"You can't smoke in here," she says.
"Oh—I know. I wasn't going to, don't worry," I say, smiling.
"Yes, well, just as long as you know." She doesn't smile back. In fact, her body stiffens, as if she thinks I'm about to attack her or something. As if I'm bad enough to do something like that.
What is it about these people that makes me feel as though they're damning me to hell all the time? Or maybe it's not them: It's me. I should tie my hair up; my hair can offend people. I should pretend not to smoke. I should always use my nice quiet BBC voice, not my loud, confident one. I should always offer to help. I should always tell people exactly what they want to hear ... I should join in with people who pretend that meaning exists and makes people like me bad in order to make them good. I should feel absented by their presence. I should lie all the time, because the truth just isn't nice. It isn't holy.
"What's your god like?" I ask the woman, before I can tell myself to shut up.
"What's God like?" she says.
I should never have asked this question. "Yes," I say.
Although all I've done is ask about her god, I've broken social convention and my eyes start to water and itch, and I can feel myself blushing slightly. I don't want a row; I really don't. I only asked the question because I was interested. And I meant to say "Yes" in a timid way, but I don't do timid very well, and it didn't quite work. Nevertheless, I expect the woman to be polite back—or even to answer my question. But instead her eyes harden further.
"He looks after the people who believe in him," she says.
And then she walks away.
As I leave the café, light my cigarette, and sit on a wall to smoke it, I remember the various times in my life when I've tried to find out about religion. It often starts with a logical idea: that so many people around the world believe in a god, or a way of life, that there must be something in at least one of these approaches. So I go to the local library, or the university library, and there's always that moment—perhaps similar to the moment before you choose the bread you want in the bakery—where there seems to be so much possibility. So many books; so much "truth." Surely it can't all be false? Surely it won't all be the same? But all the books do just seem the same to me. They all have the same hierarchies. They all have leaders. Even Buddhism has rules over who can really "belong" and who can't, who is in charge, and who is not. And all the leaders are men.
I remember once flirting with Roman Catholicism when I was seeing a guy who'd been a choirboy as a kid, and who seemed to get something out of the whole thing (and had worked it all out so you could be a Catholic and still have dirty sex). I got a couple of books and magazines from the local church and started to read up on it. I'd kind of bought all that stuff about the Virgin Mary and was in the process of trying to convince myself that a religion that took a woman so seriously must have something going for it. Then I read a humorous anecdote in one of the magazines about a time when Pope John Paul II was visiting some town, and the nuns who were supposed to cook for him messed it up and ended up giving him fish fingers. Obviously the point of the story was that it was funny that the pope had eaten fish fingers, but I couldn't get over the detail that the pope had nuns to cook for him. Surely religious leaders are supposed to be somehow wiser than the rest of us? But I realized then that there was nothing special about this system at all, nothing that made it more profound and extraordinary than the rest of society. If someone who had given up his whole life to thinking about goodness and rightness and truth still expected nuns to cook him his fish fingers (because after all, nuns haven't got anything else better to do, and none of them are ever going to be priests or become the pope, because women aren't good enough for that), then something was very wrong. How could he have missed the bit about everyone being equal in the eyes of God? If this was the wisest Catholic, I certainly never wanted to meet the stupidest one.
Perhaps this is similar to the anthropic principle, but I am a woman, and after a lifetime of experiment I know I am capable of everything men can do, except things that specifically require a penis (like pissing standing up). I mean it's so obvious it even sounds a bit silly to repeat it, a bit like saying "All humans have heads." So what does religion know about me that I'm missing? Am I worth less in an a priori sense? But that would be utterly nonsensical. How is it possible that religion, which claims to be more profound than anything else, still has less of a grasp on humanity than any personnel department in the country?
It's not just Christianity, either: How could the Buddhists have missed the bit in their thinking about freedom from desire, when most of them seem to desire to be reincarnated well, and in such a way that they can be a man, and be called a "venerable master" and tell other people what to do? Why is religion so disappointing? You expect it to tell you something you don't know, and all it ends up telling you is the stuff you've known for years, and that you long ago decided is wrong.
Over to my left is the big gray wall in front of the church.
ARE WE THE THOUGHTS OF GOD? a poster asks.
No, I realize. It's the reverse.
I put out my cigarette and stop thinking.
The library is a large square space with two floors. There's a checkout desk in the middle of the ground floor, and bookshelves all around it. The second floor is basically just a gallery with a big hole in the middle, so you can stand up there and watch what's going on downstairs, or sit at one of the small desks and try to work, if you don't mind all the noise. I remember the library I went to as a kid. It was always deadly quiet and, at least in my memory, everything in it was orange, including a little sunken bit in the kids' section that to me felt like a huge abyss, and that I would beg my mother to let me go and sit in.
I walk up to the counter.
"Hi," I say, when a bearded librarian walks over to me. "I want to use the Internet."
"Are you a member?"
"Of this library?"
"Yes."
"Oh, no. Sorry. I'm not."
"Are you a foreign student?"
"No."
He smiles. "We can give you a day pass. You'll need to fill in this form..."
He gives it to me. But I'm wondering whether I can lie on it, and if so whether they will check. I certainly don't want to leave any written record of myself.
"Maybe I'll see if I can find the information I want in a book first," I say. "But I'll try this if that fails." I did want to look up the Web site of the cult of Apollo Smintheus as well as look for the information on the castle, but maybe I won't bother. After all, I am vaguely in debt to these people.
"Fine with me," he says. "Can I help you locate a book?"
I think this is the most helpful librarian I've ever come across. All the university librarians just act as though you're getting in their way. That's not to say I'm not missing the university, though, and I don't know where else I'll ever find a secular green space with no take-away cartons on the ground. For about the thousandth time today I have a pang: I'm not going back; I'm not going back.
"Um, I'm interested in local castles," I say.
"Ah. Any in particular?"
I smile. "No. Just generally. I want to look at the shapes of castles." That sounds mad. I think quickly. "It's research for a book."
He looks impressed. "And it's Devon castles you want?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Well, you'll need the local history library then."
Oh shit. "Where's that?" I say.