The Whispering Swarm (6 page)

‘That must be more ancient than most of the City,' I said.

‘You can see it?' He seemed enormously pleased.

I laughed. ‘Well, of course I can. It's massive.'

He stepped forward and pushed hard at the gate, ushering me through.

I expected to find myself in the courtyard of an old ecclesiastical building. Instead, as the door closed behind me, I saw that I was in a cobbled street, like several you could then still discover in the area. I was struck by an unusual smell, completely different to anything I'd ever experienced and impossible to identify. The smell was at once earthy and sharp, more like a market at full pitch, a mixture of vegetables, fish, fruit, cooked food, spice, malfunctioning lavatories and all different kinds of smoke. On both sides of the narrow alley leaned tall half-timbered houses, their second, even third storeys pitched at crazy angles out above their ground floors. Such houses, too, could still occasionally be found in my part of London. An entire stretch of them stood minutes from where I lived in High Holborn. Others were at the western end of Fleet Street. Most were all rather too tidily preserved. These buildings, however, had a different air to them, at once decrepit and full of vitality, with crooked wooden blinds, some hanging by a single hinge; paint peeling on doors and woodwork; part of the plaster exposed to reveal lathe or brick; creepers, vines crawling up, over and through tiles missing from roofs out of which also jutted crooked stone chimneys gouting sooty clouds into the damp grey air.

The cobbles were grubby and I was just able to avoid stepping into horse droppings directly in front of me. Apart from the gypsies, the Brookgate and Holborn dairies' nags and the occasional policeman's mount, I had never seen a horse in the Fleet Street area. Even more astonishing to me, a couple of fat, red-combed white chickens were pecking at the dung. They were dispersed, clucking and flapping, as a woman in a long, nondescript skirt, wearing a grubby cap on her dirty hair, came running from the house with a shovel and bucket, to scoop the stuff up. I remembered my Uncle Fred doing this when he followed the milkman's cart down Leather Lane during the war, bent on getting the manure for the little rose-and-vegetable garden he tended behind our house in Fox Street.

An early autumn afternoon fog was darkening a day not yet lit by gas. Behind some of the thickly glazed windowpanes yellow light began to flicker and bloom. Their blinds and curtains drawn, a number of windows were patched with oiled paper. Most others had green-tinged ‘bottle-glass' panes. Maybe they had been blown out in the Blitz and not yet replaced? This was still austerity Britain emerging from that long, grey, hand-me-down period. Some parts of London, too, had either resisted government improvements or been overlooked. The yellow glow grew warmer, steadier, either from candles or oil lamps and not gas, as I'd originally guessed. I began to wonder how on earth I had failed to discover this quaint bit of London as a boy. It was extraordinary. The smell alone, being so much like one of the big London markets, was acrid, sweet, musty, ancient, intense, impossible to identify. Why did I feel uneasy?

From hidden alleys came shouts, the occasional cry of a child, coarse grunts and elaborate curses. I was reminded of the old public slum courts and Peabody estates that still survived around Brookgate, where our narrow lanes wound through to Grays Inn Road. I tended to avoid those blocks of flats in case I was challenged by one of the ‘court cliques' which metamorphosed into the 1950s Ted gangs. Luckily they fought mostly among themselves from echoing court to echoing court. They barely bothered you if you were an obvious neutral.

I couldn't see any gangs in the Sanctuary. A lot of people crowded together here but no more than in, say, Leather Lane market on a Friday. They could belong to some religious sect, judging by their old-fashioned clothes. I saw them strolling, gossiping, chatting on cobbled corners, seated at open windows. We passed a massive coaching inn, with servants' or guests' rooms built out above the central stone-and-red-brick archway. Overlooked by balconies, there was space in the inn's cobbled yard for a full-sized express coach and team, or three modern buses. The odd picture on its sign was explained by the tavern's name: The Swan With Two Necks. What I could see of the stables looked new enough but logically had not been used in half a century at least. Dull brass, black leather, dark green paint, black beams and whitewashed walls, almost fresh. I could even see some tack. Recently dressed up for something. The coronation, probably. Around the time Queen Elizabeth II had been crowned, there had been a lot of ‘New Elizabethan' nostalgia for the glorious days of Good Queen Bess. Days that never really were, of course. New myths for a new age. Above was a gallery of leaded glass behind which someone moved swiftly, lighting candles. The entrance's signboard showed the mythical swan encountering three happy greybeards seated in a row on a bench with huge two-pint ‘shant' tankards on their knees. It might have been painted by Tom Browne or Phil May, those master-draughtsmen of Edwardian London. I was surprised I had never heard of the place. From it came a smell of strong beer, shag tobacco, frying chops.

I heard a shout from nearby and looked back. From around the corner, ducking beneath the tavern's low overhang, straight from a Dick Turpin story Tom Browne himself might have illustrated, rode a dramatically pretty young woman. Kitted in some sort of eccentric hunting outfit, with shining black thigh-high boots, doeskin breeches, a cutaway velvet midnight-blue coat, frothing lace at throat and wrists, she wore a befeathered tricorne on her long, red-gold curls. Pure Howard Pyle stuff. Even though she probably was dressed to rehearse for a coming pantomime, with herself as the ‘principal boy', I fell instantly in love with the woman's huge violet eyes and full, red lips. Almost riding us down, she struck one bold, appraising look back at me before cantering into the innyard yelling, I'd swear, for an ostler. An
ostler
? Was there a film crew in the upper galleries? Her horse was a beautiful chestnut stallion, furnished in oiled leather and silvered steel, his flanks flecked with sweat. Those brass-wrapped holsters on her saddle were big enough for monstrous horse pistols the size of carbines. I laughed, guessing they were making a movie about rural Ireland, and watched her long legs as she swung off her horse. My heart beat rapidly. I recognised her.

She'd appeared often in a recurring dream I'd experienced several years earlier. Probably puberty had something to do with it! Then I'd seen her as my sister. Now the feelings she sparked were not brotherly. I wanted to follow her, find out her name. Of course I couldn't possibly leave Friar Isidore, but the urge to do so was strong. I might never have the luck to dream of her again!

Then the tavern was behind us. We turned left. With the fog still thickening, we reached a large stone building at the end of a cul-de-sac. We had reached a narrow Gothic archway and a door whose battered ancient oak and iron were older even than the first. Could that sight or the fog be causing the pressure in my chest? I drew as deep a breath as possible, observing a massive brass crucifix nailed to the door. No, not a crucifix, but more like the looped Egyptian cross. Beneath it, carved on a piece of wood, was a mysterious Greek inscription,
Panta Rhei
. Below this an iron grille was set into the door. Friar Isidore lifted the old black knocker and rapped out what was evidently a prearranged sequence. A dark brown eye gleamed on the other side of the grille, blinked as if in surprise, then disappeared.

A moment later I heard the scrape and squeal of bolts and bars and then, feeling sudden alarm for no obvious reason, I was admitted to the ancient London abbey of that Most Pious Order of Old Flete Carmelite Friars.

Friar Isidore drew a deep breath, as if in relief, and put his arm around my shoulders.

 

3

THE FISH CHALICE

The door led not into a building but into stone cloisters running around a small courtyard, much of which had been put to lawn. Surrounding this were twelve squat yew trees whose massive trunks must have grown there for a thousand years. Lit at intervals by lanterns, the cloisters encircled the whole courtyard and were entered on the far side through another door, almost the twin of the one we'd used. The priory building enclosing the courtyard was partly of stone, partly of warm-red brick, its black oak beams standing out strongly through the fog, while the stone and mortar, on the other hand, disappeared into it. I loved this effect, especially when concrete was the grey material made to vanish. The smell of the yews and the fog mingled. A familiar stew: London! Town and country were always best when organically entwined.

We took the mossy path leading directly across the lawn to the other door. I heard a robin ticking at us from the ivy as if we threatened her territory. A plump, cheerful, tonsured monk appeared in the doorway, looked up, recognised Friar Isidore and smiled, did not recognise me, and frowned. He introduced himself as Brother Constantine and fussed with a large key attached to the loose belt tied around his waist. Then, before anyone could speak, his brow cleared and he looked at me with an expression of genial welcome. Maybe he thought I was a volunteer? Turning the key again, he beckoned us back into the relative warmth of the priory church. Clearly this did not serve a large group of monks. We stood in some sort of vestibule. Directly ahead of us was a small nave from which emerged a very old monk, beaming benignly at me as if I were a long-lost nephew. ‘My dear boy! But you are early are you not? I was at my prayers and now I have an appointment with our—the treasure…'

‘This is our Father Abbot,' declared Friar Isidore at his pause. ‘Father Grammaticus is a little absentminded. Possibly we should…' As he spoke we followed the abbot back into the building. Suddenly the chapel was alive with gorgeous colour! From modern-looking, strangely abstract stained glass windows poured the most extraordinary vibrant light, flooding across the deep-yellow stones of the small nave. Standing before this on a plinth of its own was a tall, slender-stemmed silver-chased vessel I took to be a chalice. The vessel caught the last of the light as it passed through the rich glass and spread in a shimmering pool, an unstable halo throughout the chapel. Suddenly in that wild, uncertain brilliance the gilded pewter and green-gold-red enamel resembled a moving fish straining upward to the surface. The abbot appeared to hesitate before making a gesture towards the cup. He then turned, apparently baffled, as if listening to a voice we could not hear. By the set of his head he might even be taking instruction. He turned, spreading his hands in apology. ‘I had hoped to invite you here for tea, but apparently—'

‘We have had tea, thank you, Father Abbot, in those—in that—'

‘ABC,' I supplied. ‘In Ludgate Hill.'

The abbot stared at me, his mouth forming the words I had just spoken. I felt I had stumped him somehow. I had no idea what to say next.

‘Then you must come tomorrow. Around four?' He looked behind us as if someone had brought him good news. ‘He saw our gate, did he?'

Reflected light flared in his eyes. Then it was gone.

‘Oh, he did.' The friar beamed; but for me, mystified by this exchange, the chapel was suddenly gloomy again and where I had been vaguely aware of a sense of joy I now felt something close to depression. ‘I had best be getting home I suppose,' I said.

Friar Isidore answered in surprise. ‘The fog. Aren't you unsure? Isn't it dangerous? If the gate has moved you could become lost forever as others have. You'll be walking back?' His concern betrayed a certain innocence. ‘Can you find your way?'

I was charmed by him. I laughed. ‘Easily. Thanks.' We shook hands, his dry, delicate, almost-transparent skin rustling against mine. I'd felt nothing like it. So old, so soft, so thin I thought I might tear it!

‘Meet me here at the bookshop by The Swan With Two Necks, at half past three,' he said.

For another instant the scene was framed in pearly pink light until the surrounding shadows merged and we found ourselves in the cloisters again, walking towards the outer gate. Then we stood in the little cobbled cul-de-sac with tall, leaning houses on both sides. The fog was deeper as we made our way back. From the warm windows of The Swan With Two Necks, that brick and daub half-timbered tavern on the opposite corner, came the stink of strong, bitter beer and the somewhat muted sound of voices lowered perhaps in conspiracy. Next door to the tavern stood the bookshop, still open, with shaded oil lamps flickering outside for customers to read by. A large tortoiseshell cat cleaned herself in the window. An old man with long white hair looked up from the book he was examining. On the other side was a spice merchant's, its shutters already closed against the fog. I looked everywhere, hoping for another glimpse of the red-ringleted young woman who had ridden so furiously into the tavern's courtyard. I pretended that I wanted to look at the books, but Friar Isidore hurried now. He took me hesitantly by the elbow to guide me towards that big gate. Did it, like some Inns of Court, still shut at dusk? A few oddly dressed women stopped their gossiping to glance with greater interest at the two of us. He opened the gate just wide enough for me to squeeze through, cautiously glanced out and waved a worried goodbye. ‘Godspeed, Master Michael!'

With its exotic scents and queerly dressed people, this area was more like Soho than the City. I hurried up towards Grays Inn Road. My footsteps gave off that strange muffled echo which defied location. Fog made the world timeless and spaceless. Of course I knew the route well enough, up to Holborn and from there to Brookgate Market, but I was coughing heartily by Chancery Lane. The more I saw of Alsacia, the less my lungs would be able to tolerate the familiar atmosphere of my boyhood, even though I had walked through worse pea-soupers. When the Clean Air Act came into force and it became illegal to burn the coal or coke which gave our fog its distinctive smell, the cities of England lost much of their lethal magic. We would never again see the coalman on his regular rounds, his sacks being counted in, hundredweight by hundredweight, to a million domestic coal holes. His work became a rural or posh-people's trade, along with chimney sweeps and the old reliable street services, like knife grinders and crumpet men you once saw every winter. They were the common cultural-map references we thought would always endure. They vanished before you could turn around, like story papers and gobstoppers. And toy soldiers. While my mum worked I was even looked after by the horse-gypsies who had stabled their livestock in Brooks Mews. They had taught me to ride their ponies through the nearby streets and, like my aunty, tell fortunes with tarot or ordinary playing cards. A few years later, they were gone, absorbed into the rest of the community, lost in the fog of the past.