Letters From Constance Read online

  He seemed to have wearied since I last saw him and I got the impression that he was as apprehensive about this interview as I was. He said, ‘I’m sorry if my references to Bishop Barnes upset you . . .’

  ‘I don’t mind about Bishop Barnes, or Bonhoeffer, or any of the other people you mentioned,’ I said. ‘But I do need to know what the Church thinks.’

  Perhaps he had hoped that an apology on behalf of Bishop Barnes would set matters right. He blinked rapidly and said, ‘Now, what do you mean by the Church?’ I have always suspected that people ask this sort of question to lay bare the confusion of my thoughts. I could see, however, that he was giving himself time. ‘The Anglican Communion,’ I said. ‘What is its doctrine?’

  ‘Mmh . . . Well . . . I think we have moved some way from too close a concern with doctrine.’

  ‘Does that mean we don’t have any?’

  Although in the pulpit he is remarkably free with his ideas, privately he seemed shy about expressing himself He looked away from me while he answered, like a virgin required to strip. ‘The Church is evolving all the time. It is important we don’t regard it as a static thing. I like to think of it as the ark of the covenant, which the faithful carry with them on their journey.’

  This isn’t the way I think of the Church, but if it helped him I was prepared to go along with it. ‘Does it have any furniture?’ I asked.

  He winced.

  It seemed that I must do the talking, which was fair enough, since it was I who had the problem. ‘What about the Creed? We say it at each Eucharist, so I suppose it must be important, even if it is not the sum of things.’

  ‘It is supposed to summarise our beliefs,’ he said irritably. ‘It depends on what we mean by the beliefs we assert.’

  ‘Could we go through them? I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Are we still all right with that?’

  He clenched his hands and examined the knuckles. ‘How do you think of God?’

  ‘God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth . . .’

  ‘You wouldn’t be happier with the idea of Him as the source of all being, the energy which powers the universe . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t be happy leaving out God the Father.’

  ‘Why do you think the father image is so important to you?’

  ‘It was important to Jesus.’ It’s surprising the difficulty one has with mentioning the founder of the faith. I felt naive and foolish and I could see he was embarrassed. Perhaps it’s not God we need to find another image for, but Jesus. He eyed me anxiously, like a surgeon faced with a patient whose illness is so extreme there is no kind way of tackling it. ‘Jesus walked this earth a long time ago,’ he said. ‘He seems to have lived in a brilliantly lit landscape; there is an electric charge in everything He does. One feels that God is an intense and immediate reality to Him. Most of us can’t feel like that. We have lost the sense of immediacy.’

  ‘So that means Jesus has to be altered, not us?’

  ‘Our conception of Him . . .’

  ‘Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?’ I asked while we were on the subject of conception.

  He thought for a moment, perhaps wondering whether to ask what I meant by Virgin Birth, and then decided to take his stand squarely beside Bishop Barnes. ‘No.’

  ‘Or that He was divine?’

  He passed a hand across his chin. ‘I think God was truly in Him . . . blindingly so.’

  ‘What about the Holy Spirit?’ We might as well polish off the Trinity.

  ‘How much do you yourself believe?’ he asked gently. ‘I mean, do you ever think about these things which you repeat so often? Are there any questions you ask?’ He might have been a psychologist inviting me to examine the darker reaches of my mind.

  ‘Of course I don’t believe everything,’ I said. ‘For one thing, my mind isn’t capable of stretching that far. I believe some things some of the time and others most of the time. In my black moments I don’t believe anything at all. The Virgin Birth gives me a lot of trouble, but I have hopes that if I leave it around in my mind something will grow out of it. But I don’t expect the Church to haver like that. The Church doesn’t have feelings, does it? It doesn’t have off-days, though it does seem to have off-centuries.’

  ‘What do you think the Church is?’

  ‘I like to think of it as a framework, something within which I can move around, test my beliefs, measure my ideas up against its doctrines. I like to think of it as something which holds me; I don’t like the structure to wobble every time a bishop has an idea.’

  ‘How would you feel about the Church as a lot of individuals doing much the same sort of thing as yourself?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Would you not agree that God is revealing Himself to His people all the time?’

  ‘But there’s a lot of people and a lot of time has passed. There must be some way of quantifying and qualifying. How does one decide what is revelation if there isn’t any machinery for examining all the claims made?’

  ‘You don’t think that this is something we each have to do within ourselves?’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean we end up with one person believing one thing and another something else, according to their make-up and predilections?’

  ‘I’m afraid our “make-up”, as you put it, does tend to influence our way of believing.’

  ‘That whittles it all down to something so personal and idiosyncratic that there is no place for a community of faith.’

  He spread out his hands, palms upwards. ‘If that is how you see it.’

  I was beginning to understand how Peter must have felt when he tried to walk on the water. I said, ‘I could no more work out on my own how this village should be run, let alone the county or the country. I need to be a citizen. In the same way, I need to be a member of a community of faith; I couldn’t exist as an isolated individual, trying to work everything out myself. And I couldn’t believe in a God whom I could work out.’

  ‘I concede that. My approach may seem to you to be negative; but I think we are going through a time - a rather exciting time - when great changes are taking place in our understanding of . . . well, let’s say God, since that is obviously the term with which you are most comfortable.’

  ‘What term are you most comfortable with?’

  ‘If I could put it into words, it wouldn’t be what I meant.’

  ‘If it’s as complicated as that, then Christianity isn’t really for most people, is it? I mean, ordinary people like me.’

  His glasses misted up; he took them off and rubbed at them with his handkerchief His face looked undefended without them. I wondered if he might have been better off as a Buddhist, then no one would insist he define the undefinable. But I didn’t say that. I was aware of pain in him, deeper than any I could inflict and it occurred to me that his explorations are made at some cost to himself. Why people talk about the consolations of religion, I can’t imagine.

  The rest of my family is safely gathered into the Catholic fold. Dominic, Kathleen and Cuillane are out at some youth jamboree organised by the Church this afternoon. I begin to feel like a solitary sheep left on the mountainside without any tender shepherd to care about its plight.

  There! Do you regret that you once said you were more interested in hearing about the state of my soul than what we are growing in the vegetable garden?

  We go to Devon at the end of next month, complete with tent - an enterprise I view with considerable misgivings. It seems years since you had a holiday. Why don’t you all come here and look after the house while we are away?

  My love to you all,

  Constance

  P.S. Isn’t it a blight that this pestilential Nasser has become President of Egypt? No wonder I am disturbed.

  Sussex

  August, 1956

  My dear Sheila,

  In haste, as I have to collect Cuillane from a friend’s house. Did you know you were in the Observer - a picture of the Dr
uces and Harpo among a small group of people attending a meeting in Westminster at which Fenner Brockway held forth about the need for nuclear disarmament? I saw it at a coffee morning in aid of the church roof, but didn’t like to ask for it as our hostess was telling all present that Fenner Brockway is engaged in a plot to overthrow democracy. Miles looks every bit as angry as this chap in the play everyone is talking about; Harpo shines forth like Mother Courage converted to peace; you have your head bent, keeping your thoughts to yourself, wise woman. Try to get hold of a copy.

  What times we live in! Unrest in Hungary now.

  Love,

  Constance

  Sussex

  November, 1956

  My dear Sheila,

  I am hunched in bed writing this. We have Fergus’s Jesuit friend staying with us and they are downstairs debating a book by A. J. Ayer which has just come out. How I wish we two could be talking now. You, at least, might explain with some patience what is happening to our country.

  Fergus has always known how perfidious are the English. We quarrelled last Sunday morning. I don’t know quite what started it - a news bulletin probably, or it may have been the sight of him up early to go to Mass and all those comfortable certainties from which I am shut out. I found myself telling him that the Irish are always grieving over a country they never live in. When did they ever produce anything other than grievances? What leaders have they ever had - not Cuchulain and Conchubar, but real men like Robert the Bruce and Wallace? Even the Welsh had Glendower. What is this lost greatness the harp at Tara sang? ‘It’s all in the imagination,’ I said, following my little flock into the hall where they picked up their missals. ‘It’s the land that never was.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Ma?’ Kathleen asked Fergus.

  ‘Anthony Eden has upset her,’ he replied, shepherding them down the garden path.

  We went out to dinner on Tuesday. We get invited out twice a year at the most, why did it have to be now? Mine host, a mild little bookseller, was wearing his tank corps tie - remember? brown, red and green, through mud and blood to the cemetery beyond.

  ‘Teach the wogs a lesson once and for all,’ he boomed. ‘As for Gaitskell, he should be in prison. A lot of decent fellows in the Labour Party are ashamed of him.’

  Mr Gaitskell has been my rock over the last few days and I felt I had to speak for him. As you know, I have no difficulty in being devil’s advocate, but when I try to uphold the cause of right the words don’t come so readily. ‘He is the only person who has spoken for me, so perhaps I should be in prison, too.’ The walls of my throat were shaking so much my voice sounded strangled.

  The woman next to me thought I was in need of rescue. ‘You are like me, my dear. I hate the thought of our bombing the Egyptians.’

  Our host said, ‘We didn’t bomb the Egyptians. We bombed their airfield.’

  Fergus was at the far end of the table, talking peaceably about Jo Grimond and the Liberal Party.

  The woman next to me said, ‘I know we had to do it. I just don’t like to think of it.’

  Our host went on talking about the Canal, how important it is to the peace of the world that it should remain open, and how primitive people like the Egyptians couldn’t possibly maintain or manage it. I sat there, the victim of a ludicrous piece of miscasting. I am not a rebel, a radical, left-wing. From time to time I may have made fun of patriotism, but I didn’t expect to be taken seriously. I believe in my country. We have integrity, we are people of our word, and for that I respect us. We stood against tyranny when the rest of Europe had gone under and for that I shall be eternally proud. Emphatically, we are not the sort of people who make dubious secret treaties, attack-without going through the proper preliminaries, lie to our allies and to one another. Above all, we do not commit an act of war without allowing our people to have any say in the matter. This is not us. We, collectively, have gone mad. I am sane. Sane and unchanged, not a rebel, a radical or left-wing.

  What will my children make of England when they grow up? Will it seem a very different place from the land of my youth? Do they already see it differently because they are Catholic? I begin to feel afraid that they will grow away from me.

  Tell me what you think.

  My love,

  Constance

  Sussex

  November, 1956

  My dear Sheila,

  I agree with much that you say but it doesn’t make me any happier. Harpo seems quite delighted we have fallen flat on our face over this Canal business; it is as though it had happened to another person whom she disliked and from whom she has no difficulty in distancing herself. But I don’t see it like that. It has happened to my country, of which I am a part, not a disinterested observer. England is my larger family. I see now how precious was the sense of belonging within that family. This is the first time I have felt so completely at odds with the people around me and yet I still feel closer to them than to Harpo. I want to think like them, I want to believe what they believe; they are good people whose opinions I usually respect. I cannot understand why I am so shaken while they remain staunch.

  It isn’t only the Suez affair on which we are divided. It is Hungary as well. My nice bookseller, the Brigadier, even the easy-going civil servant next door, all resent the Hungarians. Not too many years ago these men risked their lives in the desert and in Italy in a fight for freedom. On a domestic level, they are the kind who would rush into the street on hearing a cry for help. Yet their response to that terrible cry from Imre Nagy as the Russian tanks moved in, ‘Help us!’ was embarrassed irritation which quickly turned to resentment. My daily help produced a newspaper cutting reporting how the refugees grumbled about their treatment. ‘All this fuss about these people,’ she said, ‘and this is how they repay kindness.’ As if they were down-and-outs complaining about a soup kitchen.

  I said to Fergus, ‘We should be dancing for joy that tyranny has been challenged.’ He said that people don’t like the idea of authority, of whatever kind, breaking down; the status quo, vile as it may be, is preferred to the unknown. Can that be the answer? Or is it guilt? While the Hungarians were fighting for freedom, as we fought on the beaches of Dunkirk, we turned our back on them and got on with our Suez adventure. What would be the use of our making a fuss about the invasion of Hungary by the Russians when we have so compromised ourselves?

  I am daily unlearning my country. Do you feel the same? And does it distress you? You didn’t sound distressed in your letter so much as very sure and angry. I seem to have the worst of all possible worlds, deploring what Harpo calls the immorality of Suez without being rewarded by any sense of righteousness. I am, after all, a part of that immorality, since I am English.

  Fergus has taken the children for a walk because he thinks I am not well. I can hear them coming down the road, so I must pull myself together and reward them with tea.

  I am sorry this is such a dreary letter. Perhaps I shall be better when the baby comes.

  Your outcast

  Constance

  Sussex

  December, 1956

  Sheila,

  No, not offended. Discouraged. It takes me time to think things out while you seem always to be ahead of me, crisp and decisive. It is rather desponding to have one’s loved ones all so knowing at a time when, one feels so soggy. When the baby comes fuzzy old head will clear and words will dance across the page again.

  Must attend to Christmas preparations. Do Buddhists have a festive season anything approaching ours? If not, I may become one.

  Love,

  Constance

  Sussex

  February, 1957

  My dear Sheila,

  I’m sorry not to have written sooner. Fergus wrote to thank you for the presents because I have been unwell. My mother came to help, but it wasn’t a great success. She doesn’t really like children and certainly not in duplicate. Almost her first words on arrival were ‘We don’t have a history of twins in our family’, as if they were a nasty dise
ase Fergus had transmitted to me. It was like having an exacting guest, constantly demanding what she should do and bemoaning the fact that she was in the way. She meant well, but I haven’t the energy to construct a work programme for someone else and she seemed unable to do even the smallest thing on her own initiative.

  Last night I dreamt I was in a room full of small cloven-hoofed creatures while in the street below someone had loosed a huge, unwieldy pig. A great boar? Whether I am bored with kids, or a bore about kids, or both, was not resolved. I woke feeling as if I had been a long time corked in a bottle with watery greyness all around.

  I hope you can read this, my writing skills have gone along with my energy.

  Love,

  Constance

  Sussex

  April, 1957

  My dearest Sheila,

  The moment you came through the door you raised us all up. You know you have this gift? I think it is so important we should know our gifts, particularly as we get older and a bit more worn, no longer the bright, shining things we once were. You took upon yourself our burden. Were you daunted when you felt the weight? You did not show it. You looked at us, held out your arms and laughed as if with joy. In parting, you have left your gift behind, laughter lodged in nooks and crannies of the house. It is going to come as quite a shock to poor Gillian and James, the discovery that it is I who am their mother. Up until now they have probably thought of me as the wet nurse.

  Stephen seemed to think you lived here. When you left he thought you were playing hide-and-seek and he peered behind chairs and under tables, shouting ‘Auntie Shee’. Fergus explained that you had gone back to your own home and as Stephen was not convinced of the necessity for this, he painted a heart-rending picture of Linnie and Toby deprived of their Mummy.

  Stephen has consented to be comforted and seems disposed to be content with his parents. He is the nicest natured of my children. I am surprised, but deeply gratified, that you thought he took after me. Fair hair apart, he seems to have Fergus’s disposition. I sometimes think he doesn’t need fairy stories; he is supplied with a ready-made world of his own into which he can float away at will. A darling child, but I should feel easier could I detect a measure of Fergus’s toughness in him. Fergus says I am never satisfied, I have my dream child and now all I want is that he come down to earth.