Chapter Text
No one who had ever seen Aziraphale Fell in his youth would have supposed him born to be a hero. His situation in life, the character of his father and mother, his own person and disposition, were all equally against him. He was neither the eldest son, born to the weight of responsibility and expectation, nor the worthy youngest of the classic fairytale three brothers; though he had two sisters, they were neither of them at all inclined to be kidnapped by dragons nor to fall prey to the machinations of libertines, being a pair of eminently sensible and practical ladies. He was not unusually tall nor unusually handsome, though he had a fine pair of intelligent, blue-grey eyes, and he had sadly followed his father to a prematurely pale head of hair, being grey by the time he was thirty, and quite white by thirty-five. Thus while he would, in any group of gentlemen, be considered striking, it was not quite for the reasons which would usually distinguish the hero.
Likewise his activities and occupation did not seem to lend itself in that direction. He was a well-behaved boy at boarding school, who went on to be an unexceptional student at university. To his father’s satisfaction he studied Divinity, and became in due course an eminently respectable rector with a comfortable living not more than six miles from his parents’ home. Indeed, for much of his life he had made living up to his parents’ wishes his principle aim and ambition. They were a kind and generous couple, but they had standards, and therefore so had he.
As for his interests, they held nothing to indicate what his future might be. He liked his food better than horse-riding, and his books better than either of them, and he liked nothing so much in the world as sitting quietly by the fire in the little library of his rectory, listening to the rain outside. But from thirty-five to thirty-nine he was in training for a hero, little did he know it. Aziraphale began to chafe a little at the calm predictability of his routine, the mundane cycle of events offered by his respectable life in a respectable parish. He began to linger over his tales of adventure, his copies of Otranto and Udolpho, his Don Quixote and Gulliver’s Travels, a little more than his psalms and sermons. He began to pull out maps of Europe and trace routes across the borders with his fingertips, to Constantinople and Casablanca and Rome. It crossed his mind to wonder whether he would ever feel those swells of passion, that stirring of the soul, which the novelists and poets he read invoked so freely. Whether he might one day know what it was to love. But then a log would crack in the fire, or the maid would bring a cup of tea for him to forget until it was cold, or a parishioner would knock upon his door, and Aziraphale would remember that he was a grown man and a pillar of his community, and such things were not for him.
But when a gentleman is to be a hero, the attractions of a comfortable, quiet home cannot prevent him. Something must and will happen to throw his destiny in his way.
In Aziraphale’s case it was a wedding. His mother’s dear friend’s son was married, and for weeks his mother heard nothing but the joy it gave her friend to see her son so happily situated, and the great support given to her nerves by her new daughter-in-law. Aziraphale had three siblings, all long-since married and moved too great a distance to often see their parents, and so he found himself subject to the entire focus of his mother’s new-found determination that he should not be permitted to remain a bachelor.
“But mama, you know I have never felt the need of a partner. Indeed, I am very happy to remain single, and able to … to devote myself fully to my calling, and the Church.” The excuse had achieved little last week, but it was the most honest answer Aziraphale could bear to give his mother, and so worth a further attempt.
Mrs Fell waved the consideration aside. “It is not as though your calling requires celibacy, dear; we are not Catholic, after all!” She pursed her lips and widened her eyes to indicate this was intended as a witticism, and Aziraphale smiled dutifully.
“No, but it does require a great deal of my time and focus, and I should not wish for a spouse to feel second-place to my work.”
His mother ignored him. “Oh, it would be such a comfort to me to know that you were not alone in that house, you know. A lonely house is such a nasty, draughty place.”
“Truly, mama, the rectory is not draughty! It is quite charming, even in the winter. And I do like to be alone there; I may keep my own hours and need not consider the comfort of anyone but myself, and I have my housekeeper and my maid from the village to keep the place in order.”
“But a wife would make the house into a home. Or a husband, I suppose, if you prefer, but wives are much better suited for looking after a man.”
“Mama, do you honestly expect me to marry some schoolroom miss not yet twenty? For, setting aside my preference in a spouse, that is all the local community has to offer. If there were any persons of a similar age to me, whom I found interesting and conversable, and who thought me the same, I daresay marriage may have crossed my mind before now.”
This, finally, gave his mother pause. “You are quite correct, Aziraphale. I should never wish you to marry someone who could not make you happy.” She frowned thoughtfully, then nodded. “We shall have to find a way to introduce you to a wider society.”
Aziraphale sighed.
It was only two weeks later that he admitted he had quite exhausted all possible excuses in this circular discussion, and gave up the pretence that he had any hope of winning the argument. His mother’s expression when he gave her permission to make some enquiries on his behalf was almost enough to ease the inevitable sense of loss he experienced upon returning home to his cosy rectory and looking into every room, knowing that it would no longer be his own private sanctuary, but a space he would have to share with some as-yet-unknown other.
Quite conveniently, only a few days passed before his parents’ neighbour, Mr Shadwell, was ordered by his doctor to Bath for the autumn for the benefit of a gouty constitution, and his lady, the Madame Thérèse, who, since her arrival in England from Paris as a young lady many years ago, had good-naturedly adopted the diminutive Tracy as being far more amenable to the English tongue, and who was a good friend of his mother’s, kindly offered for Aziraphale to accompany them to that social hub in the expectation that it would increase his chances of finding a suitable match.
Being now as ready as any gentleman could be to take on the mantle of a hero, for all that he remained as yet blissfully unaware of this, Aziraphale spoke to the bishop to arrange a leave of absence, packed a valise, and went to seek his destiny. Quite forgetting, of course, that between a hero and his destiny, one will always find a villain.