Peter approaches Jesus with a complaint. Although their group are popular speakers and draw big crowds, Jesus won’t let them charge anything. Now it’s tax time and somehow, they owe. Jesus tells him to go down to the sea, throw out his net and take the first fish that he catches. Jesus is insistent on this point: the first fish. Peter catches his first fish. There in its mouth is a coin that will pay the taxes for him and for Jesus.

That’s the New Testament. Here’s the Tanakh: There’s something Jonah has to do. It doesn’t matter what, the point is he must do it, can’t put it off, can’t do something else instead. And he really, really doesn’t want to. So he doesn’t. Now he’s on the run, he’s all at sea, he’s a man overboard. He falls into the mouth of a fish. It takes him down into deep waters. But because of the fish Jonah doesn’t drown. Reflecting on this it comes to him, there in the fish, to agree with what must happen. Whatever that is. And when he steps out of the fish’s mouth, it’s onto dry land.

From the chapter called “The Cave,” in the Koran. Moses is traveling in unfamiliar country. He meets someone going the same way and asks if they can travel together. The companion agrees on the condition that Moses not ask him any questions. As they cross a river Moses’ lunch, a dried salted fish, falls into the water, comes back to life and darts away.

In midrash, and the Book of Enoch, and some translations of Job, mention is made of a fish so vast that it requires the entire ocean as its cover, that was at first a terrible monster, enemy of the world,  later on a playmate pleasant and docile, and will at the end of time be drawn out with a hook and served as one course of a banquet for everyone there.

In the Romance of Alexander, in the Babylonian Talmud, in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and the legend of Saint Brendan, in Iceland and Greenland, in Chile and Persia and Arabia is the description of sailors making landfall, on a country of fruit trees, fresh water, everything anyone could want. Always the same: the sailors light a fire to cook their meal and the enormous fish, whose back they have mistaken for dry land, submerges.

I learned to fish with my Uncle Johnnie on the waters of Massachusetts Bay. He taught me that the bay was full of fish that no one could see unless you caught one and showed it to them yourself. The first fish I caught was a small black bass. Uncle Johnnie demonstrated how to remove the hook, at the same time letting me see that the fish had a silver Walking Lady Liberty dollar in its mouth, which he said was very lucky. As he handed me the silver dollar he laughed and told me, “No one’s gonna believe this, Peter. But we’ll know it’s true.”

A paper silhouette fades into the light.

You move forward, carefully putting each step in front of the previous one. On the ground there are dirty papers lying around, pieces of plastic, and urine stains from yesterday's pissers. The light from a clothing store illuminates a window, a little further away, where rigid mannequins  set up an absurd vigil, in order to display some sportswear there. Finally, a blind wall blocks the alley that you have just taken. So you turn around, and walk back your steps leaving this dead end littered with rubbish.

Once on the avenue, you actually find yourself stuck in a compact crowd of people, made out of a mixture of passersby, tramps, and seated folks busy sipping their drinks at café terraces. You walk by a few dowdy couples, which seem to be just out there in order to set up some sort of a competition, about who will turn out to be the most ridiculous of the bunch, in the end. This to such an extent that it could almost turn out to be a deadly game for them, as we like to say it in French. You try to get out of all this mess by taking shelter in a park, not far away, where you also unfortunately find a multitude of playing children. They’re soon enough all around you as, out of sheer excitement,  they keep running up and down, blowing clouds of dust into the air with their feet. While doing so, they usually utter  high-pitched little screams that make you think of the ones of some sort of tiny eunuchs, or strange hairless dwarves. Sometimes they start off chasing unfortunate pigeons for no apparent reason, as if to test their power over their surroundings. Some of them tearing off leaves or branches from the trees too, with their little white hands, as they pass by them, holding them up a bit like trophies, to be discarded pretty soon. You can easily spot their parents slowly walking at a stately pace not too far behind,  watching their offspring with a loving and an utterly stupid gaze. Many being dressed casually on this bank holiday, startlingly look like the mannequins in the store window seen by you earlier on in a street. Doing so, they also speak about trivial stuff, conversations usually revolving around all sorts of small things taken from their everyday life. After forty or beyond , they are usually showing off beer bellies and puffy faces, vaguely distorted, and perhaps a little bit like your own. You say to yourself that the majority of the parents of these kids do undoubtedly display quite an ugly scene here, and that one should be allowed to put a veil over their heads in order to hide them. The children, it must be said, are not all of them so good looking too, but at least they do not have the beer bellies sticking out from under their t-shirts, nor flabby flesh hanging down from their chins. A few graceful birds, geese, ducks or moorhens, keep drifting on the small lake lined with varied trees, located just at the center of the park. Finally, a breeze picks up and starts swinging the highest branches of the trees. There are now some gray clouds coming by the horizon, and slowly accumulating over the roofs. It will probably rain soon. You're not alone wandering out there either, as your woman is walking along with you,  kissing you too, from time to time.
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But, despite all her love, a silence, or a void, strangely seems to surround all things out here, isolating them from one another. But it is you, above all, you alone, in this teeming park, who is isolated from all the others with these kind of thoughts, in the end.

On the afternoon of my return to Newcastle, the town of my birth, I took a taxi to my brother’s large and impressive semi-detached house, set back some way from the road. A For Sale sign jutted out between two cherry trees. A woman I took to be his wife evidently saw me making my way along the driveway and was standing at the foot of a short flight of steps leading up to the front door, a concerned expression on her face. It’s an expression to which I’ve become accustomed. A middle-aged man in a wheelchair is never a welcome sight.
            ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. ‘Are you here to view the house? The estate agent didn’t tell me anyone was coming.’
            ‘Are you Catherine?’
            ‘Kathleen. Do I know you?’
            ‘No. I’m Kevin.’
            She continued to look concerned, but there were also unmistakeable elements of suspicion and alarm. Any physical similarity I had to my brother, any lingering trace of a local accent, any echo of a familiar name, escaped her. There was only the wheelchair. A stranger in a wheelchair.
            ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone, and you say I don’t know you. I’m a little confused. Are you here to see my husband?’
            ‘Yes, I am.’
            ‘Is he expecting you?’
            ‘Oh, no.’
            She took a step backwards. I had the distinct impression she was afraid I might suddenly spring from my seated position and overpower her. She was clearly finding it very difficult to hide her discomfort. For ten seconds or so, she stood there in an unsmiling silence. A girl of around eight or nine came out on to the steps.
‘Mummy – ’ she began.
            ‘Go back inside!’
            ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
            ‘Don’t answer him!’
            ‘Poppy.’
            ‘I said, go back inside!’
            ‘Poppy. Lovely name. I’m Kevin.’
            ‘Uncle Kevin?’
            ‘Yes.’
 
We waited for Martin in the kitchen. The steps made it impossible for me to enter by the front door, and I followed Poppy along the side of the house and manoeuvred myself through the narrow entrance. Kathleen offered no apologies, either for her initial wariness or for the difficulty I had in getting into the kitchen, but issued a series of instructions that I should not knock against any of the fitted units, her anxiety prompted not by concerns for my comfort, but for the effect any blemishes might have on the house’s resale value.
            ‘Why are you in a wheelchair?’ asked Poppy.
            ‘Be quiet,’ said her mother. ‘That’s not a nice thing to ask.’
            ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m in a wheelchair because I can’t walk.’
            ‘Why not?’
            ‘I had an accident.’
            This appeared to satisfy her, and as the initial novelty of my wheelchair started to fade, she wandered into the living room to watch television, leaving Kathleen and I alone at the kitchen table. She showed little interest in me, my history, or the reason for my unexpected reappearance, and contented herself with making several uneasy and unconnected remarks about the slowness of the housing market, the likelihood of rain, and the probable whereabouts of her two other daughters, Laura and Katy.
            ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to ring Martin?’ she asked again.
            ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I was hoping to surprise him.’
            ‘Well, I think he’d want to know,’ she sighed, irritated by my lack of co-operation. ‘But if you insist.’
            We sat mutely for several minutes.
            ‘How do I know you’re Martin’s brother?’ she asked, suddenly.
            ‘How do I know you’re his wife?’
            I was saved from any further interrogation by the sound of a car pulling into the drive. I heard Poppy run to the front door and explain to Martin in a series of disjointed whispers that someone was waiting to see him in the kitchen. As he stood in the doorway each of us tried, and failed, to conceal our surprise. My skinny, fifteen-year-old brother was now a mature, handsome, and smartly-dressed man. I watched his eyes for a flicker of recognition but there was nothing: just a prolonged and uncomprehending inspection of a wheelchair and its unfamiliar occupant.
            ‘Well, Martin,’ I said, ‘you’ve certainly changed!’
            At last, he forced himself, willed himself, to respond, with an effort that seemed almost physical in its intensity.
            ‘It’s you,’ he said softly. ‘Kevin. It’s you, isn’t it?’
            ‘Yes,’ I said, equally quietly. ‘It’s me.’
 
We sat around a cast-iron, circular table on the patio at the rear of the house. I’d allowed Martin to push the wheelchair along the path, although it was a straightforward enough journey for me to make. Poppy sat with us; Kathleen remained in the kitchen.
            ‘I rejoice that you’re here, Kevin. I’d never given up hope that we’d see each other again. I’ve told Kathleen and the children all about you. My big brother.’
            ‘Not the prodigal son?’
         ‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘Hardly. When the prodigal son returned, he was resented by his brother. This brother – your brother – couldn’t be happier.’
            There was an inflection to his speech and an expression on his face that I found hard to identify.
            ‘But tell me,’ he continued, indicating the wheelchair. ‘What happened?’
            ‘He was in an accident, Daddy,’ said Poppy.
            ‘Yes, I was in an accident. A rig fell on me.’
            ‘A rig?’
          ‘I was the lighting designer at a theatre. We were in the middle of a technical rehearsal. It was my own fault. I’d loaded too many spotlights on the rig. I miscalculated their weight, and the whole thing came down on me. I’m paralysed from the waist down.’
            ‘When was this?’
            ‘Six months ago.’
            ‘Does it hurt?’ asked Poppy.
            ‘It did at the time. But not now.’
            ‘I’m relieved to hear that,’ said Martin. ‘I think Uncle Kevin is very brave, don’t you, Poppy?’
            ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
            He turned to me.
            ‘And I see no bitterness. No resentment. Only courage.’
            ‘You’re not looking hard enough.’
          I gave him an abbreviated version of my life over the last three decades. I admitted that when I’d left home, I had no idea of what I might do or where I might go. After I’d tired of sleeping on friends’ floors, I left Newcastle, moved to Manchester, and signed on with a couple of events agencies where I worked as a roadie. Amid the lousy food, cheap hotels, all-night driving, egotistical rock musicians, heavy lifting, and fights with the local toughs, there were undeniable fringe benefits: the mantra of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll is something of a cliché, but there were ample opportunities to misbehave. I gradually became interested in the technical aspects of stage performance, and picked up some of the basics of sound engineering, special effects and lighting. Eventually, I was offered a job as an assistant lighting technician with a small theatre company based in Bristol; when we took our production of Equus on a tour of Denmark I found a similar job there, and decided to stay on in Copenhagen. After that, I moved around a lot, working in theatres in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, and, eventually, Barcelona. That was where I met Belinda, a postgraduate student from Canada, who was on a six-months internship at the city’s Picasso Museum. When her placement ended, we went back to Vancouver together.  And that’s where I had my accident.
‘But we’re still together,’ I concluded. ‘In fact, she’s over here with me.’
‘I’m so glad,’ my brother said, smiling.
            ‘What about you, Martin?’ I asked.
‘For a long time, I was in banking. But not now. You saw the For Sale sign? We’re moving down to Yorkshire. I’ve been a lay preacher in St George’s here for some years, I studied theology part-time at the university, I’ve gained my qualifications, and now...well, I’m joining the clergy. From next month, I’m the new curate at the parish church in Skipton. If all goes well, I’ll be ordained Deacon after a while, and then, if it’s God’s will, I’ll be given my own parish as Vicar. We’re all very excited, aren’t we, Poppy?’
            The girl nodded automatically and as she did, Martin’s imperturbability, Kathleen’s apprehension, and Poppy’s compliance fell into place.
            ‘I think it’s you who’s brave, Martin,’ I said, non-committally. ‘That’s a big career change.’
He must have seen the lack of enthusiasm in my eyes.
            ‘Oh, it’s much more than a career change, Kevin. I first found God in my early twenties. Or perhaps God found me. It’s ironic...you know, when Mum was ill, I prayed every night for her to recover, and when she didn’t, when her suffering increased, I decided there was no God. There couldn’t be. So, my faith, when it came, was a revelation. Jesus revealed himself to me. That’s all I can say.’
‘You had a vision?’
‘Not in the terms you imply, no. But he undoubtedly came to me. I think I denied him at first. I didn’t want to know. Why me? But once I accepted it as a fact, it seemed natural and right. He’s a part of me. He teaches me, he watches over me, he guides my every action. His love is the defining element of who I am.’
‘Just as this wheelchair is the defining element of who I am?’
‘Not in God’s eyes.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’
            ‘OK,’ I said, trying to change the subject. ‘Tell me how Dad reacted to your new life?’
            ‘Oh, you know what he was like. He disliked anything abstract, anything beyond his control. He never knew God. He always remained uncomfortable about it.’
            I nodded. Our father maintained a strict, almost fanatical, conviction that his view of the world was the only possible one. As though he were God. Anything that challenged his view was misguided or dangerous or stupid, and deserved to be punished. I’d been right to leave when I did.
            ‘You look troubled, Kevin,’ he said. ‘Can I help?’
‘I’m confined to a wheelchair, Martin. Of course I’m troubled.’
            ‘God is with me. He can be with you, too. You may not understand this, but I believe he has always been with you.’
            ‘Even when I had my accident?’
            ‘Especially then.’
            ‘It’s a pity he didn’t do something to prevent it.’
            ‘You know that God moves in – ’
            ‘In mysterious ways. Yes, so I’ve been told.’
            ‘Tell me what you’re thinking, Kevin...what you’re really thinking. You can be honest.’
            ‘I will be honest, Martin. I’m not a religious person. In my view, religion – any religion – is science-fiction, a fantasy, a fairy tale.  You’ve simply replaced one father who had all the answers and expected you to obey him with another one. The only difference is that this new Father comes with a capital F.’
We sat staring into each other’s eyes, until eventually he looked away.
‘This is unfortunate, Kevin,’ Martin said, rising from his seat, ‘but I really must leave you. I have a meeting – my last meeting – of the parish council to attend, and I believe they have some kind of presentation to make to me. Where are you staying?’
            I gave him the name of my hotel and he promised to call tomorrow morning.
            ‘And then you must come back for lunch. There’s so much to talk about. We’ll have the whole afternoon. We’ll have a proper conversation. You know, I envy you.’
            I looked at him in disbelief.
            ‘You do?’
            ‘Of course. God intended your accident as a liberation, not an imprisonment. He has a plan for you.’
            ‘You know, Martin,’ I sighed, ‘Perhaps you mean well, but statements like that...’ I left the sentence unfinished.
 
Belinda was waiting for me in the lobby of the hotel.
            ‘Well?’ she asked, leaning down to kiss me. ‘Was it what you expected? Has your brother changed?’
            ‘Yes,’ I said, taking her hand in mine. ‘He has. We both have. If we hurry, we can catch the 7.30 train down to London. There’s no point in staying.’