Divine Inspiration

by Jane Langton

  “So what about Charley?” said Homer, gratefully accepting a bowl of soup. “Remember that day when Alan said he saw his mother? Did Rosie really go back to her house that day?”

  “I asked Helen. She said Rosie did go back. She persuaded Pip she needed more of her own things. Actually she just wanted to be sure Charley wasn’t still there, abandoned and starving.”

  “Her hat!” Alan waved his soup spoon triumphantly. “Remember, I said she was wearing a white hat? It was a bandage around her poor head. It was Rosie, all right. Charley was one hundred percent correct.”

  Homer finished his bowl of soup and licked the spoon. “Are you sure this young woman was really telling you the truth? How did she know what Pip was doing?”

  Mary shook her head, as if she didn’t believe it herself. “He told her things she didn’t want to know. He whispered things to her, he bragged about everything. If she gave him away, he said, he’d set fire to her bed while she was asleep.” Mary looked angrily at Homer. “We’ve got to do something about her, Homer. We’ve got to get her out of there.”

  “I can see that, but how?”

  It was late. They were all exhausted. Mary smoothed Alan’s bed, Homer pulled himself upright with a groan, and they said goodbye.

  Alan listened to their footsteps receding down the stairs. Then, reaching eagerly into his pocket, he found the slip of paper with Rosie’s address, and took it to the table where his typewriter was gathering dust. He had a letter to write.

  But at once he jumped up and went to the window and threw up the sash and shouted down at Mary and Homer as they climbed into their car. “He had it too, didn’t he? I saw it, but I didn’t recognize it. I saw him knock over a glass, and then he had a hard time standing up. Huntington’s disease, he was getting it too?”

  Mary looked up at him. “Yes, that’s right. Helen told me she knew what was happening to him. She recognized the symptoms so well. It was the only time she cried.”

  Alan wanted to say that it was horrible, but he couldn’t utter another word. He could only shake his head and slam down the window, while the car pulled out from the curb and crept down the steep hill, heading for home.

  CHAPTER 74

  These hard heads need sound knocks.

  Martin Luther

  Barbara Inch was as good as her word. Even with her professional career crumbling around her, Barbara kept her promise to Mary Kelly. She spent the week after Easter pursuing the past history of the ex-wife of Martin Kraeger.

  The trail of wreckage was easy to follow. In every workplace, classroom or institution in which Kay Kraeger had set foot, the broken glassware was still bitterly remembered. Resentment rankled. Every victim displayed the scars Kay had inflicted, and pointed in the direction of another sufferer.

  Barbara invited Mary to lunch, and showed her the list.

  They sat sipping sherry in the living room of Barbara’s dark apartment on Marlborough Street, while her roommate whispered on the telephone in the next room. Leaning back in her chair, Mary read the first page of the list aloud. “Oh, this is choice.” By the time she had read all six pages they were doubled up with laughter.

  “I could do more,” said Barbara. “Her high school adviser said there was some sort of weird incident in the eighth grade.”

  “No, no.” Mary stroked the sheaf of pages and stuffed it into her briefcase. “This is enough. I’ll give it to Homer. He’ll take care of it.”

  “Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, legal firm,” said Martin Kraeger, holding the phone in the crook of his shoulder, trying to open an envelope at the same time. “This is the letter accusing me of child molestation. It’s signed by Archibald Pouch.”

  “Archie Pouch!” Homer was overjoyed. “At last I’ll get my own back. I’ve tangled with that rat before. I can hardly wait.”

  From the wreck of his ruined church next door, Martin could hear the grinding of trucks backing and filling, the jarring thump of rock rattling from the shovel of a bucket loader, the shouts of working men. He murmured something into the telephone.

  “What?” said Homer.

  Martin spoke up. “You say Barbara Inch discovered all these things?”

  “That’s right. Mary started it, but Barbara carried on.”

  “Well, thank you, Homer. Thank all of you.” Kraeger hung up. His church lay in ruins, his career was surely at an end, but at this moment he felt strangely pleased.

  The glossy offices of Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket were on Federal Street. Homer remembered them well. On an earlier occasion he had been humiliated by Archie Pouch. Today he was eager for revenge.

  “Hey, like I remember you,” said Pouch, reaching out a finger and prodding Homer in the chest. He was a vilely handsome goon in cowboy boots and a sharp three-piece suit.

  “Your client is a nutcase,” said Homer. “Allow me to recite her colorful history. Item one, at the University of Vermont she accused a fellow graduate student of climbing in her dormitory window for purposes of assault, burglary and sodomy. Charges dismissed. Item two, your client charged a number of her fellow students with indecent exposure in the same women’s dormitory. Case laughed out of the dean’s office. Item three, she accused her professor of sociology of trying to kidnap her when he stopped his car to ask if she needed a lift. Resulting scandal rocked the university, your client was expelled. Item four, she was thrown out of another institution of higher learning for reasons described as good and sufficient. Item five, she accused a fellow employee in the Ten Cent Savings Bank on Milk Street of making sexual advances. He proved his innocence with a witness, and your client was fired. Item six—”

  “Oh, shit,” said Archie Pouch, “tell you what. We’ll settle for seventy-five thousand.”

  “Item six, your client accused a delivery man of drugging a bottle of milk in order to commit rape—you know it’s very odd,” said Homer, interrupting himself, “when you consider that your client is a very homely woman. Well, never mind, that’s beside the point. Item seven, she accused her mother’s physician of—what? You tell me. You lost the case in court.”

  Pouch looked chagrined. “Oh, yeah, it was kind of dumb. Necrophilia, having sex with a dying woman.”

  “Item eight, your client sued the night nurse in the obstetrics ward of Brigham and Women’s Hospital for failing to attend to her crying baby. Items nine, ten, eleven and twelve, your client attempted to close four separate and distinct daycare centers by spreading rumors about child molestation. Items thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, she brought tumult and interdepartmental strife to three different places of employment with absurd accusations against colleagues, namely—”

  “Oh, the hell with it,” said Pouch. “Tell Kraeger we’re dropping the case.” He turned on his heel and shouted at an underling and went out and slammed the door.

  CHAPTER 75

  Jerome, in his excitement, used to beat his heart with stones but could not beat the maiden from his heart. Francis made snowballs. Benedict lay among thorns, Bernard had so mortified his body that he stank abominably.… These great men were as much slaves to it as we are.

  Martin Luther

  Alan wrote his letter to Rosie seven times. The first letter ran to fourteen wild gushing pages. The second was a single page of cold hard fact. In the end he filled three typewritten sheets with a straightforward account of all that had really happened, from the true story of the fire at the Church of the Commonwealth to the day he found Charley on the steps of the church, to the collapse of the vaulting, the death of Philip Tower and the confessions of Pip’s sister, Helen.

  Reading the letter over, Alan wondered if Rosie would believe it. She herself had witnessed some of it, but Pip Tower had warped the truth, and frightened her, and sent her fleeing across the Atlantic.

  When she called him from Germany, her voice was tentative, almost inaudible. “Alan Starr? This is Rosie Hall.”

  Alan had been getting dressed. He held the phone in one hand and his left shoe in the other. �
�Oh, hello,” he said, and then his throat closed and he could hardly say anything more. It was an unsatisfactory conversation. Rosie said she was coming home with Charley as soon as she finished at the university. She would write. He said a squeaky goodbye.

  The day of Rosie’s transatlantic phone call was the very day when the litigation over the construction of the new hotel on the other side of Clarendon Street from the Church of the Commonwealth was settled out of court.

  Neither side in the negotiations was happy. Each accused the other of misrepresenting the facts. But now, at last, work could begin again on the digging of the excavation and the shoring up of the steel sheeting lining the hole with rakers and tie-back anchors.

  On the first day back at work the construction engineer walked around the site, getting a feel of the place again. It had been months since he had seen it last. As soon as the lawyer called to say that construction could go forward, his mind had leaped ahead, he had thought of everything. He rehired the bulldozer and the fleet of dump trucks and the pile driver, and he even remembered to notify Boston Edison that he needed access to the switch for the pump under manhole 277.

  But it was strange. This morning when he got down inside the manhole he found the pump switch in the on position, rather than off.

  “Shit,” he said conversationally to the guy from Boston Edison, “the fucking thing’s been on the whole time. Well, what the hell.” Shrugging his shoulders he climbed out of the manhole and the Boston Edison guy whanged the cover back down and went away.

  Only later in the day did the construction engineer look across the street to the wreckage of the Church of the Commonwealth and think about the continuous uninterrupted drawdown of groundwater by the sump pump. Twenty-five gallons a minute had been sucked up by the pump, night and day, week after week, ever since that morning last March when they had been ordered off the job.

  For a moment his face went blank. Then he reached into the bulging pocket of his down vest, jerked out his lunch bag, pulled out a sandwich and hollered at the driver of the ten-ton truck that was backing into the hole, “Jesus Christ, you sonofabitch, why don’t you look where you’re going?”

  Hell, if the assholes across the street didn’t know enough to check the water level on those old wooden pilings, it was their own goddamned fault.

  CHAPTER 76

  Seven times tried by fire will prove

  Thy silver undefiled:

  Await with patience too God’s word

  And find it pure and mild.

  Hymn by Martin Luther

  After such a catastrophe as the violent destruction of the Church of the Commonwealth, the collapse of a thousand tons of stone, how could a congregation ever settle down and become itself again?

  Kenneth Possett did it. His aggressiveness and financial know-how, combined with the energy and will of Martin Kraeger, were an upward force more than equal to the downward pull of gravity that had dropped three neo-Romanesque vaults into the wreckage of the granite footings beneath the sanctuary.

  Ken was a dynamo from the beginning. On the very day of the disaster he whipped together a fundraising committee with Edith Frederick as chair. For the next two months the two of them bustled around the city of Boston, talking to people of enormous distinction, appointing them to the committee—the mayor, the governor, six college presidents, four museum directors, three Pulitzer prize-winning economists, a dozen directors of international investment houses, and seventeen regional heads of multinational corporations. In addition they sought out particular people famous for their wisdom and insight—Putnam Farhang of the Paul Revere Insurance Company, Harvard Fellow Shackleton Bowditch, and even that legendary financier Jane Plankton of the Cambridge firm of Janeway and Everett.

  Miss Plankton came to the site of the devastation with Ken Possett and clasped her old hands in horror, remembering from her girlhood the window of the Wise and Foolish Virgins that had sparkled so gaily, high in the east wall. A wise virgin herself, she cried out with sympathy and swore to lend a hand.

  At once they took her into the undamaged part of the building and up the stairs to Martin Kraeger’s study. There, seated at Kraeger’s desk while he looked on in wonder, Miss Plankton wrote out a list of her best bets, obscure little firms that were about to surge skyward. Her two brothers in the firm of Janeway and Everett were well known for their experience and acumen, but Jane was famous for the inspired and mystical nature of her predictions. She was seldom wrong.

  Ken tested one of her suggestions with his own funds, and tripled his investment in three days. Then, greatly daring, he transferred some of the blue-chip investments in the church portfolio to the next item on Miss Plankton’s little list. This venture also blossomed, doubling the income of the church in a single week.

  “You did what?” cried Bill Foose, another member of the church’s Investment Committee. “You made an executive decision to transfer funds without consulting the rest of us?”

  Ken blushed. “Well, of course if it hadn’t worked so well, I would have replaced the sum myself.”

  They stared. Ken Possett, of all people, saying a thing like that. But they couldn’t deny their pleasure in the result. “What else is on her list?” inquired Marybelle Trotter.

  Ken opened his pocket notebook. “She seems to have a lot of faith right now in automobile services—Howie’s Rebuilt Engines, Acme Auto Body, Moody’s Mufflers and Brake Shoes, Victory Electronic Tune-ups.”

  In a moment they were crowded around him, staring earnestly at Miss Plankton’s precious list, taking down her infallible strokes of genius on the back’s of envelopes.

  In the meantime, with something as gigantic as the rebuilding of the church to think about, the complaints against Martin Kraeger melted away. It was strange, but in the presence of such an overwhelming physical disaster the congregation settled down, its peeves forgotten. The usual crowd came to Sunday services in the rented school auditorium and listened calmly, while James Castle played simple preludes on a portable organ and the choir sang anthems under the leadership of Barbara Inch. Barbara had been asked by Castle to stay on as choir director because his doctors had urged him to slow down a little.

  Thanks to Homer and Mary Kelly, most of the old complaints against Martin Kraeger had vanished. It was true that he still preached powerful sermons against the administration in Washington. And he went right on denouncing the same international corporations from which his money raisers were wheedling capital funds. But this sort of truculence was a long-standing failing on his part, and everybody was used to it.

  It was too bad that Edith Frederick did not live long enough to see the new edifice for which she was raising so much money, and to which she was contributing so much of her own wealth. In the year following the collapse of the church, Martin kept a close eye on his old friend. He couldn’t help noticing her growing fragility, the hesitation in her step. Strangely enough, he found a new attractiveness in her wasted face as the pure structural outlines showed beneath the skin, and the lineaments of vainglory fell away. He was intensely moved by her tireless efforts to help with the capital drive, to make a hundred personal visits to wealthy men and women of her own generation. Who but Edith Frederick could charm such massive contributions out of their pockets? In the last days of her life she accomplished one more good thing, although the consequences were not at all what she intended. She went to Martin’s office to warn him about that dangerous woman Barbara Inch.

  “I see Loretta’s gone,” she said, noticing the empty desk outside Martin’s door.

  Martin beamed. “Thank God. I fired her, bang, just like that. It was a pleasure. I didn’t know firing people could be so satisfying. She didn’t seem to mind. She gathered up all her spinach and Brussels sprouts and whatnot and walked out. I’m looking for a replacement.”

  “Actually,” said Edith, “I came to warn you about someone else. I think you ought to know, Martin, that you should watch out for Barbara Inch. She’s after you.”

>   Martin was thunderstruck. “My dear Edith, you’re out of your mind. Nobody in this world is after me. I’m too fat and old and ugly.”

  “Nonsense, you are very attractive to women.” Edith smiled at him. “If only I were thirty years younger! But honestly, Martin, I think you should be aware that Barbara Inch has her eye on you. A word to the wise. I mean, a woman can always tell.”

  Martin scoffed at her gently, and kissed her, and changed the subject. But he was profoundly affected. Feelings he had suppressed for months came rushing to the surface, and this time he let them flood his consciousness, and send warm blood all over his body. At once he went looking for Barbara.

  He found her in the music room, riffling through stacks of music, choosing anthems for the choir to sing in November. She looked up as Martin came in, and the music slipped from her fingers.

  He crossed the room and stood close to her and came to the point at once. “Edith Frederick thinks you have your eye on me. Is it true?” He took her hands. “My dear, is it true?”

  Barbara could say nothing. She merely looked at him, and in a moment he reached out his great bearlike arms and drew her in.

  The first word to the wise had been delivered to Barbara by Kay Kraeger, the second to Martin by Edith Frederick. The two words had been enough.

  Edith died without knowing of the failure of her advice. One Sunday during the morning service in the borrowed school auditorium her bony companion pressed closer and closer, ever more tender and attentive, and then as the sermon began he lifted his arm and struck her kindly on the breastbone. Martin hurried down from the stage and the people in the endless rows of folding chairs turned and craned their necks, as Death disentangled his rickety limbs from Edith Frederick and rattled down the aisle to embrace old Dennis Partridge, and dig bony fingers into his sleeve.