The Choir

by Joanna Trollope

  The dean went into his study and closed the door upon all the varied domestic defiance in the rest of the house. He crossed to the window and looked with love and something close to anguish at the cathedral, suddenly seeming, for all its majesty, so vulnerable, a great spirit dwelling precariously in a frail fabric. He could not bear the thought of giving up the lighting scheme; Mr. Harvey had fired him with visions of the nave roof illuminated with an almost theatrical magic by concealed floodlights and fluorescent tubes, the triforium arches silhouetted against a hidden glow, the choir screen standing dramatic and dark against the upflung light from the chancel beyond. And in any case, if the roof was really serious, would forty-five thousand pounds make that much difference? The clock struck five-thirty. He was due at Croxton in forty-five minutes, and he still had on his dusty shoes and old flannels from climbing about the cathedral. The journey at least would serve as thinking time; he felt instinctively that he must have some suggestions ready, some plan afoot to defend his lighting scheme against the demands the roof was bound to make, irresistibly, of the cathedral coffers. He opened the study door. They were singing “Jerusalem” in the drawing room, no doubt to emphasize, to any clergy wife who was in the least doubt, that in Bridget’s eyes the Women’s Institute, which she virtually commanded in the county, was a body of much greater significance than the Church. Sighing for a dozen reasons, Hugh Cavendish grasped the lovely bannister rail and began to climb the stairs wearily to change.

  “Shut your eyes,” Leo said, “while I put the light on and decide whether I can bear to let you look.”

  “I live with men,” Sally said reasonably, “and work for another. I’m quite used to mess.”

  “But this,” Leo said in a voice that had an edge of awe to it, “this is really five-star mess.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “So it is.”

  “If I’d known I was going to have the impulse to ask you back here, I wouldn’t have left it like this.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t I what?”

  “Know you might have the impulse to ask me back?”

  “Of course I did,” Leo said. “I’m as poor a liar as I am a housekeeper. I suppose it’s a sort of test. If you can stand this, I might have a chance—”

  “A chance?”

  “Sally, don’t flirt with me.”

  “Why—”

  “Because I’m serious.”

  “You can’t be. You came to supper last night and we went to the wine tasting tonight and—”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Oh Lord,” Sally said, but she was enchanted.

  Leo went to the window and pulled the single curtain until it hung in a panel across the centre, and then he took an armful of books, a cardboard box of bottles, and a muddle of newspapers off the sofa and said, “Sit down. I think I’ve got some wine.”

  “I don’t really want any more to drink.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Lovely.”

  “It isn’t. It’s instant. Don’t let me be serious, Sally, I’m so useless.”

  “It isn’t up to me,” she said dangerously.

  “I said, Sally, don’t flirt.”

  “I don’t know what to do with you.”

  He knelt by the sofa.

  “I know what I want to do with you—”

  She had the same inward sliding sensation she had had when he had arrived at the wine tasting and stood in the doorway, looking round for her. She was helping her boss pull corks and pour wine, so she couldn’t do much more than wave, and he came across the room and looked at her most particularly and took a glass in either hand saying, “Burgundy and Burgundy?” and went away to talk to other people. She hadn’t exchanged another word with him for an hour, and then he had come back and said, “Come home with me, for half an hour, so we can talk,” and here she was in this charming crooked chaotic room with Leo about to make love to her and her wanting him to, all the way.

  She said, “I must think.”

  “Fatal.”

  He got off his knees and stood up.

  “I’m going to find some coffee in my evil kitchen.”

  She followed him across the room and leaned in the doorway while he poked around finding mugs and spoons and the coffee jar.

  “Leo, I really don’t know what I’m doing. Am I just another bored wife married to a man I never see who is periodically unfaithful to me anyway? Are you just lonely?”

  “It isn’t like you to talk like that.”

  “But you don’t know what I’m like! You can’t—”

  “I can and do know enough to perceive in you a coolness and a gallantry that I am bowled over by. You’re also wildly attractive.”

  “So are you.”

  “That’s better,” Leo said.

  Sally said in a much steadier voice, “I didn’t mean to sound as if I was whining. But it has all rather rushed in and grabbed me when I wasn’t looking.”

  “Hasn’t it just.”

  He handed her a mug.

  “Tell me about Alan.”

  “If you like. But I shan’t reveal anything at all interesting. I just don’t like him much anymore. We have nothing to say to each other and nothing in common except Henry.”

  “So?”

  “So it has crossed my mind fairly frequently in the last year that I don’t want my life to trail on like this much longer. I sometimes think, What if this is all there is?”

  Leo steered her towards the sofa and sat down beside her.

  “Have you had an affair with anyone?”

  “Since I married Alan? No.”

  “Well,” Leo said, without moving towards her, “you’re going to now.”

  “It isn’t just your decision.”

  He inclined his head.

  “We’ll go at any pace you like. Can’t you see? I want to do what you want, as well as what I want.”

  “I’ve never got so far so fast with anyone in my life.”

  “Nor me.”

  “You were married though, weren’t you?”

  He got up and pulled the book of photographs from under the magazines on the bookshelf. Sally followed him. He opened the book and put it in her hands.

  “There she is.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was desperate for her to marry me until she did and then it was quite hopeless. I never liked her really, I was just desperate.”

  “Are you desperate now?”

  “No,” he said, “just enormously happy,” and he took the book away from her and put his arms around her and was kissing her when Alexander, who had found the front door unlatched, knocked at the sitting room one and walked in without waiting for an answer.

  Sally tried to break free, but Leo held her.

  “Alexander,” he said. His voice was quite level.

  “Please,” Sally said and Leo let go. She went quickly across the room to Alexander, said, “Good night, Mr. Troy,” and slipped past him and out of the door.

  “What are you doing?” Alexander demanded.

  “A superfluous question.”

  “That,” Alexander said, advancing on him, “that is the mother of one of your choristers, do you realize? Henry Ashworth is a charge of both yours and mine. What are you thinking of?”

  “Of her, and of myself.”

  “Leo, Leo—”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I rather wanted to talk.”

  Leo sighed and put his hand on Alexander’s arm and guided him to the sofa.

  “I’ll talk all you like but not about Sally Ashworth.”

  “It can’t go further, Leo, you must give her up—”

  “No.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Two days, properly.”

  “Then—”

  “No, Alexander.”

  He went into the kitchen and found the bottle of wine Sally had refused and returned with it and two glasses and a corkscrew.

&
nbsp; “You’ve only just staggered through the last scandal, Leo.”

  “This isn’t a scandal.”

  “Do you think you love her?”

  “Do you think I am going to tell you something I haven’t even told her?” His voice became angry. “You haven’t any prerogative on love—”

  Felicity’s name hung unspoken in the air between them.

  “I don’t want to quarrel with you.”

  Leo held out a glass of wine.

  “Very wine ordinary, I’m afraid.”

  They drank for a while in silence. Then Alexander began to talk about the council’s designs upon the headmaster’s house and the episode with the dean that afternoon, and Leo said how thankful he was to be out of the close politics.

  “You might be dragged in, willy-nilly.”

  “Why?”

  “I sense a thunderstorm rumbling away round the edges.”

  Leo refrained from saying that perhaps it was Alexander’s own personal thunderstorm, and said instead, “Oh, it’s always like this. Storms in teacups. Remember my appointment, for one.”

  Alexander stood up.

  “I must go.”

  “I think you haven’t said what you came to say.”

  “It went wrong,” Alexander said, “didn’t it?”

  “You’d better say it. It’s either now or some other time and I’d rather hear it now.”

  “I came,” Alexander said, “for some balm for my wounds. But from your last remark, I can see that that’s the last thing I’ll get—”

  “You mean Felicity.”

  “Yes.”

  Leo put a brief hand on Alexander’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about that. But I can’t help you. I can only hope fiercely that she will come back to you.”

  “I shall go looking for her, if she doesn’t.”

  “Alexander—”

  “She’s my wife. We are bound to each other. I can’t just feebly let her drift.”

  “She’s a person—”

  “All persons are persons. But this one is my beloved wife. There’s a world of difference between giving someone room and leaving them to be lonely and afraid. That’s one of the things marriage is for.”

  Leo said, thinking of Sally, “And if marriage leaves you lonely and afraid?”

  “You must signal for help.”

  “As Sally Ashworth is now doing.”

  “But not,” Alexander said with emphasis, “to her husband.”

  “He won’t listen.”

  “Or perhaps you will listen more easily and sympathetically.”

  Leo picked up his and Sally’s coffee mugs.

  “You love Felicity. Sally and Alan do not love each other anymore. Coffee?”

  Alexander shook his head.

  “Judith and I stopped loving each other. We didn’t mean to but it happened. You are lucky to be so unhappy, you are lucky to love someone as you love Felicity.”

  “I know. But I don’t think I should give up if I stopped—oh God, what a stupid conversation! We mean so many things by love, so many rich and various things that there must always be enough of something left to help a marriage to survive—”

  “No,” Leo said, “not necessarily. But I wish you were right.”

  “I believe in marriage.”

  Leo’s voice rose.

  “That isn’t your prerogative!”

  Alexander moved across the room and opened the door to the hall.

  “For better or worse—”

  “A splendid exit line,” Leo said with venom.

  “Don’t be cheap.”

  They looked at each other across the disordered room.

  “You’re a great fellow,” Leo said, “but I can’t cope with you tonight.”

  “That makes two of us,” Alexander said, and went out into the hall.

  When he had gone, Leo rang Sally. She was very calm.

  “He’s such a nice man. I think he was horrified. Did he tick you off?”

  “Not really. He asked me to stop seeing you.”

  “And?”

  “I refused.”

  “Oh,” she said on a breath, and then, “Did he mention Henry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leo—”

  “Sally, I don’t have any children but I spend a lot of time with them. It seems to me that you can’t live your life for them; otherwise they can’t live for themselves. If things are right for you, there is a better chance they will be right for them.”

  “I admire Henry, you know, as well as love him.”

  “I admire him. As well as like him. And I love you.”

  “You can’t know—”

  “I can,” Leo said, “and I do,” and rang off.

  Three minutes later he rang back.

  “I’ll say the same thing after I’ve made love to you, too. Only more often.”

  “Leo, don’t be so head-turning—”

  “You don’t know” he said with sudden energy, “the sheer relief of having found what I hardly knew I was looking for. Sleep well. I’ll ring you tomorrow.”

  She put the telephone down and switched off her bedside light. In the street outside someone kicked an empty can along the pavement, and behind her knees, Mozart humped himself into a different shape and purred slumbrously. Upstairs, Henry would be as he had been when she had kissed him good night, rammed down under his duvet, oblivious of her and exclusive to himself. A vast happiness settled across her like a huge relaxing hand and drew her luxuriously into sleep.

  6

  THE ROOF OF THE CATHEDRAL, THE DEAN INFORMED AN EMERGENCY chapter meeting, was going to cost at least a quarter of a million pounds. The parapet mullions were seriously decayed and whole sections must be removed without delay, for safety, and the rest spliced. The worst wear was at the base of the mullions, where the soft stone had worn away to allow gallons of water to lie in the angle formed by the roof and the parapet. This water had seeped its way into a large section of the south and west roofs. There was nothing for it but to strip the roof, re-line and re-lead it, and make lengths of new parapet. It would take a year to repair the roof and longer for the stonework. Cathedral funds could find perhaps fifty thousand; the rest must be found elsewhere.

  One of the canons suggested an appeal. Two others at once pointed out that the appeal for the restoration of the organ was still open and the public would hardly be likely to subscribe to both. It occurred to the dean to reveal Frank Ashworth’s offer to buy the headmaster’s house, and then, for a reason he did not care to explore, he decided against it. It was, after all, quite out of the question that such a jewel should pass from the close to the council and therefore pointless to set such a red herring a-swimming.

  A slightly fractious murmuring arose among the canons. One suggested a cut in the diocesan educational services to help pay for the roof, either because he forgot or because he wished to provoke a fellow canon who was in charge of education in the diocese. Another suggested less support for the mission for the dying in Calcutta, which was particularly dear, they all knew, to the bishop’s heart; and a third, suspecting that the Historic Churches Fund had already been approached by the dean on the question of the new lighting, asked why that body should not be appealed to.

  Hugh Cavendish eyed them all serenely. His drive to Croxton had indeed proved fruitful and the cheese-and-wine party soothing to his feelings, being so full of admiring praise for his loving care of the cathedral. He leaned forward and put his clasped hands in front of him on the table at which a dozen generations of chapters of Aldminster had met.

  “Gentlemen. I hope you will bear with me, but I have a scheme which I need to revolve a little further in my mind before it is fit for your consideration. When we next meet, I hope to be able to lay before you my proposal for solving our present predicament.”

  “Old fox,” Canon Ridley said later to Canon Yeats, helping him down the stone staircase to the close. “Something’s up. When he gets all stately like that you c
an hear the cogs clicking away in his brain like Meccano.”

  “There’s a rumour,” Canon Yeats said a little breathlessly, trying to accommodate the stair rail, two sticks, and his colleague’s well- meant but misdirected arm, “that we’ll be selling off the headmaster’s house. Fetch a tidy bit.”

  “Don’t you believe it. The dean would never countenance selling a building, let alone a good building. He’d sell us, if we were worth anything, like a shot. Care for a bite of lunch before you get back?”

  Frank Ashworth was not surprised when the dean wished to make an appointment with him, but he was intrigued by being asked if they might meet privately. Accordingly the dean, early one evening as an extremely pretty apricot sunset threw the cranes on the docks into dramatic stork-like relief, drove down to the block of flats in Back Street, and took the unpleasant grey plastic-lined lift to the top.

  “I had no idea you had such views from here.”

  “I’m directly above where I lived as a boy, only sixty feet higher.”

  The dean walked to the windows that gave on to the sharp rise of the city up to the crown of the cathedral.

  “I’ve never seen it from here. It’s magnificent.”

  “I hear I’ll have a fine view of scaffolding for the next year.”

  “I’m afraid so,” the dean said easily. “Of course, we’ll make all the haste we can.”