The Gate of Angels - Penelope Fitzgerald

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on this subject where reason, not much to its credit, is powerless. So much was only decent politeness. But his father was certain to be deeply distressed. The time of day for discussing this, long enough to give pain and, if possible, to lessen it to some extent, was between five and six o’clock, when his father sat patiently in his study ready to give advice to his parishioners, who, however, always chose some other time to come. The study windows faced the front lawn, and in summer Fred and his two sisters had not been supposed to cross it, between five and six, so as not to disturb the pastoral hour. Fred, Hester and Julia did, of course, cross it, as Apaches, flat on their stomachs, close to the bitter-smelling roots of the laurel hedge where the cat left the remains of her mice. Looking, in those days, up the slight incline of the lawn Fred used to see his father at his desk, determinedly wide awake, his head a little on one side, presumably to show that he was willing and ready to listen, staring out into the late afternoon.

      The best thing would be to explain at once that as from the beginning of that summer he was an unbeliever, but his unbelief was conditional. He had no acceptable evidence that Christianity was true, but he didn’t think it impossible that at some point he might be given a satisfactory reason to believe in it. And then you’d give it another chance, his father was likely to answer. – That’s very handsome of you, Freddie. What would you consider a satisfactory answer? – Well, Father, put it another way. I want to know the truth about the way things are. I can’t take them on trust, that would be the waste of the education you’ve given me and such brains as I’ve got. – Now – the ‘now’ didn’t sound quite as Fred wanted it, but no matter – the only evidence we can get is from our own senses and from the senses of other people who have gone before us, and can communicate what they found out through writing. – Like the Gospel writers, his father would say – even if they were only a committee. Do you consider they were wasting their time? Yours too, of course. – Do what he could, Fred always found that when he talked to his father, who was not at all deaf, he raised his voice slightly, while his father countered by talking even more quietly than usual. – However, Father, he would go on. You stay close to experience, you see the resemblances between things and the continuity of one idea from another, and gradually, through many lifetimes, everything becomes explained. As soon as something’s completely described, it’s explained – like the anatomy of the human body, for instance. There’s no more to say about that, it can be described, therefore there’s no mystery in it, it’s ordinary. Well, the time will come when we shall see everything that once seemed extraordinary as ordinary. – Would you prefer that? his father would ask doubtfully. Would you, Freddie?

      All this time Fred saw himself walking up and down the study, while his father sat there with his green spectacle-case in his hand, but this walking up and down might suggest that he wasn’t sure of himself, so he sat himself down, in his imagination, in one of the not too comfortable chairs. His father, meanwhile, would in all probability go back to his question, the one that had not been answered. – You haven’t told me yet, Freddie, what you would consider a satisfactory reason for believing that Christ rose from the dead? – Fred saw himself here listening to his father’s voice, in order to judge how much his feelings had been hurt. The next thing would be a knock on the door, as his mother was unable to leave anyone alone in the study for more than twenty minutes without asking them whether they would like to take a little something, perhaps barley water. The barley water was kept on the slate window-sill of the larder, in a jug covered with muslin weighed down at the edge by blue beads.

      At this point he saw that he would have to start the discussion at a different point altogether. It was absurd for him to sound as if he was lecturing his father. What he really wanted to explain, stage by stage, was how the crawler across lawns and reliable Sunday choirboy who had sung, with all his heart’s conviction,

      Teach me to live that I may dread

      The grave as little as my bed

      had become what he now was, a man with a mind cleared and perpetually being recleared (because there was a constant need for that) of any idea that could not be tested through physical experience. There were no illusions left there now. The air was pure. But it had happened gradually, and although Fred wasn’t much given to talking about himself he would have, on this occasion, to account for himself gradually. He would have to describe for his father, step by step, how he had expelled the comforting unseen presences which, in childhood, had spoken to him and said: Give me your hand. What is completely described, however, he kept reminding himself, is completely explained.

      

      He got up early, biked to the station, left his bike there and took the train to Blow Halt, changing at Bishop’s Leaze. The whole village, from wall to wall of its cottage gardens, blazed with flowers, early phlox and bean-flowers contending with raucous gusts of scent, early roses red and white, pot marigolds, feverfew which was grown here as a garden plant, ferocious poppies and cornflowers, peonies, sweet williams still in flower, herb of grace, Russell lupins, pinks. Nature here was certainly not at her most natural. Most of the cottagers knew where to ask for field manure, the postman and the policeman, seen working every evening in their gardens in their shirtsleeves, had their own arrangements for getting it, and every household emptied its tea-leaves three times a day on the soil, and by night the contents of the earth closets. There was nowhere in Blow to buy vegetables and it never occurred to anyone to buy any. The station grew roses and beans, and large marrows striped like a tom-cat. Even the weeds were not more luxurious than what was grown deliberately.

      At Blow Halt he was Mr Fred and had once been Master Freddie, though, once again, he couldn’t remember when the change took place. This was Ellsworthy, the station master, who had become Old Ellsworthy.

      ‘We stopped for five minutes outside Bishop’s Leaze,’ said Fred, ‘why was that, do you think?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Ellsworthy. ‘I shall have to make enquiries about that.’

      ‘Couldn’t you telephone down the line?’

      ‘I could.’

      Ellsworthy walked with him to the barrier, watched by the very young porter who was lining up the milk-churns. A certain amount of milk always got spilled on the platform, giving it a faint smell of a nursery sink, drowned at the moment by the bean-flowers and the meadowsweet.

      ‘How am I going to find them at the Rectory, Ellsworthy?’

      ‘Why do you ask me, Mr Fred?’ Fred didn’t know, he hadn’t meant any harm. He knew very well, however, that the country is not a place of peace, and that it was difficult to tell what might give or have given offence, which made it a good preparation for life at a university. In this instance, it had probably been a mistake to mention the unscheduled stop at Bishop’s Leaze. ‘Why do you ask me about the Rector?’ repeated Ellsworthy, with controlled fury. ‘You can’t accuse me of being a church-goer.’

      ‘I don’t accuse you of anything,’ said Fred. Ellsworthy relented a little, and asked him how things were in London. Fred explained that he was still at Cambridge, but sometimes it was handier to go up to London King’s Cross and make the exchange there.

      ‘Yes, London’s useful for that,’ said Ellsworthy. In the field next to the station fence an old horse, once grey, now white, moved a few sedate steps away. This was a token retreat only, it was many years since the train’s approach had given warning that it might be required to pull the station fly. The fly mouldered away now, its shafts pointing upwards, in the corner shed. On the horse’s hollow back, as it came to a standstill, the elder flowers fell gently.

      There was a short cut through a wicket gate across the field to the Rectory, but Fred could see that it was jammed fast with nettles and trails of blackberry. He could also sense that Ellsworthy was waiting until he pushed the gate to tell him that it was stuck and that he’d do best to go round by the road.

      ‘I’ll go round by the road,’ he said.

      ‘I can remember when you’d have jumped that. You were quite agile as a boy. You wouldn’t have made anything of it.’

      Fred began to walk up the road, swinging his bag in his hand: Church Road. The church and Rectory were once imposingly,

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