Stone of Destiny

by Ian Hamilton

  Kay, however, had one eye on the purse, and was not keen to stay in London a moment longer than was necessary. Gavin wanted to ‘have a bash’ and Alan was no less keen. I agreed. Although I was tired, I was also excited. I was aching to start, and at times tiredness is no bad thing. I am a nervous person, and nervous people are less frightened if they are tired. The reactions are a trifle slower. There is an extra fraction of time between impact and reaction that allows a calculated response and can prevent that swift instinctive movement, which is not always wise and is occasionally cowardly. There is never a better time than now.

  We paid our bill and left. I had a long eerie vigil in front of me, but my stomach was full and my mind was clear. Alan and Kay drove off in the Anglia to make themselves familiar with the route west out of London, for it was their duty to head for Dartmoor with the Stone early the following morning. We said au revoir with a carelessness that was quite unassumed, and it was not until they were gone that I realised that if things went wrong I would not see them again until I had passed through prison.

  The starlings were raising their ceaseless shrill chattering in the eaves of the buildings as Gavin and I turned into Northumberland Avenue where our old Ford was parked. I raked in my grip and produced the tools of my new profession: a file, a saw, a screwdriver bit, a wrench, a hooded torch, a length of wire, a tin of Vaseline to lubricate the saw, and, of course, the jemmy. I had gathered them together as symbols of my resolution. I had handled them a hundred times. I had fawned on them and looked at them and loved them far more than I had ever loved any inanimate thing. Their value as symbols was past. They had now become real.

  Gavin sat watching me as I stowed them about me. The car was small, and as I stretched and stowed I felt that the eyes of all the passers-by were upon me. I had to go outside to put the jemmy in position, as it was too long to manoeuvre easily. Once I had it in the sling I had to be careful how I moved, because it galled me sorely in the groin. When I had my coat on all was hidden except a slight stoutness, which Gavin made jokes about as we drove along the Embankment.

  My laughter was strained and I would have preferred silence. I have an antipathy to working in company, and this time I would especially have preferred solitude because I was nervous and frightened. Yet the fear turned into excitement as we neared the Abbey and I had to screw it down until it was only a pressure along my ribs, occasionally unwinding itself in an involuntary twitch. I do not know if Gavin knew I was nervous. Perhaps he did and was trying to jolly me along. But I tried to hide it from him, as his sympathy would have been unbearable.

  We parked the car in the Sanctuary, the open space outside the west door. With a brief ‘Cheerio’ to Gavin I eased myself out of the car, galling my groin on the jemmy as I did so. Then I stood for a moment and adjusted my dress before leaving and walking casually towards the west door. Big Ben struck 5.15 p.m. We were on time.

  I passed out of the shining noisy darkness of a London evening. Inside, the light was soft yet it seemed to illuminate me and probe me out as a persistent and sinister visitor. I pulled my heavy coat about me and hated the damning jemmy at my side.

  Followed at a distance by Gavin I walked slowly up the north transept, pausing only to gaze at a Latin inscription, or read an English one. The venerable guide was in conversation with a woman and he paid no attention to me. I walked on into the shadows, which seemed to be patches of only slightly less intense light.

  I turned as I reached the top of the north transept. It was in comparative darkness. A low rail separated me from the extreme end of the transept, where, under the brief cover of a cleaner’s trolley, I hoped to hide. Down in the aisle, Gavin walked slowly past. No one else was in sight. He nodded to me briefly, absent-mindedly. I crawled under the trolley and having covered my face with my coat lay perfectly still, my head cushioned on my arm. I noticed I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly. I was in Westminster Abbey. Saliva oozed out my mouth. It made the sleeve of the coat from my father’s tailor’s shop in Paisley soggy. Old people say youth is wasted on the young. Mine wasn’t being.

  Chapter Eight

  My own little world was under my coat collar. The steam from my breath condensed on my face and the saliva crept along my sleeve. The hard stone of the Abbey floor was part of it, but the greatest reality was my heart, which thudded and pounded and threatened to stick in my throat and make me vomit.

  This, I had always reckoned, would be the most dangerous and trying part. To be caught at any time would be bad enough, but to be caught with my pockets stuffed with housebreaking tools before I had had a chance even to touch the Stone would be ignominy and derision. And I was young enough to fear derision more than anything else.

  Gradually I relaxed. My leg ceased to twitch and although I wanted to cough I forced the need into an attic of my mind. Quarter to six struck, and then the hour. Gavin would now be out of the building since it closed at six. My head was still covered and I could not see whether or not the lights were out. I did not dare to look.

  When quarter past six struck I tensed and looked up. The lights were out and I was in darkness. I could now move in safety to St Paul’s Chapel, where, since it was under repair, I was certain I could hide without fear of discovery.

  I listened and, hearing nothing but the vague susurration of the traffic in the world outside, crept stiffly from my hiding place. I took off my shoes for silence, and my stockinged feet were noiseless on the cold stone floor. A hundred and fifty feet above me the great vaulted roof soared in the darkness, invisible like a clouded sky. You could reach out and touch the silence as I started to creep along.

  I had gone three paces when I suddenly heard a noise. It was the jangling of keys, and even as I listened, a light swept round a corner of the transept and came towards me. Shocked and frightened, I crouched behind a statue, hoping the watchman would miss me.

  The jangling stopped and the light shone in my face. I looked up, white and piteous.

  ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ The watchman’s voice was clear and masterful, like the voice of a public speaker. He was tall and bearded, and suddenly I knew that he had been badly frightened. He was restoring his self-confidence by being over-bearing in the presence of the poor moron that he saw before him.

  ‘I’ve been shut in,’ I said, hanging my head on my chest, and making myself smaller and more like a mouse than usual.

  ‘Why didn’t you shout then?’ he asked. He was not bullying me, and although he sounded as though he spoke with all the authority of the House of Lords, his voice was not unkind.

  ‘I thought I’d get a row,’ I said, and my voice quivered on the verge of tears. He told me that this would never do, and I cringed before him. Then he saw my shoes in my hand, and I had to tell him the truth, as I could think of no lie.

  ‘I was frightened someone would hear me,’ I said, ‘and come and catch me.’

  ‘Well, put them on,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t hit you over the head. I’m patrolling about here all night, you know.’

  For the first time a wild hope flamed up in me that perhaps he would put me out without handing me over to the police, who would be bound to search me. Then as I stooped to put on my shoes, the jemmy slipped from the sling under my armpit, and only my arm pressing against my side kept it from falling with a clang onto the stone paving of the Abbey floor.

  I held it there in a sort of left-sided palsy, and then suddenly we were moving towards the door, the west door, through which I had entered with excitement and pride only an hour before. As we reached the door, he suddenly shot a question at me.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘John Alison,’ I replied, with a bland ability to improvise which amazed me.

  ‘Your address?’

  ‘Care of Fee, 49 Arlington Street, N14.’

  He noted it down on the back of his Post Office Savings Bank book. Then a thought seemed to strike him.

  ‘Have you any money?’

&n
bsp; I told him I had a pound.

  ‘You’re sure,’ he insisted. ‘You weren’t sheltering in the Abbey because you had nowhere else to go?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I did not feel that I looked like a down-and-out.

  Then he opened the door, led me down the steps, and with a kindly word and a ‘Merry Christmas’ he let me out into the concourse of people who had nothing on their conscience. I hitched the jemmy back into its sling but I did not dare to lift my head and step out like a free man until I was far from the Abbey.

  My first reaction was one of jubilation that I had won free of a dicey event. I had showed my willingness to take risks if not my ability to succeed. I had met the most unfavourable of situations, and coped with it with an ability to lie that rather shocked me, but gave me not a little pride as well.

  When, from the far side of Parliament Square, I turned and had a last look at the massive building that had almost been my prison, I realised that the Stone was still inside, and I wondered at my temerity and sneered at my complacency. With amazing folly I had thought that I might do something of note and of wonder, and I had only made myself ridiculous. I envied people who had someone to tell them what to do next, and walked on defeated.

  Then I thought of the nightwatchman with whom I had crossed swords and scored a contemptible victory. Success had been on my side, but so had the advantages, for I knew all that went on, and was fighting for a cause and striving for my own personal liberty, while he was only patrolling for pay. He had treated me gently and courteously; he had set me free when he could have exerted his petty authority. Yet when it came out in what circumstances we had met, he would become the reproach of his superiors, and the gibe of his equals. Added to my misery was the thought that if a real victory lay between us as two humans that night, the victory was his. He had acted at Christmastime in a true Christmas spirit; he had made no room for me in his church, but he had seen that I was not penniless when he turned me away. The fact that I had to accept his kindness as a sort of betrayal of him troubled me greatly and I could find little consolation in knowing that the whole sorry business arose from this un-Christian English church keeping property at Westminster that did not belong to it. I greatly admire gentleness as a virtue, and I met gentleness in the Abbey that evening.

  I never met the watchman again or heard what became of him. I like to think that he was a trainee curate and that he settled into a quiet living and became beloved of his flock; that he never read the works of Tom Paine or Samuel Butler, or had philosophical doubts. He represents the other Church of England, the one I admire. I have a tiny copy of the Book of Common Prayer, the Cranmer and Latimer one, which I read from time to time. I love it. A smile of affection comes to my lips when I think of this other Church of England and its night-watchman. His concern for me and how he ascertained that I had enough money for a night’s lodging struck a dissonant chord with the drunken celebrations I saw all round me. Although I am one of life’s doubters I left the Abbey with a lurking feeling that I may be missing something that was very precious to the man who had just turned me out.

  I wondered about this as I walked aimlessly along the Embankment, contradicting myself with every thought. I was resigned to a long wait, because we had made no provision to meet should things go wrong. It had never occurred to me that I might be caught and ejected, and that a rendezvous point would be necessary, and, somehow, I had to stop the others trying to make contact with me inside the Abbey when zero hour approached. I was much criticised by many of my friends for my lack of foresight in this instance, but foresight can only see through a fog. Hindsight is the only clear vision. We had not been planning for failure. We had been planning for success. However by one of the series of coincidences that were to mark everything we did, I found Gavin’s car, which I had left only two hours before. It was standing on the Embankment, and I waited beside it in the bitter frost and drew on a cigarette. I knew that Gavin would arrive shortly and I would have to explain how I had bungled matters and let everyone down.

  After about quarter of an hour I saw him coming jauntily towards me. He wore no coat, but his hands were lost in a massive pair of sheepskin gloves. A cigarette poked skywards from the corner of his mouth. He was almost on me before he saw me, and then he stopped dead in his tracks and the cigarette fell to the pavement.

  ‘How did you get here?’ he asked as he stooped to pick it up. His amazement was justified. He knew I had been locked in the Abbey.

  ‘I walked,’ I said sourly and ungraciously.

  He unlocked the car door and we both got in.

  ‘I got caught,’ I said, and told him the story. He listened to me to the end without a word, and then he started the car and drove off.

  ‘You can thank your lucky stars you’re not in there.’ He jerked a fur-clad thumb towards the bulk of New Scotland Yard, which loomed over us. I was too dejected to reply.

  We parked the car in Northumberland Avenue and moved over to Trafalgar Square, where Gavin had arranged to meet Kay and Alan after their return from making themselves familiar with the west road out of London.

  We waited moodily at the Underground entrance in the square. They were late, and I was in no mood for conversation. As the minutes dragged by it seemed to me that there had been another hitch, and that Alan and Kay would never materialise out of the thousands who teemed about the giant Christmas tree in the breeze-blown spray of Trafalgar’s fountains. I moved away from Gavin and watched the crowds and listened to the great noise which was soothing in its strength and impersonality. When I came back to the subway feeling less of a failure, I found Gavin talking to Kay and Alan. He was explaining what had happened.

  Nothing more was said about the Stone since we were all feeling pretty sick. Alan, with a cheerfulness that was not faked, and which did not grate, suggested that we should cross over the road and ‘eat our Christmas dinners’. It was only a few hours since we had fed, but we all suddenly realised that it was good advice. The human body seems to be able to go without sleep for lengthy periods, but the longer the period the more food is required. In the last stages of the expedition, when I had only catnapped during a period of over 100 hours, I found myself eating ravenously and continuously. After the meal, we crossed over Northumberland Avenue and sat in the Anglia and held a council of war.

  I told them in detail what had happened. Among the remarks the watchman had made to me was one which filled us all with dismay. He had told me that it was a dangerous business being in the Abbey after hours, for there were watchmen prowling round all night.

  To me this did not ring true. My information was that there was only one watchman, and I could not see him doing his rounds more than once every two hours. But, on the face of it, it was plausible. After all, I had been caught. My information might have been false, and if the watchman were correct we might as well press the starter and go home.

  We considered trying the same plan again the following night, but gave it up as too dangerous. I could have wept with impotence and shame. Here we sat in the centre of London; reivers, moss-troopers, pseudo men of action, frustrated by one bearded watchman. It seemed to me that we had failed, but it was unthinkable that we should go home yet. On the other hand a coarse and blundering attempt could only end in further failure, and bring disrepute down on our country and on ourselves.

  ‘Don’t forget we are wasting money,’ I said. ‘And the man who gave us it can ill afford it.’

  Kay’s voice came from the back of the car: ‘There are still more nights and more chances.’

  ‘We might break in from the outside,’ said Alan, who had not shown the slightest dismay at our initial failure.

  ‘Or we might try a cheeky attempt in daylight,’ I added, forgetting my cautious thoughts of a moment before.

  Alan summed up what we all thought.

  ‘Bruce watched his spider seven times. We’ve only tried once. Let’s go along to the Abbey and look for spiders.’

  We all laughed. Gavin st
arted the engine and we turned into Whitehall and made once again for the Abbey.

  We stopped the car in Old Pie Street, and Gavin and Alan got out. I stayed with Kay because I did not want to be seen twice on the same night by the same watchman. The other two went off to prowl around and glean what information they could. They penetrated to the Dean’s Yard, and from the Dean’s Yard to the Cloisters, and returned to report that they had seen nothing but a drunken cockney lying in the gateway from the Sanctuary to the Dean’s Court.

  ‘We didn’t think it was the Dean himself,’ said Alan. ‘So we passed by on the other side.’

  We made several other excursions that night, but they were all as fruitless as the first, and towards eleven o’clock we decided to call it a day. We knew that in Glasgow our friends would be waiting and wondering and anxious, and wanting some report from us, but we had little to report to them, and we saw no reason to telephone them to tell them that we had failed. We went instead for some hot coffee, because the temperature was dropping fast, and indeed London was in for one of its coldest nights for many years.

  It was now late and the streets were full of drunks. The whole West End was jammed with people determined on having a good time to celebrate the birth of Christ, no matter how much it cost them. We eased the car through them and swore at them, as there were many who were clumsy in drink. Time and again we pondered on their reactions should they know why we were among them. We felt like a bubble of Scotland in the centre of a hostile stream.

  It was now imperative that we should find somewhere to sleep, for it was getting late and we were very tired. Kay was adamant on the subject.

  ‘We can’t go back to Glasgow with all our money spent and no Stone. We’ll sleep in the cars and save three pounds.’

  The temperature was 10 degrees below outside, and our breath was freezing on the windows. We had had only snatches of sleep for 36 hours and none of us had been warm since we left Glasgow. Murder might have been in our hearts as we turned on Kay, but underlying her economy was a strange truth. In the cars we lived as a sort of community of mutual support. Together in the cars we preserved our fragment of Scotland and our comradeship and our integrity of purpose, all of which we might have lost had we sought warmth and soft beds.