‘Yes,’ I said solemnly. ‘What sins?’
‘We are all by nature born in sin.’
‘How’s that?’
‘It’s the nature of the world,’ she said sadly. ‘We are grown unlovely to the Lord.’
She shrugged and gently joggled her breasts.
‘But why?’ I said. What was wrong with me? I should have counted my blessings, stashed the bible under my shirt and been glad enough to escape. But the devil had stitched me into that chair and pricked my tongue into argument. ‘Because we came from Adam and Eve?’
‘Not exactly. We must think of our own disobedience.’
‘Everybody? Does everybody sin?’
‘Oh, yes!’ she said, beginning to brighten. ‘You’re not alone. It’s the human condition. I suppose you could say that life is like a wrestling match. Good always struggles with evil and God is the referee.’
I found no comfort in this idea. If God the Referee was anything like Rhino Black we all had something to worry about.
‘Are you ready to confess your sins?’
‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said nervously, glancing towards the chest of drawers in a rush of embarrassment. ‘At the moment. Just like that. I’d need some time to think about it.’
‘Well, let’s start with the seven deadly sins,’ she said helpfully. ‘Greed, anger, sloth, lust. That sort of thing.’ She reached out and took my hand. She seemed very fond of holding my hand.
‘Yes,’ I said quickly.
‘Yes, what?’
‘All of them.’
‘Good!’ she said, giving my fingers a friendly squeeze. ‘That’s good!’ She began to look quite excited. ‘Do you have the courage to tell me about them?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘We need to confess our sins before we can be forgiven…’
But I was struck dumb. I wagged my poor head. Despite her tender encouragements, I found I had nothing to declare.
She sighed. ‘Why don’t we talk again tomorrow?’ she said, at last, reluctantly returning my hand. ‘Read the Good Book, think about the things we’ve discussed and come to see me tomorrow.’
25
Late that night, as I sat in bed with Lottie Pout, I heard a scuffling at the bedroom door. I pulled myself reluctantly from hot Lottie’s elastic nipple and went to investigate. The mysterious visitor had fled but left a large brown envelope on the floor. I took the envelope into my bed and found it contained, to my great disappointment, a dogeared copy of the Glad Tidings Mail Order Catalogue. Dorothy must have felt that I needed some extra encouragement.
I settled back in my pillows and flicked with dismay through the glossy pages. The catalogue was the size and weight of a telephone directory and contained all the booklets and magazines, the tokens and charms, that helped the struggling missionary to travel safely among the heathens.
There were many bibles, as you might suppose, in different editions, and books of prayer and popular hymns and crucifixes and candles. But there were also comic books, posters, postcards, libraries of tapes and several pages of button badges. And there were T-shirts, sweaters and baseball caps embroidered with comical Christian slogans: Christ I love Life! and God Knows Why I Picked This T-shirt! And Jogging for Jesus tracksuits — pure cotton, one size fits all — and John the Baptist shower caps and Samson-strength luxury bath towels embroidered with your choice of proverb.
And there were novelty, cast-iron, Moses in the Basket doorstops and Christmas carol door-chimes and apostle key rings and Noah’s Ark jigsaw puzzles and Nativity tapestry kits and giant inflatable rubber globes printed with maps of the bible lands. And there were crucifixion holograms, framed and ready to hang on the wall, with Charlton Heston as Christ in a crown of thorns and a twinkle of blood on his neatly trimmed beard. And there were reproduction brass rubbings and Ten Commandment coffee-mug sets and Three Kings in a snow-shaker and Queen of Sheba pot-pourri and Galilee bath salts and sinister glow-in-the-dark Baby Jesus in a Manger bedside ornaments and handy pocket Madonnas, with Ingrid Bergman cast as the Virgin, finished by hand in genuine hall-marked silver.
There was no end to this stuff! Pages and pages of mawkish knick-knacks, wall plaques and souvenirs. It was quite a revelation! And, as I had feared, Dorothy was working on some sort of bonus incentive scheme. She earned a small commission on every Jumping Jesus she sold, a good deal more on the leisure-wear and a tidy amount on the jewellery. If she procured ten new names for the catalogue’s mailing list she received a free, nylon travel bag.
The catalogue itself was an article of worship and held the unspoken promise that Heaven would be a Disney World in which all your favourite characters — Abraham, Judas, Jonah, Herod and the rest — would come out to greet you every night in a grand illuminated parade. You could shake hands with Mary and Jesus (don’t forget your camera!) and try the latest white-knuckle rides. The Great Flood. The Flight from Egypt. Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Glad Tidings Bible Tract Company was a formidable industry. An influential financial power with considerable tax advantages. A major employer of clerks and accountants, an important consumer of wood pulp and paper. The New York headquarters, pushed like a stake through the heart of Manhattan, had been designed by a team of prize-winning architects. Marble and bronze. No expense spared. The Glad Tidings Bible Tract Company was a powerful organisation. And because it broadcast the word of God you couldn’t fault its credentials.
26
I was a good student. I worked hard. I began with the first book of Moses and stubbornly worked my way forth towards the Revelation of St John the Divine. After supper each evening I’d slip away to Dorothy’s room where she monitored my progress and tested my knowledge of saints and sinners. It was true, yes, that I’d trapped myself into taking this long and arduous path but I saw the advantages. I sat with Dorothy every night and claimed her undivided attention. We spent the time together, engrossed in intimate conversation, and no one complained or dared to come forward and challenge my purpose. As rumours of my conversion spread I was treated with caution as if, in my pixilated condition, I might infect others with divine contagion. And so I was granted the freedom to lay siege to the object of my desire without raising the least suspicion. Dorothy trusted her faith without question, but when I grew in confidence I became more argumentative. As I struggled through the Old Testament I found God was bad-tempered and dangerous. He demanded living sacrifice. He devised countless traps for his followers and when His flock plunged into them, concocted terrible punishments. There were so many rules and regulations, so many curses and obligations. The fat years and the lean years.
The right path and the wrong path. The clean and the unclean. So many riddles to be explained.
‘Why does God permit famine and earthquake and war and plague?’ l demanded one evening.
Dorothy was ready for me. ‘They’re part of His terrible mystery,’ she declared. ‘If we understood, we should be like Him.’
‘You mean angry?’
‘No, Skipper!’ She looked rather shocked. ‘Praise ye the Lord, for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever.’
‘But look what He did to the poor Egyptians,’ I complained. ‘He turned their rivers to blood, slaughtered their cattle, blighted their crops, killed their first born and sent down plagues of frogs and lice and flies and boils and hail and locusts.’
‘Well, they were disobedient. They had hardened their hearts against His children.’
‘I thought we were all God’s children.’
‘Except the Egyptians,’ she said serenely.
‘But He drove out the Canaanites, the Amorites and the Midianites,’ I continued, blazing with indignation.
‘For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God,’ she said. ‘Exodus 34, verse 14.’
‘And He sent a flood to swallow the world!’
‘But He sent His Son to save it.’
‘I haven’t found Jesu
s,’ I admitted. I was still sloshing through the blood of kings with Joshua.
‘That’s obvious!’ she said. ‘But you’ll find that life without Jesus is like a three-minute egg served without a spoon. If you try to crack it without His help you’ll always make a mess of it. Why don’t you try the New Testament?’
‘I don’t want to miss anything.’
It was far more complicated than I’d imagined. God sent Moses on the glory trail but still I grieved for obstinate Sihon, king of Heshbon, and Og, the giant king of Bashan, with his iron bedstead nine cubits long.
‘If you die in an act of God, do you go to Heaven?’ I said and I might have been four years old again, asking my mother the same question.
‘Yes. Almost certainly.’
‘But remember how Joshua waged war against Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem, and Hoham king of Hebron and Piram king of Jarmuth and Japhia king of Lachish and Debir king of Eglon and there was a great battle and God Himself came out though the clouds to throw stones at them?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Joshua utterly destroyed all that breathed, the armies were slain, the land was laid waste and the kings were hanged from trees?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were the slain taken up to Heaven? Were the unlucky kings to be forgiven once they’d been hanged and taken into God’s kingdom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean, if you saw Joshua coming at you shouting proverbs and swinging a sword, it would be an act of God wouldn’t it? And you’d automatically qualify for a place in Heaven?’
‘It would be an act of God,’ she agreed.
‘Well, that’s what I mean!’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Well, if God had sent someone to kill you and rape your women and make slaves of your children, and butcher your cattle and cripple your horses, you’d suspect that He wasn’t pleased with you and this act of God was a sign that He didn’t want you in Heaven.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said, rather confused. ‘But this all happened a long time ago in a faraway place called bible land. We have to understand its message for the modern world.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘We must love one another,’ she said.
We had more success with my confessions. Encouraged to unburden myself without fear of restraint I now began to hint at the monstrous cravings that poisoned my blood and choked my heart with the agony of a violent and ballooning lust. Slowly. Slowly. I gave myself to her mercy.
She developed a little ritual for these delicate encounters. At the end of each bible lesson — conducted in the comfort of the two armchairs — we would sit side by side on the carpet, propping ourselves against the bed, and hold hands in silence, staring at nothing, waiting for me to open my mouth and incriminate myself. It might have worked, given time, but the weight of her hand, the warmth of her thigh and the lickerish nature of her perfume, left me tongue-tied and nervous.
Dorothy was not to be defeated and, in order to spare my blushes, had soon persuaded me to sit behind the folding screen to whisper my confessions through a crack in the canvas. It had the desired effect. Huddled in the twilight of that secluded corner, with my knees beneath my chin and broken cobwebs in my hair, I began to give voice to my strangled emotions.
‘Do you have anything to tell me?’ she prompted, kneeling on the floor with her face gently pressed to the screen.
‘I’ve stolen food from the kitchen.’
‘Forgiven.’
‘I’ve made cruel remarks about Senior Franklin.’
‘Forgiven.’
‘I’ve failed to clean in this corner.’
‘Forgiven.’
I fell silent.
‘Is there nothing else?’ She sounded disappointed at the banality of these crimes. They certainly didn’t justify the hours she’d spent coaxing them out of me. But I wasn’t finished.
‘I have hot and fleshly thoughts,’ I whispered.
‘Forgiven.’
‘But I have dreams!’ I protested.
‘What sort of dreams?’
‘Voluptuous dreams.’ I twisted and dipped my head to sneak a peek through the crack in the canvas. She had pulled herself away from the screen and was leaning against the back of a chair. She looked slightly flushed but remained self-composed. She sat in a pool of petticoats, picking at the pleats of her skirt.
‘Tell me about them,’ she said softly.
‘I beheld a strange and wonderful woman!’ I croaked, with my eye to the canvas keyhole.
‘A young woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she sent to lead you into temptation?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Yes! Tease me. Tempt me! Lead me astray. Deliver me into the arms of a cunning succuba in sensible shoes and wire-rimmed spectacles. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil.
‘What happens?’
‘Behold, she comes to me in my sleep and beckons me forth to render her garments asunder. And she prevails over me, yea, unto the trembling of my haunches and I cast open her raiment, even unto the last button thereof, and am bewitched and fondle her intimate portions…’
Dorothy brushed at her skirt with both hands, jerked up her head and frowned. ‘Is this just a dream?’ she asked, suspiciously.
‘It’s just a dream,’ I said, sadly, from the gloom of my makeshift confessional.
‘Forgiven.’
27
And what was happening while Mr Romance was locked away with his bible? Nothing happened. A sinister silence seemed to descend upon the house.
Father, absorbed in some new and fantastic invention, spent more and more time in the cellar. He became a shadow, a silent spectre that drifted from room to room and was gone again before we could challenge him. His eyes were clouded with dreams. His head was filled with immense calculations and fabulous conjectures.
Franklin, having completed his campaign of hate against the Dwarf, seemed to hesitate, listening, holding his breath, waiting for the screams of outrage, the battery of protest, the full fury of public indignation that he confidently expected to explode around his rival’s head. He loitered in unexpected corners, barked when anyone rang the bell and cringed at the sound of the telephone.
Janet, despite my good advice, enrolled for Conversation at night class. She now took Yoga on Monday, retired from Wednesday’s Basketwork, retained Pottery on Thursday and sacrificed her Needlecraft to practise chitchat on Friday. The precious few evenings she spent at home were usually reserved for Katie Pphart or games of dominoes with Marvel.
Mr Marvel, no longer so threatened by Dorothy, returned to his favourite roost in the front parlour, sleeping through the afternoons with his belly wrapped in The Trumpet.
He ventured abroad once or twice a week, returning battered and bilious, and continued to bang out messages on the old typewriter after each mysterious journey. I persevered in my attempts to trap him into surrendering these secret documents and he continued to outwit me.
The house seemed to grow unnaturally quiet, as if waiting for a storm to break. Nothing stirred. During the day the rooms slumbered beneath an oppressive weight of sunlight. At night they remained stubbornly indifferent to our circulation, muffled our voices and deadened our footsteps. But the storm gathered and finally broke as Janet’s infatuation with the odious Franklin again made itself manifest in a new and most original fashion.
It was long and barrel-shaped. It was hollow. It was crooked. It was broad at the base and slightly twisted towards the mouth. It was moulded from clay and dribbled with a thick, white, blistered glaze. It might have been a stump of walrus tusk or a lump of eroded coral. It was beautifully wrapped in scented paper and tied with a glittering pink and white ribbon.
‘What is it, my cringing concubine?’ Franklin demanded suspiciously when Janet presented him with this gift. It was heavy! The weight startled him and be nearly let it slip through his fingers.
/> ‘Surprise,’ she said quickly and blushed. She obviously hadn’t made a lot of progress from her art of conversation class.
It was a Wednesday evening, supper was finished, and we were sitting in the front parlour recovering from an especially virulent spiced chicken pie. Dorothy was helping mother in the kitchen, where she made a nuisance of herself with cheese balls and cocktail onions. Father was locked in the cellar. Mr Marvel was at the table with his box of dominoes and I was in the armchair with Jesus Rebukes the Pharisees. Franklin cast away the ribbon and scratched at the wrapping paper until he’d uncovered the curious object. He frowned. He weighed the pot in his hand as if he were holding a human skull.
‘It’s for your pencils,’ Janet said hopefully, smiling and knitting her fingers together.
‘What’s that, my pert pudendum?’ he asked. He looked perplexed. He cocked his head and squinted along the length of his nose. He speared the pot with two fingers and sent it into a wobbling spin by striking it with the palm of one hand.
‘I made it for you at night class,’ she said, very flustered. ‘It’s supposed to be a pencil pot…’ She hung her head to hide her blushes and stared stubbornly at her feet. It had taken all her courage to perform this little ceremony and now she was trapped, paralysed, waiting for his approval.
Franklin sniggered. It hissed from his stomach and squirted through those long and loathsome teeth. His eyebrows bristled. His mouth sprang open. His face trembled and he started to laugh. It was a hot, volcanic shout of laughter that whirled from his throat and would not stop. It gusted about the room, punching the curtains and lifting the lace on the antimacassars. It seized him by the arms and legs and made him thrash and kick in the sofa. He twisted. He bucked. He clutched his bursting head in his hands. His lungs, tortured by these convulsions, withered and collapsed, shrinking down to the size of walnuts. He began to suffocate. He gulped at the air like a fish, swallowing great greedy draughts as he tried to keep himself afloat. His face changed colour, grew dark and swollen with blood. His tongue was black. His eyes began to bulge in their sockets. And still the laughter came out of him.
Mr Romance Page 13