Mister God doesn’t love us.’ She hesitated. ‘He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the polly-wogs, but they don’t love me. I love you, Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?’
I tightened my arm about her.
‘You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.’
It sounded to me like a death-knell. ‘Damn and blast,’ I thought. ‘Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.’ But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping-stone.
‘No,’ she went on, ‘no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.’
I must have made some movement or noise for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.
‘Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.’
It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities but God was not like us because of our difference. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.
‘You see, Fynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.’
The first salvo was enough for me; it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasn’t going to be spared the rest of her artillery.
‘Fynn, why do people have fights and wars and things?’
I explained to the best of my ability.
‘Fynn, what is the word for when you see it in a different way?’
After a minute or two scrabbling about, the precise phrase she wanted was dredged out of me, the phrase ‘point of view’.
‘Fynn, that’s the difference. You see, everybody has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn’t. Mister God has only points to view.’
At this moment my one desire was to get up and go for a long, long walk. What was this child up to? What had she done? In the first place, God could finish things off, I couldn’t. I’ll accept that, but what did it mean? It seemed to me that she had taken the whole idea of God outside the limitation of time and placed him firmly in the realm of eternity.
What about this difference between ‘a point of view’ and ‘points to view’? This stumped me, but a little further questioning cleared up the mystery. ‘Points to view’ was a clumsy term. She meant ‘viewing points’. The second salvo had been fired. Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points. When I put it to her this way and asked her if that was what she meant, she nodded her agreement and then waited to see if I enjoyed the taste. Let me see now. Humanity has an infinite number of points of view. God has an infinite number of viewing points. That means that – God is everywhere. I jumped.
Anna burst into peals of laughter. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you see?’ I did too.
‘There’s another way that Mister God is different.’ We obviously hadn’t finished yet. ‘Mister God can know things and people from the inside too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Fynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about Mister God from the inside of him.’
Another fifteen minutes or so were spent in polishing up these arguments and then, with an ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she kissed me and tucked herself under my arm, ready for sleep.
About ten minutes later: ‘Fynn?’
‘Yes?’
‘Fynn, you know that book about four dimensions?’
‘Yes, what about it?’
‘I know where number four is; it goes inside me.’
I’d had enough for that night, and said with all the firmness and authority I could muster: ‘Go to sleep now, that’s enough talking for tonight. Go to sleep or I’ll paddle your bottom.’
She made a little screech, looked at me, and grinned and squirmed in closer to me. ‘You wouldn’t!’ she said sleepily.
Anna’s first summer with us was days of adventures and visits. We visited Southend-on-Sea, Kew Gardens, the Kensington Museum and a thousand other places, most times alone, but sometimes with a gang of other kids. Our first excursion outside the East End was ‘up the other end’. For anyone not familiar with that term it simply means west of Aldgate pump.
On this occasion she was dressed in a tartan skirt with shirt-blouse, a black tammy, black shoes with large shiny buckles and tartan socks. The skirt was tightly pleated so that a twirl produced a parachutelike effect. Anna walked like a pro, jumped like Bambi, flew like a bird, and balanced like a daring tightrope-walker on the curbs. Anna copied her walk from Millie, who was a pro, head held high, the slight sway of body making her skirts swing, a smile on her face, a twinkle in her eye, and – you were defenceless. People looked and people smiled. Anna was a burst of sunlight after weeks of gloom. Of course people smiled, they couldn’t help it. Anna was completely aware of these glances from passers-by, occasionally turning her head to look at me with a big, big grin of pleasure. Danny said she never walked, she made a royal progress. Her progress was halted from time to time by her subjects: stray pussies, dogs, pigeons and horses, to say nothing of postmen, milk-men, bus-conductors and policemen.
As we walked west of Aldgate pump the buildings got grander and bigger and Anna’s mouth opened further and further. She walked round and round in small circles, she walked backwards, sideways and every way. Finally she stopped in bewilderment, tugged at my sleeve, and asked, ‘Does kings and queens live in them and are they all palaces?’
She didn’t find the Bank of England very impressive, nor for that matter St Paul’s; the pigeons won hands down. After a little talk we decided to go into the service. She was very uncomfortable, fidgeting about the whole while. As soon as the service was over we hurried outside and made straight for the pigeons. She sat on the pavement and fed them with great pleasure. I stood a few paces off and just watched her. Her eyes flicked from place to place, at the doors of the cathedral, the passers-by, the traffic and the pigeons. Occasionally she tossed her head in disapproval of something. I looked about me to see what it was that affected her so much. There was nothing that I could see which would account for her mood.
After some months I could now read her distress signal accurately. That sharp little toss of the head wasn’t a good sign. To me it always looked
