Conversations 16

Some people are going to hate this one, but it's a different conversation, and deserves to live on the page as much as any other. If you don't like it, stop reading it. If it helps, it not about your philosophy, it's about someone else's.

Thanks to Randi for her gentle, patient editing.

*****

The doorbell rang just as I was settling down with a cold bottle of cider to watch the latest episode of Doctor Who. I gave a sigh of frustration, but I could watch it any time on catch-up, so it wasn't wildly important.

I opened the front door, noting for the umpteenth time that that inner side needed repainting, and was taken aback to see the tall, bearded man who was wiping his feet on the welcome mat. His hair was flattened by the rain, and even his bushy eyebrows – which normally stuck up and out to the side like those of a Macaroni Penguin – had flattened down a little. I'd seen quite a few of those when I was in the Falklands and couldn't help thinking that they and the man in front of me shared more than a few genes.

"Father McBain," I said, my tone neutral – an acknowledgement that I knew who he was, rather than a welcome.

"Geoffrey, my boy," he said heartily, extending his hand. I automatically shook it, putting precisely the same amount of pressure into it that he did. "Can I come in for a few moments?"

Without waiting for my reply, he started removing his coat, slipping one finger inside the white collar beneath his shirt and easing it away from his neck. I'd noted that habit before and put it down to a nervous tic that he developed when he was under pressure.

I was torn between the Doctor and the Pastor. Manners won out. I opened the door wide.

"Come in."

"Thank you, thank you. Terrible weather for this time of year, isn't it? I always forget my brolly, and have to rely on the kindness of my parishioners to get me through the showers."

Strictly speaking, I wasn't one of his parishioners, but didn't feel the immediate need to point that out. In a way, I was actually glad he was there.

"Can I offer you a beer?" I asked as he bustled past me and hung his coat on the hook that graced the passage wall.

"Tea would be better, I think," he said with a smile. "Don't want rumours to start that I'm an alcoholic!"

"It might be, but the milk's off and I've run out of sugar. So it's going to have unsweetened black tea then."

"Ah. Would you happen to have a nip of whisky about the place?"

"That's off as well," I remarked as he settled himself into my armchair. I retrieved my cider and perched on the couch, which for most nights doubled as my bed. He looked a little taken aback at my remark, but I felt no need to give the last few mouthfuls of my '89 Glenfiddich to a man I hadn't invited over. Besides, I wasn't lying. It was off – off the menu.

He looked sad, but I paid that no heed. My house and my supplies were always open to my friends – I just didn't count him amongst them.

"So how can I help you, Father?" I asked, knowing that he didn't like being called that. He wasn't a Catholic, he was an Anglican – who are just as bad in my eyes – in the Church of England. He liked to point out that he considered himself High Church, which in my mind was the same as High Supermarket for all the difference it made in my life.

"Ah, well Geoffrey, you see..." He interrupted himself to pat the pockets of his jacket, withdrew a weathered old pipe and gestured it at me. I shook my head meaningfully and he put it away again – the sad face once more in evidence. I stuck to my guns. I didn't mind the smell of pipe smoke when it wafted around outside a pub in a smoking area, in fact it was quite pleasant. However, I was buggered if I was going to sleep in a room that stank of stale tobacco ash, if I didn't have to.

He started again. "It's about Jane."

Of course it was about Jane. It was always about Jane. We were divorced two months ago, and it's still always about Jane. I swear she's haunting me from this side of the grave!

I sighed. "What about her?"

"Well, I was visiting her the other day and she told me the story of you... your divorce. It got me thinking."

"Oh yes?" I put as much disapproval into those two words as I could possibly manage. I really didn't want to discuss it, but I was my parents' child and to them a pastor was a person of weight who should be treated with charity and goodwill. One or other of them would pop around now and again when I was growing up, and they were always welcomed with tea and biscuits, or coffee and cake, and listened to very seriously. However, even as a child I put together that a visit always ended up with them being asked to give or do something 'for the parish'.

"I was wondering if you might tell me your side of the story," he said. "After all, there are always two sides to a story, wouldn't you say?"

I pursed my lips. If he wanted my side of the story, then he should have it.

"Well, Father," I started.

"Oh please, call me Alan," he said generously. "I'm just a pastor, you know. And even as an official in the High Anglican church and with three children of my own, I can't claim to be a father. That would be a Catholic thing, although I never really understood it, as they're never allowed to be fathers."

He gave a laugh which invited me to join him in the ridicule of the Catholics. It was like listening to a supporter of one team when facing the prospect of a local derby.

"Then, Alan, you should call me Jeff, as that's my name. It says so on my birth certificate."

"Oh, I thought... Jeff, as I said, I was hoping to hear your side."

I didn't see any reason for his need to hear my side at all. I was sure he had all the details readily to hand.

"As you know, we married three years ago," I started.

"And a jolly nice ceremony it was, too," he cut in. "I remember uniting the two of you in holy matrimony. Lovely wedding it was. Although I do remember that you didn't attend church after that."

He had a gentle frown on his face, and I wondered whether he practiced that look in front of the mirror. It was a look of gentle admonishment, showing the receiver of it that they'd disappointed rather than upset him. It didn't affect me one way or the other.

"I didn't go before, either," I pointed out. "I would have been happy to get married in the registry office, but Jane wanted the whole shebang – all the bells and whistles. So, what the hell, it was her day, her chance to be a princess. I loved her completely, and she was not only the girl of my dreams, she was the only woman for the rest of my life. So I simply went along with it.

"But, to get back to the story, we were married three years ago. We loved each other completely – or at least I thought so at the time. After all, we'd made a contract – a legally binding contract mind you – to be faithful and true, in sickness and in health, until we died.

"And then she wasn't. She not only broke the contract, she ripped it up, shat on the pieces and then burned them in effigy. So we got divorced."

"But Jane maintains she never broke any of her vows," he remarked. "To her way of thinking, you simply left her – after an act of God occurred that she had no hand in, something that was above her abilities to manage."

I frowned at him, wondering if he'd actually come around simply to demand my whisky and then take the piss out of me. Was it because I never went to his church, or was he really that stupid?

"She broke them, Alan. Believe me, she broke them."

He looked at me for a moment, then put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, showing that he was my confidant and that I should trust and believe his motives and his words.

I was immediately on guard.

"Did she, Geoff? After talking to her, I'm not so sure."

I gaped at him. "How could you not be sure? It was obvious, more than obvious."

"Let me ask you, Geoff. You seem to be a very capable man who has been in tough circumstances, right?"

"I'm a soldier, so yeah."

"In fact, Jane told me you recently completed a tour in Afghanistan."

"Yes."

There was a whole world behind that simple affirmative. There were long days of unrelenting heat, and night after night of fear of the unknown. There were patrols where every yard of road could mean a hidden bomb that could wipe you off the face of the earth in an instant. There was the heartbreak of seeing children torn apart by bullets and bombs, women beheaded for wanting a better life – or just an education, families torn asunder in the most brutal ways. And always, friends and comrades being shipped back home in a box for the eternal rest, or on a stretcher to start trying to recover a life with just parts of their body intact.

"That must have been hard," he continued.

"At times," I said noncommittally. Oh it was! Crossing the camp, only to hear the thump of a mortar being fired and trying to guess which way to run, which way to gamble on the turn of a card, or the throw of a dice. Or manning an outpost with half the squad already out of action and praying that the choppers would get there on time.

Hauling my best mate, Chalky, out of that well after he'd taken a bullet in his shoulder and stumbled backwards, falling over the low, clay wall and splashing down into the darkness – that was hard. Knowing the weight of his kit – especially the Osprey suit with its armour plating in place – would drown him, I'd grabbed a rope hanging off the back of a nearby Foxhound, found it already tied to a tow ring and simply leapt in after him. It turned out the rope was too long, but that had actually helped as he was still going down when my feet found his chest. I grabbed the shoulder strap of his webbing and started to haul both of us up to the surface with one hand – easier to say than to do, believe me. We'd both hung on at the surface, yelling and screaming until we were rescued.

Chalky had been my best mate since we both joined the regiment on the same day. He was from the city, and I was from a tiny village miles from anywhere – but despite that, we'd become the best of friends. Contrary to the nickname that the drill sergeant had pinned on him that day, I was fascinated by how black his skin was – having never actually seen someone that black before – and he was amused by my fascination. We'd looked out for each other for the rest of the time in the army.

Such as the time a bullet took out my knee while we were going door to door in some unnamed shithole of a village three days out from Bastion – that was hard. The knee was one thing, but the storm of bullets that suddenly sprayed in our direction from every other direction was another. I knew I was going to die, but Chalky returned the favour by sprinting out to pull me back into cover, taking a bullet to his helmet which rang so loud it stopped his yelling at me and my swearing at him in return for at least ten seconds.

So yeah. It was hard. Spending a whole year away from your wife, with just a phone call now and then to stop you going insane, it was hard. Even with Chalky there every day, when our leave was cancelled halfway through our tour due to an upsurge in hostilities, it was almost impossibly hard.

"I'm betting there were times when you prayed," Alan went on.

Ah, I got it. If I prayed during times of danger, why didn't I pray in peacetime?

"Not to any specific god, I didn't."

"I'm sure God has many names, my son," he pontificated. "It's all one to God. He forgives our trespasses, so calling on him by any name is no matter."

"And you think he'll forgive my cursing at him in just as many languages?" I asked. We met people of all nations out there in the desert, all teaching us their favourite swear words and expressions as we taught them ours – all lubricated with whatever alcohol we just happened to come across after searching really hard for it.

He looked taken aback for a moment. "God forgives us, all we have to do is ask."

"What if we don't ask?" I was curious.

"God knows what's in our hearts. We don't always vocalise our deepest feelings."

"So you're saying God forgives us, no matter what, as long as we want it."

He nodded.

"And I'm guessing the subtext to that is that we should forgive others if they ask – or even if they don't?"

He smiled at me with an expression that said 'for a stupid boy, you've done remarkably well!'

I didn't like it.

"Exactly!" he chortled. "It's what Jesus taught us when he said we should turn the other cheek."

"But then how would we know that they deeply desire forgiveness? I mean, we're not gods, are we? So we just have to kind of guess? Would that be the right thing to do if they're thinking 'fuck you and your god! Die infidel!' Should we still forgive them their trespasses across our wire?"

"Actions surely show intent. If they show they are peace-loving, then surely they can be forgiven."

"But how would I know, if they are peaceful to my face and then haul out an AK47 when my face is turned away?"

"It's a tough question, my son. One that can probably be best answered through prayer."

"In other words – just take a guess and hope!" I really disliked him call me 'son' – my own Dad wouldn't have done what he did. "Because if I'm on my knees in church or next to my bed talking to myself, then I can only guess what I should do. It's comforting, I suppose, as it might give you confidence in your solution, but it's still just a best guess."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, my son."

"I really would so appreciate it if you didn't call me that," I said, my anger surfacing for a moment. "After all, you asked me not to call you father, so fair's fair. Besides, I have a father and he's not you."

He nodded slowly, gave a slight shrug, and then came back to his point.

"What if Jane asked you to forgive her?" he said, his eyes slightly narrowed, as if to stress the importance I should place on his question.

"Never going to happen," I laughed. "If it hasn't happened up until now, it's never gonna happen. She'll stick to her story through thick and thin now. Besides, she doesn't feel she needs my forgiveness. After all, it was an act of GOD!"

I stressed the last word to show how important it was to the question. We do all sorts of things while talking; we emphasize particular words, we move our hands to demonstrate a point, wave them to show emphasis, cross our arms or turn away slightly to show disbelief, or put on an expression to show all of the above. It's amazing what we can say without using words. No wonder autism in such a plague on those suffering under its sway.

"Which you don't believe."

I put a puzzled expression on my face. "Of course not, why would I?"

"It's happened before."

"She had an affair before that one? Jesus Christ!"

He looked more than pained at my language, and I could almost see him trying to quell the desire to put the expression into a pointed dig at my non-belief.

"No," he said after a moment. "I'm not saying that, I'm saying that Acts of God happen all the time, and that that one has happened before. A long time ago."

It took a fair few moments before it sank in. Then my mouth simply hung open for a while.

"You're saying that God did it. That she had an affair with god. And you think she might be telling the truth."

"Of course I'm not saying she had an affair with God. I'm sure that would be anathema to him. No, what I'm saying is that Jane swears she never touched another man during the time you were away for a year."

"I know that. But her giving birth just three weeks after I returned from 'being away for a year' as you put it, sort of puts the kibosh on that statement. And no, I don't believe for a moment that it was 'an act of god'. It was the act of a slut who couldn't keep her legs together despite the promises we'd made."

Again, he looked pained.

"Mary wasn't a slut when she had Jesus," he said with finality to his voice.

"So says a two thousand year old scroll that was probably written hundreds of years later by a friend of the family and mistranslated time after time."

"She was a virgin," he pointed out.

"Or a girl with a very small, stretchy hymen, who did the nasty with a guy with a small dick. It's equally as probable," I said with the same level of reasonableness. "There have been cases of women who fell pregnant with an intact hymen. It doesn't really mean much, except to the girl when it's broken. It hurts."

"I'm sure that wasn't the case," Alan said, his voice showing he was disturbed by my apparent blasphemy. It seems that god is very pissed off when logic is used in place of faith – at least if the first parts of the Ten Commandments are to be believed. It's called blasphemy and can get you burned at the stake in most centuries. I haven't yet ruled this century out, as it's not going well so far.

I shrugged, undisturbed by his disturbance. My idea kind of made sense; a young girl in a patriarchal society that sometimes stoned women to death for having sex outside of marriage, finding herself pregnant and yet, by the grace of god, with an intact hymen. How difficult would it be to convince her parents and her husband and his family that god did the deed, rather than the rabbi's son who had an attractively persuasive manner. I had no evidence or conviction to my theory, apart from my own experiences where no god appeared to run the show in any way whatsoever. It's easier not to believe in a tale that seems to put god on a par with Father Christmas, as both seem to offer what you want, but neither supply it.

And the tale my wife had tried to spin was a real doozy.

She'd turned up alongside my bed when I was allowed visitors after being flown back to hospital in England. My knee was new, the bone-shard wreckage having been replaced by plastic, which hurt like fuck. So I was flat on my back – but even from there I could see the bulge of her belly.

If I'd thought my knee being hit by a small piece of lead and copper going at half a mile per second was painful; that rounded belly beat it hands down. Nothing was more painful, although the heated discussions we had subsequently had about the efficacy of her faithfulness came pretty close. Especially when she refused point blank to admit that anybody or anything had been inside her apart from me the night before I left for Bastion. I remember both of us crying a lot, and her swearing that she loved me more than anything or anyone else. She even offered to have an abortion, but I think my horrified reaction to it stopped that suggestion dead in its tracks. Besides, I think she offered it in the safe knowledge that no doctor would abort any baby at that stage of the pregnancy. All round, it was a horror show for me – and not with the meaning the Russians have when they say that.

The frustration of being laid up in bed, while she swanned around doing god-knows-what was equally horrific, however. My imagination put her into situations that tortured my days and gave me bad dreams during the night. Admittedly, she would have had to have been double-jointed, had at least one extra vagina, and be in possession of a mouth that could swallow a water melon whole. Hey, they were dreams and could get as weird as they wanted to.

I was up and on my shaky feet in time for the birth, although I didn't attend, I just couldn't do that. I couldn't watch the physical ramifications of her disloyalty, her shattering of all the trust I had placed in her, my failure as a man and a husband, all become manifest in front of me. I just waited outside until it was born and then simply took a look through the nursery glass at the baby and then went back to the crummy house I'd managed to rent on my army pension. I shared it with Chalky, whose shoulder had gone downhill after he'd been set free from the hospital in Bastion and returned to duty, and which was now almost as bad as my knee. I don't think dragging me through that village as fast as he could go had done that shoulder any good at all.