Facing the Tank (9 page)

‘Very
à propos
,’ Petra Dixon commented as she left her desk to find
Barrow 341
, a twelfth-century compilation of miracles, fables and saintly legends.

‘How so?’ asked Evan. ‘May I sit here?

‘Yes do. It seems you’d be interested in this morning’s little phenomenon.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘Well, because we need to carry out drastic building works in the east end, the patron saint is having to be moved.’ She pulled over a set of rolling steps, flipped down the brake shoe with her foot and began to climb them.

‘Saint Boniface of Barrow?’

‘Yes. You’ve done your homework, only it’s pronounced ‘Brew’.

‘Sorry. He’s the tall one with the sparkler, yes?’

‘That’s right. Anyway there was a service this morning for the opening of his tomb and a flock of doves shot from inside.’

‘My word.’

‘At least, I say doves but I wasn’t there and my informant owned to having been between long-range and reading specs at the time. But they were certainly white.’ Miss Dixon grunted slightly as she tugged a large, vellum-bound volume from the shelf.

‘Here. Let me,’ said Evan, bounding forward, and he took it from her so that she had both hands free to climb with. ‘Fascinating,’ he went on. ‘You don’t think it was a put-up job?’

‘We’re not in Ireland, Professor.’

‘No. Of course not. But I was thinking of Augustan Rome and those funerals they still have in Japan sometimes, where they let out a flight of birds to represent the departed soul.’

‘Possibly. It’s not very us but then the Bishop is still very new here. I was thinking more of Claudia of Knightcote.’ She wheeled the steps back to their place and returned to her desk.

‘You’ve got me there.’

‘Marvellous story. Hang on.’ She twisted to a small shelf beside her. ‘
Keller and Baynton
vol. three,’ she said, thawing as she pulled out the book. ‘My favourite.’ And she read him the story of how Claudia of Knightcote’s corpse was replaced in the turning of a handmaid’s back, into a bedful of fluttering doves. She then shamed his ignorance further, but with charm, by pointing out a reference in his own early work,
The Visionary Tradition
, St Marty of Rabastens who drove pillaging soldiers off his tomb in the guise of three enraged cob swans. Evan didn’t remember that bit and thought he must have plagiarized it.

Miss Dixon proved herself the soul of discreet helpfuless and her library was indeed breathtaking. Evan was already familiar with its contents, having pored over the catalogue often enough in the British Library and back in Harvard, but there was nothing to compare with the happy sensation of feeling the precious manuscripts on a desk before him. He frittered away much of the morning devouring
Barrow 341
for no better reason than the perfection of its illumination. When the huge bells in the spires behind her sounded the lunch hour, Miss Dixon apologized that she had to turn him out for forty minutes while she went home to walk her terrier. Out in the Close again, she directed him to the Tracer’s Arms in Tower Place. He enjoyed an excellent lunch of the local herb-flecked sausages and an incautious pint of Old Stoat, the local bitter, before he was led further astray by the siren lure of the Cathedral where he wandered happily for half an hour or more. It had one of those cunning rooves which seem so much higher on the inside than they appear to be from without, but for him the chief attraction was the scattering of fine memorials, whose epitaphs it had long been his bad habit to study. Already there were hordes of tourists searching for small white birds and bothering the Scottish Masons for photographs. The west end tympanum bore a crude representation of the Last Judgement watched over by various saints including a towering Saint Boniface of Barrow, carrying a lantern whose spiky beams represented the ball of fire that had converted him. Tourists were lining up to take photographs of each other in front of him. The rising souls of the blessed on whom he cast his approving, if sightless, gaze seemed to be paddling through water. Ambrosia perhaps, or badly carved clouds.

Evan’s afternoon was spent in genuine work, translating the relevant chunks of Memling’s
Gravitas
and taking notes for the photograph collectors. As she shut the doors again at five o’clock, Miss Dixon warned him that Tuesdays always saw the place overrun with school parties and a lecture on bookbinding. On her advice, he telephoned Dr Cresswell – the
Lord
of Tatham’s – and arranged to spend Tuesday there instead.

‘No. Don’t jump on there.
No!
You’ll leave pawprints. Beast! Go on. Pssh. Get
down!
’ Emma shouted.

The cat, an immensely fat ginger tom, regarded her with his habitual expression which could convey either hauteur or cretinism, depending on Emma’s mood. A damp cloth in hand, to wipe away the pawprints he had indeed left on the kitchen table, she scooped him gently up and carried him out to the stairs. He sat where she left him, sending a gooseberry glare through the banisters as she returned to tidying the kitchen. As well as the house, she had inherited its two cats, Rousillou (said to be Occitan for ‘small red thing’) and his mother, Blanquette. Blanquette was a smoke-tinted Abyssinian of whom so few traces were imprinted on her son that she was assumed to have married down. Both cats were extremely loquacious, mewing as often from a wish to be sociable as from hunger or irritation. Emma tried not to talk to them too much. It was an easy habit into which to slip, however, so her self-discipline in this quarter tended to stretch only as far as not talking to her cats in front of other people.

Since her telephone conversation with Fergus Gibson yesterday, her house had received a major spring cleaning. Emma’s original intention had been merely to run around with a Hoover, to do a little dusting and conceivably, to clean the wash basins. In the event, she had started to enjoy herself so much that she had been quite carried away and had hauled rugs out to the washing line for beating, had turned mattresses, washed windows and even lifted pot plants off the window sills so as to wipe away the brown rings left underneath. She had retrieved stale copies of Sunday papers (she saved money on weekdays by reading papers in the staff common room),
The Times Literary Supplement, History Today
, and
The Church Times
from points of accumulation around the house and had tied them up in neat bundles in the woodshed. Her father had taken out a life subscription to
The Church Times
and the paper continued to arrive regardless of his decease. Emma had intended to write them a cancellation letter long ago, but had become a quiet fan of the quirky journal and continued to read it, cherishing the hope that the subscription department would now never notice their oversight.

She had taken everything out of the larder, washed the shelves and even wiped the dust off storage jars and the stickiness off jam pots before she set them neatly back. She had sorted through the bathroom cupboard and thrown out old pills and several tubes of her late father’s pile ointment which she had been keeping on the rather depressing offchance that they might come in useful some day. In a final blast of enthusiasm last night, she had taken all her late father’s suits, shirts, shoes and ties and piled them into bin liners, along with some clothes she had not donned since the Indian cotton summer of 1977. She had telephoned the Spastics Shop before setting out for this morning’s school, and a whinnying sort of woman had just come round to take it all away in her Morris Oxford. The house now had a clean, expectant feel to it.

Emma sat with her post-lunch coffee in the sitting room and waited. Blanquette emerged from under the sofa, jumped with a mew to her lap, sniffed the coffee and, rejecting it, lay down. Mr Gibson had said ‘after lunch’ but that could be now, which was 1.30, or in two hours’ time. She hoped he would not expect her to harbour any strong tastes of her own. She judged houses on the air they conveyed and was not wont to think in terms of wallpaper or painting effects. On her way home to her rendezvous with the whinnying Spastics envoy, she had bought a copy of
House and Garden
and found it deeply disturbing. Certainly she possessed the initiative to march into town, pore over colour cards and do the place up herself over a score of weekends and long afternoons, but the transformation – exorcism almost – which she had in mind was so momentous that she had a horror of making a mistake. Renovating a late father’s house was not so different from building a chapel in which to house his corpse; a task best left to other, impersonal hands.

The garden gate clanged. Emma jumped up and stood peering from the gloom at the back of the room. She barely glimpsed six feet worth of brown tweed striding past the window towards the porch. The knocker was struck. Her coffee was too hot to drink. She hurried into the downstairs lavatory to tip it into the sink, checked her face in the newly polished hall mirror and let him in.

‘Miss Dyce-Hamilton?’

‘Hello. You must be Mr Gibson. Come in.’

‘Thanks. What a garden you have there. I’ve often admired it on my way past in the car.’

‘Isn’t it. All my father’s work. All I have to do is prune and weed.’

‘I’m sure it takes a lot more work than that,’ he started, but she was already walking into the sitting room.

He had cast her into confusion. He was not exactly handsome; not her idea of handsome. He had greying sandy hair (which she had never much liked) that appeared to be thinning, and his nose looked as if it had once been broken. He smelled of peppermints and she liked her men to smell of leather and pipe smoke. His eyes were brown and liquid, however, like a spaniel’s and one of their brows had a quizzical tuft in it. She was confused. She had no idea how interior designers should look, but she had not been expecting him to look like this and she was confused.

‘No!’ he shouted involuntarily on seeing the disagreement between curtains and chair covers.

‘What is it?’ she asked in alarm, visualizing a brutalized mouse or worse underfoot.

‘Oh, sorry. It’s probably all your mother’s …’

‘No. I quite agree,’ she piped up. ‘The whole place is quite revolting. Do sit. Please.’

He sat on the sofa opposite her chair. Blanquette, who usually fled from male strangers in a huff, wandered over to sniff his suit trousers then jumped on to his lap and settled immediately into her contented chicken posture.

‘Hello,’ he said softly.

As he stroked the cat, Emma saw the flash of a signet ring and a strong wrist. She had seen him before. He had once stood immediately in front of her in the queue for Eucharist and she remembered glancing at his hands as he raised them for a wafer.

‘Oh. I’m sorry. Do you hate cats?’ she asked. ‘Just push her off if you like.’

‘No. She’s lovely. What’s her name?’

‘Blanquette.’

‘As in
veau?
’

‘What?’

‘Veau.’

‘Er. Probably. I’ve seen you before, you know.’

‘Really? Well I only live a few streets away.’

‘No. It wasn’t in the street.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I was kneeling next to you for Communion. I shouldn’t have been looking, I suppose, but … sometimes it’s hard.’

‘Isn’t it.’

Should she ask after his mother? Lydia had said he had mother trouble. Perhaps that was too personal.

‘I should explain,’ she said. ‘I’m not certain that I want to stay here but if I decide I do, I shall want the place tidied up and if I decide to sell I think I’ll get a better price if I’ve done some titivating.’

‘I see. How much were you thinking of having done?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, anything structural, for instance? Do you want walls knocking down or windows moving?’

‘Goodness no – unless, of course, you think it vital. Just walls and carpets and’ – here she grimaced at the sofa – ‘I suppose these ghastly old chair covers. Well, I say just, but I expect that costs the earth.’

‘It wouldn’t be cheap, no, but as you so rightly say, it would help you get a better price. Can I look round?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ Emma would have preferred to sit here at a safe distance rather than walk side by side. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee first?’ she added. Once moving, one’s limbs were so much freer to move further. He emanated so; it was insidious, like a sexual equivalent of bad breath only far from repulsive.

‘Thank you, but no,’ he answered. ‘I had some just before I came out.’

So she apologized for the house being in such a terrible mess and they walked round it. He wrote things in a pocket book as they went.

‘What are you writing?’

‘Extremely rude things about the decor of your lovely house,’ he said with his soft Scots accent. She laughed then fell behind for a second to pick a piece of apple peel from between her teeth, cursing herself for not having grinned as well as pouted in the hall mirror before she let him in. It had occurred to her that he could have been taking notes for a burglar friend. It had also occurred to her, as their arms brushed yet again on the stairs, to lock him in the spare room and keep him all to herself.

‘I would feed you well,’ her mind’s voice wheedled, ‘and my requirements would be few. No visitors, of course, but I would let you have a sewing machine and a television.’

He seemed delighted. He admired the good state of preservation of the cornices and mouldings, was happy to see that none of the original sash windows had been touched and suggested that she apply for planning permission to replace the one bricked up during the imposition of Window Tax. He tugged, with her permission, at some skirting around the bath and was pleased to find that the bath had lion’s feet. As he admired she felt a glow of pride. She had always liked the house because her father had chosen it and she had lived there. Now, through Fergus Gibson’s spaniel eyes, she perceived its finer points.

As they returned, at the end of his tour, from a quick trip to the cellar, she snatched a white handkerchief that was riding up out of his pocket and stuffed it up the sleeve of her dress.

They re-entered the sitting room, where Rousillou, who was now sunning himself, took up an enviable position on Fergus Gibson’s knees.

‘There remains the sticky question of money. Obviously I can’t give you an estimate until we’ve chosen colours and materials but, roughly, what would your budget be?’

‘A few thousand,’ she suggested, wondering how far her nest egg would stretch. ‘How are you paid?’

‘Well I charge a set fee for my suggested scheme and then, if you decide to go ahead, I’ll provide the workforce and materials then charge you ten per cent on top of their cost.’

‘Lovely,’ she said, oblivious.

He raised that eyebrow again as he stood.

‘Right then, I’ll give you a ring when the plans are ready and once I’ve got the samples together. Probably in two or three days. Wednesday, I expect. Can I call you here during the day?’

‘I teach at the Choir School most mornings but, yes, afternoons are fine,’ she said. ‘Or evenings,’ she added.

‘You’re in the phone book, aren’t you?’

Had he already looked her up?

‘Yes,’ she said, walking him to the front door. He slid his hands into his pockets and paused, frowning. ‘Have you lost something?’ she asked.

‘Nothing really. I think I might have dropped a handkerchief somewhere, that’s all.’

‘I’ll keep a look-out for it.’

‘Thank you. Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye. And thank
you
.’

Rousillou followed him down the garden path to the gate then, belly swinging, bounded back asking for a hug. She shut the front door then pulled the stolen handkerchief from her sleeve. There was an F embroidered in one corner, in red with a little toy soldier standing to attention against the upright of the letter. It was exquisitely done, obviously not bought in a shop. Mother trouble. His mother had worked it for him when he was little and before she had become any trouble. F for Fergus. Nothing really, he had said. She sniffed it. It smelled of peppermints too. She would wash and iron it for him. He would be touched. She would be pleased to touch him.

While the cats were eating their supper, Emma sat at her desk and chose a postcard to send to her godson, Crispin, who was thirteen and had just arrived for his first term at Tatham’s. His mother had telephoned the other day asking if Emma could invite him round. He was bound to be homesick. She sent him a picture of an elephant from a Bodleian manuscript.

‘Dear Crispin,’ she wrote. ‘Welcome to your “Big” school! I hope everything is well. Your mother rang me the other day and gave me all the family news. How
lovely
about your Lottie going to have puppies. I’ll bet you’ll find they keep one just for you. Can you come to tea tomorrow at four? (Tuesday is still a half day, isn’t it?) If you can’t, ask Mr Henryson to let you ring me – otherwise I’ll assume it’s OK. Lots of love. Emma (D-H). p.s. It’s number 8 Tatham Street. p.p.s. Will make a chocolate biscuit cake especially!’