Page 109 of The Running Grave

Once everyone was seated, the lights overhead were extinguished, leaving the stage spot lit.

Into the spotlight onstage stepped Jonathan Wace, clad in his long orange robes, handsome, long-haired, dimple-chinned and blue-eyed. Spontaneous applause broke out, not just from the church attendants, but also among the recruits. Robin could see the thrilled, blushing face of widowed Marion Huxley, who had such an obvious crush on Wace, through a gap to her left. Amandeep was one of those applauding hardest.

Jonathan smiled his usual self-deprecating smile, gestured to settle the crowd down, then pressed his hands together, bowed and said,

‘I thank you for your service.’

‘And I for yours,’ chorused the recruits, bowing back.

‘That’s no mere form of words,’ said Wace, smiling around at them all. ‘I’m sincerely grateful for what you’ve given us this week. You’ve sacrificed your time, energy and muscle power to help us run our farm. You’ve helped raise funds for our charitable work and begun to explore your own spirituality. Even if you go no further with us, you will have done real and lasting good – for us, for yourselves and for victims of the materialist world.

‘And now,’ said Wace, his smile fading, ‘let’s talk about that world.’

Ominous organ music began to play over hidden speakers. The screen behind Wace came to life. The recruits saw moving clips of heads of state, wealthy celebrities and government officials pass in succession across the screen as Wace began talking about the recently leaked confidential documents from an offshore law firm: the Panama Papers, which Robin had seen in the news before coming to Chapman Farm.

‘Fraud… kleptocracy… tax evasion… violation of international sanctions…’ said Wace, who was wearing a microphone. ‘The world’s grubby materialist elite stands exposed in all their duplicity, hiding the wealth, a fraction of which could solve most of the world’s problems…’

Onscreen, incriminated kings, presidents and prime ministers smiled and waved from podia. Famous actors beamed from red carpets and stages. Smartly suited businessmen waved away questions from journalists.

Wace began to talk fluently and furiously of hypocrisy, narcissism and greed. He contrasted public pronouncements with private behaviour. The eyes of the hungry, exhausted audience followed him as he strode backwards and forwards onstage. The room was hot and the rush-covered floor uncomfortable.

Next, a melancholy piano played over footage of homeless people begging at the entrances to London’s most expensive stores, then of children swollen-bellied and dying in Yemen, or torn and maimed by Syrian bombs. The sight of a small boy covered in blood and dust, shocked into an almost cataleptic state as he was lifted into an ambulance, made Robin’s eyes fill with tears. Wace, too, was crying.

Choral voices and kettle drums accompanied catastrophic footage of climate change and pollution: glaciers crumbling, polar bears struggling between melting ice floes, aerial views of the decimation of the rainforest, and now these images were intercut with flashbacks of the plutocrats in their cars and their boardrooms. Maimed children being carried from collapsed buildings were contrasted with images of celebrity weddings costing millions; selfies from private planes were followed by heartrending images of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. The shadowy faces around Robin were stupefied and in many cases tearful, and Wace was no longer the mild-spoken, self-deprecating man they’d first met, but was shouting in fury, raging at the screen and the world’s venality.

‘And all of this, all of it, could be stopped if only enough people could be woken from the slumber in which they are walking to their doom!’ he bellowed. ‘The Adversary and his agents stalk the world, which must awake from its slumber or perish! And who will wake them, if we don’t?’

The music slowly died away. The images faded from the screen. Now Wace stood breathless, apparently spent by his long speech, his face tearstained, his voice hoarse.

‘You,’ he said weakly, stretching out his hands to those seated on the floor in front of him, ‘were called. You were chosen. And today you have a choice. Rejoin the system, or stand apart. Stand apart and fight.

‘There will now be a short break,’ said Wace, as the lights began to brighten. ‘No – no,’ he said, as a smattering of applause broke out. ‘There’s nothing to be happy about in what I’ve just shown you. Nothing.’

Cowed, the applauders desisted. Robin was desperate for a breath of fresh air, but as Wace disappeared, church attendants opened a door on the left onto a second panelled, windowless room, in which cold food had been laid out.

The new space was comparatively cramped. The door onto the lecture room had been closed, increasing the feeling of claustrophobia. Fasters were directed to a table bearing flasks of hot water and lemon slices. Some recruits chose to sit down with their backs against the wall while eating their sandwiches or sipping their hot water. Queues formed for two more doors leading to toilets. Robin was certain they’d been in the lecture room for the entire morning. The girl with the heart-shaped face, who’d challenged Mazu the previous day in the temple, was sitting in a corner with her head in her arms. Robin was concerned about Walter, the philosophy professor, who appeared unsteady on his feet, his face white and sweaty.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him quietly as he leaned up against the wall.

‘Fine, fine,’ he said, smiling while clutching his mug. ‘The spirit remains strong!’

Eventually, the door to the lecture room was opened again. It was already dark, and people stumbled and whispered apologies as they tried to find a free place to sit.

When at last all were settled back on the floor, Jonathan Wace stepped out into the spotlight once more. Robin was glad to see him smiling. She really didn’t want to be harangued any further.

‘You’ve earned a reprieve,’ said Wace, to a ripple of relieved laughter from his audience. ‘It’s time to meditate and chant. Take up a comfortable position. A deep breath. Raise your arms over your head on an in breath… lower them slowly… release the breath. And: Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu… Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu…’

Thought was impossible while chanting; Robin’s feelings of fear, guilt and horror gradually subsided; she felt herself dissolving into the deafening chant, which echoed off the wooden walls, taking on its own power, existing independently of the chanters, a disembodied force that vibrated within the walls and within her own body.

The chanting went on longer than they’d ever chanted before. She could feel her mouth becoming dry and was dimly aware that she felt close to fainting, but somehow the chant sustained her, holding her up, enabling her to bear the hunger and the pain.

At long last Wace called a halt, smiling down at them all, and Robin, though weak, and uncomfortably hot, was left with the feeling of well-being and euphoria chanting always gave her.

‘You,’ said Wace quietly, his voice now more hoarse and cracked than ever, ‘are remarkable.’

And in spite of herself, Robin felt an irrational pride in Wace’s approval.

‘Extraordinary people,’ said Wace, walking up and down in front of them again. ‘And you have no idea of it, do you?’ he said, smiling down into the upturned faces. ‘You don’t realise what you are. A truly remarkable group of recruits. We’ve noticed it from the moment you arrived. Church members have told me, “These are special. These might be the ones we’ve been waiting for.”