Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“Where will you go?” I said.

“Back home,” he said. I had not heard him use the word “home” before. “There are things to be done there,” he said.

“And what will Peter do?” I found myself talking of Peter instead of Annabelle in the way that everyone did.

“I believe his father is trying to get him a job in Paris.”

“Will Peter take it?”

“I hope he will.”

“Do you know his father then?”

“Oh yes. I stayed with them, you know, for quite a time. He is a very remarkable man, his father. Very remarkable indeed. I was doing some work for him out there.”

“What sort of work?”

“Various things,” Marius said.

There was nothing else to say. I stood up to go. I was angry, but this time it was with a quite dispassionate annoyance, a desire to get away into an atmosphere that was whole. Marius watched me and then asked me, more from politeness than anxiety, I thought, if I would have lunch with him the next day. I thanked him. Politeness was better than nothing. I walked along to say good-bye to Alice and I found her lying on her bed in the shaded light. “I told you you would be in a mess if you went with Marius,” she said. She was looking very tired and the light made hollows in her face as it lay on the pillow. “Are you in a mess?” I said.

“No,” she said. The room smelt of smoke and the curtains were heavy against the window. I thought of how Marius had once said that Alice did not have an effect on people and now he did not have an effect on people either. “I don’t mind being in a mess,” I said. I left her my cigarettes and went.

I met Peter in the square. I was glad to see him. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in,” he said. “The place is full of priests.”

“Priests?” I said.

“Substantially there is only one, I suppose, but he is like one of those jelly-fish that are composed of a million minor orgasms.”

“Organisms,” I said.

“Yes, organisms. He knows all about cricketers and actresses. He is that sort of priest.”

“Come back to my room,” I said. “I can make some supper.”

“Anywhere,” Peter said. “Anywhere for God’s sake that is not holy.”

We sat on a bus. I felt again like a private detective. It was as if Peter were my witness from whom I had to extort the truth before he was killed. “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Is that Marius’s child?”

“I suppose so,” Peter said.

“I was beginning to wonder even about that.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“So what’s wrong with Marius? Why’s he going away?”

“There’s nothing else for him to do.”

“Doesn’t he want to stay with Annabelle?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Annabelle says it’s no good,” Peter said.

We sat together handcuffed by what we did not understand, and I could think of nothing except the fatuity of my questions. “What happened when you were abroad?” I said.

“We were with each other for a time,” he said. “My father was sent to the West Indies, you know, so that we were there with Marius. We were moving in and Marius was round about the house and it was all right then. Annabelle was all right. Then I went away to do this ridiculous job and by the time we were due to come home it was all wrong. Nobody was saying anything and Marius just followed us hoping for the best. And now here we are. Why the devil did she start a child if she didn’t want to stick with him?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“So he’s got to go away and the whole bloody thing’s breaking up. I could kill her.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And now what’s she going to do? What’s she going to do with the baby? No one seems to be interested in that. All they do is call her a tough nut. They seem to be more interested in me.”

“They can talk about you,” I said.

“Why can’t they talk about her? It’s going to be very awkward for my father and mother if Annabelle has a child. They can’t very well cart her around with them. Yet everyone treats her as if she’d done something marvelous and me as if I’d been certified insane.”

“You know this psychoanalysis stuff is nonsense,” I said. “Why keep on bringing it in?”

“You don’t know it,” he said. “You don’t know it at all. My father could charm the hindquarters off an ox.”

We went up to my room. Its ugliness hit us. “Oh dear,” Peter said. I lit the gas fire and cleared some clothes off a chair. Peter was examining the writing-desk that turned into a washstand. The walls were the colour of the inside of a trunk. “Why do you live here?” he said. “I don’t mind it,” I said. I found myself being almost proud of its ugliness, proud of the condition of poverty which was the disease of the post-war world. I found a bottle of beer among my boots.

“I wondered,” Peter said. “It is funny how none of us know anything about you. Perhaps this is the hold that you have over us, that you live in a place like this.”

“I only live here because I choose to.”

“Why?”

“A reaction, probably. Reactions are necessary. I think it is the way to live.”

“In order to be free?”

“Free from the opposite.”

“It is this freedom that is crazy,” Peter said.

We drank our beer. The gas fire popped, gave out, was revived by a shilling. “What is it that is crazy?” I said.

“That we are no better off. When Marius’s wife was alive, do you remember, we were all right, we were fond of each other, Marius and Annabelle were in love. Now she is dead and they are not. We none of us are. The world has become a place in which there is no love. Why did you laugh with my father at tea?”

“Because I don’t think that’s true.”

“When Marius’s wife died she gave Annabelle and Marius freedom. Look what they have done with it.”

“I don’t know what they have done with it. You said that they were happy abroad.”

“I said that they were all right because I thought that they should marry. That was what I meant. But I do not think that they were happy. I do not think that any of us have been happy together since we last saw you. Does that make you glad?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why did you walk out that night?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was the thing to do.”

“It doesn’t seem that it was.”

“Perhaps Marius’s wife was the cause of it. Perhaps she was more important than all of us so that while she was alive we were all right. Then she died and we were free from importance and it was not all right. Even when we did not know her we felt that there was something beyond us that made the rest possible. Now there is nothing of importance and that is the despair.”

“So you walked out?”

“I walked out because I thought there were other things of importance. There were to me.”

“And are there still?”

“Yes, that is why I laughed at tea. I did not know that there would not be anything of importance to you.”

“There should have been,” he said. “Why don’t you marry Annabelle?”

“Annabelle is happy,” I said. “Do you know why?”

“It is those priests,” he said. “Those bloody damn priests. It is they who have ruined us.” This was the saddest answer I have ever had, and at the time I had to take it as true.

I turned away from him. I lit the gas ring and put fat in the frying pan and watched the liquid spread. I thought of Annabelle cooking and knitting and having children and Peter’s priests like great black spiders to entwine her. “Who is this priest?” I said.

“You will see him. He is what is important now. He is called Father Jack Manners. Isn’t that a silly name for a priest?”