“Because that is what he will be called by his bloody country,” shouted Powell. “Social Insurance Number 123 dash 456789, and when he gets his pension in old age he will be SOAP 123 dash 456789. By the time he is SOAP nobody will have any other name except the one the God-damned civil servants have given him! So why don’t we steal a march on them and call him SOAP from the start? This is a land dead to poetry, and I say the hell with it!” In his indignation he drained a large whisky at a gulp, and filled his glass again, to the brim.

It was a time to rise above passing furies and disdains, so Darcourt said, in his most honeyed tones, “Then it’s to be Arthur David Nikolas, is it? An excellent name. I congratulate you. I shall pronounce the names with my warmest approval. Now, about the other matters.”

“Let me remind you right away that I am a convinced unbeliever,” said Hollier. “I know too much about religions to be humbugged by them. So you don’t get around me with your priestcraft, Simon. I am simply doing this out of friendship for Arthur and Maria.”

Yes, and because you were the first to have carnal knowledge of the child’s mother, thought Darcourt. You don’t fool me, Clem. But what he said was, “Oh yes, I have long experience of unbelieving godparents, and I know how to respect your reservations. All I ask is assurance of your willingness to cherish the child, and help him when you can, and advise him when he needs it, and do the decent thing if his parents should not see him into manhood. Which God forbid.”

“Obviously I’ll agree to that. I’ll take part in the ceremony as an ancient observance. But don’t ask for acceptance as a spiritual force.”

“No, none of that. But if there is to be a ceremony, it must have a form, and I know the form which is appropriate. Now, Nilla, what about you?”

“No doubts and no reservations,” said Gunilla. “I was brought up as what the grocer Shakespeare calls ‘a spleeny Lutheran’, and I am very fond of children, especially boys. I am delighted to have a godson. You can rely on me.”

“I’m sure we can,” said Darcourt. “And you, Geraint?”

“You know what I am, Sim bach. A Calvinist to the soles of my boots. I am not sure that I trust you. What are you going to ask me to promise?”

“I shall ask you, in the child’s name, to renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of this world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh.”

“By God, Sim, that’s very fine. Did you write that?”

“No, Geraint, Archbishop Cranmer wrote it.”

“A good hand with the pen, that Archbishop. And I renounce these things for the child, not for myself?”

“That’s the idea.”

“You see how it is. As a man of the theatre—as an artist—I couldn’t really set aside pomp and glory, because that’s what I live by. As for covetousness, my whole life and work is hedged with contracts, drawn up by covetous agents and the monsters who regulate the economics of the theatre. But for the boy—for young Dafydd, whom I shall call Dai when we get to know each other—I’ll renounce away like billy-o.”

“Do we really promise that?” said Hollier. “I like that about the Devil. That’s getting down to realities. I hadn’t realized the baptismal service delved quite so deep into the ancient world. You must lend me the book, Simon. There’s good stuff in it.”

“What trivial minds you men have,” said Gunilla. “When you talk about artists living for pomp and glory, Powell, speak for yourself. What you say, Simon, seems to me to mean keeping the boy up to high principles. Making a man of him. You need have no doubts about me.”

“Good,” said Darcourt. “May I see you all at the chapel on Sunday, then, at three o’clock? Sober and decently dressed?”

When they were leaving, Powell going off to his accustomed bedroom, Darcourt took his opportunity to speak to Maria alone.

“You said nothing about names, Maria. Have you no preference as to what the child should be named?”

“I haven’t forgotten my Gypsy ways, Simon dear. When the child came out of me and gave a cry, they laid it on my breast, and I named him. Gave him his real name. Whispered it into his tiny ear. And whatever you do on Sunday, that will be his name forever.”

“Are you going to tell me what the name is?”

“Certainly not! He will never hear it again until he reaches puberty, when I shall whisper it to him again. He has a proper Gypsy name, and it will go with him and protect him as long as he lives. But it is a secret between him and me.”

“You have been ahead of me, then?”

“Of course. I didn’t think I’d do it, but just before he left my body forever, I knew I would. What’s bred in the bone, you know.”

Except for one minor mishap, the christening went smoothly. Only the parents, the godparents, and the baby were present; the Cranes had to be told plainly that they might not come. Al murmured incoherently about objective correlatives and the link between the birth of the child and the birth of the opera. It would, he said, make a terrific and unexpected footnote to the Regiebuch. Mabel begged to be allowed to come simply on the ground that she wanted to see what a christening was like. But when Darcourt suggested that she could manage that by having her own impending child christened, she and Al were quick to say that they did not believe that a few words mumbled by a parson over their child could make any difference to his future life.

Darcourt forbore to tell them that he thought they were wrong, and silly in their wrongness. He had reservations about many of the things which he, as a clergyman, was expected to believe and endorse publicly, but about the virtues of baptism he had no doubt. Its solely Christian implications apart, it was the acceptance of a new life into a society that thereby declared that it had a place for that new life; it was an assertion of an attitude toward life that was expressed in the Creed which was a part of the service in a form archaic and compressed but full of noble implication. The parents and godparents might think they did not believe that Creed, as they recited it, but it was plain to Darcourt that they were living in a society which had its roots in that Creed; if there had been no Creed, and no cause for the formulation of that Creed, vast portions of civilization would never have come into being, and those who smiled at the Creed or disregarded it altogether nevertheless stood firmly on its foundation. The Creed was one of the great signposts in the journey of mankind from a primitive society toward whatever was to come, and though the signpost might be falling behind in the march of civilization, it had marked a great advance from which there could be no permanent retreat.

Hollier had decided to accept the baptismal ceremony as a rite of passage, an acceptance of a new member into the tribe. Good enough, thought Darcourt, but such rites had a resonance not heard by the tin ear of the rationalist. Rationalism, thought Darcourt, was a handsomely intellectual way of sweeping a lot of significant, troublesome things under the rug. But the implications of the rite were not banished because some very clever people did not feel them.

Powell wanted to be a godfather with his fingers crossed. He wanted to make promises he had no intention of keeping—and indeed who can hope to keep the promises of a godfather in all their ramifications? Very well. But Powell wanted to be a godfather because it was as near as he was likely to come to being acknowledged as the real father of the child. Powell could not resist a solemn ceremony of any kind. He was one of the many, who should not therefore be despised, who wanted serious inner matters given a serious outer form, and this was what made him a true and devout child of the drama, which at its best is precisely such an objectification of what is important in life. Darcourt thought he knew what Powell meant better than Powell did himself.