Communion, Chapter 6

Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint:

Chapter 6     

      My second day began quietly. My office was to be in the house where the backyard meeting was held. I packed up some of my things and took a cab.

      All the dust was gone. Elves? I wondered. On the first floor by British reckoning, one flight up from street level, I found a room that would work nicely. The walls were newly painted a gleaming white. The hardwood floor sported a fresh, shiny coat of wax. Office furniture, all of it antique and quite good, was scattered in disarray. I didn’t mind. It gave me the chance to arrange things to my liking.

      Floor to ceiling windows looked out over the southern part of the city. Dominating the view was the spire of the cathedral. Just visible to the right was the park that contained what remained of the old city. Out from between them ran the old London road, first built by the emperor Claudius to link this tribal capital to the port on the Thames.

      I stood looking out over the past, immersing myself in the stream of people who had once upon a time worked and lived here. The doorbell shattered my reverie, and I hurried downstairs.

      A uniformed man was just turning away as I opened the door.

      “Miss Griffin?” He consulted a palm-sized gray plastic box, some sort of computer. “Post office.”

      “Post office?” I said, feeling lost.

      “Your telephone, miss. This is the office of the Communion of the Saint? Odd name, that. I have an order for a double voice line, fax line, and high-speed modem. Total of four.” Under one arm he carried a cardboard box.

      I let him in.

      “Where do you want it, then, miss?”

      He followed me upstairs to the office. He had barely settled down to work when the bell rang again.

      “Delivery!” a voice called from below. I ran down.

      Another young man, with carroty hair and freckles, waited on the step. He had a dolly stacked with large boxes.

      “Miss Griffin? Your computer is here.”

      “I didn’t—”

      “Beggin’ your pardon, but here’s the order. Where to?”

      I pointed up the stairs.

      “It’s never on the ground floor, is it?” He grinned good-naturedly while he pulled the dolly, nearly hidden by the load of brown boxes, up the stairs. The rubber tires thunked softly against the aged oak risers.

      “Can I help?” I offered.

      “No, easier to handle by meself. Thanks, though. Appreciate the offer.” He paused to wipe sweat from his brow. “Wouldn’t mind somethin’ to drink, though, if you have anything.”

      It was already hot out. I padded into the kitchen. The refrigerator, which had stood silent and empty the afternoon before, hummed importantly now. I looked inside. Plastic bottles of mineral water, a liter of white wine, a small carton of milk, and cans of soft drinks neatly lined the shelves. Elves, again.

      I opened one of the cupboards. They, too, had been filled—with china, glasses, and mugs. The pantry boasted containers of tea bags, coffee, sugar. The whole kitchen had been stocked with stuff useful for entertaining visitors. There were even a few tins of cookies—called biscuits here. I opened one and the heady smell of baked butter cookies filled my nostrils. I took the tin and a handful of drinks and headed up to the office.

      The voices of the workmen reached me while I was still on the stairs. I eavesdropped shamelessly.

      “—must be someone important,” I heard the post office man say. “A top priority notice came in yesterday, and my supervisor made me promise to get on it this morning.”

      “With us, it was a telephone order. One of everything, best quality, no shirking. Price no object. I took the call meself. Bank draught delivered within the hour, with a bonus to get it done today. She’s somebody, all right.”

      The shamelessness dissolved. I scuffled on the bare wood, so they would know I was coming. The sounds of boxes opening and tools working replaced their voices by the time I reached the top of the steps.

      The redhead knelt among putty-colored computer components and pale, gray cables. The telephone installer leaned, squatting, against the wall in the far corner, using a drill with a bit at least a foot long.

      “Where d’you want this set up, Miss?” the redhead asked.

      Gray shapes of plastic and steel littered one end of my new office. A huge flat box bore the headline “Ergonodesque.”

      I shrugged. “What’s that?”

      “It’s a computer desk—ergonomic.”

      In the corner, the telephone man grunted.

      “Over there.” I pointed to the wall opposite the door, where the light from the window wouldn’t fall on the screen. “Here’s some cold drinks.”

      Footsteps clattered in the hall below. I put the drinks and biscuits on my oaken desk and hurried back to the stairs.

      Lady Phelps was coming up. She wore a fawn suit, tailored to flatter and set off with a white silk blouse.

      “Dr. Griffin—I thought you might be here.”

      “Lady Phelps—”

      “Leslie, please.”

      “Leslie, then. These men—”

      “Yes, I saw their trucks. Everything’s going according to plan, then?”

      We reached the top of the stair and went back into the office.

      My tray of goodies sat untouched. Leslie watched the workmen for a moment.

      “Ted,” she told the telephone installer, “be careful of the baseboard. It’s older than I am.”

      “Yes, ma’am.” Ted touched the bill of his Post Office cap.

      Leslie turned to the redhead. “William, did you bring all the software I ordered?”

      “I did, mum. It’s all installed and ready to go.” He looked up from putting the Ergonodesque together and pointed to a brown carton. “The disks and manuals are all in that box.”

      William wore no cap, and had no forelock to tug on. He slid his gaze back down to his work. A whiff of Irish rebel hung about him. Unlike the post office man, William the computer salesman earned his living by his wits, and only thought of Lady Phelps as a wealthy customer.

      “Excuse me, ladies.” Ted slipped by us, tugging again on his cap. “I’ll be going out to bring the wires in from the pole. It won’t take long.”

      Leslie and I watched William work for a moment, until his ostentatious diligence drove us from the room and down the stairs. Leslie led the way to the back yard, where we sat in the wicker chairs from the afternoon before. She arranged us so that she could watch the house.

       “Is everything to your liking?”

      I admitted to being impressed with her efficiency.

      “I’m glad to see you here. Most people would be dithering about, ‘settling in.’ I’m relieved that you’re not a ditherer.” Leslie lit a cigarette. The familiar yearning rose in me. “I had hoped you wouldn’t be.”

      From the moment of our first meeting, Leslie brought out the worst in me. Only with effort did I manage a simple “Thank you.” She was only here to see whether or not I was on the job yet.

      But I was wrong.

      “You’ve had a poor introduction to us, between Mr. Sexton and Mrs. Hardesty.”

      “She’s apologized,” I said.

      Leslie brushed a particle of ash from her skirt. “Mr. Sexton will no longer trouble you.”

      “That wasn’t—”

      “I must admit, I sacked him as much for his rudeness and insubordination as for his bigotry. I can’t stand either.”

      I held back my reply. The way Leslie had done it, Sexton could blame me, and he wouldn’t even have to work at it. He says what’s on his mind about me. He’s canned. It’s my fault, because I’m the nigger, the outsider, the stranger. And yet, what else could have been done about him? To let him spew his hatred unchecked would have been equally impossible. While I was still wrestling with all of that, Leslie plowed ahead. Sexton was a closed subject.

      “I know that you’re staying with Jane Fern. That’s quite all right for a tourist, but you are now a member of the community.”

      I was, on my second full day, hardly that, but I didn’t argue. Leslie, though, wanted me in my proper place.

      “As I said yesterday, I’ve had a list of available flats made up. It’s not that you should move immediately, but after you’ve had a little time to get to know us—well, it would be best.”

      Leslie stubbed out her cigarette.

      “I’ll let you get to it, then,” Leslie said.

      I walked with her to the garden gate. Once she was safely away, I fairly skipped back inside and up the stairs to my new office.

      The workmen were finishing up the installation. Ted packed his tools and looked around, holding the empty carton. “All done. Everything works. Your numbers are written on the pad, there. D’you have a waste bin?”

      “There must be one somewhere,” I said. “Just leave it. I’ll take care of it later.”

      “I can’t do that, miss.”

      “Why not?”

      “Not on a job for Lady Phelps.”

      “I won’t tell, honest,” I answered, but Ted was adamant.

      William slumped at the Ergonodesque, tapping the keyboard in sudden flurries and peering intently at the huge monitor he’d just installed. Icons and windows flashed into being on the screen, then disappeared with soft clicks.

      “I can take that, Ted,” William said, without looking away from the monitor. He held out a hand. His skinny arm protruded from the short sleeved white dress shirt. Ted handed the box to the redhead, then tugged on the bill of his cap to me and slipped out.

      “There’s something you’ll be after understandin’, Miss,” William said when we heard Ted’s truck pull away. “I know that being an American and all, you think that we’re a little bit silly, and perhaps that’s right. I’ve spent my short life tryin’ to comprehend the Brits and I’m no further along than when I started. But this I do know: when someone like Leslie Phelps gets a bee in her bonnet, stand out of the way. Don’t be asking Ted to do somethin’ that she might not like. He won’t do it in any case, and it puts him in a bind.”

      “Thanks for the advice,” I said.

      “We’ve set you up a local account on the net. Do you know how to use it?”

      I nodded. Any researcher these days needs to use the computer.

      William shoved back from the desk and gathered his boxes. “That’s it, then. I’m off.”

      I thanked him. He left, and I was alone again. All the books I had struggled to find back in the States rested in the shelves above my desk—the Deeds of the Abbots, Matthew Paris’s Great Chronicle—both in nineteenth-century leather bindings. I reached for the twelfth-century monk’s first volume, trying to bring to mind my undergrad Latin.

      I opened the old book as gently as possible; the binding crackled like middle-aged knees. The aroma of old glue, old paper, old leather, and old thoughts rose around me.

      I took the brooch out of my pocket and set it next to the computer. The old, corroded bronze lay in my field of vision as I plopped myself down at the Ergonodesque.

      Out the window to my left, the spire of the abbey cathedral shimmered and faded from sight. The small background noises of traffic drifted away with it. The only sounds were those inside my new office and those outside—a light wind moving through trees and the crackle of distant, angry voices.

      I dashed to the window. The town had disappeared. In its place was forest, though I looked down from my first floor perch securely enough. The house I was in still stood, but everything around it was changed.

      My breath came fast; fear twisted my stomach. I turned back to my office. Next to the quietly humming computer, my brooch, pitted with corrosion the moment before, glowed with the soft yellow of newly-minted bronze.