The Keys of the Kingdom (39 page)

‘An absurd thrill pervades my sun-bleached bones when I think that such happiness may be in store for me. Enough! I must start to save to buy myself a suit of clothes. What would the good Abbess of Santi Apostoli think if the little bricklayer who claimed her acqaintance turned out to have a patch on the backside of his pants …

‘
September 17th, 1923.
Breathless excitement! Today, my new priest arrived, at last I have a colleague, and it seems almost too good to be true.

‘Although, at first, Anselm’s voluminous hieratics gave me hope of a stout young Scot, preferably with freckles and sandy hair, later advices had prepared me for a native Father from the College at Peking. It was like my perverted humour to tell the Sisters nothing of the coming dénouement. For weeks they had been gathering themselves to coddle the young missioner from home – Clotilde and Martha wanted something Gallic with a beard, but poor Mother Mercy Mary had made a very special novena for an Irish one. The look on her honest Hibernian face as she burst into my room, purple with tragedy! ‘The new Father is a Chinese!’

‘But Father Chou seems a splendid little fellow, not only quiet and amiable, but conveying a deep sense of that extraordinary interior life which is such an admirable characteristic of the Chinese. I have met several native priests on my infrequent pilgrimages to Sen-siang and I have always been impressed. If I wished to be pompous I should say that the good ones appear to combine the wisdom of Confucius with the virtue of Christ.

‘And now I am off to Rome next month … my first holiday in nineteen years. I am like a Holywell schoolboy, at the end of term, banging his desk and chanting:

‘Two more weeks and I shall be,
Outside the gates of mis-er-ee.’

‘I wonder if Mother Maria-Veronica has lost her taste for fine stem ginger. I shall take her a jar and risk being told she has turned to macaroni. Heigh-ho! This life is most jolly. Through my window I see the young cedars swaying in the wind with a wild joy. I must write now to Shanghai for my tickets. Hurrah!

‘
October 1923.
Yesterday the cable came cancelling my trip to Rome and I have just returned from my evening walk by the river-bank where I stood a long time in a soft mist watching the cormorant fishers. It is a sad way of catching fish, or perhaps I had a sad way of looking at it. The great birds are ringed by the neck to prevent their swallowing the fish. They crouch indolently on the gunwhale of the boat as though dreadfully bored with the whole proceeding. Suddenly there is a dip and a splutter and up comes the great bill, pouched with fish, a tail wriggling at the tip. An embarrassing undulation of the neck follows next. When relieved of their catch the birds shake their heads, disconsolate, yet as though experience had taught them nothing. Then they squat again, brooding blackly, recuperating for a fresh defeat.

‘My own mood was dark and defeated enough, God knows. As I stood by the salty water, from which the night threw waves upon the weed coiled like hair upon the shore, my thoughts, strangely, were not of Rome but of the streams of Tweedside, with myself, barefoot in the rippling crystal, casting a withy rod for trout.

‘More and more of late I find myself living in the memory of my childhood, recollected so vividly it might be yesterday – a sure symptom of approaching age! … I even dream, tenderly, wistfully – isn’t this unbelievable? – of my boyish love: my own dear Nora.

‘You see, I have reached the sentimental stage of disappointment, which is next to getting over it, but when the telegram arrived, in old Meg’s words, “ it was hard to thole.”

‘Now I am almost resigned to the utter finality of my exile. The principle is probably correct that a return to Europe unsettles the missionary priest. After all, we give ourselves entirely, there is no retreat. I am here for life. And I’ll lay myself at last, in that little piece of Scotland where Willie Tulloch rests.

‘Moreover, it is certainly logical and just that Anselm’s trip to Rome is more necessary than mine. The funds of the Society cannot sustain two such excursions. And he can better tell the Holy Father of the advances of ‘his troops’ – as he calls us. Where my tongue would be stiff and clumsy his will captivate – garner funds and support for all the F S missions. He has promised to write me fully of his doings. I must enjoy Rome vicariously, have my audience in imagination, meet Maria-Veronica in spirit. I could not bring myself to accept Anselm’s suggestion of a short vacation in Manila. Its gaiety would have troubled me, I should have laughed at the solitary little man, poking round the harbour, fancying himself on the Pontine Hill …

‘
A month later
… Father Chou is nicely established in the Liu village and our pigeons pass one another at celestial speed. What a joy that my scheme is working so beautifully. I wonder if Anselm will mention it, perhaps, when he sees the Holy Father, just a word of that tiny jewel, set in the great wilderness, once forgotten … by all but God …

‘
22nd November, 1928.
How can one compass a sublime experience in mere words – in one bald and arid phrase? Last night Sister Clotilde died. Death is a topic I have not often dwelt upon in this sketchy record of my own imperfect life.

‘Thus, twelve months ago when Aunt Polly passed away in her sleep in Tynecastle, uneventfully and of pure goodness and old age, and the news reached me in Judy’s tear-smudged letter, I made no comment here beyond the simple entry:
“ Polly died, 17th October, 1927.”
There is an inevitability in the death of those whom we know to be good. But there are others … sometimes we tough old priests are staggered, as by a revelation.

‘Clotilde had been ailing, slightly it seemed, for several days. When they called me just after midnight I was shocked to see the change in her. I sent at once to tell Joshua, Joseph’s eldest boy – to run for Dr Fiske. But Clotilde, with a strange expression, restrained me. She indicated, with a peculiar smile, that Joshua might spare himself the journey. She said very little; but enough.

‘When I recollected how, years ago, I tartly reproached her for that inexplicable recourse to chlorodyne, I could have wept for my stupidity. I had never thought enough of Clotilde: the tension of her manner, which she could not help, her morbid dread of flushing, of people, of her own overcharged nerves, made her superficially unattractive, even ridiculous. One should have reflected on the struggles of such a nature to overcome itself, one should have thought of the invisible victories. Instead, one thought only of the visible defeats.

‘For eighteen months she had been suffering from a growth of the stomach arising out of a chronic ulcer. When she learned from Dr Fiske that nothing could be done she pledged him to secrecy and set herself to fight an unsung battle. Before I was called the first bad haemorrhage had prostrated her. At six next morning she had the second and succumbed quite quietly. Between, we talked … but I dare not make a record of that conversation. Broken and disjointed, it would seem meaningless … a prey for easy sneers … and alas, the world cannot be reformed by a sneer …

‘We are all much upset, Martha especially. She is like me, strong as a mule, and will go on forever. Poor Clotilde! I think of her as a gentle creature so strung to sacrifice that sometimes she vibrated harshly. To see a face become at peace, a quiet acceptance of death, without fear … it ennobles the heart of man.

‘
November 30th, 1929.
Today Joseph’s fifth child was born. How life flies on! Who would have dreamed that my shy, brave, garrulous, touchy youngster had in him the makings of a patriarch? Perhaps his early fondness for sugar should have warned me! Really, he is quite a personage now – officious, uxorious, a little pompous, very curt to callers he thinks I should not see – I am rather scared of him myself …

‘
A week later.
More local news … Mr Chia’s dress boots have been hung up at the Manchu Gate. This is a tremendous honour here … and I rejoice for my old friend, whose ascetic, contemplative, generous nature has always been devoted to the reasonable and the beautiful, to that which is eternal.

‘Yesterday, the mail came in. Even without the presage of his immense success in Rome, I had long realized that Anselm must achieve high honour in the Church. And at last his work for the foreign missions has earned him a fitting reward from the Vatican. He is the new Bishop of Tynecastle. Perhaps the greatest strain is thrown upon our moral vision by the spectacle of another’s success. The dazzle hurts us. But now, in my approaching old age, I’m short-sighted. I don’t mind Anselm’s lustre, I’m rather glad, because I know that he will be supremely glad himself. Jealousy is so hateful a quality. One should remember that the defeated still have everything if they still have God.

‘I wish I might take credit for my magnanimity. But this is not magnanimity merely an awareness of the difference between Anselm and myself … of the ridiculous presumption of myself aspiring to the crozier. Though we started from the same mark Anselm has far outstripped me. He has developed his talents to the full, is now, I observe from the
Tynecastle Chronicle
, ‘an accomplished linguist, a notable musician, a patron of arts and science in the diocese, with a vast circle of influential friends.’ How lucky! I have had no more than six friends in my uneventful life, and all except one were humble folk. I must write to Anselm to congratulate him, making it clear, however, that I do not presume upon our friendship and have no intention of asking for preferment.
Viva Anselmo!
I am sad when I think how much you have made of your life and how little I have made of mine. I have bumped my head so often … and so hard, in my strivings after God.

‘
December 30, 1929.
I have not written in this journal for almost a month … not since the news of Judy arrived. I still find it difficult to set down even the barest outline of what has taken place at home … and here, within myself.

‘I flattered myself I had achieved a beatific resignation towards the finality of my exile. Two weeks ago today, I was remarkably complacent. Having made a survey of my recent additions to the mission, the four rice-fields by the river which I bought last year, the enlarged stockyard beyond the white mulberry grove, and the new pony farm, I came into the church to help the children make the Christmas crib. This is a job I particularly enjoy, partly for that lamentable obsession which has stuck to me all my life, I suppose the ribald would call it a suppressed paternal instinct: a love of children – from the dear Christ child down to the meanest little yellow waif who ever crawled into this mission of St Andrew’s.

‘We had made a splendid manger with a snowy roof of real cotton wool and were arranging the ox and ass in their stall behind. I had all sorts of things up my sleeve too, coloured lights, and a fine crystal star to hang on the spruce-branched sky. As I saw the shining faces about me and listened to the excited chatter – this is one of the occasions when distractions are permissible in church – I had a wonderful sense of lightness, a vision of all the Christmas cribs in all the Christian churches of the world, dignifying this sweet festival of the Nativity, which, even to those who cannot believe, must at least be beautiful as the feast of all motherhood.

‘At that moment one of the bigger boys, sent by Mother Mercy Mary, hurried in with the cablegram. Surely ill-tidings come fast enough without flashing them round the earth. As I read my expression must have changed. One of the smallest girls began to cry. The brightness in my breast was quenched.

‘Perhaps I might be judged absurd for taking this so much to heart. I lost Judy when in her teens, on my departure for Pai-tan. But I have lived her life with her in thought. The infrequency of her letters made them stand out like beads upon a chain.

‘The hand of heredity propelled Judy forward without mercy. She never quiet knew what she wanted or where she was going. But so long as Polly stood beside her she could not become the victim of her own caprice. All through the war she prospered, like many other young women, working for high wages in a munitions factory. She bought a fur coat and a piano – how well I recollect the letter in which the joyful information reached me – and was keyed to sustain her effort by the sense of emergency in the air. This was her heyday. When the war ended, she was over thirty, opportunities were scarce, she gradually abandoned all thought of a career and lapsed into a quiet life with Polly, sharing the small flat in Tynecastle and gaining, one hoped, with maturity, an added balance.

‘Judy seemed always to have a queer suspicion towards the other sex and had never been attracted by the thought of marriage. She was forty when Polly died and one never dreamed that she would change her single state. Nevertheless, within eight months of the funeral, Judy was married … and later deserted.

‘One does not disguise the brutal fact that women do strange things before the climacteric. But this was not the explanation of the pitiful comedy. Polly’s legacy to Judy was some two thousand pounds, enough to provide a modest annual competence. Not until Judy’s letter arrived did I guess how she had been persuaded to realize her capital, to transfer it to her sober, upright and gentlemanly husband whom she had first met, apparently, in a boarding house at Scarborough.

‘No doubt whole volumes might be written on this basic mundane theme … dramatic … analytical … in the grand Victorian manner … perhaps with that sly smirk which sees a rich deep humour in the gullibility of our human nature. But the epilogue was briefly written in ten words on the telegraph form that I held in my hands before the Christmas crib. A child had been born to Judy of this belated, transitory union. And she had died in bearing it.

‘Now I reflect there had always been a dark thread running through the flimsy fabric of Judy’s inconsequential life. She was the visible evidence, not of sin – how I detest and distrust that word! – but of man’s weakness and stupidity. She was the reason, the explanation of our presence here on earth, the tragic evidence of our common mortality. And now, differently, yet with the same essential sadness, that mortal tragedy is again perpetuated.