Read Online The Centre of the Green by John Bowen - Free Book Online Page B

“You’ve got some good qualities. You’vehad an education. You’ve found out a lot in your research . But have you found the Lord Jesus?” Nobody had answered him, and the people near him had moved away.
Lonely
. Charles remembered a drunk in Hyde Park. “They don’t talk to me where I live. You might think I don’t exist.” And the diary entry of the woman in the Social Service pamphlet—“Nobody called”, day after day.
    Question:
Alternatives?
Answer:
Do something about it
. Question:
What?
There was the advice in the magazine survey—Join a political party or a social club, take art classes, go to church—and the readers’ letters that followed it—
Dear Sir, Lonely people have only themselves to blame. These people expect “Mr. Right” or “Miss Bosom Pal” to come leaping after them without making any effort themselves.
Well, that was it, of course. Charles was lonely because Charles wanted to be lonely. Charles never did anything about it himself. He never went out looking for Miss Bosom Pal. Charles was to blame. Charles dropped a glass curtain between himself and his world; Charles on one side, Sybil and her lover, the editorial staff of The
Potters’ Weekly
, even the psychiatrist at the hospital, all of them on the other. Charles—here he made a discovery —just wasn’t interested. He wrote it down on the sheet of paper in his mind: “I am just not interested.”
    So there he was, insulated by his lack of interest, and the time passed slowly in the performance of simple and rather monotonous work, in day-dreaming, and sometimes even in long blank stretches during which his mind was empty, and he could not have told you
what
he had been thinking about, or if he had been thinking at all. He was not friendless. He sent Christmas cards, and received them. People he had known at Oxford had also come to London to work, and sometimes he would arrange to meet one for lunch, or there would be theoccasional supper. But it was all so much effort. Just to keep the conversation going was an effort, and the silences would grow longer and longer, and really it was easier to eat lunch by oneself with a book.
    Charles wrote again on the page, “I am not involved”. So much of that was convention. People spent so much time behaving in the ways they thought they ought to behave, or else in ways they couldn’t help, like Peeping Toms or the drunk in the park. But you couldn’t
feel
all the things you said. It was civilized to say, “Did you have a good Christmas?” and, “I hope your cold’s better,” but you couldn’t really be interested in the answers. And it was the same with the rest of it. Love, friendship, responsibility—mostly acting, being polite, pretending to feel the right emotions. Since pretending was so much effort, it was better not to enter into the sort of relationship that demanded it.
    Too much effort. No point.
No point in going on month after month, year after year. He had no mission, no message, would lead nobody into the promised land, make nothing beautiful with his hands—nothing like that. He would just go on passing the time and enduring various discomforts until the day he died; it didn’t seem worth doing. And yet if there were no point in living, what point was there in dying?
I am in the way to study a long silence…. Oh, I am in a mist
. Just a mist. He strained to remember something, anything at all from those hours while he had been unconscious, poisoned, half-way to death. Nothing. Not worth it for nothing. And yet not worth living either. No point.
    Decided:
Nothing
. All the questions and answers came to that. But, although it had nothing to do with the questions and answers, one thing had been decided. He would not tell his parents what had happened. Indeed, if the psychiatrist had not suggested it, he would not haveconsidered doing so. The train drew in to Bristol (Temple Meads). There were twenty minutes to wait, and from every compartment grey-faced