The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘You’d be better off on the beach,’ Susannah said.

  Mrs Shepherd brought in the beef, glowing as she was showered with compliments. As he watched his father carve, his steady hand a further proof against senescence, Clement was grateful for the chance to indulge a taste denied to him at home. Although Mike had never asked him to stop cooking meat, he had chosen to do so, partly because separate meals struck him as almost as sad as separate beds, but mainly because he hoped that Mike would treat his beliefs with a similar respect and accompany him one Sunday to church. That hope had yet to be fulfilled.

  Between bites, he outlined his latest commission. He knew that his father would be intrigued by a selection process which offered fresh evidence, if any were needed, that the inner workings of the Church of England rivalled the machinations of M15. He had received no formal invitation but been advised by Canon George Dickinson, the éminence grise of Anglican art, that the Dean of Roxborough was looking to install a new window. ‘He urged me to investigate, so I did. The curtains in the cathedral close must have been twitching! There I was in the apse, studying the churchmanship and chewing over possible designs, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the Dean. Straight out, he asked if I had any ideas. I mentioned the Harrowing of Hell, which seemed to thrill him. I thought he was going to kiss me.’

  ‘Urgh!’ Karen said. ‘Oh, sorry, Clem!’

  ‘No, you were right first time. Urgh! He arranged for me to put it to the Chapter, insisting that we had it in the bag. No such luck! From the word go, I was bombarded with questions – some borderline insults – from one of the lay canons, a retired army officer – major I think – by the name of Deedes. After giving him his head, the Dean played his trump card, saying he’d been promised cash by both the county council and the Normington Trust. The cathedral would not only not be out of pocket but get loads of free publicity.’ He tried to catch Susannah’s eye but she was toying with her food. ‘In the end the Chapter deferred its decision while agreeing to fund my sketches.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Susannah said, without looking up.

  ‘I’m proud of you, my boy,’ his father said. ‘But watch out, Harvey Harvey can be a tricky customer.’

  ‘Harvey Harvey?’ Karen asked with a giggle and a burp.

  ‘The Dean,’ Clement said.

  ‘How cruel of his parents!’ his mother said. ‘Another parsnip?’ she asked, holding out the dish to Susannah, who patted her stomach and shook her head.

  ‘On the contrary, it’s been his calling card since Cuddesdon,’ his father interjected. ‘That said, he must be due for retirement.’

  ‘Next year. He wants to go out with a splash.’

  ‘Thank God for self-important clerics! Or else the C of E would never have any new art at all.’

  ‘How much will they pay you? Or is it a rude question?’ Susannah asked, with a hint of mockery which Clement chose to ignore.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I leave all that to the gallery. Of course, the Dean is playing the usual trick of acting unworldly as if it were the same as being spiritual but, take if from me, he’s as sharp as a knife. He’ll try to get away with less than the going rate on the grounds that it’s a large-scale piece and will create a stir.’

  ‘Which is no doubt true,’ his father said.

  ‘But still no excuse for exploitation.’

  ‘That Deedes fellow: I’ve a feeling he’s one of the ones who had a go at me after Spirit of the Age.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why he was so hostile?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s a six-dayer. The sort of chap who gives religion a bad name.’ Clement knew that this was a serious charge from one who placed his faith in the Church rather than in God. ‘Yes, I’m convinced of it. Not quite the “God put fossils there to fool us,” but “there’s no fossil evidence to support evolution” brigade.’

  ‘And this is a man who was high up in the army?’ his mother said. ‘Has he never heard of myth?’

  ‘Even as myth,’ Clement said, ‘Genesis leaves a lot to be desired. By placing mankind at the pinnacle of creation, it enables us to justify the harm we do to the planet.’

  ‘The Goddess is groaning,’ Karen said.

  ‘She’s not the only one,’ Susannah said.

  ‘We laugh at the fundamentalists with their literal readings, but are the symbolic ones so much better? They make the world seem nothing more than a scientific experiment, with God as, at best, a Newton and, at worst, a Mengele. To my mind, we can’t divorce the creator from creation. He is architect and blueprint and material. The earth and the earthworm, the sky and the skylark, the sea and the sea breeze and the sea lion are all part of His being.’

  ‘Are you talking literally or symbolically?’ his father asked.

  ‘Both. God is subject and object, word and meaning. The experiment, if it can be described as such, is on Himself.’

  ‘You’ll none of you be surprised to learn,’ his mother said, ‘that the most profound creation myth I know comes from the Hadza. Put simply – which it is anyway – it states that, in the beginning, the Hadza were all baboons. One day, God – who in their language is both male and female – asked them to go down to the river and bring back some water. They took so long that God went to look for them and found that, instead of doing what they’d been told, they were playing games. God was furious and put a curse on them, condemning half to become human while the rest remained baboons, leaving the two groups at war with each other till the end of time. So there you have it, the story of creation, evolution and the origins of human behaviour in a few short sentences.’

  Clement flashed a glance at Susannah, who returned it with a smile that harked back to the nursery. There were, indeed, few matters on which his mother would not cite the superiority of the Hadza, the remote East African tribe she had studied for her doctorate and to which she had paid repeated visits over fifty years. Although as children they had hated the very mention of the name, afraid that it heralded another trip to the Serengeti when she would leave them in the care of a nanny who, however kind, could not hope to fill a mother’s place, the more they learnt of her life in Occupied Poland, the more they came to appreciate her need, in his father’s words, to ‘exchange the so-called civilised world for one where the horrors that wiped out her family and friends are unknown.’

  ‘Good try, Ma,’ Susannah said. ‘Maybe you should write the Hadza bible?’

  ‘I thought she already had,’ Clement said. ‘A little thing called The Eden People?’

  ‘Mock all you like. I only hope that when you have children… Oh I’m ready to drop!’

  ‘You and me both, Ma,’ Susannah said lightly. ‘And we’ve a busy day tomorrow. So, if you’ll all excuse me…’

  Susannah’s departure was swiftly followed by Karen’s. Considering her wine intake, Clement wondered if he should walk her back to her cottage, but weariness drowned out both gallantry and concern. Instead, he accompanied his parents to the drawing room, where his mother served coffee: the one instance when she allowed his father to ignore medical advice. After making Clement promise not to keep him up late, she went upstairs.

  ‘Dean Harvey asked me to tell you how sorry he was that you were no longer a regular on the airwaves.’

  ‘I’m eighty-one! Besides, I felt enough of a fraud sounding off when I was a bishop. At least then I could claim the authority of my office. Now I’d see it as a double deception. Since I no longer regard the Christian cosmology as true, I can hardly claim a special mandate.’

  ‘I admire your integrity.’

  ‘You’re on your own. Most people would say that it showed a distinct lack of integrity to remain in the Church after abandoning my faith. And I’m not sure I wouldn’t agree. But I was able to justify it to myself because, although I couldn’t believe in an actual God: a real presence: a creator, I could – and do – believe in the idea of God. I believe in God not because He made man in His own image but because man made God in his. What’s more, I beli
eve the ideal of goodness we invest in God is itself a good. The very fact that we can conceive of an ultimate good means that somewhere in the infinity of the universe it must exist. The concept of God is God.’

  Clement grappled with an argument which he had heard in various forms over the years as his father sought to explain a stance that appeared untenable to many both inside and outside the Church. Critics had scoffed that he was too wedded to the privileges of office, but his friends knew that it took far more courage for him to stay at his post than to resign. Moreover, by remaining in the Church after renouncing its doctrines, he had shown a belief in humanity far greater than any humanist’s, since he had credited it with the creation of God.

  ‘Do you remember when I was a kid and I’d fall and graze my elbow or knee? You’d tell me to grab hold of your hand and let the pain pass to you. I wish I could return the favour. Only not with pain. With faith. There’s nothing worse than to lose it.’

  ‘But I haven’t lost it… just redirected it a little. As a boy, I had a Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild faith. Then, as an adolescent full of self-disgust and self-doubt, I had a Crown of Thorns for us Sinners faith. After that, I went through various forms of Anglican observance. Now my faith’s been turned inside out. If the Church is the body of Christ, I believe in the body and not the soul.’

  ‘For most of us, it’s the other way round. We believe in God in spite of the Church.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not talking about the Creed. I was loath to affirm my faith in one God even when I had a faith to affirm. Nobody who’s studied comparative religion can do that with much conviction.’

  ‘Was it Mark?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to ask but I’ve been too afraid of the answer.’

  ‘And you’re not now?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. But I think I’m more afraid of being left without an answer when… if…’

  ‘I’m eighty-one years old. There’s no need to be coy.’ He laughed. ‘So was it Mark what?’

  ‘Was it his death that destroyed your belief in a benevolent God?’

  ‘Omnipotent and omniscient?’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘No, Clem, don’t worry. It wasn’t Mark. Of course losing him didn’t help. It didn’t help anything. But there’ve been too many disasters, too much suffering, too long a history of non-intervention. You can only take the free will argument so far. The question isn’t why I stopped believing but why I carried on doing so for so long. I wanted… I wanted desperately to believe in that all-in-all God. I was ready to defy science, history, logic and my own experience into the bargain. But it was spiritually and intellectually dishonest. The time came when I had to face the truth.’

  ‘So where does that leave me, a man whose religion is not only the heart of his life but of his art?’

  ‘I was serious when I said I believed in the Church. Just as religion expresses the best in man, religious art expresses the best in religion.’

  ‘I doubt your views would find favour in orthodox circles. Wasn’t it St Augustine who held that it was a grave sin to respond to the singing in church rather than to its message?’

  ‘I can live with his disapproval. On the other hand, I’m not so sure I can live with your mother’s. I’d better go upstairs. Good night, my boy. We can continue this discussion whenever.’

  Clement saw his father into the hall and returned to the drawing room. He sprawled on the sofa, rapt in reflection. An artist, someone had said, was a man who was true to his contradictions. Such contradictions would always be at their starkest in those whose subject was faith. For them, the struggle wasn’t simply to make their canvases worthy of their ideas but to make their lives worthy of their canvases. From Fra Angelico to Eric Gill, there was a long line of those who fell short. He would take heed from their example. The conflict between spirit and flesh would be resolved in paint.

  4

  Clement examined his watch for the third time in less than a minute. There were only five days before he was due to present his designs to the Fabric Advisory Committee and Rafik was one hour and sixteen… no, seventeen minutes late. It was his own fault. He should have stuck with an actor or a dancer who respected the artistic process, rather than gambling on an amateur.

  A glance at his sketchbook served to increase his frustration. For all his unreliability, it was clear that Rafik was an inspired choice, his soulful beauty lending weight to the imprisoned Adam and lustre to the liberating Christ. Refusing to work with a lesser model, he called the gallery and asked Gil to negotiate an extension of his contract. He slipped on his coat, desperate to escape the enforced indolence, but, just as he reached the door, the telephone rang. The relief of hearing Rafik’s voice faded on hearing his news.

  ‘I am in prison.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Police prison. They put me in arrest.’

  Clement struggled to make sense of a story which was made more confusing by loud and disturbing background noise. The one ineluctable fact was that Desmond had stabbed a man and, in the course of the investigation, Rafik had been charged with entering the UK illegally and served with notice of removal. Clement shuddered at the thought of his return to a country where rough justice was dealt out with razor blades on a bus. He was anxious to help, but his knowledge of police procedure stopped short at hazy memories of Inspector Morse.

  ‘Is it just one phone call you’re allowed, do you know?’

  ‘Who else must I call? I wish to say to you I am sorry. So sorry. You wait for me and I am not there.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Clement said, disgusted that he should be thinking about it himself. He turned the sketchbook face down to prevent its making any further claims on his consciousness. ‘The first thing we must do is find you a lawyer.’

  ‘What for? The thing that they say is true.’

  ‘Well don’t say it! Don’t say anything, except “I reserve the right to stay silent.” Did you get that? Meanwhile, I’ll call my solicitor and ask her to send someone round. Don’t worry,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘We’ll soon have you out.’

  Fired with indignation, he rang Gillian Wrenshaw, who explained that, while it was outside her own field of expertise, she knew a first-rate immigration lawyer and would contact him at once. Ten minutes later, James Shortt called to introduce himself and, after a few words with Clement, undertook to go straight to the police station.

  Clement remained at the studio waiting for news. To keep from brooding, he opened the copy of the Quran which he had dusted down after his first conversation with Rafik. He had made little headway with it in the past, finding its confused and apocalyptic tone closer to the Book of Mormon than to the Bible, but Rafik’s account of the creation of Adam had inspired him to read it again. Even perched uncomfortably on a studio stool, he was surprised by how much he warmed to the new perspective on the familiar story. Not only was it free from misogyny, since it was Adam rather than Eve whom Satan tricked into eating the apple, but Adam himself was less of a sinner than a dupe. His expulsion from paradise was an integral part of God’s plan to ‘make a vice-regent on earth’. So while the Genesis Adam was condemned to a life of toil and shame, the Quran Adam was hailed as the first prophet. This welcome corrective to Original Sin chimed with his own belief that what was known as the Fall would be better described as the Stumble, and that Christ came not to save mankind but to share in the suffering that was the inevitable result of our existence in time.

  His reflections were punctured by the phone, which he rushed to answer, knocking over a jar of charcoal. To his relief, the call was from Shortt, who explained that he had made a claim for asylum on Rafik’s behalf, persuading the immigration officers to grant him Temporary Admission. Promising to ring again on his return to the office, he handed his phone to Rafik.

  ‘You are why I come to England,’ Rafik said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Clement replied, more bewildered than ever by R
afik’s English.

  ‘You are so kind when you know me so little. I carry nothing but trouble. Your window…’

  ‘We’ll have plenty of opportunity for that. The important thing is that you’re free. Go home and ring me as soon as you’ve rested.’

  ‘That is now. I am well. I am strong. I can be standing for two hours… three. I can come to you in next minute. You can make drawing of me in afternoon.’

  ‘Really, it’s not necessary. Tomorrow – ’

  ‘Now, please. I wish it.’

  Having put up a show of resistance, Clement was delighted when Rafik chose to ignore it. He told him to waste no time but to borrow the cash from Shortt and take a taxi. Then, calculating that Mike would be on his lunch break, he rang him with the news. Far from expressing surprise, Mike declared that, apart from a few powerful families with contacts at the British consulate, it was well nigh impossible for Algerians to obtain visas.

  ‘So you’re saying you knew about Rafik all along and didn’t tell me? How bloody irresponsible! What if I’ve committed a crime?’

  ‘I didn’t say I knew; I said I suspected. I’ve only spoken to him a few times in the Elliot. You’re the one who’s cooped up with him for hours on end. I thought you liked your models to talk.’

  ‘But he’s reserved. It’s one of the first things that struck me. There’s a gravity to him… a weight – in spite of his slight physique. Which is precisely the image I want for Christ.’

  ‘And no doubt you think it’s something innate, breathed into him by God, and not the result of everything he’s been through?’

  ‘Don’t you have marking to do?’ Clement asked sharply.

  ‘Touché!’

  Mike offered to drive round after school and talk to Rafik himself, adding that it would give him a chance to look at the sketches. Clement put down the phone and pottered about the studio, suppressing the urge to rush out for a bottle of champagne. Temporary Admission was a small victory in what promised to be a long and bloody campaign. The buzzer sounded and he let in Rafik, who was wearing a T-shirt that was far too thin for early March even without the disconcerting rip in the sleeve.