Nigel Farndale Read online

  THE

  BLASPHEMER

  NIGEL FARNDALE

  LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  By the Same Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781407084169

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  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Nigel Farndale 2010

  Nigel Farndale has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBNs 9780385617796 (cased) 9780385617802 (tpb)

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Lines from ‘Memorial Tablet’ on page 26, copyright © Siegfried Sassoon, reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon.

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  Typeset in 12/15pt Bembo by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  For my grandfather, Private Alfred Farndale,

  who died in the mud of Passchendaele,

  and again seventy years later in his bed

  By the same author

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  ‘Monkeys make men. Men make angels.’

  Charles Darwin

  PROLOGUE

  Ypres Salient. Last Monday of July, 1917

  WITH A FIVE-DAY BEARD AND A CRUST OF YELLOW MUD WOVEN INTO the fabric of his breeches, Peter Morris does not look like an officer. Instead of a peaked cap he wears a loose-knit trench hat. On his back is a sleeveless leather jerkin. His skin is grey with fatigue and his hooded eyes, as he raises his head and stares at the entrance of the dugout, are shot with blood.

  He has heard a scrape of metal. Now he sees the corrugated iron door open wide and a hairless hand push back the blanket on a string that serves as a gas curtain. A waxy-faced young private in a relatively clean tunic appears in the doorway, stamps in a tray filled with chloride of lime, and adjusts his eyes to the gloom. With his downy moustache and his narrow shoulders that slope down like a Russian doll’s, he looks his age, twenty. ‘Private Kennedy,’ he says in a flat-vowelled voice. ‘Shropshire Fusiliers. I’ve been told to find a Major Morris. You seen him? He’s with the Rifle Brigade.’

  The major lowers his gaze without answering. There are words vibrating in his head but they are random and meaningless. Someone has asked a question. A movement distracts him; it is his own hands coming together on the desk in front of him, the fingers steepling. Next to them, he notices, is a field telephone and a studded cosh with fibres of hair and cartilage attached to it, and alongside this an empty bottle of HP sauce with the label half picked off. They are acting as paperweights for a trench map. He places them carefully on a shelf, takes a sheet of folded paper from his wallet and smoothes it out over the map. It is a musical score, annotated in German. He nods to himself as he studies it. There is meaning in these patterns. There is order and beauty.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Kennedy’s question does not reach Morris.

  ‘Is it a sheet of music?’

  All morning the sky has been buckling with noise. Now the barrage that has been creeping closer finds them. A Pissing Jenny – identifiable by its whistle – lands within forty yards of the trench. As the air compresses and a shower of soil falls from the gaps between the beams in the ceiling, the private cowers, but the major does not react. The score and the map are littered with dirt, making the cartographic trench system appear three-dimensional. A lantern hooked to a nail above the desk sways, pitching the map in and out of shadow. Morris brushes the soil away with the side of his hand, his movements mechanical and slow, as though underwater. A smell of cordite and damp, freshly turned earth crowds the space between the two men.

  ‘I’m with the Shropshire Fusiliers,’ Kennedy repeats, ‘Eleventh Battalion.’

  Morris remains silent.

  ‘We’ve just got here.’

  The older man levels his eyes at the younger. They are cold and bestial; the eyes of a man who has killed before and could, w
ithout hesitation or conscience, kill again. Kennedy steps backwards involuntarily. Makes as if to speak. Leaves.

  As Morris stares down once more at the sheet of music in front of him, his right hand rises lightly and, with gradual undulations of the wrist, begins to conduct.

  CHAPTER ONE

  London. Present day

  DANIEL KENNEDY STOOD NAKED IN FRONT OF HIS BATHROOM mirror and rehearsed in his head the lie he had told, the one he was about to tell again. His reflection was indistinct, more a shadow in the violet-edged dawn. As he stared at it, he felt behind his back for the light cord. Tug. Click. Release. Clack. When the darkness continued, he reached forward and gave the fluorescent tube above the mirror a double tap with his fingertip. It crackled for an instant before casting a sallow light over one half of the bathroom. Mounted to the left of the sink was a round, extendable mirror. He examined his magnified skin in it, captivated by the layers of epithelial tissue, by the orange peel, by the inherited, unchanging size of the pores. After half a minute he blinked, washed with a tea-tree-oil facial scrub and dabbed with a towel before applying moisturizer. This rubbed in, he rinsed his hands and teased his tufty hair with matt clay, spiking it in a way that looked dry and natural. He plugged in his shaver next, on a setting that left a suggestion of stubble. Its electric buzz was soon joined by the aggressive purr of Nancy Palmer’s toothbrush. Nancy was his dentist, the mother of his child, the woman he loved.

  As an associate professor of nematology – a branch of zoology involving Petri dishes, microscopes and steady hands – Daniel felt he had an excuse for occasionally studying Nancy as though through a powerful convex lens, observing her movements, analysing her behaviour. He watched her now as she lowered the lavatory seat, sat down and stared at the floor. She was running the oscillating head of the toothbrush over her tongue. The tendons on her neck were rigid. Her eyes were avoiding contact with his. After two minutes – her brush had a timer – she wiped, stood up and pushed the flush-lever. He admired the way she could multitask like that.

  ‘Don’t wake the baby,’ he said as he clicked off his razor and drew attention to the rushing water.

  ‘Wasn’t going to,’ she countered too evenly, her voice tight.

  ‘We should let her sleep for as long as possible.’

  ‘I know. I wasn’t going to wake the baby.’

  (Although their daughter Martha was nine, they still sometimes referred to her as ‘the baby’.)

  Nancy was wearing the T-shirt she had slept in. It was too big for her – one of Daniel’s – and her frame looked adolescent in it. When she tugged it off in order to stand as lightly as possible on the bathroom scales, her hair tumbled gently and the faded barbed-wire tattoo around her bicep became visible. This, along with her stretch marks and neatly trimmed pubic triangle was, to Daniel, incongruously adult-looking. As he sprayed under his arms with deodorant, he allowed himself a furtive smile, more a twitch of the lips. He couldn’t afford to let Nancy gauge his mood yet. She hadn’t: she was looking the other way, reaching for the main light switch.

  ‘Don’t turn that on,’ Daniel said in a muted voice, crossing the bathroom and lifting the seat. ‘You’ll wake the baby.’ His plan was to goad Nancy in such a concealed way she wouldn’t understand why she was feeling annoyed. It would, he reasoned, make her appreciate the moment of unknotting all the more.

  ‘But I can’t see the scales.’

  As Daniel relieved himself, he balanced on one foot and, behind

  Nancy’s back, pressed his toes down on the scales.

  ‘Unbe-fucking-lievable,’ Nancy said flatly. ‘I’ve put on four pounds.’ She looked over her shoulder and noticed Daniel’s toes. ‘Hey!’ She was laughing now. ‘Bastard!’ The tension that had been building between them was dissipated temporarily. Still smiling, Nancy flipped the seat back down, flushed again and reached the bathroom door at the same time as Daniel. When she opened it, Martha was standing on the other side, rubbing her eyes.

  Three quarters of an hour later, Daniel was sitting in the driver’s seat of what the advertisements had called a ‘green but mean’ hybrid utility vehicle. The engine was running, the heater was on, and he was worrying whether Martha was now too old to see him naked in the bathroom. It had, after all, been more than a year since he had stopped her getting into the bath with him. Making a mental note to consult Nancy – she always had a good steer on these matters – he unfolded his Guardian and turned to the sports section. England on tour in India. Batting collapse. What a surprise. When a council lorry hissed by in the slush, spraying salt on tarmac and parked cars alike, he noticed that his windscreen was icing up again where he had emptied the kettle over it. He turned the heater on as high as it would go and watched the glass steam up. The hot air was making him feel claustrophobic. He loosened his scarf, opened the window and looked out. Beyond the amber halo of the streetlights, blackness was shading into grey. It had been snowing steadily throughout the night and, in the absence of a breeze, flakes had settled on the tree next to the car. The phone lines that crisscrossed the square had also turned white, the extra weight causing them to belly. Daniel turned off his engine so he could appreciate the nakedness of the silence.

  ‘Can I get out and make a snow angel?’ Martha asked from her booster seat in the back.

  ‘No. Mummy will be here any second.’

  ‘Think she knows?’

  ‘Hasn’t got a clue.’

  The sodium lights dimmed and went off, leaving the square eerily luminous. Daniel checked his watch again. ‘Did Mummy give you your injection?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Martha replied with a yawn. ‘Said she’d do it in the car.’ The child gathered her hair into a ponytail. Pulled up her hood. Shivered. Although it had been nine months since her tiredness, blurred vision and nightly thirsts had resulted in a diagnosis of type one diabetes, her father still couldn’t bring himself to administer the required dose of insulin. He could inject rabbits and mice in a laboratory, but not his own daughter. Nancy had no such compunction. Being a dentist, she was used to the sight of other people’s discomfort.

  That was how they met, Daniel and Nancy. She had entered wearing a facemask that exaggerated her eyebrows: two fiercely plucked arcs. As he lay on her hydraulic chair thinking of the impacted wisdom tooth she was trying to wrest from his numbed gums, her eyes entranced him. They were bearish brown, flecked with gold. He fell in love with them right there as he lay on his back, with his mouth open, flinching intermittently. He also fell in love with the weight of Nancy’s left breast, which, under several layers of material, was pressing against his arm. Pleasure and pain. Pain and pleasure. Their relationship had started as it was destined to continue.

  What was she doing in there? They were going to miss their flight at this rate.

  Daniel probed with the tip of his tongue the soft cavity that had been left by the wisdom tooth – something he often did without realizing, the equivalent of touching a comfort blanket. He tapped his watch again and shivered with excitement as the porch light came on and Nancy emerged from the house shrugging a grey duffle coat on over a fawn polo neck. The falling snow had softened a little, arriving in flurries, and downy flakes were settling on Nancy’s hair as she turned the front door key in the lock, stood framed on the lip of the porch and closed her eyes – something she always did when making sure she had remembered everything. Watching her, Daniel felt a surge of tenderness. How beautiful you look, he thought. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking more beautiful. ‘We’ll be late!’ he barked through the lowered window. ‘The traffic is bound to be bad with this weather.’

  Snow that had settled on the path creaked as it was compressed under Nancy’s sheepskin boots. ‘Don’t push it,’ she muttered, opening the back door and getting in beside Martha.‘And why did you turn the heating off?’

  Think. Think.‘Global warming.’

  Nancy narrowed her eyes.‘Now we’ll use twice as much energy reheating the house when we get back. You
should have just turned it down.’

  Daniel drew breath as if about to reply, but stopped himself. He was becoming mesmerized by the speed at which Nancy was unzipping a medical pouch, removing a needle from a sterilized pack and slipping it on to a syringe. She did everything quickly: talk, eat, walk, reach orgasm, pick up new languages. Even sleeping was something she appeared to do in a hurry. Something to do with her REMs. Daniel could study her sleeping face for hours.

  Nancy was now holding a small bottle of insulin to the car light and giving it an impatient shake. In the same movement, she pierced its rubber stopper, preferring this old-fashioned method to the ‘pen’ because it was easier to keep track of doses. A familiar clinical smell, sharp and metallic, pricked the air. Martha assumed a kneeling position, pulled down one side of her tracksuit trousers and pinched a fold of skin. Nancy positioned the syringe at an efficient right angle, inserted the needle up to its full depth, pressed down on the plunger and allowed a few seconds for the dose to be delivered before withdrawing the needle. ‘There,’ she said, massaging the skin. ‘All done. You had enough to eat?’

  Martha nodded, holding up a mottled banana skin.

  Nancy stayed in the back and clipped up her belt: as she normally travelled in the front, this was intended as a statement of her annoyance. Daniel shrugged, turned the radio on and, recognizing the thumb positioning of Charlie Mingus, nodded approvingly. He then tuned it away from his preferred jazz station and found a raw, metallic Lenny Kravitz song instead. Better. Less relaxing. He started the engine. They had gone a hundred yards up the road before Daniel said: ‘Dog!’ The brakelights came on and the hybrid began reversing.

  While Nancy ran back into the house, Daniel blew on his hands and patted the pocket of his cord jacket, checking he had the passports. He could feel two, but nevertheless pulled them out to make sure he had picked up Nancy’s not Martha’s. He flicked to the back page and stared at Nancy’s photograph. It was recent and a good likeness: shoulder-length hair that had gone chestnut in the sun, swollen cheekbones, a puffy curve for a top lip. With a shake of his head he flipped open his own photograph page. It had been taken eight years earlier, when he was thirty, and he had not only looked younger – sandy hair thicker, not yet frosting at the temples – but also, somehow, more luminous: his long eyelashes paler, his blond eyebrows more feathery, the rims of his eyes pinker. He was, he felt, cursed with the fussy, delicate appearance of a Victorian clergyman. In recent years he had tried to compensate by growing sideburns and hair down to his collar, but this, he had come to suspect, made him look like a Pilgrim Father instead. He opened the glove compartment, pulled out a manila envelope and slipped the passports inside it next to the tickets, just as Nancy appeared with Kevin, a brindle-coloured mongrel of indeterminate age. She had rescued him from Battersea Dogs’ Home and given him his name because it amused her to think of her socially ambitious parents having to shout ‘Kevin!’ in the park whenever they were looking after him. When she opened the hatch and Kevin jumped into the caged-off boot space, Daniel grimaced as he waited for her to notice the picnic blanket covering the two pieces of hand luggage next to the cage. She didn’t and, having slammed the hatch-door shut, deigned to sit in the front passenger seat. As the car set off again, Martha caught her father’s eye in the rearview mirror, made a letter ‘L’ sign with her thumb and index finger – ‘Loser’ – and placed it on her forehead. They both grinned conspiratorially.