When Amanda stopped talking, the sounds of the English countryside reasserted themselves. There were grasshoppers in the dry grass. A flock of starlings passed overhead like a dark cloud, formed, re-formed and swept away.
“I was in the kitchen, trying to find out what had happened to all the servants, when the Gangas arrived. There were five of them, almost naked. They were carrying machetes and iron-wood clubs. Jobo was arguing with them, telling them to go away, I suppose. They cut him to pieces. The first blow nearly took his head off. Then they started cutting off his arms and legs. They were like boys playing a game. Then Father came out. He must have heard the noise. He just stood looking down at what was left of Jobo. The man nearest to him took a swipe at him with his club and broke his leg. They’d have killed him, of course, but at that moment they caught sight of me in the window. They all swung round and came crowding into the kitchen. The only thing I could do was back into the corner and crouch down. I think my legs had given way under me. That was when they saw something more interesting than a sixteen-year-old girl. There were a dozen lumps of raw meat on the dresser. They grabbed them and started stuffing them into their mouths. The blood was running down their chins and dripping onto their naked bodies. They fought each other for the odd piece. I suppose they must have been starving. Father, who had dragged himself to the doorway, stood watching them. As long as I live, I shall never forget the look on his face. A few moments later the five men were all rolling on the floor in agony, jerking and twisting. They died quite soon. The meat was bait, for the foxes. There was cyanide in each lump. I don’t remember much after that. The servants who had run away came back. They buried the Gangas. They could have driven Father into Jimma, where there was a hospital, but he wouldn’t let them. He showed them how to set and splint his leg. It wasn’t a sensible thing to do and it made a lot of trouble later. Something went wrong with the leg bone. It had to be broken and reset. He was nearly a year in and out of hospital when we got back to England. I think he welcomed the pain. It was a penance for what he’d done. He could have stopped them, you see. He knew enough of their language to shout out, ‘Poison!’ But he didn’t. He let them die. If he’d had to do it to save the Church, it would have been justified. It wasn’t justified to save me. I told you not to look at me.”
James said, “Sorry.” He knew that she was crying, although she was making no noise about it. He watched two boys on bicycles racing each other on the road at the foot of the down.
Their shouts came distantly up to him. When Amanda spoke again, she seemed to be back on balance.
She said, “Now you know what a dangerous man he is.”
“Not an easy member for a cathedral community to accommodate,” agreed James.
“Oh, he got on well enough with most of them. Tom Lister was a great standby. Is it true you were talking to him on the night he died?”
“Quite true.”
“What a perfect way to go. Like a candle being blown out when it’s time for bed. I wonder if he knew it was going to happen.”
“I think he must have done.”
“What did you talk about?”
“He said that scientists were so dangerous that they ought to be locked up in their own laboratories.”
“James,” said Amanda, “you do like me, don’t you?” Before he could say anything, she went on, “Because if you do, you mustn’t talk to me as though I was ten years old.”
“I’m sorry. It was quite a long discussion.” He tried to collect his thoughts. “What Tom seemed to feel was that scientists were all right when they were doing their proper job, which was, I suppose, inventing useful things like anaesthetics and antibiotics, but when they went too far and meddled with things they weren’t meant to meddle with, they were stepping out of their proper ground and that was when they hurt people more than they helped them. I didn’t agree. I said that a scientist must always go the whole way and damn the consequences.”
“Then you were wrong and Tom was right.”
“You really think that?”
“Certainly. Do you believe in God?”
Faced with this sudden and practically unanswerable question, James took refuge in silence.
“Before you say something stupid, let me tell you what I don’t mean. I’m not asking if you believe that there’s an old man with a white beard waiting to say hello when you go aloft, or that if you live respectably down here on the ground floor, you earn yourself a stay in a golden penthouse afterward.”
“I’m with Omar on that,” agreed James. “’For this is truth, though all the rest be lies. The rose that once is blown forever dies.’”
“Right. But what I do mean is that all this—” Amanda lay back on her elbows and looked down at the patchwork of fields below them “—all this can’t just be blind chance. Someone must have thought it out. The world and all the weird and wonderful creatures in it. The dolphins, who knew all about radar before we imagined we’d invented it, and the swallows that come every year, without maps or compasses, from a particular house in North Africa to a particular house in Melchester, and the ants who organise themselves like an army, and hummingbirds, and the creatures who live so deep down in the sea that no one has ever set eyes on them, to say nothing of the balance of elements that allows the world to exist at all. Don’t tell me it’s all a fluke.”
“Darwin—” said James.
“Oh, Darwin. All he explained was why some giraffes have longer necks than others. He doesn’t get near the real point that some intelligence, so much more intelligent than we are that we can’t even begin to understand it, must have thought it all out. Ever since people have started to think, they’ve realised that an intelligence like that must exist. Mostly they’ve been prepared to be thankful and enjoy their luck. It’s only scientists who probe and peer. It’s so—so impertinent. And dangerous, because they never know when to stop. And what happens at the end of the day? They produce a baby out of a test tube and think they’ve done something terribly clever.”
James had listened in silence to the altars of his faith being trampled on. What he would have said was never put to the test, since a lady, who had approached Helmet Down from the rear, arrived at this moment with an English setter which fell on Amanda and started to lick her face.
“Good walk?” said Peter.
“Smashing.”
“You look stiff.”
“I am stiff.”
“I’m telling you, don’t let that girl get you onto a squash court. She’ll run you off your feet.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“What did you find to talk about?”
“Everything under the sun,” said James. “What about a drink? I could just hobble as far as the Black Lion.”
“Not tonight. Thursdays and Fridays are no-booze and early-bed nights. We’ve got a needle match on Saturday against Salisbury. They always put out a good side.”
“In that case,” said James, “since I didn’t get much lunch and no tea at all, I think I’ll stand myself a proper evening meal for once.”
He was not sorry to be alone. He didn’t want to talk about Amanda. He wanted to think about her. The elaborate four-course dinner at the Black Lion, with decorous intervals between the courses, gave him plenty of time to do this.
For a start, how old was she? If she had been sixteen or seventeen at the time of the Ganga episode and had come back to England soon after that, and her father had been in and out of hospital for a year and had been at Melchester for the best part of two years, that made her about twenty. She looked older than that, but, living the sort of life she did, she’d have grown up quickly. That last episode must have been traumatic. Clearly, it was not for general publication, since all that he had heard before had been vague rumours. From remarks dropped during the school walk he gathered that there were at least three versions current among the boys, the most widely believed being that the Dean had a wooden leg in place of one cut off and eaten by cannibals.
/> “Red currant jelly with it, sir?”
“Thank you,” said James, “I think I’d rather have mint sauce.”
Why had she confided in him? A number of explanations occurred to him, some more flattering than others. She was a serious girl. No doubt about that. With very definite ideas about life – and death. She was also, probably, still a virgin. Though damned nearly not. Damned nearly deflowered and dead. He visualised her father watching silently while his enemies destroyed themselves. What had she said about that? If he had done such a thing for his Church, it would have been justified. But not to save his own daughter. He had regarded that as a sin which merited penance. That was a hard, bitter philosophy.
“Will you take the sweet, sir?
“Will you take the sweet, sir?”
“I’ll have the raspberries.”
“With some cream?”
“Yes, I’d like some cream.”
By the time he had finished his second cup of coffee, he was alone in the dining room and the waiters were beginning to lay the tables for breakfast. He paid his bill and strolled out into the street. It was a black, heavy night. The moon and stars were hidden by an overcast sky. Not a night when sleep would come easily. He decided to make a gentle detour to the south of the town to stretch his legs. By the time this leisurely circuit had brought him to the River Gate, it was shut. The Bishop’s Gate would be shut too. He would have to circle the Close wall widdershins to reach the High Street Gate. By the time he got there, it was a few minutes short of eleven and he was surprised to find the Close Constable absent from his post. Mullins was usually waiting inside the gate to count in the latecomers and close the gate as soon as the last of his flock was inside.
A short cut across the school playing field brought James to the north front of the Cathedral. Here he stopped. There was a light showing, shining out through the clerestory window. It was a single light and he guessed that it must come from the organ loft. A moment later this was confirmed. He heard the sound of the organ being played. It could only be Paul Wren. Paul had, he knew, a private key of the cloister door and sometimes practised in the evenings, but not often at eleven o’clock at night. He decided to investigate.
The cloisters, which formed an open square at the southwest corner of the Cathedral, were in deep shadow. James felt his way along. As he reached the far end, something moved in the blackness. James threw up an arm in an instinctive gesture of defence, then lowered it again. It was Mullins. James said, “Does he often do this?”
“Never before,” said Mullins. “I thought I’d better come along and have a look. Ten to one he’ll forget to lock the door when he goes. Then it’s me that gets into trouble.”
When he opened the door, a very faint reflection of the light from the organ loft emphasised the vast emptiness of the Cathedral. The organist was improvising, starting one cadence and breaking off into another, using the softest stops, in little runs and trills.
“Odd sort of music,” said Mullins.
“He isn’t playing. He’s talking to the organ and the organ’s answering him back.”
“Then I hope it soon tells him to go to bed.”
At this moment the music reached a sort of resolution and stopped. The light in the organ loft went out. The next thing they saw was the pinpoint of a torch coming toward them along the transept. It was Paul Wren and he was not hurrying. He could hardly have avoided seeing the two men by the door, but he gave no sign of having done so and walked slowly past them. They watched the light of his torch bobbing down under the cloister arches and disappearing at the far end.
Mullins said, “Just like as if he was saying goodbye to his girlfriend and didn’t want to leave.” He added, “And he didn’t lock the door. I told you he wouldn’t.”
Nine
“The simplest arrangement,” said the Dean, “will be for each of you to take a month in residence in turn until we get a new Canon installed. Then, if you find that more convenient, we can revert to four three-monthly tours of duty. That will mean that you finish October, Archdeacon. Mervyn takes November and you take December, Francis.”
“Which means that I get Christmas,” said Canon Humphrey. “Thank you very much.”
“We may have a new Canon by then.”
“Not a chance. When Canon Carstairs died, it took them four months to choose me and another two months before I was installed.”
“I have already alerted the secretary of the Appointments Committee. We can only hope they’ll be a bit quicker this time.” The Dean consulted some notes he had made. “Tom’s funeral will be on Tuesday week. We couldn’t fix it sooner because the Archbishop had expressed a wish to officiate. He was a great admirer of Tom’s.”
“We shall have to alert the stewards,” said Canon Humphrey. “It will be a packed Cathedral. We don’t want a repetition of the sort of trouble we had when the Queen came down.”
“Tickets only,” said the Archdeacon.
“I’ll consult the chief steward,” said the Dean shortly. “I don’t like turning a service into a theatrical performance. Next point, the college. We shall have to put someone in charge there temporarily.”
“Openshaw,” suggested the Archdeacon.
“He should be able to handle it,” agreed Canon Humphrey.
“As a stopgap, then.” The Dean looked at Canon Maude, who had been sitting unhappily at the far end of the table and had so far contributed nothing to their discussions. Becoming aware that people were looking at him, he said, “Yes, yes. Of course I agree.”
“Then perhaps you would record that, Henry. Now, is there anything more?”
“Two things,” said the Archdeacon. “I have been in correspondence with Bernard Lovett. As you know, he is at the moment assistant organist at Worcester. He is a medallist of the Royal College and was chosen to play at the Three Choirs Festival this summer. I have always thought that he would be just the man for us here. Two days ago I heard that he was agreeable – in principle. The details would have to be worked out, of course.”
“Where does that leave Paul Wren?” said Canon Humphrey.
“I’m sure he would be very happy to work under such a distinguished man. If not, he could always apply for a post elsewhere.”
The Dean said, “I don’t agree with that.”
“I’m not happy about it either,” said Canon Humphrey. “I think Paul is a fine musician and has a remarkable rapport with the choir. Several people have told me that they’ve never heard them sing better.”
“But surely,” said the Archdeacon, “a cathedral like Melchester cannot be content with anything less than an associate of our own Royal College.” He looked across at Canon Maude, who jerked himself back into the proceedings and said, “Yes. Of course. I agree with that.”
“Since we seem to be equally divided,” said the Dean, “we shall have to postpone a decision. If Wren gets a firm offer of a top job elsewhere, it might be different.”
“Even then I should be against it,” said Canon Humphrey. “The man’s a genius.”
“With some of the defects of a genius,” said the Archdeacon. “I’m afraid he’s a little unbalanced.”
The Dean said, “I think we must leave it there for the time being. You had a second point, Archdeacon?”
“There is one other matter. And if it had not been both urgent and important, I should not have raised it at a moment like this. Yesterday I received a letter from Gerald Gloag—”
“Really, Archdeacon. Do you think—”
“I think I had better read it to you. It refers to his earlier letter making us the offer of a hundred and eighty thousand pounds for Fletcher’s Piece. It says:
‘You will appreciate that men who are prepared to raise money on this scale cannot allow it to stand idle. The consortium concerned is pursuing a number of projects, of which Fletcher’s Piece is only one. I have to tell you, therefore, that they must have agreement, if only in principle, by the end of next week or the offer will be withdr
awn.’”
The Dean’s face had set like stone. He said, “And do you require our comments on this letter?”
“If you please.”
“Then the first thing I would say is that I find it extremely distasteful that you should have raised the matter at all. We are all aware that Tom Lister was opposed to this project. Is it your suggestion that, now that he is dead, we should immediately reopen it in order to get a different decision from the Chapter?”
“I am simply suggesting that the letter needs an answer.”
“Then let the answer be short and simple. We note that the consortium intends to withdraw their offer. We are content that they should do so.”
The Archdeacon, who had managed so far to keep his temper, said, “Might I suggest that it merits our serious consideration. The rights and wrongs of the matter are already the subject of public comment.”
“Public comment!” said the Dean. “If you mean that piece of juvenile nonsense which purported to be a leading article in today’s number of the Melset Times, I think we could safely ignore it.”
“I read it, too,” said Canon Humphrey. “And it did strike me that Arthur Driffield seemed curiously well informed about our deliberations.”
“The same point had, of course, occurred to me,” said the Dean. “I did not intend to raise it, but since you have done so, may I say that I hope—” he refrained so pointedly from looking at the Archdeacon that he could hardly have made his meaning clearer “—I hope that the confidentiality which we have always enjoyed in our meetings has not been breached.”
There was an awkward silence. The Archdeacon said, “If that was aimed at me, Dean, it is wide of the mark. I have had no communication of any sort with Driffield. On the other hand, I have never made any secret of my views on Cathedral finances. As you know, I have only just been able to begin my detailed investigation of the main Cathedral accounts, some of which are so complex that I begin to suspect that my predecessors deliberately got them into a state in which no one could understand them.”
The Black Seraphim Page 10