The Book and the Brotherhood (39 page)

Gerard’s thoughts about Jenkin, tending for some time in a certain direction, were now approaching crisis point. The reasons for this state of feeling were obscure. It might be to do with his father’s death, with a sudden shortage of people who loved him
absolutely
, a premonition of loneliness, when there would be no more places where everyone danced with joy when he arrived. A more rational prompting was Gerard’s fear that Jenkin was planning to
go away.
At dinner Jenkin had announced with a casualness which Gerard saw to be assumed, that he planned to be out of England at Christmas. Did he not realise that, for the first time for many years, Gerard would be spending Christmas in London? Gerard intuited, had for some time felt, a certain preoccupied restlessness in his friend, as if Jenkin were looking over Gerard’s shoulder at something much farther off. Of course Jenkin had
said nothing to Gerard about any general departure plans and Gerard, afraid, had not asked. But Gerard had not failed to notice the interest in ‘new theology’, the stuff about ‘the poor’, the Portuguese grammar. He thought in flashes things like: Jenkin will leave us, he’ll go away, he’ll go to South America or Africa, and he’ll be
murdered.
Only he
mustn’t
go away, thought Gerard, if he goes, I’ll go with him.
I can’t do without Jenkin.
This was his state. What was such a state called?

What’s the matter with me, thought Gerard, I’m hot and cold, I’m shivering, my hands are trembling. I never really
told
my father how much I loved him. If Jenkin were to die I’d wish I’d told
him.
Perhaps it’s all very simple. I’ve known Jenkin well for more than thirty years, why this sudden overflow of feeling now? I love this man, but is there anything special, anything new, which I’m supposed to do about it? I am realising that Jenkin could cause me the most terrible pain, if we quarrelled, if he went right away, if he died. Such is the power he has over me. The idea crossed Gerard’s mind, am I actually falling in love with my old friend, do such things happen? Perhaps after a death love runs wild, perhaps it will all pass. But I must
secure
him, I must keep him
safe
, I must keep him
here
, I must not let him go away. How am I to be
sure
he will not go away? I must simply tell him that I
need
him, I must make a
pact
with him, he must be made to promise to stay with me. I must be able to see him more, much more, now that I have this feeling about him, or realise that I’ve always had it, only now it’s urgent. Is this growing old, is it knowing at last that time and death are real? I don’t feel old, this strange emotion makes me feel young. Good heavens, thought Gerard, am I really in love?

I must be drunk, he thought, I am drunk. I don’t think I’ll feel different in the morning, but I’ll have a bit more sense. Really, how can I say all this to dear old Jenkin? He’d think I’m daft, he’d be embarrassed, he might be disgusted. If he was he’d keep it to himself but I’d know all the same, I’d see he was upset or annoyed. It might harm our friendship, at least it might cast a shadow, and then I’d imagine he was avoiding me and I’d be in hell. Supposing he were cold to me. The risk is
terrible. I’ve lived alone now for years and years – and he has lived alone, perhaps always. The amazing thing is that I don’t really know him all that well, we’ve never been
that
intimate, I just don’t know how he’d react. Perhaps it’s better to say nothing.

Everyone was going to church except for Gulliver and Lily and Duncan. Duncan in fact had already departed, he left after breakfasting very early. No one saw him go except Rose. At Sunday breakfast Rose had told her friends, as she always did, that of course there was no need for anyone to go to church. She would go with Annushka, because this was part of her country life, but no one else need come. Gerard and Jenkin said, as they always did, that they would come with her, and Tamar said that she would come. Gull and Lily said they would walk to the wood, and then to the village along the Roman Road to investigate the Pike. It was agreed that they would all meet later at the pub.

Gull and Lily were in rather a giggly mood. The previous night had not at all been what Gull had hoped and expected. No sooner were the two of them in bed, and after the most inconclusive of preliminaries, they had both fallen into a deep drunken slumber, awakening only in time not to be too late for breakfast. Lily had found this extremely funny. Gulliver, after feeling rather disconcerted and discredited, decided to find it funny too. He felt, at least, that he had done something decisive, and, as Lily was so relaxed, even casual, about the whole thing, that gave him time to discover what exactly it was that he had done.

Today the sun was shining, the sky was blue, almost cloudless. The rooms were filled with light. Everyone looked
out of the windows and exclaimed with surprise, pointing out to each other the glittering snow crystals and the melting icicles. There was talk of building a snowman. The lawns were criss-crossed now with human tracks and Gulliver and Jenkin had been out just after breakfast to walk round the garden and throw snowballs at each other. Rose had already taken a conducted tour to the kitchen window where a mob of redwings could be seen, fat round birds bigger than thrushes, with red breasts and striped necks and little demonic faces and sharp probing beaks, frantically devouring the berries of the cotoneaster.

Everyone seemed to be in a vague wandering-about sort of mood. Tamar, wearing a dark brown velveteen dress for Sunday, was sitting on the window seat in the library, holding
Genji
on her knee, contemplating her slender legs in brown stockings, and getting up at intervals to stare at the rows of books. Gerard had wandered off to the billiard room, where the moth-eaten billiard table was hidden by a canvas cover, and had put on Mahler’s first symphony on the record player. He liked the melancholy bereaved sound of the second movement. This sound, though he turned it down, penetrated faintly to the drawing room where Lily was sitting on the sofa with her shoes off playing patience. Gulliver, who had got his feet wet in the garden, had gone up to his room to change his shoes and socks and look at himself in the mirror. He was wearing his loose cable-stitch dark grey cardigan and grey and dark blue striped shirt with the high collar and a dark mauve tie and grey and black very small-check trousers. The mauve tie was inconspicuously patterned in pink. He decided that, since he was not going to church, it was all right. He sleeked down his hair and put on his saturnine look. Jenkin, dressed for church in his best suit, had gone to sit in the library near Tamar in case she wanted to talk to him, which she did not. He opened his
Oxford Book of Spanish Verse
and read a sonnet addressed ‘
to Christ Crucified
’ which he liked. He watched Tamar who was irritably aware of his gaze. When she closed her book sharply, he made haste to retire. After that he went upstairs and put on his overcoat and boots. He very much
wanted to walk in the snow by himself and had decided to slink off. Gerard was now listening to some Haydn. Jenkin told Rose, preoccupied with Annushka in the kitchen making treacle tart, that he was going for a walk and would see them at church. He left by the front door. Gerard emerged and was annoyed to find that Jenkin was gone. Rose told him that they would be leaving for church in three-quarters of an hour. Gull was in the drawing room reminding Lily that she wanted to go to the wood and look for Stones, but she said she had changed her mind and wanted to stay by the fire. Gerard went to look for Tamar, and took her to look at the redwings, which she had missed, but they had eaten all the berries and moved on.

‘We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord, all the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting, to thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein, to thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy…’

Rose and her party, on country Sundays, usually occupied the second pew which was left vacant by the villagers if it was known that Rose ‘had company’. Today they were installed in the following order: Gerard, then Rose, then Annushka, then Tamar, then Jenkin, who had arrived first. The church was, for a country church situated outside the village, reasonably attended; that is, there were, including Rose’s contingent, some twenty people present. For evensong in the summer, when it made a pleasant walk, there were usually more. A wavery harmonium accompanied the hymns. There was no choir. The church, thirteenth-century, not distinguished for anything in particular, was comparatively unspoilt, except by the removal of the clerestory and of some unspecified ‘monuments’ some hundred years ago. The big ‘decorated’ east window, through which the snow-and-sun light was now streaming, had plain glass, the other windows had leaded panes with green and pink glass, the crenellated tower, windowless,
containing the six bells, occupied the west end. The interior, without transepts, porches, pillars or side chapels, resembled a big high decrepit untidy whitewashed room. It was also now, although there were three big paraffin heaters, very cold. There were some exceedingly pretty eighteenth-century memorial tablets, a plain sturdy Norman font, and a low-standing stone pulpit, meanly narrowed and crushed against the wall as if some devil had half succeeded in wafting it out of the church altogether. The front pews were seventeenth century, with handsome ‘poppy-heads’ carved into various kinds of foliage. These pews also possessed, which the Edwardian pews behind, now rarely occupied, lacked, delightful kneelers, embroidered by village ladies of the older generation. Rose wondered why these very nice objects were not stolen, since the church, in accordance with Father McAlister’s ideas, were never locked. Perhaps people depraved enough to steal from a church lacked a relevant sense of beauty. Two stone angels appeared from the wall in the chancel, perhaps part of a rescue party sent to prevent the devil from removing the pulpit. These had been, originally, painted, and had been repainted in controversial colours by Father McAlister’s predecessor. There had been a wall-painting in the nave, but only the vaguest shadow remained, perhaps a resurrection with people climbing out of tombs. Beside this, more clearly traced though equally ancient, was the message:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.
Matthew 7.7. This too had been smartened up by the presumptuous paint of the previous parson, to the indignation of the locals including Rose who thought that these things should be allowed to moulder in peace.

Father McAlister had climbed the two steps into the little pulpit, and standing with his back against the wall, had turned toward his small congregation who had politely turned toward him, shuffling their frozen feet and depositing lumps of snow upon the stone floor. Father McAlister was tall, but was now, because of the cold, hunched up inside his robes, his hands invisible, his head descending between his shoulders. It was quite a striking head, large, with wiry grey-brown hair
which stood up in a commanding wave from his broad brow, a fiercely curving mouth and dark authoritative eyes which were fixed now upon the group in Rose’s pew. Gerard, who had been thinking about Jenkin and not listening, began, as Father McAlister’s emphatic tones battered his ears, to pay attention. ‘Him that hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer! So speaks the Lord our God. And what also does God say? Oh listen. He says that He is nigh unto them that are of broken heart, and saveth such as be of contrite spirit, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit – a broken and contrite heart, O God, wilt Thou not despise. Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. The grace of God, O my friends, is poured forth upon the humble ones, upon the afflicted and ashamed, but upon the proud God’s curse falls and shall bring them low. God hateth pride and curseth it – the pride of this age of cruel power, the power of machines, the power of material possessions, the power of the oppressors who are everywhere with us – the pride of those who possess riches, the pride of those who think that education and intellect have set them up on a high hill. How woefully deluded are they and how great shall be their fall! The Lord is not with them, the Lord is with the poor, the broken ones whose contrite tears acknowledge that they are nothing. Oh yes, sin demands punishment, sin itself is punishment, but in our fear and our shame is the very working of grace. Before the countenance of God our souls shrivel like moths in a flame, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the consciousness of sin, and that alone, O my dear friends, can open our blinded eyes and make clean our blackened hearts. Sin befouleth the fair image of God, so that the sinner may feel that he knows not God, even that there is no God. But stay with your sin, bide steadfastly beside it in knowledge and in truth and in faith, and call upon the Spirit, crying “Come Lord, Come Lord!” Surely He will come. And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, we ascribe as is most justly due all might, majesty, dominion and power, now and forever more. Amen.’

‘Do you think he was getting at us?’ Rose said afterwards, outside.

‘Yes!’ said Jenkin.

‘His assumptions, even if correct, were impertinent,’ said Gerard.

‘Is he unpopular?’ Jenkin asked.

‘No, rather popular! Last summer people walked over from the next parish just to hear him!’

‘Masochism has always been one of the charms of Christianity,’ said Gerard.

‘He doesn’t seem to be a learned man,’ said Rose, ‘but he’s very eloquent and sincere. I thought at first he was just a ranter. He’s certainly a change from Mr Amhurst!’

‘I enjoyed it!’ said Jenkin. ‘Did you, Tamar?’

They had sung ‘For those in peril on the sea’ which always brought tears to Rose’s eyes, and afterwards Rose had talked to Miss Margoly, and Julia Scropton who played the harmonium, and Annushka’s niece Mavis who was engaged to be married, and Mr Sheppey who was to come up on Monday and look at a drain. The parson had not reappeared.