The Office of the Dead (9 page)

Early in May the weather became much warmer. I no longer had to wear a coat and two cardigans when working in the library. The big room filled with light. The index cards marched steadily across the shoeboxes and everywhere I looked there was evidence of my industry. I felt better in other ways, too. On some days I hardly thought about Henry at all.

One Tuesday afternoon I was sitting at the table when I heard the door opening at the other end of the room. I assumed it was Canon Hudson or Janet or even Mr Gotobed, the assistant verger, who had a habit of popping up unexpectedly in the Cathedral or the Close. I turned in my chair and found myself looking up at David.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting you. The dean’s trying to track down a model of the Octagon, and there’s a possibility it may be in here.’

I screwed the cap on my fountain pen. ‘Not that I’ve seen, I’m afraid. But please have a look.’

He glanced round the library and smiled. ‘It’s looking much more organized than when I last saw it.’

‘So it should be,’ I said. ‘Now what about this model?’

‘The dean thought it might be in one of the cupboards.’

He nodded towards the long cupboard behind the table where I worked. It was about six feet high and built of dark-stained pine. Canon Hudson had told me that before the room was converted to the library, it had been used as the choir vestry and the cupboard had probably been built to house cassocks and surplices. It was full of rubbish now, he’d said, and when Gotobed had a spare afternoon he would investigate it properly. I’d tried the doors but they were locked.

David produced a key and unlocked the nearest door. Then he opened the other two, pulling open the three sets of double doors so the whole cupboard filled with light. What I noticed first was the skeleton of a mouse lying at the foot of one of the doors. Dust was everywhere, soft and gritty. I saw a bucket, a small mountain of prayer books, an umbrella stand, a stack of newspapers, an object like a wooden crinoline with a torn surplice draped over it, a clump of candlesticks, some of which were taller than me, a lectern, empty bottles and a cast-iron boot-scraper. I bent down to pick up one of the newspapers. It was a copy of the
Rosington Observer
from 1937.

‘There we are.’ David lifted the ragged surplice from the ecclesiastical coat hanger. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? I wonder who made it.’

‘Is
that
it?’

He shot me an amused glance. ‘Were you expecting something more lifelike? This shows what you don’t see – the skeleton supporting the whole thing.’ He flapped the surplice at the model, dislodging some of the dust. ‘It’s very elegant. A mathematical figure in wood. If I get the dust off, do you think you could help me lift it out?’

I ended up doing the dusting myself. Then we lifted the model out of the cupboard. It stood like the skeleton of a prehistoric animal on the library carpet.

‘It’s as if it’s got eight legs,’ I said.

‘Each of them rests on top of one of the pillars below. They’re beams supporting almost all the weight. Amazing, really – nearly sixty feet long, and they taper from just over three feet at the base to twelve inches at the top where they meet the angles of the lantern.’

His long fingers danced over the wooden framework. I didn’t understand what he was saying. I really didn’t try. I was too taken up watching how his hands moved and the expression on his face.

‘And then look how they twisted the lantern itself round so its sides are above the angles of the stone Octagon below. It splits the weight of each angle of the wooden Octagon between two pairs of these main beams that run down to the piers of the stone Octagon. Its legs, as you said.’ Suddenly he broke off, frowning. ‘But there should be a spire. Where do you think it’s got to?’

I pointed into the cupboard at what I had assumed was an umbrella stand. Admittedly it was a peculiar shape for the purpose but it did have a broken umbrella jammed into it. With a cry of triumph David lifted it out. I applied the duster and then he raised it on top of the model of the Octagon. It slotted into place. We both stood back to admire it. The whole model now stood over six feet high. Nearly two feet of this was the slender framework of the spire, also octagonal.

‘It’s based on the Octagon at Ely,’ David was saying. ‘Ours is five or ten years later and rather smaller. In one sense it looks as if Ely was the apprentice work. Ours is much lighter – physically lighter, and also the windows in the lantern are larger. And we’ve got a spire which here is an integral part of the design.’

He was like a boy in his pleasure. It had never struck me before how attractive enthusiasm can be, the sort of enthusiasm that reaches out to other people.

‘What are you going to do with this?’ I asked him.

‘We’re planning an exhibition. The dean thinks we should do more to attract the tourists. Without the income we get from them it would be very difficult to run this place. Do you think I could leave it in that corner for now? He’ll want to come and see it. But would it be in your way?’

We moved the Octagon where he suggested. David glanced at the table where I worked, which was underneath one of the windows.

‘How are you getting on?’

‘I’m nearly halfway, I think. I had to have a week off over Easter.’

‘Any surprises?’

‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’

He stared at me, then threw back his head and laughed. ‘What did you do with it?’

‘I gave it to Canon Hudson.’ I decided not to mention that I had read it first. ‘Apparently it’s the unexpurgated 1928 edition and it might be worth something.’

‘But we’d have to sell it anonymously.’ He gestured towards my card index. ‘I’d like to have a look through there sometime, if I may.’

My excitement drained away. Indeed, up to that moment I hadn’t been aware I was excited, only that I was enjoying myself. But now it was spoiled. Suddenly it seemed improbable he was interested in what was in the library for its own sake. Perhaps this was something to do with his campaign for the Theological College.

‘I’m sure Canon Hudson wouldn’t mind,’ I said.

‘I’d better leave you to your labours.’

At the door he paused. ‘By the way, I should thank you.’

‘It’s nice to have an excuse for a break.’

‘I don’t just mean now. I mean at home. I don’t know how Janet would have managed without you. Especially with her father around.’

I felt myself blush. I couldn’t stand much more of this new David, considerate, enthusiastic and worst of all grateful.

‘Of course, I’m not sure how long he’ll be with us,’ he said, and the old David emerged once again. ‘In the nature of things it can’t be for ever.’ Then he smiled and the gears of his personality shifted again. ‘Bless you,’ he said, as priests do, and slipped out of the library.

I think coincidence is often a label we attach to events to confer a fake significance on them. But it makes me feel uncomfortable that on the same afternoon, a few minutes after David left, I had my first encounter with Francis Youlgreave.

I was cataloguing Keble’s three-volume
Works of Richard Hooker.
On the flyleaf of the first volume, opposite the bookplate of the dean and chapter, was the name F. St J. Youlgreave. Presumably Youlgreave had owned the book and later presented it to the library.

There was a strip of paper protruding from the second volume. I took it out. The top was brown and flaky where it had been exposed to the air but most of the strip had been trapped between the pages. It looked like a makeshift bookmark torn from a larger sheet. Both of the longer edges were ragged. One side was blank. On the other were several lines of writing in ink that had faded to a dark brown.

… a well-set-up boy perhaps twelve years old. He said he was going to visit his sister and their widowed mother who lodge in Swan Alley off Bridge Street. His name is Simon Martlesham and he works at the Palace where he cleans the boots and runs errands for the butler. It is curious how people of his class, even the younger ones, smell so unpleasantly of rancid fat. But when I gave him sixpence for helping me back to the house, he thanked me very prettily. He may be useful for …

Canon Osbaston, the principal of the Theological College, was the man whose job David wanted.

He had a taste for Burgundy and on Saturday morning David spent a good deal of money at Chase and Cromwell’s, the wine merchants in the High Street. He also showed an uncharacteristic interest in the food Janet was intending to serve. David was trying to butter up the old man but I don’t think he realized it. He could be astonishingly obtuse, especially where something he really cared about was concerned.

In honour of Canon Osbaston’s visit we were going to use the dining room. I spent part of the morning polishing the table and cleaning the silver. What we needed, I thought, was a well-set-up boot boy to take care of these little jobs about the house.

Janet was unusually quiet at lunch. She wasn’t irritable but her attention was elsewhere and there were vertical worry lines carved in her forehead. I assumed it was because of this evening. After lunch David went to play tennis at the Theological College. It was a fine day so I volunteered to take Rosie for a walk to give Janet a dear run in the kitchen. Rosie agreed to come on condition we went down to the river and fed the ducks. She was always a child who negotiated, who made conditions.

We walked down River Hill to Bishopsbridge. From there we went along the towpath until we found a cluster of mallards, two couples and their attendant families. We crumbled stale white bread and fed them.

‘Would those ducklings taste nicer than ducks?’ Rosie asked.

‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ The idea of eating one of those fluffy little objects, halfway to being cuddly toys, seemed absurd. ‘Not as much meat on them as the older ones.’

‘We like lamb instead of sheep, and veal instead of cow,’ Rosie said. ‘So I wondered.’

What she said made perfectly good sense. I was pretty sure that if a cannibal had a choice of me and Rosie on the menu he’d go for Rosie. I turned away from the ducks, looking for a change of subject. That’s when I saw the Swan.

It was an L-shaped pub built of crumbling stone with an undulating tiled roof in urgent need of repair. A weather-beaten sign hung from one of the gable ends. I towed Rosie away from the river. There was a yard dotted with weeds in front of the pub, partly enclosed by the L. On one of the benches beside the front door an old man was sitting in the sunshine with his pipe and an enamel mug of tea.

‘Hello,’ I called out. ‘It’s a lovely afternoon.’

After a pause he nodded.

‘I was wondering, is there somewhere called Swan Alley near here?’

‘There is,’ he said in a broad Fen accent, ‘and then again there isn’t.’

Oh God, I thought, not another old fool who thinks he has a sense of humour. ‘Where is it?’

He took a sip of tea. ‘Just behind you.’

I saw a piece of wasteland used as a car park, separated from the towpath by a mechanics workshop built largely of rusting corrugated iron.

I turned back. ‘So it’s not there now.’

‘Just as well. Terrible place. Whole families in one room, and just a cold tap in the middle of a yard for all of them to share.’ He shook his head, enjoying the horror of it. ‘My old mother wouldn’t let me go there because of the typhoid. They had rats as big as cats.’ He studied me carefully to see how I took this last remark.

‘How wonderful. That must have been a record, surely?’

‘What was?’

‘Having rats that size. I hope someone had the sense to catch a few and stuff them. Is there a museum where you can see them?’

‘No.’

‘What a pity.’

He started to light his pipe, a laborious procedure which told me the conversation was over. I felt a little guilty for spoiling his fun but not much. Rosie and I walked up the lane towards Bridge Street.

‘Would baby rats be nicer to eat than full-grown ones?’ Rosie asked, though unfortunately not loud enough for the old man to hear.

We crossed Bridge Street and went through the wrought-iron gates that led into the lower end of Canons’ Meadow. The ground rose steadily upwards towards the Cathedral and, to the left of it, a mound of earth covered with trees, once the site of Rosington Castle. We walked up the gravel path to a gate into the south end of the Close. Canon Hudson was standing underneath the chestnuts on the other side talking to the bishop.

I tried to slip past them, but the bishop saw Rosie and beckoned us over. He was a tall, sleek man with a pink unlined face and fair hair turning grey. He was wearing a purple cassock that reminded me of a wonderful dress I’d once seen in a Bond Street window.

‘Hello, Rosie-Posie. And how are you today?’

She beamed up at him. ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’

Hudson introduced me to his lordship, who congratulated me briefly on my work in the library and then turned back to Rosie.

‘And how old are you, my dear?’

‘Four, sir. I’ll soon be five. Not next week, the week after.’

‘Five! Gosh! That’s
very
grown up. What presents are you hoping to get?’

‘Please, sir, I’d like an angel.’

‘A what?’

‘An angel.’

The bishop patted her shining head. ‘My dear child.’ His eyes swept from Hudson to me and he murmured, smiling, ‘Trailing clouds of glory, eh?’ Then he bent down to Rosie again. ‘You must ask your daddy and mummy to bring you over to my house one day. You can play in the garden. It’s lovely and big, and there’s a swing and a pond with some very large goldfish. When you come I’ll introduce you to them. And Auntie Wendy can come too. I’m sure she’d like to meet my fishies as well.’

And so on. The bishop seemed to have at his command an effortless flow of whimsicality. In an open contest he’d have knocked spots off J. M. Barrie. If anyone had told me at Rosie’s age that I looked like the Queen of the Fairies I’d have curled up with embarrassment. But she accepted it as her due.

‘I’m glad we bumped into each other,’ Hudson said to me while the episcopal gush flowed on. ‘I meant to drop in yesterday. Everything all right?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘I gather David found a model of the Octagon in the wall cupboard. Something for the dean’s exhibition.’

‘It was quite exciting, actually. It made a change from cataloguing books. Mind you, I’m not sure I’d have known what it was if he hadn’t been there.’ One memory jogged another. ‘By the way, I came across a scrap of paper with some writing on. It was in a book that once belonged to someone called Youlgreave.’

‘Ah yes. That would probably be Francis Youlgreave. He was the canon librarian about fifty years ago. What exactly did you find?’

‘It looked like part of a letter or diary. Something about giving a boy sixpence for helping him.’

‘He was a bit of an oddity, Canon Youlgreave. He had to retire after a nervous breakdown. If you come across anything else of his I’d like to see it. Would you make sure you do that?’

It wasn’t what he said so much as the way that he said it. Hudson looked so mild and inoffensive that those rare times when I saw his other side always came as a shock. His voice was sharp, almost peremptory. He had just given me what amounted to an order.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But now we mustn’t keep you any longer. Come along, Rosie, we mustn’t be late for tea.’

I dragged Rosie away from her mutual admiration society, said goodbye and walked towards the Cathedral and the Dark Hostelry. When we reached home, I opened the gate in the wall and Rosie ran ahead of me into the house. I found her and David waiting for me in the hall.

David was still in his tennis whites and his racket was on a polished chest near the door. I noticed that he’d knocked the vase of flowers on the chest, and a few drops of water glittered on the dark oak. Stupid man, I thought. If we didn’t wipe off the water soon, it would leave a mark.

‘Wendy, there you are.’ His voice was casual to the point of absurdity, a tangle of elongated vowels and muted consonants. ‘I thought I’d take Rosie downstairs and give her some tea.’

My face must have shown my surprise. But I managed a smile. ‘OK. How nice.’

He moved towards the stairs to the kitchen, towing Rosie. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, interrupting Rosie who was telling him about the bishop and his fishies. ‘Janet asked if you could pop up and see her if you had a moment. She’s in our bedroom, I think.’

David give Rosie her tea? It was unheard of. Without taking off my hat, I went quickly upstairs and tapped on Janet’s door. I heard her say something. I twisted the handle and went in. She was sitting on the window seat looking at the Cathedral.

‘Are you all right?’ I said, walking towards her.

She turned to look at me. The tears welled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

‘Wendy,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

I watched the tears running down her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head.

I went to her, put my hands on her arms and drew her towards me. She laid her head on my shoulder and began to sob. Between the sobs she muttered something.

‘I can’t hear you. What did you say?’

She lifted her tear-stained face. ‘I can’t bear it.’ She hiccuped. ‘Another one.’

‘Another
what
?’

Janet pulled away from me and blew her nose. ‘Another baby. I think I’m pregnant.’