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A School of Higher Learning

“. . . we shall all be changed . . .”
1 Cor. 15.51

Something happened that morning in the chemistry laboratory at St. Bardolph’s that threw the Lower Fifth into chaos and changed Mr McCorkindale irrevocably. Mr McCorkindale, better known to the boys as Old Corky, was introducing the Lower Fifth to the structure of atoms and molecules. He had drawn a diagram on the blackboard, showing a nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons.
“We can think of the nucleus as being like a billiard ball, with the electrons rotating in shells about the centre,” he said. “This is only a model, but it’s a very good one because we can explain why chemical reactions between atoms occur. Now, let’s see what happens if we take an atom of sodium . . .”
At this point, Mr McCorkindale crumpled and dropped to the floor. It happened so quickly, in the twinkling of an eye. One moment Mr McCorkindale was in his body, the next he was out of it and regarding the scene with a certain amused detachment.
Bulstrode, the big Australian student, had taken charge and assisted by Rees-Jones had begun administering resuscitation. Anstruther had run to fetch Matron.
Unfortunately, in the mêlée, Compton spilt a bottle of ammonia, causing fits of coughing in the boys crowded round the prostrate figure on the floor.
At the back of the class, Mr McCorkindale noticed, McIntosh was conducting an interesting experiment in metallurgy. Oblivious of the commotion, the ginger-headed Scot was alternately heating his pen nib to red heat over a Bunsen burner and plunging it into a pot of ink.
“Settle down, boys,” said Mr McCorkindale. “I’m quite all right, really, you know.”
But of course they couldn’t hear him now.
“I’d better go to the Head and tell him I’ve died,” thought Mr McCorkindale. “He can get Dr Forsythe to take the rest of the lesson.”
He chuckled to himself as the absurdity of the thought struck him. He slipped quietly out and closed the classroom door behind him for the last time.

St. Bardolph’s had been founded by a teaching order of monks in the fifteenth century and was famed for the nobility and proportion of its architecture. But as he looked along the high vaulted corridor in which he now stood, bathed in light of unbelievable purity, Mr McCorkindale realised that what the monks had created in St. Bardolph’s had been but a reflection of something infinitely greater. The reality was . . . breathtaking.
Mr McCorkindale put his hand on his chest and smiled. He was still breathing, and his heart was still beating. He still had a body but, of course, but it was totally different in nature to the body he had left behind. This was his real body: the other, by comparison, was like a worn-out suit of clothing.
“We shall all be changed,” he thought, “in the twinkling of an eye.” It was true after all. How could he ever have doubted it?
Noticing an alcove nearby with a seat in it, Mr McCorkindale sat down. It was not that he needed to rest. On the contrary, he had never felt more invigorated in his life. But he needed to collect his thoughts. He had always set great store on clear thinking. He had taught chemistry and physics for over forty years. Science, he would frequently remind the boys, was impossible without clear thinking. Indeed, life itself demanded clear thinking at very step.
He began by mentally reviewing the elements in the Periodic Table, beginning with the simplest element, hydrogen. He calculated equations for reactions involving increasingly complex formulae. The answers to the problems he set himself came quite effortlessly: obviously his mental faculties were unimpaired by the change.
He thought back to the chemistry lesson he had been taking in the school laboratory. The conventional model of atomic structure served well enough for understanding chemical reactions. But to understand what was happening in the world of physics, one had to turn to quantum theory, one of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century.
It was a professor at Cambridge University who had first conceived the equations that combined the laws governing the motion of electrons with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Quantum mechanics had provided science with extraordinary insights into the nature of the universe and its creation. It also posed extraordinary paradoxes that challenged the finest minds working in science.
Mr McCorkindale felt a quickening of intellectual excitement. He realised he was now in a place where answers to these tantalising questions might be found.

As a boy, the quest for knowledge had won him a scholarship that took him, at the age of eleven, from a provincial comprehensive school to St. Bardolph’s. It was a school that not only fostered academic excellence but one that kept alive the great spiritual traditions of its founding monks.
In his final year, he’d won a scholarship to Cambridge. That was the year the Great War broke out. For reasons he had never understood, he’d survived the trenches and the mud and the shells while the best part of a generation of young men, that included many of his school friends, had perished.
After the war, he had gone to Cambridge, graduating with a Double First. He had planned to undertake research in physics for a doctorate degree, but then the teaching post at St. Bardolph’s had come up.
His old headmaster had encouraged him to apply.
“You’re exactly the sort of chap we’re looking for,” he’d said.
As a young science master, who coached the First Eleven and led it to some notable victories against Barnsley, Mr McCorkindale was something of a hero to the boys. Corkers, they called him. The years had rolled by, boys had come and gone and so had many of the masters, but he remained. Old Corky, they called him now.
Physics and chemistry were still his passion. He had kept abreast of the astonishing discoveries made year by year; his own physics textbook had won a medal from the prestigious Moule Foundation.
Many of his students had gone on to achieve eminence in their professions. And in every class he taught, there had been boys who had sought the Higher Knowledge that had inspired the founding monks. They too had gone out into the world, to do the work to which they were called.

Mr McCorkindale stood up. He felt an extraordinary lightness of being. He wanted to dance. And he did, leaping, pirouetting, swooping, at an incredible speed along the high vaulted corridor.
“Hullo, old chap!”
Someone was waiting for him, with a hand outstretched.
“Good heavens,” said Mr McCorkindale, gliding to a graceful halt. “It’s . . . Chatsworth, isn’t it?”
Chatsworth had been killed in the Great War, in the trenches at the Somme, blown apart by a German mortar. Mr McCorkindale had seen it with his own eyes. Yet here he was, as large as life and grinning from ear to ear.
“You haven’t changed at all,” said Mr McCorkindale, clasping his friend’s hand warmly. “Well, you have and you haven’t.”
“You’re looking well yourself,” said Chatsworth beaming.
“I’ve just realised something rather remarkable,” said Mr McCorkindale. “You were the first person I met when I arrived at St. Bardolph’s and you’re the first person I’ve met here. Do you remember that first time?”
“I remember it well,” said Chatsworth. “You were on your way to the Head’s office and Prendergast had bailed you up in the linen closet.”
“I don’t know how I should have managed without your help,” said Mr McCorkindale. “There’s so much I never really thanked you for.”
Mr McCorkindale had never forgotten Chatsworth’s kindness to him during his first few weeks at St. Bardolph’s. Small for his age and desperately unsure of himself, he had been an easy target for Prendergast and his cronies. It was Chatsworth who’d taken him under his wing, showing him over the school, explaining the customs and making him feel he belonged.
When the trouble with Prendergast persisted, it was Chatsworth who had donned boxing gloves and sorted matters out once and for all in the school gymnasium.
“You helped me out of some sticky moments too, don’t forget,” said Chatsworth. “Do you remember when I was wounded at the Somme, and the sniper had me pinned down? You dragged me back into the trench before he could let off another shot.”
“It seems incredible we should meet here and still remember all these things,” said Mr McCorkindale. “An extraordinary coincidence.”
“It’s not exactly a coincidence,” said Chatsworth. “The Head asked if I’d meet you and show you round. Shall we go for a stroll?”

Stroll was perhaps not the word to describe their means of locomotion. Mr McCorkindale could not resist the impulse to soar and swoop. But he stopped suddenly.
“I say, Chatsworth, just look at that. It’s . . . it’s . . . what can I say?”
They were standing at a high arched window, looking out. Even as he took it in, Mr McCorkindale knew he was seeing a minute part of an infinite perfection. But he felt he could have looked at it for ever.
“There’s even cricket here!”
“O, the facilities are splendid,” said Chatsworth. “More than one could ever imagine, in fact.”
“You know, I used to fear it might be frightfully grand but this is just . . . perfect,” said Mr McCorkindale.
“You haven’t seen anything yet, old chap,” said Chatsworth, laughing. “The Head mentioned you’re interested in quantum reality. There’s a special group working on that, you know, although here they call it something quite different. He wondered if you might like to look in on one of the research facilities?”
“I should like that very much indeed,” said Mr McCorkindale.
They were “strolling” again. It appeared they covered a vast distance, through corridors, courtyards and colonnaded walkways, in virtually no time all. It was not as strange as one might have expected, Mr McCorkindale thought. The quantum theorists had no difficulty with such notions, however much difficulty they might cause the liberal theologians.

They were standing in the doorway of what appeared to be a vast auditorium. Perhaps laboratory would be a better word, Mr McCorkindale thought, although he could not even begin to guess at the purpose of the equipment he glimpsed. All he knew was that it was of a totally different order from anything the scientists had developed in the old world.
The far end of the auditorium had no wall. It seemed to open directly into the cosmos. A group of people were observing the scene – it may have been the birth of a galaxy, he could not tell – with rapt concentration. He sensed they were not passive spectators but involved in a vast creative enterprise of some kind.
One of the white-coated figures turned to the door and greeted him with a familiar wave.
“Ah, McCorkindale. So nice to see you again!”
Despite its youthfulness, Mr McCorkindale recognised the face of one of his former teachers.
“It’s Professor Rawlinson, isn’t it? You taught me at Cambridge.”
“Yes indeed,” said the professor. “I remember you well. You’ll find a lot of Cambridge chaps here. I do hope you’ll join us, McCorkindale. I’m sure you’ll find our work interesting.”

They were looking out at another endless vista. Gardens that made the gardens in the old world seem like pale imitations of reality. Mr McCorkindale was overcome by a great longing. It was tinged with just a hint of trepidation.
“I really should like to meet the Head. Do you think that would be possible?” he asked Chatsworth.
“Of course,” said Chatsworth. “Whenever you’re ready. You don’t need an appointment.”
“What should I expect? I imagine He’s rather . . . awesome,” Mr McCorkindale said hesitantly.
“O, absolutely,” said Chatsworth. “But He’s also a frightfully nice chap. He’ll ask you a few questions, of course. Just to see if you’re happy to stay here. He’ll offer you a glass of wine. Then there’ll be a bit of a party. There’s an awful lot of people who want to see you, you know – relatives and family from way back. Guest of honour and all that sort of thing. Well, here we are.”
They had arrived at an alcove. Beyond it, Mr McCorkindale saw a green baize-covered door. It bore, in simple gold lettering, the word “Head”.
There had been a similar door to the Head’s office at St. Bardolph’s, he recalled. The old monks obviously had a greater eye for detail than he had supposed. It was a homely, unassuming touch. It made him welcome.
He raised his hand.
“You don’t need to knock, old chap,” said Chatsworth. “The Head’s expecting you. I’ll catch up with you later in the Quad.”