Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Sometimes on a fine evening we, the people who were building the hall, would eat our supper out of doors on a trestle table; there would be food for anyone who came to ask for it — soup with meat and potatoes and bread and cheese and fruit. Children would come with cans and we would fill their cans for them to take away; not many people sat down with us to eat. I would think — But what is the terrible unattractiveness of the Good Samaritan? Is it that he is clean, he has no smell: does not love have something to do with the prevalence of smell?

The man who was making a political speech would move his

right hand up and down as if he were working a pump: words seemed to be something sloshing around inside him; he had to get them out. I wondered — Or is he working the handle of a lavatory? People are drawn to him, perhaps, like dogs to a smell.

He was saying, how could there be a world in which everyone made a profit? In a world of limited resources, one person's profit was another's deprivation. So what was necessary was for everyone to be in some sort of army; to see that in an army everyone's interests were the same.

I would think — But the interests of everyone in an army are to maim, to kill.

The speaker told of a company called National Shipbuilders Security Limited that was buying up local shipyards and then closing them down and selling them for scrap: this was an organisation formed by local capitalists to ensure that the few shipyards left in their hands would be protected and make a profit when trade improved. It was not just that shipyards were being closed temporarily during the slump; they were being dismantled so that it would be unlikely that there would ever be shipbuilding in the area again. There were tens of thousands of workers out of work now and the capitalists were making sure that there would never be such work again: all this was in order that the capitalist system should be safeguarded. The speaker reached his peroration 'My friends, are we going to stand for the behaviour of these clowns? Are we going to let ourselves be trampled on?' His audience listened to him silently. I thought — But people like watching clowns trampling on each other.

The speaker once came to join us for supper at our outdoor table after he had spoken. He was a young man with short fair hair: there seemed to be little back to his head: the skin of his face had a consistency like that of cloth. He sat with the blood-red sky of a sunset behind him. I thought — The blood has spilled on to the sky from his face, from the back of his head.

Peter Reece said 'So you are in favour of some sort of revolution.'

He said 'Oh no, we are on the side of the law, it is our opponents who are in favour of revolution.'

Peter Reece said 'But your opponents, surely, are the directors of National Shipbuilders Security.'

The man said 'Oh no, our real enemies are the Communists.'

Peter Reece said 'But the Communists seem to be saying exactly

the same as you — at least with regard to the activities of National Shipbuilders Security.'

The man said 'Perhaps that is why we are enemies!' He laughed.

Peter Reece said 'Why?'

'Because we are diametrically opposed.'

4 But what is the difference between you?'

'We are aiming at the highest and they at the lowest.'

'But they would say the same about you.'

'Yes.' He looked pleased.

Peter Reece said 'So it is matter of what is relative — '

The man said 'Ah, we don't hold with the Theory of Relativity!'

I said 'But you need enemies.'

He said 'Oh we have enemies all right!'

I thought — Oh yes, like the harlequin in the pantomime, with a ladder and a plank of wood and a bucket of cement.

One evening the man was attacked on his way back to his lodgings after a speech: he was left bruised and bleeding by the roadside. Peter Reece visited him in his lodgings. I went with him. I thought — But at what point does the Good Samaritan become the enemy you need?

Peter Reece said 'But who attacked you? You think it was the Communists?'

The man said 'Oh it was the Communists all right!'

Peter Reece said 'Might it not have been people hired by National Shipbuilders Security?'

He said 'Oh I don't think they would be up to anything like that!'

He was sitting up in bed with his head and hands bandaged: his face, out of which the blood seemed to have run, seemed pleased.

Afterwards I said to Peter Reece 'I suppose that if people feel they have enemies then everything remains a game.'

Peter Reece said 'I don't want to live in a world in which people think everything is a game.'

I said 'What sort of world do you want?'

He said 'It is true, you know, that there would be no unemployment if there was a war.'

One day I took time off from the building of the Recreational Hall and went for a long walk along the line of the estuary. I started off through the area where I had seen the children playing the first day I had arrived; I hoped I might see them again. I did not know what I would do if I did; perhaps just wave; make a fluttering movement to the girl as if releasing a bird from my hands. It was a

bright windy day; clouds moved like sailing ships in the sky. I had asked Peter Reece if he knew of a family whose child or children were deaf and dumb: he suggested that there might be such a family in an encampment of gypsies that had set themselves up some distance along the estuary. This encampment was near an ancient church and the ruins of a monastery that had been founded in the seventh century: this, I had learned, was when Christianity had first come to this part of the country; it had been carried by men in small boats that blew across the sea like seeds; monks had settled and had built walls and within them had produced prayer, learning, corn, bread, fruit; they had illustrated what they were doing in exquisitely coloured manuscripts. From here further seeds had drifted across the land. I had said to Peter Reece 'Why can't you do something here like those monks of the Dark Ages?'

He had said 'Like what?'

'Pray, grow corn, illuminate manuscripts.'

'While people around starve?'

I thought I might say — What did those monks do for people who were hungry?

I did not see any signs of the children who had been rolling tyres down a hill. I had not really expected to. I thought — You do not see angels, do you, if you look for them.

I was moving past the area where there were huge cranes like the skeletons of birds; the few hulks of ships as if picked clean by vultures. I thought I might say to Peter Reece — You mean ships are needed, because they are sunk, in a war?

— And men are killed, and so men are needed, in a war?

I was moving out into an area of desolate mud-flats. I could see the squat shapes of the ancient church in the distance. It was like some resting animal. I thought — But what the monks produced in their fortress-monastery, how did it survive? Will what is produced in the banks and municipal buildings of the town survive?

— It is that which is beautiful that survives?

There was a dyke going across the mudflats towards the church; there was an embankment running alongside the dyke on which I could walk. I thought — But what was the message in the seeds that blew across the sea in small ships: there was news of- what? — the birth and then the death-no-not-death of a child?

— When those monks painted their manuscripts, they would have known that there was a message: they would properly not have quite known what the message was?

I had crossed the mudflats on the embankment of the dyke to where I could see the mounds and trees of the walls of what once must have been the monastery. And here there were, yes, children playing. There was no sign of the gypsy encampment that Peter Reece had talked about: the children did not seem to be children I had seen before. I thought — But still, is not what I am looking for whatever will turn up. The wind had dropped so that the clouds were motionless in the sky: they were like seats, yes, from which some old gods might look down. I reached the end of the dyke and stepped over a wire fence into the area of what had once been the monastery. I thought — the monks received a messsage: it was with their hands, their eyes, that they imagined what the message was. It was difficult to see exactly what the children were doing: they were crouched in a circle, quite still, as if over something on the ground. One child seemed to have an object in its hand which it held carefully; there seemed to be a connection between this object and whatever was on the ground. The other children were watching: they all had their backs to the sky. Then as I got closer it seemed — But I know what they are doing! That child is holding a magnifying-glass in its hand: they are using it to concentrate the rays of the sun and to burn whatever it is on the ground. This was a game we had played at school — you found an ants' nest, perhaps; you chased the ants and shrivelled them up with the rays of the sun. And so you were like gods, looking so omnipotently down! I sat down on what seemed to be a fallen tombstone at some distance from the children; I watched, as I had watched the other children. I thought — But if it is children, of course, that come from seeds that are blown across the sea, still what do we learn? I stood up. The children noticed me: they turned and ran away. I thought — Oh but if I were a god I would not have minded your burning ants, would I, my children.