wooden ceiling and her tiny fists clenched. At times, holy tears rolled down her face and into her hair.

It was at the Gatehouse that we first met Thomas Jolly. One Sunday, Mother seized Father’s arm as we filed inside, and nodded towards a strange, bald man at the back of the church. During the service, I watched him. He didn’t sing with the same zeal as Father or the men with the guitars, but he knew every word, and when Pastor David was speaking, he leant forward, his eyes closed, and smiled with small, craggy teeth. At the end of the sermon, he blinked and caught my eye, and although I looked away, I sensed his smile widen.

After the service, Father hurried us out of the pew. ‘Jolly!’ he said, greeting the stranger like an old, dear friend. He whispered something in Jolly’s ear, and Jolly guffawed. Mother arranged us behind her, in a single, solemn line. ‘Look at this family,’ Jolly said, to Father. ‘Look at these children! I’ve heard so much about them.’ He shook my hand and placed his palm across my head. He was a slight man, but ropes of muscle wound around his arms, and his whole body trembled with a keen, contained strength.

‘And another?’ Jolly asked, and cupped Mother’s stomach with both of his hands. She looked at Father, to secure his pride, and she, too, smiled.

On the walk home, Father was invigorated. ‘Jolly’s doing amazing things,’ he said, ‘all across the North West. And it’s us he came to see.’ He laughed, and lifted Delilah above his head. A thin rain was falling, and we didn’t have an umbrella; the cold of it sat beneath my clothes. Autumn, trudging in across the moors. I walked faster, and Ethan ran to join me. Father was still holding Delilah, and now he took Mother’s hand from the pram and swept her beneath his arm. ‘My beautiful children,’ he said. ‘My family.’

Jolly was a pastor in Blackpool, just off Central Drive and close to the hotel where Father worked. Father had assisted Jolly in installing new technology throughout the church: there was an advanced projection screen, for videos and photographs, and state-of-the-art speakers, which Father had inherited from the hotel. ‘The atmosphere there,’ Father said, ‘is like nothing else. It’s electric. If you want to see the future of the church, that’s where you go.’

The holiday was booked for late February, just before the new baby would arrive. Jolly was hosting a long weekend of sermons and events, and Father would provide technical and spiritual support. Ethan, Delilah and I were to miss school on Monday. ‘This,’ Father said, ‘this is learning.’

We would have two rooms at the hotel, he said. The best rooms, which overlooked the ocean.

We hadn’t been on holiday before, but as soon as it was arranged, Father was rejuvenated, as if the promise of it was all that he required. He asked for his liquor every evening, and he described the town in great detail. There was a theme park, he said, and a huge Ferris wheel. We would be able to see all of the way home. Mother, watching him talk, smiled, and closed her eyes to join him in the promised land.

Her pregnancy had been difficult. There were complications with the caesarean scar, which hadn’t been allowed enough time to heal before the skin was stretched again. (How long did they wait, I wonder – after Evie – before he wanted her, and did she protest in the few moments before he was inside her, silently, with her limbs, so as not to wake us?) She had shown us the fine, careful line through which Evie had come, sat low on her belly like the print of a waistband. Now, the scar tissue buckled under the new weight, and Mother spent a lot of time in her bedroom, with the door closed. ‘She needs a break,’ Father said. ‘The sea air. She’ll be fine.’