I looked over my shoulder. It was only a bombing plane which had flown between me and the sun. The place seemed to be creeping with them.

I strolled into the church. For almost die first time since I got back to Lower Binfield I didn’t have the ghostly feeling, or rather I had it in a different form. Because nothing had changed. Nothing, except that all the people were gone. Even the hassocks looked the same. The same dusty, sweetish corpse-smell. And by God! the same hole in the window, though, as it was evening and the sun was round the other side, the spot of light wasn’t creeping up the aisle. They’d still got pews—hadn’t changed over to chairs. There was our pew, and there was the one in front where Wetherall used to bellow against Shooter. Sihon king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan! And the worn stones in the aisle where you could still half-read the epitaphs of the blokes who lay beneath them. I squatted down to have a look at the one opposite our pew. I still knew die readable bits of it by heart. Even the pattern they made seemed to have stuck in my memory. Lord knows how often I’d read them during the sermon.

Here…………………fon, Gent.,
of this parifh……………his juft
& upright……………………..
…………………………………
To his……….manifold private bene
volences he added a diligent……….
……………………beloved wife
Amelia, by…………….iffue feven
daughters……………………..

I remembered how the long S’s used to puzzle me as a kid. Used to wonder whether in the old days they pronounced their S’s as F’s, and if so, why.

There was a step behind me. I looked up. A chap in a cassock was standing over me. It was the vicar.

But I mean the vicar! It was old Betterton, who’d been vicar in the old days—not, as a matter of fact, ever since I could remember, but since 1904 or thereabouts. I recognised him at once, though his hair was quite white.

He didn’t recognise me. I was only a fat tripper in a blue suit doing a bit of sightseeing. He said good evening and promptly started on the usual line of talk—was I interested in architecture, remarkable old building this, foundations go back to Saxon times and so on and so forth. And soon he was doddering round, showing me the sights, such as they were—Norman arch leading into the vestry, brass effigy of Sir Roderick Bone who was killed at the Battle of Newbury. And I followed him with the kind of whipped-dog air that middle-aged business-men always have when they’re being shown round a church or a picture-gallery. But did I tell him that I knew it all already? Did I tell him that I was Georgie Bowling, son of Samuel Bowling—he’d have remembered my father even if he didn’t remember me—and that I’d not only listened to his sermons for ten years and gone to his confirmation classes, but even belonged to the Lower Binfield Reading Circle and had a go at Sesame and Lilies just to please him? No, I didn’t. I merely followed him round, making the kind of mumble that you make when somebody tells you that this or that is five hundred years old and you can’t think what the hell to say except that it doesn’t look it. From the moment that I set eyes on him I’d decided to let him think I was a stranger. As soon as I decently could I dropped sixpence in the Church Expenses box and bunked.