Divine Inspiration

by Jane Langton

  It was some sort of ghastly Thanksgiving family reunion. “I’ll come another time,” Martin said lamely, and beat a hasty retreat. The screaming broke out again as soon as the door closed behind him. It was a woman’s clamorous voice, the mother’s obviously, since the sister didn’t look capable of screaming.

  Afterward Castle had said nothing about it to Martin, and therefore Kraeger hadn’t brought it up either, having a delicate regard for his parishioners’ privacy. If they came to him for help he gave it in generous measure, but not otherwise. Now he couldn’t help wondering about the old witch whose last days Castle was attending so dutifully. Maybe she wasn’t as bad as she had seemed.

  Kraeger heaved himself out of his chair and put Castle’s strange family out of his mind. It was time for lunch, and he had a hearty appetite. Martin Luther had provided the excuse: If Our Lord is permitted to create nice, large pike and good Rhine wine, presumably I may be allowed to eat and drink.

  Opening his closet, he yanked his coat off its hanger, dislodging at the same time one of the black gowns he wore on Sunday mornings. He picked it up and looked at it, wondering if it was the one he had been wearing at the evening wedding on the night of the fire. He had never looked in the pockets for a cigarette stub. Groping, he found nothing but an old order of service for last Thanksgiving.

  There was another gown in the closet somewhere, an old one missing most of its fastenings. Kraeger groped in the back of the closet and brought out a limp black garment. It was in a sorry condition. If he had been wearing it on the night of the wedding, the bride’s mother would have been shocked. There were coffee stains all down one side. He found nothing in the left pocket but a safety pin, but in the right there were three cigarette stubs.

  He took them out and held them in the palm of his hand. They looked pitiful and familiar. He could almost remember putting them into that very same pocket on the night in question. Was he imagining it?

  Oh well, the hell with it. Who would believe him? And perhaps he had smoked four cigarettes, not just three, and left one of them smoldering on the floor.

  Kraeger swung the closet door shut, but it wouldn’t close because Loretta Fawcett had stored an easel among the coats and gowns. Martin couldn’t avoid reading the words some idiot had inscribed on the big pad of newsprint, Spirituality = Creativity. Oh, God, churches had a lot to answer for.

  On the way out he stumbled over more of Loretta’s stuff. He had asked her months ago to sort all these papers and distribute them in the church archives. Everybody said he should fire the woman, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Now he smiled at Loretta as he passed her desk. Walking heavily down the hall, he thumped down the stairs and hurried out-of-doors.

  A cold rain had begun to fall.

  Martin pulled his coat collar up around his chin and walked quickly in the direction of Copley Square. Across Clarendon Street the excavation looked like a hole in hell.

  CHRISTMAS

  “Ermuncre dich, mein schwacher Geist”

  Chorale harmonized by J. S. Bach

  Break forth, O beauteous heavenly Light,

  And usher in the morning;

  Ye shepherds, shrink not with affright,

  But hear the angel’s warning.

  This child, now weak in infancy,

  Our confidence and joy shall be,

  The power of Satan breaking,

  Our peace eternal making.

  CHAPTER 8

  When natural music is heightened and polished by art … one man sings a simple tune … together with which three, four or five voices also sing … performing as it were a heavenly dance.

  Martin Luther

  Alan Starr sat at the keyboard of a small portable organ in Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street, feeling ridiculous in a green tam-o’-shanter and tunic. The tunic was itchy. In agony, Alan adjusted the gold rope around his waist and reached up a furtive thumb to scratch.

  Christmas was a hectic season for organists, even for an organ builder and repairman like Alan, because he hired himself out to play here and there. His colleagues in the American Guild of Organists were busy too, even the ones without steady church jobs, like Pip Tower and Gilda Honeycutt and Jack Newcomb and Peggy Throstle.

  At this festive time of year all the churches in the Back Bay vied with one another in pageantry. Only at the Church of the Commonwealth were the celebrations subdued, because the new organ wasn’t ready and James Castle was away on leave. Pip Tower was filling in for the two candlelight services and the one on Christmas day. Alan hurried through the voicing of four ranks of pipes, so that Pip would have something to work with. Only forty-six more to go. “You’ve got Bourdon sixteen on the Pedal,” he told Pip, “and Prestant eight, Octave four and Spitzfiute eight on the Great, and that’s all.”

  Pip wasn’t satisfied. “What, no mixture? How can I turn on the congregation without a mixture? Where’s the ecstasy, where’s the rapture?”

  Alan felt sorry for Pip. He was a good-looking guy with very white skin and thinning blond hair, getting on for thirty. Like Alan, he was a student of Castle’s, but although he was a fine performer he seemed unable to land a regular church job. For years now he had been cadging Sunday morning substitutions and taking anything else he could get. Of course the job market for organists was impossible. The only regular positions were in churches and temples, and openings were scarce. There was no other employment but the occasional wedding or funeral, and unfortunately nobody seemed to be getting married any more and the old folks were healthier all the time. “Well, okay,” said Alan, “I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise.”

  But by working at odd hours he managed to finish the Mixture rank on the Great division, and Pip had his moment of rapture.

  At Emmanuel Episcopal it was all rapture. They were doing a Bach cantata and a medieval miracle play. There were long-haired women in velvet gowns with lutes and men in tights with dulcimers. Christ our blessed Savior, sang the women, now in the manger lay. Alan couldn’t help thinking again about young Charley Hall. What sort of manger was poor Charley lying in right now? It had been two weeks since he had been carried off in the police cruiser, clutched to the hard blue bosom of Sergeant Steeple. Alan’s efforts to discover his whereabouts had been fruitless.

  He had been tossed from one telephone extension to another. When at last he reached Mrs. Marilynne Barker, a mighty general in the Department of Social Services, she held him at arm’s length.

  “Are you the child’s father? A relative? A friend of the family? No? Then what exactly is your interest in Charles Hall?”

  “It’s just that I’m concerned about him. I was the one who found him on the street after his mother disappeared.”

  “Is that all? You have no other connection with the child? Then I’m sorry, Mr. Starr, I can give you no information.”

  Alan continued to feel a pang of anxiety. What would happen to the poor little kid if his mother never came back? And where in the hell was she?

  Rosalind Hall’s disappearance was now common knowledge among the community of organists in Boston. The dramatic details of Alan’s rescue of her child, his entry into the open door of her apartment, his discovery of the blood on the floor—the whole story had been printed in the Boston Globe, along with Rosie’s picture.

  Her friends were upset. “Where can she be?” said Barbara Inch, who had been closest to Rosie. “What could possibly have happened?”

  Jack Newcomb didn’t hide his glee. “All the more opportunities for us,” he said ruthlessly. “Rosie always got the plums. She was everybody’s first choice. After Castle, of course. Now they’re both gone. Less competition, right?”

  Peggy Throstle was shocked by Rosie’s disappearance. “How could she abandon her little boy? I think it’s terrible.”

  Barbara was outraged. “How can you talk like that? She may have been badly hurt. She would never have left that baby if she’d been all right. Somebody should be trying to find her.”

 
; Alan Starr agreed with Barbara. Were the police doing anything at all? He cut Rosie’s picture out of the paper and taped it over the sink in his room on Russell Street. The picture kept nudging him, it wouldn’t leave him alone.

  But neither did the demands of the Christmas season. At this time of year there was a regimented jollification in all the churches of the Back Bay, a tinseled charm that somehow outbalanced the reality of the surrounding city of metal and cement, the bland grind of traffic on the streets, the flashing windshields, the multitudinous offices with their data-processing machines, their ten thousand printouts folding over and over.

  In the sanctified spaces of the churches of Copley Square and Newbury Street and Commonwealth Avenue the gray truths of daily life were swagged with garlands of laurel and wreaths of balsam. The scent of the north woods filled lofty interiors rich with timbered ceilings and acres of stained glass. Chancels were crowded with chirping children, pews thronged with churchgoers drugged with holy revelry. There was an infectious aura about the week before Christmas that seemed for the moment something more than a Dickensian mass hallucination. For a few days the illusion of peace on earth prevailed in the Back Bay.

  There was no peace for Alan Starr. He had agreed to help with too many special services. After the miracle play at Emmanuel he had barely time to tear off his itchy shirt, pull on his jacket and pants and race down Berkeley Street to the Church of the Annunciation, slipping and sliding on the icy sidewalk.

  Annunciation was another high-church Episcopal establishment. In the late nineteenth century there had been a demand along the broad new avenues of the Back Bay for the liturgical splendor of Anglican services, a hunger for red brocade and flickering candles and images of saints. Pale Brahmin noses had twitched gratefully, inhaling the fragrance of swinging censers, weak eyes had blinked in the dim light of the Middle Ages, educated ears had taken pleasure in the sonorities of The Book of Common Prayer. It was all very British, and everything British was good.

  Alan slipped onto the organ bench at Annunciation and played a brisk prelude while the choir waited to process down the center aisle. Processions were important in the Church of the Annunciation. It was the highest of the high churches in the Back Bay. It was as close to Catholic as a Protestant church could come without falling into the arms of the pope.

  You wouldn’t want to get any closer. Catholicism had been the religion of the immigrants who had swarmed into the North End and South Boston, Irishmen who by the raw strength of their arms built the railroads in which the Yankees of the Back Bay invested. It was the religion of the men who laid the sleepers and pounded the spikes, who roamed the countryside looking for work, plowing for Yankee farmers, felling trees in Yankee woodlots, caring for Yankee beasts of burden. It was the faith of the Irish women who tended the deafening machines in Yankee textile factories, who lived in the attics of Yankee town houses and cooked in the basement and did the laundry.

  There were no Catholic churches in the Back Bay. If the Irish servants wanted to attend Mass, let them walk to St. Cecilia’s across the tracks, and be back in time to serve dinner.

  Now in the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation the processional advanced. Alan pulled out a couple more stops and launched into “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Pacing in front of the choir, Barbara Inch was close enough to wink at him. Normally Barbara was the organist at Annunciation as well as the choir director, but this week her duties were so taxing, she had called on Alan to help out. Hastily now he pulled out a mixture as the congregation rose to sing.

  Joyful and triumphant. Alan glanced at Barbara, and saw her lean toward the verger marching beside her. She was saying something, and at once the verger stopped singing, convulsed with laughter. As the rector ascended the chancel steps in front of them he turned his head and glowered.

  Alan grinned and added a couple of brilliant reeds as he swung into the last verse, Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning. There was only one trouble with Barbara, she was too funny for her own good.

  “They’ve warned me,” she had told Alan. “I may lose my job.”

  She had not turned over a new leaf.

  “How is she?”

  “She keeps drifting off. Her pulse, God, it’s so slow.”

  “Has she said anything yet?”

  “Just ‘Charley.’ She keeps mumbling ‘Charley.’”

  “Oh, Jesus, her kid. Christ, it’s not my fault. I couldn’t take the kid too.”

  “Forget it, Sonny. He’s okay. Social Services, they’ve got him, that’s what the paper said.”

  “How’s Helen?”

  “Helen? Oh, my God, Sonny, she won’t speak to me. She won’t speak to her own mother. She’s worse than ever. God! What about the other one?”

  “The other one?”

  “You know. You saw the X ray.”

  “Oh, that one. Horrible outlook. Surgery next week. I keep track. Every now and then I—adjust things slightly.”

  “You adjust things slightly! Oh, good for you, Sonny. Oh, that’s rich. My clever boy.”

  THE NEW YEAR

  “Das altc Jahr vergangen ist”

  Chorale harmonized by J. S. Bach

  With this new year we raise new songs,

  To praise the Lord with hearts and tongues.

  For His support in troubles past,

  Wherewith our life was overcast.

  CHAPTER 9

  The dream I had lately, will be made true; ’twas that I was dead, and stood by my grave, covered with rags.…

  Martin Luther

  Edith Frederick lived on Beacon Street. Her house had been in her husband’s family since its construction by Blaikie and Blaikie in 1888. The façade was elaborate with wrought iron. A heavy stone bow front rose beside the sumptuous entry.

  But the house was not a fortress. It had been broken into by a merciless thief, a burglar with no interest in snatching up the silver. Instead he had attacked Edith herself, he had battered her, yanked out handfuls of hair and flattened her breasts, knocked out her teeth and tugged loose the fresh skin of her face so that it sagged beneath her chin. The thief was still lurking in the house, in closets, in the pantry, in the cellar, reaching out to dim her sight, to drive knives into her ears and a sword down her throat.

  Edith fought back as well as she could. This morning her weapon was a new wardrobe for the new year.

  The proprietor of the dress shop on Newbury Street knew her tastes exactly. She trotted out the little boiled jackets that Edith loved, the angora turtlenecks, the pleated woolen skirts. Cleverly she had saved them for Mrs. Frederick from last year, guessing they were going out of style.

  Edith was delighted. She chose six pretty jackets in wine, forest green, black, gray, navy and winter white.

  “Edge-stitched,” said the proprietor softly, displaying a selection of pleated skirts.

  “Oh, good,” said Edith, knowing how gaily the pleats would twinkle as she walked, how the panels of light and shadow would swish to left and right. She chose them in five colors to go with the jackets—gray, black, navy, Dress Gordon and Black Watch.

  Edith wore the gray combination out of the shop. The new gray sweater of softest angora rose warmly above her coat collar, hiding the stringy skin of her neck. Walking quickly along Clarendon Street, she looked into the faces of the young people as they thrust past her, plump girls with masses of disordered hair and weedy-looking boys, their noses red with cold. Did they notice her? No, they gave her not a glance.

  How old were they? They had been babies only a few years ago. It made Edith tremble, the way the young were forever rushing into life, surging into adulthood around her, each mini-generation thrusting her further into old age. To each new batch she must seem still more doddering and superannuated.

  Edith stared at the boy veering toward her now across the sidewalk—surely he was less than fourteen. If she were to say to him, “I was born in 1915,” it would seem fantastically remote, as though she had started life durin
g the Civil War. She gave him a challenging look, commanding him to see her, to recognize that a woman of stature was walking toward him, but the boy only turned his head to the street and spat. A ball of white foam fell toward the pavement, translucent in the morning light.

  Edith recoiled and hurried past him—but the boy wasn’t spitting at Edith. He was spitting at his father, he was spitting at school.

  At least in the Church of the Commonwealth she would find the esteem she deserved. Edith had been coming here since childhood. It was like another home. She had met Henry in the church when it had been part of a whole Back Bay neighborhood of familiar places, a community of friends and relations.

  In Edith’s youth there had been a lovely shape to her life—Friday afternoons at the Symphony, dancing classes at the Somerset under the tyranny of Miss Blanding, rounds of parties, musicales and concerts. Edith smiled, remembering the morning after her coming-out party when all her best friends had refused to go home to bed. They had shocked the cook by making their own breakfasts in the basement kitchen, then scandalized her mother by running off to the Sunday morning service at the Church of the Commonwealth in ball gowns and tuxedoes.

  Edith and Henry, Ginny and Abby and Nick and Richard and Edgar, they had been full of high spirits in those days, but their good manners were the result of gentle rearing in pleasant homes on Marlborough Street or Newbury or Beacon or Commonwealth Avenue, houses with sumptuous reception halls and monumental staircases. Their country places were more modest, big wooden houses where everyone took pride in living simply, with only a cook and a couple of maids and a gardener.

  It was all gone now. The Great Depression had scattered her friends. Luckily Henry’s family had survived intact, its wealth secure, soundly invested in government bonds. The others had not been so fortunate. Their houses had been sold and broken up into flats.