The Bell (20 page)

The birds were inspected while Peter photographed the goldcrest through the netting.

‘Why ever do they go in?' Dora wondered.

‘For food,' said Peter. ‘I lay down a little bread and nuts as bait. Then they try to get out by flying what seems the easier way into the second compartment, and then its still harder for them to escape. Some birds will even enter an unbaited trap out of sheer curiosity. '

‘Again, like human beings,' said Michael.

‘I won't bother with the tits and sparrows this time,' said Peter. He lifted up one of the cages from the ground and in a quick flurry the birds rose with the wire and darted away. ‘I'll ring the nuthatch and the goldcrest. Perhaps, Michael, you wouldn't mind photographing the goldcrest while I'm holding him.'

Michael took the camera. Peter knelt down and opened the door at the end of the cage and put his hand in. The birds in the small compartment began to flutter madly. Peter's brown hand seemed very large beside them. Fingers spread wide he cornered the little bird. His hand gently closed, folding its wildly agitated wings to its body and drawing it out. The small gold striped head appeared between Peter's first and second fingers. Dora gave an exclamation of alarm, excitement, and distress. Michael knew how she felt. He got the camera ready. Peter took the light metal band from his pocket, so small that a magnifying glass would be needed to read its legend. He juggled the bird carefully in his hand until one tiny scaly leg and claw appeared between his fourth and little fingers. Then with his left hand he bent the flexible band around the bird's leg, and lifting it up to his mouth closed the band deftly with his teeth. At the sight of Peter's strong teeth closing so near to that tiny twig of a leg, Dora could bear it no longer and turned away. Michael took two photographs. Peter rapidly tossed the bird into the air and it vanished into the wood, bearing with it forever after to all whom it might concern the information that on that particular Saturday it had been at Imber. Peter then ringed the nuthatch and released the other birds. Dora was full of wonderment and distress and Paul was laughing at her. Michael looked at Toby. His eyes were wide and his lips moist and red where he had been biting them. Michael now laughed at Toby. It was extraordinary how affecting the whole business was.

While they examined the traps at closer quarters, turning them on their backs, Peter wandered away into the wood. Under the trees the light was fading faster, and great clouds of midges drifted about the clearing. Dora was waving her parasol and complaining of being bitten in spite of the citronella. Then a moment later everyone was electrified to hear clearly and unmistakably at quite close quarters the call of a cuckoo. They straightened up and looked at each other - and then burst out laughing. Peter was called back.

‘Oh dear!' cried Dora. ‘I thought it really was one. What a shame!'

‘I'm afraid the real cuckoo is in Africa by now, wise bird,' said Peter. He showed Dora the little instrument he used to make the sound. Then he took from his pocket other toys made of wood and metal, and reproduced in turn the song of the skylark, the curlew, the willow warbler, the turtle dove, and the nightingale. Dora was enchanted. She demanded to see and to try, seizing the small objects from Peter with little cries and self-conscious feminine twittering. Michael observing her thought she epitomized everything he didn't care for about women; but he thought this with detachment, liking her all the same, and feeling too good-tempered at present to feel distaste for anyone.

‘It's as good as the real thing!' cried Dora.

‘Nothing's as good as the real thing,' said Peter. ‘It's odd that even a perfect imitation, as soon as you know it's an imitation, gives much less pleasure. I remember Kant says how disappointed your guests are when they discover that the after-dinner nightingale is a small boy posted in the grove.'

‘A case of the natural attractiveness of truth,' said Michael.

‘You're full of pious remarks today, isn't he?' said Peter. ‘You must be practising for your sermon tomorrow.'

‘It's James tomorrow, thank heavens,' said Michael. ‘I'm next week.'

‘I think the moral is don't be found out. Don't you agree, Toby?' said Peter, laughing.

They began to walk back. Paul asked Peter if he would mind taking a photograph of Dora. Peter was delighted, and finding an opening in the trees began elaborately to pose her sitting on a mossy stone and fingering a flower.

‘Paul doesn't realize what he's in for!' said Michael to Toby. ‘When Peter gets hold of a human subject he's at it for hours. It's a revenge for the frustrations the birds are always making him suffer!'

Michael and Toby walked on together. From behind them they could hear the laughter of the other three and Dora's voice protesting. Paul seemed quite restored to good humour now. Michael felt suddenly very happy. He felt as if he had gathered all these people benignly about him and as if he were in some way responsible for the beautiful evening, for the gaiety and innocence of it all. He found the word ‘innocence' coming naturally to his mind, and did not pause to ponder over it. How rarely now he had this sense of being, in the company of other people, at leisure and at ease. His thoughts then turned to Nick: but the sadness that followed seemed purged and sweet even, unable to break the spell of his present mood. He was glad to be walking along with Toby, talking idly and intermittently about nothing in particular. He felt on holiday.

‘There's an avenue in these woods,' said Michael, ‘a bit farther on from where we were, where you see nightjars sometimes. Ever seen a nightjar?'

‘No, I'd love to!' said Toby. ‘Could you show me?'

‘Surely,' said Michael. ‘Some evening next week we'll go along. They're very strange birds, hardly like birds at all. They make one believe in witches.'

They came quite suddenly out of the wood onto the wide expanse of grass near the drive. The great scene, the familiar scene, was there again before them, lit by a very yellow and almost vanished sun, the sky fading to a greenish blue. From here they looked a little down upon the lake and could see, intensely tinted and very still, the reflection in it of the farther slope and the house, clear and pearly grey in the revealing light, its detail sharply defined, starting into nearness. Beyond it on the pastureland, against a pallid line at the horizon, the trees took the declining sun, and one oak tree, its leaves already turning yellow, seemed to be on fire.

They both stopped, taking a deep breath, and looked in silence, enjoying the great space and the warm expanse of air and colour. Then from across the lake came sharply and delicately the voices of the madrigal singers. The voices plied and wove, supporting and answering each other in the enchanting and slightly absurd precision of the madrigal. Most clearly heard was Catherine's thin triumphant soprano, retaining and re-asserting the melody. It was too far away to catch the words, but Michael knew them well.

The song came to an end. Toby and Michael smiled at each other and began to walk slowly toward the ferry. It was too magical a time for hurrying. Then as they neared the lake another sound was heard. Michael could not at first think what it was; then he recognized it as the rising crescendo of a jet engine. From a tiny mutter the noise rose in an instant to a great tearing roar that ripped the heavens apart. They looked up. Gleaming like angels four jet planes had appeared and roared from nowhere to the zenith of the sky above Imber. They were flying in formation, and at this point still perfectly together turned suddenly upward and climbed in line quite vertically into the sky, turned with an almost leisurely movement onto their backs and roared down again, looping the loop with such precision that they seemed to be tied together by invisible wires. Then they began to climb again, standing upon their tails, absolutely straight up above the watchers' heads. Still roaring together they reached a distant peak and then peeled off like a flower, each one to a different point of the compass. In another second they had gone, leaving behind their four trails of silver vapour and a shattering subsiding roar. Then there was complete silence. It had all happened very quickly.

Michael found himself open-mouthed, head back and heart thumping. The noise and speed and beauty of the things had made him for a moment almost unconscious. Toby looked at him, equally dazed and excited. Michael looked down and found that he had fastened both his hands onto the boy's bare arm. Laughing they drew apart.

CHAPTER 9

‘THE CHIEF REQUIREMENT OF THE good life', said James Tayper Pace, ‘is to live without any image of oneself. I speak, dear brothers and sisters, as one who is most conscious of being remote from this condition.' It was the next day, Sunday, and James was standing on the dais in the Long Room, one arm resting lightly on the music stand, delivering the weekly talk. He frowned nervously and swayed to and fro as he spoke, tilting the stand with him.

He went on. ‘The study of personality, indeed the whole conception of personality, is, as I see it, dangerous to goodness. We were told at school, at least I was told at school, to have ideals. This, it seems to me, is rot. Ideals are dreams. They come between us and reality - when what we need most is just precisely to see reality. And that is something outside us. Where perfection is, reality is. And where do we look for perfection? Not in some imaginary concoction out of our idea of our own character - but in something so external and so remote that we can get only now and then a distant hint of it.

‘Now you will say to me, dear James, you tell us to seek perfection and then you tell us it is so remote we can only guess at it - and where do we go from there? The fact is, God has not left us without guidance. How, otherwise, could our Lord have given us the high command “Be ye therefore perfect”? Matthew five forty-eight. We know in very simple ways, ways so simple that they seem dull to our subtle moral psychologists, what we ought to do and what avoid. Surely we know enough and more than enough rules to live by; and I confess I have very little time for the man who finds his life too complicated and special for the ordinary rules to fit. What are you up to, my friend, what are you hiding? I should say to that man: A belief in Original Sin should not lead us to probe the filth of our minds or regard ourselves as unique and interesting sinners. As sinners we are much the same and our sin is essentially something tedious, something to be shunned and not something to be investigated. We should rather work, as it were, from outside inwards. We should think of our actions and look to God and to His Law. We should consider not what delights us or what disgusts us, morally speaking, but what is enjoined and what is forbidden. And this we know, more than we are often ready to admit. We know it from God's Word and from his Church with a certainty as great as our belief. Truthfulness is enjoined, the relief of suffering is enjoined; adultery is forbidden, sodomy is forbidden. And I feel that we ought to think quite simply of these matters, thus: truth is not glorious, it is just enjoined; sodomy is not disgusting, it is just forbidden. These are rules by which we should freely judge ourselves and others too. All else is vanity and self-deception and flattering of passion. Those who hesitate to judge others are usually those who fear to put themselves under judgement. We may remember here the words of Saint Paul - Michael will correct my Latin -
iustus ex fide vivit.
The good man lives by faith. Galatians three eleven. I think we are meant to take this remark quite literally. The good man
does
what seems right, what the rule enjoins, without considering the consequences, without calculation or prevarication,
knowing
that God will make all for the best. He does not amend the rules by the standards of this world. Even if he cannot see how things will work out, he acts, trusting in God. He does the best thing, breaking through the complexities of situations, and knows that God will make that best thing fruitful. But the man without faith calculates. He finds the world too complicated for the best thing, and he does the second best thing, thinking that this in time will bring forth the best. Ah, how few of us have the faith spoken of by Saint Paul!'

Dora was beginning to lose interest. It was all too abstract. She had come to the little service out of curiosity and placed herself at the back where she could see all the congregation. Paul was sitting beside her, which was unfortunate. She would have liked to be able to survey him too. He kept glancing at her, and at one point drew his foot up to hers till she could feel his highly polished shoe touching her instep through the sandal. She saw from the corner of her eye the soft blur of his moustaches, the bird-like movements of his head. She kept her gaze resolutely forward.

Dora felt restless and dejected. In spite of certain moments of satisfaction, when the warmth of the weather and the beauty of the scene lifted her above her anxieties, she had not been able to settle down at Imber. She still felt nervous and shy as if she were acting a part. It was not that she disliked anyone, though she did find Michael and James, especially James, a bit alarming. Everyone was nice to her, she had an easy time, she didn't even have to get up at what James called ‘shriekers', which she discovered to mean crack, or shriek, of dawn. She ambled down a minute before breakfast. Sometimes she missed breakfast and scrounged a bite later on from the larder. She did nothing all day quite agreeably, without anyone looking askance. Even Mrs Mark seemed to have forgotten about her, and was quite surprised when Dora offered to help with this or that. Her only regular duty, besides doing her room, was washing up, and she could do this quite serenely in a dream. What nagged her however was a certain new sense of her inferiority; that, and the prospect of going home with Paul when all this, unnerving as it was, was over. Dora was not unused to feeling inferior. A vague sense of social inferiority, an uneasy lack of
savoir faire,
was normal to her. But what she felt at Imber bit deeper, in a way which she at times resented. Often it seemed to her that the community were easily, casually even, judging her, placing her. The fact that so little was expected of her was itself significant. This was distressing. The sense that the judgement occurred without their thinking about it, that it happened automatically, simply as it were by juxtaposition, was still more distressing.