To Dream of the Dead

Most people lose their faith as a result of personal tragedy — for example, the failure of prayer to alleviate the suffering of a loved one. In my case, I simply awoke, as if from a ridiculous dream and realised in a single moment of revelation — a word much inflated by the Christian church — that it was all a despicable fabrication.

Immediately, a great weight dropped away from me and for a few moments I had never felt as free or as happy in my life.

This, of course, was before the anger set in.

Not even a physicist or a geneticist. Just a journalist.

The Independent had kept him on as Religious Affairs correspondent after he’d come out as an atheist. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Merrily sat in the computer-lit scullery, remembering, from her childhood, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Catholic against Protestant, religion synonymous with hatred and violent death.

Around the same time, John Lennon had been imagining wistfully that there was no heaven. Easy if you tried, and she had tried but never found it that easy. Nothing colder than an empty sky: clean, pure, bleak, pointless.

Like the scores of Islamic suicide bombers who’d given their lives to promote the cause of secularism in the West. Blow yourself up with a few dozen innocent infidels and there’s a queue of virgins waiting for you in paradise.

World Cup tickets for all martyrs.

Insane.

All religion, therefore, was insane.

Mathew Stooke continued in his job with the Independent for another year. During this time, viewing the world of religion through new and penetrating eyes, he wrote the remarkable series of articles which would become the basis of the international bestseller The Hole in the Sky.

Merrily cross-reffed to Stooke’s Amazon listing, found The Hole in the Sky ranking number 34 in the Hot One Hundred. Which, since it had been around for more than a year, was disturbingly impressive. Whatever it was costing to rent Cole Barn would be small change, these days, for Mr Winterson.

‘A man who embraces glorious, guiltless blasphemy like an expensive whore.’

New York Times.

Yeah, right. She scrolled into the Amazon reader reviews.

This book came out of rage and it made me angry too. Stooke is a diamond. I salute him.

… The guy beats Dawkins hollow because he seems to have started out as a believer and he knows what that’s like. The sense of betrayal comes across so much more powerfully than the smart-arsed science-boy stuff you get from Dawkins. It’s time for the pope and the archbishop of Canterbury and a few imams to get scared. Stooke is the goods.

I got this book for Christmas, which I thought at first was a bad joke. By the time I was halfway through the book I realised it was Christmas that was the joke.

Merrily watched the cigarette browning in the ashtray. So what did you get for Christmas, Merrily? Apart from Britain’s premier evangelical atheist as a parishioner.

She picked up the cigarette and tamped it out in the ashtray. She had a parish to work, the open desk diary reminding her to drop in this afternoon on Sarah Clee, who provided summer flowers for the church from her garden in Blackberry Lane, and should be back home after a hip replacement.

Real life. She spooned out some lunch for Ethel, scrambled herself an egg and carried it, with a slice of toast, back to the computer. On the desktop was an icon marked Sacred.

Cole Hill Preservation Society. The membership database. Jane had all the names on her laptop but, for safety’s sake, she’d copied the file onto the scullery computer.

All the names of all the decent citizens concerned about their heritage. All the gentle pacifist pagans. And maybe one or two loonies. No worries about her mum prying, because of the new trust between them now.

Merrily’s hand hovered over the mouse. The paperback copy of The Hole in the Sky lay at the edge of the desk like a time bomb.

Bliss stopped the car on a forecourt in front of some shops on the edge of the Rotherwas Industrial Estate, got out his mobile and checked in with the incident room.

‘Hold on a moment, Francis.’ And then — a knowing, calculated insult — Iain Brent, PhD, didn’t even bother to cover the phone. ‘Don’t need Bliss for anything, do you, ma’am?’

Bliss didn’t hear a reply.

‘No, Francis,’ Brent said. ‘Unless you have anything for us?’

Twat.

Bliss spent a couple of minutes staring through the dirty windscreen at the dirty sky, trying to lose the tightness in his chest.

On the way out, after his dismissal by Howe, Kevin Snape had called him back.

‘Nice one, Francis. The Dinedor connection — staring us all in the face, but nobody else spotted it.’

‘Deductive flair, Kev. Sadly out of fashion nowadays.’

‘No, come on, what put you on to it?’

Just a hunch, Bliss had said. And contacts. Like he was going to tell them the truth — that all he’d done, because he knew bugger-all about local councillors, was Google Clement Ayling, Hereford and then watch two full pages of links to the Dinedor Serpent come bouncing up at him. And then Google the Serpent.

Bliss started the car, looking for Watery Lane which apparently gave access to the new road site. His mobile went off. He pulled in again. ‘Yeh.’

‘Inspector Bliss? It’s Steve Furneaux, Planning Department, Herefordshire Council. You wanted to talk to me, I think, about Hereforward. And then my secretary said you’d rung an hour or so ago — she wasn’t sure whether it was to cancel or postpone.’

Bliss thought about it quickly. Yeh, he’d done that. He’d called to cancel. Just like he’d been ordered to by his superior officer — daughter of the ex-copper, bent, who was also a member of Hereforward. Not of immediate importance, is it? Annie had said.

Right, then.

‘No worries, Steve,’ Bliss said. ‘All it was… small problem about me getting to your office before lunchtime. Where is it you actually go for lunch?’

‘Oh, various pubs. And Gilbies bar.’

‘Gilbies would be fine,’ Bliss said. ‘Shall we say half-one?’

When he turned along Watery Lane it was rising to its name, the ditch on the left overflowing, half the road swamped.

Bliss drove through regardless.

Over seven thousand people worldwide had signed Jane’s online petition, calling for the preservation of Coleman’s Meadow as sacred space. Merrily hadn’t realised there were so many. Easy to underestimate the Web’s ability to draw together threads of dissent.

from Dr Padraig Neal, Co. Wexford.

The warmest of greetings, Jane, from Ireland.

I most fervently applaud your courageous stand against the barbarian bureaucrats and would respectfully