Flying Under Bridges (32 page)

‘Morning!’
called Inge. Kate smiled and waved.

‘What
are you doing here?’ grinned Eve.

Kate
whispered to her. ‘I thought I’d better introduce myself to God before I meet
him in person.’

Inge
laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah. Actually Patrick asked us. His dad’s the priest. Not your
regular haunt, is it?’

‘No, my
daughter, Shirley. I think I told you — she’s been saved.’

Kate
was about to say something when a woman in a dress fresh from a Sunday
supplement advert swept over.

‘Inge
Holbrook! Inge Holbrook! It is, isn’t it?’ She almost pushed Kate aside in her
desire to get to Inge. ‘I can’t believe you are here. Well, I can. I mean, it
doesn’t surprise me that you walk with us, but I can’t believe we will actually
worship together. This is thrilling. Will you stay for coffee?’

‘Actually
I’m with my friends.’

The
woman looked Kate and Eve up and down. ‘Yes, well, I suppose they could come
too.’ The woman took a good look at Eve. ‘Mrs Marshall, isn’t it? Very funny
piece in the
Mail
about your husband.’ Before Eve had a chance to reply
the woman took Inge by the arm and began to lead her towards the church. ‘I
wonder if I might take this opportunity to talk to you about an event we’re
having…’

Inge
looked back helplessly at Kate and Eve, abandoned on the path. Kate smiled and
shook her head. She turned to Eve.

‘You
will help her, won’t you, Eve? She can’t manage. Everyone thinks she can run
the world but she really can’t. She’ll need you.’

Eve
took Kate’s arm and they moved into the church together and sat down. A
handsome man with greying hair was walking amongst the congregation, shaking
hands and hugging as he went. Inge had been placed in a prominent position
right in the middle of the main seating. The man made his way to her and shook
her warmly by the hand. By the time Kate and Eve arrived to sit beside her,
Inge felt she had met the entire six hundred people in the building.

‘You
all right?’ whispered Kate.

‘I told
you I didn’t want to come,’ hissed Inge, still smiling at everyone.

The
handsome man stopped at the front row where a woman and Patrick were sitting
together. Patrick had cleaned up for the service and looked quite a different
boy. He wore a brown suit and tie and looked much more the nearly man that he
was. The greying man smiled at the woman and then pulled Patrick into a long
embrace. The congregation settled down and the man stepped up on to the stage.
In his hand he held a well-worn Bible and a sheaf of notes.

‘My
name is Lawrence.’ His voice boomed from a bank of speakers behind the
congregation. It was the very voice of God. ‘My name is Lawrence, Lawrence
Hansen. I am the pastor of this church and I am so glad you all came. So glad!’

There
was a slight whoop from the audience as Lawrence opened his arms to welcome
everyone. ‘Now, if anyone is new,’ he said, ‘I would like to introduce you to
my family… this is my wife, Joan…’ Joan stood up and waved at everyone. ‘And
this is my son, Patrick.’ Patrick was less keen on the waving but managed a
nod from his seat. Lawrence stood looking at the boy for a moment and then
looked up at the assembled ranks. ‘And I would introduce you to the rest of my
family, but there are hundreds of you so I don’t think there’s time!’

This
familial inclusion got a little round of applause, to which Lawrence gently
held up his hand both to acknowledge and stop.

Patrick
turned in his seat and searched the crowd for Kate’s face.

When he
found it, they exchanged a little wave and the boy turned back to his father.

‘So I
am here with my family,’ continued the sermon, ‘but why have we come together?
It’s a lovely summer’s day: What are we doing inside?’

‘I was
beginning to wonder myself,’ Inge whispered to Eve. Eve wasn’t listening. Her
eyes were fixed on Shirley. Her daughter was now a big part of the church. She
had joined the choir and sat angelically in white robes near the front to one
side. John faced her in his dark blue suit. He was ready to do service. He was
near Shirley. Eve hadn’t made the robes, she hadn’t heard her rehearse, she
hadn’t helped her join. None of it was anything to do with her. Between mother
and daughter a huge divide of people sat listening to the pastor.

‘I’ll
tell you. I am here, we are all here, to share the good news. Good news! Isn’t
that great? Couldn’t you all do with good news?’ There was a general murmur in
the rather young crowd. Yes, good news would be nice. He held up his small
bundle of notes. ‘I have here the sermon I planned to preach today. I think it
was a good sermon. I shouldn’t say that but however hard I try the Lord doesn’t
seem to have purged me of all my vanity.’ Lawrence smiled at the vast
congregation and the regulars laughed. He smiled again. ‘I think it was a good
sermon but I am not going to share it with you.’ Lawrence took the papers and
slowly shredded them on to the stage. The word of God snowed down on the pine
floor. There was some general whispered discussion at this but Lawrence held up
his hand.

‘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 parents where he is going — just to say he’s going over to a friend’s
house.