The Office of the Dead (18 page)

‘Hello, Rosie, I’ve –’ I broke off.

The room was full of soft, grey light. It was perfectly obvious that there were two heads on the pillow.

‘Mr Treevor,’ I said.

He sat up in the bed. Rosie was still laughing, snuffling with excitement. Mr Treevor wore his maroon striped pyjamas. His hair looked like a wire brush and he was not wearing his teeth. His eyes were huge in his shrunken face.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was cold,’ he said, pushing out his lower lip. ‘Rosie’s keeping me warm.’

‘I’m tickling Grandpa,’ Rosie announced, ‘and Grandpa’s tickling me.’

‘Nice and warm now,’ Mr Treevor said.

‘Then perhaps you’d better go to bed,’ I suggested. ‘I think it’s time for Rosie to go to sleep.’

He extricated himself with some difficulty from the bedclothes. In the end I had to help him. He tottered out of the room and across the landing. He and Rosie did not say good night to one another. His door closed with a gentle click. I decided the postcards could wait until the morning.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked Rosie as I tucked her in again.

She nodded, settling her head into the pillow. Her face rolled towards me. The excitement had faded away.

‘Where’s Mummy?’

‘Downstairs. She’ll be up to see you soon.’

‘But why isn’t she here
now
?’

‘She will be. She –’

‘But I want her.’

‘Why? For a particular reason?’

‘She always came to see me before.’

‘Before what, dear?’

‘Before you came.’

‘And she does now. But I happened to be passing, and I heard you and Grandpa, and –’

‘You take Mummy away from me,’ she interrupted. ‘You stop her seeing me. You
make
her stay downstairs.’

‘Don’t be silly, Rosie. You know that’s not true.’

She put a thumb in her mouth as though corking it would stop further words falling out. In the fading light her face had become the colour of lard, like one of the marble monuments in the Cathedral and just as hard. I stroked her hair. She turned her head away, dislodging my hand.

‘Mummy,’ she muttered, so quietly I could pretend not to hear her. ‘I want Mummy.’

Didn’t Rosie understand I was trying to
help
Janet? Did she really believe I had taken her mother away from her? The trouble with children, I thought, is that they see things differently from grown-ups, and it’s so easy for them to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.

She muttered something else, in an even lower voice, and this time I really couldn’t hear what she said. Not for sure. But it might have been, ‘I hate you.’

‘Mummy will be up very soon. Don’t worry about anything, and sleep tight.’

I squeezed Rosie’s shoulder and left the room. Least said, soonest mended. I’d let Janet know that Rosie had wanted her, I thought, as I climbed the stairs up to the second floor and my own bedroom. But perhaps it would be better not to mention Mr Treevor and the tickling. Janet would worry that Rosie might have been scared. She would be concerned about her father, at this further sign that he was growing worse.

This was 1958. We were more innocent then. And adults can get hold of the wrong end of the stick, too.

In the morning I went back to work. My visit to London seemed to have given me extra energy. I catalogued more books than ever before. This was despite the fact that I had three visitors.

The first was Canon Hudson, who wanted me to check a draft of the pamphlet for the exhibition in case there were any errors.

My next visitor was Mr Gotobed who stood in the doorway fiddling with the badge of the Cathedral which he wore on a chain round his neck as part of his verger uniform.

‘I mentioned to Mother what you said, Mrs Appleyard.’ He gabbled the words out as though they were hot. ‘She says she’d be pleased to see you if you’d like to drop in for a cup of tea tomorrow afternoon. But she says she hopes you won’t mind her not being up and dressed. Of course, if you can’t spare the time –’

‘It’s very kind of her. Please tell her I’d love to come.’

Mr Gotobed coloured. ‘Mother’s a bit deaf, I’m afraid, so you may have to speak quite loudly.’

‘That’s all right. Tell her I’m looking forward to it.’

Finally, just as I was thinking of packing up at the end of the day, Canon Osbaston arrived. Under his arm was a large flat package wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Appleyard. I hope I haven’t interrupted your labours at a crucial point.’

‘Not at all.’ I watched him moving down the library, deliberate as a tank.

‘Mrs Elstree knew I would be passing nearby and she entrusted me with an errand.’

He ran out of breath and began to puff. I drew out a chair for him and he sat down heavily and laid his package on the table. It was a big chair but his body overflowed around it. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed the bald patch on his little head.

‘Dear me, Mrs Appleyard, it is still unseasonably hot.’

‘One of the advantages of working here is that the temperature never gets that far above freezing.’

He chortled like a schoolboy in a Billy Bunter story. ‘Very droll, Mrs Appleyard. And how are your researches into Canon Youlgreave progressing?’

‘Slowly,’ I said, playing safe.

He edged his chair a little closer to mine and leant towards me. ‘It’s really very odd, but someone else has been asking questions about him.’

‘Asking you?’

He shook his head. ‘Mrs Elstree. Apparently a man came up to her as she was leaving the Theological College one day. It was in the morning, she was going shopping. He said he was writing a book about him. According to Mrs Elstree, he looked quite respectable but he certainly wasn’t her idea of a writer.’

‘How strange. Did she say anything else about him?’

‘Not really. She sent him off with a flea in his ear.’ Canon Osbaston settled his glasses more firmly on his nose so he could see me better. ‘I wondered if he might be some sort of journalist. But why would a journalist be interested in Canon Youlgreave?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said with perfect truth.

‘Of course, in your case it’s very different. In a sense you’re treading in his footsteps. Which brings me to my reason for being here.’ He smiled, and if tortoises have teeth they must be just like Canon Osbaston’s. ‘Mrs Elstree was up in the attics the other day. There’s a possibility that we may convert some of them into study bedrooms. Be that as it may, she chanced upon something she thought might interest you. As she knew I was practically passing the library door, she asked me to deliver it.’

He moved the parcel a little closer to me. Clearly I was expected to examine it there and then. This took some time because Canon Osbaston felt that dealing with knots was a man’s responsibility. This meant he had to find his penknife, cut the string, close the knife, roll the string into an untidy ball and unwrap the brown paper, a process that is far less tedious to describe than it was to watch. The result of his labours was a framed photograph measuring perhaps fifteen inches by twelve. The frame was heavy and dark, its varnish dulled, and the photograph itself was spotted with damp. It showed about twenty people on the lawn in front of a building, which I recognized almost immediately as the Theological College. They were on the croquet lawn in front of the French windows of the Principal’s Lodging. On the far left of the photograph were branches from what must have been the beech tree under which Rosie had sat drawing a picture of an angel with a sword.

Several of the people in the photograph were wearing costumes of some sort. Of those who weren’t, three of the men were dressed as clergymen.

Canon Osbaston leant closer still. His breath was sour, smelling of ginger. He tapped a long knobbly forefinger against one of the clergymen.

‘According to Mrs Elstree, that’s Canon Youlgreave.’

So at last I saw Francis, though not as clearly as I would have liked. He was the smallest of the men and he stooped towards the camera as if he’d seen something rather interesting at the base of the tripod. He was wearing a hat, but what I could see of his hair was dark. His nose was long and his eyes were dark, blank hollows.

Canon Osbaston leant a little closer and peered at the photograph. As he did so he rested his right hand as if for support on my left knee.

‘Have you noticed the curious clothing, Mrs Appleyard? I wonder if they were engaged in a dramatic production of some sort.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘your hand.’

He glanced down at his hand and my knee as though seeing them for the first time. ‘Good heavens! I’m so sorry.’ He removed the hand, although without obvious haste, and gave me another of his tortoise smiles. ‘I think the clergyman in the centre must be Canon Murtagh-Smith, one of my predecessors.’

I stood up, moved round the corner of the table and stretched. ‘Pins and needles,’ I explained.

‘How tiresome. I believe regular exercise is the only answer. As for the third clergyman, both Mrs Elstree and I are baffled. In those days we had our own chaplain, so it may be him, or perhaps one of our lecturers.’ Seizing the back of his chair with one hand and resting the other on the table, he pushed himself to his feet. ‘But I mustn’t keep you any longer from your work, Mrs Appleyard.’

‘Do thank Mrs Elstree for me. And tell her I know Mrs Byfield will be interested to see the photograph as well.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Canon Osbaston, his eyes bright with understanding. He knew as well as I did that Mrs Elstree had produced the photograph for Janet, not for me. It was Janet who might be the wife of the next principal.

He shuffled down the library, gave me a wave and left. I turned back to the photograph. There were several children in it, including two little girls in white dresses. One of them was standing next to Francis, part of her shielded from the camera lens by his right arm. I stared at her, wishing there were more detail in the print. Then I remembered the magnifying glass in the tray where I kept my pens and pencils. I could see everyone a little more clearly under the glass. If only I could climb into the photograph, I thought, I would understand everything. As it was, all I really discovered was that the two little girls seemed to have white protuberances attached to their shoulders. A moment later, I realized what they were. Wings.

The little girls were dressed up as angels.

‘You’re a big girl,’ Mrs Gotobed observed. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Mother!’ Mr Gotobed set down the tea tray on a brass table between my chair and his. ‘She doesn’t always realize what she’s saying,’ he murmured to me.

‘Like me,’ Mrs Gotobed continued. ‘Wilfred’s father used to say I was built like a queen.’

‘How lovely.’ Nobody had ever told me I was built like a queen but I wished they had.

Mrs Gotobed nodded. She was sitting in a wing armchair with her feet up almost on top of the little coal fire that smouldered in the grate. Her legs were covered with a crocheted blanket. She was wearing what looked like a tweed coat. Her face was long and bony, with pale, dusty skin like tissue paper.

‘Milk, Mrs Appleyard? Sugar?’

Watched by Pursy, who was lying in a patch of sunlight on the window ledge, Mr Gotobed blundered around the over-furnished little room. He was wearing an apron over a dark suit made of stiff, shiny material that looked as if it would stand up by itself if its owner suddenly evaporated. The tea service was bone china speckled with little pink roses. We had lovingly laundered napkins, so old that their ironed creases were now permanent, apostle teaspoons, two sorts of sandwiches and two sorts of cake.

‘You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble,’ I said as I accepted a fishpaste sandwich.

‘It’s no trouble,’ Mrs Gotobed replied. ‘Wilfred enjoys it. I always say he’ll make someone a lovely wife.’

‘Mother!’

For the moment we devoted ourselves to eating and drinking. The Gotobeds’ house was next to the Porta. Through Pursy’s window I saw the Theological College across the green. Rain fell steadily from a sky the colour of the slates of the college’s roof. As I watched, two familiar figures emerged from the driveway, the one sheltering under an umbrella held over him by the other.

‘There’s the bishop,’ I said.

Mrs Gotobed looked up. ‘And Mr Haselbury-Finch. The dean and Canon Hudson went in a little earlier.’

‘Mother knows everything that’s going on,’ said Mr Gotobed proudly. ‘Inside or outside the Close.’

Directly opposite Pursy’s window was another which overlooked the chestnuts, the entrance to Canons’ Meadow and the road up to the cloisters and the south door.

‘So you live in the Dark Hostelry with Mr and Mrs Byfield?’

‘That’s right.’

‘They’re a handsome couple. And that little girl of theirs is a beauty. I saw you and her the other day talking to His Lordship and Canon Hudson.’

‘Mrs Appleyard is working in the Cathedral Library for Canon Hudson,’ Mr Gotobed said in a loud voice, speaking in the vocal equivalent of capital letters.

‘I know that, dear. I’m not stupid.’

‘No, Mother. Try a slice of this fruit cake, Mrs Appleyard. It was made by one of the Mothers’ Union ladies.’

‘Just a small slice,’ I said. ‘I mustn’t spoil my supper.’

Mr Gotobed cut three substantial slices and handed them round. Once again silence descended. It was clear that in this household eating and talking were not combined.

‘Not bad,’ Mrs Gotobed said, wiping her fingers on her napkin, ‘though not as good as the ones I used to make. They don’t put in enough fruit nowadays.’

‘Mrs Appleyard,’ announced Mr Gotobed, ‘is very interested in the
old
days.’

‘There’s no need to shout, Wilfred.’

‘Because of working in the library and helping with the exhibition. You remember the exhibition, Mother? The one the dean’s having in the Chapter House.’

She sniffed. ‘Next thing we know they’ll be selling cups of tea in the Lady Chapel. I don’t know what your father would have said.’

‘The dean and chapter have to make ends meet, same as everyone else.’

‘It’s not right,’ Mrs Gotobed said. ‘It’s the thin end of the wedge, you mark my words.’ She cast her eyes up to the ceiling as if searching for consolation there. ‘You’d think they’d remember Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of the Temple, being educated men and all.’

‘That’s not the same thing at all, Mother.’

‘Why not?’

I said, ‘You must have seen a lot of changes over the years, Mrs Gotobed.’

‘Changes?’ She snorted, then began to choke. But a second later I realized she wasn’t choking, she was laughing. After a moment, she brushed the tears from her eyes with a grubby forefinger. ‘This is the sort of place where everything changes and everything stays the same.’

‘Now, Mother, that doesn’t quite make sense. Do you mean –’

‘Mrs Appleyard knows what I mean.’

‘Were you thinking about the pigeon your son found?’ I asked.

‘Oh, that. I suppose so. That and other things.’

‘Mr Gotobed said you’d told him it’d happened before, about fifty years ago.’

‘Not pigeons, I think.’ She took a sip of tea and stared into the glowing coals of the fire. ‘I remember a cat. That had lost its head. They found it in the north porch. And there was a rat, too – they found that in Canons’ Meadow. And I think there was a magpie that had lost its feet. No pigeons, though.’

‘And they found who was responsible?’ I prompted. ‘One of the canons who wasn’t quite right in the head?’

‘Oh, no.’ Mrs Gotobed held out her cup to her son. ‘More.’

He took the cup. ‘But, Mother, I’m sure you said –’

‘You’re getting muddled again, Wilfred.’

She turned to me. ‘He sometimes says it’s me that’s muddled, Mrs Appleyard, but half the time it’s him.’

‘I’m sure you said it was one of the canons.’

‘I said they
thought
it might be one of the canons, Wilfred. That’s a very different thing. There was a lot of gossip, I remember, a lot of wagging of nasty tongues.’

‘Was the canon Mr Youlgreave?’

‘Yes, that’s the name. How do you know?’

‘Just a guess. He used to be the Cathedral librarian so I’ve come across a few references to him.’

‘They didn’t like him, that was the long and the short of it. He tried to rock the boat, Mrs Appleyard, and nobody likes people like that.’

‘How did he rock the boat?’

‘There used to be some dreadful places in Rosington then. Down by the river. He made a fuss about them, tried to get something done.’

‘Like Swan Alley.’

‘How do you know about Swan Alley?’ she snapped.

‘Someone mentioned there was slum housing down there.’

‘All the land down there was owned by the dean and chapter. They’d let it out, of course, but it was still their land. So they didn’t like him pointing the finger. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? It’s human nature, isn’t it? Mind you, Canon Youlgreave did have some funny ideas. They got rid of him in the end. Ganged up on him, I shouldn’t wonder. He wasn’t a well man.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But such a lovely gentleman.’

Mr Gotobed was looking bewildered. ‘So it wasn’t him after all.’

‘What?’

‘Cutting up birds and things.’

‘How can it be? He’s been dead for fifty years.’

‘Not now, Mother. Then.’

‘There’s a copycat about if you ask me.’ She stared dreamily into her teacup and then looked at me. ‘Like I said, Mrs Appleyard, things don’t change, not around here. I said as much to Dr Flaxman only the other day.’

‘But who would want to copy something like this?’ I asked. ‘And who would know about it in the first place?’

‘Plenty of people,’ she shot back. ‘You’d be surprised. Fifty years isn’t really a long time.’

‘Not when you’re your age, Mother,’ said Mr Gotobed, beaming nervously and brushing the crumbs from his apron. ‘Next thing we know we’ll be seeing your telegram from the Queen and your photo in the
Observer.
That
will
be a treat.’

She shook off his interruption like a fly. ‘Fifty years isn’t long in Rosington.’ She waved a hand at the window overlooking the Close. ‘Especially out
there.’

‘Just some lad, I expect,’ Mr Gotobed said. ‘Fiddling around with his penknife. I dare say he didn’t mean any harm.’

Mrs Gotobed wrinkled her nose, sipped her tea and wrinkled her nose again. ‘This is stewed, Wilfred. That’s not very nice for our visitor, is it? Couldn’t you make some fresh?’

In an instant Mr Gotobed was on his feet, apologizing, gathering teacups, dropping teaspoons on the carpet, and denying that making a fresh pot would be in the slightest bit troublesome. He picked up the tray and then realized he would have difficulty opening the door. I stood up to do it for him. He edged out of the room, keeping as far away from me as possible.

‘Close the door,’ Mrs Gotobed told me. ‘There’s a draught.’

On my way back to the chair, I paused by the mantelpiece. There was a photograph of a boy in a chorister’s cassock and ruff.

‘Is this Wilfred, Mrs Gotobed?’

She nodded. ‘He cried when his voice broke. Always was a silly boy. But kind-hearted, I’ll say that.’

I sat down. Now we were alone, she looked younger, as if age was part of a disguise she wore when her son was in the room.

‘Have you lived in this house a long time?’ I asked.

‘That’s one good thing about a place like this, about it not changing. They’d had a Gotobed in the Close for the past hundred years, so they didn’t want a change when his dad died. Just as well. I don’t know what he’d have done otherwise. I don’t know where we’d have lived.’

A short, uncomfortable silence followed. Pursy woke and looked first at Mrs Gotobed and then at me. Coals settled in the grate, and the window looking out on the Close rattled in its frame as a squall of rain spattered against the glass.

‘If it wasn’t Canon Youlgreave cutting up animals,’ I said, ‘then who was it? Did you ever find out?’

She glanced at me, her face at once sly and unsurprised. ‘Not for certain.’

‘But you had an idea?’

‘There was a boy.’

‘Can you remember his name?’

‘Simon. Was it Simon?’ Her head nodded on to her chest and her eyelids closed. ‘Don’t mind me if I nod off,’ she mumbled. ‘And don’t go. Wilfred will bring the tea, that will wake me up.’

‘Simon who?’

‘Simon,’ she repeated. ‘Good-looking boy. He went away.’

Then the door opened and Mr Gotobed walked backwards into the room carrying the tray. For the rest of my visit the three of us took part in short, intense bursts of conversation, punctuated with pauses when Mrs Gotobed nodded off for a moment.

She was curious about Mr Treevor. She had heard that he was living in the Dark Hostelry.

‘I thought I saw someone who might be him the other day,’ she said. ‘Old gentleman, with a big head, not too steady on his pins. Went into Canons’ Meadow. He was by himself.’

‘Mr Treevor doesn’t go out much,’ I said. ‘Not by himself.’

But he had gone out on his own on Rosie’s birthday. He said he’d gone to feed some ducks.

‘That’s Mother all over,’ Mr Gotobed whispered as he showed me out of the house. ‘Likes to know everything about everyone.’

It was only as I was walking back through the Close that I realized Mrs Gotobed had asked me very few questions about myself, and none about how I came to be living in the Dark Hostelry, or the whereabouts of my husband. She must have known that Henry had been sacked from the Choir School. She must have noted my surname. If she asked no questions, then presumably she knew the answers already.

At the Dark Hostelry I found Janet, Rosie and Mr Treevor in the kitchen. Rosie and Mr Treevor were eating cheese on toast. Rosie’s doll was on the chair beside her.

‘How did it go?’ Janet asked.

Rosie pressed the doll’s chest. ‘Mama!’ it said.

‘Angel wants more,’ Rosie interpreted.

‘Coming, darling,’ Janet said mechanically.

‘It was interesting.’ I sat down at the table. ‘And she was very protective of Wilfred.’

‘Wilfred?’

‘Mr Gotobed to you. Mrs G. was a hen with one chick. I think I was being sized up.’

Janet giggled. ‘As a future Mrs Gotobed?’

It was the first time I had heard her laugh for days. ‘I don’t think the current Mrs Gotobed would approve of a woman in my situation.’

I tried to speak lightly but Janet wasn’t fooled. All the laughter drained from her face.

‘Did you learn anything about Francis Youlgreave?’ she asked.

‘Not really. Except Mrs Gotobed’s a supporter. A real gentleman, she said. She thinks he wasn’t liked in the Close because he ruffled too many feathers about the slums by the river. Apparently the dean and chapter owned the freehold.’

I didn’t mention Simon. David had told Janet about the pigeon Mr Gotobed had found, but I hadn’t yet passed on Mr Gotobed’s information that someone else, fifty years earlier, had a penchant for cutting up small animals in the Close. The Byfields had other things on their minds at present, and also I didn’t think Janet would thank me, or that David would approve. When I was in Rosington that year, I often had the feeling he was looking for reasons to disapprove of me.