And I knew that is how it is with us and how it is with God. We are perfectly what we are, as the flecks of sunlight are perfectly flecks of sun. And we are individual particles of God who we come from and are already all the time, now, here, every day. The flecks of light don’t go looking for the sun. They are the sun. In themselves and all together. And we don’t need to go looking for God. We are God, in ourselves and all together.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved St John’s Gospel more than all the other books in the Bible—because it starts off by saying just that, and goes on to tell us how it is that we are God.
[Pause.]
‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God . . . In him was life; and the life was the light of men.’
[Pause.]
As I looked and looked, it was all there, written in front of me, in the grass and the pond and the tree. Like a message written in the earth and left for me to find. Just like it was all there for you, Nik, that evening in Sweden. Only you felt apart from it, shut out from it, and wanted to plunge into it so you could belong to it. Whereas for me, as I lie here in the fading light still looking and still knowing, I feel already part of it. One of it. One with it. Me . . . perfectly me . . . confined to bed and not happy like this, but perfectly unhappily me. And happy at the same time to be me because I know I am part of that which always Is—capital I—all the time for ever. And after today, the great gift of today, I can remember and tell myself about it and try and understand more deeply still. But in my own time and at my own pace. It’s all there waiting, simply being, like the grass and the pond and the tree were there and waiting when I opened my eyes and the blinds were raised. It won’t run away.
Perhaps this is one of the good things to come out of my bomb. And maybe what was being given me in the terrible second of the explosion was time. Time to think at my own speed, I mean, and to see what I saw today.
[Long pause.]
It’s dark now and I’m tired. I’ve done nothing today, nothing at all, except look at a pool of water and a tree and the light playing on them. And, dear Nik, dear God, I’ve been for the first time in weeks perfectly myself and perfectly happy.
†
NIK’S NOTEBOOK: The nightmares have been terrifying. Every night I was away. Julie running. The explosion. Julie in flames, screaming. The fire, like fingers reaching out for me. Then I black out.
Twice I woke up, shouting, with Dominic, whose cell was next door, holding me so that I wouldn’t throw myself out of bed, which I did the first night.
Since coming home I haven’t been able to sleep much. Maybe I’m afraid of the dreams? But also, a couple of press people are still sniffing around, wanting to talk to me. And that makes me furious. Grandad curses at them now, which only makes things worse. So I have to watch it when I go out. If Grandad is here, he performs diversionary tactics at the front while I skip off at the back. But I’m fed up of this.
The leptonic OBD turned up yesterday, all gush and smarm. The group send their best, etc., ad nauseam. Don’t know whether he meant it, but he never sounds sincere, just creepy. And he’s still sticking it to the holey mints with his reptilian tongue. Asked about the explosion. Everybody asks about that, everybody, and what they really want to hear are the gory details, the blood and guts and mayhem. He even suggested it would be ‘a smashing idea’ if we included a reconstruction of the bombing in the film.
That’d grab em, says he, rubbing his little hands together like an excited lizard. Really contemporary, that would be, really relevant. Maybe Christ could be the bomber? That’s it, he says, getting quite beside himself with excitement, Christ the urban revolutionary. And the bomb he’s placing has been tampered with by the CIA so that it blows him up when he’s setting it. Instead of being crucified, he’d be blown to kingdom come by the fascist functionaries of the state. He lies in the road, squirming and black and bleeding, and muttering my God, my God, why have you not stood by me, and around him, peering down at him are a soldier, a policeman, a man in a dark suit with a briefcase—representatives of the earthly powers that be—while he dies in agony as a church clock strikes three. I can see it all. Terrif, eh? So the political establishment wins again, just like it did the first time. And with you playing Christ, Nik, there’ll be the extra human interest of knowing you went through that, well nearly that, you’re still with us, thank goodness. But what a great scene, eh?
Note for school essay: It may be true that the human race is basically religious, but it is also true that it is basically brutal, bloodthirsty, and cruel. Therefore, either religion is to blame for encouraging this or one of its main aims must be to change human nature. When you think of things like burning people at the stake, holy wars, and human sacrifices made to keep in good with some God or other, it doesn’t seem like most religions want to do much about changing human nature.
Not to mention the crucifiction. That’s a pretty good example of blood and guts and mayhem.
Julie would say I’m being cynical. She’d pray about it. So would Kit. Even Adam. Wish I could. Last week, I might have done. Why can’t I now? I feel a bit like when I was a little kid and Mum wanted me to do something, and I knew I should, even wanted to, but wouldn’t, so as to assert myself, I suppose. To be me, and not do what someone who mattered to me wanted me to do. Is that it? Maybe, as well, if I’m honest, I have to have help. Last week, there were other people who made it seem—not exactly natural, but possible.
Thinking about last week, one of the things I now know I learned was how a group of people can live together, even under quite a strict set of rules, and yet not be a crowd. Not a bunch of follow-my-leader robots. I liked that. I felt I was myself, independent, private. But also felt I was one of a group who worked together and made things happen.
Been thinking about these things during the sleepless nights. And when I’m tired of thinking, and feel lonely, I put on Julie’s two tapes that were waiting when I got home, and listen with the cans so as not to wake Grandad. Her voice fills my head. Trouble is, I hear her pain. She tries to sound cheerful, but the pain breaks through. Expect she’s also not telling me the worst, just as I’m not telling her.
There she is lying in her bed, remembering. Here am I in mine, trying not to remember, and listening to an electronic memory of her. I know she’s right, we can’t do without memory. But she doesn’t say that some memories hurt.
Looked up the poem she couldn’t finish. Just as well she couldn’t. The last lines wouldn’t exactly cheer her up.
I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ‘tis little joy
To know I’m further off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.
Thomas Hood, b. 1799 d. 1845. He didn’t last long, poor bloke. Probably died of depression, judging from his poem.
I’ll not read it to her till she’s better. Is religion only for kids? Or is he saying life makes you sour? He doesn’t say there’s no Heaven (and therefore no God). He only says he’s further off from Heaven now he’s a man than he was when he was a kid. Anyway, it’s a bit sad, and Julie doesn’t seem to remember it that way. She also seems to think it’s about a little girl and by a woman. Wonder what she’ll say about that.
Remembering last week is good. I’ve tried to live the same at home. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried St James’s. But it seems—I don’t know . . . Optional. Outmoded. A hangover from something finished, done. An antique shop full of wornout nicknacks.
Note for film: If Christ returned today, he’d bulldoze most of the churches. That would make quite a scene too! He hijacks a huge ‘dozer and rubbles a church. A crowd gathers. He says: My house shall be called the house of prayer and you have made it a mausoleum.
Nowadays church buildings get in the way. Millstones round the neck
of belief. They stand for the wrong things. Heavy, cold, empty, geriatric, cavernous, immovable, inflexible, museum-like, bossy. They’re about property not prayer.
Christ said: When two or three are gathered together in my name, there I shall be among them. Two or three, not twenty or five hundred or thousands. And nothing about meeting in a draughty old-fashioned barn of a place designer-built for the purpose. Or in expensive posh modern buildings, come to that.
Fact: he used to pray in the open air, or wherever he happened to be. And he held the Last Supper in the upstairs room of an ordinary house. He’d do that again. Why not? Those are the places where ordinary people are and live.
The first time round, he was arrested for claiming to be the messiah and therefore a threat to the establishment. Not this time. This is where the OBD is wrong. Nowadays, nobody would care less if he claimed to be the son of God. People would just laugh and say he was another nutter, and ignore him.
But ’dozing a building would really stir them up. Not because it’s a church, but because it’s a building, a piece of property. For that, they’d give him the works—arrest, fine, gaol, long lectures on how outrageous, what’s the world coming to, how dare he, is nothing sacred any more, etc. etc. And when he says, But those places are supposed to belong to me, they’d say that only made things worse, he ought to be ashamed of himself. After all, what would the country be like if people started taking him seriously and bulldozed any building they owned just because they didn’t like it? Think what would happen to property prices. They’d collapse. And anyway, he didn’t get planning permission to demolish his church. You can think what you like, they’d say, and even say what you like, it’s a free country, but demolishing buildings, that’s serious. Only someone absolutely mad would do such a thing. And people must be taught respect for property. Go to gaol for five years hard labour, you horrible man.
And when he answers back, and says: I’m God, I’m God, and incites people to give up all they have and follow him, the authorities get fed up, but they don’t crucify him. Not these days. They’re not barbarians. They’re civilized. No, they’d say he’s deranged, schizoid or dangerously deluded, anyway crackers, and pack him off to the bin, where they’d convulse him with electric-shock treatment till he can’t remember a thing, and inject him full of tranquillizers till he doesn’t know who he is or what he is or where he is, and leave him there, out of sight, out of mind, till he ceases to be a problem by snuffing it.
So the last shot in the film wouldn’t be anything gory. It would be of a forlorn, drug-dosed young man staring at nothing with a blank expression on his face, shuffling slowly along a bleak, echoey corridor without any windows, accompanied by a burly warder in a clean white coat, while on the soundtrack massed football crowds sing ‘You’ll never walk alone’.
Joke for a Christmas cracker: If you were the son of God, would you rather be drugged for life in a mental hospital or put to death by crucifiction?
PARTING SHOTS
‘Nik!’
‘Surprise surprise!’
‘You’re on your own?’
‘Got your tape. Thought I’d come over.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘Train. Grandad gave me the money. Good trip. Enjoyed it. Except for the underground in London. Had to play sardines with a package tour from Tokyo.’
‘Lovely to see you.’
‘Great that you can. You look a lot better.’
‘I’m mending. Knowing my eyes are all right is a big lift. But how are you?’
‘Terrific.’
‘Truly?’
‘Honest. So there’s the famous pond and tree.’
‘No sun today though. Did you get wet?’
‘It’s quite a nice view, but somehow I imagined it would be—I don’t know—more impressive.’
‘I did warn you.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Perhaps it’s the grey sky and the rain. Everything looks washed out. And I was euphoric, not surprisingly. Still . . . I shan’t forget . . .’
‘Brought you some prezzies. Nothing amazing. A book I thought you’d like and the regulation bunch of grapes.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘Neither’s much cop, I now realize, because you still can’t use your pickers and stealers. Sorry!’
‘No, they’re just right. I’ll share the grapes with Simmo. She’ll feed them to me. And I can manage books, though they still ration the time I’m allowed to read.’
‘Are your hands coming on okay?’
‘Slowly. They took the worst.’
‘But they’ll be all right?’
‘I’m doing well. Really! Don’t worry so. You’re as bad as Mum. But thanks all the same. Now, what’s the news from the home front? You haven’t written for a few days.’
‘No, sorry.’
‘I wasn’t complaining. Only meant—’
INTERCUT: Nik in his bedroom with his Walkman headphones on. He is sitting, crouched, gaunt, his face strained, staring out of the window. He grips a fat black Bible tightly between his hands.
‘I know. Haven’t written anything lately. Can’t somehow.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing. School nor you.’
‘Not even your project?’
‘Least of all.’
[Pause.]
‘I was only burnt outside. Maybe you were burnt inside.’
‘You always know.’
‘I do?’
INTERCUT: Nik in his bedroom as before, but viewed now from outside. His face is unbearably tense. He rises and with studied violence hurls the Bible directly at us. It smashes through the window.
[Enter Staff Nurse Simpson, carrying a tray with two mugs of coffee on it.]
‘Thought you might like a drink after your journey.’
[She passes a mug to Nik, who takes it with only an impatient nod of thanks, before she sits on the other side of the bed from him, where she holds Julie’s mug for her to drink from.]
‘He’s not over-exciting you, is he?’ Simmo says.
‘It’s good to see him.’
‘He doesn’t exactly look full of beans. A bit peaky in fact. You’re not coming down with something, are you? Don’t want you in here if you are.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘He’s a bit in the dumps, I think.’
‘That can be catching as well. What have you got to be in the dumps about?’
‘I didn’t say I was.’
‘You don’t have to. Your face says it for you. Aren’t you pleased to see Julie sitting up and taking notice?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And don’t you think she’s done well?’
‘’Course.’
‘Then why not show it?’
‘What would you like me to do, a flipflap or a pirouette?’
‘I’ll settle for your nicest toothy smile. Come on, live dangerously! Your face won’t crack.’
‘Stop teasing him, Simmo.’
‘I’m not. I mean it. He’s a lot livelier on paper than he is in the flesh, judging by today’s performance, I must say.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘What, after all those letters! I’ll miss them now Julie can read for herself.’
‘They were only meant for Julie.’
‘Somebody had to read them to her.’
‘Simmo did it in her own time,’ Julie says.
‘Fear not, Nik, your secrets are safe with me.’
‘What secrets? There weren’t any.’
Simmo hoots, mocking. ‘There’s none so blind—’
‘What d’you mean?’ Nik says, smarting.
‘It’s obvious you two shouldn’t be left in the same room together,’ Julie says.
‘Time I went anyway. Here, make yourself useful.’ Simmo hands Nik Julie’s mug. ‘See you both later. And cheer up, Nik, it might never happen.’
[Simmo goes. Pause.]
‘Don’t m
ind Simmo.’
‘Do I?’
‘She was on duty all weekend and now she’s covering for someone off sick. She’s hardly had any rest.’
‘If she’s that brisk when she’s tired, I hate to think what she’s like when she’s not.’
‘More patient but just as frank. Which I like. We’ve become good friends.’
‘I thought it was only men who fell in love with their nurses.’
‘Why should men have all the fun?’
‘Are you being serious?’
‘Are you being bitchy?’
[Nik scowls at Julie who is grinning at him. He feeds her some coffee.]
‘Did you mean it though?’
‘Why not? Don’t you love your friends?’
‘Not sure I have any. Not that close anyway. Except you.’
‘Which I want us to talk about.’
‘About me not having friends?’
‘About you and me.’
‘What about us?’
[Pause.]
‘You remember the night before?’
‘Am I likely to forget?’
‘What 1 said then still goes, Nik.’
[Nik places his and Julie’s mugs on her bedside cabinet and crosses to the window, where he stands, his back to Julie, looking at the view.]
‘You’re not really talking about the night before, are you?’ he says. ‘You’re really talking about the tape.’
[Pause.]
‘I didn’t want to bring it up here,’ Julie says. ‘I wanted to wait till I was home again and back to normal. But—’
[Nik turns and faces her.]
‘You’ve decided.’
‘Yes. I know what I have to do.’
‘You can’t know. Not yet. You’re afraid you’re not going to heal properly, that’s it, isn’t it? You think you’ll have scars and not be attractive.’
‘No, that’s not it!’
‘I don’t care, it wouldn’t matter to me. I’ve thought about it. It won’t make any difference.’
‘Listen, Nik. It isn’t that at all, truly. The doctor doesn’t think there’ll be anything bad. Nothing ugly. That’s why I wanted to wait till I’m fully recovered before we talked like this. So you could see I was okay. But—’