Such Men Are Dangerous

by Stephen Benatar

  “All right, forget the tidal wave,” said Josh. He leaned back and tried to derive inspiration from a watercolour which most likely dated from the nineteen-twenties and had a caption Trust the Umpire! “How about this? Why not let Gabriel put in a second appearance? To you and Geraldine and me; if he came now he could join us in a nightcap. All he’d have to say is, ‘Cheers, you brilliant little trio, well done, here’s to your continuing success!’ Which, may I submit, is hardly going to tinker with anyone’s free will?”

  “Except ours.”

  “No, I don’t see it.”

  “Josh, you’re asking for authentication. God wants faith to be our touchstone. Life would be very easy if there were little dollops of proof awaiting us at every turn.”

  “But a small sign of his approval—a bit of skywriting or another rainbow—would that really be too much to ask?”

  “Yes, if his purpose is to test us.”

  “I thought his present purpose, his overriding purpose, was to make the world a better place.”

  “Yet he doesn’t lose sight of the individual even in his concern for the mass.”

  “Then perhaps he ought,” grumbled Josh. “He doesn’t have to impress me with all that multi-tasking.”

  “Josh, do you want to go home?”

  “Well, since you ask…” His tone was still light, although he remembered his dream of getting away from Scunthorpe, of finding a life far more fulfilling. He couldn’t really understand why but this dream had now lost a lot of its pulling power.

  “Then go.”

  “You mean, without you? No. I was talking about the three of us. The three of us! Geraldine, you haven’t said a word. Have we sent you to sleep?”

  “No, no, I’ve been listening and trying to work out exactly what…”

  “Geraldine, do you want to go home?” asked Simon, when she paused.

  She said slowly, “Like Josh, I certainly wouldn’t be happy to do so on my own.”

  “We’re still a fair distance from London and—if you remember—I announced publicly my intention of walking to London.”

  Again, it seemed something new in Simon: this use of mild sarcasm. “Then announce publicly,” broke in Josh, “that you have now—through experience—judged it wiser to change your mind. It’s not a sin to change your mind.”

  “Yes, it would be, in this case. So I suggest, Josh, you have a good night’s rest and then you’ll feel fresh to return to Scunthorpe in the morning.”

  “You know, I might almost take that as positive permission to be sinful.” Josh smiled. “Anyhow, there’s no way I would leave you both.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I respect you too much, respect the pair of you, although I’m not addressing this next bit to Geraldine. I just wish you weren’t so pigheaded and could see that there are other ways to bring about what you want to bring about; and that I and lots of others would do everything we could to help you…Eh, Jericho?” Absent-mindedly he had slipped back into using a name he was fond of but nowadays realized would be tactless. He didn’t even know he’d said it.

  Simon, however, didn’t appear to have heard any of that last bit. “Want to bring about?” he repeated, a little mystifyingly. “That’s only part of it. More exactly—what I’ve been asked to bring about, given the duty to bring about…And, no, there are no other ways.”

  “Wouldn’t you think that’s a hell of a duty to place on the shoulders of any one individual?”

  “Yes. I would.”

  But there was neither rancour nor pride in the utterance of that statement, it sounded purely matter-of-fact.

  Geraldine’s utterance was a lot less neutral. “I think it’s a duty more than anyone could bear.”

  “Nobody is given more to bear than he’s capable of bearing. And as I say, it’s a test.” Simon’s voice suddenly acquired a tremor. “I feel honoured.”

  “Honoured?” exclaimed Josh. “The very fact you can use that word! Doesn’t it strike you it could be a form of arrogance?”

  “Oh, Josh, Josh…,” said Geraldine. She stood up. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m shattered. I think I have to go to bed.”

  “I can well see why you’d say that,” replied Simon, after she had gone.

  “Is it a form of arrogance?”

  “Possibly—and, if it is, God would certainly be counting on it. I’m sure he uses all the traits in somebody’s character, good or bad, to help him achieve his purpose.”

  Josh laughed. “And is that, then, your definition of free will?”

  Simon said wearily: “Josh, go home. You’ve been wonderful—a tower of strrength—and I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. But now it’s time for you to go back to Dawn and the children.”

  “No. Not without you. Whether you realize it or not, you plainly aren’t yourself any longer. You’ve changed, and in some ways, I’d say, not for the better. I’m sure God never intended that. I remember the man who tried—and tried again—to get me to have a pint with him and who laughed about our handbook, How to be the Perfect Clergyman. Would he laugh now? Where have you gone, Simon? The essential you? What’s the number of that paragraph which deals with arrogance?”

  “I’m really sorry if the essential me has disappeared, rather than—on the contrary—risen to the surface. But people have to develop, Josh, in accordance with the times. In accordance with a duty that’s finally been revealed to them.”

  “Oh—and you keep on talking about duty! Duty, duty, duty! Stuff duty! I hate it.”

  “But you yourself, Josh, have developed in accordance with the times. I called you a tower of strength just now. I didn’t do so lightly. It’s a term which Ginny would sometimes…What I mean is, it’s a phrase I always associate with her.”

  “Your wife?” Josh knew she’d been his wife but couldn’t think what else to say.

  “Yes. And tonight she happens to be especially on my mind. It’s this place…the way it overlooks a village green. Also that picture I saw you looking at. Reminds me of a cricket game I once took part in. While I waited to bat, the two of us were lounging on the grass, her grandmother and great-aunts were sitting in their deckchairs…” He stopped, his expression more relaxed. “But, then, she’s always on my mind. Literally not an hour goes by when I don’t in some way draw comfort from her presence. It was she who wanted me to be a vicar.”

  Josh said nothing.

  “I truly feel she walks beside us and that if anything hurtful were ever to happen to me”—he bit his lip for a second—“I know that she’d be right there to hold my hand. Basically, it’s largely the thought of Ginny which enables me to carry on. More than that: gives me the inspiration and the willpower, even the courage—the sheer physical courage—to make sure that I’ll keep going.”

  There was a fairly long pause.

  “Would you ever consider marrying again?”

  “No. I shall never do that.”

  “I think Geraldine might be rather sorry to hear it. I suppose you realize she’s in love with you?”

  Simon nodded.

  “And in other circumstances—who knows what might have happened? But, no, I’ve been shown that I shall never get married again.” Yet, despite the repetition, his words sounded hesitant and once more his voice revealed the hint ofa tremor.

  “Shown?”

  This question was ignored, but in favour of something far less intense. “It’s pretty clear she’s fond of you, as well.”

  “There was a time when she was anything but that!”

  “Though—as I must have told you in a dozen different ways—you too, Josh, are a changed man. And, in your case, most definitely for the better!”

  “Thank you. I hope so. However, I trust you’re not encouraging me to think of Geraldine romantically!”

  “Of course not.”

  They went to their rooms soon afterwards. Josh slept well. Simon didn’t, but anyway he had more or less given up the idea of being able to sleep. Or even of wanting to
. Although for much of the day he felt so tired there were moments when it was hard to keep his eyes open he nonetheless had no wish to squander his nights mainly in a state of unconsciousness. It would have been an escape, yes, but it would also have meant a reawakening. He wondered how a person felt awakening on the day of execution. And, besides that, time was much too precious. Although he wanted to rest and be recharged as fully as was humanly possible he also wanted to spend each hour in preparation: in thinking, remembering, coming to accept the things that had to be: in communing with his God as peaceably and as submissively as he could.

  43

  The next day was November 5th. In the evening there was to be a firework display, together with a bonfire: a bonfire visualized as being so large—their landlady had mentioned whilst serving them breakfast—that locals had spent over twelve hours building it. Both Geraldine and Josh had persuaded Simon of the great opportunity awaiting them here; they felt surprised that persuasion should have been necessary and that Simon’s objections should have seemed not simply atypical but even feeble—chiefly to do with people being in the sort of festive mood non-conducive to any consideration of serious issues.

  In the end, though, Simon relented and gave them the real, if slightly inarticulate, reason.

  “When I was a kid…a bonfire pretty much like tonight’s…a couple of stray cats must have sought shelter…exits either got cut off—or in their panic the cats simply couldn’t find one. And their screams weren’t recognized until it was far too late to do anything.”

  He shrugged.

  “I dreamt about that blaze for weeks; and—ever since—have found it hard even to go anywhere near a bonfire.”

  They sympathized, of course: with the cats, with Simon, with everyone who’d been there. But, after a minute or so, they grew practical.

  “Yet don’t forget,” observed Josh, “that we do have a megaphone. You wouldn’t need to go within a dozen yards of the bonfire.”

  “And, yes,” added Geraldine, “people in a jolly mood mightn’t want to listen to a preacher, not to any old common or garden preacher, but Simon you’re different, a celebrity—”

  “A charlatan?”

  “No, not at all. Yet even if that were true you’d still be a very handsome charlatan, so don’t underestimate the difference sex appeal can make. In other words,” she said, “a charlatan with charisma. Lots of pull at the box-office!”

  Yesterday, Josh might have felt a lot more jealous than today.

  “Oh, yes?” said Simon. “No doubt they’ll be queuing up for autographs?”

  “Or else queuing up to give theirs,” she answered.

  And in the end she prevailed; and it turned out roughly as she’d foretold. Far from being resentful of any interruption to its enjoyment the crowd showed itself by and large to be good-natured—with scores of its members ready to furnish their signatures. Even some of the initial excitement appeared to have returned.

  Otherwise it was the old story. Their signatures would have to stand proxy for the signatories. Next morning the original three were still on their own.

  Simon seemed more than usually disappointed.

  He eventually explained why. In part.

  “A vow is a vow and I’ve made an unbreakable one.”

  “One needn’t ask to whom,” commented Josh.

  “Yes, directly to God of course, but indirectly to the world itself. A vow that will show how very much we care! Somebody has to show his appreciation of God’s message. Somebody has to show the lengths he’ll go to, to express his acceptance of its truth. It’s really now or never and there’s got to be some effective way in which to make the government give us its full attention.”

  “We ought to make contact with the women of Greenham Common!” declared Geraldine. This wasn’t wholly in response to Simon’s last remark but was certainly an offshoot.

  “The women of Greenham Common ought to make contact with us!”

  “Yes. True.”

  “There’s absolutely no alternative. It’s utterly crucial we renounce Trident! Then with all those billions saved we have to get rid of disease and starvation in the Third World; eliminate poverty over here. That’ll be a start. Obviously, we shan’t get Utopia in the first week.”

  If Margaret Thatcher stayed in charge, reflected Josh, we shouldn’t get it in the first decade—or century.

  Simon guessed what he was thinking.

  “If, in the face of everything we do, the government remains obdurate (although I can hardly believe it will: despite all outside differences and discontents it is made up of well-intentioned people, many of them religious) then the way forward will clearly be to work on basic popular opinion. We’re a democracy, remember. And what’s more, unless angels have indeed appeared in other countries, Britain will patently have been chosen to lead the field.” Simon smiled, a little twistedly. “That is an honour, you understand.”

  Josh returned the smile. “Arrogant, I know, but other visitations…well, I’m sure we’d be aware of them in the same way that Gabriel’s visit to Scunthorpe—so one hears—has been reported all across the globe.”

  “In that case, leading the field will plainly mean leading the world. Leading through example.”

  Neither Josh nor Geraldine could help remembering that old and well-known argument: that if Britain relinquished her nuclear deterrents, and even managed to get America and theWest to follow suit, where would that then leave them if countries like Russia, say, or Iran or Iraq, decided to retain (or in some cases develop) their own weapons of war.

  But they had long since realized something. Simon was intractable in matters such as this. He had the idealist’s viewpoint, the fanatic’s viewpoint, and such viewpoints were invariably and inevitably simplistic. Blinkered.

  Yet they also realized that they themselves had now come to share this viewpoint—even if the renunciations in question should prove flagrantly unilateral. How extraordinary was that!

  “Anyway, this vow of yours?” asked Josh. “What does it entail?”

  “That, I can’t go into.”

  “I suppose you’re not thinking you might kill yourself, as a way to point a moral?” Though the question was put playfully it proceeded from a serious foundation. “‘Vicar in Angel Controversy Leaves Poignant Suicide Note…to Show How Very Much He Cared’?”

  “Stop it, you’re breaking my heart,” said Simon.

  “I’m relieved to hear you say so!”

  “All I can tell you is this. I’ve given my word. And it’s a promise there’s to be no going back on. Well, I mean, apart from one—now rather unlikely—eventuality.”

  “Which is?”

  “That when we present ourselves in Downing Street on November 30th it has to be with five hundred sympathizers. At the very least.”

  “Five hundred?”

  “Yes.”

  “Specifics laid down by God or offered by yourself?”

  Again Josh was speaking playfully but over the days that followed he and Geraldine conferred increasingly about the true meaning of Simon’s words. Could it be an intent to kill himself which he’d implied? At moments when they felt rested they managed to shrug off such an idea, almost to laugh at it, but when they felt tired they couldn’t see what else he could have had in mind. And Simon’s condition seemed unstable enough to warrant such concern. Perhaps he’d always been a zealot. But now the zealotry was undisguised and unmistakable, He had become a different person.

  Therefore the two of them, Geraldine and Josh, each immensely grateful to have the backup of the other, made it their mission to be vigilant—especially when they went into a chemist’s for their TCP or soap or plasters, or into corner stores and supermarkets, anywhere, indeed, that might sell aspirin or the like.

  But frequently he had a headache. (Frequently they all had.) How could they deny him Paracetemol?

  “Whatever he says, we need another miracle. Are you listening, Lord?” Josh could now use such words without a trace
of mockery. Humour, yes. Mockery, no. “And would it honestly require a miracle to raise just five hundred supporters? Isn’t there a company called Rent-a-Crowd? Haven’t I read that film studios sometimes use it?”

  Geraldine wasn’t sure. She’d imagined, maybe wrongly, that even humble extras had to belong to Equity.

  But anyhow, as November 30th approached, they were now only forty, thirty, twenty miles from London. Twelve! Ten! Surely people could be persuaded to walk a mere ten miles?

  Bribed, even—Josh still had money. And a distance that short could easily be covered in a morning: with everyone home again that very afternoon: nobody’s job at risk! And apart from the thought of bringing good to the world there’d be company and exercise—something to talk about for weeks—maybe a picture in the papers! Altruism and adventure. Any bribes considered, said Josh, should be coming in the opposite direction.

  Five hundred supporters?

  Five hundred was nothing!

  But what in God’s name was the matter with everyone? By November 29th Josh was going into pubs on his own, into shops and cafes on his own—Geraldine was doing the same—as well as continuing to knock on doors on his own. Geraldine and he would usually canvass opposite sides of the street, these days more and more often leaving Simon to himself, to his prayers and meditation. By now they were offering an inducement of twenty pounds to almost anyone they met. Yet nobody at this point was taking either of them very seriously.

  And whenever Simon had indeed been coaxed into being a little less ‘shut down’ as Geraldine had termed it (although certainly not to him) and into resuming his interaction with strangers, Josh kept suggesting he should please get his hair cut as he himself had done (by Geraldine) - or, at the very least, washed—and that he should also begin to shave again; but he couldn’t suggest he put some weight back on or get rid of that frequently rather scary look in his eye. Simon had developed into what Josh had started to think of as a John-the-Baptist figure, gaunt and staring and unkempt, even to the extent that his two disciples sometimes did their best to keep him in the background, telling him to take time off, rest and recoup his strength. Or at any rate his equilibrium…although, again, they didn’t call it that.