The Gate of Angels. Penelope Fitzgerald

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, now unacceptably, at the top of a steep slope. It took it out of you getting up there, if you wanted the Rector to sign a certificate. Elms sheltered the field, young elders and hazels filled the drainage ditches. All that ought to be cleared away before winter, if someone could be found to do it. The Herefords chewed, every jaw moving anti-clockwise, as a tendril grows. Round them the grass stood unmoving, hazed over with a shimmering reddish tinge, ready for hay. The bushes, too, were motionless, but from the crowded stalks and the dense hedges there came a perpetual furtive humming, whining and rustling which suggested an alarming amount of activity out of sight. Twigs snapped and dropped from above, sticky threads drifted across from nowhere, there seemed to be something like an assassination, on a small scale, taking place in the tranquil heart of summer. Fred pounded steadily up the road, which had never been tarmacked and was deeply rutted with cart-tracks which the sun had dried to powder.

      Having arrived at a course of action, you should go over it in your mind only once and then prevent yourself from thinking about it until the moment comes. Fred had already decided to speak separately to his mother and to his sisters, Hester aged twenty (he was sure about that) and Julia, who must be sixteen, as she seemed to have stopped learning anything. Separately, because they were scarcely ever in the same room or of the same opinion. There was a kind of agreement to disagree which, however, produced a perfectly orderly life, from day to day, in the Fairly household.

      The Rectory had been built in 1830 with a solid dignity which, for the last twenty years or so, had been letting in the water everywhere. The front gate, however, was quite new, and had been designed by the Christian Arts and Crafts Guild of Coventry. It was made of pickled oak, carved and inlaid with copper medallions and what looked like small glazed saucers. The raised lettering read The Rectory, and below that, Welcome, Enter, Have no Fear, Simplicity and Quiet Dwell Here. These two lines, perhaps fortunately, were in a decorative celtic alphabet which was almost impossible to read. The gate had been a gift to the Rector’s predecessor who had been artistic, and it was almost the only part of the house in perfect working order.

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