The Way Through The Woods

Colin Dexter The Way Through The Woods

The tenth book in the Inspector Morse series, 1997

acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for use of copyright materials:

Extract from A Portrait of Jane Austen by David Cecil, published by Constable Publishers;

Extract from The Rehearsal by Jean Anouilh, published by Methuen London;

The Observer, for a quote by Aneurin Bevan © The Observer,

Faber & Faber Ltd for the extract from 'La Figlia Che Piange' in Collected Poems igog-icfiz by T. S. Eliot;

Oxford University Press for the extract from 'austin, Alfred (1835-1913)' from the Oxford Companion to English Literature edited by Margaret Drabble (5th edition 1985);

Don Manley for the extract from the Chambers Crossword Manual (Chambers 1992);

Extract from Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell, published by Unwin Hyman;

Kate Champkin for the extract from The Sleeping Life of Aspem Williams by Peter Champkin;

Extract from Further Fables of Our Time, published by Hamish Hamilton, 1956, in the UK and Commonwealth and Simon and Schuster in the US. Copyright © 1956 James Thurber. Copyright © 1984 Helen Thurber.

The Observer, for a quote by Edwina Currie © The Observer;

Extract from The Road to Xanadu by John Livingston Lowes. Copyright 1927 by John Livingston Lowes. Copyright © renewed 1955 by John Wilbur Lowes. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. All rights reserved;

Extract from A. E. Housman: Scholar and Poet by Norman Marlow, published by Routledge;

Faber & Faber Ltd for the extract from 'I Have Started to Say', Collected Poems by Philip Larkin;

Extract from Half Truths One and a Half Truths by Karl Kraus, published by Carcanet Press;

The University of Oxford for the extract from the Wytham Woods deed.

Even effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the author and publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

Maps of Wytham Woods and Blenheim Park drawn by Graeme James.

Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

From The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

WYTHAM WOODS

prolegomenon

Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be whiter, yea whiter, than snow

(Isaiah, ch. i, v. 18)

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

(Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)

'I must speak to you.'

'Speak on, my child.'

'I've not often come to your church.'

'It is not my church – it is God's church. We are all children of God.'

'I've come to confess a big sin.'

'It is proper that all sins should be confessed.'

'Can all sins be forgiven?'

'When we, sinful mortals as we are, can find it in our hearts to forgive each other, think only of our infinitely merciful Father, who understands our every weakness – who knows us all far better than we know ourselves.'

'I don't believe in God.'

'And you consider that as of any great importance?'

'I don't understand you.'

'Would it not be of far greater importance if God did not believe in you?'

'You're speaking like a Jesuit.'

‘Forgive me.'

'It's not you – it's me who wants forgiveness.'

'Do you recall Pilgrim, when at last he confessed his sins to God? How the weight of the great burden was straightway lifted from his shoulders – like the pain that eases with the lancing of in abscess?'

'You sound as if you've said that all before.'

'Those self-same words I have said to others, yes.'

'Others?'

'I cannot talk of them. Whatever it is that men and women may confess to me, they confess – through me – to God.'

'You're not really needed at all, then – is that what you are saying?'

'I am a servant of God. Sometimes it is granted me to help those who are truly sorry for their sins.'

'What about those who aren't?'

'I pray that God will touch their hearts.'

'Will God forgive them – whatever they've done? You believe that, Father?'

'I do.'

'The scenes of the concentration camps…'

'What scenes have you in mind, my child?'

The "sins", Father.'

'Forgive me, once again. My ears are failing now – yet not my heart! My own father was tortured to death in a Japanese camp, in 1943. I was then thirteen years old. I know full well the difficulties of forgiveness. I have told this to very few.'

'Have you forgiven your father's torturers?'

'God has forgiven them, if they ever sought His forgiveness.'

'Perhaps it's more forgivable to commit atrocities in times of war.'

'There is no scale of better or of worse, whether in times of peace or in times of war. The laws of God are those that He has created. They are steadfast and firm as the fixed stars in the heavens -unchangeable for all eternity. Should a man hurl himself down headlong from the heights of the Temple, he will break himself upon the law of God; but never will he break the universal law that God has once ordained.'

'You are a Jesuit.'

‘I am a man, too. And all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.'

'Father

'Speak on, my child.'

'Perhaps you will report what I confess…'

'Such a thing a priest could never do.'

'But what if I wanted you to report it?'

'My holy office is to absolve, in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the sins of all who show a true repentance. It is not my office to pursue the workings of the Temporal Power.'

'You haven't answered my question.'

'I am aware of that.'

'What if I wanted you to report me to the police?'

'I would be unsure of my duty. I would seek the advice of my bishop.'

'You've never been asked such a thing before?'

'Never.'

'What if I repeat my sin?'

'Unlock your thoughts. Unlock those sinful thoughts to me.'

'I can't do that.'

'Would you tell me everything if I could guess the reasons for your refusal?'

'You could never do that.'

'Perhaps I have already done so.'

'You know who I am, then?'

'Oh yes, my child. I think I knew you long ago.'

CHAPTER ONE

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell

(George Bernard Shaw)

morse never took his fair share of holidays, so he told himself. So he was telling Chief Superintendent Strange that morning in early June.

'Remember you've also got to take into consideration the time you regularly spend in pubs, Morse!'

'A few hours here and there, perhaps, I agree. It wouldn't be all that difficult to work out how much – '