Fire Watch

  Finney’s foot began to throb. “When he’s finished with his business.”

  “I hope he comes soon,” Megan said. “There are only the three of us till he comes.”

  “Yes,” Finney said, thinking of the other teacher, Mrs. Andover. A fine threesome to hold down the fort: a middle-aged spinster, an eighteen-year-old child, and a thirty-year-old … what? Church school teacher, he told himself firmly. His foot began to ache worse than ever. Lame church school teacher.

  “I hope he comes soon,” Megan said again.

  “So do I. What are you making?”

  “Sheep,” Megan said. She held up the paper. White bits of the cotton wool were stuck randomly to the blue paper. They looked like clouds in a blue sky. “My class is going to make them after tea.”

  “Where are your children then?” Finney said, trying to keep his voice casual.

  She looked at him with round blue eyes. “We were playing a game outside before. About sheep. So I came in to make some.”

  St. John’s at End sat on a round island in the middle of the River End. The river on both sides was so shallow one could walk across it, but it was possible to drown in only a foot of water, wasn’t it? Finney nearly had.

  “I’ll find them,” he said.

  “The lost shall be found,” Megan said, and patted a bit of wool with her hand.

  He collided with Mrs. Andover on the stairs. “Megan’s let her class out with no one to watch them,” he said rapidly. “She’s in there pasting and the children are God knows where. My boys are out, but they won’t think to watch out for them.”

  Mrs. Andover turned and walked slowly down the stairs ahead of him, as if she were purposely impeding his progress. “The children are perfectly all right,” she said calmly. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and faced Finney, her arms folded across her matronly bosom. “I set one of the older girls to watch them,” she said. “She has been spying for me all week, seeing that nothing happens to them.”

  Finney was a little taken aback. Mrs. Andover was so much the Oxford tour guide, prim blue skirt and sturdy walking shoes. He would have thought a word like “spying” beneath her.

  “You needn’t worry,” she said, mistaking Finney’s surprise for concern. “I’m paying her. Two pounds the week. Money’s the root of all loyalty, isn’t it, then?”

  “Sometimes,” Finney said, even more surprised. “At any rate I think I’ll go make sure of them.”

  Mrs. Andover lifted an eyebrow and said, “Whatever you think best.” She turned at the landing and went into the sanctuary, Finney started out the side door and then stopped, wondering what Mrs. Andover could possibly be doing in there. She had not had a pocket torch with her, and the sanctuary was nearly pitch-black. He hesitated, then turned painfully around, using the stone lintel for support, and followed her into the sanctuary.

  At first he could not see her. The spaces where the stained glass windows had been were boarded up with sheets of plywood. Only the little arch at the top was left: open to let in light. The windows had been the first to go, of course, even before the government had decided that a state church should by definition help support the state. The windows had been sold because the cults could afford to buy them and the churches needed the money. The government had seen at once that the churches could be a source of income as well as grace, and the systematic sacking had begun. The great cathedrals, like Ely and Salisbury, were long since stripped bare, and it would not be long before the looting reached St. John’s.

  St. John’s will becrammed with spies, Finney thought. The Reverend Mr. Davidson, Mrs. Andover’s girl, the government spies, and myself, all working undercover in one way or another. We shall have to sell the pews to make room for everyone. He stood perfectly still, balancing on his good foot. He let his eyes adjust, waiting to get his bearings from the marble angel that always shone dimly near the doors. The little curved triangles of sky were thick with gray clouds that absorbed the light like Megan’s cotton wool absorbed the brown glue.

  He caught a glimpse of white to the left, but it was not the angel. It was Mrs. Andover’s white blouse. She was bending over one of the pews. “I say,” he called out cheerfully, “this would make a good hiding place, wouldn’t it?”

  She straightened abruptly.

  “What are you looking for?” Finney said, making his way toward her with the pew backs for awkward crutches.

  “Your cup,” Mrs. Andover said nervously “I heard you tell Megan you’d lost it again. I thought one of the children might have hidden it.”

  Mrs. Andover was full of surprises today. Finney did not really know her at all, had not really thought about her presence though she had come after he did. Finney had ticketed her from the start as a schoolmistress spinster and not thought any more about her. Now he was not certain he should have dismissed her so easily “What are you doing here?” he said aloud.

  “I was not aware the sanctuary was off-limits,” she snapped. Finney was amazed. She looked as properly guilty as one of his upper form boys.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said. “I was only wondering how you came to be here at St. John’s.”

  She looked even guiltier, which was ridiculous. What had she been doing in here?

  “One might wonder the same thing about you, Mr. Finney.” She looked coldly at his stub of a foot. “You apparently came here through violent means.”

  Very good, thought Finney. “A shark bit it off,” he said. “In the River End. I was wading.”

  “It is no wonder you are so concerned about the children then. Perhaps you’d better go see to them.” She started past him. He put out his hand to stop her, not even sure what he wanted to say. She stopped stock-still. “I shouldn’t question other people’s fitness to teach, Mr. Finney,” she said. “A lame man and a half-witted girl. The Reverend Mr. Davidson is apparently not in a position to pick and choose who represents his church.”

  Finney thought of Reverend Davidson bending over him, his shoes wet and his trousers splattered with water and Finney’s blood. He had propped Finney’s arm around his neck, and then, as if Finney were one of his children, picked him up and carried him out of the water. “Either that,” Finney said, “or he has jesuss unfortunate affinity for idiots and cripples. Which are you, Mrs. Andover?”

  She shook off his hand and brushed angrily past him.

  “What were you looking for, Mrs. Andover?” Finney said. “What exactly did you expect to find?”

  “Hullo,” Megan said as if on cue. “Look what I’ve just found.”

  She was holding a heavy leather notebook full of yellowing pages. “I was looking for some nice black construction paper to make shadows with,” she said. “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’ I thought how nice it would be if each of the sheep had a nice black shadow and I looked in the bottom drawer of Daddy’s desk, where he always keeps the paper, and this is all that was in there. Not any green at all.” She handed the notebook to Finney.

  “Green shadows?” he said absently, thinking of the drawer he had pulled out, full of colored paper.

  “Of course not,” Megan said. “Green pastures. ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.’”

  He wasn’t really listening to her. He was looking at the notebook. It was made of a soft, dark brown leather, now stiffening at the edges and even peeling off in curling layers at one corner. He started to open the cover. Mrs. Andover made a sound. Finney looked over Megan’s bright blond head at her. Her face was lined with triumph.

  “Is it Daddy’s?” Megan said.

  “I don’t know,” Finney said. Megan’s sticky fingers had marked the cover with bits of cotton and stuck the first two pages to the cover. Finney looked at the close handwriting on the pages, written in faded blue ink. He gently pried the glued pages from the cover.

  “Is it?” Megan said insistently

  “No,” Finney said finally. “It appears to belong to T. E. Lawrence. How did it
get in your father’s desk?”

  “Megan,” Mrs. Andover said, “it’s time for the children to come in. Go and fetch them.”

  “Is it time for tea, then?” Megan said.

  Finney looked at his watch. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s only three.”

  “We’ll have it early today,” Mrs. Andover said. “Tell them to come in for their tea.”

  Megan ran out. Mrs. Andover came over to stand beside Finney “It looks like a rough draft of a book or something,” Finney said. “Like a manuscript. What do you think?”

  “I don’t need to think,” Mrs. Andover said. “I know what it is. It’s the manuscript copy of Lawrence’s book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He wrote it after he became famous as Lawrence of Arabia, before he—succumbed to his unhappiness. It was lost in Reading Railway Station in 1919.”

  “How did it get here?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Mrs. Andover said.

  Finney looked at her, amazed. She was staring at him as if he might actually know something about it. “I wasn’t even born in 1919. I’ve never even been in Reading Station.”

  “It wasn’t in the desk this morning when I searched it.”

  “Oh, really,” Finney said, “and what were you looking for in Reverend Davidson’s desk? Green construction paper?”

  “I’ve set the tea out,” Megan said from the doorway, “only I can’t find any cups.”

  “I forgot,” Finney said. “Jesus was fond of tax collectors, too, wasn’t he?”

  Finney went into the kitchen on the excuse of looking for something better than a paper cup for his tea. Instead, he stood at the sink and stared at the wall. If the brown leather notebook were truly a lost manuscript of Lawrence’s book, and if Mrs. Andover was one of the state’s spies, as he was almost certain she was, Reverend Davidson would lose his church for withholding treasures from the state. That was not the worst of it. His name and picture would be in all the papers, and that would mean an end to the undercover rescue work getting the children out of the cults, and an end to the children.

  “Take care of her, Finney,” he had said before he left. “‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’” And he had let a government spy loose in the church, had let her roam about taking inventory Finney gripped the linoleum drainboard.

  Perhaps she was not from the government. Even if she was, she might be here for a totally different reason. Finney was a reporter, but he was hardly here for a good story He was here because he had nearly bled to death in the End and Davidson had pulled him out. Perhaps Reverend Davidson had rescued Mrs. Andover, too, had brought her into the fold like all the rest of his lost lambs.

  Finney was not even sure why he was here. He told himself he was staying until his foot healed, until Davidson found another teacher for the upper form boys, until Davidson got safely back from the north. He did not think it was because he was afraid, although of course he was afraid. They would know he was a reporter by now, they would know he had been working undercover investigating the cults. There would be no question of cutting off a foot for attempting to escape this time. They would murder him, and they would find a scripture to say over him as they did it. ‘If thy right hand offend, cut it off.’ He had thought he never wanted to hear scripture again. Perhaps that was why he stayed. To hear Megan prattling her sweet and senseless scriptures was like a balm. And what was St. John’s to Mrs. Andover? A balm? A refuge? Or an enemy to be conquered and then sacked?

  Megan came in, knelt down beside the cupboard below the sink, and began banging about.

  “What are you looking for?” Finney said.

  “Your cup, of course. Mrs. Andover found some others, but not yours.”

  “Megan,” he said seriously kneeling beside her, “what do you know about Mrs. Andover?”

  “She’s a spy,” Megan said from inside the cupboard.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Daddy said so. He gave her all the treasures. The marble angel and the choir screen and all the candlesticks. ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars.’ It isn’t there,” she said, pulling her head out of the cupboard. “Only pots.” She handed Finney a rusted iron skillet and two banged-about aluminum pots. Finney put them carefully back into the empty cupboard, trying to think how best to ask Megan why she thought Mrs. Andover had stayed on. Her answer might be nonsense, of course, or it might be inspired. It might be scripture.

  “She thinks we didn’t give her all the treasures,” Megan volunteered suddenly, on her knees beside him. “She asks me all the time where Daddy hid them.”

  “And what do you tell her?”

  “‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal.’”

  “Good girl,” Finney said, and lifted her up. “What’s an old cup? We’ll find it later.” He took her hand and led her into tea.

  Mrs. Andover was already being mother, pouring out hot milk and tea into a styrofoam cup with a half circle bitten out of it. She handed it to Finney “Did you and Megan find your cup?” she asked.

  “No,” Finney said. “But then we aren’t experts like you, are we.”

  Mrs. Andover did not answer him. She poured Megan’s tea. “When is your father coming back, Megan?” she said.

  “Not soon enough,” Finney snapped. “Are you that eager to arrest him? Or is it hanging you’re after, for treasonable offenses?” He thought of Davidson, crouched by a gate somewhere, waiting for the child to be bundled out to him. “If the cults don’t murder him, the government will, is that the game then? How can he possibly win a game like that?”

  “The game’s not finished yet,” Megan said.

  “What?” Finney slopped tea all over his trousers.

  “Go and finish your game,” Mrs. Andover said. “Take the children with you. You needn’t come in till it’s ended.” Now that Finney was looking for it, he saw her nod to a tall girl with a large bosom. The girl nodded back and went out after the children. What else had he missed because he wasn’t looking for it?

  “It’s a game of Megan’s,” Mrs. Andover said to Finney “One child’s the shepherd, and he must get all the sheep into the fold by putting them inside a ring drawn on the ground. When he’s got them all inside the ring, then it’s bang! the end, and all adjourn for tea and cake.”

  “Bang! the end,” said Finney. “Tea and cakes for everyone. I wish it were as simple as that.”

  “Perhaps you should join one of the cults,” Mrs. Andover said.

  Finney looked up sharply from his tea.

  “They are always preaching the end, aren’t they? When it is coming and to whom. Lists of who’s to be saved and who’s to be left to his own devices. Dates and places and timetables.”

  “They’re wrong,” Finney said. “It’s supposed to come like a thief in the night so no one will see it coming.”

  “I doubt there’s a thief could get past me without my knowing it.”

  “Yes, I forgot,” said Finney “‘It takes a thief to catch a thief.’ Isn’t that one of Megan’s scriptures?”

  She looked thoughtful. “Aren’t the lost supposed to be safely gathered into the fold before the end can come?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Finney, “but the good shepherd never does specify just who those lost ones are he’s so bent on finding. Perhaps he has a list of his own, and when all the people on it are safely inside some circle he’s drawn on the ground—”

  “Or perhaps we don’t understand at all,” Mrs. Andover said dreamily. “Perhaps the lost are not people at all, but things. Perhaps it’s they that are being gathered in before the end. T. E. Lawrence was a lost soul, wasn’t he?”

  “I’d hardly call Lawrence of Arabia lost,” Finney said. “He seemed to know his way round the Middle East rather well.”

  “He hired a man to flog him, did you know that? He would have had to be well and truly lost to have done that.” She looked up suddenly at Finney. “If something else turned up, something val
uable, that would prove the end was coming, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would prove something,” Finney said. “I’m not certain what.”

  “Where exactly is your Reverend Davidson?” she asked, almost offhand, as if she could catch him by changing the subject.

  He is out rescuing the lost, dear lady, while you sit here seducing admissions out of me. A thief can’t sneak past me either. “In London, of course,” Finney said. “Pawning the crown jewels and hiding the money in Swiss bank accounts.”

  “Quite possibly,” Mrs. Andover said. “Perhaps he should think about returning to St. John’s. He is in a good deal of trouble.”

  Finney pulled his class in and sat them down in the crypt. “Tisn’t fair,” one of the taller boys said. “The game was still going. It wasn’t very nice of you to pull us in like that.” He kicked at the gilded toe of a fifteenth-century wool merchant.

  “I quite agree,” Finney said, which remark caused all of them to sit up and look at him, even the kicker. “It was not fair. Neither was it fair for me to have had to drink my tea from a paper cup.”

  “It isn’t our bloody fault you lost the cup,” the boy said sulkily.

  “That would be quite true, if indeed the cup were lost. The Holy Grail has been lost for centuries and never found, and that is certainly no one’s bloody fault. But my cup is not lost forever, and you are going to find it.” He tried to sound angry so they would look and not play. “I want you to search every nook and cranny of this church, and if you find the cup”—here was the tricky bit, just the right casual tone—“or anything else interesting, bring it straightaway to me.” He paused and then said, as if he had just thought of it, “I’ll give fifty pence for every treasure.”

  The children scattered like players in a game. Finney hobbled up the stairs after them and stood in the side door. The younger children were down by the water and Mrs. Andover was standing near them.

  Two of the boys plummeted past Finney and up the stairs to the study “Don’t …” Finney said, but they were already past him. By the time he had managed the stairs, the boys had strewn open every drawer of the desk. They were tumbling colored paper out of the bottom drawer, trying to see what was under it.