The Blasphemer

by Nigel Farndale

  As he headed towards a bench overlooking the boating lake, he saw her fifty yards away, unmistakable in a white coat, walking towards him arm in arm with a man he did not recognize. As she hadn’t seen him he considered changing course but, realizing she was too deep in conversation to notice passers-by, continued walking towards her. She was not only talking animatedly but also smoking – taking urgent, agitated jabs and barely pausing to hold the smoke down before exhaling, presumably so that she could finish her thought. She dropped her cigarette on the pavement half smoked and ground it out with her foot, causing a jogger behind her to swerve. There were big gestures from her now; arms spread wide, fingers open. Her hair looked vivacious in the sun, painted by a Pre-Raphaelite. She undid a hairclip and, holding it between her teeth, shook her head, regathered, coiled and reclipped. The man held out a hand to stroke her hair. With his other hand he rubbed her arm. Hello, Wetherby thought. What’s this? When the man removed a lash from her cheek she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him.

  Wetherby was only a few yards away from them and, as he walked past, he saw that Nancy was crying. He glided on for twenty yards before turning to see her checking the man’s watch and saying something he could not hear. He presumed she had realized she was going to be late for her next appointment: him. She kissed the man on the cheek and he took hold of her hand briefly before letting it slip from him as she pulled away, trailing her fingers like a lingering fragrance. As she walked briskly towards the exit gate, putting in extra steps, the man stood staring at her. Once she had disappeared from view he checked his watch but did not move. Wetherby began walking back towards him. ‘Hello,’ he said with a double-take when they were level.

  The man looked confused. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Wetherby said. ‘Have we not met?’

  The man studied his face. ‘Not sure.’

  Wetherby frowned. ‘London University perhaps? I am the vice provost at Trinity College.’

  ‘I know a professor there, well, know of him.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Kennedy, Professor Daniel Kennedy.’

  ‘Perhaps that is it. Though I believe he is not a full professor yet. Are you an academic?’

  ‘No, I’m a trauma counsellor.’

  ‘So you’re Daniel’s therapist?’

  ‘I’m sorry … client confidentiality. Actually, it’s his wife Nancy I know.’ He held out his hand. ‘Tom.’

  ‘Ah yes, the crash.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Through Daniel. I am a friend of his. How is Nancy? Do you see her regularly?’

  Tom hesitated. Wetherby sensed a shadow of guilt play across his face. ‘Next time I see her I’ll mention … sorry, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Wetherby. Actually, I am about to see her now. She is my dentist. You should be careful.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Patients often fall in love with their therapists.’

  The shadow of guilt again. ‘I’m not a therapist, I’m a counsellor. And I didn’t say she was my patient. Besides, that’s a myth.’

  ‘Really? She seems very fond of you.’

  Tom looked confused again. Made as if to speak. Checked his watch again and gave a half-salute. As he walked towards the bandstand in the centre of the park, Wetherby checked his own watch and walked off in the direction taken by Nancy. He was smiling to himself, his thin version of a smile.

  ‘That Muslim friend of yours seemed pleasant.’

  Daniel jumped. Though the refectory was almost empty, he hadn’t heard Wetherby approach.

  ‘He was a Muslim, I take it.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a Muslim, unfortunately for him.’

  Wetherby silently placed his empty tray alongside Daniel’s. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘MI5 have been hassling him. They even came round to my house asking questions.’

  ‘Did they say why?’

  ‘Because he’s a Muslim, I guess. Because they are all fascist bastards.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing. There was nothing to tell.’ Daniel shunted his tray along. ‘Might try the soup.’

  ‘Did the MI5 officer give a name?’

  ‘Think his name was Turner. Geoff Turner. Why?’

  ‘The provost has asked me to be police liaison for his new emergency policy. Thought I might know him.’

  ‘I’m just glad Nancy wasn’t in.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine.’ Daniel nodded distractedly as a woman wearing a green apron and hair net gestured with a ladle at two soup tureens. ‘Well, as fine as can be expected. Tomato, please. Still seeing her counsellor.’

  ‘Yes, I had heard. I gather she is seeing a lot of him.’

  Daniel looked at Wetherby, trying to read his face. In his confusion he gave a short laugh. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘We only have onion left.’

  Daniel looked at the woman holding up the ladle. ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘I tell you as a friend.’ Wetherby didn’t so much speak these words as breathe them.

  ‘What do you mean, you tell me as a friend? Tell me what exactly?’

  ‘Careful, it’s hot.’ The woman in the apron was holding up a steaming bowl of onion soup.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Wetherby said, ‘it is none of my business.’

  ‘What is it you are telling me as a friend?’

  Before Wetherby could answer, a short man in a black silk shirt, black denim jacket and black jeans set his tray down between theirs. Though the thick hair that came down to his shoulders was silver, the skin on his hands and face was smooth, like a teenager’s. A smile tugged gently at the corners of his mouth and, as he examined what hot food was on offer, he hummed to himself.

  ‘Ah, Professor Sang-mi,’ Wetherby said. ‘You two met?’ He looked across at Daniel, talking over the top of the professor’s head.

  ‘Professor Sang-mi has recently joined us on secondment from MIT. He is going to teach theoretical physics here for two terms. We are very lucky to have him …You were a research student at MIT, were you not, Daniel?’

  ‘What? …Yes … Sorry.’ He held out his hand. ‘Daniel Kennedy. Zoology.’

  ‘Hello.’ Sang-mi spoke with a gentle American accent infused with Korean. ‘I know all about you. I’ve seen your programmes. Most interesting.’

  Daniel grimaced. ‘They have to be fairly simplistic. For a television audience, I mean.’

  Wetherby indicated a table. ‘Do join us.’

  The three men sat down together but the conversation was mostly between the professors of music and physics.

  ‘So have we read the mind of God yet?’ Wetherby said, gathering his eyebrows in mock seriousness, the extravagance of his vowels giving an ironic connotation to his words. ‘Have we cracked that elusive theory of everything?’

  Sang-mi had a lazy, sprawling voice – soft and mallowy, as if his mouth wanted to swallow all his words. It was a shy voice and an attention-seeking one at the same time. ‘We prefer the term “quantum gravity”,’ he said.

  ‘Well, we are all looking for the mind of God, in our own way,’ Wetherby continued. ‘And if we find it we hope that mind will be even rather than steep. Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem.’ Wetherby gave a sideways glance at Daniel who, his own mind elsewhere, did not notice.

  Sang-mi spoke through a smile. ‘I think the physics department will get there sooner than the music department. With respect.’

  ‘The day you are able to play some Bach on one of your particle accelerators will be the day you come closest to knowing the mind of God.’

  ‘You joke, but I have a doctoral student working on the beauty of equations at the moment. He has a whole chapter on Bach. Such a mathematical composer.’

  ‘Indeed. What do you think, Daniel?’

  ‘Huh? Oh definitely. Bach will do it. Or Miles Davis. It’s all good.’

  The shape of Sang-mi’s smiling m
outh did not change. ‘No, I think it would have to be Bach. There is even some discussion about whether Bach could help with string theory. You are familiar with string theory?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘The stuff about the universe having eleven dimensions?’

  ‘Exactly. The vibrations on our tiny, one-dimensional strings can be interpreted as particles. String theory – you’ll like this, Wetherby – is just music, different harmonies you can play on the strings. This is the only candidate for a theory of everything that would be consistent with the beautiful symmetry of the universe.’

  Wetherby leaned forward. ‘Perhaps I have this wrong, but I have heard that string theory is going to help simple, unimaginative Christians like Dante, Milton and me prove the existence of God. That must be an annoying prospect for you.’

  There was a bubble of laughter from Sang-mi. ‘Not at all! The mind of a scientist is open to all possibilities. Take the uncertainty of the subatomic world. It is supposedly full of fluctuations that apply to space-time as well. So up and down, left and right, even past, present and future are no longer predictable at the subatomic level. The past could walk in on the present. Your great-grandparents, Daniel, or yours,Wetherby, could walk into this room right now.’

  Daniel was raising a spoonful of soup to his mouth but stopped in mid-air.

  Sang-mi nodded at him. ‘I know! Sounds crazy, right? But as Einstein showed us, time is relative to space. There is no absolute now, and no absolute then. Not that any of this means that God created the world in seven days.’

  ‘Six,’ Wetherby corrected. ‘He rested on the seventh.’

  ‘Six then.’ Sang-mi’s knee was jiggling up and down. ‘Or six billion years. It doesn’t matter because there is no mathematics for your God. None. Certainly not for the personal God of intervention in people’s lives. I mean, how do you write the mathematics for it? You can’t. But if you define God as harmony, you might be on to something. Then you could say all your equations must be harmonious and unifying. That becomes a testable theory. Is there harmony and symmetry in the universe? If that is your idea of God then that is testable.’

  Wetherby stared at the physics professor with the hollow eyes of an El Greco saint. ‘I personally would not presume to define God, other than to say He is indefinable.’

  Professor Sang-mi laid down his knife and fork. His smile had gone, along with his slightly patronizing tone. ‘The point is, the fundamental particles of the known universe are not made of different material, but the same material. The reason they display different characteristics is because their internal strings are vibrating differently. If string theory is correct, and it is, the sum total of the unimaginably small vibrating strings equates to the harmonic symphony of the universe we see around us. That is why if an equation is correct it will be beautiful. It will have harmony and symmetry and simplicity. If you look at a score by Bach it looks like chicken scratches, unless you can read music. But to a musician it resonates and has beauty. In a similar way equations resonate to a physicist. They speak to you. They jump out at you. Look at E = mc2. Beautiful.’

  Daniel was staring in front of him, lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he repeated distantly.

  ‘Oh, but biology is a much sexier subject than theoretical physics,’ Sang-mi said, trying to draw Daniel in.

  Wetherby was studying Daniel’s face. ‘You have been doing some interesting things with worms, have you not? Did I not read that you have been playing God and reversing the ageing process?’

  ‘Huh? Oh. Yeah. Yes. Sorry.’ Daniel was aimlessly stirring his soup now. ‘We can double the life expectancy of the nematode to forty days, which is, you know …’ The sentence went unfinished. He was staring at the spoon in his hand. Eventually he looked at the physics professor and said, ‘Did you say the past could walk in on the present?’

  Wetherby and Sang-mi exchanged a look.

  ‘Yes,’ Sang-mi said. ‘Are you OK? You seem …’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I’ve …’ Daniel closed his eyes in concentration. ‘Scientists are not as anti religion as you think,Wetherby. We just want evidence. One shred. It’s not so much to ask. Something testable. Something we can hold in our hands … I mean, you can say anything without evidence. Anything! A Brief History of Time tells of the lady who insisted that the Earth sat on a giant turtle. When challenged as to what held that creature up, she replied that the cosmos was “turtles all the way down”.’ Daniel blinked. The word turtle had produced some cognitive friction. He tried to repeat it but it clotted his tongue.

  Wetherby touched his arm. ‘Daniel, are you unwell? You have not touched your soup.’

  ‘Soup?’ Daniel said. ‘Turtle soup … Mock turtle soup …’ He rose from his seat, muttered, ‘Excuse me,’ and left the refectory.

  Sang-mi looked shocked. ‘Did I say something to upset him?’

  ‘Do not mind Daniel,’Wetherby said, playing with the cornelian intaglio ring on his finger. ‘He can be a bit territorial, that is all. He probably feels you are stepping on his turf. Also … I probably should not mention this …’

  Sang-mi looked left and right. Leaned in closer.

  ‘His nerves have been a little strained lately. It has been a great worry to his colleagues.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  NANCY THREW HER FRONT DOOR KEYS ON THE SIDE, JOGGED UP the stairs, opened her laptop and clicked on the file marked ‘diary’. It was empty. Good. She had remembered to delete its contents before leaving for work. It had been nagging her all day. She descended the stairs as quickly as she had gone up them, the heels of her boots clattering on the wood. She found Daniel waiting for her in the kitchen. ‘Why didn’t you ring and say you were going to be late?’ he said. ‘I was supposed to be going to a faculty meeting tonight. I’ve had to cancel it.’

  ‘My watch is still broken.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you get it repaired?’

  ‘I keep it like this to remind me of the crash.’There was hardness in her voice. She was surprised by it.

  ‘Why would you want to be reminded of the crash?’ No answer.

  ‘Oh, obviously you would want to be reminded of the crash.’ Daniel’s tone had a sarcastic edge that he must have known would provoke her. ‘Why would you not want to be reminded of the crash?’

  She shifted her weight from one foot to another, her hands on her hips. It annoyed her that he was fixating on the watch. Bloody hell, he had nothing to get upset about. He had no right. She was the one who should be feeling irritated. ‘Just do, that’s all.’

  ‘Time frozen. I get it. Like you. Frozen.’

  ‘Let it go, Daniel.’

  He moved a step closer to her, squaring up. ‘You’ve calcified and you can’t see it.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Anyway, you need to keep thinking about the crash so you can go on seeing your counsellor. How often do you see him?’

  Nancy gathered her hair over one shoulder and teased two strands of a fringe down so that they hung dangerously over her eyes. ‘Most days. Why?’

  ‘What do you talk about?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Is that all you do? Talk?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Don’t be pathetic.’ Nancy’s nostrils were flaring, her eyes flashing in anger.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m fucking him? You think I’m fucking him?’ Nancy shook her head in disbelief. Her expression hardened and she nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fucking him.’

  ‘You can’t be.’

  ‘Of course I’m not, you arsehole.’ She threw a can of deodorant at him, the closest thing to hand. It bounced off his arm. She threw a mug next; it broke against the wall behind him.

  Daniel stared at the pieces in silence for a moment, then said, ‘It’s getting crowded in here,’ and left her standing on her own.

  Neither spoke to the other while they made their own bre
akfasts the next morning, though each clatter of plates and cutlery felt like a reproach. When Nancy went upstairs to floss and gargle, Martha said to Daniel, ‘I heard shouting last night. What was happening?’

  ‘Mummy and Daddy were having an argument.’

  Martha thought about this for a moment before saying, ‘Who won?’

  ‘Well, both sides did, in a way.’

  ‘So Mum did.’

  The silence continued into the school run. Daniel was driving and, as usual, he dropped Martha off first, then Nancy at her dental surgery. Neither said goodbye. Trying to change the subject of his thoughts proved enervating and futile. Nancy kept seeping back, filling the mental space like a liquid: her face, her voice, her smell. Stop it. Think of something else. What had Wetherby and the new physics professor been talking about? It had sounded interesting. Something about the past walking in on the present. His mind furred around the conversation, unable to give it shape or substance.

  In the evening, when Daniel came home from work, he got straight into the bath vacated by Nancy – as he always did, to save water, to save the planet – and began itching. He held up his arms. The skin was turning red and blotchy. His eyes were streaming and, when he wiped them, he felt a stinging sensation. It was now he noticed the smell coming from the bathwater: sodium hypochlorite. He lurched from the bath and reached for a towel. ‘Nancy!’ he shouted downstairs. ‘Have you put something in this bath?’

  There was a pause. ‘Sorry. I’m cleaning it. I put some bleach in it.’