4 Beyond Belief Read online

  Hilary crossed the road and walked along the path above the beach, in the direction of the hotel, Trina and Emily following her. Looking down through the railings, Emily could see a small crowd on the beach watching what appeared to be some amateur sporting or athletic event. The tide was going out so there was a biggish expanse of wet sand to play on. But what were they playing? Was it a game of beach cricket? Was it a race?

  As they drew closer, Emily decided it must be a race. One of the contestants was the preacher she had seen earlier, still in his white clothes, his trousers rolled up to his calves. He appeared to be pursuing the other contestant, who was wearing a tweedy jacket that flapped open as he ran, his arms flailing. The contestant being pursued was Gerald Ayode.

  “Sir!” the preacher called. “Sir!”

  Gerald wasn’t an athletic man but he was going at a good pace.

  The preacher’s voice was hoarse. “Sir! Come into the waves with me!”

  So it wasn’t a race.

  Gerald was a reformer. He was a zealous man. He had said as much yesterday. But when he had talked to Emily about the challenges of being the president of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture, Emily never would have guessed one of those challenges would involve being called into the sea by a vigorous-looking preacher with his trousers at half-mast.

  “Colonel!” called Hilary, dumping her plastic bags and running down the steps with Trina beside her. Her voice brought him to his senses. The preacher stopped chasing after Gerald and walked back to the enthralled crowd, who carefully remained out of arms’ reach, taking a few steps backward as necessary, to protect themselves as he came near.

  Gerald made it to the safety of the steps beneath where Emily was standing and he started climbing. The Colonel didn’t even glance back in his direction. Like a fielder who has dropped his catch in a cricket match but must continue the game, he walked in his white trousers and white shirt to the edge of the field of play, head down, hands on hips, and started again.

  So this was the Colonel who liked immersing people? It looked to Emily as if he hadn’t had much luck this afternoon. His clothes were dry. Now he stood up to his ankles in the shallow waves and called out to the crowd, “Who will come into the water with me and be drowned, and emerge to be born again? Take the pledge; take the plunge!”

  The Colonel was out of breath, gasping great raggedy breaths between words. But his melodious Welsh voice was still deep and powerful, carrying as far as Emily as she leaned against the railings above to listen.

  Gerald came and stood next to Emily. He was also out of breath. He held onto the railings, concentrating on his out breaths as he calmed himself. “Maybe this is the drowning Peg’s been seeing? A symbolic one. You can mention it in the report.”

  “I will.”

  Hilary and Trina had joined the crowd below. Emily saw that Tim was still among them. He must have been there for nearly an hour and a half listening to the Colonel preach.

  Hilary grabbed the charity shop sundress and then she started shucking a complaining Trina out of her hoodie. But Trina wouldn’t have it. So in the end Hilary put the dress over all of it—hooded top, jeans, sweater, all of it—and pushed her to the front.

  The Colonel seemed surprised. He looked over at Hilary. “A volunteer?”

  Hilary nodded.

  “Are you sure now?” Are you shoo-er now? Two syllables. The Colonel’s accent was very Welsh. It gave his voice a lovely lilting cadence that made everything he said seem like a prayer. “Are you sure, child?”

  “I should have let him catch me,” said Gerald. “Spared the girl. Should I go back down there?”

  But Trina and the Colonel were already wading waist deep into the water. The waves were a little rough, but the Colonel was sure-footed. Emily was familiar enough with adult baptisms. She knew the way it was supposed to work. Trina would cross her arms over her chest and lay down in the crook of the Colonel’s arm while he prayed over her. Then he would dip her down into the icy cold water while she lay motionless, not resisting, and then bring her up again, glowing from her immersion in the waves. It was a setup. But presumably Hilary had staged it so that, after seeing this, other people would want a turn. Or, if they didn’t want to commit, they could at least go home and think on what they had seen and become closer to God.

  With her report in mind, Emily turned over the implications of the staged salvation. If the Colonel wasn’t having much luck getting people to come forward in the usual way, did that mean he was desperate, dangerous? He was desperate enough to chase Gerald down the beach. But would he be desperate enough to drown someone? And, even if he did, what might he hope to achieve by it?

  In the sea, a few feet from the shore, Trina lay back in the crook of the Colonel’s arm. Emily now realized that Hilary had chosen the dress for her to make her look girlish and pure of heart. But it quickly became heavy once the water got into it; it was at least two sizes too big. The hooded top was heavy, too, the waves filling the hood and pulling down on it.

  The water was cold and quite deep. The Colonel was feeling it. Emily noticed he was shivering.

  “I hope they don’t go too far back,” said Gerald. “It’s quite rocky behind them, look.”

  A feisty little wave came in just as the Colonel was about to dip Trina down under the water. It unbalanced him slightly so that he dipped her a little further than was necessary. Trina gasped as she went under. She took in a mouthful of water. Her reflexes tried to bring her to the surface instead of letting her stay relaxed and lying in the crook of the Colonel’s arm. But she couldn’t come back up because her clothes were dragging her down, so she started struggling.

  Another complication was that she had in the pocket of her hoodie packets of Devon fudge and pink-and-white-striped coconut ice, all of which would get heavy with water and drag down the material of the hoodie as if something like a fishhook had got caught in it.

  Flinging her arms about, trying to get something to hold onto to bring her back to the surface, Trina accidentally punched the Colonel in the throat. He gasped and staggered back, and reflexively held Trina tighter, which seemed to frighten her.

  “Do we need to do something?” asked Gerald. “What shall we do?”

  Incongruously, Emily thought of Peg’s positivity circle. Apart from beaming positive thoughts in Trina’s direction, she couldn’t think of anything useful to do. They were too far away to intervene. Besides, wasn’t the Colonel used to immersing people? He must be used to this. It would be OK.

  Trina tried to struggle free of him. He brought Trina up to the surface but staggered back again. He slipped on the rocks under his feet, going under. They were both struggling now. Trina was out of the Colonel’s grip and tried to hurl herself toward the shore. But the current pulled her back. Trina was drowning. The Colonel reached for her, trying to grab her and steer her toward the beach.

  Trina’s non-waterproof Big Lash mascara and Nighttime Stay-on Smoky Accents eyeliner from Maybelline would be off her lids and lashes now and mixing with the salt seawater, stinging her eyes, making it difficult to see anything. She trod on the Colonel’s shoulder as he reached for her, and she pushed him under, where his arms would be scraping on the sharp little rocks poking up from the sand on the seabed beneath them. He came up and Emily could see he was trying to get a hold of Trina. They went under again. They were drowning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BORN AGAIN

  Emily and Gerald ran down the steps. Emily, with a Londoner’s ingrained reluctance to leave baggage unattended, had brought Hilary’s plastic bags with her, banging against her legs as she ran.

  They could see that Trina and the Colonel were in trouble, not “playing” or even worse “playing dolphins” as some people in the crowd would later claim to have believed. They were getting tired, they had been scratched as they were thrown against the sharp rocks under their feet, they had tried to reach the shore but they had been pulled back by the waves. They had
gone under. If someone didn’t do something, one or both of them would drown right in front of everyone, only feet from the shore.

  Tim saw they were in trouble as well. As he had been standing among the crowd on the beach, he was only a few feet away from the drama. He ran into the water. He reached under the waves and got hold of Trina and hauled her to safety. With Trina out of the way, no longer kicking and flinging her arms about in panic, the Colonel recovered and stood up. He began to walk toward the beach, the cuts and scratches on his arms and face bleeding. Tim went back and took hold of the Colonel’s arm and walked with him.

  “Now, what are we supposed to make of that?” asked the Colonel. He was too shocked to say thank-you.

  Hilary was at their side by now. She waved Emily over and took the two orange candlewick bedspreads out of the plastic bags. She threw one over Tim and the other over the Colonel. She put her own coat over Trina.

  It seemed the Colonel now had the answer to his question. He turned his scratched, bleeding face to Tim. “You were the one who was meant to be immersed. That’s what this is about. Consider yourself blessed and born again. What’s your name, sir?”

  “Tim.”

  “Let me buy you a drink up at the hotel, Tim.”

  Tim eyed the bedspreads and saw that Hilary had come prepared. “You knew this would happen?”

  “Hardly!” said Hilary. “Not Trina trying to drown the Colonel and you saving them both. The two of them were supposed to have a quick dip and come out wet, that’s all.”

  Trina was shivering violently, her mascara running down from her eyes in mock-zombie rivulets. “I’m going to die of cold.”

  “You can have a bath as soon as we get back to the Seaview,” said Hilary. She rubbed Trina’s arms as they walked along, to keep her circulation going. “That’ll warm you up.”

  “The Hotel Majestic’s just over the road,” Tim said. “Trina can have a bath in my room.” He was embarrassed. “I mean our room. Sarah, my wife…”

  Trina rolled her zombie eyes. “We know what you meant.”

  “Thank you!” said Hilary. “That’s kind of you. Saved again!”

  “Thank you, Tim. Meet you there in a bit, Hilary,” said the Colonel. “I’ll go back to the Seaview and get changed.”

  “And can you bring Trina some dry clothes?” Hilary reminded him.

  “I will. Tim, would you do me a favor? Could you let the security guards at the hotel know I’m meeting you?” Shivering, wet and bleeding, wearing an orange bedspread, he grinned. “Otherwise they might think I’m some sort of undesirable and not let me in.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LIONS

  Gerald used his position as president of the society and chair of the conference to clear a corner of the bar at the Hotel Majestic for the main players in the afternoon’s drama, and their family and friends. Dr. Muriel, Peg and Sarah Taylor squashed together on a sofa with Emily and Gerald, Sarah sitting next to Peg, her new best friend. Hilary perched on a bar stool slightly apart from the group, with Tim’s discarded sodden bedspread rolled up in a plastic bag at her feet, waiting while Trina had a bath upstairs in Tim and Sarah’s room.

  Gerald fiddled with his phone. “I’m checking Twitter now. I can’t see any photos of the debacle on the beach,” he said to Emily. “Not under the hashtag BeliefandBeyond, anyway. So that’s a relief.”

  Tim came in and stood at the bar, waiting to catch the barman’s eye to get himself a drink. His hair was damp and he was wearing several layers of clothes, but otherwise he seemed unaffected by his plunge into the sea. He responded to polite enquiries from the group about his welfare by explaining he had used the hot shower in the hotel spa to clean up and warm up and he was now perfectly OK.

  Trina wafted in wearing a big pair of trousers and a flowery top that Sarah had lent her. She smelled of a mix of several of the finest products supplied by the perfumeries of Grasse, and she had a shiny face.

  Sarah smiled. “Been at my face creams, Trina?”

  “Yeah. Well they’re no use to you. You’ve already lost your looks.”

  Sarah flushed.

  Hilary turned on Trina. “That’s enough of your lip!”

  “It’s OK,” said Sarah. Her expressive eyebrow-raise/shoulder-raise combo gesture said, Teenagers! And everybody who saw it knew she’d rather have her son there being rude to her than dead and gone, and they were sorry for her loss.

  Fortunately Peg was in good spirits. She turned the conversation away from troublesome or absent teenagers and back to her favorite subject: herself. “We need to send out a press release, Gerald. Lady Lacey Carmichael must be celebrating today’s news, wherever she is. Eh? What do you reckon, Emily? You must be celebrating and all, dear. You write up that report and you can take the rest of the weekend off.”

  Gerald looked anxious. Hadn’t he suffered enough for one day after being chased down the beach by the Colonel? “I don’t think we can say it’s proved, Peg. I really don’t.”

  “I saw a man drowning in my vision.”

  “You knew the Colonel was going to drown?” Hilary shifted her bar stool a little closer.

  “Not the Colonel, no. I wasn’t able to pinpoint the identity of the victim. As a matter of fact, we thought it might be Edmund. But I saw a man drowning—choking, going under the waves. I brought together my circle of like-minded women, all strong and free spirited, and we sent out good vibes to save him. And save him we did. Prophesy plus positivity equals success! Sales of my book are going to go through the roof.”

  “Perhaps it was a coincidence?” said Gerald.

  “Well, I’m surprised at you, since you’re supposed to be the science-minded one here, Gerald. But Muriel will back me up, I’m sure. There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

  Dr. Muriel shifted her arm to try to get more comfortable. “We all have different ways of interpreting events, that’s what’s so interesting about it. I’m doing a talk at the conference tomorrow about mythmaking. I do hope you’ll be able to join me.”

  But Peg wasn’t going to be cheated of her moment in the spotlight. “I’ll put another call in to the features editor of the Sunday Sentinel, see if she can’t do something about the important work that’s been done here. It’s not a myth. Or coincidence. It’s what I like to call cosmic influence.”

  Hilary was unimpressed. “It’s what I like to call cosmic nonsense!”

  “Call it what you like, dear. But good luck pitching a feature to the Sunday papers on cosmic nonsense.”

  Joseph Seppardi came into the bar and cooled the atmosphere by a few degrees, like a robot that has been designed to look like a man but behaves like a portable air conditioner. He saw that Sarah was sitting with Peg but he made no move to join them. He stood awkwardly by the bar. “Sarah,” he said. “What time should we get together this evening?”

  “I think we should leave it for this evening, Joe. Thanks.”

  This wasn’t the answer he was expecting. He stood there waiting for an explanation.

  “I’ve got some bits to do. Might get an early night. Me and Tim are going on the Agatha Christie tour tomorrow, and you’ve got a big day, haven’t you?”

  “Sarah—”

  “We’re still on for six o’clock, though, dear?” Peg said to Sarah.

  Sarah barely glanced at Joseph as she said, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t let him dictate what you can do,” said Peg.

  Sarah blundered on anxiously, trying to smother any sparks of rage in Joseph with words, lots of words, a blanket of words. “It’s on a vintage bus. The trip to Agatha Christie’s house. I’d like Tim to see it. Take his mind off…off of…Take his mind off…”

  “His immersion?” enquired Joseph.

  “Well, no. I think he quite enjoyed that, in a funny sort of way. He’s come out of it feeling more positive than when he went in.”

  “Has he indeed?” said Joseph. “Then what does he need to take his mind off? Not his son?”

/>   Sarah looked at him, mute with misery, one side of her face turning red as though she’d been slapped.

  The Colonel turned up just then, oblivious to the tension in the room. He greeted Hilary by saying, as if he had made some extraordinarily useful contribution to their domestic arrangements, “I’ve put that bedspread in the bathroom to dry, Hilary.”

  He handed over clean clothes to Trina and went over to Gerald.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said. “Can I make a donation, perhaps, to a favorite charity?

  “No need,” said Gerald graciously.

  “I chased you down on the sand, sir—”

  “Gerald.”

  “I chased you down on the sand, Gerald, and made you look a fool.”

  Gerald looked uncomfortable at that. No man wants to be reminded that he has recently been made to look foolish.

  “I was feeling very low,” the Colonel said. “Desperate. I stood on the sand and I called for people to take a plunge in the water with me, and no one responded. At that moment, I had lost my faith.”

  “Ah. Well. No harm done. You got there in the end.”

  “And then I saw you, and my mind turned to Africa, you see. I had been thinking of taking a trip there, before too long.”

  Trina looked at Hilary. Hilary sat stone-faced on her bar stool.

  The Colonel carried on, still oblivious. “I saw a black man in front of me and I thought…Oh, excuse me. Where are you from, Gerald?”

  “Ealing. West London.” Gerald tried to put his left hand out to indicate the westness of it, so the Colonel could bring to mind a map of London and locate Ealing on it, but there wasn’t much room. He had to keep his elbow tucked in. “It’s on the District Line—the green one.”

  “Well, I saw a black man in front of me and I lost my head. I thought of Africa.”

  “That’s racist!” said Trina.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Hilary.

  “Yes it is.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Gerald. “I’m proud of my race. I’m proud to be the first black president of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture.” He looked over at Emily as if to say, you can write that down. She took out her notebook.