I sighed with delight. ‘What a wonderful story! And what a wonderful church. Can we see the rest of it?’
A verger appeared then, and asked us if we wanted a tour, but when we said we preferred to wander by ourselves, he was amenable and handed us a brochure with a floor plan and some mention of principal points of interest.
Our first stop was the chapel devoted to private prayer. Nearly every English cathedral has one, a place set aside from traffic areas and noise, where one can be alone with God, whoever one conceives him to be. We knelt for a moment, each with our own thoughts. I was giving thanks for the beauty that surrounded us, and also put up a fervent petition that Sherebury might find the right bishop. I suspect Alan’s prayers had something to do with the search, too.
When we rose, the first thing I wanted to see was the chapter house. Now, not all cathedrals have one of those, only the ones that have been monasteries at some point in their careers. It was the place where the monks gathered once a day to hear a chapter read from the Rule of their order, and to discuss any business matters that might be before the abbey. They vary in style according to the architecture of the building, of course, but the most popular style was circular or octagonal, the roof supported by a single central pillar, with stone benches ranged along the walls. The most famous one of this type is possibly at Wells, where the lovely steps leading to it have been photographed innumerable times. Sherebury’s chapter house is also of this pattern, though the room is now used as the Cathedral library, with rows of bookshelves, which rather spoil the effect.
Perhaps Rotherford hadn’t been a cathedral long enough to acquire much of a library. At any rate, the fine old octagonal room was bare and washed with sunlight from the high windows all around. They were glazed with plain leaded glass, not stained, so the natural light saturated the already golden stone. My breath caught in my throat.
Alan smiled, put his arm around my shoulder, and drew me close.
Sometimes the best communication is wordless.
We wandered, then, without aim or purpose, finding here a charming little chantry, there an amusing tomb inscription, amazing stained glass, exquisite carvings.
There comes a moment, though, when one is saturated with beauty and wonder, and unable to take in any more. When I responded with a nod and a murmur to something Alan pointed out, he said, ‘Tea time, then?’ and we walked out in perfect agreement.
It was a little early for tea, so we inspected the churchyard for a bit. It was neatly mowed, by machine, I realized regretfully. It’s only the country churches that still allow sheep and goats in the churchyard to keep the grass trimmed. They do a much better job than mechanical devices, especially around the headstones, and of course they fertilize the grass as well, but I suppose a cathedral feels that animal droppings are a trifle undignified. I don’t know why. They’re small, and smell no worse to my senses than gasoline fumes.
We picked out a few interesting inscriptions to read to each other, and then decided we were now in need of sustenance, so we found a tea shop, crowded on a Tuesday afternoon, and eventually snagged a seat outside.
Of course, our conversation turned to the search.
‘So far,’ I said, ‘it’s Robinson by a length. By a lap. By a mile. I’m sorry, but I simply cannot like Lovelace. Even if he isn’t an embezzler. I wish we’d hear something from Walter.’
‘These things take time, if one is cautious. And we certainly want him to be cautious.’
‘We do. Alan, that man is dangerous.’
‘He is. He’s political and he’s manipulative, and he’s so damnably persuasive. I truly fear that he may be chosen, and I dread the prospect.’
‘Can’t you stop it? Does the vote have to be unanimous?’
‘No, unfortunately it does not. A simple majority. In less contentious times I understand the candidates were often chosen by acclamation, but it certainly isn’t going to be like that this time.’
‘No. The Church has become so politicized. In a way, I suppose it’s better than indifference, but it doesn’t seem very Christian.’
‘I do seem to recall,’ said Alan drily, ‘that our Lord once said that he had come not to bring peace, but division.’
‘And how right he was.’ I sighed and took another scone.
ELEVEN
The next morning we were up early. Watson saw to that. It was a beautiful day, there were all sorts of exciting sights and smells outdoors, and he didn’t intend to be shut up in a house any longer. So he made much more of a nuisance of himself than usual, and Alan was up, sketchily dressed, and out taking him for a walk before seven. I snoozed for a little, but it was a beautiful day, and the birds in the garden were making such a happy racket I couldn’t really sleep. So I was showered and dressed and ready for breakfast when husband and dog returned, both in great spirits.
‘We walked down to the river. It’s quite nice down there. Masses of water fowl – ducks, coots, swans, all sorts.’
‘I suppose Watson wanted to chase them.’
‘Of course he did, but the cob taught him his manners. A swan can be quite alarming when he wants to be.’
‘They certainly terrify me. I hope he didn’t get too muddy.’
‘A bit, but I cleaned his paws before we came in. He’s quite socially acceptable now. Which is more than you can say for me. If you’ll see to his breakfast, I’ll be with you as soon as I’m fit company.’
We’d brought his food and dishes along with us, so I took him down to the garden where he could eat without worrying too much about mess. He wolfed his food happily and then was reasonably content to stay in the walled garden while his humans had their meal. I promised him a bit of sausage or bacon later. Alan and I have strict rules about feeding him snacks, rules we break every time something especially tempting is on offer.
We felt a bit like sausages ourselves when we’d tucked into the full English breakfast, so we took another stroll around the town, with Watson. The influence of the cathedral was obvious everywhere. The Boys and Girls Club, which was clean, tidy, and plainly in daily use, had a message board outside listing activities for the coming week, many of them involving cathedral personnel. The row of pretty alms-houses was also in good repair, despite its venerable age. ‘Church endowed?’ I wondered aloud, and Alan pointed out the brass plaque on the end house. ‘Est. 1512 by Thos. Swain, Esq. & St Martha’s Abbey. Re-estab. 1715 by St Martha’s Church.’
It was the same everywhere we looked. A school sported a poster advertising end-of-term activities, with the dean visiting. A village hall advertised a concert a week hence featuring the cathedral choir, in aid of Oxfam. A shop listed times when free food would be distributed, with addenda thanking contributors. The cathedral and Dean Smith headed the list.
We had decided to see the dean first in his cathedral – on stage, so to speak – so we spent most of that Wednesday just being tourists, with the now-routine nap in the middle of the afternoon.
The bells woke us. It was time for me to fetch my hat and my good shoes, banish Watson to the garden, and make our way to church.
For weeks now my mind had kept harking back to Trollope’s Barsetshire novels. Alan had compared our present bishop to the henpecked, ineffectual Bishop Proudie in Barchester Towers, and I had to admit there was a good deal of truth in that. Now, seated in the cathedral, I saw that the Very Reverend James Smith was, on the other hand, a near-perfect model of Septimus Harding, the sweet, mild-mannered precentor of Trollope’s Barchester Cathedral. Dean Smith was a smallish man with sparse greying hair. His wire-rimmed spectacles gave him an earnest look, as did the wrinkled brow produced, I suspected, by poor eyesight. I recognized the peering expression from my own mirror.
I had expected, from his appearance, that the dean would have a quavery voice, but it was, instead, strong and sweet. The service was spoken, rather than chanted, but the dean did intone a few phrases, not only reverently but in tune.
The choir, made up traditionally of boys
and men, was excellent; so was the organist. In fact, the service was so lovely in every way that I waited for the sermon with great apprehension. Was this going to be the weak spot?
‘My brothers and sisters in Christ,’ he began, ‘we have come together, friend and stranger, in this beautiful and holy place to worship Almighty God, he who made us, sustains us, redeems us. We have heard the comforting words from the Gospel of John, words that are often read at a funeral: “Let not your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me.”
‘But we come here to this cathedral church from many places, from many different religious traditions. Many of you – perhaps most of you – are members of this cathedral parish, and indeed I see many familiar faces. I also see unfamiliar ones. Some of you may have come this afternoon to hear our wonderful music and bask in the beauties of our church. Some have come out of curiosity. Some may be seeking respite from troubled lives. Some have come because you’ve been sightseeing and your feet hurt.’
There was a little ripple of laughter at that.
‘Not all of you are Christians. Not all of you are believers of any sort. What I want to say to all of you is that God doesn’t care why you’re here. Let me repeat that. God doesn’t care why you came to church today! He cares that you’re here. He cares that you are, for a little time, a captive audience, so to speak. Here he can reach out to you in a special way. Our form of worship is designed to help people feel the presence of God, and, of course, he uses the music and the beauty and the solemnity to touch you.
‘So I want to warn you, all of you – Christians and non-Christians and those who aren’t quite sure what you believe – I want to warn you all that God is, in fact, reaching out to you, and he is quite relentless about it. He’s going to use every means at his disposal to draw you into his love. If you’re trying to run away from him, my friend, as most of us do from time to time, I have to tell you that you’ve come to the wrong place. There is never a time or place when he isn’t at your side, urging you to know him better, to commit yourself to his way, but this time and place is especially hazardous to anyone trying to avoid him. So if you want to escape his net, I’d advise you to leave right now. Another few minutes, and it might be too late.’
He paused, and silence filled the great sunlit space. Then a titter or two began to run through the congregation. No one now would dare to get up, even if they desperately needed to use the loo! Clever, I thought, and Alan passed the same thought to me with a little smile.
‘Ah. Well, then, you can never say you’ve not been given fair warning.’ He leaned forward in the pulpit and grasped the sides. ‘You may think me facetious, my friends, and I will admit the charge, to an extent. Perhaps the way I have phrased my message is not as serious as it might be. But the message itself is perfectly true. Our loving God, our God who loved us to the point of dying on the cross, is never going to give up on us. He keeps on urging us to follow in his way, to love our neighbours and seek to help them. If you are trying to escape that necessity, again you have come to the wrong place. We here in this cathedral are keenly committed to helping our neighbours in every way, to feeding them, clothing them, and showing them God’s love, and a portion of our offering today will be dedicated to those efforts.
‘Our Lord is present to us in a special way in his church, but he is always, everywhere, with us. When we reject him, when we turn away from his love, he keeps on loving us and seeking to bring us closer to him. When at last we find him, it is because he has, all along, been searching for us. The parents in this congregation will know that, if one of your children is lost, you will move heaven and earth to find that child and bring it back home. So much more will our heavenly father try to bring us home to him.
‘So, my advice to you this morning – my urgent plea, in fact – is to stop running. I absolutely promise you that when you do, you will find a mansion prepared for you, a haven where you may rest and stop worrying. That’s what he promised us, and he keeps his promises.
‘And now unto God the Father …’
‘The Hound of Heaven,’ I said to Alan as we were having tea at Rotherford’s fanciest hotel, Watson waiting sadly outside. He accepts the fact that he cannot go everywhere with us, but he doesn’t understand.
‘I was reminded,’ said Alan, ‘of C. S. Lewis writing about “the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet”. It is indeed, in some ways, a frightening idea, though I’ve never heard a parson approach it quite that way before.’
‘He’s a good preacher. Short, sweet, clear. In fact, he’s a good man altogether. I do like Mr Robinson, but Dean Smith is the best of the lot.’
‘I agree, but there’s no guarantee the committee will.’ He grimaced. ‘Let’s talk about something else. What would you like to do for the rest of the afternoon?’
We took Watson for a long walk. We prudently changed into don’t-matter clothes and Wellies, in case he took a notion to jump into the water after the ducks.
There can, for me, be nothing closer to Paradise than an English spring afternoon. Robert Browning had it right. April, when the weather behaves itself, is heavenly. The air is warm in the sun, but not too hot, and fragrant with the indescribable freshness of new growth and damp earth. Birdsong is everywhere, and the very ripples of streams sound like joyous laughter.
We were content to amble, saying nothing, with Watson snuffling happily along in a world of delightful sights and smells. He apparently remembered his encounter with the swan, for he kept well away from the waterfowl, only pausing now and then to sit and look at them with longing.
We saw the pair of swans, with their trail of just-hatched cygnets. If there’s anything more graceful than a swan in the water, I don’t know what it is. Nor anything sillier than any water bird on land. Their legs and feet weren’t made for walking.
We rounded a bend of the river and there, over the trees, rose the spire of Rotherford Cathedral, floating like something in a fairy tale. ‘Not Septimus Harding, after all,’ I said. ‘Just as gentle, just as kind, but with more backbone.’
‘I, for one, look forward to meeting him tomorrow morning.’
Dean Smith had arranged for us to meet at the Deanery, which was one of the beautiful old houses near the cathedral. His wife opened the door and greeted us warmly. She was exactly the sort of wife I’d expected him to have – around fifty, with hair greying around the temples and a pair of twinkly blue eyes. She had, I thought, been a raving beauty in her youth, and she was still very attractive, with an enviable figure.
‘Do please come in! You’ll be Mr Nesbitt and Mrs Martin, and I’m Emily Smith. Will you have some coffee?’
‘We never turn down coffee. Thank you.’ Then I wondered if I’d been too hasty. English coffee varies pretty widely, from heaven-sent to what my family used to call ‘damaged water’.
She led us into the pleasant, chintz-covered front room, where two other couples were already sitting. ‘We invited some of our parishioners,’ she said. ‘As this was to be an informal, get-to-know-one-another sort of session, we thought you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ said Alan. ‘Delighted.’
‘Well, then, let me introduce Mr and Mrs Stewart. Mr Stewart is, as one might suppose, from Edinburgh, and is one of our churchwardens. You know that St Martha’s is also a parish church? Mrs Stewart is one of the leading lights in Rotherford’s WI. And this is Mr Cho, our organist and choirmaster, and head of our choir school, and Mrs Loften, who manages our cathedral gift shop. And you all know that these people are Mr Nesbitt and his wife Mrs Martin, who are here to talk to us about the appointment of the new Bishop of Sherebury. James will be along any moment; there was a sudden crisis about arrangements for the mission trip.’ She spoke as though sudden crises were a regular feature of cathedral life, as, indeed, I imagined they were.
‘Here I am, my dear. I’m so very sorry to have kept you all waiting. Emily, have you introduced everyone?’
‘Ye
s, don’t worry. I’m just going to get coffee.’ She slipped out of the room, smiling kindly at her husband as she left.
I was wrong. This wasn’t Barchester Towers. It was The Nine Tailors, and I was in the home of Mr and Mrs Venables.
‘Now then. We are at your disposal, sir. And lady! What would you like to know?’
‘Actually, we simply wanted to get to know you. As I explained, I’m not here officially representing the commission. The formal interviews will come later. I’m afraid I don’t know how much later. They would ordinarily have begun some time ago. The commission is meeting next week to decide what to do in the face of the recent tragedy.’
‘And just what are the police doing about that, I’d like to know!’ said the leading light of the Women’s Institute belligerently. ‘It’s been over two weeks now, and no one’s been charged!’
‘I know very little about it,’ said Alan patiently. ‘I’ve been retired for a good many years now, so not much news comes my way. I believe, though, that the police have not yet determined whether the dean might not have met with an accident.’
‘Hmph! I’d have thought they’d be able to tell a simple thing like that straight off!’
‘One would think so, certainly. There may be complicating factors I’m unaware of.’
‘But you came here to learn about us, not we about you,’ said Mrs Smith, entering with a tray of coffee things, which she set down on a low table, proceeding to pour the coffee. ‘Alice, do tell us how the gift shop’s coming along. I know I saw a big crowd in there the other day.’
Mrs Loften smiled and accepted coffee from our hostess. ‘That would have been just before Easter, I should imagine. There’s always a run on cards and gifts then. And, of course, we have that new CD of the choir that’s attracting a good bit of attention. Do you like music, either of you?’
‘We both do,’ I answered, ‘and we thought the choir was lovely at Evensong yesterday. I didn’t know the anthem, but I loved it.’
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