Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

When Marius rang up he said that he had met Peter and had talked with him. He thought that I should go to Grosvenor Square because something was happening. I told this to Annabelle and it was she who insisted on going with me. When we were ready we went out and the two sad men were still playing on the corner. One of them took off his hat and held it out to us and then bowed to us gravely. We did not go to Grosvenor Square until the evening because there seemed so much to be done.

Peter stood in the middle of the room holding a tennis racquet. “Are you better?” he said.

“Much better,” Annabelle said.

He looked at her slily and then twirled the tennis racquet around in his hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t produce Father Jack for you,” he said.

“I didn’t want him.”

“I thought you did,” he said.

“No.”

I wished that Annabelle had not come. I was afraid that she was still more ill than she admitted. Our day had gone quickly and I did not believe that there was any need to worry about Peter. In fact I found it difficult to care about Peter at all. He was swishing at the flowers with his racquet.

“I saw Marius this morning,” he said.

“Did you?”

“I met him in the street. Does he know Father Jack well?”

“Quite well.”

“He is coming round this evening to say good-bye. He should be here soon. He is going away to-morrow. Father Jack will be back too. It will be quite a party.”

“Peter, do be careful with that racquet.”

“Racquet!” He knocked the top off a daffodil. “Father Jack is a hypocrite,” he said.

“Is that what Marius told you?”

“Marius said Father Jack doesn’t like me at all. That is very wrong of him, you know.” He said this in a off-hand way that was almost arch. “Silly of him to think that and not to tell me.”

“What didn’t he tell you?”

“I had a talk with him, do you remember, that day after breakfast, and I thought I’d be nice to him as he is after all an awful bore, so I said what I thought quite pleasantly and he simply lapped it up, at least he said he did, and he told me to go ahead, it was all right by him, so he’s a liar. I suppose they have to be nice to you if you’re nice to them.”

“I suppose they do,” Annabelle said.

“Well they shouldn’t. He’s an old hypocrite. A silly old gardener leading fools up the garden path.”

“Did Marius say he was leading you up the garden path?”

“He used absurd language. That was what he meant. ‘Knowing well that there would be thistles on the way,’ Marius has become like a guidebook, one can simply hear the capital letters. As if fools cared!”

The room was hot. I felt that Peter’s indignation was enormously trivial. He was trying to hit the broken head of the daffodil through the open window.

“Are you going to play tennis?” Annabelle said.

“Definitely.”

“Who with?”

“Father Jack,” Peter said.

I think it was the day that Annabelle and I had spent together that left us unprepared for the scene in the evening. Emotion is never trivial to the person who feels it. I should have known this. But we forgot it, and did not know that Peter was desperate. We did not manage the scene well.

“When is Marius coming?” Annabelle said.

“Soon. I didn’t know you’d be here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

“I suppose it will be nice for you to say good-bye to him.”

“Peter!”

“Yes?”

“Nothing.” She suddenly looked very ill as she had done the evening before.

“I mean, you probably won’t see him again. What does Father Jack think of that?”

“I expect he thinks it’s dreadful.”

“For a man who has lived with us for a month, who has eaten our food and been waited on by you, he seems to have rather a low opinion of us.”

“He loves us,” Annabelle said.

“I hope he doesn’t love you like Marius did,” Peter said. “Or perhaps that would be a good way to get rid of him.”

“Oh Peter, please.”

“Sorry,” Peter said. “Sorry. Let’s ask him what he thinks of Marius. Perhaps he loves him too.”

It was I, standing by the window, who saw Father Jack arrive. He was a tiny black figure crossing the road with a suitcase. I nodded to Annabelle, and she went out of the room. “Where’s she gone?” Peter said.

“Father Jack has arrived.”

“Damn her,” he said. He started for the door.

“He’s coming up,” I said.

“Has she gone to warn him to bring some thistles for the fool?”

“She’s gone to tell him something about herself, nothing about you.”

“To say she’s sorry?”

“Yes.”

“How miserable. How bloody miserable!” He threw his tennis racquet onto a chair and then picked it up again. “How damnable of him to demand it!”

When Father Jack arrived his face was wrinkled in smiles and he began talking at once. Peter went to take his suitcase with an affectation of politeness and it was then that I began to be as worried as Annabelle was. “Have a drink, Father,” Peter said.

“I think I will, thank you, I have a throat like parchment.”

“A good big one, there, that will be nice for you.”

“Aren’t you drinking, Peter?”

“No, I’ve given it up, I suppose that is dreadfully immoral of me.”

“Indeed, I hope not, I should not like to think so.”

“I hear that you think us all quite dreadful, Father.”

“Indeed I do not think that you are dreadful.”

“Myself, at any rate, you think I am most wrong.”

“There is no one, I suppose, who is not most wrong.”

“Can’t you do anything about it, Father, or would you like another drink?”

“I do not think I will have another drink, thank you.”

“Perhaps a little omelette which Annabelle will cook for you?”

“Thank you, no.”

“I am afraid we have nothing else to offer you. What can you do for people who are most wrong?”

“You must remember, I think, that one is wrong oneself.”

“Really? And is that an excuse for not doing anything?”

“Certainly it is not an excuse.”

“So?”

“But what are you asking me, Peter?”

“I am asking you what you do when the world is going to hell.”

“The world is not going to hell. It is individuals who may go to hell.”

“Then do you tell them the truth of this?”

“One is not in a position to say who will or who will not go to hell.”

“Do you tell them the truth?”

“The truth as you endeavour to see it.”

“Or do you endeavour to assert your superiority over them by every trick at your command?”

“You do not.”

“Then, again, what do you do for them?”

“I can tell them what to do but I cannot make them do it.”

“You lead the old horses to water but you cannot push them in?”

“People are not horses.”

“No, of course not, they are much wickeder than horses. So you drag them to the water and pour a bucketful over their heads. Is that what you do to help them?”

“It is something that may help them.”

“And if after the ceremony they commit all the crimes that human wickedness can imagine, you do not take this as an adverse reflection upon the ceremony but merely as an illustration that men are wickeder than horses?”

“There is no question of horses.”

“Have you ever known a horse that is so bestial as a Christian? All right, there is no question of horses, there is the question of the man to whom evil happens because he has no faith in eternity and the man who causes evil in the name of God.”

“They may both be punished.”

“And when there is an institution that does evil in the name of God, that for centuries has been responsible for more killing, starving, imprisoning, and torturing than any other institution in history, do you not take this responsibility as a reflection upon the institution or do you happily look forward to a further riot of punishment in the light of which these earthly crimes might indeed appear beautiful?”