Nik: Now I Know Read online

  Also: Suppose Our Beloved Director has more than a lepton for a mind after all. Suppose the only leptonic thing about him is his leptosomatic body. He is all of 1.46 m. in his legwarmers, and is about as thick as a leptocephalus when last seen in a suitable state to be measured for swimming trunks—a service I observed the costume person of female gender performing for him last week behind the counter in the nosh bar when OBD thought we were all doing relaxation exercises in the drama hall. No wonder they call him Randy Franky, as he is so frankly randy. (I was hunting for a packet of Smarties at the time, finding the consumption of Smarties more relaxing than relaxation exercises with a bunch of sweating would-be superstars. Also: what the ding do women see in him, when there’s not much to see of him at all? I still have not understood about sexual attraction and must make a special study of it soon.)

  OBD is leptocephalic in other ways as well: like slippery and wriggly. He also looks slimy to the touch. I have no intention of finding out if he really is. But withal he is fascinating in a primitive kind of way. The gang say he is okay when you’re in the bad and that persons of youthful age who find themselves in trouble flock to him for advice and assistance. Being sheep, they would. All I can say is I hope I’m never in trouble with no one else to bleat to.

  Selah.

  I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they’re more groupy than glue. If they’re on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with.

  Why me? I asked OBD.

  His reply: Many are called but you is chosen.

  Very convulsing. I told him he himself should play a small but perfectly formed Almighty, as he already seemed to ALMOST know the lines.

  Reply: All right, you big Dick—I mean, Nik!—get on with it because you’re cast.

  Much laughter from the groupies.

  Me: I have been told my natural curiosity is one day likely to land me in hot water. Despite this warning, I joined your crazy filmthing because you wanted a researcher to save you the trouble of doing the work yourself. This I don’t mind. I enjoy researching, and God turns out to be quite interesting in an uninteresting sort of way. But me play Jesus! Pick on someone your own size!

  OBD, riled by this second reference to his diminutive stature: Look, Lord Bighead, you joined this project because your history teacher told you your work on the film could be submitted for exam assessment, and you thought what a nice easy option it would be. So just do your researching and quietly think of playing Jesus Christ, okay? There’s weeks yet before shooting starts so you’ll have plenty of time to turn us down if you don’t want to do it. In which case, your researching will be finished and you can seek pastures new among people of a better class who are more worthy of your superior talents than this our humble company.

  Etc. yammer yammer yak yak. Quite took off with the putdowns.

  I said I’d think about it, just to shut him up.

  Well, he does kind of breathe at you. He wriggles close and exhales up at you from beneath your nostrils, he being minuter than everyone else in the movie except that pricky clapperboy. And his breath stinks of mints. He chainsucks those nasty little mints with the hole in the middle. This habit he makes even more attractive by spearing the mint through its hole with the sharp point of his pink little lizard-like tongue and then sticking his tongueyed mint out at you while he listens to what you’re saying. Distracting. He was doing it during our heated exchange, which is why I couldn’t think of any speedo-witty retorts to his insults.

  The rest of Our Gang enjoyed this no end, naturally, and orchestrated it with much hooted laughter in the manner of a Greek chorus gone off their heads. Especially when OBD said that I was exactly his idea of the sort of anybody person who can’t act and wouldn’t be noticed in a crowd even if everybody else left.

  A sort of renta-nobody, John the Baptist quipped.

  Mintbreath breathed: A nobody would suit my idea of Jesus Christ exactly. And you, he said to me, will make a very successful nobody.

  Selah.

  If he was trying to rile me in revenge for being turdy with him, he succeeded. But:

  I AM NO NOBODY

  And I have a passport to prove it. Required last year when Grandad took me to northern Sweden to meet some old buddies from his days at sea.

  There is a terrible picture of me staring at the Qwik Foto camera on Paddington station. Even my own mother wouldn’t recognize me. And my passport: says in official government printing that I am Nicholas Christopher FROME, British Citizen and Student, 1.75 m. taille, with no distinguishing marks.

  When I come to think about it this just shows how useless a passport is at telling who you are. For example: ‘No distinguishing marks’. Ridiculous. I’m covered in distinguishing marks! Not that I’d want other people to know about most of them.

  Like the brown mole, 1 cm. diameter, just below the hip bone on my right thigh. And the scar, 3.4 cm. long on my left kneecap, where I fell on a jagged stone at age nine yrs four mths while being chased by cruds in the playground at school, their intention being to tie my arms and legs into reef knots, they being good little boy scouts busy learning their tenderfoot and desirous of practising brotherly love and scouts’ law on me. This experience has left me with serious reservations about boy scouts and brotherly love. As churches of all kinds often run scout troops and talk a lot about brotherly love, this also makes me suspicious of churches, apart from my difficulties with God.

  Circumcised. 9.6 cm. limp, a slim 13.3 cm. when roused. (Last checked two nights ago, when I was disappointed to find no further development since the previous measurement a month ago. There’s more hair though—and about time.) My mother was fanatical about cleanliness and thought my father a dirty old man, even at thirty, which is old, I know, but not old enough, surely, to class him as a DOM. Anyhow, my fifth member was given the chop shortly after my second birthday (or so I’ve been told; I’ve no memory of this presumably painful occasion) to make sure I could be kept germ free and could be thoroughly inspected for any signs of DOMishness by Mummy in the bath at night, which she insisted on right up to the time when she . . .

  I prefer not to remember that distinguishing mark. Forget it.

  Why am I spewing all this out here? It has nothing to do with God and Our Gang. Must be this word processor. You just keep writing like you were talking to someone, when really it’s only a dumb machine. It’s the gazing face of the VDU that does it, and the green fingertip moving across, writing words. And having writ moves on. You just can’t stop.

  STOP damn it. Where was I? Oh yes: Distinguishing marks.

  Also: light brown hair, grey eyes, glasses (not all the time), etc., all ‘visible’.

  The point I’m making is that there can be nobody else anywhere in the whole spacedout world who has exactly the same combination of physical attributes, thus proving how unique a somebody I am.

  Which is a nice thought till you remember that everybody else is just as unique a somebody. Which also means, therefore, that being unique is the most commonplace thing you can be. Which seems a contradiction in terms. But never mind.

  What’s more I haven’t even started to list the things inside me that are never ever visible, even to myself, and which nobody knows about except me, and which are more me than any of the visible bits. None of these ever gets on a passport, or any kind of form, so how does anyone ever know about anyone else?

  STOCKSHOT: And as the mole on my [right thigh] is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the living son looks forth . . . That which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the f
uture, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then shall be.

  The idea of me playing Jesus is also ridiculous because I do not believe in God. OBD said this didn’t matter.

  He said: You don’t have to believe in God, ducky. All you have to do is behave like you’re the son of God. And judging by your normal behaviour you shouldn’t have any difficulty doing that.

  Har har har and good-night.

  The evening so happily concluded, Mintbreath sent us all home to work out who or what our Bible characters would be if they returned today. Caiaphas equals the Archbishop of Canterbury, Judas equals the Chancellor of the Exchequer: that kind of thing.

  Not me. He wants a nobody for Jesus, he can have a nobody. A nobody who refuses to be anybody who is not the somebody he already is. If I’m going to play Jesus (which I’m not) then Jesus Christ is going to be me.

  Selah.

  Who cares anyway? As far as I can tell from my researches, the only thing you can say about Christ is that he never turns out to fit anybody’s idea of how he ought to be. Everybody tries to make him into what they want him to be. In my opinion, nobody wants to know what he was REALLY like, because they all know instinctively that they wouldn’t like what they found if they did.

  I’d cop out of this movie right now, but I keep wondering WHY. Why do people believe all this guff about God? And what does it feel like to believe it? What does it DO to you? I mean, even intelligent people fall for it! It must DO something. Mustn’t it?

  That’s the trouble with being too curious. Once you’re hooked you can’t give up. I keep churning it over in my mind and I know I might as well get it out of my system right now. I mean, it would be such an indignity to get old, like in your twenties, and still be interested in God. You’d never live it down. It’s so juvenile. So I’ll tackle God and Jesus Christ now and then get on with black holes, which is at least something worth looking forward to. (Question: Is God the Father a black hole? Is God the Son a white hole? Is God the Holy Ghost a quasar? Explore and discuss.)

  Selah.

  Anyway, I told Mintbreath I’ll play Jesus if I can convince myself Jesus is important enough to bother about, but that I’d only be doing it under protest.

  To which OBD replied: You think Christ was willing? So who wants to be crucified?

  Har har har and a second good-night.

  ACTION: Fixed interview with Revd Philip Ruscombe BA, Vicar of St James, tomorrow, 7 p.m., at the vicarage, to ask Important Questions About God.

  Start with the priests. If they don’t know about God, who does? How does anybody know?

  Not that Christ had much luck with the priests, come to think of it. They were the ones who wanted him dead.

  †

  Only one witness, an insurance agent, Brian Standish, reported finding a young man hanging from a cross. Later that same morning Tom sought him out in his office.

  ‘Don’t look much like a policeman,’ the insurance agent said. ‘And I went through all I know half a dozen times at the station.’

  ‘Helps to hear it first hand, sir .’

  ‘Have to make it quick. Up to the eyeballs. Coffee?’

  ‘No, sir, thanks.’

  ‘Well, let’s see. As I told the sergeant, I was jogging. Morning stagger, do it every day. Same route: along London Road, left past the council depot, under the railway viaduct to the canal, along the towpath, up into Cheapside, along Rowcroft, up into town and back home along London Road. Some days do it twice, if I’m feeling strong, which isn’t often. Today I did it twice, though I’m beginning to regret it. Didn’t see him first time so don’t know whether he was there or not. I’m not one for the scenic beauties. Anyway, it was a bit foggy this morning and parky. But the second time round, the fog had cleared and the sun was bright. That’s why I spotted him. The sun caught him. He was swinging, you see, turning slowly like a life-size crucifix on the end of a wire. The sun flashed on his face, I think. At any rate, it was his face I saw first, hanging up there, right above me, over the hedge along the towpath. Stopped me dead in my tracks. But I mean dead. Took my breath away for a second. The look on his face. The pain. But smiling. Grinning more like. Mad almost. Weird anyway. I thought he was a gonner. But then I heard him say something. Saliva slavering from his mouth. His body was shining with sweat, ribs sticking out, belly sucked in. Like a chicken carcass hanging in a butcher’s shop. And his legs! Bent, very awkward. And those underpants! Not a pretty sight!’

  ‘Blue with white trimmings?’

  ‘Shouldn’t laugh, but the underpants were comic somehow. Not that I laughed then. Too stunned.’

  ‘And he said something?’

  ‘Blabbering. Couldn’t make head or tail.’

  ‘Important, sir.’

  ‘Sorry, not a word. Delirious, I suppose. Not that I stood there listening. As soon as I realized what I was looking at, I scrambled up the bank, pushed through the hedge into that dump—which, by the by, it’s time the council made them clear, junked cars piled all over the place, rusty scrap everywhere, a bloody eyesore, a blot on the town, the sooner the bypass goes through the better . . . Where was I?’

  ‘Pushing through the hedge, sir.’

  ‘Right. Wasn’t till I was in the dump I realized he was dangling from a crane. Couldn’t believe it! Fifteen feet off the ground on a cross made of rusty metal hooked onto the end of a crane! He was strapped on with strips of polythene round his arms and legs. Looked at first like there was nothing holding him at all. It was only then I realized I’d expected nails and blood streaming out. When I saw there wasn’t, it was almost as big a shock as seeing him first. And I panicked a bit, I suppose. Funny thing, you expect the worst and when you don’t find it, you go to pieces. Usually a calm person myself. Have to be in my line of business. But you don’t find people on crosses every day, even in insurance. And we don’t do a policy covering crucifiction.’

  ‘So you did what, sir?’

  ‘Ran about like a spooked rabbit. I was going to try and get him down. But then I thought, what happens if I push the wrong levers and he goes twanging up into the pulley or crashing to the ground? Pole-axed or pile-driven, that’s what. Either way, a big claim against yours truly. So I started thinking whether to fetch the fire brigade, the ambulance, or the police. Or all three. But I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I thought, if I don’t believe it myself, who’s going to believe it when I tell them over the phone? So there I was dodging about and getting nowhere while the kid was babbling on like he was in Parliament, spouting a lot of hot air that didn’t make any sense.’

  ‘But you finally went for the police.’

  ‘Daft, I know, running all that way. Could have dialled the three nines. But somehow I just had to see somebody to tell.’

  ‘You arrived at the station at six thirty-three, according to the report sheet. Told the duty officer what you’d found. He sent you in a car with two officers back to the scene.’

  ‘And he’d gone.’

  ‘But the officers believed your story?’

  ‘The driver knew me. Stan Fields. Belong to the same bowling club. He could tell I wasn’t joking. And of course there were the footprints. The cross was lying on the ground directly under the crane and strips of polythene were scattered all round. They’d been cut. But that wouldn’t have made a case, would it? The footprints did though. Very fresh, and all round the cross. I knew mine because of the pattern of the soles. I was wearing new running shoes, expensive, with an unusual pattern on the instep. We could see the print of them all right. But the other prints crisscrossed over mine, so they must have been made after I’d been there.’

  ‘You were at the station by six thirty-three. How long to run there from the scene?’

  ‘Oh, eight minutes. Ten at most.’

  ‘You were back at the scene by six fifty according to PC Fields’ report. So there was a maximum twenty-seven minutes for whoever it was to get the boy down and awa
y. And you didn’t see anybody anywhere near the scene all the time you were there?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘And you can’t identify the boy?’

  ‘Sorry. Never seen him before, as far as I know. Not that I go round looking at kids his age. See enough of my own two, thanks.’

  ‘They about his age?’

  ‘Fifteen and sixteen. He might have been seventeen. Hard to tell under the circs. Certainly not younger than sixteen, I’d guess. Too well hung—if you’ll pardon the pun.’

  ‘I’ve the other details you gave the sergeant, sir. But perhaps you’ve thought of something else since then?’

  ‘Sorry. Would help if I could.’

  ‘Then I’ll not hold you up any longer, sir. Thanks for your time.’

  ‘Best of luck. Hope you catch them. Need to crack down on this sort of thing. Too much violence everywhere these days.’

  †

  JULIE: Dear Nik. Can’t start without saying a name, as if I’m talking to thin air and not to another person. When I pray I start Dear God. Same thing. Somebody . . . other . . . has to be there. So: Dear Nik.

  [Pause.]

  Funny about names. At the beginning, when I thought I was dying, names suddenly seemed very important. I used to say my own over and over to myself. Julie . . . Julie . . . Julie. JulieJulieJulie. And Sarah . . . Sarah, because that was the name my father called me when I was little. I was christened Sarah Julia, did I ever tell you? But when I was twelve I took against Sarah because I read in the Bible about Sarah being childless till she was very old. I thought, I want children when I’m young, so I won’t let anyone call me by a name that might put a hex on me. As if names could work bad magic. I told everybody they had to call me Julie, and everyone did, except my father, who said I’d always be Sarah to him. Sarah my solace, he’d say.