The Office of the Dead (12 page)

The dean’s exhibition was taking shape in the Chapter House. Janet told me that the idea had aroused considerable opposition because it smacked of commercialism. I was never quite sure whether the opposition was on religious or social grounds. In the Close, it was often hard to tell where the one stopped and the other began.

The dean had financial logic on his side. There was deathwatch beetle in the roof of the north transept. The windows of the Lady Chapel needed re-leading and the pinnacles at the west end were in danger of falling into Minster Street. The available income barely covered the running costs, according to David, and was incapable of coping with major repairs or emergencies. Opening the Chapter House for an exhibition might be the first step towards setting up a permanent museum. The real question was whether the tourists would be prepared to pay the entry fee for what was on offer.

‘If this works, the dean’s talking of having a Cathedral café,’ David told us one evening. ‘It makes a sort of sense, I suppose. Why should the tea shops in the town reap all the benefit from the Cathedral’s visitors?’

‘But where would they put it?’ Janet asked.

‘If they close the library there would be plenty of room there.’

‘But that’s inside the Cathedral.’

He shrugged. ‘They could move the exhibition into the library and use the Chapter House or somewhere else in the Close for the café.’

The collection included a good deal of medieval stonework – fragments of columns, tombstones and effigies, some of the grander vestments from the great cope chest, fragments of stained glass, and of course the model of the timber skeleton of the Octagon which David had found in the library cupboard. Canon Hudson asked me to keep an eye out for attractively bound or illustrated volumes in the Cathedral Library, particularly ones with a Rosington connection. I tried to make David laugh by suggesting they used the
Lady Chatterley
I had found, but he preserved a stone face and said he did not think it would be suitable.

The whole thing was done on the cheap. The dean had no intention of wasting money on new display cases or on extending the collection until there was evidence that the exhibition would make a profit. They had decided against hiring staff, too. One by one, the ladies of the Close were recruited for the exhibition rota. There was to be a grand opening in June with the bishop. The
Rosington Observer
had promised to send a photographer.

‘I’m sorry you got landed with this as well,’ Janet said to me on the evening of the day I was asked to join the rota. ‘I don’t think David should have asked you.’

‘I don’t mind. Anyway, it may never happen.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I may not be here by then. This job isn’t going to last for ever.’

Janet looked at me and I saw fear in her eyes. ‘I hope you don’t go. Not yet.’

‘It won’t be for a while,’ I said, knowing that I would never be able to resist Janet if she asked for my help, if she asked me to stay. ‘Anyway, the cataloguing may take longer than I think. You never know what’s going to turn up.’

Or who. When I left the library the following afternoon I found Canon Osbaston loitering in the cloisters.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Good Lord! I’d forgotten I might find you here, Mrs Appleyard. I was just examining the exhibition.’

Wheezing softly, he held open the door to the Close.

‘You’re going to the Dark Hostelry?’

‘Yes.’

He fell into step beside me. ‘Perhaps we might walk together. I’m on my way to the High Street to buy some tobacco.’

We walked for a little while without talking.

Suddenly he burst out, ‘Youlgreave was mad, Mrs Appleyard. Absolutely no doubt about it. Don’t you find it rather warm for the time of year?’

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Let’s hope the sunshine lasts. We have a jumble sale for the South American Missionary Society on Saturday.’

Our progress through the sun-drenched Close was slow, a matter of fits and starts. We stopped while Osbaston mopped his face with a large handkerchief. In honour of the weather he was wearing a baggy linen jacket and a Panama hat with a broken brim.

‘When you say “mad”,’ I said after a moment, ‘what do you mean exactly?’

‘I understand Canon Youlgreave was considered eccentric when he first came to Rosington,’ Osbaston said, edging closer to me. ‘And then he grew steadily worse. But it was in ways that made it difficult for one to insist on his having the appropriate medical treatment. When I arrived here in 1933 there were many people living who had known him and all this was common knowledge.’

‘So what did he
do
?’

‘It was a particularly distressing form of mental instability, I’m afraid.’ Osbaston glanced at my face as if it was a pornographic photograph. ‘It seems that his private life may not have been above reproach. And then there was that final sermon. Caused rather a stir – there were reports in the newspapers. They had to bring in the bishop and I believe Lambeth Palace was consulted too. Fortunately the poor fellow’s family were very helpful. No one wanted any scandal.’ The little head nodded on the great body. ‘So we have that much to be thankful for, Mrs Appleyard. And we mustn’t judge him too harshly, must we? I believe he was always very sickly even as a boy.’

By now we were standing outside the door in the wall leading to the garden of the Dark Hostelry.

‘I must say goodbye, Mr Osbaston.’

He moistened his lips just as he had on Saturday night when he was about to take a sip of Burgundy. ‘I thought I might have a cup of tea at the Crossed Keys Hotel. I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?’

‘That’s very kind, but I should go. Janet’s expecting me.’

He raised his Panama. ‘Some other time, Mrs Appleyard. Delightful to see you again.’ He ambled away.

Janet was on her knees weeding a flower bed near the door into the house. ‘What have you got to smile about?’ she said.

‘How nice to see you again, Mrs Byfield,’ Mrs Elstree said. ‘Such a shame about the weather.’

‘It’s not a bad turnout all things considered,’ Janet replied. ‘By the way, this is my friend Mrs Appleyard. We were at school together. Wendy, this is Mrs Elstree.’

I shook hands with Canon Osbaston’s housekeeper, a tall, drab woman who looked as though she had stepped out of a sepia-tinted photograph. She stared at the base of my neck. I wondered if my neck was dirty or if a button had come adrift and my bra was showing. But she smiled quite affably and then turned her attention back to Janet.

‘Let’s have some tea, shall we?’ she suggested. ‘I need to check they’ve remembered everything. I’m afraid some of our staff need watching like a hawk.’

The three of us made our way through the crowd to the urn controlled by the Theological College’s cook. It was raining hard so the jumble sale was being held in the dining hall. Since the doors had only just opened, there wasn’t a queue for tea. Most of the people here were middle-aged women in hats and raincoats, armed with umbrellas. They intended to let nothing get between them and a good bargain.

Janet insisted on buying the tea. Mrs Elstree examined the sugar bowl, felt the side of the urn and checked the level in the milk jug.

‘Nothing to worry about, I’m glad to say,’ she murmured in my ear. She had a Fen accent, its harsh edges softened by years of contact with clerical vowels. ‘They know better than to try monkeying about with me.’ She smiled at Janet’s back and lowered her voice still further. ‘Lovely lady, Mrs Byfield. Such a nice family to have in Rosington.’ Then, at a more normal volume, ‘I understand you work in the Cathedral Library, Mrs Appleyard.’

‘For the time being,’ I said. ‘Which reminds me, Canon Osbaston told me you might be able to tell me something about Canon Youlgreave. I came across something he’d written in the library a week or so ago.’

‘He was a strange man and no mistake.’ She lifted her eyes to my face. The pupils were large and black. ‘Not that I knew him well, of course.’

‘Where did he live?’

‘Bleeders Hall. Where the Hudsons are now. I was working next door in the Deanery. Of course they did things in a lot more style in those days. The dean had a butler and kept his own carriage.’

‘Really? And what was it like at Canon Youlgreave’s?’

‘I couldn’t say. I never had any call to go there. Of course, Mr Youlgreave was a bachelor and didn’t need the sort of establishment the dean did. But he had the house redecorated – I remember that. He lived in the Dark Hostelry while it was being done.’

Janet brought the tea. ‘Who lived in our house?’

‘Francis Youlgreave,’ I said. ‘But Mrs Elstree says it was only for a short time. Apparently he had the house the Hudsons have got.’

‘He wasn’t liked, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Elstree said. ‘And of course he went mad in the end. Not that we were surprised. We could see it coming.’

‘Did you hear the famous sermon about women priests?’

She shook her head and then, as if to make up for this failure, added, ‘They say he was over-familiar with the servants. And some of his ideas were very strange. You know he did away with himself?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ I watched her spooning sugar into her tea. ‘I thought he’d not been well for some time and he just died.’

‘That’s not what we heard. And him a clergyman. But it didn’t happen here. It was after they got rid of him.’ She took a sip of tea and then turned to Janet. ‘What I say, Mrs Byfield, is that you’re bound to get a few rotten apples in every barrel.’

‘I don’t suppose you knew a boy called Simon Martlesham in those days. He worked at the Bishop’s Palace.’

‘Simon Martlesham? Oh yes.’ She hesitated and stirred her tea again, quite unnecessarily. ‘I think he used to run errands for Canon Youlgreave sometimes. But he left Rosington years ago. He lives in Watford now. My brother bumped into him in the Swan.’

‘I know. The pub by the river.’

She nodded. ‘His family used to live down there. There was his mother and sister. By that time he was at the Palace, of course, the servants lived in … I don’t remember a father. I expect he was in the area and thought he’d go and see his old home. Not that there’s much to see.’

People swirled between us. Someone jogged my elbow and tea slopped in the saucer and on the sleeve of my mackintosh. Other conversations began. Later Janet bought a knitted golliwog in a blue boilersuit for Rosie’s birthday and I found a Busy Lizzie for the kitchen windowsill.

Afterwards as we were walking home arm in arm under one umbrella, Janet said, ‘So you’re still interested in Francis Youlgreave?’

‘Just something to pass the time.’ I was afraid that Janet would sense my ingratitude, my boredom with Rosington, my shabby little thoughts about David. I rushed into speech. ‘I imagine Mrs Elstree can be rather terrifying. But she was very pleasant to us.’

‘Mrs Elstree tries as hard as she can to be nice to me,’ Janet said. ‘That’s because if David gets Osbaston’s job, she hopes we’ll keep her on.’

‘And will you?’

‘Not if I can help it. I think she’s too used to running the place, too set in her ways. Mr Osbaston leaves everything to her. But she’s right about the work involved.’ She looked sideways at me. ‘Actually, I don’t think it would be much fun being the principal’s wife.’

We hurried through the rain in silence after that. David was at home working on his book in the study and in theory keeping an eye on Mr Treevor and Rosie. In the Close a car passed us, splashing water over my shoes and stockings.

‘Can you smell anything?’ Janet asked when we were taking off our raincoats in the hall.

‘Only damp.’ I sniffed the air. ‘And perhaps bacon from this morning.’

‘No, it’s something underneath that. Something not very nice. At least I think it is.’

It was the first time any of us mentioned the smell. Of course Janet must have imagined it or smelled something different from the later smell. There’s no other explanation.

David came out of the study. ‘Hello. How was it?’

‘Much as you’d imagine,’ Janet said. ‘But wetter. Where’s Rosie?’

‘Somewhere upstairs with your father. I think they were going to play Snap.’ Then his voice dropped a little in pitch. ‘Ah – Wendy?’

Surprised, I looked away from my reflection in the mirror. I was wondering if my nose was unusually red. Was it becoming what my mother would have called a ‘toper’s nose’? I thought David was looking accusingly at me.

‘I had a letter this morning,’ he said. ‘From Henry.’

I stared at him. I felt sick. What he’d said was as unexpected as a punch in the stomach. But David and Henry were friends, in the inexplicable way that men are friends. Which meant that it didn’t necessarily matter that they hadn’t seen each other for years, they rarely wrote to each other, and they had completely different outlooks on life. I wondered if they’d been plotting about me.

‘He asked if you were here,’ David went on.

I said nothing.

‘I’ll have to write back and say you are. Naturally.’

‘All right.’

‘He wants to see you. He says –’

‘I don’t want to see him,’ I said loudly. ‘Just tell him that. Now I’m going to get changed. I’m soaking wet.’

I ran upstairs, past the sound of giggling coming from Rosie’s room and up the next flight of stairs to my own bedroom. When I got there I blew my nose and looked away from my reflection in the mirror on the dressing table. What I needed, I decided, was a very early nightcap.

Two days later, on Monday, I came across a copy of an Edwardian children’s book in the library. It was by G. A. Henty and was called
His Country’s Flag.
Though the spine had faded the colours of the picture on the jacket were still as vivid as the day it was new. The picture showed a young English boy in a red coat. He was harvesting a crop of frightened-looking Zulus with a sabre. I opened the book and there was that familiar handwriting on the flyleaf.

For Simon Martlesham on his thirteenth birthday with good wishes from F. Youlgreave. July 17th, 1904.