A Creed for the Third Millennium Page 26

  'She's jealous of Joshua,' said James. 'She always has been, poor Mary.'

  'Well,' said Mama, picking up the T-shirt and poking it down inside the poster, 'I think the best thing we can do with these is burn them.'

  Martha got up. 'Give them to me, I'll take them down to the incinerator,' she said colourlessly.

  But it was Andrew who reached out and plucked the roll off Mama. 'No, I'll do it,' he said. 'You, my Mouse, can make me a mug of hot chocolate.' He lifted wry brows at James and Miriam. 'I'm sure the plants won't mind a little puff of warmth from Joshua!'

  That was perhaps the most depressing of the Christian family's early reactions to Joshua's sudden fame. It was followed very shortly by the most euphoric, heralded by the arrival of Elliott MacKenzie on the back stoop of 1047 Oak Street He was armed with a proposal.

  However, he waited until after Mama served him an excellent dinner, using the time to observe the various Christian faces, and wondering how their fair placid beauty could ever interlock with Joshua's dark turbulence.

  'Joshua is going to be literally months touring around the United States,' he said over coffee, 'and I have an enormous market abroad, especially in Europe and South America. England, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are clamouring for a visit from Joshua, as are all the states south of Panama.'

  They sat listening attentively, proud but a little puzzled.

  'Anyway, I have an idea I'd like to put to you,' he went on, 'though there's no need to give me an answer right away. You've always supported Joshua in the clinic, you're a very close-knit family and I guess you know Joshua, his work and his ideas, better than anyone else.' He paused, turned to James in particular. 'James, would you and Miriam consider touring the Eurocommune on Joshua's behalf? I know Miriam is a very fine linguist — which actually Joshua is not — and that gives you a very great advantage. It's not the same as Joshua, but in all honesty I don't think that matters.' Then he turned to Andrew. 'I've got a job for you too, if you're interested. South America. Would you and Martha take that on for Joshua? I know you speak fluent Spanish, and we'd put you through an intensive course of Brazilian Portuguese before you go.'

  'How do you know what languages we speak?' asked Mary, staring at Elliott MacKenzie so painfully that he shifted uncomfortably in his palest-pink chair.

  'Joshua told me, when he had dinner at my place. He's terrifically proud of all of you, you know. And I think it would delight him to realize you were taking his work into other countries.'

  'It's a very hard thing to decide,' said James slowly. 'Usually Joshua's here to make the decisions. Couldn't we contact Joshua — by phone if it can't be arranged any other way — and see what he thinks?'

  'Well, I hate to remove Joshua's authority, but honestly he's got so much on his plate at the moment that I think it would be much better if you didn't bother him,' said Elliott MacKenzie delicately.

  'I'll go,' said Mary abruptly.

  Her brothers both turned to stare at her, astonished.

  'You?' asked James.

  'Yes. Why not me?'

  'For one thing, Drew and I are married, we have wives to help us. For another, we have the necessary languages.'

  'Please let me go!' she whispered.

  Andrew laughed. 'We haven't even decided yet if anyone is going, Mair. But Jimmy's right. If any of us go, it will have to be the married couples. You and Mama must stay here to look after things.' His eyes rested thoughtfully on Martha, who sat with lids lowered and face blank. 'Actually I'm very tempted, Elliott,' he said, turning to smile at the Atticus publisher with a great deal of his oldest brother's sweetness. 'A couple of months in South America might do my wife the world of good.'

  So it was that Dr Christian's mother joined him in Mobile, Alabama. As reason for her sudden unheralded appearance, she gave out the news that all work in the clinic had had to be discontinued because of the head of the clinic's meteoric plunge to fame.

  'Oh, you've no idea what it's been like!' she said to her son breezily. 'People everywhere! They don't come for treatment, they just seem to want to look at our houses and have a cup of coffee and talk to us because we're your family. It's like trying to move around with a million newborn chicks all over the floor! We can't work But it's quite all right, dearest,' she said with great earnestness because he stood there so still and quiet, 'we've all found other work to do. Mr MacKenzie is sending James and Miriam to Europe because the book's out there, and everyone's screaming for you. Only you can't go because you've got here to do, and anyway, you don't have the languages. Then because Andrew speaks such beautiful Spanish, Mr MacKenzie is sending him and Martha to South America. The book's out in South America too. So there I was! Out of a job! James and Miriam and Andrew and Martha have already gone to New York for briefing or coaching or something, and they won't be back. So — anyway! — I told Mary she would have to look after the houses and the plants, because I'm going to come along with you!'

  His stillness broke into a huge jerky shudder. 'But — my work!' he gasped.

  Mama rattled on nervously. 'Well, of course it goes on, dearest Joshua, but it just can't go on in the clinic any more is all. It's going on throughout the country, and in other countries as well. You can rest assured James and Andrew will work very hard for you abroad! You see, after Mr MacKenzie went back to New York we had a family talk, and we all decided that the best thing we could do for you in the circumstances was to help publicize the book.'

  'What have I done?' he asked, of no one.

  Mama had not given Dr Carriol time to divert this thoughtless relaying of information it had been decided to keep from Dr Christian for the moment; impotent but seething, Dr Carriol deemed it best to hold her tongue until Mama ran down. Now she tried to step in and repair the damage.

  'You're doing it,' she said soothingly. 'Joshua, you are doing what you most wanted to do! You're actively helping millions of people to recover from the depression of decades! There's a whole new mood in the country, and it's entirely due to you.'

  He turned his poor shrivelled face to her piteously, desperately. 'Is it, Judith? Is it really?'

  She took hold of his hands, squeezing them hard. 'My dear, I would not mislead you about something so important! You're in the midst of working a great miracle.'

  'I'm not a miracle worker! I'm just a man doing a man's best!'

  'Yes, yes, I know. I meant it metaphorically.'

  'Why did it have to be like this?'

  A huff of breath in a little sigh came out of her, half exasperation, half frustration. 'Look, in a month you've gone from utter obscurity to absolute fame. How could you know what it was going to be like? No one could have known, including me! Certainly I for one never thought of what might happen in Holloman. But in spite of the clinic's closure, you're moving forward in ten-league boots.'

  'Is this then my life's work, Judith? But this isn't real! This won't last, it can't last! It was never intended to last! The clinic—' He stopped, so moved he could not finish.

  'Joshua, when this is over you can reopen your clinic. That's so easy! What's happened in Holloman isn't going to last either. James and Andrew will come back, you'll all be together again, the clinic will reopen, and your life will resume some normality. Of course you won't ever be entirely free from the effects of God in Cursing, but I don't suppose you want to be. You will be able to continue your work in Holloman! Mama's news just seems such a catastrophe because of the life you're leading at the moment, because you feel if you were there the clinic wouldn't be closing. Calm down and think about everything! What you're doing now is the most unreal existence in the world — constantly travelling, constantly meeting new people, constantly giving of yourself in ever-increasing amounts — but you never thought it would be easy, Joshua. So how about giving everything a little time ? Let yourself work through this period of transition, and then reorganize yourself. Don't you say in your book that change means reorganization? And that reorganization takes time and patienc
e? Work?'

  He tried to laugh, a tight little rustle of noise, a face too twisted for success. 'I'm a poor subject for my own preaching, that's the trouble. I can only listen to it inside my own head. And my own head is beginning to be a pretty bad place these days.'

  'Joshua, it's late,' she said, her voice dropping half an octave with unconscious solicitude. 'We have a six o'clock start in the morning, because this is Mobile, and there's a breakfast show. Go to bed.'

  He went, but there was no euphoria tonight. For the first time since he had started on his tour, Dr Carriol knew him to be depressed. God damn Mama! Why is it that certain women are so sure of their maternal ground that they refuse to think with anything higher up than their own uteruses? During all of Dr Carriol's desperate attempts to mend what Mama had made, Mama sat looking adorably bewildered and innocent, her eyes travelling from Joshua to Judith and back again as if she didn't really understand what was going on. But how could she not understand?

  Obviously she didn't understand, for when he started to leave the room she got up to follow him, to fuss and cluck.

  Dr Carriol put out a hand to detain her rather roughly.

  'Oh no you don't! I want a few words with you,' she said grimly, and hustled Mama from the sitting room in the opposite direction from Joshua's room, to her own room — and had Mama thought of accommodation? Did she think she could share a room with dear Judith? And how had she got all the way to Mobile? Not with the help of Atticus, for sure! Oh she knew she was doing the wrong thing, all right. But it didn't stop her doing it, thought Dr Carriol, eyeing her sourly.

  'What's the matter, Judith?' Mama quavered. 'What is it? What have I done?'

  'The last thing in the world your son needed was to be told a lot of garbage about his clinic closing down and his brothers taking off for foreign parts.'

  'But it's all true! Why shouldn't he know? I thought he'd be pleased!' Mama whined.

  'When he came back to Holloman with all this touring behind him was time enough to tell him. Why do you think I haven't told him? At the moment he is under incredible strain, Mama! He's travelling without letup, he's not getting enough sleep, and he's draining every reserve of energy he's got by talking to people nonstop and signing hundreds of books and letting people shake him by the same hand he signs with — Mama, why did you come? Don't you understand that your presence is just another burden he's going to have to pick up and carry as well?'

  Mama gasped, her magnificent bosom heaving. 'I am his mother!' Another gasp. 'I — I — I have been entirely responsible for him since he was four years old! I know what a strain he's under, that's why I came! Believe me, Doctor Carriol, I'll be a help to him, not a burden!'

  'Oh for God's sake, Mama, don't get the shits with me,' said Dr Carriol tiredly. 'I know what I'm saying, and so do you. Be honest! You were sitting up there in Holloman with the clinic in ruins and your other sons taking off for exciting tasks in exciting places, and you felt left out of everything. If concern for Joshua's welfare was really what was driving you, you would have sent Mary down here and stayed behind yourself in Holloman to do the fortress-holding. That is a good girl you sit on all the time, poor Mary! Be honest! You were feeling left out and you were dying of curiosity, your apple-of-the-eye firstborn has gone and got himself famous, and you know you did it, and so you decided you were going to have some of the excitement. You're a very beautiful woman, you're still in the prime of life, and people are going to look at you. They're going to admire you. They're going to congratulate you on producing Joshua. They're going to accord you a lot of the credit.'

  'Judith!'

  'Look, Mama, the wounded martyr act doesn't cut any ice with me at all, so don't bother. I'm the one has to care for him while he's crazily barnstorming his way round this enormous country, and he doesn't need you to worry about as well as himself. Because he will worry about you — whether you're busy destroying all his good work by prattling on about the joys of having four children while he's trying to convince people that the ideal number of children is one, whether you're feeling as fucked and bedraggled as he is, if you've had enough to eat because he hasn't, if you're bored, if you've been left behind in some radio station or newspaper office — that's the truth of it, Mama!'

  The only possible refuge was tears, so Mama trotted the tears out. Genuine tears too, for she really hadn't thought to question her motives for coming to join him, and now that someone she trusted and admired as much as Judith Carriol had pointed them out to her with disastrous clarity, she was not only devastated but ashamed. Ashamed too of her unthinking treatment of Mary, the dowdy spinster who never got any of the attention and never got any of the bonuses.

  'I'll go home first thing in the morning, and send Mary down,' she grieved.

  'No, it's too late for that You're here now, so here you stay,' said Dr Carriol with weary resignation. 'But I'm warning you, Mama! Keep a low profile. Don't open your mouth — and don't keep it shut looking like a martyr either. Content yourself with looking like the ravishing fallen angel you are, and don't do anything to increase his anxieties.'

  'I won't, Judith, I promise I won't!' She was cheering up second by second. 'And I will be useful, honestly I will! I can do all his washing, all your washing—'

  The laugh she hadn't known she still possessed came tumbling out of Dr Carriol. 'Oh, Mama! Who has time or facilities to do washing? We move on too fast for hotel laundries, and the rooms are too cold to wash in a bathroom basin — we don't do it. Every day while he's waiting for us, our pilot goes and buys the few bits of fresh clothing we need, for himself too. And since you're joining the menage, you'd better give Billy your size in underpants and bras before you run out, or you'll be wearing dirty ones.'

  Mama blushed. She actually blushed.

  Dr Carriol gave up. 'Here, you'd better have my room,' she said, picking up her single suitcase from where it still lay unopened. 'I'll go down to the desk and see about another one. Where's your bag?'

  'Downstairs,' whispered Mama wretchedly.

  'I'll have it sent up. Goodnight.'

  After the bag came Mama went to bed, and cried herself desolately to sleep.

  Dr Christian was in bed too, but neither tears nor sleep came to heal him. Where had all the pleasure gone, so swiftly, so suddenly? Oh, he had enjoyed this past month! He had found it supremely satisfying to move freely among so many pain-racked people, watching their faces as they listened to him speak, knowing that indeed his inner promptings had not led him astray, that he could indeed help. The days had fled in joyous activity, he hadn't needed to count his energy because it flowed through him in rivers of fire impossible to quench. Such an adventure to whip through the air from town to town with Billy the pilot, silent and smart and Service, guiding his craft wherever he was bidden. So many questions, so much that people yearned to know — and there he was, magically enabled to help them through the offices of Fairy Godmother Carriol. It had been so easy! A landbound seal finding the water at last. He had frolicked in his natural element, so happy, so content. The people had received him, the people had not rejected him.

  But ever in the back of his mind had lain Holloman, his dear beloved clinic, the work he would go back to in a relatively short time, even if only to begin planning the removal of that clinic to some desperately needy place in the south of the country.

  Not true. Not there. He closed his aching eyes. Think, Joshua Christian! Think! He had spoken of change and of patterns, of the future's viability and the present's uncertainty and the past's mortality. So was this trouble not a part of the pattern too, was this direction not intended to guide his ignorant feet? He had taken himself and he had deliberately altered the conditions of his life. And once conditions have been altered, something entirely different must emerge.

  Be optimistic, Joshua Christian! How lovely and how very satisfying, that James and Miriam and Andrew and Martha were to be a positive part of all this newness. Fitting. They had always been shoulder to shoulder with h
im — so why not now, in this altered condition? Be positive, Joshua Christian! It is for the best. It is meant. It is a part of some pattern shaping itself so subtly and so secretly that you cannot as yet so much as glimpse its nature. But you will! You will.

  He concentrated upon sleep. O sleep close mine eyes! O sleep heal my pain! O sleep show me that I am mortal man! But sleep was far away, it curled through the brains of those he helped.

  From Mobile the augmented Christian manage moved to St Louis. Mama behaved herself beautifully, making friends with Billy the pilot immediately, and endearing herself to him by coyly handing him her vital statistics in a sealed envelope.

  'What colour do you like?' he whispered.

  She smiled at him angelically. 'White, thank you.'

  On the surface St Louis went very well, and out of it came one of the most charming of the little allegories with which Dr Christian peppered his talks. Luckily it was preserved for posterity on videotape, for it occurred during a morning show on one of the local television stations.

  The hostess was lightweight and terrifyingly gushing; very pretty, very blonde, quite young. Dr Christian was the most important guest she had ever collared, so an acute attack of nerves made her just the slightest bit patronizing. And since she was not equipped to patronize him on an intellectual level, she concentrated on his masculinity and his childlessness.

  'Doctor, I'm interested in the way you defend those who have been lucky enough to obtain a second-child approval,' was her opening gambit. 'But it's awfully easy for you to be magnanimous, isn't it? I mean, you're not married, you have no children, and — uh — well — you can never feel like a mother, can you? Do you honestly think that you're in a position to condemn the attitude of all the poor women who haven't been lucky in the SCB lottery when they hit back at the lucky few?'

  He smiled, sighed, leaned back for a moment with his eyes closed, then opened them and stared straight into her soul, which was not very far down.