by Ashly Graham
‘The only thing I may have misled you on a bit, and I’m sorry about this, Jimmy, is that a magpie may not know how awful his voice is any more than he likes the sound he makes. I said I’m sorry, Jimmy…well, Jimmy, because one has to dress these things up a little in order to entertain. In the animal and bird kingdom no one wants to be someone or something else than what they are, or go on holiday, or have a lie-in in the morning. No one desires to be rich in a world where there is no money and no need for it, and no such thing as possessions or entitlements, and where the only wealth is life—which for the animals and birds is neither wealth nor an inheritance or gift or lottery win, only a fact that they do not question because there is nothing to question.
‘Sure, birds and animals play games from time to time, as you’ll know if you’ve seen fox cubs frolicking, but keeping their wits sharp is part of getting ready for the day when their parents stop feeding and looking after them. Animals and birds are born with the skills that will see them through their lives. They do not have to tidy their rooms or go to school or take baths, or eat and drink things they don’t like…Jimmy, your mother shall speak to you afterwards. They do not go to the doctor or hospital. The grooming and preening that they must do to keep themselves in condition, they do themselves. Nothing that they do is not connected to the deadly serious business of living. Has anyone ever seen a rabbit boiling a kettle to make a cup of tea, or eating a bar of chocolate, or posting a letter to a friend, or sitting next to one in the cinema?
‘Oh good…Alice has, thank goodness it’s Alice this time—I think that’s why you put your hand up, Alice dear, isn’t it?. Yes, Alice has, but then she is more observant than the rest of us.
‘As human beings we may lack the confidence of the duckling as it takes to water for the first time, of the foal that struggles from the ground as soon as it is born, and of the golden eaglet as it launches itself from the precipice without its mother’s assurance that it is sufficiently fledged to bear itself aloft. But we should not mistake what they do for confidence because it is not confidence, it is an urge to get on with life and do what they know without thinking they must do.
‘We humans, on the other hand, are not born with confidence, but with talents. Each of us has talent or talents of some kind, to greater or lesser degree, but it is not a sin or evidence of failure or a deficiency in ourselves if our natural skills are not apparent or lesser or fewer in us than they are perceived to be in others. Some may be industrious in developing their talent through hard work, tutoring, training, and practice; or they may be lazy and ignore it. Talent in us is the equivalent of the instincts that are inherent in animals and birds.
‘But we humans have one thing that no animal or bird has: the power of choice. We humans may not be equally talented but we are all equally able to make decisions, for better or for worse: moral decisions, decisions that we know, if we are “sane” in a certain sense, when we make them that they might be either right or wrong. We all know that there are such things as right and wrong, and that there is a difference between them, for reason that we know our personal decisions affect other people as well as they do us.
‘It is because of this knowledge that we may question our judgements, and change our minds, and revise our opinions, and repent of what we have done wrongly, and attempt reparation, and endeavour to do better in future. That we can do so is proof positive that the greatest reality of all is that which cannot be proven, and that the future or consequence of our decision-making is not predetermined or certain. If to a child there is no difference between dreaming about being able to fly, and doing so “in reality”, why should it not be true? Perhaps we can fly, or will be able to when our minds and bodies tell us that we can. Oh dear, I’m sorry…Jimmy, your father shall also speak to you after Service.
‘And if when we’re young we believe that we will never die, that it is impossible to die, why should that not be true also?’
Raising her fists to her shoulders and stretching her arms as if she had just woken up, Ophelia smiled. ‘Really, I wasn’t thinking of saying anything much today. That must be the longest I’ve ever gone on about anything, I hope it didn’t come across as being too sermon-like. The only way I can think of making good is to encourage you all to go and partake of some of Effie’s wonderful refreshments. Jimmy and Alice, I see, are already on the way down to the children’s table.’
Noticing that the devil lady and her manservant had stood up and were sidling to the door, she added sharply, ‘And because Mrs Diemen and her partner are close to the back, perhaps they’ll do us the honour of serving the tea and coffee, and washing up afterwards. I am sure Effie won’t mind so long as she and her helpers remain in charge of the cakes. Thank you both so very much.’
Boxed in by the surge of bodies to the back, the infernal pair had no choice but to be inveigled into duty at the trestle-table with the samovar and the aluminium teapots and cups and instant coffee and tea bags and milk and sugar and spoons. Although the DL was in a rage, she was anxious to spare herself the ignominy of being pelted again with cake and buns, and composed her features as best she could as she assumed the menial task. Grinding his teeth audibly, her manservant filled the teapots from the spigot on the electric urn, and did not wince when he poured boiling water over his hand.
As they passed the cups to the outstretched hands of generations of parishioners, everyone took the opportunity to barrack the duo. Only the presence of Father Fletcher could have made their satisfaction more complete.
The devil lady and her man bore the insults and raffish jokes, each of which prompted raucous laughter, with set faces.
‘Hey lady, this ain’t strong enough. Ain’t you never made tea before? How many bags you put in?’
‘Three sugars, O Madam of the Manor.’
‘Easy on the milk there, pal.’
‘No, I said black—black as your heart and soul.’
‘This Sunday if you please, milady.’
‘And one for yourself, when you doan’t get a moment.’
As soon as everyone was served, and the devil lady found herself being advised by a frock-coat not to wrinkle her alabaster hands with the washing-up and to leave the job to her minion, she took advantage of a space in the throng to make a break for the door, dash down the lane with her tail between her legs, and whoosh home along the hilltop.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At mid morning, as her man was bringing in a pot of freshly brewed coffee and about to serve it, the devil lady looked furtively at the fireplace and saw that the demons, who had been absent when she came down, had returned. But there was a difference: now, instead of moving in their usual St Vitus’ dance, they had formed into ranks and were standing to attention.
As ominous as that was, the DL’s worst fears were confirmed when the fire, as if it had been suddenly deprived of oxygen, was sucked up the chimney with a great roar and extinguished. The room grew very cold and daylight turned to darkness.
Then the flames roared back, burning much more fiercely than before. The air was saturated with evil, and she felt like a child who, in a nightmare, walks into a room to find it thick with ghosts that fluttered like moths against her face. Every vein and artery, every sinew, muscle, ligament, bone and tendon of her human disguise burned in agony and her blood boiled. Both she and her man fell quailing to the floor, all distinction between them gone.
Although no feature was distinguishable of who- or whatever had invaded the room, none was necessary for them to comprehend the presence and essence and authority of the foul agglomeration of evil personified, owing to the impossibility of human comprehension and classification, as the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness.
No words were spoken and they did not have to be. It was sufficient that the devil lady knew that she had been visited, and that the eye of the Infernal Council had been turned upon her.
A moment or a minute later the sooty blackness dispersed and sunlight returned. The f
ire died down to its normal size and the demons resumed their prancing, though without their former manic abandon. The pair picked themselves up and the DL tottered to an armchair, where her serving-man, unusually solicitous, ignored the coffee and instead poured her a tumbler of whisky from the decanter on the sideboard. He filled a smaller glass for himself and sat down on a footstool.
The devil lady, for once grateful for the familiarity and companionship of one who had an inkling of what had just happened, took a gulp. Conscious of how much she was shaking, she used both hands to set the tumbler down on the side-table.
‘How paradoxical it is,’ she said hoarsely, feeling the need to unburden herself, ‘that even when one is doing the best one can towards meeting one’s goals, there is no respite from the unremitting pressure to confirm and reconfirm oneself in damnation. Hell is paved with good intentions. There are no garlands in a place where success and failure are punished equally.’ The servant, both wanting and not wanting to hear more, knocked back his drink and got another. ‘On earth, evil is an unnatural element that can be harboured or concealed but not absorbed. It is like oil on water, or globules of mercury that can only subdivide into more globules.
‘Goodness, on the other hand, permeates a being as oxygen does the atmosphere. Fighting it is like trying to hold down a lifebelt in water: the harder one pushes, the greater the resistance, the more tiring it becomes. Spring springs, grass and flowers grow, trees blossom, the sun is warm, crops are sown and reaped, creatures are born—all naturally and easily. There is nothing we can do about the inevitability of renewal, no point in trying, any more than we are responsible for natural disasters that occur, of drought, famine, earthquake, volcanic eruption, tsunami, hurricane and tornado, fire, flood, freeze. There is no evil in them, only human sorrow.
‘Nor are we responsible for accident and disease, in fact we deplore them as much as does humanity, because people die in whatever state of Grace or condemnation they are in at the time of their deaths, when they are still a work in progress.’
Feeling her hands and voice more under control, the DL took another drink, and set the glass down. ‘On the other hand, a world of unadulterated goodness would be as bland as distilled water. Good is dependent on evil to limn and define it, to give it contour, depth and dimension, to animate it. Human beings are not born good, or bad, but neutral. Only as they mature are they conscripted or press-ganged into the battle of life and death. But they conscript, they press-gang, themselves. War is not declared until they declare it themselves. The war is of their own making. When the human soldiers arm and take to the field, at first they find the field empty. Then the alarum is sounded in the enemy camp.
‘But the inimical force does not muster against them, it remains unseen, hidden, like an infiltrator, a spy, an undercover agent. What is the cause the humans are fighting for? They do not know, all they know is that, whatever it is, it is personal. The soldiers think they are fighting for their lives, lives which are defined by their selfish interests, to ward off the incursions of others who lay unrighteous claim to what they unrighteously desire for themselves. They fail to recognize, fail to understand, that they are not fighting for their lives, they are fighting for their deaths. They are fighting not to the death but to the life, where there are no selfish interests.
‘The battle is both lively and deadly. There are no Pyrrhic victories, where the blood shed on either side is so great as to make victory meaningless, because the enemy has no blood to lose. But the enemy has plenty of blood to shed.
‘Man has to work hard at being bad, and work hard he does. Hell’s job is to both ease his task and make it more difficult, by confusing the issue, skewing circumstances, stacking the deck, loading the dice, both in their favour and against them and providing as many opportunities as possible for Man to dig a deeper, and hotter, grave for himself. We lead Man down the garden path, and when it turns out to be a dead end, we turn and devour him. We increase the odds in our favour by striking Faustian bargains.
‘The sin of greed, avariciousness, is as prevalent amongst the poor as it is the rich. The poor mistake deprivation for beatitude. The hunger for wealth originates in the longing to immerse oneself in a worldly heaven, in return for which one is willing to jump the life to come, that is, risk the verdict being against one in the courts of the hereafter, or maintain a belief that they do not exist.
‘We are not fooled by the well-off, who only when they find themselves comfortably situated attempt to shed their guilt by buying the name of philanthropist, and laundering the acquisitive dirt from their garments. How many of them would have given away a tithe of their first day’s earnings? It’s a vicious circle that one joins at birth, and in the proving-ground of life may make little or no effort to break out of as the world increasingly appears to be unfairly withholding its prizes.
‘Consider the child who possesses something that he or she didn’t ask for, or think of asking for, or perhaps did not even want: a birthday gift, perhaps, something that his or her playmate doesn’t have. As a result, the playmate covets the article, and snatches or steals it. The playmate then loses interest in the item, because it was desired not for itself but to deprive the other of control and ownership. And now that he or she has taken it, the first child finds that it wants it after all, and fights to get it back.’
After a long silence, the DL bent forward and spoke harshly into the fire. ‘But what about me, the facilitator, the expediter, of downfall, how do I feel? I am not allowed to feel. How easy is that, for one who, following the finity of death’s adjudgement, is experiencing the infinite worst that life in death has, not to offer, but to impose? How difficult is that, when one has known what it was like to receive the daily blessing of dawn on the hillside, and on one’s face, and to inhale the fresh breath of Creation? When one has known what it was like be alive and, with the disadvantage of hindsight, know that one was redeemable? When it was possible that, in the words of the anchoress Julian of Norwich, “Sin is behovely,” or behoveful, meaning advantageous, expedient, necessary, fitting, “but all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”? When one had a soul to lose?’.
The manservant, who throughout had remained hunched and expressionless on the stool, was horrified. Scrambling to his feet he ran to the door.
For weeks the devil lady stayed holed up at the Old Rectory. It was not that the title of Lady of the Manor carried any obligations with it, but now that they did not have her around to throw things at, Mrs Diemen had become intriguing to the villagers. She was the main topic of conversation at their coffee mornings, their lunch and dinner tables, and when they encountered each other on the Street.
In the ordinary course of life, much that would be deprecated elsewhere was celebrated under the unwritten code of the countryside. The corollary of being opponents of red tape, as all denizens of this rural backwater were, was that they might be flexible in interpreting the law. Colourful characters, like Effie, who cocked a snook at authority were not just tolerated but commended for their activism. Such people, if they were new to the area, were more quickly assimilated into the community than others: it might take five years instead of ten. The only reprehensible conduct was that of trying to keep a low profile or remain anonymous; of preferring not to take a position or express an opinion on things, however controversial they might be; of failing to take a side or sitting on the fence.
People who could not be pigeon-holed as being a certain sort of person, good, bad, or indifferent, were regarded with great suspicion by the community. Better to have a reputation for unpleasantness than of being a loner. That Mrs Diemen had no identifiable pedigree was a source of great irritation. She was neither of the titled classes nor the landed gentry; she had no husband or children to declare; she was not known to be in any profession, business or trade. She made no effort to get involved in local causes or activities. She was not an expert on farming techniques, or flower-arranging, or the restoration of
antique furniture, and she did not ride to hounds or play bridge or throw lavish parties. Most frustrating of all, she was not known to have acquaintances who might be induced to dish the dirt on her.
Coaxed by flattery, the devil lady’s manservant, who was always the one to answer telephone calls at the Old Rectory, without asking permission took pleasure in making up imaginative answers to the enquiries that poured in from people and bodies starved for information about what Lady Muck’s views were on this, and what she intended to do about that, and whether she would join something else or make a donation to it. He became very free with his tongue and greatly enjoyed his self-appointed role as the DL’s spokesman and as a quotable source regarding the background, views and activities of the alleged recluse or hermit who employed him.
