“I don’t know. I suppose.”

“So what’s success?”

“I don’t know. Someone who succeeds at what they’re doing. A businessman or J. K. Rowling or-”

“It’s just money and fame, then, is it?”

“No,” said Israel.

“So you can have a successful social worker or a window cleaner or a bus driver?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And what would make them a success?”

“Doing their job well, I suppose. Enjoying it. Making a contribution.”

“And what is there to stop you doing that in your job?”

“I don’t know. I just…It doesn’t feel right. I just feel I don’t fit in, I suppose.”

“Mmm.”

“I just feel…The milieu here, the-”

“The milieu?” The Reverend Roberts laughed again. “The milieu!”

“Yes.”

“You know, Israel, maybe you don’t fit in here. Milieu!” He slapped his thighs with mirth.

“What’s wrong with ‘milieu’?” said Israel.

“Israel! Nobody says ‘milieu,’” said the Reverend Roberts.

“Well, I do,” said Israel.

“Sorry, sorry,” said the Reverend Roberts, chuckling. “Seriously. Where do you think you would find your milieu, Israel? Where would you thrive?”

“I don’t know.” Israel thought for a moment. “Vienna in the 1920s? Or Paris. Les Deux Magots?”

“Ah, yes, the old café cultures,” said the Reverend Roberts.

“Conversation and intellectual stimulation,” said Israel.

“There’s always Zelda’s,” said the Reverend Roberts.

“It’s hardly the same.”

“No. But there are cafés down in Belfast now. They’re everywhere. Starbucks.”

“Yes, but-”

“I know, I know. I’m joking.”

“It doesn’t seem that funny, being stuck here,” said Israel.

“I know what you mean,” said the Reverend Roberts. “We are rather on the edge of things, I suppose.”

“Exactly.”

“In a funny way that’s what makes it attractive, though, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Feeling isolated, removed, yearning to connect to the center? Being here, it’s a kind of metaphor, really, isn’t it?”

“A metaphor for?”

“I’m not sure,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Our need for redemption? That desire to resolve that sense of alienation from ourselves that I think we all have, and that derives from our recognition and knowledge of our own destructive impulses?”

“Erm…”

“I think living here excites in me that same feeling that religion or art or music or literature raises and simultaneously answers in us, and yet not completely answers…Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” said Israel. “Although I never thought of Tumdrum as a metaphor, I must admit.”

“Well, maybe you should,” said the Reverend Roberts. “It might help answer some of your sense of-”

“Having sort of lost the thread a bit,” said Israel.

“Yes,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Yes. And do you think drugs are going to help you pick up the thread and make you feel like a success?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just…feel like…I’m not…at home. I don’t seem to have found what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

“Well, I think we can all identify with that feeling!” said the Reverend Roberts, with a sigh. “Ardens sed virens.”

“Sorry?”

“‘Burning yet flourishing,’” said the Reverend Roberts. “It’s the motto of the Presbyterian Church.”

“Right,” said Israel. “It’s different for you, though, isn’t it? You have a calling, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t often feel like it,” said the Reverend Roberts.

“Really? But you’re like the preacher to Kierkegaard’s ducks, aren’t you? The man up the front, telling people they can fly?”

“Mmm. You know, Israel, usually, to be absolutely honest, I feel like one of the duck congregation myself.”

“Oh.”

The two men gazed again outside at the blankness beyond the kitchen windows.

“I think we’re all destined to live our lives in darkness, don’t you, Israel?”

Israel coughed nervously.

“The Bible promises us that God will divide light from obscurity, yes. But not necessarily in our lifetimes, I think. It’s amazing to me, actually, that more people don’t…”

Israel huffed. The reverend sighed.

“But! Enough of this sort of talk,” said the reverend. “Come on! Onward! I’ve got a sermon to write, and you’ve got a young woman to try to find. Let’s not indulge ourselves.”

“Right enough,” said Israel, standing up again.

“If you need any help, let me know,” said the Reverend Roberts, reaching for a commentary.

“Likewise,” said Israel, shaking the reverend’s hand.

“I appreciate that,” said the Reverend Roberts. “Thank you.” And “Now,” he continued, to himself as Israel let himself out, “Prevenient Grace: where to begin?”

20

The Retreat, as the Reverend Roberts suggested, was indeed held in Tumdrum’s community halls, a bizarre, dilapidated warren of buildings just off the town’s main square. The halls had metastasized over the years from their original simple 1930s wooden incarnation into a horribly deformed redbrick and concrete monstrosity that sprawled lazily and decrepitly across a large area surrounded by brown weeds and broken paving stones. But of course, like a church, the community halls were more than a mere building; you couldn’t really judge Tumdrum Community Halls on the basis of their looks alone. Which was fortunate, because they really were quite horrid.

A big, bright luminescent sign had been erected outside the halls saying The Retreat, with another sign in luminescent orange saying FREE TRIP TO HEAVEN DETAILS INSIDE! alongside it, and there was a loud, forceful, jolly man with a clipboard at the door, the sort of man who in middle age was somehow both fully mature and yet still fully a child, his plump neck and receding hair the perfect complement to his hilarious Hawaiian shirt and character Buddy Holly-style glasses. He was directing young people to different rooms in the halls, with an air of grand and efficient theatricality, as though he were a stage manager and the halls were the backstage dressing rooms for a large and important show. Israel was surprised: at eight o’clock on a Friday night there were crowds jostling to get in. The range of weekend and nighttime recreational activities for young people in Tumdrum was neither alluring nor extensive: the bright lights of Rathkeltair tended to draw the over-eighteens for dancing and drinking, which left the town to the younger teens to do what they wished, and what they wished was what other teens wished on Friday nights in small towns all around the world, which was to hang around on street corners, smoking, drinking, and shouting at one another and at passersby. But when they got bored or cold or they wanted someone new to annoy or to intimidate, or they just had the urge to play table tennis or pool on slightly broken-down pool and table-tennis tables, the Retreat was there for them.

“OK,” the clipboard man was saying to the crowds of people pushing through the doors, manically high-fiving whoever he could as they passed. “Good to see you! Good to see you! Hi! Hi! Hi! High-five! OK, people,” he yelled, “you know the score. It’s table tennis through to the left, sock hockey in the main hall, refreshments in the dining room, prayer room next to the toilets.” He caught his breath and then yelled over the heads of the crowd to address a gang of even-more-disenfranchised-than-most Tumdrum young people standing across the other side of the street who were shouting the traditional abuse at those going into the club. “Hey! Hey! Come on over,” he said, waving them across. “Come in. Come on. You might like it! Table tennis! Pool! Sock hockey. Come on! Check it out!”

“Loser,” shouted one young man across the road.

“Double loser,” added another.

The man with the clipboard smiled beatifically-like a saint. Or Ned Flanders, thought Israel.

“Hi! Hi! Hi! High-five!” came his repeated greeting as young people flocked through the doors.