The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [153]
“I believe he has something new like that every week,” said Aunt Philippa. “It must be lovely to live in his neighbourhood.”
Charles’s was not a God-fearing home. Until August 1914 his father had been accustomed to read family prayers every morning; on the outbreak of war he abruptly stopped the practice, explaining, when asked, that there was now nothing left to pray for. When Charles’s mother was killed there was a memorial service for her at Boughton, his home village, but Charles’s father did not go with him and Aunt Philippa. “It was all her confounded patriotism,” he said, not to Charles but to Aunt Philippa, who did not repeat the remark until many years later. “She had no business to go off to Serbia like that. Do you think it my duty to marry again?”
“No,” said Aunt Philippa.
“Nothing would induce me to—least of all my duty.”
The service followed its course. As often happened, two small boys fainted and were carried out by house-captains; a third left bleeding at the nose. Mr. Peacock sang the Gospel over-loudly. It was his first public appearance. Symonds looked up from his Greek, frowned and continued reading. Presently it was time for Communion; most of the boys who had been confirmed went up to the chancel rails, Charles with them. Symonds sat back, twisted his long legs into the aisle to allow his row to pass, and remained in his place. Charles took Communion and returned to his row. He had been confirmed the term before, incuriously, without expectation or disappointment. When, later in life, he read accounts of the emotional disturbances caused in other boys by the ceremony he found them unintelligible; to Charles it was one of the rites of adolescence, like being made, when a new boy, to stand on the table and sing. The Chaplain had “prepared” him and had confined his conferences to theology. There had been no probing of his sexual life; he had no sexual life to probe. Instead they had talked of prayer and the sacraments.
Spierpoint was a product of the Oxford Movement, founded with definite religious aims; in eighty years it had grown more and more to resemble the older Public Schools, but there was still a strong ecclesiastical flavour in the place. Some boys were genuinely devout and their peculiarity was respected; in general profanity was rare and ill-looked-on. Most of the Sixth professed themselves agnostic or atheist.
The school had been chosen for Charles because, at the age of eleven, he had had a “religious phase” and told his father that he wished to become a priest.
“Good heavens,” his father said; “or do you mean a parson?”
“A priest of the Anglican Church,” said Charles precisely.
“That’s better. I thought you meant a Roman Catholic. Well, a parson’s is not at all a bad life for a man with a little money of his own. They can’t remove you except for flagrant immorality. Your uncle has been trying to get rid of his fellow at Boughton for ten years—a most offensive fellow but perfectly chaste. He won’t budge. It’s a great thing in life to have a place you can’t be removed from—too few of them.”
But the “phase” had passed and lingered now only in Charles’s love of Gothic architecture and breviaries.
After Communion Charles sat back in his chair thinking about the secular, indeed slightly anti-clerical, lyric which, already inscribed, he was about to illuminate, while the masters and, after them, the women from the side aisles, went up to the rails.
The food on Sundays was always appreciably worse than on other days; breakfast invariably consisted of boiled eggs, over-boiled and lukewarm.
Wheatley said, “How many ties do you suppose A. A.’s got?”
“I began counting last term,” said Tamplin, “and got to thirty.”
“Including bows?”
“Yes.”
“Of course, he’s jolly rich.”
“Why doesn’t he keep a car,