MICHAEL ARDITTI

The Breath of Night

For Rupert Christiansen

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman

But since you are neither hot nor cold, but only lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Revelation (New Jerusalem Bible)

The trouble with Christianity is not that it has failed, but that it hasn’t been tried.

G. K. Chesterton

Preface

I first heard of Julian Tremayne during my all-too-brief engagement to his great-niece. Having been named for him, she felt a special affinity with him, not least given the circumstances of his murder. Julian was an English missionary who went out to the Philippines in the early 1970s. After more than a decade as a parish priest, he was implicated in the assassination of a local military commander and thrown into jail. The preposterousness of the charge, which even his enemies held to be a blatant attempt to intimidate him, provoked international outrage. The government, bowing to concerted diplomatic pressure, sent Julian home. Three years later, after the fall of President Marcos and against the wishes of his family, he returned to the Philippines where, travelling in a remote mountainous region, he was captured by a band of Communist guerrillas who brutally killed him. Even in death he was not silenced, since there have been reports of mysterious occurrences at his grave.

I treat such reports with a healthy scepticism. My own opinion, for what it is worth (and I am only a paid chronicler of Julian’s story), is that the world would be a happier, more equitable and, indeed, more spiritual place without religion. I say ‘without religion’ but not ‘without God’. By that I mean the God who can be found in the paintings of Raphael, Caravaggio and Roualt, the music of Tallis and Bach, the poetry of Donne and Herbert, as well as in countless individual acts of charity, right down to my own youthful sponsored walks on behalf of Christian Aid. I come from a long line of middle-of-the-road Anglicans. My father and grandfather, no doubt along with generations of Sewards before them, take the view that God, if not exactly an Englishman, is of an English disposition, deploring excessive religious zeal as much as any other intemperate display of passion. The Tremaynes, on the other hand, are an old Roman Catholic family, whose ability to survive the vicissitudes of post-Reformation, pre-Emancipation politics demonstrates the strength of their faith.

Julia and I met at Cambridge in the spring of 2003. She was reading modern languages and I history of art. Were I writing about her, I would fill paragraphs, chapters even, with tributes to her beauty, intelligence, generosity, glamour, wickedness and wit, along with the more intimate information that now seems obligatory in any account of a love affair. My concern, however, is with her uncle, and so I shall pass swiftly on to my first visit to their family seat, Whitlock in County Durham. The house was early Tudor with Dutch gables and russet brickwork. An east wing of Portland stone, added in the wake of the quarrying boom of the 1830s, gave it an asymmetrical charm. The current owner was Julia’s grandfather, Gregory Tremayne, who had served as a junior minister under Mrs Thatcher. Since his wife’s death the previous year, his daughter Isabel, Julia’s mother, had acted as her father’s hostess.

Julia issued me with such an extensive list of dos and don’ts regarding her grandfather that I was dreading my visit. In the event, Gregory (he was studiedly informal) could not have been more hospitable. I had scarcely taken off my coat when he offered to give me a guided tour. I was fascinated by the pictures, which were far superior to the usual country-house mishmash, but less enamoured of some of the other exhibits, notably in the trophy room. Bears, polar and grizzly, an elephant with yellowed tusks, a stag with arboreal antlers and many lesser specimens gazed glassily from the walls. Two skins, a lion and a tiger, were spread on the floor like crime-scene silhouettes. This gruesome menagerie had been gathered by Gregory’s great-uncle Lennox, in his quest to eat every animal named in the Bible except, of course, for the griffons and unicorns. Julia, anxious that I should not be misled by family legend, dismissed Lennox as a fraud, claiming that the dishes of crocodile, jackal and wolf described in his diaries attested simply to the range of his travels and his reluctance to offend the culinary tastes of his hosts.

My second visit to Whitlock was in the summer of our graduation, when Julia and I went up to announce our engagement, only to find the news overshadowed by that of her grandfather’s terminal cancer. His imminent demise cast doubt on the future of the estate. The slate quarries had been closed for years and the tenant farms no longer paid their way. Julia’s father, Hugh, was willing to underwrite his wife’s inheritance, but at the cost of sweeping changes, both administrative and aesthetic, which aroused as much opposition from the family as from the local residents. Within a year of his father-in-law’s death, he leased several hundred acres of unprofitable pasture to a wind farm. ‘Thirty turbines whirling away at an annual rent of £100,000 each. It’s an ill wind,’ he said, with a wry grin.

Meanwhile Julia and I moved to a flat in Battersea and took the first steps in our planned careers. Eighteen months later, both had been abandoned: mine by circumstance; hers by choice. Much to my chagrin, she was lured away from translation work by a friend who was setting up as a party organiser. Not even the ready supply of gourmet leftovers could reconcile me to the switch. My own dream lasted longer. Through a family friend, I was taken on by a Duke Street gallery dealing in Old Masters. After a year spent largely ‘below stairs’, cataloguing and researching, I sold a Cranach workshop painting of the Gadarene Swine to a Russian billionaire. Unfortunately, I had failed to do sufficient research into either the picture or the buyer. The former was not the simple gospel illustration it appeared, but a deeply unpleasant anti-Semitic satire, and the latter had recently rediscovered his Jewish roots. Fearing a scandal, my boss ‘reluctantly’ let me go. I did the round of London galleries but, whether their regrets were genuine or my reputation had preceded me, there were no jobs. Disillusioned, I reinvented myself as a critic, writing pieces for everything from scholarly journals and glossy magazines to sale catalogues and websites.

Then on 21 June 2007 everything changed. Not only the date but the time is for ever imprinted on my mind: 2.10 a.m., which, curiously, I see not on the elegant watch face I checked when the telephone woke me but in the clinical display of a digital clock. Julia and I had been invited to Kent to celebrate her Aunt Agnes’s seventy-second birthday. I had to stay in town for an opening at the d’Offay gallery, so Julia drove down with her younger brother Greg. Of course I blame myself. Even if we had taken Greg’s car, I might have offered to drive since, according to the autopsy, he was three times over the legal alcohol limit, or, at the very least, have insisted on his reducing his speed, which the skid marks showed to have been about eighty miles an hour. Had all else failed, I could have persuaded them to put up the roof and perhaps have saved their lives.

Ten days later I sat beside Isabel and Hugh at the funeral in the elevated family pew which, despite its whiff of feudalism, had the virtue of screening us from public view. Scores of friends came up from London, as did my parents along with my brothers and their wives, yet, for all their expressions of sympathy, I felt that my grief was marginalised. There was an unspoken assumption that I was young and would fall in love again but there would be no such grace for the Olliphants, who had lost both their children. In crude terms, it was as though their pain were not doubled but squared. Conscious of that and that Greg had been unattached, I promised to keep in touch. While I resisted returning to Whitlock, I spent several strained evenings in Chelsea, where we each tried to pretend that our memories made up for our loss. When, a year or so later, I met Belinda, a cellist with the LSO, Isabel and Hugh professed to be thrilled, inviting us to dinner where they quizzed her as if she were a prospective daughter-in-law. Their manner was so brittly polite that I resolved to refuse any further invitations even after I had broken with Belinda. For two years I restricted myself to Christmas card contact until, out of the blue, I received a letter from Isabel asking me to Whitlock to discuss a matter of mutual interest. Intrigued, and not a little nostalgic, I set a date.

My conviction that the past was behind me wavered as I drove through the main gates, whose heraldic crest, an owl and two halberds, had been freshly repainted. Juddering over the cattle grid, I gazed across the sunlit meadows where a cluster of wind turbines gleamed as bleakly as artificial Christmas trees. Much to my relief, the house remained true to my memory, and I climbed the uneven steps, savouring its fusty charm. I waited in the oak-panelled hall while an elderly maid went to inform her mistress of my arrival. She returned to lead me to the small drawing room where Isabel sat, as constant as the house, with only a hint of silver in her auburn hair to mark the passing years. Tears welled in my eyes as she called me Pip, a nursery diminutive which had lain dormant until I mentioned it to Julia who immediately adopted it, followed by her parents and brother. From anyone else, it would have sounded precious, as though it should be coupled with ‘toodle’; from Isabel, it took me back me to a warmer, safer place.

She asked to hear all my news and I was embarrassed by how little I had to report. She listened appreciatively as I outlined my journalistic achievements, but the collection of reviews, interviews and articles, already modest in my mind, seemed even more so in the telling. Even my big break, a six minute spot on a radio arts programme, had led nowhere, after the producer, a Cambridge contemporary, had been seconded to Sport. The irony was that my greatest success had come from filing diary stories for another university contact, going to the very parties that I had once reproached Julia for organising. I had spent six months trying to write a novel but, despite the enthusiasm of a hand-picked set of readers, I was forced to admit that I had nothing unique, profound or even amusing to say. No ‘late developer’ tag could disguise the fact that I was a twenty-seven-year-old failure, barely eking out a living. It was then that she put forward her plan.

‘Have you ever met a saint?’ she asked, so abruptly that I took it for a trick question.

‘Not to my knowledge,’ I replied warily.

‘You’d have known if you’d met my uncle.’

I assumed that she was using ‘saint’ in the broad sense of a good and selfless person but, to my discomfort, I realised she was using it in the strict sense laid down by her Church. She gave me a brief overview of Julian’s life and work in the Philippines, along with details of his murder, which Julia had either found too painful to discuss or from which her parents had sought to protect her. Having returned to the Philippines and a new parish, he had gone on a spiritual retreat in an area which, unknown to him, was a stronghold of the NPA, a group of virulently anticlerical Marxists. They had ambushed and shot him, dumping his body in an open grave where it was not discovered for several months, by which time the bones had been picked clean, a fact which she confessed had first horrified her but which now seemed fitting: a literal surrender of the flesh, for which he had striven, symbolically, all his life. He had been identified provisionally by height (he was a foot taller than the average Filipino) and definitively by the family crest on his ring.

‘I’m surprised that it wasn’t stolen,’ I said. ‘Aren’t the people abjectly poor?’

‘They’re also extremely devout. The two foresters who unearthed the body reported that it was bathed in a mysterious light and, on their approach, a bird appeared out of nowhere and hovered above it. They called the police, who confirmed their story, adding that, when they removed the bones, they smelt a honey-like sweetness and heard an ethereal music, which one of them compared to a children’s choir and another to a harp.’

Isabel’s face glowed with such conviction that I longed to share it, but the rationalist in me immediately looked for explanations in sunbeams deflected from mountain peaks, the sound of the wind whistling through leaves, and the sickly-sweet smell of putrefaction clinging to the bones. I even wondered about the language and how much might have been lost – or added – in translation, but I kept such doubts to myself, hoping that a blank expression would convey an open mind. I listened while Isabel explained how her grandmother had wanted to bring Julian’s remains back to Whitlock, but her father had convinced her to leave them in the country that he had made his home. So he had been buried in the cemetery of his former parish. Hugh had flown out to oversee arrangements and she herself had visited the grave some years later, when she accompanied him on a business trip to the Philippines. Over time, and despite being officially discouraged by the Church, a cult had grown up around Julian, whose intercession was said to have led to several miracles of healing. The sceptic in me, which had by now eclipsed the rationalist, suspected that it had been a wise move to leave the body in such a susceptible environment, but when I asked her why she thought that similar miracles did not take place at the graves of saintly men in England she replied that they occurred in countries where people prayed for them, which they no longer did in the West.

Just as her account was verging on the anecdotal, Isabel explained that three years ago a group of Julian’s former parishioners had petitioned their bishop to have Julian declared a saint. Rightly assuming that I knew little about the process of canonisation, she summarised the key criteria: either martyrdom for the faith or the performance of two or more miracles. In the light of the cures, I asked whether Julian had not already met that second condition, but she replied that personal testimony was not enough; the miracles had to be authenticated by a team of experts. In addition, the candidate was required to have led an exemplary life: technically, ‘a holy life of heroic virtue’, exhibiting the qualities of zeal for the Church, consecrated virginity, poverty and obedience. While I was debating which of the four I would find it hardest to achieve, she declared that, in response to the petition, the Bishop had launched an investigation into Julian’s virtues. His agents were gathering evidence which, together with copies of Julian’s writings (of which there were precious few), would be presented in a document known as a positio to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome.

Although the impetus for the investigation came from the parish, Isabel gave it her wholehearted support. She kept a close eye on its progress, rapidly losing patience with both the agents’ sluggishness and the Bishop’s refusal to chivvy them. Hugh, more conversant with the local ways, mollified her by quoting an old joke: ‘Is there a Filipino word for mañana?’ ‘Yes, but it doesn’t possess the same sense of urgency.’ Her unease as she repeated it underlined her exasperation. With Hugh’s blessing, she decided to take a more active role, sending out someone to galvanise the investigation by compiling an independent report. To my amazement, I discovered that the someone she had in mind was me. Far from my usual gratitude for the smallest offer of work, I was seized by panic. Even as she tried to persuade me of my fitness, I listed my limitations: I had never been to the Philippines; I could not speak – could not even name – the language; and I was not a Catholic. She discounted each in turn, assuring me that I would be a fresh eye; that everyone spoke English; and that, as an Anglican, I would counter any charge of bias.

‘But what if I let you down?’

‘You won’t. Both Hugh and I have complete confidence in you. He has any number of employees he could send. Or else we could hire a professional investigator. But it’s far too important to trust to a stranger. Julian – St Julian – is all that’s left of my family, apart from you, Pip. You see I think of you as family,’ she said, making the one appeal to which she knew I would respond. ‘I wanted nothing more than to see you married to Julia.’

She was so convinced of her argument that she expected me to agree on the spot. Staunchly resisting her blandishments during a tense lunch, I promised to mull it over and discuss any remaining concerns with Hugh when he came up from London that evening. My hopes of an afternoon walk were dashed when, claiming that no one could speak more eloquently for Julian than he had himself, she handed me a reliquary-like casket, which contained all his surviving letters home from the Philippines. My interest was roused as much by her allusion to ‘pages of family gossip that you can skip’ as by the prospect of a privileged account of Julian’s mission but, sitting in the library where five years earlier Julia and I had pored over the gory entries in Lennox Tremayne’s game book, I was gripped by the vivid descriptions of Filipino rural life. Even on a cursory reading, the letters made a compelling narrative which, perhaps perversely in view of the savage and shocking material it contained, whetted my appetite to go there.

I had no wish to rush to judgement – and besides, the crucial judgement would not be mine – but at first glance I could detect little obvious saintliness in the letters. There was courage and self-sacrifice, honesty and integrity, generosity and charity, and a host of other virtues; there were even hints that some miraculous phenomena had been manifest before his death. But there was also anger, resentment, obstinacy, self-righteousness and other shortcomings, which suggested that, if nothing else, Julian had been a deeply conflicted figure. Moreover, he lashed out not just at the landowners and officials who had exploited and abused his parishioners, but at those in his own family whom he believed to have failed him. Meanwhile, I was struck both by how rarely he returned home – twice in thirteen years was meagre even for a missionary – and by his parents’ reluctance to visit him. Although I still found the concept of priesthood alien, I was intrigued by Julian’s contradictions and inclined to accept the commission.

A snatched half-hour by the lake managed to clear my head if not to resolve my dilemma. When I returned to the house, a marked if elusive change of mood signalled Hugh’s arrival. I found him in the drawing room, glass in hand, talking to his wife. Although he looked the same as ever: aquiline nose; full lips; wavy hair worn raffishly long at the nape; cheeks the pink of a child’s paint pot; my picture of him had been transformed by Julian’s. He apologised for not having been here to greet me, citing business meetings in the City. Even now I remained hazy as to what exactly his business was, taking my cue from Julia who had been far more forthcoming about her Tremayne than her Olliphant relatives. The letters had revealed a hitherto unknown Philippine connection, about which I questioned him. He explained that his great-great-grandfather had founded a trading company in the 1840s, when Spain first opened up the country to foreign commerce. Succeeding generations had diversified into textile manufacture, merchant shipping, quarrying and mining, and he was now part of a multinational conglomerate of Filipinos, Americans and Chinese.

Eager to know if he had read what Julian wrote about him, I gently broached the subject of their relationship. ‘I had a lot of time for Uncle Julian,’ he said, ‘although I’m not sure that he would have repaid the compliment.’ His sly grin left me none the wiser. ‘He was something of a pinko, which you might think pardonable given the politics of the time, but in my humble opinion he took it a bit too far. Ended up going native – though he’d most likely have called it “going indigenous people”.’ He paused, seeming to recollect himself and the reason for which I had been summoned. ‘But he was a first-rate chap. No doubt about it. Gandhi; Mother Teresa; you know the sort of thing. And, like me, he loved the Filipinos. He made it his mission to save their souls, just as I’ve made it mine to conserve their art.’

Declaring it a disgrace that Filipino culture was so underrepresented in the world’s great collections, he offered to give me a preview – ‘premature, I trust’ – of the treasures he was bequeathing to the British Museum. Stifling my surprise at this improbable passion, I readily agreed and followed him into the billiard room, with its rows of monochrome pots, bowls and burial jars, for which I struggled to muster the requisite enthusiasm. I found more of interest in his study, notably a fifteenth-century crocodile made from carabao horn and conch shell, but my admiration for the intricately carved rice gods, which had once protected their adherents’ huts and now adorned his walls, was tempered by the memory of Julian’s disapproval. All that paled, however, beside my shock when he led me into the trophy room and showed off his latest acquisitions: six mummified heads ‘salvaged’ from a former headhunting tribe, many of whose descendents worked in his mines. To compound the horror, he had had them mounted and hung among the other exotic species. Even as I was working out whether this were a sick joke, a racist insult, or an existential howl of despair, I was struck by an image of Julia’s skull smashed against the tree.

I fled upstairs, returning for dinner, which was served with due formality in the old hall. At the end of the meal, Isabel, more mindful of past than of present company, left us to ourselves. Wasting no time, Hugh urged me to accept his wife’s proposal. With an affecting tenderness, he described how she had become increasingly withdrawn since the children’s deaths, scarcely stirring from Whitlock. Honouring Julian’s memory was the sole thing that gave her life meaning. Sounding strangely sheepish, he explained that she had an intense, almost mystical, belief that because Julia had been named for Julian and I had been engaged to her, I would be the one to revitalise the investigation. Knowing the Philippines as he did, he was under no such illusion, nevertheless he was convinced that my presence – and progress reports – would bring her hope. ‘You’ve no idea how much she needs it right now.’

‘I’d like to help. Truly.’

‘So what’s stopping you? I assure you I won’t be ungenerous. Tell me honestly, is your life in London so wonderful?’

‘You know it’s not.’

‘Well then, what do you have to lose?’

That was the moment at which I decided to take up their offer. The promise of unlimited time and limited responsibility, of extensive funds and expert assistance, was one incentive; the chance to travel to an unknown country and explore a unique, hybrid culture was another; the lack of alternative prospects and emotional ties was a third. Above all, however, it was Hugh’s simple question, with its cruel but irrefutable logic, which persuaded me to book a flight to Manila for the early New Year.

One

4 June 1971

My dear Mother and Father,

Greetings from the parish of San Isidro in the vicariate apostolic of Montagnosa, in the province of Luzon, in the archipelago of the Philippines. All I need add is ‘the Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Universe’ and you’ll think me six years old again. Which is pretty much how I feel; everything is so vivid and exciting.

First of all, mea culpa. I meant to write weeks ago but, from the moment I stepped off the plane, I was caught up in a whirlwind. Besides, I wanted to wait until I knew where the Regional was sending me so that I could give you an address. The three months I’ve spent here have already made up for all the disappointment of Liverpool. I had to struggle so long to banish any tinge of envy for friends who were posted to Cameroon or Sudan or India. I should have trusted in the Lord. Not only has He called me to a country that is just as wondrous, but it’s one that has escaped all taint of the British Empire.

Manila was magical. I trust Cora received my postcard. Some nights the sky really is that pink. There are those who attribute it to pollution, but I take a more romantic view. By day it’s the people who provide the colour. Many of them are pitifully poor, yet they remain cheerful, even joyous. I’m thinking of a shoeless girl dancing a jig in the street, while an old man sat quietly repairing pavement cracks like a boy sifting sand on the beach. They’ve retained the gift, long lost in the more affluent West, of exulting in sheer existence.

Although I’ve been treated with nothing but kindness both here and in Manila, the Regional told me that the government regards foreign priests with mistrust, which is why the Society brought me in on a tourist visa. My first task was to exchange it for a work permit, which proved remarkably easy, but not without cost. I’ll say no more except that the Mr Fixit, whom the Regional deputed to assist me, would be perfect casting for the corrupt official in Casablanca – you know, the French captain with the pencil moustache. Next, I was measured for a cassock (white), which was delivered the following day and which I am wearing as I write – though, in the insistent heat, I can’t help envying the Filipino men who walk about bare-chested. I hear you gasp, Mother, across a distance of 7,000 miles. Don’t worry, I gave you my word that I shouldn’t go native, and I intend to keep it.

For three weeks I had the Society’s house to myself, which I must admit I enjoyed (don’t tell Greg, who’ll think me even more of a recluse than ever), before I was joined by two fellow missionaries, first a rather crabby old man, another Julian, who’d been ministering to the plantation workers on the sugar island of Negros, and then, to my surprise and delight, by Hendrik van Leyden, who was at the seminary with me in Brabant. He spent a fortnight with us at Whitlock four years ago, do you remember? Chestnut hair; dimpled chin; eyebrows which, much to Cora’s horror, met in the middle? Or maybe I should mention an eight-pound salmon: the one which, displaying an uncharacteristic – even unprecedented – indulgence, Father, you swore that you’d left for him? I’ll say no more.

Hendrik and I were classmates once again, on a crash course in Tagalog run by the Dominicans (eight hours a day, six days a week for two months), after which the Regional considered us ready, with God’s grace, to begin our mission. We’ve promised to meet up regularly, or as regularly as we can, given that Hendrik has been posted to a parish in Cabanatuan City in Nueva Ecija province. It may not be that far on the map, but distances in the Philippines have to be measured in more than miles. After a couple of hours on the North Diversion Road no one, not even Uncle Lawrence, would complain about the surface of the A1.

On my admittedly brief acquaintance, I’d say that the distance from San Isidro to Manila is greater than that between England and the Philippines. No, the sun hasn’t addled my brain. Do you remember how horrified Cora – or was it Agnes? – was when the Misses Cuddleston told us that they’d never been to London and not even to Durham since the General Strike? There are old people here who’ve never visited Baguio City, which is barely an hour away and the closest thing to a metropolis. Manila is as remote from them as Moscow was from Chekhov’s Three Sisters, except that, instead of yearning for it, they view it with suspicion. I shall miss the theatre, along with bookshops, newspapers, electricity (I’m writing this by a kerosene lamp), the morning post (we have a weekly delivery on market day), and I won’t begin to mention the sanitary arrangements! But I do have a shortwave radio that picks up the BBC. And to live among such prayerful people makes up for it all.

The parish is huge, with 6,000 souls scattered across 400 square kilometres. It consists of the poblacion, the town centre both administratively and geographically, and twenty-four barrios (hamlets? neighbourhoods?), each of which is home to between one and two hundred families: some are within walking distance of the centre; others are out on the haciendas and can only be reached by car. I’ve inherited an old jalopy, but I’m told that one of the managers gave my predecessor, Father Teodoro, a brand-new Mercedes, so I live in hope! The most remote barrios are high in the Cordilleras, the vast mountain range that marks the eastern limit of the parish, and are only accessible on foot. While I remember, would you please send me a pair of hiking boots? 10½ if they do half-sizes, since my feet tend to swell in the heat.

So far I’ve barely strayed beyond the poblacion. Its heart is a large square, with the Church and convento (rectory) on the east side and the town hall on the west. Two rows of Spanish colonial houses, all cracked white stucco and fretwork shutters, half-hidden by thick-boughed frangipani and acacia trees, plus two small general stores, occupy the north and south. In the centre are a statue of the national hero, José Rizal, four weathered stone benches and a dried-up water trough.

It’s no accident that the convento is the largest and best appointed residence in town. During the three centuries of Spanish rule, while the soldiers and bureaucrats were based in Manila, the country was effectively governed by a few hundred friars. There is of course an irony, which I’m sure you’ve not been slow to grasp, in my having become a missionary in order to take the gospel to places where it had never been heard, only to find myself in one where it can be heard more clearly than at home. I won’t pretend that I’m not relieved to have escaped all the babble and clatter of England, along with its fashionable clarion calls – how anything can be described as ‘liberation’ that leads you away from the Church is beyond me! Moreover, although the people here have long had Christ, they’re hungry for priests. I understand that, for perfectly valid reasons (age, ill health, pressure of work), Father Teodoro neglected to visit some parts of the parish from one year to the next. That’s an omission I propose to rectify.

On second thoughts, please send me two pairs of boots.

The laminated fact sheet in the porch, complete with charming misspellings (the ‘vaulted apes’!), describes the church as ‘earthquake baroque’ which, to my mind, fails to do it justice. It dates from the early 1600s when Philippine houses were flimsy wooden structures on stilts (many still are), the better to withstand wild animals and flooding. So it’s easy to see how this lofty stone building would have filled the locals with awe. I doubt that it would find favour in your Holy Redeemer-trained eyes, but I’m already learning to love it. The heavy grey exterior, more buttresses than walls, has a touch of the penitentiary about it and the functional interior still bears the scars of the Japanese invasion in 1942. Several of the clerestory windows are missing, leaving the nave at times like an aviary (perhaps it will come into its own at Pentecost?). The chief decorative features are the santos – simple wooden figures dressed in garish robes that Agnes and Cora would have scorned to put on their least precious dolls – set in niches along the walls and above the altars. Yet, for all their roughness, they display the hallmarks of deep devotion. On the day I arrived, a young boy took my hand unprompted and led me to the high altar which, with its three tiers of glass-enclosed santos, resembled nothing so much as a toyshop window. He pointed to the central figure, a glazed-looking Christ, unremarkable except for long woven dreadlocks reaching down to his waist. ‘Jesus Christ, He is so beautiful,’ he said with tear-filled eyes, adding imperiously: ‘Now you will kiss Jesus Christ.’ Moved by his words, I put my lips to the squarely carved feet with as much reverence as I once had to the bronze toe of St Peter in Rome.

The boy, whom I have yet to meet again unless he were one of the horde of children who accompanied their parents to my first mass, is not alone in his piety. At odd moments throughout the day and at the end of every service, the faithful step up to one of the side altars and press their lips or their handkerchiefs to the santos. The mass, by the way, is in English which, I suspect, is as incomprehensible to much of the congregation as the Latin was in Gaverton a decade ago. Confessions, however, are in Tagalog. The Dominicans did their best to tailor their vocabulary to our needs (I doubt there are many language courses that teach elementary students the phrases for disrespecting one’s elders, illegal foraging and lustful thoughts). Even so, I’m not always sure precisely what I’m absolving. Yesterday a young man left the church with a massive grin after a long and faltering confession during which, I must admit, I was utterly lost. Then again, there may be something opportune in my confusion. Since God’s mercy is, as we know, infinite, it seems almost reductive to fashion the penance to the sin.

‘Soft!’ I hear your favourite epithet, Father, echoing across the drawing room. ‘The boy’s gone soft in the head!’ Or maybe Mother is reading the letter aloud to you at breakfast, causing you to choke on your porridge, and your prediction that one of your children will be the death of you will finally be fulfilled.

Forgive me! I’d tear up the page and start again if I weren’t so near the bottom. The fact is that I’m missing everyone so much. By trying to keep a clear picture of you in my mind, I’ve let myself be carried away. But please don’t think that I’m depressed. If anything, I’ve been having too much pleasure, not least because I arrived on 13 May, two days before the feast of San Isidro, the most important date in the town’s calendar.

‘See the welcome we’ve laid on for you,’ the Mayor said, when he greeted me outside the church. For a moment I mistook the twinkle for the truth. What arrogance! It was a saint they were celebrating, not a humble priest. The square and several of the side streets were festooned with bunting. It looked as if the whole town were wrapped in a cake frill. The church itself was crammed with fruit and flowers and vegetables, including a jackfruit the size of a beer barrel, which quite obscured the font. The santos had all been given their annual change of wardrobe at the hands of the hermanas, the daughters of the local landowners. I may be wrong, but I detected a hint of genteel rivalry over the distribution; unsurprisingly, Our Lord, Our Lady and San Isidro are prized above the lesser saints. One young woman made up for being assigned the comparatively lowly Santa Barbara by decking her out like Marie Antoinette at Versailles. Next year, apparently, it will be my job to make the allocation – which is a treat in store.

This year my duties were confined to saying mass. That was nerve-racking enough since it was my first chance to meet the hundreds of parishioners who had streamed in from the outlying barrios. The church was packed, with several of the young men sitting on one another’s shoulders. What’s more, I’d had no time to write a sermon and simply adapted one on Loving Your Neighbour that I’d preached before last year’s Liverpool-Everton derby. But it seemed to go down well, with so many people shaking my hand at the end that I stopped worrying about the sweat. I even received a compliment – and a lunch invitation – from don Florante Pineda, our foremost local landowner. ‘An excellent sermon, Father, I approve,’ he said, as though the parish were his private domain.

After mass I had a chance to unwind, strolling through town and introducing myself to the people before the procession, which was due to start at three. Having adjusted my mind as well as my watch to Filipino time, I was expecting a half-hour delay, but not the ninety minutes in the hallucinogenic heat that it took for everyone to assemble. That said, I did as I was told and waited patiently (don’t laugh, Father), until it finally set off, taking its pace from the lumbering water buffalo that pulled San Isidro’s carosse, looking as incongruous in its sampaguita garland as Hector in Cora’s Christmas Day crown. The carosse was covered with carrots, corn, cucumber and lettuce, the saint’s early life as a farmer making him a particularly fitting patron for an agricultural parish. Our Lord, Our Lady, St Francis Xavier, St Charles Borromeo and a host of angels followed in slow succession, each attended by the family who’d taken charge of its care and adornment over the previous year. Then came a parade of barrio groups, among them a pack of Gigantes, ten-foot-high stilt-walkers with Humpty-Dumpty heads, and twenty youths performing a tribal dance, wearing loin cloths and flip-flops, and brandishing spears.

A band of ten girls, in floral crowns and white dresses (which had withstood the heat far better than my cassock), brought the procession to a close. Each represented a different facet of Our Lady: Divine Shepherdess; Immaculate Conception; Queen of Prophets; Mystical Rose and so forth. With one exception, each was escorted by a young man, looking at once proud and bashful. The exception was a remarkably pretty girl, whose radiant smile as she walked beside her mother made her the perfect representation of the Queen of Peace. The poise and excitement of the girls and the anxiety of the boys suggested that, for all the religious panoply, Mary wasn’t the only virgin being venerated. As they filed past, I wondered how many of the couples might be standing before me at the altar in the forthcoming months.

My hosts – no, I must call them my neighbours and soon, I hope, my friends – assured me that every Filipino loves a fiesta. At any given moment, somewhere across the country there’ll be a festival to celebrate something, be it fruit, flowers or even fish, although the majority are in honour of saints. Some might see it as overkill, but I see it as the essence of incarnational theology: the communal expression of a world suffused with God.

Now I must go to bed. Their hot coconut toddy (think very rough gin) is lethal. And I’ve a busy day tomorrow: lunch with the civic auditor; followed by my first catechism class; then, in the evening, a film. The nearest cinema is in Baguio City where, from what I can gather, the presiding genius is Bruce Lee, but every once in a while a travelling company comes to town and sets up a makeshift (bed-sheet) screen in the square. Tomorrow night they’re showing Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba which, being a Hollywood epic from the fifties, contains the perfect mix of religiosity, romance, exoticism and violence for a Filipino audience today. They handed out publicity flyers at the fiesta. I enclose one just in case you think I’m making it up: ‘They came from different worlds. He was a Catholic. She was a Protestant. Yet they dared to fall in love.’

I can see that I have my work cut out.

Your loving son,

Julian

Applause rippled through the plane as it glided on to the tarmac. Philip, sucking palliatively on a boiled sweet, wondered whether it sprang from relief at having survived the flight, happiness at being home, or common courtesy. The slick young businessman across the aisle, who had read both the Economist and the Wall Street Journal cover to cover, raised his eyes as if to excuse the foibles of his countrymen. Philip flashed him a wry smile, which he trusted conveyed the mixture of confidence and sensitivity that he intended to make the keynotes of his stay. He had misjudged the balance so far, his respect for the stewardess’ headscarf having restricted his alcohol intake to two glasses of champagne, while the businessman had not only downed the best part of a bottle but met her for coffee during the six-hour stopover in Dubai. Feeling disgruntled, Philip gathered up his new grip, which looked cheap beside the businessman’s briefcase, and stepped off the plane.

He followed the crowd down a series of corridors, past adverts for banks, hotel chains, computers and mobile phones, most of which were reassuringly familiar, before joining the long queue at Immigration. Its sluggishness was all the more frustrating given that it was predominantly composed of Asians; he trusted that it was ignorance and not apathy that prevented his distinguishing between Filipino, Malay and Chinese. From his own experience of Heathrow, he would have expected them to be whisked through, but, gazing at the Wanted posters for New People’s Army insurgents dotted about the concourse, he realised that domestic terrorism was the officers’ prime concern. He was surprised by the posters since he had assumed that, like other such groups, the NPA had become a spent force in recent years. He peered hard, trying to read the small print without either drawing attention to himself or losing his place in line, finding that the size of the suspects’ photographs was in direct proportion to the bounty on their heads and, presumably, the danger that they posed to the state. Although not yet accustomed to the currency, he could see that 1 million pesos for each of the four commanders would be a strong incentive for betrayal.

He reached the control booth, where the officer’s suspicious stare made him feel as though every joint he had ever smoked were secreted about his person. He wondered if the suspicion might arise from the fact that, for the first time in his life, he was travelling not for pleasure but for ‘research’. His passport finally stamped, he made his way into the congested baggage hall where he struggled to find the correct carousel. Having been given advice, insect repellent and Travel Wash by his mother, who was wary of hotel laundries; advice, mustard and foot powder by his godmother, who had grown up in Ceylon; advice and a dog-eared copy of Dos and Don’ts in the Philippines (‘Do think twice before you challenge a Filipino to a drinking match’, ‘Don’t assume all pretty girls are female’) by his old school chum Brian, who had spent the previous Easter surfing in Boracay; on top of the books, computer, camera and clothes needed for an indefinite stay, he worried that he had packed too much, but his two bulging cases paled in comparison with the precariously laden trolleys of the Filipino passengers which, from the labels on the boxes, contained plasma TVs, hi-fis, air-conditioning units and at least one fridge.

Waved through customs with almost insulting indifference, Philip walked across the lobby and out of the building. A blast of heat hit him like the swirl of a sandstorm, and his lightweight jacket hung as heavy on his shoulders as the cape he had affected during his final year at school. With no public access to the terminal, a horde of waiting relatives and friends packed the forecourt and he scoured the few white faces for Max Bradshaw, Hugh Olliphant’s agent in Manila, who was due to meet him. He tried to recall Julian Tremayne’s description of him before reminding himself that it would be at least thirty years out of date. Taking off his hat to any Englishman who could survive for so long in such an oppressive climate, he felt an urge to do so literally, lifting the panama that had been another of his godmother’s gifts and mopping his brow. At that moment a tall, angular man in a whitish suit clambered over the barrier, to the consternation of a soldier, who looked far too young to be wielding a weapon on anything other than a games console. Holding up such a scrappy piece of card that Philip was only partially comforted to read his own name, the man moved confidently towards him. ‘This is you, I presume?’ Philip gazed at the spindly writing and nodded. ‘Max Bradshaw. The pleasure’s mine.’ He held out a hand that was more slippery than sticky. ‘Good flight?’ He carried on without waiting for a reply. ‘Whenever I travel long distance, I always start by looking around the plane to see which of the passengers I could eat if we happen to crash.’ His broad grin revealed teeth as stained as his suit. ‘I’ve texted Eddie – our driver – that you’ve arrived in one piece. Though when he’ll get here is anyone’s guess. Adjusting your watch is just the start of it. You have to adjust to a whole new way of doing things. It’s called Filipino time.’

After twenty minutes, Eddie pulled up with a long list of excuses, which Max proceeded to rebut although, as they inched down the slip road and on to the freeway, there was no denying the heaviness of the traffic. A loud whir was the sole evidence of the air conditioning and, pressed against his neighbour who made no attempt to draw back, Philip realised that it was not only dentistry that Max treated with disdain. Feeling both nauseous and jet-lagged, he longed to shut his eyes but was kept alert by the running commentary, which took on a new urgency as they drove down Roxas Boulevard, which Max described as ‘Manila’s premier thoroughfare, also notable as the street where I live’. Bordered on one side by the sea and on the other by a long line of tower blocks and luxury hotels, interspersed with gaudy, single-storey nightclubs and sinister patches of wasteland, it appeared to embody all the city’s contradictions. ‘That’s the American Embassy,’ Max said, pointing to a large white building on their left with the familiar flag flying high. ‘Look at the crowds. Every morning you see hundreds of people queuing up for visas. Then, in the afternoon, you see them waving banners outside, protesting against US imperialism.’

‘Not the same people surely?’ Philip asked.

‘I wouldn’t put it past them.’

At the end of the boulevard they reached the hotel, where security guards stopped the car, opening the boot and the bonnet, and checking beneath the chassis with a periscope. They then continued down the forecourt, past more guards with sniffer dogs, to the main doors, where Eddie parked, a porter collected the luggage, and Philip and Max went through an airport-style scanner.

‘Why all this security?’ Philip asked Max, as he waited for his jacket and holdall to be X-rayed.

‘You get used to it,’ Max replied airily. ‘Little men with big weapons, the same as everywhere. Only here we face two separate threats. One’s the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. They’re out to create a religious state on the island of Mindanao. I’m all in favour of covering up the competition, but mullahs and beards and floggings and stonings. No, thank you! The other’s the NPA, a gang of diehard Marxists. And, in the Philippines, that means a mixture of Karl and Groucho.’

Max escorted Philip through the grandiose lobby, whose richly panelled ceiling, glittering chandeliers, thick carpet and plush sofas were a world away from the hurly-burly of the streets. As the six-piece orchestra played airs from operettas, Philip felt that he might have been back taking tea with his mother and godmother at the Savoy.

‘Would you like to see the room?’ Philip asked reluctantly, after collecting his key from the receptionist.

‘My, you are forward! We’ve only just met. Don’t worry,’ Max said, as Philip struggled to conceal his dismay. ‘I’ll just sit here and wait. Waiting’s what I do best.’ He strolled to a table in front of the orchestra, while the porter led Philip to his room.

The blast of cold air when he opened the door was as fierce as the heat outside the airport. The room was large, square and impersonal, containing a ceiling-high four-poster bed with diaphanous curtains, a wall-length TV and cocktail cabinet, an L-shaped sofa and a smoked-glass coffee table on which sat a vase of waxy white flowers. The muted oatmeal and slate colour scheme was clearly designed to reassure the reluctant traveller that the external world would not intrude. The only indications that he was in Manila, rather than Rome, Sydney or Buenos Aires, were the vista from the window, a medley of greys and browns with a small patch of green in the foreground and a faint line of blue on the right, and the copy of the Philippine Tatler, which he idly flicked through while waiting for his luggage to arrive. The wallowing in wealth was even more obscene than in its English counterpart and, although he had abandoned activism after a student phase as predictable as puberty, he felt a tinge of sympathy for the NPA, which he expressed by overtipping the bellhop who brought up his bags.

Freshly showered, changed and powdered (and grateful for his godmother’s prescience), he made his way downstairs to find Max still sitting at the table and drinking something green. Downing the glass in a single gulp, he jumped up. ‘Lunch!’ he declared, so vehemently that Philip half expected all those within earshot to drop whatever they were doing and join them. ‘Should we try the Champagne Room?’ Max asked, with a show of deliberation, guiding Philip through the lobby and into a room as intoxicating as its name. Sunlight streamed through the chinks in the heavy silk curtains, illuminating the wrought iron arches, mirrored walls, patterned glass and decorative grates, while leaving the body of the room in romantic shadow. Feeling as if he had trespassed on the transformation scene of a pantomime, Philip followed the maître d’ round two large trees made entirely of crystal, which tinkled as they passed, to his table, where a waiter removed a mitre-shaped napkin from his plate and spread it decorously on his lap. ‘Come on,’ said Max, gazing at the menu as reverently as at a Book of Hours. ‘Let’s spend some of Hugh’s lovely money.’

‘Right you are,’ Philip said, pondering what it was in this fey, feckless man that recommended itself to Hugh. Julian had cited his contacts in the Marcos regime, but that failed to explain why such a hard-bitten businessman had kept him on the payroll for a further thirty years. ‘I gather you’ve worked with Hugh for a long time,’ he said, probing the improbable relationship.

‘Man and boy. But then I know where the bodies are buried,’ Max replied, with a smile so arch that Philip suspected a double bluff.

The wine waiter came to take their order.

‘Champagne,’ Max said, as if anything else would have been unworthy of the room. ‘Taittinger. We’ll save the Dom Perignon for a special occasion.’

‘Shouldn’t we save all of it?’ Philip asked. ‘At least till I have some news about Julian.’

‘Nonsense. It’s not often I get the chance to live the high life any more. You’ve made an old man very happy – I use the word “old” loosely.’ He laughed. ‘What are the three most beautiful words in the English language?’

‘I love you?’

‘You’re very young,’ Max said, with a pitying look. ‘“Money’s no object”, of course.’

Philip might have been more convinced, had he felt more confident of achieving his mission. Worried that he would come up with nothing of value to the investigation, he would have preferred Max to have booked him into a more modest hotel. For all Hugh’s expressions of marital concern, he would expect a return on his investment.

‘I understand you knew Julian yourself,’ he said, uncertain whether his slurred speech stemmed from jet-lag or champagne.

‘I met him. I wouldn’t say that I knew him; quite the reverse. He came to Manila with Hugh and his wife before they were married. I got him an invitation to one of Imelda’s most glittering soirées. There were people who’d have killed to be there – literally. But was he grateful? Anyone would have thought I’d taken him to a black mass.’

‘You never saw him again.’

‘Once, a couple of years later when I visited him in prison. Hugh asked me to take in some supplies and report back. He looked a good deal happier there than he had in Manila. In his element it seemed to me.’

‘So, do you think he was a saint?’

‘He certainly enjoyed playing the martyr. But I’m not the right person to ask. Our Saviour and I haven’t seen eye to eye for years.’

‘Do you have any religion at all?’

‘Beauty,’ Max replied with unexpected fervour. ‘Beautiful art, beautiful music, beautiful people. They’re my religion. And the Filipinos are the most beautiful people I know. How about you?’

‘I don’t know that many. Oh, you mean religion? Your typical wishy-washy Anglican, I suppose, of the hatch, match and dispatch persuasion. I’d put it better if I weren’t so shattered. Or maybe not. I grew up in Berkshire, where the Sunday service was as much a part of the fabric of our lives as the church was part of the fabric of the village. Not that it went much deeper. It’s a family joke that when the vicar said “my help comes from the hills”, my mother took it that his charlady came from the Chilterns. What I envied about Catholics – at least the ones I met through Julia – was the seriousness of their faith. Julia was Hugh’s daughter. We were engaged.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘It was three years ago.’

‘I know.’

‘Thank you. Between you and me, I’ve been in limbo for quite a while, since Julia’s death in fact – though I don’t like to make the connection, at least not out loud. In the end, I think that’s why I agreed to come: a sense that whatever I did for Julian, I’d also be doing for Julia. And, when I’d done it, I might finally be able to move on.’

‘I see.’

‘Now I’m here, I long to get cracking. I had hoped to do a lot of the groundwork back home, but Google wasn’t much help. The only mentions of Julian were linked to his older brother, Hugh’s father-in-law: you remember, the Tory minister?’

‘It rings a teensy bell.’

‘So unless you’ve a better idea, I thought I’d start by sifting through the archive material in the National Library. Then I’d like to interview Julian’s clerical colleagues, fellow missionaries, friends and former parishioners, along with anyone who claims to have been cured through his intervention. When I’ve collated all the material, I’ll submit one report to Isabel and Hugh, and another to the Bishop. What happens after that is anyone’s guess! The official investigators will be free to use anything I come up with or to carry on in their own sweet – and slow – way. Isabel still might not live long enough to see her dream fulfilled.’

‘First things first,’ Max said, as he gobbled up a melting sorbet, oblivious to the latest stains on his sleeve. ‘You must take some time to explore the country, meet the people, see what Julian was up against or working with, depending on your point of view. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt during my years in Manila, it’s never to plan.’