One of the most important secondary characters in "Moral Fibre" is Rev Edwin Reddings, the father of the female protagonist. Given the fact that both Kit and Georgina are still very young during the events described, Georgina’s
father is frequently the only “adult in the room.” As an Anglican priest and a veteran of the last
war, Reddings provides a mature and (usually) wise point-of-view and his observations give the reader some of the most important insights.
Excerpt 1:
“Daddy?”
“Hm?”
“You get these visions sometimes…”
Edwin spun about sharply. How had she known? He looked at Amanda with an unspoken question. She just shook her head bemused.
Georgina was continuing, “But they’ve always involved strangers, haven’t they? Or, well, people you only know distantly. You’ve never had them about someone close, have you?”
“What do you mean?” He handed her a mug of steaming alcohol.
“Well, Gerald, for example. Or Don?”
“Gerald is fine,” her father answered firmly, causing even Amanda to raise her eyebrows.
“And Don? I mean since he passed away is there any way that you —”
“Georgina, your father’s tired. You shouldn’t—”
“It’s all right, Amanda,” Edwin told his wife before looking intently at his daughter. “I’m not a medium, Georgina. I can’t contact the dead, and they do not speak to me. It’s true that I sometimes have these visions — fortunately not too often. And sometimes I sense things that aren’t entirely tangible. That’s all. I have never had contact with those who have already gone on before us.”
Georgina nodded solemnly. “I understand, Daddy. It’s just…”
“What’s bothering you, child?” He encouraged her.
“Well, Kit and I visited Don’s grave on the anniversary of the crash—”
“You’ve seen Kit again?” Edwin was so pleased he couldn’t help interrupting.
“I — I rang him. He was planning to visit the grave on the anniversary anyway, and he offered to drive me there.”
“So that’s why you didn’t ask me to take you. I’d kept the day free and even had the car serviced. When you didn’t ring, I assumed Miss Townsend hadn’t given you the day off.”
“Thank you for thinking of me, Daddy,” she reached out and squeezed his hand once, but then continued with her thoughts. “When I was there, I had this powerful feeling that Don wanted me to move on. Do you think that’s possible? I mean, is it possible that it was something real, not just me making excuses for what I want to do?”
“Georgina, if there’s one thing I believe, it is that Don wanted you to be happy. You can’t be happy by dwelling on the death of a wonderful young man. You can’t be happy by denying yourself a future. Seeing how you grieved must have hurt Don terribly.”
Georgina caught her breath. She had never thought of Don seeing her grieve. What a frightening thought! After being so selfless and brave himself, Don must have been disgusted with her lack of fortitude and courage. “Do you think…”
“Go on,” her father urged her.
Georgina took a deep breath. “Do you think he’d be upset to know that Kit and I have fallen in love with one another?”
“That’s splendid news, my dear!” Edwin proclaimed breaking into a broad smile. “I’m very fond of that young man and so is your mother.” He glanced towards his wife, realising that this was the secret she and Georgina had already shared before his arrival.
“But what would Don think?” Georgina asked her father seriously, evidently still unsure.
“My dear, I can’t imagine anyone Don would approve of more. Together you will never forget him, and that is the most the dead have a right to ask of the living.”
The Reverend Edwin Reddings was a Yorkshireman from a solid, respectable but not terribly wealthy family. His father was a solicitor, and he enrolled in university expecting to study and eventually practice law. Although not swept up in the initial enthusiasm at the start of WWI, patriotism and a sense of duty were deeply inbred, and so in 1915, he volunteered in the Duke of Wellington's Own West Riding Regiment. He served on the Western Front, was wounded twice, and against the odds survived the war. His plans were to resume his studies as soon as he was demobilized.
Instead, while driving drunk on a country road late at night, he has an encounter with the supernatural. The vivid, life-saving experience causes him to abandon his career plans and study theology instead. At the end of the arduous training, he is ordained and finds a living in a rural Yorkshire parish. Meanwhile he has married a practical and supportive young woman, Amanda, and they have two children together, Gerald and Georgina.
Only after Edwin has settled in his new role, does Edwin experience another supernatural vision. He sees the child of a parishioner drowning in a lake in his mind. By the time he reaches the child's home, his body has already been brought home from the lake where he drowned. Edwin continues to have visions sporadically and unpredictably. He cannot summon these messages, and they appear to be simultaneous with the events he sees, precluding the possibility of preventing the events. As a result, Edwin hates them. They are an extreme emotional burden, whose use he cannot fathom, but he accepts them as a divine gift nevertheless.
Reddings grows into his role as vicar and pastor. His parishioners increasingly turn to him for advice and comfort. Yet while his parish is removed from the conflicts and crises gradually consuming Europe, he is not ignorant of them. Reddings actively follows world events and reads voraciously -- about Ghandi and his arguments and methods for Indian independence, about Bolshevism, collectivization, and the kangaroo trials that devour the leaders of the Russian Revolution, and about Hitler and how German revanchism has awoken a sleeping monster. He is deeply disturbed by the colliding political currents and disgusted with domestic politics and inaction. When the war finally comes he is not surprised and he supports the new Prime Minister's determined opposition to Hitler.
His son Gerald enlists and in due time obtains a commission in the Royal Navy as an engineering officer. Georgina leaves her horsey childhood behind and earnestly pursues training as a teacher. Although she falls in love young, Edwin understands the pressures of wartime and does not try to dissuade her from an engagement. Furthermore, he likes her young man very much and is devastated when he is killed before the year is out. The depth of his daughter's grief distresses him, and he worries she will be scarred for life, even warped by bitterness. His relief is great when she finds the courage to love again, this time to a young man he likes even more than her first fiance.
Meanwhile, the Allies are winning the war, and Edwin knows that victory is not the end of history. There will be serious challenges -- indeed more complex challenges -- to face after the guns stop.
Excerpt 2:
“Reverend Reddings? It’s Kit Moran, here. You asked me to ring you?”
“Kit! Thank you for getting back to me. I just wanted to check…that you’re all right.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Kit sounded slightly amused. “I’m about to have a cream tea at the mess after spending a pleasant morning shooting hares with some of the other chaps. Howard and Sayers asked me to go shooting with them.” Edwin could tell that Kit was pleased about that. “We bagged two. I hope to see Georgina after she gets home from school this evening. Is there some reason you wanted me to ring you?”
“I — um — I was wondering. Did you fly last night?” Edwin wanted to be sure he hadn’t misunderstood.
“No, they’re still refitting the mid-upper turrets and replacing the armour plating after our last op.”
“But there was a raid, wasn’t there?”
There was a pause and then Kit admitted. “Yes, rather a large one. It will probably be on the BBC soon enough, I suppose.” Edwin could hear Kit’s reluctance to talk about operations.
“Do you know anything about it?” Edwin prompted. “Anything you can share?” He knew that although information about an impending raid was shrouded in the strictest secrecy, once an operation was complete details were usually released to the press and broadcast on the BBC.
Kit hesitated for a second, but then answered. “Apparently at the request of the Soviets, we and the Americans sent over three waves of bombers. Close to eight hundred RAF aircraft took part and I believe the Americans put up another five hundred. So thirteen hundred bombers altogether. I don’t know anything about fighter escorts.”
“But 617 squadron didn’t fly on it?”
“No, none of us—”
“I’m so relieved.”
“Why, sir?”
“Something terrible happened. I saw it in a dream, and it terrified me like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It was all so pointless and — how do I explain this? — so impossibly arrogant. Destruction just for the sake of destruction. Sheer hubris. Do you know where?”
Again, Moran hesitated, clearly uncomfortable, but the BBC would name the target soon enough. “A place I’ve never heard of before,” he admitted. “Dresden.”
“Dresden,” Edwin echoed the name in a whisper, more shattered than ever. Reddings did know Dresden. He had been there as a student between the wars. It was a beautiful baroque town strung along the banks of the gentle Elbe. A minuet in stone, he had thought at the time of his visit.
“Pilots of 627, which did take part, report there was quite a fire storm,” Moran admitted.
“What we did was wrong, Kit.” Edwin had no doubt in his mind, and he spoke with the conviction of his profession. “There was no legitimate military target there — not like Hamburg. And it was full of helpless refugees with nowhere to go.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Kit answered respectfully. “Maybe we can discuss it when we next meet.”
“Yes, we must talk about it. I want to hear what you think. For now, I’m just glad you weren’t part of it. Take care. You are in my prayers daily.”
“Thank you. Give my regards to Amanda.”
“Gladly.”
They hung up, but Edwin remained standing in the hallway, unable to face his sisters. Throughout the last five years of war, he had sustained himself with the justice of their cause. He had made excuses again and again for actions he found questionable. He had even conceded the need for ‘saturation bombing’ on the strength of the simple technical impossibility of precision strikes. Yet now, on the very cusp of victory, the Allies were starting to behave like their enemies — smashing things and killing people simply to demonstrate their ability to do so. They were destroying their shared European cultural heritage which they should have been striving to rebuild together.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, sitting only a few feet away was an Englishwoman, his own flesh and blood, who, despite everything this appalling war should have taught, was just as bigoted as any Nazi. His own sister was ready to insult, isolate, and discriminate against people purely on the basis of their race. He was acutely aware that in less than a decade the Germans had gone from the Nuremburg Laws, that inhibited Jewish participation in the economy, to full-scale genocide. While the reports of Auschwitz underlined the need to eradicate Hitler and his ideology of hatred and racism, Edwin knew that Jews had been more integrated into German than English society. The fact that the persecution of Jews could happen in Germany was, therefore, particularly shocking — and telling. Far from being a specifically German problem, Auschwitz illustrated the fact that all societies and nations could commit acts of gross inhumanity when manipulated by evil leaders. Which, Edwin concluded, meant that the most dangerous ‘Nazis’ were those at home.
MORAL FIBRE IS THE WINNER OF THE HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR 20TH CENTURY WARTIME FICTION
IT WAS ALSO A FINALIST FOR THE BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD 2023
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