Darkness Visible: With an Introduction by Philip Hensher

  So Mr Pedigree came out of the urinal and walked back up the High Street, keeping as close as possible to any convenient wall. He glanced back at the upper window in Sprawson’s but of course the Bells were no longer visible. He made for the park. He went in, past the notice-board with its list of necessary prohibitions, with what for him was an air of complete security. He was near the bottom of his graph after all. He was able therefore to find a seat and sit on its iron slats and finger the netsuke in his pocket as he spied out the land. He was, as he sometimes said to himself, window-shopping. The children were in groups, some with balls, some with balloons, some trying not very successfully to fly kites in the light wind. The adults were dotted about on the seats—three pensioners, a courting couple with nowhere to go and the young man in a grey raincoat whose presence was not unexpected to Mr Pedigree. In the far corner were the lavatories. Mr Pedigree knew that if he got up and went there the young man would follow and watch.

  Regularly, since now there was the possibility of meeting Bell as well as visiting the Old Bridge, Mr Pedigree rotated, day after day, through his own rounds of Greenfield. It was at this time that there was a curious kind of epidemic in the town. People only thought of it as an epidemic when it was past its height and nearly over. Then they thought back, or some of them did and felt they knew where the blame was to be laid, right back, even to the first day, because the first day was so soon after Mr Pedigree met Bell on his latest emergence from retirement. It was a young woman seen, a white woman trotting from Pudding Lane into the High Street. She wore platform shoes and that made her trot even more comical than it might have been, because she was the sort of young woman who can only run with her hands up at either side and with her feet kicking out this way and that—a method of progress which allows of no acceleration. Her mouth was open and she was saying “Help, help, oh help!” in a die-away voice almost as though she was talking to herself. But then she found a pram by a shop with a baby in it and that seemed to quieten her because after she had examined the baby and jogged the pram for a bit she wheeled it away without saying anything, only looking round her nervously or perhaps sheepishly. The same day Sergeant Phillips had a real cause to look sheepish because he found a pram with a baby in it outside Goodchild’s Rare Books and neither Sim Goodchild nor his wife Ruth had any idea of how it got there. So Inspector Phillips had to push the pram all the way up the High Street to his car and then radio a description. The mother was soon identified and had left the pram complete with baby outside the Old Supermarket next door to the Old Corn Exchange. There were a few days then and it started all over again. But for a month maybe, prams were moved as if someone was trying to draw attention to himself and using this as a kind of sign language. Mr Pedigree was watched; and though he was never caught at it, the pram-shifting stopped and that month simply became the one people remembered when you couldn’t leave a pram unattended. They forgot a rather nasty confrontation between Mr Pedigree (entering the Old Supermarket in search of cereal and carrying the minute pot of Gentleman’s Relish he had obtained from George’s Superior Emporium) and some ladies who saw him threading his diffident way between the prams that were parked outside like boats moored at a landing stage. As Mrs Allenby remarked to Mrs Appleby over coffee when they discussed the affair in the Taj Mahal Coffee Shop, it was lucky for Mr Pedigree this was England. Of course she did not call him Mr Pedigree but that ghastly old creature.

  There was nothing to connect Mr Pedigree with the pram-pushing. But as Sim Goodchild agreed with Edwin Bell, people of Pedigree’s sort often had a degree of cunning in the pursuit of their perversions that was the result of not being able to think about anything else. It was true. In this respect, except for the fleeting interests that Mr Pedigree’s expensive education sometimes gave him, he was like Matty and dedicated to one end only. But unlike Matty he knew only too well what that end was, what it had to be; and watched it approach or found himself compelled to approach it, with a perpetual kind of gnawing anxiety which aged him far more than the mere flow of time. It is not recorded anywhere if there was a single person living in Greenfield who pitied him. Certainly those ladies at the supermarket who were prevented from scratching his eyes out would have screamed a rebuke at anyone who had suggested it was possible he had never touched a pram at all. And after he had got away from them it could not be a coincidence that Greenfield prams seemed to be safe from interference thereafter.

  So Mr Pedigree kept out of the High Street for a while, going no nearer it than Foundlings, round the corner, where he sometimes hoped to see Edwin Bell, who took care not to be visible. The old man, stuck like a broken gramophone record, would stand outside the railings, mourning for the perfected image of little Henderson, and cursing the boy with the mended face, who at the time had landed at Falmouth in Cornwall from a Greek cargo boat and had gone back to ironmongering, locally, the Bible when consulted having told him to make no more than a Sabbath journey. It was the same day that the ladies tried to maim Mr Pedigree that Matty in Cornwall, and for a most extraordinary reason, started to keep the following journal.

  Chapter Seven

  17/5/65

  I have bought this book to write in and a biro because of what happened and I want to keep the book for evidence to show I am not mad. They were not like the ghost I saw in Gladstone it was a ghost it must have been. These appeared last night. I had read my portions and then repeated them from memory and I was sitting on the edge of my bed taking my shoes off. The time was eleven forty I mean eleven forty when it began. At first I thought it is cold for May and then my room is cold but it got colder and colder. All the warmth went out of me like being drawn out. Every hair on my person, I mean every short hair not the long hair on my head which prickled but every short hair stood up each on a lump. It is what people call being frightened and now I know it is awful. I could not breathe or call out and I thought I should die. Then they appeared, to me. I cannot properly say how. Remembering changes it. I cannot say how. But I am not mad.

  18/5/65

  They did not come back tonight. No, last night I must say now. I waited until twelve o’clock and when it struck I knew they would not come. What can it all mean I ask myself. The one was in blue and the other in red with a hat on. The one in blue had a hat too but not as expensive. They appeared and stayed I do not know how long from eleven forty just looking at me. It was awful. The ghost was without any colour at all but these were red and blue like I have said. I cannot say how I see them when I see them I just see them but it is different remembering. Is it a warning I ask myself, have I left something undone. I searched back and could not find any except of course my great and terrible sin, which I would undo if I knew how but the Bible sent me here and he is not here so what am I to do. It is all hidden. I gave many signs nearly two years ago in Darwin Northern Territory and nothing has happened. It is to try my faith.

  17/5/66

  I take up my pen a year after to say they came again. I knew they would as soon as I felt the cold and the warmth drawing out of my person. I waited but they did not speak but still looked at me. I cannot tell when they went away. They came at after eleven and went away before the clock struck just like a year ago. Perhaps they come every year. I think perhaps it is something to do with my feeling that I am at the centre of an important thing and have been always. Most people do not live into their thirties without knowing what it is to be frightened and most people are afraid of ghosts and do not see spirits.

  21/5/66

  I was reading at the table Revelations when I understood. At once it was like when the spirits appear but they did not. I went cold, shivering and the short hairs on my person stood up. I saw that a FATEFUL DAY is coming by reason of the calendar. At first I did not know what to do. This must be why the spirits appeared before me. They must come again to tell me what to do. My waiting on them is a wave-offering. I must make a heave-offering but have so little it is difficult to see what I have left for a heave-offering.

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bsp; 22/5/66

  I thought in the shop what would be a heave-offering but it is so awful I am holding it back.

  23/5/66

  I bind to lift up more of what I eat and drink then place it on the altar. I bind to lift up all of what I speak except what must be spoken. There is almost no time left. I pray all the time I can.

  30/5/66

  At first with eating so little I felt great pain and weakness but then I found a way of seeing all that I had not eaten offered up on the altar and this helped me. Also cold water is alright to drink but I have a great and live memory of tea hot tea with milk and sugar like in Melbourne. Sometimes I can even smell the tea and feel how hot it is. I wondered then I might be being ministered to as it is said. Mr Thornbury tells me I should see a doctor but he does not understand. Because I have made a heave-offering of my talking it is not right for me to explain to him.

  31/5/66

  I have been among the Baptists and Methodists and Quakers and the Plymouth Brethren but there is no dread anywhere and no light. There is no understanding except sometimes when I repeat my portion inside from memory. When I go among these different people they question me sometimes. Then I lay my hands over my mouth and see by the way they smile that they understand a little. Now I have been cold all day, thinking of the calendar. I thought in these exceptional circumstances the spirits might come back but now it is past twelve and though I got colder as the clock struck nothing happened because I tell myself the cup is full but not yet pressed down and overflowing. Also I said to myself it would start perhaps when it started first down under and then remembered it is said in the twinkling of an eye so it would be in Melbourne, Sydney, Gladstone, Darwin, Singapore, Hawaii, San Francisco, New York and Greenfield also in Cornwall at the same instant.

  1/6/66

  It is terrible to see the days pass, the cup already full and waiting to be pressed down. I eat nothing and only drink a little cold water. Today as I came upstairs to my room I stumbled for weakness but it is no matter with the time so short. It came to me in a flash, a great opening while I was just writing those last words, a hand was laid on me and I understood what I must do on THE DAY. It is my task to give Cornwall ONE LAST CHANCE!!

  4/6/66

  There are no preparations to make. Tomorrow I will watch all night lest we be taken sleeping. It seems to me that on 1/6/66 a voice told me what to do but I cannot be sure. It is all mixed up like when the display counter was turned over by that great dog.

  6/6/66

  I watched all night having put everything ready the day before. It was much harder to cut myself than I had thought but I made an offering of it. A bird sang at first light and I had the dreadful expectation that it had sung for the last time. I took blood and wrote on the paper in letters each as long as my thumb the awful number 666. I put the paper as instructed in the band of my hat so that the number was to be seen from in front. I repeated my portion as I thought I should not have the opportunity later but be in judgement and was in great dread at the thought. Then I walked out. The streets were so empty that at first I thought judgement had already been done and I left of all the world alone but later I saw it was not so as people were bringing food to market. I believe some were stricken and some even brought to recollection when they saw me bearing the awful number through the streets on my head and written in blood. I went through all the churches and chapels in the town with my hat on except those that were locked. At each of these I knocked three times then shook the dust of the threshold off my feet and walked away. All this time I was very tired and in such terror I could hardly walk. But when it was dark I went back to my room, on hands and knees up the stairs and waited until midnight when I began to write this so that not to make a lie of it the number should be 7/6/66. Many people will know the carnal and earthly pleasures of being alive this day and not brought to judgement. No one but I have felt the dreadful sorrow of not being in heaven with judgement all done.

  11/6/66

  I have looked for the judgement that was to be done on the sixth but cannot find it. Sara Jenkins died, may she rest in peace, and a son was born to the doctor’s wife in the cottage hospital. There was a slight accident at the bottom of Fish Hill. A boy (P. Williamson) fell off his bike and sustained a fracture of the left leg. His will be done.

  15/6/66

  It is a great relief to me to think that all these people have time now in which to repent. Yet in that relief I feel a great grief and when not a grief I feel a great emptiness and my question comes again. What am I for, I ask myself. If to give signs why does no judgement follow. I will go on because there is nothing else to do but I feel an emptiness.

  18/6/66

  They came back. I knew they would as soon as I felt the cold and my hairs rise up. I was more ready this time because I had thought while serving in the shop what to do. I asked them in a whisper so as not to be heard through the partition by Mr Thornbury if they were servants of OUR LORD. I expected them either to say nothing or to speak out loud, or perhaps whisper, but it was a mystery instead. For when I had whispered I saw they held a great book between them open with HIS NAME there in shining gold. So it is alright but still dreadful of course. The hair on my person will not lie down all the time they are there.

  19/6/66

  They will not speak in a common way. They hold out beautiful white papers with words on or whole books faster than newspapers being printed like you see on the television. I asked them why they came to me. Then they showed on a paper: We do not come to you. We bring you before us.

  2/7/66

  They came again tonight, the red spirit with the expensive hat and the blue spirit with a hat but not so expensive. They are hats of office I cannot say what I mean. Also the red robes and the blue robes. I do not know how I see them but I do. I am still frightened when they come.

  11/7/66

  Tonight I asked them why they brought me before them out of all the people in the world. They showed: You are near the centre of things. This was what I had always thought but as I felt the pride of it I saw them both much dimmed. So I hurled myself down inside, down as far as I could and I stayed like that. But they went away, or as I should say, put me from them. Now my fear is not just the cold, it is different. It is deeper and it is everywhere. I got cold when they came but not like I did when they first came and my hair just prickles a bit.

  13/7/66

  The fear is everywhere and mixed in with it is being sorry, grieving, but not me only being sorry but everything. This feeling is there even when they are hidden from me.

  15/7/66

  There is too much to put down but I must put it down for evidence. Great things are afoot. They have been four times, always after I have repeated my portion. The first time they brought me before them I asked them why they brought me before them. They showed: We work with what we have. I was put in great satisfaction by this reply and asked what I was for, my old question. They showed: That will appear at the appointed time. The next time they were there I asked what I was, the older form of my great question and they showed: That will appear too. The third time they brought me before them was very terrible to me. I asked them what they would have me do. Then the red one showed: Throw away your book. I thought he meant this book and I started up from the edge of the bed—for that is where I seem to be sitting when they bring me to them—and reached out for the book to tear it. But as I did so the red one showed very plainly: Let the record of our meetings alone. We mean you are to throw away your Bible. At this I think I cried out and they thrust me away from them so that they were hidden. I could not sleep all night I was so frightened, and next day in the shop Mr Thornbury asked me what was the matter. I said I had a bad night which is true. I wondered all day if they had thrust me away from them for ever as being unworthy of a place near the centre of things and I thought that if they came back—or rather I must remember it is difficult—if they bring me before them I will have some questions to test them. Satan may appear as an ang
el of light so much more easily as a red or blue spirit with hats. They did come that night, the fourth time it was in a row. I asked them at once, Are you both true servants of OUR LORD? At once they held up between them the great book with HIS NAME in shining gold. I watched very closely for I knew that THAT NAME would strike Satan down and burn him like an acid. But the beautiful paper was the same as ever and the gold too. Then, for I had determined not to be mistaken, I said though frightened and cold, What do you mean by HIM. Then they showed: We worship HIM THE LORD OF THE EARTH AND THE SUN AND THE PLANETS AND ALL THE CREATURES THAT ARE ON THEM. At that I flung myself down inside myself and whispered, What does HE want of me? I am willing. Then they showed: Obedience and to throw away your Bible. It was a quarter to ten. I put on my charity greatcoat and took my Bible and walked out into the night all the way to the headland. It was very dark with clouds and there was a sound all the time of wind and sea that got louder as I got nearer. I stood right on the edge and saw nothing in the dark but some white patches down below where the water was moving round the rocks. I stood there some time in fear to throw and in fear to fall though I think to fall would have been easier. I waited for a while hoping that the order would be cancelled but there was nothing but the sound of the wind and sea. I threw my Bible as far out into the sea as I could. Then I returned very weak and thirsty and failed at the knees as I climbed the stairs. But I managed at last and came at once into their presence. I whispered, I have done it. Then they held out the great book between them and I saw that it was full of the comfortable words.