The Programme

CHAPTER ONE-2

Their parents had met on an Aldermaston - Ban-the-Bomb -march in the 1950s: Charles propelled by politics, Marion by religion. In hindsight, it seemed as if it was the last time they had anything in common: he looked as if he had slept in a hedge, tufts of hair protruding from his head and most of its orifices, while she was always impeccably prepared and presented; the children were spoils of war to be fought over; Charles always won. When she died, and they were released from the obligation to go and live with her, it seemed like even God - even her God - was on his side.

Their mother had taken them to school or to the doctor, shopping for clothes and to children’s parties. Charles took them skiing - water and snow - and into town to adult restaurants, gave them too much pocket money, asked what they thought, then argued with them when their opinions differed from his. His cases were in the newspapers and sometimes he appeared on television commenting on this or protesting about that. When he disappeared for a weekend with the latest young female articled clerk he had taken into his firm, it was for a conference. They were none of them fooled but, given the choice between their mother’s dour sufferance - her tiny voice haunting them with scriptures full of doom and wrath - and his childlike exuberance, they took his side.

Carey filled herself up with work, occasional male companions - too often, because she had so little life outside, from within the firm -and irregular recourse to women friends from college with whom she had less and less in common. She drank wine - too much - and nibbled cheese alone in her tiny, cottage-like terraced house with the front window that looked right out onto the street, watching the people pass beneath the street light directly outside, smoking in solitude. She wanted something to fill the void, but she didn’t know what. Sometimes, she heard secret beats inside her head - sometimes a jig, sometimes a dirge, sometimes a throbbing that was discernibly s****l. It came upon her at the strangest times - sometimes in front of her window, sometimes in a law library, sometimes in court.

“A pound for ’em,” Charles prompted as they drove to the restaurant, an old joke, meaning her thoughts were worth far more than the conventional penny.

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “Who was that with Colin?” The striking man she had seen from behind as she emerged from the building.

“I don’t know. Ha.” He spied a parking space and aimed the car at it like a javelin. “That’s a piece of luck.”

They ate at Oscars, a little known restaurant tucked into the basement of a massive, anonymous, fifties brownstone building full of small businesses in clusters of tiny offices sharing facilities on Temple Avenue, backing onto the Inns of Court.

Over pre-prandial drinks, Charles announced:

“I’m going down to Antibes soon. When are you coming?”

Charles owned an apartment overlooking the bay, on a small, well- maintained estate. He went down for six or eight weeks before the season and another couple of months afterwards. He despised people who had apartments on the Côte d’Azur, and loved to be near enough to let them know it. She usually went down for a visit - as Colin, Jan and their children did - but it had to be planned in advance. There were always visitors, some of them from the covey of widows and divorcees with whom Charles managed still to surround himself, others would be friends of his own age who had retired or, like him, who worked less than a full year. His sojourn in the South of France was organised so that he was never alone for too long at a time.

“How’s the book?” she asked non-sequentially as they were brought their food. She watched as her father tasted the wine. Tried not to appear too eager for her own. She had a meeting to attend and clients to see that afternoon, but nothing too serious for a couple of lunch-time drinks.

Charles had been threatening to write his autobiography since, shortly before his sixtieth birthday, he had decided that the active part of his life was over and that it was time to arrange it into a permanent record as if it had all been a coherent whole.

He grunted. He was no further forward than the last time she had asked. Or the time before.

He pushed his food around on his plate, asked:

“How are you getting along?” She and Colin.

“Fine,” she said. “We always get on fine.”

He found it difficult to understand how she could be so close to him and yet so close to Colin.

“And Jan?”

“Ah, Jan.” Jan - Colin’s wife - Colin’s pretty wife - wife and mother to his children. They were both jealous of her.

“She’s the reason,” Charles said darkly. Carey knew what was coming. Colin wanted to take the firm in a new, more commercial - more profitable - direction. It was Jan’s fault: Jan who wanted their children in expensive private schools, delivered in expensive cars by smartly turned out nannies.

“It’s the times,” Carey said. “No one survives on legal aid anymore; all the others are doing the same.”

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

What people fear most is being controlled; what they want most is to be taken care of. The only people who can be controlled are those who are not in control of themselves. Ask yourself why you are not in control of yourself. Ask yourself if you want to be. Then comes the difficult question. How? We don’t have the answer; we don’t think there is one answer; there are as many different answers as people asking the same question. We think everyone has to work it out for him- or herself, but we don’t think you have to do it alone. We don’t think anyone can do it alone. The crucial difference is between control and care; none of us needs to be in anyone else’s control, yet all of us need someone to care for us. How can you be cared for - safely - unless you are also in that person’s control, which defeats the very purpose? That’s what we offer: a way to be cared for, and to care, without being controlled or controlling. Example, support, love: that’s our programme.

Matthew strolled confidently from the Arnotts office all the way back to the Chapter, enjoying the solitude. He was always at work and on show. He was the public face and spokesman of The Programme. He was The Teacher. He was the father and the leader, the guide and the shepherd, the vessel through whom the message was interpreted. He had dependants at every level.

It was a fine, spring day. The journey did not take him as long as he would have enjoyed. Through Smithfield to Fleet Street and along the Strand, then through back streets until he reached Green Park. On Piccadilly, he stood and watched from a distance as a small group of Initiates and Acolytes sold their magazine to strollers. Donating, they called it: not collecting; they were offering more than they asked for.

Donating in the street did not produce an income on which they could thrive; nor did takings from the Coffee Lounge in the basement of the building; possibly fifty per cent of their outgoings could be met from this sort of income, including meditation, lecture and course fees. Some of the members, some of them residents, worked in outside jobs: one was an accountant; yet another was a personnel officer in the civil service. The balance came from the private incomes of members, legally or in practice made over to The Programme, from capital gifts, from the donations which members made when they committed their lives to The Programme and no longer needed an independent safety net. Donations like Amanda Kroger’s: if it had to be given back, then none of the group’s money was his; it was all no more than a loan.

He had enriched the truth for Arnott. Several hundred implied more than the two to three hundred to whom The Programme could at any one time lay claim, including not only the full-time, residential members and active outside followers but those who flitted in and out of the group as the mood took them and a number who had never made a formal commitment to it but who had hung around long enough for Matthew to consider them a part of the group’s life. Even so, for a boy from the nowhere state of North Carolina, it was a sort of success; no one else he knew had achieved anything like it.

This was why he had come to Europe: to find success. He had been born in Asheville, the home-town of North Carolina’s greatest writer, Thomas Wolfe. Another one larger than life. You can’t go home again, he had written; but, look homeward angel. Move on, but do not forget where you come from.

He did not have Wolfe’s talent; he did not have any other obvious talent, yet he had always believed - to a certainty - that he was destined to accomplish something special in life, that would make people say, yes, Asheville, Wolfe and Matthew Crane, of course.

He had charm and wit and because he was a big man people wanted his protection. For a while, he had been in Vietnam; he had commanded men and killed enemy; he had no regrets - it was the most fulfilling time of his life. He had studied the Bible, read it cover to cover several times over, pondered its secrets and the hold it had over so many people for so long. He had wondered about it as he gazed on fire-wars: gun flares, flame-throwers, napalm, ritual bombings, shattered limbs and broken bodies - these too were the story that the Bible was trying to tell yet somehow fell short. He discovered a natural ability to lead. That was what he wanted to do: to lead and to protect. Though he could have stayed in the army, it was not a real choice; he was meant to fight his own battle, not someone else’s war.

He had used GI Bill money to fund his travels; he had enlisted at the University of London. He had put his birth-family to one side and begun to create one of his own. He lived a dual life. For one part of it, he was merely the American philosophy student, older than most, with dark secrets that mystified and attracted but no discernible direction; for the other, he was plotting a way to create something that people would stand up and take notice of - in the end, that they would applaud. He had set to work with a clear sense of where he needed to be, even if he was not yet sure how to get there.

He had been amused when the lawyer mentioned Scientology. He had been approached outside Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, lured into their shop-front fly-trap, answered their questions, attended meetings, paid for e-meter readings, made love to their women and thought: I could do this too.

He had learned that once people were dependent, they would do almost anything he wanted: that was what he offered them; the capacity to do things they would not have the courage to do on their own; peer group pressure was a particularly potent drug: take an act that a person might be able to imagine but would not have the confidence to perform; show that person one other who was willing to do it and it was within grasp; show that person two others - or five or ten - willing to do it, and the only questions that remained were how soon, how often, how much. He had tested the theory and proved it incrementally: spiritual exploration and abasement alike, mental, moral, even physical.

So many people - mostly young, many well-educated, all of them superficially self-possessed - were desperate for something more than friends and families could offer. He was the Big American, a big brother; he was charismatic; he combined novelty with security; he offered them something that was new, gift-wrapped and with a guarantee for life; gradually, the flotsam came together to form a floating island.

He had learned one thing early. Not quantity, but quality. He rejected nearly as many would-be followers as he accepted. Every rejection bound each of those he accepted ever more tightly. People cost money; monied people cost nothing. Nothing would be achieved if he did not build a net strong enough for the wider trawl. The lonely, the emotionally dispossessed, the frantic, the hungry with something financial to contribute were every bit as worthy of his attentions as those whose neediness was their solitary asset.