A SEVERE MERCY

"He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisesly, the emotions. But, then - this was awful! - maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering! He checked himself: showing one's emotions was not the thing: having them was. Still, he was dizzy with the revelation. What is beauty but something that is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least partly, is emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it seemed to be found in love - a great love - though maybe for the saints there was joy in the love of God. Certainly not! So, if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love. But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain - if, indeed, they went together. If there were a choice - and he suspected there was - a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths."

"If we were caught up in love, we were no less caught up in beauty, the mystery of beauty. Essentially we were pagan, but it was a high paganism. We worshipped the spirits of earth and sky; we adored the mysteries of beauty and love. Early spring became full spring. The orchard was a sea of white blossoms where we drifted enraptured in starlight and sunlight. Sometimes we walked in the rain, and we pressed our faces into masses of damp cool lilacs. I picked little posies of lily-of-the-valley to pin on to her blouse. However often it has happened to other lovers, it was to us the greatest glory we had ever known."

"Look," we said, "what is it that draws two people into closeness and love? Of course there's the mystery of physical attraction, but beyond that it's the things they share. We both love strawberries and ships and collies and poems and all beauty, and all those things bind us together. Those sharings just happened to be; but what we must do now is share everything. Everything! If one of us likes anything, there must be something to like in it - and the other one must find it. Every single thing that either of us likes. That way we shall create a thousand strands, great and small, that will link us together. Then we shall be so close that it would be impossible - unthinkable - for either of us to suppose that we could ever recreate such closeness with anyone else. And our trust in each other will not only be based on love and loyalty but on the fact of a thousand sharings - a thousand strands twisted into something unbreakable."

"On a day in early spring we thought we saw the answer (t0 the enemy of love). The killer of love is creeping separateness. Inloveness is a gift of the gods, but then it is up to the lovers to cherish or to ruin. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together. Finding separate interests. 'We' turning into 'I'. Self. Self-regard: what I want to do. Actual selfishness only a hop away. This was the way of creeping separateness. And in the modern world, especially in the cities, everything favoured it. The man going off to his office; the woman staying home with the children - her children - or perhaps having a different job. The failure of love might seem to be caused by hate or boredom or unfaithfulness with a lover; but those were results. First came the creeping separateness: the failure behind the failure."

"Our very closeness was a danger in that we were instantly aware of the slightest disharmony: a grain of dust that would not affect an alarm clock may throw off a fine watch. A hint of anger or coldness in a voice would shock the other. Outrage would be politely expressed. Love had been betrayed. Unbelievable disaster had come upon us. Hope was gone, eyes would be averted, and an awful silence would ensue. And yet, in the depths, we knew that if we caught each other's eye we would laugh and it would be over."

"We lived aboard and sailed the waters off the southern tip of Florida, exploring the keys and inlets, eating fish and lobsters and sand sharks we caught with hook and line or speared. Sometimes we would spend two months at a stretch wandering among the islands, brown and half-naked, our hair long and wild...The two of us, brown as nuts with spears in hand, wading in waist-deep shallows, peering down through the clear water for the feelers of the wily lobster sticking out from beneath a rock or sunken log, and later discussing a huge lobster salad in the cockpit as the sun went down. Or the two of us lying in warm shallows with only our heads, crowned with immense straw hats, and our hands, holding books, out of water - one of us smacking the water now and then to drive away the tiny dorsal fins of little sharks that might fancy a toe or two. And I hear the sounds of the keys: the flap of a sail, the hum of mosquitoes, the wind in the rigging, the wild lost cry of a seabird."

"The breeze had sprung up and backed to north so that it was coming straight in the mouth of the cove, though not strongly enough to cause any worry about the anchor holding. It had blown every bit of humidity and sultriness away. The air was cool and fresh. Then thousand brilliant stars arched across the sky. But what transfixed us was phosphorescence. Every little wave rolling into the cove was crested with cold fire. The anchor rode was a line of fire going down into the depths, and fish moving about left trails of fire. The night of the sea-fire. Davy had crept near to me, still crouching, and I put my arm about her, and she snuggled close. Neither of us spoke, not so much as a whispered word...All about us was the extraordinary beauty of the sea-fire and the glittering stars overhead. We were full of wonder - and joy...The moment was utterly timeless: we didn't know time existed; and it contained, therefore, some foretaste, it may be, of eternity."

"But if Davy was a tower of strength to everybody else, I was allowed to be, a little, her strength. That is in exaggeration, for the real source of strength was her crucified Lord, and yet, humanly she leaned on me. Perhaps it was her divine courtesy; and, indeed, there was a courtesy between us and sometimes, a sort of supernatural justice. At all events, she did not, perhaps could not, conceal from me her human longing to live and her human fear of death...Davy's burden was not death but the fear of death. I asked her to give me that burden, a real handing over, like surrendering a trunk to a porter. An act of handing over. And I took it - also act. I then entered into the fear, her fear, with all my heart and mind and imagination, felt it, carried it along with my own fear, which was also real but other. And her burden grew lighter."

"Now I was discovering it anew in Davy, going through the years: I was touching her soul, the very essence of her being. I described earlier how all the Davys began to flow back to me shortly after her death, and I recovered the wholeness of her. How with the Illumination of the Past the process was complete. It is sometimes said that the fourth dimension is time or duration: one does not see a person or thing in any one instant of seeing. And I was seeing Davy in all her years - I even had her baby and childhood pictures and scribblings. As nearly as a lover can do, I was seeing the whole of her - a wholeness I would never lose - and knowing her soul."