A World of My Own (7 page)

It was in 1972 that a lot of houses in London were destroyed by bombs. Going upstairs to my apartment with a friend I was immediately suspicious of a canister which was tied to a radiator on the stairs and attached by a glass tube to an electric point. My friend detached the tube and I went down into the street and showed it to a group of policemen.

One of them examined the tube and said there was enough explosive in it to blow up the whole block. They went into the house. I was afraid for all their lives, for a second bomb might have been planted, and sure enough a suitcase did explode and a shower of sharp little pieces flew in all directions—not dangerous but stinging.

I found myself in a room where a parrot was at liberty and flew suddenly up to the ceiling. I explained to a companion who was with me, ‘I am terrified of birds, as my mother was. I can’t bear touching feathers. I can’t stay in this room.’ I went
crouching into a little dark room next door, but the parrot swooped after me, nearly touching my face.

There were other creatures around me in this room, but they were little furry friendly ones. Suddenly someone thrust a large fat spider into my trousers and I felt it grasp my penis. This was worse even than the parrot.

In January 1983 I was in Mexico attached to a gang of guerrillas pursued by the army. I and a companion had been separated from the main body. As we were crossing some rough country we were shot at from a line of shallow trenches.

My companion didn’t reply but fired into the air, at which an elderly man who I think was his father stood up in the trench and waved his welcome. Then he ran forward and fell wounded on his knees.

Some time must have passed for the next thing I remember is the two of us, again alone, making our way along a road. Coming towards us were a man and a woman driving a horse and cart. I saw that the man had what looked like a very new rifle in front of him. As they reached us I grabbed the rifle and they passed out of sight round a bend in the road. I felt sure they would tell our pursuers where
we were. My companion went back to the bend to see if they were close and he waved to me to make a deviation.

I could see that a company of troops was approaching, and when I looked down the road to my left where he had waved me to go I saw another troop marching towards us, while a third company was coming down the road towards me. We were hemmed in.

I decided to walk straight on carrying my rifle, and hoped they wouldn’t recognize me. They began to pass without firing, but then I heard the click of bolts—they would shoot at any moment. The road we were on was striped alternatively white and black, and I thought—‘White is life and black is death.’

I must have survived, for death is rare in dreams, so rare that I think I’ve only encountered my own death once—the death with which this book ends.

I am surprised to find how often religion of a kind intrudes itself into the World of My Own. I write ‘of a kind’ for I have always resented being classed as a Roman Catholic novelist. After all, one of my books,
The Power and the Glory
(perhaps my best), was condemned by the Holy Office, and the Cardinal of Westminster previous to Cardinal Heenan severely criticized my work. I am not surprised that in the World of My Own too I can hardly be described as an orthodox Catholic.

Nevertheless, I have encountered three popes there, though only two in the Common World—Pius XII and Paul VI. Luckily John Paul II was asleep when we first met in the World of My Own.

John Paul II is a great traveller and I am not sure in what hotel and in what country we happened to be staying at the same time. For a reason I don’t
understand myself, for I have no liking for him, I felt a strong desire to make my confession to him. It was late evening and I hesitated a long while outside his bedroom door wondering whether to knock. Then I turned the handle and the door opened and there was the Pope in bed fast asleep. The face on the pillow had the same charismatic look I had seen on so many television screens. I stood looking down at it, wondering whether I should wake him, but there my memory fails me. I suppose I slunk away, carrying away with me unspoken what must have been a very unimportant confession.

My other encounters with Pope John Paul II have not been happy ones. In 1984 we had a walk together around the Vatican garden. He was in turn very amiable and then very impatient. We stopped beside two groups—one of women and one of men—who were playing cards. He gave a chocolate Perugina to each of the two winners, and I was a little disgusted by the pious and servile way in which they received them, as though he were giving them the Host.

In July 1987 I was shocked to learn from the newspapers that the same pope was thinking of canonizing Christ. I felt the man must be mad with pride to
believe he was in a position to give an honour to Christ. As it happened he was on a visit to Antibes, and one day I passed him on the ramparts, kneeling in prayer and gazing at the sea. After I had passed I realized that he was following me and I slowed my steps, hoping that he might speak to me and that I would be able to express my feelings about the honour he was proposing to give. But he passed me without a word and turned off into the town. He was dressed in an old pair of very dirty white trousers and a green pullover. There was something pathetic in this disarray and for the first time I felt a little sorry for the Pope.

My only meeting with Pope John XXIII, whom I much admired, was a curious one. It occurred in the last year of his life. The Pope was blessing the sea, an ancient ceremony in the course of which he waded into the water waist deep, wearing his triple tiara. Unfortunately three unruly Englishmen were bathing at this spot and they combined together to splash the Pope. They were—I hesitate to give their names, but two of them at least are now dead—the Earl of Southampton, Sir Kenneth Clark, and Raymond Mortimer. Because I knew the last two personally, the Pope took me on one side when the ceremony was over and asked me to give them some
form of rebuke, and he lent me a room in the Vatican for the purpose. I forget now, after twenty-four years, what I said to them, but I am sure I criticized them as strongly as I could, for their conduct had shocked me.

In the case of Paul VI, whom I had known and liked in the Common World, I remember a very different religious ceremony, but the handwriting in my diary after twenty-four years is sometimes difficult to read. A religious ceremony was certainly in progress, in Rome this time, before a great square palace which reminded me more of Vienna than of Rome, and did lions really play a part or is my writing deceptive? I seem to describe the lions who were there chasing after children, though I admit I was not sure whether it was a bit of flesh they were chasing or an innocent tuft of hair. There were also tall stone statues, with grotesque cardinals’ heads, which moved around the square followed by a nun who beat them on the heads to prove that they were of stone. Finally, after all this, came Pope Paul’s sermon—but it emerged from the throat of a mule of which I could see in mid-air only the head and the long extended throat, like a monstrous speaking-tube.

When I returned to the house where I was staying I found a jewelled crown on the dresser—presumably it belonged to the Pope—and I was tempted
flippantly to try it on, but I feared that the Pope might enter at any moment.

I had on an earlier occasion been closer to Pope Paul VI than through the head of a mule. I found myself walking beside him in a procession up the aisle of a church in Rome. He seemed tired and dispirited and I began to tell him that he was working too hard and that we loved him (something I would never have said to his successor). Tears even came into my eyes. When we arrived before the altar there was an empty row of chairs for us to occupy. I felt that I had had more than I deserved of the Pope’s company, so I hesitated to take the chair nearest him, but I was saved from that.

“Find a place for Saint Hugh,” someone cried. Looking back over my shoulder I saw an old man with a white beard and a cheerful smile, and I gladly made room for him though I had no idea who Saint Hugh could be, for surely all saints are dead even in the World of My Own.

Once I attended Mass with my mother in Crowborough, where my parents lived. We had found places in the front row. The priest was saying a Hail Mary
in company with two servers. They made little steps towards the altar and halted between each line. I realized to my anger and disgust that the priest held a lighted cigarette in his hand, and so did one of the servers. At the end he turned to the congregation and said that soon a decision would be taken by Rome for or against the legend of the Virgin Birth, and that he wanted no trouble whatever the decision was. Then he walked down the aisle to greet the congregation as they left.

I was furious. I was determined, if I had the chance, to tell him what I thought of him. I slipped out and got to the door. He was busy talking to people. I hoped he would come to me, but I waited—I had the excuse of waiting for my mother. The priest returned into the church without speaking to me, and I followed him. He embraced a tall man, hanging as it were from his shoulders, and I found at last the courage to speak and told him how he had disgusted me. ‘Couldn’t you have waited for three minutes to smoke?’ He smiled back at me in a superior and complacent way.

Tonight at Mass a fat ungainly woman was helping the priest serve. She had plonked down a cup of tea
on the altar beside the chalice, and this gave the impression that the priest was consecrating the tea as well as the wine. I felt very indignant and when Mass was over argued rather fiercely with the priest, who seemed a feeble and ignorant man.