Nuns and Soldiers (12 page)

‘Yes, of course.’

‘She loves you, I think.’

‘Yes. I love her.’

There was silence again. Anne breathed quietly, praying blankly, feeling an immense tired quiet like a cloud rising up out of her. She did not feel able to make conversation, but there might be no need, perhaps it was all right just to sit there.

‘Why did you leave the convent?’ said Guy.

Anne was suddenly alert, electric with precision. ‘I changed my views about religion. It would have been a lie to stay.’

‘Maybe you should have hung on. Christian theology is changing so fast these days. The relieving troops would have arrived. You would have heard the sound of bagpipes.’

‘No theologian could have rescued me!’

‘Lost your faith - ?’

‘That’s not quite the phrase. Perhaps people don’t all that often just
lose
their faith. I want to make a new kind of faith, privately for myself, and this can only be done out in the world.’

‘Inside you had to say what you didn’t believe, even if you said nothing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you still believe in a personal God?’

‘Not in a personal God.’

‘Then in some sort of mysterious world spirit? Zeus, whoever you are.’

‘No, nothing of that sort. It’s hard to explain. Perhaps I just can’t make any more use of the word “God”.’

‘I’ve always hated God,’ said Guy.

‘You mean the Old Man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you ever have any Jewish religion? But of course your family were Christians.’

‘Scarcely. We knew about the Jewish festivals. There was a kind of nostalgia. It was odd. I knew about holiness.’

‘Isn’t that religion?’

‘What did you mean about a faith privately for yourself?’

‘I suppose every faith is private. I just mean - it wouldn’t have names and concepts, I would never describe it, but it would live and I would know it. I feel as if I’ve finished talking.’

‘I’ve often felt that,’ said Guy, ‘but it was an illusion. What will you do?’

‘I don’t know, some sort of social work, I’m not thinking about it yet.’

‘And Jesus, what about him?’

‘What about him indeed.’

‘Will he be part of your new faith?’

‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘I-I think so -’

‘My uncle David Schultz once told me that if at the world’s end it turned out that Jesus was the Messiah, he would accept him. It’s interesting to speculate on the alternative.’

‘Some of your family kept to the Jewish faith?’

‘He was an uncle by marriage. But yes. You must ask Veronica Mount, she’s the expert. I used to hate Jesus too.’

‘However could you? I can imagine hating God, but not Jesus.’

‘I mean the symbol not the man. One must pity the man. Judaism is a sober religion, teaching, prayer, no excesses. But Christianity is so soft, it’s sentimental and magical, it denies death. It changes death into suffering, and suffering is always so interesting. There is pain, and then, hey presto, there is eternal life. That’s what we all want, that our misery shall buy something, that we shall get something in return, something absolutely consoling. But it’s a lie. There are final conclusions, one is shortly to be reached in this house. Eternal departures take place. Suffering has the shifting unreality of the human mind. A desire to suffer probably led you into that convent, perhaps it has led you out again. Death is real. But Christ doesn’t really die. That can’t be right.’

‘Right or wrong, it’s the point.’

‘It’s not
your
point.’

‘No -’ Anne wanted to think about what he was saying, though his strained utterance distressed her. ‘I think - we want our vices to suffer - but not to go away.’

‘Yes. Yes. We want ... because of the suffering ... to be able to keep ... everything ... to be forgiven.’

‘That seems to you soft?’

‘Yes.’

They were silent again. Anne thought, I can say anything to this man.

Guy said, ‘You don’t, I imagine, believe in the anti-religious idea of life after death?’

‘No. I agree it’s anti-religious. I mean - whatever it is - it’s happening now and here.’ That’s what I couldn’t tell them in the convent, she thought.

‘I wish I believed in the hereafter,’ said Guy. He had been looking away from her, twisting his hair with one restless hand, showing her his hawk-nosed profile. Now his eyes glittered at her. ‘Not for any vulgar reason of course. Not just to be let off this thing that’s going to happen in the next few weeks. But - it’s something I’ve always felt -’

‘What?’

‘I would like to be judged.’

Anne reflected. ‘I wonder if it’s a coherent idea? It seems to me a little like what you didn’t care for about Christianity.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Guy. She had pleased him. He smiled a sweeter smile which softened the taut face. ‘It’s romantic, sado-masochistic, a story-idea, not what it seems - indeed -’

‘Do you mean judgement as estimation, a clear account, or as punishment?’

‘Oh both. I think one
craves
for both. To look over the Recording Angel’s shoulder. And to have consequences. Consequences would prove something.’

‘What do you want proved? Gertrude said you were writing a book about punishment.’

Guy frowned. ‘Did she? It’s nothing yet. I mean - it’s nothing, just a sketch.’

‘Can you tell me anything about it?’

‘It’s an impossible subject. If a Home Office official writes a book on punishment it’s bound to be - oh you know - about deterrence and rehabilitation.’

‘And leaves out retribution, and that’s what you want?’

‘For myself, yes.’

‘Don’t you think others may need it, want it, too?’

‘Oh maybe, but I’m only interested in my own case. Like you.’

They both smiled. Anne sat tense, concentrated.

‘Justice is such an odd thing,’ Guy went on, ‘it cuts across the other virtues, it’s like brown, it’s not in the spectrum, it’s not in the moral spectrum.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Anne.

‘It’s a calculation.’

‘What about mercy?’

‘Something quite different. Anyway there can’t
be
mercy.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because crimes are their own punishment.’

‘If so why do you want an after-life?’

‘Oh but one can’t
see.
I would want to understand it all. I would want to have it exhibited, explained. That’s why the idea of purgatory is so moving.’

‘What about hell, is that moving too?’

‘No. Incomprehensible really. But purgatory, suffering in the presence of the Good, what joy. Computerized suffering, suffering with a purpose, with a progress - no wonder the souls in Dante plunge joyfully back into the fire.’

‘But purgatory is rehabilitation and you said -’

‘Purgatory is magical rehabilitation, guaranteed to work. In real life punishment may produce any result, it’s wild guesswork. And retribution is only important as a check, it’s necessary for the sort of rough justice we hand out here below. I mean, the chap’s got to have
done
something, and we must have a shot at saying how large or small it is -’

‘Otherwise we might penalize people just to do them good.’

‘Or to deter other people, yes.’

‘I understand what you feel about purgatory,’ said Anne.

‘I once saw a Victorian picture called “Abject Prayer”. I envied the man in the picture.’

‘I know the picture. Oh - heavens - yes! It’s all so unutterably consoling and as you said romantic, and yet -’

‘Why shouldn’t poor sinners be consoled?’

‘Yes. But about retribution, when you say you want to be judged is that just a general idea, something “soft”, to use your word, or do you relate it to things you’ve done, as it were - ?’

‘Oh well -’ said Guy. He smiled again, sadly, his dark eyes fixed intently upon Anne. His eyes were moist and shining in his dry pale face where the skin was stretched so tight across the bones.

‘I mean I’m not asking what you accuse yourself of, or just about how you think of it -’

‘We specialize, don’t you think?’ said Guy. ‘We are selectively decent, if we are decent at all. We each have one or two virtues which we cultivate, not much really. Or we pick a virtue which always seems to help, to mediate goodness somehow, as it might be resolution, or benevolence, or innocence, or temperance, or honour. Something not too large, not too impossibly hard that seems to suit us somehow -’

‘What’s yours?’

‘My - ? Oh nothing high. Something like accuracy.’

‘Isn’t that the same as truth?’

‘No. We are not really very versatile when it comes to being good, we are awfully limited creatures. How much scrutiny would the lives of the saints stand up to? Everybody is beastly to someone. Even your friend Jesus, what do we really know about him? He had the luck to be celebrated by five literary geniuses.’

‘Luck? Well -’

‘Our vices are general, dull, the ordinary rotten mud of human meanness and cowardice and cruelty and egoism, and even when they’re extreme they’re all the same. Only in our virtues are we original, because virtue is difficult, and we have to try, to invent, to work through our nature against our nature -’

‘But doesn’t every vice have its corresponding virtue. I mean aren’t they defined in terms of each other?’

‘Only apparently. For virtue is awfully odd. It’s detached, something on its own.’

‘You mean demonic?’

‘That’s another romantic idea. No, I won’t pick it up. Just - original - idiosyncratic - odd - Vices are general, virtues are particular. They aren’t in a continuum of general improvement.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Anne. ‘They must be related to each other in some sort of -’

‘System? Hierarchy? That’s metaphysics.’

‘And virtue is often quiet and dull, I’ve seen it. I agree it’s specialized. We are good in a small area that suits us. But you are thinking of virtue as being all interesting and original inside, and I don’t see that. It’s a sort of - conjecture.’

‘I didn’t say “interesting” - and it is a conjecture - But you asked me if ... when I wanted punishment ... I wanted it ... for anything in particular ...’

Guy was staring at her intently. Anne was suddenly frightened and felt her face flushing. It had occurred to her that Guy might actually want to make some sort of confession. Suppose he were now to tell her something terrible, something that was on his mind, tormenting him? Was it for this that he had asked to see her? She thought, if I were a priest it would be my duty to hear it. But I am not a priest. With me it would be muddled and personal. I have no role here, no magic power to transform what might happen, no authority to touch his soul. I could say nothing good to him and he would regret it.

She said gently, ‘I think I am tiring you. Gertrude said I mustn’t stay long.’

Guy continued to stare at her. Then he sighed, smiled a little mocking smirking grimace, and turned his head away. He said, ‘I frightened you just now, didn’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, it was nothing. And it’s - all right. Hey, hey, the white swan. Nurse will come in a minute anyway.’

‘I must go.’

Guy turned back to look at her. Anne felt a surge of emotion which almost made her gasp. She trembled. She felt for a moment,
I can’t go.

Guy stretched out his hand towards her. Anne took hold of the thin papery hand, feather-light in her strong grasp, and leaned over and kissed it.

‘Oh Anne - go now - we’ll talk - another time -’

But Anne never saw Guy again.

‘Is that all you’ve got for our supper?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bloody Christ.’

‘I suppose we can buy something.’

‘Oh shit!’

Tim Reede and his girl Daisy Barrett were sitting drinking in the Prince of Denmark. Tim was drawing the Prince of Denmark cat. The cat, a slim black beast with a noble bony face and white paws, was cold and vain. It stared contemptuously at Tim out of its ice-green eyes, then stretched voluptuously and adopted another pose. Tim started again. That cat (its name was Perkins) had a larger repertoire of attitudes than any cat Tim had ever drawn, and he had drawn many a cat. The Prince of Denmark, a pub near Fitzroy Square, had also possessed a dog called Barkiss, an animal of infinite jest, recently kidnapped by a passing client. Tim and Daisy liked the place because it was quiet and unfashionable and seedy. There was a big mahogany bar with a superstructure or screen composed of little pivoting panels of Victorian engraved glass which looked like the east end of a Greek orthodox church. There was indeed an ecclesiastical atmosphere. The place was dimly lit and smoky and the customers talked in low voices. Little cubicles, like confessionals, lined one wall. Tim and Daisy were seated in one of these. There was no juke box.