Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“Everything is so old, there is nothing to do about it. All this goes on and on and there is nothing left in the world to worry about. If you would just stay with me you would know and then you would stop probing inwards and inwards and then you would pity. There is nothing that is wrong until you know that everything is wrong, and until you have done something you will never know. Until you have done something wrong you will never have to forgive yourself, and until then you are not human. Until now you are not human, dear darling, darling, and afterwards you will know what humanity is and how it suffers, and when you hate yourself it will be good for you and then you will see. You will see everything in your life and how terrible it is and then you will have to forgive yourself. You will give up and you will be frightened and then you will be human.”

As I lay beside her on the bed I did not move and I did not answer, so she raised herself up on her elbow and leaned across me with one arm stretched on the far side of me to take her weight and I could see her ribs where she breathed, and as she bent down to kiss me I could feel her pressure on my chest like the weight of two soft hands. I put my arms around her and held her and I thought of Annabelle and Marius and how I did not care any more. She moved her body and I could feel nothing but the heaviness of her and the dryness of her mouth and I held her so that she might feel something better. I put my arms beneath her dressing-gown and stroked her, and I did not think it was myself who was lying. Then she lifted her head and pushed her hair back with her hand and she said, “Don’t you love me darling?” and I said, “Yes,” and she went on looking at me with her sick enormous eyes, he dressing-gown was away from her front and from her shoulders and she tried to close it and then she said “It is Marius that I love.” “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I tried to hold her again in my arms but she pushed herself away from me and sat up on the edge of the bed and I thought she was crying. She was searching under the pillow for what I thought was a handkerchief, but it was for a cigarette which she found and I watched her light it. “You’d better go now,” she said. The room seemed to hold me like a bath that has gone cold, and I did not want to get out of it. “Go on,” she said.

Marius came to stay with me. In the mornings he went out early to do the business that still detained him in England, and I had the room to myself in which to work. In the afternoons I usually saw Alice. We sometimes had tea together.

One day when Marius was out Father Jack came to see me. He was an old man, but he climbed the stairs rapidly talking all the time and his small wrinkled face showed no sign of fatigue. He sat down and he did not notice the room at all, it might have been beautiful to him. He said:

“The trouble is that you do not understand the position, you do not understand it at all, you look upon the Church as a team of hospitable cricketers, a home for stray sufferers, an army of thin crusaders doing battle against the flesh. You see some special significance in the numbers that this army contains, in the individual behaviour of some of its members, in the errors that they may make. You talk of this significance as if it affected the function that is proper to an army. It does not. An army has its function no matter what its numbers and its mistakes. You imagine that we are engaged upon some game of tip-and-run with immorality, that we have charms to dispense with pain, that we are fighting for the truth and are concerned about our chances of victory. We are not. What you must realize is this, and this is everything, that whatever war we are fighting it is not one of which the issue is still in doubt. We are not marching towards truth because the truth has been given to us. We do not struggle for victory because the victory has already been won. We know the truth. We enjoy the victory. Our function now, if you like to use these metaphors, is that of a triumphant army in occupation of the world.

“You do not know these things because as a child you did not listen or else you were not taught. The world is full of people who have received no instruction or who have ignored it, and who do not know what Christianity is about. Many of these are settled firmly in a way of life that seems satisfactory to them, and when instruction is offered it is most often incapable of being heard. Others are not settled and are interested in instruction, but their condition of bewilderment is seldom one which can advantageously be used. A man must come to his own conclusions, he must not be persuaded by the rhetoric of a priest. There are practical considerations in this, as well as ethical ones. A conversion against a man’s conscience is not a true conversion, and the results of it are dangerous for everyone concerned. A priest is dealing normally with practising Christians, and his function is one of service to the Christian Church. Instruction is given to children because that is the time for instruction; ministration is given to adults in the pattern of what they believe. It is true that now, in the conditions around us, the pattern is upset and the world is not normal. These are conditions which are unfortunate but which do not affect the position of the Church. Its function remains the same.

“This function you can learn to understand and practise or you need not learn to understand. That is up to you. It is quite a simple function, of love and worship, which begins with the sacraments and extends to the whole of life. You can learn it if you wish. I hope you do. But what I would say to you is this, that it is what a man believes that is important. I would rather a man lived faithfully by what he believes than attempted to persuade himself of what he does not. A synthesis of persuasion is useless: an antithesis of truth is not. This is perhaps what you will recognize. There is something of the truth in every man, however contradictory expressions of it may appear. It is this truth that can be respected: I should say more than this, — it can be loved. The claim that the Church makes, you see, is a very large one after all;—it claims that if every man will observe and honour the truth that is in him, then there is not much more that need be done. The Church, as it were, is doing the rest. It is working for the world in the only way possible for it. There is a good deal of confidence in this, and certainty. This is what you will learn to understand. Do I make myself clear?”

Marius came back in the evenings and he looked at me with eyes that curiously had no depth. It was difficult to talk to him. He said:

“Yes, I know Father Jack, he is a good man, a very good man, he is what they call their West End turn, does that shock you? I know what you mean, I didn’t think he would help you, but don’t let anything shock you until you know what it is about. Then you will see that he is a very good man, and not a spider — didn’t he say so? — not a spider to entwine you. I do not think that he is the person for you to talk to, however, and I? no, of course not, I am not the person, but you know where you can go.

“In one way at least I think I am like Father Jack. The life of everyone is like a circle and at one stage you stand on the circumference looking inwards and you search for the centre and the centre is not there. Then you find it and you turn outwards because the centre is established and you don’t have to search for it any more. You stand on the circumference looking outwards and outwardly your life becomes quite a passionless business, to do what ought to be done, and in the centre because it is established the passion is not seen. Passion is not often discernible in a thing that does not move. Passion in sculpture needs a specialist’s eye to observe it. If you have not these eyes then you think it is dead. And it is not easy for some to turn inwards again.