Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

I said 'Where are your parents?'

She said 'They're abroad.'

'And you're living with your grandmother.'

'I'm staying with my grandmother.'

'Are you still at school?'

'Yes.'

'How old are you.'

'Nearly seventeen.'

She came in from the larder carrying a kettle. She knelt down in front of the fire; she blew on it; she put the kettle on the flames.

I said 'Does anyone else know?'

'No.'

'You haven't told the father?'

'There isn't any father.'

She left the grate and went back into the larder. I took a stick and poked at the fire to make it burn properly. She called out 'And I don't think I'm the Virgin Mary!'

I thought I might say — Then who do you think you are?

She came back into the room. She said 'I wanted to make something like a home, yes; what did you call it, an "environment" — '

She had brought in a teapot and a mug. She stood by the fire, watching it.

I said 'You want your child to be different.'

She said 'I think the grown-up world is mad. People seem to want to die, to kill. They seem to get people strung up, to get themselves strung up, like Jesus. That's why I wouldn't want to be the Virgin Mary.'

I said 'What can people do to you? I mean, about the child.'

It took some time for the kettle to boil. We watched it.

She said 'They can't make me get rid of it. They can make me something called a "ward of court". Then perhaps when it's born they can try to take it away from me.'

I thought — So you are building some sort of nest; here, and in your mind.

I said 'Why don't you tell the father?'

She said 'Because it wasn't his fault.'

I said 'Who said it was anyone's fault!'

I thought I saw her smile. She went back into the larder.

She said 'Anyway, I love him too much. I don't want to ruin his career.'

I shouted 'God damn it, why should it ruin his career?*

She said 'Milk? Sugar?'

I said 'Yes, please.'

When she came back into the room she was certainly smiling. She said 'I'm afraid I've got only one cup.'

I said 'Thank you.'

I thought — Will it do good if I manage to have tears?

She stood with her back to the grate, facing me. Her yellow skirt was embroidered with flowers. It was torn in several places.

She said 'All right, I don't want to blackmail him into marrying me. I want him to be free.'

I said 'If you tell him, you will not be blackmailing him into marrying you.'

She said 'How do you know?'

I said 'I know.'

She said 'How will I ever know he loves me?'

I shouted 'Oh of course you know he loves you!'

She said 'You're mad.'

She made some tea in the teapot. She poured the tea into the mug. She offered me milk and sugar. I took them: I said 'Thank you.' I drank. Then I offered her the mug.

I said 'It's the grown-up world that you think is mad. You're building this house. You want things to be different.'

She said 'Are you married?'

I said'Yes.'

'Where is your wife?'

'In Switzerland.'

'Why?'

'Because she has work to do there.'

'Do you love her?'

'Yes.'

Then she said 'Well, why do you think I don't tell him?'

I said 'What people like you and I are frightened of is to have not too little but too much. It's easier, as you said, to be strung up.'

She said 'What's the alternative?'

I said This.'

I looked up to the ceiling where the ridge-beam had been cracked by the branch falling on the roof.

She said 'Don't we need a prop for that roof?'

She went out into the glade in front of the cottage. I tried to send a message to you — This is all right, my angel: you will be all right? The girl came in dragging a branch that we had cut off and I sawed it to the right size and trimmed it of its lesser branches and then we put the narrower end against the cracked ridge-beam of the ceiling and the other end at an angle on the floor.

She said 'Can you tell me — what is a mutation?'

I said 'It is a new sort of being that happens as a matter of luck. What you can do for it, which is not a matter of luck, is to make an environment that you would wish for whatever turns up. This is what you have been doing. You love your baby.'

She said 'In my imagination.'

I said 'In fact.'

She said 'I told you I was lucky.'

We got hold of the bottom end of the prop and heaved; I kicked it so that the top end pressed against the ridge-beam; then I got hold of another piece of wood and banged the bottom of the prop with it while the girl pulled and the prop gradually became upright and the ridge-beam was raised so that it became level and dust and rubble drifted down like bits of light.

She said * You mean, this is some sort of practice?'

I said'Yes.'

She got a broom that seemed to have been made of twigs from the glade; she swept up the dust and rubble that had fallen to the floor; she tidied the tea-things that were round the grate; she made sure that the fire was safe; then she stood and looked round the room.

I said 'You see, you have made this place; now you can carry it in your head.'

She said 'Is that what you do?'

I said'Yes.'

She said 'All right, I'll tell him. I expect he'll marry me.'

I thought — This place, this afternoon, exist as if they were a painting.

She said 'Did you hear what I said?'

I said 'Yes.' She took the jug of milk and poured a little of it into the vase of lilies.

She said 'If my baby is a girl I am going to call her Lilia.'

I said 'Why?'

She said 'Because lilies are the flowers that grow at this time of year.'

Gasthof Friedrich, Zurich See September 2nd 1939 My Angel,

The fact that I am writing this means that I am alive -

That I am alive means that this is what the universe is like -

You are taking care of yourself?

I got Walburga's car. I set off early in the morning. There was news on the wireless coming through about the German invasion of Poland. There was almost no one in the streets. People were huddled round their wirelesses. It seemed that I might have just one or two days before Britain and Germany declared war.

Walburga had tried again to come with me. She had said 'Why not?' I had said 'Because then it wouldn't work.' I suppose it will always be impossible to explain this.

At the Swiss frontier the man who looked at my passport said 'You are sure you want to go into Germany at this time?' I said 'I have to find my father.' He stamped my passport.

On the German side of the frontier the man said 'You are sure you want to come into Germany at this time?' I said 'I will only be here for one or two days.' He stamped my passport.

The men in the customs house were huddled round their wirelesses. It was a scene like that in Morocco on the day when there was the first news of the war in Spain.

Here there had been rumours that if Germany attacked Poland, and if France and Great Britain declared war on Germany in accordance with treaty obligations, then Germany might attack France through Switzerland in order to avoid the defences of the Maginot Line. But there was hardly any traffic on the roads: no troops, no cheering. It was as if everyone was turned inwards in groups round wirelesses, waiting for news of war perhaps to go round the universe and hit them on the backs of their heads.

It was fifty miles from the frontier to the village above which Franz's family had their house. I had been there once before when Franz and I had gone wandering like birds in the forest. Then some time later I had met you, and we had been like those two people in that play wandering but also looking for each other in a town in which there was already war.

Bruno had said 'Germans split themselves into Mephistopheles and Faust: the one is deep enough to know that good can come out of evil, the other is too shallow to take responsibility for this knowledge.'