The Book of Daniel (12 page)

Over the next few weeks, very little occurred to challenge that perspective. Once I had risen from what could very easily have turned out to be my death bed—physically or mentally—we got on with the business of falling in love properly. I had been worried that our relationship was going to be hard work, what with all of my issues of trust and independence, but she made it very easy for me. The age difference that had been a barrier to even basic interaction fourteen years earlier had dwindled into insignificance, and we found that our conversations were as comfortable as if we had known each other for years. It was a refreshing experience for me to enjoy such openness; and much as I shared the details of my life with her, so she told me all about herself.

It seemed that Jo’s misadventure in the woods outside of Hirston had had more of an impact on her than was at first apparent. In that resilient way of the very young, she had quickly recovered from her exposure to the cold and the mental stresses of the ordeal, and the doctors had no problem in declaring her fit and well. But Jo had been so impressed by her time in the hospital that, from that moment forth, she was determined that she was going to work there one day. Her parents humoured her, thinking it was one of those phases that all children go through, but the indomitable will that she had shown in the forest—refusing to give in to the cold’s tempting caress—now turned its attention instead to her newly decided career plans, and she worked hard to make them become a reality. And once she had made it, by all accounts she was very good at her job, too; so much so that six months before our encounter at the hospital, her supervisor had encouraged her to think about putting her talents to use in the Army Medical Corps. She had initially been wary of the idea, having only just recently been transferred to the accident and emergency ward, but if you remember, Jo was a lot more religious than I—not hard, I know—and she prayed about it, and felt that that was where God wanted her to go.

The first time Jo told me about this last part of her tale, I did my best to hide my scepticism, but I obviously failed.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Dan?”

I paused before answering, but it was probably as good a time as any for us to bring our religious differences out into the open. “Well, I don’t want to turn this into a big issue between us, but I’ve got to be honest with you, Jo. I know I used to go to church and all that, but I don’t really believe in God anymore. Or, to put it more accurately, I believe in Him, but I don’t want anything to do with Him, and I’m pretty sure the feeling’s mutual. Let’s just leave it at that.”

She looked as if I’d just slapped her, and because of the hurt on her face, I felt as guilty as if I had. “Oh. But Dan, you used to have such a strong faith. Don’t you remember what Mr Wright called you when you found me in the woods that day? He called you an agent of God, I’ve always remembered that. Only people with real faith can hear God’s voice so clearly. What happened to change you?”

“Do you really need to ask? Maybe God tearing my parents’ marriage apart and then driving my mother to suicide had something to do with it.”

“But those things weren’t God’s doing. It was your father’s decision to leave you and your mother, and Geraldine’s interference that… made things worse. If you must blame someone, blame the human influences in your life, not God.”

“Yes, but all of those human influences have direct links to God, or claimed to be acting in His name. If God had nothing to do with it, and they were just following their own selfish instincts, then that’s only because He made them the way they were. And He could easily have intervened to stop them at any point, too. Whichever way you try to look at it, it’s His fault. And there’s no sign of Him letting up, either; just look at what happened to all my friends in that ambush. Exactly why the hell should I worship Him?”

I could see tears in her eyes, and that hurt, but once I had got started, I couldn’t stop myself. All the years of pain and bitterness I had bottled up inside of me shot the words right out of my mouth, and poor Jo just happened to be in the line of fire.

“Dan, it’s not like that. You know that God loves us. Why do you keep that Saint George medallion of yours if you don’t believe that, somewhere deep down?”

“Because it was my mother’s, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with God, apart from reminding me how he keeps shitting all over my life.”

The tears fell. I realised that my fervour on the subject had gotten the better of me, and that I was hacking away at one of the central pillars of Jo’s world with the axe that I’d had to grind. I tried to rein myself in.

“Hey. Don’t do that. There’s no need to cry. Listen, Jo, I know this is important to you, and I’m sorry I can’t give you the answers you want to hear. I can’t help feeling the way I do. Maybe if I were in your position, I’d find it easier to believe, too. From what you’ve told me, everything in your life has worked out pretty much just the way you hoped. But haven’t you ever questioned your faith? Haven’t you ever had something go so wrong that you wonder why God is doing that to you? It’s happened to me too often for me to be able to just shrug it off, or pray it away, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do.”

She looked downwards, hiding her face and her tears from me. In a low voice, she said, “As a matter of fact, my faith is being tested right now.”

“What do you mean?”

She raised her eyes to search my own. “Don’t you think it’s amazing that you and I have come into each other’s lives again like we have, especially after everything you’ve been through? Don’t you think there might be some higher power behind that, and that maybe our meeting up, our… what we have together already, even after such a short time… is some kind of expression of God’s love? That He’s saying to you, ‘Dan, here, after all the bad things that have happened to you, here is something good’?”

“Maybe. Or maybe what He’s saying is, ‘Here’s something good, maybe the best thing you’ve ever known, but just you wait. That’s the next thing I’m going to take away from you, just like I did with your family, just like I did with all your friends, just like I did with your face.’ I’m sorry, Jo, but my experience of God is that He’s vengeful, not merciful, and that for whatever reason, He’s got it in for me.”

Another tear dropped from her eye, landing in her lap with a soft, audible plop. “Let me tell you something, Dan. I didn’t want to tell you earlier because I was worried that it would sound weird to you and scare you off. Maybe now isn’t the right time either, but I have to help you see the bigger picture. You might think I’ve had an easy life, and maybe in comparison to yours I have, but I wouldn’t have been able to see my way through as far as I have under my own steam. God really does give me the strength to get through the tough times, and later, I can usually see the reason why He’s put me through them in the first place.

“But here’s the thing that’s testing my faith at the moment, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. You see, there were really two parts to the path I was called to follow after I got lost in the woods—and yes, I really do believe that it was a calling, not just an idea born out of my own determination. Becoming a nurse was only half of it, and despite a few minor stumbling blocks, that’s been easy to believe in, and, well, here I am. The other half… I’ve never believed it could happen, because it’s always sounded crazy. I thought it was impossible, even for God, because you disappeared. You might think that I was so keen to join the Medical Corps out of some crazy hope that you and I might meet up again, but the thought never really crossed my mind; over the years, I’ve sort of forgotten about the second thing that God called me to do, dismissed it as a silly fantasy. And yet here we are, just as He said.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Dan, the second part of my calling was that you and I were meant to be together. That one day, you would be my husband.”

By comparison, the sniper’s bullet that had hit me in the head seemed like a mosquito bite.

The idea of being married to Jo was a thrilling one, no doubt about that, and something that had drifted idly through my mind on more than one occasion since we had met. But so far, that’s all it had been: a gilt-edged fantasy. As I had told her, I was still fighting against my inner doubts, worried that I would only be opening myself up to whole new realms of pain if I were to let her into my life so completely and then lose her to God’s next malicious whim. The implications behind her words—that any freedom I felt was an illusion; that meeting Jo as I had was all according to His plans—soured the whole fantasy, turned the gilt-edging green with corruption. It all reminded me too much of the way I had been used—manipulated—by God to locate Jo and her friends after they had gotten lost.

“Look, I know you must think I’m a total nutcase,” she said, “but just listen for a minute and I’ll tell you the full story of what happened that day.

“When my friends and I got lost and the daylight started fading, three of us wanted to keep on going, hoping that we’d find someone to help us, but Penny was scared because she thought she’d heard a bear. She wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard we tried to convince her, so in the end, we all sat down under that tree together and started shouting for help. But after a while, as it got darker and darker, Penny’s idea about the bear didn’t seem quite so silly anymore. Even Mary thought she saw something moving amongst the trees, and she was always the sensible one. As soon as she said she saw something, that was it—we didn’t argue anymore. We huddled even closer around the base of the tree, piling the snow up around us to build a shelter, hoping to keep out the bear, or whatever it was.

“Of course, I know now that there wasn’t any bear, but I can understand why we were led to think that there was. It was just God’s way of getting us to build that shelter as quickly as possible. If we hadn’t cocooned ourselves up like that, we would probably have frozen to death long before you found us. Even as it was, I can’t remember ever feeling so cold; we were warm enough all the while we were building the shelter, but once we’d finished, it didn’t take long for that heat to wear off. As we got colder, that was when I started to pray, like I’d never prayed before. Nothing profound, of course—I was only seven—just simple prayers, asking God over and over again to save us, save us from the bear, save us from the cold, just to save us. And then all of a sudden, I knew that we’d be safe, that God would send someone who would find us. Just like the parable of the lost sheep.”

Her words were like a splash of ice water, vocalising the dream I’d had that night; but she mistook my surprise for scepticism.

“I know what you’re thinking, that it was just my mind going into shock, but it wasn’t like that. I can’t explain it. Suddenly, bam, I just knew. Out of nowhere, an image came into my head of a man with a huge shield on his arm, protecting me from arrows and dragons and lightning, and God said to me, actually
spoke
, ‘I am sending you a man who will be your husband. He will be your protector. Not just today, but forever.’ Seconds later, I heard the sound of someone running up to the tree and digging in the snow, and then a voice, your voice, called out that you’d found us. Suddenly the nightmare was over and there were people everywhere, all of them talking about what a miracle it was we had been saved, and about how God had told you where to find us.

“I didn’t pay any serious attention to what God had said about you one day being my husband until much later, and even then I’ve always been doubtful. But the very fact that you’re here with me now, against all the odds… surely that
proves
it was true and not just something I dreamt up. When you suddenly appeared in the hospital here, I thought all my doubts had dried up and blown away like dust. The way you came back into my life, I thought nothing would ever be able to shake my faith again. But, Dan, to hear you say what you did just now about God, after you were so strong in your faith before… I… I just don’t know…”

She trailed off, crying softly, and the sight of her distress melted away the last of my negative feelings. Of course I hated God, but I didn’t see any reason why that meant Jo should suffer because of it. Did it really matter if she believed that God had brought us together, while I thought it was just a wonderful twist of fate? The important thing was that we
had
found each other, and I hoped that the reassuring embrace I enveloped her with conveyed that.

“Oh, Dan, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s just that—when I’ve imagined it, you coming back into my life again was supposed to be such a joyful, uncomplicated event. The happily ever after. And now look at it… what a mess.”

We held each other for longer, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, she pulled back slightly, and I looked down, straight into her eyes. They were still as blue and piercing as I remembered from our younger days, but now they held a new power over me. “Do you think you can ever go back to not hating Him, Dan? It’s never too late to turn back; you remember the story of the prodigal son. And whatever else you feel now, I
know
that you were guided by God that day. You must feel that too. With His help, you did a great thing.”

I pushed away the memory of the dream as it elbowed its way to the front of my mind again. I did not share Jo’s certainty. Although at the time I had felt the dream was from God, it was just as possible that Jo or one of the other girls had some kind of latent telepathic power that had manifested itself when their lives were in danger. No-one could prove one theory over the other—and to be honest, I didn’t care either way. I was no more likely to become a proponent of telepathy than I was to wholeheartedly embrace the being who had so royally fucked over my entire life. But I didn’t want to tell Jo that.

So I lied.

In our few short years together, it was the only real lie I told her, and even now it still feels sour in my mind. I told her that I didn’t know, that maybe over time I could learn to trust God again, that perhaps the dark years were over, that I believed a man could fly. Even as I opened my mouth and the words came out, I knew they were going to be false. Jo believed me, of course; her sweet nature and her faith conspired against her, and it was pretty much exactly what she wanted to hear. But the words were hollow. It may not sound like much of a lie to you—it’s not up there with ‘She’s just a friend, darling’ or ‘I’ve never seen this person before in my life, Your Honour’—but to me, it was a big deal. I had wanted to keep my relationship with Jo free from lies, and now, I had spoilt that. And once again, God was to blame.