Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“We certainly don’t seem to be very welcome here,” Freddie said.

Peter looked miserably at Annabelle, who still had her hand in front of her eyes. Then he went up to Freddie. “But you are welcome,” he said, “really; won’t you stay and have a drink?”

“We’ll go,” Freddie said.

“But I think you’re terribly nice,” Peter said. “Really Freddie, I am sure I can find you a drink. Do stay.”

“No,” Freddie said.

“I was joking,” Peter said. “I am always joking.” He looked very sad and quite sincere. “You should know that I am joking.” Then he turned to the girl. “I think you’re terribly nice too,” he said. “Can’t you show us what you’ve got in that lovely bag?”

“Oh just one or two things,” said the girl, happy now, starting to struggle with the clips.

“Do let’s see.”

“Come on,” Freddie said, swearing furiously from the passage.

“Just the few things that I always carry about with me. . ” She was like a child showing off a new toy.

“How exciting!” Peter said.

Freddie seized the girl and dragged her into the passage. Now that Peter had become friendly he was determined to go. I supposed he thought it was a joke. I did not blame him. Hilton Weekes followed them quickly. On the landing the bag burst, scattering a few dainty objects on the floor. The girl and Hilton Weekes knelt to pick them up, and Peter was hovering round saying, “That’s a nice one, that really is: I’ve never seen one like that before;” and Freddie was looking as if he was going to burst too. At length they gathered themselves together and went. We could hear Peter’s voice following them pleasantly down the passage.

We waited uneasily. Then Peter returned. He went straight to Annabelle. “I am so sorry,” he said. “So sorry, sweet Annabelle.” She took her hand from her eyes and smiled. “You were quite funny,” she said.

“I am an ass and a pig,” he said, “and I am going to pour ashes on my head.” He went into the bathroom.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Marius said.

“Yes,” Annabelle said.

Peter joined us. His hair was neatly brushed. We set out. In the lift I had a feeling of elation that I had not felt before in my life. Peter touched Annabelle gently on the shoulder, and when she looked at him I saw that she had tears in her eyes. Marius’s head was bowed as if he were asleep again. As we stepped out of the building into the night I felt as though I wanted to do something for these people because they were so peculiar.

The square was huge and moonlit. A statue stood folded like the wings of a bird. Peter said, “I should like to get out of England because England is dying.”

Marius said, “You do not leave a deathbed, you go to it. You go to it because a deathbed always has meaning while life very often has not.”

“England will not admit that it is dying,” Peter said. “That is what makes it unbearable. There is nothing so ugly as a sick-room in which the patient has to pretend that he is well.”

“There is meaning even in that ugliness,” Marius said. “I do not care much about beauty and ugliness, I only care for meanings and the sadness of the world.”

“I don’t,” Peter said. “I am too close to it. All I hate is ugliness and all I want is beauty.”

Annabelle walked a little ahead of us with her coat thrown carelessly over her shoulder and the cold wind blowing against her neck. Her arms and legs were white like water, and as she moved her dress became darker than her hair which the moon made icy.

“There is no beauty without meaning,” Marius said. “You may make an image of your own and call it beauty, you may give it your praise and worship all your life, but in the end it will fail you. On a death-bed it will fail you. You cannot die beautifully without meaning.”

“Die beautifully?” Peter said.

“Yes. And that is what faces us. Did you not say that England was dying? Well then, you die beautifully, and that is what always faces people, as individuals, at any time in history, whether or not a civilization is dying as well.”

“We should be beginning,” Peter said.

“Our world is old, and with the arrogance of age it is complaining. You cannot praise it and you cannot pity it, because praise and pity are reserved for achievement. It has built its images and has seen them broken, and on its knees it is searching for the fragments that it loved. It finds them, sometimes, among the rubble of cities — a pedestal, a memory, limbs of old glories that are dug from the dust and refastened with wires to give an illusion of solidity. And then illusion is there, for some: a civilization will worship its images until there is no one left to worship them. But when there is no one left then few will ever have known what their ending has meant. And you, you hate the world, but it is you who are part of it. You want your images, you want your shapes; and your complaint is the same as the complaint of the world, the complaint that what is breakable has been broken, that what is temporal is not eternal, that what is of the earth is no more than the earth and crumbles. You have seen the pretty castles that were built in the sand, and now you are lamenting that the tide has run over them. But the tide is greater than the castles, and if it is beauty that you want then you should see the beauty in the tide. Praise and pity are the noises of history, they are not the noises of life. The noise of life is the tide. Why will you not hear it?”

“I hear you,” Peter said, “but I do not hear the tide.”

“Your complaint is the complaining of the body whose blood has grown thin, but the body is not the meaning and still you can love it. You look at the body and you see that it is drowned, but when you look why do you not say ‘The tide has gone over it’ instead of ‘The body is ugly’?”

“What is the tide?” Peter said.

“That is for you to say.”

“The body is ugly,” Peter said. “The tide has gone over it. I will say what you want me to say. But there are still some things that are beautiful.”

Annabelle stepped up the small wooden railing that separated us from the grass, and as she swung herself over she became for a moment like a dancer on her toes. “Beginnings are never beautiful,” she said.

“What you want,” I said, “is a place that has died many years ago, a place in which there is no movement and no meaning except that which exists in a fossil or a stone.”

“And is there such a place?” Peter said.

“I believe so.”

“Where?”

“I have lived in one. I have left it. It is an island in the south. There is nothing living except the cactus and the crabs, and the people are only shadows on the faces of the rocks.”

“And you left it?” Peter said; “Why?”

“Because it was too old,” I said. “It was too old and too dead and too dry. Our world may be ageing, but a grave like that is uncanny. It is too close to the sun. The sun is not the God of life — that is nonsense. The sun is the God of eternity. One cannot live under a sky so old.”

“Rain is the God of life,” Marius said, “rain and dampness and softness and dew.”

“Of which there was none. Have you ever lived in a place in which the only softness is rotten? You find it strange. You become frightened of touching things in case your finger goes through.”

“You need not touch things,” Peter said. “You need only look. You cannot touch beauty, it must always be apart from you. And it must be hard so that it will remain apart from you and you may not be tempted to stroke it.”

“That is the old beauty,” Marius said, “the beauty that is dead.”

“Then I want it!” Peter said.