He walked over to the large square black font. It resembled marble but Pete knew, from his reading of the Cathedral’s history, that it was polished and waxed limestone brought from France in the mid-twelfth century. ‘This is a font. Do you know what it’s for?’
‘To wash your hands?’
‘No, it’s for baptising new babies. The priest puts water over their head and…’
‘What’s baptising?’
‘Well, it’s a thing parents do to say we want our baby to believe in God and we’re going to teach her about God as she grows up.’
‘Did you do that about me?’
‘Let’s look around, shall we? Oh, look at this…’
‘Okay.’
Pete turned towards the Nave, still holding his children’s hands. They were relaxed and in no hurry. Pete revelled in this element of his children and parenting more than any other. There was no hurry, no deadlines, no copy to get to the editor, no coffee date appointment to meet, no traffic to battle, and no dinner to cook by a certain time. It was the weekend, and for Pete, even weekdays now afforded much of that peacefulness. He appreciated the opportunity to guide his children through the beauty of this place, not because he needed them to understand God – he wasn’t so sure about God himself – but to show them the power of a people and a history, and even an empire for all its strengths and weaknesses, and how the Church and its buildings fostered a nation. Not a religious education, but an education just the same. Not a celebration of the power of a state, but an observation of the labours and devotions of hundreds of thousands of people across hundreds of years. That was Lincoln Cathedral to Pete, and he immersed himself in it.
The Cathedral was enormous, not dark but not light, afternoon sun pouring in just the same, through the high northern windows and stained glasses. The effect was appropriately celestial. The size of the space he was in, up, across and looking the long distance towards the eastern end, still staggered him.
The high, lengthy Nave was neatly laid out with moveable seating, and several people were dotted about – some obviously locals and in prayer, others tourists quietly taking in their surrounds. A large pulpit with a spiralling staircase stood empty. A few obvious church officials were about – some busying themselves with administrative tasks; another middle-aged woman in cassock speaking with a visitor or parishioner.
Jillie was happy to walk slowly beside her father. Holding hands had been openly agreed as their favourite thing. Pete observed the relative quiet of the enormous building, oddly without much echo. Jillie had a sense of the place and had made an assumption that it was a place of whispers. Tim was compliant, for now. Had he thought it in so many words, he would also recognise that holding his father’s hand was one of his favourite things.
They walked along the south wall, stopping at each giant window, in part looking at what each tableau contained, in part simply taking in the beauty of the colours and light plays of each. This particular craftsmanship was never lost on Pete either and his appreciation never became saturated. Jillie could not seem to get enough either and had remarked once ‘it’s so beautiful, Daddy – can we come and live here in the Church’, to the bemusement of bystanders.
They passed the cassocked woman chatting to another visitor. Pete saw that her name tag read ‘Duty Chaplain’, as she introduced herself to the person she was with as ‘Jane’. She spoke softly and kindly in a well educated accent, and Pete wondered about a lifetime of devotion to the Church.
He said quietly to Jillie, ‘Is there anything you’d particularly like to see, sweetie? Mummy’ll be a wee while.’
‘No, I like all the parts. Look, there’s a picture of a swan in that glass up there.’
‘It is too. Do you think that’s the swan we saw today?’
‘Don’t be silly, Daddy.’
‘But it could be the great-great grandfather of the one that talked to Timmy. Probably ten times that number of greats. Probably infinity greats.’
‘Wow!’ Jillie continued to stare up at the window.
Pete wallowed a moment in her delight.
At the other end of the nave, across the West Transept, the Choir screen marked the midpoint of the Cathedral.
Pete turned and looked back down the Nave with its twin lines of great columns. There was surprisingly little noise, even with people milling about. To his left now, the afternoon sun poured down into the southern end of the transept through an enormous round stained glass window, the Bishop’s Eye, set high in the wall.
Tim was standing, head back, blinking up through the central tower rising directly above them. The perfect symmetry of the many vaulted and arched lines in this view was like one section through a kaleidoscope. Tim was mesmerised, until Jillie stood right in front of him, looking up too, and his attention was broken and he giggled at his sister.
They wandered along the southern choir aisle, and Tim pulled away towards a black stone resembling a seat built into the surrounding internal Cathedral wall. He meandered over, moving his head left and right as he walked, keeping his eyes though on the seat. He stopped in front of it and stood, a little tentatively, the fingers of one hand lightly brushing the edge of the structure. Then he sat down on the floor, rested his head, and stared along the edge of the metre-long seat.
Tired, thought Pete.
A shuffle to one side drew Pete’s attention to a stout red-haired cassocked woman emerging around the Choir Screen with a small stack of books. She walked towards them and, as she got close, slowed to consider the view of the boy perched on the stone floor.
‘Sorry,’ said Pete. ‘He’s just plopped himself down there. A bit tired, I think.’
‘Oh no, not at all. He looks very sweet. Quite at home,’ said the woman, smiling.
Tim leant further on to the seat and put his hand on it, as though listening for something inside the box.
The woman also cocked her head to one side, studying Tim. ‘Do you know what’s in there?’
‘Ah, no. I don’t. What is in there?’
The woman was clearly pleased with the small spectacle. She turned to Pete. ‘Actually, it’s a shrine.’
Pete’s eyebrows rose.
‘It used to be a lot bigger and more ornate but was destroyed during a war once. It’s known as the Shrine of Little Hugh.’ She looked back to Tim. ‘A young boy from the Middle Ages. Quite a horrendous story. Supposedly he was crucified and then tossed down a well. His death was blamed on the Jews, although undoubtedly that wasn’t the case. Some were executed though for the crime. The boy was considered a martyr and was interred here. No one knows now, of course, who he really was or what really happened.’ She stared still at Tim and then turned back to Pete. ‘But perhaps your wee boy does.’
Pete stared at her.
‘But never mind me, I like to imagine these things.’ She laughed a little, at herself it seemed.
Pete looked to Tim and back. She was rather jolly, this woman, and open, as she smiled at them all. ‘Tim … he knows … some things we don’t know, for sure.’
‘Well, I find most small children do have some wisdom about them, I have to say.’
‘Tim’s autistic,’ Pete explained.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh. Well.’ She looked intriguingly at Tim. ‘I’m Rose Draper. I’m a deaconess here.’ She turned back to Pete and extended her hand.
‘Pete Watson.’ Pete shook her hand. ‘This is Jillie. We live at Nocton Fen. Jillie and I’ve been a few times to the Cathedral, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, I like it.’ Jillie stepped forward.
‘Well, I’m glad.’ She seemed genuinely delighted.
‘Mmm,’ Jillie responded shyly.
‘Well, it’s a curious attachment your Tim has to our Little Hugh.’
‘Oh, you know, he’s just tired really. We’ve had quite a day. And he does this thing looking along vertical and horizontal lines like this, especially when he’s tired. It’s called local coherence – when things are getting a bit much, i
f there’s too much going on – autistic kids will activate some little habitual behaviour they have, and it keeps anxieties and uncertainties about their environment at bay. So that’s one of the things he does.’ Pete looked at his son. ‘Looks like he’s on to something else though now,’ he said.
Tim was smiling, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed.
Jillie was holding her father’s hand again and also watching her brother. She could see the light again, that had come before when Tim talked to the Swan.
‘You know, he smiles like this – at nothing seemingly – all the time. Sometimes I swear it’s to the same vacant spot in mid-air, completely as though there’s something there that no one else can see. We’ve just been down to the lake, and he’s been having the most unbelievable little chat with one enormous swan. My wife was just about beside herself. He practically walked off with it.’
‘It was talking to him, Daddy. I could see it.’
‘Yes, well, it did rather look like it, that’s for sure.’
‘You know that the real St Hugh – Bishop Hugh – who rebuilt the cathedral in the Middle Ages, is the Patron Saint of swans and sick children.’
‘Really?’ Pete said.
‘So that makes for a nice little story, doesn’t it? Your wee man here chatting with swans just like a real saint.’
‘Oh, well … ’
‘You know, I really do think some children can connect into something we can’t – as though we’ve lost it – and they haven’t yet. And there are children like Tim – I’ve seen this before – you’re right, they see things we don’t. And I do wonder about that, I really do. It gives me enormous pause to consider the ways we conceive of God, that I wonder may be quite … well, not so useful. I don’t know. Anyway, you’re quite blessed I’m sure, Pete, to have Tim.’
‘Thank you. Not many people would think that. It’s nice of you to notice.’
‘Well, I must away. Things to do – song sheets to prepare, etcetera. Lovely to meet you.’ Rose extended her hand again and Pete took it.
‘Yes, you too.’
‘I hope I’ll see you again some time. Goodbye, Jillie. Enjoy your afternoon with your dad.’
‘Bye.’
Rose walked off and then turned back after a few paces.
‘Forgive me if I’m being rather bold, Pete. It’s just that I’m about to pin this up to the noticeboard. We run several adult classes – discussion groups really – where we explore questions about what do we know and how do we know it, God and so on. Maybe you’d be interested. There’s one at my cottage on Thursday evenings. There are nine or ten of us, I suppose. We start at seven thirty. Here …’ Rose handed over a leaflet from the pile of things in her arm. She scribbled on the corner and handed it to Pete. ‘It’s just along from the Cathedral, easy to find. You don’t need to bring anything, although a bottle’s always welcome.’ She grinned. ‘Right, well, must away. Cheerio!’
Pete’s views on the eccentricities of the Church and priesthood felt both confirmed and dismantled all at once.
‘Thank you.’ Pete didn’t know what else to say. That was a bit odd. Cheerful sort though. And she had Tim’s number all right.
Tim walked along with his head hanging back almost as far as it could go, holding his father’s hand for balance and staring up at the vaulting far above. They’d walked to the eastern end of the Cathedral, past St Hugh’s shrine, an enormous affair, and back down the northern choir aisle. Pete noticed the vaulting here was irregular and asymmetrical as though two different halves of two quite different cathedrals had been joined together by accident, but cleverly just the same.
How odd, thought Pete. Bet that disturbs Tim’s linear aesthetic.
The bright light in the rafters reminded Tim of the reflection he’d seen earlier, and he knew then that he would see it again, and often, because ‘it’ was a special friend who saw the world just as he did.
‘Thank God!’ Alicia fell into bed next to Pete.
‘That was a bit of a mission sorry. He’s in that super-stimulated but super-tired state.’
‘Isn’t he always in that state? Honestly, if there’s a balance between giving him plenty of stimulation to get those cogs going, and not giving him too much so he goes completely mental, I don’t know what it is.’
‘Yip.’
Alicia grabbed the top book from a pile by her bed. Tim, bespectacled, had The Times in his hands.
‘Isn’t that yesterday’s?’
‘Yeah, I didn’t get to it. Tim. You know.’
‘I do know.’
Neither Pete nor Alicia found much benefit in complaining about the trials of parenting an autistic child, but both offered a silent support and a quiet knowing to each other’s quite separate battle with this reality.
‘How was the cathedral?’ Alicia had collected her family that afternoon as planned and the evening was then taken over with the usual dinner-bath-story-bed ritual, albeit that this particular evening’s ritual was vastly extended by Tim’s considerable and chaotic energy.
‘It was lovely. I really do like it there, so much history and fabulous stories. In fact, I heard a new one from a priest-woman while we were there.’
‘A priest-woman? What’s that ya’ dork? There’s no such …’
‘I think she was a deacon – a deaconess, yeah, she was a deaconess.’
‘What’s a priest-woman?! Ya’ nong!’
‘Well, she was a deaconess, I remember now. Anyway, what I was saying …’
‘Carry on.’
‘There was this box Timmy sort of sat on … leant on. Well, it turned out it was a shrine – just a wee thing, stuck out of the wall. Didn’t look like anything unusual, kind of a seat really, a black stone box. Turns out it’s the body of a child, thrown down a well in the Middle Ages, and it got put there. No one knows who it is, but he’s referred to as Little St Hugh, after the real St Hugh, who was bishop at the time.’
‘How’d you know all this?’
‘The deaconess!’
‘Right. Name of … ?’
‘Ah. R … r … Rose!’
‘R-r-rose!’
‘I was just trying to remember it. I knew it was R-something. You’re being very cheeky tonight, y’know.’
‘Sorry. Feel like taking the piss. The alternative may be that I yell at someone.’
‘Really? Why’s that, love? Those quantums getting you down again?’
‘Oh, I’m just not sure about what I’m doing, and where I’m doing it. Bit bored, I suppose. Would rather be in the thick of it somewhere and instead I’m sat here in Lincoln with a bunch of dreary odd-bods who’re not at all interested in anything new – anyway, whatever. Don’t get me started.’
‘I know the perfect recipe for boredom.’ Pete put his book down and rolled towards his wife.
‘Nuh. Don’t even think about it.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. Not interested. Sorry.’
‘Oh my, things are bad.’
‘Don’t joke. It’s not funny.’
‘Right then.’ Pete went back to his book.
Alice put her book aside, turned out her light, and slid under the covers, away from Pete.
‘Nice chatting,’ said Pete.
‘Careful. Honestly.’
‘’kay. Sorry.’ Pete put his book down, turned a light out, and cuddled in behind his wife. ‘It’ll work out, hun.’
‘Yuh. Thanks.’ And an afterthought, ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
That night, Loraine Warren, who was staying with her sister in Torksey, walked to the gate to put the milk bottles out. She looked up at the night sky and happened to see a falling star.
‘Hmm.’
She was observing the interconnectedness of all things, knowing that the light from the stars had taken an infinite time to reach her eyes. Also she knew that a ‘falling star’ was really just a meteorite burning up as it traversed the atmosphere, acknowledging, nonetheless, the porte
nt of an event yet to come.
Loraine, unapologetically fat and unapologetically not fit, puffed back up the front steps and into the living room where her brother-in-law, Arthur, sat bespectacled and reclined with his feet up, a Scientific American in his hands.
‘A world leader’s going to be shot tomorrow,’ she announced, ‘but he won’t be killed.’
Arthur looked up, realising, after a few seconds staring into Loraine’s face that this would probably be the case.
‘Right,’ he said, as if that was that.
Loraine nodded a little nod, as if that was also that. ‘Well, goodnight then.’
‘Goodnight.’
His eyes followed her out. He glanced down at his magazine, and then back to where she’d been standing.
Right.
It was 29 March 1981.
5
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress than all the previous centuries of existence.
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
Going about his own business and little more was what made up the foundations and pillars of Gamel Warriner’s life. Anything that threatened to disrupt his easy rhythms and habits, he either didn’t notice or he closed his mind to. He was not a cruel man, but he was insensitive, through simplicity of life and habit. He cared little and felt less. He was just like that. A day in his blinkered life was preferably never an exception to any other. Every moment followed the previous one through however many hours the day sent, through weeks and seasons, moons and harvests, each year bringing him nearer his mortal limit. It was the way of things, and he conformed to this without even considering his conformity a deliberate act. It was the way of things and that was as sure a thing as there could be.
There were two things though that daily threatened Gamel’s footing – his wife, and his youngest son. To Gamel, most people were more or less the same as each other. He preferred it that way. Trees and the like, which he knew and understood well, they were different. They had variations in the qualities of their wood and thus the uses to which they could be put. Rock and stone were likewise. Seasons were different, and parts of seasons, and these ruled Gamel’s life more than most things. But not people. People were the same, they were predictable, and mostly they went about their business the same as he, each one knowing his part and path. For his own part, Gamel knew people expected certain things of him; they knew him to be law-abiding and hard-working, and they knew if they passed him by on the road, he would tip his hat and nod a Mornin’, not so much as a courtesy, but not just as a thing that must be done either. If some neighbour needed help to haul a log, or shift some beast dropped from lameness or disease, then they knew, and Gamel knew, that he could be relied on for aid, with no expectation of favour or such recompense of the small kind as may be afforded or occasionally offered. Daily life required attention to cooperative engagement with those living near. This was not an act of affection or friendship on Gamel’s part. Nor though was he unfriendly or cold. Survival relied on the flexible and committed operation and unfolding of this kind of mutual dependency. It was natural.
Angels in the Architecture Page 6
