Now I Know (17 page)

I said: Well, no, well I mean, if you like . . . well yes, I wouldn't mind . . . Or put that another way—I would mind, I'd like it a lot, to be honest.

Pause.

Are you, she said, making a pass at me?

Pause for controlling of breath.

Yes.

Silence, her head up, eye-balling.

Julie: Did you think I expected something like this?

I shrugged, not knowing then what I'd expected, but knowing now that I'd hoped for it.

She looked down, hiding her face again. The longest pause so far.

Then, almost whispered: I'm sorry.

I spluttered: Hey, look, it's okay, it's all right, I . . .

No no!, she cut in. I don't mean, I'm sorry I don't want to sleep with you. I mean, I'm sorry, I should have known, I should have thought . . . inviting you, you know, like this, you'd expect . . . it's only natural . . .

She looked up, her expression pained. The first time I'd seen her unsure of herself in the face of me. Vulnerable is the word. She had seemed so utterly strong till then, so unshakeable and knowing.

I couldn't speak. Didn't know what to say. Confused about myself and her and what I'd just done, which already, then, seemed twittish, and now seems worse than grubby and makes me cringe. How could I be so crass?

But instead of letting it go, trying to apologize and forget, I sat there, staring at her, even letting myself feel angry, as if she had done something wrong to me.

She said, shaking her head: I'm stupid, I'm really stupid!

I shook my head, meaning: No you're not.

I don't know, she said, perhaps . . .

What? I said, wanting to know, but the word came out like a rebuke.

Just . . . !

Her turn to stammer and fluff. She looked away, a blank stare into the night blackened by the glare of the fizzing lamp.

. . . Perhaps I wanted you to try.

I said, cloddishly puzzled: Wanted me to try?

A sort of test, she said.

A test, I said, and now the anger took hold: Great! Well, I failed. Asked too soon, did I?

She laughed, which didn't help, misreading her again.

Just like a man! she said.

Not surprisingly, I said.

Thinking you're the only one who can fail. I can fail too, you know.

You're the one who set the test, I said.

Look, she said, you've got it wrong. What I mean is, I think perhaps . . . She sighed . . . Perhaps I asked you to come with me hoping you'd try something, but not admitting it to myself.

Why would you do that?

So as to test myself. To find out if I'd let you . . . If I'd sleep with you.

But you haven't. Not yet!

No.

So you haven't failed yet.

Not with
you
, she said, glaring at me. But with
myself
.

Selah.

Moths were buffeting the lamp, burning themselves, fluttering away in maddened circles, but coming back for more. Julie turned it off, plunging us into star-pricked night again.

What she was telling me didn't sink in. I still felt I'd been rejected, and was at fault for even trying. But I was thinking, why shouldn't I? I was only letting her know what I wanted, how I felt about her. What was wrong with that? And I really did think she had given me a hint, that her birthday-present kisses were more than thank-yous.

I couldn't help asking: Is it that you don't fancy me?

No no! she said, sounding now as irritated as I felt. Just the opposite if you must know!

Then why? Is it religion? Sex before marriage, all that stuff?

Yes! . . . No!. . . Yes, of course it's got something to do with religion. How could it not? My religion is about all of my life, not just about the bits of it that don't matter. But no, it hasn't got anything to do with sex before marriage and what you call all that stuff. It isn't like that any more—God, I mean, religion, Christianity. Not for me. It's only like that for you because you haven't thought about it enough, haven't
lived
it, but only assumed things . . .

There was anger between us now.

Selah.

Rows are stupid. That's why they seem so funny afterwards. Not always. But often. We laughed about this one next morning, while we were driving into Cambridge.

But the real joke about rows is that they're futile. I'm no expert on girls or how to deal with them, and I'm no expert on sex. But I am expert on rows, thanks to years of training by my row-loving parents.

When 1 felt anger bubbling up between us I thought: This is just the way it used to be at home! The thing would boil up, like a kettle full of water, until it boiled over and we'd all get scalded.

I thought: I'm even sounding like my dad. Like I'd caught a disease from him. Verbal cancer. Why don't I just shut up!

Switch off, goon! I thought. Or make it different, make it
sane!

Selah.

Look, she said, I'll try and explain. About the sex, I mean.

Don't bother, I said, like a sulky boy who's been refused an ice-cream.

For my own sake, as much as yours!

Pause. The night echoing its deadness.

She shuffled closer, as if crossing a boundary.

She said: It isn't that I don't fancy you. I do.

There was a change of tone in her voice, a new tune, a caressing sound.

She went on: I didn't admit it before. Not even to myself. I've been pretending, I suppose—that you were just a funny, interesting schoolboy who said he was researching for a half-baked film project but who deep down was really trying to sort out his ideas . . . his relationship . . . with God.

And me, she said, I'd help you, wouldn't I! I was older and more mature, wasn't I! I'd open you to religion, show you the way, bring you to God! I'd convert you!

She laughed, self-mocking.

Isn't that great! I hate it. That I'd even let myself think it, I mean, never mind try and do it. Wanting to make converts, wanting to persuade people to believe what I believe the way I believe it. I can't bear it when I see other people trying to do that. Like those creepy evangelists on television, with their glossy suits, and their big rallies, and their stage-managed fervour, and their packaged sincerity, and their sanctimonious humility that somehow always makes you feel they possess a God-given superiority over the rest of us.

She heaved a sigh and rubbed a hand across her eyes.

One of the reasons I like Philip Ruscombe is that he's hopeless at conversion. If you had to make converts in order to qualify for Heaven, he'd fail. Not because he doesn't know how, but because he can't bring himself to do it.

It's one of the great temptations, you see—wanting to prove the strength of your own faith by making others believe what you believe. It shows you're right.

She huffed.

But it doesn't prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that you're condescending and arrogant and good at doing what half-decent actors can do, or advertising agents, or pop stars, or politicians, or con men, or any of the professional persuaders. They sell illusions. And that's all they do. And they feel good when they succeed. That's what their lives depend on.

Which isn't true about religion. Or shouldn't be. Your belief shouldn't depend on what other people think about it. And it certainly should not depend on whether other people believe the same as you.

She laughed.

But there I was, she said, falling into the trap. Wanting to make a convert! And the funny thing is that I was only
pretending
I was trying to do that. What 1 was really doing was falling into a different trap—fancying you and not admitting it to myself.

I said: Sounds as if wanting to convert me was a substitute for having it off with me.

Could be.

So you admit you fancy me?

Yes.

And you don't have any worries about sex?

Not the way you mean.

And I fancy you and certainly don't have any hang-ups about sex, so why don't we—

Because, she said firmly, for me there's a bit more to it than that!

Selah.

Can't remember word-for-word what she said then, but do remember her reasons. They went something like this:

Sex is a maker of life, as food is a sustainer of life.

Sex can also be an appetite, as eating is an appetite.

Just as you can eat for the sake of eating, so you can enjoy sex for the sake of it.

There is necessity in sex for making life. There is no necessity in sex for the sake of it.

One of the illusions that the Big Persuaders have sold us is that sex for the sake of it is necessary—that we've failed or lost out or somehow actually damaged ourselves if we don't have sex for the sake of it.

Julie doesn't want to make a new life, just for the sake of becoming a mother. And her appetites are all for God. She wanted to know more about God—wherever that took her, whatever it demanded, whatever God meant. She wanted to know more about herself as she looked through God's eyes, as she put it. She wasn't denying herself anything so that she could have something else. She was using all she had for one main purpose that meant more to her than all the other things on offer in life.

She laughed a lot about all this. She knew, she said, that most other people would think her weird, which is why she didn't talk about it. She also knew what she said sounded old-fashioned, just about extinct in fact. But it was the way she was and she just accepted it.

She wasn't saying everybody should be like her, or that she even thought she was right. She knew most people thought that sex was there to be enjoyed any time you liked, so long as you didn't force yourself on anyone and didn't do anything that hurt the other person. And she didn't disagree. But for her, she said, her sex, having sex, was such an important part of
her
, of her
self
, that she couldn't treat it as if she was just having an enjoyable meal with a friend.

Anyway, she said, it was wrong to compare sex and food. They weren't the same. When you share food, you share something from outside both of you. Each person takes part of the whole and enjoys it in the company of the other. When you consume food you consume something of the world about you and so you make yourself part of that world. But when you have sex you give part of yourself, part of your own interior being, and take a part of the other person, part of their inner being.

Something more is involved than simply keeping yourself physically alive, or enjoying yourself with someone you like. Food keeps you alive and binds you to the world we live in. But sex has to do with making life itself, and binds you to the life that's greater than any of us, and greater than the world we live in—the life that Julie calls God.

Sex has something directly to do with God. And as God fascinates her, is the most exciting, most important Event (her word, her capital E), she wanted to use her sex (her sexuality, her womanhood) to help her get to know God. Even though she doesn't understand yet how to use it that way, and fails sometimes to resist the temptations that confuse her.

But no giving in to temptation tonight? I said.

Not tonight!

We both laughed.

I told her I thought I understood but that I'd never be able to do it myself, even if I thought it was right.

She said: Because you don't believe yet. You want to know what belief feels like, don't you? Well, I'm telling you what it feels like. Belief makes it possible for you to do crazy things other people who don't believe can't do.

Not even if they want to?

Not even then.

So you could sleep in the tent and you'd be okay after all?

Now I can.

Now but not before?

Because, she said, now I know that I was unconsciously testing myself I'll be okay. Knowing that, I can resist temptation.

I said, laughing: But what about me? I'm just a weak unbeliever! Maybe I won't be able to keep myself under control.

Then you'll get a good strong believing tweak where the temptation hurts most, and I'll evacuate to the sanctuary of the car.

Selah.

We spent the rest of the night talking. Or most of it.

And it was the happiest night of my life.

I'm wondering why.

Because we shared without demanding?

Because we gave without taking?

Because we received without expecting?

That's what Julie would say, I think.

But then the next day happened.

Dear God, if you are there, WHY?

Chapter Four   THOR'S DAY

When we finally went to bed I lay awake, mind frying fat after our talk.

Whenever Julie turned over I felt the shifting shape of her against me, but muffled through two layers of cloth, an echo of a body.

Mind frying fat, body hungry.

I sweated.

My bare arm outside to cool me, my hand on bare ground. Soil like flesh. Stones beneath my fingers like bones. Naked earth.

Remembering Sweden. The huge magnificent elk, the lake, the boat, myself starkers in the sky, in the water, knowing as never before never since how everything is part of the same beyond-everything life. Remembering the timelessness of it, how I seemed to see into the heart of things and understand the mystery of the universe. Remembering the randy longing to be absorbed into it, to come into it, to lose myself in it.

All that feeling swept over me again as I lay there, and is so impossible to put into words. The words contradict each other: