Free Judgment Day by Penelope Lively Page A

dead bird. But no, not dead, because as he approached, it lurched suddenly onto stick-like legs and stood swaying and blinking. It must be hurt, poor thing. He was filled suddenly with a surge of warm protective feeling: he would look after it until it was better, he would take it home and feed it and it would be his bird, it would be tame, it would come when he whistled. He picked it up.
    *  *  *
    Clare, circling the Green on her way back from the school, stopped the car and wound down the window. “Morning, Mr. Porter.” Oh God, now she'd made the poor man jump out of his skin.
    “Good morning, er…”
    “We'd better put our heads together at some point.”
    “Heads…?”
    “This stuff we're going to do on the history of the church—the Civil War thing and the other.”
    “Oh. Oh, yes.”
    “Where did you find out about it—what book?”
    “There's that booklet in the library, the village library— History of Spelbury . It mentions Laddenham and the other villages.”
    “Would it be an idea,” said Clare, “if I went further afield, to one of the bigger county libraries, to see if I could lay hands on a few more books, and then we can go through them together and see what we can come up with?”
    “Fair enough.”
    Not the most forthcoming person in the world. Or is it just my genius for alienation?
    “If you've the time,” he added.
    That's better; we'll win him over yet. Big smile. “Oh, I've plenty of time, Mr. Porter. Well, I'll be seeing you, then.”
    All the time in the world. And for a book-junkie like me a trip to the county library is right in the line of business. In fact, come to think of it, there's no time like the present. Quick sprint home to make the beds and then off. Not a bad prospect at all, the day looks more promising already. So wave nicely to the vicar since we're feeling genial, and away.
    The days are not unpromising, it's not that; Peter is wrong in his diagnosis of bored housewife. Peter, of course, has been trained to spot problems and then apply his considerable talents to solving them. Which is all very well where assembly lines and productivity targets and technical innovations are concerned but not always so effective when it comes to people. No, I am not bored.
    Children are bored, because they live in a continuous present and want to escape. The old are bored, for other reasons. When I was a child I never believed I would growup. Now I am grown I watch my own survival with disbelief. And the survival of those I love. I can look at a fourteenth-century wall painting of Judgment Day with the understanding and apprehension of a fourteenth-century peasant. Unlike the twentieth-century priest next door, who is in other respects more ignorant and less worldly than I take myself to be. So much for sophistication.
    It's a crude threat, that division into the damned and the saved; as crude as the weighing of souls. All to induce guilt—guilt and therefore compliance. Do as I say, or else. Nowadays we are less gullible, but we still feel guilt: different guilts. When I contemplate the day of judgment it is not the possibility of salvation I have in mind.
    When I was a child I tried to be good—to begin with because people were pleased if you were good and later because I had developed theories about the nature of goodness. I thought it was wrong to be cruel to animals or those weaker than yourself; I reckoned you should be polite, up to a point; I tried to treat others as I should like them to treat me, though I suspected a flaw somewhere in that argument. Later, I went through the Ten Commandments; most of them were straightforward enough, but some didn't seem to apply to me and there was a hectoring note that I found distasteful. And later still my unbelief blossomed and I ceased to accompany my parents to church on Sundays and my mother was upset. I explained to her that I probably shared her every opinion on what was right and what was wrong, but I could not believe in