Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins

by James Runcie

  ‘And what did she say to that?’ said Sidney.

  ‘Oh, some nonsense. I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy speaking. I had to make my position clear.’

  Henry filled in the details. ‘She was very nice about it. Quite meek.’

  ‘I felt sorry for her,’ said Amanda. ‘But I can’t forgive her. She sent my parents a hearse, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Has she admitted to the murder of Virginia Newburn?’ Sidney asked, not wanting to stir up his friend’s animosity.

  Henry jumped in with an answer. ‘Connie is still saying that it was an accident. But there will be further questions; an inquest and a trial, I should imagine. I expect she will be taken to somewhere more secure.’

  ‘A prison, you mean?’

  ‘Eventually. Although Amanda’s gracefully agreed not to press any charges.’

  His fiancée checked her lipstick. ‘I’ve behaved quite brilliantly, if you must know, Sidney.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been magnificent.’

  ‘You could preach about me at the wedding. How I was put on my mettle and came out shining.’

  ‘I think I can write my own sermons. You’d like to proceed then?’

  When Henry retired to the bathroom Amanda told Sidney that if she was going to marry anyone at her age, having given up on the idea of children, then she might as well have a bash with her fiancé. It was, perhaps, as good as she was ever going to get.

  Sidney did not think that ‘having a bash’ was the best attitude to marriage, but he promised to help her if she still believed that she loved Henry. Amanda said she thought she did. He was, as her friend had already admitted, a good man at heart. He could be forgiven. And he could still, perhaps, be shaped and changed into the kind of husband she had always wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but what marriage was?

  And so, at the end of June, Sidney found himself taking a small service of blessing in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. It was one of the most beautiful spaces in England, built in the fourteenth century in the decorated style. Its sculpture, carvings and stained glass had been destroyed by Reformation zeal to leave an open space in bleached Weldon stone. The foliated arcading and the milky green light suggested a transcendent architectural garden: assured, contemplative, sacred.

  He welcomed a small congregation of some fifty family and friends. He joked that he thought this day would never arrive, but that good things came to those who knew how to wait; and although no one could ever call Amanda patient, perhaps this was a day in which they could celebrate the grace of God as well as their love for each other. The couple could even ‘be an example to us all’, demonstrating that the best relationships were not a matter of looking constantly into each other’s eyes, but outwards, forwards, together.

  It was a beautiful day, the air was still and warm and the smell of cut grass blew in from the lawn outside the North Transept. Amanda carried a bouquet of white roses and, to any onlooker, the ceremony would have been the perfect example of late-flowering love.

  Sidney was, however, unusually nervous. It was more than the simple fact that he was presiding over a ceremony in which, ten years ago, he might have been the groom instead of the priest. He was happy with Hildegard, proud that Anna was a flower girl, and pleased that all their lives had come to such a harmony. But something was still not right, no matter how much he tried to give the proceedings an authoritative spirituality.

  He felt he was having to force things to make the occasion more than it was. His hands trembled slightly and his voice was not as loud and clear as usual. It was almost a relief when the service was over, and he felt guilty as he raised his right hand in bidding with hope as much as faith.

  ‘God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve and keep you; the Lord mercifully with his favour look upon you, and so fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen.’

  After the service, when Sidney had thanked everyone for coming and given his genial greetings, he left the Lady Chapel, crossed the Octagon and changed in the vestry. There he said a quiet prayer, asking for forgiveness for his thoughts. He wanted to be made more charitable, less suspicious, and more confident about the future of Amanda and Henry’s love.

  He took off his robes, checked his suit and dog-collar and left the cathedral by the Monk’s Door. At least there would be some champagne at the reception, he told himself. Amanda was unlikely to stint on that.

  He was just making his way into Firmary Lane when he caught sight of a woman in the distance. She was by the river, at the far end of Dean’s Meadow, standing under an elm tree. Although the figure was partially obscured, she had made little effort to hide herself. In fact, she had been waiting to be seen. Sidney could not be certain but he had a good idea who the woman was. She was clothed in a wedding dress. It was exactly the same as the one Amanda was wearing.

  Prize Day

  It was Prize Day at Millingham School, a private establishment situated in a picturesque location by the River Ouse. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century, it lacked the history, tradition and scholarship of nearby King’s Ely, and compensated for its lack of intellectual distinction by concentrating on its sporting prowess. Unkind rivals remarked that it was the kind of school where rich people sent their stupid children.

  Millingham was currently without a chaplain (the previous incumbent having departed in circumstances that had been kept vague) and it was the Archdeacon of Ely’s responsibility to find a replacement. At the same time, the school also had need of an umpire for the Prize Day cricket match.

  While he very much enjoyed the game, Sidney had mixed feelings about the task. The last time he had officiated, Grantchester’s finest spin bowler, Zafar Ali, had been fatally poisoned.

  The prospect of a summer day at a minor public school was not, therefore, one of unconfined joy. It would, however, provide an opportunity to get to know the headmaster, some of the teachers and, more importantly, the pupils. Sidney was frustrated that he did not meet more young people and, now that he was undoubtedly middle-aged, he was less than certain about the pulse of the times in which he lived. It would be good, he told himself, to spend a while sharing the dreams and ambitions of adolescents who were deciding the kind of people they wanted to become.

  A further consolation was that he would have Hildegard’s company. One of her best piano pupils, Adam Barnes, had won the school music prize and was down to perform the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata during the assembly.

  After a ceremonial gun had been fired on the school green, the proceedings began with an assembly for parents and pupils in Memorial Hall. This was a Greek-style amphitheatre constructed in brick and stone soon after the Great War, a building that had once been generously situated but was now overshadowed by the addition of a modern science block to accommodate Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat’ of technology.

  The headmaster, Geraint Rogers (MA Oxon), was a stout, barrel-chested man in a navy suit that had begun to shine at knee and elbow. He was in his mid-fifties and possessed what must once have been a broad and welcoming face. Alas, time and chance had not been kind. Failure to control his weight had resulted in a box-like torso, double chin and pouchy cheeks. He had lost half his hair, and the dark slip of a toupee purchased to disguise the fact was too ill-fitting to convince anyone but the short-sighted, particularly on a hot and sweaty day. His silver-grey eyes, already appearing smaller due to the increased flesh on the face, were concealed behind half-moon spectacles that didn’t quite achieve the donnish aura the wearer had intended. Put simply, this was not the look of a man who was going places.

  It meant that Geraint Rogers had to make an extra effort with his speech in order to persuade his audience that he was a serious man of achievement rather than the leading representative of a school that was never going to punch above its weight. He spoke as if it could almost have been a hu
ndred years earlier when the boys were being prepared for Empire. It was his avowed intent to nurture young minds, he said, to help his pupils pursue learning, understand the rewards of discipline and discover passions they did not know they had. This was a school that believed you could be physically fit and intellectually agile, whether it was marathon running or mathematics. His mission was to produce men who were ready for anything.

  The head boy reviewed the year. The rugby first XV had won four, drawn two and lost three of their matches, with the Colts unbeaten; the hockey XI had won more games than they had lost; and three members of the cricket team had been for trials with neighbouring counties. There had been expeditions to Snowdon, a kayaking trip to Scotland and the Combined Cadet Force had taken part in a series of exercises at Foulness.

  A procession of some thirty boys walked up on to the stage to receive cups, certificates and awards for Sport, Classics, Modern Languages, History, Geography, Art and Science. Parents in old-school ties in yellow and burgundy designed, perhaps deliberately, to be easily confused with the ‘egg and bacon’ colours of the MCC, politely applauded other people’s children while silently judging their own.

  Some of the sixth-form pupils were already in blazers and whites ready for the cricket later that morning, but Sidney’s task was simple: to give the leavers’ prize for religious studies to an enthusiastic ginger-haired boy who had compensated for his lack of good looks by becoming the school jester.

  Adam Barnes then walked on to the stage to play his Beethoven. He was a shy seventeen-year-old pupil in the lower sixth with dark-brown Beatle-cut hair, pale skin that had suffered its fair share of acne, and a thin mouth that had thought about smiling but decided not to. He was a boy who had grown too fast and was taller than he wanted to be, and he spent as much time as it was safe to do so looking down to his long fingers on the keyboard or his feet on the ground, minimising the embarrassment of direct eye contact.

  He adjusted the piano stool, checked he was not sitting too close, and composed himself as Hildegard had asked him to do. (‘Make them wait,’ she had advised. ‘Let them anticipate the drama. Then lean back, take a deep breath and command the opening chord. You are the master of the piano. You must not let it rule you! Tame it!’)

  After his bold introduction, Adam Barnes achieved a controlled and rhythmic tremolo in the left hand as his right picked out the melody ‘con brio’, as he had been instructed, ‘playing to the bottom of the keys’ in a performance that was remarkably mature even if it lacked dynamic range and emotional depth. On completion, after some eight or nine minutes, he received kind and full applause and looked to Hildegard when he took his bow. He smiled shyly. There was no sign of his parents.

  After everyone had stood for the National Anthem there was a boisterous rendition of ‘Men of Harlech’, given for no reason, Sidney surmised, other than the fact that the headmaster happened to be Welsh.

  A marquee had been erected next to the Great Lawn where the school band were playing a medley of military favourites, the CCF went about their exercises, and groups of parents roamed through the main quad to view work that was on display in the classrooms. Later that afternoon there was the promise of a visit to the Pearson Building, home to the new science labs. This was a two-storey brutalist construction in ‘unfinished’ concrete that had been built after several hefty donations from parents, a few of whose children had been on the verge of expulsion.

  The cricket match began at midday and involved a tactful selection of Old Boys against pupils. Here, the promise of the young was pitched against the experienced but waning powers of fathers still keen to prove their virility before their retirement to that great pavilion in the sky.

  Sidney was umpiring. Hildegard watched from a deckchair, with Anna and Byron by her side, while her star piano pupil fielded at midwicket. If those responsible for national tourism had wanted to show a perfect English midsummer day then this could have been it. Or rather, that would have been the case had not a mighty explosion ripped through the science block just before lunch, with the Old Boys on the verge of a hundred runs, creating a chaos of thunderous noise, shock, panic and debris.

  The chemistry teacher, Trevor Paine, ran from the labs with his hands over his face and the back of his jacket in flames. He dropped to the ground and rolled over and over on the hard asphalt, desperately trying to put himself out as the roof of the building took fire. Boys ran towards him to help, buckets were summoned and one of the porters produced an extinguisher from the Memorial Hall. The school bell began to toll, the fire drill was activated, and the emergency services were called. Pupils and parents were ordered to assemble on the Great Lawn as the building crackled and burned. A thunderstorm of smoke sprawled across a Cambridge-blue sky.

  The cricket match was abandoned. Sidney ran over to see if he could help. The headmaster was shouting at teachers and prefects, establishing a line of command with buckets and hoses. Several of the boys, including Marcus Pearson, the star of the cricket team, were sent round to the back of the building to see if anyone was trapped inside.

  Although Trevor Paine was badly burned it was clear that he would live. He was certainly well enough to issue a string of curses stating that the explosion had been no accident but a deliberate strategy to sabotage the day. He swore that he would find the pupil responsible and administer the most savage beating that had ever been known to man.

  Sidney took a few steps forward so that he could hear precisely what the chemistry teacher was threatening to do but Hildegard pulled him back saying that it was none of his business, he was not a witness, and that he didn’t have to become involved every time something dramatic or unexpected happened.

  ‘I must stay. Besides, they may continue with the cricket.’

  ‘You think so? After something like this?’

  ‘The school will probably want to show that it can survive misfortune. The Dunkirk spirit.’

  The headmaster approached. ‘This is terrible, but we will not be defeated. Remember Dunkirk!’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I am not sure what to do about the match, Canon Chambers. But let’s review the situation over our delayed lunch. I trust you will stay.’

  ‘I had no other plans for the afternoon.’

  Hildegard gave her husband one of her ‘looks’ because she already knew that Inspector Keating was due to come over the following Thursday and that her husband would be unable to refrain from telling him that he had been present when someone had tried to blow up the science block with the possible intention of murdering the Head of Chemistry.

  The drive back to Ely was moodily silent. Even Byron seemed full of foreboding.

  It was the Chambers’s first summer in their new home and they had not yet established a proper routine. Sidney had been better at keeping to a Tuesday ‘day off’ on which he looked after Anna and Hildegard packed in much of her teaching, but there were still many things left undone that ought to have been done. Anna wasn’t getting the attention she deserved, the house was a mess, and there were regular piles of washed clothes in need of an iron that had been left in a basket on the kitchen sideboard. The solution to all this chaos was, Hildegard insisted, an au pair girl, and she had at last found an ideal candidate: Sabine Neuer.

  Such was their domestic confusion, however, that Sabine arrived at the railway station a day earlier than they had been anticipating. Hildegard could not understand how they could have made such a mistake. It just showed, she told Sidney, how full their lives were and how impractical it would be if he decided to play a part in any investigation into the school explosion. Fortunately (or, perhaps not, Sidney conjectured silently) Canon Christopher Clough had shared the same train up from London, and had introduced himself to Sabine without, of course, revealing that he was well known as the local Lothario, a man whom one of the cathedral cleaners had recently dubbed ‘the Casanova of the Cloisters’.

  He staked his claim quickly, carrying Sabine’s suitcase from the station, tak
ing her over the meadows on the scenic route to the cathedral, and offering to help show her the ropes whenever she was ready. Sabine had replied that she had no interest in knots but she was grateful that Canon Clough had been so attentive.

  ‘I’ll bet he was,’ Sidney murmured to himself.

  Sabine was an athletic-looking girl with large blue eyes, a cheerful face, and shoulder-length blonde hair that was held in place by an Alice band. She was dressed in a printed rayon blouse and blue jeans that appeared a little tight for her, and she looked more like Hildegard’s niece than an employee, sent to England to do a bit of growing up after disappointing exam results and a disastrous first love affair.

  Anna had refused to come out of her room on the au pair girl’s arrival. She was busy adding to the model farm that had already taken over all the floor space and could not be disturbed by anyone tidying or hoovering. Her recent request for a hamster was only likely to make things in the child’s already overcrowded bedroom considerably worse.

  Hildegard showed Sabine round the house and helped her unpack as Sidney made the tea and laid out a few biscuits. The cake that had been planned for tomorrow had not been started, and he knew that he would have to tread carefully with his wife and not even joke that this early arrival might in any way be her oversight.

  He was just allowing himself to feel almost pleased with the way he had managed to keep the great ship of his family afloat, concentrating on his duties as a father and a priest, when the mood was broken by a visit from the Millingham headmaster.

  ‘We don’t know what caused the unfortunate incident,’ Geraint Rogers began. ‘The preliminary suggestion from the fire brigade is that someone left the gas on.’

  ‘Deliberately or accidentally?’

  ‘To cause that kind of explosion, every Bunsen burner in the room would have to have been fully open. That’s more than an oversight. Our Head of Chemistry, Mr Paine, is a chain-smoker, everyone knows that, and the room is powered by electricity, so the light switch may have been tampered with. Anyone entering the room with a naked flame, such as a cigarette, or even simply turning on the lights could have triggered the explosion. The labs were, in effect, booby-trapped.’