The Office of the Dead (5 page)

Even now, when I am as old as John Treevor, I dream about the day I came to Rosington. Not about what happened in the house. About talking to Rosie outside. The odd thing, the disturbing thing, is what Rosie says. Or doesn’t say.

When I see her in the dream I know she’s going to tell her joke, that she’s called Nobody because nobody’s perfect. But the punchline is scrambled. That’s what makes me anxious – the fact I don’t know how the words will come out. Perfect but nobody. Nobody but perfect. A perfect nobody. Perfect no body. No perfect body. Maybe my sleeping mind worries about that because it’s less painful than worrying about what was going on in the house.

But the dream came much later. On my first night in Rosington I slept better than I had for years. I was in a room on the second floor away from the rest of the house. When I woke I knew it was late because of the light filtering through the crack in the curtains. The air in the bedroom was icy. I stayed in the warm nest of the bedclothes for at least twenty minutes more.

Eventually a bursting bladder drove me out of bed. The bathroom was warmer than my room because it had a hot-water tank in it. I took my clothes in there and got dressed. I went downstairs and found Janet’s father sitting in a Windsor chair at the kitchen table reading
The Times.

We eyed each other warily. He had not come downstairs again the previous evening; Janet had taken him some soup. He stood up and smiled uncertainly.

‘Hello, Mr Treevor.’

He looked blank.

‘I’m Wendy Appleyard, remember – Janet’s friend from school.’

‘Yes, yes. There’s some tea in the pot, I believe. Shall I –?’ He made a half-hearted attempt to investigate the teapot on my behalf.

‘I think I might make some fresh.’

‘My wife always says that coffee never tastes the same if you let it stand.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Good idea. Yes, yes.’

I was aware of him watching me as I filled the kettle, put it on the stove and lit the gas. He had put on weight since I had seen him last, a great belt of fat. The rest of him still looked relatively slim, including the face with its nose like a beak and the bulging forehead, now even more prominent because the hairline had receded further. His hair was longer than it used to be and unbrushed. He wore a heavy jersey that was too large for his shoulders and too small for his stomach. I wondered if it belonged to David. He did not refer to the incident yesterday and nor did I.

‘I hope you slept well?’ he said at last.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘The noises didn’t keep you awake?’

‘The noises?’

‘Yes, yes. You tend to get them in these old houses.’

‘I didn’t hear any. I slept very well.’

He gathered up his newspaper. ‘I must be going. It’s getting quite late.’

‘Where’s Janet?’

‘Taking Rosie to school. Will you be all right? Can you fend for yourself?’

Once he’d established my ability to do this, at least to his own satisfaction, he pottered out of the kitchen. I heard him in the hall. A door opened, then closed and a bolt smacked home. He had taken refuge in the downstairs lavatory.

He was still in there after I’d drunk two cups of tea, eaten a slice of toast and started the washing-up. A bell jangled – one of a row of bells above the kitchen door. I guessed it must be the garden door, so I dried my hands and went to answer it. There was a small, sturdy clergyman on the doorstep. He touched his hat.

‘Good morning. Is David in?’

‘I’m afraid he’s up in town at a conference. Janet’s out but she should be back soon. May I take a message?’

‘Do you happen to know when he’s coming back?’

‘This evening, I think.’

‘I’ll ring him tomorrow or perhaps drop in. Would you tell him Peter Hudson called? Thank you so much. Goodbye.’

He touched his hat again and walked briskly down the path where Rosie had played hopscotch to the gate in the wall. The lawn on either side of the path was still white with frost. At the gate, he turned, glanced back and waved.

That was my first meeting with Canon Hudson. A meek and mild little man, I thought at the time, with one of those forgettable faces and a classless voice that could have come from anywhere. If I had to have dealings with a clergyman, I thought, I’d much prefer he looked and sounded like Laurence Olivier.

In the evening David came home from London. The mood of the house changed. He arrived in the lull between Rosie being put to bed and supper. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing him. Janet and I were in the kitchen, Mr Treevor was dozing in the sitting room.

David kissed Janet and shook hands with me.

‘Did you have a good time?’ Janet asked him.

‘Most of it was hot air but some useful people were there. Any messages?’

‘On the desk in the study. Rosie might still be awake if you want to say good night to her.’

‘Just a few phone calls I should make first.’

‘Oh, and Peter Hudson called.’

Already at the kitchen door, David turned. His face was sharper than it had been. ‘And?’

‘It was this morning – Wendy saw him. He said he’d phone or drop in tomorrow.’

‘He’ll want to talk about the library. I’ll see if I can get hold of him now.’

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.

Rosington wasn’t like Bradford or Hillgard House or Durban or any of the other places I’d lived in. The past was more obvious here. If you glanced up at the ceiling while you were sitting in Janet’s kitchen you saw the clumsy barrel of a Norman vault. The Cathedral dock rang the hours and the quarters. The Close and its inhabitants were governed by the rhythm of the daily services, just as they had been for more than a thousand years. I had never lived among religious people before and this was unsettling too. It was as though I were the one person capable of seeing colours, as if everyone else lived in a monochrome world. Or possibly it was the other way round. Either way I was in a minority of one.

When we were at school Janet and I used to laugh at those who were religious. Now I knew she went to church regularly, though it was not something we had talked about in our letters.

On my first Sunday morning in Rosington I stayed at home. Janet and Rosie were going to matins at ten thirty. The pair of them looked so sweet dressed up for God in their Sunday finery.

‘If you don’t mind I won’t come to church,’ I said to David at breakfast. I’d already made this dear to Janet but I wanted to say it to him as well. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings.

He smiled. ‘It’s entirely up to you.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not particularly godly. I’d rather do the vegetables.’

‘That’s very kind of you. But are you sure it isn’t too much trouble?’

I don’t know how, but he made me feel like the prodigal daughter a long way from home.

‘I suppose you have to go to church,’ I said to Janet as we were washing up after lunch. ‘Part of your wifely duties.’

She nodded but added, ‘I like it too. No one makes any demands on you in church. You can just be quiet for once.’

I was stupid enough to ignore what she was really saying. ‘Yes, but do you believe in God?’

I didn’t want Janet to believe in God. It was as if by doing so she would believe a little less in me.

‘I don’t know.’ She bent over the sink and began to scour the roasting tin. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I believe, does it?’

During my first fortnight in Rosington the five of us settled into a routine. Given how different we were, you would have expected more friction than there was. But David was out most of the time – either at the Theological College or in the Cathedral. Rosie was at school during the week – she was in her second term at St Tumwulf’s Infant School on the edge of the town. Old Mr Treevor – I thought of him as old, though he was younger than I am now – spent much time in his bedroom, either huddled over a small electric fire or in bed As far as I could see his chief interests were food, the contents of
The Times
and the evacuation of his bowels.

The house itself made co-existence easier. The Dark Hostelry was not so much large as complicated. Most of the rooms were small and there were a great many of them. David said the building had been in continuous occupation for seven or eight hundred years. Each generation seemed to have added its own eccentricity. It was a place of many staircases, some of which led nowhere in particular, small, crooked rooms with sloping floors and thick walls. The kitchen was in a semi-basement, and as you washed up you could watch the legs of the passers-by in the High Street, which followed the northern boundary of the Cathedral Close.

Although the Dark Hostelry was good for keeping people apart, it was not an easy house to run. A charwoman came in three mornings a week to ‘do the rough’. Otherwise Janet had to do the work herself. And there was a lot of it – this was 1958, and the nearest thing Janet had to a labour-saving device was a twin-tub washing machine with a hand mangle attached. The last time the place had had a serious overhaul was at the turn of the century when the occupants could probably have afforded two or three servants.

In some ways I think Janet would have preferred to be a paid servant. She loathed the work but at least she would have been getting a wage for it. A simple commercial transaction has a beginning and end. It implies that both parties to it have freedom of choice.

Janet had the worst of both worlds. There was a dark irony in the fact that as well as running that ridiculous old house she also had to pretend to be its mistress, not its slave. Janet was expected to be a lady. When the Byfields came to Rosington she had visiting cards engraved. I’ve still got one of them – yellowing pasteboard, dog-eared at the corners, the typeface small and discreet.

Mrs David Byfield
The Dark Hostelry
The Close
Rosington

Telephone: Rosington 2114