Aunt Phyllis told a wise lie. “Some day. Not for a long time. They’ve gone—oh, ever so far.”
“Farther than ever so,” said Peter.
He reflected. “When they come back Peter will be a Big Boy. Mummy and Daddy ’ardly know ’im.”
And from that time, Daddy and Mummy ceased to be thought of further as immediate presences, and became hero and heroine in a dream of tomorrow, a dream of returning happiness when life was dull, of release and vindication when life was hard, a pleasant dream, a hope, a basis for imaginative anticipations and pillow fairy tales, sleeping Parents like those sleeping Kings who figure in the childhood of nations, like King Arthur or Barbarossa. Sometimes it was one parent and sometimes it was the other that dominated the thought, “When Mummy comes back.... When Daddy comes back.”
Joan learnt very soon to say it too.
§ 8
Death was too big a thing for Peter to comprehend. He had hardly begun yet with life. And he had made not even a beginning with religion. He had never been baptized; he had learnt no prayers at his mother’s knee. The priceless Mary had come to the Stublands warranted a churchwoman, but as with so many of her class, her orthodoxy had been only a professional uniform to cloak a very keen hostility and contempt for the clergy, and she dropped quite readily into the ways of a household in which religion was entirely ignored. The first Peter heard of religion was at the age of four and a half, and that was from a serious friend of Mary’s, a Particular Baptist, who came for a week’s visit to The Ingle-Nook. The visitor was really distressed at the spiritual outlook of the two children. She borrowed Peter for a “little walk.” She thought she would begin with him and try Joan afterwards. Then as plainly and impressively as possible she imparted the elements of her faith to Peter and taught him a brief, simple prayer. “He’s a Love,” she told Mary, “and so Quick! It’s a shime to keep him such a little heathen. I didn’t say that prayer over twice before he had it Pat.”
Mary was rather moved by her friend’s feelings. She felt that she was going behind the back of the aunts, but nevertheless she saw no great harm in what had happened. The deaths of Arthur and Dolly had shaken Mary’s innate scepticism; she had a vague feeling that there might be grave risks, well worth consideration, beyond the further edge of life.
Aunt Phyllis was the first of the responsible people overhead to discover what had happened. Peter loved his prayer; it was full of the most beautiful phrases; no words had ever so filled his mouth and mind. There was for example, “For Jesus Krice sake Amen.” Like a song. You could use it anywhere. Aunt Phyllis found him playing trains with his bricks in the nursery one afternoon. “Hoo! Chuff-Chuff. Chuff-Chuff. Change for Reigate, change for London. For Jesus Krice sake Amen.”
Aunt Phyllis sat down in the little chair. “Peter,” she said, “who is this Jesus Krice?”