A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [15]
There was a rustle of disturbance in the hall, and her voice increased in volume to cover it.
“And the other story, about God the sculptor? I’m sure you all know the saying”—her voice climbed and turned saccharin—“that woman was made from man’s rib so she might stand beside him and under his arm for protection.” She made a face as if she’d tasted something disgusting. “Have you ever heard such sentimental, condescending rot?” Her voice control was extraordinary, for she sounded as if she were speaking normally, yet the crack of the last word rose above the combined laughter and a handful of angry voices. “If you want to be logical about it, don’t tell me that the woman was given to Adam as a servant, a sort of glorified packhorse that could carry on a conversation. Tell me what the story really said, that God realised creation was incomplete, so He divided His human creature up, and created Eve, the distilled essence of His human being. With Eve, humanity became complete. With Eve, creation became complete. Adam was the first human, but Eve… Eve was the crown of God’s creation.”
Now she was having to shout.
“That was what my loud preacher feared, to be told that he and his cronies had no more right to tell me that I couldn’t speak in God’s house than I had a right to tell the sun not to shine. But all that’s changed now, hasn’t it, my friends?” A great roar drowned out her words for the next moments.
“… God’s image, you have the God-given right to use your minds and your bodies. You are in God’s image, and I love you. See you Thursday, friends.”
Abruptly, she waved, and in a swirl of gold and white she was gone. The place exploded in hundreds of voices raised in shouts of argument, pleasure, friendship, and confusion. Ronnie leant over and spoke loudly in my ear.
“This lot will go and have tea and biscuits next door, but if you’ll wait a few minutes, we can go back and say hello, if you’d like.”
I would like. I was fascinated, impressed, more than a bit repelled, and altogether extremely curious. The woman had played her audience like a finely tuned instrument, handling nearly four hundred people with the ease of a seasoned politician. Even I, non-Christian and hardened cynic that I am, had found it difficult to resist her. She was a feminist and she had a sense of humour, an appealing combination that was regrettably rare, and she came across as a person who was deeply, seriously committed to her beliefs, yet who retained the distance and humanity to laugh at herself. She was articulate without being pompous, and apparently self-educated since the age of fifteen. Her attitude towards the Bible seemed to be refreshingly matter-of-fact, and her theology, miracle of miracles, was from what I had heard radical but sound.
Oh yes, I should like to meet this woman.
I followed Veronica against the stream of chattering, gesticulating women sprinkled with fuming men to an inconspicuous door set into the wall next to the stage. The large, uniformed man standing guard there greeted Miss Beaconsfield by name and tipped his hat as his eyes gave me a thorough investigation.
Behind the door, the atmosphere was closer to that backstage after a theatre performance than to a vestry following a church service. Swirls of dramatic young women were calling “darling” to one another over the heads of trouser-clad women hauling spotlights and cleaning equipment. Gradually, we insinuated our way through to the hindmost recesses, and as Veronica’s face became more and more expectantly radiant, I became increasingly aware of the depth of her involvement and the degree of her authority in this organisation. We went unchallenged, followed only by envious glances directed at my companion, and these slid into frank curiosity when they took in the peculiarly dressed figure in her wake.
A door closed behind us and the cacophony shut off abruptly. The rough workaday backstage setting was left behind, and we walked through what looked like the corridor of some high-class hotel. A huge flower arrangement