Father McAlister was looking forward to Easter. He had given up alcohol for Lent and the smell of the tangerine cocktail was inflaming his senses. Also of course he dreaded Easter. I do not know, I cannot tell, what pains He had to bear, I only know it was for me He hung and suffered there. The terrible particularity, the empirical detail, of his religion bore down upon him then as at no other time. He would endure it, he would purvey that story all over again, what else was he for? Without the endlessly rehearsed drama of Christ, His birth, His ministry, His death, His resurrection, there was nothing at all, he, Angus McAlister, was a vanishing shadow, and so were the planets and the most distant stars and the ring of the cosmos. Others live without Christ, so why not I? must be it senseless question. Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. How did Saint Paul know? Is it not upon his knowledge that the whole thing rests? Without Paul to carry that strange virus from land to land the gospels would have been lost forever, or rediscovered centuries later as local curiosities. So it was all an accident? That was impossible, for it was something absolute, and what is absolute cannot be an accident. Suppose there was nothing of Christ left to us but his moral sayings, uttered by some unknown man with not a fragment of history to clothe him? Could one love such a being, could one be saved by him? Could he come closer to one than oneself? Christianity spoils its believers as spoilt children are spoilt. The radiant master, the martyred man, the beautiful hero, the incarnate god, the best known individual in history, the best loved and most powerfuclass="underline" this is the figure Christianity has lived upon and may die of. That was not Father McAlister's business. He had his own certainties and his own paradoxes; he did not dare, as Easter approached, to call these his lies. It must surely be possible for him – in Christ – not to lie. Such a truth as ends all strife, such a life as killeth death. Christ on the cross made sense of all the rest, but only if he really died. Christ lives, Christ saves, because he died as we die. The ultimate reality hovered there, not as a phantom man, but as a terrible truth. Father McAlister could not dignify his beliefs by the name of heresy. He prayed, he worshipped, he prostrated himself, he felt himself to be a vehicle of a power and a grace which was given, not his own. But his terrible truth was never quite clarified, and that lack of final clarification troubled him on Good Friday as at no other time. This mysterious Absolute was what, during those awful three hours as he enacted the death of his Lord, he had somehow to convey to the kneeling men and women who would see – not what he saw, but something else – which was their business and God's business – only there was no God. That the priest performed this task in agony, with tears, did him no credit. Rather the contrary.
Tamar had abandoned her brown and grey uniform and was wearing a midnight-blue dress with a jabot of frilly white silk at the neck. Her fine tree-brown tree-green hair had been cleverly cut into layers, she looked boyish and elfin and cool. Her face was slightly less thin, her complexion slightly less pale, she had lost her 'schoolgirl' look. She wore no make-up. Her large hazel eyes carried a wary self-consciously melancholy expression which was new. Conrad Lomas had, as he confided to Leonard, admired her for several seconds before recognising her. Tamar had let Gideon arrange her future, he typed letters for her and she signed them. What had seemed so impossible was fixed up easily and swiftly, what had seemed lost forever retrieved, no one seemed to be surprised, no one objected, her tutor, the college authorities, expressed calm pleasure at the prospect of' welcoming her back. A van, conjured up by Gideon, brought to her all her remaining clothes, all her possessions down to the tiniest trinkets from her room. The awful old flat seemed gone from the earth, as if it had indeed been burnt, an image which haunted her. She bought books, acquiring again the works which her mother had made her sell and which she had parted from with such bitter tears. Though riot without invitations, she remained solitary, as if, in a unique healing interim never to be repeated, she must fast.
The fervour of her religious conversion had, as the cynics predicted, worn off. It was amazing to her now to remember.how she had craved for the sacrament. Had she really swallowed all those wafers of bread and all those sips of rich wine, more intoxicating by far than Gideon's cocktail? At present, she did not want this food. But the cynics (of whom she was well aware) understood very little. Tamar was indeed puzzled about herself' Father McAlister had constantly talked of 'new being'. Well, she had new being, she had been permanently changed. But what had happened? Was it simply that she had broken free from her mother, was that what her cunning psyche had, under the guise of other things, always been after? She had been suddenly endowed with a supernatural strength. Like a trapped creature who, seeing a last, already vanishing, escape route, becomes savagely powerful, able to destroy anything which impedes its way. In that final scene, Tamar had felt ready to trample her mother into the ground, and had sensed with satisfaction her mother's apprehension (if all irreversible shift of the balance of power between them. Was one, as a Christian, and a new Christian, allowed to take dial much time off from the Gospel of Love? To say it was necessary, it is over, things will be better, there will be a fresh start seemed a shabby way of getting oneself'off. Tamar had no idea what she had done to her mother. Tamar had not discussed these more recent problems with her mentor. She was with his tacit consent, avoiding him. Later they would talk again – though never, perhaps, as they had talked once. Slit was sure of his concern, indeed, of his love. Only love, his or Christ's, his and Christ's, could have rescued her from dmi inferno of guilt and fear. She was also aware, with a hall amused irritation, of the way in which, when the prjctii apprehended her withdrawal, he 'transferred his affections' to her mother. Tamar and Father McAlister had ofcourse talked a great deal about Violet, and he had visited her first with Gideon, later (as he told Tamar) by himself, brief and, as she understood, fruitless visits. However it took more than snubs and indications of the door to deter this connoisseur of hope. less cases. Tamar's teacher had insisted to his now, in this matter sceptical, pupil that her mother depended on her, really loved her, and really was loved by her. Before her escape Tamar was not ready to reflect on these theories. Now, reflecting on them, she made little progress. She had been told of, indeed had experienced, the transforming power of love, the only miraculous power upon this earth. Was it possible now for her to love Violet, or discover that she had always loved her? Tamar's new state placed her further from her mother than she had ever been, her liberation having been made possible by an anger which made her former submission seem more like weakness than love. Could she see more clearly now or less clearly? Had she always assumed that she loved mother because that was what children did? The priest, who had seen and understood that sinful anger, had told her to banish it by thinking love, enacting love. Approach her! Do little things! She needs you! Tamar was not so sure. She had tried a little thing by bringing her flowers, accompanied by Pat, which had been a mistake. Violet had accepted them with it tigerish smile. Visible hatred terrifies. Tamar determined to try again soon.