Blind Faith (19 page)

For a moment she seemed less confident, less in control.
She even reddened a little; he could see it even beneath the
sun block. Then slowly a wry smile spread across her lips.
She put down her knife and leaned back in the boat,
stretching, seeming to enjoy the heat of the sun as it shone
upon the bare skin of her arms and legs.

'That's a very attractive observation, Trafford. "Hidden
sexual soul"? "Breathless with desire"? A girl might get
quite dizzy with it all.'

Trafford said nothing, preferring instead to drink in the
sight of her. Languid and easy, lovely and lazy as she
reclined in the sun. Her legs stretched out, the breeze
folding her dress around her body, revealing its slim,
toned shape.

'Do you want me now?' she asked, almost matter-of-factly.
'Do you want me to reveal my secrets?'

Trafford could only gulp, his throat suddenly dry.

'Would you like me to take off my dress, like a girl's
supposed to do?' she continued, a bare foot creeping
across the floor of the boat towards him. 'Do you want me
to tell you how I like to "do it"? What turns me on, tunes
my motor and melts my ice cream?'

'More than anything I have ever wanted,' he answered,
but then added, 'except no.'

'No?'

'No, I don't want you to.'

'Why?'

'Because if you did, the anticipation would be over, the
secret would be out, the mystery revealed and I couldn't
bear it. I've discovered, through you, the thrill of denial.
Ours is such a dull world, with everything revealed,
everything "shared" and "proudly" on display. I know now
that nothing is more erotic than almost knowing. Nothing
can equal the agonizing intensity of
wanting
to see you
naked, the pain, the
need
. . . I have never felt more alive
than I do now and I want this moment to last for ever.'

'Are you imagining me naked now?'

'Yes, of course, and I'm imagining being naked
with you.'

Sandra Dee smiled and for once her air of cool
detachment seemed to desert her.

'What's it like?' she asked.

'It's perfect. Nothing could be more beautiful. Imagine
that! Perfection. Beauty. When did you last experience
either in this miserable world? And yet I can
imagine
them
any time I like! It's incredible. To be transported by mere
thought! By a
fiction
of the mind's eye! I never dreamed of
such exhilaration.'

'Come on, Trafford,' she replied and to his surprise he
saw that she was blushing. 'I
said
what's it
like
?'

'What's it like?'

Her cheeks were definitely red now and for a moment
she looked away, seemingly afraid to meet his eye.

'I want to know what you're actually thinking,' she
said quietly, almost in a whisper. 'I want you to tell
me now.'

'You're sitting up,' Trafford replied, and to his surprise
the words came easily. 'I've already undone the top
buttons of your dress, kissed it from your shoulders and
now it's falling down past your breasts. You look at me and
you smile, then your mouth drops open a little and I can
see your white teeth.'

'Really?' said Sandra Dee, her mouth dropping open just
as Trafford had described. 'What happens next?'

'Together we undo the rest of the buttons.'

'Together?' she asked with a giggle. 'How do we
manage that?'

She was looking directly at him once more but there was
a softness in her gaze that Trafford had never seen before.

'You undo the first two or three,' he said, 'then you guide
my hands into your lap and allow me to unbutton the rest.'

'And then?'

'Then I open your dress out completely and it slips from
your arms and falls about you on the bench like the petals
of a flower. You're sitting on it, your pale skin shining
bright in the sun. Your underwear is quite plain – you
chose it for your own comfort, not to fit some net-inspired
pornographic template.'

'I see, so I'm a sensible girl, am I? That's nice. I like that.'

'You are your own woman. You dress to please yourself,
not men.'

'Flatterer,' she said. 'I bet you say that to all the girls. All
right, so here I am, sitting on the bench in my plain and
simple bra and knickers. What happens now?'

'I put my hand on your belly, just above the waistband
of your panties. Your navel is beneath the palm of my
hand. I feel you breathe. You lean towards me and as you
do so I can see the fall of your breasts inside your bra, I can
see the separation between them, and you reach out and
pull my shirt up over my head.'

Sandra Dee shifted on her cushion and leaned forward
a little, her hands between her legs.

'How do you look?' she asked.

'Well, how do you think I look?' Trafford replied.

'You look . . . very nice,' said Sandra Dee. 'What now?'

'I place my hands behind your back, I gently run my
fingers up your spine to find your bra strap, effortlessly I
unhook it and it falls away. Your breasts are revealed, firm
and
real
, the nipples pale pink against the white skin, like
half-ripened strawberries in cream. You lean back, your
dress spread out around you, and you hook your thumbs
into the top of your knickers. Your legs are very slightly
apart. I can see a wisp of sandy hair protruding either side
of the thin cotton gusset.'

Sandra Dee reddened once more. She covered her
embarrassment with a laugh.

'An unkempt bikini line? That's not very proper, is it?'

'Your legs come up and you glide the panties down over
them. Another secret revealed! Your bush is full and
natural, no stupid shaven bristle or brutal reddened
waxing, just the soft natural hair of a woman . . .'

Sandra Dee's mouth opened to speak but Trafford
stopped her.

'Don't tell me if I'm right or wrong! I don't want to
know. Besides which, I
am
right because the Sandra Dee
I'm describing is mine, the creation of my imagination.'

'I like her,' she said quietly.

'I'm on my knees before you, kneeling between your
legs, staring. Staring at every detail of you. I raise my head
to look into your eyes and you stare back. You stare at me
almost ferociously, hardly even blinking, and then you
smile, a sweet, sweet smile. Once more you lean forward; I
see your breasts swing out from your body, hanging,
perfectly formed and separate. I see the tiny creases in your
stomach as you lean towards me; your navel half disappears
into one of them; you reach out and undo my shorts, I
stand up as you pull them down, I step out of them, and
now you take hold of me and—'

'Stop!' she said and her voice was shaking.

'Stop?'

'Yes. Let's not do it today.' She looked at him intensely
and briefly it seemed to Trafford as if there was sadness it
her clear grey eyes. But then she laughed and added, 'After
all, a girl doesn't want to imagine going all the way on her
first date.'

Trafford laughed too. It had been a funny thing to say.

That phrase about going all the way on a first date hailed
from a distant past. People only used it ironically these
days. These days everybody went all the way on every date.
Why not? If a thing was desirable surely it was desirable to
have it as soon and as often as possible. Trafford loved the
idea that once more they were defying convention. Even in
this imagined consummation they would not follow the
crowd. Besides, he thought hopefully, if she was speaking
of 'first dates' then perhaps there was to be a second.

'You mean . . .' he asked hesitatingly, 'that we can
meet again?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I'd like that, it's been fun and I don't
often have fun. You were right. It
is
exciting to . . . imagine.'

They sat together as the boat drifted. Sandra Dee had
bought some beer from the marina shop and although it
had long since lost its chill they drank it gratefully and
listened to the water lapping against the boat and watched
the sun setting behind the chimneys.

'Won't that wife you're supposed to be divorcing be
wondering where you are?' Sandra Dee enquired.
'Shouldn't you call her?'

'I'm often out. She doesn't mind. She has plenty to fill
her time these days, now that she's a queen bee in our
tenement. Women come round just to hold our baby in
the hope that the luck of the Love will rub off.'

'That must be nice for her.'

'She loves it. I think it's pathetic. They're such
superstitious fools.'

Sandra Dee looked about nervously; this was reckless
talk, even between two people who had confessed to a
mutual love of privacy.

'Be careful, Trafford,' she said. 'You shouldn't talk
like that.'

'I don't care. I mean it. They're stupid, superstitious fools.'

'You don't believe that your child was protected by
divine intervention?'

'There are millions and millions of babies on Earth.
Abroad, in the Other World, more die even than in the
countries of faith. How could any God consider the fate of
single individuals? And why would he bother? Kill most
but save that one, for a
purpose
? It defies logic.'

'So how do you explain her surviving a measles plague?'

Trafford thought about the question before answering.

'I don't want to tell you,' he said finally.

'Another secret?'

'Yes.'

'I see,' she said, then added without missing a beat, 'so
you had her vaccinated.'

Trafford was taken aback. Now it was his turn to look
around nervously.

'I . . . I don't want to incriminate you by discussing such
things,' he said quickly.

'Don't worry,' she said, 'your secret's safe with me.'

Once more there was silence between them, but now it
was the silence that exists between friends. Sharing such
dangerous confidences had created a bond.

'Tell me another,' Sandra Dee said finally.

'Another secret?'

'Yes, an exciting one.'

Trafford realized that he would never get a better
opportunity than this.

'All right, I will.'

'Is it a good one?'

'It's a very good one.'

Sandra Dee waited while Trafford considered how best
to say what it was that he wanted to say, what he had been
waiting to say ever since he had walked into the office to
find her being bullied by Princess Lovebud.

'I hold the key to a door,' he said slowly, 'a door
to another world. Another universe. In fact to a
thousand universes.'

'Wow,' she said. 'Big secret.'

'I can step through that door and leave this terrible,
terrible town we live in any time I like. In a single moment
I can make Princess Lovebud disappear; I can make my
chat room moderator disappear; I can make all the crowds
of sweating, eating, belching bullies disappear. I can block
out the infotainment loops, I can tune out the bullshit
celebrities and the reality cop shows and the naked bodies
fucking on every screen on every wall. I can forget the
bombs and the wars that keep the peace and the Temple
and all its stupid, illogical Wembley Laws. I can escape
from it all. That's my secret. That's what I can do, Sandra
Dee. I can make them all
disappear
.'

'Tell me how,' she replied eagerly. 'I want to know.'

'Well,' said Trafford, 'you said a minute ago that it was
exciting to imagine.'

'Yes?'

'That's the key. The key to escaping this man-made thing
that we call "reality" is through the mind, through reason
and
imagination
. I have discovered . . . books.'

'Books?' Sandra Dee could not conceal her disappointment.
'Books are shit.'

'Wrong books,' Trafford replied.

Then he reached into a plastic bag and brought out what
appeared to be a copy of
Feng Foodie
, a popular pamphlet
which claimed that inner health and spirituality could be
achieved by the proper alignment of one's food prior to
eating it. Be it in the carton or on the plate, the way your
fries interacted spatially with your burger could help or
hinder your spiritual growth.

'You are joking, I presume,' Sandra Dee said, looking at
the book with contempt.

Then Trafford removed the book's cover and inside was
a battered paperback copy of
Wuthering Heights
.

'This,' he said, 'is a wonderful story written many years
ago. I chose it for you, to read if you want. While you are
reading it, the world we live in will go away. Instead
you'll find yourself in the one described in the book: a
world of genuine passion, eternal love, complex
emotions and
space
, so much space. You will walk on
windswept moors, the cold rain driving in your face. A
soul adrift. A soul
alone
. Lost on the moorlands of secret,
doomed love.'

Sandra Dee took the book from Trafford.

'If I was caught with this, the least I could hope for
would be to be put in the stocks. They'd beat my feet.'

'It's worth the risk, believe me.'

'Where did you get it?'

'I . . . found it. I can find more if you like it. Would you
like to borrow it?'

'Yes, I'd love to.'

The sun had nearly gone and with it the breeze. Sandra
Dee took down the sail and between them they rowed
back to her mooring.

'I've had a wonderful time, Trafford,' she said as they
took their leave of each other. 'I can't remember when I
last spoke with someone the way we spoke today.'

'No, nor me,' said Trafford.

'And of course,' Sandra Dee added, giving him a kiss on
the cheek, 'the sex was great.'

Trafford and Cassius walked up Hampstead Hill towards
Jack Straw's Castle. Trafford had never visited this
particular island of the London archipelago before; it was
a place where rich men lived, Temple elders, civil
administrators and prominent businessmen, a gated
sanctuary protected by armed guards.

'We're visiting the house of Connor Newbury,' Cassius
informed Trafford as they turned into a street of
semi-detached houses each with its own private garden,
which indicated occupants of enormous wealth. Trafford
knew all about Connor Newbury: a popular TV and web
chat-show host with a slightly foppish air, he was known
for being boldly irreverent towards Temple elders,
although in truth this never amounted to anything more
than teasing them over their choice of jewellery and the
breadth of their stomachs.

'He's one of us, you know,' Cassius explained as they
approached the house.

Once inside, they were shown into a large sitting room.
The room was unique in Trafford's experience in that,
instead of being hung with plasma screens, it had static
pictures on the walls which appeared to have been executed
with nothing more than paint. The carpet was thick and
luxurious and the furniture looked very old: deep leather
armchairs, a huge, cushion-covered couch and elegant little
coffee tables. Two of the armchairs were occupied. Connor
Newbury himself was instantly recognizable in a
characteristically flamboyant crimson man bra and silver
hot pants. He was cooling his backside before a cheerfully
roaring air conditioner and smoking an enormous cigar.

'Aha,' the famous personality boomed. 'Hail, Cassius,
and hail, our new computer whiz. I'm Newbury but you
know that of course, don't you, Trafford! These two are
Professor Blossom Taylor' – a pleasant-looking elderly
woman in a voluminous kaftan nodded absent-mindedly
towards Trafford, 'and Billy Macallan.'

'All right, geezer,' said Macallan, a big shaven-headed
man with hairy tattooed arms who looked more like an
all-in wrestler than a literary type.

'We four make up the Humanist Senate,' Newbury
continued, 'and I'm Chair because I've got the nicest house
to meet in!'

Trafford shook hands with Taylor and Macallan. He
didn't approach Newbury, who merely gave him a
patronizing wave.

'Right,' Newbury continued, 'let us proceed to kick some
intellectual butt! Cassius here tells us you don't think we
humble revolutionaries are thinking big enough.'

Trafford was then given a drink and invited to explain
once more the idea on which he had been working since
he had first revealed it in embryonic form to Cassius.

'You may know that I am a systems programmer for
DegSep, a division of the National Data Bank,'
Trafford began.

'For which my sympathy,' said Newbury. 'What a
drag
.'

'DegSep stands for Degrees of Separation,' Trafford
continued, ignoring the interruption. 'Our job is to
route the connections between people, to record everything
which is common between them in every possible
way and from every possible angle. The program is
massive beyond imagination, the proverbial grains of
wheat doubling on every square of the chessboard,
except that our chessboard is the size of a soccer pitch.
We take each single characterizing item, from hair
colour and choice of breakfast cereal to the number
of times a person rides on a bus or a tube train, and
then cross-reference each one against all other
information stored.'

'And that's what our taxes pay for,' Connor Newbury
interjected, unable to resist playing the role he performed
each night on TV. 'Go figure, people.'

'My suggestion to Cassius,' Trafford went on, 'is that
we Humanists pinpoint a series of characteristics which
we share and which, when fed into the DegSep computer,
will start to lead us towards similar types of people. Once
we've found them we can reach out to them.'

'By which you mean?' Professor Taylor enquired.

'We create a secure viral email which will first intrigue
our targets, then begin to educate them and eventually
organize them.'

'Biggish job, mate,' Billy Macallan observed.

'The Temple is a biggish enemy,' Trafford replied.

'Good point! Well said,' Newbury agreed. 'OK. Let's start
with these personal coordinates. As it happens I think I'm
unique . . . Completely different to you, Trafford,
obviously, but also to everybody in this room. What do
you think I might have in common with the rest of you?'

'Well,' Trafford replied, 'as Cassius here may have told
you, I think the key is secrets. My view is that anyone who
has identified in themselves a desire for privacy is likely
to prove a fertile prospect for conversion to Humanism.'

'That sounds reasonable,' Professor Taylor interjected.

'I don't think so,' Newbury replied. 'We're not all
introverted little mice like you, Blossom! I'm a public
figure and I love it. I'm a natural extrovert and showing off
is how I get through my day.'

'But I notice that you have no plasmas in this room,' said
Trafford.

'Well, yes, that's true,' Newbury replied. 'But I'm a
celebrity, it's harder for us. Everybody looks at me all the
time. I've got to turn off sometimes, haven't I?'

'With respect,' Trafford argued, 'I think a lot of people
feel that way. Everybody looks at everybody all the time
and you don't need to be a celebrity to feel the need for
privacy. I myself was recently in big trouble with my
Confessor for being slow to post a birthing video. I'm not
talking about being either an extrovert or an introvert: I'm
talking about people who don't believe privacy is a
perversion, people who think it might even be a virtue.'

'All right then,' Newbury said, 'if we accept that idea,
how do you propose to find these people?'

'I would imagine that our guest was coming to that,
Connor,' Cassius interjected somewhat irritably.

'It seems to me,' Trafford hurried on, 'that one of the
things we should be looking for is people who don't
stream their lives 24/7. I need to write a search program
that looks for people who try to establish gaps in their
lives, periods when they are not being watched. Then,
taking the flip side of that coin, our program should
also be considering the amount of time people spend
watching other people
. We should look for those who
scan the socially acceptable minimum of their
neighbours' webcasts.'

'Why?' Newbury asked.

'Because I'm guessing that showing an interest in
something other than voyeurism and gossip would
indicate a potentially fertile mind.'

'That makes sense,' said Billy Macallan.

'Showing an interest in what?' Newbury asked.

'Anything,' said Trafford. 'Growing a pot plant. Trying to
bake your own cakes. Building models out of matches and
bottle tops . . .'

'Gardening? Baking?' Connor Newbury laughed.
'
Building models?
Sounds fucking awful to me.'

'I build models,' Macallan said firmly.

Cassius was getting angry.

'I don't think it's fair to ask Trafford to produce a fail-safe
template here, Connor,' he said. 'Every rule is inevitably
going to throw up a thousand exceptions. What Trafford is
trying to do is establish characteristics which, while innocent
enough not to bring a person to the attention of the
Temple, might identify in them an inner sense of self. And
speaking of which, personally I think a reluctance to join
Group Hugs would be a good indicator.'

Everybody, including Newbury, nodded at this.

'That's right,' said Trafford. 'I hate Gr'ugs too and when
I can, I get out of them. Now most offices have a
communal message board and usually the moderator's
daily blog records the Gr'ugs, including, if my own office
moderator is anything to go by, the absences. It should be
possible to scan those blogs for names of people who are
frequently absent.'

'Wow,' said Newbury, clearly impressed. 'I think it's
lucky you don't work for the Inquisition.'

'Another thing I think we should be looking at is
spiritual fervour.' Trafford was warming to his theme. 'For
instance, it seems to me pretty obvious that the more
evidence of blind faith a person publicly exudes, the
less likely they are to want to question the Temple
status quo. So if we bundle up a number of faith
and superstition words like "tarot", "star chart", "psychic"
and "reincarnation", we can then identify people who
habitually include those words in their blogs and webcasts
and then veto them from our search profile.'

'That'll get rid of most of my viewers,' said Newbury.

'Serial confessors should go too,' Professor Taylor
suggested. 'Those awful people who never shut up at
testification. And this might seem a small point, but I
think perhaps frequent use of the words "please" and
"thank you" might indicate a revolutionary spirit.'

'Sounds to me, Taylor,' Newbury argued, 'that we're in
danger of advertising for bores.'

'I do not find manners boring,' the professor sniffed back.

'If I might recap on Trafford's behalf,' Cassius said
firmly, 'he is to construct a search program which locates
individuals who seek privacy, avoid tittle-tattle, pursue
special interests, approach Group Hugs with distaste,
evidence low-level use of faith words, testify minimally
and mind their manners.'

'OK,' said Newbury, 'it's a start. And once our young
friend has produced his list of people who fit this slightly
depressing profile, what then?'

'We contact them, of course,' said Trafford, 'let them
know that they are not alone. We begin to build a secret
community. A network of people who want to
think for
themselves
.'

'What do we say to them? No point just emailing to say,
"Hi, we hate the Temple too." '

'The first thing we should do,' said Cassius, 'is send
them a succinct summation of the theory of evolution.
Evolution is the key; it is the idea that the Temple
fears most.'

'Exactly,' Taylor said. 'Isn't that the problem? If we
start chucking evolutionary propaganda on to the net
willy-nilly, we'll get picked up by an Inquisition search
engine in no time.'

'We won't
be
"chucking it out",' Trafford explained. 'We'll
be sending secure emails to specific addresses and I shall
set up a secure address from which to send them. None of
us will be traceable even if the messages are uncovered. But
I don't think they will be uncovered. After all, nobody's
looking for us. The police monitor the web for seditious
sites and chat rooms but they don't read emails unless
they have a person under surveillance. As we all know,
most emails are spam anyway.'

'And that's another thing,' said Billy Macallan. 'How
do you expect to get this lot we're after to open these
unsolicited emails, let alone read them? I personally junk
95 per cent of all the crap I get.'

'I've been thinking about that a lot,' Trafford replied. 'It's
all in the title box, isn't it? We need a line that will grab
them, something to draw them in. How about:
Can you
keep a secret?
'