by Liz Jensen
Linda manoeuvred the lozenge to the back of her mouth, crunched and reeled in shock at the peppermint blast, which irrigated her nasal passages and temporarily deafened her. She reached for a baby-wipe from the Moses basket, blew her nose in it noisily, and stuffed the soggy mess in the suggestion box in front of her. The freckle-eared gent next to her was in a trance.
Now, up on the stage, a cloud of dry ice had begun to crawl across the stage, and from its epicentre a huge metallic rocket-headed cylinder was forcing its way upward like a thrusting bud. It reminded Linda of something, but she couldn’t quite work out what. The cylinder grew to twice the height of a man, and then suddenly its sheath retracted to reveal the barrel-shaped figure of Carmichael in flowing robes of royal blue. A cheer went up from the crowd as he leaped out of the contraption, which closed itself again and shrank away into its socket in the stage.
A penis, Linda realised suddenly: that’s what. She recalled the Reverend’s unusual member and shuddered.
Meanwhile the Reverend’s eyes were skimming the congregation.
‘Friends,’ he said in that voice of oil and honey Linda knew so well. ‘Welcome. Welcome to God’s home.’
A sigh spread around the huge hall as the Reverend, following a chord from a battery of guitars behind him, began to croon the Holy Hour theme:
Today’s the day
The time is now
Let Jesus in
It’s Holy Hour!
The crowd joined in, and none sang more loudly and with more crazed abandon than my sister Linda.
Today’s sermon was apt, for Carmichael was nothing if not a man who knew exactly when and how to cash in on a news story. These things are an instinct, like sex, or the knowledge of right and wrong.
When the applause and murmuring had hushed, he pulled out a monstrously shiny red apple from his cassock and held it aloft. In the television lights, its redness was shocking.
Then he spoke. Pirated cassettes exist of what he said, and what happened afterwards, though the official videos have all been confiscated and destroyed.
He said, ‘The Apple of Knowledge looked as tempting and as succulent, ladies and gentlemen, as this.’
There was a murmur. Carmichael brought the apple close to his face and sniffed it elaborately, breathing in deep.
‘Mmmm!’ he hummed slowly. ‘The perfume! Wonderful! Gorgeous! Now, folks – wouldn’t you just like a bite?’
The audience shuddered and recoiled with mutterings of, ‘No way!’
‘Come on now, don’t be shy!’ urged the preacher. ‘You, sir! Come and take a bite of the Apple of Knowledge! That’s what the snake said to Eve and then to Adam. Come and bite into my tasty fruit! Let yourself be tempted!’
The man shook his head vehemently as Carmichael thrust the apple at his face.
‘Bless you,’ murmured Carmichael, withdrawing, and made the sign of the cross in the air.
‘Bless you, bless you, O ye folk. If only Adam and Eve had been like you.’
Now he shoves the apple under the nose of an elderly woman in the front row.
‘You, madam! Bite into the Apple of Knowledge and taste original sin!’
The woman bellows, ‘No, sir! I will not! Not for all the tea in China!’
Her friend, sitting next to her, adds for emphasis, ‘No way, José.’
‘And rightly not, dear madams, rightly not!’ responds the preacher with gravitas, staring mournfully at the apple in his hand. He looks up and lets his eyes scan the crowd before him slowly, as though inhaling them individually.
‘And why, folks? Because the Bible has taught us our lesson about knowledge and it’s right there in Genesis!’
And he starts pacing the stage with sudden, violent energy.
‘Chapter three, verse thirteen: “Eve has partaken thereof, and the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done?”
‘And what did Eve say to that, ladies and gentlemen?
‘She said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
‘And so the Lord had no choice, did He, but to banish both her and Adam because of their greed and their curiosity. He sent them forth, saying thorns also and thistles may it bring thee, this knowledge, and thou shalt eat nought but bread and the herb of the field. Which is a strictly vegan diet, folks.’
He holds the apple aloft again.
‘Now, ladies and gentlemen – still no takers? Well, I know of one man who partook. A man who, in his folly and pride, took it upon himself to bite into this Apple of Knowledge!’
A murmur from the audience.
‘Shall I tell you his name, ladies-and-gentlemen-and-children?’
A hushed pause.
‘His name is Dr Gregory Stevenson!’
The Reverend gazes up at the apple in his hand, and the camera projects its tempting wholesomeness on to the video wall behind him. Then suddenly he has spun the fruit round to reveal the other side.
A huge and greedy bite has been removed.
The audience gasps.
‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, and so you should be shocked. That’s what a bitten apple looks like. And now we know what it’s done. On the news today, ladies and gentlemen, as you may have heard, the extent of one man’s folly was on display for all to marvel at. Dr Gregory Stevenson is on the run from God and righteousness, ladies and gentlemen. Let his folly be an example to us. He bit into this apple you see before you, ladies and gentlemen, and now he is paying God’s price.’
The audience boos. The freckle-eared man next to Linda shudders in a spasm of indignation and lets loose a weird groan.
Carmichael is storming out the Bible.
‘And Adam and Eve did weep, and God said unto them, “Be thou banished, unworthy children, from mine kingdom, unworthy in my sight. For thou hast tasted of the forbidden fruit and ye shall be outcast from Eden, to eat thistles, as I have said, and bracken and other blasted vegetables of the field”.’
He refers to the fire at the Fertility Management Centre as ‘God’s wrath’. To the police hunting for the missing Dr Stevenson as ‘the people’s witnesses’. To the whole of Gregory’s enterprise as ‘an object lesson in grandiosity and vaingloriousness’.
While he preaches eloquently of ‘the Frankensteinian folly of false-idol worship’, and commits her brother-in-law to the fiery gulags of hell, Linda listens, smiles, and bides her time.
She has calculated that the moment to act is two minutes before the end of the service, when there will be no time for anything else. She sits like a coiled spring as the show continues with jokes, a healing session, a mass blessing, and a final sports prayer.
‘ … and may the Great One see his way clear to removing heretoforth this thorn of misery at the heart of our great national game,’ finishes the Reverend, ‘and soccer will thrive and flourish as the orange groves on the shores of Galilee.’
‘Amen!’ calls the congregation. ‘Hallelujah!’
The organ music is striking up again, and the Reverend is taking a breath for the final hymn, when a blonde-haired woman, ignoring the glares of the congregation and the frantic waving of the producer, waddles up to the stage brandishing a comatose baby.
Carmichael spots her, and exchanges a look with the producer, who signals to the dwarfs; the rousing hymn-tune dissolves discreetly into soft chords of muzak.
‘Please, Reverend,’ begs the woman, falling to her knees and holding Katie-Koo aloft like a triumphant goalkeeper with a football.
‘Please, Reverend. Bless my afflicted child.’
The producer, relaxing, gives the signal for the camera angle to tighten. Live television takes risks, but nothing much can go wrong when it’s a sleeping baby needing a splash of holy water on its gob. Linda grabs the microphone handed to her by a lackey, and starts noisily kissing the hem of Carmichael’s robe.
‘Reverend. Bless her. Bless her, please,’ she mumbles.
A standard enough request in the House of God. Carmichael doesn’t recognise Linda. Wh
y should he? She’s wearing the wig and specs, and as the koala-man said, he does have a lot of fans.
The Reverend carries around his neck a gold chain from which hangs a small vial of holy tap water for occasions such as these. He unstoppers it and bends down, trickling a few drops on the baby’s forehead and making the sign of the cross.
‘Bless you, God’s creature. May the Big One be with you now and always.’
A sigh from the congregation. Another soul individually blessed; another small but vital redemption in the Lord’s name; another mother’s heart at peace.
But this is no ordinary mother.
‘Take her,’ says the woman.
Her voice is suddenly different, harsher. The Reverend stiffens in surprise.
‘Beg pardon, madam?’
The woman before him has stumbled ungraciously to her feet, nearly tripping over a footlight.
‘Take her,’ she says again, commandingly, and shoves the baby at him.
Carmichael clasps the bundle in a reflex, stunned.
Linda, microphone in hand, turns to face the camera.
‘This man,’ she says, pointing at the Reverend, ‘is the father of my child. He seduced me. And may I say now and publicly, to all of you foolish women out there who may be harbouring sexual fantasies about the Reverend here, the copulation that produced this infant lasted precisely thirty-seven seconds and was no great shakes. In fact,’ she pauses for effect, ‘in fact, he has a disgusting hairy penis and the whole thing was fucking crap.’
Linda’s timing could not have been more perfect. The theme tune wipes out the rest of her speech, and the credits roll.
Hallelujah for live television!
Linda told me the story breathlessly when she arrived at the Hopeworth later that night with a bottle of champagne, and a plastic replica of the Reverend Carmichael for Billy. She told me about the look on Carmichael’s face, and the howl of anguish he gave, and about how the crowd mobbed him, and how she escaped in the mêlée and took the train back to Gridiron minus her wig and specs.
You have to hand it to her.
We filled our glasses and drank a toast to our future. Then we watched the news. Carmichael’s love-child and his allegedly hairy penis made the lead story. The search was on for the mystery mother. The congregation were still milling about the House of God like lost sheep: police declared it a ‘crisis zone’, and installed camp beds for those who refused to leave. Another televangelist was on his way from the States to counsel the nation. Carmichael was said to be in hiding, and at prayer.
Linda was hugging herself with glee. If she could have kissed herself she would have done.
‘I did it! He believed me! He thinks he’s the father! I’ve got rid of her! I’m brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!’
Linda’s prize pumpkin brain had scored again.
And as it turned out, my smaller, less efficient organ hadn’t performed so badly, either. The second story on the news concerned my husband. It was an update on the fire at his clinic. To my delight, things had moved on: an anonymous tip-off had suggested arson, and police were still searching for the man they believed perpetrated it: Dr Gregory Stevenson, ‘the controversial doctor at the centre of the Perfect Baby drug row’.
There was only one way to celebrate.
‘Come on!’ I said to Linda. ‘Let’s jump on the bed!’
Stifling our giggles so as not to wake Billy, Linda and I wobbled on to the mattress and then began jumping tentatively, with small bounces. The springs were ferociously tight, and shot us upwards with such energising vigour that we grew more daring, and soon we were jumping higher and higher, and then as high as we could, and in perfect synchrony, as though we’d done nothing all these years but practise for this moment, this time of sisterly abandon, in which as I shot upwards, I caught sight of my excited face in the mirror, and my hair flowing up, with Linda just a streak of paint in my side vision, and when I landed, I saw the hole in the knee of Linda’s navy tights, and heard her small grunt as she made lift-off, and then I was up again, suspended in air, jumping, jumping, jumping, and the air around us whirled with a strange, speckled light.
When I was up, she was down. And when she was down, I was up.
When the room was spinning, we collapsed and just lay there panting. Feeling the glory and the control.
Gregory’s arrest and downfall came about very quickly after that. It turned out that he’d been caught in a sort of pincer movement. In tipping off the callow police trainee, I’d been one half of the pincer.
The other half of the pincer turned out to be quite a surprise. A surprise to me, anyway. Looking at her sad-eyed photo in the scrapbook, though, you can see that it had a certain logic. After all, she’d suffered a betrayal, of sorts, at the hands of Gregory. And a fair share of hell, thanks to Linda and Ma, who’d lumbered her with a normal baby when she felt a perfect one to be her due. So why not go out with a bang, Ruby Gonzalez?
Yes. Ruby Gonzalez.
The remains of the Fertility Management Centre were still smoking the next morning, when the famous copy of the Lancet appeared. That, too, is in the scrapbook. The lead article is entitled ‘Optimum Gene Selection: some Empirical Research’, by Dr R. J. Gonzalez. (The J is for Juanita, I have since learned.) I read the article as a straight confession, though it was presented in scientific jargon, offering the facts without any moral interpretation, except for the last line, which was a pure cry for help. Ruby was clearly determined to be remembered as a scientist first and a silly woman second. But facts are all you need to damn yourself, and she did that all right. I sort of took my hat off to her.
The article made enough discrediting claims about her work with my husband to get Ethics Committees, church leaders, and Scotland Yard’s Moral Affairs Unit hyperventilating with activity. Within an hour, all the fax machines had clogged. From now on, criminal arson was the least of Gregory’s worries.
As I have mentioned, the last line gave some sort of insight into her state of mind. It said, ‘This researcher has been forced to conclude that such experiments can only lead to personal tragedy.’
I have to report that when I first read that line I experienced a minor twinge of a grotesque emotion I could not identify, and can’t to this day. It was very brief, and for all I know it might have been something else: a pang of indigestion, or my body unconsciously registering a minor earthquake on the other side of the world. I have to report also that, later on, an opaque and clinging burden of pity settled on me when I realised just how much trouble Gregory was in. In the old days I would have stroked his forehead, perhaps, got together something stodgy for dinner to help him forget. Now I just felt weary. You can’t jump on a bed for ever.
As usual, the media took over. The hunt was on for Baby A and her mother. Prizes were offered, and several women with babies came forward claiming to be Dr Gonzalez. The answer to her whereabouts was finally provided by the Venezuelan Press Agency. Dr Ruby Gonzalez had issued a statement through her lawyers. She and the child were living in a Trappist nunnery somewhere in Latin America. (‘Keeping their traps shut,’ Ma said.) According to the press reports, Ruby had given up medicine. It was the devil’s work, according to the new, holy Ruby. She was taking a vow of silence as of today, following this final photo opportunity and press conference, at which the imperfect baby would be on display.
‘Nappy rash permitting,’ added the statement, reiterating what Ruby’s article had stated so unequivocally: that Angelica wasn’t perfect at all. Far from it.
Nappy rash did permit, and I have the photos and the cuttings. They, too, are in the scrapbook. Ruby’s depressed, resigned look. The scrunched-up face of Angelica yelling at all the fuss. The way Dr Gonzalez finally said, simply, ‘That is all,’ lowered her cowl, and spoke not another word.
They tracked Greg down shortly afterwards. He was holed up in his new lab, where he’d locked himself into a cupboard full of Petri dishes with an electronic key. They found him clutching a file marke
d ‘Baby A’. He was slapped in Gridiron Correction Facility and charged with arson until they could come up with a strategy to settle the Perfect Gene question once and for all, vis-à-vis the law. The great and the good were called in to form an emergency committee.
There was silence from Hooper. A spokesman said he was hunting in Kenya and could not be located at this moment in time. In fact, as a probing television camera dangled at the window of his penthouse discovered, he was at home, kicking the walls, smashing vases, shouting at his mistress, drinking gallons of Mexican beer and throwing darts at a cardboard cutout of a man he kept on the bathroom wall: generally relaxing. Even in disgrace, Hooper gave good television. When he finally emerged, it was with a ‘No fucking comment’ to the waiting press, before his lawyers whisked him off for consultations.
The consultations must have involved a discussion about damage limitation, because later that day a despatch rider knocked on my door at the Hopeworth and handed me a bulging envelope.
I counted the money.
All two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were there, in fifty-pound notes.
A year on, I look back on it all now with a certain affectionate wonder. There was no mention of me at Gregory’s trial. I kept interviews to a minimum and made sure not to say anything interesting. I mumbled on the radio. They had to ask me to speak up.
‘I was in a nuthouse,’ I said. ‘I know nothing.’
Some things are worth it for the money.
Gregory is still doing middle-class time in his white-collar open prison. He’s decided to switch from medicine to fossils, and is taking an archaeology degree. I take Billy to visit him regularly. It’s the least I can do. Boys need fathers, even if they’re as bad as Gregory. I wouldn’t ever dream of telling Billy what his father tried to do. They spend a couple of hours together in a special family unit and a new bond seems to be growing between them, which involves Lego. I don’t see him often myself, since the signing of the divorce papers. I may have hated Ruby, but at least she did the decent thing. I still have fantasies of going to visit her and pouring out all the bottled-up stuff that’s still there, and calling her a cow and all that. But she wouldn’t be able to reply on account of the Trappist thing. I think this might take the edge off our encounter.