him, his damaged arm clearly causing him pain as he closed the gap between them with long loping strides.
Boots hammered behind her as she lurched across the road ahead. The churchyard of St Paul’s was always kept open. She ran through the gates in the direction of the main entrance. There was bound to be someone at the door.
As she fled up the steps of the cathedral he lunged out at her, but she had reached the doorway, and offered a prayer of thanks as she slipped inside.
One of the wardens was switching off the lights.
She halted, trying to catch her breath. “Father…there’s a man…”
A young, bespectacled ecclesiast with thinning hair looked at her quizzically, unsure of the problem facing him.
She tried again, aware of the figure looming behind her. “Someone is following me…”
The warden looked beyond her to the waiting figure. “The service has finished. We’re closing for the night,” he began.
“But this is a church,” Alison screamed suddenly. “You’re not supposed to close!”
“I’m sorry, but you two will have to sort out your differences outside.”
He thought they were having a lovers’ tiff! She looked around to see the raincoated figure striding quickly towards her.
The warden stepped forward, shaking his head and raising his hands in front of him, refusing her entry. Ducking beneath his arm, she ran into the nave, expecting to find other clergymen ready to help her. There was no one in sight. Surely they didn’t entrust the safety of an entire building to one man?
Scuffling footsteps made Alison turn in fright. Her pursuer had been apprehended by the warden, who was ineffectually attempting to hold him outside. Suddenly the raincoated figure struck the warden hard in the face with the flat of his good hand, knocking him down on to the tiled floor. The sound of the assault reverberated through the cathedral in a dull boom.
He had stepped around the unconscious form and was moving fast towards her.
A narrow opening in the right transept appeared in her vision. She took it without thinking and found herself in the steep stairway that led to the Whispering Gallery. She glanced back, only to find him right behind her.
There was nowhere else to go.
Up she ran, her heart hammering painfully, the hot blade of a stitch forming in her side. As he reached out again she kicked back with her spiked heel, connecting hard with his chest.
She reached the gallery entrance. The chill stone balustrade curved away on either side. She intended to follow the path around, knowing that she would be able to see if he changed direction.
The vast dome rose above them to create a giddying sense of space, its monochromatic paintings fearful and austere. St Paul’s was a gruesomely Christian church, a monument to the idea that redemption invoked awe, not comfort.
He was panting hard as he came through the door. There was no time to put any distance between them. She stopped and looked back, but the dim exit sign above his head cast a shadow over his face.
“What do you want from me?” she called out.
No reply came. He was breathing heavily, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet. He seemed disconnected from the pursuit, as though he hardly realized what he was doing.
“I didn’t find out anything.” She took a step back as he slowly approached. “I swear I was only trying to help. I can’t do you any harm – please, I don’t want to end up like the others.”
The longer she talked, the more she felt she had a chance of being saved. But how? It was obvious that they were alone in the eerie vastness of the cathedral. There was no holy sanctuary for her here, only harsh judgement. He was beside her now. The touch of his hand was soft and almost reassuring.
“Sorry, Lady. It’s not my fault.”
His voice was little more than an exhalation of air with the trace of an Eastern accent. Alison was so surprised that he had actually spoken that she failed to move as he suddenly seized her, his thick fingers snaking across her opening mouth. He was a powerful man, and effortlessly lifted her off the floor. She saw the bitter irony of facing death surrounded by the very history she had spent her life loving and trying to understand.
She looked up into his brown eyes. There was no malice in them, just commitment to duty.
“So very sorry,” he whispered again in a tone of genuine regret. With a grunt, he hoisted her twisting body over the balcony and released it. With thrashing limbs and a throat stretched taut by the power of her scream, she plunged a full hundred feet to the floor below.
Her last sight was of the unforgiving cathedral spinning above her, as the echo of her fall refracted back and forth between the tombs of sleeping saints.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
38
Illumination
Beneath the white traverse arches of the greenhouse were orchidaceous clusters of crimson and scarlet flowers: bougainvillea and beloperone, callistemon and strelitzea, surrounded by fan and sago palms, some of them over eight feet tall.
“This was my great-grandfather James Makepeace Whitstable’s house, and these are the plants that he himself tended. Until recently they were like our family, deeply rooted, tough, surviving. Now they might outlive us all.”
Charles had brought her here after dinner, the perfect place to sprawl in armchairs beneath the glass roof. During the course of the afternoon there had been endless questions about her upbringing and complex explanations of how the guild ran its businesses. He was a decisive man, a Mason, a figure of restless intensity, and had inexplicably chosen to admit her into his world. He had spoken about the supervision of Anglo-Indian exports, and it sounded incredibly, unbearably dull.
Beyond the greenhouse a lurid sunset flooded the sky in a vermilion wash, mirrored in shimmering fields of frost. Charles had humanized himself by changing into blue jeans and a heavy green cotton sweater. During the course of the afternoon he had not smiled once. A number of times he had started at noises in the endless dark woods beyond the house. He appeared to be under a great amount of strain. Now, as he sat warming a brandy in his hands, he seemed on the verge of imparting a confidence.
“I imagine it’s been pretty dull for you today,” he began, studying his glass. “Christmas and all that, you’d probably rather be with your friends, someone of your own age. I’m not used to having young people around. Our family was always old and big and inescapable.”
“I just thought there would be others here.”
“Normally there would be, but this year my visit is under extraordinary circumstances. My childhood memories are filled with decrepit relatives tottering about these rooms. As a kid I was always being scolded for disturbing my sleeping elders.” He leaned back against the headrest, recalling his upbringing in the vast dusty house above them. “Our family – a blessing and a curse. Until recently we were only fighting to stay alive in business. Now look at us. What a sorry state we’re in. I suppose you’ve been following it all in the papers.”
He looked across at her, his grey eyes eerily luminescent in the setting sun. He tasted his brandy and set it down. “You have a very strong-willed mother, Geraldine. I assume you’re aware of her ambitions.”
“What makes you say that?”
Charles studied his glass. “It’s Gwen who wants you to work for us.”
“She had nothing to do with me coming here.”
“I wondered if you had her ambitions.” He gave a rare smile. “But no, you’re different. I can sense a certain antipathy toward your parents. I know you’re acting under your own volition. You must understand something about us, Geraldine.” He gave a thin smile, no lips, no teeth. “The only way to effect an entry into the Whitstable family is to operate in its interests. The family always protects itself. Even if it means curtailing its own freedom.”
He drained his glass. “It’s hard to explain one’s behaviour under threat. Mr Heath will continue to hold out against the unions, and that will be just the beginning. The world is waiting to move into London to pick its riches. There are dark times ahead, and only the strong will survive. Once we were the giants, the whip-wielders. Now
