Blind Faith

by Ben Elton

  'Yes, but not just on one chick. You're supposed to perv on loads of chicks.'

  'That would be better, would it?'

  'Of course it would!'

  'Well, I'll certainly remember next time!' said Trafford, feigning righteous anger and slamming down the lid of his computer.

  They remained for a little while in silence, he still hunched over the closed laptop, she behind him.

  'Well, look at me, for God's sake, why don't you?' Chantorria demanded suddenly.

  Turning round, Trafford saw that she had dressed herself in what was known as 'the full linge'. This was a phrase derived from the old word 'lingerie' and it meant dressing specifically to sexually excite one's partner. It was applied to women only. There was no male equivalent of the full linge because men were not required to attempt to excite their partners, although they were under considerable pressure to become excited once they had been linged. Any woman who donned the full linge for her partner, particularly in a sexually moribund relationship, held a strong moral position. Healers and counsellors would deem her to be making the effort to put fire and spice back into their sex lives, and the man was expected to react with unalloyed delight.

  Chantorria was wearing the classic Temple-approved linge ensemble for women of faith: five-inch black stiletto heels, a chocolate-flavoured edible G-string and a leather cupless bra.

  'I went to Dirty Sexy Filthy Bitch,' she said.

  Dirty Sexy Filthy Bitch was one of the ubiquitous chains of shops that sold lingerie and sex toys, which were the only serious rivals to fast food outlets for domination of the shopping malls.

  'We haven't had great sex big time since before Caitlin Happymeal was born,' she said.

  'I know that,' Trafford replied.

  'People will talk.'

  'People always talk. They'll talk whatever we do.'

  'Aren't you going to sort me out then?' Chantorria asked in a small voice.

  Trafford looked at his wife. He was still fond of her. It was not her fault that she was scared and put upon. He felt scared and put upon himself most of the time. On the other hand, he found the things she was wearing quite ridiculous. If he did not wish to have oral sex with her, why would he feel any more inclined to do so because her vagina was covered in chocolate? There was chocolate in the fridge, a kilo of it, and none of it was vagina-flavoured. What was even more excruciating was that he knew Chantorria herself was feeling ridiculous. Even in their thrilling, early days together she had never been the sort of girl who favoured 'erotic' toys and costumes. Then, of course, it hadn't mattered; their sex life had been so full and active that it had gone unnoticed in the tenement that Chantorria was in fact quite shy about her body. Then they had made love naked but beneath the sheets, and the nurse's uniforms and pink fluffy handcuffs she had been given as engagement presents had lain unused in a drawer. Now it was clear that Chantorria was feeling the need to make an effort and it was equally obvious to Trafford that she hated it. Her expression as she stared down at him was challenging and defiant rather than sensual, and although she trembled Trafford knew it was with embarrassment, not passion. His heart went out to her but at the same time he felt angry to see her neediness so cruelly exposed.

  'Do you want me to sort you out because you feel like great sex big time or because you're worried that people will talk?' he asked.

  'Both, of course,' she replied.

  But Trafford suspected he knew which reason was greater. A vigorous and hearty sexual appetite with a natural desire to 'do anything' was considered the proper thing for a respectable woman of faith to exude. A woman was expected to 'want it' and want it 'big time'. She was also expected to provoke an insatiable lust in her partner, otherwise it was understood that her man, being a man, would 'get it' elsewhere. Any woman characterized as 'frigid' might find it difficult to gain a new husband when her current partner moved on, as inevitably he would. The pressure on young women to be highly sexualized at all times was enormous and Trafford knew that if ever the community noted that he had not been sorting out Chantorria on an appropriately regular basis she was the one most likely to be stigmatized. Hence her decision to linge him up, a tactic that publicly put the ball back in his court.

  As if to prove the point, suddenly Barbieheart's voice broke in on Trafford's thoughts.

  'Oh my God! Doesn't she look fabulous! Oh my God, girl, you look so hot !'

  Trafford turned to the wall. Barbieheart, a chicken drumstick in each hand and a big smile spread across her greasy mouth, was nodding her approval.

  'Hey, girls!' Barbieheart shouted. 'Check out Chantorria. What a babe!'

  On the part of the wallscreen which was tuned to Tinkerbell's apartment, the girls halted in their drunken partying to turn and stare.

  'Way to go!' they whooped. 'You own that look, girl. What are you waiting for, Trafford? That girl is hot. She is to die for. Sort her out! '

  Chantorria smiled shyly at the attention although she must have known that it was nothing more than common manners for women to loudly big up any of their number who had gone the full linge.

  Suddenly Trafford was furious. He wanted to scream at the wall. He wanted to tear those faces from it and stamp on every one. How dare they burst in like that! How dare they presume to intrude upon his wife's efforts to excite him!

  He said nothing, of course. Why would any man object to the world seeing his wife in her sexiest attire? Wasn't he proud? Wasn't he proud that she was proud? Wasn't she beautiful? What was wrong with him? Had either of them anything to hide?

  Trafford clenched his fists and struggled to master his anger.

  'Wow,' he said finally. 'Yes, my babe certainly looks hot.'

  'If you don't sort her out now, Tiger,' Barbieheart said through a mouthful of fried chicken, 'you never will.'

  'Oh, I'll sort her out all right!' Trafford said. 'Just you try and stop me.'

  There were more whoops and shouts from Tinkerbell and her friends.

  'I'll leave you two to it then,' said Barbieheart.

  But as he muted the sound on their community podcast Trafford knew that Barbieheart would not be leaving them to it. Barbieheart would be watching. Itching to tell the whole building that Trafford had failed to sort out Chantorria even after she had linged him up. That they were 'having problems'. That she was frigid. That he was impotent. That their relationship was a pathetic lie in which there was no great sex, either big time or any time.

  'I'll have to fake it,' he whispered to Chantorria as they crossed into the bedroom. 'Too much pressure.'

  'I don't care. Just make it convincing,' his wife whispered, desperate not to be publicly humiliated as a woman who could not arouse her man even while wearing heels, a G-string and a cupless bra.

  And so, for the benefit of the neighbours, Trafford and Chantorria performed a pantomime of lovemaking in which, having briefly and perfunctorily consumed her chocolate G-string, Trafford lay between her legs, grinding his flaccid penis against her while she whimpered in mock ecstasy.

  When they had finished their performance they wished Barbieheart good night.

  'Way to go, kids,' Barbieheart replied, opening a bottle of fizzy drink. 'I am so jealous. Back in the day you should have seen me go. I was mad for it!'

  As a woman dealing with size issues, Barbieheart was exempt from the social pressure to have a fantastic sex life.

  Trafford could not help wondering in his secret self how mad for it she had ever been. How mad for it was anybody in the stinking-hot rabbit warrens in which they lived? Did other people fake it for the cameras too? How much of the sex that was streamed on the community webcast was actually a pantomime? The social pressure to be an obsessively sexual being was all-encompassing. Every advert, every song, every reality show seemed to be about almost nothing but sex. Sometimes it seemed to Trafford as if, with the exception of some of the news, nothing was broadcast at all that was not about sex. All comment, all discussion, all marketing appeared to be based on the assu
mption that there were only two proper states for a person to be in, either 'up for it' or 'at it', and if they weren't one of those two things then something was very wrong. Trafford knew that this was rubbish. He liked sex as much as anyone but people had children to raise, money to earn, vermin to kill, problems to deal with; it was impractical for sex to be the number-one priority every minute of the day. How would the washing get done?

  Was everybody lying? Did they all have secret lives? If they did then they were all heretics, Tinkerbell, Barbieheart, Sabre and Lexus, all of them. Enemies of the Temple. It occurred to Trafford that if only all these people could be brought to Confession together and made to speak the truth, there would be a revolution. For a moment he indulged in the fantasy of appealing to the camera for common sense. 'COME ON!' he cried out in his mind. 'Are you really all so ecstatically fucking happy? Don't you occasionally long for a bit of calm? A bit of quiet? A bit of privacy?!'

  Unable to speak, Trafford got up and went into the kitchen. For a few moments he stood over Caitlin Happymeal's cot, watching her as she slept. Her lashes were long and dark, just like her mother's. Trafford wondered if one day his tiny, happy baby would grow up to have the joy crushed out of her as Chantorria had – or would Caitlin find the strength to keep her secrets and make of them a shield? After a little while he went to the table and sat down at his computer. Sandra Dee had updated her lies since he had last looked; she was very conscientious about maintaining her cover. There were new sex videos, a badly focused tape of a woman singing karaoke in a pub and a new blog discussing the latest entrant into a popular reality show. She looks like a total bitch to me, it said. But fair play to her, she's a strong woman and I love her big time. Trafford copied and pasted the sentences on to his search engine and soon discovered that the blog had actually been written by a woman named Vosene who lived on one of the islands of the South Downs.

  Caitlin Happymeal began crying. Chantorria got up to feed her.

  'How's your girlfriend?' she enquired sarcastically as she emerged through the beaded curtain that stood in for a door between their sleeping and dining area.

  'She's not my girlfriend,' Trafford replied, 'she's a colleague who gets bullied. I feel sorry for her, that's all.'

  'Whatever,' Chantorria replied, and putting Caitlin on her breast she returned to bed.

  Thinking about his baby, Trafford felt a surge of pride.

  He had had her vaccinated. He had acted independently in defiance of the Temple. He had begun his own private revolution.

  21

  The address that Cassius had given Trafford was for a small communications shop in Finchley. It was not an easy place for Trafford to get to, as it involved crossing Lake London with his bicycle and disembarking at the Paddington jetty, then cycling for miles along the rickety stilt paths and stinking, muddy, half-submerged streets of what was left of Kensal Green and Kilburn. As he half pedalled, half waded his way towards his destination, Trafford's emotions veered between intense excitement and intense fear.

  If he had guessed Cassius's intentions correctly, he was about to enter the secret company of Humanists, people with whom he hoped to experience an intellectual liberation that weeks before he would not have imagined possible.

  On the other hand he was also putting himself among heretics, on a collision course with the Inquisition. What was more, to do so he was having to journey into a particularly desperate area of town. It was a grim, fearful place where fresh water was currency and teenage street gangs ran illegal tolls on every bridge; where ferrymen rowed with guns held ready between their knees and even the police and the Inquisition travelled only in packs, rarely leaving their boats. A brutalized and embittered local population lived in a state of continuous war with the incoming immigrant underclass, both communities struggling to scratch a living from the rubbish that floated on the canals.

  As Trafford hurried along, the grim environment and the knowledge of his secret mission preyed on his nerves. Every passer-by suddenly looked like a Temple spy and every leaky punt a police launch. Beggars demanded money in menacing tones that seemed to say, 'I know where you're going, boy. Pay up or I shall denounce you.'

  Trafford inwardly chastised himself for being weak and fearful. If Sandra Dee were with him, he thought, she would not be starting at shadows and scared of weak and pitiable beggars. She'd face them with the same steady assurance that she faced that bitch Princess Lovebud. Trafford felt emboldened. Sandra Dee showed no fear and nor would he. He would be worthy of the secret love he harboured for a secret person.

  Finally, after wading up and down a seemingly endless series of mostly deserted back streets just south of the Nag's Head market, Trafford found the address he was looking for. The building, which bore the legend Books and Pamphlets Bought and Sold, stood in a grubby terraced street very slightly more prosperous-looking than the ones through which he had been forced to pass. He mounted the scaffolding stairs to the first-floor window and entered a small, dimly lit emporium.

  Communications shops had enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. The manuals and pamphlets they sold had traditionally been ordered from the net, but with the deterioration of the courier services and the continuing rise in the water level there had been a revival in what was known as 'direct commerce'. Shops had become viable as businesses once more. This one was stuffed to bursting point with the usual religious, faith-based and self-help manuals which for some reason people still seemed to prefer to consume in hard copy rather than view on the net. Everywhere Trafford looked, celebrity hypnotists, healers, pop singers, astrologers and spiritualists promised step-by-step programmes that guaranteed personal improvement. Thousands and thousands of books all offered to make the reader a strong, rich, powerful and successful person. Trafford had seen many such books; people read them all the time. There was clearly an enormous desire to be strong, rich, powerful and successful. The interesting thing was that despite all these books and their vast following of readers, Trafford had never met anybody outside the Temple hierarchy who actually was strong, rich, powerful and successful. It was just one more of the many contradictions that Trafford noted but never discussed.

  He picked up a book at random, a slim volume which promised to show him how he could recognize the God within himself and use it to attract a better class of sexual partner. As he was glancing through the contents, the manager of the shop approached him. A small man with the thickest glasses Trafford had ever seen, he looked a bit like an owl.

  'Was there anything in particular you were looking for?' the manager enquired.

  'Well, actually I was hoping to meet somebody,' Trafford replied.

  'Any particular reason why you were to meet this person here?' the man asked.

  Trafford recognized his cue. 'Oh yes, of course. Reason dictated it.'

  'In that case I think you'll find your friend just through here.'

  Trafford allowed himself to be led into the back room and from there down two flights of stairs to the cellar of the building, which by rights should have been flooded but was not. It was extremely dark and before Trafford's eyes had time to grow accustomed to the dimness he heard the familiar voice of Cassius.

  'Trafford,' he said.

  'Is that you, Cassius? Where are you?'

  Cassius stepped out of the shadows.

  'Greetings,' he said. 'Are you ready to cross the Rubicon?'

  'What is the Rubicon?'

  'A river.'

  'What about it?'

  'In Ancient Roman times Caesar defied law, convention and superstition by crossing it with his army. For him it was a point of no return. You have arrived at such a point. Will you cross your Rubicon?'

  Trafford had heard of Caesar; he knew that he was an emperor from the distant past.

  'I don't know anything about rivers,' he said, 'but when it comes to defying the law, convention and superstition, I'll cross any river you like.'

  'I hope so,' Cassius said. 'We have to be most caref
ul whom we approach.'

  'Don't worry about me. I'm sure I believe what you believe.'

  Cassius frowned. 'You earn the right to come here, Trafford, not by believing but by understanding.'

  'Understanding what?'

  'Understanding that in time everything can be understood. You have no doubt heard your Confessor speak of the Love that passes all understanding?'

  'Of course.'

  'Well, I reject that thesis. I do not believe that there is anything in the universe that passes all understanding. It is merely that there is much that we do not understand yet. Some people, most people, fill that gap with God. I and my friends wish to fill it with knowledge.'

  'The other Vaccinators?'

  'Not everyone who comes here is a Vaccinator, although most Vaccinators are Humanists. You told me that you wished to join us.'

  'I do, I do.'

  'You realize that if you are caught you will be killed, and if you betray us we will kill you? This is the Rubicon.'

  Trafford needed no persuasion; he had been waiting for a moment like this all his life.

  'I understand the risks and I would never betray you.'

  'Do you know what a Humanist is?'

  'Not really. Perhaps a little.'

  'Then how can you know that you wish to be one?'

  'Because you have spoken of knowledge and understanding and those are two things that I desire more than anything else on Earth.'

  'Do you know what knowledge is? Do you understand what understanding is?'

  'I know only one thing and I understand only one thing: that everything I have ever been told by the Temple and everything I pretend to believe is a lie. Beyond that I am utterly ignorant. Whoever you are, I want to join you. I am lost. I am alone. Every thought I have I must keep secret. Everything I claim to believe I actively despise. I would rather be a dog than a man: animals know nothing but they don't know they know nothing. I do. I am aware of my ignorance. I am aware of the pointless banality of my existence. It's a curse to have a mind if it is illegal to use it. It's a curse to have intelligence if you are forced to cloak it in a lifetime of wilful stupidity. If you and your friends can bring light into the miserable darkness of my life then I will be a Humanist and die a Humanist.'