Oswald’s Chapel the Warden knows it.”
Her reply was calm: “But he doesn’t know that we do.”
“He will when Gascoigne talks.”
“Gascoigne doesn’t know either. This is a fall-back meeting place which Rolf kept to himself in case one of us was taken.”
“Where has he left his car?”
“Concealed somewhere off the road. They planned to do the last mile or so on foot.”
Theo said: “Across rough fields, and in the dark. Not exactly an easy place for a quick getaway.”
“No, but it’s remote, unused, and the chapel is always open. We don’t have to worry about a quick getaway if no one knows where to find us.”
But there must be a more suitable place, thought Theo, and felt again a doubt of Rolf’s competence to plan and lead. Comforted by disdain, he told himself: He’s got looks and a certain crude force but not much intelligence, an ambitious barbarian. How on earth did she come to marry him?
The lane came to an end and they turned left down a narrow path of earth and stone between the ivy-covered walls, across a cattle-grid and into the field. Down the hill to the left was a low farmhouse which he hadn’t remembered seeing before.
Miriam said: “It’s empty. All the village is deserted now. I don’t know why that’s happened with one place more than another. I suppose one or two key families leave and the rest panic and follow.”
The field was rough and tussocky and they walked with care, their eyes on the ground. From time to time one of them would stumble and the other put out a quick supporting hand, while Miriam shone her torch, searching in the pool of light for a non-existent path. It seemed to Theo that they must look like a very old couple, the last inhabitants of a deserted village making their way through the final darkness to St. Oswald’s Chapel out of some perverse or atavistic need to die on consecrated ground. To his left the fields stretched down to a high hedge behind which, he knew, ran the Windrush. Here, after visiting the chapel, he and Xan had lain on the grass watching the slow-flowing stream for the dart and rise of the fish, then, turning on their backs, had stared upwards through the silvered leaves to the blue of the sky. They had brought wine with them and strawberries purchased on the road. He found that he could recall every word of their talk.
Xan, dropping a strawberry into his mouth, then twisting over to reach for wine: “How too Brideshead, dear boy. I feel the need of a teddy bear.” And then, with no change of tone: “I’m thinking of joining the army.”
“Xan, whatever for?”
“No particular reason. At least it won’t be boring.”
“It will be unutterably boring, except for people who like travel and sport, and you’ve never particularly cared for either, except cricket, and that’s hardly an army game. They play rough, those boys. Anyway, they probably won’t have you. Now they’ve got so small I’m told they’ve become very choosy.”
“Oh, they’ll have me. And then later I might try politics.”
“Even more boring. You’ve never shown the slightest interest in politics. You’ve no political convictions.”
“I can acquire them. And it won’t be as boring as what you’ve got planned for yourself. You’ll get your First, of course; then Jasper will find a research job for his favourite pupil. Then there’ll be the usual provincial appointment, serving your time with red-brick nonentities, publishing your papers, writing the occasional well-researched book which will be respectfully received. Then back to Oxford with a fellowship. All Souls, if you’re lucky and haven’t already got it, and a job for life teaching undergraduates who see history as a soft option. Oh, I forgot. A suitable wife, intelligent enough to make acceptable dinner-table talk but not so intelligent that she’ll compete with you, a mortgaged house in North Oxford and two intelligent, boring children who will repeat the pattern.”
Well, he got most of it right, all of it right except the intelligent wife and the two children. And what he had spoken in that seemingly casual conversation, had it even then been part of a plan? He was right, the army did take him. He became the youngest colonel for 150 years. He still had no political allegiance, no convictions beyond his conviction that what he wanted he should have and that when he set his hand to something he would succeed. After Omega, with the country sunk in apathy, no one wanting to work, services almost at a stop, crime uncontrollable, all hope and ambition lost forever, England had been a ripe plum for his picking. The metaphor was trite but none was more accurate. It had hung there, overripe, rotten; and Xan had only to put out his hand. Theo tried to thrust the past out of memory, but the voices of that last summer echoed in his mind, and even on this chill autumnal night he could feel its sun on his back.
And now the chapel was plain before them, the chancel and nave under one roof, the central bell-turret. It looked just as it had when he first saw it, incredibly small, a chapel built by some over-indulgent deist as a child’s plaything. As they approached the door he was seized with a sudden reluctance which momentarily froze his footsteps, wondering for the first time with an upsurge of curiosity and anxiety what exactly he would find. He couldn’t believe that Julian had conceived, that wasn’t why he was here. Miriam might be a midwife but she hadn’t practised for twenty-five years and there were numerous medical conditions which could simulate pregnancy. Some of them were dangerous; was this a malignant tumour left untreated because Miriam and Julian had been deceived by hope? It had been a common enough tragedy in the first years after Omega, almost as common as the phantom pregnancies. He hated the thought that Julian was a deluded fool, but hated more the fear that she might be mortally ill. He half-resented his concern, what seemed his obsession with her. But what else had brought him to this rough unencumbered place?
Miriam swept the torchlight over the door, then switched it off. The door opened easily under her hand. The chapel was dark but the group had lit eight night lights and had set them in a line in front of the altar. He wondered whether Rolf had secreted them here in advance of need or whether they had been left by other, less transient visitors. The wicks flickered briefly in the breeze from the open door, throwing shadows on the stone floor and on the pale, unpolished wood before settling into a gentle milky glow. At first he thought that the chapel was empty, and then he saw their three dark heads rising from one of the box pews. They moved out into the narrow aisle and stood regarding him. They were dressed as for a journey, Rolf in a Breton cap and large, grubby sheepskin jacket, Luke in a shabby black coat and muffler, Julian in a long cloak almost to the ground. In the dim light of the candles their faces were soft blurs. No one spoke. Then Luke turned, picked up one of the candles and held it high. Julian moved towards Theo and looked up into his face, smiling.
She said: “It’s true, Theo, feel.”
Under the cloak she was wearing a smock over baggy trousers. She took his right hand and guided it under the cotton of the smock, pulling the elastic of the trousers taut. The swollen belly felt tight and his first thought was of wonder that this huge convexity was so little visible beneath her clothes. At first her skin, stretched but silken smooth, felt cool under his resting hand, but imperceptibly the warmth passed from his skin to hers so that he could no longer feel any difference and it seemed to him that their flesh had become one. And then, with a sudden convulsive spasm, his hand was almost kicked away. She laughed, and the joyous peal rang out and filled the chapel.
“Listen,” she said, “listen to her heartbeat.”
It was easier for him to kneel, so he knelt, unselfconsciously, not thinking of it as a gesture of homage but knowing that it was right that he should be on his knees. He placed his right arm round her waist and pressed his ear against her stomach. He couldn’t hear the beating heart, but he could hear and feel the movements of the child, feel its life. He was swept by a tide of emotion which rose, buffeted and engulfed him in a turbulent surge of awe, excitement and terror, then receded, leaving him spent and weak. For a moment he knelt there, unable to move, half-supported by Julian’s body, letting the smell of her, the warmth of her, the very essence of her seep into him. Then he straightened himself and got to his feet, aware of their watching eyes. But still no one spoke. He wished that they would go away so that he could lead Julian into the darkness and silence of the night and with her be part of that darkness and stand together in that greater silence.
