The Office of the Dead. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ refer fewer and fewer queries to Canon Hudson.

      At first he came in once a day to see how I was getting on. Then it became once every two or three days or even longer. There was pleasure in that too.

      ‘You’ve got a naturally orderly mind, Wendy,’ he told me one day towards the end of April. ‘That’s a rarity.’

      Henry would have laughed at the thought of me in a Cathedral Library. But the job was a lifeline at a time when I could easily have drowned. I thought it came to me because of the kindness of Canon Hudson, and because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Years later I found out there was a little more to it.

      It was in the early 1970s. I met June Hudson at a wedding. I said how much the job in the Cathedral Library had helped me, despite everything, and how grateful I was to her husband for offering it to me.

      ‘It’s Peter who was grateful to you, my dear. At one point he thought he’d have to catalogue all those wretched books himself. Anyway, if anyone deserves thanking it ought to be Janet Byfield.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘It was her idea. She had a word with me and asked if I would suggest you to Peter. She said she hadn’t mentioned it to you in case it didn’t come off. But I assumed she’d have said something afterwards.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘She never did.’

      That increased my debt to Janet. I wish I knew how you pay your debts to the dead.

       15

      Then there was the business about the bishop’s invitation. It was delivered by hand through the letter-flap from the High Street while Janet and I were having tea in the kitchen. She ripped open the envelope, which had the arms of the see on the back, read the note from Mrs Bish and pushed it across the table to me. She had asked the Byfields to dinner.

      ‘That means he’s asked us,’ Janet explained. ‘David will be pleased.’

      ‘What’s he like?’

      ‘He was the Suffragan Bishop of Knightsbridge before he came here.’ Janet blushed as she usually did when she was going to say something unkind. ‘And some people say he was better at the Knightsbridge part than the bishop part.’

      ‘You mean he’s a snob?’

      On that occasion she wouldn’t say more. But after meeting the bishop once or twice I knew exactly what she meant. Like so many people in those days, he secretly felt that the Church should be a profession confined to gentlemen. His chaplain was a young man named Gervase Haselbury-Finch, who looked like Rupert Brooke and had a titled father, qualifications which as far as the bishop was concerned made up for his lack of organizational abilities. I don’t mean to imply there was anything improper about the bishop’s behaviour, not in the sense that makes tabloid headlines. He was married and had three grown-up children.

      ‘The bishop likes to have little chats with David,’ Janet went on. ‘He says things like, “I’m expecting great things of you, my boy.” He’s very much in favour of keeping the Theo. Coll. going and he thinks that David would make a marvellous principal. So that’s something in our favour. A very big something.’

      ‘Is that how they choose someone?’ I said. ‘Because the bish likes their face?’

      ‘Well, there’s more to it than that. Obviously. But it helps.’

      ‘It’s not exactly fair.’

      She made a sour face. ‘The Church isn’t. Not always.’

      ‘It’s like something out of the Middle Ages.’

      ‘That’s exactly what it is. You can’t expect it to behave like a democracy.’

      Later that evening we discussed the invitation over supper. David already knew about it because he had met the bishop at evensong. The only other people invited were the Master of Jerusalem and his wife. It turned out that the bishop had been at Jerusalem College too.

      ‘I haven’t anything to wear,’ Janet said.

      ‘Of course you have.’ David smiled at her. ‘Wear what you wore for the Hudsons. You’ll look lovely.’

      ‘I always wear that.’

      ‘They’ll notice your face not your dress.’

      ‘Your mother had a very pretty dress at our engagement party,’ Mr Treevor put in. ‘I wonder if she’s still got it. Why don’t you ask her? Are there any more baked beans?’

      Afterwards David took his coffee to the study and Mr Treevor went upstairs. Janet shook a small avalanche of powdered Dreft into the sink and turned on the tap so hard that water sprayed over the front of her pinafore and on to the tiled floor.

      ‘What’s up?’ I said.

      ‘It’ll be ghastly. They’ll make me feel like a poor little church mouse. I can never think of anything to say to the bishop. He pretends I must be frightfully intellectual because he’s read some of Mummy’s translations. So he tries to have conversations about the theme of redemption in Dostoevsky’s novels and the irrationality of existentialism. It’s dreadful. Meanwhile the women look at my shoes and wonder why they clash with my handbag.’

      ‘Don’t go,’ I said.

      ‘I’ve got to. David will be so upset if I don’t. The bishop wants me to come, you see, and the bishop’s word is law. And what about you?’

      ‘Don’t worry about me. I’d much rather stay at home.’

      I hadn’t been included in the invitation – I’m not sure the bish knew of my existence, not then. This suited me very well. Someone had to keep an eye on Rosie and Mr Treevor. Anyway, in my bedroom I had the bottle of gin and the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover. What more could a girl want?

      ‘I suppose I could wear my blue dress. But there’s that stain on the shoulder.’

      ‘You can borrow my shawl if you like.’

      In the end, though, Janet didn’t go after all. On the day of the dinner party she developed a migraine. She had had them occasionally since we were children, usually when under strain. When I came back for lunch and found her flat out on the sofa, I made her go to bed and arranged to collect Rosie from school. David came in later, with just time to bathe and change before going out again. I told him what had happened, and said there was no chance that Janet would be well enough to go out to dinner.

      ‘I’ll go up and see her,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she’s feeling better.’

      ‘She’s not. And if you try and persuade her she is feeling better, it’ll only make her feel worse.’

      ‘That’s plain speaking.’

      I sensed the anger in him. I even took a step backwards and felt the edge of the hall table pushing into the back of my thigh. ‘That’s what we do up in Yorkshire, David. Honestly, I don’t mean to be rude, but I know СКАЧАТЬ