Eyeless In Gaza (12 page)

She proposed a stroll before tea, and they walked through the garden and out into the domesticated wilderness of grass and trees beyond. In a glade of the little copse that bounded the property to the north, three crippled children were picking primroses. With a gruesome agility they swung themselves on their crutches from clump to clump of the pale golden flowers, yelling as they went in shrill discordant rapture.

They were staying, Mrs Foxe explained, in one of her cottages. ‘Three of my cripples,' she called them.

At the sound of her voice the children looked up, and at once came hopping across the open space towards her.

‘Look, Miss, look what I found!'

‘Look here, Miss!'

‘What's this called, Miss?'

She answered their questions, asked others in return, promised to come that evening to see them.

Feeling that he too ought to do something for the cripples, Mr Beavis began to tell them about the etymology of the word ‘primrose.'
‘Primerole
in Middle English,' he explained. ‘The “rose” crept in by mistake.' They stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘A mere popular blunder,' he went on; then, twinkling, ‘a “howler,”' he added. ‘Like our old friend,' he smiled at them knowingly, ‘our friend “causeway.”'

There was a silence. Mrs Foxe changed the subject.

‘Poor little mites!' she said, when at last they let her go. ‘They're so happy, they make one want to cry. And then, after a week, one has to pack them off again. Back to their slum. It seems too cruel. But what can one do? There are so many of them. One can't keep one lot at the expense of the others.'

They walked on for a time in silence, and Mrs Foxe found herself suddenly thinking that there were also cripples of the spirit. People with emotions so lame and rickety that they didn't know how to feel properly; people with some kind of hunch or deformity in their power of expression. John Beavis perhaps was one of them. But how unfair she was being! How presumptuous too! Judge not that ye be not judged. And anyhow, if it were true, that would only be another reason for feeling sorry for him.

‘I think it must be tea-time,' she said aloud; and, to prevent herself from passing any more judgments, she started to talk to him about those Cripple Schools she had been helping to organize in Notting Dale and St Pancras. She described the cripple's life at home – the parents out at work; not a glimpse of a human face from morning till night; no proper food; no toys, no books, nothing to do but to lie still and wait – for what? Then she told him about the ambulance that now went round to fetch the children to school, about the special desks,
the lessons, the arrangements for supplying a decent dinner.

‘And our reward,' she said, as she opened the door into the house, ‘is that same heart-breaking happiness I was speaking of just now. I can't help feeling it as a kind of reproach, an accusation. Each time I see that happiness, I ask myself what right I have to be in a position to give so easily, just by spending a little money and taking a tiny bit of pleasant trouble. Yes, what right?' Her warm clear voice trembled a little as she uttered the question. She raised her hands in an interrogative gesture, then let them fall again and walked quickly into the drawing-room.

Mr Beavis followed her in silence. A kind of tingling warmth had expanded within him as he listened to her last words. It was like the sensation he had when he read the last scene of
Measure for Measure,
or listened to Joachim in the Beethoven Concerto.

Mr Beavis could only stay two nights. There was an important meeting of the Philological Society. And then, of course, his work on the Dictionary. ‘The old familiar grind,' he explained to Mrs Foxe in a tone of affected self-pity and with a sigh that was hardly even meant to carry conviction. The truth was that he enjoyed his work, would have felt lost without it. ‘And you're really sure,' he added, ‘that Anthony won't be too much of a burden to you?'

‘Burden? But look!' And she pointed through the window to where the two boys were playing bicycle polo on the lawn. ‘And it's not only that,' she went on. ‘I've really come to be very much attached to Anthony in these two days. There's something so deeply touching about him. He seems so vulnerable somehow. In spite of all that cleverness and good sense and determination of his. There's part of him that seems terribly at the mercy of the world.' Yes, at its mercy, she repeated to herself, thinking, as she did so, of that broad and candid forehead, of those almost tremulously sensitive lips, of
that slight, unforceful chin. He could be easily hurt, easily led astray. Each time he looked at her, he made her feel almost guiltily responsible for him.

‘And yet,' said Mr Beavis, ‘there are times when he seems strangely indifferent.' The memory of that episode in the train had not ceased to rankle. For though, of course, he wanted the child to be happy, though he had decided that the only happiness he himself could know henceforward would come from the contemplation of the child's happiness, the old resentment still obscurely persisted: he felt aggrieved because Anthony had not suffered more, because he seemed to resist and reject suffering when it was brought to him. ‘Strangely indifferent,' he repeated.

Mrs Foxe nodded. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘he wears a kind of armour. Covers up his vulnerability in the most exposed place and at the same time uncovers it elsewhere, so that the slighter wounds shall act as a kind of distraction, a kind of counterirritant. It's self-protection. And yet' (her voice deepened, thrilling), ‘and yet I believe that in the long run he'd be better and spiritually healthier, yes, and happier too, if he could bring himself to do just the opposite – if he'd armour himself against the little distracting wounds, the little wounds of pleasure as well as the little wounds of pain, and expose his vulnerableness only to the great and piercing blows.'

‘How true that is!' said Mr Beavis, who found that her words applied exactly to himself.

There was a silence. Then, harking back to his original question, ‘No, no,' said Mrs Foxe with decision, ‘so far from feeling him as a burden, I'm really enchanted to have him here. Not only for what he is in himself, but also for what he is to Brian – and incidentally for what Brian is to him. It's delightful to see them. I should like them to be together every holidays.' Mrs Foxe paused for a moment; then, ‘Seriously,' she went on, ‘if you've made no plans for the summer, why
don't you think of this? We've taken a little house at Tenby for August. Why shouldn't you and Anthony find a place there too?'

Mr Beavis thought the idea an excellent one; and the boys, when it was broached to them, were delighted.

‘So it's only good-bye till August,' said Mrs Foxe as she saw him off. ‘Though of course,' she added, with a warmth that was all the greater for being the result of a deliberate effort of cordiality, ‘of course we shall meet before then.'

The carriage rattled away down the drive; and for a hundred yards or more Anthony ran beside it, shouting ‘Good-bye' and waving his handkerchief with a vehemence that Mr Beavis took as the sign of a corresponding intense regret to see him go. In fact, however, it was just a manifestation of overflowing energy and high spirits. Circumstances had filled him, body and mind, with the deep joy of being happily alive. This joy required physical expression, and his father's departure gave him an excuse for running and waving his arms. Mr Beavis was extremely touched. But if only, he went on sadly to think, if only there were some way of canalizing this love, and his own for the boy, so that it might irrigate the aridities of their daily intercourse! Women understood these things so much better. It had been touching to see how the poor child had responded to Mrs Foxe's affection. And perhaps, he went on to speculate, perhaps it was just because there had been no woman to direct his feelings that Anthony had seemed to be so uncaring. Perhaps a child could never adequately mourn his mother for the very reason that he was motherless. It was a vicious circle. Mrs Foxe's influence would be good, not only in this matter, but in a thousand other ways as well. Mr Beavis sighed. If only it were possible for a man and a woman to associate; not in marriage, but for a common purpose, for the sake of motherless, of fatherless, children! A good woman – admirable, extraordinary even.
But in spite of that (almost because of that), it could only be an association for a common purpose. Never a marriage. And anyhow there was Maisie – waiting for him there; he would not fail . . . But an association for the sake of the children – that would be no betrayal.

Anthony walked back to the house whistling ‘The Honeysuckle and the Bee.' He was fond of his father – fond, it is true, by force of habit, as one is fond of one's native place, or its traditional cooking – but still, genuinely fond of him. Which did nothing, however, to diminish the discomfort he always felt in Mr Beavis's presence.

‘Brian!' he shouted, as he approached the house – shouted a bit self-consciously; for it seemed queer to be calling him Brian instead of Foxe or Horse-Face. Rather unmanly, even a shade discreditable.

Brian's answering whistle came from the school-room.

‘I vote we take the bikes,' Anthony called.

At school, people used to mock at old Horse-Face for his bird mania. ‘I say, you fellows,' Staithes would say, taking Horse-Face by the arm, ‘guess what I saw today! Two spew-tits and a piddle-warbler.' And a great howl of laughter would go up – a howl in which Anthony always joined. But here, where there was nobody to shame him out of being interested in spring migrants and next-boxes and heronries, he took to bird-watching with enthusiasm. Coming in, wet and muddy from the afternoon's walk, ‘Do you know what we heard, Mrs Foxe?' he would ask triumphantly, before poor Brian had had time to get out a stammered word. ‘The first white-throat!' or ‘The first willow wren!' and Rachel Foxe would say, ‘How splendid!' in such a way that he was filled with pride and happiness. It was as though those piddle-warblers had never existed.

After tea, when the curtains had been drawn and the lamps brought in, Mrs Foxe would read to them. Anthony, who had
always been bored to death by Scott, found himself following the ‘Fortunes of Nigel' with the most passionate attention.

Easter approached, and, for the time being, ‘Nigel' was put away. Mrs Foxe gave them readings, instead, from the New Testament. ‘And he saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.' The lamplight was a round island in the darkness of the room, and towards it, from the fire, projected a vague promontory of luminous redness. Anthony was lying on the floor, and from the high Italian chair beside the lamp the words came down to him, transfigured, as it were, by that warm, musical voice, charged with significances he had never heard or seen in them before. ‘And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.' In the ten heart-beats of silence that followed he seemed to hear the blows of the hammer on the nails. Thud, thud, thud . . . He passed the fingers of one hand across the smooth palm of the other; his body went rigid with horror, and through the stiffened muscles passed a violent spasm of shuddering.

‘And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.' Mrs Foxe lowered her book. ‘That's one of those additions I was telling you about,' she said, ‘one of those embroideries on the story. One must think of the age in which the writers of the gospels lived. They believed these things could happen; and, what's more, they thought they ought to happen on important occasions. They wanted to do honour to Jesus; they wanted to make his story seem more wonderful. But to us, nowadays, these things make it seem less wonderful; and we don't feel that they do him honour. The wonderful thing for us,' she went on, and her
voice thrilled with a deep note of fervour, ‘is that Jesus was a man, no more able to do miracles and no more likely to have them done for him than the rest of us. Just a man – and yet he could do what he did, he could be what he was. That's the wonder.'

There was a long silence; only the clock ticked and the flame rustled silkily in the grate. Anthony lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Everything was suddenly clear. Uncle James was right; but the other people were right too. She had shown how it was possible for both of them to be right. Just a man – and yet . . . Oh, he too, he too would do and be!

Mrs Foxe picked up the book once more. The thin pages crackled as she turned them.

‘Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came upon the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.'

The stone . . . But at Lollingdon there was earth; and only ashes in that little box – that little box no bigger than a biscuit tin. Anthony shut his eyes in the hope of excluding the odious vision; but against the crimson darkness the horns, the triangular frizz of auburn curls stood out with an intenser vividness. He lifted his hand to his mouth, and, to punish himself, began to bite the forefinger, harder, harder, until the pain was almost intolerable.

That evening, when she came to say good-night to him, Mrs Foxe sat down on the edge of Anthony's bed and took his hand. ‘You know, Anthony,' she said after a moment of silence, ‘you mustn't be afraid of thinking about her.'

‘Afraid?' he mumbled, as though he hadn't understood. But he
had
understood – understood, perhaps, more than she had meant. The blood rushed guiltily into his cheeks. He felt frightened, as though somehow she had trapped him, found him out – frightened and therefore resentful.