He had them. The silence stretched on and on, and he had them. Gordon knew he was an old man. But he wanted to shout aloud to the glory…

  Then a smattering of applause began, which was quickly taken up by a group at the back of the hall and turned into slow ironic clapping. George started to speak again, but what he said was lost. Clappers and non-clappers were beginning to argue, and scuffles were breaking out. Behind George the three other missionaries were holding a hurried conference, Williams urging a course of action that the girls vigorously denied.

  Gordon couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, and didn’t care. He stood, as stiff and straight as ever, and watched the reason for his life derided, and—indifferent to who might see him—wept.

  Suddenly there was a movement at his side. Mr. Wilcox, Sergeant Major Indomitable Wilcox, was heaving at the wheels of his chair, swearing obscenely as he worked himself forward between the maze of different levels to where George was standing, now silent and defeated, watching the bobbing mass of useless, hopeless people below him. And Mr. Wilcox was shouting. Shouting as he had never shouted in his life before.

  “You know what you are?” His face was purple, his hands quivering. “You know what you are? You’re a load of bloody nig-nogs. A lot of bloody pregnant fish in a bloody thunderstorm. You don’t know you been bom, that’s what. Fart-arsing around like a lot of bloody pregnant fish in a bloody thunderstorm.”

  Briefly he had their attention. A sarcastic cheer went up. He lowered his voice but still didn’t need the microphone.

  “That’s better,” he said. “You all of you’ve took the trouble to come here, so why not have hush and listen? First thing is, you don’t want to take too much notice of him.” He jerked his thumb up at George. “Not that he’s not alright in his way. But he’s a prophet, and no prophet ain’t never honoured in his own land—and I’ll tell you for why. He’ll fill you up with words when what you want is fac’s. Fac’s…”

  He leaned forward, buttonholing individually each person in the huge audience. “Fac number one: ustiliath works. Now. Not tomorrow, not one day in the sweet bye and bye, but now. Here and now. Ustiliath works here and now. Fac’ number two—”

  “Prove it.”

  “Fac’ number two: ustiliath isn’t just for no fancy—”

  “Prove it. Prove the stuff works here and now.” The single shout had become many. “Prove it, prove it, prove it…”

  Mr. Wilcox gave up. He didn’t shout again; he was too experienced a campaigner to hope the same trick would work a second time. And he had nothing else. The noise in front of him increased, no longer good natured, and he sat back, watching the people clamour and refusing to be moved. Gordon couldn’t see his face, but he could well imagine its expression. Wilcox had watched advancing Germans in the same way, and would have died with the same expression of pitying scorn on his face if Gordon hadn’t himself pulled him down out of the line of fire.

  There were times when Sergeant Major Wilcox needed saving from his own obstinacy. Times when he was scarcely sane.

  “Prove it, prove it, prove it…”

  The cry was steady now, as insistent as the former drumming. Gordon rose—there was nothing else he could do—and went to stand beside Mr. Wilcox. He stood. Even when he got there, there was nothing else he could do but stand. He stood beside Mr. Wilcox and looked out at the shouting faces. They sweated, fixed in mindless repetition.

  “Prove it, prove it, prove it…”

  Out of the comer of his eye he could see George. William was with him and George was shaking his head. Further away the visiting speakers were huddled, uncertain what to do. There was no curtain to bring down, no way of salvaging at least dignity. And the noise continued. To Gordon it was no longer words, but an engine— the engine he had feared—whose pounding threatened to bring the walls, the roof, the sky itself, showering about his ears.

  Then William thrust past and was in front of them both, arms slack by his sides, head tilted back, his whole being concentrated not upon the people but upon the darkness above. He spoke.

  Even above the engine beat of the voices his words were clear. “Ustiliath be praised,” he said. And then again, “Ustiliath be praised.”

  His hands tightened and his whole body quivered with the agonised intensity of his endeavour. And fire blossomed. In the huge black space crossed with pillars of dust-filled light, flames were made, white and blue and yellow, curling on themselves like the petals of a living flower. They grew till the middle air was filled with their cold, silent radiance.

  The crowd was stilled, on the rim of terror, of selfdestructive panic, but held in fascination by the fire as it wove patterns in colours nameless and beyond number.

  “Ustiliath be praised. May the knowledge of ustiliath light us and warm us all the days of our life. And may the unity of ustiliath help us in the hour of our death. Ustiliath be praised.”

  The fire clenched, then flickered, scattering flame to the cool farthest comers of the hall. The flames touched and ceased, drawing in a breath, a moment’s total stasis in the sudden dark. A flame had touched Gordon, had entered him, had filled him—an old man—with certainty and peace. Belief, that before he had worked at out of need, flowed gently through him, an easy, all-consuming tide of peace. He knew. He knew ustiliath. He knew…

  But Sylvia, afraid for her soul so deeply moved by what she had seen and felt, strode clumsily to the television set and switched it off and turned on the others. “Proof?” she said harshly. “Do you call that proof? I call it witchcraft. I call it wicked, sinful deviltry.”

  For a moment the abrupt withdrawal held the others speechless. Then pandemonium broke out, violence that stemmed from real pain, from real deprivation—and was met with the violence of real fear. The television set slithered on the counter top, propelled by frantic hands battling desperately for the switches, and fell noisily onto the floor, spreading broken glass. The villagers froze, their anger shocked out of them. The fall was unspeakable, the blasphemous toppling of a household god, leaving obscene filaments and bits of rheostat exposed to the rude gaze of the population. The villagers turned away their eyes, and shuffled their feet, and were quiet, feeling the chill of shared guilt.

  Dacre had let the hysteria ebb and flow about him. He had seen his fathers quirkish fortitude. For minutes, for hours it seemed, the camera had lingered on the old man’s face, on the bright, unwavering determination in his eyes. He whom Dacre had thought so weak and vulnerable. He set himself beside his father’s determination and was ashamed.

  The squalid, undignified struggle was suddenly over and the cafe was quiet. He saw Rocky and Crud standing in the background, beside the jukebox. He wondered when they had come in, how much they had seen of the programme and of his mad, mad mother. She was the first to move. She pushed thin straggles of hair back from her face and walked slowly to the door. He saw that her dress was tom down one side.

  “Send the bill in to me,” she said to the man behind the bar. “I wouldn’t want you to be out of pocket.”

  She inclined her head graciously, including everybody in the benediction, and then progressed out through the double swing doors. Dacre followed her, his eyes on the ground. Together they crossed die tarmac to where they had left the car. Surprisingly, Rocky and Crud came hurrying after them. Dacre stared at them, willing them to go away. After a moment’s hesitation Rocky sidled up to the car door and opened it.

  “Took guts, that did,” he said, to nobody in particular. “I mean, there wasn’t many would of.”

  His mother seemed dazed, not quite understanding, and Dacre answered for her. “Oh yes, my mother’s got guts alright.”

  “Here—who’s side be you on then?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Had his sarcasm shown so much?

  “Her ups and does things, that’s what I mean. With you it’s all talk. All the time nothing but old talk.”

  It was a just comment. He wasn’t his father who did things, who defied seven thousand, he was nothing but a lot of old talk. He helped his mother into the car without answering. Her left hand was bleeding slightly and he gave her his handkerchief to wrap it in.

  She looked at him, then at the two youths in their motorcycling gear. And she remembered.

  “Introduce me to your friends,” she said, mildly.

  Item from the Missionaries’ I.G. Handbook.

  In general, conversion is an hysterical reaction. Before it can be said to have become a permanently imprinted thoughtway it needs reinforcement and group therapy over a long period. Centralised control is essential if lapsing, plus attendant trauma, is not to be widespread. Over-enthusiasm can in many ways be as dangerous as indifference.

  The weeks that followed were the time of London’s ustiliath fever. From newspapers, magazines, hoardings, radio, television, door-to-door evangelists, even pulpits, the information and misinformation poured in a vulgar, unremitting torrent. Against it the missionaries themselves were powerless. Ustiliath centres sprang up unauthorised in back—and front—streets everywhere: ustiliath clubs for lesbians, gay ustiliath associations, ustiliath meditation rooms, ustiliath lecture courses teaching who knew what or why. Ustiliath was Humanism; ustiliath was Zen; ustiliath was Primitive Methodism; ustiliath was way out; ustiliath was the scene; ustiliath was anything and everything that could sell a plastic bauble or buy a moment of the elusive public ear.

  The council elected at the end of the triumphant Albert Hall rally did its best, putting out moderating, minatory edicts. But reporters preferred the more lively statements to be gathered daily from professing ustiliaths in Lewisham and Richmond, in Whitechapel and down the Fulham Road.

  Evicted couple blames ustiliath.

  Ustiliath helps Mavis find long-lost pussy.

  Parties swing with ustiliath, says deb Sandra.

  30 minutes’ daily ustiliath ends rheumatic pain.

  Deep-sea diver ustiliaths his way to fame and fortune.

  For ustiliath I gave up my life of sin, says call girl Dora.

  Ustiliath v. Pot: official survey shock.

  Motorcycle gangs grew up—Ustils versus Progs. A Black Ustiliath rally, backed by three steel bands, ran for four days and nights in the streets around Notting Hill Gate. A youth castrated himself outside the Russian Embassy when denied an entry visa to preach ustiliath. And workmen spent an entire morning scrubbing ustiliath symbols off the chaste fagade of Buckingham Palace.

  Gordon was embattled and sunk in depression. He seldom left the police-protected Russell Square Centre, except to accompany the missionaries on increasingly rare forays. Their not quite human faces made them instantly recognisable, and their appearance anywhere caused such large crowds that mostly they stayed under cover. Gordon spent most of his time answering hysterical letters in his office with its new shatterproof window, and writing press handouts—Willoughby-Parkes having despicably resigned—that nobody ever read.

  His constant companion during this time was Mr. Wilcox. The sergeant major, because he lacked the physical mobility to evade the mobs, was never able to move a yard outside the Centre. If he had, the excitement of the press and the souvenir hunters was such that he would have been stripped naked, and probably trampled underfoot in the rush. Hours later, fragments of “the real chair” would have been on sale all over London.

  He and the brigadier lived as if tinder siege. If they went too near the window even, somebody would be likely to spot them and a cheer would go up. Or possibly something would be thrown, and a scuffle would result. A minor religious war. The sergeant major didn’t mind these living conditions in the least; they brought out the improvisatory best in him, and he spent hours devising schemes for drawing the curtains without being seen or getting the milk in without coming under fire. His schemes usually needed a great deal of string, and never once worked.

  But the sergeant major kept cheerful. He just couldn’t understand Gordon’s despondency. Ustiliath was booming, wasn’t it? The movement was sweeping the country. They were all famous, weren’t they? What more did Gordon want?

  He found the missionaries’ anxieties equally incomprehensible. “I don’t know what you lot’s on about How many members at the last count, then? Signed up and sealed…how many then?”

  George would sigh. They went over it all so many times. “Names on bits of paper, Mr. Wilcox. They don’t mean a thing. Last month it was the Beatles. Or Viet Nam. This month it’s ustiliath. Next month it’ll be something else. We might as well open a shop in Carnaby Street and be done with it”

  Gordon kept silent on these occasions. He felt sick and giddy, as if he were on a roundabout, as if a stately sacred procession had suddenly become a gaudy, vertiginous carousel, a grubby whirligig, out of control, that he must cling to or be flung off and die. He was trapped, and the lights were too bright, the music was too loud, the movement insane.

  “We’re being eaten alive,” George said a day or two later. “We’re entering bellies, not minds or souls. As easily as we are consumed, so easily will we be expelled and flushed away. And there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing we can do to stop it.”

  For the first time, Gordon began to notice serious rifts between the missionaries themselves, adding to his nightmare. One morning, after news of a particularly unpleasant bomb outrage in Wandsworth, recriminations flared out into the open.

  “What was I to do?” William was bitterly angry. “If I hadn’t done what I did in the Albert Hall the whole Mission would have been finished.”

  “Better than the circus act it’s turned into now.”

  “It would have been turned into a circus act anyway, George. These people are animals—vulgar, sensation seeking animals. Look what they did to their Christianity. They’d turn anything into a circus.”

  “They’re people, William. Sharers in the sacred spark of ustiliath. If we hadn’t cheapened ourselves by—” “And don’t try your bloody piousness on me, George.” William slapped the palm of his hand on the table and leaned forward across it. “I know you too well. And I know too well what we’re really here for.”

  There was a terrible silence. Gordon saw George’s eyes flicker sideways, to himself and Mr. Wilcox. But it was Sally who answered. “We’re here to preach the truth of ustiliath. We’re missionaries. And we were promised. We were promised that—”

  “If you believed those promises, then you’re—”

  “I believed them then. I believe them now. Were here out of love, William. Love.”

  William didn’t answer. The panelled room waited. Sounds filtered in through its high, graceful windows, sounds from the square below, sounds of people, of the crowd milling round the guarded front door. George sighed, gathered his papers, and moved the conversation on to other matters.

  But the rift, although Gordon didn’t understand it, didn’t dare try to understand it, was there. George and Sally on one side, William and perhaps Cora on the other. And the merry-go-round, cracked down its axis, continued to gather speed.

  Sylvia had laid her plans carefully. It was possible that she could do what had to be done entirely on her own. But the missionaries were powerful, and devious, and she had no illusions as to her own competence. The good Lord had made her a woman, and had further handicapped her with the upbringing of a lady. Her most recent contrivances only served to emphasise this inadequacy: catapults that fell to pieces; an electrified towel rail that simply fused the main box downstairs every time it was switched on; digitalis she brewed from foxgloves that, when forcibly administered to the cat by way of a trial run, didn’t even appear to give the stupid creature a headache. Be nice to the cat, he’d said. That was all he’d said.

  With these failures behind her, and Dacre always watchful, she decided that a little outside help, preferably masculine and—unlike O’Hara and the vicar—determined, might after all be advisable.

  She contrived a second meeting with Rocky and Crud. They were admittedly odd associates, but they had many of the right ideas. And beggars—as she had often told her horselike reflection—could not be choosers. Besides, she could at least be frank with them, which was a change from her dealings with Messrs. Dunbarton and O’Hara. They turned out, however, to be less helpful than she had hoped. Rocky was full of impossible plans involving stolen gelignite, while Crud (poor boy—such an unpleasant name she could never quite bring herself to speak it) favoured half a dozen sawn-off shotguns. While she had no basic objection to such wholesale methods, she sensed that they were both in fact no more than playing games. What she had in mind was much simpler, much more serious.

  Perhaps O’Hara was right, and community involvement was the real answer. Here it was that a chance word from Crud gave her the lead she was needing. A chance word about Janey Martin. She got rid of the boys as quickly as she could, determined to shift them over onto O’Hara who she was sure could do with some of their forceful enterprise, and took the car on to the caravan site where Janey Martin lived with her girlfriend.

  Janey was alone in the caravan; she had been home from work all day, sick. She felt wretched, and welcomed company—even that of Dacre’s mother. And word had gone round the town that Mrs. Wordsworth might be loony, but she was dead against all that ustiliath stuff.

  Sylvia entered the caravan gingerly, felt the structure quake about her, and sat down quickly on the folded convertabed. Her knees were uncomfortably close to her chin, but at least the cups had stopped rattling on the shelves.

  She came to the point “You can be frank with me,” she said briskly. “You’re pregnant, and you want justice done. So do I.”

  Janey wondered if a little snivel was suitable, and decided it wasn’t. “Your Dacre—” she began.

  “My Dacre has nothing to do with it, as well you know.”

  “Don’t know nothing of the sort”

  “If my Dacre, then Rocky, or Bright Boy, or the other one.” Sylvia wasn’t being unkind, merely establishing the right basis. “Perhaps your baby’s Bright Boy’s orphan. Poor little thing.”