1
Was there a ghost? Was there, in a
manner of speaking, a murder?
Ask me these
questions and I cannot answer a simple yes or no. I did not know at the time
and now, more than forty years later, I am even less able to answer them.
Perhaps an easier question is this: what exactly do I remember about Faraday
and me in those few days before the War? The First World War, that is, the one
that was meant to end them all.
He and I didn’t
know each other long, not properly — four or five days, perhaps. And nights, of
course. I suppose there must be records — a report in the local newspaper,
surely, and a police file. Perhaps letters from Faraday’s guardian. There must
also have been correspondence between the school and my parents but I found no
trace of it after my mother died. We never spoke of it when she was alive, not
directly, and my father wasn’t able to speak about anything after they brought
him back from France in 1915.
So — all I can
really rely on is my memory. But of course memory may, paradoxically, make
matters worse. It is not a passive record of what happens, though it may
misleadingly give that impression. It plays an active role as well, selecting
and shaping the past. Memory speculates about itself; it ruminates and dreams,
edits and deletes: over time, the fruits of these processes become the memories
themselves and the entire process begins again.
So what does that make Faraday’s fugitive notes? Or the man I saw in the arcade? Or
even Mordred?
To take a minor
example. I must have seen the view from the train as we went back to school
over and over again. But in memory it is always winter, though of course I must
often have seen it at other times of the year. All the different journeys have
elided into one which, strictly speaking, never really happened at all.
The train comes
north across the Fens. It’s afternoon but the light is already fading rapidly
from the endless bowl of the sky. The land is nearly as featureless — a plain
of black mud stretching as far as the eyes can see. I stare out of the window,
trying to find something to look at — a windmill, a hedge, a tree, a farm.
Sometimes there is even a Fenlander. We used to call them Boggos.
I do not want
to be on this train. Nor do I want to arrive at school. But there is no help in
it: that’s what I remember most of all, that the desolation outside the window
seemed to mirror the desolation within me.
It’s nonsense,
of course. They call it the Pathetic Fallacy, the belief that one can attach
human emotions and thoughts to inanimate objects, even landscapes. I know that
because Mr Ratcliffe explained it to Faraday and me. It may be a fallacy but
sometimes fallacies have their own sort of truth.
When I look out
of the window into the darkening world, I am looking for the two towers and
dreading to find them. The sight of them means that the journey is coming to
its end. One tower is taller than the other, and they are joined by the long,
high-backed ridge of the nave.
The Fens diminish everything — people,
buildings, trees. Everything except the Cathedral, which deals with the Fens on
its own terms.
*
Most old English Cathedrals have a
school attached to them, often a King’s School set up by Henry VIII at the
Reformation. Ours was of no great size — perhaps a hundred pupils, some dayboys
and some boarders, aged between nine and nineteen. Within the school was
another school — technically, I believe a separate foundation: this was the
Choir School, whose purpose was to educate the boys who sang in the Cathedral
choir.
The Choir
School was very small — twelve or fifteen boys. It was ruled by the Master of the
Music, Dr Atkinson, who was also the Cathedral organist. For much of the time,
the Choir School boys mingled with the rest of us — they attended the same
lessons and played the same games. But they were a race apart, nonetheless.
They were liable to vanish unexpectedly to attend practice or perform
Was there a ghost? Was there, in a
manner of speaking, a murder?
Ask me these
questions and I cannot answer a simple yes or no. I did not know at the time
and now, more than forty years later, I am even less able to answer them.
Perhaps an easier question is this: what exactly do I remember about Faraday
and me in those few days before the War? The First World War, that is, the one
that was meant to end them all.
He and I didn’t
know each other long, not properly — four or five days, perhaps. And nights, of
course. I suppose there must be records — a report in the local newspaper,
surely, and a police file. Perhaps letters from Faraday’s guardian. There must
also have been correspondence between the school and my parents but I found no
trace of it after my mother died. We never spoke of it when she was alive, not
directly, and my father wasn’t able to speak about anything after they brought
him back from France in 1915.
So — all I can
really rely on is my memory. But of course memory may, paradoxically, make
matters worse. It is not a passive record of what happens, though it may
misleadingly give that impression. It plays an active role as well, selecting
and shaping the past. Memory speculates about itself; it ruminates and dreams,
edits and deletes: over time, the fruits of these processes become the memories
themselves and the entire process begins again.
So what does that make Faraday’s fugitive notes? Or the man I saw in the arcade? Or
even Mordred?
To take a minor
example. I must have seen the view from the train as we went back to school
over and over again. But in memory it is always winter, though of course I must
often have seen it at other times of the year. All the different journeys have
elided into one which, strictly speaking, never really happened at all.
The train comes
north across the Fens. It’s afternoon but the light is already fading rapidly
from the endless bowl of the sky. The land is nearly as featureless — a plain
of black mud stretching as far as the eyes can see. I stare out of the window,
trying to find something to look at — a windmill, a hedge, a tree, a farm.
Sometimes there is even a Fenlander. We used to call them Boggos.
I do not want
to be on this train. Nor do I want to arrive at school. But there is no help in
it: that’s what I remember most of all, that the desolation outside the window
seemed to mirror the desolation within me.
It’s nonsense,
of course. They call it the Pathetic Fallacy, the belief that one can attach
human emotions and thoughts to inanimate objects, even landscapes. I know that
because Mr Ratcliffe explained it to Faraday and me. It may be a fallacy but
sometimes fallacies have their own sort of truth.
When I look out
of the window into the darkening world, I am looking for the two towers and
dreading to find them. The sight of them means that the journey is coming to
its end. One tower is taller than the other, and they are joined by the long,
high-backed ridge of the nave.
The Fens diminish everything — people,
buildings, trees. Everything except the Cathedral, which deals with the Fens on
its own terms.
*
Most old English Cathedrals have a
school attached to them, often a King’s School set up by Henry VIII at the
Reformation. Ours was of no great size — perhaps a hundred pupils, some dayboys
and some boarders, aged between nine and nineteen. Within the school was
another school — technically, I believe a separate foundation: this was the
Choir School, whose purpose was to educate the boys who sang in the Cathedral
choir.
The Choir
School was very small — twelve or fifteen boys. It was ruled by the Master of the
Music, Dr Atkinson, who was also the Cathedral organist. For much of the time,
the Choir School boys mingled with the rest of us — they attended the same
lessons and played the same games. But they were a race apart, nonetheless.
They were liable to vanish unexpectedly to attend practice or perform
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