A Pure Clear Light (14 page)

‘Are you sure you can cope?’ said Louisa fearfully.

‘It’s a challenge,’ said Flora stoutly. Flora was a soldier of Christ. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten,’ she told Louisa, ‘because my heart is pure.’

‘You know, darling,’ said Louisa, ‘I think that’s pretty true, actually.’ Flora was laughing. ‘I mean it,’ said Louisa.

‘I don’t know what I’d do without Flora,’ she told Robert. ‘What
we’d
do, that is.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She’s going to mind Fergus during the pre-Christmas hols.’

‘Is she, by God? Does she know what she’s letting herself in for?’

‘Of course she does. Fergus is notorious.’

‘Really?
Notorious?

’ ‘Yes,
notorious.

’ ‘What
have
we spawned?’

‘I ask myself the same question at least once a day.’

Fergus came in and they explained the arrangements to him. ‘Ho hum,’ said Fergus.

‘What do you mean, ho hum?’ said Louisa.

‘Well, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another,’ said Fergus.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Robert.

The rebellious look began to come onto his son’s face.

‘It’s only for a few weeks,’ said Louisa, ‘after all.’

‘A few weeks,’ said Fergus, ‘is actually quite a
long
time.’

‘But then there’s Christmas,’ said Louisa encouragingly. ‘Think about that!’

‘Can I have a car?’ said Fergus. Oh, dread: he’d seen some millionaire child on television driving—yes, actually driving—a scaled-down six-litre Bentley.

‘Not
just
yet,’ said Robert. ‘Not until we’ve got our own private road. But we’ll think of something almost as good, if not as good as.’

‘What?’ said Fergus bluntly.

‘It’ll be a surprise,’ said Louisa. So it would, starting with her and Robert. They were going to have to come up with something pretty
insolite
, that was certain. Fergus wouldn’t forget. It was a jolly good thing that Regent Street was Louisa’s front yard.

53

‘Oh, you’re early!’

‘Am I?’

‘I mean, it isn’t even dinnertime yet—look, I’m still cooking, it isn’t even—’ ‘Well, I didn’t say I’d be working late
every
night, did I?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Where’s the gin?’

‘I think we might be out of tonic.’

‘Rats. I’ll go and get some.’

‘I should have remembered—I just—’

‘Never mind.’ Simon went out, and returned twenty minutes later with a large carrier bag, which he put down on the kitchen table. Flora looked askance. He began unpacking. ‘I thought we might as well have a party while I was about it,’ he said. ‘Just the five of us.’

‘Oh how lovely.’

‘Ask me why.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got Michael
and
Nathaniel.’

‘Oh,
congratulations.
How wonderful.’

‘Yes, it is that. And they’re both dead keen. Nathaniel’s dying to be a sweetie and Michael yearns to be a cad.’

‘Marvellous.’

The constituents of the party were all now unpacked: the tonic for the gin-and, lemonade for the children, potato crisps, salted nuts and stuffed olives;
de luxe
chocolate ice-cream. ‘This is for afters,’ Simon said. ‘Shall I shove it in the freezer?’

He went and called the children and they all drank a toast to the Lloyd’s names, Nathaniel’s agent, Michael’s agent, and Lizzie Ainsworth.

‘And David,’ said Flora. ‘We mustn’t forget David. He’s the most important of the lot. The writer is the
sine qua non.

’ ‘A lot of use the writer would be,’ said Simon, ‘without the subject-matter, or the producer, or the actors, or etcetera.’

‘He could just write novels,’ said Janey. ‘About love, or something. Then he wouldn’t need all the rest.’

‘Yes,’ said Nell, ‘that’s right, he could, easily.’

‘What’s novels?’ said Thomas.

‘You know,’ said Nell. ‘Like
Winnie the Pooh
; that’s a novel.’

‘Oh,’ said Thomas. ‘I thought that was just a book.’

‘He’d still need a publisher,’ said Simon. ‘
If
he could find one. And then he wouldn’t actually make any money. Not likely. So he’s far better off as he is. Which he knows.’

‘I might write a novel, one of these days,’ said Thomas. ‘Or a book.’

They all laughed, but Flora stopped when she saw his face. ‘Yes, darling,’ she said; ‘I really think you might.’

Thomas drank some lemonade. ‘Anyone could,’ he said. ‘There’s no law against it.’

They all laughed again, but this time Thomas, uncertain about the cause but gratified by the result, joined in.

‘I’m probably going to be an actress,’ said Nell; and they all saw that indeed, she probably was, one way or another.

‘It’s a hard life,’ Simon warned her.

‘And what about our Janey,’ said Flora. ‘Any ambitions, darling?’

‘Oh, I’m going to travel around the whole world,’ said Janey. ‘All of it. I want to see what it’s
really
like.’ And the younger children said that of course, they should do that too; that went without saying. And Flora and Simon each silently hoped that they really would, all of them, do just that; as long as they came back safely. You couldn’t possibly bear to think of them going off, so far, and never coming back. Transience was all very well, but there were limits.

54

‘Aren’t you going to give me a guided tour?’

‘If you like. Shall we start at the top?’

She started up the stairs and he followed her. Half-landing, more stairs, landing. Finest Wilton and gloss white, all spanking clean. More stairs, another half-landing, then the final ascent. Two empty rooms, and a tiny bathroom. ‘These can be spare bedrooms,’ she said. ‘Or one can be a study. If I decide to take up studying.’

‘You could. Seems a pity not to in the circs.’

‘Well yes, I could. It could come to that.’

It could. Indeed it could.

‘Let’s go down then.’ They descended to the first floor. ‘Da-da,’ she sang, flinging open a door. All the doors here were real doors, with panels and brass handles. The master bedroom: the larger room, overlooking the street; an ensuite bathroom. The back room was a dressing room. He looked through the window onto the tiny garden, and saw Solomon sitting on the handkerchief-sized lawn among the fallen leaves. ‘Ah, Solomon,’ he said.

‘Yes, Solomon’s in clover. He’s never been outside before. Not since he left his mother, at any rate.’

Simon looked down at the cat, who so well deserved the change in his fortunes. ‘Good,’ he said; ‘good.’ As they descended once more to the ground floor he suddenly realised that the sight of the bedroom, the bed itself, had left him quite unmoved.

She turned into the sitting room, which ran the length of the house, with french windows at the rear. There were a few pieces of furniture in it. ‘I’ve acquired the fundamentals, as you see,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick up the rest bit by bit.’

‘Have some fun with it.’

‘I mean to. See those alcoves?’ He did, one each side of the fireplace. ‘I’ll have to think of something to put in them.’

‘Books?’

She pulled a face. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of statues.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’ll see. And now come and see the kitchen.’

It was long and low-ceilinged, large enough to accommodate a dining table and chairs at one end—where more french windows led to the garden—and had all the latest equipment.

‘Was all this stuff here?’ he asked. There was, for example, a large and very splendid gas cooker.

She put a hand on it and nodded. ‘This is French,’ she said.

‘Someone must have been very serious about cooking,’ he said.

‘Rather wasted on me,’ she said sadly.

‘You’ll just have to get serious yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s the only solution.’

‘I could go to some classes, couldn’t I?’ she said brightly.

Brightly, innocently; seriously. It wrenched his heart.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you could. Good idea. The kitchen can be your study.’

‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘you know I think I really might.’ And she looked almost delighted.

‘That’s settled, then,’ he said; and now he suddenly, after all, wanted her; he took her in his arms. At this moment the knowledge that he loved her possessed him so entirely that silence was painful; he held her very close until the pain ebbed away. Its ebbing was followed by a sadness, almost a sense of desolation. ‘So you’ve managed everything,’ he said.

‘Yes; all sorted.’

‘BT, Electricity, Gas?’ he said.

‘And the Water,’ she said; ‘all on stream, all on time.’

‘Jolly good. These privatised monopolies done got
rhythm.

’ She laughed. She looked up at him. ‘Well, do you like my house?’ she said.

‘It’s perfect.’

‘Yes, it
is
, isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t know what to bring you. For a house-warming present.’

‘Oh, but you’ve brought me yourself.’

He was left for the moment speechless; but then, ‘As it were,’ he said.

‘As it were,’ she repeated.

‘Damn it all,’ he said, and he began to kiss her.

Later on, he saw the orchid that Rupert had sent; several frail white blooms on a long curving stem, growing in a clay pot. He hadn’t realised that Rupert might actually care. Still, he, Simon, had her.

55

The vicar ascended the stairway into the pulpit; he crossed himself, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen, and then he looked around at his congregation, his church, his—our—his Father’s—world; all the misery and the marvel and the mystery of it; ‘
Algebra
,’ he said.

The silence was absolute. He looked down at them, concern and compassion on his face. ‘Algebra,’ he repeated. Then he raised his hands from the edge of the pulpit and pushing back the sleeves of his surplice slightly raised them into the air, as if writing on a blackboard.

‘Three plus two,’ he said, ‘equals five. Three-plus-two-equals-five. That’s arithmetic.’ Pause. ‘You know where you are, don’t you, with arithmetic? Three plus two always equals five.’ He was holding up five fingers. ‘Good, straightforward stuff. Pretty boring, of course. Not much to get your teeth into. No. Three plus two always and forever equals five. It’s relentless, is arithmetic. No room for argument. It leaves you speechless.’

He paused, and looked down at them again, full of concern and compassion. They’d all suffered from arithmetic, and would again. Then he looked up, and over their heads, towards the organ loft, and beyond it, into the world, the universe.

‘Whereas,’ he said, ‘algebra.
Algebra.
Ah,
now
: consider this.’ And he waited for a second, to give the slower-witted time to gird up their loins, and consider. ‘Two,’ he began—and paused for another compassionate, rhetorical second, ‘plus
x—
two plus
x
—equals five! Yes! Two plus
x
equals five: that is algebra. There it is. Two plus
x
equals five. And we will know, won’t we, in this very simple, very elementary exercise that
x
here must equal three—we’ll know this almost without having to think, won’t we? If two plus
x
equals five then
x
,
in this instance
, equals three. So far so good.’ He could only trust that it was.

‘But of course, what most of us may remember about algebra is that it isn’t usually so simple. No. We very soon get to the stage of dealing with more complicated propositions: simultaneous equations, and worse teasers still, where we have many many unknowns to find values for:
x
’s and
y
’s and even
z
’s, squared and cubed and multiplied and divided until we hardly know where to turn, and it may not be boring but God knows we might even wish it were, because the fact is, it’s
difficult.
We have to use our brains as hard as we can, haven’t we? And even then we might not get the correct answer. Boring, no; difficult, yes; even impossible, at least for us, today, if not for someone else, today, or for us, next week, or next year.

‘Because there is a way, isn’t there? There is a method for doing these complicated sums in algebra: you only have to know the method, and apply it correctly, and you will find the answer in the end. The unknowns, the
x
’s and
y
’s and
z
’s, will all be revealed for the quantities they actually are. You’ll have
the answer.
It may take a long time. It may even take courage; it will almost certainly take patience; what it will very certainly take is faith—yes,
faith.

‘You knew I’d get around to that, didn’t you? Some of you have been saying to yourselves, come along, Vicar, you can’t fool us. You can pretend to be talking about mathematics as much as you like but we know where you’re going! So, very well: I’m here: faith.

‘Because you’re never going to start doing that piece of algebra, are you, without the faith that it
can
be done: that there
is
an answer; that it’s not just a nonsense, that there is a method, and that if you follow the method correctly, you’ll get the thing out in the end. Even when it’s become so difficult that you feel you never will—you’ll still keep trying. You might put it aside for a while, or sleep on it, or go and make a cup of tea and do something else for a while to clear your head; you might even go to someone else for a bit of advice, just to make sure you’ve got the method right; but you’ll go back to it, and you’ll go on trying to solve it, because you’ve got faith. You know where you’re going
and why.

‘Well, I suppose some of you, not to say all of you, already know where I’m coming out now, don’t you? You know I’m going to tell you that life, rather
living
, is like one of those problems in algebra.
It’s not arithmetic
,
it’s algebra.
It’s full of unknowns. There are
x
’s and
y
’s and
z
’s wherever you look, squared and cubed and multiplied and divided; and the people who tell you it’s arithmetic are misleading you. It’s algebra, and sometimes you have to be patient, and courageous. And sometimes
all
you have, the
only
thing you have, is your faith.