In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  The white face looked up towards the foot of the high Crucifix and beside it the hand of the priest turned over the pages of the book on his lap.

  “I think you had better say no more at present. I am not sure that you are well, and though of course that makes no difference to the glorious forgiveness which reposes in the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, it has a bearing upon the advice I shall give you. In cases of this sort the words of Absolution may be granted even in the face of an incompleted confession. I will now pronounce those words and you must have no fear of not being forgiven fully for everything you may or may not have done, whether you can recall it or not.”

  John bent his head.

  “Is there anything further you would like to say?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Are you quite sure you are well?”

  “Yes Father, I am quite well. I know what I have said and it is all true.”

  “Before I give you Absolution I must ask you to be sure that you pay back the money you stole to the person from whom you stole it.”

  “Yes, I will. Father—there is one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you tell me why I feel that I ought to be forgiven for something I never did? Why do I keep thinking about it all the time? Why have I felt different ever since it happened? Was it wrong of me to love her? Is that why I go on and on like this? Will I never be the same again? Happy like other people?”

  Father Delaura sighed and turned another page of the book.

  “These are difficult questions. I think I must ask you to confide in your guardian, Mr Victor. The seal of confession is absolute; but sometimes, where permission is not withheld, we feel that we may seek advice from those who are concerned so long as we do not divulge the particulars of the penitent’s sins. I feel sure that you can be helped to re-orientate yourself if you will allow me to suggest to your guardian that you should see a medical man without delay. May I suggest that?”

  “Yes, Father, if you must. But Mr Victor does know about it all.”

  “Nevertheless, my son, I do feel that a part of your difficulties lies beyond the Church’s sphere. We try nowadays to work with the professions and while you must never have any fear that God out of His infinite mercy has not completely absolved you from your past, at the same time there is nothing to prevent you from seeking such scientific help as is so providentially at hand in our time. Mr Victor no doubt will—” He broke off and then in a different voice said, “I will now pronounce the words of Absolution.”

  John waited for a few moments after the echo of the last words had died away to nothingness in the dark roof. He walked back down the swinging aisle to his own place in one of the centre pews and kneeled down.

  He could remember nothing distinctly; only the two words MISTER VICTOR, MISTER VICTOR. He prayed them over to himself and looked up again at the beautiful but remote Crucifix. It seemed immeasurably far away, a distant ornament that had no part in the fabric of the Church. At one time he had begun to feel light as though a burden were indeed being replaced by impatient wings lifting his knees from the hassock; but they had failed and his shoulders were now heavier than ever, he was back to his unchanged self; he had failed Father Delaura, and Mr Victor would be waiting for him.

  In the Lady Chapel Father Delaura had finished his prayers. Coldly, a little sadly perhaps, without a glance in John’s direction, he hurried in his black and white to the Vestry door and disappeared behind it.

  The Church was quite empty; it contained only himself and the dead God on the Cross. In front of him something caught his eye; the yellow shine of a brass plate affixed to the back of the next pew. He read it carefully:

  THIS PEW WAS OCCUPIED by

  H.M. KING EDWARD VII

  ON THE OCCASION OF HIS VISIT

  to

  WORTHING

  September 1905

  Leaning over the grainy wood John inspected the seat three feet beneath his eyes; it was quite unremarkable, no different from all the others.

  Crossing himself for the last time he hurried out of the Church.

  As he clattered back along the dry pavement he ignored yet was sensible of everything; people and trees passed him with the unreality of a train-landscape at the cinema. In the shopping streets the green buses roared and groaned, flags clapped in the wind; while behind the tailors’ windows, segregated in their glass boxes, well-dressed young men and women stood inviolate on their pedestals; their faces more evenly tanned than Audrey’s, their clothing more sharply creased than the murderer’s.

  He hurried up the concrete entrance to Rooker’s Close and running through the conservatory into the hall burst into Mr Victor’s brown study without knocking.

  With an almost maidenly deprecation Peter looked round at once. He sat very upright on the arm of Mr Victor’s chair and at the sight of John rose on to the twin columns of his white trousers. Mr Victor was slower; with chilling self-control he continued to gaze for a moment or two at the printer’s proofs on his lap and then very deliberately raised and traversed his grey face until it was directed at the open doorway.

  “I’m sorry sir! I had to see you, straight away. I expect Probitt has told you? I’ve just been to my confession and it was no good—can I talk to you sir?”

  Probitt felt for the tie he was not wearing and then made for the french windows. “I’ll go out this way sir.”

  In the way a man ignores his dearest possessions when his title to them is threatened by violence, in the way a householder will stumble to his bedroom door on the night of a burglary, insensible of everything for which he is about to do battle, Mr Victor ignored him; something live and threatening had walked in on his privacy and all his household gods were temporarily forgotten. As he sat there slowly concentrating his entire attention upon the source of the disturbance he was more terrible than a lion, less actively angry than a spider, and John shivered.

  “I have been expecting you, Bowden! Father Delaura has already telephoned me.” He settled back in the chair. “I might add that I was not expecting you quite like this. Where are your manners, Blaydon?”

  “Oh—I’m sorry sir.” Clumsily he started to shut the door, forgot it, and turning round stepped farther into the study. “It’s terribly important. You see, I let him go and now I’ve got a dreadful feeling that I should have had him arrested before it was too late.”

  “Really? That is most interesting.”

  “Yes sir—”

  “I think you had better sit down,” he glanced at the ceiling and then back at John. “I asked you to sit down and I would rather that you did not speak for a few moments; I think it would be wisest.”

  “But—”

  “No Blaydon! Kindly be seated on the upright chair and remain silent.”

  The determined immobility of the man facing him, his refusal to respond to the sense of urgency which had carried John so swiftly through the afternoon, was beginning to have its effect. Already he was experiencing a reawakening of the self-criticism which until now had lain dormant. A different view of his behaviour sought insistently to replace the one which had actuated him ever since he left the beach; he saw himself as someone gauche, gormless, and hysterical; an over-dramatic adolescent magnifying circumstances which were quite unremarkable, behaving like some odious only-child in a third-rate farce. He sat down and Mr Victor replaced his pipe between his lips.

  “I am going through the galleys of my essay on ‘The Tears of Christ’” he said quietly. “I greatly enjoy correcting proofs and I think—I hope that for some few minutes it may interest you to help me; but I do not want you to speak, Blaydon.”

  “No sir.”

  “Neither a yea nor a nay, Blaydon.”

  John took a fold of the velvety lining of his lower lip between his teeth and bit it. A small piece was detached and he swallowed it and then explored the gap with his tongue.

  “What do we mean by the Tears of Christ?” Mr Victor blew out a question mark of
pipe-smoke and read on: “surely, we mean more than tears? A rhetorical question, Blaydon; and though as a rule I deprecate rhetoric it still has its place in academic exegesis. The direct New Testament references to the tears of Christ Jesus are not numerous.—I might remark that at this point I have inserted an appropriate footnote.—Though there are indirect eschatological inferences from which we may safely assume that Our Lord did in fact weep on many occasions: notably in the Gospel according to St Luke Chapter 19 Verse 41.” He looked up. “You will not doubt recall another reference without my repeating it, and though I could take your silence as an affirmation I will repeat it nevertheless:

  “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

  a very beautiful stanza and one that should remind us that quite apart from everything else, Our Blessed Lord had inherited from His human forebears the gift of supreme poetry for which the Jews have always been remarkable. But I will read on: ‘We may, I think, consider the tears of Christ—Lacrima Christi—under three discrete headings: first, the physiological.’” He ejected another little gout of smoke, “This, Bowden, as you doubtless realise will permit of my disposing of some of the grosser excesses of Modernism! Second, Emotional. That paragraph needs considerable revision and so on the present occasion we must forgo it. Thirdly, we may examine the philosophical implications of these Holy Tears.” He patted his galley proofs together with all the affection of a poker player who has been dealt a Royal Flush. “Now this section, I must confess, originally gave me so much cause for thought that I had even considered abandoning it altogether as a matter proper only for discussion by the Mystical Theologians. Apart from everything else, to deal adequately with this profound mystery, it would have been necessary to reprint large sections of pre-Reformation commentaries which are already on the syllabus of the theological students for whom my own little work is intended.” He looked up. “You follow me, I hope?” Meeting the half-smile with his own eyes, John said nothing.

  Mr Victor’s sunken gaze glinted as he replaced the proofs on his desk and crossed one short calf over the opposing knee. He smiled threateningly and glanced at his watch.

  “You may now, if you are sure you are more collected, break your silence, Blaydon. You were talking, I believe, of having let someone go; and you mentioned in passing that your recent confession to my respected and dear friend Father Delaura was ‘no good’. Perhaps you would now comment on these statements, in order.”

  “Yes sir.” John filled his chest. “I expect Probitt told you about the beach; but he didn’t understand. I had to tell him a lie, the man hadn’t picked my pocket at all. The reason I wanted to have him arrested was because I had recognised him—he was the Murderer.”

  He noticed that there was no tremor of the thin scrupulously clean fingers as Mr Victor’s hands came together over his waistcoat.

  “Just so.”

  “He was the Murderer!” John repeated.

  Because Mr Victor’s face was in shadow he could not see whether or not it had changed colour. “So you said.”

  “He was the man who murdered Victoria two years ago in Yorkshire and when I accused him he ran away—”

  “He ran away.”

  The placidity of the interruption, as expressionless as an echo, unnerved him still further. He exerted himself once more.

  “He pretended he thought I was ill and then shoved me out of his way and escaped through the back of the tent.”

  Mr Victor had been leaning in his chair until this moment; but now, despite the fact he had made no perceptible movement he appeared to be crouching. “What tent, Blaydon?”

  “The tent belonging to the—a tent on the beach sir.”

  “Belonging to the what? the who?”

  “Some girls,” it sounded lewd, “some women,” this sounded Biblical and even more suggestive. “Ladies, sir, Audrey and—Sheila, Miss Miller. But that’s not important.” It wasn’t important, he wasn’t going to have it made to seem important. He was being hypnotised. It was becoming increasingly difficult to believe in his own attitude, the still power of the man in the chair was having a paralysing effect on his conviction. “The point is, sir, that the man escaped; he’ll have gone off in his car to another town and unless we—”

  “A moment, Blaydon! These ladies with whom we are on such familiar terms—you say that this stranger made his escape through their tent? He was not with you?”

  “No, he was—”

  “I take it, then, that you were with the owners of the tent?”

  “No sir, I wasn’t. I explained that to Probitt.”

  “I know you did.”

  “I was lying near them but I wasn’t talking to them; really sir! He came along later and—”

  “But you know their Christian names, Blaydon? or are those too an invention on your part?”

  “Those are their names: I heard them talking to each other that’s how I know their names.”

  “Ah yes! Your remarkable powers of memory outside working hours. Did you report the loss of this imaginary wallet to the ladies concerned?”

  “Yes sir, as I’ve already explained, I had to.”

  “And did they believe you?”

  “I think so.”

  “A little surprising surely? that two strangers should believe that a third party had been robbed of a wallet by yet another person who had had no access to his clothing?”

  “What, sir?”

  Over the pale hook of the nose the fierce eyebrows drew slowly together and Mr Victor spoke very slowly. “Unless of course the stolen wallet had been in the tent used by the alleged thief, the tent belonging to the ladies.”

  John separated his tongue from his palate. “I’m sorry sir, I don’t understand. I seem to be muddled.”

  In his chair Mr Victor executed a tiny wriggle, a little massage of the buttocks against the soft cushion.

  “So I see! But I think I can help you. I am suggesting, Blaydon, that in defiance of our rules you have struck up a friendship with two of the town-girls on the beach. That in addition to being on such intimate terms with them that you habitually use their first names, you are in the habit of sharing their tent with them.”

  He stood up; a black bald-headed figure against the drowsing garden. John saw that his hands were quite still, that his pace to the fireplace was measured, and his turn in front of the crested tobacco-jar on the mantelpiece unhurried and precise.

  Somewhere in the depths of his mind he had ceased to mourn his lost impetus; somewhere behind the bricking up of the light he knew a clear despair that hung against a back wall whitely; he was scarcely concerned with it.

  Mr Victor looked at him with contempt. The shortened upper lip revealed the young dentures, the old eyelids drooped in their shadows and the nostrils dilated on hairy depths.

  “This—this gutter-cunning, this adolescent prurience would have been enough”—the narrow torrent of his words filled the room. “For you, Bowden, apparently it was not enough; not content with threatening the good name of this … you add to your tally by running hot foot to the Church and attempting to involve Father Delaura…” Mr Victor’s pale yellow hands disappeared from his sides to meet and embrace somewhere behind his buttocks. “Clever of you, Blaydon, remarkably clever! That is what has alarmed me … He felt that he might have failed in his function as a priest, but I was able to reassure him. I told him as I had earlier told you that I had recently myself had cause for concern … regretted my haste in having sent you to him without a little further reflection … Doing myself something of an injustice perhaps, because this afternoon I did my best to gain your confidence, to dissuade you from any evil you might even then have been contemplating and to … Made unhappy, Blaydon, to think what must have been the state of your mind after your rejection of me—of my help in the rose-garden four hours ago. It is one thing
to commit an offence blindly; it is quite another when what is done is premeditated.”

  John sat up. “Premeditated:” the word, so fresh in his mind, reached through to him.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Mr Victor took a pace towards him; he seemed to suck himself forward and hover a few feet over the seaweed-brown carpet, pale and bulbous like a giant squid wreathed in its ejected ink.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying; you don’t know what you’re thinking. It sounds as though you’re reading out of a book again and it’s making me muddled.”

  Mr Victor retreated and John stood up. The change of posture helped him; it was symbolic of the return of his belief in himself. With one of those lightning strokes of insight which illuminate people in their darkest situations he saw that he had inherited from his mother the ability to gain an instant power from the emotion of anger. At such times he was, like her, possessed of a dynamic, an arrogant and intuitive coherence which few people could withstand for long.

  Mr Victor he knew, had already sensed the change in him; the short retreat he had made towards the mantelpiece was in itself conciliatory.

  “Sit down Bowden, please sit down.” A hand reached forward and rested on John’s shoulder. “Though I may have been a little vehement in my remarks it was only because I was trying to help you to see the truth about yourself. Confusion is a terrible thing; but however painful the process may prove, one must not cling to it when one finds it being dispersed—destroyed!”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then sit down.”

  “If you don’t mind I’d rather stand.”

  Mr Victor frowned, a movement as quick as a lizard’s and as wary.

  “Very well then,” he sighed. “Let us resume. Perhaps you had better tell me, confess to me, if I may put it like that, the full extent of your relationship with these girls on the beach.”