‘I want to ask you one thing,’ said Rozanov. ‘I will make it a condition of our having any further conversations that you do not mention the name of that young man.’
‘Oh, as you will.’
As they walked on into the town Father Bernard wondered to himself, do I like him, do I love him, do I hate him, is he mad?
It was Sunday morning again. In St Paul’s Church Father Bernard was leading the faithful in telling God that they had erred and strayed from His ways like lost sheep, had followed too much the devices and desires of their own hearts, had offended against His holy laws, had left undone those things which they ought to have done, and done those things which they ought not to have done, and generally had no health in them.
In the Quaker Meeting House a profound silence reigned. Gabriel McCaffrey loved that silence, whose healing waves lapped in a slow solemn rhythm against her scratched and smarting soul. The sun was shining through wind-handled trees outside, making a shifting decoration of yellow spear-heads upon the white wall. The room was otherwise bare of adornment, a big handsome highceilinged eighteenth-century room, with tall round-headed windows. The benches were arranged in three tiers, forming three sides of a square, of which a plain oak table occupied the fourth side. The party who wanted flowers on the table were regularly defeated by those who felt that God’s spirit was embarrassed by corporeal charms.
Present were Brian, Gabriel and Adam, William Eastcote and Anthea, Mr and Mrs Robin Osmore, Mrs Percy Bowcock, Nesta Wiggins, Peter Blackett, Mrs Roach the doctor’s wife, Nicky Roach the doctor’s son, now studying at Guy’s Hospital, Rita Chalmers, wife of the Institute Director, Miss Landon who was a teacher at Adam’s school, Mr and Mrs Romage who kept a grocer’s shop in Burkestown, and a Mrs Bradstreet, a visiting friend who was staying at the Ennistone Royal Hotel and taking the cure for a condition in her back. The attendance varied, being today rather sparse. A week ago Milton Eastcote the philanthropist, William’s cousin, had been present and had given an address about his work in London. Dr Roach was often kept away by professional duties, too often said those who thought that the doctor was more attached to the natural light of science than to the illumination from above. Nesta Wiggins was a recruit of several years standing, having abandoned the paternal Catholic fold for the douce blank Quaker rites. She esteemed the Friends, who were active in good works in Ennistone, and was particularly attached to William Eastcote. Peter Blackett, whose parents were ‘humanists’, came out of curiosity and admiration for Nesta. Nesta was sorry she could never persuade her friend Valerie Cossom to come along, but Valerie regarded all religious observances as superstitious opiates. Percy Bowcock, who had used often to accompany his wife, now came no more, and Gabriel had heard someone say that he had become a Freemason. Gabriel knew little of Freemasonry, and whether it was compatible with the ideals of the Society of Friends, but she was sorry not to see her cousin (to whose house she was rarely invited). She was fond of him and admired him very much and only coveted his wealth a little, and could not help feeling a bit censorious about the Freemasons, since they were secretive, and Friends did not approve of secrets.
But what about her own secrets? She stole a glance at Brian (she was sitting as always between her husband and her son) and saw the usual look of strained brooding anxiety. She looked across at the calm pale face of William Eastcote who was sitting opposite to her. Eastcote smiled. The silence breathed with long slow soundless exhalations, with slower deeper rhythms, seeming ever more unbreakable and profound, as if everyone in the room would soon come to some absolute stop, perhaps quickly peacefully serenely die. Sometimes during the whole meeting no one spoke. Gabriel liked that best. Human speech sounded so petty, so unforgivably stupid, after that great void. Some people spoke with piercing exalted voices. Today, however, her own trivial thoughts were bubbling in her ear. She was thinking about a cracked jug which she had seen in a junk shop in Biggins. She had said to Adam, who was with her, ‘What a pretty jug, but it’s cracked.’ Adam had immediately taken the side of the jug. ‘He wants someone to love him and look after him, we’ll love him and look after him, we’ll take him home and wash him and dry him and find him a place to sit.’ Sometimes Adam’s determination to personify his surroundings upset Gabriel to the point of wild annoyance. Adam seemed to be deliberately playing upon her tortured sensibilities. ‘That jug, he’s saying to himself, will that nice lady buy me.’ Gabriel said, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s all cracked, it’s no use,’ and hustled him on. Now it had become clear to her that nothing in the world was more important than going back to that shop and buying that jug. She would go early tomorrow morning. But, oh, suppose it had gone! Tears rose up behind Gabriel’s eyes. All these things were somehow images of death. Adam had such awful dreams sometimes. She encouraged him to tell his dreams. Gabriel had once heard Ivor Sefton lecture at the Ennistone Hall. He said that children should tell their dreams and join the symbolic dream material to their waking life. But Adam’s dreams frightened Adam and Gabriel, and surely telling them would make him remember them. Adam dreamed so much about drowning. I am a silly woman, thought Gabriel, and Brian blames me for losing Stella, as if I had made a mistake, as if I had opened the door and let her run out! I couldn’t comfort Stella, she is so hard and silent and superior. She is an opposite woman to me. But I should have done better, I didn’t look after her properly; and where is she now, has she killed herself? Is she with George? Brian had telephoned and called round but got no answer. At the thought of Stella comforting George, forgiving him, holding him in her saving arms, Gabriel felt nothing but pain, and she knew that it was a wicked pain. Her feelings about George were part of her silliness, part of the stupid feeble sensibility which made her encourage Adam’s funny soft porous attitude to the world, and be hurt by it at the same time. Brian thought she was making Adam weak and dreamy. But it was all to do with feeling so sorry for everything. Her feeling for George was like that, feeling very very sorry for him, feeling oh so much protective possessive pity-love, a sort of desperate sorry-for affection. It’s so private, she thought. But then all my love is private, as if it were a secret.
Adam was conscious of a ball of slightly mobile blazing warmth up against his side which was Zed curled up in the pocket of his duffle coat. Zed was not allowed in the Institute but he was allowed to come to Meeting. Why should not dogs be present, since the waves and particles of the Inner Light flowed through them too? Besides, there were precedents. Mrs Bowcock’s mother’s corgi had attended for years. Zed’s little delicate head with its black-and-white domed brow peered from the top of the pocket. After looking about for some time with an alert critical air, he had fixed upon Robin Osmore, staring intently at the legal man with an expression of amazed quizzical curiosity. Osmore, aware of the scrutiny, became uneasy, disconcerted, fidgeted, looked elsewhere, then looked back to find the little beast still staring, its clever humorous gaze giving an extraordinary impression of a judging intelligence, a strange little spirit, not really a dog at all. Adam touched the silky fringy end of Zed’s long ear with his finger tips. He was thinking about Rufus. When he thought about Rufus it was as if a kind of lurid gap appeared in the world through which something red and black kept flashing out at him. He knew instinctively that these thoughts were dangerous, perhaps bad. He never told his mother the very strange weird things he dreamed about Rufus, and about Zed. Sometimes in dreams he was Rufus. Adam never mentioned Rufus, and his parents imagined that Adam had forgotten that Rufus ever existed. Sometimes Adam wondered whether he himself were not really George’s son, and had been exchanged for Rufus when he was in the cradle. They were almost exactly the same age. It was as if Rufus by dying had laid a kind of debt upon him. He had to grow up for Rufus, to carry him along like an invisible twin. Yes, he thought, I’m growing up for Rufus, in a way I am Rufus. And this thought led him back to George and to the way George had winked, and the way George had stared at him when they saw each other that day at the Institute, when Adam had sat down among the potted plants.