The Choir

by Joanna Trollope

  “Is your husband in?”

  “He’s just come over from the school, as a matter of fact.”

  Frank peered at her. She had bare feet and was wearing the kind of skirt he associated with gypsy fortune-tellers, who used to come with the travelling fairs to Horsley Common when he was a boy. The common was a housing estate now with silly street names like Primrose Way and Cowslip Close.

  “Could I see him for five minutes?”

  Alexander came out of the sitting room, saying he thought he had heard the doorbell.

  “Mr. Ashworth—”

  “I wonder if I might have five minutes—”

  “Of course,” Alexander said. His voice was matter-of-fact.

  Frank stepped in saying, “It concerns Mrs. Troy too, so if you’d join us—”

  The sitting-room floor was spread with new curtains for their bedroom that Felicity had suddenly decided to make as a hostage to fortune against their having to leave the house. Almost the entire room was covered with rough cream Indian cotton that gave off a strong smell of sunburned grass. She made no reference at all to this, so the three of them took chairs twelve feet from one another around the edge and Frank felt himself disadvantaged. Alexander appeared to notice nothing; both he and Felicity sat and watched their visitor.

  “I believe a valuation has recently been carried out on this house,” Frank said.

  Alexander nodded.

  “I expect you know that it has long been my wish to provide the people of the city, the ordinary people, with somewhere of their own in the close—”

  Alexander burst in. “The principle of course—”

  “Sh,” Felicity said.

  Frank turned his head slowly from one to another. He looked tired beyond measure.

  “My wish hasn’t changed. But the times have. The timing too. This isn’t the moment, because such a house wouldn’t be used for the proper purpose, for the people of the city. I fear that just now it would be used for minority interests, so”—he paused, as if he needed to summon up the energy to go on—“at the next council meeting I’m going to withdraw my proposal that we should buy this house.”

  There was a silence. Felicity and Alexander did not look at each other. Then Alexander said soberly, “Thank you for telling us, Mr. Ashworth.”

  “You’d a right to know.” He gave Alexander a sideways glance. “You don’t always hear from the proper quarter.”

  He stood up. Alexander and Felicity rose too and the three of them processed in silence around the edge of the curtain fabric and into the hall.

  “Your Henry has done us all proud this week,” Alexander said.

  Frank smiled for the first time.

  “Cocky little monkey,” he said and went out in to the close.

  Behind the closed door of the headmaster’s house Alexander said, “What is going on?”

  Only fifteen governors could attend the emergency meeting summoned by the dean, but the necessary three clerical members were present in the dean, the archdeacon, and Canon Yeats. Bridget had taken enormous trouble to arrange the dining room like a boardroom with notepads and pencils and carafes of water, and she had made a batch of shortbread for Mrs. Ray to take in with the coffee. The dean had refused to discuss the matter with her—she tried to tell herself that this was perfectly proper of him—but she knew that what he was seeking was a vote from the governors of no confidence in Alexander Troy.

  Alexander’s crime, in Bridget’s eyes, was not this nonsense over the choir, or even his use of school Speech Day as a personal platform, but his defiance of the dean. The only small ameliorating factor was that he was, undeniably, a gentleman. But the prestige of the high officers of the Church was to Bridget something sacred, something hardly to be subjected to the finger-snapping of lesser men. To her, such insolence was outrageous, and although she believed sincerely that Alexander should be punished, she was also afraid that if he were dismissed, his replacement might well not be what she would care for at all. Hugh’s own stature would be diminished if he was entirely surrounded by men—here even Bridget hesitated in her mind over the words—men not of his own sort. Heaven knows, there were enough of them in the Church as it was.

  When she had shut the last governor into the dining room, she went to her bureau to sort out the cathedral guides muddle which she had, ex officio, taken over from the chapter office. The chapter steward had not been in the least pleased about this, but as the guides rota had become terribly confused, with far too many unreliable members, he had not been in much of a position to refuse when Mrs. Cavendish had swept away the files, saying that she would sort them out. She had done just the same thing to the cathedral bookshop two years before and reorganized it to perfection and found a new manageress and aroused resentment and indignation all round. At least the Mistress of Embroideries, a fierce old academic doctor with an immense knowledge of historic fabrics and embroidery skills, had the strength of character to defend her own patch, and the voluntary team who cleaned the monuments had always had the discretion to lie very low indeed. The Friends of the Cathedral were slowly massing together for strength; as the bishop said with ironic regret to his wife, Bridget Cavendish was wonderful for uniting the diocese.

  For an hour and a half she sat and made lists and rotas and telephone calls. Mrs. Ray went in with the coffee tray at precisely eleven, but in the seconds that the dining-room door was open, nothing could be heard but polite murmurs at the sight of biscuits. At noon, the door opened again and the governors began to surge into the hall. She sprang to show them out, bright with enquiring smiles. They thanked her gravely. Canon Yeats was the last, heaving himself on his sticks. She was most solicitous with him but he seemed not to notice her much, being preoccupied, it appeared, not so much with the deanery steps as with his thoughts. Huffo did not come out at all. Bridget assisted Canon Yeats down to the level of the close, and as she held the gate for him, she could not resist saying vivaciously, “I do hope the meeting went well!”

  Canon Yeats stopped to look at her. He had never liked her. Her big handsomeness always reminded him of those dreadful bossy voluntary army women who had made his wartime army chaplaincy such a nightmare. “I should have liked,” he said to his wife later, “to have planted the end of my stick on her great bust and pushed her over” He gave her a glimmering little glance before turning away.

  “It went well, Mrs. Cavendish, but it should never have been called in the first place. The ways we have fallen into are very wrong.”

  She went back up the steps to the deanery. The dean was not in his study or in the dining room. Mrs. Ray met her in the hall between the two and said the dean had said not to wait lunch for him because he would be out until three and would pick up a sandwich. Mrs. Ray must have invented the last phrase because it was never one the dean would use. Bridget went out through the back door to the garage; the car was gone. She returned to the house, told Mrs. Ray that that would be all for today, thank you, and then climbed heavily up the staircase to the nobly windowed bedroom she had curtained and draped in convolvulus chintz, and where she and Hugh had now slept, side by side, for sixteen years. She sat down at her dressing table and looked at herself without the smallest atom of pleasure. Hugh had been defeated by the governors and had not felt that he could, or wanted to, come to her for comfort. She leaned her elbows on the glass surface, under which tens of photographs of her children lay imprisoned, and lowered her head into her hands, covering her eyes. The house was very quiet. In its silence, her elbows numbing on the cold glass, Bridget Cavendish went down, for the first time in her life, into the pain of love.

  When the dean walked into the council offices, the receptionist, who knew everybody and everything, said that Mr. Ashworth wasn’t in today. The dean said in that case, he would be grateful to have a word with any senior councillor who could spare him a quarter of an hour. The receptionist said she would see what she could do, and showed him into a small waiting room with a cactus on the table and racks ar
ound the walls full of public health leaflets. “Nobody will bother you in here,” she said to him, and shut him in.

  He went, inevitably, to the window. It looked on to the car park and beyond that to a well-worn corner of the Lyng Gardens, where the grass had been rubbed off the earth around flower beds planted with the municipal favourites, scarlet salvias and orange African marigolds. There was a stout and gloomy girl slumped on a bench with a toddler strapped in a folding stroller by her, and beyond her two men lying flat out on the grassless earth with their heads covered by the same newspaper. It was one-thirty. The dean had driven about for over an hour, debating to himself. For once, he had not gone to the cathedral—he had vowed he would not go in except to services until the record makers had removed all their rubbish—but had instead made for the ring road and driven round that, mindlessly, like a donkey on a treadmill. At one point, he had turned off and gone down to the estuary and listened to the gulls, and bought a pork pie from a little corner shop, which he ate ravenously in the car. It had heartened him. He had turned the car back to the city and headed for the council offices.

  They kept him waiting twenty minutes. He read about heroin addiction, whooping cough, dental care, and sexually transmitted diseases; then he found a batch on legal aid and citizens’ rights, and read those too. When the door opened and a different girl came in to say Mr. Thornton could see him now, he was reading the incase-of-fire instructions on the back of the door and she nearly knocked him over. She was embarrassed by his dog collar and addressed him as “you” because she did not know what else to call him. He followed her into a lift, and up two floors to a long corridor covered in carpet tiles, which echoed to the intermittent clack of typewriters.

  Halfway down, she opened a half-glazed door and showed him in to a small room with two modern tweed-covered armchairs and a low table bearing only an ashtray. She went over to an inner door, knocked, and then opened it to say, “Your gentleman, Mr. Thornton.” She turned back to Hugh. “You can go in.”

  “It is usual,” the dean said with as little heat as he could manage, “to call me Dean.”

  She goggled at him. He went past her into the inner office and found Denis Thornton, sharply suited, with a gold pin thrust through his collar ends under the knot of his tie, standing waiting with an official smile.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Cavendish. Do please take a seat. Will you have coffee? No? One coffee only then, Heather—”

  The dean sank down. Denis Thornton sat down neatly and folded his arms on the desk. He wore several rings, all on unorthodox fingers.

  “Now then. What can I do for you?”

  The dean’s voice seemed to him to come from a long way off.

  “I am sure you are aware of the appeal we are having to mount for the cathedral roof—”

  “Well, yes, I—”

  “It appears the damage is very much greater than we feared. Very much. It appears we have beetle to contend with as well as water.”

  Denis Thornton made sympathetic noises but said nothing.

  “I am not sure how far the suggestion has gone in the council, but I believe you were anxious to have some kind of centre, for the people, in the close—”

  He looked up. Denis Thornton was watching.

  “It was Mr. Ashworth’s project,” he went on, too quickly, “and I must confess that at first I could not bring myself to see things his way. The house he had in mind, the headmaster’s house, you see, is so very—”

  “I’m afraid,” Denis Thornton said, “that I know nothing of this.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I’m not saying, Mr. Cavendish, that it isn’t a proposal we might entertain. But it isn’t on the current agenda.” He smiled at the dean. “I can see it might be a very attractive proposal.”

  “I understood Mr. Ashworth had proposed it already.”

  “Perhaps privately, but not in council, Mr. Cavendish. Explain to me, if you would, what you have in mind.”

  “The sale of the headmaster’s house to the council,” the dean said. “It has recently been valued at three hundred thousand pounds. Of course—” He stopped.

  Denis Thornton picked up a pen from the rack in front of him and held it lightly between his fingers.

  “Suppose you write me a letter, Mr. Cavendish, outlining your proposal.”

  The dean sighed.

  “I feel that as the project began with Frank Ashworth—”

  Denis Thornton laid his pen down with precision.

  “It would be better to address the letter to me. Frank Ashworth is nearing retirement after all.”

  “Retirement! But I thought—”

  “Oh yes indeed. Younger shoulders, you know.”

  The dean stood up.

  “We live in a harsh world, Mr. Thornton.”

  Denis Thornton escorted him back to the lift and saw him into it with slightly showy courtesy. He was borne downwards, and stepped out into the echoing foyer with a righteous tread. Duty, he told himself, duty, authority, and the cathedral.

  “OK, then?” the girl on the desk said cosily to him as he passed.

  He bowed very slightly.

  “Thank you.”

  She came round the desk and tapped past him on her high heels to open the heavy outer door for him.

  “Mind how you go,” she said.

  Disgusting expression, overfamiliar, chummy. He passed through in silence and sought his car in the park.

  He came in through the garden door of the deanery. Bridget was on the telephone.

  “My dear, I can’t promise anything just now. I’ve got to devote myself to Hugh, you know, he has so much on his plate—of course I will, the moment I can see a day ahead—I couldn’t agree more, all politics and money—I’m sure you understand—”

  She caught sight of the dean.

  “My dear, he’s just come in. Will you forgive? Absolutely, as soon as ever I can. Bye—”

  She put the receiver down and came towards him with a curious expression on her face which, he would have said if he had not known her better, contained a trace of uncertainty.

  “Huffo, where have you been? And no lunch! Let me make you a sandwich. And after such a morning—”

  He moved past her.

  “Thank you, but no sandwich. I had things to see to in the city, but really I am not hungry.”

  “Some tea, dear, then—”

  He gave a tiny sigh.

  “Tea would be very nice.”

  She gave a step towards him as he opened the door to the study.

  “Huffo …”

  He turned in the doorway and said quietly, “Tea. Thank you. Tea,” and then he closed the door gently in her face.

  13

  AT THE END OF TERM, A STAND-IN CHOIR ARRIVED FROM A SURREY parish church, and the singing boys were sent off on their various summer holidays. Henry took Chilworth to his grandmother’s for a week, most of which they spent building an elaborate camp in the small wilderness Jean permitted to the garden beyond the regimented vegetable patch. Both boys were very happy being orthodox by day and experimenting with hair gel and pop music on their Walkmans by night, when Jean supposed them in bed with the innocent copies of Anthony Buckeridge and Captain W. E. Johns she had left for them to read.

  Behind them, despite the provisional choir, a lull fell upon the close at Aldminster. Alexander and Felicity, elated at the growing fund for the choir and the promise of secure tenure of their house, borrowed Sam’s Herefordshire cottage for a fortnight and drove away to walk the Malvern Hills. Half the school closed down entirely; the other half was taken over by two hundred Scandinavians on a summer English course. They were, on the whole, very quiet, and when a group of them, cornered while gazing conscientiously at the cathedral, were asked by Bridget Cavendish what they most enjoyed in Aldminster, they answered her gravely, “The cheapness of the alcohol.” Gallantly, she tried to pass this off around the close as an amusing story, to show her lightness of heart, but nobody was taken
in. That she was suffering in some way was visible to everybody, but she remained essentially unreachable. One morning, Janet Young found her inexplicably weeping in front of a scarlet sprayed slogan on the deanery wall; “Judge Dread,” it said, “says YES to the choir.”

  “It is only a piece of silliness,” Janet said, putting a tentative, solacing hand on Bridget’s arm. “It is no real menace.”

  Bridget stood very upright at once and blew her nose authoritatively.

  “It’s for Hugh, of course. I can’t bear him to be exposed to any more of this.”

  Janet made kind and murmuring noises, but was brushed off when she tried to help Bridget into the house.

  “Please say nothing of this. I try to keep all these feelings from Hugh because I do not wish to add to his burdens.”

  “At least then,” Janet said later to the bishop, “she was speaking the truth. But she wasn’t weeping for him, I’m sure of that, at least not for his pain. It’s some pain of her own—”

  “Those children?”

  “No. No. She looked too vulnerable for that. The last person she would ever confide in is me. Her pride wouldn’t allow it.”

  The bishop bit the earpiece of his spectacles reflectively.

  “The dean is not himself either. Much more withdrawn—”

  Intellectually, the dean pitied his wife. He saw her misery and he was sorry for it, but emotionally he could do nothing to alleviate it. His own afflictions in the years they had spent together had not so much hardened him as alienated him, so that he could not regard Bridget with any imaginative sympathy. She had defied him, day in, day out, for almost thirty years in matters of love and life, over children and parish, and although he could not identify which straw it was that had finally broken the camel’s back, he knew his docility was ended. He was, he told himself hourly, daily, as a kind of mantra, dean. He held as dean an administrative and spiritual authority that was not only his privilege but which he would make his gift to God. Nobody, any longer, should defy that authority, not Bridget, not Alexander Troy, not Leo Beckford, not his own daughter. He felt there was a kind of purity in his authority and in the strength he saw in it; he had inklings of a reforming zeal. When he and Bridget took their customary ten days’ fishing on the Dee, he would make the new pattern of their life very plain to her; while they were thus occupied, Cosmo, he resolved, whether he liked it or not, would go to an adventure centre in North Wales. Out of the muddle and compromise of life in the close as it had become, he resolved, a new clean, strong order should rise, with all disruptive forces subdued. Living in the undistinguished second master’s house—Mr. Vigors, a bachelor, would surely be no trouble to move into the school—would effectively subdue Alexander Troy.