I
The next morning Myra was in the church hall sorting out costumes for the Easter pageant when Mrs. Thomas came in.
‘I met your good man at the gate on his way out and he told me you were here,’ she said.
Myra, who was kneeling beside a trunk, pulled out a long grey skirt which smelt of moth balls.
‘We used that for the play about Florence Nightingale. Remember?’
Mrs. Thomas acknowledged it with a bray of laughter.
‘I shouldn’t get into it now, should I?’
Myra continued to poke around in the trunk and Mrs. Thomas stood with her feet slightly apart looking down at her.
‘Ralph really ought to have a curate. He is beginning to look his age.’
Myra pulled out a straw bonnet trimmed with cherries.
‘That’s not so dreadful. He’s only forty-two.’
‘If Bill looked as drawn as that I shouldn’t be flippant about it. The parish is much too large for him to manage on his own.’
Myra twiddled the hat round on her fingers.
‘Don’t be silly, Joan. No one has a curate nowadays. Certainly not in a parish like this.’
‘I shall raise it at the next P.C.C. meeting. There’s quite a lot of money goes into even the meanest house in this parish now.’
‘And you’ll get the same answer that Rutledge got when he raised Planned Giving.’
‘My dear! I think I’m a little more persuasive than our Stanley.’ Mrs. Thomas took the hat from Myra and rubbed at the cherries which were powdered with dust. ‘Aren’t you worried about Ralph?’
Myra gathered up a bundle of clothes which she had put to one side on the floor.
‘It’s no use worrying about what can’t be altered. Will you help me to carry these things over to the vestry? I think they’ll be safer there, out of the way of the youth club, until after the pageant.’
Mrs. Thomas picked up a rough-hewn bowl with a strange brass fixture inside it.
‘What on earth is this?’
‘It’s a lamp. Rutledge made it for one of the Wise Men. He claims it’s an authentic design! I believe it’s got oil in it, so be careful you don’t spoil your coat.’
The vestry looked very sombre, without flowers, the cross on the side table the only decoration. It was a very small room. The two women seemed less at ease with one another now that they were at such close quarters. Mrs. Thomas set the oil lamp down on top of the low cupboard where the communion wine was kept. She paused, looking at the lamp, for a moment; anyone who did not know her opinion of him might have thought that she was admiring Rutledge’s handiwork. Myra was folding the clothes and depositing them in a neat pile in a corner. In another corner there was a stack of old hymn sheets and choir music, the paper curled and yellow, giving out a musty smell. The room was damp and chilly; the sunlight reached it only in the late afternoon when it had no power to warm the stone walls and there was only one small radiator which was never more than tepid.
‘I’ve been trying to persuade Ralph to have flowers on Sundays during Lent,’ Myra said. ‘They do at some churches because Sunday isn’t supposed to be included as a fast day.’
Mrs. Thomas tilted the lamp to one side and the oil moved sludgily.
‘The P.C.C. would never agree. They like their Lenten gloom.’
‘It doesn’t hurt them. It does hurt Ralph.’
Mrs. Thomas put down the lamp.
‘There are other things that could hurt him more.’
Myra folded a shawl with particular care; then she tossed it on top of the pile, spoiling her handiwork, and dusted her hands together. As she did these things, she realized that one of the signs of shock is to appear not to be shocked. But it was too late now for the innocence of anger.
‘Don’t imagine that I am enjoying this,’ Mrs. Thomas said, watching her eagerly. ‘Because, as you know, I’ve been through it all myself. I know just what it feels like.’
Myra waited.
‘I know how much unhappiness it can cause, too.’
She is jealous, Myra thought. Her little affair was over so long ago and now she hasn’t the courage to start another although she is bored with Bill.
‘This is hardly the place to talk about your past waywardness, Joan.’
‘And I was wayward. My dear! When I think about it I hardly know myself.’ Pleasure lingered for a moment in her big, staring eyes. ‘And I don’t regret it, either. Not one moment of it. So don’t think I’m critical of you.’
‘Many thanks.’
Myra was thinking: So we are sisters under the skin, are we? You want me to confide in you so that you can live through your vulgar, lusty passion again. How surprised you would be if I told you the truth; how dark and devious and depraved you would find my ‘love’ affair.
Mrs. Thomas was saying: ‘It’s just that you’ve been seen around together once or twice; and people make so much of that kind of thing—especially with a woman in your position. And, you know, we do give ourselves away without realizing it. You watch him. Did you know that? During the service, and afterwards when you are talking to people in the porch . . .’
But I mustn’t confide in her, Myra told herself desperately; however strong the urge to shock may be, this is one time when I must not give in to it. In one way we are truly sisters, she and I; neither of us has the courage to go through with our affairs. She chose Bill and security; I don’t give a damn about security but I won’t risk passion. I had passion once with Ralph, and I was grateful for it, but it is finished. So this thing must stop and I must take the first step towards ending it now.
The room, chill and forbidding, was like a penitent’s cell. But she must tell lies and not the truth; she must offer a false confession although the humbling of pride would be real enough.
‘Thank you, Joan.’ Still a touch of acidity there; she must do better than that. ‘I’ve never felt for anyone as you felt for Barney.’ That, at least, was true; the sting of pain the words brought was a proof of their authenticity. It was the right thing to have said, too. The sudden brilliance of the other woman’s eyes told Myra that she would have no trouble now in convincing her of any tale she might choose to tell. ‘But he is very young, and I have never had children. So I suppose I have perhaps . . . enjoyed him too much . . . become a little possessive.’
‘Oh, my dear!’
Mrs. Thomas blundered across the room, tears blurring her eyes, and flung her arm round Myra’s shoulders. While the woman gushed out comfort, Myra thought: I shall never despise myself more than at this moment.
They went through the church together. Spencer was putting out extra prayer books which would be needed next week when all the one-day-a-year worshippers presented themselves for communion on Easter Sunday. He followed them into the porch and watched them walk down the path.
‘He’s going queer in the head,’ Mrs. Thomas whispered loudly. ‘I saw him prowling round your garden one evening. If I were you I should tell Pym to keep an eye on him.’
‘He’s welcome to prowl round the garden. There’s no gold buried there.’ Myra was not interested in Spencer’s vagaries. As they reached the vicarage gate and Mrs. Thomas showed no signs of departure, she said resignedly: ‘Come in and have coffee.’
When Myra opened the front door, she saw that there was a letter on the mat. The envelope was lying face down, but there was something familiar about the cheap paper. As she turned it over in her hands, she was bracing herself for the shock but in spite of this she had to put her hand against the door to steady herself.
‘For Sarah?’ Mrs. Thomas asked, seeing the sprawling, childish capitals.
‘No. For Ralph.’ Myra managed to walk quite steadily to the hall table where she laid the letter down. ‘He gets some odd correspondence from time to time.’
Mrs. Thomas had lost interest.
‘I’ll make that coffee,’ she said. ‘And I shall put a little brandy in it.’
While Myra sat in the lounge she thought about the letter. Ralph would not be in until the evening; she would have to wait a long time for him to open it. Alternatively, she could open it herself and burn it. But what would be the use? There would be others. And, in any case, there was a part of her that was glad that the climax was approaching.
II
Big Ben was chiming the half-hour when Jill left the Treasury where she worked and turned towards Great George Street. Half-past five. A fine evening, a little sharp, but with some sunlight still and hardly a cloud in the hazy blue sky. At the far end of Great George Street she could see the trees in St. James’s Park, green leaves beginning to clothe their skeletal branches. She hesitated, surprised to find that the sight brought sadness. Surely she was a little young to experience the ache in the heart of beauty? She felt impatient with herself; nevertheless, she would not risk the park tonight. She would catch an 11 bus from Parliament Street. Then, as she half¬turned, she caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of a figure hovering on the kerb. It was a mistake, of course; only her racing pulse seemed to think otherwise. She began to walk down Great George Street, choosing the lesser evil of the park.
Keith Wilson watched her go without attempting to follow her. She took about half-a-dozen steps and then turned again. As they came together, they spoke at once:
‘I didn’t like to . . .’
‘I wasn’t sure at first if it was you . . .’
Two of Jill’s friends from the Treasury went past, studying Wilson with interest; as they walked away one of the girls turned and nodded her head approvingly. Jill ignored her. Wilson was saying:
‘I had to see someone over at County Hall, so I thought . . .’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘No; just some figures about housing we wanted to check up on.’ He sounded quite important; anyone would think he was running the office. The odd thing was, he got away with it. The new air of authority faltered a little, however, on the personal level.
‘I was wondering . . .’
‘I’m on my way to St. James’s Park Station. Why not walk along with me?’
She steered him across the road under the outraged eyes of the policeman who had just beckoned on the traffic. They walked in silence towards Birdcage Walk. He glanced at her quickly once. Was it because her face was a little thinner that the features seemed less blunt? The colour in her cheeks betrayed confusion, but the mouth was more composed and words did not spill out so readily. They crossed into Birdcage Walk. She had been so friendly, so uncomplicated. He looked at her again. There was a glow about her still, but its quality had changed; an inner sparkle had replaced the cheerful schoolgirl warmth. He was suddenly aware that he loved her very deeply; all the things that he had planned to say seemed too shallow to offer to her. He turned his head away and stared bleakly at a twisted iron staircase which led down from one of the office buildings into a garden where an old wooden bench supported an even older cherry tree. The garden had the look of a place which is never visited.
‘I expect you’re busy getting ready for May?’ he asked.
‘Very busy.’
The terraced buildings in the Walk were honeycombed with lights now. In one ground floor window they could see a man bending over a drawing board, while from the shadows of the garden outside a small stone cherub gazed forlornly at the lighted window. On the opposite side of the road the trees in the park seemed to have moved closer together. Wilson said in a voice which just failed to strike the right casual note:
‘I hoped you might have a bit of time to spare this evening.’
‘Anyone can see you haven’t a flat to run.’
They were crossing the entrance to the Cockpit Steps. Ahead of them was Queen Anne’s Gate leading to St. James’s Park Station. Jill looked at it as a tired runner looks at the finishing post. It will all be over soon, she told herself. You just have to harden your heart and be very firm for two or three minutes. As they reached Queen Anne’s Gate, he said:
‘That flat won’t come to grief in half an hour, will it? After all, it’s going to get along without your ministrations from May onwards.’
While she was trying to formulate a reply which would not involve lying about being houseproud, another person took over and said:
‘I could walk across the park, if you like, and get a train from Green Park.’
The park was already a purple hollow of shadow. On the far side she could see the substantial buildings in the Mall; they seemed a long way away and as they crossed the road her feet felt leaden as though she would never make the distance.
They entered the park by the path that led to the bridge. Although the sunlight still lingered here and there, Jill had the feeling of darkness closing around her. The fact that Wilson now walked a little further away from her seemed only to emphasize the tension between them. There were still a few people strolling around, aimlessly enjoying themselves; on one seat a young couple nuzzled one another and on the next a woman was feeding the pigeons. These people, by their very imperturbability, seemed to heighten her own uneasiness. There were some early bluebells out under the trees and one or two men were standing paying them the townsman’s awed tribute. Jill and Wilson joined the gazing group for a moment. While she stared at the bluebells she was thinking about him. She did not dare to look up at him and she was surprised how difficult it was to recall his features. Memory told her that he was pale, dark-haired, over-serious and more than a trifle arrogant; but he was also, if the verdict of her girl friend at the Treasury was to be accepted, personable. Now that she had had this glimpse of him through another person’s eyes, he had ceased to be quite so familiar to her. She wondered what Connie would have thought if she had known that the man Jill was accompanying had recently been released after serving a term for inflicting grievous bodily harm.
As they began to walk under the towering plane trees towards the bridge, it was something more than the evening mist that sent little shivers up and down her arms. She tried to fold her loose jacket tighter about her. How strong was the impulse to violence within him? Was it something that could be controlled, or was it some kind of decay that would gnaw at his brain until one day the thread of reason snapped? A month ago, she would have dismissed such thoughts as nightmare fantasies. But now, in spite of his strangeness, he had become nearer to her; when she tried to see him clearly the image blurred. She forced herself to look at him. He smiled at her; he did not look very dangerous and the slow, rather unpractised smile had a trustful quality about it. She found that this trustfulness frightened her more than anything else. She was no more to be trusted than he was and he must be made to realize it.
They had reached the bridge. There were a few people leaning against the railings and some small boys were still feeding the ducks. Wilson put his hand on her elbow to turn her towards the railings and withdrew it quickly. His touch excited her and she was inconsistently annoyed with him for treating her with such anxious respect.
‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked hopefully, as though the view were something he had arranged himself for her special benefit.
Indeed it was beautiful. On either side of the lake the willows were coming to life again. What other tree was so transformed by spring? Witchlike in winter, its branches like coarse strands of greying hair, who could ever guess its flowing summer grace? She stopped herself on the verge of regret. There would be other summers in which to enjoy the willows in St. James’s Park; many, many other summers with every bit as much promise as this one. And yet . . . Just for a moment as the water rippled in the wake of a swan and the dank, weedy smell came up from the lake, she wondered whether this summer might not promise the greatest adventure of all. She looked at him again. He was leaning on the railings looking at the pale plumes of willow with a rather sad expression on his face, as though her regret had communicated itself to him. He is very easy to hurt, she thought; he will never grow sleek and self-satisfied. She doubted whether he would ever be a very comfortable person, either; he would mingle with the crowd, but he would not be absorbed into it. Perhaps that would not matter, if he was strong enough to live always a little on the outside. But was he strong enough? Uncertainty hovered in the eyes still, giving him on occasions the look of a wary and rather unstable animal. Was the flaw a permanent one? I am asking how much I have to lose, she thought: it was a question which she had always considered no adventurer should ever ask. In the distance she could see the tall new building on the South Bank rising above the Admiralty. She said determinedly:
‘London’s skyline will have changed when I come back.’
‘And will you have changed, do you think?’ he asked, still looking at the willows.
‘Of course I shall have changed. That’s the whole idea. We all have to change, grow, expand . . .’
‘And you have to travel in order to do that?’
‘I want . . .’—her mind searched frantically for convincing arguments but found only one sorry cliché—‘I want to see something of the world I live in.’
‘You want to grow in breadth, but not in depth, is that it?’
Her hands gripped the railings as she looked down at the water beneath the bridge which was very dark. She had always been afraid of dark water. The sun was going down now, draining colour and warmth; in the distance the lake was like glass. I am young! she said angrily to herself as she watched the twilight transformation.
I am twenty and I haven’t lived yet; there is so much to do and to see, so much gaiety and excitement.
‘I have to go, Keith,’ she said abruptly. ‘Really, I have to go now.’
He, too, was affected by the dwindling of the day. Despair came too easily to him. And with despair came doubt. As they stood in the Mall waiting to cross to St. James’s Palace and the evening wind sent the dust and scraps of paper eddying about their feet, he wondered whether he could in fact sustain marriage. He knew that at first she would have to give more than him, and this he resented. He had planned to tell her that he, too, wanted to travel; that when he got a job on a London paper—as with his talent he surely must—he would become a foreign correspondent and then they would go all over the world at some Press lord’s expense. As they walked through the empty courtyard at the back of the Palace towards Cleveland Row he found it quite impossible, amid the stone solemnity, to give voice to these bright day-dreams. They lost themselves in the maze of small streets and by the time they were trudging up Green Park, he was telling himself that he didn’t want a wife who thought about nothing but skittering from one place to another. There were lights along the terrace at the Ritz, waiters and a few people in evening dress looking across the park. That’s all she’ll get out of her travels, he thought, one opulent hotel after another. But when they neared Piccadilly he held her back for a moment in the seclusion of the park to ask:
‘Will I see you again?’
‘I don’t think there is any point.’ She sounded resolute, but spoilt the effect by adding: ‘Is there?’
He looked away towards the race of traffic. She thought that he was about to make some kind of an appeal, and her heart began to pound again.
‘That last time . . .’ he said wretchedly. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think . . . I couldn’t bear you to think . . .’
He was not, she realized, making an appeal: he was simply apologizing for having made love to her.
‘I didn’t think anything at all,’ she assured him coldly.
‘It’s not because of that that you won’t . . .’
‘No.’
‘I do respect you; I respect you very much. I know it can’t have seemed like it . . .’
‘I haven’t any doubt of your respect. And now I really must catch my train.’
He put his hand out and then let it drop to his side. He muttered: ‘Oh, what’s the use.’ He saw her to the tube station. She bought a ticket to South Kensington, stepped firmly on to the escalator and did not look back.
She caught a train going in the wrong direction. Of course, it would never have done, she told herself as she settled down in a side seat. Marriage with him would demand so much; she would have to transfuse zest and joy to him and since the stock was not inexhaustible she would lose some of her vitality. But then in marriage there must be both gain and loss: was that the answer? The train swayed and lurched, the doors opened and shut, opened and shut. Her mind became confused until she was no longer sure what was gain and what was loss. She stared at a sign that said: ‘Covent Garden’. The words seemed unfamiliar, like the meaningless jumble of a nightmare.
She stumbled out of the train. The station was rather badly lit, and it had dark holes leading off it into which a few people were disappearing while the train rumbled away down another dark hole. She was alone, lost; she would never find her way back. The next train would take her to still more unfamiliar places; she would travel endlessly, pursued by a relentless desire to escape and yet haunted by the fear that the trap really lay ahead. There was a growl from the throat of the tunnel and after a few moments the next train emerged; it went through the station without stopping. A man in uniform came up to her as she stared in dismay at the vanishing amber light and asked where she wanted to go. She could not remember, so she said: ‘It’s all right; I know where I’m going,’ and plunged into the nearest of the dark holes.
III
Ralph opened the letter as he sat in his study in the early evening. He did not at first take its content seriously. It seemed to him incredible that Myra should be capable of deception; even more incredible was the idea that he should have been deceived. Myra was in the kitchen, but she had said that she was coming up with a bowl of daffodils. He resisted his first reaction, which was to go down to her. As he waited, some of his confidence trickled away. So much had happened in the last few days, he seemed to have been jostled from one crisis to another and now he felt dazed and unsure of his balance. By the time that she came into the room, he was thoroughly uneasy. He watched her walk across to the window; she carried the bowl carefully, as though it contained something which might spill at any moment. She remained by the window for a time, touching the flowers with her hands. When at last she turned to him, he held out the letter without looking at her.
‘Perhaps you had better have a look at that.’
She sat in the deep leather armchair which was outside the circle of light thrown by the reading lamp. Her eyes flicked briefly over the sheet of paper, ‘DO YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR WIFE AND WILSON?’ Her face, in the shadows, was enigmatic, her hands were folded quietly in her lap; she waited, as though no comment could be expected from her. He listened to the soft tick of the clock on the mantelpiece; it seemed to be measuring the seconds during which something very important that he could not identify was slipping away from him. It was all a monstrous misunderstanding, of course; but he wished that she was not so strangely passive. He spoke quickly, trying to bridge with words the gulf which seemed to be separating him from the comprehensible world.
‘I suppose we have been a bit lax, lately? You’ve been out with him once or twice, haven’t you? I encouraged it, I know; but we shall have to be more careful in future for the lad’s sake. This kind of thing, however absurd we know it to be, could harm him.’
The rattle of words stopped. She stirred and turned her head towards him. He had moved the lamp to one side so that his face also was shielded from the light.
‘You want to escape so badly, don’t you, Ralph?’
Her voice was dry, but there was no bitterness in it, only wonder and the beginning of pity. She sat up in the chair and clasped her hands more purposefully on her knees; her head was bent slightly and he could see her brows drawn together as she sought the words she needed. He was suddenly appalled at the ruthless precision with which women planned their more destructive speeches. To forestall her, he said:
‘Need we take this contemptible thing seriously?’
‘You didn’t tear the note up and throw it away, did you, Ralph?’ He stared at her, dumbfounded. This, he now saw quite clearly, was the action which he would normally have taken. She went on, quite gently:
‘What did you believe when you read it?’
‘That much had been made out of little.’
He spoke firmly. Perhaps he guessed at a mild escapade, a piece of autumnal silliness which he could accept without flinching. She smiled.
‘I haven’t been unfaithful to you in the usual sense.’ The steel in her voice prevented him from taking any comfort from this. His eyes implored her to stop; but entreaties could not reach her now, she felt strong and uplifted, as though an evil were about to be exorcized. ‘But I have betrayed you in a deeper sense. You brought this young man to our house because—these were your own words—“he needed the blessing of home life”. But there was no blessing here, Ralph. No blessing; nothing but a store of dark things inside me to which he seemed to have the key.’
He stared at her incredulously; she seemed unreal, sitting there in the shadows, a still, ivory image inhabited by a profound darkness. His voice was hoarse.
‘Myra. Think carefully before you say any more. Don’t destroy more than you mean to.’
‘Is the truth destructive?’
‘The truth has to be understood. If you cannot make me understand . . .’
‘The understanding rests with you, Ralph. I can only tell you that I have tried to corrupt Keith—without success, but that is neither here nor there.’
‘Neither here nor there?’
‘I mean that the lack of success reflects no credit on me.’
‘But why? Why?’
His hands gripping the sides of the chair were like the hands of an old man the foundations of whose world are no longer secure. She pitied him more than ever, and yet pursued her own salvation, mercilessly analytical.
‘The usual reason. Neglect. And, I suppose, a flaw in my character that was waiting to be explored. You had withdrawn from me and I lacked the strength to be alone—I am too negative a person for that. So I began to look for some kind of substitute . . .’
‘But Sarah? Surely Sarah could have answered your need for human contact?’
‘Sarah! Sarah is no ordinary child; to make contact with her would be incredibly difficult, almost a vocation in itself.’ She lashed out suddenly with the brutality which had lately governed her speech: ‘Let’s say I wanted quick returns and Keith seemed the most likely person to offer them. I wanted to be reassured, to know that I existed and could make an impact. I wanted someone who would sense when I was near, who would quiver at the sound of my footsteps, become exquisitely taut when I entered a room. Most of all: I needed to hurt someone.’
He closed his eyes and she thought that he was trying to blot out a cruelty which, to his gentler nature, must seem inexplicable; but when he spoke there was no note of accusation in his voice, only a bewildered desolation.
‘But what harm had this young man done to you?’
‘None. He was there, that’s all.’
‘But I don’t see . . . I don’t understand why you had to hurt him.’
‘Since love had failed, it seemed the next best thing.’
He sat quite still while the words bit into his flesh and seemed to mingle with the stream of blood, carrying pain to the deep centre of his body. With great difficulty, he disciplined his mind, forcing himself to concentrate on her.
‘You have spoken recently, more than once, about not mattering to anyone. It is something that you feel very deeply?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this wound has been festering . . . for how long?’
‘You know the answer to that better than I, Ralph. Think back. How long ago was it that you began to grow away from me?’
As they talked, the veil which had separated them for so long seemed to her to be disintegrating, layer by layer the defensive tissues crumbled and the way to the heart lay open at last. His enthusiasm had made him vulnerable, there had never been time to learn the wisdom of acceptance; now, reality came swift and harsh, destroying in a few moments the eager youthfulness which had for so long been her joy and despair. She watched his face grow haggard, pinched about the mouth and jaw so that the bones stood out sharply, the lips became dry, the eyes dull. As she witnessed this transformation, peace came to her, as though his anguish had relieved her sickness. Gradually, the fever left her and her pulse quietened; sanity returned, crisp and cool as the first gleam of sunlight on a frosty morning. Her eyelids dropped and the lashes, damp with tears, brushed her cheeks. She was almost asleep when somewhere in the house a door slammed and footsteps crossed the hall. Ralph said:
‘Is that Keith?’
‘It must be. But I wasn’t expecting him yet.’
Her voice sounded quite normal, as though this evening were no different to all the other evenings of their life together; he saw that she looked very tired, but relaxed, as though she would sleep well. He could hear Wilson moving about below.
‘You had better get his supper.’
She picked up the note and looked at it again, wonderingly, as though she had forgotten about it.
‘He has already had one of these notes—about his job. They must be aimed at him.’
‘Don’t mention it to him. I will see him tomorrow. Now, go.’
He heard her go down to the half-landing. As she turned the corner, she said in a light, conversational tone in which there seemed to be no sign of strain:
‘I thought you were out for the evening.’
There was no answer. Although Ralph went to the door, he heard no words spoken by Wilson. He waited, longing to hear the young man relate some trivial incident which would place him with the rest of his fellow human beings, a creature perhaps not happy, but not desperate, dangerous, or betrayed. But they had gone into the kitchen, and whatever Wilson might be saying, for Ralph there was only the memory of Myra’s words: ‘You brought this young man to our house. . . . But there was no blessing here.’ The words struck at his heart. It was as though she had told him that he had betrayed his calling. Some men grew cynical and others became disillusioned about their priesthood; but to him it was still a thing of wonder that he had been chosen to be God’s instrument. And now, it seemed that he had proved himself unfit; for if grace had resided in him the atmosphere in his house could never have harmed this young man.
He turned back to the room which he had so often called his refuge. He looked at the book-lined shelves, at the cabinet where he kept his correspondence and articles, his lecture notes and schemes for poetry readings, at the maps and plans spread out on his desk, From what had he escaped when he shut the door of this room? When he first came to St. Gabriel’s his parishioners had come here to talk over their problems; but the numbers had dwindled as the years went by. Was it them that he had shut out? How many souls had he jeopardized by his neglect? ‘Are you going to preach to me about God in Shepherd’s Bush?’ Frank Godfrey had asked. And with what impatient pride he had replied; ‘Of course not.’ How many responsibilities had he shirked, how many small miracles had he failed to perform while he waited for the great call and the spiritual life around him choked and the seed of tenderness in his own wife withered away?
The questions chased one another endlessly through his mind until repetition dulled the response and he sat for a long time in a kind of stupor. When the noises about the house quietened and the street lamps in the road had gone out, Myra came to the door and called to him, but he did not answer and she went away.
There were a few books on the far end of his desk which she had put there weeks ago when she sought for guidance she failed to find. At some time in the very early morning he reached out his hand and picked up Four Quartets. It fell open, as it always did, at the fourth movement of ‘East Coker’:
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
‘The wounded surgeon.’ He put the book down angrily. This is not the Christ that I can follow; I cannot practise the healer’s art, I have no gift for surgery. But the words echoed in his mind and he was no longer so contemptuous of Eliot’s God. How would this God, who no longer seemed so small, resolve the enigma of the fever chart? He knew the answer without turning to the book again:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
He got up and went to the window. A graveyard in which the weeds grew high; a red-brick church without architectural grace or dignity; a parish in the mean streets of Shepherd’s Bush. During all these years that he had listened, with oh how intense a longing, for the great call, had God been waiting for him here? Here, in the sleazy alley behind the market, among the slot-machines and bars in the arcade, in the soiled cottages under the railway arch, above the stained streets, stagnant with traffic, staled with diesel oil. Was it here that his work was needed, must he stand on the street corner, trying to intercept these scurrying, heedless shadows, force his way into the box-like rooms with the blank circle of faces turned to the television screen; was it this tired huddle of half¬humanity to whom he must dedicate himself? Tears scalded his eyes. Was this what God asked of him who had been prepared to sacrifice so much, suffer so much, who had dreamt of such splendour, such magnificence?
But as he thought about it, while the sky became ashen with the coming of day, the task grew in immensity. He began to understand what it would demand to tend this barren ground where growth would be reluctant, the plant sickly, needing endless care and patience and producing a flower so frail, so small a reward for effort that at times the heart would come near to breaking: it would demand everything. On the desk calendar in front of him he had drawn a ring round Easter Monday: he stared at the calendar for a long time before he knelt to pray.
Dear God, release me. I am not the man for such a task. Give me a mountain to climb, not a slag heap. The flow of words was unceasing; he seemed to pour his soul into an immense emptiness while the stars paled and went out and the first smoke belched from the forest of chimney stacks. His body, that was so strong and had known very little pain, began to ache, bruised at last by, the weight of the cross.