The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘I hadn’t expected it would be so soon,’ Clement said to Gillian over coffee. ‘The police have finally released my father’s body and we need to fix a date for the funeral. But how can we, if I’m in the middle of a trial?’

  ‘Don’t worry. The Preliminary Hearing is just a formality. The judge will ask the Prosecution to complete the service of its case within forty-two days and set a date for the Plea and Directions hearing in about two months’ time.’

  ‘I’d no idea the law was so labyrinthine,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, this is nothing,’ she replied, spooning in the sugar.

  As Gillian had predicted, the Plea and Directions hearing was set for the fifth of March, although both she and his newly-briefed barrister, Lloyd Jessop, warned of a possible postponement, should the Prosecution request more time to gather medical evidence. Meanwhile the funeral was set for the fifteenth of January, which would allow Clement to oversee arrangements during the holidays at Beckley. While dreading the prospect of his first fatherless Christmas, he was determined to keep up a front for the sake of his mother, only to discover that she was doing the same for him. Despite the absence of both her husband and her daughter, she insisted on its being festivity as usual. So Mr Shepherd and Charlie Heapstone set up the giant fir tree in the hall, which Clement decorated with Mike, finding to his surprise that he missed the annual regression to childhood when he and Shoana bickered over who should have the crowning glory of placing the star. Mrs Shepherd draped the drawing room with boughs of holly and sprigs of mistletoe, the latter permitting Karen to claim the festival as her own. That done, she kept her distance, joining them briefly on Christmas Day for presents and Boxing Day for punch.

  ‘She’s got a new man,’ Mrs Shepherd confided, ‘he busks.’

  Carla came for Christmas, before leaving to spend New Year with her parents. Her pain at being a ‘middle-aged singleton’, ill concealed by the self-deprecating phrase, was increased by her split with Curtis. Sitting in Clement’s bedroom, where twenty years before, on her first visit to Beckley, she had shyly confessed her attraction to Mark, she revealed what she had kept from him during the weeks of the investigation, namely that Curtis had turned violent.

  He took her in his arms, appalled to picture what lay beneath her newfound taste in long sleeves. ‘Tell me it’s none of my business, but would it help you to talk about what he did?’

  ‘Not really. What do most men do when they’re violent? Hit. Punch. Slap. The usual. The next day, of course, he couldn’t have been more contrite, begging me to forgive him. When I asked why he did it, he said it wasn’t really him… that is he claimed to be helpless to break the pattern, blaming the eighteenth-century mercenary like a determining gene.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’

  ‘Then he promised that, if he hurt me in this life, he’d make it up to me in the next.’

  ‘Before hurting you again, presumably?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I should have ended it then and there, I know. But it was as if he was two or three different personalities and I was still fighting to keep hold of the one I loved… yes, I really did use the ‘l’ word! Finally, when he shook me so hard I thought I’d pass out, I grabbed my statue of the Buddha – you know, the jade one Mark gave me all those years ago – bashed him on the head with it and ran. I was scared stiff that I’d killed him but, when I went back to the house the next morning with Rachel from next door, he’d disappeared, leaving only a smear of blood on the floor to show that I hadn’t imagined it. I’ve changed the locks and put in a new alarm system, but I’ve not heard a sound from him since.’

  Clement returned to London on the second of January, heading straight to the studio to repaint the final panel of his polyptych after Mike asked him whether the angel was supposed to be a self-portrait. Satisfied that any resemblance to artists living or dead was entirely coincidental, he gave the finished work to Robin, who assembled it and delivered it to the undertakers in Oxford. The next time he saw it was on the eve of his father’s funeral, when the coffin was laid out in the Beckley dining room, ready for the relatives to pay their last respects. His fears that his family would object to his presence – let alone, prominence – among the mourners were assuaged when with one voice they expressed outrage at the charge. Even Aunt Helena pledged her support. ‘You have the whole Petersham Women’s Institute behind you,’ she said. ‘I’ve told everyone that, whatever else, you’ve always been a model son. I only hope that, when I’m gaga, someone will do as much for me.’

  On the morning of the funeral he hid in his room, partly to reflect on his father but mainly to avoid a painful confrontation with Shoana and Zvi, who were driving down from London. At half-past one, conscious that he could put it off no longer, he made his way into the dining room where he found his sister and brother-in-law alone, examining the painted panels. Catching sight of Shoana, he was immediately struck by how huge she looked, blurting it out before he could stop himself.

  ‘That’s because you haven’t seen me for three months,’ she said, startled.

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Yours, Clement,’ Zvi said softly. ‘You were the one who…’

  ‘Killed my father? If that’s what you think, why not say so?’

  ‘That’s not what we think, Clem,’ Shoana said. ‘At least it’s not that simple.’

  ‘Really? Then why turn me in to the police?’

  ‘Maybe we did think so at the time. I’m not saying we were wrong – ’

  ‘I should hope not! Stick to the Good Book and you can never go wrong.’

  ‘But I was hurt. Everything I believe… everything I am: you just trampled underfoot. This is my faith, Clem. I used to envy your faith so much. Don’t hate me now I’ve found one of my own.’

  ‘You do realise I could land up in jail?’

  ‘Surely it won’t come to that?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Ma said you’d hired a top QC.’

  ‘Lloyd Jessop. The man who got the Arsenal footballers off last year.’

  ‘And it was blindingly obvious they were guilty.’

  ‘Thanks! That makes me feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘Say something, Zvi,’ Shoana said wretchedly.

  ‘Like what?’ he asked. ‘Like why did your brother come clean to the police? If he’d kept silent, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Oh I see, it’s all my fault! Nothing must be allowed to soil your lily-white consciences, but poor godforsaken Clement is already so far gone, what does it matter if he’s saddled with another lie?’

  Shoana started to cry. Zvi leant over and held her so gently that, despite himself, Clement was moved. They were interrupted by Karen, who had supplemented her usual black clothes with a home-made black beret, black nail-polish and deep purple lipstick. She gazed at brother and sister, at once embarrassed and intrigued.

  ‘Aunt Marta said to tell you that the undertakers are here.’

  ‘Then we’d better put on our coats. Are you two ready?’ Clement asked, as Zvi wiped away Shoana’s tears.

  ‘I am,’ Shoana said. ‘Zvi isn’t coming.’

  ‘He’s not?’

  ‘I intend to stay here and pray for the righteous of all nations. I shan’t go to the service.’

  ‘It’s hard when you remember what the Church has done to Jews,’ Shoana explained.

  ‘It’s hard when you remember what the Church has done to Christians,’ Clement replied, raising an unexpected smile. He felt a flicker of their former intimacy. ‘You haven’t told me what you think of the coffin.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Shoana said. ‘Truly beautiful. Pa would have been so proud.’

  Clement watched as the six pallbearers entered and lifted the lead-lined coffin on to their shoulders and into the hearse, before taking his place with his mother and sister in the first car of the cortège. On arrival at the church, they were greeted by a crowd of onlookers, reporters and cameramen, all heavily muffled against the cold. He ackno
wledged ruefully that his notoriety had now eclipsed his father’s and wished that, rather than training their lenses on him, the photographers would focus on the coffin. His mother clasped his arm ‘for support’ but, as she led him resolutely down the path, he wondered whether she meant his support for her or hers for him. He walked beside her down the nave and into the front pew, where he sat for the vicar’s words of welcome, rose for the opening hymn and knelt for the prayers. He resumed his seat as Roderick Britten, his father’s oldest friend and closest ecclesiastical ally, read from the first chapter of the Second Book of Samuel, in which the Amalekite tells David how he stabbed the dying Saul at his own request.

  Clement sensed the unease emanating from the rows behind at his choice of such a passage in place of the traditional psalm or verses from St John. After a spirited rendition of Dear Lord and Father of mankind, in which he felt the congregation’s relief at being back on home ground, he prepared for further controversy when John Remington, his father’s former chaplain, now Bishop of Stroud, entered the pulpit to give the address.

  ‘No one at this service today can fail to be aware of the circumstances surrounding it. Indeed,’ he said, staring at an unlikely group of mourners in the Lady Chapel, ‘I fear that there are some people here precisely because of the circumstances surrounding it. The usual sadness of death has been compounded by the question mark over the manner in which Edwin Granville died. Edwin expressly asked that there should be no eulogy at his funeral, a request with which I’m happy to comply, not least because no words of mine could begin to do justice to this great and good man. Instead, I’d like to take the opportunity to explore the predicament in which we all – none more so than Edwin’s son, Clement – now find ourselves. I don’t intend to discuss the specifics of a case which is currently the subject of legal proceedings or, for that matter, the state of the law, except to note that, like Edwin himself on an earlier occasion, I broke ranks with my fellow bishops when they opposed a recent bill to legalise a limited form of euthanasia. Rather, I wish to examine the broader issue of the authority on which we as people of faith – the Christian faith in particular, but I trust that my remarks will apply to all people of good faith – base our lives.

  ‘We heard a passage from the Second Book of Samuel, the only one in the entire Bible to feature what we now know as euthanasia. In it, Saul asks the Amalekite to end his suffering and the young man – and, in my view, his youth is significant – agrees because, in the words of the Authorised Version, “I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen.” This account differs substantially from that in the last chapter of the First Book of Samuel which immediately precedes it – a difference, incidentally, that you might suppose would give pause to all those who uphold the Bible as a flawless document in which every word comes straight from God – when, after the man, described as the king’s armour-bearer, refuses his request, Saul falls on his own sword, thereby breaking another taboo, that of suicide. In the version we read, however, the Amalekite takes the news of Saul’s death, along with his crown and bracelet, to David who, displaying the ruthlessness to which he is all too prone, has him killed, not – and this is the nub – because he has broken Mosaic Law, but because he has “slain the Lord’s Anointed”.

  ‘David’s concern with the status of the victim rather than the justice of the act is a clear case of pragmatism, and one which the Bible writer nowhere condemns. On the contrary, then, as now, rulers were expected to behave pragmatically. We feel uneasy when politicians launch any kind of moral crusade, if only because human nature is such that it invariably backfires. Bishops and priests, on the other hand, are expected to preach moral absolutism, even – I might almost say, especially – by people who never set foot inside a church. I would argue, however, that we too should embrace pragmatism, not in the popular sense of time-serving and compromise but in the original sense of judging actions by their consequences, spiritual and ethical as well as social and economic. Absolute truth, like absolute virtue, is to be found only in God.’

  Clement heard a rustle in the nave and longed to know if the congregation was affirming the bishop’s message or seeking to distance itself from it. Conscious, however, that on this of all days he must observe the proprieties, he fixed his gaze on the pulpit.

  ‘We live in a world that is, and will always be, imperfect. It defies logic to uphold an unchanging law when change is the law of the universe. Rather than imposing a set of antiquated penalty clauses, we should weigh up the consequences of peoples’ conduct. But there are those who prefer to live “by the book”. If they’re Christians, that book is the Bible, although, as we know full well, other faiths make equal claims for their scriptures. There are obvious attractions in declaring one book to be the fount of all truth, in obeying its laws and eliminating doubt, just as there are in retreating to a mock Georgian house in a gated community, safe from the threats and confusions of the modern world. But, in each case, it’s a false security; in each case it’s to cut ourselves off from the richness of life. Which is the true sin against the Holy Ghost. God gave us a universe of infinite variety, and the cost – as well as the joy – of that is moral complexity. The Bible exists to help us to make up our minds, not to close them. It’s a guide not a rulebook. It was written by men about God, not by God for men. We must interpret it according to our own hearts, and the human heart has always been closer to God than the human hand.

  ‘The greatest of all Biblical interpreters was Christ. He took Moses’ Ten Commandments and simplified them to two: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, the latter of which remains the best basis for a practical morality that I know. It demands both love and empathy, the Judge not that ye be not judged which Christ extolled in the Sermon on the Mount. Far from being a recipe for anarchy (or for throwing the lawyers among you out of work), it’s an acknowledgement that the only sound basis for judgement lies, not in laying down a set of hard-and-fast rules, but in putting oneself in another’s shoes. To take an obvious example, St Thomas Aquinas, who can be nobody’s idea of a heretic, overrode the Eighth Commandment, insisting that the poor had a right to appropriate the necessities of survival from the rich, an act he deemed to be “not strictly theft”, in terms very similar to those of his legendary contemporary, Robin Hood. In the same way, surely we can see that for a son to have the courage – the moral courage – to end the suffering of his terminally ill father is an act that is “not strictly” murder?

  ‘I would like to conclude by relating the concepts both of empathy and euthanasia to God. For what is the Incarnation but the greatest act of empathy in the history of the world? God so loved his people that he took on human form. And what is the Crucifixion but the greatest act of euthanasia? For it was God’s infinite mercy that he gave up His Son to be killed, to free humanity from its suffering and sin.’

  Clement wiped his eyes. He had been expecting the bishop’s theme but not such a ringing endorsement. While the choir sang Stanford’s Justorum Animae, he cast a sidelong glance at Shoana, but her face remained a mask. He sat in silence as the vicar enjoined the mourners to remember his father in their own ways, which, to his surprise, meant that his mind was filled not with brightly coloured images but a pellucid white light. He stood to sing To Be a Pilgrim, a hymn which summed up his father’s mission and valour without betraying his beliefs. He then bowed his head as the pallbearers approached the coffin, raised it on to their shoulders and carried it down to the family vault.

  Taking his mother’s arm, he walked behind, fearing for the slightest slip as the pallbearers negotiated the narrow transept doorway and bore the leaden coffin almost vertically down the vertiginous steps. He sensed their relief as they laid it on the catafalque, hugging the walls of the cramped chamber while the clergy and close family squeezed into place. The vicar rehallowed the vault, to the muffled strains of Elgar’s Nimrod, which filtered down from the nave where the rest of the congregation had stayed seated. C
lement stared at the rows of coffins which had once been the stuff of nightmare but now seemed no more daunting than an attic full of trunks. His gaze lingered on Mark’s, distinguished by its brighter varnish, and his thoughts turned to the brother, whose ninety-minute seniority had been multiplied by many years in death. He wondered how long it would be till his own flesh rotted and they were identical once again.

  He broke off as the solemn words his father had spoken over so many coffins were now spoken over his. As earth joined to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, he followed his mother in scattering soil on the lid. No matter that his father was to be laid to rest on a ledge and not in the ground, the symbolism remained constant. He held out the trowel to Shoana, who surprised him by shaking her head, moving instead to the grille where she placed a small stone. So he handed it to his aunt who, after tipping out the soil as daintily as if she were potting a plant, passed it to his uncle and cousins until, by a dismayingly roundabout route, it reached Carla and Mike. At a nod from the vicar, the pallbearers stepped forward, lifted the coffin and edged it into the vault. Clement watched as the undertaker formally locked the gate, leaving only the tip of a choir stall and wing of a Spitfire to rescue his father from the drabness of death. Then he took his mother’s arm, which felt unusually heavy, and led her back up the steps.