Angels in the Architecture (9 page)

‘It was talking to
him, Daddy. I could see it.’

‘Yes, well
, it did rather look like it, that’s for sure.’

‘You know that the real
St Hugh – Bishop Hugh – who rebuilt the cathedral in the Middle Ages, is the Patron Saint of swans and sick children.’

‘Really?’ Pete said.

‘So that makes for a nice little story, doesn’t it? Your wee man here chatting with swans just like a real saint.’

‘Oh, well
... ’

‘You know
, I really do think some children can connect into something we can’t – as though we’ve lost it – and they haven’t yet. And there are children like Tim – I’ve seen this before – you’re right, they see things we don’t. And I do wonder about that, I really do. It gives me enormous pause to consider the ways we conceive of God, that I wonder may be quite ... well, not so useful. I don’t know. Anyway, you’re quite blessed I’m sure, Pete, to have Tim.’

‘Thank you. Not many people would think that. It’s nice of you to notice.’

‘Well, I must away. Things to do – song sheets to prepare, etcetera. Lovely to meet you.’ Rose extended her hand again and Pete took it.

‘Yes, you too.’

‘I hope I’ll see you again some time. Goodbye, Jillie. Enjoy your afternoon with your dad.’

‘Bye.’

Rose walked off and then turned back after a few paces.

‘Forgive me if I’m being rather
bold, Pete. It’s just that I’m about to pin this up to the noticeboard. We run several adult classes – discussion groups really – where we explore questions about what do we know and how do we know it, God and so on. Maybe you’d be interested. There’s one at my cottage on Thursday evenings. There are nine or ten of us, I suppose. We start at seven thirty. Here ...’ Rose handed over a leaflet from the pile of things in her arm. She scribbled on the corner and handed it to Pete. ‘It’s just along from the Cathedral, easy to find. You don’t need to bring anything, although a bottle’s always welcome.’ She grinned. ‘Right, well, must away. Cheerio!’

Pete’s views on the eccentricities of
the Church and priesthood felt both confirmed and dismantled all at once.

‘Thank you.’ Pete didn’t know what else to say.
That was a bit odd. Cheerful sort though. And she had Tim’s number all right.

Tim walked along
with his head hanging back almost as far as it could go, holding his father’s hand for balance and staring up at the vaulting far above. They’d walked to the eastern end of the Cathedral, past St Hugh’s shrine, an enormous affair, and back down the northern choir aisle. Pete noticed the vaulting here was irregular and asymmetrical as though two different halves of two quite different cathedrals had been joined together by accident, but cleverly just the same.

How
odd,
thought Pete.
Bet that disturbs Tim’s linear aesthetic.

The bright light in the rafters
reminded Tim of the reflection he’d seen earlier, and he knew then that he would see it again, and often, because ‘it’ was a special friend who saw the world just as he did.

‘
Thank God!’ Alicia fell into bed next to Pete.

‘That was a bit of a mission sorry. He’s in that
super-stimulated but super-tired state.’

‘Isn’t he always in that state? Honestly, if there’s a balance between giving him plenty of stimulation to get those cogs going, and
not giving him too much so he goes completely mental, I don’t know what it is.’

‘Yip.’

Alicia grabbed the top book from a pile by her bed. Tim, bespectacled, had
The Times
in his hands.

‘Isn’t that yesterday’s?’

‘Yeah, I didn’t get to it. Tim. You know.’

‘I do know.’

Neither Pete nor Alicia found much benefit in complaining about the trials of parenting an autistic child, but both offered a silent support and a quiet knowing to each other’s quite separate battle with this reality.

‘How was the cathedral?’ Alicia had collected her family that afternoon as planned and the evening was then taken over with the usual dinner
-bath-story-bed ritual, albeit that this particular evening’s ritual was vastly extended by Tim’s considerable and chaotic energy.

‘It was lovely. I really do like it there
, so much history and fabulous stories. In fact, I heard a new one from a priest-woman while we were there.’

‘A
priest-woman? What’s that ya’ dork? There’s no such ...’

‘I think she was a deacon – a deaconess, yeah, she was a deaconess.’

‘What’s a priest-woman?! Ya’ nong!’

‘Well
, she
was
a deaconess, I remember now. Anyway, what I was saying ...’

‘Carry on.’

‘There was this box Timmy sort of sat on ... leant on. Well, it turned out it was a shrine – just a wee thing, stuck out of the wall. Didn’t look like anything unusual, kind of a seat really, a black stone box. Turns out it’s the body of a child, thrown down a well in the Middle Ages, and it got put there. No one knows who it is, but he’s referred to as
Little St Hugh
, after the real St Hugh, who was bishop at the time.’

‘How’d you know all this?’

‘The
deaconess!
’

‘Right. Name of
... ?’

‘Ah. R
... r ... Rose!’

‘
R-r-rose!’

‘I was just trying to remember it. I knew it was
R-something. You’re being very cheeky tonight, y’know.’

‘Sorry. Feel like taking the piss. The alternative may be that I yell at someone.’

‘Really? Why’s that, love? Those quantums getting you down again?’

‘Oh, I’m just not sure about what I’m doing, and where I’m doing it. Bit bored
, I suppose. Would rather be in the thick of it somewhere and instead I’m sat here in Lincoln with a bunch of dreary odd-bods who’re not at all interested in anything new – anyway, whatever. Don’t get me started.’

‘I know the perfect recipe for boredom.’ Pete put his book down and rolled towards his wife.

‘Nuh. Don’t even think about it.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No. Not interested. Sorry.’

‘Oh my
, things are bad.’

‘Don’t joke. It’s not funny.’

‘Right then.’ Pete went back to his book.

Alice put her book aside, turned out her light
, and slid under the covers, away from Pete.

‘Nice chatting,’
said Pete.

‘Careful. Honestly.’

‘’kay. Sorry.’ Pete put his book down, turned a light out, and cuddled in behind his wife. ‘It’ll work out, hun.’

‘Yuh. Thanks.’ And an afterthought, ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

That
night, Loraine Warren, who was staying with her sister in Torksey, walked to the gate to put the milk bottles out. She looked up at the night sky and happened to see a falling star.

‘Hmm.’

She was observing the interconnectedness of all things, knowing that the light from the stars had taken an infinite time to reach her eyes. Also she knew that a ‘falling star’ was really just a meteorite burning up as it traversed the atmosphere, acknowledging, nonetheless, the portent of an event yet to come.

Loraine
, unapologetically fat and unapologetically not fit, puffed back up the front steps and into the living room where her brother-in-law, Arthur, sat bespectacled and reclined with his feet up, a
Scientific American
in his hands.

‘A world leader’s going to be shot tomorrow,’ she announced, ‘but he won’t be killed.’

Arthur looked up, realising, after a few seconds staring into Loraine’s face that this would probably be the case.

‘Right,’ he said, as if that was that.

Loraine nodded a little nod, as if that was also that. ‘Well, goodnight then.’

‘Goodnight.’

His eyes followed her out. He glanced down at his magazine, and then back to where she’d been standing.

Right.

It was 29 March 1981.

5

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress than all the previous centuries of existence.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)

Going about his own business and little more was what made up the foundations and pillars
of Gamel Warriner’s life. Anything that threatened to disrupt his easy rhythms and habits, he either didn’t notice or he closed his mind to. He was not a cruel man, but he was insensitive, through simplicity of life and habit. He cared little and felt less. He was just like that. A day in his blinkered life was preferably never an exception to any other. Every moment followed the previous one through however many hours the day sent, through weeks and seasons, moons and harvests, each year bringing him nearer his mortal limit. It was the way of things, and he conformed to this without even considering his conformity a deliberate act. It was the way of things and that was as sure a thing as there could be.

There were two things though that daily
threatened Gamel’s footing – his wife, and his youngest son. To Gamel, most people were more or less the same as each other. He preferred it that way. Trees and the like, which he knew and understood well, they were different. They had variations in the qualities of their wood and thus the uses to which they could be put. Rock and stone were likewise. Seasons were different, and parts of seasons, and these ruled Gamel’s life more than most things. But not people. People were the same, they were predictable, and mostly they went about their business the same as he, each one knowing his part and path. For his own part, Gamel knew people expected certain things of him; they knew him to be law-abiding and hard-working, and they knew if they passed him by on the road, he would tip his hat and nod a
Mornin’
, not so much as a courtesy, but not just as a thing that must be done either. If some neighbour needed help to haul a log, or shift some beast dropped from lameness or disease, then they knew, and Gamel knew, that he could be relied on for aid, with no expectation of favour or such recompense of the small kind as may be afforded or occasionally offered. Daily life required attention to cooperative engagement with those living near. This was not an act of affection or friendship on Gamel’s part. Nor though was he unfriendly or cold. Survival relied on the flexible and committed operation and unfolding of this kind of mutual dependency. It was natural.

There had been a time when his exchange with others was less perfunctory. As a youth
, he had the same boisterous vitality of his sons; and although brief, his courtship of the young girl Alice provided an excitement, an impulse to dream and a thirst for something more; accepting all along that such an attitude was not to be entertained for long.

Gamel’s view was not black and white. On the contrary
, it was full of colour, natural colour. Alice and Thomas were not natural though. They did not fit comfortably into the spectacle of Gamel’s world. They demanded nothing of him, but their presence was ill-fitting in his otherwise predictable, unvarying existence, and it tugged on some part of him, in a way he could not fathom. Of course he loved them, after a fashion, as he imagined all men did their wives and children – which is to say, it was assumed and unspoken. It did not require imagination or consideration. Largely it carried just the daily responsibility to feed and shelter those in one’s care.

Gamel knew his wife to be deeply religious. He himself understood and accepted with little thought the structure of
the Church’s rule and laws in his life, as did most people. But this invoked no more sensibility in him than some vague foreboding. His obligations in this regard inhabited the conventional framework of his existence, where God and the elements were due equal attention in the matter of living and in the business of husbanding animals and crops. More than the extent of her piety though, which alone seemed more elevated than he could comprehend, Gamel’s wife displayed a grace and dignity that seemed all but to raise her to the plane of the Virgin, and far from engendering pride, it created a fear in her husband, a disquiet that this was an unholy contrivance, perilously disagreeable to the Church. As well, a cowardly misgiving tormented Gamel, and provoked an awareness of his own oafishness, next to the finer person of his wife, that he would sooner not scrutinise. The idea of intellect or scholarliness was nowhere near Gamel’s thoughts, neither was his own lack of such, nor even of any education at all, since no one of their class had any such thing. Nor was he an idiot such as his son, nor unenlightened in his awareness of the elements and their role in his life, and his role in theirs. But he was uncivilised and his view of the world did not go deep.