Hopeland by Ian McDonald

Author:Ian McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

62

He only makes it through the processional because it’s unaccompanied and he can hide shivering behind the organ console. He’s brutally hungover. The choir knows it. The congregation knows it. The Minister and Assistant Minister and Kirk Session know it. The choir gets him through the psalms. He gives them a note for the anthem and stands to conduct. Ava‘uan harmonies lift him. Not angel-high. Nose-off-the-ground high. He nods off twice during the sermon but after the closing hymn ditches his intended recessional for the Finale of Widor 6 and gives it all the rafter-shaking prog a Viscount 400 can muster. He catches Assistant Minister Akalesi’s disapproving eye: she suspects that Amon’s church music shows a want of true belief. She has not forgiven him for reprogramming the organ to full cathedral voice. To her the whooshes and slurrings of the big Hammond sound are the chorus of salvation.

After Widor Amon chats to the congregation on the bright green lawn under the bright blue sky. Did Atli get back safely? That was a lovely anthem. It’s good you’ve given that Kimmie a place to stay. What came over them? Such a good family. Can you convert back from Mormonism? We’ll hold a prayer vigil. Will we see you at Family Service?

No. Amon doesn’t hold with guitars and drum-kits.

He disentangles himself from the churchgoers and walks up Pulotu Road past the palace, past the Royal Ava‘u, past the resort hotels to a small private jetty signed for the Apia Island Resort. The boat knows to wait for him. By tradition, Apia, a cedilla on the C of Ava‘utapu, is exempt from the strict Sunday observance traditions of the main island. There is his regular table under the shade by the fishing jetty. Amon settles onto the lounger. His regular waiter arrives with his regular martini.

‘Good afternoon, Eimoni.’

‘Good afternoon, Stivi.’

The dew clings heavy on the glass, the moiling boundary layer between vermouth and gin is a portal to magic realms and it scents the air with cool abandonment.

Amon picks up the glass and in one move pours the martini out onto the sandy grass. Gin and hot dust. His stomach clenches.

He’s sick of himself. Sick.

He lies back on the lounger in his Sunday tweeds and brogues hating away his hangover. It lingers, the party guest who won’t go home.

A private-hire ocean-fishing charter arrives at his jetty. Big voices banter and brag past to the Island Bar. The loungers and tables fill. On another Amon Brightbourne Sunday he would be two martinis up, trying not to think of Monday.

Atli has changed everything.

Stivi sets the empty glass on his tray.

‘Another, Eimoni?’

‘I’m all right. I might sit awhile.’

Stivi was in the choir in Amon’s first term at Queen ‘Ana. Decent tenor but his real interest was rugby rugby rugby. He trialled for a Romanian team, flew out to Bucharest. It never came to anything.

A ship’s horn sounds across the lagoon, a walls-of-Jericho blast: I am leaving harbour. Carnival Mardi Gras departs Pulotu Wharf like a moon separating from a planet.

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