town, whose belching smokestacks fed my child’s intuition that Hell’s Gate was just beyond the next hill. More to the point, my father was the second son of a second son, a man of feckless charm and determined demons who frittered away a modest patrimony in a sequence of ill-conceived initiatives. After each catastrophe he would plunge into drink, proceeding through fury to despair and tearful encomiums to self-slaughter, before staggering back to his feet in the renewed conviction that something grand might turn up next week.
But my brother never took up holy orders. A chill gripped Toby on the evening of his fifteenth birthday, and he withdrew to his chamber under the sad watchful gaze of Our Lord. By morning the chill had become a racking cough, and by nightfall a fever that made the doctor shake his head in gloomy resignation. Toby departed at dawn, brave and devout, actually whispering with his last breath: “Don’t cry, Jack. Look—my angel’s come—he’s reaching out to take my hand.”
Well, this is quite the legacy to leave your older brother. I was seventeen at the time, and had almost settled upon the Law as a suitable career for a young man with decent intelligence and keen material expectations, but no particular gift for application—my father’s son, in other words. But now the weight of maternal hope had nowhere else to fall. My poor mother was sufficiently distraught to clutch at any straw, even the belief that I might make a clergyman after all—so how could I say no, with the flowers still fresh on Toby’s grave? Besides, I was genuinely haunted—and have remained so, all my life—by the look on my brother’s face as he struggled to lift his hand towards his angel. It was a look so radiant that it could make even a wretched Doubter half-believe that it was true—that Toby’s angel was there—and more, that there was a second angel in the room, reaching out to Toby’s brother and telling him: “This is your destiny. Put down your nets and follow me.”
So. You conjure consolatory dreams of deanships and bishoprics, which soon wither in the reality of a third-class degree from Oxford and a family with no money and less influence. Finally the Future presents itself in the form of a seventy-pound-per-annum curacy in the outer reaches of Cornwall. And what do you do then? Why, you do your best.
MY BEST IS WHAT I was doing on the afternoon of that fateful Sunday.
I had spent an hour or so alone after service, despairing over failures and inadequacies, and dreaming of escape. Today’s dream had to do with California, whence news of a Gold Rush had reached the newspapers even in Cornwall. This conjured an agreeable image of myself, ministering selflessly to spade-bearded miners in a verdant wilderness, before succumbing to a fever even more spectacular than the one that had taken my brother. I had just come to the point where news of my death reached Bathsheba Scantlebury—she was secretly shattered—when I saw that the hour was nearly two o’clock. God’s Work awaited just down the road, and so I gave myself a shake and roused myself to it.
Old Ned Moyle had been failing badly these past few months. He was past ninety and no longer able to walk to church, so I’d fallen into the habit of taking the Communion bread and wine out to him. This meant a five-mile trudge along the cliffs to the fisherman’s cottage where Old Ned lived with his son, Young Ned, and then of course a five-mile trudge back, which was no bargain—let me tell you—when the weather was up. But on a fine spring afternoon, I confess I enjoyed it—a walk that was all sharp salt air and plunging ocean vistas, with prowling waves and secret coves where you could picture low-slung sloops at anchor under the black flag, and Reeking Scantlebury plotting his depredations, and Black Bess in the fo’cs’le feeding your kidneys to Beaky Norman.
The Moyles lived in the sort of rough dwelling you’ll find all along the Cornish coast, clinging to the rock like barnacles. Their low stone cottage was set into the hillside, with a steep path winding past a desultory vegetable garden and down to the sea. The sun was sloping westward when I arrived. Young Ned was at work out front, mending his nets. “Why, it’s the young Reverend, coom to zee us,” he exclaimed, as surprised as he had been last Sunday afternoon, and each Sunday afternoon before that. Young Ned was well on the shady side of seventy himself—still as strong as a bull, but his memory was no longer what it once had been. The result was that life was full of surprises for Young Ned, and some of them were pleasant, which I suppose must count as a blessing.
“Coom in, young Reverend,” he beamed, wringing my hand and leading me inside. It was cramped and damp but surprisingly clean, though full of clutter and fisherman’s paraphernalia. The stick that was Old Ned reclined in a cot by the window, covered with a tatty old shawl. I performed the Eucharist with my customary sense that someone else would be more convincing in the role, pausing as usual while Old Ned gummed the wafer and worked it down. Afterwards I stayed for a chat, which was identical to the chat we had enjoyed the previous Sunday, and all the Sundays preceding, the gist being as follows:
YOUNG NED: “Well, Da. Here’s the young reverend.”
OLD NED: “It’s the legs, you know. They’ve give out.”
REVD BERESFORD: “I’m afraid God sends these things to try us.”
OLD NED: “WHAT?”
YOUNG NED: “E ZAYS, GOD ZENDS THESE THINGS!”
OLD NED: “Aye, God zave the Queen.”
(Brief interlude, in which are vague patriotic noddings.)
YOUNG NED: “Well, Da. Here’s the young reverend.”
Et cetera. The chat lingered, as it often did, owing to the excellent quality of Young Ned’s ale. We toasted the Queen, and the Prince Consort, and various heirs to the throne, and it was well past five o’clock by the time I rose and blessed Old Ned— something that always made me feel utterly fraudulent, but also oddly happy. Young Ned walked me out to the head of the path. It was clear there was something on his mind, and I waited while he hummed and hawed.
“’E’s not entirely well, is ’e?” he said at length, with a sidelong look, as if half hoping that I might contradict him.
“He’s an old man, Ned,” I said. Sometimes it’s best to stick with the blindingly obvious.
“’Is legs’ve give out.”
“His poor old legs.”
“Aye. Them legs.”
Young Ned stood pondering his father’s legs for a few moments, rocking from toes to heels, sucking ruminatively upon his teeth.
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” he resumed. “I’m ztarting to think . . . ’e might be gone, one of these days. One of these days quite zoon.”
There was such wistful look in his eyes—a man of more than seventy, about to be orphaned—that my heart went out.
“We’ll all be gone one of these days, Ned. But here’s what I think. I’m pretty certain—I think I can say for a fact—that he’ll be here when I come back next Sunday afternoon. So we’ll raise a glass of your excellent ale, and we’ll toast Her Majesty and all her loyal subjects, and we’ll spend a splendid afternoon.”
Sometimes when we open our mouths, the right words come spilling out. Young Ned began to nod, a happy look creeping across his weathered old face. “Well, young Reverend,” he said. “We’ll all look forward to that.”
I LEFT WITH a feeling of warmth inside that wasn’t entirely due to Ned’s ale. For a few lovely moments I was buoyed by the sense that God’s business had just been carried out—and carried out by me—and that against all odds I might actually have a vocation for this
