Beta Male (11 page)

‘What made you become a Christian?' I asked my apparent rival. If I was going to make a go of this with Mary, I would have to make some sort of effort with her friends.

‘It's a long story, Sam,' said Stock Market Christian. ‘But basically, I had a fifteenth-century house in the country, a
Porsche 911 on the drive and a penthouse flat in the Docklands, but still, something was missing.'

Yeah
, I thought.
Your testicles.

‘So I came to this church,' he continued, ‘and just felt this really real connection when the Holy Spirit entered me.'

‘And what happened when the Holy Spirit entered you?' I asked, conscious in a vague, agnostic way that a giggle at this juncture would surely mean eternal damnation.

‘I felt really warm and fell to the floor, twitching,' he said, smiling at the memory. ‘When I stood up again, I found myself singing out, subconsciously but not against my will,
Ti amo
, which is the Italian for “I love you”. I had no idea why I was doing this. But later that evening, I met Mary, who was also there for the first time. I discovered that Mary had studied Italian at GCSE… '

Stock Market Christian left the sentence unfinished as if only a simpleton could fail to grasp the depth of its meaning and declare that he, too, had seen the light thanks to Mary's secondary-education choices.

‘I don't get it,' I said. Maybe I
was
a simpleton.

‘Don't you see? This was God's way of showing Mary and me that we were less alone in the room.'

It was God's way of showing Stock Market Christian that he was a prick, I thought.

‘And also,' he continued, ‘there's the fact I sang in Italian. That's quite remarkable, don't you think? I don't even speak Italian.'

I was saved from telling him what I really thought – which was that my grandmother's neutered dog didn't speak Italian either, but even it could probably guess that
ti amo
meant ‘I love you' – by the sound of applause which signalled the beginning of the service.

‘You've come at a good moment,' whispered Stock Market Christian in my ear. ‘We're doing the Holy Spirit this week.'

Before I'd had a chance to ask him what this enigmatic
phrase meant, a man in a T-shirt approached the microphone on the stage, greeted the regulars and welcomed any newcomers.

‘I'm afraid I'm your worst nightmare,' he quipped. ‘A Christian with a guitar.'

He closed his eyes and proved he had been telling the truth by launching into a modern hymn I had never heard before. Two hundred people stood and sang heartily, some of them nodding vigorously, others raising their hands in orgasmic prayer:
You're altogether lovely / altogether worthy / altogether wonderful to me
. I looked across at Mary, who smiled back. But she wasn't singing about me. I wasn't altogether lovely or worthy. I wasn't wonderful. I was trying to get laid in church.

There were a few more excruciating verses, an almost amusingly trite sermon, and then it was time to ‘do the Holy Spirit'. A posh young vicar called Rupert appeared on the stage and showed us a series of images of weeping children to get us in the mood, overlaid with a soundtrack of ‘Fix You' by Coldplay. Did Chris Martin know, I wondered? Wasn't the song written for his wife?

The wailing Chris and the crying children worked their magic. Half the adults started crying, too. Thus warmed up, we began to pray together.

‘Come, Spirit, come,' said Rupert, his voice shaking into the microphone.

Nothing happened.

‘Now we have to wait on God for a bit,' said Rupert, as if God might be on hold on another call.

‘
Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii.
'

God had clearly answered, for a white-haired woman in the front row was singing in tongues. It sounded surprisingly beautiful. Someone next to her broke down, weeping wildly. Others joined in. A few rows back, a man began to shake.

‘
Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii.
'

Two women walked around handing out Kleenex for those
overcome by the Spirit. Then Stock Market Christian came to the front and said that the Spirit had told him over breakfast that ‘someone here called Iva – or maybe Eva, the Spirit wasn't that clear – had a sister who forgave her.'

So
that
was that how Stock Market Christian did so well on the trading floor. Still, no one came forward.

‘
Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii.
'

Stock Market Christian returned triumphantly to our little group where I was sitting quietly, trying to avoid Mary's eye. ‘Hey, man,' he whispered. ‘Can I pray for you?'

‘
Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii.
'

I finally turned to Mary for support, to explain, or at least to ask for an explanation, but she had lain on her back on the floor and was making small snow-angel patterns with her arms and legs while mumbling something at the ceiling. ‘Mary,' I said, in my own native English tongue. Still she mumbled on. ‘Mary, I'm sorry, I have to go.'

‘
Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii.
'

I got up and ran down the central aisle, not caring who saw me, not caring what they thought. I only stopped to breathe when I was outside in the crisp late-summer air, underneath a huge banner that asked, ‘Is there anything more to life than this?'

Yes
, I thought, as I took a deep breath and walked more calmly towards the nearest Tube station.
There is a hell of a lot more to life than this
. And with that life-affirming thought, I took out my mobile and called my married ex-girlfriend, Lisa.

‘You just can't compete with Jesus. Surely you understand that.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because he's bigger than you, older than you, cleverer than you and a whole lot more like the Son of God than you. Plus, his dad would definitely have your dad in a fight.'

‘But Jesus is
dead
.'

‘Not to Mary, he's not. And not to a lot of other people, either.'

I never really had Matt down as a Christian. But, as Matt put it, there are Christians and then there are ‘Christians'. Matt was a Christian, in the way people used to describe themselves as non-thinking, vaguely agnostic, Church of England Christians in a Christian country, and he didn't care much for some ‘Christians'.

‘I went to a church like that once,' he said. ‘It seriously freaked me out.'

‘Me, too. And I wasn't really trying to compete with Jesus. I just thought we might all be able to get along together – on our own, admittedly unequal, terms.'

Matt laughed. ‘So you're not going to go out with a born-again, drunk-texting maniac for a frustrating year of sexual abstinence and guilt-laden encounters before settling down to a lifelong marriage of twice-weekly church attendance, grace before breakfast and the missionary position?'

I thought for a moment.

‘No.'

Matt sighed with visible relief. ‘Phew. I thought I might lose you there. I've seen it happen before and it's not pretty.'

It was still Wednesday evening and Matt had taken a break
from his War Room to greet my return from church. Mary might not have chosen the ideal first date, we concluded, but at least I had found out earlier rather than later that she was a complete nut-job. Often you have to wait until the third month of a relationship before discovering this, or at least until you first go on holiday together. Perhaps, we debated, all potential couples should be thrown into an uncomfortable situation early on – an airline disaster, perhaps, or dinner with all of each other's close friends and extended family – to see if you sink or swim. It would save a lot of time, heartache and money.

‘And what about the money?' asked Matt.

‘The money?'

‘The Money-Barings. Is she not worth the Money-Barings?'

‘Now here's the funny thing,' I explained. ‘I called Lisa on my way home – '

‘You called Lisa?' shouted Matt. ‘As in your married ex-girlfriend?'

‘Yes. And – '

‘God, how many more mobiles am I going to have to confiscate this week?'

Matt lunged for my pocket, but I saw him coming and jumped on the sofa, holding my phone, dangling, above his head so he couldn't flush it down the toilet. I couldn't afford another one. ‘Just listen for a moment, will you? I didn't call Lisa because I missed her, or because I was having some sort of existential crisis thanks to twenty minutes in church. I called her about Mary. Her friend.'

‘Oh.' Matt sat down again, barely hiding his disappointment at being denied his mobile-confiscating responsibilities. I recognised the face he'd once pulled as a six-year-old when Alan's mum had relieved him of his milk-monitor duties. ‘So what did she say?'

‘Well, it's quite a funny story, actually. I thought Mary was just a friend of Lisa's younger sister from university. But actually, Lisa and Mary also met on the same course the vicar
forced Lisa and Timothy to go on. According to Lisa, everyone in their group seemed to have some sort of ulterior motive for being there. Lisa and Timothy, of course, just wanted to get married in a church. There were two other couples in the same boat. Stock Market Christian was there, too. Lisa remembered him with as little fondness as I will. And then there was young Money-Barings, who had been sent by her ridiculously wealthy father – '

‘Sent there by her father?' Matt looked as confused as I had been.

‘Yes. You see, after Mary's father retired, he appeared to have had a crisis of conscience about how much money he'd made, joined an evangelical church and gave half of his fortune away to charity. He then told his three children that they could only have access to the rest of it if they followed his example. Mary had been a real wild child. This was his way of saving her.'

Matt smiled. ‘So that would explain the apparent contradiction between her behaviour at Lisa's wedding and tonight.'

‘Exactly. God knows how much she actually believes it all – '

‘Yes, I suspect He does.'

‘The point,' I continued, ‘is that her choice appears to be between being poor, independent and damned, or rich, shackled and saved. However much she's faking it, it's still a no-brainer.'

‘I'm sure God will be delighted that she's going to church for all the right reasons,' said Matt.

‘Given that he doesn't exist, I doubt he gives a toss,' I said. ‘Although even I don't remember the parable of the daughter of a rich man who found God in order to inherit riches on earth.'

‘The irony, though, Sam, is that you and Mary are potentially in a very similar boat.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, you might both end up faking it in order to get your hands on the money.'

I sat in dumb silence for a moment while Matt waited patiently for the penny to drop. I used to be as sharp as Matt. Is this what happened when you didn't use your brain at all?

‘No!' Finally, I'd got it. ‘Do you really think so?'

‘It's the logical next step.'

‘I thought you said you'd seen people convert to born-again Christianity and it wasn't pretty.'

‘I didn't say I'd seen people
pretend
to convert. If you could convince her, and convince her father, then… '

I didn't say anything. So much for being a Christian: Matt was actually far more depraved than I was. It was just like him to egg me on with subtly outrageous suggestions. He wasn't the performing monkey who would have to carry them out. He knew as well as I did that I could never resist a challenge.

‘Enough about me,' I said. ‘How is your online campaign going?'

‘Not so great at first.' He sighed, running his hand over his newly acquired stubble. It suited him. Bloody Matt could spend three days inside by himself and still look better than the rest of us. ‘It turned out that all the Russians were men and most of the Arabs were women.'

‘Not the best way round.'

‘No. But I have been chatting to a nice Spanish girl. Come into the War Room and have a look at her profile.'

*

The following day was uneventful, which is how I like my Thursdays, especially if they follow an eventful Wednesday and precede a ridiculously eventful Friday. One can deal with an uneventful sandwich of a week. It's only when one's life becomes all events, or all non-events, that it is time to take stock.

Eventful Friday, as I shall call it, started with a text message at breakfast time from Lisa: ‘Hi Sam. It really was good to speak
the other night. Please don't go out with Mary. It would make me jealous. Hope you're well. I'd love to see you soon. Lisa x.'

Make
her
jealous? How did she think I'd felt when she'd got
married
within a couple of years of breaking up with me? Of course I didn't want to marry her myself – just as she didn't want to go back out with me. Our break-up had been genuinely mutual. We'd fallen rapidly in, and then slowly out of, love. We were better afterwards as friends than we had been as unhappy boyfriend and girlfriend. Still, none of this seemed to stop our relationship remaining complicated. I read the text a second time then deleted it, which somehow made it easier. Out of inbox, out of mind.

More to cheer myself up than anything else, I got dressed in one of the good suits my father had given me ten years previously, once his middle-aged paunch had finally defeated him. The last time I'd had a chance to wear it, I reflected ruefully while tying one of my better ties, was while playing the young barrister in
A Voyage Round My Father
, which had started at the Edinburgh Fringe and transferred to London. My father never came to see it, but I still have the
Guardian
review which described me as ‘thrillingly promising'. That was five years ago.