Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (10 page)

‘Yes,’ Hildegard smiled sadly. ‘I suppose it is. Will she hang, this woman, for what she did?’

‘It seems most likely.’

‘I am not in favour of another death.’

‘Neither am I; but it is the law of our land.’

‘You should change it.
Rache trägt keine Frucht
 . . .’

‘It is not in my power; but one day, I hope, in my lifetime.’

They were still sitting beside each other and neither of them wanted to move. Hildegard Staunton gave him a playful pat on the knee. ‘And what about you,
Sidney
?’ she asked. She seemed amused by the very English nature of his name. ‘What about your lifetime?’

‘It is very simple. I have my job. I have my calling . . .’

Hildegard smiled. ‘You do not have a wife, I think?’

‘I cannot imagine it . . .’ he began.

‘Well, there is time . . .’ Hildegard said gently and then smiled. ‘Why are you called
Sidney
?’

‘I was named after my grandfather.’

‘Is it an unusual name? I have never heard it before.’

‘There was a Victorian clergyman called Sidney Smith. He was quite a character. He once said that his idea of heaven was eating
pâté de foie gras
to the sound of trumpets.’

‘I am not so sure about that. In any case I think I prefer the Sidney of this world to any man of the past.’

‘I think we would both have enjoyed meeting him, had we lived in those times.’

Hildegard stood up. ‘I think you do not like sherry but it is all I have. The whiskey has not yet arrived. Stephen’s brother told me a last case was on its way; not that I need it. Would you like some?’

‘Why not?’ Sidney replied.

Hildegard laid out a tray. ‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps I should not go back to Germany after all?’

‘It would be good if you stayed here, of course. From my point of view . . .’

Hildegard handed Sidney his drink. ‘It is a strange feeling to have no responsibility for someone else any more.’

‘You must try not to let this darken the rest of your life.’

‘It is hard to think of that now.’ Hildegard looked up and smiled sadly. ‘I cannot imagine the future.’

‘It may be impossible. You will not forget what has happened. But I hope, if I may say so, that you might think a little bit more about yourself. There is only so much self-sacrifice we can offer . . . .’

Hildegard was amused. ‘I never thought I would hear a priest telling me to be selfish. You think I have made a sacrifice of my life?

‘No. All I hope is that you will find happiness again.’

‘But you know that happiness is an illusion, Canon Chambers?’

‘
Sidney
 . . .’

‘Nothing can last in this world.
Zeit gibt und nimmt alles
.’

‘Time gives and takes all?

‘Your German is better than you admit. If you come and see me you may even feel at home.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Sidney replied. ‘Are you going back?’ he asked.

‘In ten days’ time. I will be home for a German Christmas with my mother and sister.’

‘What are they called?’

‘My sister is Trudi. My mother is Sibilla. They are very German names.’

‘Like Hildegard.’

‘I was named after Hildegard of Bingen. The visionary. Fortunately I don’t have any visions. But she wrote music and without music I do not know how I could live.’

‘I am sorry that you won’t be at our carol service.’

‘I will be with my sister in Berlin. I will hear
Stille Nacht
in German once more. When they sing, I shall remember your kindness to me.’

‘I am also sorry that not everyone has been good to you.’

‘But
you
have been good, Canon Chambers, and it is your kindness which I shall remember . . . .’

Hildegard stood up and took a porcelain figure off the mantelpiece. It was of the little girl feeding chickens. ‘Take this,’ she said. ‘On account of your kindness.’

Sidney was caught off guard. ‘Oh, I don’t think I could.’

‘Stephen bought it for me when he thought we were going to have a child. He always wanted a girl. Perhaps you will be luckier in your life than we have been. I’d like to give it to you.’

‘Your life is not over.’

‘Please,’ said Hildegard. ‘Take it to remember me by.’

Sidney could hardly bear the days that followed. He could not concentrate on his work, not least the Advent sermon that he was due to preach at King’s, and even the idea of another evening in The Eagle with Inspector Keating had lost its appeal. Their meetings had become a matter of work rather than pleasure. It was his own fault, Sidney thought, but then how could he have behaved otherwise? An injustice had been uncovered and his conscience had given him no choice.

Now he had to resume the priestly life. He remembered his Principal telling him at theological college: ‘the clergyman’s identity is defined not by what he does but what he is’. He was required to live an exemplary live. It would not do to sniff out murderers and sit on a widow’s sofa drinking sherry.

This, however, was easier said than done. Sidney had to admit that he was distracted. Hildegard had sent him a letter to remind him of the date of her leaving, but he had been so uncertain as to what he would say, and how he might ask for her forwarding address, that he almost missed her departure completely.

A removal van was parked outside the house and Hildegard was waiting for a taxi to take her to the station. She was dressed in a dark blue coat and she held her gloves loosely over a matching handbag.

‘I’m glad I arrived in time,’ said Sidney.

‘I would have asked the taxi to stop at your church. It is not so far.’

‘I might not have been there.’

‘But you are here now.’ She smiled. ‘And I am glad. I hope you will come and see me in Germany . . .’

‘Yes, I . . .’

Hildegard saw his embarrassment. ‘I do not believe in farewells . . .’

‘No. Well . . . it’s only that it might be difficult to arrange . . .’

‘Nonsense. I will help you.’

Sidney could not understand why his words would not come. ‘I’ve never been to Berlin. Or Leipzig . . .’ he said.

The taxi pulled up and Hildegard paused, as if she was wondering whether to get in it after all. ‘I will write to you. I will send you my address.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Sidney.

She held out her hand. ‘Thank you. You are a good man.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

As he took her hand, Hildegard leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘I will not forget you . . .’ she said.

‘Nor I you . . . .’

Sidney watched the taxi recede into the distance. He touched his own cheek. Then he bicycled back to the vicarage. Outside the front door was a large brown case. Hildegard had instructed the removal men to leave the case of Bushmills that she had been sent from County Antrim for Christmas. A card was attached.

‘For my friend Sidney, who I know will appreciate what lies within. With love and gratitude. Your Hildegard.’

Sidney walked into his study and sat in silence.

He tried to write his sermon. It would be about hope, he decided, and grace. He remembered the flimsy pages of Stephen Staunton’s diary. We cannot erase the past, he thought, no matter what we do; instead we have to let it carry us into the future.

As he wrote, he stopped to think about each stage of Hildegard’s journey home. He imagined her boarding a train and leaning out of the window to wave him goodbye. He could picture her, even now, blonde and pale, dressed in her dark blue coat, standing on the stern of a ferry with seagulls cawing in its wake as the light fell. He saw her walking through wintry German streets and passing through Christmas markets where people drank
Glühwein
amidst the swaying lanterns. He wondered what Hildegard would say to her family when she first saw them, her sister Trudi and her mother Sibilla, and if she would speak about all that had happened; or if it would be like the war, which had rendered so many people so silent. Would she mention him at all, he asked himself; and how, come to think of it, would he ever talk about her?

The next evening he made his way to King’s College Chapel. As the candlelight flickered over the carved wooden choir stalls, Sidney thought once more about the hope and the fragility of Christmas, the uncertain morning and evening of our lives caught amidst the unfurling of time and season, day and year.

The service made his sadness at Hildegard’s parting all the more resonant. It was the end of another day, a further chance to contemplate mortality and glimpse eternity as the precentor continued the responses:

‘O God make speed to save us.’

The choirboys replied:

‘O Lord make haste to help us.’

‘Singing is the sound of the soul,’ he thought to himself. For centuries people had been singing these words. Such continuity gave Sidney hope. He was part of something greater than himself – not only history but beauty, continuity and, he hoped, truth.

He prayed for the soul of Stephen Staunton.
We will live as we have never lived
. Those had been his last words to Pamela Morton and yet, perhaps, they also spoke of a world beyond our own.

He looked up at the darkened stained glass. He had learned more about love in the past few weeks than he had known in years. He had seen some of its characteristics: how it could be passionate, jealous, tolerant, forgiving and long-lasting. He had seen it disappear, and he had seen it turn into hatred. It was the most unpredictable and chameleon of emotions, sometimes sudden and unstable, able to flare up and die down; at other times loyal and constant, the pilot flame of a life.

Sidney touched his hands together in prayer. Then he gave himself up into silence. ‘How we love determines how we live,’ he thought.

A Question of Trust

It was the
afternoon of Thursday 31 December 1953, and a light snow that refused to settle drifted across the towns and fields of Hertfordshire. Sidney was tired, but contented, after the exertions of Christmas and was on the train to London. He had seen the festival season through with a careful balance of geniality and theology and he was looking forward to a few days off with his family and friends.

As the train sped towards the capital, Sidney looked out of the window on to the backs of small, suburban houses and new garden cities; a post-war landscape full of industry, promise and concrete. It was a world away from the village in which he lived. He was almost the countryman now, a provincial outsider who had become a stranger in the city of his birth.

He started to think about the question of belonging and identity: how much a person was defined by geography, and how much by upbringing, education, profession, faith and choice of friends.

‘How much can a person change in a life?’ he wondered.

It was an idea at the heart of Christianity, and yet many people retained their essential nature throughout their lives. He certainly didn’t expect too radical a departure in the behaviour of the friends he was due to meet that evening.

As the train pulled in to Kings Cross, Sidney was determined to remain cheerful in the year ahead. He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, and if he could preach a sermon about the benefits of selflessness, and believe in it without sounding too pious, then he would endeavour to do so that very Sunday.

He put on his trilby, gathered his third umbrella of the year – he had left the previous two on earlier journeys – and alighted in search of a bus that would take him to the party in St John’s Wood.

His New Year’s Eve dinner was to be hosted by his old friend Nigel Thompson. Educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge, Nigel had been tipped as a future Prime Minister while still at university and had become Chairman of the Young Conservatives straight after the war. Having been elected as the Member of Parliament for St Marylebone in the 1951 General Election, he began his rise to power as PPS to Sir Anthony Eden (a man his father had known from the King’s Rifle Corps), and now worked as Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Sidney was therefore looking forward to a few meaty conversations about Britain’s role on the international stage with one of the most promising MPs in the country.

His wife, Juliette, had been the Zuleika Dobson of their generation, possessing a porcelain complexion, Titianesque hair and a willowy beauty that her dream-like manner could only enhance. Sidney had worried at their wedding whether she had the stamina necessary to be the wife of an MP but cast such masculine thoughts aside as the first intimations of jealousy.

Their home was a nineteenth-century terraced house to the north of Regent’s Park. It had previously been the type of establishment in which rich Victorian men had kept their decorative mistresses. Sidney considered this rather appropriate as Juliette Thompson certainly had a whiff of the Pre-Raphaelite about her. Her beauty was both doomed and untouchable: unless, of course, you were Nigel Thompson MP.