Paradise News

by David Lodge

  “But if you purge Christianity of the promise of eternal life (and, let us be honest, the threat of eternal punishment) which traditionally underpinned it, are you left with anything that is distinguishable from secular humanism? One answer is to turn that question around and ask what secular humanism has got that isn’t derived from Christianity.

  “There is a passage in Matthew, Chapter 25, which seems particularly relevant here. Matthew is the most explicitly apocalyptic of the synoptic gospels, and this section of it is sometimes referred to by scholars as the Sermon on the End. It concludes with the well-known description of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment:

  When the Son of Man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on the throne of glory. All the nations will be assembled before him and he will separate men one from another as the shepherd separates sheep from goats. He will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.

  Pure myth. But on what grounds does Christ the King separate the sheep from the goats? Not, as you might expect, fervency of religious faith, or orthodoxy of religious doctrine, or regularity of worship, or observance of the Commandments, or indeed anything ‘religious’ at all.

  Then the King will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.’ Then the virtuous will say to him in reply, ‘Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you; or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome; naked and clothe you; sick or in prison and go to see you?’ And the King will answer, ‘I tell you solemnly, insofar as you did this to the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.’

  The virtuous seem quite surprised to be saved, or to be saved for this reason, doing good in an unselfish but pragmatic and essentially this-worldly sort of way. It’s as if Jesus left this essentially humanist message knowing that one day all the supernatural mythology in which it was wrapped would have to be discarded.”

  Bernard caught the eye of one of the nuns, and essayed an impromptu joke: “It’s almost as if someone tipped him off.” The nun reddened, and dropped her eyes.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” he said. “I’d like you to look at that chapter of Matthew for next week, and at the commentaries listed on the handout, beginning with Augustine. Mr Barrington,” he said, picking on a reliable-looking RE teacher on part-time in-service training. “Do you think you could introduce the discussion with a short paper?”

  Barrington grinned nervously and nodded. He came up to Bernard to ask for some advice about further reading, as the other students drifted out of the room. When he had gone, Bernard picked up his papers and made for the Senior Common Room, feeling he’d earned a coffee break. On the way, he called in at the College Office to check his mailbox. Giles Franklin, specialist in Mission Studies, and one of the most senior members of the academic staff, was standing in front of the pigeonholes, thrusting into them stencilled sheets of yellow paper. He greeted Bernard cheerfully – Bernard had never known him to be uncheerful. He was a big, boisterous man designed to be a monk in some earlier age, with cheeks like two rosy, wrinkled apples and a head of naturally tonsured white hair. “Here,” he said, thrusting a sheet into Bernard’s hand. “The programme for this term’s staff seminars. I’ve put you down for the 15th of November. By the way …” He dropped his voice. “I’m delighted to hear that your appointment is going to be made full-time.”

  “Thankyou. So am I,” said Bernard. He took a sheaf of envelopes and papers from his pigeonhole – there was always a lot of internal mail at the beginning of the academic year – and leafed through it. “For one thing it means I’ll be able to get a proper –” He came to a large yellow envelope with an airmail sticker on it, and froze.

  “What’s up?” Franklin said jocularly. “You look as if you’re afraid to open it. Some journal rejected an article?”

  “No, no. It’s personal,” said Bernard.

  Instead of going to the SCR, he took the letter outside into the College grounds. It was a glorious October day. The sun was warm on his shoulders, but there was a touch of autumnal crispness in the air, which had a limpidity unusual for Rummidge. High pressure and a breeze blowing straight from the Malverns had dispersed the customary haze. Shapes and colours were almost unnaturally vivid and sharply defined, like the Pre-Raphaelite landscapes in the municipal Art Gallery. Small, woolly white clouds drifted like grazing sheep across a brilliantly blue sky. On the far side of the lawn, where a coarse form of croquet was played in summer, a copper beech blazed, like a tree on fire yet unconsumed. There was a wooden seat under it, dedicated to some previous College Principal, that was Bernard’s favourite spot for reading poetry. He sat down and weighed the bulky envelope in his hands, scrutinizing Yolande’s slanting handwriting as if it might give him some clue to the contents of the letter. Franklin had not been far wide of the mark: he was nervous of opening it. Why had she written to him? She had never written before – it was the first time he had ever seen her handwriting, and he only knew the letter was from her because she had put her name and address in the top left-hand corner of the envelope. She phoned him once a week, early on Sunday morning, British time, when he hung around beside the student payphone in the deserted lobby at the appointed hour, and had only deviated from this arrangement once, ten days previously, when she called him in the middle of the night to say that Ursula had died peacefully in her sleep. She had phoned the following Sunday to report on the funeral, and he was expecting another call this weekend. When she phoned, they spoke only about Ursula or each other’s trivial news. The question of their relationship was still, by tacit agreement, “on hold.” So why had she written? There was, he seemed to remember, something called a “Dear John” letter. He put his nail under the flap and ripped open the envelope.

  Dearest Bernard,

  I’m writing to tell you about Ursula’s last days, and her funeral, even though I’ve just put the phone down after talking to you, because it’s an unsatisfactory instrument for talking about anything that matters, especially with the echo you sometimes get on the satellite link. And I don’t feel relaxed, knowing that you are standing in a public booth in the middle of a student dormitory – now that they’ve given you a proper job, I hope you’ll get a phone of your own!

  Ursula, she was a sweetie. I really got to like her in the few weeks we had to get acquainted. We talked a lot about you. She was so grateful that you made the effort to come out here, bringing your father with you – well, you know that already, but it bears repeating, because she made me promise not to bring you out here again when it was obvious that she was sinking fast. She knew you would be just starting your teaching, and even if you could have gotten away, she said it wasn’t worth dragging you back all that way – “by the time he gets here, I won’t be worth talking to.” I’m afraid it was a shock for you when I called to say she had died, but that was the way she wanted it. In her last week she was feeling very poorly, unable to swallow the painkilling pills, so they had to give her injections. She couldn’t talk much, but she liked me to go and sit by her and hold her hand. Once she whispered, “Why don’t they just let me go?” and that night she died peacefully in her sleep. Enid da Silva called me early the next morning.

  We spent quite a lot of time in the preceding weeks discussing the arrangements for her funeral. There wasn’t anything morbid or depressing about it, just a concern to get everything in proper shape before she died. At first, she wanted to have her ashes scattered from a place on the coast road near Diamond Head where she stopped with you one time. But there turned out to be a public health regulation against it, and in any case the prevailing wind at this time of year is from the sea, which would have made it a tricky
operation. As she said herself (she had a great sense of humour, didn’t she?) “I wouldn’t want to get in my friends’ hair and all over their best clothes.” So she settled for having her ashes scattered on the sea off Waikiki.

  Father McPhee held a short funeral service in the crematorium. Sophie Knoepflmacher was there, and some other friends of Ursula’s, ten or so, mostly old ladies. Sophie used to visit her at Makai Manor on the days when I couldn’t make it, and Ursula appreciated it, though she liked to pretend Sophie was just a busybody. Father McPhee said some nice things about Ursula, and what a comfort it had been to her that members of her family were with her in her last illness. After the service, he said he was going to take the ashes down to Fort DeRussy Beach to scatter them, and any of us that liked could come. Sophie and I drove down with him. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he had chosen the time to coincide with a Hawaiian Folk Mass that the Army Chaplains Department have (have? hold? put on? – I don’t know the right verb) down on Fort DeRussy beach every Saturday evening in the summer months. There are Army Headquarters right by the beach. Ursula had told Father McPhee that she used to go to the Mass sometimes, and he knew the chaplain who was doing it.

  Needless to say, I didn’t know about this Mass before I met Ursula. As you know, I’m no churchgoer. The first thing I did on reaching the age of independence was to opt out of Sunday worship at the Presbyterian church my folks used to patronize, and I’ve never been back inside a church since then except for weddings and funerals and christenings. In fact I think the only time I’ve attended a Catholic Mass was for the wedding of a college friend of mine. It was in an Italian church in Providence, Rhode Island, stuffed with hideous statuary. The whole thing seemed to me like a TV spectacular, with the altar-boys in their red robes, and the priest in his brocade get-up, parading in and out, and the candles and bells, and the choir belting out Ave Maria. But this was quite different, just a simple table set up on the beach, and the congregation sitting or standing around in a loose circle on the sand. People who obviously weren’t Catholic, tourists and service people, who just happened to be on the beach, on their way home, stopped to stare, and some of them joined the congregation out of curiosity. There were young local people handing out little booklets with the service printed in it. I’m enclosing a copy in case you’re interested. As you see, most of the service was in English, but the sung parts were in Hawaiian, accompanied by some kids on guitars, and during the hymns some local girls in traditional grass skirts danced a hula. Well I knew of course that the hula was originally a religious dance, but it’s been so debased by tourism and Hollywood that it’s hard to see that way any longer. Even the authentic demonstrations they put on at the Bishop Museum are essentially theatrical, while the hula you see in Waikiki is halfway between belly-dancing and burlesque. So it was quite a shock to see hula dancing at a Mass. But it worked. I think it worked because the girls weren’t particularly good at it, and not particularly good-looking. I mean, they were OK, on both counts, but they were nothing special. It was a little like an end-of-semester concert in high school, disarmingly amateurish. And of course they didn’t have that fixed, gooey smile that you associate with pro hula girls. They looked serious and reverent. Sophie observed it all with keen interest, and said to me afterwards that it was very charming, but she couldn’t see it catching on at Temple.

  It was a lovely evening. The heat of the day had gone, a balmy breeze blew off the sea, the shadow of the priest’s movements as he lifted the wafer and the cup lengthened on the sand as the sun sank lower in the sky. He said a prayer “for the repose of Ursula’s soul,” and that struck me as an interesting word, “repose,” – almost a pagan idea, as if the soul of the dead person wouldn’t be able to rest peacefully unless the proper rites were carried out. Then I thought of that famous quote (is it Shakespeare? You would know) “Our little life is rounded by asleep.”

  When the mass was over, and the people were dispersing, Father McPhee and Sophie and I got into a little Army boat, a rubber dinghy with a small outboard motor on the back, and we putt-putted out to sea for maybe a quarter of a mile. Fortunately it was a calm evening, and in any case there isn’t a lot of surf at DeRussy, so it was not too bumpy a ride, though Sophie looked alarmed once or twice when we hit a biggish wave, and held on to her hair as if afraid it would blow away. When we were through the breakers, the soldier who was steering the boat switched off the engine and we drifted for a while. Father McPhee opened the casket with Ursula’s ashes in it and trailed it in the wake of the boat, letting the sea take the ashes. They stained the water for a moment, then disappeared. He said a short prayer, I can’t remember the words exactly, about committing her remains to the deep, and then suggested that we had a couple of minutes silence.

  It’s funny, this dying business, when you’re close to it. I always thought of myself as an atheist, a materialist, that this life is all we have and we had better make the most of it; but that evening it seemed hard to believe that Ursula was totally extinct, gone for ever. I suppose everybody has these moments of doubt – or should I say, faith? Apropos of which, I came across an interesting quotation the other day – in the Reader’s Digest, of all places. I was reading it in the dentist’s and got the receptionist to photocopy it for me. I’m enclosing it. Perhaps you know it already. I never heard of the author, he’s Spanish, I guess.

  Sophie and Father McPhee had their eyes closed during the silence, but I was looking back at the shore, and I must say Oahu was doing its stuff that evening. Even Waikiki was a thing of beauty. The tall buildings were catching the light of the setting sun as if floodlit, thrown into relief against the hills in the background, which were dark with raincloud. There was a rainbow over one of the hills, behind the tower block in the Hilton Hawaiian Village with the rainbow mural – you must have seen it as you drive into Waikiki along the Ala Moana Boulevard, they say it’s the biggest ceramic mural in the world. I suppose that just about sums up Hawaii: the real rainbow cosying up to the artificial one. Nevertheless it did look rather wonderful. Then Father McPhee nodded to the soldier, he started the engine again, and we putt-putted back to the shore. I felt we had secured repose for Ursula’s soul.

  I think I told you the basic facts about her will, but I ought to come clean and tell you that she asked my advice about it before she consulted Bellucci, and I didn’t hesitate to give it. Bellucci, by the way, turned out to be quite smart – the fake Harvard & Yale Club decor of his office is misleading. He was the one who figured out that the best way to help Patrick was to set up a charitable trust in England. That way the UK Government will never be able to claw back any of the money, and if anything should happen to Patrick (I don’t know what his life expectancy is) the money would continue to go to kids in need like him. So $150,000 went to set up the Trust (of which you’re one of the trustees, of course) and another advantage is that no US inheritance tax is payable on that. The balance of the estate after deduction of tax is going to be about $139,000. $35,000 goes to your father, with the recommendation that he should spend it for his own greater comfort, not save it. It should help him to entertain Sophie Knoepflmacher – I suppose you know she’s threatening to visit him next summer? In fact she claims he invited her – I don’t suppose he dreamed she’d take him up on it. Ursula, by the way, left Sophie her collection of ornaments, and a gold necklace to me, which I accepted for friendship’s sake. She has also left a small legacy to Tess, more than enough to cover her fare to Hawaii, and the rest of her jewellery.

  That leaves about $100,000 for you, Bernard. I hope you won’t have any scruples about accepting it. Ursula and I spent a lot of time discussing the problem, trying to settle on a sum that would be big enough to be useful and not so big that you’d feel obliged to give it away. From what you told me about property prices in Rummidge, you should be able to afford to buy yourself an apartment with it, or maybe a little house. Speaking as a potential houseguest, I would ask only that it should have central heating and a showe
r (Ursula told me some disturbing stories about British domestic arrangements, but maybe she was out of date).

  From which you will infer that I’m coming to visit you at Christmas, that is, if you still want me to. You’ve been very patient, dearest Bernard, both during our last week together on Oahu (actually I enjoyed that week very much, the old-fashioned gallantry, the chaste companionship of it, the picnics and the body-surfing and the long leisurely drives around the island) – both then, and when I called you in the following weeks, never pressuring me about Lewis, though I could always hear the unstated question in your voice when we said goodbye.

  As you reported, Ellie had gotten tired of him this summer, or maybe she had met someone nearer her own age. Anyway, she walked out on him about three weeks ago, and he wrote me a letter saying he’d been a fool, and couldn’t we get together again. He asked me out to dinner, and I agreed (strangely enough he chose that Thai restaurant where I met with you and Tess). He said he didn’t want to talk about Ellie or our possible reconciliation that evening, but just to break the ice, get back on terms again, just chat about the kids and so on. Lewis can be very charming, when he puts himself out, and we had a very civilized evening, helped along by a bottle of wine. We talked about safe subjects like the controversy going on over in Maui about planning permission for a new resort development on an ancient Hawaiian burial site. I said vehemently that I didn’t think the repose of Hawaiian souls should be disturbed by tourists driving golf carts over their graves. Lewis looked rather startled at that, though he is on the same side, for good, liberal reasons. He had picked me up in his car so he brought me home afterwards and asked himself in for a nightcap. It was still quite early and Roxy wasn’t home – I think he’d fixed that with her, because he soon tried to get me to go to bed with him. I refused. He asked me if there was anybody else, and I said, not in Hawaii, and he said, is it this British guy Roxy told me about? and I said, yes, I’m going to spend Christmas with him. I didn’t know until that moment that that was what I’d decided, and I’ve let a couple of weeks go by before telling you, just so I’m sure. But I am. Lewis is all right, but he’s not an honest man. Now that I’ve met one, I can’t be content with anything less.