Then I got the job myself of laying bricks on the top level of the wall. I had not done such work before. I thought — Ah I will not think now that the wall should fall down!
I stood on a plank on the scaffolding and took some cement on my trowel from the bucket that had been handed up to me and I flicked the cement on to the bricks that were already there and the cement seemed to go everywhere; it was like birdshit, like pollen: I thought — I am doing something that could be called building a
wall? Bits, however, here and there seemed to stay in place; indeed like seeds, like pollen. I shaped the cement that had stayed on the wall and placed the new brick on top; I dropped a dab of cement in the crack and tapped at the new brick: I thought — Of course it is when you stop thinking, that something like building a wall just happens. Then there was the business of the plumbline: you dangled a piece of string with a lump of lead on the end; it went down into the depth to get the wall upright — so this was gravity! After a time the wall did seem to be building itself. I thought — Well most things living, growing, happen by themselves: you do not notice gravity?
— Gravity is people doing what they are supposed to do?
After a time, when the walls did not fall down, the groups of men who had been watching us drifted away.
I sometimes talked with Peter Reece in the evenings. We would sit in the church, which was the place where we were most likely to be alone. We would say together the service of Compline with its strange, beautiful words — 'Brethren be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour' — and we would talk beneath the images of dapper saints looking down.
I said 'But what is this resentment that stops people helping not just those who would help them but even themselves? It is the sort of death-wish that is talked about by Freudians such as my mother?'
Peter Reece said 'Have you thought about the parable of the Good Samaritan?'
I said'No.'
Peter Reece said 'People think that the parable of the Good Samaritan is about the obligation for us to help our neighbours who are in trouble, but it is not only that!'
I said 'What is it then?'
Peter Reece said 'Just before Christ told this parable he had been saying that people should love their neighbours and someone had asked him "Who is my neighbour?" It was in answer to this question that Christ told the parable. And at the end he asked the questioner "So who was a neighbour to him who was in trouble?" And the answer was of course "The Good Samaritan." So the point of the parable is that we should love people who help us, not that we should love people who are in trouble. People have not seen this because they have thought — Surely it is easy to love people who help us! But it is not! It is not! It is very difficult to love people who are good to us: it is easier to imagine we are loving people we can
condescend to. Perhaps it is easier still to feel at home with people who do us harm: at least they are not condescending! A burden is put on people we help: of course they feel envy and resentment! But perhaps easiest of all, yes, would be for the whole human race to be packed up.'
I said 'You mean, people choose to depend on people whose interest it is to harm them?'
Peter Reece said 'Oh I am not saying that one should not go on trying to help!'
I said 'You think that the Recreational Hall might miraculously fall down?'
Peter Reece laughed and said 'Oh I don't think they'll try to do away with us!'
There was a new radical political party that had sprung up in 1931, a local branch of which had established itself in the town. Its spokesman came to hold meetings on an open space in front of the half-built Recreational Hall. He would carry a portable platform like a prayer-desk on his back and set it up: I thought — But, of course, people pay attention to politicians because they are like clowns: they are always chucking about, and getting stuck in, buckets of cement.
This was at the time when the Labour Government of 1929-31 found itself sinking in the swamps of capitalist society: a bank in Austria had 'failed'; there was what was called a run on the pound. It was felt that the Gold Standard was something that had desperately to be clung to, like a banner floating in the waves. These events, words, were like dragons in children's fairy stories: but there, in fact, were the groups of men on street corners. I thought — We are all under the spell of dragons in the mind? The speaker from the new political party would set up his portable platform like that of a conjurer on the open space in front of the Recreational Hall.
Sometimes on a fine evening we, the people who were building the hall, would eat our supper out of doors on a trestle table; there would be food for anyone who came to ask for it — soup with meat and potatoes and bread and cheese and fruit. Children would come with cans and we would fill their cans for them to take away; not many people sat down with us to eat. I would think — But what is the terrible unattractiveness of the Good Samaritan? Is it that he is clean, he has no smelclass="underline" does not love have something to do with the prevalence of smell?
The man who was making a political speech would move his
right hand up and down as if he were working a pump: words seemed to be something sloshing around inside him; he had to get them out. I wondered — Or is he working the handle of a lavatory? People are drawn to him, perhaps, like dogs to a smell.
He was saying, how could there be a world in which everyone made a profit? In a world of limited resources, one person's profit was another's deprivation. So what was necessary was for everyone to be in some sort of army; to see that in an army everyone's interests were the same.
I would think — But the interests of everyone in an army are to maim, to kill.
The speaker told of a company called National Shipbuilders Security Limited that was buying up local shipyards and then closing them down and selling them for scrap: this was an organisation formed by local capitalists to ensure that the few shipyards left in their hands would be protected and make a profit when trade improved. It was not just that shipyards were being closed temporarily during the slump; they were being dismantled so that it would be unlikely that there would ever be shipbuilding in the area again. There were tens of thousands of workers out of work now and the capitalists were making sure that there would never be such work again: all this was in order that the capitalist system should be safeguarded. The speaker reached his peroration 'My friends, are we going to stand for the behaviour of these clowns? Are we going to let ourselves be trampled on?' His audience listened to him silently. I thought — But people like watching clowns trampling on each other.
The speaker once came to join us for supper at our outdoor table after he had spoken. He was a young man with short fair hair: there seemed to be little back to his head: the skin of his face had a consistency like that of cloth. He sat with the blood-red sky of a sunset behind him. I thought — The blood has spilled on to the sky from his face, from the back of his head.
Peter Reece said 'So you are in favour of some sort of revolution.'