“I do,” said I and I did. “So how are things, topside, amongst the choirs celestial? God keeping well, is He?”
“Well, that’s the thing, chief. Actually things aren’t exactly hunky-dory in Heaven at the moment. God’s gone missing again and His wife’s getting pretty upset.”
“God’s wife? I didn’t know that God had a wife.” And I didn’t. I knew that every dog had its day and that a trouble shared was a trouble halved and I even knew that if you take two mobile phones, call one of them with the other, then place the two of them ten inches apart on a table with a raw egg between them, the egg will be cooked in less than twenty minutes.[8] But I never knew that God had a wife.
“Does He?” I asked Barry.
“Does He what? Own a mobile phone?”
“No. Does God really have a wife?”
“Of course He does, chief. A wife and three kids.”
“Three kids?”
“Only one by marriage. The other two, well, you know the story.”
“I don’t,” said I, because in truth, I didn’t.
“Wake up, chief, you do know the story. Little baby, born in a manger, three wise camel jockeys coming over the desert, nice Christmas presents but a really rotten Easter.”
“OK, yeah.” I dug into my desk drawer and brought out a bottle of Old Bedwetter Bluegrass Bourbon. The taste of the South that makes any day a Mardi Gras. I always like to take a slug of Old Bedwetter at times like these. It adds that certain something that you just don’t get from other sippin’ liquors. No siree. By golly.
“Don’t start that!” said Barry.
“Start what?” said I.
“Endorsing products.”
“Sssh,” said I. “I never was.”
“You lying git.”
“Barry,” I whispered. “There’s a fortune to be made by endorsing products. It’s a market that’s never been exploited by private eyes. I’m sitting on a gold mine here.”
“I thought you were sitting on your piles. So where was I?”
“You were telling me about God’s wife and His three kids.”
“Oh yeah. Well, you know about Jesus. He’s pretty famous. But what you didn’t know was that he had a twin sister called Christene. But she got edited out of the New Testament because God gave Jesus overall artistic control and the full translation rights. Favourite son and all that, you know how it goes.”
“Yeah, OK, Barry, I get the picture.”
“But not the Big Picture, chief. Everyone knows that Mary was the mother of Jesus. Although they don’t know about Christene. But there’s not many who know that God already had a wife and just how peeved she was when she discovered that God was having a bit on the side and had got His girlfriend up the duff.”
“Hoots a crimbo!” I clapped my hands right over my lug-holes. “Put a sock in it, Barry, that’s big time blasphemy.”
“It’s no secret in Heaven, chief. But God eventually managed to smooth things over with His missus. He can be a real charmer when He wants to be. And one thing led to another and the other thing led to the bedroom and Colin was born.”
“Colin?”
“The third child of God. Born within wedlock this time. But he’s a bad lot, that Colin, chief. I hate to speak ill of the governor’s son, but that Colin. Phtah!”
“Phtah?”
“That was the sound of me spitting, chief.”
“What? Inside my head? You …”
“Don’t get yourself in a lather. It’s only a bit of vegetable phlegm. But anyhow, God’s gone missing and His wife is in a right state. She reckons He’s down on Earth again, getting up to hanky-panky. He has this thing about Jewish virgins, you see, and—”
“Enough!” I gave my head a clout.
“Ouch!” went Barry.
And “Ouch!” I went too. “But turn it in, will ya? You’ll bring down the wrath of God on the both of us.”
“I didn’t have you down as being pious, chief. I thought you always said you were an atheist.”
“What? With you in my head?”
“I thought your psychiatrist told you that I was a delusion and that you were suffering from multiple-personality disorder and that the voice you heard in your head had been caused by some tragedy that had happened in your youth, which, allied to your drink problem and your broken marriage and your need to reach out to your feminine side and—”
“All right! All right! All right! I do believe in you. OK, I’ve said it now. Are you satisfied?”
“Always a pleasure, ever a joy.”
I took another slug of Old Bedwetter and lit up a Camel. I always smoke a Camel on occasions like this. The rich mellow taste of the fine Virginia tobacco gives me that special satisfaction which you just don’t find with other smokes.
“I can hardly wait till you put on your pile ointment, chief.”
“Yeah, right. But I can’t chitchat with you all day, Barry. I have a thousand big ones up front and a case that needs solving.”
“Forget that, chief. This is really big. God’s gone missing. Don’t you hear what I’m saying?”
“Sure I do, Barry. But if God’s got the hots for some piece of kosher tail, that’s hardly my business. God knows His own business best.”
“No, chief, you’re missing the point. If God doesn’t get back on the job, there’s no telling what might happen to the world.”
“But I thought you were implying that God was on the job, which is why His wife’s so upset. Haw haw haw.”
“Chief, pay attention. If God isn’t up in Heaven, managing things down here, then things down here are going to get hairier than a prize-winning pooch in a hirsute hound competition.”
“Ease up there. But I don’t get you, Barry. What do you mean about God managing things down here? Everybody knows that God doesn’t exactly have a hands-on approach to running the planet. God gave man free will. He doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t take sides. God’s neutral. Like Switzerland.”
“That’s what God would have you believe. But it isn’t so. God has always taken an active part throughout the course of human history.”
“You mean by inspiring people? Like poets and painters? Like prophets and priests?”
“No, chief. They’re all just nutcases. God never actually speaks to anybody, but He has shaped human history. And would you like to know how?”
“I would,” I said, and I would and I did.
“The weather, chief. God controls the weather.”
“Oh,” said I, and “does He?”
“Yes He does. Think about it. The entire colonization of the world depended on which way the wind blew and there are heaps of battles that were won or lost according to the weather. The Spanish Armada blasted away in a storm. Hitler expecting a mild winter in Russia. Rain stopping play each time England get near to winning back the Ashes. Everything in human history has ultimately been governed by the weather.”
“Well, I never knew that.”
“Of course you didn’t. But think about this. The only things you can’t insure against are acts of God. And that’s floods, lightning and earthquakes and all that palaver. And that’s God sticking His oar in.”
“You live and learn,” said I.
“Well, some of us do.”
“What’s that, Barry?”
“Nothing, chief. But what I’m saying is that God manages the weather and the weather manages human affairs and human history.”
“So what exactly does God have against the Ethiopians?”
“I think they nicked the Ark of the Covenant. God does have a very long memory. You never heard of a Jewish saint, did you?”
8
This is true. You can try it yourself if you don’t believe me. It’s a very expensive way to cook an egg, but it’s one of the reasons why I don’t own a mobile phone.