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sort. Even now, at the waning of the twentieth century, the place was still thronged with theologians, some of whom had thought up and fortified behind impregnable bastions of polemical subtlety positions more coherently agnostic than George himself had yet got round to. It would be fun, he told himself irresponsibly, if a super Father Hooker, a Hooker of larger than King Kong dimensions, could be let loose on them. He began to chant aloud as he walked that tremendous passage in Paradise Lost descriptive of the backside of the world over which in windy vanity are blown embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, black, white and grey, and all their company. But this, of course, was near-delirium, and George was surprised at himself. Besides which, people were turning and staring at him as they went past. So George quietened down, and arrived at Carfax in a more sober manner. But he was still in high spirits, and he wondered whether this was entirely the result of his at least temporary release from Father Hooker. It seemed a bit mean to rejoice at being quit of the man when he was only endeavouring to do his job. And the railway journey, although certainly trying in one aspect, had been full of interest. He had liked Len and Ron, and would have enjoyed an undisturbed chat with them.
    He decided to start this unpremeditated Oxford jaunt with a visit to Blackwell’s bookshop, so he turned north at Carfax and fought his way up Cornmarket Street. It was like that because the Corn was jam-packed with tourists who bumped into you as they anxiously consulted guidebooks, and also with skimpily-clad and husky young people of both sexes, bearing on their backs huge burdens suggestive of wayfaring life in the Middle Ages. Many of these latter were no doubt students, and could be regarded as wandering scholars of a sort. But they were wandering scholars who had come not to study but merely to stare.
    Opposite Balliol an attractive young woman – her attractiveness only enhanced by unisex garments which somehow emphasised the charms of a far from unisex figure – offered George a leaflet which he accepted with a murmur of thanks. Out of her sight, he was about to crumple it up, when it occurred to him that it might be not a notice of some theatrical venture or the like but a summons to holy living to which in his present condition he ought to accord a fair hearing. So he glanced at it, and the words ‘Forget it’, printed in bold type, caught his eye. That was what Ron had said to Mrs Archer, so George took another look. He read:
     
    CIVIL DEFENCE? – FORGET IT
    There’s no defence against nuclear weapons, and no escape. Anybody left alive in the total mess will die soon – or wish they had.
     
    George thrust this – and along with it apparently other disturbing thoughts as well – into a pocket. He then found himself quickening his pace towards Blackwell’s.
    The entrance to this booky house (as a deceased Poet Laureate had styled it) was reassuringly unchanged, and George reflected that it was perhaps the most effectively symbolic structure in Oxford. Strait is the gate that leads to knowledge as well as to salvation, and the celebrated Blackwell doorway is surely by some inches narrower than any other in Oxford. Edging through it – which involved jostling with an American lady clutching a book called English Farmhouse Fare – George did, however, find that there had been alterations here and there. The odd little domestic fireplace near the entrance, which perhaps symbolised in its turn the undoubted fact that the best companion by one’s hearth is a book, was still in evidence. But had it not, he thought, slewed itself round a little, as if disposed to cast the warmth of learning in a fresh direction? And where were the two commanding ladies who had sat hard by and taken your money as you went out? They had departed, and in their stead rather young women in the body of the shop now combined the sale of books with a