When I got back to the rectory I found two letters which had come by the same post. One was from Melvyn. It said -
Please find out about the activities of a company called National Shipbuilders Security which is operating in your part of the
world. It is run by a gang of international financiers and crypto-Fascists who are buying and dismantling temporarily out-of-work shipyards so that the effective power of the shipbuilding industry will pass to their masters, the gangsters of the United States and Japan. The active arm of the conglomerate is said to be this new so-called Radical Party. Be careful how you go! Such people would not be averse to using gangster methods to further their design.
The Prime Minister is almost certainly in their pay. His current mistress is an Austrian whose former husband was the chairman of the bank the failure of which was the direct cause of the formation of the National Government. Need I say more — as Henry VIII said when asked who was next to be beheaded.
Mullen seems temporarily to have taken leave of his senses and is interesting himself in that little girl you introduced us to at that party. I think he imagines that through her he might get some entree to you. I suppose in the chariot position she might just be taken to be a boy.
Keep your pecker up, as the hangman said to the man he had just dropped.
The second letter was from the girl called Suzy. She said -
I have to thank you for what you have done for me as a result of our odd meeting at that party. My father has suddenly relented and says I can go to Paris. I think he is letting me do this in order to get me away from you. Someone seems to have been telling him terrible stories about you, and about those terrible people who he thinks are your friends. So I have been telling him I am madly in love with you, and so he is packing me off to Paris.
Of course, all this does make you madly interesting and I am a bit in love with you, so please get in touch with me when we both return to Cambridge.
I thought — Oh well, this is how things work, is it? Then — But there is no letter from my beautiful German girl.
Sometimes I walked with Peter Reece as he went about his business in the parish. He would go about on foot: he had a theory that people should normally go about on foot; then there might be time for things to sort themselves out.
I said 'You believe things do sort themselves out? I mean you do
what you have to do, and other people do what they do; and what happens is likely to be all right?'
Peter Reece said 'What else is God?'
I said 'You mean "God" is a word for the fact that things sort themselves out, and not for the fact that there is a God.'
Peter Reece said 'What is the difference?'
We walked between rows of houses that were like stitching. The entrance to each house was through a yard at the back; at the front there were small gardens and just a footpath between them and those of the houses in the next row. Each backyard served two houses and in it there was a latrine on one side and a hut for coal on the other. I thought — It is more comfortable for people to live facing back? When Peter Reece went into the houses I usually stayed outside. I thought — As an anthropologist, I do not want to disturb these strange people.
I said to Peter Reece 'But whatever it is that happens, you could say that it was this that was being sorted out — '
Peter Reece said 'But there are some things that do not seem to be being sorted out.'
I said 'Such as — '
He said 'Love, for instance.'
I thought — He is thinking of the Good Samaritan? Of me?
— He is a bit in love with me? Then — I am mad to be so often thinking this!
Then — But perhaps love is that which gets the other stuff sorted out.
On the few occasions when I went in with Peter Reece to talk to families in their homes it seemed in fact evident that we were learning little about the families themselves; only about what they wanted to show to us. When they spoke among themselves I found it difficult to understand their dialect. I thought — But what is it that they do not show to us; what is it that goes on, as it were, behind their backyards?
I would say to them 'But what can anyone do about unemployment here if no one needs more ships? The only way in which people will want more ships will be if there is a war.'
'Oh we don't want another war.'
'So I mean, can't you do something different from building ships?'
'In this town we've always built ships.'
'Can't you change?'
'Change?'
4 Yes.'
I thought — Oh this is a dialect they find hard to understand!
— They have the tombs of their ancestors behind their backyards? Afterwards, walking home, Peter Reece would put his hand on
my arm and flash his eyes and say 'You were lovely!' I would think — Well dear God, if he is a bit in love with me -
— What on earth is being sorted out?
I was waiting to hear from you, my beautiful German girl.
I had given you my address in the north of England. I had told you that it would surely not be difficult for you, with your Marxist group, to come to visit me in the place where there was the highest unemployment in England.
I tried to work out what it was that I felt about you at this time. Were you perhaps to me one of those ladies in the Middle Ages for whom knights went out to do heroic deeds: the knights could not stay except for moments with their beloved ladies, or where would be the heroic deeds?
I thought — But where are they anyway? And so, yes, I was waiting for you to visit me.
Peter Reece once said 'Have you ever been in love?'
I said 'I think so.'
He said 'I cannot imagine being loved by any human with whom one is in love.'
I thought — You mean, that is another reason for the use of the word 'God'?
Then one day there was a letter, yes, from you, my beautiful German girl. You said that you would certainly try to visit me when you came with your Marxist group to England. You added -