I found Annabelle climbing into a taxi and I ran up and held the door open while she sat inside looking frightened. I must have appeared rather mad. I stood in the gutter in the flickering light and spoke to her. “Tell me,” I said, “what you said to me this morning, what you said about faith, did you believe it to be true?”
“What?” she said. I repeated the question. The taxi-man was motionless, like a statue. I wanted to giggle. “Of course it is true,” she said.
“Is it true in the way that a person who thinks it untrue is wrong?”
“Of course he is wrong,” she said.
“And is there nothing else but this faith that can make a person true at all?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“And it is something to worry about?”
“Of course it is something to worry about.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” I stepped away.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Please don’t go.”
“There is one more thing,” I said. “Does Father Manners like Peter?”
“Like him? No, I don’t suppose he does. Why?”
“Does he like me?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” But I could see the truth in her eyes. The truth for all of them. “Stay,” she said, “stay, where are you going?”
“You will find out,” I said. I laughed. I was quite mad then. “You will find out when it catches up on you.” I did not know what I was saying.
“Come here,” she said, but I slammed the door, and waved to the taxi-man. He drove off and I ran up the steps into the house.
Inside I waited. Alice was not in the ground floor rooms. For a moment I considered killing myself. As I climbed the stairs I looked down towards the basement and felt rather sick. I had the sensation again that something was going to happen that had happened before. I waited on the landing. Something was going to happen and then I would remember it. The sound of the taxi door when I had slammed it against Annabelle had been like the thud of an axe. Heads were falling, the world of death was intruding, it did not seem that I was responsible for the future or the past.
Alice was lying on her bed in her dressing-gown. It was as if she had not moved since I had left her the day before. The room was scented like a velvet box. Time had stopped, we were into another dimension, our existence was not that of the people we might have remembered ourselves to be. I stood in the doorway and watched her. I wondered if she had been taking drugs. The light was muffled by stained-glass curtains, shedding pools of violet above her head. “Oh darling,” she said.
I went in and sat on the bed. Ghosts, there were nothing but ghosts. The air was thick with them. “Oh darling,” she said.
“Dear darling, darling, talk, yes, will you? Will you sit with me, here it is so terrible, it is the nights that are terrible, what is there to do? I close my eyes and then there is a lurching like a ship, something goes over on to its side and I cannot straighten it, it is like a ship that someone invented which had its inside hung on hinges so that it was supposed not to roll, and when they got it out on to the sea it rolled twice as much, it rolled even when the sea was quite calm, it must have been terrible. Once when I was young my inside was hung on hinges and I tried to kill myself, I rolled little pills out of a bottle and they formed up in a line and they looked at me like cat’s eyes in the darkness, and as I ate them one by one I could feel them in my throat like fingers and they strangled me before I could die. I lurched and I could not keep myself upright, so they could not go down. Dear darling, darling, it is better not to have an inside that swings on hinges and then you roll only when the sea rolls and you do not roll when the sea is calm.
“I am so much in love, it is the heights that are terrible. Dear darling, darling, have you ever been in love? I do not think you have, perhaps you have found the secret of the ship that does not roll, you are so calm, you are the only person I have ever known who is so calm. You can probe about inwards and inwards and you do not feel sick, you do not . . . I should like to shake you, I should like to upset you just for once so that you know what it is like, what love is like, you would have pity. I was married once to a man who came and cried each time he was unfaithful, and I hurt him so much that I thought I should kill myself. And then there were men who were not men at all but statues quite hollow who were cast in bronze and they had no inside, no inside to roll, and nothing to feel, and they were terrible to love. I do not think that anyone with an inside is so calm, so calm, but you are, and will you stay, will you stay with me then, will you give up for a little, oh darling what are you thinking of?
“Everything is so old, there is nothing to do about it. All this goes on and on and there is nothing left in the world to worry about. If you would just stay with me you would know and then you would stop probing inwards and inwards and then you would pity. There is nothing that is wrong until you know that everything is wrong, and until you have done something you will never know. Until you have done something wrong you will never have to forgive yourself, and until then you are not human. Until now you are not human, dear darling, darling, and afterwards you will know what humanity is and how it suffers, and when you hate yourself it will be good for you and then you will see. You will see everything in your life and how terrible it is and then you will have to forgive yourself. You will give up and you will be frightened and then you will be human.”
As I lay beside her on the bed I did not move and I did not answer, so she raised herself up on her elbow and leaned across me with one arm stretched on the far side of me to take her weight and I could see her ribs where she breathed, and as she bent down to kiss me I could feel her pressure on my chest like the weight of two soft hands. I put my arms around her and held her and I thought of Annabelle and Marius and how I did not care any more. She moved her body and I could feel nothing but the heaviness of her and the dryness of her mouth and I held her so that she might feel something better. I put my arms beneath her dressing-gown and stroked her, and I did not think it was myself who was lying. Then she lifted her head and pushed her hair back with her hand and she said, “Don’t you love me darling?” and I said, “Yes,” and she went on looking at me with her sick enormous eyes, he dressing-gown was away from her front and from her shoulders and she tried to close it and then she said “It is Marius that I love.” “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I tried to hold her again in my arms but she pushed herself away from me and sat up on the edge of the bed and I thought she was crying. She was searching under the pillow for what I thought was a handkerchief, but it was for a cigarette which she found and I watched her light it. “You’d better go now,” she said. The room seemed to hold me like a bath that has gone cold, and I did not want to get out of it. “Go on,” she said.
17
Marius came to stay with me. In the mornings he went out early to do the business that still detained him in England, and I had the room to myself in which to work. In the afternoons I usually saw Alice. We sometimes had tea together.
One day when Marius was out Father Jack came to see me. He was an old man, but he climbed the stairs rapidly talking all the time and his small wrinkled face showed no sign of fatigue. He sat down and he did not notice the room at all, it might have been beautiful to him. He said:
“The trouble is that you do not understand the position, you do not understand it at all, you look upon the Church as a team of hospitable cricketers, a home for stray sufferers, an army of thin crusaders doing battle against the flesh. You see some special significance in the numbers that this army contains, in the individual behaviour of some of its members, in the errors that they may make. You talk of this significance as if it affected the function that is proper to an army. It does not. An army has its function no matter what its numbers and its mistakes. You imagine that we are engaged upon some game of tip-and-run with immorality, that we have charms to dispense with pain, that we are fighting for the truth and are concerned about our chances of victory. We are not. Wha
t you must realize is this, and this is everything, that whatever war we are fighting it is not one of which the issue is still in doubt. We are not marching towards truth because the truth has been given to us. We do not struggle for victory because the victory has already been won. We know the truth. We enjoy the victory. Our function now, if you like to use these metaphors, is that of a triumphant army in occupation of the world.
“You do not know these things because as a child you did not listen or else you were not taught. The world is full of people who have received no instruction or who have ignored it, and who do not know what Christianity is about. Many of these are settled firmly in a way of life that seems satisfactory to them, and when instruction is offered it is most often incapable of being heard. Others are not settled and are interested in instruction, but their condition of bewilderment is seldom one which can advantageously be used. A man must come to his own conclusions, he must not be persuaded by the rhetoric of a priest. There are practical considerations in this, as well as ethical ones. A conversion against a man’s conscience is not a true conversion, and the results of it are dangerous for everyone concerned. A priest is dealing normally with practising Christians, and his function is one of service to the Christian Church. Instruction is given to children because that is the time for instruction; ministration is given to adults in the pattern of what they believe. It is true that now, in the conditions around us, the pattern is upset and the world is not normal. These are conditions which are unfortunate but which do not affect the position of the Church. Its function remains the same.
“This function you can learn to understand and practise or you need not learn to understand. That is up to you. It is quite a simple function, of love and worship, which begins with the sacraments and extends to the whole of life. You can learn it if you wish. I hope you do. But what I would say to you is this, that it is what a man believes that is important. I would rather a man lived faithfully by what he believes than attempted to persuade himself of what he does not. A synthesis of persuasion is useless: an antithesis of truth is not. This is perhaps what you will recognize. There is something of the truth in every man, however contradictory expressions of it may appear. It is this truth that can be respected: I should say more than this,—it can be loved. The claim that the Church makes, you see, is a very large one after all;—it claims that if every man will observe and honour the truth that is in him, then there is not much more that need be done. The Church, as it were, is doing the rest. It is working for the world in the only way possible for it. There is a good deal of confidence in this, and certainty. This is what you will learn to understand. Do I make myself clear?”
Marius came back in the evenings and he looked at me with eyes that curiously had no depth. It was difficult to talk to him. He said:
“Yes, I know Father Jack, he is a good man, a very good man, he is what they call their West End turn, does that shock you? I know what you mean, I didn’t think he would help you, but don’t let anything shock you until you know what it is about. Then you will see that he is a very good man, and not a spider—didn’t he say so?—not a spider to entwine you. I do not think that he is the person for you to talk to, however, and I? no, of course not, I am not the person, but you know where you can go.
“In one way at least I think I am like Father Jack. The life of everyone is like a circle and at one stage you stand on the circumference looking inwards and you search for the centre and the centre is not there. Then you find it and you turn outwards because the centre is established and you don’t have to search for it any more. You stand on the circumference looking outwards and outwardly your life becomes quite a passionless business, to do what ought to be done, and in the centre because it is established the passion is not seen. Passion is not often discernible in a thing that does not move. Passion in sculpture needs a specialist’s eye to observe it. If you have not these eyes then you think it is dead. And it is not easy for some to turn inwards again.
“Perhaps I am dead, I say this for the last time, for the last time I go back into the centre, I do not think I am dead. But whatever has happened in me is established and I do not feel those things anymore. I am sorry about Annabelle, you do not know how sorry I am, but being in love is not necessarily a condition of marriage, she knew this better than I did, but we did not know it at the time. Marriage is when you find each other at the centre, and we could not pretend for us this was true. I could not give this to her and I cannot give what you want to you, because there are only certain things within my capacity. These I will try to do, and the rest leave to others. There is much for which I shall have to ask to be forgiven, as you must know.
“Perhaps there are only certain things in Father Jack’s capacity, too. Perhaps he feels that reality is what it ought to be, and that it is unreality when it is not. He distinguished between what is becoming and what is. This is what you must do. There are others to whom you can talk. I think that you understand this, I think you know what I mean by being passionless and turned outwards and waiting. I think that when you have found your centre there will be a great deal for you to do. When I left Alice’s house she said a strange thing to me, she said that you could not corrupt other people even though you tried to. Perhaps this is true. She meant that you did something else to them. I think that you will go further than I have done because you have the ability, and I have had to wipe out so much that I sometimes think that there is not much left of me anyway. I am not a Christian, not really a Christian. There are just certain things that I have to do each day and I have to have a standard by which to do them. When you have no emotions you have to have reasons. My marriage died. But one day you will go into the centre and the emotion that has taken you there will be a living one and then when you are turned outwards your life will be joy. It will be something, this, in the despair of the world, to know the vanity of it. The remedy for despair lies in possessing the means for action; and the means, at the centre, is what you will find.”
Mr. Palmerston was staying in a small bare room in Notting Hill. At night he wore a skull-cap made of wool. He sat leaning backwards with his hands between his knees. He said:
“I cannot teach you, teaching is not relevant to you, what is it that you believe? Teaching is only for those who believe already. You believe in nothing? My friend if you believe in nothing then death is the end of life and life is nothing and that is not possible, that life is not possible, because you know about this life, you have eyes to see this life, you know the evil of it. Man is evil my friend you know he is evil, I am not here to talk about sin, I tell you, you know about sin there is no need of me to talk about it. Sin is humanity and I tell you that it is impossible for humanity not to sin, that is the pill that you have to swallow, again and again you have to tell yourself things, that it is impossible for humanity not to sin. And therefore there is one thing and one thing alone that humanity can do, and that is to plead for the absolution from this sin and to remember the triumph that is the justification of its plea, the triumph of a life that did not sin and yet which died in the way that sinners die to make a triumph for them. Upon one day and between the hours of darkness and light there was given to this world its salvation and its redemption. It has been given no other.
“You say that you want no salvation, that you need no redemption, that you will take the responsibility for what you have done and you will live out each day of your life in misery for it. And I say to what end do you do this, to what end do you desire this misery? You do not desire misery for the sake of misery, you cannot, you desire misery so that truth may come in its place. And I say that this is the most foolish dream of the world, it is the dream of the mad dog barking for the moon, because you have no hope for it, no hope at all, because the mad dog cannot fly and you are human. If you wish to make yourself sufficient for your responsibilities that is an aim as wild as the moon and you will miss it, you will fail, you will end up in delusion and that is the greatest sin of all. You will think you
have reached the moon because you will have stared at it so long that it will have blinded you, the image that you will hold in your arms will be the deception of your eyes. It is you who have talked of failure and I tell you that this is the most terrible failure of all because it is deliberate, it is the deliberate will to failure arising out of pride. It is the sin that we call unforgivable, and this is why we call it unforgivable, because it can only be committed by those who have seen the moon and who have had an opportunity to worship it and who in its light have decided to deride it. In envy they bark at it and in hatred they blind their eyes. If for one moment you will look into yourself with the eyes that you turn upon others you will see this, you will see this choice, the choice between humble worship and the mad and bloody hound. You still have eyes left, then do this for me, look into yourself as you look into the world and then dare to say that you can tell what is your truth and what are your responsibilities, dare to say that you can bear them, dare to say that you are so much less mad than the world is that you can bring light to it! Remember, you are responsible for everything! Look now and tell me what it is you see that is so powerful!
“And if you look and truly say as you are saying now that you can do nothing, that alone you can do nothing, then there is still something that you can do. Alone you are mad and useless as are dogs that chase their tails around the gutter, but you have a choice, you have a choice which even a dog has, you can do what you are told. And for you who know your uselessness, who in your own words for a year have lived in madness is this not a possible thing to do and even a necessary one, to give yourself up to that which can bear what you will never be able to bear, which can do within you what alone you will never be able to do, which can give you the moon when you do not even desire it? When you come upon beauty you have not asked for beauty and yet beauty is there, and when you see it it possesses you and what is beautiful is this, that you have given yourself up to it, that you are yourself no longer, that there is within you a gift that is greater. In all beauty there is something within you and something outside of you and something which exists between you and the world. In all love there is this threefold existence, the giving and the receiving and the gift itself. This existence is God. What you give to God is given back to you and this gift is a greatness beyond compare. That to which you have given is given within you and the gift is a fulfillment of freedom and love. This is what love is, and this is what freedom is, and this is God. But God has given already, and it is for you to receive Him. To receive Him you have to give yourself and this is the choice. You can live as a madman chained to his lunacy or as an angel free in the service of love. You have no freedom now except this choice.
A Garden of Trees Page 26