by R. N. Morris
Felix felt too that Mother was attracted by the symbolism of cleansing. She had always talked so much about how dirty everything was. He was a dirty boy. London was a dirty city. Men all had dirty minds. Looking back now, he thought she must have hoped that the ceremony would in some way wash her clean – and not just her but the whole world.
But now, seeing the way she made a fool of herself in front of the pastor, gushing and simpering as she asked after his children, her former pupils, Felix realized with nauseating certainty that Mother’s interest in the Baptist Church had been tied up with her interest in its minister. Perhaps that was why she had been so keen to come along today, after she had seen his name in the newspaper.
A slow smirk formed on his lips. He could not think of Mother in this way except through the prism of contempt. She must have made quite a fool of herself. Felix shook his head to dispel the thought of it.
In the years since then she had flirted with other denominations and religions, returning for a time to the Roman Catholicism of her childhood, before settling more or less on Theosophism, or an interpretation of it that Felix didn’t doubt was peculiar to her. It was a peculiar enough thing to begin with, but Mother was perfectly capable of overlaying it with misunderstandings and stupidities of her own.
Felix peeked shyly over Mother’s shoulder at Pastor Cardew.
Cardew was older now, of course, though still a powerful presence. His once-black hair was sprinkled with silver shards. His face was lined and drawn. There was a new hesitancy to his manner that Felix did not remember, a slight wariness in his greeting, which seemed to contradict the forceful confidence with which he had a moment before possessed the threshold to the church. Felix had to admit this might just have been the effect Mother had on people.
Felix had never really understood anything that Pastor Cardew had tried to teach him. It had always seemed that the pastor assumed he already knew the most important things, that the biggest questions were already settled. The questions that most preoccupied Felix – what did God look like? Where did he live? And if God was good, why did he let bad things happen? – were never addressed by the pastor, and Felix didn’t have the courage to raise them himself. But it didn’t matter. He enjoyed drawing pictures and colouring them in with wax crayons. Most of all, he enjoyed the stories. Even if he was humourless, Pastor Cardew possessed a deep, resonant voice and could imbue his readings from Blackie’s Scripture Stories for Boys and Girls with a lively sense of drama.
But the real reason why Felix had never really objected to going to the Sunday school was the presence in the class of Pastor Cardew’s daughter, Eve.
She had been a pretty little thing, with gleaming black locks, a cupid mouth and big, serious eyes that took everything in. For some reason she had taken a shine to Felix. She had pressed little folded pieces of paper into his hand with messages such as ‘I love you’ and ‘Will you marry me?’ written in earnest, oversized letters in pencil. He had to admit that he had not always responded well to her attentions. The notes had at first shocked him. As had her invitation, whispered hotly into his ear while her father’s back was turned as he wrote out the words to the Lord’s Prayer on the blackboard, for Felix to kiss her. In fact, it seemed not so much an invitation as a command, and when Felix failed to obey, Eve took matters into her own hands and pressed her lips lightly on to his in such a way that it set his heart fluttering.
The incident had not been missed by their classmates, who immediately let out scandalized shrieks (the girls) and peals of mocking laughter (the boys). Felix had felt the colour flooding into his face, so that when Pastor Cardew turned round to see what all the fuss was about, Felix’s face shone out like a beacon of guilt. Eve by now was sitting primly in her seat with her best butter-wouldn’t-melt face on.
Pastor Cardew had homed in on the one boy who evidently had something to hide. ‘What is it? Felix? What’s going on?’
But Felix, of course, could say nothing.
‘Well, settle down, everybody. And know that whatever you have done, God sees it, even if I do not.’ The pastor was looking directly at Felix when he said this. ‘And if you have transgressed, God will mark it down against you. And one day you will be called to give an account of all your sins.’
With very little encouragement from Felix, Eve persisted in her campaign of billets-doux and whispered amorous propositions. He was invited to hold her hand, to carry her books, to draw her portrait and sit for his own. He was given sweets and apples and conkers and marbles, gifts which he never reciprocated, but which despite that showed no signs of coming to an end. Felix’s initial shock gave way at first to embarrassment, then to a kind of wonder.
He found that he began to look forward to Sundays. When he was in her presence, he felt a kind of pride in himself, that he had somehow won the undying love of this strange, intense girl. The fact that this love was, as far as he could tell, unearned ceased to trouble him. At any rate, it was better than the teasing and downright bullying that he endured at day school, where the only attention he got from his fellow pupils was a knuckle ground into his scalp.
And when he was not in her presence, he often caught himself thinking about her. Was he in love? He did not think so. He looked upon her rather as a puzzle he had yet to solve.
Then, one Sunday, he unfolded a larger piece of paper than usual and read upon it her most shocking message yet:
Dearist Felix,
Meet me in the Scrubs at 4 o’clock. There is a plase near where the airships land where my brother and his pals have bilt a den out of branches and things. For we must run a way. A Great Evil has come in to my life you would not believe. I will tell you all later. You are my Saviour. We will live in a cottige with flowers and hens. I can do sewing. No one will find us. I love you and will love you forever. You are my only hope. If you do not come I will kill myself.
Your Darlin Eve
He had folded the note up and pushed it deep into the pocket of his short trousers.
Needless to say, he did not make the rendezvous. It was not so much the hints of danger and the threat of suicide that put him off as the one sentence ‘I love you and will love you forever’. He was used to Eve’s declarations of love. So long as he could think of this love as something momentary and therefore essentially whimsical, he could look upon it with equanimity, if not enthusiasm. But the prospect of its continuing indefinitely frankly terrified him. Besides, he rather had the feeling that things had gone a little too far.
For the whole of the next week he had been terrified that Eve would go through with her wild threat. On the following Sunday he had been so sick with apprehension that he had even vomited up his breakfast. He had hardly slept at all the night before. And what sleep he had managed had been dominated by a terrible nightmare in which he tried to revive a dead Eve, whose tiny, husk-like corpse exploded into a shower of dust at his touch. He had breathed in the dry particles of dust and was overcome by a feeling of suffocation, at which point he woke in a fit of urgent breathlessness.
All the same, he had forced himself to go to Sunday school that day. It was possibly the bravest thing he had ever done, although it did not feel brave at the time. It was simply that he knew he would be unable to go on with his life until he had reassured himself that she was still alive.
She was. But it was clear that he was dead to her. From that day on there were no more notes, no more fervid whispers, no more hot, clandestine hand-holding. He did not go back to Sunday school the week after, or ever again.
‘And is that Felix I see behind you?’ Pastor Cardew’s bass tones drew him back to the present moment.
Felix stepped forward. As usual, he felt the ridiculous heat of a blush in his face, prompted no doubt by the course his thoughts had just taken. The past was invariably humiliating.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mother. ‘I have brought my Felix with me. We must instil a love of purity into our young men in order to preserve our young women, I think.’
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��Quite so,’ agreed Pastor Cardew. ‘You are both very welcome. I hope you will find the meeting suitably uplifting. I see you are not yet in uniform, Felix. Perhaps some religious scruples are holding you back? I understand if that is the case. Pacifism would seem to be the natural calling of a young Christian man. However, you will be interested to hear, I think, what one of our speakers, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, has to say. He is a church minister, but I vouch that he is more effective in rallying troops than any recruiting sergeant.’
‘Felix cannot join the army,’ said Mother bluntly. ‘I will not permit it.’
Pastor Cardew was taken aback. From the look of disgust on his face, Felix knew that he was thinking about Mother’s nationality.
‘I cannot possibly survive without him,’ she went on.
‘But if it is his duty?’
‘His first duty is to his mother. And, besides, I know the ways of soldiers. They are not the ways of my Felix. Felix is a good boy.’
Good boy indeed! I’m not her bloody dog!
But still, he had to admit it was so rare to hear Mother say anything positive about him – rare? It was unheard of! – that Felix felt a surge of pathetic emotion, part pride, part gratitude, both of which were immediately swamped by self-loathing.
‘And you, Felix, what do you have to say for yourself? You cannot hide behind your mother’s skirts forever, you know.’
‘Is Eve here?’ He had not known he was going to ask the question, and now that he had blurted it out, he felt a fool. The blood rushed into his face again.
Pastor Cardew was thrown by the question too. ‘Eve? I … yes … she is here, of course.’
Felix flinched away from the pastor’s frown and ducked past him to go inside the church.
SIXTEEN
Eve sat on the wooden seat next to her brother. Neither spoke.
She looked up at the balcony which ran around the church. It was filling up fast. This being a Saturday afternoon, and not a church service, the mood of the audience was unfamiliar. It was lively, excitable even. There was a buzz of anticipation going round.
The noise distracted her from the normal run of her thoughts, and for that reason she welcomed it.
Who were these people? How did she come to be sitting in the midst of them?
She looked at them with a kind of blank fascination that was close to horror. She felt that there was a real possibility that she might stand up on her seat and scream.
Do you know what he did to me? She could feel the words forming in her throat, a clenched fist of meaning punching up her windpipe, choking her.
It was not the first time she had experienced the urge. Usually it came upon her when her father was in the middle of a sermon. She would find herself fixated on his hands, watching as they formed the gestures that gave emphasis to his pious words, scything the air, grasping at meaning, spreading to beseech, coming together in prayer. It was as if she were unable to let them out of her sight for fear that they might touch her again. Those hands were the focus of her loathing and hatred. They were the focus of his hypocrisy too, which made her hate them even more.
Once they had settled into their routine – it would always happen on a Sunday afternoon, after church and Sunday school – it had surprised her how normal it became. She always knew that it was wrong. And she always felt a sickening tension as the moment approached. But that tension was released and relieved by the attention he paid her.
She hated him for that. And she hated her body, her treacherous body, which betrayed her by responding to his attentions.
There was nothing left in her life, in the world, that she did not hate.
His hands were always firm, but never rough. He never hit her or threatened her with violence. He might guide her hand and plead in hot, husky whispers with her. What might have happened if she had not obeyed, she did not know.
To her shame, she had never tested this. She had never once pulled back from his compelling grip. Had not even tried to.
And so the sin was hers. The blame was all on her. She could not claim that he had coerced her. For she had never once tried to resist him.
The last time he came to her was that Sunday of Adam’s fall.
Since then, he had hardly spoken a word to her, except such as were necessary for the functioning of their household. When she caught him looking at her, there was as much hatred for her in his gaze as she felt towards him.
Or was it fear? Was he afraid that she would one day speak of what had passed between them?
She realized that she had a kind of power over him now. And that shocked her, because she welcomed it. She realized that she had it in her power to punish him – to destroy him, even – for what he had done to her. All it would take was for her to climb up on her seat now and give voice to the words that had come to her a moment ago: Do you know what he did to me?
Except she knew that no one would believe her. She would be thought hysterical. They would say the pastor’s daughter had gone mad. She would be carted off to spend the rest of her days in Hanwell Asylum.
The speakers were coming on to the platform now. Pastor Cardew was fussing around them. There was an old, grey-bearded man in a ridiculous uniform, with tasselled epaulettes at his shoulders and an old-fashioned bicorne hat on his head. A row of big medals stood out on his chest. He looked like something out of a children’s picture book. For all the comicalness of his appearance, an unaccountable sadness came over Eve when she looked at him. He was rather slight of build, she thought, and he seemed to be puffing himself up with his medals and his uniform and his hat. As he strode on to the stage, he struck a pose of deliberate resoluteness, as if this was how he imagined a great general should walk. Or perhaps he was an admiral? The hat struck her as somewhat nautical and she remembered that an admiral was to be one of the speakers.
His face was stern and urgent. He swept the audience with a heavy scowl before taking his seat.
Next to him was a handsome woman of middle years. She looked younger than Mama (who was forty-five), but it had to be admitted that Mama had aged badly, what with her headaches and being as she was a martyr to her nerves.
This woman had a kind, engaged face, with an earnest, slightly anxious expression that made you think she always thought very hard about things before coming to her opinion. Was she the suffragette or the anti-suffragist? Eve wondered.
Probably the suffragette, because the woman next to her had much more the air of self-regard that you would expect from a celebrated authoress. Yes, that must be Mrs Humphry Ward, who was most definitely not a suffragette. Eve had not read Robert Elsmere, largely because Pastor Cardew recommended it so enthusiastically. Older than her fellow woman on the platform, with her grey hair neatly tied in a tight bun, Mrs Humphry Ward was too severe in her expression, too much the ageing bluestocking, to be thought handsome. However, she dressed with a certain elegance that testified to the success of her books.
Last in the row was a man with a high domed forehead and a drooping moustache. Like everyone on the platform, Eve could only think of him as old. There was no denying, however, the youthfulness of his expression. And he moved with quick, energetic decisiveness. You would say that he was eager to get on with things. She imagined this was an impression he gave, whatever he was engaged in.
The panel was all seated now, and Pastor Cardew was consulting his notes for the last time. The buzz of anticipation intensified and Eve gave a quick glance behind her to assess the size of the audience. It was a full house. There were even people standing at the rear. Up in the gallery, the front row was straining forward to get a better view. Eve imagined the balcony collapsing under their weight and the whole lot of them falling down on to the crowd below. She could almost hear the screams of panic that would ensue.
If the balcony fell on her and killed her, she believed she would welcome it. She would welcome even the pain that it would entail as being her due. Of course, it was easy to say that. Perhaps in the event, she might feel
as much terror as anyone, and find herself equally unwilling to give up her hold on life. But somehow she knew that her imagining of the catastrophe was a form of wishful thinking. She was eighteen years old and all that she craved for was to die in a freakish accident.
She could hear Pastor Cardew’s voice from the platform, calling the meeting to order. The din of chatter faded.
Eve brought her gaze down slowly. She was in no hurry to turn to face him.
In fact, she took one last look at the row behind her. A face had caught her attention. A young man who seemed to be looking fixedly at her. She realized immediately who it was. For though it was many years ago that they had known each other, the essential qualities of his face had not changed. And besides, he was sitting next to his mother, Mrs Simpkins, her old piano teacher.
How dare he look at me!
Of course, it was a long time ago, and they were both very young. Children, silly children. But still, he had no right to look at her. She had made a fool of herself, perhaps, in that business. But he had done something far worse. He had failed her, betrayed her even. The memory of it – the memory of how she had once felt about him – brought a quick flush of embarrassment to her cheeks, which she saw mirrored in the sudden flood of colour in his face.
She glared back at him, then turned away. She would never make the mistake of feeling like that about anyone again.
She could not avoid looking at the man who was speaking any longer. His face was a mask of respectability and responsibility. The face of a man who had answered a higher calling, who had given himself over to serving his God, and the people who worshipped that God. The face of a public man. He was talking, no doubt impressively, no doubt rousingly, about the fight ahead. ‘Yes, the country is at war now,’ he was saying, ‘against Germany and her allies. But there is a greater war that is always being fought, in which we are all foot soldiers. Every man, every boy, every woman, every girl. Every one of us, no matter our age or sex. This is a war that requires constant vigilance. And courage, yes, courage indeed. But a different kind of courage to that manifested by Tommy Atkins on the front. This is the courage to face up to the Evil One, to stare down the Tempter, and say No! Thou shalt not lead me astray.’ He was staring right at her as he said this. And the hatred in his eyes had never been clearer.
