Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“And have you got this faith?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why. .?” but the question ceased, hopeless, like a dream that is lost in waking memory.

“Because I am confronted by it,” she said. “Because I want to have it. Because I like people who have got it.”

“Yes,” I said.

The dream, caught in glimpses, was of Marius’s wife, in the hospital, in that tomb of unbearable summer, sitting up in bed and saying all the things that Annabelle was saying. Love as a triangle, with faith as the further corner: love in the presence of someone else, the eternal lover, God. I remembered the crucifix above her bed, the crucifix that Marius must have brought her. It was she who had converted Marius, who had told him that he was wrong, that it was only through the Church that he could find the love that he wanted. Just as he had once frightened her to death by his loneliness, so had she then frightened him to faith by the act of her dying.

“I know all this,” I said. “I remember it so well.”

“Do you?” she said.

And the waking memory was of Annabelle a year ago also saying the same things as she was saying now. But then she had said them as if they meant something, and now as if they did not. There was fear, too, with her. A fear of loneliness to death and a faith that denied the dying. I wondered if her calmness of yesterday was only the calmness of successful denial. I could find out.

“I remember all this going on and on just the same,” I said, “a year ago as it is now, we said the same things, acted not for ourselves but for others, loved not for ourselves but for others, why do you try to make out that then we were selfish children?”

“Because then it was spontaneous and now it is not, when we went away we found that it failed, it was then that we had to find something different.”

“Or to come back.”

“No, not to come back, you can never come back, you never have the choice again.”

“You can always come back.”

“That is not true,” she said wildly.

I walked beside her. I had never felt so dead or so destructive as on that grey carved day with the trees like rusty iron and the mud rolled smooth as marble. I felt that I was betraying more than the things that I had said to her father, and all in the name of a belief that I would not myself have dared to call a faith. “So what you have found is Father Jack,” I said.

“I am sorry about Father Jack,” she said.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I am afraid he talks rather a lot, I didn’t know if you’d like him.”

“Does it matter if I like him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then I like him,” I said.

She raised a hand to her forehead. She said miserably, “That is what we need, you see, a truth that is definite, that will tell us what to do.”

“That tells Peter he mustn’t be a puritan?”

“Yes, I think that is true.”

“Supposing Peter were not a puritan, do you know what he would be?”

“I think. . ”

“He would be a smooth lecherous man fumbling girls in the back of taxis, is that what you want?”

“He would not, that is not the point, the point is that Peter only hates and he should love.”

“Then why is that not mentioned? He does love, anyway, that is why it is not mentioned. He loves in such a way as makes you uncomfortable. He is not a puritan, he is a moralist. A puritan is someone who gets his moralizing wrong, and supposing Peter gets his right?”

“He doesn’t!”

“Why? Because Father Jack says so? Father Jack who would prefer to turn him into a lecher and who has turned you into someone who has not changed their belief or faith one atom but is now merely miserable and uncertain about it?”

“I am not, I am certain, I had no conception of it before, and why do you say I am miserable?”

“Because you look it.”

“At tea, yesterday, was I miserable?”

“No.”

“Then it is only you. . ”

“Only I who have made you miserable? Is that true?”

She made no answer. I could see her hand trembling against the edge of her coat. All she said was, “Anyway, you said you liked Father Jack.”

“I will explain. I like him at breakfast. I like him when I am not thinking about him. My instinct is to enjoy being with him and to escape from Peter, but when I think about him the feeling changes. And for this reason, that Father Jack doesn’t like a person who thinks.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“Tell me if I am wrong. The Christian ideal is a person who believes and who functions, it is not a person who thinks. Thinking is danger: curiosity is the devil. It says so, and I can see it, I can see it in Christian people. Why do you worry so much about Peter? Why do you worry more about him than about someone who sins in a state of believing? Because to you the only real sin is the sin of thought, and the sins of action don’t matter. And to me it is the other way round. Peter’s only sin is that he puts everything into question. He is lucky if he has no other.”

“It is the one thing. . ”

“It is the one thing that you hate, I know. It is what you call being egocentric. But everyone is egocentric, it is a condition of being human. If you take it to stand for anything more than this then the word is meaningless.”

“It isn’t,” she said. “Don’t you trust your instinct? Your instinct is love, and being egocentric is when there is no love.”

“You do not answer me. You never answer me. Peter makes the same complaint, that there is no love. It is a failure for which you are as much responsible as he. In fact you are more responsible, because you claim the means of love. Your words are meaningless if there is this failure. Your religion is meaningless if there is this failure. I am no puritan, I do not know what is right, but I say this, that what is wrong is that which contradicts itself. And I say that this is a contradiction, that you condemn a person for being egocentric when everybody is egocentric, that you do not judge actions when it is only actions that are judgeable, and this most of all, this failure is a contradiction. You claim to have found the means of salvation and now, as a result of it, there is less love than there was before. There is now no love between you and Peter, there is no love between you and Marius, there is no love between you and. . ” I stopped, on the brink of some great evil; “Why were you happy at tea?” I asked her.

There still was no answer. She was talking almost before the question was put, saying, “It is Peter’s fault, Peter only hates, moralizing always turns to hate when there is no faith to guide it. Oh can’t you see, can’t you see this, that we talk and talk and talk and never do anything, that love is a performance and not a feeling, that all the time last year we were judging things by ourselves as if we were so important and we were not important, not at all, and that was why things went wrong, it was then they went wrong, I told you, didn’t I tell you? and now we are trying to live as if we were not important, quite simply, as if we just had a duty…”

“We?”

“Yes, we, why are you looking at me?”

“Why are you crying?”

“Because you are so bloody, you will think of nothing but yourself, you will not admit this, that love is a performance…”

“That is what I have always admitted.”

“You have? Then why do you hate me?”

“Can I ask you to marry me?” I said.

“Oh damn you,” she said, “damn you,” and she ran away across the grass.

I could see Peter approaching. He came through the trees like a weary lion. “Listen,” he said, “listen, there is nothing to be done.” Annabelle went fluttering like his wounded prey. “I tell you it is no use talking, I have done all the talking, they have all gone mad.” She slowed down, walked, went steadily away from us. “There is no truth any more, they are different people, there is no means of approaching them.” She turned, disappeared, and the morning died. In its grave I listened to Peter. “Their words mean different things, their faces mean different things, it is no use fighting them. You can’t fight them, it is like fighting Medusa, out of every head you cut off two new ones grow in its place. They have an answer to everything, an excuse for everything, they have different memories about what has happened. They make their own truth, they make their own history, they are lunatics in their certainty. If you charge them with their failures they say that they are human, if you question their claims they say that that they are gods. There is nothing to be done, I tell you, it is either they who are mad or we are. Come back and have lunch with us and you will see again what I mean. Either they are mad or we are. You have got to face this, come back and have lunch, I have got to know if I am mad. Doesn’t it interest you that you may be a lunatic? You can’t have lunch? No? Then where are you going?”