“Not a bit of it. I am very sorry, both for you and Maria, but what good will it do if I join you in siren tears? My job is to keep a cool head and look at the thing from the outside. What about Powell?”
“I haven’t seen him. What do I do? Beat him up?”
“And signal to the whole world what’s wrong? No, you certainly do not beat him up. Anyhow, you’re in this opera thing up to your neck, and Powell is indispensable.”
“Damn it, he’s my best friend.”
“The cuckoo in the nest is often the best friend. Powell loves you, as a friend may very well love you. I love you, Arthur, though I don’t make a song and dance about it.”
“That kind of love. You have to because you’re a priest. Like God, it’s your metier.”
“You don’t know anything about priests. I know we are supposed to love mankind indiscriminately, but I don’t. That’s why I gave up practical priesthood and became a professor. My faith charges me to love my neighbour but I can’t and I won’t fake it, in the greasy way professional lovers-of-man-kind do—the professionally charitable, the newspaper sob-sisters, the politicians. I’m not Christ, Arthur, and I can’t love like Him, so I settle for courtesy, consideration, decent manners, and whatever I can do for the people I really do love. And you are one of those. I can’t help you by weeping with you, though I respect your tears. The best I can do is to bring a clear head and an open eye to your trouble. I love Maria, too, you know.”
“Indeed I do know. You wanted to marry her, didn’t you?”
“I did, and in the kindest possible way she gave me the mitt. I love her even more for that, because Maria and I would have made a damned bad match.”
“Okay, old Clear Head and Open Eye. Why did you ask her, then?”
“Because I was in the grip of passion. There were a thousand reasons for loving Maria, and I now see there were a million for not marrying her. I love her still, but don’t worry that I want to play the role that Powell has played in your marriage.”
“She told me she once had le coeur tendre for Hollier, and that you had proposed to her. And looked a fine ninny as you did it, what’s more. Every woman has these boss-shots in her past. But she married me, and now she’s wrecking it.”
“Balls. You’re the one who’s wrecking it.”
“Me! She’s pregnant, damn it!”
“And you’re sure it’s not your child?”
“Yes.”
“How? You use some contraceptive, I suppose. Condoms? They’re very much in vogue at present.”
“I hate the damned things. There they are, the morning after, leering wetly at you from the bedside table or the carpet, like the Ghost of Nooky Past.”
“Maria uses something?”
“No. We wanted a child.”
“So?”
“I had mumps, you remember. Badly. The doctors told me tactfully that henceforth I would be infertile. Not impotent. Just infertile. And it’s irreversible.”
“You told Maria, of course?”
“I hadn’t got around to it.”
“So the child must have been begotten by somebody else?”
“Yes, Sherlock Holmes.”
“Must it have been Powell?”
“Who else is a possibility? You see—I hate telling you this—somebody came to me.”
“To tip you off?”
“Yes. A security man who works at night in our apartment building.”
“One Wally Crottel?”
“Yes. And he said that Mr. Powell sometimes stayed late, and occasionally overnight when I was out of town, and as a convenience would it be a good idea if he gave Mr. Powell a key to the parking area?”
“And you said no.”
“I said no. It was just a hint, you know. But it was enough.”
“It was a mistake to underestimate Wally. So then—”
“Because of this opera business Powell comes and goes quite a lot, and if he stays late he uses our guest room. I didn’t know he used it when I was away.”
“Powell is a very using kind of man.”
“So it seems.”
“Have you told Maria now? About being infertile, I mean?”
“I told her after she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t think she was as happy about a child as I would have expected, but I put it down to shyness. And I suppose I looked astonished—that’s a poor word for it—and I couldn’t say a word. She asked me what was wrong. I told her.”
“Yes?”
“It took a few minutes, and all the time I was talking that hint from Crottel kept swelling in my mind, and at last I came out with it. Was it Powell? I said. She wouldn’t say a word.”
“Very unlike Maria to have nothing to say.”
“She simply closed her mouth and looked as I’ve never seen her look before. Very big-eyed and tight-lipped. But smiling. It was enough to drive me mad.”
“What did you expect? That she should fall at your feet and bathe them in her tears, and then wipe away the tears from your custom-made brogues with her hair? You don’t know your own wife, my boy.”
“You’re damned right I don’t. But it drove me crazy, and as I got hotter and hotter she just smiled that bloody smile and refused to say anything. So at last I said that her silence was answer enough. And she said, ‘If that’s what you think.’ And that was all.”
“And you haven’t spoken a word to each other since?”
“We’re not savages, Simon. Of course we speak. Very politely about commonplaces. But it’s hell, and I don’t know what to do.”
“So you have come to me for advice. Sensibly, I may say.”
“Oh don’t be so bloody smug.”
“Not smug. Don’t forget I’m an old hand at this sort of thing. So shall we get down to it?”
“If you like.”
“No, no; it’s got to be if you like.”
“All right.”
“Well, for a starter, don’t imagine I underestimate your hurt. It can’t be any fun being told that you’re not fully a man. But it’s happened before. George Washington, for instance. Another mumps casualty, it seems. No children, though he was quite a man for the ladies. But he didn’t do too badly. The Father of His Country, we are told.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. But I refuse to take the great tragic line, either. This business of begetting children is important as one of the biological qualities of a man, but as civilization moves on, other qualities look at least equally important. You’re not some wandering nomad or medieval peasant who has to have children because they are a primitive kind of insurance. This begetting business is terribly overrated. All nature does it and Man is far from the champion. If you hadn’t had mumps you would probably be able to squirt out a few million live sperm at a go, and one of them might make a lucky hit. Your cousin Little Charlie’s favourite stallion has you backed right off the map; he probably averages ten billion possible little stallions every time Little Charlie collects her stud fee; that’s what he’s for. The boar is the real champ: eighty-five billions—and then he trots away looking for acorns, and never gives a thought to his sow, who turns again to her wallowing in the mire. But Man—proud Man—is something very different. Even the least of his kind has a soul—that’s to say a lively consciousness of individuality and Self—and you are rather a superior man, Arthur. Unfortunately Man is the only creature to have made a hobby and a fetish of Sex, and the bed is the great play-pen of the world. Now you listen to me—”
“I’m listening.”
“You come to me as a priest, don’t you? You’ve made rather a joke of that, and call me the Abbé Darcourt—the tame cleric. The learned man on your staff. I’m an Anglican priest, and even the Church of Rome has at last had to admit that my priesthood is as valid as any. When I married you and Maria you had quite a strong fit of orthodoxy, and wanted the whole thing to be on the most orthodox lines. Well—be orthodox now. God may want you for something more important than begetting children. God has lots of sexual journeymen who can attend to that. So you’d better ask God what He wants of you.”