For Jonathan Adams reality was scripture. It was the sacred history of a people finding their God. So, though Jonathan might wish to transcend history, he grew to love its bare inviolable physicality. As a reader, like many of his age, he had turned to autobiographies, to biography, to see how others had succeeded in dealing with their demons. He had entered again that boyish period of life when the mind selects figures: the numbers on opposing sides in the siege of Derry; the numbers on opposing sides in the Battle of the Boyne; the number of languages spoken when we were given the gift of tongues. Is life not tuned more to the ear than to the eye? How many royals died of choking on fish bones? How many royals were afflicted by small gullets? How many Napoleons existed? How many Jews? How many gypsies? How many Ulstermen died at the Somme? What was the number of Presbyterians that travelled in the Famine ships to America? He traced Carson’s lineage and counted the number of homosexual politicians in Britain. He estimated the number of Catholics in the world. How many Protestants died at the hands of the Godfathers of the Roman Church in the Inquisition? How many Ulster Protestants died, were tortured, had their breasts sheared off by blood-thirsty Catholics on 23 October 1641, the feast of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits? 30,000? 40,000? 50,000? Who was Roger Casement? What are Rome’s finances? How war-worthy were Russian tanks? Did the Russians actually try to send messages through space by means of brain waves? Was it true that Communism only flourished in Catholic countries? How many Jews died so that their blood could be shipped to the front to keep the German Army going? He read magazines on American rifles, on wild pheasants in Ireland. Articles on Paisley. Biographies of American presidents, histories of the Boer War, the Second World War. Geese. Peel and the Law and Order Bill of 1852.

“You must read Pride and Prejudice,” said Maisie, “that at least.”

“No,” replied the Sergeant.

He gave her no moral or high-minded reason. Sometimes he might counter with the weak excuse that fiction was the outcome of idleness, that it was fantasy rather than fiction, but the real reason was that he had a fine memory which could not be induced to recall an imagined narrative. He read fiction as a child, but in the aftermath it remained a blur. Fiction was the shameful stories prisoners made up to escape prison. It was created to obscure guilt. Fiction for him was irreligious, the act of imagination itself was a door opening onto the void. His mind baulked at characters who entered the first line of a novel but did not reside in the real world. In truth, what did not come from the Bible was fiction.