A Whistling Woman (31 page)

The Vicar announced that they had the great good fortune to have in their midst the well-known—indeed, he dared to say,
famous
Canon Adelbert Holly, one of the most lively and up-to-date of our new dispensation of theologians. Canon Holly had agreed to say a few words to mark this joyous occasion. He would speak on the meaning of the Incarnation in a time of doubt and trouble. He would speak of things that changed, in order to remain steadfast, and not to fail.

Canon Holly creaked past Daniel's pew end, to take the pulpit. Daniel smelled his smell, years, months, weeks, days and hours of stale smoke and exhaled tobacco. Canon Holly, like Daniel, and also like Gideon, had put on his dog-collar. His white hair was very long, hippy and patriarchal, even angelic. He began, rather importantly, by saying that he knew he was famous for his elucidation of, indeed his enthusiastic
embrace
of, the new Death of God theology. The term was a paradox, but then theology, words about God, a theory, a discourse, a human
logos
about God, was in itself a paradox.

He leaned over the edge of the pulpit, white head between black hunched shoulders, and said amiably

“I can see you all thinking, the old chap's going to drone on for
hours
and we shall never get to our mince-pies. Well, I'm not. But I do prefer to say something real, rather than a few nice platitudes, telling you to be good, turn round like stray sheep, pat you on the head and so on. This is God's house, it was built for God, to hold Faith and Hope, yes and Love inside its walls, to shelter their growth and aspiration.

“But where is God? Where do we meet Him, in daily life, at prayer, in the horrors of recent unredeemed history, where is He to be found?

“Theologians have marked a steady distancing of God from the earth. As the excellent lady read out to you, God once spoke directly to men, to Abraham and Moses, and later for a time He sent angels, who visited men, and prophets, through whom His Voice spoke like a trumpet of flame. But of late He has gone away. He is not present. When Nietzsche declared that He had died, he described a state of affairs people recognised, which was why people were so disturbed by Nietzsche.”

He smiled blithely upon them, the radiance of his good will mitigated by his stained teeth and his fluttering jowl, his very apparent mortality. He said that at the moment of the Incarnation the Eternal Unchanging God had
emptied himself out
—the word was Kenosis—had shrunk his infinity, which was timeless, and poured it into finite flesh. When God became Man, said Adelbert Holly, the timeless entered history. The infinite became finite. The circular became a linear arrow. That which had no beginning and no end became a begun infant, with its umbilical cord full of blood and its blind mouth full of milk, and the blood and the milk were doomed in due course to find the end of everyman, sooner or later, to suffer and to die. Some believed that the message of Death of God theology was that it was incumbent upon all mortals to learn to live in this world, with no sense of heaven, and no fear of Hell, beyond hell on earth, of which we know something, each in our degree. But I say to you, said Canon Holly, that when God died as God and became Man, He entered History, and the joy of the mystery of His Birth is repeated daily in historical time, as is, of course, the sorrow of the mystery of His death, which has become infinitely finite.

He smiled beatifically. Frederica felt irritated. The remarks were
almost
meaningful, but not quite, they were in the end a game with language. But then, the Canon thought they meant something. What? She frowned.

They sang more carols. The candles flickered more wildly as they burned down in their glass cylinders. Finally, Mary stood up to sing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and as she did so, the choir took up their candles and extinguished them, so that the only light was the tall candles round the creche at the crossing of the aisles. She sang high and clear. Frederica the unmusical heard the sound, and made sense of it because of the poet's words, could even see that the singing voice added a lightness, a soaring, to those words.

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Sno-ow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Lo-o-ong ago.

It was a good poem. It was an uncompromising description of elemental solids—snow, water, ice, iron, stone, with the adjective at work, bleak. And, Frederica thought, the wind moaned, which is a human sound, and there was the woman with the boy child. The earth moaning. And then, infinity.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign ...

Lovely, lovely, economical
words,
Frederica thought, fast, fast. Sustain is perfect. The earth can't either hold him up, or keep Him alive.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay ...

Mary's voice grew sweeter as she negotiated her way through angels, maiden kiss, shepherd and lamb, to the human heart. Her father saw her voice beat in the channel of her throat, in the movement of her lips, across the shimmer of her teeth, as she moved her lovely head with the rhythm, and the curtain of her thick red-gold hair swung in the light of her one remaining candle. Beside him, Bill Potter coughed unhappily, phlegm rising and suppressed in his dried channels. There was no life in Stephanie Potter, but life that had come from this cross old man had moved in her, had mixed with his own, which had come from his cross old mother and his unknown father, and there it was now, briefly alight in the shadows, singing of milk, and fleece, and snow.

Why had he called her Mary? It was a plain name, and a weight. He thought confusedly of Adelbert Holly's idea that God had emptied himself out of heaven. Bill coughed again, and Daniel thought that God had walked quietly out of this stone building, too, he was present in his absence only, and that was why the old man had felt able to cross the threshold, for the live force that had once held the stones together, which had once urged “Put off thy shoes, for this is holy ground,” had flickered and ceased to burn.

“Gi-i-ive my heart,”
sang Mary. And bent her head over the glass before her, and blew out the candle, and stood, head bowed, in the spiral of waxy smoke.

Daniel heard his own heart. Thump, thump, in his ears. Pumping blood. It was all there was, and one day, it would stop.

Bill cleared his throat again.

“Like an angel,” he said.

“Hmn?” said Daniel, thickly.

“She sings like an angel, our Mary.”

“Aye,” said Daniel. “She does.”

“She doesn't get it from
our
side. We're tone deaf.”
Afterwards they stood and ate mince-pies round the crèche. This crèche was white and gold. The figures were Italian, large white glazed china figures, descendants of della Robbia. The creche itself, the stable, was made of real straw and wood. Inside, the figures were white and sleek. The Virgin, at one with her white veiling, the stolid ox, the shaggy ass, all blanched white, as was the infant, chubby in his stick-cradle. St. Joseph stood, as he always stands, puzzled, redundant and slightly apart, his hands folded and set in their glaze, his beard snowy. There was a white lamb nestling by the cradle and white doves on the thatched roof. The other colour was gold. Gold angels hung suspended around the great gold tinsel star over the rafters. Golden apples, made of stuffed silk, gold-painted holly and ivy were heaped around the place where the footlights would have been if it was a stage. Night-lights in glasses surrounded the apples and leaves.

“Pretty,” said Saskia.

Mary joined them, disrobed and breathless. Gideon and Clemency hurried up and congratulated her. Will stood apart, with his grandfather, in the dark shadows. Gideon sipped hot punch, and talked of his sense of the new community at Dun Vale Hall, of the spirit moving like yeast, of the energy released like the hens and turkeys, into freedom.

“You should have seen them stretch and scurry. All those feathers being preened and shaken. It's the sort of gesture you dream of, and then find you're actually
making
—”

Ruth said “Some of the down is actually growing back on their poor bare necks.”

Gideon stroked the long snake of her gold plait down her back, which she still wore, though she was no longer a girl.

“We all feel it. It's going to be like ancient monasteries, a religious house, where a core of contemplatives inhabit, and others come to rest and recuperate and escape the busy world, and still others come through, as it were, on the crossroads of their life, to catch a glimpse of how things
can be
... We mean to have open days for children, storytimes—Ruth will be in charge—days of prayer, days of singing and dancing ...”

Jacqueline Winwar asked how Gideon and Clemency's own children were. Frederica, partly still exalted by Rossetti's hard absolute words and Mary's voice, partly anxious now to go home, looked distractedly at her. She was not sure she would have recognised Jacqueline. She had been a glossy nut-brown girl, and had become a sharp woman who looked somehow emptied out. She had become thin, her mouth was tighter, her bones more pronounced. It suited her. The removal of her comfortable persona made her real intelligence visible.

Gideon said all his children were fine, just fine, they were making their way in the world, finding their way, falling over and struggling up again, like everyone's children. “Jeremy's away in India—he's on a spiritual pilgrimage—Tania's working with a wonderful group of creative people selling unusual clothes in Carnaby Street—Daisy's training to be a social worker—she feels a call, because she has a black skin, to work in black communities—Dominic's living in a squat, mixing with those who live on benefit and choosing to share their lot and their life-style. He's finding his way, he's finding his way. I sometimes wish it wouldn't take them so long to find a settled life-style, but that's only because I'm an old unregenerate bourgeois fuddy-duddy. Really, I admire their courage. You have to.”

Clemency Farrar looked at Daniel, and looked away. She knew that Daniel knew that Dominic had been arrested for receiving stolen goods, more than once. She did not know that Daniel knew that Tania was usually silly with an increasingly large mix of hemp and LSD. She knew Daniel did not know that they had not heard from Jeremy for two years, and did not know whether he was alive or dead. She had burned the letter Jeremy had sent, saying he hoped he would find a peace that would mean he need never come back and that it was necessary to him to cut all ties whilst he looked. She stared blankly at the white china Madonna with her plump white infant. She knew Daniel knew that Daisy, a black child with a white name, had repudiated her adoptive parents, had moved to a place where all her neighbours were black, and lied routinely about her origins and upbringing.

Gideon stroked the gold snake of Ruth's plait, and held out his arms to Jacqueline, who had been part of his Church Youth Group, when Daniel was his curate. He said

“You must
particularly
come and meet the Hearers, Jacquie, love. Ruthie would be so glad, so happy. We all should.”

Jacqueline evaded the embrace.

“Please,” said Ruth. She said “You should hear Joshua Ramsden. He is the most marvellous man. The most ... You can't imagine. You must see.”

Her face was white and ecstatic. There was an edge in her voice.

“I might,” Jacqueline said.

“And Daniel. And Marcus, you must all come, you must all come,” said Ruth. “And see what we have done, how different everything is, how real, how
new
.”

Jacqueline said she had a complicated experiment she was looking after single-handed.

“And you come too,” said Ruth to Mary. “We sing a lot. They would love your lovely voice there. Everyone would love it.”

She nestled against Gideon's shoulder, and smiled at them.

Later, they remembered this.

Under the Christmas tree the next morning, among the presents, were two identical books for Leo and Saskia, from Agatha. Saskia found hers, first. Leo was sitting amongst a heap of gilt paper considering his present from his father, which was an inordinately large mechanised tank, complete with guns which flashed, smoked, and ejected whining pellets. Saskia opened the book, peaceably. It was from Agatha, and was an advance copy of
Flight North,
which was out in the New Year. It had a dramatic dustjacket, largely in black and white, with flashes of crimson and scarlet. The lettering, in crimson, ran across a line of snowy turrets or mountain peaks, on top of which black cockerels crowed in silhouette against a red sky. The group of travellers stood in silhouette by a thorn-bush, bottom left, and in the centre the Whistlers hovered on extended white wings, with bird-necks, female faces and human hair. Saskia gave a little cry, and clutched the book to her chest. Agatha said “Look at the dedication.”

Saskia read it. “For Saskia and Leo, who listened to this story. With love.”

Leo looked up from his tank.

“You've got one,” said Saskia, busily. “You've got one, too. It's dedicated to us.”

Leo crawled across the floor amongst the wrappings, and found his neat package. He undid the ribbon, and folded the paper. He studied the cover, and looked at the dedication. Saskia hugged her mother. “I didn't know, I didn't know,” she said.

“It was hard enough keeping the secret.” Agatha was equable. She was good at secrets.

“It looks quite different, quite, in real printing,” said Saskia. She opened the book and read, at random
“All your book-learning will be of no use in the wilderness,” said the
page-boy to the Prince.