Before Hemmeridge could reply, Mothmar Acord said: ‘I don’t really see what all the kafuffie is about. What is there so extraordinary in a kid being killed? One of these days I dare say there will be a war, and then we’ll knock over millions of ‘em, and congratulate ourselves.’
Thea Olivia, with a little cry of horror, said: ‘You mustn’t say such things!’
Looking down at his freckled hands Mothmar Acord lifted a shoulder and a corner of his mouth and sauntered away to talk to Avril Wensday.
Tobit Osbert said: ‘It seems to me that Mr Acord isn’t quite right in what he said. Dropping a bomb is one thing. Getting hold of someone by the throat and choking them and — excuse me, madam — raping them, is another thing. Look down from a very high building. Look down from the Monument in the City, and even from that little height people don’t look like people any more. You know how it is when you live in a high building. The higher you live, the more you get into the habit of throwing things out of the window. It seems to me that a man in an aeroplane thousands of feet above the ground can throw down bombs, or germs, or anything horrible that you can think of, and still be quite a nice young man.’
‘Until he comes to think of it,’ said Hemmeridge.
‘He knows not what he does,’ said Mr Pink, laying one of his nervous hands upon Osbert’s left shoulder.
‘Yes, Mr Pink, that is more or less what I mean to say. He should be, as it were, forgiven because he sort of does not know what he does. He presses a button or pulls a lever and he’s a mile away from the scene of the crime even before the crime is committed — I mean, before the bomb goes off and kills men, women, and children. But a man who stands about on street corners in the dark and waits for a little girl to pass and takes advantage of the fact that she knows him and trusts him in order to do what that man did who killed Sonia Sabbatani — he is a murderer.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Pink, biting his nails, ‘but having learned of the effect of a bomb, is your brother …? I wonder…’
He paused and Graham Strindberg said: ‘Yet why should such things be? Why should Evil be? If Evil exists, and is powerful, is God allpowerful? Since there is evil, if God is allpowerful how can he be all-good? If God is all-good how can he be allpowerful?’
With something like irritation, Mr Pink replied:
‘I don’t know, Mr Strindberg.’ He was by this time quietly drunk and his eyes were like stars reflected in the rippling surface of a puddle. ‘I really don’t know, my dear sir! How can I know? God doesn’t tell me his business, does he? Who the deuce are you thatyou must know everything? Do your toe-nails insist on knowing what your head is doing? Does the body of the martyr understand the soul that tells it to burn at the stake? In Macaulay there is an account of an old Puritan after Sedgemoor: he had had his arm smashed and was cutting it off himself with his own knife, sternly repeating the Lord’s Prayer, with a face of iron and no expression of pain. What was that arm to question the will of that man? It was hurt? It was crushed? Its nerves cried out, yes? Yet I tell you that because of the unyielding spirit of. that old man to whom God gave that arm, the misery of his poor flesh brought forth something good and beautiful. You must do what you know is good. Ask no questions. Expect no answers. Have faith. Believe me — do please believe me — God is good. He is! He is!’
‘If He is good, is God allpowerful, then?’ asked Graham Strindberg.
‘Yes!’ shouted Mr Pink.
Tom Beano appeared from nowhere in particular and roared: Don’t make a fool of yourself, Pink! … Is Pink at his old games again?. Godding and Christing? Gooding and evilling? Everything-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlding? … Cut it out, Pink. This is a sociable party. Face facts. Who burned Giordano Bruno?’
Beano flourished a half-empty glass. He was red in the face, and his eyes were narrowed.
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Thea Olivia.
Tobit Osbert started to say: ‘We were talking about —’
‘— I know, I know, I know,’ said Beano. ‘And there you are again, Pink. Where’s the good in that business?’
‘Beano, you know as well as I do that there isn’t any good in it.,
‘Is there bad in it, Pink?’
‘I should jolly well think so!’
‘Why, then? Come on, Pink. Why? Tell us why!’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know why anything!‘ cried Mr Pink, with tears in the corners of his eyes. ‘I know what. I don’t know why. And so do you, Tom Beano, so do you!’
‘So do I what, Pink?’
‘Beano, you know right from wrong.’
‘Aha?’ said Beano, closing one eye. ‘And what if I do?’
‘Oh dear me, dear me!‘ said Mr Pink. ‘All this is vanity, Tom Beano, and you know it. How dare you talk the way you talk? How dare you do it? How dare you ask me “Where was God”? Where were you, Tom Beano? Where were you when that deed was done?’
‘All right, then, and where were you?’ asked Beano.
‘I was spoiling sheets of foolscap paper,’ said Mr Pink, slowly. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble…’ The tears in his eyes pushed themselves forward and came out.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Pink,’ said Beano.
‘You didn’t upset me, bless you, Torn.’
‘Then what the hell are you crying for?’
‘Beano! Does some crazy conceit make you believe that anything you could say might get a tear out of my eye? God forgive you!’
‘Ah! God forgive me, eh? Now listen to reason. Is God allpowerfuclass="underline" yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you ask God to forgive me. Is that so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now listen …’
‘Oh, please!’ said Tobit Osbert. ‘Do stop it!’
Sir Storrington slapped every back within reach and stammered: ‘Kiss and be friends, what?’ Thea Olivia, in her satisfied way, glanced from face to face. Hemmeridge, who was annoyed, looked away. Shocket the Bloodsucker was leering at her. The word had already got around that Thea Olivia was very wealthy and had, as people said, ‘Ideas’.
She knew that everyone believed that she wanted a husband; and smiled inside herself. She wanted someone with a bronze head and a chiselled mouth, a few inches taller than herself; diffident, with a suggestion of passion; impecunious yet proud — a terrible but sensitive man, intellectually isolated, envied by men and adored by women; a man into whose reluctant hand it would be necessary to press (with conspiracies and blandishments) the occasional five-pound note when the waiter was not looking.
He would be honourable: his sufferings would know no bounds. From time to time he would try to commit suicide but she would be there in the nick of time, to divert the pistol or catch his ankles as he dived over the edge of the sixth-storey penthouse roof. (He was not the sort of sneak that crawls into a gas oven or opens a vein in a hot bath.) He would need looking after. There would be important papers … documents … perhaps somewhere or other an importunate wife.
She would alter all that.
Gently, coolly, caressingly — cheek to bronze cheek, hand to fevered forehead — Thea Olivia would coax out folly like a blackhead and cream the pitted surface of his soul.
One day he would leave her. But she would wait. He’d come back — sheepish, stinking of Chanel Number Five, red-eyed, gulping, repentant — and she would receive him quietly, yet with something like ecstasy, everything having been forgiven. Later, looking down at his handsome, exhausted face, she would say to herself: ‘_Poor wretch. All men are alike_ …’ After all he was only a man … will-less, maculate, hungry for forgiveness.