After the Act

by Winston Graham

  My father was better than his word, and he found me plenty to do in a subsidiary role. I saw it all again just as I had seen it when I was twenty-four, and I liked it no more. The diseases were the same, the palliatives barely improved. Young women with anaemia or cystitis or splinters in their fingers, young men with acne or cut heads or gonorrhoea, the ageing with chronic dyspepsia, blood pressure, bronchitis, carcinoma. I liked it all no more—except that subordinate as I was there was no responsibility. This had been the incubus in the past—the obligation to take responsibility for another’s welfare. I had never been able to stop worrying about cases.

  At the end of the first week I went with my father to see an old friend called Parkinson who was dying of a thrombosis. He was a bank manager now retired whom we had known for twenty-odd years; and when we arrived we found the clergyman there who was still vicar of the church we had gone to when my mother was alive. Jonathan Martin was in his sixties, tall and big nosed like a bird, an intellectual, a worker, and a good advertisement for his beliefs, since he always looked happy and ten years younger than his age. He greeted me like an old friend, and after a decorous period by the bedside insisted on walking me back to his house for a drink and supper.

  Return to youth. So much of the last ten years sloughed off; one was a young, unfledged medical student again. Old Philips? Yes, he was still verger and still hated dogs. Did I remember Dick Keyes? He’s gone slumming in the East End; Keyes of all people. Nancy Partridge never married; always thought she had her eye on you. Percy Andrew’s in the States, representing English bicycles or something.

  As I was leaving I said: ‘I think I might come and see you again tomorrow, Mr. Martin. A personal word of advice.’

  He smiled at me from under his eyebrows and then saw my look. ‘Of course, I’ll be glad to have a chat. I prepared you for confirmation. It will be a pleasure.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bank on that.… One thing … how far are you bound? Is one, so to speak, granted the privileges of …?’

  ‘The confessional? Certainly. He would be a poor priest who uttered a word.’

  ‘He has no duty to the law?’

  ‘His duty is to God. No one else. Sorry to sound a trifle pompous, but that’s how it is.’

  ‘That’s how I’d want it to be.’

  Chapter Four

  I told him.

  It was really most odd, to find one’s feelings conforming with the old-fashioned precedent. A mind like my own that is intelligent, sophisticated and aware, should not need to talk about its one bad mistake.

  But it does, and I did. I can’t remember what he was doing while I was talking. I know it began with him sitting at his desk and me walking up and down; but when it was over he came into focus standing by the Georgian window pushing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

  Presently he looked up. ‘Oh, my dear fellow …’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  There was silence.

  ‘My dear fellow, I am so very sorry. As an—as an old friend I am—deeply upset.’

  I didn’t speak. After a pause he went on: ‘I had no idea. Do forgive me if this takes me a moment.…’

  The floorboard on which I was standing creaked two or three times, so I moved off it.

  ‘My dear Morris, you must have felt utterly distraught and miserable since this happened.’

  ‘Yes.’ After a pause I added: ‘ If I were not, I shouldn’t be here telling it all to you.’

  He glanced at me, at the slight combativeness of my tone. ‘ If you were not, you wouldn’t be telling it all to me—and seeking the only comfort this man can gain.’

  ‘Can he gain comfort? For this?’

  ‘I think so. It depends on so many things.… At least it would be true to say that the Church has always been less concerned with the enormity of the sin than with the sincerity of the contrition.’

  ‘In any event—’

  ‘But, my dear Morris, this—this that you have told me—this terrible situation in which you find yourself—it weighs on me now as it weighs on you. It’s too serious for me to give you—advice, counsel, guidance, off the cuff, as the saying is. Could we leave it until the morning, when I will have had time to think it over and to pray about it …?’

  I said: ‘Yes … But I’ve talked a lot: that hasn’t been easy either. I wouldn’t want to drive you into any snap reaction, but if there’s absolutely none now—none until tomorrow—I shall feel like someone who has stepped on a step that isn’t there. D’you think it would be possible to give me a few indications at this stage?’

  Martin went on filling his pipe. His fingers were pushing the tobacco in when the bowl was already full.

  I said: ‘ I’m sorry to come on you with this.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. This is exactly what I’m for. But I don’t want to let you down. This is vitally important for me—as of course it is for you. You see—’

  ‘I know it must be quite a shock, to a man in your position, especially having known me since the age of five, that I should do this thing—’

  He shook his head emphatically. ‘The reason I suggested waiting was that I wanted to think all round this before I speak: not any other reason. A man in my position, as you call it, is not more shocked because of his position. The very contrary. A priest comes to know a lot about the human heart, human frailty, the evil that men do. It’s his life. He becomes almost unshockable. But a priest too is fallible. He needs God’s help in all that he does for others.…’

  He stopped a moment, set his pipe down unlighted. ‘How can I put it? Tomorrow I will want to ask you many questions as to why you did this thing, how you arrived at a spiritual situation in which it became possible. But at the moment all I can say is this: the sin of murder is one of the most terrible it’s possible for a man to commit. To rob another creature of the precious gift of life … But perhaps it seems an even greater enormity to you because you have little consciousness of other sin. You ask me how this could possibly have happened? I don’t know, my friend. Perhaps I’ll never know. But I ask you in your turn to consider your life as a whole. The sin of murder seems a particularly vile one if you see yourself as a decent and respectable man. But it may seem a little less inexplicable, even perhaps a little less vile, if you realise that your life before this happened was not decent and respectable. We are all sinners, Morris. We all need Christ’s grace and forgiveness. Every day each one of us hammers another nail in the cross.’

  ‘That may be true in part—’

  ‘It’s true in whole if your life has been centred round self: self-will, self-indulgence, self-glorification—to the exclusion of God. And whose has not? Who does not need the comfort of his forgiving arms? Sin is a matter of choice, and on occasion all men choose sin.’

  After a minute I said: ‘I take the point. But I wish it were easier for me to see all sin as being of the same kind. I can’t. Of course I know self-indulgence, self-seeking is wrong. It’s probably the one thing taught by all creeds. And I know we’re all guilty of that. John Smith, who comes to you and confesses his utter selfishness, is one of thousands. But John Smith never allows that selfishness to putrefy into murder. I did. To say that murder is only another sin is true in a sense. In the same sense a mountain and a molehill differ only in size. But you can’t—’

  ‘Yes, of course, that’s what I am saying. And I’m asking you to look at the molehills and see that they are not so small. They are all part of the same mountain range. This terrible sin you have committed is the peak. That does not mean for a moment that it should be minimised—only seen in perspective.’

  I watched him strike a match and said: ‘If I have to be completely honest with you—and I know I have—I’ve come a long way since we used to meet ten years ago. As I’m sure you can guess. In so far as I’ve thought about religion at all it has been conditioned by intellectual doubt. Even now—even though now I want badly to see this act as a Christian should, I don’t know that I can. I shall need a great
deal of help. Somehow forgiveness takes second place in my mind to explanation.… That’s a pretty grim confession of itself. But at the moment it appears to be true. The biggest question of all in my mind is why?’

  Martin shook his head. ‘ You can never separate things out like that. Understanding can only grow out of repentance—there is no other way.’

  ‘Would you advise me to give myself up? I mean to the police, tell them what I’ve told you?’

  ‘What you do in that sense is a matter for your own conscience. I would not urge you to it. Indeed I’d be inclined to counsel you against it, certainly until the issues are clearer in your own mind.’

  I saw that he was waiting for me to go. ‘If I made the attempt, then; if I tried to return fully to the Church, to Christianity in its complete sense, this crime would not be an absolute bar?’

  ‘Nothing is an absolute bar except dishonesty of purpose. ‘‘If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins.’’ That statement is not qualified by exceptions. The breaker of one Commandment is no more excluded than the breaker of another.’

  That night Helen Collins—Helen Scott, I would have to get used to the name—was at her most irritating. My father, oddly enough, did not seem to mind her babble; and I wondered, for he had never been one to take fools gladly. Perhaps love, of a kind, breeds indulgence; and an old man’s easiest of all. Or was I intolerant of her for reasons of my own?

  I made an excuse and went early to bed—picked up an old book of mine, Lawrence’s short stories, and tried to read. But even here I couldn’t escape. ‘The imagination can rise above everything that is not organic damage. If one lives the life of the imagination, one can rise above any experience that ever happened to one. One can even commit murder and rise above that.’ And a few lines later: ‘By using the imagination a woman can justify herself in anything, even the meanest and most bad things.’ ‘ Men do that too. It’s the modern dodge. That’s why everybody today is innocent. To the imagination all things are pure—if you did them yourself.’

  I thought, you’re a fool, a clumsy fool ever to have opened your mouth, even to one person, even to a priest. As a modern man the ‘modern dodge’ should be yours. Don’t repent—justify. Harriet was an officious, overbearing woman and fast becoming a drunkard. Even without Alexandra’s existence she was making a misery of your life. All that happened was a moment of unfortunate though justifiable anger on your part, which had consequences you could hardly have anticipated. Why go crawling to the purveyor of an antique superstition, seeking absolution? In one’s rational mind was the only absolution one needed to seek or could possibly rationally accept. Tomorrow I’d cut the date with Martin and go back to London. There was nothing more for me here.

  But I went to see him next day.

  ‘One of the biggest difficulties of all,’ I said, ‘one of the great obstacles in the way of any sort of confession, if that’s what you suggest I should make, is that—very intermittently—I find myself not quite sorry.’

  Martin brought his eyebrow thatches together. ‘ In what way—not quite sorry?’

  ‘If I could bring Harriet alive again I would do it thankfully and without hesitation, even though there would be the disagreeableness of divorce to follow. So what I did was fundamentally motiveless. Yet every now and then—one occasion last night—something in me says: Why be sorry; she’s gone; she was always oppressive to you; be honest for a change; this is a rational world; don’t pretend you’re back with Father Christmas and the good-boy-gets-the-toys philosophy.’

  Martin said: ‘Certain ways you phrased your story last night made me wonder.… I would have thought from what you say that on a conscious level your wish to repent is absolutely sincere. On a subconscious level, you still have promptings of a baser, more primitive kind. Who has not? You should not look on this as an absolute bar between you and God—only as an obstacle which thought and prayer will overcome.’

  ‘What are you suggesting I should do at this stage?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that to begin with today we talk about this thing. Talking, unburdening one’s thoughts, is in itself a beginning of a healing process because it displays what is to be healed; it lubricates the spirit. Then when we have realised what is to be done we can begin to attempt it.’

  I said: ‘There is one enormous practical decision I shall have to make soon. Since Harriet’s death I’ve never seen Alexandra Wilshere. Before I meet her I must decide. There’s no longer any obstacle to our marriage, except this.… Can I marry her with this between us? Or must I tell her and ask her to share it—if she will?’

  He hunched his shoulders in the chair, as if he were cold. ‘This again is a matter for your individual conscience. But let me emphasise: nothing can be done without prayer, repentance, confession and absolution. If after a time I am in a position, on Christ’s behalf, to grant you absolution and remission, then you begin life as a new man. You have moved into a Christian fellowship with God. You know the words from Isaiah: ‘‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’’ Therefore, if your sin is forgiven, it may not need to be told to another. It has been told and confessed to God.’

  I moved across and stared at the theological books on the shelves.

  ‘One other thing,’ he said, ‘ in all this matter of Miss Wilshere. You must examine your conscience carefully. You must ask yourself what sort of love you have felt for her. Is it selfish, purely sensual, a clutching at something ephemeral and vain. Or is it true love such as you haven’t known before? Is God any part of it? I don’t mean in conscious thought or word but in essence. The answer to these questions must determine the whole of your future. That is, if you wish to live in Christ.’

  I said: ‘I can ask myself questions, but shall I know the answers?’

  ‘In due time. With patience and humility.’

  ‘How do I approach this? What do you propose I should do now?’

  ‘Go home and pray. Not easy, but try, and it will come. Then, having prayed, I suggest you get a piece of paper and write out a list of your sins—an honest list so far as you can judge them. Ignore for the moment this one, the greatest of them—instead concentrate on the others; try to set down all the ways by which you have estranged yourself from God, by which you have helped to crucify the indwelling Christ. Think about them, review them, small as well as great, those of omission as well as commission.’

  ‘Yes …’

  He said: ‘To admit your sin and be forgiven—that may seem simple, almost too simple a way out. What is not simple is reactivating your faith and trust in God, making Him the centre of your life—putting God first and not self. This is the fundamental step.’

  We stared at each other.

  He said: ‘You know, you’re not really a beginner at this, Morris. You’re not a complete stranger to Christianity. The basic principles are within you, to work on, to build on. But repentance is not something to be considered only after the committal of a grievous sin. It’s a lifelong process. For you, this should be the beginning of a long journey—in which I can help you and encourage you, but only that. The rest has to come from within. When you’ve thought over what you have done, all you have done, and prayed about it, then come with me and kneel at the altar rail. I shall be near you, and with God’s help you will be led to a true act of contrition. If that occurs there will be with you then the attentive Father, the risen Christ, the activating Spirit. Repentance will become not purely intellectual, not just emotional, but an act of the whole man. With God’s guidance you can begin life over again. I assure you, there is no greater prize.’

  When I got in that day Helen was in the house alone. I had noticed before that she was more nervous of me when my father was not there. We were, after all, of an age, and his presence was a barrier, perhaps in her view a safety barrier, between us. I don’t know if she thought, God help her, that I was sexually attracted to her—at least we we
re on a level, like two people meeting in a tennis club or at a dance.

  I was in the sort of confusion of spirit which would have been glad of silence and a tactful self-effacement; but that was not her way. She made tea and we sat and tried to talk. Once she pulled her skirt down over her knees. For heaven’s sake, I am not trying to suggest that she was wanton or dissatisfied with my father’s love; only that she was aware of other possibilities.

  Afterwards I helped to carry the things back to the kitchen. She was charmed with this evidence of simplicity in a famous playwright, and insisted on showing me the new dish washer they had just bought. While she was bending over it I noticed a long metal meat skewer lying on the draining board. Her back was towards me, curved, nylon covered. You could see the thin outline of her brassière strap. I thought: if she knew the truth she would be terrified, for I only had to pick up the skewer and push it in just below the brassière line, and in three minutes she would be dead. As a medical man I knew just the right place.

  The thought was academically interesting, for I did not like her, she was brash and silly and unbecoming to my father’s dignity. Yet the idea was one that I knew I would not succumb to if we stayed in this position for three years. Between the thought and the act was a completely unbridgeable chasm.

  But only a month ago I had bridged that chasm. How much safer was Helen than Harriet had been? How was I to be certain that I would not suddenly seize the skewer? Was it because I was not a true schizophrenic and could therefore still associate crime with retribution? Or because an impulse such as mine can come to a man such as me only once? Or because the Christian church was prepared to absolve me from my sin and to accept me back?

  But where was the guarantee that Helen was safe? Where was the guarantee that any woman was safe who interfered with my peace of mind? …