Walking with Ghosts

door. Marie rang again and waited long enough for a man to get out of bed, find a dressing-gown and descend from the top floor. But there was no sound from inside the house.
    She walked around the side, to the back of the building. Startled herself momentarily when she saw her own reflection in the glass of a conservatory. She wasn’t totally put at ease, either, when she realized that it was her own reflection. Her practised eye detected that she was packing several pounds more than she had at her last visit to the bathroom scales.
    She peered through the windows. The place was dust free. There was an easy chair in front of a television, a small table to the right of the chair. One wall was covered with books. And nothing was out of place. The surface of the table was uncluttered, polished. There was a framed photograph of a man, presumably Hopper himself. The floor of maple panels was naked apart from a rug. Charles Hopper was an unusual and fastidious man. Either that or he had a housekeeper.
    Oh, hell, though, putting on weight. As soon as you take your eyes off it, it starts to creep back. Soon as you relax. She’d been so involved with J.D., so intrigued by him, she hadn’t noticed the fat making its comeback. Now it had several days’ advantage, which meant she’d have to suffer for twice as many weeks to get back to normal. She’d read an article by a Christian saying you could pray yourself slim, that Jesus would dissolve all the fat and leave you trim and ready to fight the devil. You just had to believe.
    Marie didn’t.
    And it also confirmed something she had known all of her life. Jesus had no weight problems whatsoever. If he had been a fatty he’d never have got Christianity started. Or if he’d been a fatty and somehow managed to get Christianity started, we’d have heard about it big time. Like Robbie Coltrane, say. It would have been a feature.
    But then the whole script would have been different. If he’d been fat they might not have crucified him, they’d have found some other way of getting rid of him, maybe drowned him in a barrel instead. Because you can’t have a fat man on a cross, it would make the whole thing top heavy, end up toppling over. You just couldn’t found a religion on a scenario like that. But if they’d drowned him in a barrel the iconography, everything, would have been different. Instead of wearing crosses round their necks, people would have barrels.
    People with stigmata would never have been heard of. Never have been thought of. Hysterics the world over would not bleed from their hands or their sides. Instead you’d get occasional cases of bloated fanatics, their lungs filling up with fluid.
    And the last supper would’ve been a fat man’s supper. The last banquet, at which bread and wine would simply have been incidentals among a gluttony of nourishment; hors d’oeuvre, cheeses, meats, succulent steak, beef, mutton pork, veal, lamb, roast and boiled potatoes. They would have had stew, mince, broth and soup, a variety of suet puddings. And all the disciples would have been fat as well In fact Christianity would have been a fat person’s religion A society of bellies and fleshspots getting together to race through the fish course and the entree so they could bite, champ, munch, crunch, chew, sip, suck, and swill their way through a mountain of pastry, sweets, doughnuts, pancakes, mince pies, blancmange, and ice cream. While on the side would be chocolate, liquor and liqueurs, claret and coffee to ensure that everything was well washed down.
    Holy Communion as we now know it wouldn’t exist. It would have taken on a totally different face. When the priest asked the congregation to come forward to taste the body and blood of Christ, a vast catering conglomerate would go into action to feast the faithful.
    Marie smiled. Religion would really mean something then.
    ‘You looking for somebody?’ The woman’s voice dragged Marie back from her reverie. She turned to face a stout woman in a turban which was designed to hide a mixture of pink and white plastic hair-curlers. She was standing at a wooden gate which connected her garden to the garden of Hopper’s house. The woman’s face had been scrubbed with the same relish and zest as the front steps of the house, and, Marie concluded, with the same hands.
    ‘Yes. I’m looking for Charles Hopper. Do you know if he’s at home?’
    The woman’s top lip curled slightly. ‘If he was at home he’d have