The Virgin in the Garden (6 page)

“I do not burn books.”

“You do. You burned all my
Girls’ Crystals
and all those Georgette Heyers I borrowed from that almost-friend I once had, and those weren’t even
mine
.”

“Ah, yes,” said Bill, with sharp retrospective delight. “So I did. Those weren’t books.”

“They were harmless. I liked them.”

“They were prurient fantasy. And vulgar. And untruthful, if that word means anything.”

“I think you could trust me to recognise fantasy when I meet it. A little fantasy never hurt anyone. And it gave me something to talk to other girls about.”

Bill began to speak about literary truth. Alexander looked at his watch, surreptitiously. Winifred wondered, as she often wondered, why Bill found it compulsively necessary to quarrel so disastrously, to argue, for him so crudely, with the one child who had inherited his indiscriminate and gleefully analytic greed for the printed word.

She remembered the episode of the
Girls’ Crystals
. Bill – it was never known by what inspiration he had been guided to snoop – had found them stowed away in a box under Frederica’s bed. He had carried them out, blazing with wrath and delight, and had incinerated them in the pierced dustbin in which he burned garden rubbish. Crystal after Crystal disintegrated and darkened; ragged scraps of crisping black tissue and pale flames rose and danced on the summer sky. Bill stirred with an iron rod, as though officiating at a rite. Frederica danced round him on the grass, tossing her arms and screaming with highly articulate fury.

Winifred was alarmed by this one of her children. Frederica seemed sometimes possessed by a demon; her end of term reports characterised her style and even handwriting as “aggressive”. Winifred believed it. Stephanie, milder and lazier, was said to be cleverer. Marcus was, Winifred trusted, peaceful and self-contained. These two she admired for meeting wrath with her own stoic patience. Frederica was always so embattled.

Over coffee, Alexander at last managed to introduce the topic of his play. He began roundabout, with a preamble on Crowe and his plans for the new University, to which Bill took instant exception. Bill knew very well, he told Alexander, about the negotiations that had been going on. He had been in at the beginning when there’d been a real hope for something new, something that really had grown straight out of the grass-roots of adult education where it had begun. But he’d lost patience, what with Vice-Chancellors mucking up his syllabus till it was no different from any existing universities’ courses, what with Crowe sticking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, and what with the Bishop adding redundant frills and furbelows and theological colleges. All they were going to get was a prettified imitation Oxbridge, with pastiche
ceremonial and the older local houses done up with brass knockers and horrible sky-blue Festival of Britain paint for patronising dons. No thank you, he said.
His
work would have to go on outside all that fuss and flutter as it had always gone on. As for Crowe he was like an old spider, he’d sit in towers casting out webs for cultural flies and get made Vice-Chancellor, let Alexander mark his words. And the new Renaissance man wasn’t needed thank you – literacy, numeracy, experience at first-hand and articulacy would do fine.

Alexander said there was to be a Festival, and that he himself had actually written a play and would like Bill’s opinion of it. It was to be put on at the Festival. He was lucky. He mentioned Crowe’s plans for the cultural enlivening of the whole locality. He said, dubiously, that he knew Bill would be needed. He said he hoped to be able to give some time, in the summer term, to working on the play, but that this would depend on Bill. By now the euphoria and independence he had felt with Crowe, and on the railway bridge, had left him. He spoke soberly, even apologetically. Bill heard him out, rolling a home-made cigarette in a rubber-and-metal machine, fiddling with raw wisps of gummy dark tobacco, licking his lips, and the fine edge of the cigarette paper, with precision.

“What is it then? A sort of cultural pageant?”

“No no.”

“A blue print for a new Renaissance.”

“No. A play. An historical play. A verse drama. About the queen.” He hesitated. “I wanted to call it
A Lady Time Surprised
. After that portrait. But we decided on
Astraea
, because it’s easy to say. And I took a lot of the machinery from Frances Yates on Queen Elizabeth as Virgo-Astraea.”

He could see Bill thinking all this was pretentious and academic in the wrong way.

“Well,” said Bill, “you’d better let me read this work. Is there a spare copy?”

Alexander produced one of Crowe’s cyclostyled scripts. He realised, with a slight shock, that it had simply never crossed Bill’s mind that he might have written a good play. Bill’s tone was that of the schoolmaster, encouraging hard work, but honourably withholding the enthusiasm he was ultimately not going to be able to offer.

Frederica said, “Are we going to be able to act in it? Are we local culture ourselves? I am going to be an actress.”

“Oh,” said Alexander. “There will of course be auditions. A great many. For everyone. Including the schools. Although I did myself want to suggest that Marcus – if he were willing – should be specially
considered for a part. I wanted to know what he – and you – thought.”

“I thought he showed real talent in
Hamlet
,” said Bill.

“So did I,” said Alexander. “So did I. And there is an ideal part for him.”

“Edward VI, I bet,” said the irrepressible Frederica. “He could do that. Lucky old so and so.”

“No,” said Marcus. “Thank you.”

“I really think,” said Bill, “you could manage, even with your work …”

“No.”

“At least give us a reason.”

“I can’t blunder about without specs.”

“You did in Ophelia.”

“I can’t act. I won’t, I don’t want to act. I can’t.”

“We could discuss it later,” said Alexander, meaning, away from Bill.

“No,” said Marcus firmly, but on a rising note.

The door bell rang. Frederica bounded to it, and came back to announce portentously:

“A curate has come to call. He wants to see Stephanie.”

She made the announcement seem an absurd anachronism, a strayed episode from mocking Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell or Mrs Humphrey Ward. Curates did not call on the Potters. Nobody called, exactly. And curates, who might still call elsewhere, certainly never came there.

“Don’t leave him standing, it’s rude,” said Winifred. “Let him in.”

The curate came in, and stood in the doorway. He was a large man, tall, fat, hirsute, with coarse springing black hair, dense brows, and a heavy chin shaded by the stubble of an energetic beard. His black garments hung loosely from powerful shoulders; his neck was heavy and muscular above the dog-collar.

Stephanie introduced him, nervously. Daniel Orton, Mr Ellenby’s curate, from St Bartholomew’s at Blesford. Daniel Orton took in the assembled company and asked, in a rotund voice which might just possibly have been a routine clerical attempt to set them at their ease, if he might sit down. His voice was strongly Yorkshire – a southern industrial Yorkshire, less inflected and singing than Winifred’s northern one.

“If this is a pastoral visit,” said Bill, “I should say immediately you’re in the wrong house. No churchgoers here.”

The curate did not react to this. He stated simply that he had come for a few moments’ speech with Stephanie, with Miss Potter. If he might. He had promised little Julie at the Vicarage that he’d drop in and see
how the kittens were doing. He sat down, on the other half of Frederica’s sofa, seeming by instinct already to have located the box. He looked in.

“They’re not doing badly,” said Stephanie. “It’s early to tell.”

“It’s clear that child blames herself,” said Daniel Orton. “I hope you rear them.”

“Please don’t raise her hopes – please don’t rely too much on me. They’re not only motherless, they’re premature. It’s a lunatic task, really.”

“No, quite right, always tell th’ truth. I wanted to come here – I didn’t have time to say to you, on my own account – you did a marvellous job wi’ that child. I wanted to tell you so.”

A curious trace of clerical unction flickered amongst the flat Yorkshire sounds. Bill said, rapid and repressive, “We’ve already heard quite a lot about the cat episode. Thank you.”

Daniel’s big dark head turned slightly in the direction of this interjection, assessing it apparently. He turned back to Stephanie.

“I wondered if I could interest you in a bit of my work. You were kind enough to express an interest in the way I run my work. I have to be pushy in my job or I get nowhere at all, and there’s something I’ve got a feeling you’re the right person to help with. Just an inkling. I wondered …”

“Another time, perhaps,” said Stephanie, crimson, looking at her knees, almost inaudible.

“Maybe I interrupted something,” said Daniel. “If so, I’m sorry.”

Alexander looked at his watch, at the Potters, at the curate.

“You have some very fine wall-paintings in your church, Mr Orton. I’ve seen nothing to equal them in England. The Mouth of Hell over the nave – and that very
English
laily worm – are particularly fine. Even faded, a real burning fiery furnace. Very lovely. Pity you’ve not got a more informative guidebook and a bit less rhapsodic. Wife of a previous vicar was the author, I believe.”

“I don’t know. I’ve not read the Guide Book. And I’ve no judgment of what’s particularly fine. No doubt you’re right.”

“You’ve come to the wrong place,” said Bill, “if you want anyone in this house to help with your work. As far as I’m concerned, the institution you represent purveys lies and false values and I wish to have nothing to do with it.”

“Well, that’s clear,” said Daniel.

“I live in a culture whose institutions and unconsidered moral responses are constructed in terms of an ideology based on a historical story for whose accuracy there is
no
respectable evidence, and the preachments of a life-denying bigot, St Paul. But we all put up with it.
We are all Polite to the church. We never ask, if we swept it right away, what truths might we discover.” Bill glowered. He was saying what he said often, but did not often have the chance to say to clergymen.

“I’m not asking you to come to Church. I came to ask Miss Potter to help wi’ a project I’ve got on.”

“You ought to be asking me to come to Church, that’s the point. If you’ve
got
any beliefs. The thing’s not only dead, it’s flabby.”

“I have my beliefs,” said Daniel Orton, gripping his large knees with his heavy hands.

“Oh I know. One God, maker of heaven and earth and so on. Up to the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. Do you
really
? In Heaven and Hell? What we believe matters.”

“I believe in Heaven and Hell.”

“Cities of gold, cherubim and seraphim, trumpets sounding, rivers of pearl, fiery pit, claws and leather wings, the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire and all that? Or what? Some clever modern version in which your own character is your own hell in perpetuity? I’m very interested in modern churchmen.”

“More than I am, it seems,” said Daniel. “Why?”

“Because our communal life is a lie because it is
haunted
, tho’ most of those haunted are unconscious of it, by the sick and rotten images you purvey. A corpse on two planks. Some exciting untrue images of fire and apple trees.”

“Why are you attacking me?”

“There is more truth in
King Lear
as far as I know than in all the gospels put together. I want people to have life and have it abundantly, Mr Orton. You’re in the way.”

“I see,” said Daniel. “I’ve not read
King Lear
. It wasn’t set for Higher when I did it. I’ll repair the omission. Now I’ll go home, if you don’t mind. I’m not the debating kind of churchman, nor yet the preacher. And you are making me a bit cross.”

“You can’t
say
that, Daddy,” said Stephanie suddenly. “He practises what you preach. I’ve seen what he does – in hospitals and places – where for all your talk – about experience – you don’t go. He
knows King Lear
, even if he hasn’t read it.”

“I bet I know my Bible better.”

“I bet you do,” said Stephanie. “But whether that’s a point in your favour or his, I’ll leave him to say. Please forgive us, Mr Orton.”

“So you’ll talk to me at some more sensible time,” said Daniel to Stephanie. He, like the Potters, was obsessively single-minded.

“I promise nothing.”

“But you’ll talk.”

“I admire your work very much, Mr Orton,” stiffly.

“Right. Now I’ll go.”

Alexander looked at his watch again and announced that he was going too. They came out together onto the bare street and stood for a moment in a more or less companionable silence.

“The man must be mad,” said Daniel Orton. “I hadn’t done anything.”

“The irony is that he’s a believer and popular preacher born out of his time. In revolt against his upbringing.”

“Ay. Well, so am I, the other way. I ought to sympathise. I can’t say I do. It’s not of much importance. I’m not much of a preacher myself. Words, words.”

“Words are his work.”

“Let him stick to it, then. He lacks grace.” There was no clue in his tone as to whether he meant this criticism to be theological, aesthetic, or in some quite different area. He offered Alexander a large hand and walked away, by no means gracefully, sturdy and rolling towards the town. Alexander set off in a great hurry in the other direction. Like all people over-anxious to keep an appointment without the terrors of being early, he had made himself late. He began to run.

On the outskirts of Blesford, where pre-fabs and ragged allotments pushed out into real fields, Alexander, still running, came to the Castle Mound. The Castle, which had briefly housed the defeated Richard II, was now a stone shell encircling mown humps and hillocks with the ambivalently bursting appearance of grave-mounds: iron labels indicated the sites of dried well, vanished defences, foundations of bedchambers.