Sarum (192 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
“She also beats the hell out of her brothers and sisters,” Adam laughed. “Maggie’s a total tomboy.”
“Not total,” Maggie correct wryly, and Patricia gave her an encouraging smile.
It was just before they went through the old gate from the High Street into the close that Maggie suddenly turned to her.
“So I guess you must have been dad’s girlfriend,” she said, so loudly that the policeman standing just behind them could hear.
To her horror, Patricia blushed furiously.
Adam only chuckled ruefully.
“I apologise. Maggie’s quite uncontrollable,” he explained. And then, to change the subject he quickly went on.
“So tell us about the royal visit. You said it was to do with the cathedral.”
“It is indeed.” She gazed up at the great building affectionately. “The fact is, unless something is done soon, the spire is going to fall down.”
It was true. The passing of the centuries, and in particular the twentieth century with its increased pollution, had worn down and attacked the Chilmark stone so that all over the west front and on the soaring spire, it had crumbled disastrously.
Most worrying was the state of the spire itself, where the delicate scone shell was now so worn in places that it was hardly thicker than the length of a man’s finger.
Could it really be, after seven and a half centuries, that the mighty spire was in danger of collapse – that the awful fear of the medieval masons might be realised, and the whole structure keel over, wrench the tower open and bring the entire cathedral down?
Even Maggie was awed.
“You mean the whole thing could come down?”
“I’m afraid so. If we don’t put it right.”
“And that’s what this visit’s all about?”
“Absolutely. We need six and a half million pounds and we haven’t got it. All the income the dean and chapter can get goes into the maintenance. The Prince of Wales is coming here to help start the appeal.”
Adam considered.
“It’s a lot of money, but I imagine you should raise it without much difficulty.”
“We’re going to raise a million in the Sarum diocese, maybe more. After that, it may be difficult.”
“But it’s one of the wonders of the world!”
“True. But try raising six million pounds in England.”
Shockley laughed. When he thought of some of the expenditures of the big American foundations it didn’t seem so large a sum.
Maggie looked dubious.
“You sure it’s safe to go inside?”
“Of course. It’s all under control. We aren’t stupid, you know,” she added rather tartly.
But it was something else she heard that caused her to frown thoughtfully. For it was just as they were entering the church that she heard Adam turn to his daughter and whisper:
“You see what I told you. This whole place is like a museum.”
It was meant as a compliment to Salisbury, of course. She was well aware of that. And certainly it was true that to any outsider coming to the ancient city, and particularly the quiet close, it might seem as if they had stepped back in time.
Yet, something was wrong, profoundly wrong, with that statement. She frowned, trying to decide exactly what it was.
They were all sitting together – good seats, halfway up the nave. She knew many of the people there. In the row just in front of them was Osbert Mason.
It was so unexpected, she thought, that when the late John Mason had finally married five years after the war, the son he produced should have been so much shorter than he was. True, the quiet librarian from London he had married was a short woman, but even so. It had, in some ways, been a sad business. Poor John. He had set his heart on having his only son succeed him in his solicitor’s office. Yet young Osbert had shown no desire whatever to be a lawyer – indeed, it had been a problem to get him even to finish school. This was not because the boy was stupid either; it was just that he had a passion for working with his hands. So much so, that he had become a carpenter and now ran a small, but profitable business in custom-made furniture, with a little works outside Avonsford. He was thirty-five now and had already made a name for himself. All power to him, she thought, but naturally it was disappointing for his father. Surprising too. John had not been aware of any bent towards handicrafts in his family.
He turned, now, and nodded his large balding head at her solemnly.
Punctual to the minute, as the crowds gazed upwards and the television cameras followed its path, the bright scarlet and blue helicopter had descended out of the spring afternoon sky, and shortly afterwards the Prince of Wales had made his way into the stately cathedral, where he was to read the lesson. The spire appeal had begun.
The works to be undertaken were formidable. The first and most vital was to insert, within the cone of the great spire, an octagonal brace, a framework to take the weight of the spire at its weakest point while the stonework around it was rebuilt. It was a delicate task. And after this, the crumbling west front would be tackled too. The masons would use the old Chilmark stone again, just as they had seven centuries before.
The workshops were in nearly the same place as before: the office of the clerk of works was where the masons’ lodge had stood; there was a glaziers’ workshop, a plumbery, a carpenters’. Nor, in the essentials, had the working methods changed – only the power which drove and heated the same basic machines of saw, lathe and kiln had needed to be improved.
It was a sense of continuity that pleased Patricia Forest-Wilson, as she looked around her and heard the strains of the great Willis organ.
A museum, he had said. If so, she thought with a slight irritation, then perhaps she was a museum piece. She glanced at the faces of the two men beside her – both of them more bronzed than those around them, one probably from a Caribbean sun, the other from the Australian summer from which he had recently come. Two attractive men, she thought, and felt rather pleased with herself. Archibald had been a handsome man too. She liked to think she had only had the best. As for a museum piece – she was not. That was that.
Adam leaned over towards her. She saw Kersey’s eyes following him.
“Seems brighter than I remember it,” he whispered.
She nodded. It was.
In recent years much work had been done in the cathedral. Some, like the restoration of the library, where new cases to hold its priceless medieval books had been made from the old plane trees in the close, was invisible to the casual visitor, though still important. But one had only to look around the main body of the cathedral to notice signs of new life. Here and there, on walls and on the ancient tombs, careful restoration and cleaning had revealed fragments of the medieval paint which had once made the place a riot of colour. In every chapel, splendid embroidered cushions and hassocks, lovingly made by local hands, had recently appeared; and the new Sarum Group of embroiderers had won national renown for the chasubles and copes, and the dazzling altar cloths that caught the eye with such force. Today, even the flowers in the cathedral had been arranged, she could see, by a professional artist’s hands. It seemed to her that there was a new and more vigorous spirit in the place than there had been before.
But a greater wonder was at the east end, where a huge new stained glass window had been installed only five years before. The Prisoners of Conscience Window was the work of the famous French glass designers, Gabriel Loire and his son Jacques, whose workshop was outside another cathedral city, Chartres. It was good, Patricia thought, to see the old colours return to the windows too.
And then she knew why Adam Shockley was wrong.
It was not a museum after all – neither the quiet close nor the bustling town, neither the great house at Wilton nor the medieval cathedral with its soaring spire. All were as alive as on the first day they were made. For ancient forms could be re-used, medieval forms and colours recreated, and new forms would be found at Sarum. They might come slowly, almost invisibly, but they would come because their roots were deep. England had been ruined by two devastating wars; but here, as elsewhere, the ancient culture of Europe would put forth its vigorous flowers again.
She smiled. She was pleased with the thought.
After the service, while the prince was taken to tea at the old bishop’s palace, now the cathedral school, Patricia led her little party back towards the car.
Shockley and his daughter had to return to London that evening and she had promised to show them Stonehenge.
As they left the close, she moved to Kersey Godfrey’s side and linked her arm through his, smiling up at him happily. She touched his hand.
“You’re coming to show them Stonehenge, aren’t you?” she murmured.
“If I’m not in the way.”
She squeezed his arm.
“You’re not.”
They crossed the bridge and walked along to the little car park.
“It’s only twenty minutes drive, if that,” she explained. “Kersey and I will take you there.”
They reached the car. Then she paused and stared.
“I don’t believe it.”
Young John Wilson had been lucky that day. It was his thirteenth birthday.
He had stood in the close to watch the royal helicopter arrive. Then, when the prince had been greeted and moved into the cathedral, he went away. It was twenty minutes later that he walked past the car park near Crane Bridge.
The place was deserted. Idly, he moved about amongst the cars.
The big maroon Volvo was parked in one corner.
And on the driver’s seat lay an expensive woman’s handbag. The door was locked. But there was a little pile of bricks beside the wall nearby.
There were no people and police about: all in the close, no doubt, waiting to see the Prince of Wales. He moved in quickly.
There is a particularly delightful spot at Sarum – it is on a little island below Crane Street bridge – a strip of grass between two streams where the river Avon makes its gentle curve round the western side of the close.
On the opposite eastern bank, the gardens of the handsome close houses run down to the stream. On the western side, the meadows stretch, broad and placid, towards Wilton.
There are long, green riverweeds in the stream; moorhens, ducks and swans make the place their habitation. There are trees along the island’s bank. It is a quiet timeless, place where, by the hushed sounds of the riverbank, one can measure the even greater and more dignified silence of the cathedral close next door.
It was here that John Wilson loitered.
Having extracted the cash, he had thrown the bag and the rest of the contents into the stream where it had slowly sunk just opposite the gardens of the North Canonry.
It was a rich haul: a hundred pounds. His small narrow face broke into a grin.
Soon he would catch his bus home.
He knew nothing of museums, little about the cathedral. About Old Sarum and the high ground he knew only that, even now in spring, they were bare, cold and windy.
But if he thought about the matter at all, he supposed that here, at the place where the five rivers met, life would go on, as it had always done before.
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