Flying Under Bridges

by Sandi Toksvig

  ‘I am not going to give you that sermon for I believe I need to speak to you today from the heart.’ He looked out at his flock and Inge knew that he really did believe it. In his eyes you could see that he was so sure that what he was about to do was not only right but good. It was mesmerising to watch. Eve saw Inge lean forward in her seat. Perhaps Kate had been called to hear this. Perhaps it would make everything all right. The preacher seemed to look straight at Eve and her companions and only at them.

  ‘I was shaving this morning and I was listening to a programme called The Moral Maze on Radio 4… because that’s the sort of old fogey I am.’ Lawrence smiled and there was a ripple of laughter from the assembly. He was charming. ‘A panel of learned people were debating euthanasia for people with terminal illnesses. People who are suffering ought to be able to kill themselves — that was the basic argument. They debate something different every week — abortion, genetics, surrogacy, that kind of thing. And there seems to be a general notion that people should do what’s right in their own eyes. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Sounds very tolerant, doesn’t it? Almost very Christian. But as I stood there looking in my shaving mirror, I felt confused. I felt confused because I did not know why the debate was taking place at all. Why?’

  Lawrence gave a long pause and he held aloft his Bible. ‘Because I’ve read this book and if you read this book then there is no moral maze for you to get lost in. It’s all here. From beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelations, the Bible speaks of God’s way and man’s way. Now, man and woman can choose God’s way or not. You have a choice, but the choice is clear. God is the giver of life. We all know that and we also know that it is a sin to commit murder. Thou shalt not kill and that includes yourself. It is not your life to take. It is God’s.’ Lawrence strode across the wooden floor, his shoes making resounding thwacks of emphasis as he spoke. Suddenly he stood still and put on a high pitched woman’s voice. ‘But Lord, I have to die, I’m in pain, I’m suffering.’

  He grinned and everyone smiled. ‘Do you think God doesn’t know about suffering? He gave his son to us — can you imagine that? Is there a greater gift? And he gave us this.’ Lawrence held his Bible aloft once more. ‘We have here a complete manual to tell you the way forward about absolutely anything that could happen in your life. We live in a technological age and yet I can’t even find such a book for my computer. What a gift this is!’

  There were several muted hallelujahs and some half-hearted hand raising. It was revivalist but still essentially British. Lawrence stood stock still and stared down at all his people for an uncomfortable minute.

  ‘Now, I once had someone in my flock who was confused about their sexuality and they came to me. Did I love them? Of course. Did I love their temptation to sin? No. Why not? Because God tells me so. Look in here …’ Lawrence flicked open his Bible on the large wooden lectern.

  ‘Leviticus, chapter eighteen, verse twenty-two — You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. Leviticus chapter twenty, verse thirteen — if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. This is part of the Holiness code. Leviticus first says it in chapter eighteen and then again just two chapters later. Why does he need to repeat himself? Because it is so important. It is clear — God says it is a sin. There are no grey areas of sexuality. It is just wrong. But some people will say that I am being old-fashioned. That gay people can’t help it. They’re born that way..

  Lawrence wove his way through Sodom and Gomorrah as Eve sat listening. Although she was sitting next to Kate and Inge, although she had understood that they were a couple, none of what was being said seemed to apply. Kate sat unmoving as Lawrence spoke. Occasionally she glanced at Patrick but mostly her eyes bored into the speaker. He was very compelling.

  Eve looked at her daughter and thought what a comfort it must be to feel you are right. To have God on your side. She wasn’t sure of anything any more. She felt stupid. It had taken Inge with her life, and Adam with his mugging to make her realise the universal fact that what you read in the papers is not the truth. What was truth anyway? In the news, day after day, were endless accounts of individuals and nations who were convinced that they were right, their actions were just, that it was divine will.

  Lawrence kept quoting from the Bible as if it were the truth. A helpful woman next to Eve, ever mindful of lost sheep in the flock, opened her own Bible and passed it to Eve. She pointed to the text Lawrence was using and smiled.

  Eve hadn’t read the Bible for years and her eyes glanced down at the open book. This was her daughter’s guiding light. There was all that stuff about men lying with men that Lawrence was covering but there also seemed to be things that probably didn’t happen every day any more. There was a lot about sleeping with beasts, which must have been a positive menace back then, it was absolutely forbidden to ‘give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech’ and there were a few rules about sleeping with your uncle’s wife that seemed a bit Ricki Lake. Eve decided she was stupid about the whole thing.

  ‘Inge,’ she whispered across Kate, who refused to be distracted. ‘Who’s Molech?’

  Inge frowned and whispered, ‘What?’

  ‘Molech. Who’s Molech?’ Eve pointed at the passage in the Bible. ‘It says in here you’re not to devote your children by fire to Molech. Who is he?’

  Inge shrugged and turned back to listen.

  Lawrence moved from the past into the present. ‘Let me tell you a story. Imagine that you have a son, who you love, and he is thirteen years old. He is just the right age to begin exploring his sexuality. He goes to school and one of the lessons required by the government includes information about Aids. Aids is a terrible plague and the school decides to get some people with this terrible affliction to come and speak to the class.

  ‘Now, two speakers come to the school and both are homosexual. They are young, they are dying and the young class of teenagers feels very sorry for them. The speakers explain about their kind of sex in order for the young people to understand how to avoid getting Aids. Students are instructed in all the details of protection, and they make it sound fun. The speakers talk in slang and seem hip and trendy.

  ‘The next year, your son — who is now fourteen — has more sex education in school. He is told a famous lie — that ten per cent of the kids in the class are homosexual. He is told not to worry about who he ‘fancies’ because one sexual ‘orientation’ is as acceptable as another. No one mentions that for thousands of years homosexuality has been considered deviant behaviour. That it has been against the law of man for many years and has always been against the Law of God. No, your son is told that a homosexual is born that way and can never be heterosexual.’

  Patrick never moved. He sat completely still in his brown suit, listening to his father. Kate watched him and she never moved either.

  ‘He is given the impression that we in the churches and synagogues, we parents are old-fashioned and don’t understand. That many famous people were homosexuals and anyone who does not accept homosexuality as the same as heterosexuality is homophobic.

  ‘Where is your boy in all this? Well, he’s fourteen. What’s he doing? He hangs around with his friends and, just like me at that age, he is still a bit uncomfortable around girls. Now let’s say the school, trying to be helpful, give out a sheet and ask all the students to mark their ‘sexual orientation’ by putting an X next to homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. Your son, who is a nice, sensitive boy, has been given too much information and he doesn’t know what to answer. So he doesn’t check anything. This worries the teacher. Maybe he has a problem so she asks him if he’d like to talk to a counsellor. He doesn’t know why but thinks he had better agree.

  ‘He sees this counsellor who suggests that he contact a Gay and Lesbian Youth Hotline. He’s on a treadmill now. He rings the hotline and the person who answers the phone invites him to their community centre. They suggest that he doesn’t tell his pa
rents where he is going — just to say he’s going over to a friend’s house.

  ‘After several meetings at the centre, others there begin to talk about “coming out” to their parents. Then some older guys invite him to the movies. Later, his new friends invite him on a camping trip, and one night on that trip an older guy comes into his tent and begins to touch him. It feels good. He believes that homosexuality is okay, and now he’s sure that he is a homosexual.

  ‘Back at home, the counsellor helps your son become secure in his homosexuality, and they plan how they will tell you, his unsuspecting parents. At the age of fifteen your son tells you that he is a homosexual. Is this just a story? No, that’s how it can happen. Your son wasn’t born a homosexual. He was recruited.

  ‘And what does God say about this? Read St Paul — one Corinthians, Chapter six, verses nine to ten. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God.’

  Eve leant across to Inge again.

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought God loved everyone.’

  The helpful woman beside her gave the only reaction to Eye’s comment. She patted Eve on the hand and whispered, ‘He does. It’s because he loves us that he wants the best for us.’

  Eve felt bewildered. This didn’t seem like a very nice message. Where was the nice guy with the beard reaching out to her? Was he really willing to let some children grow up believing themselves to be evil? Undeserving of God’s love from birth to death? Lawrence was sweating now and pacing furiously towards some kind of climax.

  ‘You can watch the Mardi Gras from Sydney or see people on television talking about “gay pride” but you only have to read the ancient story of Sodom and Gomorrah and you know what being gay actually is — it’s a manifestation of a depraved nature. It is a perversion of divine standards, and nothing will change that.’ The bringer of the good news stopped and took a sip of water. He never looked at his son or his wife. He was transported to a higher plane.

  ‘Okay, what if you still find it hard? What if you need some rational explanation as well? That’s all right. If you want to be scientific about it, let’s do that too. Let’s think about biology. If a man and a woman come together before God they are able to create something so precious — new life. Can homosexuals do that? No. You know what they say — God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.’

  This caused much laughter as Lawrence burst his rather serious bubble with a boyish grin. Eve looked around the room at the gathering of mostly young men and women. So they were all here to make babies. That was why they had come. Adam and Eve of Eden had done that and now it was Adam and Eve of Edenford. But in her heart Eve knew that she and her Adam had thought different things from the beginning. She thought you could have sex with someone if you really loved them and Adam thought you could if they’d let you. Was that what she had been created for? As a bearer of children? What about Tom’s all-female fish in the Gulf of Mexico? What about those Amazon mollies? Lawrence steamrollered through her doubts.

  ‘And what do we say to all those people who would change our minds? Are we homophobes? Do we hate our fellow man? No! We surely can love their souls but we must be vigilant against their wicked agenda! The unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let us join together and sing hymn number four hundred and eight.’

  Everyone smiled as they stood, they smiled as they sang, they smiled as they hugged at the end and they smiled as they shook hands with Lawrence on the way out. It was the most smiley group of people Eve had ever seen in her life and she envied them. Outside the church a group of teenage church members were accosting passers-by on their way to B&Q or whatever. A middle-aged, middle-fat, middle-class woman like Eve trundled past in her coat of many seasons.

  ‘Excuse me, wouldn’t you like to be enlightened?’ asked the smiley people. The woman never broke stride.

  ‘That’s very kind,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I just don’t have the time.

  Lawrence stood outside his church in the bright sun and chatted to his flock. His son approached and Lawrence pulled him close. They stood hugging and Eve, Kate and Inge could see such love. There was no doubt that the father who gave his only begotten son truly believed he was doing the right thing. Shirley and John were caught up in a group of friends, all laughing and smiling. If it was so clear then why couldn’t Eve see it?

  Inge was surrounded by people getting her to autograph bits of paper, the back of old phone bills and even a couple of Bibles. Lawrence stood in attendance, receiving his own praise from the congregation. He hugged his people and made idle chatter with the TV star who had entered his flock.

  ‘Perhaps we could persuade you to read in the carol service as well?’

  Kate stood shaded under a tree. She looked at Patrick who looked away and pretended he didn’t know her. Eve wanted to ask Lawrence about the swimming baths. Whether her group could have them. Whether God wouldn’t want the charity to have them but she couldn’t get to him. John came over.

  ‘Let me take you to your car, Eve,’ he said. He took her arm as if she were in imminent danger of falling over.

  ‘I wanted to ask about the baths. The pool the church bought.’

  John tutted. ‘I know, Eve, I’m so sorry for you, but the church will be needing it. They’re going to do baptisms, full immersion, so they just can’t have it empty.’ They got to the car with its snapped aerial and trailing balloons. ‘Thank you for coming. It’s meant so much to Shirley.’

  When Eve got home her house was silent. Her mother slept in the dining room, her son would not come out of his bedroom and Adam had departed for a security conference in Birmingham. He hadn’t wanted to go. He wanted to lock the door on his shame, but Eve had persuaded him. He had done nothing wrong. He had to carry on.

  Eve sat in her kitchen as the light faded from the day. It was dark when the doorbell went. Kate stood on the front step. She stood outside the security gate and Eve couldn’t open it. Kate was sobbing and clinging on to the bars to hold herself up. No matter how hard Eve tried she couldn’t get the gate open to let Kate in and in that moment she hated Adam and his bloody security. Eve tried to hug her friend through the bars but it was hopeless and she was in such a state that Eve was afraid to leave to come out of the back door. Kate could hardly speak. Her whole body was eaten up with crying. That was when Eve found out about Patrick. Lawrence’s son had been found dead in the school basement. He had hanged himself.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  25 January

  Holloway Prison for Women

  London

  My Dear Inge,

  For Better or for Worse

  Let Marriage be held in honour among all…

  (HEBREWS 13.4)

  The shrink wants to know what I’ve been thinking about. Actually he’d like to get right inside my head if he could and have a good rummage. I tell him, ‘Brigitte Bardot.’

  And he says, ‘Sexually?’ which is ridiculous. The man can’t get his head out of other people’s trousers.

  I never know where to begin with any of this. You see, they have the tabloid papers in here. Everyone reads them. That and Hello! magazine. I don’t know why. It couldn’t be further from real life. Anyway, there’s been a good deal in the papers about Brigitte Bardot and her particular batty problems. Now I’m not all that interested in the intrigues and wherewithals of the famous but lots of the girls on the wing are. I never tell them that I know you.

  ‘You seen about Brigitte Bardot?’ they say to me in the lunch queue, so I have to have a look and I do find I read on. Well, I am curious about how much people can live with on their consciences. I am plagued with my conscience and I am not sure it is always a good thing. I don’t think Martha is. In fact, I’m sure she isn’t. Not because she has religion, she just isn’t and I envy that. Why didn’t I get t
hat clear head instead of her?

  I used to think I had to let every pushy swine on the road nip in ahead of me or they wouldn’t think I was a nice person. Now I realise, of course, they don’t give a monkeys about me anyway and if we were in New York I’d have been shot by now for slowing down the car behind. Anyway, for those of us who lack religion, the guidelines for the conscience are a tricky business. There’s a woman in here who’s had such a difficult life that she says to me, ‘Eve, I know it’s not right but I can’t remember what it is I’m supposed to feel bad about.’

  Which brings me to Miss Bardot. She feels bad about animals. So bad that she has given up her career, her money and her jewels to save rabbits from perfume trials, dogs from cigars and ferrets from inflammable kitchen equipment or whatever they use ferrets for. Brigitte (if I can be so familiar) has also given up her home to the critters, but they are letting her live there till she’s dead, which I call downright decent. So there we have this caring, sharing woman who has deserted her good looks and glamorous life to mess about with cats and spend a life covered in dog hair. Good for her. Then she falls in love with and marries a National Front politician. Now I know you can’t help who you fall in love with. You meet the most unlikely person when you least expect it and bam! — your body is awash with chemical impulses, teeming hormones and sweaty palms. But if you then learn that this person ‘adheres to views that you personally find reprehensible’, as Martha would put it, would you go on to marry them? Bardot says she hates his politics but she loves him. So how do you separate the man from the message, particularly if he is an up-front, campaigning tub thumper?

  Love is a curious business. I would have thought that when people hold very strong political views, that’s a big part of who they are as people. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s a phase. He doesn’t really mean it,’ if he is a full-out campaigner. Yet Adam was and I loved… love him.