Free Such Men Are Dangerous by Stephen Benatar

standing in the doorway.
    Dawn obviously hadn’t been listening. “Two things. One of them’s incredible.” Yes. The scenario was clearly by the same scriptwriter. “You see, they suddenly remembered, both of them, wholly out of the blue, a scripture lesson they’d had last Wednesday. One of the teachers was away; their classes had to double up. Well, it doesn’t really alter anything, I told them that but they were worried that it did. ‘It’s still a miracle,’ I said. ‘Mr Madison knows far more than we do and even he thinks it’s a miracle.’ William said, ‘But when we tell him what we’ve remembered he won’t go on thinking it. Nothing will make him believe it any more. And then we’ll just be on our own.’ And after that he started to cry.”
    Dawn paused, perhaps for breath. Simon said: “Poor lad. It isn’t anyone’s fault. These things…happen. If he’s with you could I speak to him?”
    It seemed that Dawn was trying to take this in; her pause extended itself.
    “But you don’t understand,” she said, at last. “You see, I haven’t told you yet about the second thing. And, Simon, it really is a miracle. Because we’ve had a sign. God’s given us the proof.”
    “Oh, yes?” said Simon. He decided this was hardly the moment to point out God wasn’t in the business of providing tidy bits of proof. Quod erat demonstrandum was not, noticeably, in God’s vocabulary.
    “You see, it was when William started to cry because he thought it wasn’t a miracle. Suddenly he clapped his hands to his face as though his tears were scalding him. At first that didn’t occur to me. I just supposed he didn’t want us to see. Afterwards he said it was like a great tingling sensation, like little currents of electricity shooting here and there beneath the skin. Not in the least bit painful.”
    “And?” Simon was scarcely paying attention.
    “Well, it was when he took his hands away. He wasn’t crying any more. That only lasted for a few seconds, maybe six or so. But his tears had washed him clean.”
    He imagined she was using blood-of-the-Lamb type language. He somewhat listlessly repeated her last three words.
    “Well, don’t say you didn’t notice!” she laughed. “Up until this happened, there was nothing we could ever do about it, no matter what the doctor gave. Well, now it’s all gone, every last trace.”
    “What has?”
    “His acne . He’s got the best complexion in Humberside. Even Josh can’t come up with anything to explain it away.” She giggled. Dawn—Dawn Heath! She was giggling like some giddy and triumphant ten-year-old. “And, truly, you mustn’t think he hasn’t tried!”

11
    Oh, yes. He had certainly tried. Even at half-past-two in the morning he was still trying. It was about then that Dawn mumbled:
    “You all right, Josh?”
    “Yes.”
    “Wondered if…some pain or something?”
    “Go back to sleep.”
    He listened to her turn over and before long resume her regular breathing; listened with relief, listened with resentment. He confessed himself unreasonable. In some ways it was this very placidity of hers which made her a good wife, and often he felt grateful to her. But his gratitude was more of the mind than of the heart and in his heart she irritated him.
    Even on Gabriel-night she had soon achieved soft snores.
    He had a favourite fantasy: his moon-and-sixpence trip. But tonight he felt nothing could have soothed him into sleep.
    What’s more, it didn’t have to be Tahiti. London would do. Anywhere that gave you the feeling of life being lived, of possibilities being possible. Forty-six wasn’t old.
    In any case, if he were starting out anew, he believed he could get away with forty. Even thirty-eight.
    The obstacle, of course, was money. He did the pools. He was trying to write an English textbook. Textbooks could be lucrative but…Well, he only wished he had the nerve to rob a post office. Something like that.
    Dawn wouldn’t miss him. Nor would