Star over Bethlehem - Agatha Christie [11]
Alan came running down the stairs again.
“Have you had a nice time? Where did you go? To church?” He laughed, trying the word out. “Church—church—that’s a funny name.”
“It means God’s house,” said his mother.
“Does it? I didn’t know God lived in a house.”
“God is in Heaven, dear. Up in the sky. I told you.”
“But not always? Doesn’t He come down and walk about? In the evenings? In summer? When it’s nice and cool?”
“In the Garden of Eden,” said Grierson, smiling.
“No, in this garden, here. He’d like all the funny new animals and things like I do.”
Janet winced.
“Those funny animals—darling.” She paused. “There was an accident, you know. At the big Station up on the downs. That’s why there are so many of these queer—things about. They get born like that. It’s very sad!”
“Why? I think it’s exciting! Lots of new kinds of things being born all the time. I have to find names for them. Sometimes I think of lovely names.”
He wriggled off his chair.
“I’ve finished. Please—can I go now? My friend is waiting for me in the garden.”
His father nodded. Gertrude said softly.
“All children are the same. They always invent a ‘friend’ to play with.”
“At five, perhaps. Not when they’re thirteen,” said Janet bitterly.
“Try not to mind, dear,” said Gertrude gently.
“How can I help it?”
“You may be looking at it all the wrong way.”
Down at the bottom of the garden, where it was cool under the trees, Alan found his friend waiting.
He was stroking a rabbit who was not quite a rabbit but something rather different.
“Do you like him, Alan?”
“Oh yes. What shall we call him?”
“It’s for you to say.”
“Is it really? I shall call him—I shall call him—Forteor. Is that a good name?”
“All your names are good names.”
“Have you got a name yourself?”
“I have a great many names.”
“Is one of them God?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was! You don’t really live in that stone house in the village with the long thing sticking up, do you?”
“I live in many places … But sometimes, in the cool of the evening, I walk in a garden—with a friend and talk about the New World—”
Jenny by the Sky
Come down to me, Jenny, come down from the hill
Come down to me here where I wait
Come down to my arms, to my lips, my desire
Come down all my hunger to sate
But Jenny walks lonely, her head in the air,
She walks on the hill top, the wind in her hair,
She will not come down to me, loud though I cry
She walks with the wind, upturned face to the sky …
In the cool of the evening I walked in the glade,
And there I met God … and I was not afraid.
Together we walked in the depths of the wood
And together we looked at the things we had made
Together we looked—and we saw they were good …
God made the World and the stars set on high
The Galaxies rushing, none knows where or why.
God fashioned the Cosmos, the Universe wide,
And the hills and the valleys, the birds in the wood
God made them and loved them, and saw they were good …
And I—have made Jenny! To walk on the hill.
She will not come down to me loud though I cry;
She walks there for ever, her face to the sky,
She will not come down though I call her,
She will not come down to my greed,
She is as I dreamed her … and made her
Of my loving and longing and need …
With my mind and my heart I made Jenny,
I made her of love and desire,
I made her to walk on the hill top
In loneliness, beauty and fire …
In the cool of the evening I walked in the wood
And God walked beside me …
We both understood.
Promotion in the Highest
They were walking down the hill from the little stone church on the hillside.
It was very early in the morning, the hour just before dawn. There was no one about to see them as they went through the village, though one or two sleepers sighed and stirred in their sleep. The only human being who saw them that morning was Jacob Narracott, as he grunted and sat up in the ditch. He had collapsed there soon after he came out of