Celestial Kingdom

by Stan Mason

  Dobson shook his head. ’We can’t use that because of two people who support him. It wouldn’t hold water!’

  ‘Well how far can anyone allow free speech to go,’ bleated Brown. ‘I mean we can criticise the Government and the Church but how far does free speech go? Surely there must be a law which prevents a person trying to subvert the course of religion!’

  ‘Public meetings are protected by law from the actions of persons who create disturbances at them,’ declared Dobson flatly.

  ‘So starting a riot would be against the law whatever the man preaches,’ stated the Chairman glumly. ‘That’ the trouble with this country. The victim’s always the one to suffer while the criminal goes free!’

  ‘What about the law relating to Unlawful Assembly? It relates to three or more persons gathered together to commit an unlawful act. It can be dispersed by forceful means although the force used mustn’t cause death or serious injury.’

  ‘Then, with his henchmen, it can be said he’s acting unlawfully,’ claimed Brown, believing that he could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  ’Can we prove it to be so?’ enquired Hamilton, shifting uneasily in his chair because he knew that the argument was less than adequate for their purpose.

  ’On Heaven, many Gods!’ stated Dobson mournfully. ’What’s in the man’s mind? The only way to stop his is to disrupt every one of his meetings until he either moves out of the district or gives up his quest. Gandhi did it in India with his passive resistance movement. The British were forced to leave by pressure of public opinion. Why can’t we do the same?’

  ’We can’t burn down every centre he hires!’ muttered Toomey. ’We’d end up emulating Nazi Germany if we did that.’

  ’It was an accident,’ declared Brown dumbly. ’It won’t happen again.’

  ’There is one way of stopping him once and for all,’ suggested Toomey thoughtfully. ’We put him out of commission.’

  ’What do you mean by that?’ asked the Chairman, his eyebrows coming together in the form of a frown. He had already contemplated asking Gabby Saunders to do the same thing but had dismissed it from his mind for ethical and moral reasons. The last thing he wanted was to have his reputation tarnished or even going to prison for complicity.

  ’I come from the East End of London,’ confessed Toomey readily. ’We have our own code of conduct there... our own way of dealing with Warrior. We never involve the police but take care of the situation ourselves. I say we put him out of action.’

  ’How?’ cut in Brown quickly.

  ’We break his legs and threaten we’ll do the same with his arms if he continues with his ranting.’

  ‘Are you going to be the one to break his legs?’ enquired Dobson raising his eyebrows.

  Toomey drew back in his chair to consider the prospect. ‘We could always put out a contract.‘

  ‘A contract!’ repeated Brown breaking into a smile. ‘You’ve been watching too many American movies on television. If we did that and were found out, we’d all go to jail.’

  ‘I think you’re all looking at it from the wrong angle,’ cut in Reilly, an accountant with his own business who had listened to them so far in silence. ‘Why don’t we do nothing. Simply let him get on with it. A few people might follow him but the rest will tired of him quickly. In that way, none of us will get involved in any illegal action. People will drift away in a few weeks’ time regarding him as a crank. You mark my words!’

  ‘And if they don’t?’ retorted Toomey bluntly. ‘What if he becomes a religious force in the district. We can’t put the genie back into the bottle. We’ll have missed out chance to stop him at square one.’

  ‘You’re all too emotionally overcome by the situation,’ continued Reilly. ‘You’ve too much faith in his view. How many people are really interested in religion these days? On Sunday mornings the churches are three-quarters empty. Hardly anyone goes to church any more. With that fact in mind, how many people will start to believe there are many Gods in Heaven. You can count them on the fingers of your hands.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Hamilton miserably. ‘The churches are practically empty on Sundays.’

  ‘I can also add that most of the congregation is pretty old in years at that,’ Reilly went on unabated. ‘As soon as they pass on, there’ll be even less people attending the services.’

  ‘Point taken,’ uttered the Chairman solemnly. ‘Maybe we’re over-reacting. Perhaps we ought to listen to Mr. Reilly’s suggestion and leave Warrior to his own devices.’ He pointed to the article in front of him. ‘Look at the damage we’ve done by interfering at the meeting. We’ve almost promoted his cause but bringing other people’s attention to it.’ He now regretted having asked Gabby Saunders to lead them in the fight in the Community Centre. However what had been done was done. There was no point in dwelling upon it because no one could do anything about the past.

  ‘I don’t think Mr. Toomey’s right,’ added Dobson firmly. ‘If we ignore him it’ll allow him to build a base. His movement will have gained credence and it’ll be impossible to get back to square one.’

  ’Any action by this committee will spur the man on,’ Reilly told him point-blank. ‘The article in The Bulletin’s a typical example. When you tread in paint, you’re bound to make a great mess. Leave him alone. Let him struggle to find his followers. He’ll fade into infinity by himself.’

  At that moment, the door opened and Mrs. Hamilton entered. ‘I’m taking orders for tea and coffee,’ she offered politely.

  Her husband stared at her searching for a way for the committee to make a decision. ‘What do you think we should do about this man Warrior, dear?’ he asked her.

  She stared at them all for a moment and then inhaled deeply. ‘I would fight him tooth and nail,’ she rendered slowly. ‘Disrupt him at every meeting and stop him from trying to influence the minds of innocent people. Why should a strange come into our midst to spread seditious lies and try to undermine our religious beliefs? The danger is that he’ll sow the seeds and they’ll grow.’ She paused as she finished her tirade. ‘How many teas and coffees?’

  After she had left the room, the Chairman turned to the rest of the committee. ‘She’s right,’ he said quietly. ‘He’ll sow the seeds and they’ll grow. Some people will believe him and pass the word on. His views may become contagious and eventually get out of hand.’

  ‘You’re letting your emotions get the better of you,’ criticised Reilly. ‘You’re over-reacting to a man who simply claims that he’s a messenger of the Gods... not a Messiah come to deliver the people of this world!’

  ‘A Messiah!’ exclaimed Dobson, his white moustache quivering. ‘That’ll be the day when a man like Warrior becomes the Messiah!’

  ‘What about digging up the dirt from his past?’ suggested Brown, exited that he had come up with an idea that might resolve the problem. ‘Everyone has a skeleton in the cupboard. If we could find out something disreputable about him, the Press would lap it up. Something like ‘Preacher fined for shop-lifting’ or ‘Messenger of the Gods accused of rape’.’

  ‘Good idea,’ uttered Dobson, ‘but how do we find out that stuff? But we know nothing about him. We don’t even know where he comes from.’

  The room fell silent for a few minutes as Hamilton fingered the newspaper article. ‘What concerns me, is that it’s not as though Warrior’s turned up with a new religious idea, he relates to worship that was practised by million so of people in different countries such as the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Romans.’. It’s not a new concept. ‘

  ‘Did those believers make sacrifices to the Gods?’ asked Toomey, introducing a new line of thought.

  ‘That’s right,’ concurred Brown puffing and panting excitedly. ‘We can get him on that one. Human sacrifices!’

  ‘Before you let your imaginations run away wit
h you,’ intervened Reilly adamantly, ‘sacrifices didn’t have to be human. Most people offered incense or food.’

  ‘But they could be human sacrifices,’ insisted Toomey, eager for the others to latch on to his idea.

  ‘If you’re thinking about the sacrifice of young children and virgins to certain Gods, forget it!’ remarked Dobson curtly. ‘No one would ever believe he was preaching that. Not in this day and age!’

  ‘Very remote,’ declared the Chairman, dismissing the idea out of hand. ‘We’d be ridiculed for making the suggestion.’

  ‘Ah,,’ continued Toomey. ‘If rumours were spread around about it, people would be disinclined to go to his meetings.’

  ‘As soon as people realise you’re out to get him with malicious rumours, you’re done for,’ submitted Reilly boldly. ‘You’ll throw support in his direction instead of frightening people to stay away.’

  ‘I know someone who’d be willing to undertake a contract on the man,’ suggested Toomey veering away fro the comments of the last speaker. ‘He’d do it at a price... just to break his legs mind you.’

  ‘Break a man’s legs and you put him out for six weeks,’ responded Dobson moodily. ‘What happens after that? Do we take out another contract to break them again?’

  ‘Well apart from the fact that it’s illegal,’ reacted Brown sharply, ‘it’s unchristian! We’ll be no better than he is if we do that.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ stated the Chairman frankly. ‘We need to confine our ideas to constructive methods to prevent the man from spreading seditious lies.’

  Reilly smiled casually. ‘I’m open to ideas but I still think we should do absolutely nothing.’

  ‘That’s the problem, Mr. Reilly,’ declared Hamilton tiredly. ‘If we did nothing we might find that we were too late.’

  ‘Well there is an alternative plan,’ continued Reilly. ‘Invite him to our next committee meeting. Tell him of our views and thoughts. Explain our continued resistance to his public meetings. We may be able to make him see sense. He might be persuaded to take his preaching somewhere else or even give up his quest altogether.’

  ‘Fat chance of that!’ snapped Toomey curtly. ‘He’s not going to give up... not without a fight.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s right,’ echoed Brown blowing out his cheeks again. He had begun to experience a feeling of malaise which meant that his blood-pressure was rising again. Feeling in his pocket for a brown bottle, he removed a tablet from it which he placed in his mouth before returned the bottle to his pocket. He swallowed the tablet assisted by the glass of water in front of him. ‘If we invited him here,’ he warned, ‘he’d try to convert all of us.’

  ‘To sum up,’ concluded the Chairman dolefully, ‘ we can do nothing, we can resist passively, or we can resist physically. We can take out a contract with someone to break his legs or invited him to our next committee meeting to talk with him. There are five of us and we’ve tabled five options for consideration. What do we do?’

  ‘Let him stew in his own juice!’ insisted Reilly undaunted. ‘He’ll soon run out of steam and move on.’

  ‘I say we put him out of action and break his legs,’ pressed Toomey carelessly, casting aside his concern about the consequence.

  ‘We resist him passively,’ urged Dobson hastily, ‘in a similar way Gandhi did in India.’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ muttered Brown, shrugging his shoulders aimlessly as Hamilton glanced in his direction. ‘I’ll go with the tide. Whatever the committee agrees.’

  ‘I’m all out for physical resistance... but in moderation, of course,’ stated the Chairman. ‘It’s the only way I know how to stop him.’

  The door opened and Mrs Hamilton returned to bring in the refreshment on a trolley. She handed out cups of tea and coffee to them before asking the obvious questions.

  ‘Have you come to a conclusion yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ replied her husband sheepishly. ‘We seem to be hung up on a number of different issues.’

  ‘You know what they did with people like him in the old days... they were locked up in prison for heresy and held for trial in which they were always found guilty. Then they were hanged or beheaded.’ She smiled at them easily and then left the room.

  ‘It’s a novel idea, uttered Toomey with a smile touching his lips. ‘Imprison him for heresy.’

  ‘There’s no such thing these days,’ countered the Chairman. ‘He hasn’t done anything illegal. There’s no reason for the authorities to imprison him.’

  ‘Not them... us!’ continued Toomey. ‘We find a place to imprison him and keep his out of the way for ever... like the movies ‘The Man in the Iron Mask!’’

  ‘Are you nuts!’ yelled Brown almost choking as his blood-pressure reached a high point. ‘Do you know what would happen to us if they found out. We’d all go to jail and they’d throw away the key!’

  ‘What about a full contact on him?’ suggested Toomey becoming tired at all the wrangling.

  ‘What’s a full contract?’ asked Dobson naively.

  ‘We dispose of him entirely. We make sure he’s despatched to his Gods!’

  ‘Well I have to agree with you, Mr. Toomey,’ added Reilly changing his view. ‘We either do nothing or we get rid of him. Nothing else will work.’

  ‘Let’s not go into the realms of fantasy!’ warned the Chairman seriously. ‘We’re all Christians and I won’t hear of any moves to terminate life.’

  ‘Then we’re stuck with him,’ returned Reilly harshly. ‘And I have to say that, as a committee, we’re pretty useless!’

  ‘Not if we use passive resistance, ‘ insisted Dobson.

  ‘But what do we do?’ asked Brown, becoming impatient with the discussion which appeared to be headed nowhere ‘Go to meetings and stand there like idiots?’

  ‘You may say that,’ explained Dobson, his white moustache continuing to quiver. ‘We fill up the room with our own people. In that way there’s no room for anyone else to get in.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to find about two hundred people each time he holds a meeting,’ observed Reilly. ‘You can’t get twenty-five people in your church. Where are you going to find two hundred?’

  ‘We do it by word of mouth, by advertising, by placing posters in strategic places and delivering leaflets through letter-boxes,’ claimed Dobson adamantly. ‘That’ll bring us the support we need.’

  ‘In a pig’s ear!’ rattled Toomey in frustration. He realised that his bold methods were falling on deaf ears and that the committee was heading towards adopting negative measures. ‘You’re living in a dream world. All people want to do is to watch television or videos every evening.’

  The committee reverted t their refreshments for a short while and the room fell silent.

  ‘I’ve come to a conclusion,’ declared the Chairman afterwards, ‘which is a personal one. I’m in favour of Mr. Reilly suggestion... to do nothing for the time being. However we need to monitor the man’s progress, Let’s meet again in a month’s time and assess the position then.’

  ‘You’ll have lost control of the situation by then,’ countered Toomey irately. ‘If we follow your lead, Warrior will have a free hand to say what he likes.’

  ‘I think we can let him off the leash for another month,’ returned Hamilton calmly.

  There was a great deal of muttering amongst the members of the committee but the Chairman closed the meeting a few minutes later. Toomey strongly resented the decision but he had no option but to go along with the others. At least that’s what he agreed to do for the present. However in his mind there lay another plan... one that was more specific to the community and to Christianity. He was a determined man and, as such, one not to be denied!

  ***

  The town clock struck ten the following morning when Sheila Warrior rapped continuously on he
r husband’s door. He opened it to find out who was causing the racket to encounter the angry face of his wife. She shook the latest issue of The Bulletin in front of his face

  ‘I see you’re causing trouble in this neighbourhood as well,’ she fumed, her eyes flashing angrily.

  ‘Ah, Sutter,’ he exclaimed, referring to the reporter who wrote the article.

  ‘You maniac!’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Maniac! Why do you persist with such nonsense?’

  He shook his head slowly as his face showed his displeasure at seeing her. ‘Why have you come, Sheila? What’s the reason?’

  She moved her face close to his in a menacing manner. ‘Ill give you a reason!’ she savaged. ‘In fact I’ll give you two reasons! Your son and your daughter! Where’s the maintenance you owe me? Where’s the money to feed and clothe them?’

  ‘There is no money,’ he told her blandly. ‘My role in life has changed since you threw me out of the matrimonial home.’

  She moved away overcome by emotion. ‘You bastard!’ she swore. ‘You lousy stinking bastard!’

  ‘I said I’d subscribe if I could but I can’t. I have no money.’

  ‘You can’t!’ she snorted with contempt.

  He stood back in the doorway to allow her to enter. ‘Come in and look for yourself,’ he invited. She moved past him into one of the rooms and looked around bleakly. ‘Do you have a television set, a video recorder, a refrigerator, a washing-machine?’

  ‘What about them?’ she asked somewhat puzzled.

  He waved his arm around the room. ‘As you’ll observe, I don’t have any of those appliances. I live a Spartan life because I have no money. End of story!’

  ‘Then I suggest you go out and find work,’ she spat in annoyance determined to make her point.