Andrew Taylor - The Office of the Dead

He left the room. I avoided looking at Janet.

‘He’s concerned about this library business,’ Janet said hastily, as if in apology. ‘There’s a proposal to merge the Theological College Library with the Cathedral one. Hardly anyone uses the Cathedral Library, you see, and it would be much better for everyone if it was housed in the Theo. Coll. Peter Hudson’s the new Cathedral librarian so his opinion’s very important.’

‘The marriage of two libraries? Gosh.’

She winced. ‘It’s more than that. You know David’s boss is getting on? It’s an open secret he may retire at the end of the summer term.’

‘And David wants the job?’ I smiled at her and tried to make a joke of it. ‘I thought the clergy weren’t supposed to have worldly ambitions.’

‘It’s more that David feels he could do useful work there. Canon Osbaston likes him. He’s the principal. So does the bishop. But the appointment needs the agreement of the Cathedral Chapter as well. It’s a bit like a school, you see. The bishop and the others are like the college’s board of governors.’

‘So where’s the problem?’

‘Some of the canons aren’t very enthusiastic about David getting the job. Including Peter Hudson.’

Janet began to lay the table. The Byfields usually ate in the kitchen because it was warmer and because the dining room was a day’s march away up a flight of stairs and at the other end of the house.

‘Hudson seemed quite a nice little man,’ I said. ‘Inoffensive.’

Janet snorted. ‘That’s a mistake a lot of people make.’ She sat down suddenly and rubbed her eyes. ‘God, I’m tired.’

I took the cutlery from her and continued laying the place settings. She fiddled with one of the napkin rings, rubbing at a dull spot on the silver.

‘It’s not really about this library,’ she went on slowly. ‘Or even about the job. It’s about the college itself. They’re talking about closing it down.’

‘Why should they do that?’

‘Because applications are down and money’s tight. It’s a problem all over the country. David says the Church of England needs between six and seven hundred ordinations a year at the minimum if it wants to keep its parishes going. But they haven’t managed six hundred a year for nearly half a century. And meanwhile everything’s more expensive. The Theo. Coll.’s a great barrack of a place. It simply eats up money.’

‘Why does David want to be principal of it? Couldn’t he do something else? Why can’t he have a parish like normal priests?’

‘He feels his vocation is to be a teacher and a scholar – perhaps even an administrator.’ She straightened one of the knives. ‘And – and I think it’s the sort of job that gets you noticed. David wouldn’t look at it like that, of course, but that’s what it amounts to.’

‘Sounds more like Imperial Tobacco than the Church of England.’

‘The Church is an organization, Wendy. They all work the same way. The C of E isn’t there to make money but it’s still an organization.’

I was tempted to make a joke about God being the chairman for life but decided that Janet might think it in bad taste.

‘The salary would be much better, too,’ she said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

It was at that point that a handful of suspicions coalesced into a certainty. ‘Money’s tight for you, isn’t it?’

Janet said nothing. I remembered how David had paid my bill at Mrs Hyson’s and bought my train ticket. I thought about the cost of Mr Treevor’s taxi from Cambridge, and how having two extra mouths to feed – and in my case water – would affect a household budget.

I drew out a chair and sat down beside her. ‘You’ve been very good to me,’ I said. ‘Both of you, real friends in need. But I shan’t stay long.’

Janet lifted her face. ‘I don’t want you to go. I like having you here. Anyway, where would you go? What would you do?’

‘I’ll find something.’

She shook her head. ‘Not yet. God knows what would happen to you.’

‘Other people manage,’ I said airily.

‘You’re not other people. You’re Wendy. Anyway, what about Henry?’

My heart twisted. ‘What about him?’

‘You don’t think –?’

‘I told you in the letter. It’s over. I’m going to divorce him. He can’t contest it. He only married me for the bit of money I had.’ I rubbed a patch of rough skin on my hand, trying to smooth away the hurt. ‘I caught him making love to another woman and she was the ugliest bitch you’ve ever seen.’

‘Oh, Wendy.’

She took my hand. I stared at them, her hand and mine lying on the scrubbed deal table.

Janet said, ‘You must stay for a while.’

‘Only if you let me pay something. And if you let me help you around the house.’

‘You haven’t got any money.’

‘I’ve got one or two little bits of jewellery.’

‘You’re not to sell them.’

‘Then I’ll have to go.’

We glared at each other. She began to cry. So did I. While we finished laying the table we shared a brief companionable weep. By the time we’d dried our eyes, hugged each other and cleared the draining board we both knew that I would stay.

The first Saturday of my visit was cold but sunny. David took Janet and me up the west tower of the Cathedral. We climbed endless spiral staircases and edged along narrow galleries thick with stone dust. At last he pushed open a tiny door and we crawled out on to an unbearably bright platform of lead.

There was no wind. I swear it was colder and sunnier up there than it had been on the ground. I leaned against one of the walls, which were battlemented like a castle’s. I was gasping for breath because of too many stairs and too many cigarettes.

I looked out. The tower went down like a lift in a horror film. The ground rushed away. I held on to the parapet, the roughness of the stone scouring my hands as I squeezed it more and more tightly.

Below me was the great encrusted hull of the Cathedral and the tiled and slated roofs of Rosington. Around them as far as the eye could see were the grey winter Fens. They stretched towards the invisible point where they became one with the grey winter sky.

For an instant I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I was adrift between the sky and the earth. All my significance had been stolen from me.

Then Janet put her hand on my arm and said, ‘Look, there’s Canon Osbaston coming out of the Theological College.’ She lowered her voice. ‘If tortoises waddled they’d look just like him.’

In those days Rosington was a small town – perhaps eight or nine thousand people. Technically it was a city because it had a cathedral, so its sense of importance was out of proportion to its size. It was also an island set in the black sea of the Fens, a place apart, a place of refuge. It was certainly a place of refuge for me. Even if he wanted to, Henry would hardly follow me to the town where he had made such a fool of himself.

David told me that in the Middle Ages the Isle of Rosington was largely surrounded by water. It was a liberty, almost a County Palatine, in which the abbots who preceded the bishops wielded much of the authority usually reserved for the king. Here the Saxons made one of their last stands against the invading armies of the Normans.

The city still felt a place under siege. And the Cathedral Close, a city within a city, was doubly under siege because the town around it nibbled away at its rights and privileges. The Close was an ecclesiastical domain, older than the secular one surrounding it, and conducted according to different laws. Its gates were locked at night by an assistant verger named Gotobed who lived beside the Porta with his mother and her cats.