Daughters and stepdaughters alike—sons-in-law and grandchildren, for that matter—all had the same reaction. They laughed and laughed. “Michael!” they gasped. “Dad! You didn’t really believe any of this, did you?”
A serious question. Had I really believed it?
I’m not quite sure. I hadn’t not believed it. Does one go around believing all the various bits of information that cross one’s path in life? Not in any very active sense, surely. The question doesn’t arise; it doesn’t usually occur to one to examine things in that light. If you look at a list of train times to Manchester, it’s not like being a conscientious young candidate for holy orders faced with the Thirty-nine Articles. You don’t have to examine your soul and wrestle with doubt. If the timetable says that’s when the trains arrive, that’s when they arrive.
Yes, I had simply accepted it, in the way that one accepts the times of trains and almost everything else in life.
The Copenhagen Papers: An Intrigue
Michael Frayn; David Burke