The Unburied Read Online Free PDF Page B

rheumatic joints. Can you squeeze past them panels? They took them off to work on the console.’
    ‘But they are putting them back?’
    ‘Oh yes, thank the good Lord. But they quite blocked that door for a couple of weeks.’
    He handed me the lantern and I climbed the stair and found myself in the organ-loft from which I had a good view of the Choir and Presbytery and could see how potentially damaging was the work that was being done. I could also see a much less dangerous way of doing it.
    Just as I was about to descend, I saw a figure approaching the old verger from the direction of the chancel. It was a small and youngish man whose prematurely bald head was gleaming as it caught the lights.
    When I rejoined the old man a moment or two later I found him talking to the newcomer as they watched the men at work.
    ‘This is Dr Sisterson, the Sacrist,’ the old verger said to me.
    With a friendly smile the young man held out a hand. He gave an impression of extreme domestication and I had the odd fancy that his wife had washed him and wrapped him up like a precious parcel before sending him out. I told him who I was and, since his office gave him responsibility for the building, explained why I was so alarmed by what the workmen were doing.
    ‘I believe you are right,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, Bulmer, the Surveyor of the Fabric, is away for a few days on urgent family business. I myself had reservations about the advisability of this way of effecting the work and suspected that the foreman had misunderstood his instructions.’ With a smile at me he said: ‘You have confirmed my fears.’
    I indicated the alternative route for the pipes which I had spied from the organ-loft. ‘They should go along here and just under this tomb,’ I said, indicating a handsome piece of sculpted bas-relief on a large slab of marble high up on the wall. It dated from the early seventeenth century and portrayed in profile two lines of kneeling figures inlaid in basalt – the men facing the women and each series diminishing in size from adults to children. It was the more prominent for not being flush with the wall but projecting from it by several inches.
    ‘Memorial not tomb,’ Dr Sisterson murmured. ‘The Burgoyne memorial. It has rather an interesting history. I mention it because I have just come from a reception being given by my colleague, Dr Sheldrick, to mark the publication of the first fascicle of his history ...’ He broke off suddenly. ‘I beg your pardon. That cannot possibly be of any interest to you.’
    I shook my head. ‘On the contrary. I am myself a historian.’
    He smiled. ‘Then I understand your concern for preserving the testimony of the past.’
    ‘And the gentleman knows a great deal about these old buildings,’ the head-verger said.
    ‘I’m sure he knows more than I do, Gazzard,’ Dr Sisterson said, with a chuckle. He moved back and stood for a few moments with his head on one side, examining my proposal.
    Then he stepped forward and said to the foreman: ‘I have decided to follow this gentleman’s advice. We will take the pipes through this way.’
    As he was explaining in more detail I saw the bearded man glaring at me over his shoulder, but when Dr Sisterson had made his wishes clear he reluctantly instructed his men on the change.
    Feeling rather pleased with myself, I took leave of my two companions and walked on round the ambulatory – which was as magnificent as I had expected – and then down the other side of the chancel, encountering nobody but a young man in a cassock whom I took to be another verger.
    I went into one of the side-chapels and knelt down. As a child I had been devout. Then I had decided I was a sceptic and at Cambridge I had called myself an atheist. I don’t know if I really was but I do know that a few years later, in the worst crisis of my life, I found I could not pray. The Cathedral had no spiritual meaning for me. It was a beautiful monument to a vast,