Nine

We’re now in Mitre Square, and in view of what I shall tell you later, please bear in mind that both the mitre and the square are significant elements of masonic ritual. It was to this square, now much redeveloped, that Catherine Eddowes made her way from Aldgate High Street, where we first encountered her and where she was last seen alive at about 1.30 in the morning by three men leaving a local club. Fifteen minutes later P.C. Watkins of the City Police discovered her body lying in front of a row of empty cottages: on the exact spot that you’re standing now.

She was horribly disfigured. The Ripper had clearly made up with a vengeance for having been interrupted with Elizabeth Stride. That is, if vengeance were his only aim. As P.C. Watkins said, she’d been cut up like a pig in the market with her entrails flung in a heap about her neck. Her throat had been slashed and her groin had been slit. Jagged gashes in the shape of V’s had been hacked through her mouth, her eyelids had been split, and the tip of her nose and her earlobes had been sliced off. This last injury prompted the police to release a letter they’d received, in which the writer claimed he’d clip off his next victim’s ear, and which was the first occasion on which either he, or anyone else, ever signed himself Jack the Ripper – the name which has since stuck.

Sir Robert Anderson was certain that both this letter and a subsequent postcard were journalistic inventions, particularly since they were sent to the Central Press Agency and from a postal district which included Fleet Street. All their corroborative detail had in fact already been released, and neither made mention of the one major detail the police had withheld: namely the theft of her womb. The murderer’s handwriting was fairly good, although his spelling and grammar seemed deliberately faulty; for example, let’s take a spot check: how would you spell ‘knife’…? Precisely. And ‘while’…? Obviously. Yet he was wrong both times. Whereas ‘piece’, a word which lends itself to misspelling, he managed perfectly. The police and later commentators remained unconvinced.

In the following weeks the police received thousands of hoax letters, and several people were subsequently jailed. Such deliberate wickedness seemed scarcely credible until I recalled the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper from my own childhood. The police were misled for months by the tape recordings of the mild-spoken Geordie who claimed to be Jack. It’s as if so many small men can see themselves writ large in these sadistic killers, and claiming responsibility is a way of becoming party to the crimes of their dreams. And in one sense they succeed; for if investigations are delayed, either by letters or recordings – if red herrings become wrong tracks, then they may well have blood on their hands. Just as a man who watches pornographic films may not have called the shots but his shadow still falls over the shutter and the frame… I must move on. I must move on.

One ‘joker’ – I hope you can hear my apostrophes – actually went further and sent a piece of kidney to George Lusk, the chairman of a local vigilante group. The letter, which was calculatedly written in a kind of stage Irish, claimed that the writer had fried and eaten the rest. Sir Henry Smith was in no doubt that it was Catherine Eddowes’ kidney, sizzled – or rather sozzled in gin; although it’s far more likely to have been some medical students’ jape or to have been obtained for a few pence from a hospital porter: the alcohol having served not to drown her sorrows but to preserve the organs after death.

So although Smith was initially delighted that the Ripper had struck in the City, thus giving him the chance to flex his investigative muscles, his conclusions as always proved wildly off the mark. He arrived here shortly after the discovery of the body and immediately set out in hot pursuit; his only problem being that the route the killer had taken took him once again out of his force’s jurisdiction – but not out of ours. So let’s make our way through the Priory House passage opposite, by the one and only path Jack the Ripper can be said beyond question to have walked.

 

You’ve grown a beard. I can never trust men with beards; I always feel they must have something to hide… I’m sorry: it’s the same old story. Attack is the best form of defence; and self-defence has become second nature to me.

I met your wife on my way in. At least I assume that’s who she was. At last you’ve slipped up: the mechanics of your consulting-room farce have broken down: the wife and the client meet face to face. But she smiled at me as though she were glad to see me; or was she simply glad to see me alive? It can hardly have done much for your reputation. If doctors bury their mistakes, do therapists commit them? You should have taken my advice and signed me away while you had the chance.

Thank you for coming to visit me. I didn’t have many visitors; although the round-the-clock nursing more than made up for it. And to have my very own Filipino nurse smoking and hacking and watching television all night long is clearly the perfect cure for loneliness. Why didn’t I think of it before?

Father Leicester came, of course. He condescended to me kindlily like a white settler with a fellow countryman who’d gone native. He presented me with a pot of honey and asked me how I spent my time. I told him I considered the commercial possibilities of canonisation – the marketable merchandise of martyrdom: such as the St Catherine wheel or the St Agnes bra, the St Sebastian dart-board or the St Lawrence non-stick griddle. He shook his head and knelt and prayed, whilst I stared at the honey-pot and racked my brain to remember if there’d ever been a saint stung to death by a swarm of bees.

Did you notice my display of cards during your statutory five minutes? You can hardly have missed the large icon of St Stephen and St John from all my fellow ordinands – I must stop saying that: from the ordinands at the college where I used to train. Unfortunately, it was bent in the post; every time I looked, I saw nothing but the creases. But it’s the thought that counts – or so I told myself when I woke up with the tube down my throat… I’m surprised they remembered me; how long is it since I left? My calendar seems like a watch in a painting by Salvador Dalí. And time has become as relative as shame.

Still, I suppose it’s a comfort to realise that all those good people are out there praying for me. How long will it be, do you think, until they admit defeat? Or will they carry on for ever until there’s no one left alive for whom my name has any meaning and it sounds as obscure as a minor skirmish in the Book of Kings? I’m someone everyone used to know… Although, given that there are many more people dead than alive on the planet, I can at least count myself amongst the silent majority.

I went to see Jack. I put my proposition to him, which was that I should buy him – us – a flat. I was deliberately vague about personal pronouns. After all, the distinctions between us would be blurred in so many far more intimate ways. Man and prostitute… one flesh: haven’t you heard; it’s the new liturgy? Oh yes, we’re all liberals now.

He asked if I wanted to be his sugar daddy. I was appalled – I never want to be anyone’s father: not even in jest. Besides, I’m three years younger than him. But I said if he liked he could see me as a kind of sugar brother. He laughed and warned me that clichés had very precise meanings; that was what made them clichés. It didn’t do to mess them around. Nor did it do to mess with him.

He sent me away; I’d had more than my allotted hour and he was expecting his next client. Of course, I thought bitterly; he had to give us all a fair crack of the whip – oh, did I crack a joke? Never mind, it was quite unintentional. And there was no one I could turn to: not even Christ.

What could he know of the isolation of my despair or the despair of my isolation? He had a mother, brothers, disciples, friends. Even the prayer he taught us seemed utterly irrelevant: Lead us not into temptation – no; lead us not into loneliness was all I asked. And there could be nobody as lonely as a grown man kneeling at the foot of a cold single bed.

I used to be alone at the foot of the Cross, but I’d meet Christ every day in the Eucharist. Now I see nothing but an empty tomb broken into for nefarious purposes. Grave-robbers have robbed the corpse and necrophiliacs have abused it:

I’ve been fucked up the arse by Jesus,

He does it to everyone,

He only does it to please us,

He says, ‘Here comes God the Son.’

No! Forgive me! Please forgive me! I didn’t say that. I’m just the ventriloquist’s dummy. The Devil has his hand down my trousers whilst I sit helpless on his knee. I need help… I needed Jack. He was the only one who could save me. I was full of sin and he was the world’s leading expert. He alone would authenticate my sin. He alone would assuage my isolation. The Protestant martyrs had at least stood side by side in the fires of Smithfield; was I to burn in the flames of Hell all alone?

No, I needn’t have worried; for there was one face I could be sure of seeing: my old friend from Sunday School, Jesus. You look surprised. But why? Surely you must have realised by now: he was the consummate confidence trickster of all time. And through the eternal presumption of the Mass, he found the perfect way to perpetuate the fraud.

And I’ve finally discovered the answer to the conundrum that has exercised theologians through the centuries. He was neither God, nor man, nor half-man, nor demigod, but demagogue. He may have warned his original hearers that ignoring his message would be like building their houses on sand; but what of all the rest of us who’ve built up our hopes on hot air? He’s led us straight up the garden path: Eden or Gethsemane? They’re one and the same.

I’ve been fucked up the arse by the Saviour,

Which strikes me as rather odd.

I’ve been fucked up the arse by the Saviour,

At least he said he was God.

Oh God! How can he let me live? Or does even my blasphemy lack all conviction? Is it simply the excrement of my despair?

No wonder Jack rejected me. Whereas I yearned for him more and more. I took to phoning him at all hours of the day and night to check if he were in – to try to catch him out. I weighed up the various tones and tones of voices, the rings and the pauses, the man or the machine. I had to know if he were alone or occupied. Then the overactive imagination in my under-employed body would supply the rest.

Finally, on what was to prove my last night out of captivity, I decided to bring things to a head. I ordered a mini-cab and slipped out of the priory unnoticed to visit him unannounced. We soon reached Westbourne Park. I’d given no thought to either explanations or consequences, but at first neither appeared necessary as there seemed to be no signs of life inside his flat. A cloud momentarily obscured the moon and I suddenly realised how late it was. I jammed my finger on the doorbell and then ran for cover beneath the trees.

I watched with bated breath as he pulled up a window and leaned out, scanning the path. His ivory shoulders gleamed in the moonlight; I was far more aware of the precariousness of his position than of mine. He looked so insouciantly sexual; I could understand how men like Jack the Ripper had been driven to murder prostitutes. I guillotined him in my imagination, picturing the window-sash dropping and his head tumbling clean off his neck and down into my waiting arms. I shuddered. He called out; but I was safe in the camouflage of the conifers. He slammed the window shut.

I breathed again – at least I breathed more deeply. And I suddenly felt as conscious of my breathing as when I was alone with him, and the benign breath of God metamorphosed into the raucous rasps of a pair of rutting animals. But then at heart I was pure animal; and I outlined my two squat horns and my curly hair and cloven hooves…

After waiting for what seemed an eternity, I pressed the bell again. This time I didn’t run away; this time he came downstairs. I’d never seen him look so ordinary. He was wearing a tartan woollen dressing-gown with a red tasselled cord, which both demystified and demythologised him. He looked at me with an expression that seemed pitched halfway between relief and fury. And then he smiled; but a smile of such calculated cruelty that it curdled my blood.

I apologised casually for catching him at a bad moment – as though it were three in the afternoon rather than in the morning, adding that I’d tried to ring him but his number had been constantly engaged. That, at least, came as no surprise; he apparently took the phone off the hook last thing at night as his adverts made him a prime target for hoax calls. I was amazed to find I’d been able to lie so convincingly. And I was lulled into a dangerous sense of security as he led me up the stairs.

Thinking back even with a mind ravaged by electricity, the sequence remains clear… We sat in his living room. He poured out a glass of wine as I poured out my heart. He asked me to try to keep my voice down; and when I wondered why, he moved to the bedroom door and pointed to the bed as proudly as a first-time father at the side of a cot. A young man was lying there fast asleep. His beauty dazzled my eyes.

At once I understood everything; but I refused to admit it. I prayed that he might be just another client, although as a rule he took great pains to keep us apart. But he was his lover: Kerry; and I wanted to die. And my honour was compounded with amazement. I couldn’t see where he found the time, let alone the inclination. I’d always been led to believe that prostitutes became disgusted by sex, like workers in a sweet factory by chocolate. But the only thing that disgusted Jack was impotence… Why are you looking at me like that?

And I was riven by a sense of intolerable injustice. Why should even a prostitute have found someone to love whilst I was so abysmally alone?

I looked away from Kerry and down at the bed: that hot-bed of both my ecstasy and my despair with its painfully sharp, matt black bed-posts and springy, sweat-stained mattress, which had to be changed every six months due to wear and tear. But now it looked quite different, like a high altar decked out in its Easter colours, with its crisp white sheets and covers in place of the customary, stark brown towel.

But above all there was Kerry. And I gazed at him tucked up in the tousled bedding which still bore the perceptible patina of their love-making, like the delicate pattern of dust on a butterfly’s wing. And I was consumed with envy that he’d been allowed inside; whereas I’d had to make do with the surface. And I watched him sleeping enchantedly – enchantingly, his eyelids fluttering with the sweetness of his dreams. And I searched for evidence of the mechanics of their lust: the belts and boots and clamps and thongs and things. But I only saw Jack’s tender touch as he gently teased his shoulder. Was it possible that the love between them was as natural as the love between… between two brothers? And Jack smiled as though he could read my mind.

He asked if I’d mind if he slipped back into bed, as it was beginning to feel rather chilly; which seemed to me the grossest understatement. And as he took off his dressing-gown, his body looked so much more relaxed than I’d ever remembered. And as he cuddled up close to Kerry, I didn’t know where to look… No, that’s not true; I knew only too well.

He kissed him awake, before effecting introductions, reminding him that I was the client who’d wanted to take him away from all this – and the extravagance of his gesture reflected damningly on mine. In turn Kerry seemed remarkably unflustered, grinning at me cockily… Oh, ha ha! it’s easy for you to smile… I’m sorry; I’ve even grown suspicious of tricks of the light… Then he slipped one arm brazenly around Jack’s shoulders: as shiny and smooth as a freshly polished banister, down which I longed to slide.

Each sought out the other’s mouth as freely as if they’d been engaged in the art of gentle conversation. They had no shame – and that’s not intended as a compliment. I wouldn’t have believed it possible to have held a kiss for so long and not drawn breath. But they drew breath as they drew life from one another. Whilst I was left out in the cold, shivering in the hair-shirt of my passion.

They seemed to lose sight of me completely as they lapped each other’s warmth and wetness. I coughed; Kerry turned to me sharply. Satisfied? he asked. And I realised he was Irish. Then he pulled Jack up by the chin; I couldn’t believe that he’d allow himself to be so crudely manipulated. Did I want a bit of it? he sneered. I was appalled; was he drunk or just disdainful? Well, did I? he rasped. Yes, I said, trying to sound non-committal. Yes, I said, as though I were auditioning for the voice of the speaking clock. Well, I wasn’t going to have it, was that clear? And as if to emphasise the full extent of my exclusion, he slipped under the cover and applied himself to Jack’s body. And I presumed – no, I knew all too well what he was doing. And the duvet rippled sinuously as though a snake were caught up in an apple-pie bed.

I watched as Jack’s lips parted blissfully. He no longer had any need to spit out the sequence of commands and obscenities which had been his professional shortcut to arousal. He no longer had any need to spit at all. With Kerry his face took on an aspect of… beatific sensuality. He was all sense; his senses thrilled; whilst mine shrieked out in torment. I wanted to be in there with them, if not in their arms then at their feet. I wanted to be a bug beneath the sheets or a baby tooth under the pillow or a Christmas stocking tied to the foot of the bed. I wanted to be the sweat on their chests, the hair in their eyes, the saliva on their lips. Surely I had the right to one taste of life before I died?

Anything, I screamed… What? Jack looked at me, whilst Kerry re-emerged from the depths of the duvet. And I offered them anything if they’d only make room for me. I played my final card, and I paid the full price of my degradation, as Kerry let rip with a thesaurus of profanities. He leapt out of bed, his penis blazing like a beacon. He made to grab hold of me; but Jack intercepted him. He asserted his authority; he established his priority. The first stone was going to be his.

What do you want from me? he asked, clutching the roots of my hair so violently that my only thought was release. But he knew full well what I wanted. Love, I said, painfully conscious of the incongruity of my position; I’ve never felt this for anyone before… What about Rees? he asked, yanking my head back. No, I screamed. And he yanked it back still further until I was practically parallel with the floor. Be honest with yourself, he said, just for once in your life. And at that he let me drop unceremoniously and moved away.

He switched on the television; the screen suffused with colour. At first I couldn’t understand why he’d chosen a film of wrestling; until I looked more closely at the two competitors. They were a large middle-aged man and a small pre-pubescent boy. No wrestling promoter would ever have permitted such a miss-matched coupling. But it was a pornographer’s dream.

It was my own worst nightmare. I tried frantically to break free. But Jack was holding me fast. My head was fixed as firmly as the camera; whilst my eyes relentlessly recorded the images which seared my soul. I was forced to watch as a monstrous middle-aged man penetrated… no, how could he do it to him? And how could Jack do it to me? I wanted to ask, but my mouth felt clamped and frozen. There was no sound in the room and no soundtrack: simply the suffocating silence of evil. Until I finally found my voice. Why? I shouted. Why?

Haven’t you recognised yourself yet? he asked, relaxing his hold for an instant as he pointed towards the screen. He was making no sense… but he continued to point whilst the man’s heaving, hulking husk of a body appeared in an all too vivid close-up. And then when the boy came back into view he declared that he was Rees.

I couldn’t and I wouldn’t understand him. It was the final proof of what I’d long suspected; his sexual excesses had twisted his mind. It was utterly absurd. I’d never laid a finger on Rees. I’d never laid a finger on anyone but him; and even then a finger just about said it all. But at that same moment another image flickered across the screen: a black and white Christ from some Hollywood Biblical epic warning against men who committed adultery in their hearts.

I pressed my hands into my eyes, but Jack pulled them away. At last the image faded, but the horror remained, as the man began to thrust into the boy so hard and so fast that I thought – I prayed – that Jack must have somehow speeded up the film. But there was no respite, not for either of us, as he continued his catalogue of accusations… are you sure you can bear to hear? He claimed that I’d used and abused Rees far more ruthlessly than any of the other men in the club. I’d had every opportunity to help him; but it’d suited me to leave him where he was: confused and vulnerable and reckless – and on remand.

I was astounded. I asked how it could possibly have suited me to leave him in a club which had struck me quite unequivocally as Hell on earth. Of course, he said; that was the whole attraction. What self-respecting Christian could be expected to throw up such a Heaven-sent excuse to visit Hell – to sin vicariously under the cloak of clerical immunity, whilst not even getting his fingers burnt? And I had no answer, and he had no mercy. You’re just a spiritual voyeur, he said, a praying Tom.

Then he dragged me to the television and pressed me face to face with both reflections. There I was gross and sweaty and raw and lustful; there I was broken and bowed and buckled under: the reality and the myth. I was afraid he’d push my head through the screen and I’d disappear forever into the pornographic abyss. So I thrust back, while at the same time the boy gave one final heartrending shudder as the man exploded inside him. And my life exploded inside me. And my head went limp.

The picture flickered and died; the moment weighed very heavy. But I knew that if I lost it, I’d be lost forever. So I grabbed hold of his waist and made a final appeal. He’d held a mirror to my soul and a camera to my sexuality. He alone had the power to save me; he couldn’t be so heartless as to send me away.

He pretended not to understand; but I told him I knew full well who he was. When Lucifer fell, he hadn’t fallen to Hell but to earth; or to be more precise to Bethlehem in four or five BC. But now he’d come again and it had fallen to me to acknowledge him. I’d be the Devil’s true disciple, the rock on which he built his coven. And I begged him to take me to him: to sanctify my body and mortify my soul.

He looked at me and his eyes filled with self-assurance as he promised to give me all I’d ever desired: which was no more than I deserved. And I closed my eyes and threw back my head in anticipation of the touch of his lips. But he summoned Kerry and they moved towards me in tandem, and they undid my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt and – I’m… I’m… They took off my shoes and my socks and my trousers and… And I sat as trusting as a newborn baby and gazed up at their naked bodies standing over me, as in a perfectly synchronised sequence they each took aim and pissed.

I sat stunned by the steaming stream of urine. It stung my nostrils; it smarted on my skin. I stared at them in bewilderment through what I thought was a veil of tears. They looked at each other. They looked frightened; they looked guilty; they looked away. And the reality of what had happened finally hit me. And both the manner and the moment of my degradation felt utterly right.

I was a sewer – I am a sewer; I’m the world’s sewer. I’m running with the whole world’s wastes. They treated me with less respect than a dog would a serviceable tree trunk. Even a dead tree can support fungus – even the Judas tree. But nothing can ever grow from me. I used to find myself in the sacraments; now I must look only to excrement. I’ve been baptised once in chrism and many times in fire; but at last I was immersed in my true element: a swirling, stagnant swill. And I thanked them warmly for performing the rite.

Jack pulled me to my feet. I gripped his arm; my legs felt as though they’d been filleted. He sponged me and towelled me and helped me to dress; I speculated on the state of the carpet. He ordered a cab from his usual service, although I was sure I detected more than the usual scorn in the driver’s eyes. But then that may well have been due to the smell – do I still smell; that is to the world at large…? He said nothing either; he was as inscrutable as the model of the three wise monkeys which bobbed from the mirror as we drove.

I couldn’t go back to the priory; the prospect of meeting Brother Martin was more than I could bear. I wasn’t worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes… But the words of the Bible mocked me, especially those of St John the Baptist. For I’d been newly baptised in the Devil’s name; and I was worthy of nothing but Hell.

We drove through the pounding rain in which the lights of London dissolved like a wash of water-colour, to a small hotel in the West End that had once been pointed out to me by the boys as somewhere they took their punters – which felt ironically apt. The red light advertising vacancies seemed also to advertise turning a blind eye; and yet there were limits even to its latitude. You could register your arrival under a pseudonym, but not your death.

The porter showed me to my room and brought me a bottle of wine. I reached for my pills, which I’d started to carry about as though I were a spy. I took a last look around the room. The decor proved an antidote to sentimentality. It was quite unembellished except for a laminated Turner seascape and a Gideon Bible. I remembered the Turners at Edensor and my courage faltered; so I turned the print to the wall. But the sight of the Bible simply strengthened my determination. And as I drank the wine and downed the pills which would together drown my sorrows, I slowly ripped out the gospels page by page.

As I started to sink, I began to worry about the smell of my decomposition: God’s last laugh and our ultimate degradation. Wasn’t the stink of mankind humiliation enough without the added stench of mortality? I moved to the window to try to prise it open when a new idea struck me, and I signed my name in the dust on the glass: a fittingly futile, final gesture. After which I must have passed out.

God moves in mysterious ways; and according to Father Leicester, none more so than the hotel porter, who, confused by complaints about the noise in the neighbouring room, broke in and discovered me. Well, he can believe what he likes but I categorically refuse to accept that God played any part in it. And besides I’d despair twice over of a God so indiscriminate as to have concerned himself with the likes of me. No, it was the Devil who saved me. He’d worked long and hard to gain control of me. He wasn’t going to let me slip from his grasp so soon.

Not that I had any intention of trying. While God’s injustices drove me finally to apostasy, the Devil’s served simply to increase my respect. How utterly true to himself to bring me back from the brink of death and yet not from despair: to refuse even to grant me the absolution of absolute damnation. He knew that for me the true meaning of Hell lay in perpetual isolation: to have communion with neither God nor man, nor even Devil; to be utterly, unutterably alone.

How could anyone have ever made suicide a crime? What punishment could begin to approach the agony of being kept alive? And it’s the one life sentence without hope of remission: not in this world, nor even the next. For it’s the one sin that can never be forgiven: the one Christ spoke of as the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. To despair is to negate God’s very nature, and to kill oneself to deny any possibility of grace.

So I suppose I’ve answered my own question. The wonder is that they ever agreed to decriminalise us, although in practice they simply hospitalise us instead. Then they can make us the guinea-pigs for their ineffective medicines and the scapegoats for their unacknowledged pain.

And yet to my mind suicides should be revered, not resuscitated. In these times of ever-dwindling resources we should be lauded as national heroes like Japanese pilots during the war. There should be a Suicides’ Corner in Westminster Abbey along with a Tomb of the Unknown Suicide to honour some particularly mangled corpse. Then we can give up our pilgrimages to Lourdes and Walsingham and erect a shrine to the Reverend Jim Jones at Jonestown: the twentieth century’s quintessential saint.

But they’d rather revive us with their pumps and pills and potions. How can they be so callous? They’d put a sick dog out of its misery: why not a sick mind? And they treat me as though I’ve forfeited all right to adult consideration. They roll the medicine trolley through my room like an armoured tank. They keep me away from sharp knives and strong ties and open windows… But I’m learning fast and I’ve already become a model prisoner – sorry, patient; and the proof is that here I am out on parole – sorry, trust.

Besides, I’ve discovered a far more poetic form of justice, and one no amount of pills can keep at bay: I intend to contract AIDS. I’ll go back to the ‘Cockatoo’ and pay the boys to take turns to go through me. Until, if only by the law of averages, I’ll have no escape. Then when I die, Dante’ll have to revise the topography of his Inferno. I’ll be so ostracised, I’ll be cast in a circle of Hell all by myself.

I can see what you’re thinking: it’s a double bluff; he’s afraid he’s already infected and so he’s putting the best face on it he can. Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Doctor Liebwitz arranged for me to be tested at the clinic and on that score I’ve nothing to fear.

He was amazed at my chagrin. He’d expected the result to relieve my mind. But on the contrary, it’d been my last chance to regain my faith in God. He might have destroyed my purpose in life; but I couldn’t believe that even he’d deny me the chance to let my death serve some purpose: to expiate my sins through my suffering; to be a living sacrifice and the essential embodiment of my prophecy of doom.

But he refused me even the mercy of opprobrium. I’d imagined myself setting up my cross at Charing Cross, ringing a knell and revealing my wounds to the crowd: See my scabs, see my scars; watch me cough and splutter. I’d have accompanied my own death rattle and my message would have been written on a billboard of blood. And I wouldn’t have let up until I’d completely lost my voice – no, until I’d begun to lose all my senses and my madness spoke for itself. Then if they’d turned on me and vilified me and spat at me like Christ, the spray of their spittle might at last have wiped me clean.

No! Even in my despair I come back to Christ. It’s not he who should inspire me, but Judas. For where would Christ be without him? And where would he be without me? He needs my sin to offset his sanctity, just as he needed Judas’ treachery to offset his faith… Of course: that’s it! Then I do have a purpose in life after all. I’m a sinner and God requires sinners. Without us he’d be as redundant as a derelict church. So I’ll give thanks for my sin, and I’ll cherish it: the greater the sin, the greater the service to God.

And you can call off your watchdogs; I intend to live. I intend to outlive both Moses and Methuselah. I’ll be sustained by my own sickness; I’ll be inoculated by my own despair. And just as Jonathan exposed the distortion of the Old Testament, so I shall do the same for the New. My first step will be to rehabilitate St Judas. He and not Christ is the true son of Man: the only begotten of both God and Satan, and their joint incarnation here on earth. Then I’ll found a new sect and profess a new creed and proclaim a new gospel: Despair is Hope, Sin is Salvation, Damnation is Redemption, and Satan is God.