Gay Before God: An Awakening Love Forbidden by the Church

by William Bruce

  “Until that is you met this other person?” James spoke deliberately still quite shocked by the revelation.

  “It was two weeks before I met you. It showed me I was ready, ready to move on. I just needed it to help me break the lock, and escape.”

  “Gosh, you are a right tart, aren’t you,” said James trying to make light of the facts, but the news made him feel vulnerable. There was nothing Terry did not know about him, for he had been stripped bare in that letter.

  “It is someone you know,” Terry went on. “We have even been to his house. I took you there only the other week.”

  “Oh yes, I know who you mean, and he has a partner!” James was becoming even more shocked, but unaware of the contradiction in what he was saying. The unfaithfulness of others is always more unacceptable.

  “We only did it twice. It just helped me know what I felt and what I needed to do. It was as if he was opening the door for you to come along. Look at it like that.”

  They drifted off into silence again as they both thought about what had been said. To James it did not matter that Terry was not perfect. He loved him just the way he was. In fact, he was pleased, so very pleased, that they could talk so openly and honestly with each other.

  “Do you still sleep with her?” asked Terry with a sense of anxiety in his voice.

  “No, I am banished to the study these days, on a mattress on the floor.”

  “I sleep in the spare room at the back of the house,” added Terry. “But he still tries to get me into his bed every night. Sometimes I feel I should, because he is so insistent. Just for a cuddle, mind; we haven’t done anything else for years.”

  “Does he ever hurt you?” asked James, turning his head to look at Terry.

  “I don’t want to talk about that," was the instant reply with a forcefulness that meant this was an area of conversation, where for the moment at least, they could not venture.

  “I do so hope we can make it,” Terry said after a time of difficult silence. “I do so love you. Do you love me?”

  “Yes, you know I do. How many times do I have to say it,” said James. He was beginning to wish he could show how much. “I will do anything for you. I will give up my marriage, give up my job, and give up my vocation, anything to be with you, because you are the one I have been waiting for, all my life.”

  “I need you to love me completely. I need you to love me 110%,” demanded Terry. He was now looking James in the eye, observing any flicker of doubt. But he saw none.

  “110% twice over if you like,” was James’ reply.

  However, there was something troubling James about the demand, perhaps most of all because of its illogicality and impossibility. 100% was all that someone could give. It was as if their relationship had been cut off from reality, and they had drifted off into a foreign sea where the currents were uncharted.

  “110%?” whispered Terry. “All the way and hold nothing back?”

  “I love you completely and utterly, madly as well,” rejoined James. “And I want you to show that you trust me.”

  “How can I do that?"

  James took Terry’s right hand and put two fingers around the ring that was on Terry’s fourth finger.

  “Let me wear your ring,” was James’ bold request. “Give it to me now and I will wear it always for everyone to see that I am yours.”

  Submissively, Terry straightened his finger, and let the ring slip off for the first time in years. Once, it had been his grandfather’s, given by Terry’s grandmother as a sign of secret love when they were courting. The inscription inside said ‘to my secret love’.

  Terry kissed it and placed it on James’ little finger of his left hand, where with some pressure it rode the knuckle and sat firmly in place.

  “I shall never take it off, unless you ask me to,” promised James. They kissed and consummated their new level of commitment.

  The next morning went very quickly. They had a late breakfast, followed by a leisurely stroll around some more shops. Terry showed particular interest in the antique barometers, especially the rare stick ones with their heavy columns of mercury. He so much would have liked to have bought one if he had had the money.

  While they were in one of the shops James received a text. At first he thought nothing of it since he only really looked out for messages from Terry. He read it when they stopped for coffee.

  “It is from Rachel,” he said, instantly throwing a worry across Terry’s face. “It says, ‘bishop will call round tonight at 8pm’. I wonder what made him decide to do that? Anyway, it is a chance to talk to him, to be honest with him.”

  “A chance to get out of this mess, you mean,” answered Terry.

  “Or sort it out, so I can be with you. There is nothing I would rather want, you know that.”

  James reached across the table with his hand, and Terry took it holding between his thumb and finger the ring James wore. They looked at each other, needing to say nothing. James felt again he was having to promise the almost impossible, demonstrate his love again, but the challenge of the madness made him even more determined to prove his sanity.

  Eventually the time in York ran out and the short 24 hours had passed. They needed to return to their everyday existence. On their way south they stopped at a small country pub for lunch, a place with small cosy rooms where in private they could sit holding hands. Neither of them wanted this time together to end, but real life had to start again. James tried not to think about the meeting with the bishop a few hours ahead. They parted at the street corner where Terry always dropped James off, a place that had become imbued with the sadness of farewell. It was never good-bye for long because even before James could get to his house there would be a text, a promise of undying love and another meeting arranged for the next day or so.

  That night the bishop was standing on the doorstep at precisely 8 pm. It was an indication of the urgency of the crisis in his mind that he called at the house, rather than summoning them to his study. He came into the front room and sat on one sofa while James and Rachel sat together on the other. It was obvious why he was there but he pretended not to know, since officially nothing had been said to him as yet. James wanted to break the news to him and did not realise that he had been thwarted by the rumour-mongers.

  The bishop listened intently to what James had to say, assessing it against the information he already had. He was quite surprised James held nothing back and was not denying anything.

  The episcopal mind went back to earlier in the day when he was shown a photo-copy of the letter James had written in Greece. Richard had acquired the copy through Charles, and even though it was intensely private and personal, the bishop felt he had every right to read it. Not that he appreciated the emotion it expressed or had any sympathy for anyone driven to compose such a letter.

  His mind returned to the room as he listened to what James was saying. He was surprised and annoyed to hear James try to celebrate the love he had found and even give it certain theological understandings. Was it not like the love of God, undeniable and all-absorbing, James was suggesting. If the church could not deal with such love, in all its forms, then what could it deal with, James was asking. Was it not like Jesus and the first disciples...

  “Just a minute,” interrupted the bishop, who could only cope with a certain amount of theologising. “This is just a straight-forward case of adultery! Let’s not dress it up in self-serving ideas. I am just so sorry that you have succumbed to temptation. I have seen lots of priests go this way, and it is very sad. Very sad.” He was slowing shaking his head in an all too practiced way.

  “But it has more to do with my sexuality than anything else,” pleaded James. “I have had to live with condemnation all my life, and suddenly I don’t think I can accept it anymore. This is about integrity, and surely that matters?” He ended with a question, not sure how the bishop would respond.

  The bishop paused to think. He had some sympathy for James, particularly as he looked at him
sitting on the sofa with his wife, a family man who had a good career behind him and possibly one in front of him, though that was fading fast. The church needed men like James, but now he had stumbled, his fatal flaw exposed. James was apparently not willing to sacrifice himself for the institution.

  “Please, bishop,” said Rachel sensing the bishop’s censorious mood. “Don’t get rid of this priest, who has worked for the church for twenty-five years. He is a good man, and a good priest. He is struggling with his feelings, finding out things about himself and I don’t think he can think straight at the moment.” Her voice tailed off because she could see that the bishop was impervious to her remarks.

  “It is not up to you, my dear! You may be the wronged party, but what James has done, no rather what he is doing,” he added with a sneer, “that is a threat to the whole church.”

  An uneasy silence descended.

  The bishop continued. “I am prepared to put this aside if you bring it to an end now. You must never see that man again. Forget about your desires, and think about your work, think about your children. Start again as a married couple. If you like I will even find you a parish on the other side of the country.”

  This was the bishop’s offer. It was not an ungenerous one but lacked vitality and honesty. It did not suit James, whose talk of love had been totally dismissed. It did not suit Rachel because she knew that denial was not the answer. It suited the bishop and he thought it very reasonable. He could have sacked the man on the spot, as no doubt his predecessors would have done. He saw himself as magnanimous and full of understanding.

  “I will leave it with you. Perhaps you could let me know in a week. Good night and God bless you!” were the bishop’s parting words.

  That night James and Terry spoke on the phone after everyone else had gone to bed.

  “What did he say?” asked Terry with explosive impatience.

  “He wants me to never see you again, to forget everything and deny everything.”

  For a moment or two there was silence. Terry had so feared this was the demand James could not resist. Charles had told him that once the bishop got involved it would all be over, proving how fickle James was.

  “But I won’t,” continued James with determination. “I can’t do it, because I love you.”

  “Thank you. No one has ever done such a thing for me. I shall never leave you, and we will have a new life together, an honest and decent life.”

  The phone call went on, neither of them wanting it to end. They had begun the day in each other’s arms and both yearned to be there again. It was the times of separation as much as the times together that made the relationship so intense. They were never wholly apart, because they were always in each other’s thoughts. James might wonder what Terry was doing, and a text would arrive with the most mundane of information: ‘Just making a coffee, about to have a bath, cleaning out the grate’. Through their mobiles they quite literary lived in each other’s pockets.

  “You know this holiday I have booked,” asked Terry referring to his trip to Egypt arranged months before. “It is a week apart, just as the bishop demands.”

  “Will it be another test do you think?” wondered James, somewhat nervously. He felt he had now put so much on the line that any more testing was unnecessary.

  “Victor says he wants to come with me, but I have told him he can’t,” Terry said hoping to prove how much he could stand up to him. “Anyway, he hasn’t got a ticket,” he added lamely. “I think it really is a chance to prove our love, to bishops or whoever, and when I come back we can be together forever!”

  Chapter 6

  All that could be heard was the shouting on the quayside. This was a constant noise during the day and the night. The passengers had got used to it after two days, and treated it as a normal part of life in Luxor. There were only twenty-five people on board the vessel equipped for twice that number, but in mid-December the potential clientele were more likely to be Christmas shopping on the high street than sailing down the Nile. Therefore, with prices low and the sites less crowded, it was one of the best times to be in Egypt.

  However, this is not why Terry had booked the holiday some months before. He had a sense, even before he met James, that by the end of the year his life would change. He wanted to recapture something of the freedom and joy of his first visit to Egypt ten years previously, which was also a turning point in his life. That was just before he met Victor and decided to move out of London. He came to Egypt to reflect, like a pilgrim consulting the ancient gods of the Nile. Now he had arrived a second time with another question to ask them: was James the one for whom he had waited all his life?

  Today had another full itinerary, beginning straight after an early breakfast, assembling in the boat’s foyer. There he met the other passengers: a collection of retired couples, mostly teachers, two or three unmarried women of a certain age, and a predator-like older single man, whose stares were too lingering. Terry, even at 39, was by far the youngest. He enjoyed being adopted by one or two of the older ladies, who in their concern invited him to join them at their table for dinner, or sit and look after his things while he swam in the pool on the deck. For them he was some kind of surrogate son asking to be mothered. The predator man was looking for something quite different but Terry was very careful, often with some ingenuity, to avoid that possibility arising.

  Yesterday in the warm winter sunshine he had gone for his usual dip in the pool, and afterwards fell asleep under an umbrella, next to one of the ladies in her bright summer dress reading her book. But in sleeping he dreamed. He was standing beside the road in his village back in England, having just arrived outside his house. As he approached the front door he could see two people standing there, quite oblivious to him, staring into each other’s eyes. At first he could not make out who they were, in the way that dreams frustrate a clear view. He strained to see and to his horror instantly recognized James and Rachel about to lovingly embrace. What he saw in his mind woke him violently, so much so that he cried out, and the old lady dropped her book.

  “Are you alright, dear?” she asked, after composing herself.

  “It was just a dream,” said Terry once he realised, but the vision troubled him for the rest of the day. Victor had phoned the day before to say Charles had seen James and Rachel out together. Perhaps they were using this opportunity to rekindle their relationship as the bishop had suggested. Charles also said James was still wearing his wedding ring. At first Terry smiled when he heard this because he was convinced that it was his own ring, the one he had placed on James’ finger at York. But then he thought, how could he be sure?

  “Are you OK?” asked James that night. It was the one phone call he allowed himself all the time that Terry was away. They had texted everyday several times but James knew Terry needed the space to clear his mind and think. James did not know that Victor had rung every evening, and Terry had thought it best not to tell him. Perhaps it was a sign that he could not quite trust James.

  “Fine,” answered Terry, “I just had a funny dream, well a terrible one, while I was dozing by the pool, and I frightened an old lady when I shouted and woke up.”

  “Scaring old ladies,” said James, “whatever next!” He did not ask what the dream was about, knowing that Terry would tell him if he wanted to. “Balloon ride tomorrow?”

  “Very early, with the time difference, you will be fast asleep when I am in the air!” replied Terry.

  “I will keep my phone under my pillow so you can text me when you like,” was James’ plea.

  “I am on the deck and I can see the moon tonight,” said Terry walking to the back of the boat away from the glare of the quayside lights.

  “It is a clear night here, and yes, I can see the moon,” said James straining to look through a frosted window. We are looking at the same thing at the same time. Isn’t that fascinating, just like in Greece. It makes me feel so close to you,” said James.

  “Oh, yes,” whispered Terry. “Here
they call the moon 'the eye of Horus', the Egyptian god of truth.” There was a moment’s silence as Terry remembered what Charles had reported. “Have you got my ring on? Have you got it on now?”

  “Of course I have,” was James’ quick but surprised reply. “I told you only you can take it off. It really helps me to have it. You don’t mind do you?”

  “No, I don’t mind at all, in fact I really like it that you are proud to wear it. Go on, let’s look at the moon and see if we can see each other!”

  Together in their separate ways, hundreds of miles apart they stared at the moon, and the same lunar light reflected on both faces. Terry felt as if he had made a huge decision, but still he needed a sign.

  “Are we all ready for the balloon trip?” asked the guide very early the next day standing in the foyer of the boat, “then follow me!”

  They drove by minibus through the outskirts of Luxor just coming to life, the dim street lights hardly competing with the hundreds of kerosene burners on stalls and hanging in doorways. In one house a television blared out and in another three young children waved enthusiastically from a window. Before long they were out into the countryside, passing labourers setting about their work and the occasional oxen trudging the earth. The minibus turned off the main road and started down a uneven sidetrack, which jostled the occupants and set them off in shouts of nervous laughter. It was preparation for the flight itself and the bumpy landing that would end it.

  Terry had brought his mobile and held it tight in his hand. Once aboard and without warning the balloon drifted effortlessly into the air. The silence of the morning was broken by the fierceness of the hot air flame, but it was the view that captivated the passengers. At first it was the patchwork of fields and clumps of trees, and then the wider countryside edged by a forbidding desert. As they rose they could see the shimming dark blue of the Nile and the barren hills beyond. In the far distance to the east the sun as a molten orange mass was beginning to invade the sky.