Caryll Houselander ‘The Dry Wood’

“Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul.”

He had wanted his prayer and to be a draught of the shining water of Life, clear and sparkling, a fountain springing up from the dry dust of his heart, but the water that entered into his soul was the dark mysterious water of the Thames.

The water that carried men away to other lands, that brought them from distant, unknown worlds to London, that carried merchants and sailors and travelers to and fro on errands that sometimes separated, sometimes united men forever. The waters that flowed with tears of old mothers and lonely lovers. The waters that ran strong and black with tides of longing and of destiny, bringing men and women to one another’s arms or sweeping them away over seven seas. The waters that carried food and wine and merchandise to and fro between the cities of the world. Cargo of fruit, grapes and oranges and golden pomegranates, sugar candy, candy peel and spice, tea and coffee and sugar and nuts, bales of cotton and wool and silk, dyed vermilion and emerald and blue, and rugs from Persia and China and Egypt and India, and treasures of ivory and teakwood, metal and copper and jade, all the full measure of delight for the feast and splendor and laughter of living.

The water that whispered dark secrets down its tides, drugs that passed swiftly, silently from hand to hand, from thin yellow fingers in far off lands, to hands tattooed with flowers and hearts entwined with roses, to hands already crimson with blood, and black with the touch of evil gold, to terrible soft hands white in the moonlight, with scarlet nails.

Waters that carried outcast and derelicts and the lost and the forgotten, all the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked humanity to and fro, to and fro through time to the ultimate harbor. Waters that caressed strange little wooden wharfs, running furtively beside ramshackle warehouses and taverns, where here and there, a light behind a blind in a window cast a shower of golden petals on the dark ripples. Water that carried rats along the side of the wharfs, and into the ships and cities, waters that knew dark and lovely secrets, water that is the soul of London and brings the world to her heart.

Water that is part of the darkness of humanity flowing forever round the mystery of its light, water that is, with all its whispering and weeping and seeping darkness, symbol of the water of Life.
Water of the Thames, dark and lovely water, gently, gently lapping against the dockside, chug chug chug of the river Thames against the wharf, and Father O’Grady rocking, rocking, rocking, into the sleep of the dark water. Now his deep breathing too is woven into the lapping of the river and the rest of his prayer is sleep.

“Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul.”

I returned to work in Twinsburg, Ohio.  Still reflecting, there will be more to say on this during the coming weekend.  For now, my thoughts go to reuniting, a coworker specific.  I learned his six-year-old daughter suffered immensely, the grace of mystery touching allowing the sorrowful opportunity for expanding faith, hope, and charity.  Her illness started as strep throat, then advanced to a flesh-eating virus that attacked her back and one leg severely.  The poor thing lost her leg just above the knee.  A solid Christian family, loving and intact, thoughts seem to linger regarding the reality.  It reminds me of words from a novel ‘The Dry Wood’ by Caryll Houselander.

“They had put Art’s misshapen infant into his own hands to hold, and he felt sure that they would not have done that if they meant him to live.  It was only for a moment, however, and then the nurse took him.  That was a black, agonized moment for Art Jewel.  In it something fierce and primitive awoke in him which afterwards never died.  He desired his son’s life as a thirsting man desires water.

And that son’s life was a tiny atom, a spark against which the whole force of what we call civilization conspired, the whole force of it, past, present, and future.  Out of the past a towering mass of evil cast long shadows across him—the greed, the selfishness, the cruelty, the lust, the infidelities, of generations of human beings.  A multitudinous procession of murder and innocence cast its fire and shadow on the wizened little face, as on the face of all children born into our world.

First of all, as if they swept past the Christ Child sleeping in the stone manger, the flock of Holy Innocents with jubilant cries like wild birds migrating, wild birds winging to the sun of the eternal light; the first martyrs, baptized only with the baptism of blood, with crimson stars tangled in their burning hair.  After them, all through the ages, came the martyrs whose death and resurrection seem the inevitable co-incidence of Christ’s birth, of the birth of life into the valley of the shadow of death.  And always dark on the burning brilliance of martyrdom, the shadow of murder, of the sevenfold evil that is death in man’s heart fighting against life.”

Caryll Houselander as a child.

‘The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep’ John 10:11

The riverside dock road stirred with mysterious life. The doorsteps swarmed, the people thronged the streets, silent, grey flocks moving in one direction like birds migrating. Silence accentuated the sense of exaltation, silence and the eagerness that sharpened the lifted white faces.

Timothy Green step down from the crude red buss into a supernatural world. He had not expected anything like this. He could not make out what had happened, or what was happening. It was not a royal visit, for there was no chatter, no flutter of paper streamers, no bunting. It was not the return of a charabanc party, for there were no groups at street corners, no waiting, no gossip. These people moved together, as people impelled by one purpose. They were one.

It could be no common event, but something new and unearthly that possessed them and united them in the integrity of a secret and solemn joy.

Timothy began to move along with the crowd, watching the faces, looking for one less concentrated, less intense than the others, whom he might question without feeling himself an intruder. He found himself beside a young man wearing no shirt under his buttoned coat; the shape of his spine and his shoulders showed through it. Timothy touched his arm, “What is it all about?” he asked.

The young man swung round to him as if he were startled. He answered in a husky, rushing whisper: “Don’t you know? Father Malone is dead.”

Timothy made no answer. He could not understand why their priest’s death move these people to exaltation.

The harsh, rushing voice went on: “I’m not Catholic myself, I’m nothing, but it didn’t make any difference to Father Malone. He’d have given the shirt off his back to the devil himself if he’d have thought he could be cold in hell. He gave me his boots.”

“Gave you his boots?”

“Yes, that’s what he did, happened this way: we were under this very arch that we are under now, it was raining cats and dogs and we were taking shelter. I remember my boots were stiffed with mud and with blood too—”

“With Blood?”

“Yes, you see on I’d been on the roads—tramping—and my feet were bleeding. All of a sudden Father Malone said to me ’Let’s see the soles of your boots,’ and when he saw them and the holes in them letting the water in, down he went on his knees on the wet pavement, and before I properly knew what was happening, I’d got his boots on and he’d got mine.”

“Shame on you then!” a woman’s voice broke in. The young man went on: “He was a very little man was Father Malone, but he always had his boots a size or two to big, so as he could give them away more often. His were fine for me, but mine were three sizes too big for him. I’ll never forget him shuffling off in them with his umbrella up and the rain dripping off the brim of his hat.”

The woman who had interrupted turned sharply and said: “You should never have taken his boots, Sam Martin—and you a wastrel that never did an honest week’s work. You shouldn’t have taken his boots!”

“No, I shouldn’t have. But somehow or other I couldn’t help it.”

Another voice joined in: “That’s true, that priest was forever giving away what he should have kept for himself, and somehow or another you couldn’t help but take what he gave.”

“Sure,” it was the soft voice of Rose O’Shane, “no one can say no to the charity of Jesus Christ.”

‘Dry Wood’ chapter 1 ‘A Priest Lies Dead’ by Caryll Houselander