by Jane Langton
Had Oliver Clare really killed himself for love? Had Freddy Dubchick answered no to that all-important question? Or was she denying it when she said, “No, no, I didn’t say that”? Did she mean she had not really turned him down? But the fact was, she didn’t have to say it in so many words—“No, Oliver, I will not marry you.” She had made it perfectly clear at Hampton Court. Homer saw again the stricken face of Oliver Clare as he walked away from the sight of Freddy in the arms of Hal Shaw, the redheaded zoologist from Kansas.
Another surprise was waiting for Homer, back at Keble. He found Mary watching television in the sitting room. Before he could say hello, before he could tell her what he had witnessed, she held up her hand and whispered, “Homer, sssh.”
He was offended. He was also exhausted and starving. But at once he forgot his hurt feelings and his tiredness and hunger. There on the screen was the house on St. Barnabas Street. Beside the ruined bicycle stood a famous BBC correspondent, reporting from the scene of the tragedy. His vowels were plummy, his voice deep and rich. “Here in Oxford this morning the descendant of a famous Oxfordshire family was found dead with his throat cut. The body of Oliver Clare, who was ordained last year as an Anglican priest, was discovered in this house on St. Barnabas Street in the area of Oxford known as Jericho. If his death was by suicide, the motive has not been determined. His grief-stricken parents had nothing to say to our London correspondent as they emerged from their house on Pont Street.”
At once Oliver’s rooming house vanished, replaced by a glimpse of a London street and a dignified-looking elderly couple hurrying into a car. As the car door slammed, the London correspondent whispered into her microphone, “Robert Clare, originally the squire of Windrush Hall in Burford, is now a retired solicitor.”
The car on Pont Street zoomed away. At once the scene shifted and the troubles of the royal family blossomed on the screen. Another correspondent piped up, her voice tuned to a note of mocking insinuation.
CHAPTER 33
My theology is a simple muddle.
Charles Darwin, letter to Joseph Hooker
It was Sunday again. Homer lay flat on his back in bed while Mary bumped around the room, getting dressed. “Mukerji’s awfully smart,” he said, gazing at the ceiling. “You have to admit that. I wonder if he’s dogged at the same time.”
“Dogged!”
“Like Darwin.”
“Oh, Darwin!” Mary discovered a run in her stockings, and cursed.
“He didn’t think he was very intelligent. You know, not a genius like his friend Huxley. He thought it was his doggedness that made the difference. It’s dogged that does it, that’s what he said. So he studied barnacles for eight years before he wrote The Origin of Species. And he spent his last years investigating—guess what?”
“I can’t. Damn and blast.”
“Earthworms. He did a lot of nice little dogged experiments on earthworms.”
Mary pulled bureau drawers open and slammed them shut. “Oh, Homer, my God, it’s half-past. I’ll be late for church.” She threw open the closet door and tumbled the shoes this way and that.
Homer leaned up on one elbow and looked fondly at his wife. “I like the way you’re doggedly working your way through the churches of Oxford. Which one is it this Sunday?”
“The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. You know, that big one on the High Street.”
“Hey, no kidding.” Homer sprang out of bed. “Hold it, wait for me. Wasn’t that Oliver Clare’s church? The one where he was rector? That’s what Professor Dubchick told me. St. Mary’s, he said. I want to see what it’s like.”
“Well, all right, but for heaven’s sake, hurry up.”
They rode their rented bikes, pedaling straight up Parks Road and Catte Street and bumping uncomfortably over the cobblestones of Radcliffe Square. Dismounting, they locked their bicycles to the railing around the Radcliffe Camera in a tangle of undergraduate wheels and handlebars. Walking along the passage to the High, they peered into a college entry where a sign said
BRASENOSE COLLEGE
CLOSED TO VISITORS
and approached the church by the front door.
The entrance on the High was one of Oxford’s marvels. Its two fantastic columns reminded Homer of rubber bands in windup airplanes. Someone had twisted the two columns of golden stone, the left one clockwise, the right counterclockwise, until they writhed upward, charged with potential energy, ready to take off. Above them rose an architectural confection of curling volutes and statuary.
“You know what I like about Oxford?” said Mary. “They went whole hog. The architects, I mean. They didn’t give a damn about restraint and functional form. It was excess all the way.”
“Oh, right,” said Homer as they made their way inside. “If you wanted a useful building, you stuck a tower on top, and then you stroked your chin because you weren’t quite satisfied, it wasn’t enough, it needed a little more somehow, so you stuck pinnacles all over the tower, and then you pasted on ten thousand crockets. Whole hog, that’s right, that’s Oxford. They went whole hog.”
“Homer, sssh.”
Softly they pushed open a glass door and made their way to one of the pews at the rear, as the broad high spaces of the church opened around them. The congregation was standing, singing a hymn. A layman in a dark suit brought them two orders of service and a fat green hymnal opened to the right page.
Mary didn’t need it. The hymn was familiar, “The Spacious Firmament on High.” She sang it lustily, thumping out the repetitive undergirding F-naturals in the alto line, showing off a little, giving hearty tongue to Joseph Addison’s recitation of the wonders of the heavens and the rejoicing in reason’s ear and the spreading of the truth from pole to pole, the truth that the entire creation was the work of an almighty hand. Then, bang! Mary closed the book with a tidy slam, nudged Homer, and whispered, “Okay, Charles Darwin, deny that if you can.”
Homer grinned and sat down. He could imagine Darwin sitting on his revolving chair at Down House, explaining courteously to Mary Kelly that Addison had used the word God to personify natural law. It is Newton’s gravitational law that rules the planets, Mrs. Kelly, not some almighty hand with nice clean fingernails.
Mary enjoyed church services, even when reason’s ear gently shucked off most of what she heard. This church was very grand. Tall piers soared around her, the shadows of birds darted across the wall, the organ made a massive articulated noise, and the vicar was a handsome old man with a magnificent accent. His sermon was intelligent, mildly addressing the ear of reason.
It was time for the Nicene creed. “All stand,” said the vicar.
Homer stood silent while the congregation murmured the words,
We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
The collective soft humming reminded Homer of the murmuration in the museum, somehow representing more than the sum of the voices actually speaking. It was entire populations whispering and talking. In the museum it was all the creatures of the earth softly barking or growling, it was the reverberating fall of trees in the forest. Here it was the faithful, it was bishops and archbishops, worshiping a great invisible personage who had made them, who had created the universe and miraculously fathered a son whose death would save all of them into eternal life, all of these young churchgoing undergraduates and their elders, every single human being sitting around Homer in these noble pews.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Now for the prayer of intercession. Mary and Homer bowed their heads and leaned forward, while kneeling stools were pulled out all around them, scraping the floor, and bodies were lowered with a slithering of coats. At home in Concord, Massachusetts, the Kellys were not members of any of the local churches, although they occasionally visited the First Parish Church on Lexington Road. The First Parish was Unitarian, with a freethinking congregation for whom kneelin
g would have been a strange and unfamiliar act.
Homer stared at the knees of his trousers, which were so politely refusing to lower themselves. He did not expect to be resurrected. Someday his body would be buried or cremated and that would be it. His bones would never spring together on some final day of judgment, some moment of the universal clattering enhingement of all the buried bones in the world. Nor would his dead muscles be reborn, to clap themselves once again to his bones. His blood would never pour into his body from some giant overarching pitcher. It was too bad, but Homer could not force himself to believe otherwise.
Mary sat quietly during the communion part of the service, coming to a conclusion. It was slowly dawning on her that this was the wrong church. Young Oliver Clare couldn’t possibly have been the rector of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Homer must have been mistaken. Surely Oliver had been too young and naive to stand before this congregation and preach with authority. It must have been some other St. Mary’s entirely.
CHAPTER 34
The more one thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man’s ignorance.
Charles Darwin, letter to Lord Farrer
After the service there was a jolly reception in the church hall. Mary and Homer accepted cups of coffee, and Mary introduced herself to the undergraduate who had assisted the rector in serving communion. “My husband and I are wondering what church Oliver Clare was connected with, the young man who—”
“—who died yesterday,” supplied the undergraduate, whose name was Matthew Friendly. “I saw it on the telly. Too bad. No, sorry, I don’t know where he worked.”
“We assumed it was a local Anglican church, because he lived—”
“—in Oxford, yes, I saw that too. Well, all I can suggest is that you ask the rector.” Matthew Friendly nodded amiably in the direction of the priest who had led the service.
Mary thanked him, then lowered her voice, “Tell me, how does one address a rector? I don’t know the British forms of—”
“—of address, I see, of course not, naturally not.” Friendly had a disagreeable habit of finishing one’s sentences. “It’s just ‘Mr.’ You just say ‘Mr. Gideon.’ There’s no other—”
“—form of address,” said Mary, teaching him a lesson, but she doubted he noticed.
Mr. Gideon, too, was ignorant of Oliver’s church connection. He had never heard of Oliver Clare.
Homer and Mary left the reception and returned to their bicycles.
“Freddy Dubchick would know about Oliver’s church,” said Mary, settling herself on the tall seat and wobbling forward. “Do you think you could ask her?”
“Poor kid. I should have stuck around to hear what she said when she woke up from her fainting spell. When we get back, I’ll call Mukerji.”
But Gopal Mukerji was in a querulous mood. “Never,” he told Homer on the telephone, “be a gentleman. I didn’t keep the girl for questioning. I told her I would speak with her in the afternoon, and then I sent her home with Police Constable Henrietta Lark. P.C. Lark drove Ms. Dubchick to her house on Norham Road and handed her over to her father.” Mukerji uttered an unfamiliar word. Homer guessed it was a Bengali curse. “In the afternoon Ms. Dubchick could not be reached. Her father could not be reached. They have fled.”
“Oh, not fled,” said Homer. “Surely not fled.” He said goodbye to Detective Inspector Mukerji, then turned to his wife. “They’ve gone. William took Freddy away. Why don’t I call Helen Farfrae? She might know where they are.”
“No, wait, Homer. It’s too soon. Too much has happened. She’s still working only part-time. Let her alone.”
“But she’s your devoted pal and confidante. You could call her.”
“No, no. She’s withdrawn from me a little. I think she regrets pouring out all the violence of her feelings the day after her husband’s death. And now there’s this horrible thing about poor Oliver, which involves Freddy Dubchick, the daughter of Helen’s boss. I don’t want us to play big investigators, not now, not at a time like this.”
In the end they agreed that Homer would make a simple businesslike call and ask a single straightforward question.
Mary stood listening uneasily while he called Helen’s number in Kidlington.
She answered warily. Then she sounded relieved. “Oh, Homer, hello.”
At once he abandoned his businesslike plan. “Helen, are you all right? Are you safe there, all alone?”
For a moment Helen said nothing, afraid to betray the pleasure she felt in her newfound solitude. Her tumultuous feelings were beginning to settle down. Guilt and sorrow had convulsed her, and the news of the violent end of Oliver Clare had shocked her, but no grief could match the sordid misery of her married life. “Yes,” she said at last, “I’m fine.”
Mary was making faces at Homer. He asked his question. “Inspector Mukerji tells me Professor Dubchick and his daughter have run away. Do you know if it’s true?”
“Well, it’s true that they’re gone,” said Helen, “but they weren’t running away. William called to say he was taking Freddy away for a while. That was all. He said she’d had an awful blow.”
“I see. Did he say where they were going?”
“No, he didn’t. Perhaps to Cornwall. They have a house there, and Professor Dubchick’s sister lives nearby. I don’t know where it is in Cornwall.”
“Well, perhaps you can tell me what I wanted to learn from Freddy. We’re trying to find the church where Oliver Clare was rector. It was called St. Mary’s, but it wasn’t St. Mary the Virgin. Do you know of any other St. Mary’s?”
“What about St. Mary Mag?”
“St. Mary Mag?”
“St. Mary Magdalen. You remember, it’s the church at the triangle between St. Giles and Broad Street, near the Martyrs’ Memorial, right across from Balliol.”
Homer did not remember. There were too many splendid colleges on the Broad and the High for one more medieval-looking building to register on his memory. But he saw the church at once as he emerged from the Lamb and Flag Passage and ambled past Balliol, where another army of bicycles cluttered the wall. As he crossed the street, a dozen kids romped up the steep encircling steps of the Martyrs’ Memorial. Above them Ridley and Larimer gestured mournfully, reminding all and sundry of their sad burnings at the stake. The children paid no attention. The two martyrs might have been catapulted into space, for all they cared.
The church occupied an island between the two streets. There was a sign on the iron fence around it, proclaiming it to be the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalen. The sign listed the hours of Sunday and weekday services, but it did not give the name of the rector. Homer found his way in, and spoke to a woman who was setting out pamphlets on a table in the entry.
“Excuse me, my name is Homer Kelly. I’m a visiting lecturer at Keble College. Can you tell me if a priest named Oliver Clare was the vicar here?”
The woman had a handsome presence. She was obviously one of the pillars holding up the church. “You mean the young man who died yesterday?” She shook her head sadly. “No, I’m afraid I never even heard his name before I read about him in the Times.”
“But I understand he was vicar of a church called St. Mary’s.”
“Oh, there are lots of St. Marys in Oxfordshire. I don’t know which is which. Try the phone book. There’s one in my office. Come in.”
“Thank you,” said Homer humbly. He sat down with the phone book, made a list of churches called St. Mary, and thanked the pillar of the church. Then he made his way to the Eagle and Child, where he was meeting his wife for lunch.
Mary had commandeered a tiny table and ordered two tall glasses of beer. “Maybe it’s just Americans who order pints of bitter in British pubs,” she said to Homer, as he lifted his glass. “I don’t care.”
Homer looked around the narrow room, which was crowded with people making loud conversation. “Isn’t this C. S. Lewis’s old pub? Where he met those other guys of similar literary and theol
ogical persuasion?”
“That’s what it says on the wall,” said Mary. “It’s too bad I’m not the sweet innocent young girl I was before I met you. I was a big Lewis fan once.”
Homer was charmed to learn something new about the wife of his bosom. “You were? You mean you changed your mind?”
“Well, of course I admit he’s charming, and he can certainly spin a story. But I think his logical proofs for the existence of God and the lessons of the Bible are just clever ways of playing with words. It’s all from Cloud-Cuckoo Land, that’s what I think.”
Homer took a swig from his pint. “It always seemed to me that he didn’t start far enough back. He takes the doctrines of the Anglican church as already granted, as though everybody agreed they were the ground of all being, then goes on from there. I always get grumpy at about page twenty-five. Look.” He hauled his scribbled list out of his pocket. “I’m still not getting anywhere in trying to find the church where Oliver Clare was the pastor. It wasn’t Mary Magdalen. But look, there are all these other places called St. Mary’s.”
Mary pulled her chair closer and together they consulted the list. There was a St. Mary & All Saints in Beaconfield, a St. Mary the Virgin in Charlbury, a St. Mary’s in Cogges, and a St. Mary the Beneficent in a council estate called Nightingale Court. There were also St. Mary’s Centres in Banbury, Haddenham and Wendover.
“I’ll call them,” promised Mary. “I’ll go home and call them all.”