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A year later I was on an errand that took me through the church-yard where Freddie was buried. A figure – it was Bevan – was kneeling in prayer at his grave. He stopped as I came up, saw me, and explained smoothly in his beautiful voice that he often prayed at Freddie's grave.
“He did me a great injury once”, he said meditatively, “but I have prayed that he may be forgiven.”
If unction can ease the path to the Almighty, Bevan's prayer reached God; it may even have got through to Freddie. The angels would like his laugh, “Ooh – sorry!”
Freddie's raid on the domain of the Almighty – which in my theology had a mixed population of God, Gawd (Baptist in those days), Cud (C. of E., privately educated and Cambridge University, Civil Service), the Devil (not a bad sort with many disguises), various demons (Nickel Sehn, Hodson or Hodson's Horse – I was not sure whether he owned the horse or the other way round), and the most awful Arf Arfer – was not the only rebellion that began to erode my oppressor's power.
Once every two weeks we had a hymn-singing class taken by a mistress who I thought was nice despite her ominous name – Miss Good. She was not smart like the Matron, not like the maid in the hymn and only smart on Sundays. She was clever, like Nigger our headmaster, but curiously and very frighteningly gave me the ‘wiggling’ feeling when I “hadn't done a thing” – “really and truly” – but who on earth would believe that?
Some hymns expanded my Pantheon; Gideon for example – the ‘prowl and prowl around’ one. This was a bit sinister with Gideon
prowling around and I wasn't quite sure if he was A or B – Powers of Darkness, or the other crowd. Anyhow, it was a fine hymn; while ‘they’ were prowling and prowling around we sang very softly, ppp, gathering our breath ready for CHRISTIAN UP AND SMITE THEM, fff; we gave it everything we had. That, I used to think, must have scared the slats out of ‘them’. At night time I didn't like Gideon and the powers of darkness prowling around o