The Office of the Dead

by Taylor, Andrew

  ‘But what did he do?’ I asked.

  ‘He preached a sermon in favour of ordaining women priests.’ Another rumble of laughter erupted from deep in the interior. ‘Can you believe it?’

  After dinner David took Osbaston into the drawing room and gave him a glass of brandy while Janet and I cleared the table and made the coffee.

  ‘It seems to be going quite well,’ Janet said as she piled plates into the sink.

  ‘If Osbaston has any more to drink we’ll probably have to carry him home,’ I said. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ I noticed Janet was leaning against the draining board. ‘Are you OK?’

  She glanced back at me. ‘Just tired.’

  I made her sit down at the kitchen table. All the standing up couldn’t be good for her and she had been up since half past six. I suggested she went to bed but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘It would be rude.’

  ‘It would be common sense.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m all right. I’ll be fine after a little rest.’

  I gave up. It had always been impossible to deflect Janet from something she considered to be her duty. Probably the woman they burnt at the stake suffered from a similar mentality.

  I picked up the tray and we went into the drawing room. Osbaston and David broke off their conversation as we came in. They looked like conspirators. I wondered if they’d been scheming about the Theological College. Ever the little gent, David sprang up to take the tray from me.

  ‘I was just telling David,’ Osbaston said, rolling the brandy round his glass, ‘my housekeeper can remember Canon Youlgreave.’

  ‘Really?’

  He eyed me in a speculative way I suddenly recognized. It was as if someone had thrown a glass of icy water in my face. The sort of life Henry and I had led contained a great many men who looked at me as Osbaston did. ‘It’s not that surprising,’ he said, settling his glasses on his nose. ‘I’ve never dared ask Mrs Elstree how old she is but she can’t be much less than seventy. Youlgreave must have died about fifty years ago.’

  ‘It’s hard to think of someone alive actually knowing him. He’s like a character out of history, somehow.’

  Osbaston allowed one of his rumbles to emerge. ‘You must come and meet her. Why don’t you all have tea with me tomorrow? Mrs Elstree makes very good –’

  There was a loud crash above our heads. Janet was into the hall first, with the rest of us close behind.

  Mr Treevor was standing at the head of the stairs. His feet were bare and his greasy hair stood up around his head. His pyjama jacket was undone, revealing a tangle of grey hair, and his trousers sagged low on his hips.

  ‘Daddy, what’s wrong?’ Janet cried. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘There was a noise, footsteps, just like before,’ Mr Treevor said in a thin whine. ‘I went to see if Rosie was all right but I couldn’t find my glasses. I must have – must have knocked something over. Janie, where are my glasses?’

  As if on cue, Rosie began to cry.

  19

  In the end I talked to David about Janet. He didn’t like it and nor did I. I was beginning to feel like an interloper in their marriage, in more ways than one.

  It was after breakfast the next day, Sunday, which happened to be the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Henry. No one else remembered this and I did my best to forget it. David came back from celebrating the early communion service full of the joys of this world and the next. While he worked his way through two cups of coffee, two boiled eggs and several rounds of toast, Janet pecked at a slice of bread and butter. After I’d washed up I cornered him in his study where he was reading a book and making notes.

  ‘Janet’s not well,’ I told him. ‘She needs to rest.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She tired herself out yesterday killing the fatted calf. And she was tired beforehand. And then there’s her condition.’

  His eyes were drifting back to the book on his desk.

  ‘She’s pregnant, David. And in the first three months women are particularly delicate. If she works too hard there’s a danger she might lose the baby.’

  That got his attention. ‘I hadn’t realized. In fact …’ His voice tailed away and I laid a private bet with myself that he had been about to say, In fact I’d forgotten she was pregnant. He looked at me. ‘What do you advise?’

  ‘I think she should go back to bed. She’s getting ready for church at present. Tell her you think she ought to rest. It’s what she needs. I can do lunch. There are plenty of leftovers.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll be well enough to have tea with Canon Osbaston?’

  ‘She’s not ill, David. She’s just tired and I really think she needs a day off. Rosie and I can come if you want.’

  In one way it worked out very well. Janet spent most of the day in bed and the rest of us muddled along reasonably happily. In retrospect, I think Rosie may have been withdrawn. Usually she enjoyed being with her father but when we walked to the Theological College for tea with Canon Osbaston, it was my hand she decided to hold. None of this seemed significant then and even now I wonder if I’m reading too much into it. That’s the trouble with trying to remember things – you end up twisting the past into unrecognizable shapes. I just don’t know what happened the previous evening. If anything.

  I do know the weather was wonderful that afternoon. I haven’t imagined the feeling of sun on my arms as we walked through the Close and down to the Porta. Ink-black shadows danced along the pavement. We passed Gotobed planting pansies in his window box. He pretended not to see us. He was a large man who hunched his shoulders as if trying to make himself small. His face was delicate, with big ears and a tiny nose and chin. I thought he looked like a mouse and perhaps felt like one too. He would talk to me when I was by myself but I think he was scared of David. He was certainly terrified of the head verger, a swarthy man named Mepal who rarely spoke, but I think everyone was a little afraid of Mepal, including the dean.

  Immediately outside the Porta was Minster Street, which ran along one side of a small green before plunging down Back Hill to the station and the river. On the other side of the green stood the Theological College, a large redbrick building surrounded by lank shrubberies like coils of barbed wire.

  David guided us up the drive and round to the lawn at the back. Four pink young men were playing lawn tennis. A little further on, four more were playing croquet. The Principal’s Lodging, a self-contained wing of the main building, was beside the croquet lawn.

  Canon Osbaston was dozing in a wing armchair in front of open French windows. The room behind him was long, high-ceilinged and densely populated with large brown pieces of furniture. He must have heard our footsteps on the gravel because his eyes flickered open and he struggled out of the chair.

  ‘Must have nodded off. Meant to have the kettle on before you arrived. Is Janet with you?’

  ‘She’s a little unwell,’ David said.

  ‘Nothing serious, I trust. Such a pleasant evening.’ He leered at me. ‘I wonder if you would give me a hand making the tea, Mrs Appleyard? I’m afraid it slipped my mind yesterday evening, in the – ah – heat of the moment, that Mrs Elstree has Sunday afternoons off. She visits her widowed sister, I believe.’

  ‘Perhaps Rosie can help as well,’ I said. ‘Many hands make light work.’

  In the end, all four of us went into the kitchen. I felt as though I’d awakened a Sleeping Beauty. I wished I could find a way to send him to sleep again. We found that Mrs Elstree had left everything ready for us in the kitchen. Ten minutes later, we were sitting in deckchairs on the lawn.

  We drank lapsang souchong and ate most of a Victoria sponge. It was warm in the sun and I felt pleasantly tired. Osbaston found Rosie some paper and a pencil and once she had finished her cake she sat on the lawn in the shade of a beech tree and drew.

  The young men played croquet and tennis, and watching them gave me something to do with the forefront of my mind. Occa
sionally some of them would wander over to have a few words with Osbaston or David. More than one of them looked at me in a way that gave me pleasure. I might have no taste for elderly clergymen but after the dreariness surrounding the end of my marriage it was nice to be admired again, even by theological students.

  David and Osbaston were talking about the syllabus for next year – something about the pros and cons of increasing New Testament Greek at the expense of Pastoral Theology. It was one of those lazy conversations full of half-sentences which happen when people know each other very well, so much so that each is usually aware what the other is about to say. I looked at David through half-closed eyes.

  Before I knew what was happening, I found I had drifted into a daydream in which I was married to him and Rosie was our daughter. That was enough to make me sit up with a jerk. I hate the way the mind plays tricks when you’re relaxing. I went into the house to powder my nose. By the time I came out the tennis and the croquet were finished and it was time to go. The men were turning their thoughts towards evensong.

  ‘You must come and meet Mrs Elstree some other time, Mrs Appleyard,’ Osbaston said. ‘In the meantime I found something else which might interest you.’ He pottered through the French window into his drawing room and came out a moment later with a hardback book bound in blue cloth. ‘I thought I’d seen something about that fellow Youlgreave recently, and I was right. I looked it out after breakfast this morning. Do borrow it, if you’d like. I’ve put a marker in.’

  I took the book and opened it automatically to the title page. The Journal of the Transactions of the Rosington Antiquarian Society 1904.

  ‘I think it may be what gave him the idea for that judgement poem,’ Osbaston said. ‘You remember, the story about a heretic being burned? Take it with you, my dear, and study it at your leisure.’ He edged a little closer to me. ‘Perhaps we could discuss it when you come and meet Mrs Elstree.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Thanks.’ I looked around for a diversion and found Rosie. ‘What a nice drawing. May I see it?’

  With obvious reluctance she gave it to me. David and Osbaston came closer and together we looked down at the sheet of paper in my hands. It was a child’s drawing with no sense of perspective or proportion. After all, Rosie wasn’t yet five, though in some ways she was very mature for her age. The pencilled figures were like stick insects with a few props attached. But you could see what Rosie had been getting at. A man wearing a white dress and a pair of wings was about to plunge a sword shaped like a cake slice into a small person with long hair cowering at his feet.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Canon Osbaston, his head swaying towards Rosie. ‘Could this be the sacrifice of Isaac?’ He frowned and a heavy forefinger stabbed the man with the sword. ‘But in that case this must be Abraham, despite the wings. After all, it can hardly be the Angel of the Lord.’

  20

  Osbaston had marked a letter, one of a number printed at the end of the Journal. I read it after supper when David was working in the study. Janet was trying to reconcile the butcher’s bill with what we had actually received and said she would look at it later.

  CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED BY THE EDITOR

  From the Revd Canon F. St J. Youlgreave:

  Sir,

  I write to apprise you and other members of the Society of an interesting discovery I have made in my capacity as Cathedral Librarian. I had occasion to examine the binding of a copy of the Sermons of Dr Giles Briscow, the Dean of Rosington in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which was in a decayed condition, with a view to seeing whether it should be rebound. I discovered there were annotations on the end-paper at the back of the book. These are in a Secretary hand which I judge to be of the first half of the seventeenth century. The writing is in Latin and appears to have been copied from an older work, perhaps a Monkish Chronicle dealing with the history of the Abbey of Rosington.

  Evidence on the flyleaf at the front of the book suggested to me that the volume had once been in the possession of Julius Farnworthy, who of course was Bishop from 1619 to 1628, and whose tomb is in the South Choir Aisle. It is possible, even probable, that Bishop Farnworthy, or one of his contemporaries at Rosington, was responsible for the memorandum inscribed on the end-paper.

  For the time being I have entrusted the book to an acquaintance who has some skill at palaeography and who is also in a position where he may conveniently examine the Farnworthy Collection in the British Museum Library. First, however, I took the precaution of copying the memorandum in full. When the results of the palaeographical examination are known, and when I have had an opportunity to complete other researches, I hope to be in a position to present a paper on the subject to the Society. I intend to assess the authenticity and provenance of this curious discovery, and also to sketch in the background of the events which it describes insofar as this proves possible to do. In the meantime, I hope you will permit me to whet the appetite of my fellow members of the Society with my rendering of the memorandum into English.

  ‘In the third year of King Henry’s reign, plague swept this part of the country. Merchants and pilgrims alike dared not cross the Great Causeway for fear of infection. Houses were left empty, fields untended and animals starved for want of feeding.

  ‘Men said openly that the devil was abroad in the land.

  ‘In the village of Mudgley, the parish priest died in much agony. His housekeeper stood at the cross and told those that remained alive that the Devil had carried away his soul, but at the same time an Angel had protected hers. And she uttered this blasphemy: that the Angel had told her she was chosen among all women to be His first priest of her sex. And the Angel ordained her, saying unto her, “Am I not greater than any Bishop?”

  ‘Whereupon the woman led the people into church and celebrated Mass. Hearing this, the Abbot, Robert of Walberswick, sent men to bring her to Rosington where she was tried before God and man for blasphemy. But the Devil would not leave her. She would not confess her sins nor repent of her evil so they burned her in the marketplace. Her name was Isabella of Roth.’

  Robert of Walberswick was Abbot from 1392 to 1407. The third year of King Henry’s reign must refer to Henry IV and therefore date this episode to 1402. It is not clear whether the village mentioned is Mudgley Burnham or Abbots Mudgley. The Latin shows no signs of the influence of the Renaissance and it contains many characteristically Mediaeval contractions and turns of phrase. At present, at least, we can only speculate why the unknown writer of this memorandum should have wished to copy the passage. The whereabouts of the original is equally mysterious.

  If I may be permitted to end on a personal note, you will notice that Roth is mentioned. I can only assume that this is the village of Roth in the County of Middlesex. Strange to say, this is a locality I know well, since my family has resided there for more than forty years.

  I am, Sir, etc.

  F. Youlgreave

  I also found Youlgreave’s poem, ‘The Judgement of Strangers’, in an anthology of Victorian verse in the dining room bookcase. If I hadn’t read the letter, I don’t think the poem would have made any sense to me at all. But if you assumed it was Isabella’s story, then everything fell into place. Well, perhaps not everything because some of it was almost wilfully hard to understand. But you could see that the poem might be an impressionistic account of a woman being martyred for her beliefs in a vaguely medieval setting.

  I read both the poem and the letter again when I was in bed with rather a large nightcap. The gin gave a slight hangover later and probably caused the nightmare which woke me covered in sweat in the early hours. I dreamed I was in Rosington marketplace. Someone was burning rubbish near the cross and people were shouting at me. Just before I woke up, I glanced into a litterbin fixed to a lamppost and found a doll with no arms staring up at me.

  Theologically the idea’s completely untenable, as Youlgreave would have known,’ David said. ‘The notion of women priests simply doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Why?�
� I asked, not because I cared one way or the other. It was just that I wanted to keep David talking, and he was particularly appealing when he became passionate about something.

  He glanced up at the Cathedral clock. ‘I don’t want to go into it now. There isn’t time and it’s a very complicated subject.’

  ‘Come on. That’s no answer.’

  He stopped at the door to the cloisters. We had been walking round the east end of the Cathedral on our separate ways to work. It was another beautiful day. A wispy cloud hung behind the golden weathercock at the tip of the Octagon’s spire. Every detail of the stonework was crisp and clean. A swallow appeared round one of the pinnacles at the base of the spire, banked sharply and swooped down the length of the nave towards the west end. Suddenly David smiled, and not for the first time I thought that there is something cruel about beautiful people. Their beauty sets them apart from the rest of us. From the beginning they are treated differently.

  He said, ‘I don’t believe a woman can be a priest any more than she can be a father.’

  ‘But being a priest’s a job. If you can have a woman on the throne, why can’t you have one in the pulpit?’