by David Lodge
But how had it escaped his attention that these cinemas were such cesspools? He could not think how his parishioners were able to reconcile the patronage of such corrupt entertainments with attendance at Mass and reception of Holy Communion. They must be warned of the grave dangers to their immortal souls from this source. Perhaps, after all, his misdemeanour would be put to good use by God, working in His mysterious ways.
Wearily he rose to his knees and looked up at the crucifix. He began to recite the fourth Penitential Psalm:
Turn away Thy face from my sins, and blot out my iniquities.
Create a clean heart in me O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Cast me not away from Thy face, and take not Thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of my salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.
I will teach the unjust Thy ways; and the wicked shall be converted to Thee …
Father Kipling repeated this last verse to himself as he locked the church doors. The night was cold, and he fumbled in his pockets for his gloves, only to find that he had left one in the cinema. It was not the only thing he had left there.
In the presbytery he sank into his old arm-chair, and dozed uneasily for a few hours before the first Mass.
* * *
The clanking of over-taxed plumbing woke Mark. Nobody in the house seemed to understand that you had to let the cistern fill before pulling the chain. They just yanked at it again and again with stubborn impatience. He peered at his watch and groaned into the pillow. Ten past eight. Soon Clare would come and make sure he was awake. Why was it that when you woke up the most important thing in life was that you should stay exactly where you were?
There was a tap at the door, and Clare came in with a smiling morning face and a steaming cup of tea. She was fully dressed, but her scrubbed, shiny face and fluffy, newly brushed hair made her appear ridiculously young and more enchantingly unsophisticated than ever. In the presence of her moist, bud-like freshness he felt old, coarse and soiled. He was made guiltily aware of the rough stubble on his chin, his greasy, unwashed face, the stale taste of last night’s tobacco in his mouth, the rumpled bed-clothes sealing the rank air round his body.
‘You’re like some beautiful but accusing sunbeam shining into a den of vice,’ he said.
‘I hope this is no den of vice,’ she replied, carefully placing a newspaper under the saucer on his bedside table.
‘You remind me of duty. You’re so disgustingly awake and industrious and clean. Three qualities which I find uncongenial.’
Clare drew back the curtains and opened a window.
‘It’s a fine day.’
‘For heaven’s sake, if you must open that window, close the door. There’s a howling draught.’
‘Well you could do with some fresh air in here,’ she said as she returned to the door. ‘Don’t be long getting up, will you Mark, or we’ll be late for Mass.’
‘All right. Clare.’
‘Yes?’ She paused by the door.
‘I’m sorry about last night.’
She blushed. ‘That’s all right’ she murmured, as she passed through the door.
‘And, Clare.’ She pushed her head back round the door. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
‘That’s all right.’ She smiled.
Well, that was one good job done. It was always best to get apologies over as soon as possible. Thanking her for the tea had been a happy inspiration too. She had a touching appreciation for such little gestures. In fact, it was so easy to draw appreciation from her that it was like cheating.
He sipped his tea, letting it scald away the bad taste in his mouth. He was almost certainly the only person—except Patrick (who had served at some appallingly early Mass) and perhaps Mr Mallory—who was drinking tea at that moment. All the rest would be heroically fasting for Holy Communion. Heroically? Or perversely? The Pope had recently issued an edict allowing the Faithful to drink non-alcoholic beverages up to one hour before Communion. But Mrs Mallory and her children had declined to take advantage of the new regulation, almost as though they suspected it of being a trap, a little too easy. They preferred to win salvation the hard way. It was the same with the evening masses which were now becoming common. Mrs Mallory stubbornly refused to attend them, although, as a hard-worked housewife, she was precisely the sort of person they were designed to help. She insisted that she felt ‘wrong’ all through Sunday if she didn’t hear Mass in the morning. There was something at once admirable and irritating about this family’s ability to bring the body into subjection. It wasn’t that they didn’t like tea. They did. And it wasn’t that they liked getting up. They didn’t. But somehow they managed to get up and not to drink tea.
The house resounded now with their energy: the bustle was like an accusation. He threw back the bed-clothes; found it, as he expected, cold; and pulled them over him again. There was a rap on the door.
‘Mark!’ Clare reminded him.
‘Oh, all right. I’m getting up,’ he grumbled, throwing back the blankets a second time. Scratching his head, he peered into the mirror, and scraped the sleep from his eyes with a finger-nail. Pulling on his dressing-gown he staggered, weak-legged, out to the bathroom.
* * *
Well, here he was on his knees again. He felt rather sheepish and embarrassed remembering his collapse of the night before. The explanation was perfectly obvious of course: the libido, deprived of sexual fulfilment, conspired with the ego and the super-ego for religious fulfilment. In the abasement before the supernatural it found a substitute for the abandonment of the sexual act. Prayer was spiritual orgasm. If he could have copulated with Clare, or merely stroked her breasts a bit, he would never have toppled to his knees in so abject a manner.
Kneeling in church was a rather strange way of witnessing to one’s intellectual independence. But it was essential if he was to regain Clare’s confidence. Like a trout, she could be caught by very skilfully and delicately tickling her religious susceptibility; tickling her belly would have to come later. He must beat Damien at his own game. Thackeray had said that every woman was a match-maker at heart; but she was also a missionary at heart. She always wanted to reform her man—it gave her desires a certain respectability. The challenge of his scepticism held a greater attraction for Clare than the holy, still and cold conversation of Damien. All she needed was a little encouragement. That was why he was here.
The church was stuffy: only one tiny window was open. The congregation did not seem to mind. But they were stuffy too, in ugly felt hats and buttoned raincoats, behinds tilted ungracefully on the edges of the benches, mostly staring vacantly ahead, with a few ostentatiously following the service in their missals, making a great show of turning over leaves. Here and there a child fretted, bored and uncomfortable, penned in by dull, sabbatical adulthood. Rows of grey, cross faces. Why were church-goers so unlovable? There was no getting away from it, all the beautiful, witty, intelligent people were sufficient unto themselves. It was only the failures and defectives who slunk into the temples and listened greedily to their promised revenge—they and the prosperous who wished to insure themselves by an hour’s boredom and discomfort against a reverse of fortune in the next world.
Yes, that was all very well, but what about the Mallorys? They were beautiful, they had a rich sense of humour, and they were undeniably intelligent. The Mallorys upset all his pet theories. It was damned annoying.
Father Kipling emerged from the sacristy, paced slowly across the altar, genuflected, and mounted the pulpit, pausing on each step like an old man. Clasping the pulpit with two hands, he gravely regarded the congregation as Father Francis finished the Gospel. He continued to gaze at them as they noisily settled themselves, and for several moments after, until there was almost complete silence. Mark sensed that people were curious, and slightly uncomfortable under that unblinking gaze. They were not used to the preacher seeking to make an impression, unless he was some missionary, and it troubled
them.
Father Kipling looked tired and strained. When he spoke it was in a dull, lifeless voice.
‘Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost. The 6.30 Mass was for Mrs Duffy’s intention, the 7.30 for …’ The notices droned on. ‘Your charitable prayers are asked for the following who …’ Always the same names insinuating themselves on some pretext or other—illness, an anniversary, or at the last resort, death. ‘May their souls, and the souls of all the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.’
Father Kipling proceeded to read the Epistle, stumbling through the awkward syntax. St Paul: surely, after Henry James, the most unreadable of all the great stylists. As he finished, a few eager souls leapt to their feet to show that they knew the Gospel came next Sluggishly the rest of the congregation heaved up, listened, at last with some show of comprehension, and subsided again. Father Kipling waited until everyone was still, and then he cleared his throat.
‘My dear brethren in Jesus Christ’—the congregation dutifully nodded their heads—‘I had intended to talk to you this morning on the subject of Grace—the Grace we derive from the sacraments, particularly Holy Communion. Without this Grace, this supernatural food—our souls will wither and die. Therefore it is most important that every Catholic should understand what supernatural Grace is, and how it is to be obtained.
‘However, this topic has had to give place to an even more urgent matter. Before the graces of the sacraments can be obtained, with the exceptions of Baptism and Penance, it is essential that the soul should be free from mortal sin. And a potential source of grievous sin for many people now in this church has come to my notice. I feel, my dear brethren, that it is my duty to warn you.
‘Last night I went to a picture-palace. I went in the belief that the well-known religious film Song Of Bernadette was being shown, but I was mistaken. My subsequent experience was shocking and painful in the extreme, but instructive. I saw a scandalous presentation that deliberately exploited the basest passions of man, and that viciously attacked the foundations of a Christian society—the family—all in the name of entertainment. I saw a woman employ all the arts of coquetry to degrade the sex which was glorified by the Mother of God. I must conclude that the entertainment was typical, for I was the only member of the audience, as far as I could tell, who was shocked. Everyone around me laughed and smiled as if it was the most natural thing in the world to see the precepts of clean, decent, Christian living travestied upon the screen. I noted angrily that there were children in the audience—many, mercifully, too young to be contaminated, though they should have been in their cots. I noted sadly that there were some of my own parishioners there too.
‘You have heard me speak unfavourably of the cinema before, my dear brethren. You have heard me urge you to give up patronizing it as a penance for Lent, or in order to contribute more fully to some charity. But whereas in the past I regarded it simply as a profitless, worldly pleasure, I now regard it as a source of serious sin, a dangerously infested swamp in which the unwary soul may easily be swallowed up, and so perish.
‘I address myself particularly to parents. Remember, my dear brethren, that the moral welfare of your children is your solemn responsibility. I beg you not to expose them to the temptations of the flesh such as they find flagrantly exhibited and condoned in the picture-palace, at an age when they are most vulnerable to such influences. Remember that when you give them money for the picture-palace, you may be enabling them to purchase the loss of their immortal souls. And remember that you must yourselves set a good example by avoiding these demoralizing entertainments. Do not over-estimate your own strength. The evil effect of these shows is gradual and insidious: it gradually undermines religious principles, renders the conscience slack and tolerant of sin. Behind all is Satan’s cunning and directing power. In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ (dazed and punch-drunk, the congregation still remembered to nod) ‘I exhort you to avoid these temples of Mammon and Belial.
‘It will not be easy: that I know. For many of you it has become a habit. You have seen nothing evil in it. But from the pulpit of your church, I, your priest, beseech you to give up this habit. With God’s help nothing is impossible, and He will bless your sacrifice.
‘As Saturday evening is apparently the most popular time for people to visit the cinema, I propose to transfer the Thursday Benediction to Saturday. On Saturday evening, my dear brethren, I wish everyone who would normally have gone to the picture-palace, and thus put his soul in deadly danger, to come instead to the church, to give honour and glory to God, and to join with me in saying the Rosary for the conversion of England. Who knows, from this humble beginning in Brickley may spring a full-scale crusade against immoral and worldly entertainments. But at the very least we will have the satisfaction of knowing that we are witnessing to the principles of Catholic Christianity. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.’
Father Francis rose to begin the Creed in a numbed silence, suddenly punctuated by the sound of a loud handclap. It was not, however, the instinctive applause of some enthusiastic listener, but the noise of the organ getting up steam. At the Offertory more coins than usual were dropped to the floor. Mark wondered if Father Kipling had been in the Palladium the previous evening. The lascivious woman sounded like Amber Lush. It had been an extraordinary sermon—easily the most impressive he had heard Father Kipling deliver—but it had missed the point. The menace of the cinema was not surely that it was lewd and sensual, but that it encouraged people to turn their back on real life. Escapism had always been a fundamental and harmless function of popular art; but the cinema invested such escapism with a new and sinister plausibility, projecting a seductive image of a stream-lined, chromium-plated, hygienically-packed, deep-frozen, King-sized superlife, which could be vicariously and effortlessly enjoyed by slumping into a cinema-seat. Father Kipling was fighting a losing battle. The cinema, or the whole system of processed mass-entertainment for which it stood, had already become an acceptable substitute for religion. What was more alarming was that in time it might become an acceptable substitute for living.
The ancient organ wheezed into life, and the congregation staggered into the opening lines of Just For Today:
Lord, for tomorrow and its needs,
do not pray;
Keep me, my God, from stain of sin,
Just for today.
This, of course, was the most revolutionary doctrine in the Christian code. Be not solicitous. But there wasn’t a single person in the church who would apply the words of the hymn to his own careful accumulation of Savings Certificates and Insurance Policies, his persistent intriguing for promotion. When you considered the matter, the so-called Bohemians were the only true Christians. They toiled not, neither did they spin; often they didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, or where they would sleep from one day to the other. Yet they were condemned outright by the cautious, prudent, God-fearing church-goers as beyond the pale.
Let me be slow to do my will,
Prompt to obey,
Help me to mortify my flesh,
Just for today.
Of course you could give the refrain an ironical twist, and interpret it as a careful reservation made by the singer: all right, help me to mortify my flesh—but just for today mind. Tomorrow I’ll have one hell of a good time.
Let me be faithful to Thy grace,
Just for today.
He felt the same wry amusement as Thomas Hardy must have enjoyed when he heard the anecdote, related in Under The Greenwood Tree, about the church where the Ten Commandments were inscribed by some tipsy masons who left out all the ‘not’s’.
It would be difficult to persuade Clare to go to the cinema now—or any of the Mallorys for that matter. Although going to church was like going to the cinema: you sat in rows, the notices were like trailers, the supporting sermon was changed weekly. And people went because they always went. You paid at the plate instead of at the box-of
fice, and sometimes they played the organ. There was only one big difference: the main feature was always the same.
Yes, that was something you couldn’t get away from, and instead of becoming more boring, it became more interesting with each repetition. That was the difference between drama and ritual probably.
‘Dominus vobiscum.’
‘Et cum spiritu tuo.’
‘Sursum corda.’
‘Habemus ad Dominum.’
‘Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.’
‘Dignum et justum est.’
‘The pressing nature of this dialogue,’ he read in his missal, ‘shows clearly that we are coming now to the very heart of the Mass.’
‘Sanctus,
Sanctus,
Sanctus.’
The bell rang out three times, and the congregation pitched noisily on to its knees. It fidgeted, sneezed, coughed, whispered. How could they be so inattentive, if they really believed in the stupendous thing they claimed would happen shortly? Perhaps, for them, it was too common an occurrence. Christ risked making himself cheap by mass-production. Mass-production. Rather good that. More than ever he was convinced that Catholics did not really believe what they professed to believe. Because, if it was true, that at the Consecration God was really present on the altar, whole and entire, under the appearance of bread and wine, as Clare’s dog-eared Catechism stated—then it was quite simply the most important thing in life. If you really believed it you would shiver in dreadful anticipation of this tremendous mystery, you would follow each movement and word of the ritual with breathless attention, and at the climax, at the moment of divine epiphany, the universe would collapse and swirl around you, and you would pitch forward on your face with a low moan. Human nature could not endure such a strain. As to Communion, the cannibalistic fusion with the Godhead, one could conceive of entranced Oriental fanatics performing such a rite, but these drab, smug, self-righteous people who coolly lined up to snap their dentures on the living Christ—could they know what they were supposed to be doing? Yet if you tackled them on the subject, even kids like the twins, they were quite cheerfully positive about it. Yes, of course they believed in the Real Presence. But how could they walk about with such terrible knowledge? Browning, hoary old Protestant that he was, had detected the essential indecency behind the candles, the incense and the flowers: