The Virgin in the Garden (64 page)

The Bishop, the Ellenbys, the Ortons, the Potters, Miss Wells and several minor clergy were gathered towards one end of the Hall, holding glasses of champagne and shouting. By the time Marcus brought Alexander there they were shouting quite loudly about a concatenation of matters loosely ranging from pain through dismemberment, execution, crucifixion, disembowelling, regeneration and back to pain. Also present were Lucas Simmonds, who was also shouting, and Edmund Wilkie who was not, but was proffering a great deal of psycho-somatic information about pain-thresholds and the body-image to those capable of taking it in. As Alexander came tentatively nearer, Bill Potter seemed to be declaring in a barely controlled scream that the Bishop was a bloody butcher, the Bishop, flushed wine-coloured, but lucid, was apparently lecturing Lucas Simmonds on the necessity of suffering, and Simmonds was wringing his hands round and round and making agitated remarks about excising corruption. Wilkie was still clothed in the black velvet of his Tower vigil although he had resumed his roseate goggles: Felicity Wells was stiff in her grass-green train, bum-roll, ruff and farthingale. Frederica was not there, but Stephanie was, drooping heavily graceful and pensive next to Daniel, like the early Venus of the Primavera.

The conversation had not begun in this way. Miss Wells had tugged
Stephanie along with the Ellenbys to meet the dear Bishop. The Bishop, a tall, saturnine, handsomish man with a flow of white-flecked black hair, a trim figure and an intelligent look, had complimented Stephanie on what he had heard of her excellent work with Youth, Young Wives, the housebound and disabled. Stephanie, who had made a considered decision to help Daniel flat out in those areas of his work where no doctrinal conflict could be said to arise, would, in fact, have accepted this compliment gracefully had her father not been skipping from side to side behind her like a flyweight boxer preparing to land a body-blow on the smooth, very slightly convex purple silk front of the Bishop.

The Bishop, seeing Bill, had attempted, spreading automatically flowing oil on the choppy waters, to make a few observations about this flowering of their common cultural heritage, the sense of true communion imparted by the rising-up of all the folk, as exemplified by churches, schools and Bill’s excellent adult education classes, in this sustained, jointly achieved work of art. Bill had said that the Bishop could speak for himself. For his own part, he had no faith that much of our culture, including, he might say, the Church, either could or should be revivified. Let them lie down and die decently,
he
said, he said. And moreover he was afraid he had to make it clear that he had certainly no faith in this sort of play, which he went on to categorise as nostalgia for something that never was, a
charming
, airy dream of a time which was in fact nasty, brutish, and bloody. A despotic police state, controlled by spies, torturers and executioners, whom he noticed we hadn’t been shown. It was in this way that what Marcus had so accurately categorised as a “horrible argument” had been embarked upon.

Miss Wells had shrilled nervously that the hanging, drawing and quartering of Dr Lopez had in fact been reported, if briefly: Wilkie had volunteered that the original description, very gruesome, had been cut; the martyrdom of Campion had been touched on; Lucas Simmonds had asked, with a disproportionate intensity, whether pain and suffering were qualitatively different in those harsher days, either for men to watch or men to undergo. One of those curious compulsive conversations about what man is capable of doing to man had at this point erupted: the Bishop had called to witness the slaughtered saints of Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs
and Bonhoeffer’s concentration camp: Lucas Simmonds had recounted some tales of what he had been told, when on a Destroyer in the Pacific, the Japanese did to recalcitrant p.o.w.s. Wilkie remarked that useful work had been done on the relation between where a man felt pain and where the stimulus was applied: also on the reaction which, when the whole body is filled with pain, makes a man able to
detach his consciousness, stand outside his body and watch the pain take its course. Lucas was very interested in this and pressed Wilkie for more information about the psychological machinery that made such things possible. The Bishop, at this point, remarked that there were things worse than pain and the fear of pain, death and the fear of death. There were ignorance and evil. He himself had been chaplain at Bentham Gaol some years ago and had always refused to allow those of what he referred to as “his” prisoners who were hanged to go to the drop with their minds clouded or stupefied by morphine, lest they should lose the real chance, face to face with extremity, of repentance or conversion. He was, indeed, on these grounds, in favour of the retention of capital punishment.

It was at this point that Bill Potter had begun to roar. He had called the Bishop bloody, arrogant and perverted. Marcus went to fetch Alexander. The Bishop, bland, wine-dark, and hard, continued to listen and to convey the belief that his opponents were naive and superficial, had not taken into account the true nature or real consequences of his own position.

When Alexander, Thomas Poole and Marcus arrived, Bill was graphically describing the degrading terrors to be experienced in condemned cells. To this the Bishop replied quietly, and as far as he went, truthfully, that Bill had no first-hand experience of such matters, that he himself had been witness of, sharer of, moments of great beauty and glory in these unlikely circumstances. Bill cried out that this was the more shame. Stephanie was in tears. Lucas was talking about our blind modern squeamishness, in support of the Bishop, who seemed to find his support distasteful. “If thine eye offend thee, cast it out,” Lucas cried. “Or a leg, or an arm, or anything else.”

Wilkie said to Alexander, “This began with a discussion of the exaggerated charm of your portrayal of the Tudor State.” Bill turned on Alexander and said they were now on matters infinitely more important than
that
, and returned to demolishing the Bishop with statistics of innocent Sheriffs who had gone white and insane overnight because of duty. The Bishop said that great faith and strength were indeed requisite, and Lucas, his words falling muddily over each other, into incoherence said that the first man was of the earth, earthy, and needed to be wholly, however painfully, done away with, so that the immortal corn should spring, which caused the Bishop to click his tongue loudly and audibly and caused Bill to begin to roar about the repugnant, savage and bloodthirsty nature of Christianity, which worshipped a smashed body and a crushed self. He then turned on Daniel and said he must be mad to expect him to condone his daughter’s marriage into this thwart, disnatured sect. Lucas said that a crushed body liberated a glorious soul,
the Bishop said firmly that he was not sure that some of Mr Simmonds’s – was it – Mr Simmonds’s responses were quite healthy, that he was not advocating an
obsession
with pain or dissolution by any means, only a healthy acceptance of it, at which point Lucas Simmonds, drooping, wet with perspiration, became poppy-crimson with agitation, and Daniel spoke. He spoke first to Bill, saying that he expected nothing of him, except trouble, and second to the Bishop to say briefly and flatly that he believed that what he, the Bishop, had just been arguing was wicked, cruel and unjustifiable.

It was immediately clear that Daniel was angrier than anyone else: that he could barely speak for wrath. He added that no one had given him a good reason yet for coldly killing anyone, let alone involving anyone else in the killing, and that he was now taking his wife home. Bill was somehow silenced by this hefty and unexpected, indeed probably unwelcome support. Daniel put his arm round his wife and led her away without looking back: Mr Ellenby told the Bishop that Daniel was a rough diamond: the Bishop said, chill, that Daniel might in courtesy have waited for a reply. Lucas Simmonds suddenly ran out of the Hall: Alexander saw the Parrys, now all three, making their inexorable way to his rowdy corner. He thought he must speak to Marcus: or to Lucas: the chap was definitely odd, no question, he looked all swollen and shrunken out of shape, somehow, and was surrounded by some almost tangible electric fug of anxiety, or terror. He said, “I’m sure what I said was right. You can’t afford to stay involved in whatever …”

“Someone has got to
help
him,” said Marcus.

Alexander considered the Bishop, who now looked distinctly irate, and Bill, who was now sulking. He thought of drawing Marcus after Lucas, which would have avoided Bishop, Bill, Parrys and Thomas Poole’s insoluble and terrifying mirror-problem, but was pre-empted. Floating like Gods from machines from the end of the Hall came Crowe and his three Elizabeths, Marina, Frederica, Anthea, smiling and beckoning. Crowe, still got up as Baron Verulam, brandished his long staff like Comus stilling his rabble, or his mother, Circe, dismissing the swine to their swill.

“Alexander – this is your night, my dear – the Press is wild with delight – you must come and meet – you are positively howled for, dear boy – they
die
to meet you – good evening, Bishop, a triumph, I’m sure you agree, such a marvellous corporate effort – come away, Alexander, excuse me I
must
drag him off – help me ladies – good evening Jenny darling, you were
lovely
, the
Yorkshire Post
has promised a special mention, Bess Throckmorton by sweet Sir Walter so rudely forced – so
convincing –
and you of course you bad clever lordling, your name is made
too – now come away, please excuse us, good night, Bill, I’m glad you managed to get here. Alexander, come away, come away.”

Marcus went out on the terrace in search of Lucas. He found him standing close to the royal palanquin, breathing fast and smiling unnaturally. He could not think why Lucas should have come to this scene at all unless out of some need, fanatical or pathetic, to keep an eye on Marcus himself.

“Sir. Are you all right? You looked …”

Lucas answered testily that he was quite all right, quite all right, more than all right. They were simply caught up in the flow of very big movements of force. They had a part to play. They had to be sure what it was. They were required to set off for Fylingdales on Friday.

“Sir, I can’t. I can’t come any more. I’m afraid.”

Naturally he was afraid, retorted the flushed cherub, even more irritably, clattering a fist on the flimsy gilded panels of the palanquin. He couldn’t expect to displace real powers and not be afraid, that wasn’t reasonable. There was every likelihood that they would freeze on Friday, or fry, or vanish in pure energy with nothing left of them but shadows like the men of Hiroshima after the lightburst. This prospect seemed to afford him some furious pleasure. We always knew what we risked, he pointed out, sweetly reasonable. Didn’t we?

Marcus said no, he had not known. And that now … now … he wasn’t sure they hadn’t made the whole thing up.

“And the transmissions? The levitation at Owger’s Howe? Your photisms? Did we make those up?”

“No. Well, no. But maybe those – were not – what you – what we – thought.”

“We don’t
know
what they were. There is only one way to find out.”

“No. I’m afraid.”

“But you are the seer.”

“I’m not sure. I daren’t. You’ve got to let me off.”

“You aren’t – disgusted by me?”

Marcus began to cry. Lucas glared stonily at his tears. He repeated his question.

“No. I’ve told you that. I’m scared. I told you.”

“Then I must go alone. Alone, I shall almost certainly fail. But there is no alternative.”

Marcus begged him weakly to give up. Lucas sneered. He said, “All right. Go away. It’s too late to retreat but you can delude yourself if you choose. What you fear is everywhere, and will do what it will do where it chooses.”

Marcus, weeping, and not entirely truthfully, cried out that it was of
Lucas that he was afraid most of all, “of you, of you, of you.” At this Lucas suddenly struck hard at his face, cutting the corner of his mouth, told him to leave him alone, then, and hurtled away down the terrace. Marcus sat down by the palanquin, holding his stinging head in his hands and sobbing. People wandering past him thought he was drunk, considerately stepped round him, and left him alone.

Two of the people who ran past Marcus late that night were Alexander and Frederica. Both were in flight; Alexander from the Parrys, who had taken their eyes off him to quarrel over who should change Thomas’s stinking nappy, Frederica from the traveller in dolls, who had raised his arm, snapped his fingers and started to shove his way towards her through the crowd. He was not invited, but almost anybody could have, and had, effected an entry. One might discuss Ed with Wilkie, but not with Alexander, to whom she had simply said she absolutely must get out. He had agreed it seemed a good idea, and so they had run, hearing behind them faint ironic cheering and public laughter. In the dark, hearing her breathing and leaping, he felt close to her. In the garden with the fountain it was different. They stood awkwardly in the circle of each other’s arms, and both distinctly felt the other to be bony and ungiving. Both were visited by a revisionary white coiling of Anthea Warburton’s fine solid buttocks and calves. He could not tumble Frederica Potter under a bush. As for Frederica, she could not initiate such tumbling. So they stood entwined, hardening already into familiar attitudes like children playing statues. She chattered at him, recalling gross compliments, stage mishaps, faux pas. He willed her into a more desirable silence, into which she presently fell. He put a finger on her cold lips.

“Well, what shall we do?”

No answer.

“Perhaps we should agree to forget all this?”

No answer.

“No good can come of it.”

“I want it.”

“It can be so little.”

“I don’t care. I want
you
.”

“But what can we do?”

She did not know. Bed, marriage, communion of souls, a perpetual continuing of this delightful crisis.