Free After Such Kindness by Gaynor Arnold Page B

in Daisy’s company. It was another lovely day, and Mrs Baxter sat in the shade of an acacia tree with a novel in her hand and the baby asleep on her lap, while Daisy and I walked around the vicarage’s extensive and well-kept garden. Daisy showed me the marigolds she had been trying to grow in a plot near the kitchen wall. ‘I’m afraid the caterpillars got to them,’ she said, bending down in that delightfully pliant way that children have, and stroking the few ragged leaves that remained.
    ‘What a shame,’ said I, squatting beside her, feeling how small she was and how large I was in comparison, and enjoying the protective feeling it gave rise to. ‘Although, without caterpillars, we would never have butterflies to delight us with their beauty, would we? We would think that a shame too.’
    She looked up at me then. It was the first time she had looked at me so directly, and she was so close to me that my insides nearly melted. ‘But why do the marigolds have to suffer?’ she asked. ‘Can’t things have their place in the world without eating others or being eaten themselves?’
    She is such a kind child, it was hard to disabuse her. ‘Nature is quite indifferent you know,’ I said gently. ‘Everything has to fight for its place.’
    She looked perplexed and rather upset. ‘Nature?’ she said. ‘But I thought God made everything the way it is.’
    In her innocent way, she had brought down the axe. ‘It’s a conundrum,’ I said.
    ‘What’s a conundrum?’
    ‘An enigma. A mystery. Something we don’t know the answer to.’
    ‘Don’t you know the answer, Mr Jameson?’
    ‘I less than any man. Maybe your father does. He’s a deep thinker.’
    She did not seem very satisfied with that answer. ‘Papa says you are the cleverest man he knows, so if you don’t know, he won’t either. He said you were a “Double First”.’ She looked up at me. ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means I have spent too much time with my nose in a book.’
    ‘So why are there still things you don’t know the answer to?’
    ‘I don’t know the answer to that. In fact, there are things to which I don’t even know that I don’t know the answer.’
    She laughed at that, and I felt again how wonderful it was to be the cause of laughter in a child. Bubbles of happiness welled up in me and I wanted the moment to go on for ever. But she straightened and brushed down her pinafore and started to walk further along the path, further away from her mama. I fell into step beside her as we skirted the shrubbery. ‘May I ask you a question?’ she said.
    ‘You certainly may. After all, a cat may look at a king. But I think it’s not the question that is at issue; it’s the answer. And, as you see, I cannot guarantee that I will have one.’
    She pondered that for a bit, then she murmured in a low voice, ‘Things aren’t always fair in this world, are they?’
    ‘Depends what you mean by “fair”,’ I said. ‘What’s fair to one person isn’t fair to another. Is it fair that I am good at arithmetic, for example, but that your father is good at rowing?’
    She considered this gravely. ‘You and Papa are just different,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think that matters. But why are some people poor and others rich? And why are some people allowed to tell others what to do and they have to do it whether they like it or not?’
    ‘A very good question. And one I have often asked myself – without, I have to say, getting much sense in return. But, on the second point, I suppose you could say that in general parents know more than children do, for example, and therefore they have the right and the duty to guide them in their actions. And this might entail forbidding them certain things, or telling them they must accomplish certain things. And, again, the rich have certain duties towards the poor; and those with knowledge have obligations to those who are ignorant. I am sure you have heard your father preach such