underneath it the stone softened and crumbled away. Do you see this?’
They had passed through a Gothic doorway on the south side of the chancel into a pillared hallway. Ahead of them an exuberant flight of stone steps curved upwards under an intricately vaulted ceiling. Nina paused at the bottom step. It was hollowed and worn shiny, but as the springing geometry of the stairs drew her eyes upwards she also saw the black flakes of stone that were breaking away to reveal the paler crust beneath. The thirteenth-century magnificence had come to look sickly, diseased. Gordon stooped beside her, with one hand splayed over the base of a pillar. He rubbed with the tips of his fingers into a stone hollow the size of his fist, and then withdrew his hand to show her that it was gritty with dust.
‘Can it be put right?’ Nina asked.
‘We can try. Using the best methods at our disposal, and hoping to be more successful than the Victorians. Some of these pillars will have to be replaced.’
Nina put her head back, following the jets of stone with her eyes, imagining the scale of the work.
‘The rest will be treated in the same way as the exterior, with lime wash coloured with stone dust and skimmed milk to match the old stone as closely as possible. The coating protects the stone, but lets it breathe at the same time. In a hundred years or so, the cathedral’s conservators will know whether we have been successful or not.’
Nina liked the absence from his meticulous explanation of both arrogance and the assumption of omnipotence, but she was also warmed by the underlying optimism of what he described. It was satisfying to contemplate the endurance of the cathedral, this medieval glory of branching pillars and mouldings decorated with ball flowers, solid and cared for and beloved, at the heart of the other careless Grafton with its car parks and chain stores and shopping precinct. She thought of the perpetual counterpoise that underlay this urban contrast, between spiritual endurance and material desire, and was pleased to find it so neatly summarized around her.
Somewhere out of sight beyond the curve of the stairs a door opened, and the dim air was filled with chattering voices. Around the corner appeared a stream of boy choristers dressed in ruffs and white surplices over plum-coloured robes. They swept past Nina and Gordon, jostling amongst themselves and covertly laughing, and descended into the cathed-ral. Behind them came the choirmaster and a line of senior choristers, and then a chaplain with a heavy bunch of keys. Gordon nodded to most of the men as they passed and held up his hand in greeting to the priest. It was time for Evensong.
Nina and Gordon followed behind them, and then turned down the length of the nave to the west door again.
‘Thank you,’ Nina said when they reached the door. Inside her head there was a rich collage of decorated stone and candlelight and fluttering surplices.
‘I hope I didn’t bore you,’ Gordon said stiffly. He was suddenly aware that he had talked, and she had barely spoken.
‘No.’ Nina smiled at him. The choir had begun to rehearse a Te Deum. The boys’ voices climbed up, and higher, as invincible in their harmony as the soaring steps they had just come scuffling down.
Outside it was dark. Gordon wondered disconnectedly where he should offer to take her, trying to calculate how much time was left to him. Could they go to the Eagle? Across to the Dean’s Row house again? He couldn’t bear the idea that he must lose sight of her, but he knew he would soon have to go to the hospital and somewhere within himself find the buoyancy to lift Vicky out of her depression.
Nina was still smiling. The splendour of the cathedral, and the singing, and the startling pleasure she felt in Gordon’s company had lapped together with the images of regeneration in the conservation work to produce a high, curling wave of happiness. She knew that since Richard’s death she had been walking inside a blank-walled box and had been unable to raise her head to look beyond it. She understood in the same moment that she was afraid of what Gordon Ransome threatened, of the edge they were balanced upon, but at the same time she longed to pitch herself over it, for the affirmation of physical response, as a release from the steady and monotonous solitary confinement of her days. The directions forward seemed to multiply entrancingly ahead of her.
She thought that Gordon was going to reach out and touch her. She stepped away, containing herself.
‘I should get back now. I have some work to finish,’ she muttered.
Her immediate need was for solitude. She had no doubt that there would be tomorrow for Gordon and herself, tomorrow and other days. This confidence surprised her, but she did not question it.
Gordon found that he almost ran after her, like a boy. He dodged to stand in front of her, cutting off her line of retreat.
‘Shall we meet again? Perhaps I could buy you lunch tomorrow?’
No, not lunch, he remembered. He was committed to lunch with Andrew and a pair of retailing entrepreneurs for whom they did a great deal of work.
‘Or dinner, rather? Could you manage that? It would have to be late, perhaps, after the hospital …’
He heard her cutting short his bluster.
‘Dinner would be fine. Thank you.’
‘I’ll pick you up at about half past eight.’ He had to call after her. Her heels clicked musically on the cobbles as she swung away from him. Gordon was happy as he went to retrieve his car from the malodorous recesses of the multistorey park.
*
He was early for visiting. Vicky looked up in pleased surprise as he edged around the floral curtain protecting her bed. Helen was in her arms, a white bundle of hospital cellular blanket, and Marcelle Wickham was sitting in the single armchair next to her.
‘Hello, darling, is everything all right?’ Vicky asked him. He acknowledged silently that it was a matter for concern nowadays if he arrived anywhere before the last minute.
‘Of course it is. I wanted to see you both, that’s all.’ He kissed her overheated forehead and laid one finger against the baby’s cheek. He kissed Marcelle, too, noticing her perfume, reminded by it of dancing with her at parties. Then he glanced around for somewhere to sit. The curtained space was full of bunches of flowers, fading fast in the heat. The flowers pushed into inappropriate vases that were mostly too small looked as uncomfortable as he felt. There was a faint but distinct smell of vomit in the ward, underlying the perfume and flower scents. Gordon put his coat down on the end of Vicky’s bed and loosened the knot of his tie.
‘Sit here, Gordon. I’m on my way back to pick up the kids from nativity play rehearsal.’ Marcelle stood.
‘No, Marcelle, you don’t have to rush away because Gordon’s arrived.’
‘Stay a bit longer. I haven’t seen you for weeks.’ They spoke in unison, unwilling to have the buffer removed from between them.
‘This baby is gorgeous.’ Marcelle bent over to admire her once more. ‘You are so lucky.’
Her face was drawn with sadness. Gordon wondered if she wanted another baby herself, and if dour Michael Wickham wouldn’t agree to it. He remembered how one summer barbecue afternoon, with his tongue loosened by beer, Michael had complained to him, ‘Bloody kids. They’re like vampires, aren’t they? They take every hour of the day and every ounce of your energy, and your wife’s and they still want more. Why do we do it?’
They
