My mother is very like William Blake; she has visions and dreams and she cannot always distinguish a flea's head from a king. Now and again my mother liked to tell me her own conversion story; it was all very romantic. I sometimes think that if Mills and Boon were at all revivalist in their policy my mother would be a star. She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. She told me all about the lives of the saints; how they were really wicked and given to nameless desires. Not fit for worship; this was yet another heresy of the Catholic Church. But she had her own problems. A lot of the missionaries had been eaten, which meant she had to explain to their families. Sometimes Mrs White came round to mix the grout, but then they'd both end up listening to Johnny Cash records or writing a new handout on Baptism by Total Immersion.
My mother had taught me to read from the Book of Deuteronomy because it is full of animals. Horses, bunnies and little ducks were vague fabulous things, but I knew all about pelicans, rock badgers, sloths and bats.
We did our cross stitch and chain stitch and then we had to think of a project. The girl next to me wanted to do TO MOTHER WITH LOVE, the girl opposite a birthday motif; I was thinking of THE SUMMER IS ENDED AND WE ARE NOT YET SAVED.
I upset the other children; not intentionally but effectively. I had told all the others about the horrors of the demon and the fate of the damned. It was obvious where I belonged. Ten more years and I could go to missionary school. After that day everyone at school avoided me. If it had not been for the conviction that I was right, it might have been very sad.
'I remember when we built the gospel hall here,' said my mother. It had been a difficult time, saving up for a piano and hymn books; fending off the temptation of the Devil to go on holiday instead. We had a sliding scale showing the number of possible conversions that could be made in a year, if every person, starting with you, brought two souls to the Lord. According to the sliding scale, the whole world could be godly within a mere ten years. This was a great encouragement to the timid. May had her big sandwich board that said SEEK YE THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND. 'My name's in that text,' she told everyone with pride, "so I know it's me duty to carry it.'
Pastor Spratt was fast becoming one of the most famous and successful missionaries that our group of churches had ever sent out. Tribesmen from places we couldn't pronounce sent thank-you letters to our headquarters, rejoicing in the Lord and their new salvation. To celebrate his ten thousandth convert, the pastor had been funded to take a long holiday and tour his collection of amulets, idols and primitive methods of contraception. The exhibition was called "Saved by Grace alone". He arrived in an old Bedford van with the terrified damned painted on one side and the heavenly host painted on the other. On the back doors and front bonnet he'd inscribed in green lettering, HEAVEN OR HELL? IT'S YOUR CHOICE. He was very proud of the bus, and told of the many miracles worked inside and out. We were shocked as he described the epidemic of demons, even now spreading through the north west; only the day before he had cleansed a whole family in Cheadle Hulme. Ridden they were, and do you know why? Unnatural Passions.
Poor Melanie, she didn't understand any of them, she just knew she needed Jesus. There was no-one else, so Melanie had plenty of attention at the end of the service. So each Monday after that I went round to Melanie's and we read the Bible together, and usually spent half an hour in prayer. We read the Bible as usual, and then told each other how glad we were that the Lord had brought us together. She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn't stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me. 'Do you think this is Unnatural Passion?' I asked her once. 'Doesn't feel like it. According to Pastor Finch, that's awful.'
'These children of God have fallen under Satan's spell. These children are full of demons.'
We cried each other to sleep, but someone where in the night I stretched out to her and kissed her and kissed her until we were both sweating and crying with mixed up bodies and swollen faces.
'Do you promise to give up this sin and beg the Lord to forgive you?'
This is the city of Lost Chances, and this the Room of Final Disappointment. You can climb as high as you like, but if you've already made the Fundamental Mistake, you end up here, in this room. You can change your role, but never your circumstance. It is the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.
It all seemed to hinge around the fact that I loved the wrong sort of people. Right sort of people in every respect except this one; romantic love for another woman was a sin.
I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest has a book with the words set out. Words for every occasion. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. I loved God and I loved the church, but I began to see that as more and more complicated. I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a large version of our church. Now I was finding that even the church was sometimes confused.
Can love really belong to the demon?