A Garden of Trees (28 page)

“No,” she said. The room smelt of smoke and the curtains were heavy against the window. I thought of how Marius had once said that Alice did not have an effect on people and now he did not have an effect on people either. “I don't mind being in a mess,” I said. I left her my cigarettes and went.

15

I met Peter in the square. I was glad to see him. “I'm sorry I can't ask you in,” he said. “The place is full of priests.”

“Priests?” I said.

“Substantially there is only one, I suppose, but he is like one of those jelly-fish that are composed of a million minor orgasms.”

“Organisms,” I said.

“Yes, organisms. He knows all about cricketers and actresses. He is that sort of priest.”

“Come back to my room,” I said. “I can make some supper.”

“Anywhere,” Peter said. “Anywhere for God's sake that is not holy.”

We sat on a bus. I felt again like a private detective. It was as if Peter were my witness from whom I had to extort the truth before he was killed. “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Is that Marius's child?”

“I suppose so,” Peter said.

“I was beginning to wonder even about that.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“So what's wrong with Marius? Why's he going away?”

“There's nothing else for him to do.”

“Doesn't he want to stay with Annabelle?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“Then what's wrong?”

“Annabelle says it's no good,” Peter said.

We sat together handcuffed by what we did not understand, and I could think of nothing except the fatuity of my questions. “What happened when you were abroad?” I said.

“We were with each other for a time,” he said. “My father was sent to the West Indies, you know, so that we were there with Marius. We were moving in and Marius was round about the house and it was all right then. Annabelle was all right. Then I went away to do this ridiculous job and by the time we were due to come home it was all wrong. Nobody was saying anything and Marius just followed us hoping for the best. And now here we are. Why the devil did she start a child if she didn't want to stick with him?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“So he's got to go away and the whole bloody thing's breaking up. I could kill her.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And now what's she going to do? What's she going to do with the baby? No one seems to be interested in that. All they do is call her a tough nut. They seem to be more interested in me.”

“They can talk about you,” I said.

“Why can't they talk about her? It's going to be very awkward for my father and mother if Annabelle has a child. They can't very well cart her around with them. Yet everyone treats her as if she'd done something marvelous and me as if I'd been certified insane.”

“You know this psychoanalysis stuff is nonsense,” I said. “Why keep on bringing it in?”

“You don't know it,” he said. “You don't know it at all. My father could charm the hindquarters off an ox.”

We went up to my room. Its ugliness hit us. “Oh dear,” Peter said. I lit the gas fire and cleared some clothes off a chair. Peter was examining the writing-desk that turned into a washstand. The walls were the colour of the inside of a trunk. “Why do you live here?” he said. “I don't mind it,” I said. I found myself being almost proud of its ugliness, proud of the condition of poverty which was the disease of the post-war world. I found a bottle of beer among my boots.

“I wondered,” Peter said. “It is funny how none of us know anything about you. Perhaps this is the hold that you have over us, that you live in a place like this.”

“I only live here because I choose to.”

“Why?”

“A reaction, probably. Reactions are necessary. I think it is the way to live.”

“In order to be free?”

“Free from the opposite.”

“It is this freedom that is crazy,” Peter said.

We drank our beer. The gas fire popped, gave out, was revived by a shilling. “What is it that is crazy?” I said.

“That we are no better off. When Marius's wife was alive, do you remember, we were all right, we were fond of each other, Marius and Annabelle were in love. Now she is dead and they are not. We none of us are. The world has become a place in which there is no love. Why did you laugh with my father at tea?”

“Because I don't think that's true.”

“When Marius's wife died she gave Annabelle and Marius freedom. Look what they have done with it.”

“I don't know what they have done with it. You said that they were happy abroad.”

“I said that they were all right because I thought that they should marry. That was what I meant. But I do not think that they were happy. I do not think that any of us have been happy together since we last saw you. Does that make you glad?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why did you walk out that night?”

“I don't know. I thought it was the thing to do.”

“It doesn't seem that it was.”

“Perhaps Marius's wife was the cause of it. Perhaps she was more important than all of us so that while she was alive we were all right. Then she died and we were free from importance and it was not all right. Even when we did not know her we felt that there was something beyond us that made the rest possible. Now there is nothing of importance and that is the despair.”

“So you walked out?”

“I walked out because I thought there were other things of importance. There were to me.”

“And are there still?”

“Yes, that is why I laughed at tea. I did not know that there would not be anything of importance to you.”

“There should have been,” he said. “Why don't you marry Annabelle?”

“Annabelle is happy,” I said. “Do you know why?”

“It is those priests,” he said. “Those bloody damn priests. It is they who have ruined us.” This was the saddest answer I have ever had, and at the time I had to take it as true.

I turned away from him. I lit the gas ring and put fat in the frying pan and watched the liquid spread. I thought of Annabelle cooking and knitting and having children and Peter's priests like great black spiders to entwine her. “Who is this priest?” I said.

“You will see him. He is what is important now. He is called Father Jack Manners. Isn't that a silly name for a priest?”

“Yes,” I said.

“They all have names like that. It is like the girls who are called William. They have to present themselves as the opposite of what they are supposed to be. Why do they do it? I don't understand. I should have thought that a priest was the one person who shouldn't.”

“Perhaps they have to present themselves strangely in order to get what they want . . . ”

“But do they get it? Surely, that is the greatest fallacy in the world, that you can hope to get what you want by pretending something different. You can see the results of it all around you. I like people to say what they are thinking, I believe it is necessary to say what you think in order to get what you want, and surely it is the business of a priest to think of something other than Wisdens or the Tatler.”

“But it is what he does, the effect he has, rather than what he says . . . ” I was trying to remember all that Peter's father had told me and was failing.

“Admittedly he is not like one of those monks of the middle ages. Have you read Boccaccio? It is interesting, that. I don't know how true it all was, that world of lecherous monks, but at least it was the fashion to make up stories about them. And stories, if they are good ones, have at the worst a superficial resemblance to facts. It was the fashion then to be lecherous, and the priest was taken as the fashionable man par excellence. Now it is the fashion to be in with the latest gossip, and priests are there at the head of the field again. Talk is the big thing now, and by talk you can judge people. I tell you, this man knows what's going to win the National and what names will appear in the engagement column of the Times. That's what he talks about. The one thing he doesn't talk about is the difference between right and wrong.”

“Have you asked him why he doesn't?”

“No, I don't think I could bear to.”

“I shall ask him,” I said.

Peter smiled. I was no good as a detective. I should always, I thought, sympathize with the suspect. A person's reasons for choosing to be what he was were more convincing than the judgments of others upon what he had chosen. The motives I should like to question were those of the police.

“Do you know this religious racket?” Peter said.

“No,” I said.

“I tell you, there is in it no question of right and wrong. It is a matter of good form and bad form, and whether you can keep a smile on your face like a bloody Aunt Sally.”

“How did you get into it?” I said.

“It's my mother's racket. Mothers always have a racket, and the Church is hers. So I'm an Aunt Sally whether I like it or not.”

“She's not a Catholic, is she?”

“Yes, she is. That's one of their tricks. She's a Catholic but she isn't a Roman Catholic. It's a very clever trick. They get you feeling a fool before you've begun.”

“Yes,” I said.

“All part of the racket. No one knows anything about it, you see. And they never tell anyone so you go on not knowing. They talk and talk and make you feel a fool and you don't know what the devil they're up to. I doubt if they know what they're up to themselves. I'm sure my mother doesn't. She doesn't know the difference between a Baptist and a bishop. But she's put her money on God because she thinks his shares are rising. He pays out the interest of making her feel on top of everyone else. She's in the know, she's on to a good thing, she's got that damned satisfaction of having jumped the market. And she never explains it. Why doesn't she explain it? Why else except that to make a bit for herself she has to keep others in the dark?”

“She doesn't try to convert you?”

“They never try to convert you. It's like some club, some damned secret society, you have to come begging and knocking before they let you in. And yet they say it is a matter of life and death to you, a matter of eternal heaven or eternal hell. Why don't they try to convert you? They are supposed to be charitable. You have to get the right knock or the door won't open, you have to pull the right strings or your name will not be proposed. The knock and strings are there, I admit. But they have bloody funny ideas in the way of advertisement.”

“But you said you were an Aunt Sally . . . ”

“I am an Aunt Sally because although they don't try to convert you by stating their case, they do everything to demoralize you from having a case of your own. It's like having a disease in the family, or drunkenness—their eye is on the bottle and the bottle fills the room. You can't escape from it. There is a smell of it in the corridors, if you went into the jungle you would hear it on our trail. And now everyone is talking it up, everyone muscling in on the racket. I tell you my family is a nightmare. I believe if I went to the North Pole I should find a bloody monk on top of it like Simon Stylites.”

“How did it begin?”

“I tell you how my mother began it. I don't believe my father cares a damn, but he says he does. She got the priests hopping around—they are the most frightful snobs, you know—and then Marius got wind of it . . . ”

“Marius?”

“Yes, didn't you know? Marius got wind and made a nice little investment and had a nice little sinful affair with Annabelle all at the same time—that's funny, isn't it, that's really bloody funny—and then Annabelle . . . ”

“Annabelle?”

“Oh yes, of course, God almighty, Annabelle was their darling and she went to bed with Marius, doesn't that make you laugh?”

“No,” I said.

“They all took it up, they all made lovely big jokes about it—that's another of their tricks, you know—all being beautifully irreverent and jolly, and darling Father Jack mopping up the cocktails and Marius floating round as if he'd seen a vision and Annabelle getting bigger and bigger as she knelt in Church;—Oh Jesus Christ oh bloody Jesus Christ if it doesn't make you laugh then isn't it too much to make you cry?”

“Begin again,” I said. “Begin again about Annabelle.”

“I tell you Marius began it. Marius's wife died and Marius got religion. Did she do it for him? Do you know? It doesn't matter. Marius came to my mother and she took him under her wing and they got their tame priests with leads around their necks. Tame priests wear dog-collars, did you know? Then Annabelle. Annabelle always had it, you remember how she talked, but she did not have it like this. Now she does not talk. And I will tell you why she now has it like this, because Marius gave her the baby and that's a mess for anyone to be in and this is her way for getting out of it.”

“I don't believe that,” I said.

“You don't know it, you don't know it at all, I tell you this is the racket which has ruined us and the world. When my father got hold of you this evening what did he say to you? I know what he said, he said that I was in a muddle and you must all pull on the bloody old rope to get me out of it. Did he say anything about Annabelle? Did he say anything about Marius? No. And now who do you think is in the muddle. I who have never changed my creed for one instant and who have done my best to live by what I believe and who admit my failures according to what is left of my conscience, or Marius who sins and Annabelle who blinds herself and my father who will say what he said to you without having the honesty to say it to me and Father Jack Manners who puts his blessing on the assembly and bluffs them all into thinking that they are acting in the name of God? Who is in the muddle?”

“I don't know,” I said.