A God in Ruins

A boy named Teddy is walking with his aunt, Izzie. He shows her a skylark in flight and tells her about its beautiful song, although “[i]t was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was” (4). He remembers his mother saying, “The purpose of Art is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself” (4). 

Izzie begins singing the song, “Alouette, gentile alouette” (5)—a French war song about plucking birds. In February of 1944, Teddy will fight in World War II. Alouette will be the name of his unit, 425 Squadron. He will think about this day with Izzie before his last flight. They walk through a field of bluebells, and Teddy picks a bouquet to take to his mother. Teddy thinks about boarding school; he will be going at the end of the summer, just as all the men in his family have. As they walk, Izzie asks Teddy questions about his favorite foods, his hobbies, and whether he has a girl he likes. He likes a girl named Nancy, who lives next door, but does not tell Izzie. 

Teddy’s mother, Sylvie, looks at herself in a mirror. She is famed as a beauty but is aging. Shortly before his death, her father had sketched a charcoal portrait of her at age 16. When he died, the family was in debt and had to sell their belongings at a bankruptcy auction. A fat man had paid three pounds for the sketch and boasted about how he would enjoy looking at the “ripe young peach” (15). She hears a commotion downstairs and knows that Izzie and Teddy must have returned. Izzie takes the car to town, and the family has a quiet evening at home. Pamela and Ursula—daughters of Sylvie and Hugh—study chemistry and Latin. As Izzie drives, she remembers her time as a nurse in the war. She had been a FANY: “First Aid Nursing Yeomanry” (20). Her memories of the men’s’ injuries are horrible. She had been engaged twice during the war. One man, Augustus, had died. She had lost track of the other man and found his wedding photo years later in a newspaper society column. She was 24 when the war ended and worries that her chances at marriage have passed. 

Hugh slips out of his house and goes to the home of Roberta Shawcross, who takes him in her arms. They hold each other, nearly kissing, as she talks about her husband, Neville. Neville can no longer function sexually after being injured in the war. Hugh leaves before he can give in to adulterous temptation. 

Roberta runs a pacifist group for children, the Kibbo Kift. It is meant to be an alternative to what she considers the militaristic aspects of Boy Scouts. Teddy often participates in Kibbo Kift activities, along with Nancy. 

Sylvie takes a cab to a hotel where she intends to meet a lover. When she sees him through the window, she leaves instead and goes into Wigmore Hall to hear a concert of Hayden’s The Hunt. When the concert ends, Sylvie is weeping. At home, Hugh greets her and watches her take her hair down. She has to fight the urge to flinch at his touch, and thinks, “She had been a coward and was now chained to this life forever” (32). 

Ursula—one of Teddy’s sisters—looks into his room and sees that he is awake, reading a magazine. She sits with them, and they listen to an owl hooting for a while before saying good night. 

The title of this interlude is also the title of a book that Izzie writes and publishes. Teddy reads it and knows that the title character, Augustus, is based on him. Izzie wrote the book under the pen name of Delphie Fox. Teddy feels that “Augustus would plague him one way or another for the rest of his life” (36). Sylvie remembers when Teddy was born, and that she always told him he was her favorite. 

Viola is driving in a van with her children, Sunny and Bertie. Later, after her boyfriend Dominic dies, Viola will realize that he suffered from bipolar disorder. Her son, Sunny, complains of hunger. She remembers a year prior when they had gone to her father Teddy’s house for Sunny’s birthday: Sunny had bitten Viola for no reason while she had been cutting the cake; Viola slapped Sunny, and Teddy was unhappy with Viola for doing so. They reach a beach, get out, and she gives Sunny a sandwich. He throws it back and says he never gets anything nice. Viola’s daughter Bertie silently hopes that Sunny will give in to Viola. 

Bertie had been the first baby born on the commune on which Viola and Dominic had lived. Bertie had been given the nickname of “Moon” in a “naming ceremony” (48) devised by Dorothy, the commune leader. Sunny asks where his father is, and Viola says he is swimming. When she looks at the sea, Viola can’t see Dominic and wonders where he is. She begins reading a book and reminisces about her insatiable appetite for reading. Viola had met Dominic in her first year at university. He was a painter and heavy drug user, living on grants. He talked constantly about the Stalinist state and gave his paints away instead of selling them. She thought they “were both, essentially, very lazy people and it was easier to stay together than to pull themselves apart” (54). Four years later she graduated with an English degree and was disappointed in her results. She spent most of school on drugs and not progressing toward her dream of becoming a professor. 

When she had gotten pregnant with Sunny, her father Teddy had been disappointed that she wasn’t getting married. When Sunny was born, Viola and Dominic were squatting in an apartment with 10 other people. When Teddy visited, he was appalled at the squalor and brought Viola some baby supplies before returning home to worry about his grandchild. The move to the commune was the next step. When Teddy asked why, Viola claimed an interest in “cosmic evolutionary development” (58), despite not knowing what the phrase meant. Many people came and went, in addition to the dozen that made up the core group of the commune. A woman named Dorothy was in charge. Dorothy had gone to India, returned claiming to be enlightened, and began the commune. Soon, Viola was pregnant with Bertie. Dorothy rarely works, and Viola begins to resent her. 

Viola wakes up from a nap on the beach and can’t find her children. She locates them at the “Lost Children hut” (65). Sunny had gone to the ice cream van and gotten lost on the way back to Viola. Dominic is still missing, and Viola thinks, “Please let Dominic be dead” (65). He has recently been the recipient of a trust fund, and Viola thinks she will get it if he dies. Two policemen take Viola and the children back to the commune, where Dorothy stops them at the door. She says Dominic is in his studio, painting. When no one is watching, Viola packs a bag, takes the children, and walks to a nearby farm. She stays the night with the farmer and his wife before taking a train to York and going to her father’s house. 

In her Yorkshire home, Nancy is sitting by the fire, knitting. Teddy watches her and remembers their 1945 wedding, shortly after the war ended. They lived in Piccadilly, near a college where they were studying to become teachers. They had known each other since childhood, when they had lived next door to each other. They were engaged before the war and spent the night before their wedding with Nancy concerned that Teddy might not want to go through with the wedding. 

Teddy works on a nature column he writes for The North Yorkshire Monthly Recorder under the pen name Agrestis. The Recorder is a small monthly magazine primarily found in doctors’ waiting rooms. As he writes, he thinks about his time as a fighter pilot in the war, in the Royal Air Force (RAF). He is tormented by how many people he killed, including innocents that died as collateral damage in air raid bombings. During the war, “[h]e had lost Nancy to the Official Secrets Act” (82) while she worked in cryptology and code-breaking that she couldn’t discuss with him. 

Teddy remembers that the night before their wedding, he had almost confessed that he had been unfaithful to her during the war. However, Nancy has told him that she had sex with other men while she thought he was dead, and he knows that his confession would not bother her, so he keeps the secret. As a young couple, they moved into a house called Mouse Cottage. 

When Teddy graduated from Oxford, he had wanted to wander the country, writing poetry. His parents, Hugh and Sylvie, had disapproved. He had followed his plan for a year. Just before Christmas, Hugh sent him a telegram saying that his mother was in the hospital with severe lung problems. She recovered quickly, and Teddy wondered if the telegram was a ruse to get him home, but he finds himself relieved to abandon the pretense of his poetry. He settles back into a domestic life that he finds boring, and “[t]he war, when it came, was an immense relief” (94). 

After moving to Yorkshire, Teddy taught in a boys’ grammar school and came to resent the indifferent students. Nancy taught in a girls’ math school and loved her work. Knowing he is miserable, she encouraged him to write a novel. He tried, but found his efforts clichéd and uninspired. One day in school, he had walked out and driven down the road, abandoning his students. He helped a man, Bill Morrison, whose car had broken down. As a thank you, Bill took Teddy to lunch, and they talked about writing. Bill was the editor of the Recorder. He offered Teddy the weekly spot writing a column called Nature Notes. Months later, Bill offered him a promotion to “roving reporter” (101). 

By the fireplace, Nancy asks Teddy if he has forgiven the Germans. He remembers spending the final years of the war as a prisoner in a POW camp. He ejected from his plane after being shot down and often suffers from nightmares. When Nancy is done knitting, they go upstairs and make love. After, Nancy “waited for Teddy’s nightmares to begin” (106). She wants to have a baby, believing that it will “heal Teddy, heal the world” (106).