“Now. A most important point. At this stage in my life I was not an atheist, by no means. I felt reasonably certain there was a deity, certainly a deity real enough for me to pray to Him to preserve my life. But I did not do that. No.” Frobisher’s jowls tremble. “Instead it came to me that I must freely surrender myself to Him, that He might deal with me as He wished. And so I did. I gave myself up to God. I prayed: Let me die or live according to your wish, Oh Lord. And I survived. All these years, Acton, I’ve lived by His grace. And when He wishes to take me, I will know that it will be because I’ve fulfilled His purpose.”

A whispering, shifting noise above us makes me look up. Brick dust is falling, a thin cataract. The smallest breeze presages the tempest.

—

The beam strikes our iron roof with a bang like ball lightning. The table is dashed onto its side and the bed frame slams down, leaving us roofless. Rafters, lath, and plaster descend in a solid rain. Roaring, Frobisher seizes the iron headboard and throws it over us, propping it with the frame. I fold myself at an excruciating acute angle, giving him all the room I can. No air left, only dust. In the cacophony I feel Yvette’s hand, the very first touch, but before I can close my fingers on hers, she slips away.

—

The curtain of dust thins, parts. The beam lies a couple of yards away, leaning against the wall of the study. Frobisher is gazing upward, weeping brown tears. The dust has irritated his eyes. A gray light gleams on the top of his head. “I can see the sky,” he announces, and I understand that it is daylight shining on his crown. Does that mean that there is nothing else to fall? Presently Frobisher sighs and puts his glasses back on, the movement so everyday and businesslike that he could be about to speak at a meeting of the bishop’s staff.

“It seems God can spare you for a bit longer,” I say.

“Ha!” He claps his hands, gives me his usual bumptious grin. “Enough about me,” he says, jollily. “What about your vocation, Acton?”

—

I tell him about the padre I met at Sagan, who gave me the usual spiel about a just war. I replied that this idea was one thing in a book, quite another in life and, begging his pardon, I did not believe he had ever borne down on an armored column and found himself strafing an open lorryload of German troops, all of them too young to have voted for any leader however evil.

“It was my wife, my future wife, who helped me out,” I continue. “She wrote to me at Sagan. Said, under the circumstances, there was nothing else for it.”