Rainbow's End Read Online Free PDF Page B

one would know.
    â€œMake me a uniform, Mum!”
    The trouble was (his mother had said), the headmaster might ask him what twelve times eighty-two is, and what would he say?
    To this, he had no answer.
    Or the headmaster might ask him, How do you spell “agape”?
    He had never even heard the word, much less knew how to spell it. It, or much of anything else.
    â€œWhat’s ‘agape,’ Mum?”
    His mother had turned from the hem, smiling and giving him a peck on the cheek. True love, that’s what it is.
    It had only been a little while after that that the bomb had fallen late at night and brought the ceiling and walls with it, covering his mother in rubble and beams.
    Across the Exeter Cathedral yard, the last of the dark blue uniforms rounded the corner, the last but for the one girl, hair flying, running as fast as she could to catch up, and who looked, to Jury’s overtired mind, all the world like Elicia Deauville.
    â€œGo on, Mum!”
    â€œWere you wanting more tea, then, sir?”
    Jury blinked several times, blinking up reality, and finding the face of the young waitress. “What? Oh. No, thanks, I’m just leaving. If you could give me my bill . . . ” His voice trailed off, as if uncertain of the propriety of this request.
    She wrote on her small book, ripped off the ticket, smiled at him.
    Jury left the tea rooms.
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    THERE WERE sixty-four cities in England, which meant there were sixty-four cathedrals. And yet he could name fewer than half a dozen—Exeter, Ely, Salisbury, Lincoln. He stood in the nave of ExeterCathedral, gazing up at the clerestory, the elaborate vaulting, the intricate designs of the ceiling bosses, and wondered if any of those sixty-three other cathedrals could be more capacious, more massive.
    Jury was early, and so he thought he’d take advantage of the taped tour of the rondels. These tapestry cushions—the rondels—extended for the entire length of the cathedral nave, and it was to hear a bit of the story of their making that Jury had paid his one pound for a tape recorder. He was bending over the cushion depicting the Great Fire of London, started, as the embroidered words read, by “a spark from a baker’s oven.” He stood marvelling at the intricate stitching. . . .
    â€œTook you long enough, Jury.”
    Jury nearly dropped the little tape recorder when he heard the voice behind his back. Brian Macalvie stood there, hands in trouser pockets, holding back his mackintosh. Several of the supplicants, seated or praying in their chairs, looked up at him. Something about Macalvie drew people’s eyes to him.
    As God (Jury assumed) looked down, a slant of sunlight pierced the rose window behind them as if its only purpose were to halo Macalvie’s copper hair. Macalvie didn’t need the trimmings. “Sorry, Macalvie. I had to make a stop along the way to live my life.”
    Macalvie was already leafing through a spiral notebook. “That shouldn’t have taken long.” He thumbed the pages. “The body was found almost exactly at the spot where you’re standing, did you know that?”
    â€œOnly you are blessed with second sight, Macalvie. No, I didn’t.”
    â€œThe woman, Helen Hawes, but always called Nell by friends, was seventy-two. At first, she appeared to be in some pain and then just keeled over. Very sudden. According to witnesses, she seemed to get very sick, retching, clutching herself, and then—” Macalvie shrugged. “That was a week ago end of January, when you were diddling around in the States.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œNot many people here, it was just before closing, and not many tourists this time of year anyway.”
    Macalvie’s eyes scanned the jottings in the notebook, but Jury knew he was not reading, he was reciting. He carried all of this information in his head; therefore, he