So you see she couldn’t go to the village or anywhere else because of the shame of it. She believed they already thought her a lunatic. And she and Serridge weren’t married. Either way she would have faced ridicule and censure, either way she would be ruined. At the back of her mind was the bitter knowledge that she didn’t know what she’d signed over to him during the last few weeks.
Most of all, you believe, she stayed at Morthams because in some small and tender place in her heart there still lived a sickly hope that this was really a bad dream, and that soon her Joseph would change back to the man she knew he really was. Perhaps this was some sort of test, and all she need do was endure. Perhaps she could make him love her, as she did him. She would tear out her heart for him if it would make him happy.
The smell of cats was stronger. The cold seeped from the flagstones and oozed out of the walls. He sat on the table, his back against the rough, whitewashed wall.
It was not entirely dark. As his eyes adjusted, Rory made out a faint rectangle at the other end of the room, which must mark the door. On the other side of the door was the cloister and the fading, grey light of a winter afternoon. But very little sound penetrated the thick walls or the heavy door. It was as if he was entombed. The loudest sound was his own breathing. He was very cold — he had left his hat and his raincoat in the undercroft.
They had taken his notebook, presumably during the fracas. In his mind, he went over the sequence of events, trying to memorize them. He was damned if he was going to let them prevent him from writing this article. First, there had been an interruption to Fisher’s speech — the tall old man who looked Jewish, though presumably not orthodox or else he wouldn’t have been here on the Sabbath. Then the scrap, when the Blackshirts waded in to remove him. Then Lydia was mixed up with it and then Fenella and Dawlish.
Why the hell had Lydia been there? Surely she wanted to avoid her husband?
When the row started, Rory had stood up without thinking, drawn partly by a journalist’s instinct to move towards trouble rather than away from it, and partly to help Lydia. But the Blackshirts were already on him.
The timing was important. It suggested they must have been told to keep an eye on him, presumably by Marcus. Told to pounce when there was trouble in the audience, told to extract him neatly and swiftly as though he were a troublesome tooth, and they were a pair of pincers. He gave them full marks for efficiency. They had frogmarched him out of the undercroft. One of them kept his hand clamped over Rory’s mouth. They had been so extraordinarily polite and unemotional about the whole thing.
‘Excuse me, sir, would you let us through? Gentleman needs a breath of air.’
Everyone must have known that he was being ejected, Rory thought, but his escorts contrived to do it in such a way that many of the bystanders would have assumed the fault was his, not the Fascists’.
More Blackshirts had been milling around in the cloister, mainly at the far end, near the door to the street. His escorts hadn’t waited for orders and they hadn’t tried to turf him out. That must be significant as well. They had simply wheeled him round to the right and down into the Ossuary, where they kicked his legs from underneath him and forced him down to the floor.
Rory had forced himself not to cry out, not because he was brave but because he thought if he did he might attract more violence. Mercifully they seemed to lose interest in him: closed the door gently and turned the key in the lock. Darkness fell like a stone. The light switch was outside the door.
When they left him alone, he had stood up and swept his hands over the walls, exploring the Ossuary by sense of touch. All it contained was the table. The chairs had gone. He hooked his hands under one side and lifted. It rose a couple of inches, and then the weight was too much for him. He considered trying to wedge the door with it, but remembered that the door opened outwards, towards the steps down from the cloister.
Sooner or later, he told himself, someone would come. This will end. Everything ends. He shied away from the thought that whatever replaced this might be worse. Time passed. At one point he thought he heard distant music on the edge of his range of hearing. Perhaps the meeting was over, and they were playing the National Anthem. The theory was confirmed when he heard the rumble of voices and footsteps, a whole tide of them, in the cloister. All those clerks and commercial travellers and office boys were going home to the suburbs for the weekend. He would have given anything to be one of them. He hammered on the door and shouted, trying to attract their attention.
No one came. Had Fenella and Lydia and Dawlish got away safely? It was quite possible that they didn’t realize what had happened to him. It might be hours until he was missed — at the very earliest, not until he failed to turn up at Mecklenburgh Square at half past five.
Everything was now quiet outside. Time trickled slowly away. Rory’s mind wandered. He saw sand dribbling through rows of hourglasses, then the hands sweeping round an infinity of dials, all the clocks and watches of London measuring out his life.
At last, the key turned in the lock, the sound jolting him painfully back into his own chilly and uncomfortable body. The door opened, and blinding light streamed into the Ossuary. In the heart of the light was a shimmering shadow.
‘They’ve gone back inside,’ Lydia said.
‘All of them?’ said the large, untidy stranger.
‘As far as I can see. Serridge and Howlett are still by the gate.’
‘Barbarians,’ Mr Goldman muttered behind her. His face was grey and he was breathing hard.
‘Are you all right?’ Lydia asked.
He nodded. ‘Just out of breath. And angry.’
‘Have you far to go?’
‘I have a flat over the shop.’
‘I say,’ the other man said, blinking at her. ‘We should introduce ourselves. My name’s Dawlish, Julian Dawlish. This is Miss Kensley.’
‘How do you do?’ Lydia said automatically. ‘This is Mr Goldman, who has a shop in Hatton Garden. My name’s Lydia Langstone.’
‘Are you related-’ Dawlish began.
Simultaneously Fenella Kensley spoke for the first time: ‘We’ve met, haven’t we? On Remembrance Sunday in Trafalgar Square.’
‘That’s right. You were with Mr Wentwood.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s in there now, you know,’ Lydia said. ‘Did you see him?’
Fenella nodded.
‘I think they may be after him.’
‘Because he’s a journalist?’
‘Not just that,’ Lydia said. ‘There’s — there’s something else as well.’
‘Mrs Langstone,’ Dawlish said, ‘forgive me for asking, but it’s not a common name …’ His voice trailed away before he had actually asked anything.
‘Marcus Langstone is my husband,’ Lydia said evenly. ‘I’ve left him.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, but in the circumstances …’
‘It really doesn’t matter.’ She bent down and opened the letter box again. ‘I can’t see anyone outside the chapel. And there’s no sign of Serridge and Howlett now. If I were you I’d leave while you can.’
‘Yes,’ Dawlish said. ‘Mrs Langstone, I can’t thank you enough.’ He added, stiffly and absurdly, ‘We mustn’t take up any more of your time.’
To her surprise, Lydia realized, she felt quite calm. ‘We had better leave together but then split up. Perhaps Mr Goldman and I should go through the gates to the square and you and Miss Kensley out by the lodge.’
Dawlish nodded. He was peering at the noticeboard listing the house’s tenants. Fenella tugged at his sleeve
