The Programme

CHAPTER FOUR-2

Father Nahum was a round, happy man in large, red-framed spectacles that would have suited a circus clown, who would have been a monk in the middle ages, a vicar in the nineteenth century, and who had been an architectural school drop-out turned shoe salesman named Bob Eccles in the second half of the twentieth. He discovered The Programme when it was still little more than a group of friends. At that time, he had been separated from his wife and was about to separate from his job. He was already halfway to the right attitude: Matthew helped him make it complete.

Matthew took Father Nahum out to dinner with Helen. They went to a Dutch Pancake House: they ate vegetarian pancakes and luxurious ice cream pancakes and drank alcohol-free cider.

Matthew was spending as much time as he could with Helen. Their time was coming to an end. He was offering her to Nahum. Nahum was an ally: Matthew wanted to forge them into a partnership to represent him. Alone, neither of them could succeed in standing up to The Seer, least of all to The Seer supported by Fathers Caleb and Christopher.

Helen’s eyes told Matthew she would not accept the party line. She had not accused him of other motives for wanting her out of the way, but when she had finished her work the night Carey visited with Matthew, she had sat in a dark booth and watched him talking to the woman solicitor, the way he had talked to her in the beginning.

Matthew asked Nahum:

“Have you heard from Amanda?” Kroger.

“Not directly. Jemima had lunch with Rosalyn - Amanda’s old room-mate?” Matthew shook his head to say he didn’t remember. “She’d been out to see her.” At the clinic where she was held. “Claims Amanda’s planning on checking herself out; wanted Rosalyn to bring her some clothes, money, says there’s a credit card in another name, a car in a parking lot. Rosalyn says she won’t do it, but someone else might. It doesn’t look good.”

“I don’t understand,” Helen said. “If she’s well enough to get out, won’t that help the case?”

“Not if she’s nowhere to be found. They’ll think we’ve kidnapped her or hidden her away. What are you thinking?” Matthew asked Nahum.

The jolly man shrugged, his chin wobbling.

“Give her up? Stop the break out.”

Helen shook her head.

“No. Help her.”

Nahum started to protest. Matthew liked Helen’s suggestion.

“Produce her at trial. Can you do it?”

Nahum caught up. He wasn’t stupid though he could be slow.

“With some help.” He turned to look at Helen with admiration. “No one knows you over there, do they?”

“What do you want us to do, Matthew?” Helen asked, changing tack. “We’re no match for them.” Cassandra and her crew.

“Do you think they want to split?” Nahum picked up the thread.

“Split? No. I think they have fantasies of taking it all over.”

“You are The Programme, Matthew,” Nahum protested. “It’s impossible. They’d destroy it.”

“It won’t happen; like I said, it’s just a fantasy.” Helen looked at him sombrely. It was not that The Programme without Matthew was unthinkable; Matthew would never let that happen. It was what he would do to stop it that frightened her. Meltdown; final unification; the fire beyond; the demons unleashed. She asked:

“Why let her even try?”

“Let her?” Matthew raised an eyebrow in reprimand. “It has to run its course. If they need to try, if they need to take it to the extreme, then we have no choice except to go along with it. That’s The Programme; that’s the only route; you know that.”

Charles met them at the airport: he had delivered his last guest just as - in a week’s time - he would bring them back and fetch someone new.

Though the season had not begun, the Côte d’Azur was already alive: the sun bounced off old mountain villages - Saint Paul de Vence and Haut de Cagnes amongst them - onto the shiny new buildings of the coast.

“It’s glorious, isn’t it?” Charles crowed. “Sometimes I wish I could stay the whole year round; but I’d probably end up as stultified and as lame as the other old codgers.”

He glanced at Emily, in the front passenger seat, and smiled for sympathy. She returned the smile uncertainly. When he returned his vision to the road, she looked quickly back over her shoulder at Carey who responded with an amused grimace.

No sooner were they on the motorway than they were leaving it. Their estate was on the East side of Antibes, between Nice and Antibes rather than between Antibes and Cannes, the exit after Villeneuve-Loubet and Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Charles swerved without signalling off the main road which had led from the motorway to the sea and, within minutes, turned again into a short driveway, likewise without using his indicator, narrowly missing a car coming in the other direction. Carey said:

“The reason Charles likes France is because they drive as badly as he does.”

Charles chuckled and used a swipe card to open the electric gates of the estate. The grounds were lush, rich green grass carpeting the terrain between roads and paths, palm trees rising here, thick bushes flourishing there, exotic and colourful plants flowered in well-tended beds, at brief intervals a sharp eye could spot sprinklers in the ground, at night - Emily would soon learn - they watered the grounds for hours at a time, creating mini-rainbows in the lights of the estate, from the balcony of the apartment it was a beautiful sight.

The estate itself was composed of a single, relatively high block of flats, with two smaller blocks on one side of the walled enclave, and a line of mini-villas along the other. They were in the high-rise, on the sixth floor. Before she even showed her to her bedroom, Carey led Emily to the balcony, to look out onto the Bay. She sensed that it was almost too much for her: from the small flat in London where she had been abused by Richard to this luxury in a matter of weeks. She quickly led her to the third bedroom, the one that had been Colin’s in his teens and student days. The apartment was stone-floored, with rugs not carpets, laid out like a ’T’ from one side of the building to the other, with the bedrooms - each with its own private bathroom - and the kitchen on a corridor at the back, through the living-room onto the balcony at the front.

“You’ll be all right,” Carey reassured her.

“I know. Thanks, Carey.” She held her new friend’s eyes for a moment then, unexpectedly, stepped forward and hugged her. “No one’s ever done so much for me.”

Carey went in search of her father. She kept spare clothes in the flat and did not need to unpack, nor did she need time and space to feel at home. She loved the apartment: in her private fantasies, she liked to imagine herself living here permanently.

She found Charles on the balcony, setting out the accoutrements for an alcoholic tea: thin biscuits, a bottle of gin, small bottles of tonic, ice in a bucket. a bowl of fruit. Carey laughed.

“I see you plan to get us straight into the holiday mood.”

“Your friend looks as if she could do with some relaxing,” he said gruffly, somewhere between consideration and complaint. Carey glanced around to make sure Emily was still in her room, led her father to the balcony railing and explained in hushed tones:

“She’s had a rough time, Daddy. Husband thing. Go easy on her.”

“She’s a client?” Charles asked doubtfully.

“She’s a client but she’s a friend. She’s been staying in the house, too. Oh, I don’t know, it seemed right at the time. I was lonely,” Carey shrugged. This was not the time to touch on any deeper discontent, probably it never would be: she was the apple of her father’s eye and she had to be rosy and fresh and unblemished if she wanted to keep it that way.

Charles studied her querulously. It was out of character. Not that Carey was mean or unkind to those in need, but because she was always careful to draw a line around herself, not to let them - or their pain - touch her. Despite himself, he heard himself ask:

“You’re not, er, I mean,” he looked around for the right - politically correct - words, “you’re not involved with her, are you?”

For a moment Carey did not know what he meant, then burst out laughing:

“Oh, Daddy, everything isn’t always about sex.”

“What about s*x?” Emily came onto the balcony. “I thought that was the one thing I’d left behind in London - thank goodness.”

Carey almost told her what Charles had said but thought better of it. She did not know Emily well enough; she had been through a terrifying ordeal; it would not be surprising if she was - as they used to say at college - off men for a while.

While Charles prepared her drink, Emily crossed to the rail and leaned out over it for another delighted inspection of the eye-stopping view.

“Can we go for a swim after?” Emily waved her hand in the direction of the pool. It was surrounded by plastic recliners and chairs, a few tables, sun-shades, but otherwise empty of people. “It looks, oh, idyllic.”

“That’s the right word,” Carey replied. “But we ought to go down now, before it gets any cooler. And before we have another drink.”

While Emily went to change into her swimming costume, Charles asked quietly: “You’re unhappy, Carey?” She shook her head, rose, as she passed behind his chair, she leaned down and kissed the top of his head, murmuring:

“It’s just that time of my life.”

He did not join them at the pool, staying behind to clear up the drinks. A local woman came in to clean for him each weekday morning, but in between he managed on his own. Later, he would take them down to the harbour at Antibes to eat; the restaurants had all re-opened, if they dressed for it, it would not be too cold to sit outside, but because the crowds had not yet arrived, there was no need to book. Later still, when they had gone to bed, he would sit on the balcony, in the dark so as not to attract the mosquitoes, with a last whisky or maybe two, brooding about his life, wondering how so much of it seemed to have slipped away and how he could hang on to what was left.

Http://www.the-programme.org.uk (turn on sound if available).

Everything is about fear. “What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear him,” says the Bible. Fear is double-sided: it puts us off, but it only has the capacity to do so because whatever we are afraid of attracts us. Otherwise, we would feel nothing but indifference. Fear is like when we were young, and we could afford to be afraid, knowing our parents would take care of us. Fear is the Big Dipper at the fairground, or Indiana Jones at Disneyland: we can experience the fear just because we know we will soon enough be safe again. Fear can be pleasant, warming, enticing. We learned early that fear comes before knowledge; fear is of the unknown; without unknown, no fear; fear and unknown are synonymous; you cannot discover anything new - about yourself or about anything else - unless you fear it first; if you do not fear it, it is not unknown, but something already within your grasp; fear-unknown, it is a partnership.

They filled the week with trips, mostly on their own. They went up to Haut de Cagnes, wandered around the Grimaldi Castle and Museum and ate on the square. In Saint Paul, they bought cards and jewellery in a shop behind the Picasso Museum and took photographs over the ramparts. In Vallauris, they saw rows of shops with rows of pots they were glad were too big to take home, they would never have been able to choose. Mornings they swam graceful and lithe in the pool and lay out on recliners, talking little, sunbathing topless like the French women of the estate, trying to seem as casual, self-consciously ignoring each other’s bodies.

One afternoon, they drove out to Cap Ferrat and walked around the zoo, sipping cokes and smoking at the open air café. Another day, they did a half tour of the Loup Valley, scrabbling over the rocks at the side of the road to paddle in the pool at the base of the waterfall at the Loup Gorges. In the early evening, they spent more money than they ought in the boutiques of Antibes. In Cannes, they roamed the rue d’Antibes, where Paris couturiers had southern outlets.