Such Men Are Dangerous (8 page)

It seemed that Dawn was trying to take this in; her pause extended itself.

“But you don’t understand,” she said, at last. “You see, I haven’t told you yet about the second thing. And, Simon, it really is a miracle. Because we’ve had a sign. God’s given us the proof.”

“Oh, yes?” said Simon. He decided this was hardly the moment to point out God wasn’t in the business of providing tidy bits of proof.
Quod erat demonstrandum
was not, noticeably, in God’s vocabulary.

“You see, it was when William started to cry because he thought it
wasn’t
a miracle. Suddenly he clapped his hands to his face as though his tears were scalding him. At first that didn’t occur to me. I just supposed he didn’t want us to see. Afterwards he said it was like a great tingling sensation, like little currents of electricity shooting here and there beneath the skin. Not in the least bit painful.”

“And?” Simon was scarcely paying attention.

“Well, it was when he took his hands away. He wasn’t crying any more. That only lasted for a few seconds, maybe six or so. But his tears had washed him clean.”

He imagined she was using blood-of-the-Lamb type language. He somewhat listlessly repeated her last three words.

“Well, don’t say you didn’t notice!” she laughed. “Up until this happened, there was nothing we could ever do about it, no matter what the doctor gave. Well, now it’s all gone, every last trace.”

“What has?”

“His
acne
. He’s got the best complexion in Humberside. Even Josh can’t come up with anything to explain it away.” She giggled. Dawn—Dawn Heath! She was giggling like some giddy and triumphant ten-year-old. “And, truly, you mustn’t think he hasn’t tried!”

11

Oh, yes. He had certainly tried. Even at half-past-two in the morning he was still trying. It was about then that Dawn mumbled:

“You all right, Josh?”

“Yes.”

“Wondered if…some pain or something?”

“Go back to sleep.”

He listened to her turn over and before long resume her regular breathing; listened with relief, listened with resentment. He confessed himself unreasonable. In some ways it was this very placidity of hers which made her a good wife, and often he felt grateful to her. But his gratitude was more of the mind than of the heart and in his heart she irritated him.

Even on Gabriel-night she had soon achieved soft snores.

He had a favourite fantasy: his moon-and-sixpence trip. But tonight he felt nothing could have soothed him into sleep.

What’s more, it didn’t have to be Tahiti. London would do. Anywhere that gave you the feeling of life being lived, of possibilities being possible. Forty-six wasn’t old.

In any case, if he were starting out anew, he believed he could get away with forty. Even thirty-eight.

The obstacle, of course, was money. He did the pools. He was trying to write an English textbook. Textbooks could be lucrative but…Well, he only wished he had the nerve to rob a post office. Something like that.

Dawn wouldn’t miss him. Nor would the boys. He couldn’t fool himself he’d been much of a father—not since they’d moved out of childhood, become teenagers, learned to rely more on friends than fathers. Not since they’d no doubt grown ashamed of him.

And none of them, financially, would be any the worse off. The opposite. If he ever got the money to escape he’d make sure he had enough to send some home each payday.

Sometimes he saw it as a real possibility. Even when he didn’t, hope hadn’t fully died. Every time he went walking through the town he was vaguely on the lookout for a new relationship: something with depth and durability. At bottom it wasn’t just a carnal thing he was after, although Dawn no longer attracted him and seldom wanted sex. In truth it was more a friend he hankered for. Somebody to hug, yes—a ready hand to hold—yet still, in essence, more a two-way flowing of concern, support and understanding. Only when depressed did he tell himself this wasn’t realistic.

Even one-night-stands eluded him. From all he read he would have supposed that to pick up a girl in 1984 was an easily achievable aim for any man who was at least averagely attractive; and he knew that he was probably more than that. He hadn’t got those film-starry looks which, for instance, the vicar from St Matthew’s had. Nor did he have his height. Yet on a one-to-ten scale he would surely be amongst the sixes or the sevens.

He had envied him this afternoon, that vicar. Envied him his stature, envied him his certainty and singleness of purpose.

Envied him his singleness.

But since then, somehow, his other feelings had completely changed. In fact, it now made him cringe, the memory of how he had buttered him up on the stairs. The man was nothing but a prig. Josh could neither understand his own attitude at the time—he wasn’t normally a person who
fawned
—nor, to be honest, what had afterwards enabled him to get things back into perspective. He was only thankful that something had.

“Josh, what
is
the matter with you?” Dawn yawned lengthily. “Do you want me to get up and make some tea?”

“No. Go back to sleep.”

“You keep on saying that. But how can I? With you so restless?”

“Sorry. I’ll stay still.”

“You’re not worried about money, are you? I tell you and tell you, Josh. God will take care of all of that.”

“Yes. You tell me and tell me.”

“‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’”

At least once every week Josh was urged to consider the lilies of the field. He had never before been urged to consider them at two-fifty-five in the morning. He felt seriously tempted to suggest that the lilies of the field go screw themselves. After all, what else had they to do in all that stupendously undeserved free time? But he found that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not to Dawn.

My God, she tried though. In a way, you had to admire her for it; feel sad to see such effort misdirected.

“‘And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’”

“Sod Solomon.”

“What?”

Four years ago she wouldn’t have been able to recite that. Probably the extent of her biblical quotation then would have been
Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me went down to the river to bathe
. Now she had whole passages by heart. The fact that many were in rather pleasant English did little or nothing to compensate.

“Sod Solomon in all his glory.” Yes. Why not? Even to Dawn.

“Please don’t blaspheme. It’s childish. Just because you’re cross at being proved wrong! Yes, that’s why you can’t sleep, suddenly I know it is. Well, Josh, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be down on your knees and thanking God for all his goodness. You ought to be pleading for forgiveness, you ought to be begging for salvation.”

“Is that right?” he said. No. I ought to be getting the hell out of here. I ought to be doing something with my life. I ought to be getting the very most out of every fleeting minute, hour and day.

He turned his bedside lamp on and thought about, as a first step, going to make them both that cup of tea.

Dawn lay her head back on the pillow and looked towards the ceiling. “The wondrous thing is,” she said—and the note of reproach had entirely disappeared—“that
I
could sleep. I mean, after I’d just witnessed…”

Perhaps, then, it wasn’t mere placidity. “It must be the sleep of the innocent,” he told her, gently.

She turned her face towards him.

“Oh, Josh, I don’t see how you can fly in the teeth of all the evidence like you do. I really don’t. It’s like when we watched that programme on the Turin Shroud. Only more so. Are you going to spend the whole of your life just running?”

“Probably.”

He got out of bed and started pulling his clothes on.

“Right now,” he said, “I’m going to spend it, at any rate, just walking. Building up to it, you see, in easy stages. Whatever you may think about my present showing I’ve not yet reached the top of my bent.”

“Oh, but that’s silly. Where can you go at this time?”

Nowhere. He would have liked to walk to London, before his energy wore off. He got as far as Ashby—two miles? Here he finally acknowledged the uselessness of it all; turned round; feet dragging. He encountered scarcely anyone: a cyclist; an old man in too large an overcoat shuffling along in gym shoes; a very occasional car. The wind had acquired an extra edge. As a last gesture of hopelessness coupled with defiance, he deviated from the road home, trudged recklessly across hilly, hillocky, pitch black common land—“I couldn’t give a fuck, not a fuck, whether I stand or fall!”—found himself, ironically, outside St Matthew’s Vicarage and shuddered violently several times, while continuing to cry out loud at intervals, “I couldn’t give a fuck, not a single fuck!” (He wished that precious, posing, pontificating hypocrite might have heard—and, indeed, if the study hadn’t been at the back of the house, Josh would have seen its light shining through the thin curtains.) On the last stages of his journey home he began to see some daylight. Incredibly, he was relieved to get back into the snugness of his bed. “You stubborn man,” murmured Dawn. “I’m glad you’re back…” Her hand reached out for him. This didn’t often happen. Almost against his will he responded.

12

Simon had also got up before three. Unable to sleep, he hadn’t been able to pray either, or not as he’d have liked. Although he’d often told his parishioners their prayers would sometimes sound laboured and dull (but that they shouldn’t feel discouraged, for God would still be pleased and listening and receptive) tonight he couldn’t draw much comfort from his own advice. The words that left his lips—or, rather, his heart, since he wasn’t speaking them aloud—struck him as wholly worthless, insincere. They were certainly a little wooden, when what he’d asked for at the start was spontaneity and joy. And wisdom. In the end he left the sofa and sat at his desk, beneath the crucifix, drew several sheets of paper towards him, picked up a Biro…and eventually began to write. Resolutely, wildly, hoping that this, too, could represent a form of prayer.

She had known him as long as she could remember, yet she had never seen him like this. He was furious. She thought that at any moment he might strike her.

“Who was it?” he shouted. He held a hammer; she wished he’d put it down.

“I’ve told you. The angel said—”

“The angel said! The angel said! Another bloody word about this angel of yours—” Then suddenly he sagged. He sank down on the stool behind him, his face covered by both hands. “Angels may have come to the prophets in ancient times,” he said, brokenly. “They don’t appear to unknown girls in Nazareth today.”

“But this one did,” she persisted. “And he told me that my pregnancy came from God. He asked if I would bear it.”

“And you, of course, said ‘yes’.” The moist eyes and the falsetto voice and the rugged frame were all oddly at variance. “‘I’m six weeks overdue, God, and already half married to that simpleton carpenter down the road but if I can say you were the one who put me in the club he’s bound to be impressed!’” The man’s voice became his own again; the hammer dropped out of his limp fingers; he watched it strike the sawdust. “Oh, what the hell does it matter whose child it is? Don’t you know what the punishment can be for a girl who’s betrothed to one man and gets herself pregnant by another?”

When she didn’t answer, the savagery came back. “Well, don’t you?”

She nodded. For the first time a tremor appeared in her voice, a reminder to him that, after all, this was only a sixteen-year-old girl and he was a man of more than twice her age. A man almost old enough to be her father.

“Stoning?” she wavered.

He looked away. “Yes, well,” he mumbled, “there’s no need for it to come to that. There’ll be shame for you, shame for both of us, that’s unavoidable, but we can hush the thing up as far as possible. Do your people know?”

“No. You were the first one I wanted to tell. Oh, Joe, I felt so proud.”

She clenched her fist to her mouth to keep back the sobbing that suddenly welled up. Then she ran from the shop and the carpenter watched her go.

He had loved her so much. Life had seemed so perfect. Why had everything had to go wrong?

Now the time was half-past-six. Simon put down his Biro, went and drew back the curtains, stood at the window, yawning, stretching. He looked out at the garden; realized with some surprise that he was still in his pyjamas but nonetheless opened the French window and strolled out on the grass, enjoying the damp softness beneath bare feet, enjoying the bright freshness of a new day. He felt pleased with what he’d written, although he knew he had no right to, “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,” and knew, also, that on a later reading he might well feel disappointed. That often happened with his sermons. Despite the countless crossings-out and substitutions and battles against cliché (for instance, he still wasn’t happy with ‘almost old enough to be her father’, and things like ‘she clenched her fist to her mouth’, when naturally a fist would already have been clenched) and
despite
the passage being so relatively short, perhaps not even long enough to be regarded as a first chapter, he knew that it would still require a second draft. Possibly a third and a fourth.

But yes, he thought, as he peed behind a rosebush (his mother would have given him hell if she had happened to be looking out!), he was actually quite pleased with it, and excited—and despite the initial sense of aggression with which he had started,
virtual
aggression, he was already aware that constantly throughout the day he’d be thinking about it and wanting to get back to it, and the true self-discipline which any writer was supposed to have would lie in his
not
allowing that writing to get in the way of everything else he ought to be getting on with.

He said to himself the Lord’s Prayer and then went on to pray about the Heath family and the conundrum with which they were presenting him; and this time found that his words flowed and seemed far more acceptable.

Which made him laugh. “Acceptable to whom? Who the
heck
do you think you are!”