“Yes, I know.” My voice was acid enough to attract his condescending attention.
“Oh, h’it’s you, Mrs. Martin.” There wasn’t a lot of Christmas cheer in his manner, either.
“Good evening, Mr. Wallingford. I know it’s hopeless, but I thought I might find a place to stand.”
“Oh, but we can’t ’ave standing in the choir on Christmas Eve, can we—too many candles h’about, we ’as to keep the h’exits clear. Danger of fire, you know.” He sounded quite pleased about it, and I gritted my teeth. This was petty English officialdom at its worst, someone whose function was to serve the public taking delight in snubbing them instead.
“Well then, don’t bother about me, I’ll manage.” I swept away in a burst of temper I regretted before I had taken two steps. The odious man might have helped if I’d played on his sense of chivalry instead of getting indignant. Assuming he had a sense of chivalry. As it was, those back rows of the nave were looking better all the time.
One last despairing glance at the choir stalls before I turned to leave—and my small miracle happened. I saw an empty stall, and actually in the second row!
“Excuse me, is someone sitting there?” It couldn’t happen, could it? They would have gone to the bathroom, or to fetch a program, or . . .
“Not as I know of. Me wife got sleepy and went ’ome. Dunno as you’ll fit.” The fat man in the next stall looked appraisingly at my own well-nourished contours; I felt a little like one of the farm animals I would bet were his daily companions. He was obviously displeased at the idea of a neighbor, but I was past caring. The seat was right in the middle of the row, so I pardoned and excused and squeezed my way past the knees and the hassocks and a few glares, smiled graciously at the fat man (which annoyed him still further), and slipped to my knees with a sigh of relief. So annoying to be late, but how lucky to have found a place at all, and it was only because I was alone. Most people wanted two seats together.
And at the thought, with no warning, depression possessed me utterly. It was like that. It always struck unexpectedly, when I had forgotten, before I could put up my defenses. It would lie in wait for a chance to remind me that I was—alone. That only a year ago I had been celebrating Christmas with Frank, vigorous, apparently healthy Frank, looking forward to retirement in June, the two of us planning our move to the England we adored. This should have been a moment to enjoy together, our first Christmas in our new home. Instead I was congratulating myself on finding a single seat. A widow’s seat.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut, but too late. A tear worked its way out and rolled down my cheek, and the more I tried to will the demon away, the more insistent became its jabs. I
knew
force never worked against it. Anyway, what was the good of resisting? All the courage in the world wouldn’t change anything. I was alone. What an idiot I’d been to think about leaving familiar surroundings for a place where everyone tried to be kind, but no one really understood. No one spoke my language. Oh, I had plenty of acquaintances, but they had a different sense of humor, different ways of doing things. I’d never be one of them.
As the tide of self-pity rose to drown any other thought, any hope of comfort, I stopped trying to say my prayers. There was plainly no point. No, I would sit there and wallow in misery. Despising myself, and adding despicableness to the roster of my woes, I creaked back into the hard, upright seat, sniffed, and raised my chin in martyrly fashion.
And the cathedral took over. Far above my head it soared—the cathedral by candlelight. An unimaginable weight of flamegilded stone, defying gravity, rushed skyward and spread, lacelike, into the miracle of England’s finest fan-vaulted choir. Rank on rank of wood and stone saints and kings and apostles looked down on me from choir stalls and niches, carved draperies swaying a little, features shaping into half-smiles or reproving frowns with the flicker of candles far below. Five centuries of worship, seeping from ancient stones, embraced me in the warm arms of faith and tradition. The heady scents of incense and evergreen, the subdued, exciting bustle of voices, light and color and movement, all spoke of something to come, something cosmic and magnificent.
Awestruck, senses sated and numbed with beauty, I forgot to be unhappy. I was even able to grin at myself as I mopped away the silly tears. The demon wouldn’t appreciate being overcome by architecture, but it didn’t stand a chance here, not for long. I couldn’t be miserable even when I tried, not on Christmas Eve in the most beautiful church in the world.
“I beg your pardon.” The voice at my elbow sounded apologetic. I had an uncomfortable feeling that this diffident man in tweeds had been trying to get my attention for some time. “Sorry to bother you, but I believe we’re meant to take one of these.” He held out a box full of slender candles and small cardboard circles, carefully not looking at me.
Oh, dear. He’d seen me crying. I felt a blush rising, but I couldn’t very well explain myself to a total stranger. “Of course,” I murmured, not looking at him, either. “Thank you.” I took a candle and drip-catcher from the box and passed it along to the fat man, who grunted.
As I slid the disk onto the bottom of my candle, I chanced a sideways glance at the man in tweeds. He was a big man, not flabby like my fat neighbor on the other side, but tall and substantial, with lots of soft, wavy gray hair. As my look slid up to his kind but firm-looking face, my eye caught his and I looked away in embarrassment.
“I do beg your pardon, but are you by any chance Mrs. Martin?” His solid, comfortable voice sounded just the way his face looked.
I turned back to him and stared. Aside from a strong resemblance to Alistair Cooke, his features were completely unfamiliar. I was sure I’d never seen him before. “Why yes, I am, but . . .”
He smiled. “No, it isn’t second sight. I know your neighbor, Jane Langland, and she’s mentioned you to me. Especially your—er—taste in hats. I quite like this one, if I may say so.” The smile broadened slightly, although he was much too polite to let it turn into a chuckle.
I relaxed and laughed. “I know it’s an extremely silly one—but thank you very much, I like it too, Mr.—?”
“Nesbitt. Alan Nesbitt.” He shook my hand.
“And how do you know Jane?” I was genuinely curious. Jane’s orbit did not, as far as I knew, include many distinguished-looking men, except for the cathedral staff, and I knew most of them by sight.
“I met her on official business a year or so ago.”
I looked blank.
“Sorry, I should have explained I’m chief constable for this county. Miss Langland’s house was burgled last year, and she came to me in great distress, convinced we had the wrong man. She was quite right, in fact. She gave me no peace until we caught the real villain.”
I laughed. “I can imagine. Jane’s almost always right about people, and she’s a tiger for justice.” I laughed again at the thought of Jane as a tiger—a plump, gray-haired, very English tiger—and was about to voice the image when the great organ over our heads uttered a mighty chord that made human speech inaudible. I shrugged and smiled. A mellow light began to spread through the choir as the vergers lit a few congregational candles and each passed on the gentle flame. The last electric lights were turned out; the sonorous fugue rolled over us and we settled back in satisfaction. Bach, I thought dreamily. Perfect for Christmas. The great ritual was beginning.
The service proceeded in its familiar order, with extra flourishes for Christmas. Sherebury is “high-church”—very Catholic in its practices—so clouds of incense led in the cathedral clergy in their glistening white-and-gold vestments. Vergers headed the procession in the red and blue and green cassocks of their rank, stained-glass colors that were their usual garb but looked specially chosen for the festive season. The dean followed the canons, wearing his tall dignity with a benign humility. The bishop, a small man made majestic in embroidered cope and mitre, brought up the rear, carrying his deeply carved silver crozier. And all the while the choirboys in ruffled surplices and the men in more tailored versions sang like the very archangels.
The bishop ascended his throne, the “cathedra” for which the building was named. Not being especially fond of the bishop, I confess to the irreverent thought that he looked far too insignificant for the splendor of that chair. Carved of oak and nestled in a hooded niche of miraculously lacy marble that stretched upward for twenty feet or more, it seemed more fitting for the real Owner of the building. Everyone else took their appointed places for the stately choreography of a high-church service, and the dean began the measured poetry of Archbishop Cranmer. “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known. . . .”
As the service wore on, the vast congregation of strangers seemed to unite in the mood of that night of miracles, joining lustily in the hymns and carols. They gave us all the old favorites: “Away in a Manger,” “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “What Child Is This.” I did my enthusiastic best until they came to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Then the pure beauty of the boy soprano’s descant put such a lump in my throat that I couldn’t sing a note. No matter that I know perfectly well they’re normal mischievous little boys, not angels straight from heaven; when they sing in that particular way I melt to a puddle.
The sermon was brief and cheering, the communion solemnly moving. As I made my way back from the altar rail I reveled in the exalted sense of goodwill that one always hopes will last. It never does, of course. In a while I would remember my troubles. I would begin to let the little worries nag at me, and be annoyed by the fat man’s wheezes and elbowings. I would come down to earth. But even knowing that, for just one sublime suspended moment nothing could spoil the perfection of Christmas, the first Christmas and this one somehow joined as one.
It was long after midnight, truly Christmas, when the slender congregational candles flickered their last, the bishop pronounced the benediction, and the organ broke into a final delighted riot of sound. I sat while the others began to leave, well content to let the glory flow over me until the last triumphant chord rolled away and was swallowed up in the greetings of “Merry Christmas” sounding from all sides. I heaved a huge sigh of satisfaction and rose, a trifle creakily, from the confinement of my narrow stall. A courteous hand at my elbow reminded me of Mr. Nesbitt’s presence.
“Thank you. I think I’m getting too old for late hours and hard seats. Lovely as that was, I’m stiff and tired and ready for home.”
“I’d be delighted to see you home, Mrs. Martin. Unless you have other friends here . . .”
“No, I was planning on going home alone. It’s very kind of you, but you don’t need to bother, I’ll be fine. It’s only a few steps, just the other side of the Close.”
“No bother at all. I believe the cloister door would be the nearest, wouldn’t it?” He steered me away from the crowd going out through the nave. He was quite right. It was quite a walk through the Close to my house from the south door, while the cloister door led directly to the little gate into my street.
“Goodness, it’s dark!” I stumbled over a paving stone in the south choir transept, grateful once again for the steadying hand. “I suppose they left these lights off for effect.”
“Actually I believe it’s something to do with the rewiring. Did you have a coat, Mrs. Martin? It’s quite chilly.”
I stopped in dismay. “Oh, dear. It’s in the south porch. My umbrella, too. I came in that way because this door was locked from the outside. Maybe we should go out the front after all.”
“No, no, we’ll be able to get
out,
I’m sure. I’ll just go and fetch your things for you, if you’ll tell me what color . . .”
“A new Burberry, with a red scarf in the pocket. And the umbrella has cats all over it, in bright colors.”
Again I caught that suggestion of a chuckle as he turned away.
“I won’t be a moment.”
Well, what did I care if he found my taste a bit flamboyant? He was being polite about it, anyway. I was glad he had remembered the coat; I was beginning to shiver as the cold of ancient stones encircled me.
This was the oldest part of the cathedral, the choir transept leading to the old cloister. The cloister itself, save for part of the old scriptorium and the boundary walls, had fallen to ruin centuries ago after the dissolution of the abbeys, leaving only a few moss-covered stumps of arches to bear witness to Henry VIII’s devastation. The Norman transept, however, had survived intact, lone remnant of the eleventh-century church. Impressionable folk claimed they sometimes saw a monk here, robed and cowled, walking sadly and silently the steps he had trod so many hundred years before. I devoutly wished I hadn’t remembered that story at just that moment.
The dark quiet was oppressive. Although hundreds of people still filled the huge nave, the cathedral’s design funneled the sound away from this remote area, where the loudest noise was the echo of my own footsteps. I shivered again, not from cold this time, and then remembered the tiny flashlight in my bag. If only the batteries were still good . . . I rummaged, finally found it, and turned it on. Well, not exactly a spotlight, but at any rate a reassuring token of the twentieth century.
I took a firmer grip on it and inched toward the cloister door. If I opened it the outside light would brighten the area, and I didn’t think I could get much colder. It wasn’t easy to get my bearings in the looming dark. Surely the Fitzalan chantry was just here on the left, and then the last of the side chapels before the door? The frail beam of light confirmed my rapidly diminishing sense of direction. But then—there were no memorial brasses here, were there? That gleam of metal on the floor—what on earth?
It was a candlestick. My flashlight, with the perversity of its kind, brightened for a moment and then dimmed to a mere glimmer, but the brief flare was enough to show me the unmistakable silver shape. Ornate, three feet tall, it belonged with its mate on the altar of the lovely little chapel that should be here, just next to the cloister door. I picked up the heavy object, wondering why it was there, and moved forward to replace it.