Beta Male by Iain Hollingshead Page A

shouldn’t still take them.
    â€˜And if you ever need a helping hand, you know where I am.’
    â€˜How kind. But why would I want help from you? I have it all sewn up already.’
    *
    Wednesday arrived, as Wednesdays do, and I met Mary after work as arranged. Work for her turned out to be a part-time job, which curiously she had never mentioned before, in thebookshop of an evangelical church in a posh, leafy part of Clapham. Perhaps I should have smelt a rat when she texted during the afternoon to ask if I could meet her there.
    â€˜So,’ she enthused, greeting me with an enthusiastic kiss on both cheeks. Mary was always enthusing about something. ‘Are you ready to come and meet my friend?’
    I looked in the direction in which she was nodding.
Jesus.
She was nodding towards the church.
Did she want me to come and meet Jesus?
    She did.
    â€˜I know it might seem bizarre,’ she guessed, accurately, noting the look of sheer blasphemous horror on my face. ‘But you and I got off to such a strange start and I need to be honest with you. This is part of me, a really important part of me. And it is important to me that you understand that. Do you understand?’
    â€˜No’ would have been the simple, honest answer. But she was such a sweet, enthusiastic, pretty, filthy, confusing girl that I really did want to understand her. Wouldn’t anyone be intrigued by an otherwise rational person wanting someone they’d met at a wedding to meet their dead, Middle Eastern friend? Plus, there was the money. Or the Money-Barings, to be precise. That’s what I really wanted to understand. Had the Money come first or the Barings? Had Mr Money met Miss Barings and declared it a match made in financial heaven? Had Barings married into money? Or were the Barings simply sitting around one day thinking,
Fuck me, our name doesn’t sound nearly posh enough as it is, let’s add ‘Money’ in front of it so that no one is in any doubt just how rich we are
.
    Maybe I would get a chance to ask her during the evening, just after a sermon about the rich man and the camel trying to get through the eye of a needle.
    We linked chaste hands and ventured inside.
    The church was old and echoing, with vast pillars stretching up to a high wooden ceiling. The evening light slanted through a giant stained glass window above the altar, catching an antique silver crucifix. Yet an effort had clearly been made to make everything feel as modern as possible. The chairs were arranged in small groups, facing inwards towards a stage. Plasma screens were attached to the pillars. There was a hum of anticipation among a well-dressed, mainly young, congregation of about two hundred. U2 blared out from the hi-tech sound system.
    Mary introduced me to a small group, most of whom had the beatific smiles and put-upon demeanours of long-term Christians and therefore had to be kind. Everyone took an intense, apologetic interest in me, explaining how they met every Wednesday evening (‘a bonus bit of worship’) as well as on Sundays. I joined in as well as I could, listening politely as the guy on my left – a confusing mixture of wide-boy City trader and wide-eyed evangelist – explained how he liked to ‘say a little prayer’ at work before embarking on each multi-million-pound deal. I wondered, silently, how such a little prayer might go: ‘Dear Lord, who was born in a stable and worked as a carpenter, who befriended fishermen and threw money lenders out of the temple Dear, dear saviour, please give me the courage to screw over this small company in this deal I’m about to make, for your compassionate name’s sake, amen.’
    â€˜It’s a pithy description of the Trinity, isn’t it?’ I said instead, aloud.
    â€˜What?’
    I gestured at the speakers. ‘Bono’s lyrics: “You’re one, but you’re not the same”.’
    Stock Market Christian