A Garden of Trees (29 page)

“Then tell me this, when you saw Marius this evening, did he appear to you to be alive or dead?”

“Dead,” I said.

“Well then, there you are, thank you, thank you very much, so long as someone agrees about something it is not so very terrible.”

He sat back. The food had gone cold, the sausages congealed, there was a feeling in the room as if devils were close to us. “But now,” I said, “now, with Annabelle, in the flat, with that priest, what is he doing there?”

“She asked him. He had to be in London and she asked him to stay. She is hooked, collared, you see, and they lap each other up like saucers of milk. They lick together round the rims of plates. But it is for me he is there. He is a good solid base for the tug of war. Is it presumptuous to say this? You will see what I mean. I am just so sorry for everybody.”

“And Annabelle . . . ” I said.

“You must see,” he said. “You must come to breakfast and hear him talk. Annabelle? I don't know about Annabelle. Marius was alive and now he is dead. I don't know about Annabelle. It is quite an education to hear him talk at breakfast. He is one of those people who say how dreadful breakfast is, how it should be suffered in silence, and then talk for two hours. The priest, I mean. I can't think about Annabelle. You must watch her while she listens to him. May I stop here the night? Thank you. I'm very tired. I can't bear to go back in case there is someone sitting up for me. I love Annabelle. Sitting up like a Nanny with a cup of tea. It is kind of you to let me stay. A bloody old nanny goat bleating in his sleep. I love Annabelle. You will see what I mean.”

“Yes,” I said. I went to bed that night believing in Peter.

In the night I found myself awake. I thought, as I had done once before—Time does not have to go so quickly as this.

I lay in the darkness. More had happened in nine hours than in a winter. I had woken, and the world was running again, and it was not myself who had changed.

I waited for the morning. Two things surprised me: one, that what had changed us had come from outside; the other, that I felt myself in a position to control it. I had not expected either of these during my dreams of the winter.

I thought—I might have been changed if this had come to me in my loneliness: Annabelle and Marius were more lonely than I: it is strange that they should have been lonely. Peter is fighting it. I can fight something which comes from outside.

I can fight it because I am awake again. In the morning time will run and I will run to keep up with it. I am awake because during the winter I was at least impervious. Now I can run more quickly than time. I can give to them, and help them, because the only change in myself is this being in control again. If priests have given me this strength by weakening the others, for this alone I can be grateful to them.

I enjoyed this illusion, of being in control again.

16

Father Jack Manners, at breakfast, said:—

“Good-morning, Peter, good-morning, how do you do, well and what has Annabelle got for us this morning? she has the most magnificent black market in eggs, you know, really magnificent, for what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful, I don't know where we would be without the black market, do you? do I think the black market is wrong? no I must honestly say that I don't, I am afraid that eggs are one of my weaknesses, I remember once when I was asked to say grace in Sussex the old parlourmaid an admirable woman said ‘You should thank Mr. Goldberg, Father, not the Lord,' and so I said that I would, and I did, yes, Annabelle, I know that that is a very old joke but I am a very old man and I like old jokes, Mr. Goldberg? no, I don't know anything wrong about Mr. Goldberg, do you? oh dear, what a cross-examination at breakfast, I am afraid I am not at my best at breakfast, you should learn about the difference between morality and religion, is there a difference? yes, most certainly there is a difference I should say that there is all the difference in the world, or rather of the world, I remember a story told by Prebendary Dodds, he had just smacked his young nephew for some minor offence and a good woman asked him how he came to reconcile his action with his religious belief, and he said ‘Madam I am more concerned with coming to a reconciliation with my nephew,' yes Annabelle, yes, I know that it is not quite the point, but you don't know the good Prebendary, he is a very small man, very small indeed, at least three inches shorter than his nephew, so that it really was a problem, a problem indeed, I remember him as a young man doing missionary work in Lancashire, and a weaver of considerable size slammed the door in his face, and Prebendary Dodds couldn't move away because his overcoat was caught in the door, so he knocked again and the weaver who had probably had too much to drink came rushing out and tripped clean over Prebendary Dodds and knocked himself out on the pavement; what? but religion is concerned with facts, you see, it is simply concerned with facts, while morality, surely, is not; I remember when I was traveling in a train during the war and a young lady started talking to me, it was interesting how people started talking at that time, and this young lady said, ‘Of course I myself am not a very religious person,' and I said, ‘Neither, if it comes to that, am I,' and she was very surprised but what she had intended to say, of course, was, ‘I am not a very moral person,' and I am sure I do not know what I should have answered to that; I was too old, I fear, for it to have interested me greatly; but this is the point, you see, all right, Annabelle all right, that that young lady, although I am sure she would have been most startled to hear it, was a puritan, yes a puritan, she had got religion muddled with morality and that is what puritans do, all the time, and I am afraid that puritans have been responsible for the most dreadful amount of muddled thinking about religion, a really dreadful amount, you find their influence everywhere, in the most unexpected places, at the breakfast table, even, forgive me, but you must believe me when I say that they see the position quite wrongly, that they have done the most unaccountable amount of harm, that morality must on no account be muddled with religion; and now, Annabelle, thank you very much for the most delicious meal, I trust my lecturing has not disturbed your enjoyment of it, I myself find talking most distracting in the morning, there is a lot to be said for the monastic rule of silence at such hours, especially if you are a sufferer from indigestion, as I am, and now, if we have finished, Benedicite Deo.”

I walked in the park with Annabelle. She said;—

“I can't answer questions. What happened last year happened as it did and now we are past it. We were together once and then we went apart, to be individuals, didn't you say? and we found that we were not individuals, that it is impossible to be an individual, isn't that what you found? I was unhappy, yes, did Peter say I was happy? then he is a fool, I wasn't, were you? No, we were alone, I couldn't bear it, and then Marius was there, and it didn't work out like that, so we stopped it. You have got to have faith, do you know what that means? you have got to have faith in order not to be an individual, or to become an individual, it's the same, and that is all I have done. You either have to have something which you wish very clearly to do, or else you have to have a faith which will tell you very clearly what to do. I did not marry Marius because that was the wrong thing to do, because marriage is not simply a matter of love or admiration or convenience, it is not even a matter of making the best of a situation that is irrevocable which is at least a stronger argument for it than admiration or love. It is something that one has to be dedicated to and Marius will never be dedicated to marriage again, and neither will I, I think, because I am past that now. The chance for these things happens just once and never again. And now I say what we must have is faith, that we have got beyond the stage when love like the love of children arises spontaneously without a faith and is held there by an instinct that is unconscious, that now we are all too conscious and nothing on our own is spontaneous any more, and for love to be held and maintained it needs a faith to keep it there. That is the only answer that I can give.”

“And have you got this faith?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why . . . ?” but the question ceased, hopeless, like a dream that is lost in waking memory.

“Because I am confronted by it,” she said. “Because I want to have it. Because I like people who have got it.”

“Yes,” I said.

The dream, caught in glimpses, was of Marius's wife, in the hospital, in that tomb of unbearable summer, sitting up in bed and saying all the things that Annabelle was saying. Love as a triangle, with faith as the further corner: love in the presence of someone else, the eternal lover, God. I remembered the crucifix above her bed, the crucifix that Marius must have brought her. It was she who had converted Marius, who had told him that he was wrong, that it was only through the Church that he could find the love that he wanted. Just as he had once frightened her to death by his loneliness, so had she then frightened him to faith by the act of her dying.

“I know all this,” I said. “I remember it so well.”

“Do you?” she said.

And the waking memory was of Annabelle a year ago also saying the same things as she was saying now. But then she had said them as if they meant something, and now as if they did not. There was fear, too, with her. A fear of loneliness to death and a faith that denied the dying. I wondered if her calmness of yesterday was only the calmness of successful denial. I could find out.

“I remember all this going on and on just the same,” I said, “a year ago as it is now, we said the same things, acted not for ourselves but for others, loved not for ourselves but for others, why do you try to make out that then we were selfish children?”

“Because then it was spontaneous and now it is not, when we went away we found that it failed, it was then that we had to find something different.”

“Or to come back.”

“No, not to come back, you can never come back, you never have the choice again.”

“You can always come back.”

“That is not true,” she said wildly.

I walked beside her. I had never felt so dead or so destructive as on that grey carved day with the trees like rusty iron and the mud rolled smooth as marble. I felt that I was betraying more than the things that I had said to her father, and all in the name of a belief that I would not myself have dared to call a faith. “So what you have found is Father Jack,” I said.

“I am sorry about Father Jack,” she said.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I am afraid he talks rather a lot, I didn't know if you'd like him.”

“Does it matter if I like him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then I like him,” I said.

She raised a hand to her forehead. She said miserably, “That is what we need, you see, a truth that is definite, that will tell us what to do.”

“That tells Peter he mustn't be a puritan?”

“Yes, I think that is true.”

“Supposing Peter were not a puritan, do you know what he would be?”

“I think . . . ”

“He would be a smooth lecherous man fumbling girls in the back of taxis, is that what you want?”

“He would not, that is not the point, the point is that Peter only hates and he should love.”

“Then why is that not mentioned? He does love, anyway, that is why it is not mentioned. He loves in such a way as makes you uncomfortable. He is not a puritan, he is a moralist. A puritan is someone who gets his moralizing wrong, and supposing Peter gets his right?”

“He doesn't!”

“Why? Because Father Jack says so? Father Jack who would prefer to turn him into a lecher and who has turned you into someone who has not changed their belief or faith one atom but is now merely miserable and uncertain about it?”

“I am not, I am certain, I had no conception of it before, and why do you say I am miserable?”

“Because you look it.”

“At tea, yesterday, was I miserable?”

“No.”

“Then it is only you . . . ”

“Only I who have made you miserable? Is that true?”

She made no answer. I could see her hand trembling against the edge of her coat. All she said was, “Anyway, you said you liked Father Jack.”

“I will explain. I like him at breakfast. I like him when I am not thinking about him. My instinct is to enjoy being with him and to escape from Peter, but when I think about him the feeling changes. And for this reason, that Father Jack doesn't like a person who thinks.”

“Doesn't he?”

“Tell me if I am wrong. The Christian ideal is a person who believes and who functions, it is not a person who thinks. Thinking is danger: curiosity is the devil. It says so, and I can see it, I can see it in Christian people. Why do you worry so much about Peter? Why do you worry more about him than about someone who sins in a state of believing? Because to you the only real sin is the sin of thought, and the sins of action don't matter. And to me it is the other way round. Peter's only sin is that he puts everything into question. He is lucky if he has no other.”

“It is the one thing . . . ”

“It is the one thing that you hate, I know. It is what you call being egocentric. But everyone is egocentric, it is a condition of being human. If you take it to stand for anything more than this then the word is meaningless.”

“It isn't,” she said. “Don't you trust your instinct? Your instinct is love, and being egocentric is when there is no love.”

“You do not answer me. You never answer me. Peter makes the same complaint, that there is no love. It is a failure for which you are as much responsible as he. In fact you are more responsible, because you claim the means of love. Your words are meaningless if there is this failure. Your religion is meaningless if there is this failure. I am no puritan, I do not know what is right, but I say this, that what is wrong is that which contradicts itself. And I say that this is a contradiction, that you condemn a person for being egocentric when everybody is egocentric, that you do not judge actions when it is only actions that are judgeable, and this most of all, this failure is a contradiction. You claim to have found the means of salvation and now, as a result of it, there is less love than there was before. There is now no love between you and Peter, there is no love between you and Marius, there is no love between you and . . . ” I stopped, on the brink of some great evil; “Why were you happy at tea?” I asked her.