Philip Temple - Chance Is A Fine Thing: 50 Years In New Zealand

In the icy darkness of a midwinter late afternoon, it seemed the only place I could go for shelter, for solitude, where I could think, a place away from all the people and the traffic, the overwhelming clangour of lower Fleet Street. St Pauls, an illuminated airship of inspiration rising above Ludgate Circus, was too immense, too full of patriotic challenges. There had to be somewhere smaller, a church nobody went to; there were plenty of these now. The last time I had visited a church had been for my brothers christening about eight years before. But since I had first started school there had been prayers and hymns (as far back as All Things Bright and Beautiful), compulsory religious instruction, and that great religious monument, Westminster Abbey, with Poets Corner, the Unknown Warrior and the Coronation. Even a confirmed teenage atheist like me could not deny the history and traditions, the sense of peace and sanctuary even aesthetic stimulation that only a church could provide. At that moment, I was intuitively seeking a place that best represented the country I had grown up in, the only one I had ever known, to make a final decision, now or never, to leave it for another country on the other side of the world.

The enormity of what I was planning to do had not registered until the New Zealand immigration officer pushed the final contract form across the desk and said, Sign there and then, Youre quite sure about everything, are you? Youll be sailing around June

Oh yes, everythings fine, I replied, signing quickly, but thinking, What does he mean, what dont I know, what have I overlooked, is there something I havent been told? I stood up and we shook hands and he said, Well let you know about a sailing date as soon as we can. A late wave of uncertainty overtook me and I went to ask more questions, but he was already looking over my shoulder with an expression of, Next please. He swept my papers into a folder, the folder into the Out tray, and I began to panic. Once those papers went into the system, I thought, once they had banked my 10 postal order, there could be no turning back. I was a novice sky-diver at the door of the plane. For the first time since I had thought of doing this, I was faced with the reality of what I had been planning for months. But did I really want to do this? Why did I want to do this?

I walked the streets around Smithfield and came to a church whose door was ajar. I slipped inside, hoping no one had seen me, and was relieved to find it empty. I sat in a pew near the back, looked up at the dimly lit ceiling vaults and the pious sculptures but found no clues or reassurance. Without shame, I dropped my head, closed my eyes, recited the Lords Prayer and prayed for guidance. But God was having none of this convenient conversion. With fears and doubts still tumbling around my head, I began to think of leaving, of trying somewhere else, when the church door opened and a young curate walked in, down the aisle, and began switching off lights in the vestry and altar area. When he came back, he caught my eye, detected something in my look and came to sit beside me. Are you all right? I shook my head. Can you tell me about it? I looked at him: he seemed trustworthy enough, the stranger willing to listen. I blurted, I have to make the biggest decision of my life and I dont know what to do. He recoiled a little from the import of this but then remembered who he was and said, Why dont we talk about it, then? I nodded and he added, But not here, I have to close up. Better at my flat, its not far. I had experience enough to know the possible implication of this. He saw my doubt and said, My wifes expecting me.

I remember walking with him through the winter darkness for about fifteen minutes to a poorly furnished first-floor flat. There was a fire in the grate and I stayed there so long that the curates wife gave me baked beans on toast and a cup of tea. I left only because she insisted they had to go to a concert. She was less sympathetic to me than her husband, probably regarding me as another one of his waifs and strays one, perhaps, who had produced a confession more prolix and intense than most.