by Alan Bennett
BACK AT THE CHURCH, Geoffrey was shaking hands to the finish, with last out, as always, Miss Wishart who was still attesting her supposed connection with the deceased. ‘Somebody said something about drinks for my nephew. Where would they be? A sherry was what he preferred only I like wine.’
The priest pointed her vaguely in the direction of the churchyard which with people standing about talking and laughing looked like a cocktail party anyway. He had been asked to drinks himself by a florid and effusive character, a publisher apparently, with a stony-faced woman in tow. He had taken both Geoffrey’s hands warmly in his, saying he had this brilliant idea for a book and he wanted to run it past him.
This, taken with the upbeat conclusion of the service, ought to have cheered him, but Father Jolliffe found himself despondent. The presence of the Archdeacon could only mean one thing: he had been vetted. For what he wasn’t sure, but for promotion certainly. And equally certainly he had failed to impress. For a start he should not have invited the congregation to participate. He knew that from something that had happened at the Board, when in answer to a question about the kiss of peace and the degree of conviviality acceptable at the Eucharist, he had said that the priest was, in a real sense, the master of ceremonies. This had got a laugh from the Board (the Bishop actually guffawing), except that he had noticed that Treacher was smiling in a different way and making one of his spidery notes: he was not impressed then and he had not been impressed now.
Still had he not, as it were, thrown the service open to the floor, the true circumstances of Clive’s death would never have emerged, so he could not regret that. What the Lord giveth the Lord also taketh away. He went back into the now empty church to get out of his gear.
‘SHOULD I HAVE SPOKEN?’ Hopkins was still slumped in his pew. Now he got up clutching his backpack in front of him like a shield. ‘I wondered if it was out of turn.’
‘Not at all,’ said Geoffrey, noticing that the young man had loosened the unaccustomed tie and undone the top button of his shirt, so that he looked younger still and not so old-fashioned. It was difficult to think of him at Clive’s death-bed.
‘You did the right thing, Mr Hopkins. There were many people’ – he didn’t say himself – ‘who were grateful. It lifted a burden.’
The boy sat down again cradling his backpack. ‘The young guy seemed pretty pissed off. The –’ he hesitated, ‘the gay one?’
Hopkins had an unconvincing earring that Geoffrey had not spotted, ear and earring now briefly caught in a shaft of light, a faint fuzz on the fresh pink ear.
‘People were upset,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Clive was … well, Clive.’ He smiled, but the young man still looked unhappy.
‘I felt a fool.’ He sat hugging his backpack then suddenly brightened up. ‘That blonde from EastEnders was on my row. Clive never told me he knew her.’
Geoffrey thought that there were probably quite a few things Clive had never told him and wondered if anything had happened between them. Probably not, if only because he imagined there was more on offer in South America and the local talent doubtless more exotic.
He was an awkward boy with big hands. He was the kind of youth Modigliani painted and for a moment Geoffrey wondered if he was attractive, but decided he was just young.
‘And that cook who slags people off? He was here too.’
‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was a good turn-out.’ Then, feeling he ought to be getting on. ‘They’re all outside.’
The youth did not notice the hint, still less take it. ‘You said you knew Clive?’
‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey, then added, ‘but not well.’
‘I’d never seen anybody die before. It was depressing?’
Geoffrey smiled sadly and nodded as if this were an aspect of death that had not occurred to him. The youth was a fool.
‘Can I show you something?’ The student rooted in his pack then put it on the floor so that the priest could sit beside him. ‘I had to go through his stuff after he died. There wasn’t much. He was travelling light. Only there was this.’
It was a maroon notebook, long, cloth-covered and meant to fit easily into a pocket. Geoffrey thought he remembered it and ran his hand over the smooth, soft cover.
‘Is it a diary?’ the priest said.
‘Not exactly.’
IN THE CHURCHYARD the party was beginning to break up. One group had arranged to lunch at the Garrick and were moving round saying their farewells while someone looked for a cab. Others were going off to investigate a new restaurant that had opened in a converted public lavatory and of which they’d heard good reports, though tempted to join forces with yet another party who were venturing into one of the last genuine cafés patronised by the porters at Smithfield where the tripe was said to be delicious.
Most of the big stars had left pretty promptly, their cars handily waiting nearby to shield them from too much unmediated attention. The pop star’s limo dropped him first then called at the bank so that the security guard could redeposit the clasp and then took him on to a laboratory in Hounslow where, as a change from Catherine the Great, he was mounting vigil over some hamsters testing lip-gloss. Meanwhile, the autograph hunters moved among what was left of the congregation, picking up what dregs of celebrity that remained.
‘Are you anybody?’ a woman said to the partner of a soap-star, ‘or are you just with him?’
‘He was my nephew,’ said Miss Wishart to anyone who would listen.
‘Who, dear?’ said one of the photographers, which of course Miss Wishart didn’t hear, but she looked so forlorn he took her picture anyway, which was fortunate, as he was later able to submit it to the National Portrait Gallery where it duly featured in an exhibition alongside the stage doorman of the Haymarket and the maître d’ of the Ivy as one of ‘The Faces of London’.
Soon, though, it began to spit with rain and within a few minutes the churchyard was empty and after its brief bout of celebrity, back to looking as dingy and desolate as it generally did.
‘NO, IT ISN’T A DIARY,’ said Hopkins. ‘It’s more of an account book.’
It was divided into columns across the page, each column numbered, possibly indicating a week or a month, the broad left-hand column a list of initials, and in the other columns figures, possibly amounts. The figures were closely packed and as neat as the work of a professional accountant.
‘Can you make it out?’ said the young man, running his finger down the left-hand column. ‘These are people, I take it.’
‘They might be,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I don’t quite know.’ Having just spotted his own initials, Geoffrey knew only too well, though he noted that the spaces opposite his own name were only occasionally filled in. This was because Clive came round quite spasmodically and wasn’t often available when Geoffrey called (now, seeing the number of people on his list, he could see why). When he did come round the visit did not always involve sex (‘No funny business’ is how Clive put it). Geoffrey told himself that this was because he was a clergyman and that he thus enjoyed a relationship with Clive that was pastoral as well as physical. More often than not this meant he found himself making Clive scrambled eggs, while Clive lay on the sofa watching TV in his underpants, which was about as close to domesticity as Geoffrey ever got. Still, Geoffrey had always insisted on paying for this privilege (hence the entries in the notebook), though really in order to give credence to the fiction that sex wasn’t what their friendship was about. Though, since he was paying for it, it wasn’t about friendship either, but that managed to be overlooked.
‘Did you see a lot of each other? In Peru?’
Geoffrey was anxious to turn the page and get away from those incriminating initials.
‘Yes. We had meals together quite often. I could never figure out what he was doing there.’
‘What did you eat?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Eggs?’
‘Beans, mostly. He said he was travelling round. Seeing the world.’
As casually as he could, Geoffre
y turned the page.
‘These figures,’ said Hopkins, turning it back. ‘What do you think they mean?’
‘They’re on this page, too,’ said Geoffrey turning the page again. ‘And here,’ turning another.
Hopkins blew his nose, wiped it carefully and put the handkerchief away. ‘Is it sex, do you think?’
‘Sex?’ said Geoffrey with apparent surprise. ‘Why should it be sex?’ He looked at Hopkins as if the insinuation were his and almost felt sorry for him when the young geologist blushed.
‘Clive was a masseur. They may be payments on account – if they’re payments at all. I think when he was hard up at one period he used to provide home help, carpentry and so on. It could be that.’
‘Yes? You say he was a masseur. He told me he was a writer.’
Geoffrey smiled and shook his head.
‘My guess is that it’s a sort of diary and I don’t feel,’ Geoffrey said pompously, ‘that one ought to read other people’s diaries, do you?’
Hopkins shrank still further and Geoffrey hated himself. He went on leafing through. Against some of the names were small hieroglyphics that seemed to denote a sexual preference or practice, an indication of a client’s predilections possibly, of which one or two were obvious. Lips with a line through, for instance, must mean the person with the initials didn’t like being kissed; lips with a tick the reverse. But what did a drawing of a foot indicate? Or an ear? Or (in one case) two ears?
None of the drawings was in any sense obscene and were so small and symbolic as to be uninteresting in themselves, but what they stood for – with sometimes a line-up of three or four symbols in a row – was both puzzling and intriguing.
It was a shock, therefore, for Geoffrey to turn the page and come across a note en clair that was both direct and naive:
Palaces I have done it in:
Westminster
Lambeth
Blenheim
Buckingham (2)
Windsor
Except Windsor was crossed out with a note, ‘Not a palace’ and an arrow led from Westminster to a bubble saying ‘Lost count’. Written down baldly like this it seemed so childish and unsophisticated as not to be like Clive at all, though as notes for a book, Geoffrey could see it made some sort of sense.
‘It’s rather sad, really,’ Geoffrey went on, still in his pompous mode. ‘Why bother to write it down? Who’d be interested?’
‘Oh, I keep notes myself,’ said Hopkins. Then, as the priest looked up, startled, ‘Oh, not about that. Just on rocks and stuff. He told me he was writing a book, but people do say that, don’t they? Particularly in South America.’
It’s true Clive had spoken of writing a book, or at least of being able to write a book, ‘I could write a book,’ often how he ended an account of some outrageous escapade. Geoffrey may even have said, ‘Why don’t you?’ though without ever dreaming he would.
Like many who hankered after art, though, Clive was saving it up, if not quite for a rainy day at least until the right opportunity presented itself – prison perhaps, a long illness or a spell in the back of beyond. Which, of course, Peru was and which was why, Geoffrey presumed, he had taken along the book.
Still, he wasn’t sure. Clive was always so discreet and even when telling some sexual tale he seldom mentioned names and certainly not the kind of names represented at the memorial service. This iron discretion was, Clive knew, one of his selling points and part of his credit, so not an asset he was likely to squander. Or not yet anyway.
Hopkins seemed to be taking less interest in the diary and when Geoffrey closed the book and put it on the pew between them the young man did not pick it up but just sat staring into space.
Then: ‘Of course, if it is sex and those are initials and you could identify them it would be dynamite.’
‘Well, a mild sort of dynamite,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and only if a person,’ Geoffrey smiled at the young man, ‘only if a person was planning to reveal information …’ He left the sentence unfinished. ‘And that would, of course, be …’ and he left this sentence unfinished too, except at that moment a police car blared past outside. Geoffrey sighed. God could be so unsubtle sometimes. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘if this is entirely about sex, and I’m not sure it is, it’s not against the law, is it?’ He wondered how long he could get away with reckoning to be so stupid.
Having found someone, as he thought, more ingenuous than himself the young man was determined to instruct him in the ways of the world. ‘No,’ he said patiently, ‘but it would make a story. Several stories probably. Stories for which newspapers would pay a lot of money.’
‘You wouldn’t do that, surely?’
‘I wouldn’t, but someone might.’ Hopkins picked up the book. ‘I wondered about handing it over to the police.’
‘The police?’ Geoffrey found himself suddenly angry at the boy’s foolishness. ‘What for?’
‘For safe-keeping?’
‘Safe-keeping,’ shouted Geoffrey, all pretence of naivety gone. ‘Safe-keeping? In which case why bother with the police at all. Just cut out the middleman and give it to the News of the World?’
Taken aback by this unexpected outburst Hopkins looked even more unhappy. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, nuzzling his chin on top of his pack. ‘I just want to do the right thing.’
The right thing to do was nothing but Geoffrey did not say so. Instead he thought of all the people behind the initials, the troubled novelists, the tearful gardeners and stone-faced soap-stars, Clive’s celebrity clientele dragged one by one into the sneering, pitiless light. Something had to be done.
He put his hand on the young man’s knee.
He felt Hopkins flinch but kept his hand where he had put it, or not where he had put it, he decided subsequently, but where God had put it. Because tame and timid though such a move might seem (and to someone of Clive’s sophistication, for instance, nonchalant and almost instinctive), for Geoffrey it was momentous, fraught with risk and the dread of embarrassment. He had never made such a bold gesture in his life and now he had done it without thinking and almost without feeling.
The young man was unprepossessing and altogether too awkward and angular; in the street he would not have looked at him twice. But there was his hand on the boy’s knee. ‘What is your name?’ he said.
‘Greg,’ Hopkins said faintly. ‘It’s Greg.’
Geoffrey had no thought that the presence of his hand on the young man’s knee would be the slightest bit welcome nor, judging by the look of panic on his face, was it. Greg was transfixed.
‘I am wondering, Greg,’ said Geoffrey, ‘if we are getting this right. We are talking about what to do with this notebook when strictly speaking, legally speaking’ – he squeezed the knee slightly – ‘it has got nothing to do with us anyway.’
‘No?’
‘No. The notebook belongs after all to Clive. And now to his estate. And whom does his estate belong to … or will do eventually?’
Hopkins shook his head.
‘His only surviving relative. Miss Wishart!’
The priest loosened his grip on the knee, though lingering there for a moment as if it might be preparatory to travelling further up the young man’s leg. This galvanised Hopkins and he got up suddenly. Except that the priest got up too, both crammed together in the close confinement of the pew, the priest seemingly unperturbed and never leaving his face his kind, professional, priestly smile.
Hopkins was now unwise enough to put his hand on the edge of the pew. Geoffrey promptly put his hand on top of it.
‘No, no,’ said Hopkins.
‘No what?’ said Geoffrey kindly.
‘No, she should keep the book.’ Hopkins pulled his hand away in order to retrieve the book still lying on the seat. ‘Where can I find her?’
‘She comes to church. I can give it to her.’ Geoffrey reached for the book and fearful that he was reaching for him too, Hopkins relinquished it without a struggle.
‘I can give it
to her as a relic of her nephew. The only relic really.’ He stroked the book fondly and in that instant Hopkins was out of the pew and on his way to the door. But not quickly enough to avoid the priest’s kindly hand pressing into the small of his back and carrying with it the awful possibility that it might move lower down.
‘Yes,’ Hopkins said, ‘give it to her. She’s the person.’ And stopping suddenly in order to put on his backpack he got rid of the hand, but then found it resting even more horribly on his midriff, so that he gave a hoarse involuntary cry before the priest lifted his hand with a bland smile, converting the gesture almost into a benediction.
‘Won’t she be shocked?’ Hopkins said as he settled the pack on his back. ‘She’s an old lady.’
‘No,’ said Geoffrey firmly. ‘And I say this, Greg, as her parish priest. It’s true she’s an old person but I have found the old are quite hard to shock. It’s the young one has to be careful with. They are the prudes nowadays.’
Hopkins nodded. Irony and geology obviously did not mix.
‘I wondered if you wanted a cup of tea?’ Geoffrey stroked the side of his backpack.
‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘No, I’ve got to be somewhere.’
Still widely smiling Geoffrey put out his hand.
They shook hands and the young man dashed out of the door and quickly across the wet gravestones, Geoffrey noting as he did so that he had that over-long and slightly bouncy stride he had always associated with flute-players, train-spotters and other such unworldly and unattractive creatures.
Something strange, though, now happened that Geoffrey would later come to see as prophetic. Or at least ominous. The boy had pulled out a knitted cap and as he stopped to put it on he saw the priest still standing there. Suddenly and unexpectedly the boy smiled and raised his hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he called out, and then about to go, he stopped again. ‘But thank you all the same.’
Geoffrey sat down in the nearest pew. He was trembling. After a bit he got up and went into the vestry where he opened the safe in which was kept the parish plate, the chalice (Schofield of London, 1782) and the two patens (Forbes of Bristol, 1718), each in its velvet-lined case. On the shelf below them Geoffrey put Clive’s book.