A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
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For Reuben
“A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.”
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Nature
“The purpose of Art is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.”
SYLVIE BERESFORD TODD
On one occasion [St George] came to a city named Salem, near which lived a dragon who had to be fed daily with one of the citizens, drawn by lot.
The day St George came there, the lot had fallen upon the king’s daughter, Cleolinda. St George resolved that she should not die, and so he went out and attacked the dragon, who lived in a swamp close by, and killed him.
When he was faced by a difficulty or danger, however great it appeared—even in the shape of a dragon—he did not avoid it or fear it, but went at it with all the power he could put into himself and his horse. Although inadequately armed for such an encounter, having merely a spear, he charged in, did his best, and finally succeeded in overcoming a difficulty which nobody had dared to tackle.
This is exactly the way in which a Scout should face a difficulty or danger, no matter how great or terrifying it may appear to him or how ill-equipped he may be for the struggle.
ROBERT BADEN-POWELL, Scouting for Boys
30 March 1944
The Last Flight
Naseby
He walked as far as the hedge that signalled the end of the airfield.
The beating of the bounds. The men referred to it as his “daily constitutional” and fretted when he didn’t take it. They were superstitious. Everyone was superstitious.
Beyond the hedge there were bare fields, ploughed over last autumn. He didn’t expect to see the alchemy of spring, to see the dull brown earth change to bright green and then pale gold. A man could count his life in harvests reaped. He had seen enough.
They were surrounded by flat farmland. The farmhouse itself stood square and immoveable over to the left. At night a red light shone from its roof to stop them crashing into it. If they flew over it when they were coming in to land they knew they had overshot and were in trouble.
From here he could see the farmer’s daughter in the yard, feeding the geese. Wasn’t there a nursery rhyme in there somewhere? No, he was thinking of the farmer’s wife, wasn’t he?—cutting off tails with a carving knife. A horrid image. Poor mice, he had thought when he was a boy. Still thought the same now that he was a man. Nursery rhymes were brutal affairs.
He had never met the farmer’s daughter nor did he know her name, but he was disproportionately fond of her. She always waved them off. Sometimes she was joined by her father, once or twice by her mother, but the girl’s presence in the farmyard was a constant for every raid.
She caught sight of him now and waved. Rather than return the wave, he saluted her. He imagined she would like that. Of course, from this distance he was just a uniform. She had no idea who he was. Teddy was just one of the many.
He whistled for the dog.
1925
Alouette
“See!” he said. “There—a lark. A skylark.” He glanced up at her and saw that she was looking in the wrong place. “No, over there,” he said, pointing. She was completely hopeless.
“Oh,” she said at last. “There, I see it! How queer—what’s it doing?”
“Hovering, and then it’ll go up again probably.” The skylark soared on its transcendental thread of song. The quivering flight of the bird and the beauty of its music triggered an unexpectedly deep emotion in him. “Can you hear it?”
His aunt cupped a hand to an ear in a theatrical way. She was as out of place as a peacock, wearing an odd hat, red like a pillar-box and stuck with two large pheasant tail-feathers that bobbed around with the slightest movement of her head. He wouldn’t be surprised if someone took a shot at her. If only, he thought. Teddy was allowed—allowed himself—barbaric thoughts as long as they remained unvoiced. (“Good manners,” his mother counselled, were “the armour that one must don anew every morning.”)
“Hear what?” his aunt said eventually.
“The song,” he said, mustering patience. “The skylark’s song. It’s stopped now,” he added as she continued to make a show of listening.