The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [67]
Most of the Norman windows had been smashed and Frank had had the idea of raising money in the diocese and commissioning a window from the great artist living in the parish. He had called on Fludd, and put the proposal—as a very vague beginning—to him, and Fludd had said he had many ideas, the spirit of God brooding on the waters, maybe, or a Tree of Life with gold and crimson fruits. For a few weeks these images had been discussed enthusiastically, over mugs of beer, and drawings had been produced, in chalk, and ink, and watercolour. Frank Mallett still had one or two. The rest had been destroyed by Fludd in an excess of despair. Frank had called one day, as usual, and found the potter sitting in his great chair and staring at nothing. He seemed almost unable to speak, almost catatonic. He had muttered “I can do nothing,” and “Leave me,” and Seraphita had come into the kitchen and said—tonelessly—placidly?—that her husband was unwell, and would not be ready to do anything for some time, she knew this well, and could assure Mr. Mallett that there was nothing to be gained from visiting, until Fludd was well again. Mallett had ventured the opinion that artistic powers perhaps ebbed and flowed like the tides. (He would not now dare to utter any such platitude.) Seraphita had agreed, flatly, that this might be so, and had stood, statuesque, waiting for him to take his leave. He knew, as her spiritual advisor, that he should offer her help, or comfort, or a chance to share her burden. But she looked at him, dully, patiently, waiting for him to go, and he went. Another time might be better, he told himself. This was all before Arthur Dobbin and the vanishing Martin Calvert had turned up at Purchase House.
• • •
And then, one winter afternoon, when Frank Mallett was in St. Edburga’s Church, kneeling in fact, in prayer in the chancel, trying to combat the seeping away or silting up of his faith, Fludd had come in search of him. He had flung open the door, letting in a roiling gust of wind, which rattled papers and briefly disturbed the altar-cloth. He stood in the nave, his bull-shoulders jutting forward, his large head hunched between them, paying no attention to the fact that the priest was kneeling. He said
“I am in mortal need. Will you hear my confession?”
Frank had got up, not gracefully. He was afraid. He was a young man, and innocent, despite his pretty pointed gold beard on his chin. He had lived a sheltered life, and had so far encountered no real horrors in his brief ministry, only the present fact of death, and the destructive bad temper of competitive churchwardens and hassock-embroidering ladies. He said mildly that this was an Anglican church, and that confession was not a sacrament. Fludd laid a hand on him, tugged at his sleeve, made him sit down in a box-pew and sat next to him, his breath laboured. He was wearing a black smock, which had a parodic look of a cassock.
“God,” said Benedict Fludd, “your God, that is, strides in and out of my life with no warning. One day he seems impossible—laughable, laughable—and the next, he is imperious.” He stopped. He said “It is like the phases of the moon, maybe. Or the seasons of the sphere we live on, rolling in and out of the light, skeleton trees one day, and then snow, and afterwards the bright green veil and after that the full heat and shining. Only it is neither regular nor predictable. And there are—others—who stride in, when he takes himself off. Who seem persuasive. Like Hindoo demons who are gods in their own terms.”
Frank listened. He thought in his young head that the rhetoric was practised. He murmured something about the tenacity of faith in the dark times of the soul, in the lean years of the spirit.
“I have no will,” said Fludd, with a note of satisfaction. “I am a battleground simply, and yet I live and walk about in the world. But there is—are—chinks of light, moments of stasis, between one state and another, between the victories of the Pale Galilean and the multiform Life-force. If you take