Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [618]
But it was something else she heard that caused her to frown thoughtfully. For it was just as they were entering the church that she heard Adam turn to his daughter and whisper:
“You see what I told you. This whole place is like a museum.”
It was meant as a compliment to Salisbury, of course. She was well aware of that. And certainly it was true that to any outsider coming to the ancient city, and particularly the quiet close, it might seem as if they had stepped back in time.
Yet, something was wrong, profoundly wrong, with that statement. She frowned, trying to decide exactly what it was.
They were all sitting together – good seats, halfway up the nave. She knew many of the people there. In the row just in front of them was Osbert Mason.
It was so unexpected, she thought, that when the late John Mason had finally married five years after the war, the son he produced should have been so much shorter than he was. True, the quiet librarian from London he had married was a short woman, but even so. It had, in some ways, been a sad business. Poor John. He had set his heart on having his only son succeed him in his solicitor’s office. Yet young Osbert had shown no desire whatever to be a lawyer – indeed, it had been a problem to get him even to finish school. This was not because the boy was stupid either; it was just that he had a passion for working with his hands. So much so, that he had become a carpenter and now ran a small, but profitable business in custom-made furniture, with a little works outside Avonsford. He was thirty-five now and had already made a name for himself. All power to him, she thought, but naturally it was disappointing for his father. Surprising too. John had not been aware of any bent towards handicrafts in his family.
He turned, now, and nodded his large balding head at her solemnly.
Punctual to the minute, as the crowds gazed upwards and the television cameras followed its path, the bright scarlet and blue helicopter had descended out of the spring afternoon sky, and shortly afterwards the Prince of Wales had made his way into the stately cathedral, where he was to read the lesson. The spire appeal had begun.
The works to be undertaken were formidable. The first and most vital was to insert, within the cone of the great spire, an octagonal brace, a framework to take the weight of the spire at its weakest point while the stonework around it was rebuilt. It was a delicate task. And after this, the crumbling west front would be tackled too. The masons would use the old Chilmark stone again, just as they had seven centuries before.
The workshops were in nearly the same place as before: the office of the clerk of works was where the masons’ lodge had stood; there was a glaziers’ workshop, a plumbery, a carpenters’. Nor, in the essentials, had the working methods changed – only the power which drove and heated the same basic machines of saw, lathe and kiln had needed to be improved.
It was a sense of continuity that pleased Patricia Forest-Wilson, as she looked around her and heard the strains of the great Willis organ.
A museum, he had said. If so, she thought with a slight irritation, then perhaps she was a museum piece. She glanced at the faces of the two men beside her – both of them more bronzed than those around them, one probably from a Caribbean sun, the other from the Australian summer from which he had recently come. Two attractive men, she thought, and felt rather pleased with herself. Archibald had been a handsome man too. She liked to think she had only had the best. As for a museum piece – she was not. That was that.
Adam leaned over towards her. She saw Kersey’s eyes following him.
“Seems brighter than I remember it,” he whispered.
She nodded. It was.
In recent years much work had been done in the cathedral. Some, like the restoration of the library, where new cases to hold its priceless medieval books had been made from the old plane trees in the close, was invisible to the casual visitor, though still important.