“A reaction, probably. Reactions are necessary. I think it is the way to live.”
“In order to be free?”
“Free from the opposite.”
“It is this freedom that is crazy,” Peter said.
We drank our beer. The gas fire popped, gave out, was revived by a shilling. “What is it that is crazy?” I said.
“That we are no better off. When Marius’s wife was alive, do you remember, we were all right, we were fond of each other, Marius and Annabelle were in love. Now she is dead and they are not. We none of us are. The world has become a place in which there is no love. Why did you laugh with my father at tea?”
“Because I don’t think that’s true.”
“When Marius’s wife died she gave Annabelle and Marius freedom. Look what they have done with it.”
“I don’t know what they have done with it. You said that they were happy abroad.”
“I said that they were all right because I thought that they should marry. That was what I meant. But I do not think that they were happy. I do not think that any of us have been happy together since we last saw you. Does that make you glad?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why did you walk out that night?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was the thing to do.”
“It doesn’t seem that it was.”
“Perhaps Marius’s wife was the cause of it. Perhaps she was more important than all of us so that while she was alive we were all right. Then she died and we were free from importance and it was not all right. Even when we did not know her we felt that there was something beyond us that made the rest possible. Now there is nothing of importance and that is the despair.”
“So you walked out?”
“I walked out because I thought there were other things of importance. There were to me.”
“And are there still?”
“Yes, that is why I laughed at tea. I did not know that there would not be anything of importance to you.”
“There should have been,” he said. “Why don’t you marry Annabelle?”
“Annabelle is happy,” I said. “Do you know why?”
“It is those priests,” he said. “Those bloody damn priests. It is they who have ruined us.” This was the saddest answer I have ever had, and at the time I had to take it as true.
I turned away from him. I lit the gas ring and put fat in the frying pan and watched the liquid spread. I thought of Annabelle cooking and knitting and having children and Peter’s priests like great black spiders to entwine her. “Who is this priest?” I said.
“You will see him. He is what is important now. He is called Father Jack Manners. Isn’t that a silly name for a priest?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They all have names like that. It is like the girls who are called William. They have to present themselves as the opposite of what they are supposed to be. Why do they do it? I don’t understand. I should have thought that a priest was the one person who shouldn’t.”
“Perhaps they have to present themselves strangely in order to get what they want. . ”
“But do they get it? Surely, that is the greatest fallacy in the world, that you can hope to get what you want by pretending something different. You can see the results of it all around you. I like people to say what they are thinking, I believe it is necessary to say what you think in order to get what you want, and surely it is the business of a priest to think of something other than Wisdens or the Tatler.”
“But it is what he does, the effect he has, rather than what he says. . ” I was trying to remember all that Peter’s father had told me and was failing.
“Admittedly he is not like one of those monks of the middle ages. Have you read Boccaccio? It is interesting, that. I don’t know how true it all was, that world of lecherous monks, but at least it was the fashion to make up stories about them. And stories, if they are good ones, have at the worst a superficial resemblance to facts. It was the fashion then to be lecherous, and the priest was taken as the fashionable man par excellence. Now it is the fashion to be in with the latest gossip, and priests are there at the head of the field again. Talk is the big thing now, and by talk you can judge people. I tell you, this man knows what’s going to win the National and what names will appear in the engagement column of the Times. That’s what he talks about. The one thing he doesn’t talk about is the difference between right and wrong.”
“Have you asked him why he doesn’t?”
“No, I don’t think I could bear to.”
“I shall ask him,” I said.
Peter smiled. I was no good as a detective. I should always, I thought, sympathize with the suspect. A person’s reasons for choosing to be what he was were more convincing than the judgments of others upon what he had chosen. The motives I should like to question were those of the police.
“Do you know this religious racket?” Peter said.
“No,” I said.
“I tell you, there is in it no question of right and wrong. It is a matter of good form and bad form, and whether you can keep a smile on your face like a bloody Aunt Sally.”
“How did you get into it?” I said.
“It’s my mother’s racket. Mothers always have a racket, and the Church is hers. So I’m an Aunt Sally whether I like it or not.”
“She’s not a Catholic, is she?”
“Yes, she is. That’s one of their tricks. She’s a Catholic but she isn’t a Roman Catholic. It’s a very clever trick. They get you feeling a fool before you’ve begun.”
“Yes,” I said.
“All part of the racket. No one knows anything about it, you see. And they never tell anyone so you go on not knowing. They talk and talk and make you feel a fool and you don’t know what the devil they’re up to. I doubt if they know what they’re up to themselves. I’m sure my mother doesn’t. She doesn’t know the difference between a Baptist and a bishop. But she’s put her money on God because she thinks his shares are rising. He pays out the interest of making her feel on top of everyone else. She’s in the know, she’s on to a good thing, she’s got that damned satisfaction of having jumped the market. And she never explains it. Why doesn’t she explain it? Why else except that to make a bit for herself she has to keep others in the dark?”
“She doesn’t try to convert you?”
“They never try to convert you. It’s like some club, some damned secret society, you have to come begging and knocking before they let you in. And yet they say it is a matter of life and death to you, a matter of eternal heaven or eternal hell. Why don’t they try to convert you? They are supposed to be charitable. You have to get the right knock or the door won’t open, you have to pull the right strings or your name will not be proposed. The knock and strings are there, I admit. But they have bloody funny ideas in the way of advertisement.”
“But you said you were an Aunt Sally. . ”
“I am an Aunt Sally because although they don’t try to convert you by stating their case, they do everything to demoralize you from having a case of your own. It’s like having a disease in the family, or drunkenness — their eye is on the bottle and the bottle fills the room. You can’t escape from it. There is a smell of it in the corridors, if you went into the jungle you would hear it on our trail. And now everyone is talking it up, everyone muscling in on the racket. I tell you my family is a nightmare. I believe if I went to the North Pole I should find a bloody monk on top of it like Simon Stylites.”
“How did it begin?”
“I tell you how my mother began it. I don’t believe my father cares a damn, but he says he does. She got the priests hopping around — they are the most frightful snobs, you know — and then Marius got wind of it. . ”
“Marius?”
“Yes, didn’t you know? Marius got wind and made a nice little investment and had a nice little sinful affair with Annabelle all at the same time — that’s funny, isn’t it, that’s really bloody funny — and then Annabelle. . ”