Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“Yes,” I said.

“They all have names like that. It is like the girls who are called William. They have to present themselves as the opposite of what they are supposed to be. Why do they do it? I don’t understand. I should have thought that a priest was the one person who shouldn’t.”

“Perhaps they have to present themselves strangely in order to get what they want. . ”

“But do they get it? Surely, that is the greatest fallacy in the world, that you can hope to get what you want by pretending something different. You can see the results of it all around you. I like people to say what they are thinking, I believe it is necessary to say what you think in order to get what you want, and surely it is the business of a priest to think of something other than Wisdens or the Tatler.”

“But it is what he does, the effect he has, rather than what he says. . ” I was trying to remember all that Peter’s father had told me and was failing.

“Admittedly he is not like one of those monks of the middle ages. Have you read Boccaccio? It is interesting, that. I don’t know how true it all was, that world of lecherous monks, but at least it was the fashion to make up stories about them. And stories, if they are good ones, have at the worst a superficial resemblance to facts. It was the fashion then to be lecherous, and the priest was taken as the fashionable man par excellence. Now it is the fashion to be in with the latest gossip, and priests are there at the head of the field again. Talk is the big thing now, and by talk you can judge people. I tell you, this man knows what’s going to win the National and what names will appear in the engagement column of the Times. That’s what he talks about. The one thing he doesn’t talk about is the difference between right and wrong.”

“Have you asked him why he doesn’t?”

“No, I don’t think I could bear to.”

“I shall ask him,” I said.

Peter smiled. I was no good as a detective. I should always, I thought, sympathize with the suspect. A person’s reasons for choosing to be what he was were more convincing than the judgments of others upon what he had chosen. The motives I should like to question were those of the police.

“Do you know this religious racket?” Peter said.

“No,” I said.

“I tell you, there is in it no question of right and wrong. It is a matter of good form and bad form, and whether you can keep a smile on your face like a bloody Aunt Sally.”

“How did you get into it?” I said.

“It’s my mother’s racket. Mothers always have a racket, and the Church is hers. So I’m an Aunt Sally whether I like it or not.”

“She’s not a Catholic, is she?”

“Yes, she is. That’s one of their tricks. She’s a Catholic but she isn’t a Roman Catholic. It’s a very clever trick. They get you feeling a fool before you’ve begun.”

“Yes,” I said.

“All part of the racket. No one knows anything about it, you see. And they never tell anyone so you go on not knowing. They talk and talk and make you feel a fool and you don’t know what the devil they’re up to. I doubt if they know what they’re up to themselves. I’m sure my mother doesn’t. She doesn’t know the difference between a Baptist and a bishop. But she’s put her money on God because she thinks his shares are rising. He pays out the interest of making her feel on top of everyone else. She’s in the know, she’s on to a good thing, she’s got that damned satisfaction of having jumped the market. And she never explains it. Why doesn’t she explain it? Why else except that to make a bit for herself she has to keep others in the dark?”

“She doesn’t try to convert you?”

“They never try to convert you. It’s like some club, some damned secret society, you have to come begging and knocking before they let you in. And yet they say it is a matter of life and death to you, a matter of eternal heaven or eternal hell. Why don’t they try to convert you? They are supposed to be charitable. You have to get the right knock or the door won’t open, you have to pull the right strings or your name will not be proposed. The knock and strings are there, I admit. But they have bloody funny ideas in the way of advertisement.”

“But you said you were an Aunt Sally. . ”

“I am an Aunt Sally because although they don’t try to convert you by stating their case, they do everything to demoralize you from having a case of your own. It’s like having a disease in the family, or drunkenness — their eye is on the bottle and the bottle fills the room. You can’t escape from it. There is a smell of it in the corridors, if you went into the jungle you would hear it on our trail. And now everyone is talking it up, everyone muscling in on the racket. I tell you my family is a nightmare. I believe if I went to the North Pole I should find a bloody monk on top of it like Simon Stylites.”

“How did it begin?”

“I tell you how my mother began it. I don’t believe my father cares a damn, but he says he does. She got the priests hopping around — they are the most frightful snobs, you know — and then Marius got wind of it. . ”

“Marius?”

“Yes, didn’t you know? Marius got wind and made a nice little investment and had a nice little sinful affair with Annabelle all at the same time — that’s funny, isn’t it, that’s really bloody funny — and then Annabelle. . ”

“Annabelle?”

“Oh yes, of course, God almighty, Annabelle was their darling and she went to bed with Marius, doesn’t that make you laugh?”

“No,” I said.

“They all took it up, they all made lovely big jokes about it — that’s another of their tricks, you know — all being beautifully irreverent and jolly, and darling Father Jack mopping up the cocktails and Marius floating round as if he’d seen a vision and Annabelle getting bigger and bigger as she knelt in Church;—Oh Jesus Christ oh bloody Jesus Christ if it doesn’t make you laugh then isn’t it too much to make you cry?”

“Begin again,” I said. “Begin again about Annabelle.”

“I tell you Marius began it. Marius’s wife died and Marius got religion. Did she do it for him? Do you know? It doesn’t matter. Marius came to my mother and she took him under her wing and they got their tame priests with leads around their necks. Tame priests wear dog-collars, did you know? Then Annabelle. Annabelle always had it, you remember how she talked, but she did not have it like this. Now she does not talk. And I will tell you why she now has it like this, because Marius gave her the baby and that’s a mess for anyone to be in and this is her way for getting out of it.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“You don’t know it, you don’t know it at all, I tell you this is the racket which has ruined us and the world. When my father got hold of you this evening what did he say to you? I know what he said, he said that I was in a muddle and you must all pull on the bloody old rope to get me out of it. Did he say anything about Annabelle? Did he say anything about Marius? No. And now who do you think is in the muddle. I who have never changed my creed for one instant and who have done my best to live by what I believe and who admit my failures according to what is left of my conscience, or Marius who sins and Annabelle who blinds herself and my father who will say what he said to you without having the honesty to say it to me and Father Jack Manners who puts his blessing on the assembly and bluffs them all into thinking that they are acting in the name of God? Who is in the muddle?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Then tell me this, when you saw Marius this evening, did he appear to you to be alive or dead?”

“Dead,” I said.