There’s a porter, in fact the same man who was there in my day. Root, I
think he’s called. He’s always in the entrance hall, so there shouldn’t be
any gap when she’s alone. But on this occasion she was late for some
reason, and she came out of the side entrance. The kidnap car was
parked somewhere near Michel’s and she reached it first. Apparently it
was rather like ours. A black Mercedes. Just one man inside. There was
no struggle. She didn’t scream or anything. Perhaps she was too
surprised.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘A Veepian, a sixth-former, Clarissa Bennet I think she was called; she
came out just after Jessica and saw it all. She wasn’t sure what was happening. Then she saw Michel, put two and two together and raised the alarm. There was no violence. Not even a kerfuffle. I gather it was about ten minutes before everyone realised what had happened and
another ten before the police arrived.
‘Twenty minutes for them to be gone in.’
Stella’s tears, which had been kept at bay by her concentration on the
facts she was reciting, now coursed down her face.
‘Do you know, can you guess who or why?’
Finally Stella said, ‘There’s nothing. We have – ’ she glanced round –
‘nothing.’
Theodora followed her glance with raised eyebrow. Stella smiled a
forgiving moue of a smile. ‘I mean, comparatively. George isn’t a shipowner. He’s a soldier. The house is mostly embassy issue. One or two
things of my family’s. But as a ransom, surely not worth while.’ ‘The Greek government?’
‘Are hardly going to shell out for the daughter of a military attaché.’ ‘Are you certain it was a political kidnapping?’
Stella shrugged pathetically. ‘What else could it be? The car. The
planning. The timing. It wasn’t casual.’
‘Hence your Mercedes with toughened glass?’
‘It’s partly prestige. Anyone at the level of attaché tends to get toughened
glass. Many military don’t feel safe outside armoured cars, anyway. Not
that George is like that at all. He’s brave as a lion but, yes, he’s done his
bit, of course, and has his enemies like others in the Greek army officer
class.’
‘So revenge is a possibility, you would guess?’
‘It’s what I – we – fear most.’
‘Can you pin down the revenge motive, I mean, to particular episodes?’
Theodora could hardly ask what horrors George had perpetrated in his
time and to whom.
Mrs Stephanopoulos turned in her tiny armchair so that she was facing
Theodora. There was a momentary pause and Theodora’s refined
pastoral sense detected a change of emotional tone. Whether it was
going to lead to greater honesty or merely another change of scene,
time would tell.
Eventually the longing to unburden herself to a safe source won. The
solidity, the sheer goodness of generations of competent Anglican clerics
drew Stella Stephanopoulos. ‘You must understand that Greek politics
and, indeed, Greek society is not at all like English,’ she began. ‘Did you
read classics by any chance?’
Theodora nodded.
‘Of course. Well, it’s all much more like Homer with the nastier bits of
Thucydides thrown in.’
‘Power and honour the main motives?’
‘Which, when they’re actually experienced at close quarters, look, feel
much more like brutality and arrogance. Not that George is brutal, but his
family has been reasonably successful. They come from the north,
Macedonia. They were prominent in the 1840s, repelling the Turks in the
war of independence. Later they did quite well under the monarchy. The
family was pretty comfortable. George’s father, Andreas, could afford to
live off inherited income. He collected, mostly Byzantine stuff, dealt a
little, was something of a scholar. When the Nazis walked in in May 1941,
they were all massively unprepared. Andreas’s mother, George’s
grandmother, had been German originally, something to do with the
court-in-waiting, something like that. I think he thought it might be all
right. He …’ Stella hesitated. ‘Andreas didn’t quite fight the Germans. He
tried to get the family out of the country and didn’t manage it. George was
born in 1938, so he says he hardly remembers the war, but it was
undoubtedly tough. The Nazis arrested Andreas in ’41 and George didn’t
see his father for two years. While he was away, George’s mother died of
septacaemia. There were simply no medicines, you see.’
Theodora reviewed the bits of this tale which had been left unsaid: a
German grandmother; a difficult time; a father who didn’t quite fight but
then ended in a German prison camp; a needy, motherless family used
to riches and not quite having them. Were there tensions there which, a
generation later, could lead to kidnapping?
‘George’s father, Jessica’s grandfather, is he still alive?’ Theodora
asked.
‘Andreas died in ’84. Heart attack.’
‘Then why should anyone want to take revenge on his granddaughter?’ ‘There was too much money,’ Stella said with a rush, ‘and he got out
too early.’
Theodora was puzzled. ‘You mean?’
‘The Germans let grandfather out of prison in ’43. Too early. And after
the war he had enough money to go into politics. Not a cheap matter in
Greece anyway, if you weren’t of the left, which of course, Andreas wasn’t.’ ‘You mean he might have dealt with the Nazis in some way?’ Stella shrugged her tiny shrug. ‘We’ve never discussed it. It would be
very painful to someone of George’s temperament. He is the soul of honour,
you understand … Any stain of that kind would be unendurable for him.’ Faced with such a cul-de-sac. Theodora could only try again. ‘Is there
anything which your husband is aware of which could lead to the
abduction of his daughter? I mean, whatever her family have or have not
done, surely hurting the child is barbaric.’
‘Oh my dear,’ Stella’s fine brown eyes turned to Theodora. ‘I’m sure you
are classicist enough to know it’s practically a tradition in Greece.’ ‘Had she,’ Theodora explored fresh ground, ‘any intimation, do you
think, that she was in danger?’
‘I don’t know how much children of that age pick up about their position
in life. She’s been brought up internationally. She was born in Athens,
and we were in Cyprus when the Turkish thing blew up; we all left rather
quickly. After that we did a spell in the States. It was supposed to be full of
crime, but in fact I found it rather restful after the Near East. Living here, of
course – ’ Mrs Stephanopoulos spread her hands to indicate the security
of London – ‘we tend to suppose we’re safe.’
‘What sort of a girl is Jessica?’ Theodora stopped herself saying ‘was’
in time.
Stella’s voice broke and Theodora, previously alienated by the theatre
and the props, melted in pity for the woman. ‘She was terribly ordinary.
Much more English than Greek. Of course we’ve always had English, or
anyway, Scottish nannies, and she really isn’t outstanding in any way.’ Mrs Stephanopoulos made ordinariness sound like a virtue which,
Theodora thought, given her husband’s rackety family, she was justified
in doing. She turned to the table behind her. On it was a silver-framed
black and white photograph of the head and shoulders of a girl. It was so
small that Theodora had missed it. She had the feeling it did not usually
stand in that place. It was too small and too intimate. She looked into the
face of a girl of about fourteen, fair straight hair scraped severely back
from a broad brow, a thin face, deep-set eyes which considered the
observer, returned their gaze and gave nothing away. An ordinary face,
as her mother had said, but perhaps distinguished by a hint of strength,
Theodora thought. Round Jessica’s neck she could see a small Greek
cross.
‘She was going through a religious phase just now,’ Mrs
Stephanopoulos said. ‘That’s quite normal for fourteen-year-olds, isn’t
it?’ Stella sought Theodora’s expert reassurance in such matters. ‘It made
her a little bit secretive. I think she felt that her father didn’t approve.
I suppose she was right in a way. George feels religion is part of the state
apparatus, it keeps the peasants happy but it’s not for the intelligent. He
didn’t like the idea of a devout daughter. Her grandfather, Andreas, wanted her to be Orthodox but I felt it would be safer to have her confirmed as an
Anglican so she joined the class at St Veep’s. She’s to be done at Easter.’ Theodora felt she was getting nowhere. ‘Could we see her room?’ she
asked on an impulse.
Theodora squeezed round the narrow staircase behind the slim form
of Mrs Stephanopoulos to the third, the attic floor. The room was small
and unexpectedly elegant for a girl of fourteen. There was a total absence
of photographs of pop stars. Instead there were white walls, a grey carpet
and pink curtains, a smell of pot-pourri and a glimpse of St Mary’s Church
Row from the single window. A solid mahogany bookshelf reached the
ceiling on the wall opposite the window. On the other wall opposite the
bed was a tallboy on which stood what Theodora recognised as an icon
case in chased silver, its doors folded back. It was a picture of the Virgin
and child. The calm, austere face of the Virgin was turned towards the
front and her son raised his hand in blessing on her arm. The icon was
flanked by two silver candles. Theodora noticed that the candles in the
sticks were new but that both wicks were blackened.
‘A beautiful thing,’ Theodora murmured. She wondered what terrors
Jessica had repelled by meditation on such an object.
‘Her grandfather, Andreas, gave it to her before he died. It’s not valuable
but she seems very fond of it.’
It was the icon which stayed with Theodora as she drove home from
the unsatisfactory visit. We’re surrounded every day by artifacts which
remind us of heaven, the kingdom of God, the other world, she reflected
as she sped downhill from Hampstead to Betterhouse. Spires, crosses,
statues, icons, architecture, language itself, our society is saturated with
these angelic voices. Why do we not heed them?
CHAPTER FIVE
Parish Life
Geoffrey loped the hundred yards from the vicarage to the church. He’d seen members of his youth club vault the gravestones, and felt envy that a cassock prevented his following suit. He swerved round the south side of the building and kicked with minimum force the bottom of the wooden door. A smell of Rentokil mixed with old incense met him. In the nave a cement mixer turned like some musical instrument as its load thudded quietly from one side to the other. He’d grown fond of the cement mixer. On Sundays the builders put a tarpaulin over it, in case it should offend the congregation. In the choir there were scaffold poles and piles of sand. Mixing boards provided stepping stones from presbytery to pulpit. To get to the pulpit was a gymnastic feat which both Geoffrey and his congregation relished. On the first occasion, he had leaped the trestles, ducked under the polythene sheeting, and manhandled a cement bag. He’d been rewarded by a round of applause from those attending the family eucharist. Theodora had remarked afterwards that he must find his naval training a great resource.
It suited Geoffrey, he had to admit. He’d be sorry when everything was shipshape, the physical challenge receded, and he was left with a building fit only to be used for formal worship.
Geoffrey had a strong sense of place. He had chosen Betterhouse for his first living quite as much as Better-house’s PCC and the Watermen’s Company, who were its patrons, had chosen him. When he had completed his curacy and the time had come for him to seek his first living, he’d prayed, reflected, and then rung an old friend of his in the Automobile Association. They’d gone up in his helicopter and circled London. The helicopter was noisy: speech was impossible. As they reached Gravesend, Geoffrey had gestured towards the Thames and mouthed, ‘Can we follow it?’ Harry Gunn had nodded assent and they had followed the evernarrowing silver and khaki strip in the late afternoon light of a fine July day.
Geoffrey had surveyed the river frontage from Tilbury to Barnes. What stood out was not the railways or the banks but the churches: Wren and Hawkesmore, Gibbes and Street, classical and gothic revival, pointed their sharp spires, their balanced and confident towers, upward to the heavens. Woolwich, the Dogs, Deptford, Limehouse, Wapping and Southwark, Geoffrey’s gaze swept from north to south banks as they choppered on.
‘I think,’ he’d resolved, ‘I’ll have one of those.’ In the event it was St Sylvester’s Betterhouse, a huge gothic revival church on the south bank, upstream from Lambeth, that had fallen vacant. The Watermen’s Company were not averse to having an ex-naval man in charge.
Geoffrey’s predecessor, Canon Langthorne, clerical grandson of the clerical builder of the original church in the 1870s, had had to spend the greater part of his increasingly frail energies striving to keep the roof watertight. The battle against the elements had been an unequal one. The roof had continued to leak and the congregation, unvisited, untaught, unsupported in the ordinary crises of life, faced only with demands for money which they did not have, had petered out, claimed by death or accidie.
Geoffrey knew that people, even religious people, need the concrete. Buildings and artefacts are necessary to nourish sanctity in the midst of the terrors of an unholy world: just as we can’t keep upright as human beings without institutions, traditions, systems and networks, so we can’t manage to progress in the spiritual life without holy places and holy things. Geoffrey’s evangelical brother clergy who were wont to proclaim that people were more important than buildings, had underestimated the potency of place and time and overestimated the ability of sheep to sustain religious patterns of living without frequent reminders. To create, to maintain a Christian culture we need help, Geoffrey reflected, wheresoever we can get it.
The building of St Sylvester’s Betterhouse had been designed explicitly to provide such help and such reminders. It stood on the edge of the parish, its spire visible still from every part of it. At its back, behind the vicarage, the Thames flowed. The church’s architecture was extreme enough to merit mention in the guides on gothic revival. It had been designed by a rich priest for a poor area. He had spent his fortune on it and it had left him nobly and happily poor. He had taken his time and not been afraid to change his mind. A pupil of Street had entered into the spirit of the thing, and designed everything from steeple to door-hinges, to symbolise and remind the congregation of the great Christian truths. Every sort of material had been used to celebrate the diversity of creation: marble, brick, stone, encaustic tiles, tesseral and glass were meant to remake the medieval in patterns arranged
to bring the worshipper to his knees. The effect was, as Canon Langthorne had wished, overwhelming. In the enormous nave saints leaned from their niches between the clerestory windows, urging upon the worshipper the message of the gospel.
Alas, as the century after the first foundation stones were laid wore on, those very features which had aimed to attract and uplift the ordinary people of Betterhouse began to mystify, frighten and repel them. Geoffrey was aware that few of his parishioners understood the building’s symbolism, or its aids to safe living. He acknowledged he had much to do. He was determined that the pattern of his own ministry should be different from that of his predecessor. And he’d been fortunate. The bishop had retired, the Watermen had produced funds, his own energy had been matched by that of an archdeacon. The renewed building, its roof tight against the elements, had begun to emerge from its long slumber.
He gazed down the length of the enormous nave, built to seat five hundred at the height of the church-going 1870s, before the car had destroyed Sunday observance. Far away in front of him, five steps led up to the high altar, a stone table with a daunting gilt reredos at its back. ‘Be ye high and lifted up’, said the psalmist. Well, the altar on its sacred mountain always had that effect on Geoffrey. It achieved its purpose. It quelled, it dominated, it made one think of quite other things than everyday life. Places, Geoffrey knew, form and constrain conduct. He had served on large ships and small ones, helicopters so cramped you put your crew’s eye out by too sudden a movement, and transports so large you could hold a dance in them. But of all his working environments, Geoffrey loved this one, his first church, the best.
‘You will be coming for your prayers,’ said a voice high up on his left. Geoffrey caught sight of the beautifully turbaned and bearded head of the building foreman six foot up on the scaffolding between the organ pipes and the high altar.
‘No, Mr Singh, I’m just going to sort the boot sale stuff in the vestry. I won’t disturb you.’ ‘You never disturb us, Reverend Geoffrey,’ Mr Singh replied tranquilly, and withdrew his face between the scaffold poles like a green man retiring into his foliage.
When the builders had first taken possession of the church the previous autumn, Geoffrey had talked about having to work round them. He’s spoken in this way to Theodora, new to the parish but not to parish ways. But he’d been wrong. They’d taught him to work not round them but with them. They were a gang based on the family principle. Mr Singh had originally worked for an old local family, Makepeace Brothers, who’d reached bankruptcy in the 1980s. They had been saved by the immigrant influx of which Mr Singh and his family were examples. Mr Singh had started in a dignified way mixing cement by hand and patiently handing bricks to a young cockney. The cockney had broken his neck one rainy night when his motorcycle misjudged a bollard, and Mr Singh had taken his place. In time Mr Singh had introduced his cousin, an accountant, to the firm; his nephews, Mr Mahood and Mr Talwar, followed after a decent interval. They worked with a sort of rhythmic, dependable precision. In their private life they helped to found and supported the local gurdwara. They were sober, reliable and quick to learn. They bought out the last of the ailing Makepeace brothers. The firm prospered.
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