The Programme

CHAPTER EIGHT-3

“I thought you were in Brussels?”

“I was. I came back early.”

“Thanks,” Colin pulled the coffee towards him. “What’s up?”

“I saw a clip of theseProgramme people on CNN.”

“And?”

“How deeply involved with them are we, Colin?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Colin chose his words with care, “a lot less than with most of our clients.”

“And as far as Carey is concerned?”

“I’m not sure. Too much,” he admitted.

“I don’t understand it.” Andrew sighed. “She’s always seemed so, oh, such a stable presence.” He meant as a lawyer.

“We all have to break out once in a while,” Colin took at stab at defending his sister.

“What?” Andrew mocked. “Even you?”

“Not me. I have to never break out. It’s the only way I can handle it all.”

“Yes,” Andrew admired his friend’s self-appraisal. “That’s about right. So it’s hands off Jessica, is it?”

“You really can be a s**t, Andrew; I managed to forget that when we were bringing everything together. Yes, it’s hands off Jessica; she’s a nice girl, woman; that’s all.”

“That’s where we differ, Colin: if I see a woman I’m attracted to, I need a reason not to do something about it; you need a reason to do so.”

“I’m married and that’s my absolute reason not to, that’s the difference,” Colin replied, mollified. “Anyway, I’m sure I’m not her type.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows: it was an admission that Colin had been thinking about her.

“What do you want from me, Andrew?”

“Reassurance, I suppose; God knows, when we talked about European business, neither of us was thinking about the ashes of the Order of the Solar Temple.”

“I think she’s more involved than she intended but it’s more this Matthew Crane character than anything else; once that wears off, the rest of it’ll follow.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m sure I am,” Colin replied cheerfully.

He did not to tell Andrew about the calls he had been receiving from Richard Fielding, Emily’s husband. Following the previous threats through his solicitors, Fielding had called Colin at the office. When Colin’s secretary wouldn’t put his calls through, he had called Colin at home, late in the evening, drunk, demanding to know where Emily was, accusing Carey of leading her into The Programme, threatening Colin with dire consequences - professional and personal - if he did not bring her back. It was nonsense: nothing to bother about; nothing to bother anyone else about either.

Matthew stayed back to talk.

“Tell me about Berlinger,” he asked Phillipe after Carey and Emily had left.

“Tell me about the girl,” Phillipe countered.

“Which girl? Carey?”

“That one.”

“What’s your interest in her?”

“It’s not what you think, Matthew.”

“That’s why I asked.”

They were in the backyard, sitting on chairs still drinking beer, no more dope. His house was in the French Quarter - virtually untouched by Hurricane Katrina. They sat in plain view of his hounfour, his temple, a covered space in the walled backyard around an altar stone - the pe - on which were set candles and tiny brown jars, rattles, charms, flags, a model boat: there were also photographs in frames - Papa and Baby Doc, Mandela, Kaunda; black leaders of men, representatives on earth of the gods. Phillipe played with a rattle, bulbous, with long-handle, phallic - the asson.

“Are you happy, Phillipe?”

“You were the one with ambition, Matthew; all that time ago, still are I think. This suits me. I’ve got a congregation, used to be maybe four, five hundred, some of them survived and stayed, others are beginning to come back: that’s a lot more than some of the regular churches about here. They tithe me, gave me this house to live in: it isn’t grand but they know where to find me. I get what I want - women, to eat and drink, a little bit of respect now and then too.”

“Fear?”

“Some of them fear me.”

“And Berlinger - he pays you for what?”

“You ever think, Matthew, how many people I knew back then? I knew everyone in England; I came back home, knew everyone here too. I’m a gold-mine for that boy.”

“He pays you for information?”

“Call it information if you like,” Phillipe answered languidly. “It’s more than that.”

“What, then?”

“You think you’re the only one comes calling? You wonder why you came to see me?”

“I came because Cassandra came, that’s all.” Matthew’s eyes narrowed: Phillipe knew the way into his head.

That was the answer: what Berlinger was buying was how to get into their heads.

Phillipe watched him work it out, saw him bristle, too. He laughed, reached across, patted Matthew’s knee.

“All these years you’ve been doing it; me, I’ve been watching and learning.”

Matthew sipped his beer slowly, thoughtfully. For a time, when the women were still there, they had all been a little stoned, him too. Now, he was clear. At the time, he had thought Phillipe was stoned with them; now, he was sure he had not been.

“What about her?” Cassandra. “What did she want?”

“Ask her. Maybe she wants be the one on top now, have all those people looking up to her, you too, you know, like you just said, afraid of her.”

“Yes, I think that’s what she wants.”

“What are you doing with that little girl?” Back to Carey.

“She’s not so little; good lawyer, too. What’s it to you?”

“This is where we came in: I told you about Berlinger.” Tit for tat.

“He’s coming after me, isn’t he?”

“That’s a safe bet; you or The Programme.”

“Same thing,” Matthew dismissed. “Whatever Cassandra may think.”

“Same thing I told him too,” Phillipe said cheerfully.

Phillipe’s red-robed Guedes had accompanied the women to their hotel, sullen though not rude. They drove through the French Quarter, past three-storey houses in weathered brick with huge, dormer windows and wooden galleries, pastel-painted, then for a short way along the path of the river where the hurricane damage was still dominant: the contrast was stark. They had found a suite in a small hotel, two bedrooms adjoining with a common balcony overlooking a courtyard bar and plenty of space to sit within.

Emily and Carey talked, their first chance alone. Carey was still angry at Matthew’s remark while they were at Lamarque’s. Emily told her:

“That’s not why you’re angry.”

“Why, then?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”Programme-speak.

“You’re really getting into it, Em.”

“It’s bringing something out in me,” she admitted.

“What?” Carey was only half-attending: she was pissed in more ways than one and wanted the conversation to be about her.

“All the time I was with Richard, trying to care for him, trying to please him; part of me likes that - caring for people, pleasing them - otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. But now I’m doing it for me; it’s dangerous to invest it in someone else.”

“Simon?”

“Simon’s nice; that’s all. After Richard, well, you know.”

“It’s easy to, er, mix it all up,” Carey warned her, warned herself.

“Men; The Programme?”

“Something like that. Warmth, love, wanting to belong.”

“It’s natural,” Emily shrugged.

“Is it? I mean, The Programme - is it natural? Or just easy.”

“I’m not sure it’s that easy. I find it hard enough. Other members; people maybe I wouldn’t have had five minutes for on the outside; trying to be completely open with them, share with them, accept them. I still find, oh, I don’t know, I still get irritated, I want to say - pull yourself together, you know,” she concluded laughing. “Like someone at work. Don’t you?”

“It’s been easy for me,” Carey reminded her that she had a special ticket. “Though I get scared sometimes.”

“What of?”

“That’s it’s all a fantasy, a mistake. As London fades, I begin to wonder: was I that unhappy, that badly off?”

“I don’t know how committed I am to it,” Emily came back to The Programme. “It’s something I have to find out about. That’s all, really. Is that enough?”

Carey glanced over her shoulder, as if to say: ’Who are you asking?’ Emily stretched, yawned, got up and strolled into her own room calling back:

“I’m not the one you should be asking either.”

After she had showered, she came back in to find Carey still sitting where she had left her, in an armchair, smoking, a glass of mineral water at her side. She knelt down beside her, put her arms around her waist.

“Don’t worry so, Carey; we’re fine.”

“I know,” Carey stroked her friend’s hair. “I’m just not sure I am.”

She was stoned; she had drunk too many beers. Although the visit was intended to bring them back together, it seemed as if she and Emily were drifting in different directions. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be: not even Emily.

When Matthew returned, he found her waiting up for him.

She said without waiting:

“I feel like I’m on a roller-coaster.”

He sat down opposite her.

“It’s like that sometimes.”

“Yes, I know. And I’ve gone with it, kept going with it, but it just doesn’t seem to end.”

“It is the end, Carey, not the means. That’s all there is.”

“Not the fire beyond?”

“The fire beyond is like this: you’re on a roller-coaster; up and down, round and round, even upside down; one day, when you think you’re going over the crest of another rise, you just keep going up and up and beyond.”

“I thought this trip was supposed to make us feel closer. I don’t understand why, but ever since Asheville, you’ve been somewhere else.”

“No supposed to be, Carey, just what is.”

“All right then,” she said, annoyed by his pedantry. “Not what I wanted.”

“Ah, well, that’s different. This is Carey as was, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The one who doesn’t like it when she doesn’t get what she wants.”

“What was all that about at Phillipe’s?”

“I’m not sure myself. That’s the thing about Phillipe. You can never tell if he’s warning you about something - and if he is, whether it’s for your good or someone else’s - or if he’s telling you something just to stir it up for the hell of it, to make it happen.”

Matthew had walked back from Phillipe’s. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed the opportunity to be alone. Phillipe’s focus on Carey had made him focus on her. He had wanted her since he set eyes on her, but only on his terms, which meant within The Programme. She had to come to want it at the same time as she came to want him. It was a difficult task, but he had to let her make it her own way without telling her how to do it.

He said, as if he was answering a question she had asked:

“I belong to The Programme, Carey; the question is whether you do.”

“I told you,” she protested, “in Asheville.”

“You told me what you wanted; I told you, it wasn’t the same thing.” As being there.

“What do I mean to you, Matthew?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“You know what you mean to me. I love you; I respect you; I believe in you; I believe in The Programme.”

“’I love you - I believe in The Programme’,” he repeated, as if he had been listening to her conversation with Emily.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you haven’t separated it all out; until you do, you can’t know how you feel about its different parts.”

“Do you want me to go home now, leave you here? Is that what it’s about?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

They stared at one another with something that was on her part akin to hatred, on his to anger. She said:

“I’m a fool, really.”

“How so?”

“I really believed it was all about peace, love, being whole; I thought, well, there’s some tensions getting there, a little bit of play-acting between members struggling for something they can’t otherwise resolve, but at the end of the day - a family.”

“And? How is it not? Because I’m not immediately kissing it better?”

She blushed.

“Perhaps. You still haven’t said.”

“What?”

“What you want.”

“What I want you to do?”

“Yes.”

“See the case through; then decide what you want to do for yourself.”

“How can I do that if I don’t know what you want, what my choices are?”

“It’s the only way you can be sure it’s you who’s deciding.” She shook her head, tired, confused. He said: “The other way round, the question you’re deciding is whether you want to do what I want.”

She shook her head again.

“It’s just as complicated as everything else, isn’t it, Matthew?”

He smiled at last, rose, reached a hand out for her.

“Whoever told you it was any different?”

He led her to the bed and started to help her undress. She shrugged him off. While she was undressing, he went into the bathroom; when he came out, she passed him. By the time she was finished, he was already in bed, had turned out all but the night-lights on the wall. She slipped in on the other side from him, did not cuddle up for warmth or more. He rolled onto his side to look at her, staring at the ceiling. After a while, he stretched out and touched her breast, traced a finger down her stomach, slid it between her legs. She neither resisted nor helped him.

He pulled her legs apart, stroked the inside of her thigh, felt his way to the dry lips of her v****a. He brought his fingers to his mouth, licked them wet, dampened the opening enough to insert them without hurting her. Gradually, in spite of herself, she began to respond to the circular movements he made within, a second finger, then a third, he was forcing her to buck against him, bringing her manually to the edge before he pulled his hand out, rolled over on top of her, pushed himself into her, moving slowly on top of her, to his own rhythm, he came gently, in his own time, emptying himself into her without waiting.

In the backyard, outside the hounfour, Phillipe raised the asson: it is the circle and the wand of magic, joined together. Within it were sacred stones and the dried vertebræ of serpents to represent the bones of African forefathers. He held it towards the sky, rattling it, whispering:

“Come, Danbhalah, come down.”

It is three in the morning. He is alone. This is a private ceremonial.

He lays the asson down on the pe, picks up ku-bha-sah, the ritual sword, runs his thumb along the blade, cuts it until it bleeds, smiles, licks greedily, replaces the sword. He walks over and opens a door in the wall; it leads to a second yard, running along behind his own house and the one next door, which is also owned by the congregation, where the commandant la place- the master of ceremonies- lives. Oneside is taken up by coops; he reaches in and removes a chicken, holding it by the neck so it cannot bite him, but careful not to choke it to death. It is an easy, familiar activity, one he could do in his sleep and, sometimes, that he finds he has done.

He carries the bird back to the pe ; the stone is already stained with the blood of a thousand earlier sacrifices; now there will be one more. These, too, are easy and familiar steps, he whispers the words, thrusts his body forward so that the bloody spray hits him full in the chest, looks again to the sky and smiles: fly away; fly away little bird. It is a spell he is casting, but even he does not know if it is a spell for good or ill and on which of them he is casting it.

For the first time since he had returned to The Programme, he slipped into her bed.

They were both naked.

They lay facing one another.

She reached down and touched him; he was erect.

He shuddered.

“Cassandra.”

“Little brother.”

“You like?”

She took his hand and placed it on her breast, put her own arm around his head. Their lips met; they kissed fully. He pressed against her, moved slowly against her, she did not pull away, but when he tried to roll her onto her back she resisted. One of his hands was trapped between their bodies. He let go of her breast, reached for her thigh, tried to lift her open. She seized his wrist, pulled his hand away, placed it back on her breast. He rolled the n****e around in his fingers, lowered his head to take it in his mouth, they kissed again, he asked:

“Why not?”

She put a finger to his lip; he licked it, sucked it into his mouth. He was still pressed against her. It would not wait much longer.

“It’s still not the time, Huw my love. Not quite, not yet.”

He groaned, tried to roll himself away but she clung on to his spine so that he could not release the pressure and rocked herself against him until he came cold and sticky on both their stomachs, their mouths grappling fiercely. It was the closest yet, they had straddled the line, it could not be long before they crossed it.