All Things Undying

ELEVEN

‘Looking now at the two brass monuments set in the floor, the one nearer to the altar is considered to be the largest and finest church brass in the whole of Devon, being that of John Hawley II and his two wives, the first on his right Joanna, by whom he had a son. Joanna died in 1394 and was buried in the chancel. Later he married Alicia of the famous, very rich, Cornish family of Tresilian, who died in 1403. John Hawley II died on the 30 December 1408 and all are now buried together under the brass. John Hawley II is considered by some to be the model for the ‘Shipman’ of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.’St Saviour’s Church: an Illustrated Historical Guide, pp.14, 16

According to the morning news, the police were still appealing to the public for information about the hit-and-run driver who had killed Susan, but otherwise, over the past several days, the airwaves had been strangely quiet on the matter.

I was stretched out on a lounge chair in Janet’s garden enjoying the sun and the latest Andrew Taylor novel when the bells of St Saviour’s Church began chiming the hour. I checked my watch. It was noon on Tuesday. If I hurried, I could just make the Christian Aid luncheon. Some of the volunteers, I remembered, had been members of St Anthony’s Church before it was made redundant, repurposed by a prominent architect, and Susan Parker moved in.

It might be interesting to hear what they had to say.

St Saviour’s Church is nestled in the center of town at the crook of the lane where Anzac Street meets Smith Street. The faithful had been praising God on that spot since the early fourteenth century, and for almost all of those years, the first thing worshippers saw upon entering the sanctuary was a magnificent iron door, decorated with two leopards of the Plantagenets, their rear legs forming the hinges, superimposed over the Tree of Life. It was one of the finest church doors in all England, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and who was I to argue with that?

According to the clock in St Saviour’s gray stone tower, it was only five minutes past noon when I breezed through the south door with a nod of greeting to the two splendid leopards, then climbed the wooden staircase on my left that led up to the gallery.

People were already eating lunch, seated in small groups at folding tables covered with clean, crisp tablecloths in a patchwork of patterns and colors. I was alone, feeling at loose ends. I surveyed the gallery, but didn’t see anybody I knew, so I headed straight for the buffet table which was set up on the north end of the gallery under a rose window commissioned in Victorian times by a former governor of Dartmouth in honor of himself.

I selected a variety of crustless sandwiches, a dab of cabbage and carrot slaw, four carrot sticks, a lemon bar and half a slice of chocolate cake, then took my plate to a chest-high window. In the room beyond – a combination parish office and makeshift kitchen – the church ladies were busily keeping the tea coming. I paid for my lunch, chucking an extra pound in the jar for the poor, as was customary, then went in search of a place to sit.

Most of the tables were already occupied by groups of two or three engaged in animated conversation, but one Old Dear seemed to be lunching alone, so I homed in on her. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

She looked up from a bit of bread and cheese held daintily between thumb and forefinger, smiled invitingly and said, ‘Please, do.’

‘I’m Hannah Ives, visiting from America,’ I said as I sat down in the folding chair across the table from her.

‘And I’m Liz Talbot. Didn’t I see you here last week?’ She polished off the sandwich and considered me with serene gray eyes.

‘You did. I was with my friend Alison Hamilton. She couldn’t come today.’

In point of fact, Alison had taken to her bed, still so distraught over Susan Parker’s death, she’d sobbed over the telephone, that she’d rummaged through her medicine cabinet, found two tablets remaining in a five-year-old prescription bottle of Valium, and – while I was talking to her – took them both. ‘She was friends with Susan Parker,’ I explained, ‘the woman who was killed on the Embankment the other morning. She’s taking it a bit hard.’

Liz tut-tutted. ‘I heard about the accident on the telly. Terrible business, that. Sometimes I wonder what this old world is coming to.’ She picked up a fairy cake, slathered with thick, pink frosting, and pinched off a small piece. ‘I chatted with Susan a couple of times when she helped out with the lunches here. She seemed like such a nice, normal person, in spite of what some said about her.’

‘I understand she lived in old St Anthony’s Church,’ I said, polishing off a carrot stick. ‘I gather not everyone at St Anthony’s was happy about that.’

Liz shrugged. ‘Making flats out of the church was better than pulling it down, I suppose. Not that I’d want to live there, you understand, not with that graveyard in my back garden!’

‘Yes, but St Anthony’s is a spiritual sort of place, isn’t it? I can see why a church, graveyard and all, might appeal to someone like Susan Parker. After all, people have been praying there for over a century.’

Liz had finished her cupcake and leaned back in her chair. In spite of the summer weather, she was dressed in a brown wool suit and an old-fashioned white blouse with a flounce at the neck. If I peeked under the tablecloth, I was sure I’d find stocking feet laced into sensible, brown shoes. ‘There’s a difference between being spiritual, as in religious or devout, and spiritual, as in ghostly,’ she chuckled.

After a moment, I said, ‘I read somewhere that around thirty churches close each year in this country. Makes me wonder if England is losing its faith.’

Liz’s eyes grew wide. ‘Dear me, no. Stay here long enough and you’ll learn one simple truth: the Victorians have a lot to answer for. They simply built too many churches! Even in Victorian times, the churches were only half-full, but money was pouring into Britain at the time, and a regular building frenzy was going on.

‘St Anthony’s came very close to being preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust,’ she continued, ‘but after a buyer was found – Susan Parker, as it turned out – well, you know what happened after that.’

I swallowed hard, thinking how much I’d looked forward to seeing Susan’s flat, particularly the beautiful Byrne-Jones windows Janet Brelsford had told me about. That would never happen now. ‘I’ve walked past St Anthony House,’ I told Liz Talbot, ‘but I’ve never been inside. From the outside, you’d hardly know it’d been broken up into flats.’

‘There are strict rules about renovating the exteriors, Hannah, but the insides? I heard of one church, St Ann’s in Warrington. They converted it to an inside climbing gym.’ She clucked her tongue in disapproval.

‘Shocking!’ a new voice said. It belonged to a woman seated at the adjoining table. She’d finished her lunch and had taken out her knitting, but had clearly been following our conversation.

‘Lilith, this is Hannah Ives, visiting from America. Hannah, Lilith Price. We’ve just been discussing poor Susan Parker.’

I thought I’d heard Lilith’s name before, but I seemed to be suffering from noun-deficiency anemia, so I simply nodded and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, Lilith,’ and continued eating my sandwich.

Lilith adjusted the yarn around her finger and took another stitch. ‘Very sad, but I don’t believe in any of that talking to the dead nonsense.’

Earlier, I’d gotten such a rise out of Olivia that I thought I might try similar scare tactics on Lilith. Keeping my voice neutral, I said, ‘Some are saying that the police think Susan Parker’s death might not have been an accident. There were people who were mightily unhappy when she moved into St Anthony’s Church, for one thing.’

Lilith had finished a row. Using her free knitting needle, she rapped the table three times, emphasizing each word. ‘Stop right there! I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Hannah, but I won’t stand for anyone making it sound like we had picketers pacing the pavement outside St Anthony’s carrying signs with “Yankee Go Home” written all over them. Only a handful of us were left at St Anthony’s. We objected to the church being made redundant, that’s true, but once the PCC decided that selling St Anthony’s was the best course of action, and the bish made his decision, there wasn’t much any of us could do.’

Lilith stuck the needle back into her project and began working another row. ‘Besides,’ she said, knitting furiously. ‘St Saviour’s is a wonderful church home.’

Liz, on the other hand, seemed more inclined to play along with my darker scenario. ‘How about that woman who was furious about her husband’s memorial, Lilith?’

Lilith squinted at her work, took out a stitch and re-knit it. ‘What woman?’

‘It was comical.’ Liz turned her attention to me. ‘One of the construction lorries backed into his tombstone, toppling it like a tree. A preposterous thing, if you ask me, which you aren’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. It was an obelisk, this high.’ She held a hand over her head, which I took to mean about five feet. ‘Wreaths and anchors all over, with trumpeting cherubs and suppliant angels running rampant, and a Greek cross on the top.’

Next to me, Lilith snorted. ‘I’ll have to agree with you there. Very O.T.T. When my time comes, plant me in a plain pine box wearing one of those nametags that says, “Hello. My name was Lilith” written in felt-tipped pen.

Remembering all the adhesive nametags I’d slapped to my chest at social functions, I had to laugh. I hadn’t figured Lilith for a sense of humor. ‘So, what happened with the tombstone?’ I asked Liz.

‘The woman threw a wobbly, threatened to take legal action, so the contractor agreed to move the monument to her garden. She had them set it in place next to the tombstone of her dog, Rex, and she’s planted flowers all around. Her husband’s body is still in the graveyard at St Andrews, of course, so I don’t know what the point of that exercise was.’

I think I knew. ‘After the funeral is over, don’t we all need a physical place where we can go to mourn?’ I thought about Cathy Yates, trying to locate her father’s body so she could fill not only the empty plot waiting for him back home in Pittsburgh, but the hole in her heart. And what of the Embankment where mourners continued to build a floral tribute to Susan Parker at the very spot where the medium had breathed her last?

Lilith looked up from her knitting. ‘I agree completely, Hannah. And in this electronic age, that place can even be an online memorial page on Facebook.’

‘Don’t I know!’ I said. ‘I came completely unglued when I got an email from a friend who had recently passed away. It was sent by her daughter, as it happened, but it gave me quite a turn when my friend’s name popped up on the “From” line in my mailbox.’

Lilith inclined her head toward mine. ‘Answering machine greetings are the worst, you know.’ She shuddered. ‘They forget to change them, so you get a voice from beyond the grave.’

‘Well, on that cheerful note, I have to be off!’ Liz fished around under the table for her handbag, then stood up. ‘Nice to meet you, Hannah. Will you be here next Tuesday?’

‘I’ll walk out with you,’ I said, picking up my own handbag.

When we got to the bottom of the steps, however, I revised my plan. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Liz, but I think I’ll stay a while and say a little prayer for Susan Parker. Until next week, then?’

I saw Liz out the door, picked up a Book of Common Prayer from the bookshelf, then made my way down the south aisle to the beautiful little Lady Chapel. I sat down in one of the blue-cushioned chairs, opened the prayer book to the section on the burial of the dead, and read: I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

Life after death; Susan’s stock in trade. Was what she did for a living so incompatible with Christianity? I didn’t think so. With the book laying open in my hands, I closed my eyes and prayed for Susan’s soul, and that whoever was responsible for her death would be brought to justice.

When I opened my eyes again, I noticed a Sacrament lamp – a perpetual candle in a brass holder hanging from a chain attached to the wall. I stared at the lamp, opening my mind, embracing the silence, hoping – but not really believing – that Susan might actually reach out from the beyond and speak to me. But my only answer was the volunteers’ happy chatter spilling down from the gallery as they did the washing-up after the lunch.

I took the long way round on my way out of St Saviour’s, passing through the Ambulatory – past the antique hand pump fire engine and the Armada chest – through to the Chancel where I found myself standing, quite literally, on the splendid Hawley Brass.

Dressed in a full suit of armor, John Hawley the Second lay tall and ramrod straight between his two wives, looking none too happy about it. Each lady was adorned with jewels in her hair, and was accompanied in the afterlife by a pair of toy dogs wearing bells on their collars. But John, I noticed, was holding Joanna, the first wife’s, hand. It was a good thing that Alicia, wife number two, had predeceased old John, or she might have had a thing or two to say about that.

Meanwhile, back in the twenty-first century, I thought about Jon Hamilton and his two wives, my friend Alison and Wife Number One, who had perished at sea.

How was it, I wondered, that in all the years that we’d known Alison and Jon, the subject of Wife Number One had never come up? We still wouldn’t have known about her if Susan Parker hadn’t picked up vibes about an earlier marriage at Janet’s dinner.

Clearly, I didn’t know Alison as well as I thought. Over the years, we’d exchanged frequent emails, annual Christmas cards. Alison emailed my daughter, Emily – who called her Auntie A – and remembered to send cards on my grandchildren’s birthdays. How could a relationship be so one-sided? Now I even found myself wondering if their daughter, Kitty, was Alison’s, or Jon’s by his previous marriage to… who was it?… Beth?

Alison and I were friends, weren’t we? I figured I’d just pop over to her house and see how she was doing. And while I was there, I’d simply ask her to tell me about Beth.

But before I did that, I decided to pay a visit to the Dartmouth Public Library.