Such Men Are Dangerous

by Stephen Benatar

  “Then you may have mine, with pleasure. And, Mother, so long as you don’t harp on about my vocabulary, you’d be quite welcome to join us.”

  While he hung up her coat Geraldine had the opportunity to glance into a wall mirror. He held open the door to what was obviously his study.

  Mrs Madison had gone to fetch the Horlicks. Geraldine was waved to a large and comfortable armchair. The room was a pleasing mix of ancient and modern—the armchair modern. Simon stood for a moment with his back towards her, looking up at the crucifix over his desk. While he did so, she noted the framed black-and-white photograph of an attractive young woman with dark hair. She noticed, too, the yellow plastic dog that sat by it, soppy-looking, quite sweet, yet curiously out of keeping with what other ornaments were in the room. But then he turned and took a bottle and a glass from a cupboard near the bookcase. “That’s better,” he said. “Do you find it warm enough in here?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “I apologize for my vocabulary.”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  “Perhaps you were lucky not to do so this evening.”

  “I have to admit it wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. Frankly, I still can’t see the reason for it.”

  “Because as soon as this story breaks—tomorrow, I imagine—”

  “It may not be tomorrow. They were certainly holding space for it but it’s possible they’ll decide to wait until Wednesday, then launch it with a big splash: headlines, photographs, the works.”

  “Tomorrow or Wednesday,” he said, “it really makes no difference. Unless…” In the midst of pouring his whisky he stopped and looked at her more hopefully. “Unless that means you can get them to hold it indefinitely. Well, for a period, say, of three to four weeks. Then you can publish with my blessing, splash it about in luminous vermilion, in fiery letters six feet high.” He must have seen her expression, Geraldine thought, because suddenly he gave a shrug and his optimism went. He turned, continued pouring the whisky, then replaced the cap. Mrs Madison came in with the Horlicks and a plate of biscuits but she didn’t stay. “You can tell me all about it later.” Geraldine noticed the habitual slight severity of her expression softened as she looked at him. “I’ll see you later, Miss Coe. Or, if I don’t, then I’ll hope to meet you on some future occasion.”

  “Because as soon as this story breaks…?” prompted Geraldine, after Mrs Madison had left.

  “Then it turns into nothing but a three-ring circus. The Sun gets hold of it, the Mirror, the Mail. We’ll have ‘The Disco Angel with the Song of Love’ and the standard girlie photos all winking their encouragement. Sensationalism, ridicule! It wasn’t what I wanted, it wasn’t what I thought to get. I’ve already seen the Bishops of Grimsby and Lincoln. I’ve set up appointments to meet four more bishops during the week, plus a number of others in the C of E who hold a position of influence. I’ve made an application to the Church’s Council for Health and Healing. I’ve done everything within my power to set the ball rolling…I mean in a controlled and dignified manner. And all for what, Miss Coe?” He clenched his free hand into a fist and pounded the arm of his chair with it, three times. “And all—for—what?”

  She felt incensed, as though he were using his fist as a weapon of intimidation. It wasn’t part of her job to put forward her own opinions at a time like this and on dozens of apparently more provocative occasions she had managed not to; but tonight (perhaps she was unduly tired) some demon of perversity appeared to take possession of her.

  “Is dignity so all-important?”

  “I should have said so, yes. Don’t you think that a heavenly revelation, or what I for one accept wholeheartedly as such, deserves to be treated with awe, not with hysteria? It asks for action, not exploitation. For alarm, even. What it doesn’t ask for is a retreat into jokiness and facetiousness. Just make a noise, pretend it isn’t there.”

  “But awe—action—alarm.” She slowly numbered these responses on her fingers. “Yet no mention of joy?” She felt that for better or worse she was committed now. “And there are a couple of other things which strike me as a little odd.”

  For a moment he massaged his forehead lightly with one hand, covering his eyes.

  “Yes, Miss Coe, you’re right. Of course one shouldn’t leave out joy. What’s happened here is obviously a proof of God’s existence and of his wish to be merciful. Great! And joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit, should be totally—yes, totally—integral. But at the same time I can’t help thinking that if a messenger arrives to announce what an awful cock-up the world has made of things and to warn it of imminent catastrophe, then your natural urge to shout whoopee may seem a little out of place. Particularly if you’ve always taken God’s existence and the question of his concern pretty much for granted anyway. But clearly you see the matter differently?”

  She emitted a small laugh.

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t dare!”

  “Now you make it sound as if I’m trying to browbeat you.” Naturally by this time he had taken his hand away from his eyes but he still looked extremely weary. “What were the other points you mentioned?”

  “Well…” She slightly shifted her position in the armchair, straightened her back a little. “The first is, I get the feeling that in general you don’t have a very high opinion of people. They’re not really to be trusted.”

  He shrugged then gave a very faint smile.

  “I wonder if that could largely be because…in general…I haven’t?”

  There was a mildly disconcerting silence.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “But aren’t you going to add anything to that?”

  “If you like. I think that people are capable of great things on occasion, great moments of heroism and tenderness and sacrifice, especially when they forget to rely on themselves and when they place their full dependence where it ought to be. But otherwise…”

  “Yes? Otherwise?”

  “I think that on the whole they’re more than merely weak and self-centred, more than merely ineffectual and misguided. I think that even if we omit altogether the problem of real hardcore evil they’re still, by and large, petty-minded, hypocritical, uncharitable, jealous, greedy. Do I need to go on?”

  “I didn’t realize,” she answered, equably, “that the Christian viewpoint was only another term for misanthropy.”

  He smiled again, and less faintly than before. “A Christian, surely, doesn’t have to be blind to people’s faults, shouldn’t try to pretend they simply don’t exist? Why are we here at all, if not for the sake of self-improvement? No, surely, while seeing how very far from perfect everyone still is, the Christian nevertheless attempts to love him, in the same way that he loves himself?”

  “All the time you’ve spoken of ‘them’, the sinful wicked people, not of ‘us’.”

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t deliberate.”

  She said: “Some people, perhaps, are more adept at loving themselves than they are others? Which, as it happens, is the second thing that rather struck me.” She turned to the previous page in her notepad. “Do you mind if I read back some of your own words?”

  “Obviously in a minute I’m very much going to. But, anyhow, fire away.”

  Now that she had come this far, however, she began to experience doubt. It was an unfortunate moment in which to waver. “That is, if I can ever untangle this abominable shorthand of mine…”

  “Miss Coe,” Simon told her, “please feel free to be as blunt as you like. It really doesn’t matter. My back is broad.”

  So he brought it on himself.

  “Then listen to this,” she said. “All taken from a single speech. ‘It wasn’t what I wanted, it wasn’t what I thought to get…I’ve already seen the Bishops of Grimsby and Lincoln…I’ve set up appointments…I’ve made an application…I’ve done everything within my power…’” She looked up from the notepad and willed herself to meet his gaze. “‘I’ve done everything within my power.’”
/>   “I didn’t say that twice.”

  “What sound do you hear the loudest behind those words?”

  “Supposing you tell me?”

  “Self-assertion, would you say? Self-concern? Self-pity? In any case, self of some kind.”

  “Why are you so bitter, Miss Coe?”

  “I really don’t believe I am. It’s just that I resent complacency. ‘I know what’s going to be best!’”

  “And you’re perfectly right to resent it. Thank you for pointing mine out to me.”

  “Oh, please don’t turn the other cheek. I couldn’t stand it.”

  “The perfect clergyman,” he said. He grimaced. But his face still appeared flushed.

  “Self-parody,” she added. She looked into her lap. “Now I do begin to feel deflated.”

  “Is this the way, though,” he asked, “that you generally conduct your interviews? The local press seems to go about it differently.”

  She shook her head. “Honestly I’m not too sure what got into me.”

  “Certainly not your Horlicks.”

  “No, I’d forgotten that. In fact, it’s still drinkable. May I pass you a biscuit?”

  A temporary cessation, or a permanent ceasefire?

  “Have you heard anything of what you need to know?”

  “Yes, certainly I have. I’d like to hear, however, why you changed your mind about the validity of the boys’ story.”

  He told her, simply and concisely. Geraldine admired his fluency. Then he stood up; it was clear the time allotted to her had elapsed. “I suppose it’s no good my asking you, is it, if you could possibly use your influence to try to postpone things? That would help, immeasurably.”

  She said: “You don’t understand. Only the bosses can ever wield influence of that sort. I am sorry.”

  “Well, in that case there’s no more to be done. It’ll have to be left in God’s hand…where, of course, it should have been from the beginning. I’d better drive you home.”

  They didn’t speak much in the car. She had got into a muddle with her seat belt and he had patiently sorted it out. Again, he had to unclasp it for her at the other end; she was sure there must be something defective in the miserable device. He probably kept it that way on purpose: to demonstrate his superiority over anybody sitting on his left-hand. (Or was it the right-hand the privileged were said to sit upon?)

  She had asked him if the girl in the photograph was his fiancée. He had answered only, “No.” She had too much pride to pursue the matter—in any journalist, of course, another highly prized characteristic.

  Standing now on the pavement outside the hotel she said to him through his drawn-down window:

  “I hope your headache has cleared.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’m sorry we don’t appear to have hit it off. Clashes of personality…I suppose they’re sometimes inevitable? But please believe me: I’ll be as fair as possible in whatever I write about all this.” She added: “Thank you for the lift.”

  He didn’t say anything, only held up a hand in acknowledgment. Then he drove away without another glance, as if already she were slipping from his mind. Well, sod that, she thought. At least he, too, could have made some attempt at an apology; could have got out of the car perhaps and shaken hands? She’d always believed it took more than one to have a clash.

  27

  But did it really? She awoke next morning after a sound night’s sleep and started to remember. It wasn’t Josh Heath that she thought about principally, nor any of his family, nor indeed his contentious revelation; it was that whole strange episode at the vicarage. Oh God, oh God, oh God. And as she thought about it her entire body seemed to contract with embarrassment and shame.

  Not to mention her soul.

  Why had she been so resistant? Was it his sheer physical attractiveness she had reacted to? (Hey! Look at me, everyone! I’m not susceptible!) Was it that air he had of always having his own way? (A mother who ran out to make sure he wasn’t getting chilled then scurried off to make him hot drinks—which, anyway, as like as not he spurned—had he even said thank you? Probably since childhood everyone had spoilt him, shielded him, made sure he’d never suffer.) Was it his smugness? Especially if anyway you’ve always taken God’s existence and the question of his concern pretty much for granted. Or was it the irritatingly exaggerated respect a vicar still enjoyed amongst his parishioners? (Even in London—so what on earth must it be like up here?) Or was it, perhaps, none of the above? Was it the old woman with sour breath and a growth of beard and a collecting box who had waylaid her the other day on Ludgate Hill, wanting to know if she were saved and thrusting a pamphlet into her contemptibly docile hand? (Four printed sides of rubbish that had cost her 50p.) Why had she behaved as she had?

  She reviewed their entire conversation; tried to sort out where things had started to go wrong. He had been angry but not with her personally. (Indeed, she agreed with his assessment of the gutter press and couldn’t in any way have taken it as an indictment of all Fleet Street. She agreed, too, with his probable assessment of Josh Heath. The louse had played a deeply rotten trick on him—not only on him but on his own wife and children. Possibly on the world?) And then he had given her the full reason for his anger; well, there was nothing wrong with that and she had asked him for it in any case. Self-pity? Self-concern? (Had she really said those things? What single shred of justification had she had? He was only a man who’d been doing his job, to the utmost of his ability. And to be absolutely fair, he didn’t even have an air of always getting his own way—that aura of smugness was likewise, she knew, purely something she’d been doing her best to foist on him: he simply stated his beliefs quite straightforwardly, without dogmatism but without apology.) And he was surely right about the ridicule which people tended to heap on things which, for whatever reason, they felt unwilling to accept; you couldn’t trust them to be responsible, neither in their actions nor their attitudes. But time and again what she returned to was that dreadful allegation of hers; and, despite the repetition, her embarrassment lost nothing of its edge. Even as she’d read back to him what she had written, the evidence for such a charge had suddenly seemed thin, woefully thin. So, if even at the time…And, after all, the man was only human—besides being angry, disappointed, tired—and with a head that ached. Why in heaven’s name, merely because he was articulate, should she expect him to express himself without flaw? Why in heaven’s name should she expect him actually to be without flaw? Okay, then, a strand or two of egotism? Would that be so unnatural, so wholly unforgivable? Was she herself without it? Perhaps to be breathtakingly holier-than-thou, it wasn’t necessary to be a Christian.

  No.

  Even if it should turn out to be the most humiliating task she had ever been called upon to undertake, she had to make amends for what had happened yesterday.

  As far as it were possible.

  She reached the vicarage at the very moment he was about to leave it. Had she stopped for breakfast she would have missed him altogether. She offered up a pointless little word of gratitude.

  “May I ask for ten more minutes of your time?”

  He closed the car door with a slam and led her back into his study.

  “First and foremost,” she said, “I want to apologize.”

  He answered slowly. “But you did that last night—and I’m not even convinced you have anything to apologize for.” He motioned her to sit down.

  “That’s kind,” she said, “but untrue. And that sad little spiel about a personality clash was not only tepid, it was insincere. I now want to apologize unreservedly and to own myself entirely in the wrong, with no excuse whatever for such terrible manners. Those I could have done something about, even if my sheer stupidity was maybe less controllable. I was snide and detestable throughout, as well as being just plain wrong. No, please don’t say otherwise; I really have this need to grovel.”

  “Don’t you think, though, you may now have grovelled enough?”r />
  “No, honestly, I don’t. But perhaps I’ll let you off the rest if you’ll shake my hand and tell me that I’m fully, however undeservingly, forgiven.”

  He did as she requested. They hadn’t yet sat down. Now they did so.

  Overhead, she heard the sound of furniture being moved about. Sporadic snatches of song. Short bursts of hoovering.

  “And can you look me in the eye and say there’s not a scrap of ill feeling left between us?”

  “Not a scrap.”

  “Thank you.” She drew her hand away and smiled. “I feel all cleansed and as if I’d been allowed to make a new start. I wish you had a church roof which was falling down, or something of that nature.”

  “That’s a very kind thought,” he said. “And as a matter of fact we have—what church hasn’t? Yet why?”

  “Then may I contribute something small towards it? I don’t mean on behalf of the Chronicle but on behalf of me, as a sign that I wish to do something practical with my penitence.”

  “It isn’t necessary.”

  “Couldn’t you see it as my procuring an indulgence?”

  He laughed, and accepted the twenty pounds she held out to him. “Well, I don’t know I can see it quite as that but, if you’re sure, the church roof will certainly be grateful. This is extremely generous. You wouldn’t prefer more time to think about it?”

  “I should only feel I hadn’t paid enough.”

  “In that case, thank you.”

  “What I really wish my penitence could achieve is put off publication of the story.”

  He nodded.

  “By the way,” she said, “there isn’t any word of it this morning.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’d very much like you to believe me. If I could have suppressed it…”

  “As recompense, do you think you could suppress Josh Heath?”

  “That might—I’m not too sure—be marginally easier.” She added: “Do you know what occurred to me earlier? Joshua’s the Hebrew name for Jesus, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mildly paradoxical?”