by David Nobbs
Mr Quell had to turn right to enter his drive. He was cautious, and waited a long while for a gap in the oncoming traffic. A queue built up behind him, and a driver hooted.
There was a monkey puzzle tree in Mr Quell’s front garden.
They had tea in the front room, served by Mr Quell. There was a coal fire, with shelves in alcoves at either side of it. The tea was laid out on a trolley. Mr Quell divided up a nest of tables and placed a table beside each of their chairs.
Mrs Quell was small, almost doll-like, and very beautiful. She had small, regular features and dark hair. No lines of stress marred the oval perfection of her face.
Mr Quell served tea. His burly, barrel-chested frame and mass of greying hair seemed at odds with Dresden China ladies on shelves, and a Dresden China wife sitting very upright in the brown Parker Knoll chair. There were neat, thin, quartered slices of bread and butter and two bought cakes – a Battenburg cake and a chocolate cake. The Battenburg cake was stale and the chocolate cake had the consistency of damp sawdust. They drank cheap, unsubtle Indian tea out of tiny cups. Mr Quell could hardly get his gnarled finger inside the fragile handle of his cup.
Mrs Quell asked what colour Henry’s eyes were.
‘Brown,’ he said, embarrassed.
‘Brown!’ said Mrs Quell, as if no other answer would have pleased her.
They asked gently searching questions about Henry’s life at his various homes and schools. He replied precisely, without vitality. He only showed vitality when he explained that he had found God.
Mr Quell nodded when Henry told him this. He wasn’t surprised. It had been one of his theories. He had seen quite a few religious people with this lifeless white puffiness, this soft, introverted righteousness.
Mrs Quell cut her Battenburg cake into four quarters, very carefully. She picked up one of the two yellow squares and took a delicate bite.
‘Yellow,’ she said, when she had eaten it.
‘Correct,’ said Mr Quell.
‘I’ll try for a pink one now,’ she said, after she had finished the yellow square. She touched the second yellow square, then her hand moved on and she picked up a pink piece. She took a small bite and smiled. She ate fastidiously.
‘Think how dull a Battenburg cake would be if I could see,’ she said.
After tea, Mrs Quell left the room unaided. There was silence for a moment.
‘Her face is beautiful because she cannot see how beautiful it is, and so does not worry about it becoming less beautiful,’ said Mr Quell.
Henry couldn’t manage any reply to this.
‘Burrell is tormented by his refusal to admit that he has only one eye,’ said Mr Quell. ‘If only he could look at my wife and say, “Lucky old me. I have an eye that can see.” If only the losing finalist at Wimbledon could say, “Magnificent. I’m the second-best player in the whole world. What an achievement.” You find my comments specious. Didn’t we make an abominable tea?’
‘It was very nice,’ said Henry politely.
‘It was an abysmal repast,’ said Mr Quell. ‘All our food is brought in by Mrs Ellerby, who lives alone. It is quite the biggest thing in her life, buying our food for us. So, you’ve found God?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Less of the sir here, Henry. The name is Eamonn. This finding of God has made a great difference to you, has it, Henry?’
‘Oh yes, sir…Eamonn. I want to devote my life to His Service.’
A trolley-bus hissed to a stop.
‘I was going to be a monk, Henry.’
‘Yes, s. . Eamonn.’
‘I gave up to marry Beth. You would be wrong if you deduced that it was out of pity for her blindness. It was out of lust for her body and love for her soul.’
The trolley-bus resumed its journey.
‘If the people on that trolley-bus could hear us, they’d be amazed,’ said Mr Quell.
He went over to the hearth, lifted a small piece of coal with the tongs and placed it carefully on the fire.
‘I remember thinking when I first knew you, “He’s going to be quite the wag, that one,”’ said Mr Quell, still with his back to Henry.
‘I became very frivolous for a time,’ said Henry. ‘I even wanted to be a stand-up comedian once.’
Mr Quell came and sat opposite Henry and looked straight into his eyes.
‘If you’re going to do an act with God, don’t forget he’s the straight man,’ he said.
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Henry.
‘God has no need for bores,’ said Mr Quell. ‘Believe me, he has enough of those already. God wants you as you are. He wants you, not some lifeless image of how you think you ought to be.’
‘That can’t be so, s…Eamonn,’ said Henry. ‘If a murderer comes to God, God wants him to Repent of his Evil Ways.’
‘We repent of the evil in us, but the good in us must not be subdued in accordance with some concept we have of what a religious person should be like. A man goes to a monastery. He says, “I want to lead a life of self-denial.“ The monk says, “Do you truly, deeply want to lead a life of self-denial?” The man says, “I long for it. “ The monk says, “Then the true self-denial is to deny yourself self-denial. Off you go now. Have a lobster thermidor, a bottle of chablis and a good woman.” What does this illustrate?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Life is not simple, and we cannot come to religion in order to make it so. I believe that the search for simplicity has done great damage to religion. Good and evil are not on opposite sides of the road. Black and white. Them and us. Insiders and outsiders. Religion as a recipe for bigotry. One must always remember that there are many religious people who are more wicked than many people who are not religious.’
‘It sounds as though you’re trying to put me off religion, sir.’
‘Eamonn. Of course not. I’m trying to persuade you to come to it in the right spirit.’
Mr Quell went over to the sofa and sat beside Henry.
‘I am not a great thinker,’ he said. ‘I am just a man who has tried to live honestly and somtimes succeeded. I have learnt never to trust a man who says he has no doubts. Why are you suddenly seeking God in such an intense and overpowering manner, Henry?’
Mr Quell put his great hand on Henry’s knee. He had goalkeeper’s hands. Henry shrank away and Mr Quell hastily removed the hand and stood up.
‘You think I’m a homosexual!’ he said. ‘Is that why you think I was so eager to get you to call me Eamonn?’
‘No, s…Eamonn.’
Mr Quell selected another piece of coal and placed it carefully on the fire. He might have been an old charcoal-burner in the forests, so carefully did he tend his little blaze.
‘You think you’re a homosexual,’ he said, wheeling round and smiling triumphantly at Henry.
Henry said nothing.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
Henry nodded miserably.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Mr Quell, returning to his armchair, stretching his short, thick legs towards the fire, and not looking at Henry.
Henry told him about the fair-haired boy. His cheeks burned. It was the hardest thing he had ever had to tell anybody, but when he had finished he felt better.
Mr Quell asked him about life and homosexuality at Dalton College. Another trolley-bus came and went unnoticed as he talked.
‘I’m certain you aren’t a homosexual,’ said Mr Quell when he had finished.
‘Then why did I…?’
‘All sexuality is ambiguous,’ said Mr Quell. ‘We love it and hate it. We hope for it and fear it. Male sexuality has to have feminine elements, in order to understand female sexuality, which has to have male elements, for the same reason. Virtue has elements of vice in it, and vice versa.’ He lit a cigar. ‘I suspect that it is because many people know that they have some homosexual instincts that they are so extremely hostile to homosexuality,’ he said. ‘I’d like to ask you to try to use that knowledge to be more understa
nding and tolerant.’
‘I will,’ promised Henry. ‘I really want to be tolerant. I can’t stand people who aren’t tolerant.’
Mr Quell put another piece of coal on the fire.
‘What does God want of me?’ said Henry.
‘He wants you to try to be good, but also to try to be yourself,’ said Mr Quell. ‘He wants you to be tolerant to those of other faiths and to those of no faith. He wants you to get nine ‘O’ levels.’
Mr Quell looked at Henry.
Henry looked at Mr Quell.
Mr Quell laughed.
So did Henry.
He went to St James’s Church twice every Sunday. He prayed for a peaceful ending to the Korean War. Perhaps he didn’t pray hard enough. He prayed that the Labour Party would be more successful in its efforts to bring social justice to every corner of the land, and would manage to solve the growing balance of payments difficulties and reconcile its increasing split over rearmaments. Perhaps he didn’t pray hard enough. When Hugh Gaitskell replaced Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry wondered how this would affect Lampo Davey’s career as a mime artist in Crete. Then he prayed for Hugh Gaitskell and Sir Stafford Cripps and Lampo Davey. When national service was increased from eighteen months to two years, he asked for the courage to declare himself a conscientious objector when the time came. He couldn’t yet be sure if he had prayed hard enough. He prayed for forgiveness because during his two years in the enclosed world of Dalton College he had virtually forgotten that the outside world still existed.
On Friday evenings he went to St James’s Church youth club, which had a thriving membership of a hundred and twenty-three. It was mainly table-tennis and darts. Kevin Thorburn beat him 5–0 a darts and 21–5, 21–2 at table-tennis. He made shy advances to Mabel Billington, one of the few people at the youth club who went to church. She beat him 4–1 at darts and 21–7, 21–8 at table-tennis. He prayed that the youth club would become more religious, and his prayers were answered. The youth club leader, Doug Watson, decided to introduce talks about aspects of religion, with guest speakers. In six weeks the attendance dropped to seventeen. Doug Watson abandoned the religious talks, and it became just darts and table-tennis again. Henry prayed for extra strength to help fight the Evils of Ignorance and the Forces of Darkness.
He tried to be Tolerant. He hoped that Tony Preece would joke about Len Arrowsmith’s reincarnation again, so that he could demonstrate his Tolerance, but Tony Preece didn’t. He prayed that Tony Preece would stop winking and that people would stop annoying Neville Chamberlain by saying, ‘I have here a piece of paper.’ When Aneurin Bevan resigned over the decision to introduce health charges to pay for rearmament, he prayed for Aneurin Bevan, for socialism and for the future of mankind. He asked God to give Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris Strength to fight the Evils of Strong Drink. He even prayed for a cure for the blackheads on Geoffrey Porringer’s nose.
He prayed for forgiveness for wasting God’s time by praying too much.
He attended confirmation classes, given by the vicar of St James’s Church. He had to fight against feelings of impatience. It was all so cool, so calm, so social. The vicar kept saying that reason wasn’t enough, Christianity was far more than just a philosophy or an ethical system, it was Christ, it was Faith. Dryly, cooly, the vicar would say that this was no dry, cool business. It was the most exciting step in a person’s life. Nobody looked excited, but then, to be fair, nor did he. Perhaps he should tell them that he had known all this, that God had spoken to him on the Road to Nowhere. He hadn’t spoken much to him, but he had said, ‘My son.’ That made Henry Christ’s brother in God. He didn’t mention this, because it might seem like boasting, and boasting was a Sin. Maybe they were all concealing similar Revelations, but he doubted it, and then he felt Shame about his Doubt, and Prayed for Forgiveness.
One day, on a bus, he saw Chalky White, just as Chalky was getting off. He said, ‘Hello, Chalky.’ Chalky looked round, and his face flashed into a grin, and he said, ‘Henry!’ and then he stepped off the bus. Henry’s mind flashed back to the barn in Rowth Bridge, to reading about nigs and darkies to Lorna Arrow. He wondered how Chalky White liked reading about nigs and darkies.
The following day, during the Geography lesson, he had an idea. It was now his turn to be one of the four boys seated on Mr Burrell’s extreme left. The other three were Dakins, Smedley and Martin Hammond. By this time Henry was being more or less ignored by the other boys. He was Snobby Pratt, who once said ‘The bread van’ in morning assembly and went away to a snotty-nosed public school down south, and came back ruined. Many boys would quite soon have admitted that it was not his fault, and tried to be moderately friendly, but he had given them no chance, and now, if you talked to him, he tried to convert you to Christianity. Between Martin and Henry, though, there existed the special tension of ruptured friendship, and on this particular morning Martin handed Henry a note which said, ‘Bloody snobbish priggish goody-goody bastard.’ Henry felt sad that Martin should do this, sad for their lost friendship, but mainly sad for Martin, who was Wandering in the Wilderness.
Why did Martin send Henry a note which said, ‘Bloody snobbish priggish goody-goody bastard’? Because Martin was wearing huge false ears and a false moustache, Dakins had his jacket on back to front and Smedley had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and his feet on the desk, while Henry was taking no advantage of being in Mr Burrell’s blind spot. This was due less to belated filial feeling for the one-eyed than to his Conviction that God did not want him to wear a fire bucket on his head as he studied Geography in the run-up to his ‘O’ levels.
And then Henry had his idea, which he would not have had if he had not seen Chalky White on the bus. In the next Geography lesson he would wear a black mask. He would sit there with a huge, black mask with smiling white teeth. The class would think he was taking advantage of Mr Burrell’s blind spot, but God would know that he was in fact making a gesture of racial solidarity, an apology to black people everywhere for the insults meted out to them in the pages of popular literature.
He made the mask himself, with cardboard and some black paint given him by Neville Chamberlain out of rejected stock. It was crude, rough, badly finished, and the best thing he had made in his life.
He couldn’t wait for the Geography lesson, but first there was Latin. Here too he faced a challenge to his religion. It came from that amiable enemy of organised religion, Mr Blackthorn. One of their set authors was Catullus, whose works had been so warmly praised by Lampo. Henry came to these personal, sexy, tortured, comic, blasphemous pieces at a time when there was no possibility of his finding them other than offensive. Catullus’s passionate and unhappy love affair with Lesbia, a married woman, shocked him. If it could be forgiven in life, which was doubtful, it was inexcusable as a subject for poetry. All right, some subjects for poetry had been closed to the Romans. Tintern Abbey hadn’t been built, let alone ruined. But didn’t the Romans have daffodils, nightingales and ancient mariners?
The more scatological poems were ignored. They wouldn’t figure in the exams. But Mr Blackthorn cast his net reasonably wide. Today, they were to translate the poem:
Verani, omnibus e meis amicis
antistans mihi milibus trecentis,
venistine domum ad tuos penates
fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
venisti. O mihi nuntii beati!
visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
narrantem loca, facta, nationes,
ut mos est tuus, applicansque collum
iucundum os oculosque suavibor…
He began his translation. ‘Veranius, standing out first to me from all my three hundred thousand friends, have you come home to your hearth and your brothers who are all of one mind and your old mother? You have come. Oh blessed tidings for me! I shall see you safe and sound and I shall hear you telling me of the places and deeds and people of Spain, as is your custom, and leaning on your pleasant neck I shall kiss your mouth
and eyes…’ Well! He couldn’t go on. Poems about chaps leaning on each other’s pleasant necks and kissing each other’s mouths and eyes! He didn’t want to be reminded of what he would have liked to do to the fair-haired boy, of Lampo, who had recommended Catullus, suaving him full on the os after the end of term concert. It outraged him that this sort of thing could happen during lessons. Was there to be no escape from the Sins of the World and from his own Sins?
At last Latin was over, and it was time for Geography. He entered, said ‘Good morning’ to Mr Burrell, and took up his seat. He put on the black mask. He had no idea what sort of reaction it received, because there was a design fault. He had forgotten to make holes for the eyes. No matter. All the better, in fact. It was now a symbol of solidarity with the blind as well as the black, with the handicapped as well as the victims of prejudice.
So this was what blindness was like. This was what beautiful Mrs Quell saw morning, noon and night, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, ten years a decade.
Or was it? Henry could see darkness. Could Mrs Quell see darkness, if she was blind, or was there just nothingness, and what was that like?
They were dealing with the savannas. Norbert Cuffley, that inveterate goody-goody, had just become even more the apple of Mr Burrell’s one eye by remembering that the word for trees that were biologically suited to withstand dry conditions was xerophytic (oh Norbert, much good may it do you in your career with the Gas Board).
The headmaster entered. Confusion! Luckily he had to stand with his back to the four boys in the blind spot, in order to turn towards Mr Burrell, and he had to go round almost to the front of Mr Burrell in order to be seen by Mr Burrell. There was hurried activity. Dakins took off his jacket and put it on the right way round. Smedley whipped his feet off the desk and pocketed the unlit cigarette. Martin removed his false ears, but forgot his moustache. Disturbed by the noise, Mr E. F. Crowther swung round. He didn’t even notice Martin’s false moustache. He was transfixed by the sight of Henry in his crude, home-made black mask, with its uneven, grinning teeth. Martin remembered his moustache, coughed, covered his face with his hand and pulled the moustache off. Henry heard strange noises, but, oblivious behind his mask, he had no idea the headmaster was even in the room, let alone facing him grimly, until he heard, close by, the words, ‘What do you think you are doing?’