A Finer End

Glastonbury is the one great religious foundation of our British forefathers in England which has survived without a break the period of successive conquests of Saxon and Norseman, and its august history carries us back to the time of the earliest Christian settlement in Britain.

—FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM AN ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK

OF GLASTONBURY ABBEY

ON A SOFT evening in late June, Gemma James stood beside Duncan Kincaid in the pew of St. John’s Church, Hampstead. They had come to hear Kincaid’s neighbor, Major Keith, sing in the choir at St. John’s Evensong service.

Brought up in the spare tradition of Methodist chapel, Gemma had not learned to feel at ease in the Anglican Church. She watched Kincaid closely, standing when he stood, kneeling awkwardly when he knelt, and envying the ease with which he made his responses. Her mum would be horrified to see her here, she thought with a small smile; but Gemma was used to her mother’s dismay, given her choice of career.

The music, however, made up for her discomfort with the order of service. Gemma avidly followed the program in her leaflet: first the lovely opening prayer, then a Psalm, then the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.

Then, with a rustle of movement, the choir rose again and began to sing, the voices coming in one after another, each more joyous than the last. The sound struck Gemma with a force almost physical; so rich was it, so full, that it seemed as if it displaced the very air. She shivered, blinking back tears.

Kincaid glanced at her, eyebrow raised, and put his arm round her shoulders. “Cold?” he mouthed.

Shaking her head, she found the piece in her leaflet. Ave Maria, by Robert Parsons. Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, read the English translation.

Gemma closed her eyes, letting the soaring, pulsing sound carry her with it, and the rest of the service passed as if in a dream.

“You all right?” Kincaid asked as they filed out afterwards. The sun, low in the sky, cast the gnarled trees in the sloping churchyard into deep shadow.

“The music …”

“Lovely, wasn’t it? Good choir at St. John’s.” He whistled under his breath. “I promised the Major we’d buy him a drink. The Freemason’s Arms, you think? It’s a nice enough evening to sit outside.”

Gemma gazed at him in consternation. Tall, slender, his unruly chestnut hair falling over his forehead, looking down at her with an expression of interested inquiry—he made a picture of the perfect sensitive man. So why did she suddenly feel they might as well be from different planets?

How could he take such music for granted? Had he not felt that the glory of it was almost beyond bearing? The gap between their perceptions seemed immense.

“I—I promised Toby I’d be home for bath and story time tonight.” But she lied. The truth was she needed time to absorb what she’d heard, and that she felt too burdened by what she hadn’t brought herself to tell him to make small talk. “I’ll take the tube,” Gemma said. “You wait for the Major. Give him my best.”

“You’re sure?” Kincaid asked, his disappointment visible for an instant before he schooled his expression into pleasant neutrality.

“I’ll see you at the Yard in the morning.” Slipping her hand round the back of his neck, she kissed him quickly, a silent apology. Before she could change her mind, she turned and strode away.

But before crossing Heath Street to the Underground station, positioned at the very top of Hampstead High Street, she paused. The view from these upper reaches, south over the rooftops of London, never failed to inspire her. She loved to imagine Hampstead as the village it had once been, a green and leafy retreat, its air free of the noxious fumes and fog that choked London below.

That vision made a startling contrast to the bowels of Hampstead tube station, the deepest in London. Gemma found a seat on the crowded train and did her best to ignore the hygienic deficiencies of the man next to her, letting the echo of the choir reverberate in her head. So intense had been the demands of the past few months that even half an hour on a train was welcome time to gather her thoughts.