A moment in the closing pages of the anthem, two bars of contrary motion in the bass and tenor voices, caught Ayscue's ear. He remembered noticing it when glancing through the score with Townsend the previous week. Then he had passed it by as unremarkable, the taking of an obvious opportunity; now he caught his breath and felt himself shiver imperceptibly all over. Considering what he was about to say, it was mildly ironical that at this moment music should once more have revealed itself to him as the true embodiment of the unaided and self-constituted human spirit, the final proof of the non-existence of God.
As the series of florid, rather Handelian amens swung to its close, he caught Churchill's eye and his sense of irony sharpened. But this was a faulty, outdated reflex. In the couple of days since his return to activity, Churchill seemed to have become quite at peace, no longer frowning or continually on the verge of protest or sarcasm. He gave a faint smile now and said something to Catharine at his side. Lucy Hazell leaned over to hear it too, but Brian Leonard next to her still stared to his front, his look of puzzlement unaltered since the first chord of the fantasia. Even so, it was heartening to see him there. Apart from a squad of nominated volunteers from among the men off duty, and a few of Pearce's mates, the attendance from the camp was not strikingly good. The Colonel, Ross-Donaldson and Venables (not that the latter had been seriously expected to turn up at the concert) were away at a conference in London, where Hunter had also gone, it appeared for some sort of interview. The village, however, led by Eames, had come along in force.
The last traces of the music vanished from loft, chancel, pews, roof, gallery. Ayscue began to speak in his public tone, the one he hated whenever he caught himself at it. On those occasions he would wish he could sound as if he meant what he was saying. But he knew that that made people uncomfortable. And it could hardly be argued that wanting one's words to be believed was the same as meaning them.
"This will take about three minutes flat," he said, not too bluffly, he hoped. "You came here to enjoy yourselves, and if anybody feels like muttering that he doesn't see why he should have to put up with a dose of uplift thrown in, well, I rather sympathize with him. Many of us are in the habit of keeping our pleasures and our more serious thinking in separate compartments, and we wouldn't be human if we didn't tend to resent having our habits disturbed. But just for a moment I'm going to try to disturb this one a little. We've been listening to some music by Thomas Roughead, very finely performed by Mr. Townsend and the members of the choir. Not much is known about Roughead's life, very little more than what you see in your program. But we can learn something of him through his music. Whether he was writing church anthems like the one we've just heard, or whether, as in that song immediately before the anthem, he was celebrating the earthly pleasures that are every human being's birthright"-this was said with a hard look at the vicar- "Roughead had his eye, his musical eye if you like, on the glory of God. You may think I say this because he was a church composer, because a large part of his music is obviously religious in character, in function. That's true, but I mean more than that. Every piece of music, every work of art, and in fact everything that human beings produce, doesn't come simply from them, from their human minds and hearts. God is with and within us all in everything we do, and never more than when we're doing the best things we're capable of. It's God's glory that we're celebrating at moments like that. It was God's glory that Roughead was celebrating in these compositions of his, God's glory that our musicians have been participating in as they played and sang them, God's glory that's been revealed to the rest of us as we sat here listening to them. This is what happens to us throughout life, even at moments that seem to have nothing of God in them.
"We're in his house this evening. It's only common courtesy to say a few words to him, I think you'll agree.
"Let us pray."
As he turned and knelt, Ayscue was troubled less by the content, at once hectoring and chummy, of his penultimate sentence-ideas like that seemed to come from nowhere-than by the triteness, obscurity and illogic of what had gone before. He thought to himself he must be getting old. Then, as always on these occasions, he prayed, because here at any rate one got the chance of saying what one meant, even if to nobody.
"Catharine. Don't do it to her. Let her get well and stay well. Please."
Whenever he had prayed before it had been like talking into an empty room, into a telephone with nobody at the other end. But this time it came upon him with certainty, if certainty could apply to an image, that the room had ceased to be empty, or that somebody was at the other end of the telephone, not saying anything, nowhere near that, but listening.
It frightened him rather. He felt he could believe that this was the first stage of a process, a chain, a series of which the last would be a joy so enormous that it justified everything, or at least an explanation so cogent that human beings would unhesitatingly forgive all the wrongs God had done them.
Without thinking about it he got to his feet, rather sooner than everybody had expected. Then he recollected himself and walked firmly back to the lectern.
"Now we are going to play you," he said, trying to breathe normally, "a work by Thomas Roughead that has probably not been heard for a hundred and fifty years. Trio-sonata in B minor for flute, violin and piano."
Townsend crossed from the stairs leading to the loft and sat down at the piano on Ayscue's right. Pearce came down the aisle, flute in hand, and took up his position behind the music-stand that had been set for him. Ayscue picked up his violin and bow from the top of the piano. With the minimum of delay they began. It was immediately clear that they would do well.
Outside, Ayscue's dog Nancy was secured by her lead to the railings by the gate. She was used to being in this situation, and when he prepared to leave his room to go to the concert she had responded so enthusiastically that he had not had the heart to leave her behind. But music had always had a bad effect on her, even at a distance, and the sounds now coming from the church seemed to strike her as especially intolerable. Squeaking, she tried as never before to slip her collar, and at last succeeded.
She had run through the gateway onto the sunlit pavement and was standing uncertainly there when an agriculture lorry came jolting down the village street. Although devotedly maintained, it was an old vehicle and its driver knew that it was nearing the end of its service. When Nancy, evidently too interested in something across the street to notice the lorry, moved cautiously into its path, he spun the wheel to avoid her. The steering failed to respond.
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