Fludd: A Novel

Miss Dempsey tiptoed away.

The curate moved his hand over the tablecloth, in a skimming motion, sweeping the topic aside. His fingers—bloodless, pointed fingers—floated over the linen like swans on a lake of milk.

“I thought you might be one of those modern fellows,” Father Angwin said. “I thought you might have no scholarship. I was sick to think about it.”

Father Fludd looked down, with an inward modest smile, as if disclaiming any pretensions. He had been drinking too, but he was certainly not drunk; despite the hour—and it was now eleven o’clock—he was as pleasant, mild, and breezy as if it were teatime. Whenever Father Angwin looked up at him, it seemed that his whisky glass was raised to his lips, but the level of what was in it did not seem to go down; and yet from time to time the young man reached out for the bottle, and topped himself up. It had been the same with their late dinner; there were three sausages (from the Co-op butcher) on Father Fludd’s plate, and he was always cutting into one or other, and spearing a bit on his fork; he was always chewing in an unobtrusive, polite way, with his mouth shut tight. And yet there were always three sausages on his plate, until at last, quite suddenly, there were none. Father Angwin’s first thought was that Fludd had a small dog concealed about his person, in the way that starlets conceal their pooches from the customs men; he had seen this in the newspaper. But Fludd, unlike the starlets, had not got his neck sunk into a fur; and then again, Father Angwin thought, would a dog drink so much whisky?

From time to time, also, the curate leant forward and busied himself building up the fire. He was a handy type with the tongs, Father Angwin could tell. His efforts were keeping the room remarkably warm; and yet when Agnes came in, lugging a bucket of coal, she checked herself in surprise and said, “You don’t need this.”

Presently Father Angwin got up, and opened the window a crack. “It makes a change, for this house,” he said, “but it’s as hot as Hell.”

“Though far better ventilated,” said Fludd, sipping his whisky.

It’s time they had cocoa, Miss Dempsey thought. They’ll be tumbling under the table. The bishop will have chosen this toper, to lead poor Angwin on; he had a good head for drink, that was for sure, and no doubt when Angwin had passed out he would be tiptoeing into the hall and lifting the receiver on his special telephone line to His Corpulence.

And yet Miss Dempsey was not sure what to think. That look he had given her, in the hall; was it not, for all its chilling nature, a look of deep compassion? Could it be that Fludd was not a sycophant, but some innocent that the bishop wished to ruin? She felt that look still: as if her flesh had become glass.

I’ll sing again, she thought, to impress on him that if I’m given to singing it’s usually something pious. I’ll just hum as I take in this tray. She spread on the tray a white cloth with a scalloped edge, embroidered with satin-stitch pansies, which she had purchased in June at the parish Sale of Work; it looked, she thought, more pure than ocean foam. She placed the cups of cocoa upon it, and then two plates, and on each plate three Rich Tea biscuits. To Christ thy heart was given,/ The world pursued in vain …

She knocked; no reply of course, they were talking again. Its promises ne’er moved thee … She shoved open the door with her foot, and manoeuvred herself in. The heat took her aback; the fire was roaring up the chimney. She lost the thread of her verse. The curate looked up at her and smiled as she put the tray on the table, and she looked back, full into his face; this time, she thought, I must be sure and form some notion of what he looks like. She held his gaze for what length of time she could, without appearing to stare, and then bent over the hearth, touching the tiles up quite needlessly with the little gilt brush from the fireside set. She surprised herself; she usually brought in a filthy, bristly kitchen-type of brush for this job, and at the thought of anyone violating the fireside set, she would have spat.

She waited for Father Angwin to say, as he usually did, these are boring biscuits, I like Fig, I like Custard Creams; but he was entirely caught up in his conversation with the curate, his hands knotting and unknotting on the table, a flurry of agitation in his voice. “I try to tell myself that whatever evil is done is done permettio dei, with God’s sanction—”

“I understand,” said the curate gravely.

“—and certainly Augustine argues most persuasively in The City of God that though good can exist without evil, evil cannot exist without good. And yet the feeling has taken hold of me that the devil has got his independence in this world. It is he who has got the reins in his hands, I feel.”

Father Fludd stirred his cocoa judiciously. His eyes were downcast.

“I’ll come in for the tray,” Agnes said. “I like to get washed up before bedtime, Father. If there’s one thing I cannot abide it’s to see dirty pots first thing in the morning. I think it’s a habit low in the extreme.”

“I don’t know where God is,” Father Angwin said. “I don’t know that he is.”

“Drink it while it’s hot,” Agnes said to him, “and don’t get yourself worked up before bedtime.”

But Father Angwin was not listening to her. He looked through her as if he were not seeing her, and for a moment she felt an uprush of fear, like cold water on the back of her neck; what if she were really not visible, what if Father Fludd had disappeared her in some way? The next moment, her good sense reasserted itself. She went out into the hall, humming: All vain the wooer’s pleading/ All vain the judge’s ire: / One love alone thy bosom/ Inflamed with chastest fire. Was not “bosom” a rude word? But you were always getting it in hymns. Miss Dempsey had no terms at all for some sections of her anatomy; she never paid them attention. As men go to a banquet … She tried to remember what Father Fludd looked like, but the pattern of his features had been cleanly erased from her mind.

“So one morning,” Father Angwin went on, “I woke up. This was twenty years ago. It had gone in the night.”

“I see,” said Father Fludd.

“How can you explain that? I had it at night, and in the morning it had gone. I felt for the first quarter of an hour that it might come to light, in the way, you know, you might kick your slippers under the bed, or be absent- minded with your toothbrush.”

Father Fludd leant forward; they had transferred themselves now to the two armchairs, and sat at either side of the fire. “Did you apply to St. Anthony? You know he is the nonpareil for finding what is lost.”

“But how could I?” Father Angwin threw out his hands, in a large and liberal gesture of despair. “How could I, considering the nature of my loss, apply to Anthony or any other saint?”

“I suppose not,” Fludd said. “There are some losses—virginity, for instance—that St. Anthony could do nothing about; but you would not be debarred from asking him, if you were an optimist. Your situation, it seems to me, was more grave than the loss of virginity. What did you do next?”