The Malcontents (16 page)

‘Come in, come in. Here you are then, I’m glad to see you. I am glad to see you.’

The comfortable vowels rolled on it.

‘Sit you down,’ said the Bishop as they entered. There wasn’t much room to sit, a couple of chairs in front of a small table, at which the Bishop was already installed, short legs tucked under, so that he looked a more reasonable height than when on his feet. His face was roseate, his eyes gleamed brightly through his spectacles. Behind him on the bare, dun-painted, schoolroom-like wall stood a large crucifix. Despite his ecumenical fervour, the Bishop was orthodox both in liturgy and theology. The crucifix was a complete cross, not a tau, INRI on the top limb above the head, nails through the centre of the palms and the doubled feet. Stephen scarcely noticed it (he was meeting the Bishop’s glance, sharp, appraising but not mournful) and didn’t recall how at school he had speculated about crucifixes of that kind. Didn’t anyone realize that they were impossible, mechanically and anatomically? How did anyone think they got the cross bar into place? No human body could have been supported like that, there was nothing to take the strain. Strange how the early Church (when did they first use the symbol of the cross, fifth century or was it later?) had forgotten what crucifixion had been like. Strange how the most powerful symbol there had ever been should have lasted all these years and been so wrong.

These discursions didn’t come back to him now. He was listening to the Bishop, who said in a strong voice: ‘This is a bad business for you both. Of course it is.’

Stephen was jolted, he hadn’t seen the Bishop behave like this, no small talk, none of his touch of knockabout, no preliminaries at all. And yet it was a relief to go straight in. Stephen glanced at Tess, and they each muttered something.

‘I’m going to tell you straight away, you have to put first things first. The first thing is, you mustn’t take to your own account any more responsibility than you really have to. It isn’t your fault that this poor boy’s been killed. My girl has told me you don’t know anything about it.’

‘I expect she’s told you everything we know.’

‘Of course she has.’

In reply to that brisk tone, unsentimental, not even overkind but stiffening to listen to, Stephen mentioned their exchanges about the possibility of the drug.

‘Could be. Could be. There’s a natural explanation somewhere. But neither of you had anything to do with that?’

‘No.’

‘Well done, well done. That’s not a way to expand consciousness. We ought to listen to people your age about most things, but I’m not inclined to be permissive about drugs. Well then, that’s the first thing. You have to take responsibility for some of the things that have happened, of course you have, and that’s going to bring you suffering. But so far as any of us have genuine responsibility for someone else, you haven’t any for this boy’s death. I want you to get your consciences clear on that.’

Stephen didn’t reply. Often maybe, he had thought of the Bishop as a comic little man, but now it was mystifying (yes, partly a reassurance, but the kind of reassurance that leaves one at a loss) to meet someone so robust. Tess said: ‘That’s easier said than done, isn’t it, though?’

‘No, no. We mustn’t let things fester. That does no good to anyone. It makes you worse to yourselves and worse to other people. You’ll have enough weight to carry without that.’ His colour was growing higher, his eyes still brighter. ‘You’re not going to forget this whole business in a hurry, are you? It will stay with you for a long time, it will leave its mark. So far as I can judge, you’ve done wrong, very wrong. There aren’t any two ways about that, as far as I’m concerned. And yet you’re both serious. I hope you are. I know you are. I only wish you could find something good enough to be serious about.’

Stephen was beginning to speak, but the Bishop interrupted: ‘I only wish you were both Christians, you know.’

He said it as a wish, not as propaganda, simply, directly, like everything he had said that morning. With one fraction of an English privileged ear, Stephen noted that he pronounced the ‘t’ in Christian, which wouldn’t have happened among Thomas Freer’s friends: but Stephen replied, and Tess heard with pleasure that he was just as simple and direct: ‘I’m afraid that the words mean nothing.’

‘What words?’

‘Resurrection. Atonement. Redemption. Immortality. Or even God.’

‘Of course the words aren’t adequate. They’re only shadows, they’re the best we can do. We have to try and reach what lies behind the shadows, that’s what it’s all about.’

‘I’m afraid that amounts to adding more words without meaning – to cover up the first set.’

Another day, the Bishop always ready for a discussion, might have plunged into epistemology, linguistic analysis and their theological correlatives. As it was, he said: ‘Ah well. Faith exists somewhere beyond all that, you see.’

‘You don’t want him to pretend, do you?’ cried his daughter.

‘He’d never do that. He couldn’t do that if he tried,’ said the Bishop, looking at Stephen with a curious respect. ‘Not in a month of Sundays,’ he added, breaking into incongruous laughter, gratified by the homely old phrase. Then he said: ‘But I should like you two to tell me something. I think I know what you’re living for. You want to see a more decent world here and now, isn’t that it? So do we all, so do we all. Don’t give that up, oh no. Yes, I think I know what you’re living for. But I really don’t know what you’re living by–’

Oddly, he was using terms which they had used themselves: or perhaps it was not so odd, for those terms, ordinary enough, might have filtered into their speech from his, or even the other way round. In asking the question, the Bishop wasn’t so naïve as he seemed. Hopeful as he was, he wasn’t naïve. He knew, as well as any man, that people had found codes, aspirations, moralities, humanisms and creeds in every community under heaven, whether they believed in heaven or not. He would have said that men were sinful creatures but – they might profess any religion or none – with a possibility of grace. But about these two he was puzzled, puzzled more than hurt. Both of them had been born right in the heart of the Church. Stephen had lived all his life within sight and sound of the cathedral: Tess’ childhood had been spent in a town vicarage, before they moved here. It wasn’t that they had rebelled against Christianity – the Bishop could have understood that, it would have been no problem – but that they had quietly, without conflict, friction, or apparent loss, let it drop. True, Stephen mightn’t have been attracted by his parents’ example (the Bishop, in the depth of his soul, which wasn’t so uniformly affable and outpouring as it seemed, had a certain lack of charity towards Thomas Freer), but Tess had always been close to her father. He didn’t know all about her life nowadays: perhaps he didn’t want to know, or knew-and-not-knew. That didn’t matter, they were still close. And yet she had let her religion fade out as effortlessly as Stephen. Just as though it were in the nature of things.

The Bishop was disturbed as much as puzzled. When he was puzzled, he had to find a name for it. ‘I take it that that American – what’s his name – would call you inner-directed, wouldn’t he? Well, it’s a good thing to be inner-directed, I hope we all are, part of our time. But can anyone be totally inner-directed for ever? That’s what I wonder about you two. You’ll have to discover that yourselves, won’t you? We shall see. We shall see.’

Suddenly, as though coming to attention, he broke out: ‘Have you prepared yourselves? I mean, have you prepared yourselves for what’s in store? Very soon. You must have thought about it, you must have.’

‘I don’t suppose we’ve thought about anything else,’ said Stephen.

‘That isn’t the same as living it, Stephen.’ It was the first time he had called Stephen by his name: perhaps it was the first time that he spoke as an older man, or looked on them as very young. ‘You’ll find that public shame is very difficult to live with. It’s going to mean that, there’s no avoiding it. There are some things you wouldn’t mind being pilloried for, of course there are. But that won’t be so this time, you know. You’ll have to be ready to see your names in public and hate the sight of them.’

‘I think we’re ready for that,’ said Tess, as firmly as her father.

‘You won’t know, I’ve got to warn you, you won’t know until you’ve been through it.’ He added, with feeling, with strength: ‘I think we’re all going to need each other.’

In the midst of the selfishness of dread, Stephen had not had the free energy to imagine how the Bishop was himself involved. Yet he too was exposed, wide-open. A radical bishop, who had his enemies – now to have a daughter implicated like this. Apart from that one remark which seemed more comradely than reproachful, he did not obtrude himself again: and (so Tess told Stephen later) he had not done so, not once on the previous night. Perhaps they still did not realize how much he had subdued his own concern. Training, tenderness for their futures, certainly a knowledge that his daughter loved this man – they all helped him: but Stephen, if not distracted, must have observed that the Bishop was triumphing over his nature.

Public shame, that was bad enough: private doubts, for, though he was a sturdy, he wasn’t a complacent man: but also there might be practical consequences. It would have been hard for Stephen, even in cool days, to guess how much they weighed. Stephen had heard plenty of ladder-climbing talk at his father’s table: Thomas Freer, himself a non-competitor, had a remarkedly beady eye for the ambitions of clergymen: it was assumed that the Bishop wouldn’t stay for long in this diocese, and that he had a pleasurable expectation of a call to higher things: a call about which, Thomas Freer remarked, he would scrupulously examine his conscience, while his wife was packing the bags upstairs. Now, it might have seemed to the Bishop, that call was not likely to come.

Stephen got no hint at all that those could be among the Bishop’s thoughts. It was true that he mentioned the practical consequences for Stephen: but he had a shrewd assessment that there at least Stephen already protected, partly by his trust fund, partly by the nature of his profession, and didn’t inquire much further. Instead, he told them that there might be occasions where his own presence would be useful. Whether he meant at the inquest, or with the press, or at any possible trial, he didn’t say. As he made the offer, though, he and Stephen appeared, almost for the first time that morning, embarrassed with each other.

It wasn’t long before he was muttering ‘Well! Well!’ like one seeing them off at a railway station. When they got up, he did so too, and accompanied them through his secretary’s room out into the open air. He wasn’t wearing his overcoat, his face went purpler in the January air, he walked between them, only an inch taller than his daughter, not up to Stephen’s shoulder. They passed round the west end – nineteenth-century gothic, nothing there of the original church. The archdeacon hustled by, the Bishop shouted a hearty good morning. In front of the cathedral porch, in sight of a trickle of people, all elderly, coming out of matins, the Bishop kissed his daughter and shook Stephen’s hand.

As Tess and Stephen were getting near the outer gate, he said that he would have to call at his house, in case there were any messages.

‘Shall I go on ahead?’ said Tess, with candour, who had still not been told about the night before but who was not in ignorance.

He hesitated. ‘No,’ he said peremptorily, ‘come with me.’

When they went into the high, warm, pot-pourri-smelling hall (the house had always smelt fragrant, it was part of Stephen’s memory), no one seemed at home. According to habit, Stephen’s first glance was to the telephone pad. Yes, a number, would you ring? The number was Neil’s. As soon as Stephen got through, he heard the unpropitiating scouse.

‘It’s me. I’d better see you.’

‘Can you say?’

‘No.’

Stephen said that he and Tess were going to lunch in the town.

‘No good for me.’

Well then, they were moving out to Mark’s house: they could collect him.

‘I’ll make my own way. See you there.’

The telephone clicked down. Turning away, Stephen met Tess’ glance, anxious, inquiring. ‘Something’s happened,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He shook his head, After he had made one more call, telling Mark where to pick them up, they went, preoccupied, back in the kaleidoscope of care, into the lane.

The sun had come out, low winter sun, dazzling on windscreens. The shopping crowds went by, anonymous, busy, unheeding. The town was bright and burnished, prosperous, the pattern of a consumer’s town. Tess cried: ‘It’s a pretty dark tunnel to be in. I can’t help it–’

‘Yes.’

‘Shall we get out of it?’

She knew that the best way to give him reassurance was to ask for some: and also, though in some ways braver than he was, she was frightened.

‘Perhaps,’ he said.

Unlike Mark, Stephen and Tess didn’t use the one or two old restaurants, or the smart ones, in the town: partly because Tess wasn’t brought up to them, partly because Stephen had once felt easier ‘living like everyone else.’ So they made their way to a wimpy bar in Granby Street – where they did not recognize a single face and had (this might have given Stephen, before trouble fell, a sarcastic amusement, as a jab against himself) very little idea of the lives behind those faces. Men and women mostly of their own age: clerks, secretaries, shop assistants: what did they want? What, to ask the Bishop’s question, did they live by? Most of them seemed cheerful enough, there was plenty of casual mateyness. People talked of the loneliness of towns: claptrap, Stephen used to think, before he found Tess, on solitary excursions: there was a metaphysical ultimate loneliness all right, but the people he watched, in places like this, were no more lonely than human beings had to be.

They sat at the further corner of the bar, backs to the light, drinking cups of coffee, ate hamburgers, had more coffee. Sometimes they watched the stools fill up: occasionally, the repetitive unanswerable worries broke out. Were they right about Bernard’s death? Could he have killed himself, after all? Could he have been drugged, would it have worked that way? What had happened to Neil? What was he going to tell them? When – and this came back often, unsuppressible now – would they hear something about themselves?