St Anthony’s was close to Central Park. The church, a noisome patch of expensive twentieth-century Gothic architecture, squatted among the gay and cleanly blocks of steel and concrete, and poked up an impudent spire to look into the eighteenth-storey windows of the nearest apartment house. The present incumbent had christened it God’s Little Home by the Park, and under that name it was continually in the news. Toby rang the bell of the rectory, said that he came from Regan’s and was ushered into the rector’s study by a sort of vestryman-butler who would have done credit to an archiepiscopal palace. It was evident that Dr Carnaby Postlethwaite had need inwardly to digest the two verses of Greek. Toby guessed that they had been sent to him by some scholarly and offended parishioner.
Carnaby Postlethwaite entered his study with an air of brisk efficiency. He carried his dog collar as a dowager her corset, with pride in its smooth victory over the flesh. His face was firm, beaming, and of an honest red that owed as much to sunburn as good living. By cloth and cut Toby judged that he went to an English tailor. He was a picture of massive man-to-man Christianity in the early fifties, and undoubtedly a regular fellow.
“Well, young man, so you’re from Regan’s, eh?” said Carnaby Postlethwaite, crossing the room. “Prompt service, that! Good, clean American service!”
“You wrote that you were in a hurry,” Toby answered, “so I brought it straight round.”
“You English?”
“Yes.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr—er?” said Carnaby Postlethwaite, holding out a firm white paw.
“Manning,” answered Toby, shaking it.
“Any relation to the cardinal?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’re one of Regan’s executives, I guess?”
Toby chuckled at the thought of Regan’s filthy office possessing anybody who could be called an executive—even by the courtesy custom of calling anyone with a desk of his own an executive. It was a comic word. The whole roaring comedy of American business suddenly hit him. He understood and felt instant affection for this preposterous word-loving country.
“I am the vice-president in charge of the ancient languages department,” he said.
“I’ll say that’s pretty smart at your age,” declared the rector politely—and then, more doubtfully: “but is there much call for them in these days?”
“The museums practically depend on us,” Toby replied. “And then of course we have frequent enquiries from scholars like yourself whose classics have become a little rusty.”
“Rusty is right!” re-joined Dr Carnaby Postlethwaite. “I’m just a plain hard-working parson in a big town. I believe that what the Episcopal Church of America needs to-day, Mr Manning, is more humanity. More humanity!”
He put his arm round Toby’s shoulders and compelled him to the window. He pointed to the unfinished ninetieth storey of the Chrysler Building, a feathery rectangle of steel that hung suspended in the icy blue sky.
“God made it,” he said simply. “And God issued the stock to pay for it.”
Toby perceived that Dr Carnaby Postlethwaite was a very great man. It was no wonder that the average income of St Anthony’s parishioners was, as the papers loved to repeat, over $30,000 per annum. Yet not even the most fundamental of Baptists could question his sublime conception of the Almighty without falling into a morass of heresy.
Carnaby Postlethwaite relieved his soul by an instant of silent meditation, his grip tight on Toby’s shoulder, his manly face uplifted.
“And now,” he said, “let us return to worldly business. You come to me with a translation, I believe?”
He sat down behind the desk at which he was accustomed to be photographed, a magnificent and floridly carven piece of oak, furnished with two candlesticks, an embossed blotter of Spanish leather, a bible in black and gold and a church calendar in gold and crimson. It looked as if it had been provided, bible and all, by an expensive interior decorator.
Toby turned to the New Testament.
“Here’s your translation,” he said. “Matthew Six, twenty-four and five: ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?’”
“Very true!” said Carnaby Postlethwaite, bowing his head reverently. “Very true! But each man must labour in his own vineyard.”
The rector looked sharply up, and saw that Toby’s eyes were decently devout.
“I can tell by the way you read that text that you know your bible,” he said.
“I ought to,” Toby replied. “I read it for pleasure.”
“Are you a communicant of the Episcopal Church?”
“Well, I was brought up in the Church of England. It’s the same, I believe.”
“The very same, Mr Manning. The church of the middle path. The church for the man in the street.”
“That should be a rousing sermon,” said Toby.
“We have no sermons at St Anthony’s,” answered the rector simply. “Just manly heart-to-heart talks. I go on the principle that folks are good. So why shouldn’t I make them feel good? In St Anthony’s there are no uneasy consciences.”
“Good, clean state religion,” Toby declared.
“Exactly.”
The rector measured Toby with a keen glance that he had borrowed from his banker.
“Do you want a job?” he asked.
“What is it?”
“Private secretary.”
“Haven’t you got a secretary?”
“See here, Mr Manning—I’ll be frank with you. I’ve got two secretaries, but there isn’t one of them can give me what I want. There’s Miss van Tool, the social secretary. One of the van Tools, you know. That means a lot to St. Anthony’s.”
Toby nodded. It was one of the few American names well known to the average Englishman. It called up a vague vision of pork packing, the musical comedy stage and the Woolworth Building. At the same time he was aware that the van Tools had never packed pork, that their only connection with the stage was marriage with an English duke who had previously or subsequently married into the Gaiety Chorus, and that the Woolworth Building had either been denounced by them, opened by them or built on the site of their family mansion. He sympathised profoundly with those of his American friends who never could remember whether the Cecils were or were not second sons of the Duke of Marlborough who owned Grosvenor Square and had won the high jump at the Olympic Games.
“And there’s my curate, the Reverend Burton Snapp,” Carnaby Postlethwaite went on. “But he isn’t like you and me. Snapp’s a saint, young man. He won’t ever be a bishop. Now, you’re a pretty nice type of Englishman. You’re not pious but you know your way around a church and you can quote scripture. You’ve got class and I could use you. What do you say?”
“Well,” said Toby, “I’m an expensive man.”
“Now, listen! I’m no fool. You may be an expensive man. You ought to be an expensive man. But don’t mind my telling you that you’re not dressed like an expensive man. Vice presidenting a translation bureau may be honour, but I can see it don’t pay.”
Toby realised that he could bluff Carnaby Postlethwaite on intangibles, but couldn’t live with him in a business deal. He smiled his surrender.
“That’s swell, Mr Manning. You made me speak plainer than I like, but I can see you bear no malice. I’ll give you two hundred dollars a month. It isn’t much, but if you play ball with me you won’t regret it.”
“All right,” Toby answered. “I don’t quite know what you want from me, but we’ll try it. When do I start?”
“When are you free?”
“Now, if you like.”
“You come along to-morrow about ten, then!”
“Good! About the translation, send a dollar fifty to Regan’s, will you?”
What the rector wanted from Toby was, roughly speaking, to care for his dignity. Columnists, games professionals, politicians, movie stars and the principal prophets from California and the Far East passed through Carnaby Postlethwaite’s orbit; it was sound policy for any would-be lion of society to let himself be seen in God’s Little Home by the Park. Overwhelmed by this atmosphere of snobbery and advertising, the minister found it more and more difficult to breathe the calmer air of plain commercial Christianity. Miss van Tool should have been able to check his tendency to bad taste, for she was a silver-haired spinster of firm and dainty character who had studied, as devotedly as any anthropologist, the taboos, marriage customs and social ceremonies of New York; but unfortunately she had a hopeless passion for her employer which clouded her judgment. On the days when romance seemed unattainable she took refuge in gentle resignation and everything Dr Carnaby Postlethwaite did was right. On the days when she awoke in her imagination already Mrs Carnaby Postlethwaite and his chosen councillor, everything he did was wrong.
The rector gave his new secretary an unofficial right of veto over his interviews and public appearances. Toby found considerable enjoyment in moulding him to the standard of a liberal-minded English bishop; the Episcopal attitude to most questions of the day he gathered from the ecclesiastical news and the more sensational English Sunday press. Much to the annoyance of newspapermen, the rector refused to denounce women’s shorts, declared that prohibition was the business of the state, not of the church, and forbade actress brides to kiss him. Finding that Toby had no axe to grind and that if he had any ambitions they were not the sort that would be furthered by blackmail, Carnaby Postlethwaite got into the habit of spending an occasional evening with him. He was a sociable man who liked to relax after the day’s work. Toby and Toby’s flat enabled him to keep a stock of gin where nobody would be any the wiser if he drank it.
On one such evening in the early spring Carnaby Postlethwaite lounged in an armchair, beaming at his secretary who was delivering an incoherent lecture on the Albigensian heresy.
“State of nature,” declared Toby, leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece and gesticulating with the other. “State of nature—that’s what they went about in. All over France on all fours and stark naked. Tha’s what happens to people who take religion seriously. Tha’s what’ll happen in America. ’Piscopal Church preventative. Holy Inquisition better. Le’s join Rome.”
“Tobe,” said Carnaby Postlethwaite. “Tobe, you’re intoxicated. I blame myself.”
“Mind’s quite clear,” said Toby indignantly. “Goodwill to all men.”
Carnaby Postlethwaite considered the moment ripe to reopen a controversy of some weeks’ standing.
“Tobe, I’m going on the movies.”
“You’re not going on the movies.”
“A good Christian film, Tobe,” Carnaby Postlethwaite begged. “The Pilgrim Fathers. And they only want me to play Archbishop Laud.”
“No!” said Toby.
“Just one scene. Me and King Charles the First.”
“No!”
“Why not? It’s good publicity for St Anthony’s.”
“There’ll be blondes, Carnaby Pos-Postlethwaite.”
“There won’t be blondes, Tobe. It’s history.”
“There will be blondes. And you’ll be photographed with them in the tabloids.”
“I swear I won’t, Tobe. And I could play that part. I can act. You don’t believe I can act. That’s what it is.”
“You can act all right.”
“They’d give me some good lines—fine, uplifting lines. All America would listen to me.”
“Do you want to be a bishop?”
“Of course I want to be a bishop.”
“Do you want to be a bishop more than you want to go on the movies?”
“You’re hard on me, Tobe,” said the rector pitifully. “I’m only a little boy at heart.”
“See here, Pos-Postle—”
“Call me Pomp.”
“Why?”
“Short for Pompey.”
“What’s Pompey?”
“My given name—Pompey.”
Toby put down his glass and stared.
“You’re telling me your Christian name is Pompey?”
“My mother gave it me,” said the rector with impressive simplicity. “Listen, Tobe! I’ll tell you something. You’re a damn fool, but it isn’t your fault you weren’t born in this country and you’ve always played straight with me. You don’t talk and I’ll tell you something. Give me another highball.”
Toby poured three fingers of gin into both glasses and went out to the kitchen for another tray of ice. He returned to find Carnaby Postlethwaite in tears.
“My little mother,” he sobbed. “My little mother!”
“It’s a hard life, Pomp,” said Toby, now recovering from the maudlin stage of bootleg liquor which was just hitting his employer. “Drink your medicine and tell uncle all about it.”
“You’re like her, Tobe,” sobbed the rector. “You’re hard on me but you know what’s best. You know I’m just a little boy.”
He gulped his gin, and blew his nose.
“She was English too, a good, God-fearing woman. That’s why I took to you at first sight, Tobe. She always wanted me to amount to something, see? And she married a no-account wop, Aloisi Carnero who kept a dry-goods store. An atheist, Tobe. You wouldn’t reckon I had an atheist for a father, would you? She was set I should study for the ministry. I’ve always wanted to amount to something, see? And when I graduated from high school I changed my name from Pompey Carnero to Carnaby Postlethwaite. And a fine name for the episcopal church, Tobe!”
It was this confession that persuaded Toby to remain in the rector’s service for over two years. He had found his employer offensive while he thought of him as an established churchman with an undignified craving for notoriety. Now that he saw him as a man who had fought his way up, without any advantages, to a position of power and prestige, he understood and liked him. The rector was engaged in the winning of money like any other businessman, and his religious activities were less vicious than, for example, selling real estate to people who could not pay for it or inventing diseases to frighten the public into buying toothpastes and patent foods. Admittedly Carnaby Postlethwaite was a hypocrite. Admittedly there was no saintliness in his mind or person. But he was a sound and conventional official of a would-be state religion. Had he drunk port instead of gin, the rector of God’s Little Home would have been instantly appreciated by a place-holding, hunting parson of the eighteenth century.
Toby’s personal life was loose and thoroughly enjoyable. The hedonist civilisation of New York in the speak-easy era suited him, and he acquired its chief virtue: tolerance. With his colleagues he was on excellent terms. He took tea with Miss van Tool and mourned with her over the decay of society. He helped the Rev. Burton Snapp with his dockers’ mission and distributed free soup, making his own contribution to charity by secretly emptying a bottle of brandy into the cauldron on cold nights. Nobody expected him to be unduly pious. The city was accustomed to capable secretaries who were indispensable to their employers but no more affected by their interests than the office files. Carnaby Postlethwaite never demanded his attendance at church. He chose from the first to regard his secretary as something of an ecclesiastical scholar whose spiritual salvation was his own business.
By the summer of 1932 Toby had two thousand dollars in the bank, for the rector had been generous with bonuses and stock-market tips. It seemed to be enough capital for an attempt to remake his life. When he said that he was going, Carnaby Postlethwaite argued for days against such obstinate foolishne
ss. That his beloved Tobe had ambitions he could understand—very well, he would help him to attain them. But it was ridiculous for him to say that his ambitions could never be realised in the cleanest and most progressive country on God’s earth. What were they, anyway? Toby had no intelligible answer.
Eager to see more of a continent that he might never revisit, Toby travelled slowly westwards to Los Angeles and then sailed to Panama, intending to return from there to England by the most interesting route that offered. He put up at a hotel in the plaza and spent the afternoon exploring North-American Balboa and Latin-American Panama. At dusk he sat in front of the hotel, listening to a distant band and watching the gentle strolling of men and girls under the palms. The soft night air carried the low, continuous murmur of human voices. The heavy colonnades paced restfully around the plaza. He sipped a Planter’s Punch and held out his shoes to an importunate boot-black, rejoicing that Spanish, long unused, should fall so easily from his tongue. He was home again already. This was Europe.
That thought brought him up all standing. To outward appearances the United States were very much more Europe than a small tropical republic with hardly any white inhabitants. But the exaggerated contrast between the Canal Zone which he had seen that morning and the Panama in which he relaxed at the moment suggested that there was an aspect of truth behind his instinctive feeling. Two civilisations faced one another a mile apart. Balboa was a city of sweeping avenues lined by well-kept public lawns, upon which each model house stood amidst the communal flowers. Schools, clean as architectural drawings, offered to stock the mind with facts in the pleasantest possible surroundings. In the admirable club healthy youth sipped its ice-cream soda and kept up a continuous high-pitched babble of excitement. It was a town built for the utmost convenience of the majority, where each inhabitant obviously strove to pattern himself on his neighbours. The ideal was valid, disciplined, impressive; but entirely different from the ideal expressed in the infinite privacies of the unregimented Spanish city.
He had been aware of inconsistency when he told Carnaby Postlethwaite that the United States could not satisfy his ambitions. He could say the same of any one country, even his own. But now he had his first vague vision of what he really wished to serve. It was Europe—a Europe that apparently included Latin America as well. It was the still living wreck of the Roman Empire, the shifting and intensely active particles that would eventually coalesce into other United States. He watched the Panameños, children of negroes and Caribs but also of the Church and Castille, turn slowly about their little forum, and felt a sense of unity with them. Their way of living was his.
The Third Hour Page 21