“Wasn’t me who took the call.”
He was already wheeling me off. I could almost smell his indifference.
I thought of the woman I’d seen in the park. Too tall to be Lyneth, though for a moment she had looked familiar. And the children so bundled up in trousers and hooded jackets they might have been either sex. Yet hope had surged in me. And it was still, in some fashion, alive.
There was a faint background chorus from somewhere. At least I was managing a few steps. It was a stt. I’d been in the TV room for the past hour, watching the news. He was taking me back there. I’d sat through a report about high street sales during and after Christmas that had made no mention whatsoever of any disaster in Regent Street. It was the final confirmation I needed that nothing had happened there apart from my own accident.
I could hear a congregation singing a hymn as we approached the TV room. Was it Sunday? Would I have to sit through “Songs of Praise”? I tried to ask these questions aloud, but nothing came out. I was slipping away again.
A church choir in a big cathedral. It was packed with military men and women in ceremonial uniform—army, navy and air force. The vaulted space echoed with the hymn: “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past”.
Owain stood at the back of the cathedral, mouthing the words but not actually making any sound. The rest of the congregation sang lustily, wholeheartedly.
Finally the hymn ended and everyone fell silent as a senior clergyman rose to address everyone. He looked withered with age, swamped beneath his mitre and ceremonial robes.
From Owain I understood that he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury and Westminster, the chief prelate of the United Ecumenical Church in Britain. The walls of the cathedral were hung with national flags and naval ensigns, an array of ceremonial colour and heraldry. Behind the altar there was a memorial to the fallen, a huge bronze scroll topped by the Alliance eagle rampant, glittering in the candlelight. Owain’s uncle leant on his stick in the front row, other dignitaries beside him, listening to the funeral oration for a group of senior naval officers whose ship had sunk under mysterious circumstances off Dakar.
Owain was standing alone near the entrance, respectful of the ceremony but unmoved by its religious content. Many people, especially those of his uncle’s generation, were still strong believers, but he had long lost what little faith he’d once possessed. When he was confident that no one was looking, he slipped outside.
The men on duty were huddling in the lee of staff cars. A raw easterly was blowing, stirring up the fresh snow. Sandbag walls framed a narrow entrance to the west porch of the cathedral. Only its dome made it recognisable as the St Paul’s I knew: the west front towers were gone and the flanks of the building had been reinforced with concrete buttresses.
I got Owain to pull on his jacket as he hurried down the steps. He crossed to a skeletal observation tower on the opposite side of the churchyard. A vertical ladder was the only means to the top. Swiftly he began to climb. His gloves were folded inside his jacket pocket but he did not take them out, despite the fact that the metal handgrips were so cold they almost stuck to his skin.
The two SP guards on duty at the top of the post were startled by his sudden appearance. Both wore ribbed balaclavas under their helmets. Seeing his uniform and rank they brought their mittened hands up in an uncertain salute.
“Can we help you, sir?” one of them said.
“Just came up for a look,” Owain replied. “Everything all right?”
“All’s quiet, sir.”
He walked to a corner and peered south towards the footbridge across the river. It was busy with pedestrian traffic, civilians coming and going, wheeling handcarts piled with winter provisions. Dark smoke was streaming out of the truncated chimney of the Bankside power station, giving the illusion that it was a great ship travelling at speed.
Owain turned back to the guards. The corporal had a pair of binoculars tucked into his belt.
“Lend me those,” Owain said to him.
The corporal handed them over. Both men looked somewhat nervous, as if they weren’t sure whether this was an inspection. Owain felt distinctly overdressed for the occasion. Yet he was purposeful. I didn’t try to intervene in any way: I knew why he had come here.
He took the binoculars and made a show of scanning the south bank of the river before swinging them slowly west.
The observation tower was tall enough so that he could see over the tops of buildings out to the west until the winter haze blurred everything. The gentle curve of Regent Street was visible, while in front of it was nothing but a flat barren expanse of snow-dusted ground.
There was no activity in the area as far as could be seen—no earth-movers or busy teams of men, no mounds of churned earth and mangled metal. Everything had been cleared, levelled. As if nothing had ever gone on there.
But he could see dark smears marking the roads in the vicinity: evidence of recent muddy traffic, the trucks and lorries that had carted everything away. What did it mean? He had no answer yet at the same time felt that he should know. Or that someone who did should tell him.
The scene lunged at him as if on fast-forward, and recoiled. A surge of dark nausea overtook him.
I held him fast, letting the gut-wrenching sensation pass, willing him not to fall. It was similar to what he had experienced on his mission in the east, a sense that the world itself had buckled momentarily like a punctured bladder.
For an instant I was back in hospital, staring at a gardening programme, sipping tepid milky tea.
“Sir? Is everything all right?”
Owain’s hands were trembling. The expected view was restored. He held the binoculars out to the corporal.
He began descending as quickly as he had climbed. Halfway down he almost lost a foothold but managed to cling on. Again I had to brace him. His heart was racing in his chest. He breathed steadily until all his panic had subsided, until he had convinced himself that he had exerienced nothing more than a particularly violent spasm of vertigo.
The sound of another hymn was carrying from the cathedraclass="underline" “Nearer My God to Thee”.
Giselle Vigoroux was standing beside his uncle’s Daimler, her overcoat collar turned up. She gave him a curious smile and said, “Taking the air, major?”
Owain managed a nod, continuing to walk towards the cathedral steps. “Needed to stretch my legs.”
She didn’t say anything in reply, though he wondered what she was thinking. Nothing had been said about his late delivery of the Land Rover or the dent in its side following his flight from the bombsite; to the contrary, the vehicle had been assigned to him for his personal use. Nor had anyone raised any fuss about his unannounced decision to resume the occupancy of his apartment. Perhaps they were simply giving him a little leeway, keeping the pressure off. Technically he was still convalescing, so that would make sense. But he needed to be more careful and considered in his actions. He didn’t want to be thought of as a security risk.
He slipped back inside the cathedral. The memorial service was reaching its climax, piped organ music swelling stridently. The coffins draped in Union and Alliance flags were slowly rising on an automated dais. Forty-two gold stars made up the circle on the Alliance flag, each one representing a recognised constituent state within its borders at the height of its dominion. The number hadn’t changed throughout Owain’s lifetime, despite the fact that at least a dozen of the countries had either ceased to exist or now lay beyond its territorial control.
The transition from the outside chill to the crowded heat of the cathedral interior disorientated him. He was still wearing his jacket and sweat was springing out all over him. The hymn had transmogrified into some sort of Hallelujah chorus with an angelic counterpoint. Everyone was rapt and respectful—everyone except Owain, who felt himself drowning in its otherworldly crescendo.