The poem was entitled
The Oxen
, and was by the novelist Mr Thomas Hardy:
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
‘Now they are all on their knees,’
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers at hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said, on Christmas Eve,
‘Come; see the oxen kneel
In the lonely barton in yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,’
I should go with him into the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
When he had first unfolded it, conscious of Alex’s eyes on him, waiting for a response, Edmund read the poem three times: for himself, for Alex, for Alex wanting to share it with him. He tried not to notice a small twinge of resentment: Alex was giving him Mr Hardy’s poem to show him the work of a real poet, to point out the inadequacies of his own verses.
‘Yes, it’s very fine,’ he agreed. ‘Why do you like it so much?’
They were in the reserve trench, leaning against the parapet in the chilly grey dawn. Somewhere bacon was frying.
‘Because Thomas Hardy obviously thinks as I used to about God.’ Alex was banging his arms against his sides to keep warm. ‘He can’t really believe in him, but would willingly accept proof if it were offered. Do you know, the first time I read those last lines they sent a shiver down my spine.’
Edmund looked at him. ‘Of fear?’
‘No. Of wanting.’
‘You want to believe, like he does? What does Karl Marx have to say about that?’
‘I did at the time I first read the poem. Not now.
So
fair a fancy few would weave, in these years
. . . Thomas Hardy must have meant all this —’ Alex waved a gloved hand in the direction of No-Man’s-Land’— as well as advances in scientific knowledge. The war makes it impossible to believe, even for those who did before. There’s no God. There’s only humans and what they do to each other.’
‘Unless you come across oxen kneeling at midnight. Perhaps we could go and look for some tonight. Would that convince you?’
‘Front-line duties don’t stop for Christmas, unfortunately.’
‘But if—?’
‘If we trooped off to some cowshed and found oxen kneeling in the straw? No. It wouldn’t convince me. I’d just think they were chewing the cud. It’s a fairy-tale, as Hardy implies. A nice one, but still a fairy-tale. I’d need better proof than that.’
Alone in his bedroom Edmund closed his eyes, hearing Alex’s voice, seeing the warmth of his smile, the dazzle of his glance, then opened them to the renewed shock of his absence. Every time the same punch of loss, the same return to emptiness. He refolded the paper, then looked at his own
Caryatid
poem, which Alex would never see. He spent a few moments frowning at the troublesome third line, then gave up with a gesture of frustration. What did it matter?
What did anything matter?
He had asked for proof and none had been given. Had Mr Hardy made a similar bargain with God—show me kneeling oxen on Christmas Eve and I’ll believe? And had God obliged, though he had failed to oblige now? It made a better poem with the question unanswered, but now Edmund could only remember what Alex had said:
There’s no God
. No proof. No reason. No logic. No justice. No love. God was a fairy-tale: father-figure, guardian, all-potent giant, watcher, creator, delusion, fictional character in an age-old story, filler of a gap. Imagined answerer of questions that had no answers. All man’s needs rolled into one. But no more real than Pan, or Venus, or Apollo. Edmund thought: I tried to bargain with a non-entity. Alex died. Oxen do not kneel except for reasons of their own.
He felt oddly detached from himself. He watched himself, neatly dressed, hair combed, going down for dinner: down to the panelled drawing room, where drinks were set out on a polished table. He watched himself submit to being greeted, admired and fussed over. It was better this way, too painful to be properly in his body.
‘And of course Philippa’s been so looking forward to seeing you,’ Mrs Fitch gushed.
Philippa came forward, smiling shyly. She had on a green dress with a V-neck that showed a lot of creamy skin, and wore an apricot-coloured hothouse flower in her hair. She held out a hand to Edmund; he took it, gave a curt bow, made the briefest of enquiries about her health and turned away to join his father and hers, who were standing by the large east window discussing the uprising in Russia earlier in the spring and whether it would lead to a ceasefire between Russia and Germany. He sensed his mother’s reproachful look and Philippa’s disappointment. A few moments later he heard Philippa chatting to Mrs Winthrop, with false brightness, about her voluntary work at a Red Cross canteen.
His mother came over to the window, bringing him a glass of sherry. ‘You’ll take Philippa in to dinner, of course,’ she instructed him in an undertone.
All this ridiculous formality! Each woman had to be escorted the few yards to the dinner table by a previously allocated male, as if she might lose her way unaided. He drank his sherry in one gulp and thumped down his glass. Whisky was what he needed, a good double tot of it, not this sweet stuff. His mother fixed him with a warning look.
He performed his duty of settling Philippa in her chair and sat gloomily in his adjacent place. Food appeared in front of him, and wine in a cut crystal glass. God, how tedious! He toyed with his dinner, barely speaking. He was aware of Philippa to his right, pale-faced, clearly upset but doing her best not to show it, and of his mother’s frequent glances from the end of the table. On Edmund’s left sat Mrs Winthrop, who was twittering on about some nephew of her sister-in-law’s who was an officer in the Epping Foresters and just might have come across Edmund at the training camp in Étaples. As she was one of those speakers who rarely gave pause for an answer, Edmund let her ramble without paying much attention. Finding his wine glass empty, he nodded to the manservant, who came over and refilled it. A snatch of Mr Fitch’s conversation with his father at the head of the table reached his ears: ‘. . . might be over by
this
Christmas, God willing, now the Americans are joining us.’
Edmund leaned across Mrs Winthrop. ‘
So fair a
fancy few would weave in these years . . .
’
‘What was that, my boy?’
‘I said,
So fair a fancy few would weave in these years.
’ It was a tongue-twister.
‘I’m afraid I don’t catch your meaning.’ Mr Fitch’s big, good-natured face was creased up in puzzlement. How red his nose was, Edmund noticed; studded with large pores like a strawberry with its pips.
‘I mean that God is not willing. God takes no interest. I think you must believe in fairy-tales, sir—the American army swooping to our rescue like the genie of Aladdin’s lamp. Has it not occurred to you that the Americans will take many months to train, let alone to arrive in France, by which time hundreds of thousands more will have been thrown into the slaughter?’ Edmund paused, aware of the startled silence that hung over the table; everyone was looking at him. He swallowed. ‘God has nothing to do with it, since there isn’t a God. We’ll just fight it out till there’s no-one left alive to fight, and then the politicians can pick over the remains.’
‘Isn’t that rather defeatist?’ Mr Fitch said.
Oh,
observant
! Edmund broke a few grapes from the bunch on a silver platter. He saw his father’s outraged expression, but his mother was first to speak.
‘I’m afraid Edmund’s been under a lot of strain,’ she announced, with a brittle smile. ‘I do wish we could keep him here at home for another week. It’s such a short leave.’ She turned brightly to Mrs Winthrop. ‘Have you heard from Lady Cumnor at all?’
Philippa plucked at Edmund’s sleeve. He turned, saw her pale anxious face, her eyes shining. ‘I’m so sorry, Edmund,’ she whispered.
He swallowed. ‘For what?’
‘That you’re so . . . upset. Bitter. I wish I could help.’
‘You can’t.’
‘My letters.’ She spoke so quietly that he almost had to lip-read. He saw Mrs Fitch looking at them, her flabby, double-chinned face softening into an indulgent smile.
That’s better
, she was clearly thinking. God! All these useless, ugly, over-fed people—what gave them a right to live when Alex had died? Why did he have to exhaust himself being polite to them?
‘My letters,’ Philippa repeated in a whisper. ‘I wondered if you’d received them.’
‘Oh, I received them.’ Her tedious letters, week after week. Elegantly written on high-quality paper, discreetly perfumed. Solicitous, understated, clearly waiting for the merest hint of encouragement from him to become more intimate.
‘You never answered.’ She had a way of looking at him from under her eyelashes, doe-eyed. Presumably she thought it was appealing.
Edmund fiddled with a grape-stalk. ‘No. I never answered for the very good reason that I’ve nothing whatever to say to you.’
Philippa’s hand flew to her lips; she gazed at him, stricken. Edmund’s words had unfortunately dropped into a pause in several conversations; he had spoken more loudly and certainly more harshly than he had intended. Everyone was looking at him. He saw his mother’s mouth open slightly; for once, the smoothing-over, perfect-hostess remark eluded her.
His father spoke first. ‘Edmund! Have you taken leave of your senses? I insist you apologize.’
‘Apologize for what? For speaking the truth?’ The pressure in his head was unbearable. ‘Can’t any of you tell the truth? Why don’t you come out with it, instead of manipulating me? Why must you keep pushing, nudging, insinuating? Can’t you leave me to myself?’
Abruptly he stood up, knocking his plate and fruit-knife to the floor and his chair tipping; Philippa’s glass of dessert wine poured its contents into her lap. She moved her chair back from the table with a cry of alarm, colliding with Edmund, who pushed her roughly back into her place. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, recollecting himself, giving a mocking little bow to the table at large, ‘but I must go outside and get some air. Please excuse me.’
He blundered out, seeing his mother rise to follow him, and his father restraining her. He heard her start to speak, her voice unsteady: ‘I’m so very sorry. Edmund’s really not quite himself . . .’
Not quite himself!
For once she had got it precisely right. Indeed he was not quite himself, the self she thought she knew. But perhaps he was only beginning to become himself, his true self.
Outside, at the top of the steps to the garden, he filled his lungs with cool air. It was dusk. Lights from the windows fell on the stone terrace, and a fountain played. Its soft, regular trickle ought to have been soothing, but nothing could soothe him; he had to get away, down the steps, out of sight of the house. Trimmed lawn welcomed his feet, yielding silently to his tread. The cool roughness of cypress leaves brushed his face as he pushed through a row of conifers; the air smelled of grass and damp earth. He closed his eyes as memory surged through him like the delayed after-shock of pain. He felt detached from his body: from his walking feet, his breathing lungs, his mind registering smells and sounds.
In the lower garden he paused for a moment to listen, facing in the direction of London, thinking of Kent beyond, and the coast, and Alex in his grave (
his
cold body laid in the ground, his eyes closed for ever, a spade
shovelling earth and stones, covering him, burying him,
smothering him—unbearable, unbearable
) at the edge of the hopfields. People said that you could sometimes hear the guns, even at this distance. Nothing. He was disappointed; listening for Alex in the muted voice of the heavy artillery, he heard only the whirr of moth wings, saw the quick flickering shape of a bat; an owl hooted down in the woods. Nothing else disturbed the silence.
Silence and nothing. Nothing. It threatened to swallow him, smother him, swirl him away into black depths.
He lowered his head and walked on across the orchard, down a flight of steps towards the glimmer of water, along the path to the grotto by the silent lake. No-one would follow him down here.
A sound—the soft plop of a stone into water—alerted him. Another, spinning out of the grotto, dropped in, sending ripples. Edmund dragged himself out of his lethargy to wonder who was in there. A trespasser? A poacher? With a gun or a knife? The hairs on the back of his neck tingled, the instinct for self-preservation stirred from dormancy. But why should he care? He walked closer, keeping his footfalls silent; then, intending to startle, he strode to the front of the building, peering in, expecting a tramp or a local farm-worker after an illicit duck or trout. Funny way to go about it, though, flicking stones . . .
The person sitting inside made an incoherent sound, a clumsy scrambling movement. In the gloomy light, Edmund made out the broad face and squint eyes of the gardener’s son, the idiot boy.
‘It’s all right. You needn’t be afraid,’ Edmund said, relieved.
The boy made a gargling sound that might have been an attempt at speech. He was large for his age, fourteen or fifteen. Edmund had seen him engaged in simple tasks around the grounds, under the supervision of Baillie senior, moving with slow, ponderous concentration. He was too stupid to attend school, presumably. But should the boy be sitting here in semi-darkness? Was he capable of looking after himself?
‘Come on,’ Edmund said, deciding. ‘I’m taking you back up to the cottage.’
He stepped closer and took the boy’s arm, urging him to his feet. The boy shrank back; Edmund saw the gleam of fear in his eyes. Then he submitted, lurching heavily to his feet. Edmund had no idea whether or not the boy recognized him, or whether he was capable of recognition.
It was a struggle. The boy was poorly co-ordinated by day, even more so in this half-light. Edmund managed to coax him up the steps, talking to him, encouraging him as he might an elderly or slow-witted dog. When the boy reached the top of the steps, he gave a little chuckle of triumph and leaned for a moment against Edmund. Both touched and repelled by the human warmth, Edmund said briskly, ‘Come on. Let’s get you indoors before it’s dark.’