The Gate of Angels. Penelope Fitzgerald

      ST Angelicus had two great distinctions. One it shared with St Andrew’s University. That was that it had no real existence at all, because its foundation had been confirmed by a pope, Benedict XIII, who after many years of ferocious argument had been declared not to be the Pope at all. Two years after he had been legally elected in 1394 he was told that he was dethroned. By every law of God and man, however, no-one on earth had the right to do this. Kings and emperors can be dislodged, but not legally elected Popes. Benedict, too, was an Aragonese, and one of the most obstinate of an obstinate nation. In 1415 he retreated to a castle built on a jagged rock 64 metres high and linked to the mainland of Castellon by a strip of sand, covered at high tide by the sea. Here, in Peñiscola, he continued to hold audience in the vast halls, furnished with books and the rags of tapestries which he had brought with him. No matter, he was now ninety years old, and must die soon. He did not die, and refused to give way an inch. To settle everyone’s conscience, it was agreed by the Kings of Europe to arrange for him to be poisoned. Benedict had always lived temperately and had only one weakness left, a fondness for quince preserves, which were made for him by the nuns in a convent on the mainland. After enquiry, a Benedictine was found who was an expert at introducing poison into sweets. An attendant was bribed to take these sweets to the Pope’s study. But the old man vomited so hideously that his stomach was cleared. The attendant was arrested, the Benedictine was found guilty and burned alive, and the Pope died five years later, with dignity. He was buried in his home town of Ilueca. During the war of the Spanish succession his body was dug up by French soldiers on the rampage, who cut off the head and threw it away. Rescued from a ditch by an honest labourer, it was preserved as an object of veneration. The Senior Tutor of Angels had in fact made the journey to Aragon to see it, together with Dr Matthews, the Provost of James’s, a very well-known antiquarian. A silver reliquary had been opened for them by special arrangement, and they had been allowed a sight of Benedict XIII’s skull. Both of them had noticed that the right eye was still visible, hanging at the back of the socket in the form of a kind of dark jelly.

      ‘It was a recognisably human glance, in my opinion,’ the Provost had said. ‘There seemed a spark. Yes, some kind of communication. If we could have seen the whole skeleton, I fancy it would have had its hand over its heart.’ The Chaplain of Angels said later that it had been a mistake for the Senior Tutor to go out to Spain with the Provost, who wrote ghost stories in his spare time, and read them aloud, and who was nothing but an old woman when it came to bones and graveyards. ‘And what the two of them must have suffered! You know that in Spain they put pieces of potato in the omelettes. And. then, to go on mule-back!’

      ‘I think they took a local train from Zaragoza,’ someone corrected him.

      ‘A Spanish train! Worse, much worse,’ said the Chaplain.

      The second distinction of Angels was its size. It was the smallest college in Cambridge, and had never shown any signs of wanting to extend or expand in any direction. It had been built, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, on a plan as unlike a monastery as possible. Although everything was in miniature, it resembled a fortress, a toy fortress, but a toy of enormous strength, with walls 3¹/₂ feet thick, built without rubble. There were no cloisters, no infirmary, no hospice, no welcome (to be honest), to those, strangers or not, arriving from outside, no house apart for the Master, who crowded in on an upper floor along with the Fellows, an arrangement which had caused him to be known in the old days as Master Higgledy-Piggledy. As time went by, more openings in the roof were grudgingly allowed for chimneys, and fireplaces were built in the rooms, and one cold water tap on each landing. As to the students, in 1415 none of the colleges had anywhere for them to sleep, and St Angelicus, in 1912, still hadn’t. There were no hostels for them either. They had to find their own lodgings, and six o’clock in the evening took the last of them away, like roosting birds, their chatter fading into the distance, after which they were forgotten till the next morning. There was no room in the court for their bicycles, which had to remain stacked outside the Great Gate. Over the gate the heraldic arms, weathered almost flat with the wall, showed two angels asleep, waiting for the Day of Judgement when Benedict XIII will be shown at last to be indisputably right, and all the proceedings of the Catholic Church since 1396 will be annihilated and trodden into the dust, for all of them have been made on false authority. The motto, Estoy in mis trece, not altogether suitable for a place of learning, was one of Benedict’s few recorded remarks. It is translated as ‘I have not changed my mind’, but ‘nothing doing’ might be nearer.

      The college, then, had learned the art of living in a small space. There were the cellars, of course, and these extended beyond the college buildings themselves, some way underneath Butts Green. 1911 had been a good year for hock and champagne, and Angels had laid in considerable supplies, and were debating whether to burrow even further and to construct another vault. But, above ground, there were only the Master, the college servants and six Fellows. In other colleges the Fellows for the past thirty years had been allowed to marry and live out, but in the statutes of St Angelicus this was forbidden. The number of problems which, in consequence, did not need discussing resulted in a great saving of time, but labour, too, had to be saved. The Junior Fellowship which Fred had been granted meant combining the jobs of assistant organist, assistant librarian, deputy steward, and assistant deputy treasurer. The words assistant, deputy, and so forth didn’t mean that there was necessarily anyone above him to do the work, only that he must do it without being paid.

       3

       How Fred Got this Job in the First Place

      FRED had taken the science tripos, and at a gathering for those who had been awarded a First Class degree he had met Professor Flowerdew. There had been music and refreshments in the open air, ruined by a downpour, as often happens in Cambridge, where the rainfall is believed to be low and risks are taken again and again. Everyone had taken refuge in the Cavendish, where Professor Flowerdew, who did not like parties (still less when they were called gatherings) had been all the time. He was just retreating from the physics laboratory, and with one melancholy sideways movement of his head he invited Fred upstairs to his office. This (like most of the rooms, after all) was dark, and reached by a dingy corridor. The walls were covered with photographs, and more photographs were pinned onto the desks. Fred sniffed the air. It was his ambition to have, one of these days, an office in the Cavendish.

      Flowerdew sat down at the desk, leaving the stool near the microscope, and said to Fred, ‘What do you know about me?’

      ‘I’ve only just finished my first degree,’ Fred replied. ‘Truly, I don’t know anything.’

      ‘Well, I know something about you. Yes, something. I know you’re a bright fellow. I know you come from a rectory family. They say that at the Cavendish we have to make do with apparatus knocked up out of cardboard and string. But if you come from a rectory you’ll be used to economies.’

      ‘It’s a great thing you’ve even heard of me at all,’ said Fred.

      ‘And what next?’

      ‘I had thought of asking Professor Wilson whether I could work with him. I mean in some capacity. I could help with the photographic plates, perhaps. He was my tutor for advanced practical physics.’

      ‘C.T.R. Wilson. A very good, very patient Scotsman. Could you read what he wrote on the blackboard?’

      ‘Usually not. He used to write it with one hand and wipe it off at the same time with the other. But if I had the chance to study his methods –’

      ‘You want to assist him with the construction of his third cloud chamber. You want to photograph the alleged tracks of ionising particles.’

      Fred turned red. ‘These are wonderful years in Cambridge.’

      ‘You are attracted towards atomic research?’

      ‘I’ve seen Ernest Rutherford walking into the Cavendish,’ Fred cried. ‘I heard his lectures.