The Office of the Dead. Andrew Taylor
down to the car, Janet went through the drawers of the desk. When I came back there was a pile of papers on top and she was looking at a photograph, tilting it this way and that in front of the window.
‘Look.’
I took it from her. The photograph was of her when she was not much older than Rosie, a little snapshot taken on the beach. She was in a bathing costume, hugging her knees and staring up at the camera. I handed it back to her.
‘It was before the war. Somewhere like Bexhill or Hastings. We used to go down to Sussex to stay with my grandparents. I thought it was heaven. Daddy taught me to swim one summer, and he used to read me to sleep.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘There was a collection of fairy stories by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book. I’d forgotten all about it.’
She foraged for her handkerchief in her handbag and blew her nose.
‘Why did it have to happen to him?’ she said angrily, as though it were my fault. ‘Why couldn’t he just have grown old normally, or even died? This is nothing. It’s neither one thing nor the other.’
I said nothing because there was nothing to say.
Janet left a note for the landlady. I took her out to lunch and afterwards we walked in the pale sunshine through St John’s College and on to the Backs. It wasn’t much of an attempt at consolation but it was the only one I could think of.
Now the decision had been made, David felt there was no point in delay. Over the next few weeks we sold or gave away or threw away two-thirds of the contents of the flat.
Mr Gotobed, the assistant verger, helped David bring the rest of Mr Treevor’s belongings back to the Dark Hostelry. Puffing and grunting, the two men carried some of the furniture – the desk, the chair, the glass-fronted bookcase – up to Mr Treevor’s bedroom to make it seem homely. Janet arranged photographs on the desk, herself and her mother, both in newly cleaned silver frames. She brought her father’s pipe rack and tobacco jar, not that he smoked any more, and put them where they used to stand on his desk.
I’m not sure this was a good idea. One morning, shortly after we’d finished the move, Mr Treevor emerged from the bathroom as I was coming down the stairs from my room. He laid his hand on my arm and looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers.
‘There’s funny things happening in this house,’ he confided. ‘They’ve got the builders in. They’ve been changing my room. It must be at night because I’ve never actually seen them at work. I’ve seen one of them in the hall, though. Furitve-looking chap.’ He padded across the landing towards his room. At the door he glanced back at me.
‘Better keep your eyes skinned, Rosie,’ he hissed. ‘Or there’s no knowing what they’ll get up to. Can’t be too careful. Especially with a pretty girl like you.’
Rosie?
I have to admit the Cathedral came in handy when it was raining. You could walk almost the length of the High Street under cover. Or you could cut across from the north transept to the south door and avoid going right the way round the Cathedral outside. And sometimes if the choir was practising or the organ was playing I’d sit down for a while and listen.
That’s where Peter Hudson found me.
It was raining heavily that morning, silver sheets of icy water sweeping across the Fens from the east. I had been to the Labour Exchange in Market Street. The woman I talked to disapproved of me. Was it my-lipstick? The tightness of my skirt? The fact I’d forgotten to bring my gloves? I suspect she labelled me as louche, dangerously sophisticated and a potential husband-snatcher. Which tells you as much about the competition as it does about me.
At present the Labour Exchange had only two jobs for which I was suitably qualified. They needed someone behind the confectionery counter in Woolworth’s. Or, if I preferred, I could earn rather more if I worked shifts at the canning factory on the outskirts of town. Neither of them had anything to be said for them except money, and there wasn’t much of that on offer either.
I was beginning to think I’d have to go back to London. I didn’t want to do that, partly because I thought Janet needed me but more because I knew I needed her. It wasn’t just the breaking up with Henry. It was as if every mistake I had ever made in my life had come back to haunt me. It was rather like when you leave a hotel and they present you with a bill that’s three times larger than you thought it was going to be.
I entered the Close by the Boneyard Gate from the High Street and ducked into the north door of the Cathedral to get out of the rain. Actually, it wouldn’t have taken me much longer to stay in the open and reach the Dark Hostelry. But Janet was there and I wanted a moment or two by myself to catch my breath and decide what I was going to say to her.
Walking into the Cathedral was like walking into an aquarium, as if you were moving from one medium to another. Here the air was still, cool and grey. Gotobed, the assistant verger, gave me a quick, shy smile and scurried into the vestry. The building smelled faintly of smoke, a combination of incense and the fumes from the stoves that fired the central heating. I remember these stoves far better than anything else in the Cathedral. They were dotted about the aisles like cast-iron birdcages. The stoves were circular, domed, about the height of a man but much wider. Perched on top of each one was a cast-iron crown which would have fitted a very small child.
The choir was rehearsing behind the screen dividing the space beneath the Octagon from the east end. I couldn’t see them but the sound of their voices welled into the crossing and poured into transepts and nave. Gotobed came out of the vestry, but this time he didn’t look at me because he was on duty, carrying his silver-tipped wand of office and conducting Mr Forbury in a procession of one back to the Deanery.
I sat down on a chair, wiped the rain from my face and tried to think. Instead I listened to the sound of the voices spiralling up into the Octagon below the spire. The nearest I came to thinking was when I found myself wondering what Henry was doing at this moment, and where, and with whom. He must have found another woman by now, someone else willing to make a fool of herself because he flattered and amused her.
Then I noticed Canon Hudson coming out of the vestry. To my annoyance he came over towards me. That was one of the problems of Rosington. I had been used to the anonymity of cities.
‘Hello, Mrs Appleyard. Enjoying the singing?’
‘I don’t know what it is but it’s very restful.’
‘We’re rather proud of our music here. If you’re here over Easter, you should –’
‘I don’t think I will be,’ I said roughly, the decision suddenly made.
‘You’re leaving us?’
‘I need to find a job. There’s nothing down here. Or rather, nothing that appeals.’
He sat down beside me and folded his hands on his lap. ‘And what exactly are you looking for, Mrs Appleyard?’
‘I don’t really know. But my husband’s left me so I’m going to have to make my own living now.’ I wished I could take the words back. My private life was none of his business. Janet had told other people that my husband was ‘away’. I glanced at my watch and pantomimed surprise. ‘Oh! Is that the time?’
‘Difficult for you,’ he said, ignoring my attempt to wind up the conversation. ‘Am I right in thinking you’d prefer to stay in Rosington for the time being?’
‘Well, it’s a possibility.’
‘You say you have no qualifications.’
‘Apart from School Certificate.’
‘And have you ever worked?’
‘Only in my father’s shop for a few years before I married. He was a jeweller.’
‘What did that entail?’