Philip Hensher - Tales of Persuasion

I agreed.

‘Come through,’ a voice called. I followed the children into what proved to be the kitchen. I wondered whether I was expected. From the ceiling, what seemed to be a week’s washing was hanging on a wooden frame, the frills and collapses of much-washed intimates like some natural phenomenon of drip and accretion. On the kitchen worktop, a pile of unsorted socks threatened to fall into a bowl of salad. The only orderly thing in the kitchen seemed to be five neatly labelled recycling boxes, and they were near overflowing.

‘Hi,’ I said. Silvia was at the stove. You noticed the things of the kitchen before the people in it.

‘Oh, hello,’ she said, half turning from the pot she was peering into. ‘You found the house.’

‘Yes,’ I said. For some reason, I could not walk forward and offer her the awful flowers. With the terrible clarity of a crashing driver I envisaged the small but ugly scene as Silvia accepted the dyed carnations from my hand and I struggled to remember what on earth you say when handing over such a thing, and I stood there mute. But then Natasha took it from my hand, gently but persuasively, and removed it, and I never saw it again.

In time other people came in, and sat at the table. ‘This is my mother,’ Natasha said; she seemed to have taken over the job of hostess. Conversation of a sort came and went. ‘This is my father,’ she said.

‘We’ve never met,’ I said firmly to the professor, bedraggled from some labour in the study, or so it seemed. ‘But I know you by reputation.’

‘Admired him from afar,’ Mark said. ‘Stalked him for months, drawn by an inexplicable fascination.’

‘You can behave yourself,’ the professor said. ‘Company.’

‘This,’ the girl said, with pained distaste, ‘is my brother Kevin.’

‘I prefer to be called Benedict,’ the boy said, coming in through the garden door. He was dressed unusually for a seventeen-year-old, in a striped boating jacket and a lopsided bow tie. I wondered what school he went to, and whether he risked such an appearance in the playground. ‘After the saint and founder of the well-known order.’

‘Oh, God,’ Mrs Quincy said.

‘How long is this going to go on for?’ Natasha said.

‘The Church has endured solidly for two thousand years,’ Kevin/Benedict said. ‘I see no reason why the name Benedict should not endure one more human lifetime.’

‘Yours, Mummy, he means,’ Natasha said.

‘Oh, God,’ Mrs Quincy said.

‘He got religion,’ Natasha said. ‘He went to the church down the road, the ordinary one, and got religion. He was always awful, you know. But then he decided that wasn’t religion enough for him. So he went on to another church, which was more religion. And then he ended up on his knees dreaming of the day when he can suck the Pope off.’

‘Natasha,’ Professor Quincy said.

‘Well,’ Natasha said. ‘And it was then that he got the voice to go with it.’ It was true that Kevin/Benedict talked in a way unlike the two other children, who had a faint, attractive Australian hovering in their voice. Kevin/Benedict was conspicuously posh in his manner, sounding as if he were working up to announcing Saint-Saëns on Radio 3 in hushed tones. ‘It won’t last. He’s signed all sorts of pledges, alcohol, smoking, chewing gum, but they won’t last and then he’ll not be religious any more. Temptation, you see.’

Kevin/Benedict lowered his head, faintly smiling, pustular. He looked like the Book of Job, and you could imagine him spottily going to and fro on the earth, walking up and down on it, forgiving everyone in a pimply manner.

‘Would our guest like to say grace?’ Kevin/Benedict said.

I looked at him with astonishment.

‘Oh, God,’ Mrs Quincy said. I agreed. I had never said grace in my life, and had probably heard it said no more than ten times. ‘I couldn’t,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know what would be the appropriate thing.’

‘Well, shall I?’ Kevin/Benedict said.

‘If you’re quick about it,’ Silvia said. ‘My pasta doesn’t wait for no one, not God, neither.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ Kevin/Benedict began. The rest of the family began eating, and, after a moment, so did I. ‘Thank you for a delicious dinner, which we can eat, conscious of the fact that many in this world, many even in this city, not a mile from where we sit, have no ravioli to eat, nor sugo all’amatriciana – ’

‘Very good, Benedict,’ Professor Quincy said, through a mouthful of dinner.

‘– with which to adorn their ravioli, and so we give thanks that we are so fortunate as to enjoy the fruits of the pasta-maker and the mincing machine, free of worries, and taking pleasure in good company, and new friends around the family circle –’

‘He means you,’ Silvia said. ‘No, don’t use the bread, bread with pasta, that’s terrible, terrible.’

‘– and thinking all the time of how through the good things of the table our different lands and cultures are brought together in happiness and enjoyment in the unity of mankind and the love of God, amen.’ He opened his eyes and raised his head, murderously. ‘You’ve all finished.’

‘Yes,’ Mark said. ‘I was hungry. I wasn’t going to let it go cold.’

‘I wonder where the practice of saying grace comes from,’ I said conversationally. ‘It must be of considerable antiquity.’

‘Yup, must be,’ Natasha said.

I was smiling and nodding like crazy at Professor Quincy. I had been aiming the observation at the professor of theology.

‘Pa,’ Mark said.

‘Hmm?’ Professor Quincy said. ‘Oh – you said something. Sorry, you were saying?’

‘I was saying, I wonder where the practice of saying grace comes from,’ I said.

‘Oh, right,’ the professor said, swatting a fly circling his head. ‘It was one of those English things where you’re really asking some kind of question. I thought you were just talking.’

Silvia got up, collecting the plates, as if inadequately appreciated. I was rather hoping for some more pasta. It was jolly good. My thanks were effusive, and strange at this family kitchen table.

‘Grace, Pa,’ Mark said.

‘Are we still talking about grace? To tell you the truth, I’m off work, chum,’ the professor said. ‘I like to stop the theologizing at six, if I can. Let a fellow eat his grub. I’ve met people like you before, think I like theology so much I want to talk about it all the time. What’s this, Silvia?’

‘Agnello,’ Silvia said, bringing a vast and incinerated joint, perhaps a shoulder, to the table, half buried in carrots.

‘Looks yummy,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t like theology at all. You want to know how I got lured into it? I’ll tell you.’

‘Oh, God,’ Mrs Quincy said, but rather with relish, and the children’s eyes were shining. You could tell this was their favourite performance.

‘Do tell,’ I said.

‘You start off in year nine at school,’ Professor Quincy said. ‘And they say to you, “All right, what do you want to do? Do you want to go on with history, or do you want to do Sanskrit – because the Sydney public schools, they offer that now, these days – or do you want to be doing biblical studies or RE, as they’d be calling it? Now I tell you, I grew up in Australia, you know. So history in Australia is not much to be writing home about. And my old mum – your granny in Sydney who killed the funnel-web with the ping-pong bat, kids, I’m talking about – she said, “Do what you’re good at. A qualification’s a qualification.” So I do RE and I get the top marks in it because, to be frank with you, it’s not all that difficult to do well in RE. Well, the school says to me, “Do what you’re good at,” so I carry on with the old RE, and before you know it, there I am at Sydney University, which is one of the most distinguished universities in the world, as I’m sure you know, because you don’t strike me as one of those stupid snobs that England specializes in, and my degree, blow me down, it’s RE still, only they don’t call it that by now. It’s called theology.