Tongues of Flame by Tim Parks

Author:Tim Parks
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446442357
Publisher: Random House

PART TWO

The House Party

THE YOUTH FELLOWSHIP houseparty was arranged for Easter time – as always – and, as always, it was to be held at Copplesford, a massive rambling old boarding school situated on the hills south of the city. Each day at Copplesford the following programme prevailed: breakfast at eight, morning meeting at nine; then, ten-thirty till lunch, recreation of any and every kind; lunch till supper, coach trips, prayer meetings, recreation – as one chose; after supper, a long long long meeting, then a further half-hour of recreation, then cocoa, then evening prayer and discussion in the dormitory, then sleep. In short, food, religion and recreation, turn and turn and turn about.

The idea behind the thing was that all the faithful of the Youth Fellowship, some sixty strong, should come, bringing with them if possible some of their unfaithful friends, perhaps ten or twenty; then, with the leaders of the church preaching and so on every morning and night, by the end of the week the unfaithful would all have become faithful. Generally this worked, if for no other reason than because of peer pressure, coupled with that immense emotional turmoil you experienced anyway in your teens at the beginning of spring – especially city youngsters out in the country – and coupled too with the guilt you tended to feel at having the opposite sex around you all the time and lusting the way you would and being forever embarrassed and insecure because of the suspicion you had that you were making a fool of yourself and everybody else thought you stupid, having a haircut like you did or a broken nose or a behind that stuck out. So everybody was converted in the end or they had their faith renewed and everybody played and prayed and sang with all their energy and invented emotional problems and solved them with tears and joy – then at the end of the week they went back home and everything returned to normal. Some of the faithful would become unfaithful and some of the unfaithful who had become faithful would remain so, and the numbers were always about the same. The houseparty proved no more than a kind of powerful emotional and spiritual pressure cooker that seemed terrifically momentous while it happened but then drifted back in the memory to just another holiday.

Only this year of course there was the Holy Spirit to contend with.

And Rolandson.

Plus, in the ears of all the elders of our suburban church were ringing the words of my mother’s prophecy, ‘The Lord thy God is not proud of His church – for Satan is free and bold even in the midst of your company.’

And there was Maggie.

Adrian had been to the houseparty every year previously and taken part in it just like everybody else. But he hadn’t come to church for nearly a year now – he hadn’t even come at Christmas, having Anne-Marie in his room like he did – and so this time

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