Vera Returns To Marta City (Ch.11d) : Vera Attend A Maneddonist Meeting

Vera Returns To Marta City (Ch 11d) : Vera Attends A Maneddonist Meeting

Mother invited her to occasional gatherings of her Maneddonist friends; for Mother did indeed still have other social outlets, which, being an on worker for many years, she had been well able to continue and develop over the years. At first Vera resisted. She had a longstanding prejudice against the religious Maneddonism which stemmed form her childhood belief that Mothers’ illnesses and her reluctance to even attempt to joint the Labour Market were somehow to be blamed on this strange and very old fashioned organisation.

‘Vera, why don’t you come along with me to my Maneddonist meeting?’ said Mother one evening. ‘I know you’ve decided not to continue your studies for the present. It’s a sign that you’re looking for other things to turn your attention to.’

‘Mother, you know I don’t believe in your Maneddonist beliefs. I might be disenchanted with my own life at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I am searching for convenient replacement values. All that praying, those long silences, and endless disapproval of almost all that goes on in the modern world. You know that’s not for me.’ Mother had spoken of her Maneddonist beliefs, or at least tried to, many times in the past, and Vera thought she knew enough about them. They had a political party, a lot of people voted for them, but they would never exercise power in Marta or anywhere else outside of occasional coalitions because they did not really believe in the modern world, even if they had learned to live with it. She had seen their programmes on Vidnet as a child, and recently, because Mother liked to watch them. She found them dull and irrelevant to her own interests mostly, but there were times when she found things they said comforting and there had been times recently when she had agreed with what they said about the modern world. Perhaps they weren’t so old fashioned after all. Maybe it was the modern world that was out of tune with humanity.

‘You won’t have to do anything or even say anything if you don’t want to, although I think you have a lot to say just at the moment. You’re not doing anything in particular this evening. That’s why you have come round to my flat. If you stay here while I am out our if you go home you will only watch the Vidnet and what will that achieve?’

‘Yes, Mother, and I know who watches Vidnet more than anyone else in this house. I think it’s time I started watching it a bit more often, don’t you?’

‘Well what do you say. Sometimes there are younger people of your age at our groups. Our beliefs and philosophies are having quite a resurgence among young adults just at the moment.’

‘Is it in one of your Meeting Houses and will you be worshipping and having prayer sessions?’ she asked.

Mother knew not to stress these aspects of Maneddonist activities to Vera, but in this instance the meeting group would be held in someone’s apartments. ‘No, this is a meeting group and it will be held in Martia’s apartment. We will be discussing the teachings of Maneddon, but only for part of the time. If we have any prayers, which we may not, they will be short, so I don’t think you will be troubled about participating. We often have people as visitors who are non-believers, curious, or wishing ot discuss mere philosophy rather than belief. In fact we encourage normal people of all types to come along to these meetings. How else can we hope to influence the wider society, or gain new support?’

‘Okay, Mother, I’ll come along this once. It might be interesting, I haven’t been to anything like this since I was very young.’

Vera went with Mother to her Maneddonist meeting that night. As Mother had said, Martia’s apartment was not far away, so close that there was no need to take the Network at all. Martia was a slim lady, a little younger than Mother, Vera guessed. Her hair was greying and she looked a little frail. She was immediately friendly. Vera felt welcomed and even overcome by the deference of the host to her guests. To Vera’s solitary perspective Martia seemed unusual. There were few at work or on courses who ever talked so much. On the Vidnet characters talked a lot more than in real life, but those people, speaking the lines put in front of them, were not real. Vera soon decided that much of what Martia said was not particularly interesting like the actors and actresses on Vidnet. She spoke to fill the spaces in conversation between people who were not so well practised at speaking but she also at times swamped those who had something to say. However as a welcomer she was well suited, and maybe when in the rest of her life, when she was not the hostess, she would not be so communicative.

The apartment was large. As Mother had told her Martia too had raised a large family, and her husband was quite wealthy. He was apparently also a Maneddonist and would therefore probably be here tonight. Martia’s husband ran a distribution House of some kind and Martia had apparently not needed to work, a bit like Vera’s parents, for many years. Martia’s husband made a lot more money than Vera’s father however. He ran his own House and therefore most of its profits went to himself. The idea of a Maneddonist being very successful in business seemed to be a contradiction of the image her mother had always presented of the religious group’s philosophies, but she knew also that there were many Maneddonsits in important positions in society, and had been for centuries. She imagined therefore that their philosophies did not preclude them from entering the worlds of commerce and the professions. Indeed perhaps their philosophies contained elements which encouraged or enabled them to survive and succeed through patience in the business world.

Vera felt welcomed as she sat down on an old and comfortable settee. Once they had had one in the family apartment when they had lived in a larger apartment and the whole family had been together in her youth. Conversation fluttered around her. She was pleased not to be the centre of attention among the clique of inward looking concentrating Maneddonists she had imagined. Instead they seemed to be a cross section of “normal” people, although she had been to so few gatherings of people over the years that she was aware that she did not really know what normal was. Normal in her imagination was like the people at work, a smattering of different ages, a fair divide of the two sexes, and unlike work a mixture of professional or non professional skills. There were eleven people exactly including the hostess, which was not an overpowering number.

Vera found that she “shared” the settee with her mother and another youngish lady of similar age. Vera was in the middle. Mother immediately sat forward sufficiently to enquire of the woman, ‘I have not met you before. Pleased to meet you. I am Veronicia and his is my daughter Vera.’ It was typical of Mother, thought Vera, to talk to anyone she could persuade to listen to her, when she was in the mood of course, which was not always. But she knew her Mother loved these gatherings and was in her element here. She was among friends. Anyone who came here was an instant friend, merely by their presence. Vera imagined that any newcomer would be much prized by the Maneddonists, eager for the comfort of like minded people around them, in a world which they, as she understood from Mother, viewed as the enemy of the Maneddonist way.

‘I am Julia,’ said the woman pleasantly. ‘You would not have met me before. I have been here only once before and you were not here then.’

‘Have you been to the Meeting House as well?’ asked Mother, eager to find out more. Julia’s youth probably added to Mother’s interest in the younger woman. Vera had sometimes noticed that Mother’s desire to maintain her passed youth had led her on occasion to attempt to associate with the young.

‘No, I am not really a member of your faith,’ said Julia tactfully. ‘I was invited to come along to the last one and I found it very interesting, so I thought I would come again. I came with my aunt to the last one, but I’ve come to this one on my own now that I know a few of you.’ Julia seemed nice. Vera was well aware that she was here for the same kind of reason as Julia. She noted from the way Julia had explained her self that she did not “yet” feel herself to be committed member of this “community”. Perhaps like herself Julia did not wish to join the community which would mean accepting its philosophies and teachings. Perhaps like Vera she was here because she had few friends or needed to interact and exchange ideas with others. Vera was aware that she had those needs and she was conscious, because of past conversations over the years with Mother that she did not really belong amongst the Maneddonists. Vera sensed instinctively that, as well as their similar age, they might well have much in common.

The discussion began after the personal small talk had been allowed to go on for a few minutes. Mother assured Vera at one point that there would be more time for personal conversations later. Vera replied politely, in view of the proximity of Julia and another lady that she was looking forward to the discussions.

Julia said, “Oh yes, much of the purpose of these evenings is to meet and get to know one another, I gather.”

Mother and the other lady both agreed before the more formal discussion began. Martia took the chair, in the way lecturers had done in small classes Vera had been in. “Let us begin with a few prayers….. I will begin.”

Vera’s interest sank a little. There were times when Mother said she was praying and would withdraw from conversation for minutes, and sometimes longer. It had been this aspect of Mother’s philosophic belief which had particularly caused Vera to dislike Maneddonist practices when younger. She had felt it such a waste of precious time. What was a person to think during this period. On those occasions when mother had insisted she join with her she had not known what to think of. Her mind had usually wandered to matters closer to her own concerns than the welfare of others, and those matters from the history of Maneddon which were so removed from reality that she could not have enough about them even if she had tried.

If these prayers were to take up much of the meeting she would rather not have come. Her time was still precious. She hated to “waste” what little time she had after work. She might not be studying at the moment, but she would far rather engage herself in the varied entertainments of the vidnet where she was learning all the time about interesting things, and enjoying the process. However the prayer was only one and as it turned out, very brief. She need not have worried. Discussion was entered into, the subject being to do with the wanderings of Maneddon the prophet in the ancient days in the wilds of the north among the Telmartans, the Norenicians and the ancestors of her own “people”, the Martans. Maneddon had come from ancient Celeswid in ancient Galancia. Its modern successor, a city of the same name, was now a part of Gallanol-Galdellyn.