The Only Problem

‘I think possibly there might be a genetic interpretation of it. But I’m talking theologically.’

When, now, Edward looked at his friend’s face and saw stress on it, rich and authoritative as Harvey was, swine as he could be, he envied him for the detachment with which he was able to set himself to working on the problem through the Book of Job. It was possible for a man like Harvey to be detached and involved at the same time. As an actor, Edward envied him. He also envied the ease with which he could write to his lawyer about his divorce from Effie without a thought for the money involved. As for Edward’s loan, Harvey had already written a cheque without a word, knowing, of course, that Edward would pay it back in time. And then, although Harvey wasn’t consistently generous, and had ignored Effie’s letters, Edward remembered how only a few months ago he had arranged bail through his ever-ready lawyer for Effie and Ruth’s student, Nathan, when they were arrested during a demonstration, and been had up for riot and affray. Effie didn’t need the bail money, for her lover came to the rescue first, but Nathan did. They were both bound over to keep the peace. Harvey’s money was so casual. Edward envied him that, and felt guilty, glimpsing again, for that sharp unthinkable instant, the possibility that he might like to part from Ruth as abruptly and as easily. Edward closed the subject in his mind quickly, very quickly. It had been established that Ruth and Edward always thought alike. Edward didn’t want to dwell on that thought, either.

As a theological student Edward had spent many an hour lying with Harvey Gotham on the grass in the great green university square if the weather was fine in the early summer, while the croquet mallets clicked on another part of the green, and the croquet players’ voices made slight exclamations, and together he and Harvey discussed the Book of Job, which they believed was not only as important, as amazing, a poem as it was generally considered to be, but also the pivotal book of the Bible.

Edward had always maintained that the link — or should he say fetter? — that first bound him to Harvey was their deep old love of marvellous Job, their studies, their analyses, their theories. Harvey used to lie on his back on the grass, one leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee, while Edward sat by his side sunning his face and contemplating the old castle, while he listened with another part of his mind to Harvey’s talk. ‘It is the only problem. The problem of suffering is the only problem. It all boils down to that.’

‘Did you know,’ Edward remembered saying, ‘that when Job was finally restored to prosperity and family abundance, one of his daughters was called Box of Eye-Paint? Can we really imagine our tormented hero enjoying his actual reward?’

‘No,’ said Harvey. ‘He continued to suffer.’

‘Not according to the Bible.’

‘Still, I’m convinced he suffered on. Perhaps more.’

‘It seems odd, doesn’t it,’ Edward had said, ‘after he sat on a dung-heap and suffered from skin-sores and put up with his friends’ gloating, and lost his family and his cattle, that he should have to go on suffering.’

‘It became a habit,’ Harvey said, ‘for he not only argued the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable.’

‘But he wanted to argue with God.’

‘Yes, but God as a character comes out badly, very badly. Thunder and bluster and I’m Me, who are you? Putting on an act. Behold now Leviathan. Behold now Behemoth. Ha, ha among the trumpets. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? And Job, insincerely and wrongly, says, “I am vile.” And God says, All right, that being understood, I give you back double your goods, you can have fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. And seven sons and three daughters. The third daughter was Kerenhappuch — that was Eye-Paint.’

Towards evening, on the day when Edward visited Harvey at his place near St Die, Harvey went out and brought in the baby clothes. He didn’t fold them; he just dumped them on a chair in the little scullery at the back of the kitchen. He seemed to forget that he was impatient for Edward to leave. He brought out some wine, some glasses, cheese and bread. In fact, Edward could see that Harvey didn’t want him to leave, lest he should feel lonely afterwards. Edward had been feeling rather guilty at interrupting what was probably a fairly contented solitude. Now, it was not that he regretted imposing his presence, but that by doing so he must impose the absence to follow. For Harvey more and more seemed to want him to remain. Edward said something about catching a night ferry. He thought, Surely Harvey’s involved with the mother of the baby whose clothes he’s just brought in off the line. They must be the clothes of an infant not more than a year old. Where are the mother and child?

There was no sign of any mother or child apart from the clothes Harvey had dumped on a chair. Edward was envious, too. He was envious of Harvey’s woman and his child. He wanted, at that moment, to be free like Harvey and to have a girl somewhere, but not visible, with a baby.

Harvey said, ‘It’s fairly lonely here.’ By which Edward knew for certain that Harvey was suddenly very lonely indeed at the thought of his leaving. The mother and child were probably away for the night.

‘Stay the night,’ said Harvey. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

Edward wanted to know where Harvey had been and what he’d been doing since he disappeared on the autostrada. But they did not talk of that. Harvey told him that Effie was writing a thesis on child labourers in the Western democracies, basing much of it on Kingsley’s The Water Babies. She hadn’t told Edward this. Harvey seemed pleased that he had a bit more news of her than Edward had. But then they had a laugh over Effie and her zeal in the sociological industry.

Harvey made up a bed for him in a sort of cupboard-room upstairs. It was nearly four in the morning when he pulled the extra rough covers over a mattress and piled two cushions for a pillow. From the doorway into Harvey’s bedroom Edward could see that the bed was narrow, the furniture quite spare in a cheap new way. He said, ‘Where’s the baby?’

‘What baby?’ Harvey said.

‘The baby whose washing was out on the line.’

‘Oh that,’ said Harvey; ‘that’s only my safeguard. I put baby clothes out on the line every day and bring them in at night. I change the clothes every other day, naturally.’

Edward wondered if Harvey had really gone mad.

‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Edward said, turning away as if it didn’t matter.

‘You see,’ said Harvey, ‘the police don’t break in and shoot if there’s likely to be a baby inside. Otherwise they might just break in and shoot.’

‘Go to hell,’ Edward said.