B007TB5SP0 EBOK (17 page)

‘I’m sorry you find him so troublesome,’ Aurelia said.

Mrs Wookie glowered. ‘I wonder I’m alive,’ she exclaimed, ‘from the reports they bring. Not only am I affronted, but the Cathedral, it seems, itself, is in peril, and the name of our city also endangered. For a whim, if not from sheer madness, Dr Pantry, it appears, has petitioned the Archbishop to contract the See of Ashringford into Ashingford. Merciful heaven, why can’t he leave it alone?’

‘I dare say if Mr Pet had his way he would boil us down to
Ash
,’ Miss Wookie observed.

Her mother closed her eyes.

‘If that happened,’ she said, ‘I should leave Ashringford.’

Driven out with her Family Rose, and followed by her servant Quirker, and by Kate, she saw herself stumbling at sunset like the persecuted women on her stoles. And night would find them (who knew) where the cornflowers passed through the fields in a firm blue bar.

‘That Mr Pet is a disgrace to his cloth,’ she murmured, rallying.
‘Indeed I’d rather we had Mr Cunningham back again. He wasn’t a great preacher, but he neither droned nor gabbled, and he could be wonderfully voluble when he liked.’

‘Oh, my dear, but he was so unbalanced. He would do his American conjuring tricks in the vestry before the choir boys … Such a bad example.’

‘Still, it’s an ill wind … And Miss Wardle and her set seem quite satisfied with his successor.’

‘She would be. If you asked her for her hymn-book she’d imagine it was being borrowed for some felonious purpose.’

Aurelia looked interested. ‘I don’t see what one could do with a hymn-book,’ she exclaimed.

Mrs Wookie’s nose grew long again.

‘Don’t you?’ she answered: ‘neither do I.’

‘Besides, fresh from a Cornish curacy, what can he know?’ Miss Wookie wondered.

Aurelia corrected her.

‘From Oxford, I fancy, isn’t he … ?’

‘The man’s a perfect scourge, wherever he’s from,’ Miss Wookie declared. ‘Not half-an-hour ago he dashed down this street like a tornado. I was standing with Quirker at the door. You know I collect motor numbers, which obliges me frequently to run out into the road … I have such a splendid collection. I hope I’m not so vulgar as to bang a door, still, when I saw him coming, I confess I shut it!’

Mrs Wookie slipped a pink-clad hot water-bottle from under her back.

‘He must have discovered about Mrs Henedge and Monsignor Parr,’ she said. ‘How shocking, should there be a struggle.’

‘What should make you think so?’

‘They’ve gone to pace out the site of the new church … Monsignor Parr has been hurrying to and fro all the morning, like St Benedict at Monte Cassino. And his employees already are entrenched at the corner of Whip-me-Whop-me Street at Mrs Cresswell’s old Flagellites Club.’

Aurelia raised her eyes.

‘Surely in such a sweet old house it would feel almost vulgar to be alive!’

‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Wookie replied. ‘I do not care for Mrs Cresswell. She repels me.’

‘In any case, if anything should happen, Mrs Henedge will be quite secure. That fair-haired pianist accompanied her. You remember him, don’t you, mamma?’

‘I remember him perfectly. Nobody in the world ever got over a stile like Mr Brookes.’

‘To see her continually with that perverse musician, or with that priest, is enough to make poor good Bishop Henedge burst his coffin.’

‘Alas, Ashringford isn’t what it used to be,’ Mrs Wookie complained. ‘The late Bishop was, in many matters, perhaps not a very prudent man … but he had authority. And a shapelier leg, my dears, never trod the earth. He obtained his preferment, one may say, solely on their account. He had such long, long legs. Such beautiful long, long legs.’

‘And,’ Miss Wookie murmured, flinging her flower, ‘a really reassuring way of blowing his nose!! To hear him do it was to realize immediately the exact meaning of
conviction
.’

‘But,’ Aurelia gulped an eyelash, ‘in the official portrait,’ she objected, ‘he appears such a little gasp of a man!’

Mrs Wookie became belligerent.

‘That topsy-turvy thing in the Town Hall! I was fond of my husband, but I’d scorn to be painted in evening-mourning pointing at his dead miniature. His portrait indeed! His widow’s rather, basking on a sofa, with a locket.’

‘Apparently Mrs Henedge admires the baroque.’

‘Well, her new church will be dedicated to it,’ Miss Wookie assured.

‘So ornate?’

‘Mr Thumbler has gone to Italy to make the drawings … The exterior is to be an absolute replica of St Thomas in Cremona, with stone saints in demonstrative poses on either side of the door.’

‘And the interior, no doubt, will be a dream.’

‘It is to be lit entirely by glass eighteenth-century chandeliers,’ Miss Wookie said, ‘and there will be a Pompeian frieze, and a good deal of art leather work from the hand of one
of Lady Georgia’s young men, who did some of the panelling at St Anastasia’s once, although, of course, he was rather
restricted
.’

‘Art leather,’ Aurelia said, ‘sounds to me a mistake.’

‘If it’s half as delicate as at St Anastasia, it should be really rather lovely.’

‘Let us hope that it may—’

‘And there are to be some very nice pictures. In fact, the pictures will be a feast. Madame
Gandarella
, the wife of the Minister, has presented a
St Cecilia Practising
and a more than usually theatrical Greuze. And Baroness Lützenschläger is to give a Griego. Nobody knows quite what it represents – long, spiritual women grouped about a cot. The Chalfonts, also, are offering a Guardi for the baptistry. But as there was never any mention of one, they ran no very terrible risk. And last, though hardly least, Lord Brassknocker is sending to Paris, to be framed, a mysterious pastelle, entitled
Tired Eyelids on Tired Eyes
, which, as Mrs Pontypool says, is certainly the very last thing she looks.’

‘Kate hears everything,’ Mrs Wookie said; ‘thread me a needle, Kate.’

‘And when everything is complete, the Grand Duchess Ximina will stay at Stockingham to unveil the leather. And Cardinal Pringle will appear to sprinkle the pictures and to bless it all.’

‘If the Grand Duchess stays at Stockingham,’ Mrs Wookie said, ‘I suppose they will prepare the State bed.’

‘Poor woman,’ Aurelia murmured. ‘It’s as hard as a board.’

‘Elizabeth—’ Miss Wookie began, but Aurelia rose.

‘How pretty the garden looks,’ she said.

Miss Wookie smiled.

‘It’s only charming,’ she observed, checked in her little tale, ‘on account of the trees.’

‘Tut, Kate. I’m sure in the spring, when the laburnums are out, and lilacs in bloom, the garden’s hard to beat.’

‘It has been always summer,’ Aurelia said, as she took her leave, ‘when I’ve stayed here before.’

Down an alley and through an arch led her straight to Washing-tub Square.

Notwithstanding the eloquence prepared, it was with relief that she perceived her laundress docilely pinning some purple flowers against a fence, while close by, in the dust, Miss Valley was kneeling, with her arms about a child.

At her approach the biographer lifted loose blue eyes that did not seem quite firm in her head, and a literary face.

‘I shall have to commence my life all over again,’ she said. ‘Six weeks wasted! This child – employed in the laundry here –’ and she began to shake it – ‘this carrier of dirty linen … is Reggie … Cresswell – a descendant of the saint …’

And because Miss Valley seemed in such distress, and because, after all, she was a friend, Aurelia let fall her dish and, with a glance right and left, first, to make sure that ‘nothing was coming’ sank down upon the road by her side.

‘But can you not see,’ she murmured sympathetically, taking Miss Valley by the hand, ‘that an Apologia is just what everyone most enjoys?’ And then, drawing Reggie to her, she exclaimed: ‘Oh, you dear little boy!’

‘And your own tomb, dear Doctor Pantry, what is it going to be?’

‘My own tomb,’ the Bishop replied demurely, ‘will be composed entirely of encaustic tiles that come from Portugal – a very simple affair.’

Mrs Shamefoot sighed. ‘It sounds,’ she said, ‘almost agitating.’

‘Ah, these old cathedrals, my dear Mrs Shamefoot, how many marriages and funerals they’ve seen!’

‘I suppose—’

‘Ashringford may not have the brave appearance of Overcares, or the rhythm of Perch, or the etherealness of Carnage, or the supremacy of Sintrap; but it has a character, a conspicuousness of its own.’

‘It stands with such authority.’

‘To be sure. You’d hardly believe there was a debt upon it.’

‘No; indeed one would not.’

Lady Anne broke in: ‘There is often,’ she remarked, ‘a haze. Although I couldn’t bear the Cathedral without a few sticks and props, I should miss them frightfully, it’s curious the way the restorations hang fire, especially with the number of big houses there are about. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs Roggers?’

‘Decidedly,’ the Archdeacon’s wife exclaimed, beginning to docket them upon a glove. When revealing no small mishap, she quite omitted Stockingham from the list.

At this gust of tact Lady Anne appeared amazed.

‘If Mrs Shamefoot wishes to explore the Cathedral,’ the Bishop said, ‘it will be well to do so before the excursion train gets in from Perch.’

‘Then you had better take her across.’

‘But you’ll come with us.’

‘I must remain here for Lady Georgia. Should Mrs Henedge be out or telling her beads she’ll be back directly.’

‘Very well, we will not be long.’

‘And be careful,’ Lady Anne adjured her husband, with fine frankness, ‘not to commit yourself. No rash promises! The Cathedral’s all glass as it is. It will be like a conservatory before we’ve done.’

‘What are those wonderfully white roses?’ Mrs Shamefoot inquired of the Bishop, as she trailed with him away.

In a
costume de cathedrale
, at once massive and elusive, there was nostalgia in every line.

‘They bear the same name as the cathedral,’ the Bishop replied: ‘St Dorothy.’

Mrs Shamefoot touched the episcopal sleeve.

‘And that calm wee door?’ she asked.

‘It’s the side way in.’

‘Tell me, Doctor Pantry, is there a ray of hope?’

‘Without seeming uncharitable, or unsympathetic, or inhuman, what am I to say? With a little squeezing we might bury you in the precincts of the Cathedral.’

‘But I don’t want to be trodden on.’

‘You might do a great deal worse than lay down a brass.’

‘With my head on a cushion and my feet upon flowers. Oh!’

‘Or a nice shroud one. Nothing looks better. And they are quite simple to keep clean.’

‘But a brass,’ she said, ‘would lead to rubbings. I know so well! Persons on all fours perpetually bending over me.’

‘I can see no objection in that.’

‘I don’t think my husband would like it.’

‘Naturally; if Mr Shamefoot would mind—’

‘Mind?’ She began to titter. ‘Poor Soco,’ she said; ‘poor dear man. But a window’s more respectable. Though I’d sooner I didn’t borrow an old one.’

And with an effort she manoeuvred her hat through the narrow monastic door.

Darkness, and an aroma of fresh lilies, welcomed her, as though with cool invisible hands.

Here, most likely, would she dwell until the last day surprised her. And, like twelve servants, the hours would bring her moods.

She sank impulsively to her knees. A window like a vast sapphire – a sumptuous sapphire, changing black – chilled her slightly.

Must
colour change?

Here and there, the glass had become incoherent a little, and begun to mumble.

‘One could look for ever at the pretty windows!’ she murmured, rising.

The Bishop seemed touched.

‘We must try and find you a corner,’ he said, ‘somewhere.’

She turned towards him.

‘Oh, you make me happy.’

‘I said a corner,’ the Bishop replied. ‘Perhaps we can find you a lancet.’

‘A lancet! But I should be so congested, shouldn’t I? I shall need some space. A wee wheel-window, or something of the kind.’

The tones implied the colossal.

‘A lancet would be rather limited, of course, but does that matter?’

‘Wait till you see the designs …’

With a sensation of uneasiness Doctor Pantry began to pivot about the font.

‘In Cromwell’s time,’ he explained, ‘it was used as a simple washtub.’

‘Oh, what a shame!’

‘And from here,’ he said, ‘you get such a curious complication of arches.’

Around the pillars drooped stone garlands that had been coloured once. From them a few torn and marvellous flags, that looked more as if they had waved triumphant over some field of scandal than anywhere else, reposed reminiscent.

‘What shreds!’

‘Certainly, they are very much riddled.’

But she lingered apart a moment before the tomb of an Ashringford maiden, lying sleep-locked upon a pyre of roses, with supplicating angels at the head and feet.

‘Do I,’ she whispered, ‘detect romance?’

The Bishop bent his head.

‘Alas,’ he said, ‘the entire bibliothèque rose.’

‘And how sweet something smells.’

‘Many persons have noticed it. Even when there has been barely a dry leaf within doors.’

‘Why? What? …’

‘It emanates from the Coronna Chapel, where Mrs Cresswell is.’

‘Is it there always?’

‘It varies. On some days it’s as delicate as a single cowslip. On others it’s quite strong, more like syringa.’

Mrs Shamefoot scanned the shadows.

‘But Mrs Cresswell,’ she inquired, ‘who was she – exactly?’

‘Primarily,’ the Bishop replied, ‘she was a governess. And with some excellent people, too. Apart from which, no doubt, she would have been canonized, but for an unfortunate remark. It comes in
The Red Rose of Martyrdom
. “If we are all a part of God,” she says, “then God must indeed be horrible.” ’

‘Nerves are accountable for a lot. Possibly, her pupils were tiresome … Or it was upon a hot day. In her
Autobiography
she confesses, doesn’t she, to her sensibility to heat.’