by A. N. Wilson
Being a consummate professional, she had been through the outline of the programme the night before online with her producer. She nonetheless had left herself half an hour this morning before she needed to go on air. They could go through any news stories which had broken in the night. But this day was just one of those quiet Island days in which, it seemed, nothing very interesting was going to happen. Deirdre Hadley was scheduled to appear at ten past eight, after the news, with one of her frequent tirades against Rex Tone.
Half an hour later, at one minute to eight, Islanders from all over heard the voice they knew so well – ‘Good morning, this is Island Breakfast and I’m Cavan Cliffe’ . . . And there was then a snatch of music and Cavan said, ‘This morning’s news is read by Jenny Bredin.’
The Dean came into the Cathedral at 7.55. It was so hot that she wore simply a black clerical shirt and a light grey pleated skirt. Bob, who was in the whole rig of choir robes – cassock, surplice, scarf and hood (BA Marsh College, Dundee) – was visibly sweltering, poor lad. There were four others in the Gallipoli Chapel – Abel, the sacristan, a sad-faced, tall man of huge dignity, Tangata, very devout. He was wearing a black gown over his white trousers and sleeveless striped shirt. Eleanor often lost her place in the office book through staring at Abel’s face: not out of lust, or not exactly, but out of wonder. There seemed to be so much going on behind that face. She wondered if he was a mystic (whatever that is, exactly); he seemed to be quietly in touch with that something she only glimpsed occasionally, which Eliot wrote about in Four Quartets, and she suspected it was the same mysterious something as had made those early-morning Masses of her dad’s so meaningful in the fogbound West Midland towns of twenty-five years ago. Bob, that very pleasant, not especially intelligent clergyman, was sitting at the back of the chapel with the office book open. Abel had already lit the two candles on the altar. The frayed banners of the two Huia regiments which had suffered the worst casualties in Gallipoli hung limply over their heads. The light of the two altar candles glimmered in the beaten copper of the reredos. They looked as if they were sweating as much as Bob, as the wax dripped. Behind them, moulded brass Fish maidens danced across the relief, amid a cluster of leaves and birds. They held aloft a banner which was adorned in Gothic lettering with the words ‘PANIS ANGELORUM’. One of them appeared to be slightly sucking the tip of her finger.
The two others present were Miss Price, a small woman who even on this blazing summer morning was wearing a woollen beret, and holding a shopping basket. She attended most mornings, as did Penny Whistle, who made the responses in a very loud, conversational tone, slightly out of kilter with the other four voices. So, when Bob said, ‘The Lord be with you’, and the others replied, ‘And with thy spirit’, Penny Whistle was several beats ahead of them, and he stressed the word ‘spirit’ as if he had been long searching for the mot juste and was mighty pleased with himself for having selected it at last; his tone implied that, although he was wishing the Lord to be with Bob’s spirit, he had weighed the possibility of the Lord being with some other part, or attribute, or relative of Bob – with his mother, for example (with whom Bob lived).
The seemly forms of Morning Prayer were followed, as they were being followed in college chapels, churches and cathedrals every hour of the twenty-four, o’er every continent and island. On our Island, it was the thirteenth morning – though in England it was the previous evening. They recited the 68th Psalm antiphonally. ‘O God, when thou wentest forth before the people – PAUSE – when thou wentest through the wilderness.’ The Dean, Abel, Penny Whistle and Miss Price followed with, ‘The earth shook, and the heavens dropped at the presence of God – PAUSE – even as Sinai also was moved at the presence of God, who is the God of Israel.’
By the time Bob was reading the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, ‘Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us . . .’ Jill had finished reading the radio news, and Sophie Richards was giving the Islanders an update on the weather.
‘It’s going to be another lovely day, clear skies, and temperatures well up in the thirties,’ said Sophie’s bright tones.
She spoke through the packets of breakfast cereal and the mounds of papers, which included household bills and the vast number of communications sent by the children’s two schools – Opportunity One, where Ella was in Year One, and St Augustine’s, where Josh was in Year Eight – on the Nicolsons’ peninsular kitchen unit. The documents related to details of concerts, sports days, permission-forms for the children to go for outings to the Botanic Gardens, a message from the medical officer about nits and how to comb them out of your kids’ hair. Ten minutes of fairly noisy breakfast ensued – Josh was a passable spin bowler, and was talking to his father about an approaching match against a rival school, while Pamela was trying to get her husband to go through the desk-diary which they kept on their kitchen unit, to make sure they were all up to speed on Arrangements – who was driving Josh back from the match against Loretto. On Wednesday, Ella had a dental appointment, but she would need to go directly to this from her oboe lesson, and Pamela would not be back in time to supervise this, so could Charlie? And Charlie was doing that thing of putting his hand through his hair and looking down, which really annoyed his wife, because she read the gesture as meaning – ‘Do you realize just how busy I am and how important my job is, and you are asking me to interest myself in all these TRIVIAL little things?’
Instead, he said,
—We really need a full-time PA to manage our diaries.
—That would be very helpful, said Pamela. There was a dreadful coldness in the polite phrase. When she adopted this attitude she could freeze a fry-up with five words.
—No, no, said Charlie, sensing a squabble, I can get back in time for your oboe, Ellie, course I can.
He knew that by addressing the child, rather than replying to his wife, he was irritating Pamela still further.
Her irritation burst forth with,
—It’s not the oboe lesson. Don’t you listen? She has to go FROM the oboe lesson TO the dentist?
None of them were paying much attention to the Cassandra-like warnings of Deirdre Hadley, who, the news being over, was now haranguing Rex Tone behind the Nicolsons’ Family Size pack of Shreddies through the speaker of their small digital radio.
— . . . No . . . no, you can’t talk through me, you have taken contracts.
—You don’t know that, dear—
—I do know it and I am NOT your dear.
—Rex, Rex [Cavan’s voice] – let her finish.
—You have held talks with Wong Developments. They are almost certainly going to win the contract to rebuild the sports stadium—
—Almost certainly isn’t the same as drawn up a contract. Who said anything about a contract?
—Let me finish. You rebuilt the City Hall. That was also built by Chinese contractors. We don’t know—
—No you don’t, do you, you don’t know, but that doesn’t stop you having opinions about every subject under the blessed sun. Strewth!
—Rex! I’m warning you [Cavan].
—You’ve given no assurances about whether that twenty-storey building – twenty storeys, Mr Tone – has been quake-proofed. You cannot give us any reassurances whether the new building of the primary school—
—Opportunity One [Rex’s voice].
—Opportunity to be flattened under a heap of concrete.
—I don’t know what you’re talking about – YOU don’t know what—
—Last autumn . . . let me finish – last autumn, there was a quake which was 7.5 on the Richter scale. SEVEN POINT FIVE. It was a mira—
—Let me finish.
Pamela suddenly switched from the everlasting marital war to ask,
—You don’t think she’s right, do you? That Ella’s school . . .
Pamela Nicolson was an elegant, serious woman, with a very pale face, hair which she wore up and whose colour was s
o nondescript as to be colourless, pale lips and pale eyes. Her colleagues at Minchin and Buss wondered why she did not dye it, or at least add some highlights, but there was a reason. When Charlie (which was how she thought of him when she loved him) Nicolson, five years older, had fallen in love with her – she was working at the time, as she still did, for a rival law firm in the city – he had considered all these muted shades made her ‘ethereal’. She knew that he was no longer in love with her and guessed, accurately, that he found her appearance quietly boring. Those who wondered why she did not wear lipstick were unaware that she did so, but wore a shade so discreet that if anything it muted the natural pink of her mouth.
Her feelings towards her husband vacillated. Sometimes she was so angry with him that she wished to commit physical violence. Sometimes, however, she still deferred to him – in matters of taste. She always let him choose the wine when they were entertaining. In political views, she either shared his, mildly conservative, opinions, or silently acquiesced in them. She did not underestimate her own skills as a (company) lawyer, but she knew that he was outstanding, and even when she was hating him, she admired his legal brain.
Of course, although he had made all these declarations to the Dean of our Cathedral, and told Eleanor he was going to announce to his wife that he was now in love with Eleanor, he had not acted on his words. She was nonetheless completely aware of his infatuation, and tried not to think that he had transferred his love entirely from her to Dean Bartlett. One of the things she had once loved about him was his romanticism. Charles (which was how she thought of him when she was upset with him) had never really been at one with her in musical taste. She did not mind music in the background – for example, when they were having dinner together. She actually enjoyed choral music, and rejoiced that Josh had got into the Cathedral choir. She found it excruciatingly boring, however, to sit through concerts, and his fondness for twentieth-century French music – Poulenc, Messiaen, even Boulez – was something at which she drew the line.
Her ways of being independent of him took quieter paths. There was her Book Group, a circle of friends who met each month to discuss, usually a novel, very occasionally another sort of book. There were a number of people with whom she had lunches, usually legal colleagues, but a few old school friends, for, like me, Pamela was born and bred an Aberdonian. Why should Charles not attend concerts with those who liked that sort of thing? Yet, since he had begun to go to concerts with Eleanor Bartlett, things had changed. For one thing, he went much more often than he had ever been in the past. For another, she sensed that there was something ‘going on’ between them. It was unthinkable – wasn’t it – that a senior cleric would actually consider committing adultery? In some senses, this made the situation more dangerous. If he was smitten with a merely Platonic passion, if he and the Dean did not even hold hands . . . might it be turning into a mania inside his head? Much of the time, when he was at home, he did not seem to be with them at all. He was somewhere else, with That Woman.
—She’s bonkers, isn’t she? Charles asked, in reply to his wife’s question. This was the generally held opinion of Deirdre Hadley.
—Did you see her hat on Sunday? Pamela asked. That blue denim hat she wears. In the Cathedral. And all those badges. ‘Vegans for World Peace’. But you know she is right about City Hall. You told me yourself. Rex Tone has sold us down the river to the Chinese. Wong Developments, or whatever they’re called, DO now actually own the Aberdeen City Hall, and Deirdre Hadley knows that.
—Like I said. Bonkers. Come on, junior.
—Why is it bonkers to want world peace? Ella asked. When no one answered, she said,
—Anyway, we are going to the ZOO.
—Zoos, said Josh, are for babies.
—Packed lunch?
The question was Charlie’s. If he had asked the question of his daughter, Pamela would not have found it so annoying, but he asked it of HER – thereby showing, first, that he had not read the school’s letter about the zoo outing (‘Packed lunches will be provided’) and, secondly, that he somehow expected, had a packed lunch been required, that she would have been the one to prepare it – which of course she always was when that sort of thing was needed. So she took a breath and waited for Ella to say,
—The school’s providing them, Dad.
—Are you going to make history and choose something other than plain ham sandwiches?
—I like ham.
On the other side of town, in the cool of the Lady Chapel, Bob was saying, ‘Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger.’
The zoo outing was also a subject of domestic consideration in Barnaby Farrell’s kitchen, where, through a different set of speakers, Deirdre’s contest with Rex Tone was rising in passion.
—If the Quake was 7.5, said Rex, and Opportunity One was still standing, I don’t know what makes you say that—
—Because the epicentre of the Quake, as you very well know, was forty miles way. But if it moved. If the next one happens—
—There isn’t going to BE a next one, DEAR, said Rex. This is just the doom-merchants of the Green Party, whipping up people’s irrational fears. It’s ’cause we’re streaks ahead of you in the polls—
—What does that have to do with anything?
— . . . ahead of you in the polls, and you need, no, sorry, the listeners have got to realize this, you need to whip up irrational fears. No one’s gonna vote for your lot of yoghurt-eating, sandal-wearing prigs unless they are scared into doing so. You just peddle scare stories, which are, as I say, completely irrational—
—What’s irrational about the scientific evidence that our city was built on a fault line? That last winter, there was a quake which was SEVEN POINT FIVE? What’s irrational?
—OK, said Rex, let’s look at a worst case scenario here, let’s say there’s another one – on 5, 6, 7.5, whatever—
—How can you sit there and just SAY this when—
—Let him finish. [Cavan]
—Then we’re prepared. We’re ready for it. 24/7, we’ve been preparing. Rebuilt our infrastructure, reinforced buildings at risk—
—You expect us to BELIEVE this? Where’s the evidence you have rebuilt our infrastructure?
—I think most of your listeners will have seen Bus Interchange, and consider it is an important—
—That’s not INFRASTRUCTURE. That is yet more concrete building. Heavy concrete slabs which could fall on whole busloads of—
—Let him finish.
— . . . most of the listeners will have seen Bus Interchange-Aberdeen and consider it a considerable improvement on the old clapped-out Bus Exchange, which was built, would you believe, in 1948.
—Many of us liked it. There was nothing wrong with the bus station. Now it has been replaced by heavy concrete – the last thing we want WHEN, WHEN note, not IF – WHEN the next quake comes. And it was not the old bus station we did not like, it was the lousy public transport system we objected to, which forces people to drive their cars when they could—
—Most people seem happy enough with the state of the art facilities we’ve installed in Bus Interchange-Aberdeen, which is the most up-to-date bus interchange ON THE PLANET. We’ve got free wi-fi there, we’ve got a rolling news channel from Island TV showing 24/7 in the waiting-rooms—
—The worst bus service in the world, that’s what we’ve got, and we are still burning fossil fuels on all those buses, rather than encouraging people to ride bikes to work, rather than looking at ways to reduce fossil fuel emissions, rather than—
Cavan said,
—Well, I rowed to work this morning, so I did not use fossil fuels, but I’m going to have to stop you there.
Barnaby meditatively prodded his egg with a stainless steel spoon. He sat opposite Stig, wishing he was with Deirdre. At home, as he still thought of her house.
Stig said,
—Dad, you remember we are goin
g to the zoo?
Barnaby said,
—Course.
Stig said,
—Dad, did you remember?
He had completely forgotten. He had been planning to spend a morning in the library preparing for the next seminar – the big one, both he and Digby agreed, with the title King Lear and the Gods. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport. Now he’d have to take Stig to the zoo? When had he promised that?
—A school trip, Dad. A school trip to the zoo.
—Am I coming?
Stig laughed.
—Strewth, Dad. Course not.
Waves of relief spread through Barnaby. He loved his little boy, while finding almost every aspect of life with him – going to the playground, going to the swimming baths, reading aloud the crappy books people wrote nowadays for children – almost intolerably boring.
While he listened to her on the radio, Barnaby was meditating on the fact that she still loved him. She did not need to tell him this. She’d found no new man as a substitute. How could there be a substitute for love? He thought – it was all right when they made love, which, just sometimes, he did with her. It was fine. Why not be content with that, and stop chasing round after other women, and tell Bar to go screw herself?