The Gospel Of Judas by Simon Mawer Read Free Book Online Page B

upper lip. The little pianist. She used to play ‘Für Elise’, partly because that was her name but mainly because it was also the only piece she could manage at all competently, being too lazy, so his mother said, to practise.
    Laziness is next to sinfulness
, his mother said.
    Remove occasion for sin and you remove the sin
, she said.
    But the memory? How do you expunge that?
    It was one day during the Easter holidays that Elise came round to the Newmans’ flat. Leo had never met her before, never even seen her, had no idea who she was when he opened the front door to her and found her standing there on the doormat that said WELCOME but didn’t really mean it. The girl was slightly pigeon-toed – patent leather pigeon-toed. Her blue dress hovered uncertainly betweenchildhood and adolescence, having flowers scattered across its surface and a bow at the back, but also an ample
décolletage
that lifted and displayed precocious breasts. A pleasing blush touched her cheeks. The blush was, he could feel, reflected in his own face.
    ‘Is Mrs Newman in?’
    ‘She’s out.’
    ‘Who are you, then?’
    ‘Her son.’
    ‘I have a piano lesson with her.’
    ‘I thought she rang to cancel it.’
    The girl shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘No, she didn’t.’ And Leo smelt the sour and flinty stench of mendacity, for he
knew
that his mother had telephoned. He had heard her make the call.
    ‘Maybe you should come in and wait,’ he suggested. His blush deepened, with shame for the girl and shame for himself as he compounded her lie: ‘I don’t think she’ll be long.’ For behind the smell of mendacity there was something else: the subtle, physical perfume of complicity. She
would
be long. His mother’s cousin was ill. Her cousin lived somewhere out of London and his mother would be gone until late evening, leaving him all alone to study for looming examinations. Theology. Classical Philosophy. Ancient History.
    Remove the occasion and you remove the sin
.
    Leo Newman, awkward and withdrawn junior seminarian, stood aside and invited the occasion in, and it sat there prim and rapacious before him in the chintz armchair where his mother normally sat, its knees pressed together, its mouth (a dark red bud like the mouth of a Pre-Raphaelite Madonna) pursed in an expression of studied allure, its patent leather shoes settled on the carpet like tiny littlecoffins; while the crucified Christ watched from the wall above the piano on whose lucid surface the silver-framed relatives (dead father, deader grandparents) watched like a grim jury.
    ‘Tea?’ he asked. ‘Would you like tea?’
    Yes, she told him, yes she would like tea.
    Inviting Elise in and assuring her of his mother’s imminent return was also the only initiative that he took in the whole of the affair. Every other move – the artful, arch conversation they held over a cup of tea, the promise to meet in the Botanical Gardens the following afternoon, the hot, damp kisses which they finally exchanged two weekends later, all of those were Elise’s. Elise was practised and eager: he was hesitant and shy. ‘You do
this
, you silly,’ she said, and he found her tongue, as wet and warm as a tropical fish, flapping around inside his mouth. ‘And if you touch my bosom I will
not
mind, although you may not put your hand up my skirt, for that is vulgar so early on in our relationship.’ Her breast was a soft bud of a thing, live beneath his fingers. As he touched it she remained as still as a bird.
    There followed a season of assignations without his mother’s knowledge, a random collection of walks along the canal, of nervous and distasteful gropings on discreet park benches (once they were moved on by a policeman, another time shouted at by a woman), all culminating in a climactic visit to a malodorous cinema during which Elise reversed her previous proscription. Her breath in Leo’s ear was a soft and sultry thing, more sensation than suggestion: ‘Touch