She leapt and slithered through her discourse, losing her train of thought, shooting off into tangential metaphors, painfully misusing what I thought of as technical terms, and then, when all seemed lost, letting fly with the casual flare of illumination that left me stunned with its brilliance.
I have no great ear for music; I have only a degree more for poetry. What I do possess is a powerful and unerring sense for truth, particularly theological truth, and that night I heard it, ringing out clear and sweet in that unlikely hall from a woman who was working herself, and her audience, into a state that verged on erotic excitement.
She came back time and again to the concept of thirst, imbuing the word with a yearning that became ever more urgent. She called upon, inevitably, Canticles, but only obliquely, teasingly, and she shied away before committing herself to a full-blown orgy. (The Song of Solomon does become inordinately stimulating: “You are stately as a palm tree,” it croons, “and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I shall climb the palm tree and take hold of its branches. . . . your kisses are like the best wine, going down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.” And: “My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart thrilled within me.” It is regarded as an allegory of the soul’s desire for God, but the rabbis were forced to make strong injunctions against those who would sing it in taverns. It is, in a word, bawdy.)
She ended her talk, abruptly as before, with a phrase from Canticles: “‘Eat, O friends, and drink: drink deeply, O lovers.’” She smiled and gave a small bow. “Until Saturday, friends.” And she was gone.
THERE WAS A certain breathlessness to the wave of voices that broke over the hall, and the Inner Circle around me, though they must have heard her any number of times already, stood up flustered and met one another’s eyes with a defiant half embarrassment. Some of the gentlemen in the rows below seemed distinctly warm under the collar.
In the packed foyer, I could see a multitude of brightly coloured collection baskets, filling rapidly. Several of the circle picked up baskets and moved into the crowd, but to my surprise the others made their ways to the street doors. I turned and spoke loudly into Veronica’s ear.
“Is there no gathering tonight, then?”
“No,” she shouted back. “Not on Thursdays.”
We streamed with hoi polloi out onto the cool and rational street and washed up, blinking, beneath a lamppost, ignoring as best we could the buskers and vendors who had anticipated the crowd.
“Why not on Thursdays?” I asked.
“Why what? Oh, Margery, you mean. She meditates, both before and after the Thursday meetings, always.”
The contemplation of what the woman’s thoughts might consist of during those meditations gave me pause. I came to myself with a start.
“Pardon me?” I asked.
“I said, do you want to go for dinner, or a drink?”
“Oh. Not a full meal, I think.”
“A pub, then.”
A pub it was, and since it was nearby, it was already populated with a large percentage of the night’s congregation, laughing and merry and as unlikely a group of churchgoers as I had seen. We oozed snugly into two chairs at a miniscule corner table with our glasses and a plate of anaemic sandwiches from the bar.
“So, what do you think?” Veronica asked. I looked at her carefully, but there was no mischief in her eyes. And I couldn’t even put her innocence down to virginal naïveté.
“I think that was the most amazing church service I’ve ever witnessed,” I said, and then around a mouthful of cheese and pickle, I asked, “Was that her standard treatment for a Thursday night?”
“She was a bit subdued tonight, because of Iris’s death. She wanted to devote the evening to a memorial service, but Mrs Fitzwarren absolutely refused to allow it. She’s never liked it that Iris was so wrapped up with the Temple, and she blames Margery for the death.”
“Blames her? How?”
“Oh, that’s too strong. I ought to say, she isn’t yet prepared to share her grief with anyone outside the family. Margery understands, but she’s hurt, too—who wouldn’t be? So she was, as I said, subdued. I’ve seen her so intense, the sparks fly.”
“Must be against the law,” I said under my breath. “Oh never mind, I was just thinking that if she becomes so . . . worked up, it’s no wonder she can’t sit calmly and drink tea at the end of it. I’d have to go for a brisk ten-mile walk.”
“She says she depends on the energy that she gathers on nights like this, that when she meditates, she reintegrates it and is strengthened by it. She’s an extraordinary person,” she added needlessly.
“So it seems. Tell me, does she lead meditations, or prayer meetings, with you?”
“From time to time. She does what she calls ‘teaching silence.’ It’s a way of listening to the universe—she calls it ‘opening one’s self up to the love of God.’ Ask her about it.”
“I will.”
“You’ll go and see her, then?”
“I think so. I had thought tonight, but . . .”
“Sorry, I should have explained. Do you want that other meat sandwich? Thanks. Why don’t you telephone tomorrow and ask Marie when would be a good time.”
“I will.” I picked up the last triangle, something unidentifiable but vaguely fishy. Veronica was staring unfocused at the sandwich in her hand.
“She is truly extraordinary,” she repeated. Her heavy eyebrows came together, and I waited. She glanced up and flushed. “Oh, it’s nothing, just something I saw—or thought I saw. I suppose I could tell you about it, though you’ll think I’ve gone loony. Maybe I oughtn’t,” she dithered. “Oh hell, why not?
“I was at the Temple one night, settling a woman and her two children into the refuge. I didn’t realise how late it was, and I needed to talk with Margery about them, so I went to find her, not thinking. She wasn’t in the sitting room—where we were the other night?—so I went on down the corridor to her private rooms, thinking that I’d find Marie at any rate. Well, I did find her—I stuck my head into the room Margery uses as a private meditation chapel and saw Marie sitting there, so I walked in. Before I could say more than ‘Marie, have you seen—’ she jumped up and grabbed my arm and started pushing me back out the door. Now, you probably could guess how most of us feel about Marie. I mean, she does her job and protects Margery from being eaten up, but she’s hardly an easy person to get along with. Anyway, I stopped dead and said, ‘Marie, what on earth is the matter?’ and she hushed me and glanced across the room, the way you do when you want to make sure you haven’t disturbed someone, so I pushed forward a few steps and saw Margery. She was kneeling, sort of sitting on her heels, and her shoulders were thrown back and her arms dangled down and her head was back, just rigid. She hadn’t heard me. She looked as if she wouldn’t have heard a bomb going off. I couldn’t see her face very well, but her mouth seemed to be open slightly, and she looked . . . otherworldly, as if she weren’t in the room. Marie snatched at me and started shoving at me—God, she’s an irritating person!—and I let her push me to the door. I turned around when we got there, to look over her shoulder, and just then Margery sort of collapsed, like a marionette with its strings cut. Just went limp and folded into a huddle on the floor. Marie gave me a final push and bolted the door, and I could hear her walking—not running—across the room. I didn’t mention it to Margery, or to anyone else for that matter. I don’t know if she knows I saw her. It was a Tuesday,” she added, somewhat irrelevantly.
Time had been called and the pub was quieting, but neither of us took much notice for several minutes, until the owner came and began pointedly to clear the tables next to us. We drained our glasses and put on our coats.
“Thank you for telling me, Ronnie,” I said. “I agree, she’s an interesting person.”
“You don’t think I’ve gone daft, then?”
“Oh, no,” I said emphatically. “By no means.”
I TOOK TO my narrow bed that night with a mind awhirl, pl
ucked at by the plight of Miles Fitzwarren, the motives of Sherlock Holmes, and the spiritual life of Margery Childe. I did not sleep overly much.
9
FRIDAY, 31 DECEMBER–SATURDAY, 1 JANUARY
Let the woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I
do not suffer a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
over men, but to be in silence.
1 TIMOTHY 2:11–12
I DID RING the Temple the following morning, and after long delays and losing the connexion twice, I finally spoke with the churlish Marie, whose accent on the telephone was thick as marzipan. I shifted to French, but she stubbornly persisted with fracturing English, and at the end of the bilingual conversation, it transpired that Miss Childe was not able to see me that day for longer than fifteen minutes, that Miss Childe wished to see me for a longer period of time, and that Miss Childe therefore suggested that I dine with her the next evening, Saturday, at half past six. I told Marie in the most florid of French that such an arrangement was entirely felicitous and unreservedly acceptable, then rang off.
I sat for a minute at the telephone desk, whistling tunelessly, and then picked up the receiver again and asked for a number in Oxford. While waiting for the trunk call to go through, I retrieved the morning paper. The day’s article on Iris Fitzwarren stretched one meagre piece of news (that the nightclub she had been in was raided by Scotland Yard late Thursday night, with a number of deliciously scandalous arrests) into two columns, but despite the writer’s efforts, it was obvious that nothing was happening. Had it not been for her name, the story would have been killed or relegated to the innermost recesses.
The exchange came up then with my number, and I spoke for a few minutes to the man on the other end, referring obliquely to certain debts and favours and describing the information I wanted, and said I would ring him back in an hour. Holmes would have done the matter by telegram, I knew, but I always prefer the personal touch in my matters of mild blackmail.
I went for breakfast and then returned to the telephone. My informant had the college address and private telephone number I needed, which I wrote in my notebook. I thanked him, took up my hat, gloves, and increasingly light handbag, and called a farewell to the concierge (such a grand name for that dried-up figure!). Taxis beckoned, but I resolutely turned my steps toward the Underground. Ridiculous as it seemed, after the depredations of generosity the other night to the East End poor, my purse was emptying fast, and no reinforcements were due until the banks opened on Monday. As I walked down the steps into the noisy station, a sudden thought made me laugh aloud: The cost of the clothes the elves were making for me amounted to precisely five pounds more than the total allowance I had drawn during my three years at Oxford, and here was I hoarding my last few shillings. Monday a ragged-coated philanthropist, Friday too poor for a taxi, and Sunday on the edge of being a millionaire (in dollars, perhaps, if the market was strong and the exchange rate very good).
In Oxford, I walked through a low drizzle and presented myself at the address in my notebook, where I was surprisingly well received despite the fact that I was obviously interrupting the great man’s work. I spent an instructive two and a half hours and came away with a list of books and names. The former I tracked down in the Bodleian, where I spent the afternoon skimming several thousand pages. I spent a few shillings on a stodgy pub meal, worked a while longer, and on my way out of the town centre stopped for a brief chat with the colleague (whom I had dubbed Duncan) with whom I was doing the public presentation in January. The brief visit turned into dinner and a lengthy consultation, and I returned late to my digs on the north end of town, read for another couple of hours, and slept fitfully.
Saturday morning, I rose early, made myself a pot of tea, and began to read Evelyn Underhill’s massive (in scope, if not number of pages) treatise on mysticism. At a more reasonable hour, my landlady came in with a tray of coffee and buttered toast. Reluctantly, I closed Miss Underhill and picked up the material Duncan had given me the previous evening. At midmorning, I walked to his house, an amiable shambles of loud children and a wife every bit as absentminded as he, and after an hour’s friendly argument, I took myself on a contemplative stroll through the Parks and Magdalen’s deer park to a converted laundry in Headington, a building that smelt oddly of starch and scorched sheets when warm, at whose whitewashed front windows passersby often drew up, startled at the noises coming from within.
Watson called this form of martial art “baritsu,” for reasons best known to himself. (There was in his day a form of glorified grappling by that name, invented by an Englishman and dignified with an Oriental title, but had Holmes depended on it, he would never have survived Reichenbach.) That day, out of condition from weeks at my books and distracted as well, I called it torture, and I collected a handsome variety of bruises from my gentle and ever-genial teacher. I bowed to him gingerly and crept away to the train, reflecting on how salutary it is occasionally to put one’s self in the hands of a ruthless superior.
I ARRIVED AT the Temple promptly at five o’clock, at the everyday business doors down the street from the meeting hall. As we had arranged, Veronica met me and spent the next hour showing me the workings behind the doors. It was an enlightening experience. We saw the Refuge, open to poor women in trouble, with long tables to feed them, a small surgery to treat their ills, and a tiny garden in the back with swings for the children. (“The only garden some of them have ever seen,” commented Ronnie.) I saw the classrooms, with readers designed for children but used mostly, said Veronica, by grown women (“We’re writing a simple adult reader”); the commissary, with its stores of food and clothing for the destitute; the secretarial training rooms, with a row of typewriting machines (“You probably know that if a woman refuses to take a job as a servant, because of the low pay, long hours, and lack of dignity, she may have her unemployment benefits cancelled,” Ronnie said. I had to admit I did not); and a storage room with shelves of books, a future, dreamed-about library (“These people will read anything and everything, given a chance”).
The next building, between the Refuge and the lecture hall, was the Temple’s heart. On the street level were offices that handled communication for Margery—speaking engagements, business appointments, interested outsiders. These rooms resembled the offices of any prosperous business, without the heavy oaken dignity. What surprised me was the extent of what lay behind these.
Behind the front offices and taking up the entire basement was the Temple’s political organisation. One room had nothing but telephones in cubicles and a large switchboard. (“We can get a response or put out information immediately—it also serves to train women while they earn.”) Another had a round table nearly twelve feet across (“for making decisions on policies”). On the walls around it were a number of typed and handwritten notices and memoranda. “First reading divorce bill—March??” said one. “Remind Refuge workers that midwives get a shilling for each referral,” said another. “If you know of any sympathetic journalist, give the name to Bunny Hillman.” “Pamphlets for the Parliament demo will be ready midday 5 January.” “Needed: more typewriters, bedding, children’s shoes, eyeglasses.” “Physical culture classes beginning 20 January; see Rachel.” “Talk on ‘Sex-Rôle Conditioning, Marriage Contracts, and the Age of Feminism,’ Saturday, 22 January, St Gilberta’s Church, W1.” “NEEDED: country overnight lodgings for mother-infant outings this summer, preferably with forest or lake nearby. See Gertrude P.” “LOST: shawl, mauve with dark trim; see Helen in the front office.” “The next France tour leaves 18 February. Sign up now!! Remember: sensible shoes and be there early! See Susanna Briggs or Francesca Rowley.” “Hymnbooks are disappearing at an alarming rate! Please remember to watch for them in the foyer after services and remind the member to return it to her seat!” “BOOKS WANTED for lending library, good condition, nothing too dreary. Veronica Beaconsfield.” We went on.
The next room was a study, with books on law and history; filing cabine
ts of articles, maps, and census reports; several volumes of jokes; and great piles of journals, from suffragette tractates to Punch (“This is where we draught the speeches”). There was even a print shop in the corner that could turn out broadsheets and pamphlets.
And to think, a week ago I didn’t even know this existed, I thought, and then said it aloud to Veronica.
“You’d have heard of it before too long,” she said, and I believed her. In my preoccupation with the religious aspects of Margery Childe’s personality and message, I had been aware of the attendant practical manifestations of that message only as on the periphery. Now, moving around within the walls of the hive, as it were, I became increasingly aware that as far as Margery’s followers were concerned, the thrice-weekly services might be Margery’s way of infusing them with her energies, but here was where those energies were ultimately spent.
The Temple was a political machine, a highly efficient means of gathering in and laying out monies and giving the enthusiasm of every Temple member, no matter how lowly, a direction and a concrete goal. Canvassing, speech making, pamphlet printing; doctoring the poor and teaching the illiterate; feeding the hungry and planning assaults on the law of the land—all went on here, all directed by a member of the Inner Circle, and therefore ultimately by Margery Childe herself. A mystic, perhaps, but one quite aware of the need for works as well as contemplations. There was a groundswell of power within these walls, gathering beneath Margery Childe and carrying her—where? A seat on the local council? Into Parliament? The fifteenth-century St Catherine of Genoa was a teacher, a philanthropist, the administrator of a great hospital—and a mystic. A century before her, another Catherine, of Siena, advised kings and popes, played a key rôle in papal reformation, and ran a nursing order; she was also a visionary and a mystic ranked by Miss Underhill alongside St Francis in importance. So, why not Margery Childe in twentieth-century London?