“All right, I’ll do that. But I was safe enough. Now then, can I help you, mummy?”
He left them in the kitchen and went back to his chair. He turned on the radio to hear the news, mainly to see if anything had occurred in the murder case.
He heard that Scotland Yard detectives had been called in, and that no further clues had been discovered. He turned the radio off and found himself sinking into a bitter, reflective mood. He felt helpless; evil pervaded everything. It was disguised, it went unseen and unknown until something like this happened; and then, just for a minute or an hour, it danced joyously and nakedly under the moon or the sun, crying out in strident triumph and then slipping back to hide again in the cells of a man’s brain, in the secret veins of tree and flowers, or in the crystalline grains of rock and stone. It was the natural condition of things to be evil, as it was the natural condition of things to be dark. The good was an effort, as light was. Lights had to be trimmed, maintained, guarded, re-lighted, sheltered. When the effort wavered, only for a second, evil swept in with a rush, a flood, and all things returned to chaos. And he, now, here, he could do nothing; nothing, that is, except endure it patiently, and hope that the powers of the world would not notice his soul.
And this was a thing that very few people realised about Canon Cole; it was the source of his compulsive and overdone theatricality. He behaved extravagantly, in a mannered, artificial, even slightly camp fashion, hoping to draw attention to himself and in the main succeeding, because in the depths of his soul he hoped that it would
distract
those powers of the world, of which he had such an overwhelming fear, and bewilder them for long enough to enable him to smuggle his soul covertly out of their reach.
A little later, at supper, there was a stiff silence in the air between the three of them. Gwen was obviously still hurt or annoyed, and he was far away. He hardly noticed what he was eating. After supper Elizabeth went upstairs without a word, and Gwen sat down with a library book in the front room.
He washed the dishes, as he usually did in the evening, and put them away lethargically, and then went upstairs to his study. It was a small room at the side of the house, with a desk and chair by one wall and bookshelves all along another. There was an armchair by the hearth. Next to it, on the floor, there was an electric coffee percolator, and on a small table beside the armchair, a tray with two cups and saucers and a bowl of sugar. On the wall above the desk hung a small wooden crucifix, a calendar, and an engraving of Raphael’s Madonna. The other pictures in the room were also engravings: Alpine landscapes and ships at sea. There was a plain dark green carpet on the floor; and on the desk, an old-fashioned glass inkwell, a blotting-pad, a neat array of pens and pencils, and a table lamp with a red shade. He switched it on and drew the curtains, and then sat down at the desk and took out his drawing of the well. He had never in his life felt the impulse to draw until a few weeks before, when he had bought a sketch-pad and set out to draw the well as accurately as he could. It was not just in order to have a picture of it. He could have borrowed Gwen’s camera if he’d wanted a photograph. It was a kind of remote caressing thus to draw it; it was a magic act, too, it worked some of the well on to the paper, so that the drawing became a talisman. It was a finicky, detailed piece of work; he was pleased with it, and had shown it to no-one, preferring to take it out of the drawer he kept it in and pore over it by himself.
When the doorbell rang he hastened to put it away, and opened the study door to hear Matthew explaining to Gwen who he was and what he wanted. He heard her say “Yes, he’s in his study. Come upstairs and I’ll show you where it is,” and he shut the door again and sat down.
She knocked on the door and called out, “Thomas, there’s someone to see you.”
“Come in! Come in!” he said.
She opened the door and let Matthew go in. As she did she smiled at her husband, surprising him a little; it was a warm, friendly smile.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. “Yes! Good evening, Mr. Cortez, come in and sit down.”
Gwen shut the door again and Matthew sat down rather diffidently. He was already regretting coming here; but, he thought, it might be interesting. The thought passed through Canon Cole’s mind that he’d seen Matthew before, a long time ago somewhere, he couldn’t put a time or place to it. The shape of his face was familiar; or was it his hair? He stared at him for a second, trying to place him. He looked haggard; his clothes weren’t bad, but he could do with a shave, and his hair was far too long and unkempt; it hung down nearly to his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” said the Canon in his most charming manner, “I’m just trying to think where I’ve seen you before. Perhaps it was someone like you – I ought to know Mr. Locke and his family better, but I don’t at all; ah well.”
“No, no, I don’t think you can have seen me anywhere,” said Matthew; “I haven’t been in the village for a long time. I have some cousins, my uncle’s grandchildren, but I don’t look very like them, I think; still… I hope you don’t think it was an imposition on my part to ask if I could come here and pester you. But there are only about two or three important things in the world, and religion’s one of them… perhaps – if you could tell me about what you believe in – forgive me, but I didn’t get the impression from your sermon on Sunday that you were an orthodox Anglican priest, any more than my uncle is; but are you? I mean what you said in the pulpit: was that what the bishop would have said, or what one of the priests they have on television would have said? Because it sounded so completely at odds with everything I’ve heard from the majority of Christian priests, that I couldn’t help wondering.”
Canon Cole watched him gravely as he sat twisting his hands together and pouring out this speech. Well, you’re at odds too, my boy, he thought, at odds with yourself; because while the words tumbled out almost at random, under pressure, his face wore a reserved, haughty expression which contained a deep disgust for himself. “Cap in hand” was the phrase that came to the Canon’s mind to describe him, and, seduced by a wayward impulse of kindness, He decided to try to help him.
“Yes! Yes! Well,” he said, “I hope it was at odds. Not that I want to start a war in the church, heaven knows… no, no, but a little heresy, I’m sure, is a good thing. Does that sound like a paradox, I wonder?”
Matthew shook his head.
“No! I agree with you. But what heresy is yours? What do you believe in?”
“I’m – I suppose – tell me, first of all, would you like some coffee?”
Christ Almighty! thought Matthew; I come here to learn about God and he talks about coffee… “Thank you, yes,” he said.
“I keep an electric percolator up here. I don’t like having to run downstairs every time I want a cup,” said the Canon. He plugged it in, and switched the electric fire on at the same time, noticing that Matthew was shivering. “You said, I remember, that you believed in God… do you go to church often’?”
“No! I can’t stand it as a rule. I only went on Sunday on an impulse.”
“Yes, quite, quite…tell me, what are you conscious of, in the world? I can’t think of another way to put it; I mean your particular world-outlook, your – your life-illusion – do you see what I mean? Everything that goes to make up what you know and feel of the world and – and – yourself. No, no, I don’t want a long list, but you said just now that there are only two or three important things in the world – so what are they?”
Matthew sat silently for a second, staring at him. Canon Cole feared suddenly that he would say nothing, that the contempt would flare up in his eyes, and that he’d walk out; but then he nodded and said “Yes. Storms, first of all, violent feelings, anger or lust, anything, it doesn’t matter. But violent, raging. Then a sensation I have sometimes that I’ve been here before, that I’ve seen this place before some time, in a dream maybe, it’s a sensation that’s very sweet – wild almost – distant, hard to pin down. Of enormous potency – potentiality – a sort of metaphysical nostalgia – that’s too crude, I can’t explain that one, ignore it. And then God, or rather God over and above the rest. What I mean is this: there are no absolute values in the world. Everything under the sun and moon is relative. Now I’m consumed with desire – oh, it’s not just desire, it’s hunger, famine – for values that are absolute. Do you see? Humanity is a stunted, warped thing, weak and trivial.
I
am. But something in me isn’t. There’s something in me that longs to beat the rest into submission, or cast it aside, if by doing so it’ll help me to see more clearly. I – I despise those false priests who say that the only value lies in human relationships, because that’s a relative value. Doing good to others is relative. I don’t mean that we ought to ignore ethics, and do evil to others. Jesus was right; love one another, love your neighbour, love him completely: oh, I agree, I agree! There’s no other law than that between human beings. But it’s not enough! It’s a relative goodness because it depends on other human beings… I want a vision of a goodness that’s absolute, that would exist undimmed and unchanged if there was not a human being left on earth, not a living creature – if there wasn’t a scrap of matter or a single atom left anywhere in the universe. If there is no absoluteness, then it isn’t worth living a second longer; I know it, I know it. And I think there is an absoluteness – I think there is – and I want to know where it is, and how to find it. So that’s why I’d like to know what you believe.”
He breathed in deeply, and sat back. The coffee was ready, and the Canon bent over and poured it out into the two cups and handed one to Matthew. There was an air of clarity in the room, almost of calm exhilaration. Each of them recognised it, and looked at the other with respect, or close attention. The Canon sat down in his chair and put his coffee on the desk.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I believe,” he began. “I suppose you would have to say that I was a Gnostic. All that means is that I’ve found more truth, more of what I recognise to be true, in the old Gnostic teachers than in any of the church fathers… It was a similar time to this, you know; the end of the Roman empire was like the end of the world. I suppose things showed up more clearly…
“If you’re prepared to take every word literally, then, I’ll tell you… This is not an allegory. “The God of this world, whom the Hebrews knew as Jehovah, exists. But he is a false God, a usurper. He has no claim on us.
“Everything you’ve ever heard about him is false. Everything in the world is false… the soul, the pneuma as it is in Greek, is lost here, trapped, threatened, lost in darkness, a prisoner of the false God. But although he’s false, he is the lord of the entire universe. It’s his; do you understand that?”
Matthew nodded.
“Not understand it
intellectually
only – do you feel it to be true?”
“Yes,” said Matthew. “Carry on.”
“So that in the world – in the whole fabric of matter and thought there is
nothing
–
nothing
which is of any concern or importance to us, except that it may threaten to kill us, or enslave us… you see that. You have to start from that.”
Matthew noticed that the priest was watching him closely, with that same half-sensual expectation in his eyes that Matthew had noticed in church. Without taking his eyes away, Canon Cole settled back, and began.
“In the beginning, in the ultimate heights, there was a Being who was the father and the origin of everything. The Gnostic writers call him the Abyss…”
And then, Matthew thought, he must have begun to dream. The Canon talked without ceasing for twenty minutes or so. The most detailed, intricate, and vivid cosmogony unfolded in front of him, peopled with strange beings called Aeons, Archons, and Emanations, whose extraordinary generation and dispersal took place against a background of vast gulfs of eternity. There was a central parable of some sort, a fall, involving the lowest of the Aeons, and this fall led somehow to the creation of the world.
Matthew was fascinated. The priest’s voice was quivering, brim-full of excitement. His eyes, in the red lamplight, seemed to dissolve and disappear; his hands chopped abruptly downwards at the end of a phrase, or hung poised with the forefinger extended, or clasped each other tightly like lovers.
The narrative drew out; Matthew followed it dizzily. There was a being called Sophia, who had fallen from perfection because she had desired greater perfection too passionately. She suffered torments of loss, and out of her suffering came matter, and out of her yearning spirit. She gave birth to a blind and ignorant god, who ruled the cosmos, imagining that he had created it; and as for man, there was a spark of alien divinity in him, which had somehow survived the entrapment in matter, and longed to return to its home outside the universe.
As the tale grew, the Canon turned away from the light, and eventually put his hands on either side of his face so that it fell entirely into shadow. Matthew could hardly see it, but he looked closely, and after a while noticed with a slight shock that the priest’s eyes were fixed, with an expression of histrionic anguish, on his own. They stared at each other for a matter of seconds, Matthew openly in hunger and intense curiosity, and Canon Cole, believing himself hidden, in a false dramatization of agony. His voice, when he spoke again, was calm but taut.
He was talking about the condensation of the Sophia’s torment into matter and time. It was too complicated for Matthew to follow, but he saw that something in it was affecting the Canon powerfully.
His voice broke suddenly. His face was still in shadow; his hands quivered, but otherwise he did not move. “Out of these feelings,” he went on, a tight edge of pain in his voice, “there came about the universe; for the Sophia with her hands shaped a son, out of the ignorance that filled her and the grief she felt – she felt – a storm of feelings, a tumult of them, sorrow, loss, lamentation…” he was hardly aware what he was saying, in truth; he had almost lost sight of Matthew, and felt that he was talking to himself. He stood up suddenly, pushing his chair away with the back of his knees, and strode rapidly to the bookcase. He stood facing it, a foot or so away, and went on speaking, making the most extraordinary grimaces and pulling his face quite involuntarily into the shape of the mask of tragedy: “From – from the grief she felt – from the grief there evolved matter, it condensed into the elements, and then – she turned back, and in effect from her turning back there evolved everything psychical, do you see – it’s strange, isn’t it, how acutely this has power to affect us – from, at last, from her receiving the light, there evolved the pneuma.”