David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘How did it come to be such a ruin, Patrick?’ said Anne Herbert, pointing across to the melancholy view.

‘I expect somebody bought it for the stone after the abbey was dissolved. Then he’ll have sold it off. I expect half the town is built with the stones that were here once. Come, Anne, if we go up there I think we’ll be where the high altar must have been.’

Anne Herbert looked at him sadly. ‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘do you think Compton Minster will look like this in a hundred years’ time?’

‘It might.’ Patrick Butler laughed at the thought of the splendid spate of stories that would be produced by the Decline and Fall of Compton. ‘We must have had two religious revolutions in this country at least, Anne. One when Christianity replaced the pagans and the Druids. Another when this abbey here was closed down. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have another, this time an agnostic or atheist revolution. It’s amazing how many of these people there are already. All churches to be abolished by order of the state. Building fabric to be used for the construction of dwellings for the deserving poor. That’s what happened here, after all, except the dwellings were for the deserving rich.’

He took Anne by the hand and led her towards what he thought must be the remains of the high altar. That, she felt suddenly, would be an interesting place for a proposal of marriage. Perhaps that was what Patrick had planned all along.

An elderly porter who remembered Powerscourt from his days as an undergraduate pointed him in the direction of his old tutor’s rooms.

‘He’s still in the same place, my lord, Mr Brooke, though he’s very frail now. The Head Porter doesn’t think he’ll last the year out. Myself, I’m not so sure. Mr Brooke says the port will see him through.’

‘Come in,’ said the old man, rising slowly from his chair, leaning heavily on a stick. ‘Good to see you, Powerscourt. Last time you were here was in ’97. I looked it up in my diary. Some nasty business with Germans, I seem to remember.’

‘How are you, sir?’ said Powerscourt, slipping effortlessly into the mode of address of his student days.

‘I’m less mobile than I was even then,’ said the senior tutor, subsiding into his chair once more. ‘College is in much better shape, mind you. That terrible man who was Master then, he’s gone. Dropped dead in the Senate House Passage. I’d say the Good Lord called him home if I believed in the Good Lord. New Master believes in proper food. Thank God for that too. And proper wine. Place used to be like a second rate boarding school in the victualling department. Now it’s more like a London Club.’

Powerscourt smiled. He noticed that the old copies of The Times were still piled high around the old man’s chair. Soon they might be as high as his head.

‘Now then, Powerscourt, mustn’t keep you from your work.’ Gavin Brooke reached across to a little table and brought out a letter. He searched all his pockets for his spectacles before discovering that they too were on the table.

‘Reformation, you said in your first letter. That’s what you want to know about. We’ve got just the man for you here in college. Young fellow by the name of Broome, Jarvis Broome. It’s his special field of expertise. He’s expecting you now. And then you asked about a theologian. After lunch I’ve arranged for you to see our Dean. He’s very sound on all that sort of stuff.’

Powerscourt thanked the old man and was about to take his leave.

‘I was thinking the other day, Powerscourt, about my books,’ said the old man, gazing up at the shelves where a long row of works by Gavin Brooke, Senior Tutor and University Lecturer in Modern History, were prominently displayed. ‘At the time I wrote the early ones on Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, some of the participants were still alive. Did you know that the last surviving member of the British delegation to the Congress of Vienna didn’t pass on until 1885? Now they’re all dead, all those people I wrote about. Every single one of them.’ The old man shook his head.

‘Maybe you’ll meet them all on the other side, Mr Brooke. You could give history lectures up in heaven. I’m sure your subjects would flock along. They can’t have very much to do up there.’

‘Be on your way, young man. I tell you what they’d do, all those people I wrote about if I met them in heaven or hell. They’d probably be like all the other bloody historians I’ve met down here. They’d say I had the emphasis wrong. Even more likely they’d tear my books to shreds.’

Patrick Butler actually had three different proposals of marriage, carefully written out and currently incarcerated in his back pocket. First he had gone to the poetry section of the County Library and made copious notes. Then, late one evening when his reporters had all gone home, he composed them in his office surrounded by the normal detritus of his trade. The first was heavily dependent on the love sonnets of Shakespeare. The second was equally reliant on the work of John Donne, though even Patrick, who was not easily shocked, had been a little embarrassed at some of the language employed by the Dean of St Paul’s. At least he hadn’t ventured as far as Rochester. And the third was entirely his own work. Cynics might have said that it sounded too like one of his own leading articles in the Grafton Mercury, but it was late by this stage and Patrick was growing tired.

‘Look, Anne,’ he said, standing by a rectangular row of bricks, now only a couple of feet high and almost invisible in the long grass. ‘This is where the high altar must have been. The choir must have been down there by that wall on the left.’

‘Are you sure, Patrick?’ said Anne, feeling that this was not after all a particularly romantic spot.

‘I think so,’ Patrick replied, leading her further down towards the remains of the nave. ‘And I think they’ve put the Lady Chapel at the wrong end, if you see what I mean. It’s right down at the far end. I think it should be up here somewhere. Maybe the masons looked at their plan the wrong way round.’ The Lady Chapel, he thought, that might be better for his purpose. At least a lot of it was still standing.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was trying to work out how many times he must have walked this short route from the porter’s lodge to the last staircase by the river in the three years he had lived there during his time in Cambridge. Five or six times a day say forty times a week, three hundred and fifty a term, a thousand a year, three thousand times altogether. He was passing the hall and the kitchens now where the young Powerscourt, rather nervously, had intoned the Latin Grace before dinner. Quid quid appositum est, aut apponetur, Christus benedicere dignetur in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. The words came back to him automatically. Powerscourt didn’t think he would have described the food in his time as being like that served in the clubs of London, certainly not in any of the ones he belonged to. It was much worse than the second rate boarding school derided by his former tutor. Here was the staircase. He walked a few paces forward and peered down at the river, still meandering in its sluggish way along the Backs. To his left was King’s where the famous Chapel was hidden from sight by the buildings of Clare. To his right the solid mass of Trinity and the glory of Wren’s great Library inside.

Jarvis Broome was a handsome young man, cleanly shaven, with a large collection of ancient volumes stacked in neat piles around his desk. He showed Powerscourt to a chair with a view of the college lawns and a brief sliver of river.

‘Gavin Brooke tells me you want to know about the Reformation, Lord Powerscourt. Is there anything in particular I can help you with? I’m writing a book on the subject, though God knows when I’ll ever finish it.’