“And would he concede anything at all?”
“Nothing.”
“And so how did you leave it?”
“I said, ‘I hope I live to bury you.’” Father Angwin brooded for a moment. “He didn’t mention you.”
“Oh well,” said Fludd. “Did he not? Never mind.”
Father Angwin still half-believed, when he thought about it, that Fludd was the bishop’s spy. But he conceived that even the bishop must have a better nature, which made him tactfully gloss over the fact of the spy’s existence, as if he could not quite admit to what he had done. Either that, or his left hand knows not what his right hand is doing.
Father Angwin, of course, was the worse for drink. Father Fludd gently pointed this out to him, and went into the kitchen to get Agnes to make him some coffee. Coffee was an innovation, one that he was working on. “You grind, Miss Dempsey. You measure. You moisten. You heat. You filter.”
“Well,” Miss Dempsey would say, “I don’t know what the result will be; it will be a substance I have never beheld before.”
Father Angwin, left alone, looked into the fire in a dream. Earlier that evening, he had listened to a most peculiar confession: or rather, to a question put to him in the confessional, by a strange, strained voice, that he believed he had heard somewhere, but could not quite place. It had been Netherhoughton night; a special evening was reserved for the people from up the hill. It had been in his mind to send Fludd, but the curate wasn’t up in their ways yet; either none of them would come at all, or there would be three or four of them trying to get into the box together, all of them fighting to get their version in first. More than once it had degenerated into brawls; the boy was able for that sort of thing, no doubt, he was a strong-looking lad, but discretion is the better part of valour, and he might not have the wit to forestall trouble.
The penitent, first of the evening, had come shuffling into the box, and had knelt, and kept silence, as if waiting for him to speak first. After a while, it had occurred to him that this was some Netherhoughtonian who had come back to church after twenty or thirty years, hoping that the new priest was a soft touch, and who did not know where to begin on his or her sins, and who might anyway have forgotten the usual form of words. Encouragingly, he prompted: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … ?”
At the sound of his voice there was a small sigh, and a further silence. He waited. It was clear to him that the Netherhoughtonian had hoped for Fludd. “Well, now you’re here,” he said, “you may as well get on. Don’t worry, I’ll help you out. Why not take it a decade at a time? But first, tell me, how long is it since your last confession?”
“Not long,” the penitent said flatly. It was a woman; her age he could not guess. And what she said might be true, in the Netherhoughtonian perception. Up there, they were still gossiping about the Abdication; not that of Edward VIII, but that of James II. Their quarrels stretched back to time immemorial; they had grievances that pre- dated the Conquest.
“Well,” the voice said; and there was a further pause. “Well, I’ve nothing to tell, really. I could ask you a question.”
“All right. Your question then.”
“Would it be a sin for a man to set fire to his house?”
Now this was the kind of rough, wild stuff you got from the folk of Netherhoughton. “His own house?” the priest asked. “You don’t mean someone else’s?”
“His own,” said the voice impatiently. “If he is poor, and the insurance money would put him in better circumstances.”
“Oh, I see. Well, of course it would be a sin.” Father Angwin thought, I did not know that in Netherhoughton they had insurance, if I were a company I would refuse them. “It’s a crime besides. Arson, and fraud. Oblige me by putting the notion out of your head.”
“All right,” the penitent said, taking his point with surprising alacrity. “I could put another question. May dripping be used for pastry, or is it allowed only for frying fish?”
God help them, Father Angwin thought; accustomed as they are to living on gruel, shall I live to see the day when their tastes are broadened, their puny physiques improved? “I can’t tell you, right off. But,” he said helpfully, “I could ask my housekeeper. Why don’t I do that, and you could come back next week and hear the answer? I’m sure that if you’re struggling she’d be willing to give you many hints and tips in the culinary line.”
A pause. “No,” the voice said. “Fasting and abstinence. That’s what I’m talking about. Lenten regulations. And on a Friday through the year. Does dripping count as meat? Or does it count as butter?”
“That’s a tough one,” the priest said. “Let me think about it, will you?”
“Can you have jam on a fast day?”
“I always do, if I want. I don’t believe there’s an ordinance about it. You must be governed by the general principles, though. You mustn’t be a glutton for jam.”
“If it is a fast day, and you are taking your morning collation, eight ounces of bread that is, can the bread be toasted?”
“Oh yes, it may.”
“But then it would shrink up, Father. Perhaps it might weigh less. So you could have an extra slice.”
“I don’t think there’s anything in Canon Law about that.” He was concerned, and puzzled too, by the scruple and lack of scruple this penitent combined. “Do you get very hungry on fast days? There are some people who do. I believe that all but the most rigid authorities will allow a little more in cases of hardship.”
“I should not want to put myself forward as such a case.”
“Your efforts do you credit.”
“But now tell me, Father, how long has it been permitted to eat meat on Christmas Day, when Christmas Day falls on a Friday?”
