Chapter 6

Canon Thomas Cole arrived back at the rectory at half-past five. He had been visiting one of his parishioners, an old spinster who was ill; normally, for some unfathomable reason, he liked her and enjoyed her company, but he resented having to go to her this afternoon, because he had meant to spend some time at the well in Ditton Wood. Just as he was setting out, however, his wife remembered Miss Harrison; and, annoyed, he put the car back in the garage and set out on foot.

He was speedily roused to anger – or petulance, as it often seemed to his wife – but he was not vindictive, except when he was afraid, and he was certainly not afraid of Miss Harrison. Consequently he had almost forgotten his annoyance with her and her niece. When he was with women – particularly old unmarried women – he tended quite unconsciously to drop the rather mannered theatricality which had so surprised Matthew in him, and to put on instead the affectations, and even to a small degree the appearance, of an old woman himself. He did not flirt with them, as some parsons did; he imitated them, without knowing it, subtly and sincerely; and, also without knowing it, they were flattered, and enjoyed his company.

He had tea with them, and then left, having become Canon Cole again and resumed something of his annoyance. He could not quite place it: perhaps it was a belated frustration about his plans for the afternoon, perhaps something more deep-seated. He did not enquire very closely into his own feelings, as a rule, because he exteriorised them so thoroughly and successfully. The world, to him, was very vivid. But as he turned in to the rectory drive he realised suddenly what it was, and his annoyance gave way to apprehension. It was only that he had made an appointment with that boy, Matthew Cortez, for the evening. He wondered what he would find to say. As a priest he was used to receiving strangers in his house and being engaged in wearisome neurotic chatter. When he was younger he had done his best to get used to it, but he never liked it. He realised that people needed help, and that it was his duty to provide it; but only a duty, and not an inclination. He had only joined the church because of the opportunity it seemed to offer for the pursuit of scholarship. A university would not do; his scholarship was of a particularly fastidious, obsessive, even crazy kind which was best, perhaps, kept private and obscure. In another century he would have been an alchemist.

He would not have become a priest at all if he had not had some money of his own; for to concern himself with a hundred necessary petty economies and to witness the slow encroachment of shabbiness and dinginess into his life would have been an agony for him.

But Cortez; he would be a sounding-board, at least, if he did not fuss and fret about things. The Canon was embarrassed to find that he hoped Cortez would like him, that they’d get on together. Elizabeth these days was so hard, so hard to approach; and as for Gwen, his wife, she was – she could be very cruel. The air, the atmosphere between them had been silent for a long time.

He opened the front door of the rectory and heard Gwen call out “Is that you, Elizabeth?” He shut it quietly behind him and took his coat off before answering.

“It’s me,” he said loudly. “Where is she?”

“She said she’d be back at four o’clock to help me with the W.I.,” said Gwen, coming into the hall. “I had to do it all by myself.”

“Where did she go?”

“Gracious, I don’t know. Do you want a cup of tea now or will you wait for supper?”

“No, no, I’ll wait. What – oh, no, it doesn’t matter. I’m worried, with all these policemen about; I suppose they’re necessary. It’1l be dark before long.”

“It’s not the policemen you ought to worry about…” she began, but he had already gone into the sitting-room.

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” he called back to her.

She said nothing else; he imagined she had gone back into the kitchen, and felt secretly and absurdly guilty for a second; but then immediately he was worried again. Supposing Elizabeth had wandered too far over the moors and had met the murderer? They hadn’t caught him yet, they hadn’t even got any clues; he could be anywhere. It might be one of the men from the village – there was that half-wit – what was his name – Archer. They could never tell, in cases like this, he’d read, sex-murders… he grimaced in voluntarily, and felt a rush of compassion both for the murdered girl and for her family, mingled with an intense, biting curiosity about the murderer and a fear for Elizabeth; and he sat quite still, stiff in his armchair for over a minute, while his eyes darted this way and that in the confusion of his feelings. Then he relaxed and sat back.

He could not sit still for long. He did not know whether he was glad to be alone for a while or tormented by the absence of others; he felt now one thing, now the other, and after a few minutes the second feeling prevailed. Gwen was deliberately ignoring him. It was plain that she would have preferred it to have been Elizabeth coming in a few minutes before; she took little trouble to hide her dislike of him. Unhappily he got up and wandered about the room, staring out into the gathering darkness but seeing only his own re flection looking back at him. “Oh Gwen,” he muttered, and turned abruptly to go into the kitchen.

She was drying her hands on a towel; she started with alarm when he appeared in the doorway.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“You startled me; isn’t it obvious?”

“Why should it startle you to see your husband in the doorway?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

She hung the towel over the line, straightening it methodically until it was absolutely in the centre. He stood and watched her as she opened the door of the larder and took out a basket of eggs; she put it slowly on the table and then turned to face him.

“What is it you want?”

“Where is she?” he said. “Do you know, honestly, or don’t you?”

“Don’t be absurd, Thomas. Of course I don’t know where she is. If you want me to be angry with you, I can’t; I’m too tired, I’m not interested, and I’ve given it up. Why, in heaven’s name… no, I’m not going to ask questions either. It’s a stupid way of carrying on, answering one question with another, questions, questions the whole time, irritable questions; and they don’t mean anything, either.”

“Gwen, Gwen, my love! It’s not my doing! I was worried, I was frightened. You know I get frightened more easily than you do. There are so many things that can go wrong. Look, look at that darkness out there!”

He pointed at the kitchen window, and again saw nothing but himself, suspended in the brightly-lit kitchen like a ghost over the blackness.

“You’re acting like a stupid child. You are a child, with your endless posturing and acting in front of mirrors,” she said bitterly. “You like to annoy me, it makes you think you’re real, doesn’t it. You can pretend it’s important if you get a reaction out of me, and that’s the only reason you do it for, I know, after all; but you’re hollow, you’re completely empty. Don’t try and start an argument now, I’ve had enough.”

“Well, you know, that’s typical; I mean to say you insult me and you hurt me and then you don’t allow me to begin to defend myself – you accuse me of trying to start an argument before I’d even opened my mouth to protest- Gwen, it makes my blood boil, it really does.”

He leant forward with his clenched fists resting on the table. She looked at him coldly. He went on as if he had just thought of something else:

“But no – no, let’s be accurate about it: I’m angry with you now, yes, but we were talking about Elizabeth, weren’t we? Now if you can forget your temper for a few minutes, hadn’t we better try and find her?”

She said nothing. He stared at her for a second, and then banged his fist on the table.

“Come along, woman! What are you going to do?”

She shrugged, “Nothing at all, I suppose. What is there to be done? It was your idea. I can’t do your thinking for you, Thomas. Not as well as everything else I do. All right, I know you’re afraid; I’m sorry for you, being such a coward. But I’m not going to join in your cowardice, I’m not going to share it, I’m not going to join in your charades; not any more. A hundred times, a thousand times I’ve told you, no, I will not go mad with you; do you hear me? You’d like me to, though, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you like me to come with you into your obscurities, into your coldness, and sleep with you there? Wouldn’t you like to make love to me, with me disguised as someone else? That’s at the bottom of it, I know it is.”

He stared at her, fascinated despite his disgust… Gwen moved habitually in the centre of a sexual-maternal field of emotion that repelled him, that stifled him, that had done ever since he had married her, but which he had never entirely thrown off, or dared to; she, for her part, was only too aware of her husband’s Manichaean loathing for the flesh and for fleshly emotions, and she had tried time and time again, with a bewildering variety of stratagems born out of desperation, to engage him once and for all in a love relationship that was entirely human. She had always failed, and so had tried, after years and years of it, to live through Elizabeth’s emotions instead, encouraging her to make friends and, as far as she could, to fall in love; but in recent months she had been haunted by the fear that Elizabeth was cast in her father’s mould and that she would fail there too, and this fear drove her back with a passionate intentness to her first struggle, the struggle for the soul of her husband. She feared and hated the God he worshipped. She would have destroyed Him, if she could; she had no compunction about that. He was not the God she had believed in, but another darker colder one, who had usurped her and who mocked her daily from her husband’s eyes, and lately from the eyes of her daughter.

Canon Cole was only aware of the feeling of suffocation that the thoughts of love and warmth aroused in him, the feelings that his wife embodied and seemed to demand. And yet, all the same, he was fond of her, he was used to her, and in a way it could be said that his will lived off the tension between them over this question, that it fuelled him and spurred him on. There were occasions when the warm sexual field centred around her hypnotised him and drew him in despite himself, times when his mind ran riot in extreme sensuality, and each time it happened she thought she had won him forever; but each time she was disappointed.

They stood facing each other now, and their quarrel might have taken any of a dozen different courses. But just then, quite suddenly and calmly, the kitchen door opened and Elizabeth came in, her raincoat slung over her shoulder. There was a little frown on her face as if she were expecting to have to deal with two children who were fighting. “Hello,” she said. “I’m sorry I forgot the W.I., mummy. I hope you weren’t too busy.”

“Busier than I might have been,” said Gwen.

“Where on earth have you been?” said Canon Cole.

“Walking,” she said. “Why? Has anything happened? What’s the matter?”

“Really, Elizabeth, I was worried! What with this dreadful business –” he said. “You must be careful not to be out at night. You must promise, now, until they’ve caught this man, you can’t take risks, it’s absurd.”

Gwen stood up and took some eggs out of the basket and began to busy herself with preparing supper.

“Of course I’m careful,” said Elizabeth “But heaven knows there are enough policemen about. They’re like a plague of cockroaches. You can’t move without stepping on them.”

“Even so, I do not like to think of you wandering about in the darkness – no, I won’t go on about it. Just please be careful, or let us know where you’re going, at least.”

“All right, I’ll do that. But I was safe enough. Now then, can I help you, mummy?”

He left them in the kitchen and went back to his chair. He turned on the radio to hear the news, mainly to see if anything had occurred in the murder case.

He heard that Scotland Yard detectives had been called in, and that no further clues had been discovered. He turned the radio off and found himself sinking into a bitter, reflective mood. He felt helpless; evil pervaded everything. It was disguised, it went unseen and unknown until something like this happened; and then, just for a minute or an hour, it danced joyously and nakedly under the moon or the sun, crying out in strident triumph and then slipping back to hide again in the cells of a man’s brain, in the secret veins of tree and flowers, or in the crystalline grains of rock and stone. It was the natural condition of things to be evil, as it was the natural condition of things to be dark. The good was an effort, as light was. Lights had to be trimmed, maintained, guarded, re-lighted, sheltered. When the effort wavered, only for a second, evil swept in with a rush, a flood, and all things returned to chaos. And he, now, here, he could do nothing; nothing, that is, except endure it patiently, and hope that the powers of the world would not notice his soul.

And this was a thing that very few people realised about Canon Cole; it was the source of his compulsive and overdone theatricality. He behaved extravagantly, in a mannered, artificial, even slightly camp fashion, hoping to draw attention to himself and in the main succeeding, because in the depths of his soul he hoped that it would distract those powers of the world, of which he had such an overwhelming fear, and bewilder them for long enough to enable him to smuggle his soul covertly out of their reach.

A little later, at supper, there was a stiff silence in the air between the three of them. Gwen was obviously still hurt or annoyed, and he was far away. He hardly noticed what he was eating. After supper Elizabeth went upstairs without a word, and Gwen sat down with a library book in the front room.

He washed the dishes, as he usually did in the evening, and put them away lethargically, and then went upstairs to his study. It was a small room at the side of the house, with a desk and chair by one wall and bookshelves all along another. There was an armchair by the hearth. Next to it, on the floor, there was an electric coffee percolator, and on a small table beside the armchair, a tray with two cups and saucers and a bowl of sugar. On the wall above the desk hung a small wooden crucifix, a calendar, and an engraving of Raphael’s Madonna. The other pictures in the room were also engravings: Alpine landscapes and ships at sea. There was a plain dark green carpet on the floor; and on the desk, an old-fashioned glass inkwell, a blotting-pad, a neat array of pens and pencils, and a table lamp with a red shade. He switched it on and drew the curtains, and then sat down at the desk and took out his drawing of the well. He had never in his life felt the impulse to draw until a few weeks before, when he had bought a sketch-pad and set out to draw the well as accurately as he could. It was not just in order to have a picture of it. He could have borrowed Gwen’s camera if he’d wanted a photograph. It was a kind of remote caressing thus to draw it; it was a magic act, too, it worked some of the well on to the paper, so that the drawing became a talisman. It was a finicky, detailed piece of work; he was pleased with it, and had shown it to no-one, preferring to take it out of the drawer he kept it in and pore over it by himself.

When the doorbell rang he hastened to put it away, and opened the study door to hear Matthew explaining to Gwen who he was and what he wanted. He heard her say “Yes, he’s in his study. Come upstairs and I’ll show you where it is,” and he shut the door again and sat down.

She knocked on the door and called out, “Thomas, there’s someone to see you.”

“Come in! Come in!” he said.

She opened the door and let Matthew go in. As she did she smiled at her husband, surprising him a little; it was a warm, friendly smile.

“Thank you, dear,” he said. “Yes! Good evening, Mr. Cortez, come in and sit down.”

Gwen shut the door again and Matthew sat down rather diffidently. He was already regretting coming here; but, he thought, it might be interesting. The thought passed through Canon Cole’s mind that he’d seen Matthew before, a long time ago somewhere, he couldn’t put a time or place to it. The shape of his face was familiar; or was it his hair? He stared at him for a second, trying to place him. He looked haggard; his clothes weren’t bad, but he could do with a shave, and his hair was far too long and unkempt; it hung down nearly to his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” said the Canon in his most charming manner, “I’m just trying to think where I’ve seen you before. Perhaps it was someone like you – I ought to know Mr. Locke and his family better, but I don’t at all; ah well.”

“No, no, I don’t think you can have seen me anywhere,” said Matthew; “I haven’t been in the village for a long time. I have some cousins, my uncle’s grandchildren, but I don’t look very like them, I think; still… I hope you don’t think it was an imposition on my part to ask if I could come here and pester you. But there are only about two or three important things in the world, and religion’s one of them… perhaps – if you could tell me about what you believe in – forgive me, but I didn’t get the impression from your sermon on Sunday that you were an orthodox Anglican priest, any more than my uncle is; but are you? I mean what you said in the pulpit: was that what the bishop would have said, or what one of the priests they have on television would have said? Because it sounded so completely at odds with everything I’ve heard from the majority of Christian priests, that I couldn’t help wondering.”

Canon Cole watched him gravely as he sat twisting his hands together and pouring out this speech. Well, you’re at odds too, my boy, he thought, at odds with yourself; because while the words tumbled out almost at random, under pressure, his face wore a reserved, haughty expression which contained a deep disgust for himself. “Cap in hand” was the phrase that came to the Canon’s mind to describe him, and, seduced by a wayward impulse of kindness, He decided to try to help him.

“Yes! Yes! Well,” he said, “I hope it was at odds. Not that I want to start a war in the church, heaven knows… no, no, but a little heresy, I’m sure, is a good thing. Does that sound like a paradox, I wonder?”

Matthew shook his head.

“No! I agree with you. But what heresy is yours? What do you believe in?”

“I’m – I suppose – tell me, first of all, would you like some coffee?”

Christ Almighty! thought Matthew; I come here to learn about God and he talks about coffee… “Thank you, yes,” he said.

“I keep an electric percolator up here. I don’t like having to run downstairs every time I want a cup,” said the Canon. He plugged it in, and switched the electric fire on at the same time, noticing that Matthew was shivering. “You said, I remember, that you believed in God… do you go to church often’?”

“No! I can’t stand it as a rule. I only went on Sunday on an impulse.”

“Yes, quite, quite…tell me, what are you conscious of, in the world? I can’t think of another way to put it; I mean your particular world-outlook, your – your life-illusion – do you see what I mean? Everything that goes to make up what you know and feel of the world and – and – yourself. No, no, I don’t want a long list, but you said just now that there are only two or three important things in the world – so what are they?”

Matthew sat silently for a second, staring at him. Canon Cole feared suddenly that he would say nothing, that the contempt would flare up in his eyes, and that he’d walk out; but then he nodded and said “Yes. Storms, first of all, violent feelings, anger or lust, anything, it doesn’t matter. But violent, raging. Then a sensation I have sometimes that I’ve been here before, that I’ve seen this place before some time, in a dream maybe, it’s a sensation that’s very sweet – wild almost – distant, hard to pin down. Of enormous potency – potentiality – a sort of metaphysical nostalgia – that’s too crude, I can’t explain that one, ignore it. And then God, or rather God over and above the rest. What I mean is this: there are no absolute values in the world. Everything under the sun and moon is relative. Now I’m consumed with desire – oh, it’s not just desire, it’s hunger, famine – for values that are absolute. Do you see? Humanity is a stunted, warped thing, weak and trivial. I am. But something in me isn’t. There’s something in me that longs to beat the rest into submission, or cast it aside, if by doing so it’ll help me to see more clearly. I – I despise those false priests who say that the only value lies in human relationships, because that’s a relative value. Doing good to others is relative. I don’t mean that we ought to ignore ethics, and do evil to others. Jesus was right; love one another, love your neighbour, love him completely: oh, I agree, I agree! There’s no other law than that between human beings. But it’s not enough! It’s a relative goodness because it depends on other human beings… I want a vision of a goodness that’s absolute, that would exist undimmed and unchanged if there was not a human being left on earth, not a living creature – if there wasn’t a scrap of matter or a single atom left anywhere in the universe. If there is no absoluteness, then it isn’t worth living a second longer; I know it, I know it. And I think there is an absoluteness – I think there is – and I want to know where it is, and how to find it. So that’s why I’d like to know what you believe.”

He breathed in deeply, and sat back. The coffee was ready, and the Canon bent over and poured it out into the two cups and handed one to Matthew. There was an air of clarity in the room, almost of calm exhilaration. Each of them recognised it, and looked at the other with respect, or close attention. The Canon sat down in his chair and put his coffee on the desk.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I believe,” he began. “I suppose you would have to say that I was a Gnostic. All that means is that I’ve found more truth, more of what I recognise to be true, in the old Gnostic teachers than in any of the church fathers… It was a similar time to this, you know; the end of the Roman empire was like the end of the world. I suppose things showed up more clearly…

“If you’re prepared to take every word literally, then, I’ll tell you… This is not an allegory. “The God of this world, whom the Hebrews knew as Jehovah, exists. But he is a false God, a usurper. He has no claim on us.

“Everything you’ve ever heard about him is false. Everything in the world is false… the soul, the pneuma as it is in Greek, is lost here, trapped, threatened, lost in darkness, a prisoner of the false God. But although he’s false, he is the lord of the entire universe. It’s his; do you understand that?”

Matthew nodded.

“Not understand it intellectually only – do you feel it to be true?”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “Carry on.”

“So that in the world – in the whole fabric of matter and thought there is nothing – nothing which is of any concern or importance to us, except that it may threaten to kill us, or enslave us… you see that. You have to start from that.”

Matthew noticed that the priest was watching him closely, with that same half-sensual expectation in his eyes that Matthew had noticed in church. Without taking his eyes away, Canon Cole settled back, and began.

“In the beginning, in the ultimate heights, there was a Being who was the father and the origin of everything. The Gnostic writers call him the Abyss…”

And then, Matthew thought, he must have begun to dream. The Canon talked without ceasing for twenty minutes or so. The most detailed, intricate, and vivid cosmogony unfolded in front of him, peopled with strange beings called Aeons, Archons, and Emanations, whose extraordinary generation and dispersal took place against a background of vast gulfs of eternity. There was a central parable of some sort, a fall, involving the lowest of the Aeons, and this fall led somehow to the creation of the world.

Matthew was fascinated. The priest’s voice was quivering, brim-full of excitement. His eyes, in the red lamplight, seemed to dissolve and disappear; his hands chopped abruptly downwards at the end of a phrase, or hung poised with the forefinger extended, or clasped each other tightly like lovers.

The narrative drew out; Matthew followed it dizzily. There was a being called Sophia, who had fallen from perfection because she had desired greater perfection too passionately. She suffered torments of loss, and out of her suffering came matter, and out of her yearning spirit. She gave birth to a blind and ignorant god, who ruled the cosmos, imagining that he had created it; and as for man, there was a spark of alien divinity in him, which had somehow survived the entrapment in matter, and longed to return to its home outside the universe.

As the tale grew, the Canon turned away from the light, and eventually put his hands on either side of his face so that it fell entirely into shadow. Matthew could hardly see it, but he looked closely, and after a while noticed with a slight shock that the priest’s eyes were fixed, with an expression of histrionic anguish, on his own. They stared at each other for a matter of seconds, Matthew openly in hunger and intense curiosity, and Canon Cole, believing himself hidden, in a false dramatization of agony. His voice, when he spoke again, was calm but taut.

He was talking about the condensation of the Sophia’s torment into matter and time. It was too complicated for Matthew to follow, but he saw that something in it was affecting the Canon powerfully.

His voice broke suddenly. His face was still in shadow; his hands quivered, but otherwise he did not move. “Out of these feelings,” he went on, a tight edge of pain in his voice, “there came about the universe; for the Sophia with her hands shaped a son, out of the ignorance that filled her and the grief she felt – she felt – a storm of feelings, a tumult of them, sorrow, loss, lamentation…” he was hardly aware what he was saying, in truth; he had almost lost sight of Matthew, and felt that he was talking to himself. He stood up suddenly, pushing his chair away with the back of his knees, and strode rapidly to the bookcase. He stood facing it, a foot or so away, and went on speaking, making the most extraordinary grimaces and pulling his face quite involuntarily into the shape of the mask of tragedy: “From – from the grief she felt – from the grief there evolved matter, it condensed into the elements, and then – she turned back, and in effect from her turning back there evolved everything psychical, do you see – it’s strange, isn’t it, how acutely this has power to affect us – from, at last, from her receiving the light, there evolved the pneuma.”

He fell silent, but continued to act, passionately, without a word and with his back to Matthew, to dramatise as vividly as he could the course of an obscure but powerful sequence of emotions that flooded through his heart. He wished that Matthew would disappear, and that Gwen and Elizabeth would leave the house for a while; because he really wanted to shout, beg, cry wordlessly out and throw himself into the most proud or the most degrading postures he could imagine, in a frenzy of melodramatic passion. Oh, it was all false, all completely fake – he knew it, he knew there was not an ounce of truth in it, but the fit was on him. Supposing – supposing, though, he took a chance with this Cortez and let it go, let it have its head… He didn’t look as though he’d be frightened. He turned speculatively around.

Matthew, meanwhile, was wondering what the devil the man was up to. He felt wrought-up, excited – ready to leap out of his chair, and fight, or shout; some germ of impatience had got into his blood, and was making him itch with anger; but the substance of what Canon Cole had been saying held him enthralled, for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of – it was the atmosphere – the mental solution, as it were, in which such a system crystallised – now the priest was staring at him like a madman.

“Well?” said Matthew harshly, in irritation.

At once Canon Cole’s expression changed, and became crafty – confidential – even foxy.

“Yes…” he said slowly, drawing the vowel out – “If you want a piece of advice, young man, you’ll cling tightly to your soul, you’ll squeeze it so tight that you can’t let go. Give yourself cramp, let your arms get stiff, locked rigid around it. I’m not going to say another word about the gnosis, not another word, it’s lies from start to finish.”

Matthew’s eyes were wide with astonishment. The priest was babbling like a child, frowning, shaking his head. Matthew felt obscurely annoyed.

“Tell me, though,” he said “tell me – oh, all right, forget your system, I don’t mind. But what are you doing about it? Where does action come into it? What’s good and what’s evil? Tell me, if you can – yes, go on, tell me what the wickedest thing in the world is, if you know. Is it – can you tell me if it’s murder? And tell me something else – how do you know if you’ve committed a murder yourself?”

Canon Cole looked wary, and said nothing.

“I mean,” continued Matthew, “suppose you’d killed that little girl the other day, but you’d quite simply forgot ten about it; but you felt guilty every time you thought about it, that you couldn’t get it out of your head – well, for instance, what has that sort of problem to do with God? If He’s not in the world, I mean. If He isn’t, and I think like you, I think He isn’t, then does it matter to Him that she’s been murdered? If it doesn’t matter to Him then why does it matter to me? You see, if it does matter, then He is in the world, whether we like it or not. But He’s not, obviously, otherwise the world – oh yes, human beings as well – would be infinite and beautiful and rich and important – and it’s not, it’s nothing short of contemptible. Answer that, go on.”

Canon Cole was biting a fingernail. He went to his chair again and sat down slowly; then he passed his hand across his head, and sighed.

“It might be… terrible, but you’d have to admit that… no, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it matters to you it’s because you’re – er – part of the social being was violated… order – umm – order disrupted, that would be what you felt, perhaps? It’s out of our control really what we feel; I – er – I myself felt compassion for the parents – I don’t know…”

“No, no,” said Matthew, “it’s not that at all. Talking of the social being is rubbish. I’ll give you another example. What does it mean if you feel – if you, say, fall in love? And if it shakes you so profoundly that you haven’t the least idea what’s happening, if it jolts you like a thunderbolt – you might have been the purest saint there ever had been, you might have been utterly chaste but now you’d perjure yourself and sell your soul, if you could, for just one kiss – no, I don’t mean lust – simple lust is torment but you can control it if you want to – but love, romantic love I mean, is vastly different. You can say it doesn’t matter, but it happens, and I want to know: this woman that you’ve suddenly become a slave to – is she God? Or the love you feel – is that God?”

“Oh, no, no, certainly not –”

“Good! Good! I agree! But what does it mean?”

“I don’t know. The God of the world could tell you. These things – however deeply they affect you – are psychical, not spiritual –”

“Yes, and the measure of their dominion over you is the measure of your weakness – yes! That’s easy enough to say, easy enough to think; now tell me how you begin to live it. It’s not enough to say it and sit back! I want to move – I want to find God. If you’re in prison you have to escape, otherwise you rot. I’m rotting in the world. Do you know – do you know the way to become suddenly reconciled to the world?

“There’s a way of doing it. Now that murderer, I think, he discovered it. He took her into the wood in the evening, he enticed her there somehow, and he kept her there all night, he kept her prisoner – at first he was friendly but then she got frightened, and he tried to comfort her, he gave her sweets and told her that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he’d let her go when her parents paid a ransom.

“And hours went by, the whole night went by with him talking to her, getting more desperate all the time, you see, and she was getting more and more tired and frightened every minute, and still she didn’t understand. And then the dawn came, and she was so exhausted by then that she fell asleep. Even the cold couldn’t keep her awake. She only had a thin raincoat on over her dress. He knew she was cold, and he kept tucking it round her to keep her warm, and, you know, he even took his own jacket off at about four o’clock in the morning and put it round her shoulders so she’d be a bit warmer.” He paused; the Canon was staring at him. An odd certainty made him continue.

“What was in his mind when he did that? Who knows? I know she was shivering, shivering, shivering, like a little bird trapped in a cage. But when she was asleep, and the dawn came and the sky got a bit lighter, he could see her more clearly. He could see what he was doing.

“She was leaning back against a tree, her head on her shoulder; and without waking her he laid her gently down on the leaves – he laid her down just as if she was already dead; she didn’t wake, but she stirred a little and pulled the jacket around her like a blanket.

“But it didn’t cover her legs, and she wasn’t wearing stockings, she wasn’t wearing tights; every minute it got clearer, you see, every minute it was more inevitable. The idea of just turning his back and walking away may have come to him, but he didn’t move, he couldn’t move an inch except towards her; and so he knelt down and touched her legs, carefully at first, as if he expected them to burn him; and she didn’t wake up, she didn’t move.

“And then it came over him like a flood. He flung himself on her and tore at her like a wolf, he raped her and put his hands around her throat to stop her screaming. It was so slender and so weak that he couldn’t help but strangle her. You know what a bluebell’s stalk feels like? It’s so weak, it bends easily, but it snaps easily too. Her neck felt like that. And it only took a minute; only a minute, two minutes at the very most, before he was exhausted. He’d had enough of it. But he even went on for a bit longer than he really wanted to, because it seemed such a waste.

“But after all that hunger and that lusting for every curve on the surface of her body, for every tiniest declivity, it only lasted a minute and then he’d had enough. And then he hated the sight of her. He hated, hated, hated her, lying dead in front of him. D’you know, if you could kill a dead person, he’d have killed her then, out of loathing, he hated her so much. Why was that? I don’t know; but you see when he’d finished, just for a second or so, in the instant, maybe, when he picked up his coat or his scarf, if he had one, just for those few moments he was reconciled to the world; in those seconds, ordinary things – like a cup of coffee, or two friends talking about a football match, or eating a meal – they would have glowed as if they were immortal, there would have been the essence of heaven in them, there would have been such a light on them! So, you see, there is a way of being reconciled to it. It’s not inevitable to hate the world.”

“How do you know?” said the Canon swiftly. “How do you know that? What do you know about it?”

“I dreamt it,” said Matthew. “I’m clairvoyant. I dreamt it the other night. That doesn’t matter…but in it, at least, I’ve seen a kind of truth. A partial truth. That is, that to make the world eternal, you have to shine a certain kind of light on it, and one of the lights is murder… just by contrast, you see, it makes everything else – and everything human in particular – seem glorious and innocent. But then it burns you out, too, the light doesn’t last for long. In fact if you took those two friends talking about the football match, they’d only look innocent; really, if they knew about it, they’d be fascinated; they’d want to see the body, and if the murder was going on in front of their eyes they wouldn’t stop it, they’d even secretly enjoy watching… where is all this leading? Why am I saying this? I suppose… oh yes, the reconciliation; well, it looks true for a moment, but it’s false, that’s what I mean. Murder is the most desperate thing you can do, but even that doesn’t work. So: what do you do?”

“I am astonished –” said the Canon; he ran his hand over the top of his head – “I have not the least idea what you mean. This dramatisation of evil isn’t the point, I’m sure it’s not the point; and in any case are you sure that you’re correct about it? It seems to me that you’re attributing – oh, attributing motives – at least attributing a degree of intelligence to him which – no, no, no, it was only brutal, a squalid release of lust, that was all. To bring theology into it is absurd.”

“But how do you know? I should have said it was absurd to leave theology out. This is a thing that engages you – oh Christ, it’s like being hit with a hammer. And how do you know that wasn’t what he felt? How do you know that it wasn’t you, or me? We might have forgotten; it’d be natural to forget, if you possibly could, wouldn’t it?”

The priest breathed in deeply. His eyes were troubled. Again Matthew had the disturbing sense that they were melting and beginning to run down his cheeks, and looked away from him.

“But – no, go on,” he continued, “You hadn’t finished telling me how man came about.”

“Yes,” said the Canon slowly, “yes…did you say that you were clairvoyant? Did you mean that? It’s extraordinary…I’m forgetting: now Sophia created a son for herself, and he is the Demiurge, the creator of the world. He was ignorant, ignorant even of his mother, and he formed the world in ignorance. His name is Ialdabaoth. He drew power from his mother and brought into being a number of inferior powers, angels, Archons, and all of them come out of ignorance, all of them embody wrath and greed. He, Ialdabaoth, you know – they say He was the God of the Old Testament.”

Matthew settled back in his chair. Canon Cole was lost again, and Matthew felt in that moment extraordinarily close to him; it would be easy to lose himself in a myth as powerful as this, he thought. The priest went on, staring at the electric fire, one hand on his knee and the other resting on the table beside him.

He spoke about how the false God had created Adam because it taught Adam about his lineage and the alien life that was in him; and he told how it had been the Demiurge himself in the shape of the serpent who had taught them the mystery of procreation, hoping thus to enslave them and their generations of children for ever.

At last he said, “And that’s how the world came about. That’s the story of it all; that’s what you wanted to know.” He sat back wearily and crossed his legs.

Matthew sat still. During this last part of the Canon’s narrative he had suddenly found himself caught up in it, involved and dizzy, The priest was so mild now, so tired and dreamy and lost to the world; Matthew had the feeling of standing on a vast plateau miles and aeons above the flood of history, surveying the first cause of things and their last issue. There was nothing here, nothing at all, of the riddles and sadnesses of human things. A cold wind blew round him, a wind not of air but of thought, of spirit it might be, of sublimity; and his soul ached, but not with pain. It was an icy ghostlike joy which hurt him, and he welcomed it; it was no stranger.

He looked up at the priest and said “And that’s what you truly believe? Every word?”

“Yes.”

“Good; thank God for that. I can’t tell you how strange it is to find something like that. Something definite. Yes, that’s absolute, in the sense I wanted. But still… it’s a course of action that I’m searching for, as well. I don’t just want to know where God is: I want to know how to get to Him – oh, I’ve said it before, yes, I’ll go soon, but tell me, before I go: is there nothing in the world, no thing, which is any good? Is there no justification for the flesh at all?”

“Odd, you know, you do remind me of someone – have I said that before? He was an enemy of mine in a particular matter – this is to the point, it’s very much to the point. Now I think of it, it’s extraordinary, you might be his double; it’s as if he sent you to me like a spy, because the matter we quarrelled about was –”

Here he stopped, regarded Matthew closely, and got to his feet and paced restlessly about for a moment. Finally he went to the desk and took out his drawing of the well. He sat down, and put the drawing face downwards on the desk. Matthew stared at it curiously.

“In fact,” said the Canon, “it is my belief that ·- yes, that there are things which are, as you say, good. The Holy Grail… And I think I’ve discovered something which may be like that. It’s not far from here. How I came to find it is a secret, only because you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. But never mind that. Anyway, this is a drawing I made of what I found.”

He handed the drawing to Matthew, who studied it intently. The technique was fussy and precise; it showed a ruined stone coping emerging from a tangle of undergrowth. Ivy climbed over it, hiding a good third of the stone. There seemed to be an inscription carved on it, but the letters were indistinguishable. So this was the well he’d heard about all those months ago, on the beach! And this enemy of his must be her lover – had she seen him again since the beach? He felt a stab of bitter, murderous jealousy.

“What does the carving say?” he asked.

“It says – ummm,” the Canon murmured a little suspiciously; but after a second he went on – “it says DEO… well, there’s only one full word there, and that’s ‘Deo’; then there’s a gap where… there’s a gap, and then the letters TO; and I think what that means is that the well was dedicated to Mithra. There are other inscriptions on altars and temples that read ‘Deo Invicto Mitrae’ – to Mithra, you know, the invincible god; and then, usually, there’s the name of the man who put the altar up, followed by the letters ‘V.S.L.M.’ which stand for a Latin phrase meaning ‘willingly and faithfully carries out his vow’. That’s a common phrase; you find it all over the country. Now there’s a gap there where the name would be because the stone’s crumbled, but just here –” he indicated it with a pencil – “I’ve stripped the ivy away, and there are the letters L and M, unmistakably. I think it’s Mithraic, without a doubt.”

“Yes, I dare say. But why is it the same as the Holy Grail?”

“Because something’s hidden in it.”

“Well, what?”

“I don’t know!” The Canon’s voice was impatient. “I don’t know at all. It’s infuriating. The only way I could find out would be to take it to pieces, but I daren’t do that because it doesn’t belong to me. But it’s a holy well, beyond any doubt. Miracles used to happen there. And there was a tradition, too, that if you went to the well at certain times of the year and whispered a question into it, it would tell you the answer. It had an echo, you see… I have been afraid to test it, so far.”

He fell silent again, and crossed his arms, looking at the bars of the electric fire.

“I think,” he said, and his voice was more contemplative now, “that it’s a channel for something. It acts as a kind of radio receiver. I’ve noticed it when I’ve been working there; it’s as if the place is haunted, there’s a kind of amplifying of your perceptions. You feel more sensitive. You, with your clairvoyance, I imagine it’s how you feel, but I wouldn’t know what that feels like… You’d notice it, if you came there, I can assure you. I still don’t know what it means; that’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Yes, yes; and what are you going to do about it?”

Again the Canon got to his feet, and this time went abruptly to the window and pulled the curtains roughly open. He rested his hands on the sill and put his face close to the glass to look out. The wind of the day had not yet died down, and huge ragged masses of cloud streamed across the sky, washing like waves over the gibbous moon; some unusual condition of the atmosphere was colouring it yellow and the clouds a shade of sepia, giving to the whole scene an air that was unpleasant and disturbing. Canon Cole stayed there for nearly a minute, struggling to find words for the incoherent hatred that was rising in his breast.

“I am – restoring it. I am trying hard to establish the history of it, beyond any doubt, and at the same time I’m fighting this devil of a man who is bent on destroying it and on destroying me, too. Oh, I’m sure of it! At least twice to my certain knowledge he’s been responsible for damaging attacks on me – on me personally – in the press. There’s a local newspaper which has printed things that are very close to libel about me… And I have found a stone missing, taken away quite recently. It has part of the inscription on it. If I could see it I’d have practically all the proof I need. What he wants it for I don’t know, but I have a shrewd idea that it’s for some political purpose; he’s a fascist, or something of the sort, and politics, you know – well, that would be the end of it, and I’m not going to let it happen. Now I don’t know why I’m telling you this – what’s the time? It must be getting on – except that you challenged me earlier on to say what I believed, and what it involved in the way of action… there it is.”

Matthew breathed in deeply. “Perhaps your man’s the murderer,” was all he could think of to say. Canon Cole’s words had left him a little dizzy; the man moved so swiftly from obsession to obsession, and seemed to be rooted nowhere… was he completely paranoid? Matthew was too tired to wonder.

“Thank you for talking to me,” he said, “it’s been very interesting. I must go now, I’m tired, I’m nearly asleep… not with boredom; I’m just exhausted. Thank you, anyway, and I’ll see you again – may I call again?”

“Please do,” said the priest. “Come at any time.”

“I’ll see myself out,” said Matthew. “Goodnight.”

As he left the house and made his way home in the dark Matthew was filled with the impression above all of the Canon wandering gleefully, like a ghost or a demon, on cold, haunted tablelands where the only light came from the planets and stars of another universe altogether. The gnostic mountains; they were like Tibet.

Canon Cole watched him go down the drive, with an impulse of regret in his heart, and with the intention half formed of setting out swiftly after him to urge him to forget all he’d heard. “He’ll think I’m mad! He’ll think I’m completely insane! Perhaps that was why he left so quickly…”

And what the Canon was left with after his evening’s conversation was a memory of Matthew’s face as he described the murder. It had fascinated the priest. As he’d listened he felt – yes! – guilty. True enough, as Matthew had said, he didn’t know if he himself was the murderer; he could be; anyone could be. The Canon was more disposed to imagine what it would be like if someone else was the murderer, someone he knew; someone like Matthew, for instance. His explanation of clairvoyance rang a little thin… no, the whole thing was ridiculous.

He made himself some coffee, and later on went down stairs and tried to make peace with Gwen. For the first time in months he felt the inclination to make love to her; and when they were in bed and he was caressing her white body she felt, unwillingly, the growing warmth of hope. But after wards, as he always did, he wondered what had possessed him; and he turned away and lay sleeplessly for a long time with his face to the seething darkness.