The Programme

CHAPTER THREE-2

Emily Fielding, late twenties, sharp-featured but attractive, close- cropped, curly dark-brown hair, fit, management consultant, liked to ski, jogged, played tennis, looked as if she could give as good as she got, trying to explain to Carey why she had let him beat her, why she had let it happen again and again until, finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. He was still living with her when she came to see Carey; he had been given no warning before they sought the injunction ex parte; her affidavit candidly admitted she was scared what he would do when it was served. Now it had been granted, was about to be drawn up, and she was still terrified to do anything with it.

Outside the High Court, she asked Carey:

“Will you have lunch with me?”

Automatically, Carey shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I have to get back.”

“Just a drink, then?” Emily was desperate not to be left alone. “Please.”

“All right,” Carey heard herself say.

They found a table at the back of the pub opposite the court: they were early for lunch, the crowds had not yet arrived. This was where barristers’ clerks gathered to drink; if she wanted, Carey could walk from one end of the bar to the other and be offered a drink every step of the way. They bought sandwiches, g-and-ts, Emily said:

“You always read about women who think they deserve it; I never thought that. I thought... I’m not sure what I thought. I suppose I thought a lot of different things. Richard’s under pressure at work.” He was an accountant: they worked for different arms of one of the top ten firms, all of which now offered management consultancy alongside accountancy. “It’s because he loves me too much, he doesn’t know how to cope with it: that was another, that was a favourite, it lasted for months. Then, sometimes,” she looked down at her drink, glanced up shyly, “I think there were times I almost enjoyed it. That’s a terrible thing to admit; I mean, I’m not a masochist, we weren’t into anything, well, you know, kinky. I don’t mean that I physically enjoyed it; more like, I enjoyed the feeling of superiority.”

Carey shuddered: she could imagine it happening to her.

As if she had read her mind, Emily asked:

“Have you ever. . . I mean,” she tailed off lamely. She knew Carey was unmarried, without a partner, it had cropped up casually when they were waiting outside the court. “You didn’t say.”

“I’ve never even lived with anyone. Isn’t that awful? You’ve been married for eight years, and I’ve never spent a week with one man except on holiday.”

“It doesn’t sound awful to me,” Emily murmured enviously.

“The grass is always greener. No, I don’t really regret it. But I feel,” she struggled to explain herself, much as Emily had with difficulty admitted her different reactions to her husband’s violence. She wanted to honour the confidence; she liked the woman; she identified with her; she wanted to give something back. “I suppose I’m beginning to feel it may be too late now for any of those conventional relationships, those dreams. And it worries me where it leaves me.”

“Being alone?”

“Maybe. Or slipping into a relationship that isn’t right, just to have one.”

“It’s what kept me with Richard,” Emily admitted. “You get into a pattern of life until that’s all life is. Life is this: work, money, play, s*x. You feel, if you let go of it, there won’t be anything else. When will it be served, the injunction?” she asked suddenly.

Carey glanced at her watch: a male paralegal from the firm - Gordon, a former policeman - would serve the order at Richard’s work. He would do it politely, asking to see him privately, but if Richard Fielding responded true to the norm in these cases, there would be at the least a verbally violent reaction, sometimes physical.

“Before he goes to lunch, I hope. Are you going to go back to the office this afternoon?”

“No way. What do you think? Should I go home? Should I be there when he comes for his things? Should I pack them first?” They had an order excluding him from their flat; he was allowed to collect clothes, personal belongings; Gordon would tell him, would insist on being there, had been given a key. Emily wasn’t needed; it would become a flash point. “Gordon won’t know what’s mine. How will he stop him taking my things?”

“He’s got a lot of experience,” Carey reassured her. “Let me get you another drink.”

They were talking like old friends. Carey almost forgot Emily was a client. She could not remember when last she had slipped into such an easy familiarity with a stranger. They giggled over men tales, then frowned; Emily would start to recount an adventure with Richard and be overtaken by despair; Carey talked about her father and her brother. She found herself talking about Matthew.

“I don’t know. I tell myself, people like that are charlatans, cults and sects are cons. There’s something appealing about it though: getting away from all this; doing something different.”

“Escaping?”

“Sure, yes. I mean, I don’t think I know that many people who are really happy doing whatever it is they do. Or in their private lives. How many people do you know who are really happy? Well,” she remembered who she was talking to, “that’s not the right thing to say to you at the moment.”

“It’s just the right thing to say. You’re right. We’re always struggling half the time with what’s wrong in our lives, or doing things we don’t want to be doing. I don’t know how some people survive. I suppose that’s what kept me with him so long: watching the news, you know - seeing some mother whose child has been murdered, or film footage from Africa, the terrible things people do to each other - and that they do to themselves - you end up thinking well, if she can survive this or that, I can put up with Richard. There’s a sort of perverse logic in it somewhere.”

“Perverse is right,” Carey muttered. “It gets harder to know what’s perverse. The Programme - a lot of people would say it’s perverse - closed-in groups, believing they’ve got the only solution, fanatics I suppose: but Matthew doesn’t say that - he just says, well, it’s one way of living, if you don’t like it, fine, and if you do, you’re welcome. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m not the right person to ask. I’ve made a hash of my own life, but I don’t think I can solve it by, well, giving up, giving up control of it to anyone or anything else. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it: it’s too much control to give to someone else. Like a marriage.”

“I know,” Carey sighed. “It’s just so attractive sometimes, though: the idea of letting someone else decide.”

They left the pub together, knocked back by the fresh air. Impulsively, Carey gave her client a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Call me. You’ve got my numbers.” She always gave her domestic violence cases her home and mobile numbers: domestic violence most frequently came out to play at night. “If you need to get away, I’ve got a spare room; really it’d be fine. I’m going to my brother’s for dinner, but I never stay late - I’ll be home before eleven. Or if you just want to talk.”

“I will,” Emily said, “I’ll call you later.”

The meeting continued through lunch. Junior Messengers brought salad sandwiches and cold drinks to The Temple on trays. The talking would stop as the door opened. As the Junior Messengers entered, they would mumble shyly:

“I am one.”

The nearest couple of members would turn and reply comfortingly: “We are many.” The Junior Messengers would leave the room as quickly as they could, overawed by the power that hung in the atmosphere.

When the door shut behind them, the debate resumed.

The Teacher did not forbid discussion, even argument; The Seer positively encouraged it.

Father Christopher - Caleb’s friend - led the attack.

“If we’re going to be across the Atlantic, we’ve got to have autonomy; we can’t be expected to create aProgramme that is dependent on England; it would be two halves. Who is going to lead us?” He was tall and angular, lean and predatory in his movements, and wore wire-rimmed spectacles like a revolutionary.

“Are you going, Christopher?” Matthew asked, mildly reprimanding him for the presumption.

“We are going - whether I am one of them or not.”

“Right. That’s exactly what I’m saying: it’s still us, we’re still one group.”

“I can’t go,” said Sister Hannah, ever practical: the children.

“Ah, yes, now,” Caleb’s eyes lit up, “that raises another question, doesn’t it?” Who would take care of Anthony?

“Give us your poor, your oppressed, your psychotics?” Brother Micah offered sombrely. He had taken the news of the assault on his son with his customary fatalism; it was Hannah who had waxed hysterical. When Micah had next seen Anthony, he had gripped his arms, stared into his eyes, finally said: “I forgive you,” and turned away before he could see the sneer in Anthony’s eyes replace the fear of retaliation.

“Hammer Reach is too far from anywhere,” said Father Simon, one of the earliest members of the group and one of Matthew’s closest allies within it. A thickset man with shoulder-length hair tied back in a pony tail, Simon was patient, stoical. English upper middle-class, public school, a Cambridge rugby blue, he had studied as an architect before he committed to The Programme. A number of the early members had been in or around architecture - architects were drawn to form, tried to recreate inner forms as buildings. Simon had decided to pursue the real thing.

“What can we do with it?” Father Christopher asked. He was a practical man; there were times when his friend, Caleb, verged on the mystical; for Father Christopher, the hard line was the way to get things done.

Christopher had been a computer consultant. He had set up The Programme’s Website. He had helped Brother George Cohen computerise their financial records. He made himself useful, and - useful - he made Caleb powerful. They were the left hand and right hand of The Seer. Cassandra bestowed on them the right to be near to her; she bestowed on them her confidences; she bestowed on them her visions; sometimes she bestowed on them her body; always, she bestowed on them her authority.

Through Brother George, Christopher still undertook some freelance consultancy work. According to the rules of The Programme, everything he earned - as a resident member - belonged to the group; The Seer gave him dispensation to slice something off the top for the two of them, a private fund. His mastery of The Programme records also allowed him to funnel the occasional donation or Coffee Lounge profit to that fund. Over the years, it had grown. The move to the States was a unique opportunity to put it to use.

“Boston,” Matthew announced. “It’s only a few hours from Boston. We’ll keep Hammer Reach as a base, a retreat; Boston is where we should be.” It was one of a half dozen cities the small group of members currently exploring the States had suggested would be ripe for a Chapter. The student population of Cambridge, the numerous colleges elsewhere in Massachusetts, the port and the drug-trade, new age New Englanders, relative proximity to the ever-fruitful recruiting grounds of Canada, relative wealth.

“It doesn’t answer Christopher’s question,” The Seer reminded him.

Matthew knew she wanted to lead the mission. She wanted to take her band and make of The Programme in America something that was different and separate from The Programme they had established in England: something made over in her image, not his.

“Is there an answer?” Matthew asked. “The Programme is The Programme; the whole is the whole; there are no two wholes; if we have two identical images of one whole, what do we have - two Programmes or one?”

Sister Rebecca replied, as if the alternative was too awesome to contemplate:

“There can only be one Programme. The Programme was The Teacher. She did not understand what he was doing; it was as if he was dividing himself in half.

Father Caleb rasped:

“Simpleton.”

Sister Rebecca flushed an unattractive deep purple, tried to attack back, bit on her tongue. Mother Naamah - Job’s sister - tall, thin, austere, white-haired and ghost-like, a former New York publisher who was now in charge of all The Programme’s publications - who could spend weeks at a time without ever leaving the Chapter House - came to her defence.

“Simple and complex; unification of opposites; I am one, we are many; together we are whole.”

“Why did you say that, Father Caleb?” Matthew asked, curious not critical: “What did you mean?”

“The notion that everyone has to be different to make up a whole; that’s not the way of it, it’s not what you said either. Some are different - Naamah’s unification of opposites - but some are the same. ’Every individual is essentially sufficient to himself. But he is unsatisfactory to himself until he has established himself in his right relation with the Universe’,” he quoted Crowley. “’For these, there is strength in numbers, in uniformity, an army’.”