The Choir (11 page)

“In two weeks, sir. I’ve got my ruff now and Mrs. Ridgeway’s fed up because the new ones have got Velcro, not buttons, and she doesn’t believe in Velcro so she’s got to take it off and put buttons on.”

“We must rehearse you. Before the war, full choristers were always given a ceremonial copy of Boyce’s
Cathedral Music.
” He eyed Henry. “Perhaps it is as well that we don’t do that anymore because the book is about as big as you and Chilworth put together.”

Chilworth, who had been arguing with Briggs, dropped back now beside Henry to say, “Sing A flat.”

Henry sang.

“Sing A double flat.”

“There,” Chilworth said, “I
told
stupid Briggs you could,” and ran back to his argument.

A sudden affection for them all shook Alexander in a spasm of gratitude. He looked down at Henry with warmth.

“Fluke,” Henry mumbled, and blushed. “Sir,” he said.

The dean and the clerk of works, an experienced and lugubrious man who had to have the last word on everything, spent a depressing hour together in the clerestory walkways. Jim Woodcote, conscious that the responsibility for damp of this magnitude was bound to be laid at his door, was more silent than usual, even to the point of frequently ignoring the dean’s anxious questions. It was apparent to both of them that the trouble spot was a long line along the edge of the south face of the nave roof towards the western end, the face most naturally exposed to the rain-laden winds from the estuary. Woodcote’s powerful torch beam picked out long dark fingers of damp creeping up the vault of the nave ceiling and, most alarmingly, the odd shining trickles of wet running from the clerestory recesses at the points where the great springing ribs of the roof left the walls. As Jim Woodcote’s own alarm grew, so his manner became more and more dour. Having declined to speak at all for some ten minutes, he turned at last to the dean and said he couldn’t make any kind of assessment until he’d been up on the roof outside and had a look at the west and south parapets on the nave roof. He then shut his mouth tight and made sweeping movements with his torch to indicate that they should descend to the ground. Hugh Cavendish, endeavouring to remind himself what a marvellous craftsman and tireless overseer Woodcote was, had no choice but to obey.

He went home in a mood as abject as it had, earlier that afternoon, been elated. Half an hour remained to him before he must set out, forty minutes across the diocese, for a cheese-and-wine party given by the Friends of the Cathedral, a splendid body the prospect of
whose zealousness, in his present frame of mind, was severely daunting. In the drawing room Bridget was having one of her clergy wives’ teas, occasions which the dean knew divided far more than they united, since half the wives asked could never come on account of being full-time teachers or physiotherapists or nurses, and their absence was made much of by the regular core of Bridget’s slaves, who attended punctually. From upstairs came the thump of Cosmo’s reggae, unnecessarily loud on account of Cosmo’s being temporarily gated, as requested by Mr. Miller, to prevent his leading his freewheeling gang through the residential streets of Horsley after school hours, taking lids off dustbins and calling obscenities softly through letter boxes. If the dean were to go up and ask Cosmo to turn the music down, Cosmo would smile at him with immense frank warmth and indicate by dumb show that he could not hear and therefore could not oblige. If the dean attempted to touch the cassette player himself, Cosmo would wait until he had gone downstairs and then turn the noise up until the house trembled from cellar to attic. When the dean had once taken the machine away altogether, Bridget, saying “Poor Father is so tired, he isn’t himself at all,” had given it back to Cosmo within hours.

The dean went into his study and closed the door upon all the varied domestic defiance in the rest of the house. He crossed to the window and looked with love and something close to anguish at the cathedral, suddenly seeming, for all its majesty, so vulnerable, a great spirit dwelling precariously in a frail fabric. He could not bear the thought of giving up the lighting scheme; Mr. Harvey had fired him with visions of the nave roof illuminated with an almost theatrical magic by concealed floodlights and fluorescent tubes, the triforium arches silhouetted against a hidden glow, the choir screen standing dramatic and dark against the upflung light from the chancel beyond. And in any case, if the roof was really serious, would forty-five thousand pounds make that much difference? The clock struck five-thirty. He was due at Croxton in forty-five minutes, and he still had on his dusty shoes and old flannels from climbing about the cathedral. The journey at least would serve as thinking time; he felt instinctively that he must have some suggestions ready, some
plan afoot to defend his lighting scheme against the demands the roof was bound to make, irresistibly, of the cathedral coffers. He opened the study door. They were singing “Jerusalem” in the drawing room, no doubt to emphasize, to any clergy wife who was in the least doubt, that in Bridget’s eyes the Women’s Institute, which she virtually commanded in the county, was a body of much greater significance than the Church. Sighing for a dozen reasons, Hugh Cavendish grasped the lovely bannister rail and began to climb the stairs wearily to change.

“Shut your eyes,” Leo said, “while I put the light on and decide whether I can bear to let you look.”

“I live with men,” Sally said reasonably, “and work for another. I’m quite used to mess.”

“But this,” Leo said in a voice that had an edge of awe to it, “this is really five-star mess.”

She opened her eyes.

“So it is.”

“If I’d known I was going to have the impulse to ask you back here, I wouldn’t have left it like this.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Didn’t I what?”

“Know you might have the impulse to ask me back?”

“Of course I did,” Leo said. “I’m as poor a liar as I am a housekeeper. I suppose it’s a sort of test. If you can stand this, I might have a chance—”

“A chance?”

“Sally, don’t
flirt
with me.”

“Why—”

“Because I’m serious.”

“You can’t be. You came to supper last night and we went to the wine tasting tonight and—”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh Lord,” Sally said, but she was enchanted.

Leo went to the window and pulled the single curtain until it hung in a panel across the centre, and then he took an armful of
books, a cardboard box of bottles, and a muddle of newspapers off the sofa and said, “Sit down. I think I’ve got some wine.”

“I don’t really want any more to drink.”

“Coffee?”

“Lovely.”

“It isn’t. It’s instant. Don’t let me be serious, Sally, I’m so
useless
.”

“It isn’t up to me,” she said dangerously.

“I said, Sally, don’t flirt.”

“I don’t know what to do with you.”

He knelt by the sofa.

“
I
know what I want to do with
you
—”

She had the same inward sliding sensation she had had when he had arrived at the wine tasting and stood in the doorway, looking round for her. She was helping her boss pull corks and pour wine, so she couldn’t do much more than wave, and he came across the room and looked at her most particularly and took a glass in either hand saying, “Burgundy and Burgundy?” and went away to talk to other people. She hadn’t exchanged another word with him for an hour, and then he had come back and said, “Come home with me, for half an hour, so we can talk,” and here she was in this charming crooked chaotic room with Leo about to make love to her and her wanting him to, all the way.

She said, “I must think.”

“Fatal.”

He got off his knees and stood up.

“I’m going to find some coffee in my evil kitchen.”

She followed him across the room and leaned in the doorway while he poked around finding mugs and spoons and the coffee jar.

“Leo, I really don’t know
what
I’m doing. Am I just another bored wife married to a man I never see who is periodically unfaithful to me anyway? Are you just lonely?”

“It isn’t like you to talk like that.”

“But you don’t know what I’m like! You can’t—”

“I can and do know enough to perceive in you a coolness and a gallantry that I am bowled over by. You’re also wildly attractive.”

“So are you.”

“That’s better,” Leo said.

Sally said in a much steadier voice, “I didn’t mean to sound as if I was whining. But it has all rather rushed in and grabbed me when I wasn’t looking.”

“Hasn’t it just.”

He handed her a mug.

“Tell me about Alan.”

“If you like. But I shan’t reveal anything at all interesting. I just don’t like him much anymore. We have nothing to say to each other and nothing in common except Henry.”

“So?”

“So it has crossed my mind fairly frequently in the last year that I don’t want my life to trail on like this much longer. I sometimes think, What if this is all there is?”

Leo steered her towards the sofa and sat down beside her.

“Have you had an affair with anyone?”

“Since I married Alan? No.”

“Well,” Leo said, without moving towards her, “you’re going to now.”

“It isn’t just your decision.”

He inclined his head.

“We’ll go at any pace you like. Can’t you see? I want to do what you want, as well as what I want.”

“I’ve never got so far so fast with anyone in my life.”

“Nor me.”

“You were married though, weren’t you?”

He got up and pulled the book of photographs from under the magazines on the bookshelf. Sally followed him. He opened the book and put it in her hands.

“There she is.”

“What happened?”

“I was desperate for her to marry me until she did and then it was quite hopeless. I never liked her really, I was just desperate.”

“Are you desperate now?”

“No,” he said, “just enormously happy,” and he took the book away from her and put his arms around her and was kissing her
when Alexander, who had found the front door unlatched, knocked at the sitting room one and walked in without waiting for an answer.

Sally tried to break free, but Leo held her.

“Alexander,” he said. His voice was quite level.

“
Please
,” Sally said and Leo let go. She went quickly across the room to Alexander, said, “Good night, Mr. Troy,” and slipped past him and out of the door.

“What are you
doing
?” Alexander demanded.

“A superfluous question.”

“That,” Alexander said, advancing on him, “that is the mother of one of your choristers, do you realize? Henry Ashworth is a charge of both yours and mine. What are you thinking of?”

“Of her, and of myself.”

“Leo, Leo—”

“Why are you here?”

“I rather wanted to talk.”

Leo sighed and put his hand on Alexander’s arm and guided him to the sofa.

“I’ll talk all you like but not about Sally Ashworth.”

“It can’t go further, Leo, you must give her up—”

“No.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Two days, properly.”

“Then—”

“
No
, Alexander.”

He went into the kitchen and found the bottle of wine Sally had refused and returned with it and two glasses and a corkscrew.

“You’ve only just staggered through the last scandal, Leo.”

“This isn’t a scandal.”

“Do you think you love her?”

“Do you think I am going to tell you something I haven’t even told her?” His voice became angry. “You haven’t any prerogative on love—”

Felicity’s name hung unspoken in the air between them.

“I don’t want to quarrel with you.”

Leo held out a glass of wine.

“Very wine ordinary, I’m afraid.”

They drank for a while in silence. Then Alexander began to talk about the council’s designs upon the headmaster’s house and the episode with the dean that afternoon, and Leo said how thankful he was to be out of the close politics.

“You might be dragged in, willy-nilly.”

“Why?”

“I sense a thunderstorm rumbling away round the edges.”

Leo refrained from saying that perhaps it was Alexander’s own personal thunderstorm, and said instead, “Oh, it’s always like this. Storms in teacups. Remember my appointment, for one.”

Alexander stood up.

“I must go.”

“I think you haven’t said what you came to say.”

“It went wrong,” Alexander said, “didn’t it?”

“You’d better say it. It’s either now or some other time and I’d rather hear it now.”

“I came,” Alexander said, “for some balm for my wounds. But from your last remark, I can see that that’s the last thing I’ll get—”

“You mean Felicity.”

“Yes.”

Leo put a brief hand on Alexander’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry about that. But I can’t help you. I can only hope fiercely that she will come back to you.”

“I shall go looking for her, if she doesn’t.”

“Alexander—”

“She’s my wife. We are bound to each other. I can’t just feebly let her drift.”

“She’s a person—”

“All persons are persons. But this one is my beloved wife. There’s a world of difference between giving someone room and leaving them to be lonely and afraid. That’s one of the things marriage is
for
.”

Leo said, thinking of Sally, “And if
marriage
leaves you lonely and afraid?”

“You must signal for help.”

“As Sally Ashworth is now doing.”

“But not,” Alexander said with emphasis, “to her husband.”

“He won’t listen.”

“Or perhaps you will listen more easily and sympathetically.”

Leo picked up his and Sally’s coffee mugs.

“You love Felicity. Sally and Alan do not love each other anymore. Coffee?”

Alexander shook his head.

“Judith and I stopped loving each other. We didn’t
mean
to but it happened. You are lucky to be so unhappy, you are lucky to love someone as you love Felicity.”

“I know. But I don’t think I should give up if I stopped—oh God, what a stupid conversation! We mean so many things by love, so many rich and various things that there must
always
be enough of something left to help a marriage to survive—”