The Choir (23 page)

He said from the far side of the room, “Mine? Well, I’ve been sitting here recovering from being made a public fool of.”

“Frank!”

“I was led by the nose by the dean. I believed I was trading a chance to buy the headmaster’s house for supporting him in abolishing the choir. No such thing. He’s been supported all round the houses by close and council and school, and thus I end up with egg on my face in the chamber and a chance in a thousand now of getting their support on the house. So the dean gets rid of the choir and keeps the house. I lose the reputation of thirty years.”

Sally got up and crossed the room to him.

“Frank, no, you haven’t, it’s too big a reputation for that—”

“Size makes no difference. You can lose the biggest reputation in the world in three seconds if your enemies have a mind to it. I know I sound bitter. I am bitter. But I’ll pull up.” He looked at Sally. “You’ve a lot to learn about being alone.”

She went down in the lift to the street and found a parking ticket on her windscreen, which filled her with rage because the street was empty, unused at this time of day, and she had been in nobody’s way. She wrote furiously on the ticket, “Use our money to fine people who are really at fault,” shoved it back into its plastic envelope and drove back past the council offices to push it through the public letter box. This was partially soothing, although she would really have liked to scream at a traffic warden as well. Then she drove on to Blakeney Street and parked the car, and let herself into the house to find Henry, who had been brought home by Mrs. Chilworth, sitting on the floor watching television and eating spaghetti hoops out of a tin with a fork.

T
HE PROPOSITION TO MAKE A RECORD IN AN ATTEMPT TO RESCUE
the choir filled Hugh Cavendish with a quite disproportionate fury. He disliked open defiance in his close; he abhorred the giant and ill-controlled passions of men like Alexander Troy; he was offended by the crude amateurishness of the scheme and saw the cathedral’s own sacred dignity as being affronted by it too. Felicity’s return—and the dean was particularly annoyed with her because he knew himself to be susceptible to her personality—had given the whole business a new lease of life at precisely the moment when it had seemed that all vital controls were slipping comfortably into his hands. The business of the choir had successfully deflected public attention from the new lighting scheme, and support for the immense repairs was almost unquestioned; they had even taken on a new apprentice in the cathedral works yard on the strength of donations pouring in and the promise of substantial grants. Then the council had laughed at the notion of taking on the choir, which was precisely what was wanted, as the dean wished it to go but also needed to have been seen to attempt to save it. And then Felicity Troy had come back.

He told himself that he did not care for her opinion any more than he cared for the organist’s or the singing boys’ and men’s or even the bishop’s, for that matter. Ancient English dioceses were poorly served, in his view, by men like Robert Young, who, however
good, had had their view of the pure and ancient doctrinal tradition of the Church damaged by long service overseas. Hugh Cavendish knew the bishop privately did not support him, and even though he had expected this, it was more disturbing when it happened than he would have liked. As for Leo, the frail camaraderie that they had built up over the restoration of the organ seemed to have disintegrated entirely, and, what was worse, the animosity between Leo and the headmaster, whatever its cause, which had looked so very promising to his purpose, seemed to be much diminished.

To have, in the midst of all this, Ianthe and that hopeless boy they had all put themselves out for, so far to no avail, coming to him to ask him to waive the customary facility fee for recording in the cathedral was the last straw. He had lost his temper. No, he had said, he would waive nothing. He would require a fee of three hundred pounds to be put into the lighting fund, and in any case he very much doubted that in the busy summer months, three consecutive evenings could be found for recording. The engineers were all working late in the light season, and they could not possibly be halted; they were the priority. Ianthe had been very rude to him. She had called him a hypocrite and a dog in the manger. When they left him after this disagreeable interview, he found that he was trembling.

He looked down at his desk. Nicholas had left a list there of the music Henry Ashworth was going to sing. “Greensleeves” of course, and some Florentine carnival song and a shepherd boy’s song from the Auvergne and a whole lot of other sentimental rubbish. They proposed to make a single, whatever that was, of the shepherd’s song. It was a scheme quite mortifying in its silliness and doomed to disaster by the sheer incompetent inexperience of the promoters. Why then, he pondered, did it make him so angry, if indeed it could not possibly represent a threat? What was there in the sheer energy of their enthusiasm that nauseated him so much? He roamed up and down his study while Benedict watched him uneasily from the hearth rug. He must not lose control, either of the close or his temper; he must never forget for one moment that he owed, rightly, everything he could give to the sustaining and enrichment of the
cathedral. He picked up the telephone and dialled the cathedral architect.

“Mervyn?”

“Ah! Dean, good morning—”

“Can I trouble you for something?”

Mervyn always made a spinsterish fuss about his busyness. “Of course, Dean, I’m only too pleased but of course I am simply rushed off my feet just now—”

“Only a valuation—”

“A valuation?”

“Could you organize it for me? For the headmaster’s house. There is no need to say anything to anyone of this. If you see Mr. or Mrs. Troy, you might say it was routine.”

There was a pause.

“Dean, I shouldn’t like not to be open—”

“My dear fellow, it is your estimates that are giving us these financial headaches. Three years’ worth of stone-masonry for the parapets alone! I am merely exploring every avenue, you understand. Of course I should always prefer to beg and borrow than sell, but people eventually get to the bottom of their pockets, you know.”

“Quite—”

“Could you do it in the next week?”

“I can’t promise, Dean, though naturally I will do my best—”

“Thank you, Mervyn. Thank you.”

“Dean, I think I should tell you that I met your daughter and a friend talking to John—in the works yard. They were apparently in search of a platform of some kind to stand a chorister on for a recording. I wonder if you—”

“I know all about it,” the dean said. “It’s some childish scheme. Please don’t give them any help.”

“Oh, Dean, I shouldn’t, but I think John—”

“I will speak to John.”

At lunch Bridget was in a strange and noble mood. She helped out his quiche and salad and filled his water glass with a kind of high-minded solicitude, and only when they were peeling apples for dessert afterwards did she make a stately speech about feeling herself to be torn between a wife’s natural duty and a mother’s love.

“I suppose,” the dean said, “you mean Ianthe’s nonsense over this record.”

“Her heart is in it, Huffo.”

“My name is Hugh. If her head were in it, the scheme might have the smallest chance of succeeding. As it is, she will make a great fool of herself, and of the close too, if we are not careful. You cannot possibly think she is right.”

“She talked to me in the kitchen. She talked to me of the soul of the cathedral.”

The dean put down his apple.

“I too have talked to you of the soul of the cathedral. The difference between us is that I am very clear as to what I mean by it. Ianthe is blown hither and thither by her emotions. No doubt this current silliness is an attempt to ingratiate herself with Leo Beckford.”

“At least,” Bridget cried, “I can say I know my children! You are so hard, Huffo, so unforgiving—”

“No doubt,” the dean said, “no doubt that is how you wish to see it.” He got up. “If you will forgive me, I must get on. I will leave you to contemplate the anguish of your position.”

Alexander travelled up to London in a very different mood from the one in which he had gone to seek Felicity. He could not precisely justify his buoyancy, but the mood in the close had so lifted since her return, and the tide of opinion had so swung in the choir’s favor, that he felt it only right to trust in his confident instincts. He wore his dog collar for psychological reasons—a banker in a bronze glass eyrie in Bishopsgate would find him difficult to refuse, thus dressed—but he bought a
Private Eye
to read on the train and treated himself to a taxi to take him to the City.

The old King’s boy, new director of the corporate banking division of a huge Anglo-American conglomerate, greeted him on the sixth floor in a panelled reception area hushed by the depth of its carpet. The receptionist looked like someone’s extremely expensive but reliable wife, and brought them coffee in bone china cups. They sat in a room lined with prints of ships in pewter frames, furnished with the kind of impeccable reproduction furniture Alexander associated
with the third floor of Harrods, and looking over the City’s curious cubist horizon to the consoling dome of St. Paul’s.

Paul Downey made benign small talk about his time at King’s. No, he had not been a chorister, too interested in chasing balls of various sorts, he was afraid, and no, he hadn’t been back to Aldminster since he left, though of course he’d always meant to …

“School mythology claims you as musical,” Alexander said, smiling.

Paul Downey looked abruptly portentous and said, “Opera.”

So Felicity was right. “You’ll find it’s opera he claims to love,” she had said when she heard he was a banker. “It goes with backgammon and skiing in Verbier and handmade shoes. It’s part of proving they aren’t only obsessed with money. It’s terribly
chic
to love opera.”

He had been amazed.

“How do you
know
such things?”

“Malicious observation and reading Mrs. Monk’s newspaper.”

“I love opera too,” Alexander said now, to Paul Downey. “I just wish that
our
wonderful strain of music attracted the money that opera does.”

“Cathedrals do a wonderful job.”

Alexander leaned forward.

“If I can’t raise at least the promise of fifty thousand by October, our choir won’t have a job to do at all, wonderful or not.”

Paul Downey slid a stiff white envelope from the inside pocket of his admirable suit.

“I rather gathered that from your letter. I have worked out some figures because, as you surmised, we do have a charitable fund to draw upon. Let me explain it to you. Our aim is philanthropic and most of our interest is in medical research. We are major contributors to research into heart disease—”

Alexander’s eyes dropped involuntarily to the prosperous curve of Paul Downey’s waistcoat. With difficulty he restrained himself from saying that such support seemed to him hardly altruistic.

“—and cancer of course, and naturally our Third World lending carries an impressive programme of aid projects with it. I am in a rather delicate position, as I am sure you will appreciate, as the
claims of the choir at Aldminster must seem a very
personal
request to my fellow board members. But they have reacted very well, I think. A loan was considered too complicated to arrange on account of its security, but they are pleased to make a
gift
—of five thousand pounds.”

Alexander got up quickly to take his dismay to the window and the prospect of St. Paul’s. Behind him, Paul Downey said in his even, reasonable voice, “You see, it was felt that your choir, however valid to its city, has a very
local
claim. We feel it very much our duty to put money into schemes of at least national and at best international significance. You were most eloquent in your letter about cathedral music, but that is of course your personal enthusiasm. I should feel the same if they tried to axe the chorus at Covent Garden. I do hope you appreciate our point of view.”

There was a silence while Alexander wrestled with himself and then he turned and said with a clumsiness he could not help and much regretted, “Could you not, as an old boy, help us privately, even just to help us raise a loan?”

Paul Downey looked extremely serious.

“Oh no, Mr. Troy. I couldn’t do that.”

“Then I must thank you sincerely for your gift and return to Aldminster.”

Paul Downey rose.

“I wish we could have done more but our responsibilities are—global.”

“Are there any other old boys you can think of who might feel less—detached, shall we say?”

Paul shook his head.

“I’m afraid I have lost touch with almost all of my contemporaries. Regrettable I know, but the pressures of life simply don’t allow me the time any longer.”

In the silent lift dropping him down to street level, Alexander gazed with loathing at the blond suede with which it was lined. Above him and walking swiftly back to his office, Paul Downey reflected for two minutes upon the calibre of Church of England clergymen, and upon how easy it apparently was to lose one’s sense
of proportion living in a provincial town, before his secretary met him and said his call to Tokyo was on the line and waiting.

Alexander’s journey home was in some ways quite as depressing as the last one. That brief brush with the huge, impersonal outside world had only served to make his own cause the more hopeless. However insulated in his own world, Paul Downey’s view of the cathedral close at Aldminster—admirable, excellent, worthy, but
small
, a spot of local bother—was perfectly genuine. He could, he supposed, trail round from company to company, cap in hand, but he would never raise enough to
secure
the choir’s future, and he would half kill himself in self-abasement to achieve it. It was salutary but profoundly discouraging to see his cause as others saw it, and he must make use of the lesson, if he possibly could. If the outside world couldn’t, with the best will in the world, see the size of the problem, then the inside world of Aldminster must be made to.