Chapter 6 — Paddy

The footpath is as close as Paddy gets to the Jackson’s home. Any closer, and it’s all floodlights, police tape and clouds of moths. Resting his walking stick against his leg, he wipes sweat from his brow and swats a mosquito. If only he had listened to that Melbourne barrister. ‘Yes,’ the man had said, ‘the law is an ass, and you might get a quicker result with your trial by media. But what are you going to do if the bullets start flying? Shoot back? That’s what police are for.’ ‘Better a dead cop than a dead civilian,’ he’d joked.

Paddy remembers the moment when Mia sat in his office and asked the question: Is this a dumb idea? There and then he could have persuaded her to go straight to the police. Perhaps he should walk through the gate now and offer them his full cooperation. Or perhaps not: especially with Red looking on.

The kitchen window frames an intense conversation that’s happening between Red, who’s wearing a baseball cap, and a cop: the constable is delivering stern words. Red stands stock still, one side of his head a little swollen and eyes averted. Paddy knows the look. Red’s a soldier, he loves movies like Hurt Locker and Fight Club. Whatever Red does next is going to be ugly. What else does God expect of a man like this?

As if in answer to Paddy’s question, Mia walks across the room holding a brown teddy bear. Placing a hand on Red’s shoulder, she holds the bear up close to his face like she’s trying to will him back from some brink. Paddy says an amen. But even as the word is spoken, Mia is interrupted by one of the sleuths who takes the bear off her and seals it up inside a plastic bag.

The policeman finishes what he has to say and pats Red on the back. Red shakes his hand and the three of them move to another part of the house. Paddy is left staring at a pair of latex-gloved hands dusting the window for fingerprints.

Something about the plastic-ness of it all unnerves Paddy. A team of highly trained professionals: brushing, sucking, packaging and marking—so commonplace, so humdrum and all so unfixable.

Paddy prays, but it seems to fall flat like a bad serve in a tennis match. It reminds him of something he once read in a memoir by C.S. Lewis: ‘Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence …’

Paddy’s phone chirps an incoming text from the police.

Forensic examination of office completed. Free to return in an hour.

Angry, Paddy switches the phone off and puts it back in his pocket. He’s been answering text messages all night: messages from the police, Adams, the bishop and archbishop, and journalists he’s never heard of. They can wait. He wants to cry like a baby.

He can’t believe his small-mindedness. Oksy’s been taken, and he’s carrying on over a gutted office. But it’s more than an office, it’s his lovely little man cave—Janie’s diaries, his books, his paintings and his drink cabinet—the only things he has left in this world! Rubbish! He has his son Joe and EJ. The books and paintings are probably untouched anyway.

But what about the diaries? All those pages of Janie’s handwriting that he so loved to look at. Whoever broke into his office would have to have known they were there. Claudia knew and even managed to lose one—probably destroyed it. And he never finished reading them! How stupid can a man be! If only Janie hadn’t. Hadn’t what? Gone to the school? Had her heart broken?

Paddy already knows what she would be saying to him. She would be quoting Anthony Bloom, one of Bushka’s favourite Russian priests. ‘All the food of this world is divine love made edible,’ she would say. ‘The moment we try to be rich by keeping, we are the losers … This is the Kingdom, the sense that we are free from possession.’ Having said that, she would preach a little sermon. ‘Patrick, darling,’ she would say, ‘this is about not being possessed by our possessions. About letting them melt into infinite love. If we hold onto them, they stay frozen and our hearts freeze over.’

Tears flow. For goodness sake! He’s just a broken little boy and here they all are: trusting him, asking for his prayers. He whispers a prayer of apology and turns his phone back on. A message comes from Michelle.

Can we meet soon?

Sure, he texts back. Is your place free yet?

No. The forensic squad only just got here.

Ok—my office in an hour and a half?

Mia and Red too? she texts.

He agrees, and sends the question to Mia who messages back that they will join them in two hours’ time if they’re still up. His phone says 1.42 am. If worse comes to worst and there’s no Scotch in his cabinet, they can get some from an all-night bottle-o down the road.

He calls a taxi, and on the way home he asks his driver to stop at the bottom of the monastery hill. He needs to do something physical, so he’ll walk up the hill.

Outside on the hard path, reality kicks in. He’s having to rely on his walking stick more than ever, and he wasn’t thinking about the trucks that thunder down this road every night. With a wry smile he keeps his head down and toils his way up, leaning into buffeting slipstreams and showers of grit.

A cat darts across the road and disappears down an alleyway. Next to the alley is his second-favourite place to work, Emmanuel’s Cafe, its grapevine-covered courtyard looking otherworldly in the moonlight.

He stops and stares at it, bothered by the fact that—according to Michelle—people are talking about him and Madeleine coming here. He sighs. Whatever happened to old-fashioned friendship?

He smiles, hobbles across the road and sits at a bench outside the café. He and Janie had sat right here many times. He bows his head and holds his face in his hands. Tears flow.

There’s no way he will ever have another romance in this café. This was where he had come for coffee with Janie on their first date, him terrified and lovesick, and her giggling. And over behind the counter, the shiny-faced and balding old George making jokes about them. After that it was the blur of mortgage, work, baby Joe, EJ six years later—then the world without Janie. For a while, EJ and Joe had come with him to Emmanuel’s for melancholy breakfasts. Then Joe went farming, EJ moved to England and old George passed away.

It seemed like the music had stopped forever. George junior went to university and Paddy started drinking himself to sleep. But the music didn’t go away: the younger George got tired of uni and came back, the police returned a box of Janie’s diaries, and Paddy began using Emmanuel’s as a place to read them—occasionally interrupted by George, who would always ask after EJ. An image of the greyhound-like George sitting on a bar stool next to EJ and slowly turning it around while he talked, like a little boy mesmerised by a princess, has remained with Paddy forever.

With a sigh, Paddy turns and walks back across the road and up the last hundred metres to the monastery, which has been blacked out by a power failure. At the main gate he stops to catch his breath, sweating and wheezing, thankful it’s not the middle of the day with people staring at him.

He finds a seat at a bus stop, catches his breath, and tries to pray. Hallowed be thy name is as far as he gets. That name doesn’t feel so hallowed tonight.

Trucks roar, a tick-ticking of traffic lights echoes from an intersection at the bottom of the hill. A big shard of moon hangs in the sky, doing what it always does: true and beautiful. He doesn’t want to go in to that ugly mess of office; he would rather just lie here on the bench for a while. He stretches out along it and stares up at the darkness, praying that the right people—the police, he supposes—would find Oksy and the Wand. He dozes off.

Paddy wakes up to the monastery clock striking three and a breeze cooling sweat on his forehead. He’s going to have to keep moving if he wants to have a civilised space ready for the others. Why didn’t he just go to the police in the first place?

Picking his stick up off the pavement, he walks through the entrance, identifies himself to a security guard—who’s waving a torch in his face—and keeps going. The place is still in darkness. On the left he can see the outline of his cottage, a chapel and Adams’ cottage. Walking past them and further up the hill, he heads for the door of the main building, pushes it open and (with the help of his phone light) walks up a flight of stairs to Madeleine’s office.

Stopping for a breather at the top, he waves the light around, thanking God that Madeleine’s space is mostly untouched. Apart from a broken vase, everything seems alright. He makes his way down the corridor and steps through the wrecked doorway of his office.

Moonlight bathes the window-side of the room. The glass top of his desk gleams like a metallic spider’s web, the lines of the ‘web’ being cracks radiating from a smashed hole in the centre where something has been slammed into the glass. To his right, the bookshelf that separated the man cave from this end of the room has disappeared. His precious creation is now just a hulking pile of furniture.

Without thinking, he tries a light switch. Nothing happens. Of course nothing will happen.

He finds a fat candle on a shelf, lights it and walks carefully across glass-littered carpet to the area that was his man cave. It’s heaped up to elbow height: shelves lie at odd angles and books are strewn everywhere. Pausing in the middle of the mess, he looks over at his Lilith and Walk to Work. They appear to be untouched. And there, on the floor, are Janie’s diaries, in a jumbled heap. Next to the heap is his card from EJ.

Thank you, Father in Heaven.

Leaning heavily on his stick, he bends down, picks up the card and places it on the coffee table. There’s no way his visitors will fit here. He’ll have to risk his hip and stand the shelves back up.

Placing the candle on a windowsill, along with his walking stick, he goes to work, lifting the shelves up and stacking books in piles: the diaries going in their own little heap behind his man-cave chair. Sweat breaks out on his forehead. His hip aches. He searches for an Aspirin Max. The drawer is empty. He’ll have to put up with it.

Like the rest of the world, Patrick, this is how they all live: no painkillers, no books.

A patch of floor is finally cleared around the table. Paddy pushes the lounge chairs back to their original positions, finds some drink glasses, an ashtray and a bottle of whisky, and arranges them on the table. Reciting lines from Psalm 88, he takes a cube of ice from his bar fridge, pours himself a drink and sinks into a well-stuffed armchair. Having completed his recitation, he repeats the twelfth verse: ‘Are thy wonders known in the darkness, Or thy saving help in the land of forgetfulness?’

Sweat fogs his glasses. He takes them off, cleans them with the edge of his shirt and reflects on the words ‘darkness’ and ‘forgetfulness’—such inviting words. If only he could go back to that land of despair and just pretend, the way he once had, that he’s okay with it. Sliding a hand underneath his shirt, he holds EJ’s little wooden cross, leans back in the chair and dozes.

He wakes to the noise of a car. Headlights sweep across the window behind his desk, lighting up Sinbad the gargoyle and a knobbly Celtic cross. It must be Michelle. He recites the psalm once more and takes another sip of whisky.

The stomping of feet echoes up the stairwell and along the corridor. The sound of walking stops and Michelle appears at the doorway, a picture of dishevelment in baggy jeans and oversized shirt—the pale light of her phone shining on her face.

‘They’ve had me down at the station,’ she says, turning her light off.

‘Me too,’ he says.

‘Hope you didn’t get all Christian on us.’

‘What?’

‘You know, have a bloody crisis of conscience—tell them the truth about Tate, Adams and the Wand.’

‘Almost.’

She stares at him as if he’s just uttered some profanity.

‘What do you mean “almost?”’

Paddy’s not ready for this. He’s been grilled by the police for an hour, and now, here she is, looking at him as if he’s a traitor, her face stony and yellow in the candlelight. It’s like their conversations in this office never happened.

‘I should have told Mia to go to the police in the first place,’ he says.

‘No—answer the question, Patrick.’

‘It’s all good. I lied.’

‘Lovely,’ she says, walking through and collapsing into a chair.

‘Sorry about the blackout,’ he says, pouring her a whisky.

‘So when do we get the power back?’

‘No idea!’

‘They got into Tate’s home too,’ she says, lifting the Scotch to her mouth. ‘All slit open and gutted like the rest of us.’ Without looking at him she puts her glass down, takes a bottle of port out of her bag and places it on the table. Paddy’s sure he can see tears welling up.

‘Do they have anything on—?’ he stops, unable to say Oksy’s name.

‘Nothing on Oksy, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she says. ‘But an hour ago—’ she stops talking and looks away. ‘They found Claudia’s body in the harbour.’

The words ‘Claudia’s body’ seem to fall on him from a great height. Michelle sobs. He gets a picture of Claudia’s waterlogged body washed up on a beach somewhere. The once young and beautiful church mother, the impish girl in the woman who made everyone laugh. What will the world be like without her laughter?

Paddy tops up Michelle’s glass and they sit there in silence, watching the candle.

‘Nothing on the Wand?’ he asks.

‘No. They have a team out on the rail line looking for it. Rumour is that it was a real one.’

Conversation stops again. He watches candle wax running onto the table. His old hip is not up for sudden movements these days. He works his body around to a position where he can lean forward and reach the candle. While he’s doing that, Michelle finds a piece of paper, leans over and places the candle on it.

‘I guess Slav can blame someone for the stolen Wands now,’ Michelle says.

‘Unless Tate orchestrated it himself.’

‘You really think this is Tate?’

‘You know how he is, madam. He loves his mind games.’

‘There’s another thing,’ Michelle says. ‘The cops are being coy about a diary they confiscated from a deposit box at Claudia’s bank, which nobody knew about—not even Tate, apparently.’

‘The deposit box or the diary?’

‘Both, I believe.’

Paddy restrains himself from asking about the diary. It would have to be the one that she never returned. If Michelle finds out there’s more, she’ll want to read all of them. But there might be things in them that Janie didn’t want anyone to read.

‘Tate has a barrister trying to get the diary off the police,’ Michelle says. ‘Rumours are flying thick and fast about it: the media are licking their lips.’

Suddenly exasperated, Paddy tilts his head back and takes a deep breath. Oksy’s been kidnapped, Claudia’s dead and the media world seems to have already moved on. St. Columba’s proverb catches his eye and he recites the words in English: ‘Love knows nothing of order.’

‘What did you say?’ Michelle asks.

Paddy repeats the proverb. Michelle looks at him as if she’s about to say something, but instead, she picks up her bag and looks for a cigarette. Rifling through it, she tips out her purse, a camera and a packet of Winfields. The packet is empty; she throws it across the room.

‘Everything in this universe feels fucking personal right now,’ she says. ‘How do you live with that person, Patrick, that lover of souls you talk about? It must be oppressive.’

‘It can be,’ he says, taking a drink.

‘So is this person—aka God—okay with the fact that you don’t like them?’

‘I believe so. It’s all through the psalms. Sometimes I stop singing worship songs. I tell God that I’m not sure I like him.’

‘You lose your faith?’

‘Not at all,’ Paddy says. ‘I get the impression that God breathes a sigh of relief. God doesn’t command us to like him.’

‘But what about all that “loving God” crap?’

‘Loving does not necessarily equate to liking. Liking is about a feeling, and this is not about feelings. No one, not even God, has the right to direct another to love them that way.’

‘What the hell? Love is love, isn’t it?’

‘The Greek word is agape, which is about embracing kindness, goodness, justice and grace, especially in our actions. And if, along the way God seems to have lost the plot, we’re invited to have it out, to hold God accountable, as it were.’

‘So I’m allowed to give God shit?’

‘You could put it that way, you just have to be ready to face the fact that what you were heaping shit on, might not exist, might turn out to be a personal delusion about God.’

‘But what if it does exist? What if I’ve got it right and God is simply not my kind of dude?’

‘Yes, that’s the hard bit. Fortunately, God in his humility appreciates that: hence, what we are and what we do is more important to God than what we feel about God.’

Michelle smiles. The smile turns into a little laugh.

‘The honest abbot strikes again,’ she says, picking her bag up and conducting another search.

‘It’s nothing new Michelle. It’s all the way through our tradition. Even the psalmist says, “Is your love proclaimed in the grave? Your faithfulness in the place of the dead?”’

‘Death is one shitty situation.’

‘It is.’

‘How can anyone like a God whose bottom line is death with a little caveat about heaven?’

‘What if the bottom line is simply life?’

‘Whatever,’ Michelle says, unzipping pockets on the side of her bag and continuing her search. ‘I can cop your sermons,’ she adds. ‘You’re so bloody harmless—like my old dad, bless him. It’s words like the “church”, the “crusade”, the “Vatican” and the “Inquisition” that land like bloody bricks on my head.’

‘Me too,’ Paddy says, swatting moths that are circling the candle. ‘And this is no defence, but to be fair, madam journalist, we need to put it in the context of atheism’s track record: sixty million people killed by the Soviet communists, thirty-five million by Chinese communists and twenty-one million by the Nazis, not to mention one quarter of the population of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.’

‘I know all that,’ Michelle says, grinning and holding up a packet of cigarettes like a trophy.

‘Here,’ Paddy says, passing her a lighter.

‘So,’ she says, lighting up, ‘it seems the church and atheism have something in common.’

‘“We will tame the terror and eliminate the darkness,”’ Paddy says, making quotation signs. ‘“If only you will sell us your souls.”’

‘I remember that “taming the terror” sermon of yours,’ Michelle says. ‘You borrowed a lot from that “Bruggy” pal you always quote. What’s his name?’

‘Walter Brueggemann: “In every affluent culture it is believed that enough power and knowledge can tame the terror and eliminate the darkness.”’

‘I never did read that essay,’ she says, holding her cigarette out and looking around for the ashtray.

Paddy slides the ashtray across the table to her.

‘You should read it,’ he says. ‘It’s all about the “royal order”: the church and the government guys proving that God is on their side.’

‘While the chaos rolls in anyway.’

‘And the prophets talk about what they always talk about.’

‘Shit happening.’

Conversation stops. Michelle smokes. More moths find their way to the candle. Paddy takes a mouthful of Scotch and lets it warm his throat. He can’t let that last bit about the prophets go.

‘The prophets’ talk is not entirely about shit happening,’ he says.

‘But the chaos gets them too.’

‘It does. But what if God’s in the chaos? He “dwells in thick darkness” we are told.’

‘I love it when you talk shit,’ she says, throwing her head back and laughing.

‘Sometimes, madam journalist, the deep darkness of death is the only way ahead. It’s time we let the world of the dead speak to us again.’

Michelle stops laughing and rubs swollen eyes. He passes her a box of tissues.

‘“World of the dead!”’ she says. ‘What the hell are you talking about—witchcraft?’

Paddy swallows more scotch. Michelle’s question is beside the point. He could go there, could talk about the awful things he’s seen of the black arts but it’s too loaded with cliché and Hollywood to even begin that conversation.

‘Secular capitalism,’ he says, ‘thinks that “dead” equals no longer in existence.’

‘Oh that. So you are talking ghosts.’

‘More than that actually: I’m talking stories, ignored atrocities and unfinished business. And yes, I’m talking a living, breathing, world of the dead.’

‘Seriously, Patrick, look around. Do you see any bloody ghosts?’

‘Look further, Michelle. If you can’t see it literally, you’ll have to at least admit that the world of the dead—of memories, of witnesses, of un-forgiveness—has taken our society by the throat and won’t be letting go anytime soon.’

Michelle looks at him as if hoping for more of an explanation, but he’s had enough of hearing the sound of his own voice. Here he is talking up ‘God in the chaos’ when he’s living inside the order of a monastery. He’s never really belonged here anyway. He could have gone to England with EJ and been a real grandfather to her children instead of trying to save the world. And now here he is, trying to use the media as judge, jury and cop—and getting people killed.

‘We should have at least got Claudia to talk to the barrister,’ he says.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it would have put her straight on Dog’s kill screen.’

‘I just don’t get why Tate would hire Dog.’

‘Tate wouldn’t,’ Michelle says. ‘But Spiers would. Rumour has it he owes Dog.’

They stop again. Michelle messages on her phone and Paddy thinks about those diaries on the floor behind him. He’s gone this far; he ought to at least let Michelle read them before the police come for a second look. Too bad if she finds something embarrassing, and who knows, she might even find something important.

‘By the way,’ Paddy says, reaching around and taking a fat grey notebook off the pile. ‘That diary in Claudia’s safe was probably one of these from Janie’s collection.’

‘Oh my God, Patrick! This could be a gold mine.’

‘Might be.’

‘You should have told me about them before.’

‘I suppose so. Anyway, here they are.’

Paddy gathers the diaries up and stacks them on the table in three piles. Michelle takes one off the top and flicks through the pages.

‘How many are there?’ she asks.

‘Fifteen,’ he says. ‘They were stored at the police station for years before they brought them all back. I doubt they even opened them.’

‘And Claudia had one, you think?’

‘The day they came back, Claudia came and borrowed number fifteen.’

‘And didn’t return it?’ she asks, stubbing out her cigarette.

‘She said she’d lost it,’ he says, looking at the floor. He should never have let Claudia get away with that.

‘When did they get returned?’

‘When EJ and I went our separate ways.’

‘Wow!’ she says with a smile. ‘So you’ve read them all?’

‘Most—not all.’

‘Your wife was murdered and you haven’t read every page?’

‘Yes.’

Paddy watches the candle and explains that reading them was like pushing through a wall; eventually it was too hard and he had to stop. He’ll start again one day, he reassures her. He wonders, but doesn’t say, if it’s also because he treasures every word—every random scribble—and as long as he has more to read it’s like Janie’s still alive.

‘I remember the first time she came to our school,’ Michelle says. ‘We tried to make a joke out of it—no way we were going to her lunchtime God-music. EJ was mortified: chaplains, nuns and priests were supposed to do this sort of thing, not your mother.’

‘I know. Janie and I had always seen the Christian faith as a type of “noble lie”: a sweet little myth that serves us well in childhood. Janie deserted ship without even talking to me. God was now real, as far as she was concerned.’

Paddy offers to top up her drink. She declines.

‘So,’ Michelle asks, ‘what happened?’

‘An African bishop happened, that’s what—Bishop Addo. The bishop preached about music being the language of God, as in a real God. Janie was besotted. I was aghast.’

‘So was EJ.’

‘For three months I put up with an irritating little God Botherer.’

‘As did we.’

‘Then it all fell over—thanks to one of her students and later on, to Lilith.’

‘We thought it was us!’

‘You were all a part of it, from what I can piece together in her diaries—catalysts, as it were. But she says that what really broke her heart was when she overheard two girls in her lunchtime class having a whispered conversation. She writes about it in diary number five.’

Without even looking for the number on the spine, Paddy takes a diary off the pile. Number five is the grubby, well-worn one, the one where he’d hit a brick wall, where he’d had to face the arrogance of his presumptions about his wife’s spiritual journey. He opens it to a dog-eared page and reads aloud.

God sent two Year 7 girls to speak to me today, Kate and Eva, and they weren’t even talking to me, just to each other.

‘I don’t like God,’ Kate said.

‘Why?’ Eva asked.

‘Because God doesn’t like people,’ Kate said.

‘So why does Miss Janie like God so much?’ Eva asked.

‘I don’t think she does,’ Kate said.

‘It was the last straw for Janie,’ Paddy says, putting the diary down. ‘Having devoted herself to God, she felt as if she was infecting the class with her unresolved issues: her dislike of herself, of God and even of the human race. She had to get out.’

‘Poor thing.’

‘Yes, and she began to wonder if her entire picture of God was wrong. Then one day she stumbled on Lilith in a second-hand bookshop.’

‘I remember that part. EJ actually pinched it off Janie and read some of it to us—skiting about the fact that her mother was now cool, was turning all Goth.’

‘It is quite Gothic, but in a beautiful way.’

‘What do you mean but? Goth is beautiful, period, Patrick!’

‘If you say so, Michelle.’

‘I do. Anyway, what does she say about it?’

‘She quotes from everywhere, but in particular from chapter thirteen, where the main character is captured by a bunch of ham-fisted, stupid giants and enslaved. Little children come to his rescue. He thinks they’re the offspring of the giants, but it turns out it’s the other way around: “The dull creatures don’t know that they come from us,” they tell him. “They’ve lost themselves … which is why they never smile.”’

‘Oh my God,’ Michelle says. ‘That was Janie to a tee before she changed—she didn’t smile, she looked so ill at ease. She just didn’t look happy at school. Not that we helped.’

‘It seems to have cut like a knife,’ Paddy says. ‘She writes that she was the giant, the boring responsible adult in God’s world and God was the irrepressible, playful child.’

‘What about you, Patrick? Didn’t the pair of you talk about it?’

‘No, all I could see was that she was in the grip of this God stuff—I was scared, actually. Our marriage had never been the greatest. We had enough trouble just communicating about the ordinary business of life, and now—God, or at least her version of God—had stepped between us.’

‘And you hoped it would all just go away?’

‘I did. But I sensed that the wedge was being driven deeper, widening that gulf between us. Meanwhile, she was beginning to realise what she was doing to God, to me, to everyone. She says in diary seven, for example, that in her enthusiasm, she’d been doing a “peck, peck, pecking” thing at God—like a magpie at a mirror. The world around her might as well not have existed.’

‘A bloody magpie does that to my car every morning.’

‘And we do that to God.’

‘What do you mean “we?”’ she asks, picking up her glass.

‘Maybe you don’t, Michelle,’ he says, stretching sideways to ease his hip. ‘But most of us fall into this trap.’

‘As in, being like magpies at mirrors? What the hell?’

‘Yes. When it comes to understanding other people, for example—especially those we don’t know—we take short cuts. Impatient with the processing of information, we look down into the well of our own experience and think we’ve seen the truth about this person. But like the magpie, all that’s happened is we’ve seen something of our own reflection, perhaps even a bent part of ourselves.’

Michelle looks wide-eyed at Paddy and laughs.

‘What if we like that bent part of ourselves?’

‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘And if we’re devoted to God, we have a vested interest in controlling him, imposing our own bent-ness on him. Like the magpie, if reality grates against our picture of God, if we glimpse something that conflicts with our beloved delusion, we go back to the mirror and peck at it, reassuring ourselves that this is solid: the God in the mirror is the real one.’

‘What did Janie mean by “peck at it?”’

‘She was talking about her prayers. She says that hearing the actual words, seeing them on the page and repeating them over and over, built a kind of lovely cage for her to live in: a prison—’

Paddy stops abruptly. Here he is, talking about his wife like she’s a case study: he’s a case himself. Neither of them speaks for a long moment. Wax begins to overflow the paper under the candle. Michelle reaches across and bends the paper up to hold the wax.

‘I think we touched on this in our philosophy lectures at uni,’ Michelle says, playing with the wax, ‘we called it “naïve realism.”’

‘Yes, that’s the technical term: the assumption that there’s no gap between our perception of reality and actual reality. Janie realised that in her heart of hearts she did not like people and this had coloured her picture of God. If God did not like people, he did not like her either. How then could God be a God of love? Hence the prayer pecking, the obsessive effort at managing two impossible things: being in control of God and letting God be God.’

‘Isn’t this what The God Delusion is all about?’

‘It could have been. Dawkins begins with a good shooting down of some of the dumb things religious people have believed and said about God: a nice start.’

‘Great lampoonery,’ Michelle says, taking a mouthful of Scotch.

‘Yes—for talk shows and panels—but text on a page clarifies things and the minute he turns from the role of critic to the role of teacher his language hits a brick wall. Having embraced biology as the last word on religious experience he shoehorns all metaphors of soul and spirit into biological categories.’

‘He is a biologist, Patrick.’

‘Indeed, and like the man whose only tool is a hammer, he must treat everything as if it were a nail. When it comes to the world’s religions, for example, he takes out his biologist’s hammer and nails them all down to “a misfiring of something useful!” Biologically useful of course!’

‘But you do have to admit, there’s a lot of dysfunctional religious people around.’

‘Dysfunctional according to whom?’

‘According to—’ Michelle pauses, laughs and continues, ‘the functional people?’

Michelle keeps talking, telling Paddy that she knows he’ll say that being a functional person in a dysfunctional world does not necessarily mean you are sane. While she talks, he sighs, stretches out his toes and stares at that flickering flame. This attempt by a representative of just one branch of science to put themselves forward as the voice of all science and philosophy, has been done so many times. All it ever achieves is to drag two groups of naïve realists into an embarrassing war: neither party arguing for truth and everyone arguing for a win. Michelle stops talking and wants to know what Paddy’s thinking.

‘I’m thinking of inverted logic games,’ he says, ‘in particular of the Queen of the Underworld.’

‘As in Lilith?’

‘No, this one shows up in a CS Lewis fantasy. Her prisoners are trying to talk to her about the sun and she says to them, “Your sun is but a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing, the sun is but a tale, a children’s story.”’

Michelle smiles a broad smile at him as if about to laugh out loud.

‘My dear Patrick!’ she blurts out. ‘You and your fantasies; you are such a child—I mean that in the good sense.’

‘Thank you, but seriously, look at us here—tonight.’ Paddy puts his glass down and spreads his hands wide. ‘You can’t get much more adult than this.’

‘True.’

‘And I have to say,’ he continues, ‘that all these attempts to stretch the language of the lab around what we’re going through, leave me cold.’ Paddy looks at Michelle. She reaches out and plays with the growing puddle of candle wax. He keeps talking. ‘And the irony is that—having read a book like this—having waded through hundreds of pages of what was supposed to blow God out of his tree, a little déjà vu violin began to play. I found myself laughing. Despite the author’s attempts to distance himself from meaning and spirituality, even his molecules were singing songs of redemption: of chaos and new life, death and resurrection.’

Michelle nods and takes another drink, her eyes fixed on that candle.

Paddy swallows a last drop from his glass and continues. ‘Debaters do it all the time,’ he says. ‘They create a straw man—in this case, a straw god—knock it down and get applauded by the choir they’re preaching to. “A God Delusion” would have been a much more appropriate title. When he calls it The God Delusion he overstates his case and ruins what could have been a great contribution to the debate.’

‘On God or the delusions?’ she asks.

‘Both, we all suffer from this kind of thing whether we’re believers or atheists. The cure tends to happen when reality bites back.’

‘Like it did with Janie.’

‘Exactly. “God broke the mirror,” was how she put it. Thanks to Bishop Addo, she’d come to faith, but then, in her enthusiasm, she’d misrepresented God. After reading Lilith, she says she found herself laughing with relief. It dawned on her that she’d been trying really hard to believe, as if faith was about holding a bunch of complicated ideas together in your head. While she was doing that, God was trying to pull those ideas apart. She started asking God what he was up to and where he was in the world around her. She talks a lot about waiting, listening and watching: tuning in to the non-verbal, unwritten music of earth and ocean, of trees and sky—of the actual students she’d been teaching.’

‘Was that when she stopped going to church?’

‘Yes,’ Paddy says, nodding his approval while Michelle re-fills his glass. ‘And there we were, openly backsliding, not even bothering to go to mass after twenty years of noble-lie-style church attendance.

‘And what did our friend Bishop Steven think?’

‘He didn’t really know us back then. But there was an awkward moment one day when he visited: the local priest had asked him to have a talk with her. He tried to tell her—’

‘Of course he did, the old bastard. If my memory serves me, he drove her nuts.’

‘She couldn’t stand him—and yet he was the one who brought Addo out in the first place. He never really did get what Addo was on about.’

Paddy takes a mouthful of Scotch and offers more to Michelle. She declines.

‘She quit coming for two terms,’ Michelle says. ‘We thought she wasn’t coming back.’

‘She hardly said a word to me. I thought you girls had defeated her.’

‘EJ felt pretty bad about it—like she’d treated her own mother as if she was a joke.’

‘And just for the record, when Janie quit her little mission at the school, I quietly celebrated. I thought she had been cured of her God disease, that she would come back to the fold of our noble lie.’

Michelle reaches out to the candle and toys with a soft lip of wax. A breath of cool air flows through the room. The flame flutters. It seems Mia might not be coming.

‘Janie blew us away,’ Michelle says. ‘EJ warned us that her mum might be coming back. She was nervous as hell. And then it happened: Janie turned up at school with her lunch pack and violin and just sat on the lawn with us. Kerrod was there too. We all stood up. Just as we were about to walk away she asked what we would like her to play. Kerrod jokingly asked for Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’—’

‘And she played it?’

‘Did she ever! Kerrod got all teary. We sat back down and started singing the lyrics—all that stuff about—’ Michelle pauses, overwhelmed. ‘Killing someone, saying goodbye to everyone, shivers going down your spine. We had no idea about Kerrod’s pain, or Janie’s. It was like Janie took Kerrod unawares and suddenly we could all feel it. She couldn’t actually finish; we were a mess.’

The candle flickers. Paddy waits for the obvious question from Michelle: Didn’t Janie tell you about this beautiful story that was going down between her and God? But Michelle is busy with her phone—deliberately, he suspects. The fact is, he didn’t want to know.

‘That Bohemian Rhapsody moment in Term 4, triggered an amazing couple of months,’ Michelle says, drawing back on her cigarette and blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘We couldn’t get enough of Janie after that, which was why us girls were always at your place.’

‘My cue to go out to the club.’

‘We used to laugh about that. Poor Janie would be apologising on your behalf.’

‘Which I told her not to.’

‘It was probably for the best anyway.’

‘As in?’

‘The stuff we used to talk about. Some of it was pretty out there: her “lovely, luscious body” talks, for example.’

‘Another thing I never heard about.’

‘What about you, Patrick: you and her? You know—the home life stuff.’

Paddy leans forward and moves a cushion to a more comfortable place behind his back. This is all a bit ‘talk-show-ish’. It’s what she does. He might as well oblige.

‘Life got a lot better for me,’ he says. ‘Even before she went back to the school.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’d become so content, so happy to be who she was. She was alive—vibrant, actually. Our bedroom had even come to life, which at the time I imagined was more to do with me than her.’

‘You chauvinistic old bastard,’ Michelle says, laughing. ‘You thought it was your sex appeal?’

‘Uh huh, until she started talking to me about a thing called the “sexual crucible”—reading to me, actually.’

‘Like from textbooks?’

‘One in particular: a researcher by the name of Schnarch who suggests that when our sex life is really on fire, we find ourselves thinking about God. I began to wonder if Janie had actually found something, or someone, supernatural.’

‘And you must have been, what, fifty?’

‘Fifty-one, to be precise.’

‘Holy hell—so it can get better even after fifty? Now you’ve got me wondering.’

‘I was beginning to wonder about a lot of things, my dear—’ Paddy says. He almost says, I was launching out on my own spiritual journey, but that would be far too kind. He’s quite sure that if Janie hadn’t died, he would have smoked his pipe, written a few reflections and gone back to his ‘useful lie’.

Michelle takes a sip from her glass. Cool air flows in through a window. A gecko crawls up a curtain next to Paddy, stalking a moth. The moth flies away. Paddy smiles a wry smile. At least the moth has had a win tonight.

‘So,’ Michelle says, picking up another diary up and putting it back down. ‘Diary fifteen sounds like the one we really need.’

‘I was out the day Claudia came for it,’ Paddy says.

‘So Madeleine was the fool?’

‘No, EJ was visiting at the time, and let her have a look.’

‘Silly EJ. By the way, how soon after Claudia and Spiers’ divorce, did this happen?’

‘Pretty soon after—that’s twelve you have there, by the way: lots of Kerrod in it.’

Michelle flips through the diary. Paddy lights his pipe. There’s a loud squeal of car tyres outside.

‘Do you have visitors, Patrick?’ Michelle asks.

‘No, but we get hoons. Thought the guard would have kept them at bay tonight.’

‘This diary is well written.’

‘Have a look at page twenty-five.’

She turns to the page and reads aloud: ‘This sagging jumble gunna crumble, Daddy says. Fairies in your head, might as well be dead. Daddy says. KCD.’

‘Recognise the poetry?’ Paddy asks.

‘I do. It’s in Kerrod’s handwriting and those are his initials. He put them everywhere, even on me.’

‘There’s a few places where she seems to have invited him to add his own comments.’

‘Can I borrow all of these?’

‘You’re welcome.’

There’s a noise at the door. Paddy starts. A woman wearing a hoodie walks into the room, her face hidden from the light of the candle. It’s Mia: her head down, waif-like. Michelle hurries to her and holds her in an embrace.

Paddy heaves himself up, hobbles over and stops. About to put an arm around Mia, he senses this is not a good time. The women turn and walk past him. Michelle leads Mia to a chair. Paddy returns to his seat.

‘Where’s your man?’ Michelle asks.

‘He’s killing,’ Mia replies, hunching over on her seat and staring at the floor.

Michelle looks at Paddy and puts an index finger to her lips in a ‘silence, please’. He wasn’t planning on saying anything. He understands Michelle’s fear; he’s a preacher, after all. He offers Mia a Scotch. She waves it away.

‘So—Red isn’t in contact?’ Michelle asks.

Mia keeps her eyes floor-ward and says nothing. Michelle asks her another question but there’s still no response. Michelle asks a third question and they start talking.

Meanwhile, Paddy’s brain is on a tangent. He’s sure he saw an opal bracelet on Mia’s wrist when she waved him away, the colours and the design looking much the same as the bracelet of Janie’s, which Mia had lost. Unable to bring himself to ask and unable to join the conversation, Paddy sips his Scotch and prays for Mia. Michelle keeps going with questions about Red.

‘Once the police left, he disappeared,’ Mia says. ‘He’d already lied about the yellow Commodore at the railway station.’

‘Lied?’ Michelle asks.

‘Said he couldn’t remember the rego number, but he always remembers stuff.’

‘We’re all liars here,’ Michelle says. ‘Look at us, honey: I lied to them about everything, you lied about the Wand and Paddy lied about helping us. It’s what we do.’

‘What about you, Mia?’ Paddy says. ‘Do you need a meal, a bed—somewhere to be?’

‘I’m okay,’ she says, pushing the hood off and ruffling her hair.

The bracelet swings freely on her left wrist. It is Janie’s bracelet!

‘You found the bracelet!’ Paddy says.

‘I did,’ she says, smiling.

‘How’s Elvis?’ Michelle asks.

‘No idea.’

Paddy asks Mia if she would like a coffee. She says ‘no thanks’—a ‘no thanks’ that’s so whispered he barely hears her. Michelle shows the diary to Mia and reads more of it aloud.

While the two read and talk, the sadness in Mia’s voice reminds Paddy of another moment years ago when he had walked into his own bedroom. There, sitting naked on the bed with her back to him was a seventeen-year-old Mia with Janie’s bracelet on her arm, looking at a portrait of Janie. He’d forgotten that Mia was visiting, and whenever she visited—for the first few years after Janie died—Paddy would move into the spare room and Mia and EJ would sleep in his double bed.

He had back-pedalled and closed the door. But before it closed, Mia had whispered a sorry that was so full of sadness it had summoned unbearable grief. Leaving the house, he had found a bar, ordered a double whisky and let the tears flow. That fresh image of Mia’s long hair falling down her back was so beautiful, so princess-like and so like the young Janie he had married. And now here is Mia, the opals on her wrist again but her lovely back bowed, maybe crushed forever. He silently prays that something of Janie in those opals would touch Mia. Before the prayer is over, an answering thought seems to land on the in-tray of his soul: The devil sifted Janie like wheat and has asked the same for Mia, but I have prayed for her that her faith would not fail. Paddy regrets his prayer. Perhaps he should revoke it. He doesn’t know what to do. He’d better leave it alone.

‘By the way,’ Mia says, looking at Paddy, ‘what’s going on at the chapel?’

‘Nothing, as far as I know. Why?’

‘I saw lights, and people were yelling.’

‘Your noviciates getting on the grog,’ Michelle says, rolling her eyes.

‘They didn’t look like noviciates to me,’ Mia says. ‘They were climbing over the outer wall from the street.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Michelle says, standing.

Paddy knocks his pipe out, picks up his walking stick and follows Mia and Michelle into the dark passageway. He would rather handle this himself. They’ve had drunk noviciates, and even a fistfight, but not at this time of day. Adams’ cottage is the closest one to the chapel. Paddy prays it won’t be another Adams debacle.

As they walk through the office, Madeleine’s phone rings. The answering machine kicks in and takes a message. A woman complains about obscene pictures on the wall of the chapel and then hangs up. Crowd noises float through the office window.

At the stairs, Mia takes Paddy’s hand, helping him find his way down via the light of her phone. A fall now would be a disaster. The din of voices grows louder.

Outside, the security guard and a group of noviciates are staring at the chapel end of the monastery. People are sitting on a section of the monastery wall overlooking the chapel. A small crowd has gathered near the chapel: laughing, whistling, shouting obscenities and staring at a flickering pink glow on the side of the chapel, as if a movie’s playing. Surely Adams would have heard the noise. Where is he?

The guard tells them all to wait. He’s called the police, he says. Michelle ignores him and walks up to the chapel with her camera out—Paddy, Mia and the noviciates following.

The guard asks Paddy to stop them. Paddy shakes his head and keeps walking. This is his monastery and he has had enough. Whatever is going on up there must be something to do with Adams.

‘Go for it, fucker!’ a man’s voice booms out.

Paddy can’t believe what he’s seeing. High up on the wall of the chapel—in full view of traffic on the other side of the monastery wall—a scene plays from the video he showed Michelle: Adams, Tate and a blindfolded Kerrod are in the lounge room with the woman, Adams’ skin against Kerrod’s.

‘What’s going on?’ Paddy shouts.

The security guard switches on his torch and walks to the front of the crowd, shouting that they’re trespassing on private property. The mob splits in all directions, some climbing over the wall and others charging downhill. The guard throws his hands in the air and tells Paddy there’s nothing he can do.

Paddy follows the projection beam back to Adams’ cottage and through his front door, which is wide open. The beam comes from a data projector on a coffee table. Paddy turns the projector off. The place smells of blood, like a farm killing-block. Michelle pushes past Paddy, her camera out. The guard sweeps his torch around the room, the beam coming to a standstill on a naked body that’s covered in stab wounds. It’s Adams.

Someone’s murdered him! That’s what this is about.

Resting most of his weight on his stick, Paddy reaches for a light switch. He misses the switch, slips and lands flat on his back. He lies there, stunned. It’s a blackout. Why did he even try that? The back of his head hurts. He tries to get up and slips again, his fingers slimed by what would have to be blood.

Everyone’s yelling at once: Mia, the guard and the noviciates. Michelle places her camera on a bench, its red recording light on.

One of the noviciates kneels next to Paddy, wanting to know if he’s okay. Paddy recognises the voice of the noviciate responsible for the cellar, the unofficial leader of the group. Paddy says he’s okay. Mia crouches down, and with the cellarer’s help, she gets Paddy back on his feet. The cellarer passes him his walking stick.

Light from the guard’s torch hurls random shadows all around the room. Books and kitchen utensils have been strewn everywhere, drawers have been tipped out and a shattered porcelain doll lies on the floor.

‘Please,’ a voice whispers. ‘Help me.’

Adams is alive!

The full blaze of the guard’s torch rests on Adams, whose body lies in a foetal position, blood dripping from stab wounds in his chest, belly and genitalia. A moth flaps in a pool of gore.

‘Kelvin!’ Paddy says, kneeling down next to him and taking his hand.

Their eyes meet. Adams looks away. Paddy reaches for his phone to call 000. The guard says he’s already called. Paddy asks the guard to take the light off Adams. The guard stands his torch vertically in a corner where it illuminates the ceiling and casts a dim glow.

Michelle brings a bathrobe and a towel and—along with much moaning and protesting from Adams—helps Paddy sit him up against a wall, packing the towel against the wound in his crotch where most of the blood is coming from. Paddy drapes the robe over his shoulders.

Paddy prays for Adams. Mia shouts at Paddy, telling him to stop playing Jesus. Michelle tells Mia to shut up. The guard takes photographs with his smart phone.

‘I knew he’d do this!’ Mia shouts, walking outside. ‘I knew it!’

‘This can’t be Red’s work!’ Michelle says. ‘He’s not that stupid.’

‘It has to be him,’ Mia says. ‘He took the thumb drive from our bathroom tonight.’

Feet tramp blood across the room. Paddy looks for somewhere to wash his hands. It’s too crowded in here. A noviciate puts a hand to his mouth, runs outside and vomits. Another lights up a cigarette. Michelle orders the noviciates outside. They all comply except for the cellarer, who stays with Paddy.

Adams opens his eyes and, in a surprisingly clear voice, says one word: Wand.

‘What about the Wand?’ Paddy asks.

Adams closes his eyes and takes a deep, slow breath as if the effort of speaking has exhausted him. Mia and Michelle crouch down next to Paddy and Adams, Mia wanting to know what Adams had said.

Paddy finds a sink, washes his hands and pours Adams a glass of water. Adams takes a sip. Tears flow down his face. He points at the floor and tries to say something.

Paddy follows Adams’ gaze to a pool of blood. Michelle brings her phone light over. There, in the pool, is a black oval-shaped object about the size of a remote control car key. Paddy picks it up, takes it to the sink, cleans it and dries it on his shirt.

‘What is it, Kelvin?’ Paddy asks, holding it out.

Adams’ eyes close and he sits there shivering, seeming not to have heard the question. Mia and Michelle kneel in close. Paddy puts a hand on his shoulder and tries to shake him awake. The police will be here any minute. He should just slap him across the face.

‘What is it?’ Mia screams.

Blood seeps and drips. Congealed curds form along grout lines in the tiles. Sirens wail. Adams licks his lips. His eyes open wide. He looks at Mia.

‘Couldn’t see him …’ Adams whispers. ‘He was masked, gloved … had a knife … gave me this.’ He opens his hand, revealing a crumpled piece of paper in his palm.

Mia picks it up. The paper has just two words in black pencil: ‘MAGIC WAND’. Mia gives it to Michelle, who places it in her bag.

‘I can get … Oksy back,’ Adams says.

‘How?’ Mia asks.

‘Tate made me … the keeper of his secret … but Tate has failed me.’

‘What secret?’

‘The real Magic Wand,’ Adams murmurs, leaning, as if he might fall sideways. ‘They didn’t get …’

Michelle puts a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

‘Didn’t?’ Mia asks.

Adams smiles and looks at the pieces of doll on the floor. ‘He broke my doll. His scanner … beeped … he fell for it. Took the fakes.’

‘Where? Mia says. ‘Where’s the real Wand?’

‘You have no idea,’ Adams whispers, closing his eyes, ‘the burden … I’ve carried all these years.’

‘Where is it?’ Mia yells.

‘In the safe … locked.’

‘Where’s the safe?’

‘Under … sanctuary … locked!’

‘But we need a key!’ Paddy says.

‘Use … that!’ Adams whispers, pointing at the object in Paddy’s hand.

‘So this is the key?’ Paddy holds it up.

‘Yes. Push … button … it opens … Wand in the safe. In the sanctuary, child, under the old bricks.’

Paddy hands the device to Mia. She runs out the door.

‘Run girl!’ Adams whispers, his eyes still closed. ‘Bless my little Mia girl!’

‘Kelvin!’ Michelle hisses. ‘What about the Magic Wand’s PIN?’

‘With Tate dead,’ he says, gasping, ‘there will be a message … my email.’

‘But how do we get into your email?’

‘Brev … breviary.’

Adams’ head slumps forward, his eyes close and he stops breathing. Paddy lifts his head up but still there are no breaths. Michelle takes his pulse. It’s weak, she says, but it’s there. The guard suggests they stretch him out on the floor. With the guard’s help they slide him back into a foetal position on the floor. He starts to breathe, but still seems to be unconscious.

The whine of a siren and the flashing of red and blue fills the place. Paddy walks around the room looking for a breviary. Michelle wants to know what the hell it is. Paddy explains that it’s a book of worship, probably a monastery one: brown, about the size of two cigarette packets. There’s nothing in the room. They try the bedroom, but all they find is a Bible.

A car door slams. The siren stops and a police officer walks through the door.