A Garden of Trees (33 page)

In all these evenings—Mr. Palmerston's huge face with the moon upon its cheek-bone, the cold room listening, the dampness of walls outside which there is the darkness waiting like water round a ship—there is nothing that I can do, I cannot do as he asks me, there is no I to do it when the centre is not there. I see the savagery of eyes that are kind and terrible, the sad night face that weeps and weeps, the collar like a horizon between dark and dark, the cold moon running as if with oil at some last benediction. I hear the voice beautifully modulated and controlled beginning and going on in one key always from creation to birth to death to deliverance and it all goes past me in a wild thin stream and I am left again in silence when the sound has gone. It is like an autumn night in the long lost grass when you stand and hear the sound of swans' wings above you, a stream of swan-water flying whirring round the world and it gets very close to you, very close to your heart, and yet when it has gone you are still alone and loveless, although the earth is circled the mystery is apart. Whatever was happening to me happened in the spaces outside, and was not within me.

With Marius, too, in the mornings, it was as if my consciousness were more with him than with myself. He did not make things difficult. In talking to him there was always the feeling that he had ceased to be the person I had known before, that instead of being able to impose his will by subtlety he was now more concerned with the simplicity of making his will seem absent; but that it was possible, nevertheless, to understand that he was the same and to see the course of his change. Once he had dealt with life like a juggler; and now, with the suddenness of a child, he had given up his toys and was letting life do the juggling for him. In this condition, somehow his character was stronger. All the things that he had said a year ago were still part of him, yet by ceasing to impose them he made their presence more felt. He said that his marriage had died, and I wondered if what he had believed had died too; but it hadn't and neither had his marriage—what he said was not true. It was rather his selfishness that had died. He had searched for his centre by heightening his power and he found it only when his power had failed. In this sense, really, his marriage lived.

That I felt myself nothing when in his presence was part of this, inevitably,—what there had been between us a year ago was a juggling game of power and now the desire for power had gone. There was the possibility of something being put in its place, but not the fact of it:—a game that was played beyond us, in which our desires did not create the rules but rather had to be subordinated to them. I was conscious of this possibility as one is conscious of a truth that is at the moment beyond one's comprehension; but it was not Marius, as he had said, who could give me understanding. At times I felt so much less than him that if he had been selfish it would have been awkward, but as it happened he did not seem to notice the disparity in our states. He kept me amused, and I listened to him. He was never sad. It is always this that I remember, that he was productive of happiness. Whatever he said about himself was not true of what he gave. On the surface we lived with each other irrelevantly, with myself as looker-on, but there was always something relevant in what I saw of myself in Marius.

One day I went to Church. I did this only in order to see if there was anything I had forgotten. I went indifferently and yet warily, as if I were having some joke within myself. I was surprised to see how much I remembered. There were memories of schools, of the smell of stale clothing, of the incongruous backs of necks. I became lulled in the old inertness which was broken only by the recurrent pain of kneeling. I found that I could do what I was supposed to do, that there was nothing I had forgotten. I sang descants to the hymns, got the timing of the psalms right, went through the words of the confession. And then, as always, my thoughts wandered away from what was going on around me. This always happens when nothing seems to be going on at all.

The words wander, music wanders, why should thoughts keep still? It is not of myself I should be thinking. Words and music drone without form and without ability, they are like the noises of birds, and should I notice birds? The building is not ugly. But the people, here, is it true that no one beautiful ever goes to Church? They are supposed to be beautiful. They whisper and do not care for each other, and yet I must hope they are beautiful. Can beautiful people kneel and say that they are ugly? If they are beautiful, do they need to go to Church? Church is for nothingness in the memory of schools.

The words are words and they do not mean much to me. A stream without sound no closer than the door. And yet there is something else I should think of. On the altar there is something that is never not beautiful, a body in silver shod with candles of light. There is sacrilege done each day in church, but not to the altar. Why is not sacrilege done more often? For one who believes in nothing it should be possible to think of it. A piece of smashed silver and a crumb on the carpet: a falling body spilling its blood against the stone. And yet it is not possible. These are trifles, explainable by custom, and yet they frighten me. Would it even be possible to sneer at a priest?

I cannot even say to Mr. Palmerston that all this means nothing to me. I cannot say that everything cancels out and has its opposite, that beauty is cancelled by ugliness, hope by despair, Christ by humanity. I cannot say that I have been to Church and that is one world and soon I shall be walking in the street and that is another world, and that it is absurd to join them because there is nothing in between. There are bits of people that live in one world and people who live in the other. I cannot say this to him because it would frighten me. And are the bits really any less of machinery? I have watched them and would not like to believe this. I cannot say to Mr. Palmerston—I have heard you and thought about it and I do not care a damn.

I left the church. I walked in my world which was not a world and I had my jokes which were, at most, jokes against myself. I had forgotten that my world was not a world. I came to a cross-roads where traffic was passing, and I waited for the lights to change so that I might cross. It was then that I was reminded. I watched a small car approaching and as it drew near me I knew that it was familiar although I did not know whose it was, and even after I had seen the occupants who were Annabelle and her father the recognition of them did not strike me, and it was only after they had been drawn up beside me for an instant that I knew who they were. They sat side by side staring rigidly in front of them, and as I stepped forwards in response to my surprise they did not move and did not look at me, and so I stopped, I thought they must have seen me, I thought they must be ignoring me because they did not wish to speak. I remembered then that this would be possible. I stood stupidly not being able to go forwards or back while people pushed past me and I did not know what to do, I wished only that they might not be made to do something that would hurt me. I pretended that I had not seen them, I waited terribly while the seconds dragged like hours and then I moved to the back of the car because I could not bear it. When the lights changed again the car went away and I found myself trembling. Then I did not think that they could have seen me, I did not believe it, but I did not know. I only knew that it was true that I had imagined it.

So, beginning to walk again, I knew what was terrible. It was I who had asked for this and now I had got it. No one else could have told me but her, and what she has told me is this sickness of it. Sickness of a world that is nothing, that kills what it loves, that on a grey carved day once made her cry, that in brutality betrayed itself. There is no love that I would not kill that was the means of life to me, no madness that I would not allow in the name of sanity. O fool, fool, there was a love that was given to you, a love that you would not give to, you ugly damned fool to pretend you do not care. Walking dead and unbearable this is what you cannot bear, you can bear any folly except your own. For your own there is no mercy when it is you who must suffer it, judgment is insufferable when it is you who must judge. I have played with the world and lost it: it is what we should have made ourselves. O Annabelle, Annabelle, you are the only person I shall love. I will ask you, once, and there will be no pride in it. Without it this time it will be I who will cry.

I thought there was time.

VI
CHILDREN AGAIN

18

Annabelle looked sad in the rain. “I did not know if you'd come,” I said. Her hair was dripping like seaweed around the white face of a stone. I wondered if she were ill. “You must come in,” I said.

“I got your letter.” She went up the stairs ahead of me. In my room I had put flowers and some candles against the wall. She sat on the bed with her feet turned inwards as if her ankles were broken. She did not take off her coat.

“Why don't you lie down?” I said. And then, because she did not answer me, “Perhaps you are ill?”

She lay back on the bed. She said, “If I walked now in the streets I could get rid of this child.”

I was lighting the candles. The flames burnt with a vacancy at the centre like a soul. “Is that what you want?” I said.

“I am ill,” she said. “Will you walk with me until it happens?” She spoke to the ceiling where the plaster crumbled. “That is what I meant,” she said.

“That is not what you want,” I said.

“I cannot go through with it, for months I have pretended, I have thought . . . but I hate it so much, there is this terrible hate, and that is what makes it impossible. There is a failure too that I cannot bear.”

I sat at the far side of the room so that I should not touch her. “Why do you feel this now?” I said.

“Because what I have lived with is a lie. What I have believed is a lie. It was not you who were the devil to tell me. You were a devil once. Why did you not ask me to marry you?”

“When?”

“That night ten months ago when you left me. Why did you leave me?”

“I will marry you now.”

“I will not marry you with Marius's child. If I die I will not marry you with that to remind me. Marius is a devil.”

“You are ill, you must stay here . . . ”

“I will not marry you now. I will walk in the streets until it is dead and even then I will not marry you. What devil were you to come into our lives and to tell us everything and to leave us? In order that you might return when it was too late and tell us again? Everything I have believed in is a lie. Thank you for telling me that.”

“What is this lie?”

“There is no forgiveness. In their hearts there is no forgiveness. Why do they come fawning round us to talk about it? They do not say what is in their hearts, if they have any hearts, which I do not know if they have. They have charms which they wear on their sleeves like bracelets and inside there is a terrible condemnation or at best a pity that is as cold as ice. Should it not be the other way round, that they wear their ferocity on their sleeves and inside there should be a heart that loves? I cannot forgive what they have done to Peter.”

“What have they done to Peter?”

“They have charmed him and yet they condemn him. Has he told you that they have charmed him? He is now full of some dreadful pride with which he can . . . scorn me.” She broke off. “Is that then all it is?”

“What?”

“That I am resentful because Peter has been given the means to scorn me? Oh God, there are motives that are unfathomable.”

“Perhaps Peter has misunderstood . . . ”

“Then it is their responsibility. It is for them to explain to him. He thinks they approve of him, and I know, I know what they think. And if it is all charm on the surface and that is what they think of him, then what do they think of me?”

“They love you.”

“They love you and yet they think you dreadful. They call it love. I loved Marius once and that is what I call love. I loved him when he was something, when he was a person, and I am not sorry about the love. I am not sorry about what happened between us. But then he became nothing, and I was nothing too, and so I would not marry him. It was I who would not marry him. When we were both something I would have done, I loved him, I loved this child as it might have grown up with us, and then all life became a dead flat sham with no love no joy and no reality, just yellow smiling faces with nothing underneath. That is what they do to you, they have done it to all of us, they turn into waxworks what they cannot destroy. Have they done it to you?”

I did not answer.

“I will marry no one. I will give myself to nothing to be pitied and condemned. And if they think this about Peter whose sin is so small . . . ”

“It is the greatest.”

“Mine is greater. I have got this child. Why do you say that about Peter, and what is this love that smiles on the surface and does not say what is in the heart?”

“What is in the heart is on the surface and it is only in the mind that there is condemnation and pity.”

“I tell you that they have lied to Peter, whether they have lied to him with their hearts or with their minds doesn't matter, they have lied to him and when he discovers this lie what will he do? I tell you he will kill himself.”

“He will not kill himself.”

“He will, he has used this lie to scorn me, and I have given him this lie, that is why he will kill himself. In all his life up to now he has never scorned me, I could have stopped him before but now I cannot stop him. He is a person who would kill himself for anything, he would kill himself out of despair or out of happiness or out of love or out of hate, he would kill himself because he knows it is the one thing that is irrevocable, because it is the biggest thing he could do and it is the big things that he is involved in. He is the one person in the world who lives always in big things, he is the one person who lives as the moralists tell us to live, as if each action is irrevocable, he is the one person who would kill himself to hell if he thought he deserved it. That is why he is so much greater than anyone, so much more than anyone, why he is so much beyond them, because he does not ask for redemption, he does not desire it, he asks only that he shall be judged for what he has done and that the judgment shall be irrevocable. That is why he will kill himself when he has reached a judgment on himself, because that will be irrevocable.”

“This is nonsense, Annabelle, this is not true . . . ”

“You have said that his sin is the greatest, they have charmed you too. All right, you have come to know what I meant that day in the park, and what you know is this, that the great sin is to imagine yourself a god by denying God, and this is what Peter has done all his life. And this is what I have loved him for. This is what I am doing now myself and so long as he loved me I could have stopped him because there were two of us, but now there is only one because they have taught him to scorn me. He thinks I have betrayed him and when he finds out their lie he will kill himself. He will kill himself as an act of a god that makes amends to me. Am I mad then?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That is what gods do, isn't it? They kill themselves to make amends to those who have suffered for them? Don't they? Isn't that what God did and isn't that what is taken as a sign of a god? Peter will kill himself and they will have made him because it will be they who have betrayed us.”

“There is no betrayal,” I said.

“There is the betrayal of charming him deceitfully. It is my own fault because I made it possible for them, because they have done it to me, because they have made us condemn each other. He is mad now, have you seen him? It is my own fault that he is scorning me. They have given him a pride that he never had before, a pride to be righteous. He excuses himself anything because he thinks he is superior to me. But I love him, I know that I love him, I love him because he has a heart and because he lives on the edge of the sky and has made himself great enough to stand there. If he kills himself I shall love him more and I shall hate everyone else, I shall hate them for ever, I shall hate these priests with the flat sham manners and I shall hate Marius. Marius is a person who has been charmed to death already, who has no heart and desires no soul no existence who is a hard flat cipher against the walls of other men's eyes, who has destroyed himself so that he is a dust that can settle in heaven. I hate Marius. I loved him when he needed me and now he needs nothing and I hate him. If Peter kills himself I shall hate God.”

“You are talking about people, you are not talking about God.”

“I will kill Marius's child because it has grown into all I have hated, and because Peter will then have reasons for scorning me. I will kill myself so that he will have reasons for pitying me. If I could save Peter I would kill God.”

“You do not know about God!”

She sat up on the bed and it was as if she were trying to prevent something from strangling her. “So they have got you too?” she said.

“Annabelle . . . ”

“You do not love me, you are dead!” she shouted.

I stood up to go over to her and as I moved she shouted, “Get away from me, get away,” and she struggled from the bed and began to run to the door. I caught her round the shoulders and held her as she fought to get past me; she screamed and clawed at me with the nails of her fingers. I got in between her and the door and tried to push her back towards the bed but she screamed again with a dreadful choked cry in her throat and I hit her across the face with the back of my hand and then her head fell forwards and she began to cry. I took her to the bed and she lay down with her back to me, and as she cried I could see her nails tearing scratches in her face and hair coming out in her hands where she pulled it. The crying came and went in gasps and it seemed to possess her body terribly as if there were a devil in it. I waited until she was quiet.

I rang up Peter.

“Annabelle is ill,” I said. “She is staying here the night.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“She is ill, it is to do with the child.”

“Isn't that what she wants?”

“No.”

“She gets it either way, I suppose, according to Father Jack.”

“Is Father Jack there?”

“He's away.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“He's on a train.”

“Peter, do you know what he has said to Annabelle?”

“He said she wasn't quite sorry enough, if you ask me.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For having a child with Marius and not marrying him.”

“Why should he say that?”

“Well she isn't sorry, is she? Perhaps she went to tell him about it.”

“To confess?”

“That is what they do, isn't it, when they want to be good little girls again?”

“And he said . . . ”

“How the devil do I know what he said, I don't even know if she went, but whatever he said she didn't like it.”

“Peter . . . ”

“Is she really ill?”

“No. Peter, have you ever confessed?”

“I? What have I got to confess?”

“Nothing,” I said.

I waited for Marius's step on the stairs and when I heard it I went to warn him. In the darkness of the landing we whispered. “Has she seen a doctor?” he said.

“It is not necessary.”

“Of course I will go away. That is no trouble. Can I do anything for you in the morning?”

“Do you want to see her?”

“Should I?”

“Perhaps not. I should be glad if you would telephone.”

“Of course.”

We waited.

“Marius, what is the point of confession?”

“The point? So that one may receive absolution.”

“And if one does not?”

“What?”

“If it is refused?”

“It is only refused when there is no repentance.”

“I see.”

We waited again.

“Where will you sleep?” I said.

“Anywhere,” he said.

“Marius, does Father Jack approve of Peter?”

“Approve of him? I suppose not.”

“Someone should tell him.”

“Why?”

“I remember it being important.”

“Do you?” He looked at me. “All right,” he said.

“Good-night,” I said.

When I awoke it was still dark and I did not know where I was. I had the impression that my bed was placed in such a position as made the rest of the room impossible. I struggled to get my bearings,—the door on the left, the window, the table . . . it was as if the surroundings of my life had become unrecognizable to me, even the furniture assuming a temporal disguise. I sat up. Then everything clicked into place. But I was left with the feeling that I was a foreigner in a country that was new to me.

I knew that Annabelle was awake. This was a realization that came strangely.

“Annabelle?”

“Yes?”

“Have you slept?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I put the light on?”

“No.”

It was extraordinary to be so close to her and not to know what she was thinking. She said: “Was Marius staying with you?”

“Yes.”

“And you have sent him away?”

“Yes.”

“It is dreadful how trivial all this is,” she said.

I tried to see her in the darkness. “I mean,” she went on, “that we are the most trivial people in the world, we do nothing, we achieve nothing, we work for nothing, we have no place in any society, we are useless, yet still we think that our trivialities are important. Isn't that ridiculous?”

“I do not think that they are trivialities.”

“They seem to me to be. Did I talk a lot of nonsense?”

“Yes.”

“And contradict myself?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it is true about the devil?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“It must be when someone starts turning everything upside down. I hope Marius did not mind being sent away.”

“Of course not.”

“I really do feel ill, you know. I didn't mean it about you and Marius. Perhaps one does have to have something given to stop the devil getting in. Otherwise one doesn't know whether he's in or out. He may be in now for all I know.”

“I don't think he is.”