3

IT WAS a heat-wave, said everyone. Every day for a week now the sun had shone bright and hot, as though determined to make up for the dismal spring. Nearly midsummer, the evenings were full of swifts and martins, and the trees were richly green along the roads and lanes round Cartersfield. Mr Thomson at Mendleton and Mr Ponting at Long Acre Farm had safely gathered their first hay, and Mr Henderson smiled without impatience when people stopped him in the street to ask him not to go praying for rain again. The gravel-pits were busy every evening, with the high criesofchildren competing with the twittering of birds across the water, moorhens scuttering for shelter in clumps of reeds, dogs barking furiously at their swimming masters, incensed at the incomprehensible change of element, the moon slowly filling in a sky that dwindled and dwindled but seemed scarcely to fade into night till long after everyone had gone home.

On Saturday there was the usual dance at the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall. The doors stood open, since the evening was so warm, and before one could distinguish a tune one heard the steady thump-thump-thumpity-thump-thump of the cymbal and drum from the four-piece band. Nearer one could distinguish occasional gusts of saxophone and a few tinkles from the upright piano used for Thursday choir practice and the Women’s Institute’s opening and closing hymns. The fourth musician played a double-bass that was always inaudible, but the band leader said he kept the whole combo together if you really listened. On the big drum was written CHUCK CARPENTER AND HIS RHYTHM. All the men wore white shirts with claret bow-ties and black trousers, and Chuck himself sported a pale-blue velvet coat. From time to time he sang, his eyes swooning at the sounds of his own voice, and his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down dramatically.

‘It’s high time you and Allen got married,’ said Betty Tarrant to Ruth Stevens. They were standing together with a group of girls near the door.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Ruth. ‘We get on fine the way we are.’

‘How many years have you two been going steady now? It’s a scandal.’

‘Just because we like each other’s no reason for thinking that,’ said Ruth.

‘Don’t you ever want to settle down and have a family? Or are you going to spend your life selling lipsticks at Hudson’s?’

‘I’ll suit myself,’ said Ruth, ‘so you needn’t bother your head about it, thank you very much.’

‘There’s no need to get stuffy,’ said Betty. She did let her engagement ring show for a moment, though, as if to demonstrate the superiority of her position. Ruth sniffed.

‘Oh, look,’ said Betty, nudging her, ‘there’s that nephew of the vicar’s. Quite a smasher, isn’t he?’

‘He’s not bad.’

David joined a group of men of his own age at the other side of the hall, apparently unconscious of the stir his entrance caused. The week’s sun had given him no tan, merely a slight sallowness, as though his face was slightly and evenly dirty. He stooped his head for a moment to light a cigarette, then leaned back against the wall and observed the scene with an indolent smile. Chuck Carpenter began to sing ‘Teen Angel’.

‘There you are,’ said Ruth to Allen Bradshaw, ‘where have you been?’

He wiped his mouth guiltily on his sleeve and said: ‘Just having a wet.’

‘Men,’ said Ruth. ‘All you want to do is drink.’

‘You don’t mind me having a drink, do you?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t leave me alone here, that’s all. Betty’s been on at me about why we aren’t engaged.’

‘Well, that’s none of her business.’

‘It’s mine, though,’ she said. They were dancing now, and she paused as they passed the bandstand in order not to be drowned by the wails of Chuck Carpenter’s saxophone, he having decided that the maximum emotion could be wrung from ‘Teen Angel’ only with the maximum, and amplified, volume of his horn. When they were out of immediate range she said: ‘Why aren’t we, Allen?’

‘Because I haven’t proposed to you, Ruthie, that’s why.’

‘I know that.’

‘Listen, I’m only twenty-one. What do you want me to do, tie myself down?’

‘I’m twenty-one, too.’

‘You didn’t spend two years in the Army. I don’t want to get married yet, Ruth, that’s all. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you or anything. I just don’t want to get married yet.’

‘You could ask me to marry you, all the same.’

‘Not likely. Then everyone’d start pestering about the day. I don’t want to set a day. I’m too young to be married.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Ruth.

They danced in silence for a few more moments, then she said: ‘I want to sit down.’

‘O.K.’

They went over to two chairs under a portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh and sat down.

‘Look.’ said Allen, ‘we’ve been through all this before, haven’t we? I’m very fond of you, Ruth, but don’t push me. I’ve only been out of the Army a year. I want to get on a bit before I settle down. I don’t earn enough yet, anyway.’

‘We do together,’ said Ruth, at once. ‘I could stay on at Hudson’s for a bit, till you start getting good money.’

‘No,’ said Allen. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

Ruth got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to mind my own business in the ladies’,’ she said, angrily. ‘As though it made any difference to you.’ She crossed the hall and disappeared through a narrow door.

The band played ‘Primrose Lane’. Then Carpenter said seductively into the microphone: ‘Intermission, kids.’ People wandered about, gossiping and occasionally slipping out in pairs. The sweet night air was full of shadowy couples. An occasional squeal could be heard, and once a loud ‘You stop that’. The band came back from the Brunswick Arms and began to play what Carpenter called ‘a medley of number one hits of all time’. Allen waited impatiently for Ruth to reappear.

When she at last came through the door he stood up, ready to greet her, but she was intercepted by the vicar’s nephew who asked her to dance, and she accepted, ignoring Allen’s furious shrug of indifference from across the hall. Allen watched for several minutes, but when they continued dancing after the end of the first number he went out. There was still half an hour before closing time.

‘What are you doing back here?’ said Dennis Palmer, the landlord’s son. He worked in the bar on busy nights.

‘Women,’ said Allen, ‘they make me sick. Give us a pint, Dennis.’

‘Something up with Ruth?’

‘Oh, she’s always on at me.’ He looked round the narrow bar and said: ‘Anyone for a game of darts?’

In the hall David said to Ruth: ‘Want to step outside for a moment? It’s rather warm in here.’

‘All right.’ Ruth had seen Allen leave, and she was thinking: I’ll show him he’s not the only pebble on the beach.

Betty Tarrant nudged her fiancé, Bill Ponsonby, and they giggled together, as Ruth and David stepped through a knot of people by the door and disappeared.

‘My car’s just up the road,’ said David. ‘Would you like to go for a ride?’

‘All right,’ said Ruth. He can just stew in his own juice, she thought. Expects me never to dance with anyone else, and won’t even say he wants to marry me. Not even when no one else need know about it. Thinks I’m his slave or something.

They walked a hundred yards up the road to where Henderson’s car was parked, an old black Wolseley with a sturdy upright body and a very middle-class respectable air.

‘That’s the vicar’s car,’ said Ruth.

‘That’s right. He lets me have it when I want it.’

They got in, and David said: ‘Where do you want to go, Ruth?’

She didn’t know.

‘I think I know a place,’ he said, starting the engine.

‘All right,’ said Ruth.

*

Raymond Henderson was showing David the church. They had come to the pulpit, an elaborately carved Jacobean piece, with a heavy canopy that looked dangerously liable to fall down on the preacher’s head if he were to become too violently rhetorical. The panels were beginning to come loose with age.

‘You should come and hear me preach one day,’ said Raymond, not looking at his nephew. ‘I know you feel it’s wrong to go to church when you don’t believe, and I respect that feeling, but I am your uncle and the vicar, and you might’—he was trying to sound more reproachful than reproving—‘just give it a try. You know, many people have difficulty in believing, but they still go to church, hoping they’ll find faith. And often they do. The Lord works in mysterious ways.’

‘Yes,’ said David. He was examining the carving with a show of interest. ‘More than three hundred years old. Most remarkable.’

‘It’s not the age that matters, David,’ said his uncle, almost crossly. ‘Christianity is older than any relic of it. I mean, there are old things in the church and new ones, but they are held together and make a unity because they are all dedicated to a single purpose. For instance, we have to keep the roof in repair, and I dare say there isn’t a single original brickbat left by now, but that doesn’t mean …’ He stopped. It was no use. David didn’t listen to half what one said.

‘Who’s that old man?’ David pointed at the tomb of Sir Giles Phellips and his wife. They reclined in sumptuous elegance and apparent comfort on alabaster cushions.

‘Ah, the Phellips monument. It’s very fine, very fine indeed. They used to live at Mendleton, the family built it, possibly. They were a very old family—came over with the Conqueror, that sort of thing, and he was one of the last and most remarkable.’

‘He can’t have been the last,’ said David. ‘Look at all those children kneeling round.’

‘Well, now.’ Henderson became enthusiastic. ‘There are fourteen, aren’t there? A vigorous man. But if you look carefully, David, you will see that six—yes, six—are facing outwards. That means they were dead before their parents. As you can see, they are in swaddling clothes, so they were probably born dead, or at least they died very young, in infancy.’

‘Poor bastards,’ said David impersonally. ‘But what about the others? They can’t all have been impotent.’

‘Let’s look. Six girls and two boys survived. Now the Phellipses were a very interesting family, because they stayed Catholic while the rest of England went Protestant, and naturally they came in for a good deal of—persecution, I regret to say, under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In fact Sir Giles died in’—he muttered to himself as he peered at the Roman numerals—‘in 1624. And much reduced in circumstances.’

‘But the tomb’s vast.’

‘True. But I dare say they never finished paying for it. The eldest son died a few years later, fighting under the Duke of Buckingham at the Île de Rhé, I think. There’s no monument to him. But that’s what’s so remarkable about those people—they were loyal, even though they were Catholics, and that was an anti-Catholic war, as far as I remember. He was married, and left one son. His brother wasn’t loyal: he went over to the continent and came back as a Jesuit some years later, and was supposed to be influential at the Court, but he was banished later and disappeared altogether.’

‘They were certainly a sporting lot,’ said David. ‘But what about all those girls?’

‘Well, there can’t have been much for them in the way of a dowry. I suppose they vanished into the yeoman class.’

‘Vanished into the yeoman class,’ said David, and laughed. He looked admiringly at Sir Giles and his plump placid wife. ‘He must have been quite a man.’

The knight leaned on his elbow, ignoring his wife who gazed at heaven in a self-assured way, as though daring God not to admit her, her hands joined in prayer across her breast. Sir Giles kept one finger in a book, as though keeping the place while someone asked him if he remembered where he’d put the quotations dictionary. The book, thought David, might well have been an ancient equivalent of the Financial Times.

‘If they were Catholics, what are they doing in here?’

‘Ah. When the civil war came there was still a chapel at Mendleton, but it was pulled down by ardent Puritans and everything in it was smashed. But the wife of the son who was killed, and the grandson, persuaded the vandals to let them move the monument to the church. You can see where there was probably a cross in the wife’s hands which they wouldn’t have allowed, of course, and there may have been angels or something on top—there are marks where something was broken off.’

‘But why did they let them do that?’

‘I’ve no idea. The Phellipses probably knew some pretty influential people. And the English have never been much good at consistency. So here they are, and really very fine, too. The paint needs touching up, though.’ There were traces of what must once have been red, blue and gold on the decoration round the edge of the tomb.

‘Why aren’t people like that now?’ said David. ‘He looks as though he would know what to do, whatever might happen.’

‘Well, people still are like that,’ said Henderson. Sometimes David could be very irritating. ‘People are still prepared to be loyal and decent and honourable. Why don’t you think people are like that?’

‘Well, they’re not, are they? And, anyway, his son may have been all those things, but you haven’t said anything about him. He doesn’t look honourable to me, he looks crafty.’

‘Crafty? Perhaps he was. He made a great fortune in the 1590s, and then he retired quietly to Mendleton, married, looked after his property, that sort of thing.’

‘Why do you say he was so remarkable, then?’

Henderson looked puzzled. ‘Did I? I really don’t know very much about him, to be honest. But the tomb is so magnificent, isn’t it? He must have been remarkable to have built himself a thing like that.’

‘It doesn’t make him honourable, though,’ said David. ‘He looks as though he’d swindle you out of your false teeth.’

‘Now, David, really!’

‘He’s got guts, Raymond, and arrogance. He knew what he wanted, you can see that. And people aren’t like that now. They go and work in the city and save enough money to build a tennis court, then they go back to work again, like Gilchrist. People don’t die for things they don’t believe in, they don’t go out and become Jesuits these days.’

‘They still die gladly for their country,’ said Henderson, pointing at the tablet listing the dead of two world wars.

‘How do you know they died gladly? Who ever died gladly? They died because they were called up and a bullet happened to hit them. They don’t die because it’s noble to die for your country, they don’t believe in any of that any more. They don’t even build themselves great monuments to impress the living. They snuff out quietly, and have tasteful little slabs over their graves. Who’d think of swindling and cheating and pulling strings to save a monument these days?’

‘Well,’ said Henderson with a trace of smugness, ‘that’s the welfare state. There’d be a committee to save it from destruction nowadays.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said David, ‘it’s nothing to do with the welfare state. What have you got against people getting free medical care, as a Christian? That shouldn’t make the slightest difference,’ he went on, not waiting for an answer, ‘it doesn’t explain why the sap dried up. But it did. Somewhere between the Phellipses and the Gilchrists the sap dried up. Can you imagine Teddy or Jane fighting to defend their father’s tomb?’

‘Well,’ said Henderson, and stopped.

‘People don’t believe in anything at all, of course, that’s part of it. They muffle themselves up in platitudes, and feel nothing at all, never test their clichés against life. They don’t even have that tenacious family spirit, nothing.’ He pointed at a solemn bald man apparently addressing a crowd from a marble pillar in a niche of the nave. He had a beard, and while one hand gestured ineffably at the choir, the other rested on an open book. ‘Who’s that one?’

‘It’s Sir Reginald Thompson-Crowley. After the last Phellips disappeared the Brunswicks lived at Mendleton, but they died out in the early nineteenth century, and this man’s father bought it. Sir Reginald was a great reformer, an intimate of Shaftesbury’s. He’s said to have helped draft the first Factory Act.’

‘You can see how little there was left, then,’ said David. He observed the statue musingly. ‘You can almost see the sap drying before your eyes as you move forward in time. This one’s lost touch with reality; he’s persuaded himself by his own verbosity and rhetoric that he’s a great man and everyone’s agreed with him. Now Phellips, there, he knew what he was doing. This one didn’t, he only thought he knew. But he’d gone deaf from listening to himself for so long, and blind from admiring his own cleverness.’

‘You talk complete nonsense,’ said Henderson testily. ‘He was a very great man, one of the foremost humanitarians of his day. There’s a statue to him somewhere in London.’

‘I’m sure there is. He probably put it there,’ said David, leaving Sir Reginald his oratorical victory over the empty pews.

‘Look at these,’ said Henderson, hopefully raising a seat in the choir. ‘People come from all over the place to look at these misericords. Late fifteenth century, they say.’

Hiding beneath each seat were crouched snarling figures, crudely carved in heavy wood. A fat devil with a lewd smile was swallowing a slim woman, her mouth open vacuously in astonishment: a carpenter was holding another devil down as he sawed off his head: a blacksmith held another in a pair of tongs. The carving had no subtlety, no finesse, but a rude peasant strength and humour. David dropped to his knees to see them.

‘Now, Raymond, don’t you understand what I’m saying? Look at these, they’re alive, they’re kicking and snarling and hating and loving.’ He stood up, his eyes bright with discovery. ‘It was there, you see, and that Phellips, he had it, too, he had plenty of it, it was still there then. But when you come to that pompous do-gooder, it’s almost disappeared. And now people don’t put up statues to themselves, as though they knew there was nothing left to find. It’s dried up, or dribbled away.’

‘But what’s dried up and dribbled away, David?’

‘The sap, the spunk. Now you only see it in the crafty ones, the ones in the Army who dodge all the fatigues, the ones who dine at the best restaurants on expense accounts, the ones at school who couldn’t help themselves, they had to do the things they knew would get them expelled in the end. It’s still there, turning up in odd places, but never in the places you really need it. The place is run by the deaf and blind.’

‘I simply don’t understand you,’ said Henderson. ‘I know Britain isn’t the great power she used to be, but no country can stay on top all the time.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said David, impatiently. Then he thought for a moment. ‘Or perhaps it’s one of the points. I suppose the ones who couldn’t stand being choked here went out and built the Empire and started breathing. Till the women followed them and tamed them and turned the colonies into a sort of perpetual Surbiton. Before that it must have been possible to breathe, a man’s world. Now it’s no one’s. The men are all trapped and the women can’t think of anything to do but feed them regularly so they won’t try and escape.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Henderson.

‘And He started it,’ said David, pointing at the small figure of Christ on the cross which stood in the centre of the altar. ‘Look at Him, passive and accepting, glad to die, proud of being hung up there. But if you don’t fight you get absorbed into the grey sponge of men like that party-pooper up there, the humanitarian one.’

Henderson was extremely upset. His face was white and shocked, and he stared at his nephew with a cross between outrage and astonished innocence. At last he managed to say: ‘What did you call him?’

‘A party-pooper—a spoil-sport. He was all for drabness, for greyness. Mucking about with Factory Acts when he should have been … What is a Factory Act?’

Henderson rallied a little and said: ‘It was a very necessary measure to improve the working conditions of——’

‘Just what I thought. Nothing about playing conditions.’ David’s eye swept down the church, past the various plaques and monuments, then back to the figure of Christ. ‘He did it,’ he said. ‘He may not have meant to, but He did it. He kissed the traitor instead of knifing him. One shouldn’t go gladly, ever. He took a long time to win, but He did in the end, that’s why no one bothers with Him any more. His triumph is too obvious. We are supposed to love each other, everyone says so. When we don’t even know if there’s a person inside our neighbour’s skin, we’re supposed to love him. But luckily, somewhere around, here and there, there are some who won’t give up their sins, who cling to them jealously, who refuse to let Him shoulder the burden. He came to take away the sins of the world, didn’t He? But there are always a few who refuse to surrender them. Thank God,’ he added, smiling to himself.

Henderson was shaking, his face the colour of Sir Giles. ‘You have no idea what you’re saying, David. I think we’d better go. You simply can’t mean …’ His voice trailed off. He went to a pew and began to pray.

After a while David came up to him and touched him on the shoulder. His face was bland and slightly mocking, slightly indolent, though nothing as definite as mockery or indolence showed. ‘I’m sorry, Raymond, I didn’t mean to shock you. It’s an idea I’ve had—for some time. It suddenly seemed to me to be true. Perhaps it isn’t. Christian love is something I don’t really understand.’

Henderson did not move, his lips set, his mind saying: Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us. At last he rose, and looked at his nephew and said: ‘You certainly do not understand Christian love, David. I should have thought you would have learned something about Christianity somewhere during the course of your twenty years, but apparently you haven’t. I ought to try and make up for that lack myself, but I don’t feel able to. It will make me much happier if you don’t raise the matter of religion again.’

‘I’m sorry, Raymond, really I am. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

The eyes looked contrite in the smooth pallid face, but Henderson said: ‘I think we should go now. I have things to do.’

They went to the door and out into the sun, blinking in the brightness of noon. Brigadier Hobson jumped up from a tombstone shaped like a Roman stone coffin and seemed embarrassed, as though caught in some minor act of sacrilege.

‘’Morning,’ he said. ‘Lovely day. Mrs Crawley told me you were down here, Padre. Thought I’d enjoy the sun a bit till you were through.’

David watched him for a moment with the familiar blank indolence back on his face. Hobson seemed uneasy.

‘May I borrow the car, Raymond?’ said David. ‘I thought I’d have a swim before lunch.’

Hobson’s mouth opened, his white moustache quivering a little, then he thought better of speech and shut his mouth with a clack. Henderson and his nephew looked at him with surprise.

‘My teeth,’ he explained, embarrassed again. ‘Don’t fit too well. Awful nuisance.’ He tried a smile, and they both watched intently as though the teeth might suddenly shoot out at them. ‘Difficult sometimes.’ He looked up at the cloudless noon, a blue absence of birds. ‘Another beautiful day.’

‘Yes,’ said Henderson, pulling himself together. ‘By all means, David. I expect Brigadier Hobson wants to have a word with me. Have a nice swim.’

David excused himself politely to Hobson, but without any attempt at sincerity, then took the path towards the gate. The two older men watched him go, then Hobson said: ‘If you can spare me a moment, Padre, I’d like a word with you.’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘That nephew of yours hasn’t put on much weight, has he?’ said Hobson musingly. Then he clacked his teeth again and said: ‘I hate to bother you with anything so stupid.’

He explained. He owned one of the disused gravel-pits which people used for bathing. ‘Glad to let them use it. Used to swim myself when I was younger. Damn’ good for you.’ But last night someone, or probably several people, had behaved really very badly. ‘There’s a couple of old shacks down there, you know, for people to change in. They must have a place to change in. I don’t expect people to ask me to use them—they’re there to be used. They’re not locked. Nothing in them but a few hooks. But someone’s been using them for—for the wrong purposes.’ He paused and clacked. ‘I don’t know how to put this, Padre, but the place looks as though someone has been throwing an orgy. Bottles all over the place. Broken glass. Might cut people’s feet. Very dangerous and thoughtless. I was really shocked when I went to look. Ponting told me he’d seen a fire down there last night, he thought, so I went down. The place is a shambles. They pulled the roof off one of the huts to use as firewood. Then they had an orgy. At least, that’s what it looks like.’

‘I say,’ said Henderson. ‘That’s awfully bad.’

‘Yes, it is. It’s damned bad. In fact I’m very disappointed. People have been using that place for ten years or more and nothing like this has ever happened. It’s a damned shame.’ Hobson’s moustache quivered.

‘I expect it’s Teddy boys.’

‘Well, it may be. But there aren’t any in Cartersfield that I know of. I couldn’t tell if they’d come in cars or not—too many tracks down there already.’

‘They could be Teddy boys from somewhere else.’

‘I hope they are. I hope very much that they’re not from Cartersfield. I hope that very much. Because I’m going to make it pretty hot for them if I catch them. And I’ve informed the police.’

‘I doubt if that’ll do much good,’ said Henderson. ‘They’re so short-staffed.’

‘Well,’ said Hobson, reasonably, ‘I’m not going to sit up all night to get them at my age. I’m sixty-eight. Ten years ago—five years ago—it would have been a different matter. I wouldn’t have thought twice about giving them a dose of lead in their breeches. But I like my sleep now. And Evangeline wouldn’t hear of it. But if this happens again I shall wire the place up and put a padlock on the gate.’

‘I think you have a perfect right to do so. It’s really very disturbing. I’m very sorry to hear about it indeed. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Not that I can think of,’ said Hobson. ‘I thought you ought to know, that’s all. Tell your Boy Scouts about it. Tell them that if I catch one of them down there behaving like a vandal I’ll beat his bottom raw for him and then I’ll hand him over to the police. I mean it.’

‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be the Scouts,’ said Henderson, thinking of the twenty or thirty adolescents who mooned damply about the Brunswick Memorial Hall on Tuesday evenings, trying to tie knots. There should be a proper scoutmaster, really.

‘It may not be your Scouts, Padre,’ said Hobson, ‘and I’m not accusing them. But you can’t trust Scouts. It’s always been a rule of mine never to trust a man who admits to having been a Boy Scout.’

‘Really! That seems a little unfair. But I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. And thank you for telling me about it. I’m most disturbed about it. I do hope we don’t have an outbreak of juvenile delinquency. It must be Teddy boys.’

‘I thought you should know,’ said Hobson. ‘You’re padre, after all.’ He looked around the churchyard. ‘Well, I expect you have things to do. Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘Not at all’

Hobson took an ash-plant from beside the tombstone he had been sitting on and set off up the path as though climbing a mountain.

Henderson turned back to the church and went in. It was cool after the sunlight which showed itself here only in bright splotches of colour, red and purple and green and blue, where it streamed through the stained glass at a narrow angle.

What can the boy have meant? Before Christ the earth had no concept of peace, of Christian peace. They slaughtered each other and tortured and maimed. But they still do. What was there in all antiquity that could match the weapons of today? The guns and mud and barbed wire and piled corpses of the Somme. We certainly haven’t learned to love. And the cold, icy sin of the blitz. The colder, icier sin of Hiroshima? But that was our side. We need desperately to love one another as Christ commanded. David couldn’t have understood what he was saying. Love was a flowing out, a sharing. What did he mean that Christ had taken the sap—what did he mean by the sap?

Henderson looked at the figure of Christ on the altar. He had hung and suffered there, experienced all the pain and suffering in the world. But what wasn’t done in His name?

For a terrible moment Henderson thought: It could well be that Christ has not saved the world at all, He has merely added to the confusion.

Then he began to pray, his lips moving quickly over the words of long-familiar prayers.

*

‘Hobson says someone’s been having what he calls orgies down at his gravel-pit,’ said Henderson, an hour later, at lunch. ‘It’s absolutely disgraceful. They’ve been burning one of the changing places.’

‘Really?’ said David, looking up from lamb chops and runner beans. ‘Which pool is his?’

‘I really don’t know. The nearest one, I think. Apparently Ponting saw a fire there last night. I must say I think you young people have no idea of how to behave these days.’

‘Teddy boys, I expect,’ said David. He picked up the bone of a chop and nibbled at it.

‘That’s exactly what I said to Hobson,’ said Henderson, happy to agree. ‘He thought it was the Scouts. The Scouts in Cartersfield couldn’t light a fire with matches, let alone by rubbing sticks together. They must have come from Reading. It’s really too bad.’

‘Shocking,’ said David.