The Naylors Read Online Free PDF Page A

surprised respect.
    ‘Fancy, now!’ Mrs Bowman said. ‘And are you really a clergyman, sir?’
    The nub of this question – although Mrs Bowman wasn’t aware of the fact – decidedly lay in that ‘really’. George just didn’t know, so for a moment he couldn’t think what to say. In law he was undoubtedly a clergyman still. But morally regarded, even philosophically regarded, he had surely forfeited his claim to any such status. So what could he say?
    ‘No,’ George said. ‘I am not.’
    There was a rather prolonged silence, conceivably produced by a general perception that the gent, whether reverend or common-or-garden, was mysteriously in distress. George himself almost expected to hear a cock crow. What actually happened was that the train produced its newfangled whistle, decelerated with virtuoso precision, and within seconds was at a halt at Didcot junction. Then, quite suddenly, nobody was interested in George Naylor and his condition any more. Len and Ron with their tool-kits, the businessm’n with his documents and pocket calculator, Mrs Archer and Mrs Bowman with their innumerable packages draped around them: they all bundled into the corridor and vanished like a dream. It was an unspeakable relief, and it was not within George’s power to refrain from an audible pious ejaculation.
    ‘Thank God!’ George said, and sank down in relaxation in his corner. The train was moving again; its next stop would be Oxford; only the harmless and silent man with The Times remained in the compartment.
    But the harmless man now lowered his paper and spoke.
    ‘It is interesting to speculate,’ he said, ‘what our young friend Ron would be like had he gone up to, say, Balliol.’
    ‘Is it? I mean, yes, certainly.’ George stared at his remaining fellow-traveller with an obscure premonition of yet further discomfort about to accrue on this disastrous journey.
    ‘But I think it is Dr Naylor, is it not? Allow me to introduce myself. I am Adrian Hooker.’
    ‘How do you do?’ This conventional enquiry George managed to utter in a commonplace way. But he was conscious of now gazing at Father Hooker (for he knew him instantly to be that) much as if here were the Devil himself suddenly sprung up before him. Father Hooker was of course nothing of the sort. He was the high-powered pro sent to cope with the apostasy of his totally unimportant self.
     
    ‘Your brother was kind enough to ring me up immediately he received the Bishop’s letter.’ Father Hooker said this pleasantly enough, but accompanied the words with a faintly disconcerting small bow. ‘Although it must have been a surprise to him.’
    ‘Well, no.’ George spoke out. He was conscious he mustn’t mumble. ‘It has happened before.’
    ‘Ah, yes. I am sure Plumley will be a delightful setting for our talks. There is something very bracing in the sanctity of the family and the home.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s so.’ George found himself having to repel the thought that this had been a disagreeably canting kind of remark. ‘I am glad to be going back to Plumley. But I’m not sure that it’s in order to be braced.’
    ‘It was in my mind’ – Father Hooker continued, ignoring this –’to suggest a meeting in Oxford, where so many would be willing to receive us. And there came into my head – inconsequently enough, I suppose – the last meeting there of poor Newman and Mark Pattison. You will recall it.’
    ‘No,’ George said. Newman having been recently in his head – although in what context he couldn’t remember – this had startled him.
    ‘It was many years after Newman had left us, and he had never been in Oxford again. But now he heard that his old friend Pattison, who had been for a number of years Rector of Lincoln, was on his death-bed in the college, and much troubled in mind. Newman visited him. He travelled from Birmingham to Oxford virtually incognito. Attended, it is said, by only two chaplains.’ Father Hooker did something