Free Coincidence: A Novel by J. W. Ironmonger

Yves. Perhaps he would have learned the best way to hold a baby in a glossy christening gown over an old stone font. Unquestionably he would have employed his Greek and Latin to better understand the great scriptures that informed his faith. In that pivotal year of 1969, when the decade of free love was coming to a close, Lester Folley III was ordained as a priest; and with the ink still wet on his certificate of ordination, he returned to Langadi.
    There is a saying in Uganda: ‘The older son inherits the farm, the younger son goes astray’. This is how it was for Lester and Luke Folley. Lester the diligent elder son had devoted himself to preparing for his return to the family mission; but could it ever be that simple for Luke? The times were a-changing, and Luke chose not to return. Although he might have said that he didn’t exercise any choice at all. In a sense it was never a decision for Luke; it was, at best, the deferring of a decision. It was the brief rebellion of the prodigal son. As a non-decision, as a deferred decision, it was something that grew easier to bear with each day that passed. Luke Folley, a continent away from parental advice or family disapproval, did not excel in Latin or Greek or even, particularly, in history. He felt no calling to the priesthood. He developed a disdain for the prose of Thomas Cranmer. He dropped out of school and grew his hair. In the amiable language of the time, he found that he had somehow become a hippie . Comfortable with this new identity, Luke set about relishing the dying years of the 1960s. It was a career arc familiar to many of his generation. Together with a group of friends and like-minded dropouts, he moved into a squat in Ladbroke Grove. Burning with enthusiasm, the squatters changed the locks, repainted the walls with paisley swirls and psychedelic motifs, spread posters on the walls of Hendrix and Dylan and Che Guevara and drew Ban the Bomb symbols on the doors in pink and yellow paint. With the decoration complete, they opened those doors to fellow squatters. At one time ten, or twelve, or even fifteen people might have shared the four-bedroomed home. Sleeping arrangements were free and easy. Property was theft. Luke flirted, as many did, with Marxism and dialectical materialism and free love and LSD. He made a little money doing casual jobs: stacking shelves in a chemist shop, offloading vegetables at Old Covent Garden Market, selling small quantities of marijuana. He learned to play the guitar, and wrote songs that were vaguely Dylanesque; he wore sandals and tie-dyed shirts and an inside-out sheepskin coat and a headband from Peru. It was the uniform of his day. His hair was uncut and unwashed. Soap was an invention of the bourgeoisie. He washed in cold water and smelt of patchouli oil. He read discarded copies of Oz magazine, and comic strips by Robert Crumb, and books by Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg and leaflets by Timothy Leary. He burned incense sticks and listened to the music of The Grateful Dead and Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix. He protested against the war in Vietnam. He joined CND, and practised the ironic two-fingered V with its accompanying drop of the head and unhappy smile and dutiful chant of ‘Peace, man’.
    With the great courage afforded by hindsight, Luke would later describe these as his ‘lost years’. He grew thin on his new vegan diet. He developed a morose look. He stopped replying to letters from his parents in Langadi, or from his brother Lester at the seminary in Kent. He gave up his job at Covent Garden Market because he couldn’t manage the early-morning starts. He was sacked from the chemist shop because his appearance was unsuitable for a family business. He resisted the bourgeois temptation to sign on the dole, and took to playing his guitar in a subway at Marble Arch, effectively begging for small change. It was a desperate move for a desperate young man.
    Luke Folley turned twenty-one in the