Tales of Persuasion. Philip Hensher

dinner, which we can eat, conscious of the fact that many in this world, many even in this city, not a mile from where we sit, have no ravioli to eat, nor sugo all’amatriciana –’

      ‘Very good, Benedict,’ Professor Quincy said, through a mouthful of dinner.

      ‘– with which to adorn their ravioli, and so we give thanks that we are so fortunate as to enjoy the fruits of the pasta-maker and the mincing machine, free of worries, and taking pleasure in good company, and new friends around the family circle –’

      ‘He means you,’ Silvia said. ‘No, don’t use the bread, bread with pasta, that’s terrible, terrible.’

      ‘– and thinking all the time of how through the good things of the table our different lands and cultures are brought together in happiness and enjoyment in the unity of mankind and the love of God, amen.’ He opened his eyes and raised his head, murderously. ‘You’ve all finished.’

      ‘Yes,’ Mark said. ‘I was hungry. I wasn’t going to let it go cold.’

      ‘I wonder where the practice of saying grace comes from,’ I said conversationally. ‘It must be of considerable antiquity.’

      ‘Yup, must be,’ Natasha said.

      I was smiling and nodding like crazy at Professor Quincy. I had been aiming the observation at the professor of theology.

      ‘Pa,’ Mark said.

      ‘Hmm?’ Professor Quincy said. ‘Oh – you said something. Sorry, you were saying?’

      ‘I was saying, I wonder where the practice of saying grace comes from,’ I said.

      ‘Oh, right,’ the professor said, swatting a fly circling his head. ‘It was one of those English things where you’re really asking some kind of question. I thought you were just talking.’

      Silvia got up, collecting the plates, as if inadequately appreciated. I was rather hoping for some more pasta. It was jolly good. My thanks were effusive, and strange at this family kitchen table.

      ‘Grace, Pa,’ Mark said.

      ‘Are we still talking about grace? To tell you the truth, I’m off work, chum,’ the professor said. ‘I like to stop the theologizing at six, if I can. Let a fellow eat his grub. I’ve met people like you before, think I like theology so much I want to talk about it all the time. What’s this, Silvia?’

      ‘Agnello,’ Silvia said, bringing a vast and incinerated joint, perhaps a shoulder, to the table, half buried in carrots.

      ‘Looks yummy,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t like theology at all. You want to know how I got lured into it? I’ll tell you.’

      ‘Oh, God,’ Mrs Quincy said, but rather with relish, and the children’s eyes were shining. You could tell this was their favourite performance.

      ‘Do tell,’ I said.

      ‘You start off in year nine at school,’ Professor Quincy said. ‘And they say to you, “All right, what do you want to do? Do you want to go on with history, or do you want to do Sanskrit – because the Sydney public schools, they offer that now, these days – or do you want to be doing biblical studies or RE, as they’d be calling it? Now I tell you, I grew up in Australia, you know. So history in Australia is not much to be writing home about. And my old mum – your granny in Sydney who killed the funnel-web with the ping-pong bat, kids, I’m talking about – she said, “Do what you’re good at. A qualification’s a qualification.” So I do RE and I get the top marks in it because, to be frank with you, it’s not all that difficult to do well in RE. Well, the school says to me, “Do what you’re good at,” so I carry on with the old RE, and before you know it, there I am at Sydney University, which is one of the most distinguished universities in the world, as I’m sure you know, because you don’t strike me as one of those stupid snobs that England specializes in, and my degree, blow me down, it’s RE still, only they don’t call it that by now. It’s called theology.

      ‘Now my professor-lady at Sydney University, she takes me under her wing, because I’m a bright lad, and I pick up the old Hebrew for the Old Testament, and I pick up the old Greek for the New Testament, and she says to me, “What about taking it a bit further, because you know, my dear, it fits you for all sorts of things a degree in theology? And I say, “Like what?” And she says, “Well, you could become a priest,” to which I say, “No, thanks, love.” And I say, “Like what else?” And she says, “Hmm.” And it turns out that the other thing it turns you out for, fits you for marvellously, it’s doing more degrees in bloody theology. So then she says to me, “I’ve got an idea for something you can write about for your doctorate, son.” So, being a bit wet behind the ears, I say, “What’s that, then?” And she says, “Well, I reckon that there’s this book in the Bible called the Book of Kings – I don’t expect you to know of it, son – and I reckon, if you look at it, there’s bits that’s been written by one fellow and bits that’s been written by another fellow. Well,” she says, “I reckon that the bits that were written by the other fellow, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were written by a woman and not a fellow at all.”

      ‘So I says, “Why do you think that, then?” And she says, “You go and write your thesis and tell me why. And I tell you what, call the first fellow P and the other fellow Q.” So there it was, and here I am, and for thirty years, I’ve been writing about this nutty old girl called the Q narrator in the Book of Kings and no one else believes in her, and if she existed, I don’t know why you’d think she was a woman, and if she was, I guess she was fairly typical of her time and place, which means that she struggled with a major facial hair problem and took a bath maybe once in her life, like by accident. And she seems a bit slow on the uptake, because I tell you, the bits she wrote, she’s missed the point a bit, I reckon. And it’s taken me thirty years to work out that I hate a prehistoric old girl called Q who never existed, and I hate the Book of Kings, and I hate theology and, son, I’m not that keen on God in the first place. You ever think, we all end up doing the one thing – the one thing, mind – guaranteed to make you want to puke every day of your life?’

      ‘Yay,’ Natasha said. ‘Listen to your father, Kev. He knows about God.’

      ‘But God knows more about him,’ Kevin/Benedict said, placing his knife and fork fastidiously parallel.

      Mrs Quincy put her knife and fork down too, in a furious clatter. ‘If you don’t stop it now, this second,’ she said, with real venom, to her son, ‘you can go and sit on the naughty step.’

      Professor Quincy’s story – obviously a much-repeated one – had cheered him up. It cheers most people up to tell the story of their life, particularly if you can reduce it to well-paid catastrophe. He set about his lamb, now rather cold-looking, with beard-smearing gusto.

      ‘No no no no no no no no no,’ Silvia said. ‘You can’t say everyone hates what they do. Look at him. He works in the museum, he loves it.’

      ‘I don’t love it exactly,’ I said, unheard. ‘My job. That was a lovely dinner.’

      ‘The naughty step,’ Natasha said, in stages. Her face was purple; she had been in choking hilarity for a minute and a half. ‘The naughty step.’

      ‘The naughty step,’ Mark said, in solemn tones. ‘Do you hear that? Kevin?’

      ‘Benedict,’ Kevin/Benedict said, all fight out of him.

      The next morning I lay in bed, listening to the radio wind itself up into early fits of irritation and denunciation. The specific repetitions of government ministers wound in and out of my dreams as I dropped in and out of thin layers of sleep, and the faces of old friends looked into my eyes, telling me with concern about dangers to the environment. I thought about the night before. Silvia’s vividness had been lost somewhere in that family, and her spotlit personality subsumed in the execution of her fine national dishes. Most of what I had said to her had been mere compliments on her cooking. I might as well have told her how well