by Alan Judd
Robert had written the essay three nights previously in the early hours following a day of rehearsals. It was, he suspected, a torrid, thoughtless outpouring in which he had striven to convince by intensity rather than by argument. He could barely recall what he had written and it struck him now that in one sense the essay resembled his bicycle: he remembered only that there was one. ‘I hope that’s an oversimplification of what I wrote.’
‘Simplified in order to provoke. It would be much more useful to discuss how you should prepare for your doctrine paper; but since nothing I can say now will make you work when you seem more interested in other things, that’s by the by. The reality or not of evil is irrelevant for Schools, of course, but as you raised it I thought perhaps you might concede it has some importance.’
‘I’m not quite the sceptic you make me out.’
‘It’s not me that makes you out to be one.’
The sun glinted and flashed on the Cherwell. From the park on one side came the smell of mown grass and from the fields on the other the incessant chirping of crickets and the occasional swish of cow’s tails amidst swarms of flies. Robert, stripped to the waist, crouched to avoid an overhanging willow. One of the few who had done no sunbathing that term, his skin was dazzlingly white. He enjoyed feeling the sweat run freely from under his arms as at the end of each push he trailed the pole as a rudder.
‘You’ll get sunburnt,’ the Chaplain said quietly. ‘You really will. It’s very hot.’
‘I think I enjoy being careless.’
‘Is that why you’re not working?’ Robert performed an elaborate manoeuvre with the pole, on which he pretended to concentrate wholly but the Chaplain continued quickly. ‘It’s not that, is it? Nor is it that you’re just not bothered, like your friend Tim, nor because of your play nor anything else like that. I think it’s something deeper. I think you’ve stopped working because you’ve stopped believing.’
Robert let the pole slip through his hands back into the water.
‘Is there anything you actually want to talk about?’ asked the Chaplain.
Robert leaned on the pole. He didn’t want to have to talk at all. ‘What is sin?’
The Chaplain lifted his dripping fingers from the water, looked at them and put them back again. ‘Wilful absence from God. A turning away, an assertion of self, a denial of dependence, hence ultimately a denial of our real selves and of Him.’
‘If there were no one to turn away, then sin could not exist?’
‘Unless as an hypothesis in the mind of God, if you want to speak of it that way.’
‘Is evil negation, then?’
‘Yes, but not in the sense you want it to be. Not a dramatic, denying gesture, exciting and attractive. Evil is not interesting. It’s pervasive, undramatic, shabby, real. A condition of life, unnoticed, unremarked. Its most common manifestation is indifference. That is the deepest and most lasting cruelty.’ He lifted his fingers again, this time with a wide sweep that sent a line of drops across Robert’s body. ‘What have you done with that form?’
‘I’ve got it, it’s on my desk.’ The application form for theological college should have been in by the start of the year.
‘Fortunately, they’ve got spare places. They usually have these days. But they won’t hold them open much longer. They’re closing very soon.’
Two other punts at the bend were filled with boisterous parties who had wine and straw hats and were trying to ram each other. Robert steered around them, then drifted down the reach beyond Parsons Pleasure.
‘Supposing someone believes in God, in the reality of sin and evil, the whole thing, but is indifferent to it, shrugs his shoulders. What difference would that make to anything?’
The Chaplain smiled. ‘I’d say he was making a pose of indifference.’ He looked again at the river bank. ‘But the difference is the difference it makes to you. The more you deny, the less you are. In diminishing yourself you diminish everything. The urge to diminish comes from pride and fear. You fear belief because of the challenge it brings with it and you are too proud to humble yourself. For you there are no other reasons. Evidence for or against the existence of God is irrelevant to you, though useful as an excuse. Then when very occasionally a sense of evil, of your own sin and denial, forces itself through the crusted rock of your daily life, you dramatize it and pretend it’s something it isn’t. You make it a crisis, something dramatic and extraordinary. In fact, it’s commonplace and real, but you don’t take the real seriously, perhaps because it is so commonplace. You cease to care, you don’t take your own life seriously, and that’s when the noonday devil comes for you. He takes you seriously.’
Robert leaned on the pole and the punt surged through the water. The Chaplain was smiling again but looking carefully at Robert. ‘How’s Anne Barry?’ he asked.
‘Very well, I think.’
‘Is she happily married?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I hope she is.’
Parsons Pleasure was an area of grass fenced off on all but the river side by green corrugated iron. It was a place for male dons and undergraduates to bathe naked and was the subject of many tales and jokes, mainly concerning bathers’ reactions to punt-loads of women. These were supposed to go round the far side of an intervening island but rarely did.
This time there were a dozen or so bathers, all lying on the grass except one: a tall, pot-bellied don who stood on the bank facing the river. He wore black shoes and black socks held up by black suspenders just below his knees. He carried a black briefcase and stared belligerently at the punt, turning to face it as it passed. His skin was as white as Robert’s. His belly bulged obscenely over an obscenely long penis.
The Chaplain gazed indolently back at him. ‘Do you think he’s trying to tell us something?’
‘I don’t think he likes us. Unless it’s that he’s pleased with himself.’
‘Perhaps he thinks he can help if we lose the pole.’
They negotiated the weir, sliding the punt down on rollers at one side, and continued downstream towards Magdalen Bridge. ‘Aren’t we committing what you’re condemning me for?’ asked Robert. ‘Discussing the nature of sin and the reality of evil whilst punting in Oxford on a hot afternoon. It’s a way of making the subject attractive. And potentially dramatic.’
‘It’s an acceptable way to be serious.’
‘And what conclusions have we reached?’
‘Your sin is denial but you relish it and will do nothing about it.’
‘Do you have a sin you relish?’
The Chaplain shielded his eyes against the glare with one slim brown arm. ‘Yes, but I pray not to.’
Robert felt he had won a small victory. ‘What do you mean by prayer?’
‘The attempt to open yourself to God and consciously to experience your relationship with Him, which is ultimately your life.’ The Chaplain spoke carelessly and again dangled his hand in the water. ‘Look, shall we turn round? This is useless as far as Schools are concerned. It’s nearly tea-time and I’d like to punt.’
Back in his room thoughts of Anne Barry, Schools and The Changeling gathered around Robert like old familiars. There was never any progression in his thoughts about Anne, just the repetition characteristic of obsession. Thinking of Schools was as futile as thinking of death: they were inevitable and universal and would be realized only in the personal, when it was too late. The play at least he could do something about, though, and he had begun making notes for the next rehearsal when Hansford knocked and opened the door unbidden. His big red face was redder than usual and he was out of breath. ‘Do you know where Orpwood is?’
‘No.’
Hansford shut the door and leaned against it. ‘His room sounded empty when I came past but I heard Jan Simpson and some others had been around here plotting something.’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen him.’ Robert had no time for plots, real or imaginary.
Hansford did not notice Robert’s irrit
ation. ‘It might have concerned me, you see. You know they wanted to occupy the Sheldonian but couldn’t because the police stopped them? It’s all to do with this Iraqi geezer coming to speak at the Union. Now they’re looking for scapegoats and saying it was me that tipped off the police.’
‘Was it?’
‘No, I didn’t know anything about it. Otherwise it would have been, I don’t mind admitting. The other reason they might be gunning for me is that we’re going to hold a protest meeting when this Iraqi bloke comes.’
Hansford looked absurdly serious. Robert put down his notes wearily. ‘Do you want some tea?’
‘Love some, thanks.’ Hansford sat heavily in the only armchair and wiped his face with a blue-and-white spotted handkerchief.
‘No milk, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s all right, I can do without. Wouldn’t put it past them to come to my room and duff me up.’
‘Perhaps you should plan an escape route.’
‘I’ve recce’d the window. It’s sheer, no way down, not even a drainpipe.’
The difficulty in dealing with Hansford was that his absurdity and his good nature were in equal contention. Robert searched for the teabag he remembered having. ‘Why not go up?’
‘Eh?’
‘You’re on the floor below. There are ledges above all the windows. If you pull yourself up onto the one above yours you could climb into the passage outside Tim’s room and hide in there.’ Robert liked the sound of his own advice. It was decisive and easy, and anyway for someone else. ‘If you couldn’t get into his room or if you didn’t want to go there you could go farther along the ledge and step over the next one around the corner and get in through my window. It’s always open.’
Hansford looked impressed. ‘Gosh, Robert, that could be the answer. How wide is this ledge?’
‘Wide enough. Have a look. I climbed on to it when a shirt I was drying fell off the windowsill.’
Hansford got up from the armchair and looked. His wide body almost filled the window. ‘Sure you don’t mind?’
‘Positive.’
‘Robert, you’re a real brick. You may have saved my life. You never know with this crowd.’
Hansford relaxed over tea. He told Robert the latest news of the Middle Eastern crisis and detailed the complement and armament of the American carrier force sent to counter the Soviet presence. He thought it an outrage that the apologist from the Iraqi embassy was permitted to roam the country disgorging propaganda. When he finally stood to go he said, ‘Must get back to the grindstone. Haven’t done my daily quota yet. Hope Orpwood’s not in his room. Better be prepared if I’m going to meet him on the stairs.’
It was hard to imagine a confrontation between Hansford and the diminutive Orpwood. ‘I don’t think he’s in. He’s normally got music on if he is.’
‘Good. Thanks for the tea and the tip. Hope I can do the same for you sometime.’ His face shone with goodwill. ‘How are all the angels and devils and whatever?’
‘The what?’
‘All the theological stuff. That’s what you read, isn’t it?’
‘Ah, yes, well, still all there.’
‘All mumbo-jumbo to me, I’m afraid. I mean, I go to church and all that but I can’t pretend to understand. All a bit over my head. I need clever blokes like you to explain it to me.’
‘I doubt that you do. Doesn’t help to study it.’
‘Too much of the pale cast of thought, I suppose?’
‘Yes. But it’s hard not to think.’
Robert saw him to the door and watched him go unmolested down the stairs.
Undergraduates were invited to drink sherry in the President’s lodgings at least once a year. The idea was that the President should get to know them but he had in any case a formidable memory and rarely forgot anything he heard.
The usual difficulty of being natural over sherry meant that nearly everyone found the parties awkward. The dons were often reluctant and embarrassed, the undergraduates mainly gauche and tongue-tied. Those who were not fell easy prey to the President’s anxious wife who hopped like a sparrow from group to group, confusing names, interrupting, repeating herself. Robert arrived late, following his run, in the hope that this would mean there was less time for discussing work.
The President was a brisk and tubby man with an iron-grey moustache. He was a well-known historian who in early middle age had taken holy orders and then resumed his academic career. He talked with disconcerting precision and fluency. When Robert arrived the President and Hansford were heavily engaged discussing the international situation. He tried to move discreetly towards where the President’s wife was talking about her garden to two botanists, but the President spotted him.
‘Robert, how nice to see you. I was thinking only the other day that it was some time since I’d seen anything of you but then I concluded you must be locked in your room or in the library preparing for Schools. Was I right? Your first paper must be quite soon.’
Robert still occasionally began encounters with authority by reverting almost to childhood, starting with a self-effacing grin and a non-committal remark which, when explanations were demanded, grew immediately into a monster of banality or self-contradiction.
‘Well, off and on, yes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’ve been in my room or in the library some of the time but not all of it.’
The President finished his sherry. ‘When is your first paper?’
‘On the Thursday. Yes, Thursday.’
‘That’s the Old Testament, isn’t it?’
‘No, I believe it’s doctrine.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s the OT. In fact, I’m sure you will. But you’d better check very soon rather than take my word for it.’
Robert nodded. ‘No, you’re right. I remember now. The OT.’
Hansford interrupted with further views on the international situation. It had been reported in the press that morning that Libya and Iraq might have developed a nuclear weapon and were preparing to use it.
‘That’s another point all these CND types don’t realize,’ he said emphatically. ‘Inevitably, the day will come when all the Gadhaffis and Amins and ayatollahs and madmen are going to have nuclear weapons. They’ll get them eventually whatever we do about disarmament because the technology’s all there now. Everyone knows it – you can’t abolish knowledge. And when they have them they’ll have no moral inhibitions about using them. They think it’s a religious duty to carry out Allah’s holy war, or whatever. The only thing that will stop them is the certainty of instant and overwhelming retaliation. Don’t you think?’
They helped themselves to more sherry. Dr Barry joined them, flashing a quick conspiratorial smile at Robert. The President spoke about moderating influences within Islam. Robert looked at Dr Barry’s small bird-like face and tried to imagine Anne making love with him.
‘What do you think, Robert?’ asked the President crisply.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Leaving aside for one moment the immediate political and military consequences – including the possibility of nuclear annihilation, which seems a lot to leave on one side, I confess, but one has to make certain assumptions about survival if one is to discuss at all – leaving all that aside, what, I wonder, should be the Christian approach to the problem of war? What should the good Christian do?’
The Chaplain joined them, looking bored. He glanced about as if not listening. ‘Pray that the big bang will bring him closer to heaven.’
Dr Barry laughed and the President guffawed humourlessly. He and the Chaplain were said not to be in sympathy.
‘I think it’s a jolly difficult question,’ said Hansford.
‘But need it be a problem?’ asked Dr Barry. ‘There’s surely enough in Christian teaching about justifiable war for the Christian to be able to select the bits that support his case. The wise Christian, that is.’
The President shook his head. ‘But let us assume a
Christian who is not wise in the self-serving sense that David no doubt has in mind. What should he do? Robert?’
‘Pray for peace, I suppose.’
‘At least that, I’d have thought. Is that all?’
‘I don’t know that there’s much else he could do.’
‘Prayer may involve other things,’ the Chaplain said, off-handedly.
The President snorted. ‘But what should they be? Should the Christian be a pacifist? There is a respectable case to be made for Christian pacifism. Or should he fight for what he believes is right? After all, is life the absolute value? Or, to put it another way, is death the greatest disaster that can befall the Christian – or anyone else? If not, would the Christian be justified in killing?’
‘You have to fight for what you believe in,’ said Hansford. ‘No doubt about that.’
‘Does that apply equally to the other side?’
‘Oh yes,’ Hansford nodded confidently. ‘They may be as certain that they’re right as we are that we’re right. The difference is, we are.’ There was a surprised silence until Hansford said something to the President about the cricket.
Dr Barry turned to Robert. ‘You should come and see Anne more often. She misses her old friends. Since she’s married a don they tend to keep away.’
‘I don’t want to be in the way.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’ There was again a hint of complicity in Dr Barry’s smile. ‘Come any time.’
The Chaplain raised his delicate eyebrows. ‘You could discuss marriage and the Christian. That might even count as revision. Excuse me.’ He moved off to talk to a fresh-faced newcomer.