The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

which would at once afford him a view of the present state of Jacobite studies. ‘Jacobite’, of course, had nothing to do with Bonnie Prince Charlie and people of that sort; its reference was to that area of ecclesiastical history and doctrinal controversy in the sixth century upon which George had made himself an authority as a young man. That had been a long time ago, and he felt that he was not well up in whatever work had been done in the interval. Indeed, he was culpably rusty all round. It didn’t much worry him that he hadn’t much kept up with contemporary Christian apologetics. He could cope with logical positivism – so dire-seeming a threat in his youth – and demonstrate, at least to his own satisfaction, that it contradicted itself. But what about the larger implications of existentialism? He had already been losing interest as these hove up, and was undeniably hazy over such issues. But about all this he didn’t really bother, although he had a foreboding that his negligence was going to place him at an awkward disadvantage with Father Hooker. But his own stretch of early ecclesiastical history was another matter.
    Surely he should retain, although not a devout, at least a scholarly interest in recent contributions to research in the field? He recalled the names of several investigators quite as promising as himself. There had been Dom. Potter of Minnesota; and there had been Prebendary Delver of Durham; there had been a German at Gottingen whose name he forgot, but who had tentatively been putting forth disturbing views on political and economic conditions as having been factors in the Eutychian revival. George couldn’t hope to muck in again. Indeed, he didn’t want to. But he could take a peep at what was going on.
    Having formed this resolution, George first visited the nearest Gents (whimsically described as Schola Linguarum Hebraicae et Graecae) and then made his way into the Bodleian.
    Or rather he tried to do so. The entrance had been changed. It was no longer through the little door (almost as narrow as Blackwell’s) saying Schola Naturalis Philosophiae. It was through the wider archway of what used to be called the Pig Market, and the Pig Market itself (which had formerly harboured not pigs but notice-boards) had turned into a shop selling picture postcards and colour slides and do-it-yourself cut-out cardboard models of university buildings. Straight ahead, the Divinity School (in which he had once been required to make a speech in indifferent Latin) was still on public view beneath its incredible roof; and to George’s left, at the south end of the Pig Market, there was a kind of token barrier or horizontal wooden flap – the academic equivalent, one might say, of a turnstile as it exists in the turbulent outer world – and beyond this George could visualise the familiar long but shallow flights of steps to the reading-rooms. So he walked over to the flap, pushed it, and went through.
    ‘Ticket, please.’
    George turned round in astonishment, and saw that he had been addressed by a respectable male person standing in a species of lidless wooden box. He looked as if he had been standing there all day – despite which trying fact he had uttered those two words firmly indeed, but entirely politely.
    ‘Ticket?’ George repeated in astonishment. ‘But I’m a reader. I’m a reader, I say.’
    That this weird linguistic infection should have seized upon George’s speech so confused him that there can be little doubt of his having instantly taken on the appearance of a frustrated arsonist.
    ‘Readers can’t go in without a ticket, sir.’
    ‘But I’ve been in hundreds of times!’ George said. He was now aware that he was behaving foolishly, but irrational indignation nevertheless overcame him. Being denied entrance to the Bodleian! Him (or He)! George Naylor M.A.; Clerk in Holy Orders; for some eighteen months (he had just remembered) a junior research fellow (supernumerary and