Communion, Chapter 8

Here's the next installment of The Communion of the Saint. Back in the so-called “real world.”

If you prefer to listen, you can hear an audio version of the book at podiobooks.com. Also free.

Chapter 8

     

      “The shy Dr. Griffin.” The editor of the Hertfordshire Advertiser leaned back in his chair. Florid and fat, he had an unruly shock of once-blond hair, now yellowish white, that stood up in all directions. “I wondered when you might appear.”

      “Shy?” I smiled, doing my best to charm him. Two weeks had passed since my experience with Alban. No one knew, except Christina, and I wanted to keep it that way. I felt as if I’d been caught doing something shameful. I’d written the manuscript I carried in an attempt to exorcise the voice—which had been remarkably silent since then—but I’d been careful to do it in third person, past tense, as if I’d learned about Alban’s murder from reading books.

      “Let’s not fence with one another.” Simon Bluetooth regarded me with tiny azure eyes that hid behind pudgy cheeks—a Viking gone to seed. He ruled his kingdom from behind a gigantic partners’ desk, almost as massive as himself. Scraps of paper lay sown across the glass-topped surface like dragon’s teeth, seed for the germination of a story.

      “You are here in hope of developing a relationship with me, and through me, the paper, so that you can print the drivel generated by the Communion of the Saint. I, on the other hand, have as my sole reason for existence the purpose of selling newspapers and thereby advertising. Lady Phelps—Leslie, to her friends and to those she wants to use—has already made arrangements to which I’ve given my tentative assent. I emphasize, you’ll note, the word ‘tentative.’ Can you write?”

      I slid ten stapled pieces of paper across the desk. He picked them up and began to read. I fidgeted. He picked up a blue pencil—so editors, at least this one, actually used them—and started making notes on my manuscript. I fidgeted some more; I hate waiting for evaluation.

      “Don’t staple it.” He tore the top left corners off my sheets, but kept reading. He grunted, noted, winced, smiled, concentrated, thought, looked away, wrote in the margin, and turned over sheet by sheet.

      “It’ll do,” he announced. “I’ll run it tomorrow, provided you give me an interview. And take this back and correct it as I’ve shown you. It’s bullshit, but it’s bloody intriguing bullshit.”

      His accent made the expletives incongruous. After a few weeks, I was starting to hear differences in inflection and tone. Leslie Phelps, except when caught unawares, sounded like the queen, Tom Dorcas like a sincere BBC announcer. Simon Bluetooth liked words and knew how to use them to effect. His accent changed according to his mood.

      “How did you come up with the detail?”

      “Imaginative reconstruction,” I lied.

      “More bullshit, but useful. Who knows where talent comes from? I see little enough of the bloody stuff on this job.” He tossed the loose pages back across the expanse of his desk. “The deadline is half three today. Meet me back here and we’ll get the interview out of the way.”

      Unwilling to give him the satisfaction of looking through the marked-up sheets in his presence, I stuffed them back into their folder.

      “Bring that back with you—on a disk, please, it will save some time.”

      The rewrite was inconsequential—mostly tightening and rearranging. My new editor apparently hated adverbs.

      When I returned for my interview, Leslie was in the office with Simon Bluetooth, seated at the side of the partners desk.

      “You were to have shown it to me.” Leslie sounded even more like the queen. She was dressed in a charcoal business suit and ivory blouse. “A simple courtesy toward your employer would have been appreciated.”

      Oops. I was used to working solo. This would take practice.

      “You’re right,” I answered. “I’m afraid I simply didn’t think—”

      Out of Leslie’s field of view, Simon shrugged and rolled his eyes.

      “Let me see it now.” She held out an imperious hand for the manuscript. I gave up the envelope containing the pages and diskette.

      For the second time in the day, I endured while someone read my work in front of me. I felt like a school girl hauled to the principal’s office.

      “Couldn’t you make it more—I don’t know—uplifting?” Leslie tapped her forefinger against the pages. The nail threatened to tear through the sheet. “It’s so...bloody. And why not tell it through the eyes of Saint Alban—why must it be the executioner? Alban is, after all, the saint here. It ought to be his story. This—this person—is so distasteful.”

      “It must be,” I answered, giving in to impulse, “because I’m an American. You know how fascinated we are with violence.”

      “That’s probably it,” Leslie said. I didn’t know whether sarcasm was lost on her, or whether she just didn’t care. “It will have to do, I suppose. It does rather ‘grab’ one, and the plebs will like that. Still, I’d much rather you show your work to me, before you bring it to Simon here. So that we’re all reading from the same page.”

      She gathered her purse and, so help me, her gloves. “Run it, Simon. But let’s make her a little less bloodthirsty in the interview.”

      Simon watched her march from his office and into the elevator before speaking.

      I opened my mouth to say something catty, but he prevented me.

      “She does have a way about her,” he said. “Don’t worry, she’ll love it when it’s in print. Let’s talk about you.”

      I gave Simon a censored version of myself. This was for publication, and the old Viking was a newsman, first and foremost, not someone to trust on first meeting. We covered the basics—birth, upbringing, education, academic achievement—in a few minutes.

      “Why you?” Simon’s bluntness caught me off guard, in spite of my caution. “On the face of it, there must be two dozen English scholars who fit the qualifications. Then you show up, half Jamaican, half American, and waltz off with the job. It’s not as if—what do you Yanks call it?—affirmative action were at work here.”

      I explained about losing my job, and the academically only semi-respectable nature of the work I was called to do.

      “I can’t print that,” he said. “We need something better than its being the bottom of the barrel for both parties. More ‘uplifting,’ in Lady Phelps’ words. There has to be something about you that makes you the one.”

      “What did Leslie say?”

      “She wants me to ‘ride herd’ on you, as you Yanks say. She’s worried that you may turn out to be a mystic.”

      “Unlikely,” I answered. God knows, I didn’t want to be mystical. It was hard enough just getting through the days ordinarily, without visitations from the beyond.

      “So—why you?” I’d dodged the question, and Simon knew it. “There must be something about you that appeals to them.”

      “Naiveté?”

      “Hmm.” Simon drummed a pencil on his desk. “Partly.” The pressure of his gaze grew. I flustered.

      “I think she’s right. It takes a certain sympathy to write this stuff.” He brandished my pages. “You’ll bear watching. If you write any visionary bullshit for me, I’ll chop it to pieces.”

      I raised my right hand. “I promise.”

      Something moved in my peripheral vision. I turned in my chair, hand still upraised. A blue-white flash blinded me.

      “Need another?” the editor asked.

      “That’ll do.” A photographer rewound the film in her camera. I hadn’t even seen her come in. She slipped out the door, camera in hand.

      “That’s it?” I asked.

      “If Shelly says that it’ll do, it’ll do,” Simon answered, as if I were questioning his competence. “Now get out of here. I have a paper to publish.”

      “That’s it?” I repeated, still taken aback. “End of interview?”

      “If I need anything else, I’ll make it up. Go on. Give me the next episode next week. People have been writing this damn saint bullshit for years. Centuries. This,” he said, waving the pages again, “is the first thing I’ve seen that doesn’t reek of piety.” His eyes twinkled from underneath his pudgy brows. “Make it real. Kill a few sacred cows—it will sell papers.”

      When the next edition came out, I clipped the interview and my story—reflexively, because Papa always got a kick out of seeing his girl’s name in print. Then I stopped short. Papa was in his grave now, forever gone. There should have been somebody I could brag to besides myself.

     

American Heads Saints’ Project

         Clio Griffin is well named. The young American academic left a university position in her home country to take up residence in Saint Albans and work as the director of research for the local historical organization, the Communion of the Saint.

                  Dr. Griffin’s Christian name, Clio—not Cleopatra, she insists—is a constant reminder of her chosen field of work. Clio was the ancient muse of history, Dr. Griffin’s passion. Her surname, Griffin, also derives from myth. A griffin has the body and legs of a lion, with the head, claws and wings of an eagle.

                  But there is nothing mythical about this American scholar’s grasp of history. Lady Verulam, Leslie Phelps, president of the Communion, characterized Dr. Griffin’s scholarship as “cutting edge.”

                  “She has a way of bringing the past to life that we found quite attractive, and certainly suited to the needs of our project,” Lady Phelps stated. “Her previous work, although somewhat controversial, has just the spark that we were looking for.”

     

      The article went on at length. A color photo of me garnished the story. I avoid pictures of myself whenever I can. This one was as bad as usual; it made me look like some kind of multi-ethnic mutant. Thin, unpainted lips curved in the crooked grimace that passed for my smile. My not-quite-kinky hair looked as if I’d been caught in a hurricane. My eyes, caught by the camera, glared pale blue with a wide, wild look from a face the color of coffee with cream. I looked alarmed, trapped by the photographer’s strobe light. My upraised hand made me look as if I was being sworn in as a witness in a trial.

      I hate photographs. This one reminded me to avoid them in the future.

      When I came down for breakfast, the day the story came out, Mrs. Fern was reading the article. She was unimpressed.

      I held out an envelope with the next week’s rent. She ignored it, so I set it on the kitchen table and helped myself to a cup of tea.

      “You’re staying then?”

      “I thought so.”

      “You could have asked. I might have taken a reservation. You didn’t say.”

      “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fern. I just assumed—”

      “You seem to be quite the celebrity.”

      The voice had been leaving me alone. I felt pretty chipper, as if I were running my own show.

      “It’s just a story in the paper.”

      “I didn’t know I was housing such a famous person.”

      The tea turned sour in my mouth. I pushed the cup away.

      “What’s the matter?” I asked.

      Mrs. Fern pulled her white dressing gown more tightly around her. “Not a thing—only you won’t get a true word out of that Phelps woman. I don’t know why you put such stock in her.”

      “I don’t. She’s my employer,” I said, “that’s all.”

      “You might talk to the real people around here, before you go publishing.”

      “What are we arguing about?” I asked.

      “I’m not arguing,” Mrs. Fern said. She forced a thin smile onto her face. “But I thought you might want to know some real people—not just the swells.”

      “Swells?”

      “What you Americans call the movers and shakers. Like Lady Phelps.”

      “Leslie,” I said automatically.

      “There—you see? Any ordinary person calls her Lady Phelps, as a sign of respect. Only swells call her by her Christian name, though I’m not sure she is a Christian.”

      I wasn’t either, but hadn’t given it much thought.

      “Who do you know here, dear?”

      I rattled off the names of most of the people I’d met so far.

      “One priest, a handful of swells, and Simon. Simon’s not so bad, but he works for them.”

      I hadn’t mentioned Christina. She was different. Mrs. Fern criticized all the others I had met. I felt protective of Christina.

      “What do you want to be here?” Mrs. Fern demanded.

      “I don’t understand.”

      “It’s a simple question. What you do in this place matters. It matters to me and all the rest of us, and it matters to you. What you do here will change the rest of your life. Believe me, I know.” In her face I saw the evidence of a decision taken long ago, now regretted but still a part of her after many years.

      So much for feeling in control. I gave her the most honest answer I could.

      “I want to do the work that has been given to me to do. I want to prove to myself that I am capable. This is my chance. If I do it well, then I will be what I—”

      She stood suddenly and stripped off her white terry gown.

      “Bloody fools, that’s what we are. The two of us.”

      She was dressed to go out. I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected.

      “Come,” she ordered.

      “I can’t,” I protested. My watch showed nearly nine o’clock. “I have an appointment with the Bishop—”

      “Another swell.”

      “Maybe later—”

      “And maybe not.” She waited in the entry to the kitchen until I got up and went with her. Like me, she preferred Reeboks to leather, at least today. Jeaned and sneakered, she led the way out of the house. I followed, in my skirt and blouse. If I kept meeting more “swells,” I would need more clothes.

      She moved fast, across the street and onto the abbey green. A left turn led us toward the medieval cemetery. She stopped at a sunken spot.

      “I rather like the dead,” Mrs. Fern said. “They’re so stable.” She knelt, removed a pair of clippers from her purse, and trimmed the grass with quick, crisp snips. The act was practiced, but performed with conscious care.

      “Whose is it?” We were exposed to the eyes of passersby. Some ignored us. Others peered through the decrepit iron fence to see what we were up to. I shifted from foot to foot, wishing for invisibility and not getting it.

      “Goodness, I wouldn’t know.” The sound of her clippers fluttered above the nearby street’s traffic. “Some old monk, long dead, about whom no one cares any more.”

      “Except you.” I knelt at her side, close enough to smell the faint sachet that clung to her, a delicate hint of violets.

      “And a few others.”

      A voice sounded low and angry behind me. “See now, what are you doing here?”

      I turned and looked up: Sexton.

      Mrs. Fern’s clippers didn’t pause. “Leave her alone, Sexton.”

      His stare mesmerized me. I wanted to stand, but his eyes, bright with threat, locked me in place, one knee on the ground, my other foot poised to lift me up.

      Mrs. Fern kept clipping the grass, apparently unconcerned.

      I wasn’t so blithe as she. The muscles in my leg trembled.

      “You were foolish and wrong. Now you must suffer the consequences.” Mrs. Fern’s clippers kept moving.

      Sexton’s face betrayed a surprising hurt. “I am not stupid, Mrs. Fern. I only seem that way because I’m slow.”

      “Slow to listen, sometimes, I think, but not to understand. There’s too much pretense in your manner, Sexton.” She rose and stood between me and the big man. “No hurt’s to come to her. Do you understand?”

      He nodded like an ox, then lumbered away.

      “He’s not nearly so frightening as he appears.” Mrs. Fern knelt and the sound of her clippers resumed.

      “Good.” I didn’t believe her. I was still frozen in my half-kneeling squat. My leg ached from tension. Sexton moved out of sight around a flying buttress; his slowness might be deceptive, a pretense like his apparent mental dullness. If nothing else, he was cunning.

      “I’ve never done anything to him. Why is he like that?” I asked, but I knew at least part of the answer. A bloody wog, as Sexton had called me at our first meeting, is what some Brits call a dark-skinned foreigner. The nearest American equivalent is nigger.

      “You’re a stranger, dear one. Caution is only prudent. Everyone looks askance at a new person; we don’t know you.”

      We know you.

      The voice had never troubled me while others were present. I ignored its existence and concentrated on reality. Mrs. Fern’s clippers clicked; shards of grass fell to earth. The bleeding ends of the stalks lifted the almost-sneezing smell of fresh-cut grass to my nose. Traffic still rumbled by on the far side of the graveyard wall. The cool, morning air glowed with clarity in this archive of ancient death.

      I caressed the brooch, hidden in my pocket. Even through the denim it felt rough and pitted. As long as it stayed that way, I remained in the present, where I very much wanted to be.

      “Where are the markers?” I asked.

      “Oh, long gone to dust, or stolen.” Mrs. Fern’s busy hands never paused. “Some of them went to be building stones, when the abbey was broken up. Cromwell’s troops overturned what was left, broke them down to pebbles. Time did the rest.”

      She spoke about the Puritan revolution as if it were yesterday; it had been in the 1640s. To Mrs. Fern the breakup of the monasteries was an event in memory; it had happened in 1539. I worked hard to bring the past into the present, but for her, it had never left.

      She sat back on her haunches. “There! That’s for today.”

      “Today?”

      “I do a little each morning. It keeps the task from being too daunting. There’s a company of men that mow the main part; I just keep the graves neat. It wouldn’t do to have weed whackers snapping at the dead. Better to do it by hand.”

      She put her clippers away in her huge black leather purse and stood. “Shall we?”

      “Shall we what?”

      “Continue the tour. Let’s go!” She brushed a few blades of grass from her hands and set off with a business-like stride. I followed as we circled the outside of the cathedral.

      Mrs. Fern lectured like a tour guide as we traversed the south side of the grounds. “The abbey is over five hundred feet long, from the east window, behind the altar, to the west door of the nave.” She rattled off the vital statistics of the building, pointing to the old reused Roman bricks that formed the structure; she complained about some of the restoration work performed over a century before, as if she were talking about something that had just been finished last month, as if changes were still possible.

      Pointing at a course of stone, she said, “You can see—it’s the wrong color, and the shape of the stones is not what it ought to be.”

      Finally, we reached the western end of the nave, having come more than halfway around the abbey from the old grave yard. She heaved open the massive door. I had been in the church before, but still it took me by surprise.

      Light and shadow dappled the tourists who shuffled through the building. The sightseers’ cameras clicked, their flashbulbs sparkled inadequately. Their children’s feet pounded the stone as if the floor itself were an amusement ride. Noise echoed from the walls and ceiling. We had entered a theme park, a Disneyland of the past.

      I began to understand something about Sexton.

      “This way.” Mrs. Fern led me up the southern aisle of the nave toward the transept. We dodged the tourists’ backpacks and strollers, stepped around their unruly children.

      “They’ll bring in roller skates, next.” Mrs. Fern removed a key from her purse and fit it into a narrow door to the south of the crossing, beyond the bookstall. As it closed behind us, the noise fell off.

      “This is the slype,” she announced.

      She unlocked another narrow door and stood aside for me.

      “The chapter house,” she announced in a whisper. The building was new, put up in the nineteen-eighties, modern brick as opposed to the flatter Roman bricks and the harsh flint of the older buildings. It stood on the site of the medieval chapter house. It housed a cafeteria, a library, and a series of modernistic wooden tables. At the far window stood a prie-dieu, which was tenanted by a black-clothed man, his head bent. I cleared my throat. He turned, surprise opening his face.

      Father Tom.

      “How did you get in here?”

      “Mrs. Fern was showing me around.”

      “Who?”

      “Mrs. Fer—” I looked back toward the slype. Jane Fern’s retreating form slipped through the door at the far end. Father Tom couldn’t see her, I was sure. “She was just here,” I explained lamely. Why had she done this?

      Anger clouded his face. “How did you get here? Tourists aren’t supposed to—“

      “Mrs. Fern—like I said—”

      Grotesques grinned down at us from the junction of ceiling and walls, their faces frozen in stone. A figure caught my eye—a cleric, mouth open, tongue protruding, forever haranguing an absent congregation of sinners.

      “The Bishop’s been called away, to Canterbury.” Father Tom’s shoulders slumped, then he smiled, like a little boy appealing for mercy. “He ordered me to meet with you, in his stead. I thought I was praying, but now that you’ve appeared, I find I was avoiding you.”

      Another grotesque swam into my field of view. I recognized this one—the former archbishop of Canterbury, Runcie, stared at me from the corner of his eyes, wearing heavy-framed glasses.

       “What did you pray for?”

      “Vision. Knowledge.” Father Tom shrugged. “The usual mystical stuff.”

      “It’s overrated.” The words popped out of me before I could censor them.

      “Easy for you to say.”

      “Not easy to know. That’s the trouble.” I knelt at the prie-dieu. It felt strange, humbling. I’m not a humble person. I don’t like feeling small and insignificant. The kneeler was uncushioned. My kneecaps grated against the bones within.

      “Do you pray?” Father Tom asked.

      “I don’t have the talent for it.”

      “Try.”

      I shook my head, but stayed put, trying humility on for size, letting the hard wooden kneeler press on the bones within. I shut my eyes, in spite of Father Tom’s presence behind me.

      When I opened them, Alban stood before me, grinning like a gargoyle.

      “Welcome back,” he said. “Let’s take another ride.”