B.S. Johnson:

GOD got on Henry's wick.
The others found this attitude a childish one.
The small English car had been climbing winding roads for over half an hour through coniferous woods towards the summit of Mont Ventoux. Malcolm was praising the car's performance, and Henry realised, sickeningly, that all through the winter this would be one of Malcolm's favourite stories: the way the Minor had climbed Ventoux without a murmur. Henry shifted uncomfortably in his seat, resented again Janine's insistence on the car being fitted with safety belts, and knew with almost welcoming resignation that he should not have eaten so mány figs at lunchtime. His ears became affected by the height: he pressed his fingers firmly into them and swallowed hard. Janine saw him do this, and leaned forward to sympathise. Damn her, thought Henry, I don't want her sympathy. And in any case it's my guts that really worry me. And God. And she wouldn't want to know about either.
At the summit of Mont Ventoux there was a weather observation post. Muriel was most disappointed to see it, for she had expected the place to be wild and desolate. Henry wondered how she could have failed to notice that there was some form of building on the mountain when they had looked at it through the mounted telescope at the hotel.
Malcolm pulled the car off the road ínto a parking clearance, stopped neatly, and got out. He patted the car on the windscreen, and praised it as though it were an animal. Then he raised the bonnet and looked for signs of oil leaks or overheating. Bloody hell, thought Henry, this is uxoriousness towards cars. He turned, saw Muriel stretching herself, her short nylon blouse riding up over her midriff as she eased her breasts towards the sky, and mentally included her with the car. Though they all knew Malcolm wouldn't marry her; all except Muriel, that was.
The action of getting out of the car had loosened Henry's bowels. He looked round for distraction, hoping against hope of containment, and saw the view.
No trees grew as high as this, and the top of Mont Ventoux was covered in a loose scree of whitish-coloured rock which gave a false impression of snow from far down in the surxounding valleys. From its summit he could see for perhaps thirty miles, thirty miles of smoothly folded valleys and vine strips between thick, blunt mountains: the dry richness of Provence. Some bulky cumulus formed pretty patterns towards the east, its height apparently determined by the highest mountain in that direction.
Henry was disappointed by the view. He felt he owed no special loyalty to Britain, but he had been far more impressed by scenes in North Wales and Scotland. This landscape was too dry, too much like scrub and stubble, too bitty, to please him. For Janine, however, it was wonderful: her eyes wide in an uncomplicated joy, she gazed out across the white expanse of scree towards the clouds and the further mountains, and then swung round on Henry.
"And they say there is no God," she said.
Henry giggled briefly.
"And they say there is no God!" he repeated.
"Just what do you mean by that?" Janine attacked.
"I mean just what I said," Henry defended.
"It was your tone."
"Sorry about my tone. And they say there is no God," he said once again in as flat a tone as he could manage.
Janine huffed through her nostrils, and turned away. Malcolm, his arm around Muriel's waist, was walking away towards the northern side of the summit, past the grey concrete buildings. There was a great deal of barbed wire everywhere, and Henry wondered incuriously what it could be for as he followed the other three at some distance. His bowels gave another lurch, and he began to accept that he would not be able to wait until their return to the hotel. He looked round anxiously, and when they had reached the further side he saw with enormous relief that there was a bar and hotel sign there.
The four of them leant on a cable strung betwveen short sections of upended railway line, their different arrival weights causing the others to rise or sag. Henry was last, and his disturbance of Janine made her look angrily at him. Fuck her, he thought, fuck her, fuck her. Though it was ironical to think that, for she'd never let him have it. Not that there would be any chance at the moment, anyway, since she had the painters in. Janine's got the painters in, he said to himself, savouring the rich vulgarity of the euphemism, she's got the painters in.
Malcolm and Muriel moved away. Janine and Henry followed, separately. Henry desolately kicked at loose stones as they wandered along a ridge edge lined by cable holds towards a low building set apart from the others. This they saw to have a porch and a large pair of rustproof iron doors. Muriel sat down in the porch, but Malcolm, boasting strength, tried to pull the doors open. He gave a great heave and they moved slowly back.
"Here, Mu," he said, "there's a holy bit in here!"
The building was a chapel, with a small furnished altar and stone seats round the sides.
"Come on, love," said Malcolm, "let's practise. Do you take this dearly beloved man to be your dearly beloved husband, for better or for worse?"
"Not half," said Muriel.
Henry could wait no longer. Turning, he strode away in the direction indicated by the hotel sign, taking a short cut across the scree. He could not speak French, but he was deterrnined on this occasion not to give Janine the satisfaction of his embarrassment in having her enquire for him.
In a deserted bar Henry tried to communicate with a grey woman behind an Espresso machine. At first she thought he wanted a room for the night, but eventually she understood and directed him to a door marked with a black and white enamel sign reading WATER CLOSET. Henry felt pleased for the first time that afternoon.
He noted with approval that the place seemed clean and that there was an adequate supply of paper. There was also a washbasin, some coarse clotheswashing soap but no towel.
Henry's haste was followed by considerable pain. He began to feel hot and to perspire. His head sank down and he looked at himself.
Oh, God, he thought suddenly, through the pain, why did the bastard have to combine the reproductive with the evacuative? What sort of a dirty-minded deity is that, for crissake? They'd call that childish. It wasn't. It might be elementary, of the elements. But that made it bloody important, and you couldn't just ignore these things, not know they were there to be asked, if not answered, or dismiss them just like that. He couldn't anyway. They could?
He sat there for a long while, to let the pain ease, and used the harsh paper with great care.
Janine was not outside. Henry was very glad, and walked as quickly as comfort would allow up towards the summit, away from where he had last seen her. On the way he stopped on the edge of the scree field, which fell away for several hundred yards before dropping sheer, and picked up a stone. He wished he knew more about geology. This stone had certainly not been worn by the sea, he thought: it was jagged and sharp. But what sort of rock was it? Igneous? He hardly knew the correct classifications. This one was a lovely shape, anyway. He turned it round before him through several different circles with one eye shut, and loved the stone. Underneath he noticed some rustcoloured markings. Were these traces of iron ore? Did this mean that it could not be igneous? Was iron ore found only in sedimentary rocks? He must find out more. Perhaps he could go to evening classes to learn more about geology. He thought he would enquire about this when they got back to England. Their hardness fascinated him, the stones. And suddenly he thought of a sentence in a book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight, which Janine had given him at Christmas because she knew he was interested in flying. There was this man in it whose hobby was collecting geological specimens, and it was said of him that in all his life only the stones had not been hard on him. The words repeated themselves over and over again in Henry's mind.
The other three came up, and saw Henry with his stone in his hand.
"I think Henry's going to throw stones," said Malcolm, his arm around Muriel.
Henry was not really thinking of doing anything of the sort, but decided that it would ease his,annoyance at being interrupted if he did do so. He put his one stone, his only stone, carefully into a thigh pocket, picked up others, and sent them down the scree with a grenade-throwing movement.
"Don't, Henry," said Janine.
"Better not, mate," said Malcolm, "You might start an avalanche."
Henry threw another.
"Stop it!" said Janine.
"There might be lovers down there," said Muriel, and looked carnally knowingly at Malcolm. Malcolm grinned, and moved his hand up towards her breast.
"Yes!" said Henry, and picked up several more rocks and threw them as hard and as quickly as possible, laughing bitterly and delightedly, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
"Henry!" said Janine, and picked up a stone herself and made as if to throw it at him. Henry did not know whether she would do so or not, but stopped, dejected. He felt his one stone comfortingly in his pocket.
The movement involved in the throwing had made him aware again of his discomfiture. He thought of the figs. And that's another thing, he thought: why so many seeds? What's He trying to do, overrun the world with His bleeding reproduction? All the millions of figseeds just to reproduce one tree, all the millions of millions of herring eggs to reproduce one fish-What's it all for, what's it all MEAN, where's it all going to END?
Henry turned savagely to Janine.
"If there is a fucking God, then He's going to have a fucking lot of explaining to do when I fucking meet Him, I can fucking tell you that!"