A Garden of Trees

by Nicholas Mosley

  “I have noticed, certainly, a tendency among gourmets to resemble their favourite dish. There is an earl, for instance, who is probably bouchées à la reine.”

  Being near her, keeping the nonsense moving, I felt myself, or what I hoped to be myself, return to inhabit the body it had left. This was a sensation similar to that of a limb that has gone to sleep, the removal of the pressure that had stopped the blood from flowing and then the slow creeping pain of renewed belonging and the pleasure of waiting till the limb was whole. While feeling encroaches there is a terror of moving, a concentration or stillness till the blood is there. I waited cautiously while old love and old joy crept through me and then it was there, suddenly, Annabelle was close to me and was impervious to damage, and I laughed, hugely, while the table rocked and a spoon fell abruptly on the floor.

  Peter got up and left the room. I laughed with the tears coming into my eyes and my lungs aching until I choked upon a crumb and lost my breath. Annabelle gazed at me. Her father, with mock concern, removed his tea-cup from the table. I turned aside and buried my face in a handkerchief and Annabelle came quietly and patted my back. Then it was over. I wiped my eyes and apologized. “I trust it was something other than my wit,” her father said, “to have so alarmed you.”

  “To-morrow,” I said to Annabelle, “will you have tea with me?”

  “I have to do the cooking,” she said, “but I will walk with you in the park.”

  “Annabelle is a tough nut,” her father said, “A very tough nut.”

  “Do you still do the cooking?” I said. “Do you sow and knit and take dogs for walks?”

  “And have children,” she said, beginning to pile the crockery.

  I left her soon. I did not want to stay. We had said what was required and I made my excuses. Her father came with me to the lift. “Perhaps I can drop you somewhere,” he said. “I have an appointment myself.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We sat in a very small car. I felt once more that I had work to do. He drove fast smoking a cigarette in his holder. “How do you think Peter is looking?” he said.

  “Not very well,” I said.

  “No.” He stopped at some traffic lights. We sat staring in front of us, a small impassive man in a Foreign Office hat and I who admired him. “He seems to be suffering from a disease that is quite common nowadays,” he said; “A lack of purpose.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And a very understandable one.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I hope I understand. I know that if I were a young man now I should find it difficult to know what to do.”

  “What would you try to do?”

  “The same as before, probably. But that is no good for Peter.”

  “No,” I said. The traffic lights changed and we proceeded sharply.

  “I think that in many ways it is my fault,” he said. “I tried to bring up my children on the theory that it is best for them to be left alone.”

  “Surely you were right,” I said.

  “Was I? I don’t know. When you reach my age you will realize that it is a highly dangerous position to be left alone.”

  “But it is like free will, you have got to risk it.”

  “Well,” he said. We shot across Bond Street. The road was thick with American limousines. “About free will, you know, I have a suspicion that we deceive ourselves.”

  “There are instructions?”

  “More than that. I feel that perhaps some canvassing goes on behind the scenes. String-pulling. Fiddling. To be a good father one must be as crafty as the devil.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” I said.

  He turned to me so that his cigarette-holder jutted straight towards my nose. “Tell me,” he said, “are you in the habit of despising the older generation?”

  I laughed foolishly. “That was a bad habit,” I said.

  “Ah!” he said. We brushed remorselessly through a curtain of pedestrians. “A habit that goes with the complaint. And you believe in freedom. Freedom from conventions, controls, and the claims of parental authority.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And the claims of love?”

  “The claims,” I said, “yes.”

  “Rubbish!” he said. We sped down Regent Street. “I don’t believe you for a minute.” I laughed again. “But I know that that is what Peter believes,” he said.

  He pulled up near Piccadilly Circus. “Look here,” he said, “are you doing anything for half an hour?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then would you like to have a drink at my club? It is only just across the road.”

  “I should like it very much,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. We swerved out from the pavement and a bus shrieked to a standstill. “You see how crafty I am. I have no appointment.” We dodged the cursing traffic. “Another intolerable deceit of the older generation. But then, of course, you did not have an appointment either.”

  In the club there was a room like a railway station. We sat in ageless leather chairs. “It is true,” he said, “that this place is rather appalling. Is that why you despise us?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “That’s cheating.” He nodded as an old man passed him. “I gather you think us mad.” The old man came up to him and they whispered at each other fiercely. Their heads pecked strangely like puppet birds. When they had finished he said, “It is interesting talking to you. Peter won’t talk.”

  “I don’t think you’re mad,” I said.

  “That is because you are older than Peter, then. When you are older still you will realize why we act like we do. Not all of us, of course. But you will see that it is difficult to do any better.”

  “Do you despise us then?”

  “Oh no. I only look on you with slight alarm. It seems to me that you are obsessed with the Garden of Eden. You insist on trying to recreate it and at the same time insist on making the original mistakes. I do find that alarming. But despicable, no.”

  “Can we help making the original mistake?”

  “I don’t think you can. I think it goes inevitably with Gardens of Eden.”

  “Then what should we do?”

  “I think, since we are talking in these terms, that you should read your bible. Isn’t it something about getting it within you? You mustn’t despise the bible, you know, although it may strike you as peculiar.”

  “It does,” I said.

  “Yes, but still, you must translate it. It is, after all, not a text-book. You have to learn the language before you can understand what it means. The trouble with Peter is that he either translates it into someone else’s terms or else he despises it. He will not trouble to learn the language.”

  “It is very difficult to have faith,” I said.

  “Why yes, of course.”

  “You agree then?”

  “If you say so. If you don’t want it.”

  “But that’s what Peter wants.”

  “And he can’t get it. So that’s that.”

  “He thinks that you want to have him psychoanalysed,” I said.

  “Does he? That was a chance remark of his mother’s, which resulted in a slight misunderstanding. It is no good being psychoanalysed, either, unless one wants to be.”

  There was a silence for a while. I began to imagine what he wanted. “In fact,” I said, “in order to get results, someone has to be as crafty as the devil.”

  “As many people as possible,” he said.

  “I don’t trust that,” I said. “Not unless the people are very sure of what they are doing.”

  “There can be, so to speak, limited objectives. It can do no harm, I am sure, to act simply upon what of course must be a genuine regard.”

  “A regard for Peter?”

  “Yes. And I know for certain that he has a regard for you.”

  “Has he?”

  “Yes. And he is not lavish with his respect. There are few people
, I feel, who can influence him.”

  “There was . . . ” I began.

  “There was someone whom he respected? Yes, I believe there was, and now there is no longer. You will have noticed, perhaps, that that is part of the trouble.”

  I had noticed. I remembered Marius in the square with Peter running beside him, a moonlight night with emotion gone wrong, Marius as Mephistopheles and Peter as Faust. It had been a holiday beneath the statue that we had none of us understood. And now there was retribution. “I had noticed that,” I said.

  “You see,” he said, “there is something in this century that is inimical to children. Peter is still a child. We have talked about the chasm between generations, but it is really not that, it is simply a difference in ages. My generation were children once, at the beginning of the century, and it is interesting to remember us. We were mostly killed in the war. There was an obsession with death when I was young just as now there is an obsession with futility. Then it was active and now it is passive; that is the only difference. We all of us arrive at that age when destruction becomes a mania of the soul—the age when we cease against our will to be children.

  “Have you ever read the letters of young men at the beginning of the first world war? They are extraordinary reading. I mean the young men who, like myself and Peter, were brought up with every material advantage. I do not speak for those whose childhood was a material struggle, for their problems were different. My generation, the generation of Edwardian children being brought up in Edwardian luxury, came to an age at which they wanted to die. They said so, in their letters. They were children, and they did not know how to grow up, so they went to war to absolve themselves from the responsibility. There they found what they wanted. They said so. The war was a release, a fulfillment of childish continuities. They lived as children and they died as children, and I think they were glad.”

  “It was not the same in this war,” I said.

  “No, but that was because this war was not a children’s business. One gets, as it were, wise to war’s futility. We did, of course, after a few months in the trenches. But you were older than we, you knew it all before, you could find no release in sacrifice because you knew that it was sacrifice for nothing. We did not. And now you are alive, but you still don’t know what to do about it. It is funny how there were fewer deaths in this war probably because there were fewer desires for it.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Peter, of course, is different. Peter had no war. He did not have the opportunity for sacrifice. But the situation is there. He has reached an age at which he requires an opportunity to fulfill himself, and he does not find it. He was an extraordinary child, and the memory of that does not help him. He was brought up in the old style, and life ran kindly for him. We spent much of our time in foreign countries, you know, where English children are, so to speak, at a premium. And then he was at school. He was very successful at school. And then he was fond of Annabelle. I think he was quite unusually fond of Annabelle. They never fought, or quarreled, as brothers and sisters do. They used to guard each other carefully like ancient maiden ladies. There were times, indeed, when their regard for each other almost worried me. They became quite solemn and detached in their affection.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Once, you see, the world was not inimical to children. Once there was continuity between the expectation of a child and the expectation of an adult. The pattern was set, and the child advanced in it smoothly. Now the pattern is broken and the grown-up child is lost. This is a direct result of the freedom which children nowadays are given. This freedom is not right unless the child can build something out of it.”

  “No,” I said.

  “So, you see, this is a time of testing. We have agreed that children should not translate things into their parents’ terms, and this I have endeavoured to put into practice. Now we have to see whether our theories are justified. For Peter it is a time when childhood ceases. The old life dies and the new life begins. He has to find his own translation. I think it is only right that we should help the death to be as comfortable as possible.”

  “But with no bluff, no craftiness—that is always recognized on a death-bed. We must face what is real.”

  “If you will allow me to say so, I think that this might be taken as a definition of the difference between the old and the young—that the young are realists on the surface and not underneath, and the old are most likely the opposite. Reality, you see, is not solely concerned with behaviour. In manners, words, and affections the young endeavour to be the most ardent realists, but they are not often wise enough to be realists at heart. The aim of a realist is to come to terms with his situation, and to the successful achievement of this manners are a means and not an end. The charge of hypocrisy that is so often leveled against the old is of no validity unless one knows what is in each man’s heart. There are certain intentions, and certain failures, and the behaviour that arises from them. But it is in intention that the old are the realists.”

  “And the intention is to come to terms?”

  “In the best possible way, with the way of each person different. There can be no other realistic intention. You will perhaps know the futility of refusing terms and fighting.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So that, with Peter, we must be realists, certainly, but realists primarily in aim. We must help him to come to terms in the best possible way. As to what that way is, your guess is as good as mine. Also, I am sure, will be your manners. I trust that you will not find mine too frivolously indirect.”

  “Nor mine too earnest,” I said.

  “The old, you see, have their little tricks of appeasement. I do not think they are wrong. It is the intentions that matter.”

  “Not the results?”

  “I have said that there are failures. I would go so far as to say that there are too many failures. But that should not prevent one from trying.”

  “No,” I said.

  We lay back in our chairs. For a railway station the room was unusually quiet. Rubber-soled porters crept by with muffled trays. I felt enormously flattered. With me, perhaps, had he been insincere? A tactical manoeuvre to enroll my support? It did not matter. I believed him. “I will do what I can,” I said.

  “Thank you. And now, if you will excuse me, I really must go. Perhaps, in fact, I had an appointment all the time!” He did his wicked smile at me through a pillar of smoke.

  I followed him. Going down the steps he laid his hand on my arm. “Also,” he said, “there is Annabelle. But you will know what to do about that.” Then he walked on ahead of me.

  In his tiny car he looked like an ancient carved idol. He wound down the window. “I hope I see you again,” he said.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “I have to go to Paris to-morrow, but perhaps after that.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I used to know your father,” he said. “In fact we were very good friends. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  He drove off rapidly through the taxis like a dog splitting a flock of sheep. I watched him whizz round the corner. I stood on the pavement and wondered if he had been talking all the time about Annabelle, but I did not think he had.

  I rang up Peter. “Do you know where Marius is?” I said.

  “Where are you speaking from?”

  “From Pall Mall.”

  “Have you been with my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father would charm the leg off a horse,” Peter said.

  “Do you know where Marius is?”

  “What have you been talking about?”

  “About you, of course. And Marius?”

  There was a silence for a few seconds, then, “I believe he is staying with your friend Alice,” Peter said.

  “Oh.” I thought about this. “Will you be in this evening?” I said.

  “I expect so.”

  “Perhaps we might meet sometime afte
rwards.”

  “After what?”

  “Anyway, I’ll ring you up.”

  “Yes do. Do let’s meet.”

  “All right then.” I rang off.

  I went round to Alice’s house. She stood defensively in the doorway like a chucker-out. “Oh it’s you,” she said. “Fancy seeing you.”

  “I wondered if Marius was here,” I said.

  “How rude,” she said. “No, he’s out.”

  “Can I come in then?”

  “Have you got any cigarettes?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you can come in.” She held the door open and I went through.

  “I’m in a mess,” I said.

  “For God’s sake don’t start talking about yourself again,” she said.

  “All right. All right,” I said. “How’s Marius?”

  “He’s a bore, but I don’t see much of him. Why can’t he stay at Grosvenor Square?”

  “Annabelle is having a child,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No,” she said. “Is she? Can’t I have a cigarette?”

  I gave her one. “You don’t seem very surprised,” I said.

  “I don’t think anything that goes on between you and your friends would surprise me,” she said.

  “It’s not my child.”

  “Whose is it then?”

  “I supposed it was Marius’s.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I can’t see why they aren’t together, can you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I mean, why doesn’t he marry her?”

  “Good heavens, why do people not marry each other?”

  “But they must want to.”

  “Must they? God knows I shouldn’t want to marry Marius.”

  “But she must want to. I suppose it is Marius who won’t.”

  “The way you think you understand people!” she said.

  I sat down. The room was hot and oppressive. I felt faintly pathetic like a private detective. “I suppose you want me to leave you my cigarettes and go,” I said.

  “Darling, you know how I love seeing you. Tell me what you have been doing lately.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve finished my book.”

  “I’m sure it’s dreadful.”

  “Yes. Do you know when Marius will be in?”