In Hazard (12 page)

He was only too glad of any excuse to take out his bicycle, in those days: for it was his first one, and still new. Gran'dad had said from the beginning that he might not have one till his eleventh birthday, for fear of spoiling his heart; but ever since he was five years old he had wanted one, with a burning want.

But Gran'dad was unbendable. So, going to infant-school, he would trot along, knees coming up like
haute école
, arms bent at the elbows, and his hands in front holding imaginary handle-bars, thumbing an imaginary bell at the corners. Indeed this pretended bike was so real to him that anyone who could not see it must be very dense. He never got over his contempt for the old Rector of Bensham, who had met him one day like that bicycling along in front of his mother:

“I have just seen your young man,” the Rector called out genially to her as he passed, “riding by on his
horse
!”

Once he had got his real machine, Dick used to go for rides with his Gran'dad. The old man, at seventy, was still a keen biker. He used to say that he could still ride now as far as ever he could. That was probably true; for as he decayed, bikes improved. In the days of his vigorous youth he had juggled along on a Penny-farthing. Then came the “safety” bicycle: but it had a fixed wheel, going down hill you still had to take your feet off the pedals if you wanted to “coast”: and prudent people were chary of taking their feet off the pedals, seeing their pedals were what they chiefly relied on for braking.

Then came the free-wheel: then came the three-speed gear, in time for Gran'dad's last machine: and Dick's first bicycle, or course, had all these things.

One day, years after Gran'dad's death, Dick had found the old Penny-farthing at the back of a shed. The green paint on it was still first-class. But the bolt which held the saddle to the primitive spring was rusted, and he had a job to fix the saddle in place. And the tyres were quite perished. They were just long narrow rubber strips, like pram-tyres: they had grown too long for the wheels and fell off as soon as he moved the machine: so he bound them over and over with wire to hold them on.

When he tried to ride the thing, however, he found it almost impossibly difficult: he came hurtling off in the second yard. Good lord! Was this the thing Gran'dad used to ride all over the country as a matter of course? As he rubbed his shins he reflected, for the first time, that after all Gran'dad was not born old: must once have been even nimble, like himself.

He had seen photos of him, in black whiskers and tight knickerbockers, perched easily on this very machine. But he had always taken for granted that the machine must be easy to ride, if Gran'dad could do it (like the tricycle which old Archdeacon Bubble used to trundle to Church every Sunday, at a walking pace). So it was very upsetting to find this machine, which Grandfather had once ridden with such sangfroid, pitching him head over heels again and again: and he determined to master it.

That meant long, secret practice: and in the end of course he succeeded.

There came the day of a cricket-match, when everyone was very excited, and inclined to think up impromptu Comic Acts. So Dick slipped home, and dressed in some very old-fashioned clothes of his dead grandfather's. Then he got out the Penny-farthing, and presently did a very comic Act indeed on it, riding round the Marketplace in an exaggerated manner while both teams cheered and jeered. He felt a pretty bright chap to be able to make them laugh like that: but he felt a bit less bright when presently he saw his Mother standing there; watching him make a fool of her old dead father, who had always been very fond of him. It was not a comfortable moment.

It was almost as bad as that other time, when he thought she had heard him boasting about what he did at Holy Communion. He was telling some other boys he had drunk up all the wine that Sunday, with the Rector pulling at the Cup but him hanging on. It was untrue: in point of fact, he always behaved in Church with strict decency, and indeed was very devout and believing —especially about the Holy Spirit being present at Communion. Yet he had boasted it, in a wild fit, to outshine the bad boys who were listening —and then, turning, saw his Mother standing just behind him. What was he to do? She might never have heard at all; so he could not just take her aside and assure her it was not true. He had to wait for her to make the first move. But she made no move, she never mentioned it. Did that mean she had not heard? Or was she too deeply shocked to be able to speak of it? The uncertainty made him avoid her; and for the first time he took to locking the bathroom door against her while he had a bath.

Most boys are inclined to be decently devout the year of their Confirmation: Dick was perhaps actually more devout than the average. It sprang from the experiences of his childhood. For he had found, when very young, that if he prayed for something he wanted badly, he nearly always got it. Or, if he was not to have it, he was never left in doubt: God let him know at once, even while he was praying—but as a rule God gave him whatever he asked. And he, for his part, moved by a decent compunction, never made too unreasonable requests (he never asked for a premature bicycle, for instance, for God and Gran'dad had too much in common). Again, he found God a most ready companion, always at hand when called on in dark passages and up dark stairs.

I do not mean that this child lived always in close communion with his God; never felt doubts, times when God was faint to him. Children only feel
implicit
belief in something they have called out of their own imaginations, such as an imaginary playfellow, or a lion in the shrubbery. Any existence, such as God's, which comes to their experience from outside, is bound to be more shadowy than that. He had his Mother's word for it, that there is a God: and her word was backed by the evidence of all his answered prayers, of that felt company in the dark. But evidence is not the same as direct experience: God could never be so certain a fact as his imagined bike. He could never visualise God; beyond a fleeting vision of black whiskers and tight knickerbockers.

But in time these beliefs, these doubts, came to a climax. It was over the business of his watch.

He was ten years old then, and going to a boys' day-school. He walked there alone. Part of his way lay down a private road; the end of which, to prevent through-traffic, was barred by a scaffold-pole lashed to trestles. He was in the habit of doing gymnastics on this bar for a few minutes, as he passed, going and coming. While he turned his somersaults, he used to lay his watch carefully on the ground.

One night, when he went to bed, he found his watch was not in his pocket. In a flash he remembered that he had never picked it up again after his spell of gymnastics on the way home that day. That was hours ago. Any number of people passed down that road: it was inconceivable that the watch had not already been found and pinched. And yet ... might it be worth trying? He got out of his bed, and knelt down beside it.

Before mentioning the watch, he told God frankly that there had been many times, lately, when he had doubted the whole fact of God's existence. He wanted to get the matter settled. Let this be a test case. I have told you that a compunction had always prevented him from asking anything too difficult, anything with a touch of the miraculous in it. So all those answered prayers might be only coincidence. But this prayer would be different: there was plenty of the miraculous in this one, since it would have to act backwards. He was asking God to guard his watch during all those hours which were already past! As a test case it was perfect: and he for his part was ready to make a promise. If God would, against all likelihood, guard his watch, hide it both from the eyes which had passed and the eyes which would pass, so that he found it still lying in the same place in the road on his way to school in the morning—why, he would then give an irrevocable promise never, so long as he lived, to doubt God's existence again. That is what he prayed.

In the morning he found the watch, lying just where he had put it, in the road. So thenceforth he was pledged, for the rest of his life, to believe in God.

It is curious that having done one miraculous thing by prayer, he did not go on to others. But his compunction still held him. That had been a special occasion, necessary to settle his faith. No further miracles—however convinced he was that by prayer he could do them—might be justified. I pass over such temptations as one which came to him, on a day when the whole school were cooped in by a wet afternoon, to fly slowly across the classroom. That was obviously reprehensible: and so, easily resisted. But there came another that was not so easy.

Coming out of the post-office one day ahead of his Mother, he found himself close up against a sort of flat trolley, as flat as a table, on which a little girl lay under bed-clothes as if in bed. He had seen her before, at a distance, wheeled through the streets like this: and his Mother had told him she had a disease of the spine, and would never again walk, or even sit up: but he had never before been confronted with her close. Her face was pale, and moist; and rather proud.

Suddenly his whole being was possessed by a single thought. He had only to stretch out his hand and touch her, and she would rise up whole. He lifted his hand, in act to stretch it out upon her. And then, compunction spoke. He could do it: but he had no right to do it. And something other than compunction spoke. If he did this, what would be the sequel? A little boy who has once done a miracle in a crowded street cannot turn back, and live again the life of other boys. No more sweets and chucking ink-bombs. He would be someone apart, from then on: pledged to the utmost holiness of living, given over to saving mankind from its sins. It is not only the Devil who buys souls: if God did this for him, his soul would be sold to God for that price, every instant of his future dedicated to burn in the intensity of God's service.

Could he drink of that cup?

He lowered his hand, and passed on with leaden heart; for he knew he was leaving the little girl to more years of pain, and presently to death. That he might be doing right: but that he was being a kind of murderer.

Suppose she knew that he had this power: knew that he was deliberately refusing to save her!

—But by now his Mother had joined him. Her next call was the newspaper shop, where she bought him half an ounce of that kind of liquorice all-sorts he most loved.

The promise he had given seemed simple enough to keep, to a child of ten. But the trouble was that Dick did not remain always a child of ten: he grew. It seems that as you grow, God must grow too. Of this of course he was not forewarned: that the God he had promised to believe in for ever was a child's God.

When he was fifteen, and being prepared for Confirmation, the idea of God which was presented to him for belief was very different: a sort of impersonal Omnipotence Who never interfered with Science (not that He could not, but simply because He was above that sort of thing, and meant us to learn Boyle's Law and so on): a vague, limitless Holiness, Who really preferred the Church of England to anything else but Who failing that was also the Best Elements in all religions (especially Buddhism and Islam). In short, not at all the sort of God you asked for small material benefits, like looking after your watch for you, or helping you to win a football match. In fact, surely a different sort of God altogether. And—here was the difficulty—
not
the God he was pledged to believe in, because not the God which the evidence, still vividly remembered, had once so clearly affirmed.

What was he to do? Everyone assumed that he could no longer, at his age, believe in the God of his childhood. Such faith was all very well for a child, but not for an intelligent, educated lad. In fact, if he tried to carry such a belief through life all the most religious people—beginning with the good old man whose classes he was attending— would seriously disapprove. They would call it the crudest sort of bigotry, if not downright wicked, if he continued to believe that God was on his side. God,
they
said, was on nobody's side.

Well, he supposed they knew: and he conscientiously tried to believe as they taught him, against his instinct. In this new God. It seemed, the only proper thing to pray for, to this God, was Grace: i.e. to be made gooder. So he only prayed for Grace. But he could see little result. And in this he was not greatly surprised: for the one prayer of his childhood which had never been answered was the formal prayer he prayed every night, “Make me a good boy.” He had never found that his behaviour next day was a whit the better for it.

It was dark. Dick had been pouring oil for ten hours now, and he was sick of it. He did it automatically, so it could not hold his thoughts. And his thoughts now turned to the thin steel plates which were all that lay between him and the fury of the waters. Once more, he was afraid. How crassly confident people were, to build ships and take it for granted they would float, even on top of miles and miles of water! It was all a question of weights, of course. They said the ship's weight exactly balanced the weight of water it displaced. But to his mind, now grown so giddy, mere balance suddenly ceased to seem very re-assuring. A thing which was balanced could be upset. That Penny-farthing balanced, if you knew how: yet he had upset off it often enough. Suppose now the ship's balance was upset? I mean, suppose she grew heavier, or the water grew lighter? Down she would go like a stone. What fools folk are, to go on building great ships, and sending them out onto the sea; taking for granted that they will all float because one has: taking for granted that because a ship floats one day she will float the next: never thinking how easily that balance of weights might be upset.

Indeed, there seemed to his mooning mind little reason why the “Archimedes” should not give up floating any minute of any voyage—even if there were not the storm to consider.

Storm?
His mind reeled and turned over, waking a few degrees. Of course, it was the
storm
which was the danger—that about balance was rubbish. But the storm was not rubbish. He suddenly realised that the latrine he was in was changing shape. The walls were closer in. As iron bends under the blows of the hammer, so this iron was flattening, under the blows of the sea. It was beginning to bulge inwards.