Matilda wasn’t convinced of this but saw she wasn’t getting anywhere. The conversation took another turn and they started talking about other things. Eventually, Rachel said, ‘I’ll have to go soon. It’s getting late and I’ve got to get up early in the morning.’
‘I won’t detain you,’ said Matilda as they got up to leave. ‘Thank you for taking the time to listen.’
34
What had the Apostle John said about confessing sin? Could she dare to hope that her sin was blotted out and that God had already forgotten it all?
She would probably never know why things happened the way they did but this did not satisfy her. The idea that she might never know the reason for her suffering made her impatient with the concept of God. Surely there had to be a reason for it?
The next Sunday she was up early and decided to go to the morning service. When she got to the church, she found that Rachel was preaching. The title and content of the sermon went in one ear and out the other (Matilda wasn’t there to listen to her sermon but to pick her brains afterwards). I would like to see her undergo what I underwent, she thought.
‘I see we could entice you out of bed at this unearthly hour,’ said Rachel when Matilda passed the west door.
‘I was up anyway,’ she chirped.
‘I’ll be along for a coffee in a moment, so I can speak to you then.’
Matilda went to the church hall to claim her cup of coffee and biscuit. She hugged the wall, keeping herself to herself and despising the Christians there for their gullibility and their credulity. She wasn’t going to believe God was good because others said he was; she wanted to know and experience the goodness of God for herself.
When Rachel came at last, Matilda squirrelled her away in a corner and plied her with all sorts of philosophical and theological conundrums she had gleaned from the pages of The Atheist, a monthly magazine she occasionally bought when her mood was sour. But Rachel held her ground manfully, so much so Matilda asked outright if she bought it.
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘I buy it every month.’
‘Why?’ asked Rachel.
‘I like to poke God in the eye.’
‘Careful he doesn’t poke you in the eye.’
‘I’ve got news for you – he already has.’
She knew then that there was something about Rachel that made her want to hang around. It wasn’t her intellect or her personality but something indefinable. She got a hold of the church year-planner and looked up all the services which Rachel was either leading or preaching at and hung it in her kitchen.
When she found that Rachel also went to the midweek communion service, she started attending it just so she could see her and speak to her. When she was off work, there was little else to do now she had given up the bottle. She found little enjoyment in the services or the preaching, which was irrelevant to her situation as she saw it, and only went so she could look at and listen to Rachel.
One night, while Matilda was sleeping, she had an erotic dream with Rachel in the starring role. She woke up afterwards to find herself aroused and realised then what she should have realised all along, namely, that she was deeply attracted to the young woman. When the initial rush of pleasure faded, she was struck by a desolating realisation: that she had fallen in love with Rachel. This realisation caused her dismay, despite the pleasure she took in Rachel’s company.
What should she do now? Matilda saw the hopelessness of her love. She was the wrong end of thirty-seven, mad and was hanging on to a low-skilled job by her fingertips without a solid faith to commend her. Part of her told herself to cut her losses and run (where would she run to?), told her to stop going to St Nick’s, where proximity to a hopeless love would drive her mad (or madder) with passion. The other part wanted to hang on in the hope of winning Rachel’s confidence and latterly her admiration. At the same time, she knew that Rachel was a hopeless cause. End of.
She resolved to continue going to St Nick’s until she could find somewhere else. While she would not deliberately seek her out, she would wait to see if Rachel came to her. She would ask Rachel for an appointment to speak to her, to get her advice on spiritual matters, to see how she responded to her subtle overtures.
She arranged to see Rachel on a Thursday lunchtime before work. She asked her advice about how to pray but soon let on that she was having difficulties getting started on prayer and then retreated into disbelief.
‘I don’t believe prayer actually works,’ she said, ‘and, anyway, I just can’t seem to get into it.’
‘Do you pray in tongues?’ Rachel asked.
‘I can pray in tongues. I still have the ability.’
‘Try praying in tongues. You’ll find your spirit interceding for you to the Holy Spirit.’
‘I have a hard time believing it’s a genuine gift but I’ll try.’
All the while, she noted with alarm that Rachel wouldn’t look her directly in the eye and that her legs remained firmly corkscrewed. She appeared to be in some discomfort.
‘Am I making you feel uncomfortable?’ she asked.
It came out, just like that.
‘A little bit,’ Rachel conceded, flustered.
‘I won’t become violent, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ she said.
‘No, I don’t think you’ll become violent.’
‘What then?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Rachel, a little more abruptly than necessary.
Her base passion had been rejected. Matilda was shattered by this realisation but there was no use crying over the fact. Rachel had spoken and that abruptly. It had been a mistake to think that they could ever be friends or even, God forbid, lovers. Rachel had closed that door firmly and with such determination.
And so Matilda retreated back into her fantasies of Rachel as a friend and bosom companion. In her mind, they were the best of friends. Every now and then, Matilda had another erotic dream with Rachel in the starring role.
When the new phone book arrived, Matilda looked up Rachel’s number and address and found she was listed as living at St Luke’s Vicarage, halfway between the church and Matilda’s flat. This explained why she had seen Rachel on her bicycle on her way to and from work. Sometimes she would pass Rachel on the street as she was walking home and they would exchange greetings, which gave her hope they might reach an understanding, some sort of accommodation, with each other.
At other times, she was eaten up with a desire for revenge. She wrote a story called Rachel Manley, Priest, set in a distant, post-industrial, future, a bubbly piece of lesbian froth, serving as a farewell to any ideas of friendship. It wasn’t meant to be read by others and when she finished it, Matilda promptly hid it among her papers.
35
The noughties were a time of drifting. Matilda was drifting further from Rachel, further away from the churches she used to frequent. There were times when, doing the dishes, she would say to herself, ‘God doesn’t exist!’ but would pull away from outright apostasy only when confronted with the person and work of Jesus. She would shake her head and say, ‘Perhaps he does – we can’t be sure this side of eternity.’
She also went less and less to the Mental Health Services Day Centre. It was too far away from her new flat, its benefits too nugatory. Matilda had had a bellyful of the mentally ill and their symptoms. There were only a few people there whose company she could tolerate; Nigel was one.
In August 2004, Matilda was summoned to appear before the Employee Health Services consultant for the last time. The doctor informed her of Royal Mail’s decision to retire her on the grounds of ill health. Her pulse quickened when she heard this, when the doctor mentioned there would be a pension accruing. A few days later, a union rep came to her home to tell her that those retired on the grounds of ill health got their pensions enhanced by
two-thirds – Matilda’s pension was worth more than ninety pounds a week.
In between times, she continued to report for work, to do her statutory four hours a shift and shuffle home again, careful to stop off at the Co-op for supplies. Mandy, however, was now backslidden big-time, a full-blown alky. Robert was so dismayed by her drinking he got his own pad and moved out.
Finally, in October, she received a letter from HR telling her she would be awarded a small pension and could commute part of it into a lump sum payment. She thought of all the cigs and bottles of Diet Coke she could buy with a lump sum payment and ticked this option. By this time, her savings were depleted, so it was a case of hanging on until the payment was made. Then she went to the bank and arranged a four hundred-pound overdraft.
That month, she decided to stay at home. She stocked up on Diet Coke and cigarettes. The payment didn’t arrive a moment too soon. When it came, at the end of November, Matilda paid it into her account. Feeling flush, she decided to buy presents for all her family that Christmas, twenty-pound Book Tokens and expensive toiletries. No-one could accuse her of being miserly! When the money was banked, she transferred the entire amount to her mother’s account and asked her to look after it, thus ensuring she would not fritter it all away.
One day, Matilda was walking down a street in town when she espied her old housemate Stuart from afar, waiting for a bus. He didn’t look too bad so she guessed things must have been going well for him. She called out after him but he didn’t hear. She was about to leg it over to him but then his bus came and he got on without having seen or heard her. It would have been good to catch up with him about old times, though Stuart was another drinker and she knew well enough from her own experience that things rarely turned out well for drinkers unless they got on the wagon.
Matilda formed the opinion that churches were bad for you. She had only to look at Mandy’s example in this respect. She started drinking again, hanging out with a guy called Des. Before long, Des had moved in and Mandy was drinking twenty-four/seven. Whereas these days, Matilda had a laissez-faire attitude towards faith, Mandy became a manic charismatic, believing in all sorts of omens. Everything was either Satan or the Holy Spirit; there was no shade in between. After her retirement, Matilda bumped into her one night at the Hangman’s Arms – it was one of Mandy’s locals, though these days Mandy and Des did most of their drinking at home, where they got more bottle for their DLA money.
Matilda had to tighten her belt now that she was no longer in gainful employment. She survived on a mixture of pension, DLA and benefits. Of course, she couldn’t afford to smoke so much now that she wasn’t working: she would go onto nicotine gum whenever she ran out of baccy money but would return to baccy whenever she was in funds.
Freed from the necessity of work, Matilda filled her time with writing. She kept back just enough of her gratuity to buy a standard laptop and got to work, big time, converting her novels into computer files. There was her second novel, written after her breakdown, and her third book, her “nutty narrative”, as she called it, which was proving the most intractable. Working on both manuscripts kept her busy and out of the bars.
And now she wasn’t drinking, there wasn’t call for so much medication. Matilda’s daily dose decreased as the months of sobriety increased, her risperidone script decreasing from 12 mg daily to 10 mg and then to 8 mg.
One day, Matilda was standing outside a sandwich shop in town, puffing away on a ciggie, when Robert, Mandy’s brother, walked past.
He stopped and asked her, ‘Have you heard Mandy’s news?’
‘Is she dead?’ Matilda asked.
Somehow, she knew the truth. There was only one way Mandy was going to escape from a drinking habit as prodigious as hers – in a wooden box.
‘Yes, last May,’ said Robert.
‘It was always on the cards.’
‘Do you still drink yourself?’ Robert asked.
‘I can honestly say I haven’t touched a drop since Boxing Day two years ago,’ Matilda said, ‘otherwise I, too, might have gone Mandy’s way.’
‘She was told if she didn’t stop, she would end up that way,’ said Robert.
‘What about you?’ Matilda asked. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m an executive officer now with the city council,’ he reported. ‘I’m expecting a promotion soon.’
‘It’s good to hear,’ said Matilda.
In October 2006, Matilda turned forty. A cousin and two aunts came down from Scotland to celebrate with her family. There was a champagne and cake reception at her parents’ house and then a large meal in an upmarket tapas restaurant. Afterwards, she went for a drink with her cousin and tried one of these new fruit-flavoured ciders. She had a few sips, then stuck resolutely to Diet Coke for the rest of the evening. The ability to do this and not feel the need to get falling-down drunk, she felt, was a victory.
36
In the summer of 2007, Matilda was walking near St Nick’s when a student jumped out and gave her a leaflet. She looked at it.
The students at St Nick’s were doing an outreach – reaching out to the heart of the city or some such. She heard that Rachel had left. She looked at the student and at the leaflet. Her lips twitched.
Matilda thought about all those blasphemous thoughts, how they had tormented her for years on end. Her psychic sewage. How she resented God for them! Her heart burned with anger. And God never told her, specifically, that he had forgiven her – the rotten so-and-so! It was all so unfair.
Matilda had had words with God about it. Several thousands of them, it transpired. Some whispered prayerfully with burning anxiety; some yelled from behind a shaken fist. She was hurt, she was confused. Still.
After all the water that had passed under the bridge, she was still unsure where she stood with the Lord. Was she forgiven or was she condemned, was she still saved or was she hell-fodder? She longed to be welcomed back into the Family but sin made her draw back. She remembered telling her parents she was no longer a Christian. She thought that God had expelled her from his Family because of it. Obviously, she had been confused at the time but would God forgive her?
Despite her misgivings, Matilda went to the outreach. She talked to Rachel’s replacement, a girl called Candace. Matilda told her about the thoughts, her breakdown and her faithlessness. She told Candace that she found it difficult to believe God could still love her, much less forgive her.
‘Look to the cross,’ Candace advised.
‘I can’t – I’m too ashamed,’ said Matilda, her eyes pricked with tears. ‘He died for me and I denied him.’
‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness,’ said Candace, reading from the first letter of John from a pew Bible. The same quote had been given by her predecessor all those months ago. Matilda remembered it vividly.
‘But I betrayed the Lord!’ she cried in an agonised howl.
‘So did Peter but Jesus forgave and restored him,’ Candace insisted, ‘just as Jesus will forgive and restore you. Have you confessed your sin to him?’
‘All the time, including today,’ said Matilda.
‘Then you’re forgiven.’
‘I find it so difficult to believe.’
‘Why do you think you’re the exception to the rule?’ Candace asked her.
‘Because I know what a filthy cur I am.’
‘You might think such a thought comes from a humble opinion of yourself,’ said Candace as she put the Bible away, ‘but its root is an inverted pride that sets yourself up as the sole exception to the rule.’
Matilda went home and made a full confession of her sins. She confessed her faithlessness, her disbelief and her denials, confessed her filthiness to the Lord. She asked the Lord to forgive her, heal her and take her back into the bosom of the Family a
gain.
Sometime later, she was in the SPCK bookshop in town when something drew her attention to a thick, glossy tome level with her eye. It was a book on Chinese martyrs.
‘I’ll have that,’ she said to herself. She picked a copy off the shelf and advanced towards the cash register.
When she got home, she spread herself across the sofa and started to read her purchase. She finished it two days later. She closed the book and said, ‘Things might have been bad for me, Lord, but I’ve never had to forfeit my life for my faith.’
Indeed. She remembered the time when she had boasted to Avril of her certainty that the Lord was leading her towards a glorious martyrdom and felt ashamed. She bowed her head and repented of those proud fantasies.
Now that she was a member of the Family again, she resolved to start acting so. Into the bin went anything that reminded her of her old, backslidden past, including the story about Rachel.
She even went back to church but when she did, the music was so loud and insistent that it immediately triggered an onrush of sacrilegious thoughts. Matilda had to leave early and return home, steadfastly avoiding the pubs and bars. She stopped off at the Co-op on the way home and went in. She lingered in the Beers, Wines and Spirits aisle but forced herself to go, empty-handed, to the till and purchased cigarettes…oh well, she thought on the way out, at least it wasn’t alcohol.
She started reading the Bible again: the gospels and the letters, though she avoided Revelation – it was just too scary, too apocalyptic.
Eventually, she thought it would be helpful to meet up with other Christians and pray with them. She went down to the church offices and explained that she didn’t want anything in the morning – too early – or anything late in the evening – when she would be too sleepy. The secretary found a house group that met in the afternoons, on Fridays, so Matilda wrote down the telephone number of the leader to tell her she would be joining them.
Kingdom Come Page 11
