Penelope Fitzgerald - The Gate of Angels

The first note was from the Master. The writing sloped a good deal downwards, but it was clear enough. ‘I have to apologise to you for saying, or implying, just now in the court, something that was not true. I asked you who you were, but I, of course, knew who you were. I know the voices of everyone in the college. I also know their steps, even on the grass – particularly on the grass. Normally you cross the court directly from the SSW to the NNE, but this evening you did not do this. You must have walked a little up the gravel path, and that confused me. My remark, I am afraid, reflected something of my annoyance at that confusion.’ The Master was fond of sending these notes in the interest of truth, or rather with the intention of going to bed every night in the knowledge that he had neither said or written anything untruthful which he had not corrected. For the Master, it was a very short note. And Fred had learned to live among these people and indeed (as with the cold in his room) already found it difficult to imagine anything else.

The second note was from Skippey, who must have dropped it in to the lodge on his way back to his own college, Jesus. It read, ‘Dear Old Fellow, I don’t think you heard me just now on Mill Road. Thorpe has let us down to-night on the Disobligers’ Society. He says he is ill. He calls it influenza, and we call it letting us down. It’s lucky that you’ve recovered from your accident, because we want you to speak for us in the debate to-night. We want you to speak against the motion. The motion is “that the soul doesn’t exist, has never existed, and that it isn’t desirable that it should exist”. Charles Reding is going to propose the motion. The point is that he’s a theologian, and a pious fellow, and so on, and so of course he’ll have to say that there’s nothing we can be sure of except the body, and that thought is blood, and so on, and then you, Fred, as a rank unbeliever, will have to stick up for the soul. Afterwards, wine and biscuits. And, Fred –’ Beazley was still hanging about. Fred asked him: ‘Did the Master want an answer to his note?’

‘He didn’t ask for one, Sir.’

I’m a disappointment to Beazley, Fred thought. Steaming socks, making toast, though a lot better, mind you, than he makes it himself – where’s the dash, where’s the display? Although after the first glance he must have given up all hope of making any substantial amount of money out of looking after me – still, there he is, and I like him, oughtn’t I to entertain him a little?

‘It seems as if I’ve got to go out and make a speech, Beazley. It was raining, and I’m just drying out. Do I look untidy?’

‘Yes, very untidy, Mr Fairly.’

Beazley went out, quite well pleased, shutting the four-inch oak door, which deadened the sound of his steps as they descended the winding stairs.

Fred looked at his watch. It was a silver watch, belonging to his father, given to him when he took up his appointment, and yet not quite given to him either, since when he went back on vacations his father tended to borrow it back. It came to him that he didn’t at all want to go out again to-night, that he had a letter of his own to write which must go off – must – but on the other hand he ought not to disoblige the Disobligers’ Society. This was because he had once done Skippey a good turn, something to do with money, a temporary loan, and you are always under an obligation to anyone you’ve helped once. But his mind had not warmed up at the same rate as his body, and he was not able to think, still less to put in order, what he could possibly say in defence of the soul.

The third note, in the envelope that was not so clean, consisted of a couple of pages torn out of a note-book. It was from an acquaintance. Fred couldn’t remember where he had first met Holcombe, or why, having met him but not ever much wanting to see him again, they now considered themselves acquaintances. It was on a subject they had been talking about a couple of days ago. Holcombe must have thought of something else he wanted to say, gone to the lodge, found that Fred had signed out, and immediately started writing, since it would have been as dangerous for him not to express himself as to block his digestive system.

‘… Long tramps, Fairly, over our beloved Fenland, speaking together of intellectual problems and those only, descending at last after say fifteen miles for whisky and a warm at some friendly Cambridge hearth! That is a man’s recreation. Now, if one were to marry – well, look at it in this way – a wife has a legal right to be in the same house and even the same room as oneself! From the point of view of the temptations of the flesh that may be convenient enough, but what if she were to want to talk ? Your own position is so much simpler. You don’t have to make up your mind. At the age of twenty-five years, it is made up for you. If you stay at St Angelicus you can’t marry. If you leave, you may get another appointment, but not, you can be pretty certain, another Junior Fellowship. You are choiceless. In fact, you must be careful that your powers of choice don’t fall into disuse. I think of rust, I think of springs becoming weaker. You may find you can’t remember how to choose at all. And yet the prospect of an alternative is absolutely necessary to human will and human action. Still, let us be honest, there seems no point, as far as I can see, in your ever getting to know any young women at all –’

At this point Holcombe had run out of space. When Fred next met him, he would start straight away from where his letter had broken off, as though between words spoken and words written there was no dividing line.

Out of a carved oak locker on the opposite side of the fire from the coal-scuttle, but distinct from the bread-cupboard (and breathing out a different smell of mould when opened), Fred took a few sheets of the college paper. He shook his fountain pen to see how much ink was left in it, and wrote: ‘Dear Miss Saunders’.

ST Angelicus had two great distinctions. One it shared with St Andrew’s University. That was that it had no real existence at all, because its foundation had been confirmed by a pope, Benedict XIII, who after many years of ferocious argument had been declared not to be the Pope at all. Two years after he had been legally elected in 1394 he was told that he was dethroned. By every law of God and man, however, no-one on earth had the right to do this. Kings and emperors can be dislodged, but not legally elected Popes. Benedict, too, was an Aragonese, and one of the most obstinate of an obstinate nation. In 1415 he retreated to a castle built on a jagged rock 64 metres high and linked to the mainland of Castellon by a strip of sand, covered at high tide by the sea. Here, in Peñiscola, he continued to hold audience in the vast halls, furnished with books and the rags of tapestries which he had brought with him. No matter, he was now ninety years old, and must die soon. He did not die, and refused to give way an inch. To settle everyone’s conscience, it was agreed by the Kings of Europe to arrange for him to be poisoned. Benedict had always lived temperately and had only one weakness left, a fondness for quince preserves, which were made for him by the nuns in a convent on the mainland. After enquiry, a Benedictine was found who was an expert at introducing poison into sweets. An attendant was bribed to take these sweets to the Pope’s study. But the old man vomited so hideously that his stomach was cleared. The attendant was arrested, the Benedictine was found guilty and burned alive, and the Pope died five years later, with dignity. He was buried in his home town of Ilueca. During the war of the Spanish succession his body was dug up by French soldiers on the rampage, who cut off the head and threw it away. Rescued from a ditch by an honest labourer, it was preserved as an object of veneration. The Senior Tutor of Angels had in fact made the journey to Aragon to see it, together with Dr Matthews, the Provost of James’s, a very well-known antiquarian. A silver reliquary had been opened for them by special arrangement, and they had been allowed a sight of Benedict XIII’s skull. Both of them had noticed that the right eye was still visible, hanging at the back of the socket in the form of a kind of dark jelly.