by Flynn
The policeman may have represented law and order but Anna was concerned with higher laws and higher orders.
"That's you, mister," Anna was undeterred and went on, "and that's you inside me. Ain't it, Fynn?"
"Sure. Sure is, constable, that's you right enough," I agreed.
"Only you don't look like that really. You look like this." She shuffled a few feet to one side and drew another large circle and filled it with dots.
"That's me inside you," she said, pointing to a dot, "but that dot is really that circle. That's me."
The policeman was leaning forward looking at Anna's universe. "Ah!" he said knowingly. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders. After a hum or two he pointed his size twelves at one of the outside dots.
"Know what that is, Titania?"
"Wot?" said Anna.
"That's the Sarge. He'll be along in a few minutes and if this pavement isn't cleaned by then, you'll be in one of these." His foot described a large circle. "Know what that is? That's a police station." His broad smile softened his gruff voice.
Anna took my offered handkerchief and erased the universe from the pavements of Westminster embankment. Standing up, she flapped the chalk dust from my handkerchief and handed it to me. "
"Mister," she said, "do you always work here?"
"Most times," the policeman replied.
"Mister," Anna took his hand and pulled him to the wall, "mister, is the Thames the water, or the hole it goes in?"
The policeman looked at her for a moment and then replied, "The water, of course. You don't have a river without water."
"Oh," said Anna, "that's funny, that is, 'cos when it rains it ain't the Thames but when it runs into the hole it is the Thames. Why is that, mister? Why?"
The policeman looked at me. "Is she having me on?"
"You're being let off lightly," I said. "I get it all day long."
The policeman had had enough. "Hop it, you two, hop it or I'll—Oh yes. One last word of warning. You'd better go home that way," he pointed with his linger. "Er—Peaseblossom and Cobweb," his grin was difficult to control, "will be along here in no time. If you're still around, you might get your Bottom smacked—Get it?" he chuckled, pleased with himself.
"Comics," I muttered, "the whole world's full of comics."
I grabbed Anna's hand and led her away. "Nice work, Tich, nice work. A good bit of thinking, all that Thames stuff."
"Oh," muttered Anna, "but when do you, Fynn? When do you start calling it the Thames and when do you stop calling it the Thames? Do you have a mark? Do you, Fynn?"
Old Woody was right. The daylight schooled the lenses and the nighttime developed the wits, stretched the imagination, sharpened fantasy, hammered home the memory and altered the whole scale of values.
I began to realize why most people went to sleep in the nighttime—it was easier. A whole lot easier.
* * *
ten
It looked pretty certain that the war would come. Already the gas masks were making rude noises in the streets. The men with the Anderson shelters were clumping corrugated iron sheets in back gardens. Notices about the gas attacks, sirens, shelters, and what lo do "if," were multiplying like the spots of some disease. The decay of war was spreading everywhere. The walls against which the kids played their ball games had become the notice boards of war. The rules of "four sticks" chalked up on the wall had been cove-red over with the regulations for the blackout. We were being instructed in the rules of a new game. On very rare occasions an instruction said something oilier than had been intended: ALL EXPECTANT MOTHERS MUST SHOW THEIR PINK FORMS. It would have been nice to think that it had been done deliberately, but it hadn't.
The infection of war was spreading through the kids. Balls were no longer things to bounce; balls had become bombs. Cricket bats were pressed into service as machine guns. Kids with outstretched arms gyrated through imaginary skies with a rat-a-tat-tat, shooting down enemy planes or shooting up enemy soldiers. A shriek of wheeeeee, booooom and a dozen kids died in feigned agony. "Bang, you're dead!"
Anna held tightly to my hand and pressed herself close to me. It wasn't the kind of game that she could play; the acting and the pretending belonged to something real, and it was this reality that Anna saw so clearly. She pulled at my hand and we went indoors and out into the garden. It wasn't much better there, for over the housetops a barrage balloon made mock of the skies. She turned a full circle looking at these intruders in the sky. She looked me full in the face as her hand stretched out for mine. A frown flickered over her face.
"Why, Fynn? Why?" she asked, searching my face for an answer.
I could give her no answers. Kneeling down, she gently touched the few wild flowers that grew in the backyard. Bossy arrived and rubbed his battered old head on her leg. Patch, lying full length, eyed her with concern. It must have been the best part of an hour that I stood there watching her touch and explore these few square yards of garden. Delicately and reverently her fingers moved from beetle to flower, from pebble to caterpillar. I was waiting for her to cry, expecting her at any moment to run to my arms, but she didn't. I wasn't at all sure what was going on in her mind. All I knew was that the hurt was deep, perhaps too deep for my comfort.
Some time ago I had started to light up a cigarette, but I hadn't got very far. It was still unlit between my lips when I heard her say, so very quietly, "I'm sorry." She wasn't talking to me, she wasn't talking to Mister God. She was talking to the flowers, to the earth, to Bossy and to Patch and to the little bugs and beetles. Humanity asking the rest of the world for forgiveness.
I was intruding here so I went into the kitchen and I swore. It struck me as curious that since knowing Anna I was swearing much more frequently. It ought to have been the other way around, but it wasn't. I grabbed the unlit cigarette out of my mouth. It had stuck to my lips and it felt as if I had pulled half the skin from my lips. It made me swear some more, but it didn't make me feel any better.
I don't know how long I sat there. It seemed forever. It was the horror of my own imagination that drove me into the garden again. My imagination had somehow provided me with a machine gun and I was busy killing off those who had caused Anna so much hurt. Confused and bewildered at my own violent thoughts, I went out into the backyard half afraid that in some mysterious way she had divined them.
She was sitting on the garden wall with Bossy on her lap. She grinned as I approached her, not ope of those full-blooded grins, but full enough for me to slam the door on my own violence.
I went back into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Soon after we were both sitting on the wall drinking our cocoa. My mind was racing away with questions I wanted to ask but I managed not to. I wanted to be assured that she was all right, but I wasn't given that assurance. I knew that she wasn't all right. I knew I hat the horror of the impending war had struck deep down inside her. No, she wasn't all right, but she was managing very well. For Anna, this war creeping up on us was a deep sorrow of the soul. It was me that was anxious.
Later that evening, when Anna was ready for bed, I suggested she could come into bed with me if she wanted to, to give her comfort, to give her protection, Of course. Lord, how easy it is to fool yourself, how easy to cover up your own maggots of fear, by pretending they belong to someone else. I knew full well l hat I was concerned for her, that I was aware of her distress, and that I was ready to do anything to comfort her. It was only in the middle of the night that I realized how much I needed her assurance that she was all right, how much her sheer sanity protected me. For all her few years, I saw her then as I see her now, the sanest, the most uncluttered, and the most direct of beings. Her ability to ignore the excesses of information, dismiss the useless frill, and uncover the heart of things was truly magical.
"Fynn, I love you." When Anna said that, every word was shattered by the fullness of meaning she packed into it. Her / was a totality. Whatever this / was for Anna was packed tight with being. Like the
light that didn't fray, Anna's / didn't fray either; it was pure and all of one piece. Her use of the word love was not sentimental or mushy; it was impelling and full of courage and encouragement. For Anna, love meant the recognition of perfectibility in another. Anna saw a person in every part. Anna saw a you. Now that is something to experience, to be seen as a you, clearly and definitely, with no parts hidden. Wonderful and frightening. I'd always understood that it was Mister God who saw you so clearly and in your entirety, but then all Anna's efforts were directed to being like Mister God, so perhaps the trick is catching -if only you try hard enough.
By and large, I thought I could understand Anna's attitude to Mister God, but on one aspect I got stuck completely. Perhaps it was hidden in "Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding and didst reveal them unto babes." How she managed it, I truly don't know, but in some manner she had scaled the walls of God's majesty, his awe-inspiring1 nature, and was on the other side. Mister God was a "sweetie." Mister God was fun, Mister God was lovable. Mister God was for Anna pretty straightforward, not presenting her with any real problem in the understanding of his nature. The fact that he could, and often did, put a large monkey wrench in the works was neither here nor there. He was perfectly free to do so, and obviously it was for some good purpose, even though we were not able to see or understand that purpose.
Anna saw, recognized, admitted to, and submitted to, all those attributes of God so often discussed. Mister God was the author of all things, the creator of all things, omnipotent, omniscient, and at the very heart of all things—except. ... It was this exception that Anna saw as the key to the whole thing. This exception was funny, exciting, and made Mister God the sweetie he was.
What puzzled Anna was that nobody had seen it before—at least, if they had seen it, nobody seemed willing to talk about it. It was very odd, since it was for Anna so strange a thing that only Mister God could have thought about it. All the other qualities of Mister God, those qualities so often talked about in church and school, were magnificent, .tremendous and, let's face it, a little frightening. Then he had gone and done this thing. It made him lovable, funny, giggly.
You could, if you wished, deny that Mister God existed, but then any denial didn't alter the fact that Mister God was. No, Mister God was; he was the kingpin, the center, the very heart of things; and this is where it got funny. You see, we had to recognize that he was all these things, and that meant that we were at our own center, not God. God is our center, and yet it is we who acknowledge that he is the center. That makes us somehow internal to Mister God. This is the curious nature of Mister God: that even while he is at the center of all things, he waits outside us and knocks to come in. It is we who open the door. Mister God doesn't break it down and come in; no, he knocks and waits.
Now it takes a real super kind of God to work that one out, but that's just what he's done. As Anna said, "That's very funny, that is. It makes me very important, don't it? Fancy Mister God taking second place!" Anna never got involved in the problem of free will. I suppose she was too young, but she had got to the heart of the matter: Mister God took second place, ain't that something!
It was after ten o'clock on a Sunday morning. Anna had been up for a long time. She was shaking me awake with one hand and holding a cup of tea with the other. My one opened eye registered on the teetering cup and saucer in her left hand. It was more than possible that the cup would end up in bed with me if she shook much harder. I moved across the bed to give myself more room for any emergency maneuver.
"Desist, infant," I implored.
"Cuppa tea, Fynn," she plonked down on the bed. The cup gave a last frantic twirl around the saucer and settled down. After scraping the bottom of the cup on the saucer edge she handed it to me. The amount of tea left at the bottom of the cup might have been enough to drown a fly or two, or at least certainly inconvenience them. I lifted the cup to drain what was there and was smitten on the nose by half a dozen lumps of undissolved sugar. I made a face at her.
"That is tea?" I questioned.
"Drink wot's in the saucer then. I'll hold it for you."
I'm never at my best first thing in the morning and need both my arms to prop myself up. I sat on the edge of the bed and braced myself, closed my eyes and opened my mouth. The saucer rattled against my back teeth as she thrust it in and tipped it up. I got about a third of the tea inside me and the rest outside. Anna giggled.
"A drink I need; a wash I can wait for. Away to the kitchen and start brewing."
I pointed to the door. She went.
"Fynn's awake," she yelled. "He wants some more ! tea. He spilt that lot down his pajamas."
"May you be forgiven," I muttered as I took off my pajama jacket and mopped my chest with the dry bit.
You didn't have to wait long for tea in our house. Tea was for us what serum is for a casualty ward— ever present. Tea with saffron was good for something or other—fevers, I believe. Tea with peppermint was good for flatulence. Tea woke you up and tea sent you to sleep. Tea without sugar was refreshing, tea with sugar was energizing, tea with a lot of sugar was good for shock. For me, waking up was a shock, so the first cup of tea of the day was nice and sweet.
Anna arrived back in a couple of shakes with more tea.
"Will you make me two paddle wheels this morning?" she asked.
"Could be," I answered. "Where you paddling off to?"
"Nowhere. I want to do an experiment," she replied.
"What size paddle wheels and what are they for?" I questioned.
"Little ones like this," and her hands measured about three inches apart. "And it's for finding out about Mister God."
Requests like that I took in my stride these days. After all, if it was possible to read sermons in stones and things, why not in paddle wheels?
"And can I have the big bath, and, some hose pipe, and a tin with a hole in it? I might want something else but I don't know yet."
While I made the paddle wheels Anna assembled her experiment. The paddle wheels were mounted on axles. A large cylindrical tin had a half-inch hole drilled in its side near the bottom of the tin. One of the paddle wheels was soldered inside the tin across the newly drilled hole. After about an hour of hectic activity I was called into the yard to see the Mister God experiment in action.
A hose from the tap was filling the large bath. The tin with its paddle wheel sat in the middle of the bath, weighted down with stones. As the water poured in through the hole, the paddle wheel was turning. More hose pipe was doing service as a syphon, taking the water out of the tin, falling into and spinning the second paddle wheel, and ending up going down the drain. I walked around the experiment and raised my eyebrows.
"Do you like it, Fynrr?" asked Anna.
"I like it. But what is it?" I asked.
"That's you," she said, pointing to the tin with its paddle wheel.
"Bound to be. What am I doing?"
"The water is Mister God."
"Gotcha."
"The water comes out of the tap into the bath."
"I'm still with you."
"It goes into the tin, that's you, through the hole, and makes you work," she said, pointing to the spinning wheel, "like a heart."
"Ah!"
"When you work, it comes out of this tube," she pointed to the syphon, "and that makes the other wheel work."
"What about the drain?"
"Well," she hesitated, "if I had a little pump like Mister God's heart I could pump it all back into the bath. Then I wouldn't need the tap. It would just go round and round."
So there you are then. How to make a model of Mister God, with a couple of paddle wheels. No home should be without one. I sat on the wall and smoked a cigarette while I watched Mister God and me spinning paddle wheels.
"Ain't it good, Fynn?"
"Sure is good. We'd better take it to church on Sunday. It might give somebody some ideas."
"Oh no, we couldn't do that. That would be bad."
; "How's that?" I asked.
"Well, it isn't Mister God, but it's a little bit like him."
"So what? If it works for you and it works for me, that's fine. It might work for someone else."
"It works because me and you is full up."
"And what might that mean?"
"Well, if you are full up, you can use anything to see Mister God. You can't if you're not full up."
"Why's that? Give me a for-instance."
She never hesitated.
"The cross! If you're full up, you don't need it 'cos the cross is inside you. If you're not full up, you have the cross outside you and then you make it a magic thing."
She tugged at my arm and our eyes met. She spoke quietly and slowly. "If you're not full up inside you, then you can make anything a magic thing, and then it becomes an outside bit of you."
"Is it that bad?"
She nodded. "If you do that, then you can't do what Mister God wants you to do."
"Oh! What's he want me to do then?"
"Love everybody like you love yourself, and you've got to be full up with you to love yourself properly first."
"Like most of a person is outside," I said.
She smiled. "Fynn, there ain't no different churches in heaven 'cos everybody in heaven is inside themselves."
Then she went on, "It's the outside bits that make all the different churches and synagogues and temples and things like that. Fynn, Mister God said 'I am,' and that's what he wants us all to say—that's the hard bit."
My head went up and down in bewildered agreement.
"I am . . . that's the hard bit. I am." Really get around to saying that and you're home; really mean it and you're full up—you're all inside. You don't have to want things outside you to fill up the gaps inside you. You don't leave bits of you hanging around on objects in shop windows, in catalogs or on advertising hoardings. Wherever you go you take your whole self with you; you don't leave bits lying around to get stamped on; you're all of a piece; you're what Mister God wants you to be. And "I am," like he is. Hell's bells! All this time I had thought that going to church was in order to look for God, for praising him. It didn't dawn on me what Mister God was doing. All this time he had been working overtime trying to knock a bit of sense into my noodle, trying to turn an "It is" into an "I am." I got the message. That was the Sunday I really signed on.
