Now I Know by Aidan Chambers

the CND organizers, the NF mob, the police. You were quite funny, I admit, but you were unkind too. So when you asked if you could see me again I only said yes because I thought you’d give up when you knew going to church was part of the bargain.
    It wasn’t until 1 was in the bath that I realized I wanted to see you again, and wanted to see you in more than an ordinary way. I worried about that for a while, feeling as if I were betraying God or myself in some way. But then I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous. God will just have to take her chance.’ And so will I. Because if I can’t survive a crush on a bigheaded schoolboy, then I’m not likely to survive all the difficulties that’ll be thrown at me if I work for God. So, I thought, ‘Perhaps this quirky schoolboy is a sort of test, perhaps he’s a temptation I can use to find out how determined I am. In which case, I might just as well relax about him and get on and see what happens.’
    If I’m honest, though, I have to admit I didn’t think you were much of a challenge. Didn’t think you’d last long after church, even if you actually turned up. But here I am weeks later, still battling! And I’ve enjoyed every minute. Truly.
    [ Pause. ]
    What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve got the same sort of feeling now that I had about you in my bath. And just like then, I don’t know why. But this time the feeling says the test is near its crisis. That there’ll be an end . . . No, that’s wrong. Not an end but another beginning . . . Very soon. Which is why I want you to know, before it happens, the way things are. So that whatever happens there’s no deception, and no pretence. Only honesty and truth. Or the truth as near as I can get to it.
    Does this make sense? Do you understand?
    I’ll worry till I know.

REVELATIONS
    That first Sunday morning, when Nik met Julie at her front door, she said, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but would you mind if we didn’t talk at all till after church? I’ll explain later.’
    â€˜If that’s what you want,’ Nik said.
    So they walked side by side, unspeaking, along empty streets, up through town to St James’s, set on a hill above the hospital and below the cemetery.
    Nik smiled to himself as they approached, thinking, ‘On the trip from sickness to death stands the church of God, and it’s uphill all the way.’
    Julie plodded along with such abstracted concentration that she might have been by herself. Her gait was urgently mechanical, her eyes fixed on the ground ahead, unseeing.
    What was going on? Nik wondered. What was she thinking about? Was she worried? Or feeling ill and forcing herself to church? Or fed up? She certainly didn’t look pleased or happy.
    No, she looked more like someone utterly absorbed in a book. Consumed. That was the word.
    Julie yomping to church puzzled him. Which made him all the more curious.
    NIK ’ S NOTEBOOK :   Must the insides of churches be like deep-freeze warehouses? St James’s is a late-Victorian stone pile with walls painted white to try and brighten the place up. But all this does is make it look cold as well as feel cold. Is this what Jesus Christ intended for his fans?
    â€˜Thou shalt build in my name large, cold mausoleums that shalt cost thee a bomb to keep up. These thou shalt perfume with the odour of damp dust, dirty underwear and dry rot. There shalt thou gather with glum faces, sit near the back, utter long prayers in mournful voices, sing tedious songs out of tune and very slowly, and generally give thyselves a thoroughly bad time.’
    Not that I’ve been in many churches. None at all for ages, in fact. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe they’re terrific fun places now. But not St James’s, that’s for sure. I think the people who go there must be masochists. Or else they all have terrible guilt