He had nearly reached it when he caught sight of a middle-aged man standing outside it studying a piece of paper that perhaps bore directions. This and the style of his belted raincoat suggested a foreign visitor of some sort, and Daniel knew he had never seen him before, so it came as a considerable surprise when the man glanced up at his approach and evidently recognized him.
‘Hello there, Leo,’ said the stranger in an American accent. His expression combined pleasure, astonishment and some less agreeable feeling. ‘You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?’
‘What? My name is Daniel Davidson. I’m sorry, you must have mistaken me for somebody else.’
‘You’re telling me you’re not Leo Marzoni? But… Talk some more. Please.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m afraid I don’t know you.’
‘But it’s Leo’s voice except for the British accent.’ By now the man in the raincoat was plainly agitated. ‘If you’re… Mr David-son, you must have a double. Maybe a twin brother?’
‘I have no brother. And no double that I know of. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
‘Sir, would you be good enough to tell me your profession? Your job?’
‘Certainly. I’m a clergyman.’
‘A clergyman? You mean a priest?’
‘A priest of the Church of England, yes.’
‘Oh my God,’ said the American very quickly. ‘Pardon me,’ and he hurried away round the corner of the station and was seen no more.
This response to notice of his calling disconcerted Daniel for longer than having been mistaken for Leo something. There were doubtless a number of humdrum possible explanations for that mistake, or apparent mistake, such as researching the British character or winning a bet. Nothing of the sort would account for the unfeigned alarm the man had shown at the end. But Daniel soon forgot the question in the course of travelling from western parts of the capital to somewhere nearer the middle. His reasons for going in by tube included a clear financial one and a confused but strong one to do with what he felt his life should be or include, but on this trip his powerlessness to help his wife was enough to think about.
What with one thing and another, he was more than usually conscious today of being a bloody parson, as in unregenerate or inattentive moments he was still apt to think of himself. At the newspaper building, the features editor greeted him with his usual staunch cordiality, demonstrating to whom it might concern that he, Greg Macdonald, was not the sort to think any the less of a chap merely because he had seen fit to become a rev. Or so Daniel sometimes fancied. The other, smaller man in Macdonald’s office had been about to depart, but changed his mind after grasping who and what Daniel must be. While Macdonald read through the article on punishment, this smaller man kept glancing at Daniel in a manner he perhaps believed to be unnoticed. His general air suggested someone thrown by chance into the proximity of an astronaut or serial killer. Daniel had grown used to that kind of reaction, though it seldom took such visible form.
Macdonald finished his reading and nodded weightily for a time. Then he said, still weightily, ‘Very good, Dan. Well up to your usual high standard. Thank you.’ He went on more buoyantly, ‘Just a couple of small points. Mosaic law. They’ll think that’s something to do with mosaics. Can we call it the law propounded or whatever by Moses?’
‘Will they know who Moses was?’
‘They’d better. Enough of them will. This is a serious newspaper. Right, if you’ve no objection. Oh yes. Penology.’
‘They’ll think that’s something to do with pricks,’ said the small man, laughing aloud and looking Daniel in the eye.
‘Oh Christ, you’re still here, are you?’ Macdonald twisted round elaborately in his chair. ‘Didn’t you hear me say the Sun ran it one day last week? Well, I did and it did. And there is the telephone if you think of anything more.’
‘Nice talking to you,’ said Daniel as the small man finally went.
‘Number three on the showbiz desk,’ said Macdonald. ‘Sorry about that. I hate that clever baiting stuff.’
‘It’s a form of respect really.’
‘I suppose you get a lot of it.’
‘Not as much as I’d like, or ought to like.’
‘You mean it’s better than indifference.’
‘I suppose that’s what I mean,’ said Daniel. ‘But there are grades of indifference too, you know. I prefer it when it’s founded on a fact or two. Now I’m pretty well indifferent to the Pope, let’s say, but I’m clear about who he is.’
‘I don’t know a hell of a lot of fellows like you, Dan, but you’re the only one I do know that doesn’t mind talking about religion. And yet, it’s funny, you look to me more like a cricketer or a racing-driver than…’
‘Than a bloody parson. I know you mean that kindly. Will the study of methods of punishment do you instead of penology?’
When they got to the Sussex, they found already there the elderly urchin who was the assistant editor and the distinguished-looking scholarly type who was the astrologer, the latter said to be the chief agent of the paper’s healthy and still rising sales. Their greeting to Daniel was heartier than Macdonald’s had been but also more uneasy, as if he had just come off none too well after a charge of kerb-crawling. But they were tremendously unselfconscious about asking for whisky in his presence, and did not even glance at his ginger beer when it came, let alone at each other. Daniel sympathized with their embarrassment, which he saw as no reflection on them, and respected their efforts to hide it. Very soon it would all have worn off, and he had almost stopped noticing it in them at any stage, and about time too.
He and Macdonald carried their sandwiches over to a small table by the wall. After a couple of minutes Macdonald said,
‘You read the latest piece from that chap the Bishop of Kesteven, sounding off again?’
‘Yes, thanks. Do you want me to write something about it or him? I wouldn’t be the only one.’
‘That doesn’t matter to us. I thought it might come in nicely for your next. The importance of individual responsibility. Made to measure for you, Dan.’
‘It might be fun to have a crack at it. And him.’
‘What’s he like? Do you know him?’
‘A bit, yes. “Call me Barry” Kesteven is a pleasant, talkative fellow a few years older than me, say early forties. He’d make a useful video-shop proprietor, the sort that puts aside stuff he thinks you’ll like. Not at all what you might expect from a servant of the Devil.’
Macdonald grinned a little fixedly. ‘Do you mean all that seriously?’
‘What, that the Devil exists, et cetera? You bet I do, mate, and I’d advise you to take the same line yourself if you know what’s good for you. All right, I’ll do Barry. You’d better send me a xerox, if you would, of what he actually said or wrote. Can I get you a drink?’
Daniel went and came back with another ginger beer for himself and another whisky for Macdonald, who asked, ‘How long is it now?’
‘Oh, it must be… Sorry, it’s some time since I worked it out. Well, it’ll be eight years this coming 10th August. No, actually that was the day I took my last drink, so it has to be the 11th I started on the ginger beer.’
‘Was that before or after you met Ruth?’
‘I’d just got through my second week off it when she turned up. That was the way round things were in those days.’