Frank Baker Page 20

  The little man had finished his story.

  “Yes, but these birds,” objected the dubious one, “where do you suppose they are now? Tell me that.”

  The little man waved a hand as though he had birds up his sleeve.

  “Somewhere in the Far East,” he affirmed. “Mark m’words, gentle­men, mark m’words!”

  “Pity,” said his antagonist in a bitter voice, “you didn’t catch one like that jackdaw of yours. The Natural History Museum would have been glad of a specimen.” The man opposite me leaned over and touched my knee. “Excuse me, do you mind if we have this window up a little——”

  “No,” I said. “Of course.” And I suddenly realized I was cold.

  I took an omnibus up Broad Street, wondering at the extra­ordinary air of excitement which the expanding cloud cast over everybody. Very few people talked about the birds; everybody talked about the rain which seemed imminent. Hanging on a thou­sand arms, I saw that the umbrella had returned to London. The expression on people’s faces was carefree and jovial; conversation was light and careless, as it had always been.

  On that journey to the Cathedral I realized that I was one of the few not affected by this return to normality. Nothing seemed normal to me. The sky where now the great cloud surged slowly up to meet and extinguish its adversary the sun, was a menace. The cries of people gathered in groups on the pavements I passed—“The cloud, the cloud—rain, rain——”—were like the spas­modic yappings of a ventriloquist’s doll. All along Cheapside there were such groups of people, talking in quick, joyous voices, and pointing to the sky. “The cloud, the cloud—look at the cloud—rain—rain is coming at last!”

  By the time I reached the Cathedral close on eleven, to wait for a seat in the great crowd of people who approached the building on every side, the sun was half obscured in the dusty-looking hem of the cloud. A watery light fell over the City. The cloud, farther west, had thickened to a dense unbroken blackness. It seemed to grudge the expulsion of the rain it held, like a person who has a rare treasure to show you in a box and will not lift the lid.

  I stood in a long queue outside the north door, slowly trailing my way in. The crowd thickened behind me. Hundreds had come on the impulse of the moment, a religious impulse which prompted them to give thanks to God for the cessation of the drought. I heard many of them saying they had not intended to come, but they felt that they must.

  Eventually, after a long wait, I got into the north transept of the Cathedral and found a seat.

  Far away in the west I heard the wind, mounting like the on­coming rush of water down a mountain-side. . . .

  *

  The Cathedral was shaped like a cross, and as you stood in the centre of the cross where the two shorter arms—called tran­septs—extended on either side from the main trunk—nave and chancel—you looked up into the inverted cup of the great dome. In my early days it had been dark and mysterious; as though you saw into the hidden depths of a thick cloud wherein nebulous figures swayed and soared. Then to look up into that dome was to receive something of the true mysticism of religion. But recently they had cleaned the paintings in the dome, revealing enormous paintings of God, or one of his prophets, sprawling over the world. Previously, in the darkness of the dome it had been possible to feel that the Deity might indeed have his dwelling place somewhere up there. The latter-day revelation of him was a cold disappointment, probably because the paintings were bad.

  Spanning the dome like a hoop was a gallery, very high up, in which the curious could make experiments with the whispered voice which, because of some acoustical quality, would travel from one side of the dome to the other.

  Built up in tiers, under the dome, was the great choir which had been collected from smaller churches around London and the suburbs; men and boys, perhaps three or four hundred of them, all dressed in white smocks called surplices. Some of the boys had frills of starched linen round their necks, and some of the men had sacks of drab autumnal colours slung over their shoulders. These were hoods. To one side of the chancel, built high up, was the organ, with pipes projecting from various galleries and some very large ones, called thirty-twos, lying horizontally. When I entered the Cathedral, the organist had already begun to play some dim prelude of his own invention. It was mournful, solemn music, and did not seem to balance the whispered excitement of the people, who already saw this service as one of thanksgiving, rather than one of supplication.

  I sat hemmed in at the back of the north transept. Only by craning my head could I see anything of the choir. I studied the form of service that had been given to me at the door. I remember that it commenced with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, “Our Father, which art in Heaven.” After that, the people were invited by the officiating priest to repeat a general confession of their sins. This was a very common formula in churches. Following the con­fession, the Archbishop was to give an absolution, which meant that everybody was “forgiven.” Then came some sentences between priest and people. Let me see—what were the words? “O Lord, hear our prayer: and let our wail come unto thee.” Something like that, I imagine. Then there was a hymn honoured and revered by all people of this island: “O God, our help in ages past.” After that, more prayers and a reading from the Holy Book. Then I remember, while all the people knelt, the choir was to sing the penitential psalm of the Hebrews, “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness,” set to music by some early Italian composer. This was to be followed by an address by the Archbishop.

  Nothing was heard in the Cathedral except the rustling of service papers, the distant drone of the organ and the whispering of people. Nobody spoke aloud, for it was considered a mark of extreme irreverence to use the natural voice in church. This was, I suppose, why they always had so much music and singing, since the strain of whispering could not be maintained for long.

  As each person settled into his place, after having first crouched over the chair in front in the travesty of private prayer which tradition expected all to adopt, a deeper quietness fell. Slowly it began to grow darker. A stain of weak sunlight that had fallen through a high window, making a shallow pool on the heads of the singers, dried to a thin yellow streak till nothing was left of it. A murmur of approbation arose when, through the great west door, the Lord Mayor of the City with his Corpora­tion entered in procession up the nave. At the head was a flamboyant individual carrying a massive gold mace; then the gowned gentlemen of the Corporation, the portly aldermen of Lon­don, the masters of ancient City guilds and companies; finally the Lord Mayor himself—whose gold chain of office seemed to drag him down to the ground, and whose three-cornered hat be­decked with feathers and held before his breast, seemed to imply that he was concealing something which he did not wish us to observe.

  The procession passed into the chancel; the organ swelled out and played something more appropriate to civic dignity. Some lights in the chancel were turned on, for by now it was not easy to read the words on our papers. It grew near the half-hour. Outside we could hear the buses and cars thundering past, the hoot of motor-horns, and sometimes the clatter of a train over Ludgate Bridge at the bottom of the hill. But above this we could hear, mounting to a higher and less monotonous note, the sound of the wind.

  I stirred in my seat as the conductor appeared and walked on to the platform before the choirs; a tall bent figure with a large, sallow face, pendulous jaws, and a crop of grey curly hair like sheepskin. He stood there fingering his conducting stick and spasmodically scratching his thighs as though he were irritated by a flea. I saw him bend down and whisper to a slim, orange-haired youth who seemed to be his personal attendant. I think he had mislaid some­thing, and I watched, interested, as the youth hurried out, and, coming back presently, handed his master a little box. From this the conductor extracted a small medal on a silk ribbon—the sign of some order, I presume—which he hastily—as though he hoped nobody had seen—put round his neck.


  Now all seemed ready. The clock was a minute to the half-hour. We waited only for the Cathedral choir and the priests to enter and take their special seats in the chancel.

  The clock struck; the vergers closed all doors to prevent the entry of any more people; we heard the Cathedral choir, in some side aisle, singing their vestry prayers. Then they entered, and everybody stood up. It was hard to see. I craned my head sideways between two very tall hospital nurses who stood in front of me. A faded, elderly gentle­man on my left nudged my elbow. “Now we shall have some nice singing,” he said. I nodded abstractedly, not wanting to talk to him; he was a cadaverous and slightly offensive figure.

  I watched the procession. First a cross, carried by a youth. Then twenty boys, all looking somewhat ragged and un­kempt. Then about a dozen men who swaggered in with their heads high in the air and their hands clasped behind their backs. Then a verger with a silver wand, followed by a great many priests and one or two obscure bishops from the colonies. I recognized one priest as an acquaintance of mine: a tiny figure with a flat, triangular face, coal-black hair, and a slavering chin. He looked as though he had just been playing a trombone or some such unwieldy instrument. Then came another verger with another wand—followed, after a space, by the Dean of the Cathedral. And finally the Primate himself, the Prince of the Protestant Church of England: the Most Reverend sage known as the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a spare, frail individual with knotted brows and a bent back. Before him went his chaplain with an intricate and extravagant pole of gold, studded with jewels and shaped like a shepherd’s crook. This was his pastoral staff, and we were supposed to be his sheep.

  The organ sunk lower; heads—though not so often knees—were bent in prayer; and a quiet, well-mannered voice from the chancel commenced the words “Our Father”—words which immediately rustled all over the great building as everybody mut­tered the prayer. The service had begun.

  I found my thoughts wandering. Why had I come here? If I wanted to hear the singing or the address, I could have heard it on the wireless in my home. All over the country now people would be listening, so that the service was lifted from the mere confine of this building and carried to one vast outpouring of prayer over the entire island. But I could not believe in it. There was something so appallingly self-conscious and complacent about this crowd of people in their approach to their God; something so essentially weak and faithless masquerading as strong and faithful. The priests, who had so shabbily drifted in just now—how faded, how archaic they were. They seemed to me to have only historical interest, like the tombs and monuments in the Cathedral. The great crowd of surpliced singers, how vain they were of their voices and their little musical distinctions. The Lord Mayor and his silly men, how pom­pous they all seemed—like comic old engravings which had sprung to spasmodic life. The conductor kneeling on his dais, how proudly he relished his exalted position.

  As I stood up with the others to sing to “God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,” I said to myself, “These are arrogant thoughts; cast them out.” And I tried to sing. But the very words, “O God, our help in ages past,” seemed a confession of people’s inability to believe any longer in their God. “Our help in ages past, our hope for years to come——” Suddenly, it all seemed intensely pathetic.

  Now it grew darker, so dark that all the lights in the Cathedral had to be switched on. It seemed as though we had leapt sud­denly into a late January afternoon. As the lights came on, so the excitement of the people spread like a spark amongst straw. The hymn had ended with a great reverberating blare of the organ, a sound which at other times would have greatly moved me. Now we were kneeling and listening to prayers being read by the Arch­bishop. His voice wavered up into the dome and could barely be heard. He was asking that the nations might be bound together in peace and concord. “What dangers we are in,” he said, “by our un­happy divisions——” As he prayed, and the people said “Amen” we heard suddenly, above the noise of the passing traffic, a new sound: not wind, not trains, nor the drone of many engines. First we heard it as a sharp, plucking noise on the west window; a metallic tapping of the glass, like finger-nails flicked upon the pane.

  I raised my head. The Archbishop had paused before a prayer which appealed for rain. The sounds from the window quickened. Still the Archbishop waited. People began to murmur, raising their heads, looking behind them to the west window.

  Suddenly, in a high, thin voice the Archbishop began to pray, voicing the common desire of his people in the prayer that he improvised. “O God, our Heavenly Father, who hast vouchsafed to hear our prayers and to open the clouds above us as thou didst for thy servant Elijah——”

  A thousand heads turned round to the window, where now the metallic tappings grew louder, more hurried. The wind rose in a sudden thud, hitting the Cathedral like sacks beaten against a wall. “Hail!” whispered somebody. And I heard a voice beside me saying, “The old man shouldn’t have said it; no, he should have waited.” It was the cadaverous individual who spoke. I looked at him and away quickly, for there was an unpleasant smile on his face. He frightened me in a way I could not understand. The face and voice seemed familiar.

  One word grew and carried itself round the Cathedral. “Hail—hail!” It seemed impossible that the excited people could stay kneeling any longer. Now the choir was throwing the melancholy cadences of the Miserere from side to side. I saw the conductor as he waved his stick turn his head nervously to the west window, then back again. The Archbishop had gone into the pulpit and was kneeling in prayer. Everybody turned their eyes upon him approvingly. He was their Elijah; he had prayed and the rain had come. Even now the sweet, sharp hail pattered brokenly on the glass.

  How many had heard the sound of a beak upon glass and failed now to recognize it! Or is a hailstone composed of the same sub­stance as the bill of a bird?

  We heard a scream then. We heard the faltering tinkle of broken glass on a stone pavement. We heard a harsh croaking of malicious glee. We heard the flapping of a thousand wings.

  Then there was a great crashing of splintered glass, and a thick swarm of birds, mighty as eagles and dull black, flew in one solid phalanx along the nave, a few inches above the bowed heads of terri­fied people. Without hesitation they made for the whispering gallery in the dome. Before we could realize what had happened, that glittering hoop in the cup of Heaven was densely lined by a thousand black shapes.

  Through the broken window the wind swayed and roared in fury.

  *

  To speak of the dreadful chaos which ensued within the next few minutes is a task that I confess I shrink from. No words of mine can ever describe that cataclysm to one who did not know that great City and its Cathedral. For perhaps twenty seconds the most deadly silence prevailed. The birds had stopped their vile chattering and sat so still above us that I could imagine they were nothing but a black circle painted round the dome. We heard only the roaring of the wind through the smashed window.

  The Archbishop behaved with dignity. He did not attempt to leave the pulpit, but stood there with his thin yellow hands on the reading-desk, his head cast down, apparently deep in thought.

  Suddenly he broke this dreadful stillness. Kneeling down, he prayed in a loud voice, a thin, vibrant voice which cut through the silence. It was now as dark as twilight in winter, and the wind began to moan and howl its way to gale force. The man at my side turned to me and said, “Well, now, there’ll be trouble.” He had apparently been gifted with the same prescience as myself, for he did not seem in the least disturbed or surprised by what had happened. I looked at him, and as I met his thin, cunning smile I was again afraid, I did not know why.

  Suddenly there was movement from the dome. The Archbishop raised his head with a look of anguish as a bird swooped down from above, whirling its drab wings, and fell upon that haunted face. We saw only the flapping of wings over the side of the pulpit and the forlo
rn waving of the old man’s arms.

  The thought rushed through my mind; if something could in­duce all these people to stay quietly in their places; to pray as that old man is doing, and face their Demons, a miraculous ease and happiness could fall upon the City.

  But the descent of the bird into the pulpit; the immediate descent of another who declined in a great curving flight towards the con­ductor on his rostrum, drove the people to instant action. And the only action they could consider in their panic was to make for the doors and get outside.

  Once that deadly thing called panic seizes a large gathering of people no power on earth, no reasoning of any sort, can quell the pandemonium that breaks loose.

  The conductor, intent upon nothing but his own safety, broke madly through the ranks of singers, scattering the music desks to the ground and sweeping terrified boys aside in his senseless effort to escape. Two or three boys and some women near the chancel screamed out aloud.

  Reason and control broke. A thousand chairs were spilt side­ways; the air was filled with terrified screams and the hoarse shouts of a few who tried to restore order. Every person who had, a minute before, been kneeling quietly in that Cathedral, burst madly out of his place in a terror-stricken flight towards the first door he could find.

  In the centre of the choir I saw a billowing mass of white figures. The bird had seized the conductor and forced him to the ground. In a moment not one member of the choir remained in his place. They too ran blindly out towards the nave, some leaping madly over desks and chairs, some trampled and left wailing on the ground. “The crypt, the crypt!” I heard somebody shout.