Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

When I got to the place around which the children had been squatting I could still not at first see just what it was on the ground: they had been burning something, yes; there were the marks of scorching; there were things moving; they were not ants; they were not dead twigs; they were like the petals of a flower, growing. Then I realised that they were maggots. And what they were teeming on was some dead body on the ground. I thought at first that it was the body of some animal; a rat or a rabbit, perhaps. Then I saw that it was that of a child. Or rather of a foetus, at the most a newly-born child, perhaps from someone who had given birth here and had got rid of this child like a seed; and it had died, and so the

children had come to burn with their glass the maggots that grew out of it. I found I could not think too much about this: I had bared my teeth: it seemed that I should just bury the dead body of the child. I looked round for something that would serve as a spade. There were some slates in a small pile of rubble by the child. I pulled at these, and there became dislodged from the pile a piece of coloured glass. The piece of glass was smooth and red and slightly convex like a small pool of blood. It seemed that the children might have been using just such a piece of glass to concentrate the rays of the sun. I used a slate to scrape at the rubble and cover the dead child. I wondered if there had been a stained-glass window here once, pieces of which had made splashes of light like blood. I succeeded in covering the child. I thought — And the maggots: oh they will live, they will die! There was one of the children at some distance from me standing at a corner of the church: it was watching me. It was somewhat like the small child who had been waiting in the clearing beneath the railway lines for the deaf-and-dumb girl who had been in the tyre: it wore a similar smock to just below its knees. I had picked up the piece of coloured glass and was looking at this; it was a strange deep red; it was very beautiful; it seemed to have retained some of the rays of the sun inside it, and not to have burned with them. The small child by the church was coming towards me; it seemed to be looking for what it might find among the stones. I thought, as I had thought before — Perhaps people will think it is to do with me, that body of a child. The child in the smock had come up to me and held out its hand: indeed, it seemed to be the boy-child that I had seen before with the girl in the tyre. I gave him the piece of blood-red glass I had been holding. The child took it, and put it in a pocket at the front of his smock. I thought — So this child collects coloured glass: to burn; to build windows with? Then — I see: but what? That seeds are being scattered like bits and pieces of light? That light does not only burn: and gods look down? And we can know this: what else need we know? That maggots sometimes grow wings and fly? The child turned away with its small piece of coloured glass.

When I got back to the rectory I found two letters which had come by the same post. One was from Melvyn. It said -

Please find out about the activities of a company called National Shipbuilders Security which is operating in your part of the

world. It is run by a gang of international financiers and crypto-Fascists who are buying and dismantling temporarily out-of-work shipyards so that the effective power of the shipbuilding industry will pass to their masters, the gangsters of the United States and Japan. The active arm of the conglomerate is said to be this new so-called Radical Party. Be careful how you go! Such people would not be averse to using gangster methods to further their design.

The Prime Minister is almost certainly in their pay. His current mistress is an Austrian whose former husband was the chairman of the bank the failure of which was the direct cause of the formation of the National Government. Need I say more — as Henry VIII said when asked who was next to be beheaded.

Mullen seems temporarily to have taken leave of his senses and is interesting himself in that little girl you introduced us to at that party. I think he imagines that through her he might get some entree to you. I suppose in the chariot position she might just be taken to be a boy.

Keep your pecker up, as the hangman said to the man he had just dropped.

The second letter was from the girl called Suzy. She said -

I have to thank you for what you have done for me as a result of our odd meeting at that party. My father has suddenly relented and says I can go to Paris. I think he is letting me do this in order to get me away from you. Someone seems to have been telling him terrible stories about you, and about those terrible people who he thinks are your friends. So I have been telling him I am madly in love with you, and so he is packing me off to Paris.

Of course, all this does make you madly interesting and I am a bit in love with you, so please get in touch with me when we both return to Cambridge.

I thought — Oh well, this is how things work, is it? Then — But there is no letter from my beautiful German girl.

Sometimes I walked with Peter Reece as he went about his business in the parish. He would go about on foot: he had a theory that people should normally go about on foot; then there might be time for things to sort themselves out.

I said 'You believe things do sort themselves out? I mean you do

what you have to do, and other people do what they do; and what happens is likely to be all right?'

Peter Reece said 'What else is God?'

I said 'You mean "God" is a word for the fact that things sort themselves out, and not for the fact that there is a God.'

Peter Reece said 'What is the difference?'

We walked between rows of houses that were like stitching. The entrance to each house was through a yard at the back; at the front there were small gardens and just a footpath between them and those of the houses in the next row. Each backyard served two houses and in it there was a latrine on one side and a hut for coal on the other. I thought — It is more comfortable for people to live facing back? When Peter Reece went into the houses I usually stayed outside. I thought — As an anthropologist, I do not want to disturb these strange people.

I said to Peter Reece 'But whatever it is that happens, you could say that it was this that was being sorted out — '

Peter Reece said 'But there are some things that do not seem to be being sorted out.'

I said 'Such as — '

He said 'Love, for instance.'

I thought — He is thinking of the Good Samaritan? Of me?

— He is a bit in love with me? Then — I am mad to be so often thinking this!

Then — But perhaps love is that which gets the other stuff sorted out.

On the few occasions when I went in with Peter Reece to talk to families in their homes it seemed in fact evident that we were learning little about the families themselves; only about what they wanted to show to us. When they spoke among themselves I found it difficult to understand their dialect. I thought — But what is it that they do not show to us; what is it that goes on, as it were, behind their backyards?

I would say to them 'But what can anyone do about unemployment here if no one needs more ships? The only way in which people will want more ships will be if there is a war.'

'Oh we don't want another war.'

'So I mean, can't you do something different from building ships?'

'In this town we've always built ships.'

'Can't you change?'

'Change?'

4 Yes.'

I thought — Oh this is a dialect they find hard to understand!

— They have the tombs of their ancestors behind their backyards? Afterwards, walking home, Peter Reece would put his hand on

my arm and flash his eyes and say 'You were lovely!' I would think — Well dear God, if he is a bit in love with me -