Now I Know (29 page)

The Magdalene arrived in a glow, panting, and, slumping down at his side, leaned herself against him.

‘Look, Michelle,' Nik said when she'd recovered, ‘if you like, I'll give you a ride down the hill. The law shouldn't spot us at this time of day.'

‘Ta very much,' she said. ‘And you can give me a ride any time.'

He nudged his head against hers. ‘I'll keep that in mind,' he said and laughed.

‘I mean it,' she said. ‘I've fancied you rotten since you joined the group. But you never stay around long enough to do anything about it.'

Nik shrugged and they were silent for a time before Michelle said, ‘I've told you why I was up here tonight. Your turn now. Why were you lying there or is that where you usually doss?'

Nik sniffed. ‘Fun.'

‘Now pull the other one.'

‘Okay . . . Research.'

‘For our stupid film, you mean?'

‘Why not?'

‘Don't believe you.'

‘It's true! . . . Well, kind of.'

She turned so she could face him. ‘I saw Randy Frank yesterday.'

‘Was he poking a mint?'

‘Don't be disgusting! He's all right really. He said he'd been to see you and he thought you weren't very well. He said you were still shook up from that awful bomb, and were worried sick about the girl you were with.'

Nik bristled. ‘I wish he'd mind his own business.'

‘Well, are you?'

‘Wouldn't you be?'

Michelle nodded. ‘Anybody would. I just wondered if it had anything to do with you being up here, that's all.'

Nik said nothing.

‘Is she . . .' Michelle hesitated. ‘Is she your girl? I mean—proper girl?'

Nik rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Yes and no,' he said tetchily. ‘I say yes, she says no.'

‘Doesn't she love you as much as you love her?'

Nik gave her a squinted look. ‘You do pry.'

Michelle said, ‘Sorry, I'm sure,' and turned her head away.

But suddenly, despite his anger, he wanted to tell.

He waited a moment till the anger subsided, then with a tentative hand brought her unresisting face to his again.

INTERCUT
:  
Julie's hospital room. She and Nik clutched in their awkard embrace, weeping.

JULIE
:  

Dear Nik:

This is difficult. I'd rather tell you what I want to say when I'm with you, and when I'm completely recovered and back home again.

But I think it probably should be said before then. Judging by your letters and . . . Well, anyway.

[
Pause.
]

I suppose everybody is strong in some things and weak in others. I'm strong in faith but weak in love. I know that much about myself.

I could easily love you, Nik. Love you the way you want, I mean. I knew that the night before the bomb. I wasn't just testing myself the way I said. That was only half the truth. The other half was that I wanted you the way you wanted me. I'd even imagined it happening. Lying in bed all the week before I'd imagined it. You and me together. I'd planned it, our night together outside Cambridge. The tent. Everything! That's my confession.

[
Pause.
]

But then, as soon as I knew you really did want me, and it began to turn out just the way I'd hoped for, I drew back. Isn't that awful! The terrible desire to know you're wanted for your body as well as yourself. And then when someone offers you that, to realize it isn't enough. It isn't what you really want. And you've led them on only to reject them.

I hated myself! Dear God, how I hated myself afterwards. You thought I'd gone to sleep, but I hadn't. All the time we were lying there in the tent, I was loathing myself. Not because I'd wanted you. There's nothing wrong with that. But because of my deceit.

I'm sorry for that. For what I did and for hating myself as well. Neither did any good.

I can tell you this now because I've thought and prayed so much about it. What I did and why.

[
Pause.
]

It's all got to do with love, hasn't it?

The more I thought about it, the more it came down to one thing. ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.'

She said that at the Last Supper, the night before she died on the cross. She'd broken the bread only a few minutes before, saying, ‘This is my body,' and she'd passed round the cup of wine, saying, ‘This is my blood,' and she'd told the disciples, ‘Do this in remembrance of me'.

You know, to me the Last Supper is the most important part of her story. And being at the Eucharist, at the Last Supper repeated day in day out all down the years since the first time, that's for me the most important part of my life as a Christian. It heals me. Brings everything into focus. Gives me new energy. Helps me view things in the right perspective.

So if she gives a new commandment then, at that moment in the Last Supper, it's just got to be important. And the more I thought about it the more I kept wondering why she calls it the
new
commandment. What's so
new
about it? How is loving one another different from loving your neighbour as yourself, which we'd already been told to do?

And, after all, Nik, she can't mean ‘love' the way you meant it that night. Otherwise, she would mean a kind of everlasting gang-bang. Which you've got to admit is impractical, if not impossible.

Then I realized only St John's Gospel, my favourite, mentions the new commandment. The others don't. And in John's story, it comes after Judas has left the room to go and betray Jesus. Also, she repeats the command three times. You'll like that. And it's tangled up with her talking about friendship. ‘You are my friends if you do as I command you,' she says. ‘I call you servants no longer.' So this love, this
new
love, is the love of friendship.

In the love you wanted of me, Nik, two people come together and make themselves one. Whereas it seems to me the love Jesus is telling us to have for one another is the love of two friends: the love of distinctness, of separateness. Neither wants to dominate. Neither wants to be dominated. The desire in the love of friendship is the desire for the other's freedom.

In the love you want, the two people fit themselves together physically because they want to fit together in every way—in their bodies, in their minds, in their spirits. But in the love of friendship you don't want your friend to become one with you. Just the opposite. You want your friend to be as perfectly herself as she can be.

[
Pause.
]

That's what I want for you, Nik, and that's what I hope you most want for me.

That is what I want you for, and I hope that is what you want me for.

[
Pause.
]

Lying here, at first hating myself, wanting an end to my life, I have slowly learned to love myself as a friend. That has been my cure for my wounded self. Now and in future loving you as a friend is the best of me—is all of me—I can give you.

All I can give you is the love I give myself.

The love you've been wanting from me—the love that comes from the desire to be one—I've already given elsewhere, Nik. What I need is a friend who loves me as a friend, if I am to live up to that other love. Will you be that loving friend?

‘She sounds a bit of a fanatic,' Michelle said, ‘if you don't mind me saying.'

‘No more than you are,' Nik said.

‘Me? I'm not a fanatic.'

‘Yes you are. You're a fanatic about boys.'

‘That's natural.'

‘So? You like doing what comes naturally. Julie likes doing what comes supernaturally.'

‘Clever dick!'

‘Smartypants!'

She poked her tongue at him through vulvarine lips.

Nik blew a raspberry. ‘I'm not saying you aren't good at it, Michelle, don't get me wrong. Just the same as Julie's good at giving her all to God.'

‘Maybe that's why you like her so much.'

‘Because I can't have her, you mean?'

‘No. Because she's good at what she wants. That's always a bit sexy, isn't it? I mean, there's a boy in the swimming team at the Leisure Centre. He's terrific at swimming and he knows it, the bighead. He's just gorgeous to watch, I mean he just is. It's not only his smashing body. It's everything. I dunno how to say it, but it's like when he swims he's the best he ever will be in the whole of his life. If you could have him then, while he's swimming, you just feel it would be the greatest, the last word . . . Ecstacy!'

She sighed.

‘But then after, when he's not swimming, even though he's got this stunning body, it's like all that—I dunno . . .'

‘Concentrated energy?'

‘Yes—all that lovely concentrated energy has broken up into awkward little bits all sparking off in different directions and you're left with this big-headed, ham-fisted idiot that's about as likely to give anybody ecstacy as a side of beef in a butcher's shop.'

‘I suppose it might, a side of beef, some people being as weird as they are. But it sounds to me like you should choose your meat more carefully.'

‘That's what I've been thinking lately. But you know what I'm trying to say.'

‘Sure. Ever since I first saw Julie I've been hot for her. Not just for sex, but because of her specialness. She knows what she wants and she's going for it, all or nothing, no side-tracking.'

‘Dedicated.'

Nik glanced at Michelle with surprise. ‘That's right, that's what it is.'

‘And you want the same. Want it with her.'

‘Do I? . . . How do you know?'

Michelle laughed. ‘Any girl would know that. But if you ask me, she has to be a bit of a fool to turn you down.'

‘She hasn't turned me down.' Nik pushed himself to his feet and, breathing deeply, took in the sweeping view, early morning mist now shrouding the valley so that he seemed to be standing above the clouds. ‘She's offered me something else, that's all.' His eyes came back to Michelle lying on her side, her head supported on her elbow. ‘Something better.' He went to his bike and stood it upright. ‘Only I'm not sure I can live up to it.'

He mounted and hobby-horsed himself alongside Michelle.

‘I'm getting cold,' he said.

Michelle got to her feet and groomed herself with practised vanity.

Nik said, ‘Would you do something for me?'

She smiled at him askance. ‘Don't say this is going to be my lucky night after all!'

He grinned back. ‘You never know!'

Michelle climbed onto his saddle behind him. ‘So what is it?'

‘Tell you when we get there.'

‘Why? Where are we going?'

‘To the dump by the canal.'

†

‘Isn't this nice?' Michelle said.

‘Nice it is, secluded it isn't,' Tom said, coming up behind and slipping his arms round her waist.

‘Who said it was?' Michelle strained against him. ‘But it's a lovely view. All of the town. And especially of the dump by the canal. Isn't that where it happened?'

‘That's where it happened,' Tom said, his hands now exploring under Michelle's singlet.

‘I must say,' Michelle said, using her elbows to prevent Tom's hands rising higher, ‘you don't waste much time.'

‘Told you—' Tom's breathing was not at all calm, ‘don't have any to spare.'

‘Thought you was after information?'

‘I am.' Thwarted in one ambition Tom's hands set off in pursuit of another.

‘Well you won't find it down there!' Michelle wriggled free and faced him. ‘So what d'you want to know?'

Irritation flickered in Tom's eyes and revived his suspicion. ‘Look, you—what's your game?'

‘Snooker,' Michelle said. ‘I'm quite partial to a game of snooker.'

‘Smart ass!' Tom said.

Michelle laughed. ‘How funny! Somebody else called me that only last night. Well, early this morning to be exact. But he was a bit more polite.'