Evensong

Back in the Boardroom she took a succession of internal meetings on the Outreach Foundation. This time Anwar, who’d parked himself in one of the adjoining rooms—the one where he’d questioned Carne—did listen. He found it absorbing. It proceeded smoothly and efficiently, closing point after point, steadily building a whole corporate edifice. The senior New Anglican officials impressed Anwar almost as much as Olivia herself. Even her Finance Director, whose unwise attempt to slip something past her he still remembered, was smart and well-prepared. They all were.

He’d long ago ceased wondering whether the New Anglicans were a Church, a corporation, a political movement, a gangland syndicate, or a mix of all four. Today the answer was obvious. Today, they were in full corporate mode. It contrasted starkly to the summit, just across the Garden.

The Outreach Foundation was rapidly taking on life and shape. And all because I made that remark to her in Brighton.

Olivia visited the auditorium briefly on the afternoon of October 17, and Anwar managed to check the Signing Room, where he found everything in order. The summit was anything but in order. The impasse had gone on all morning and threatened to go on all afternoon.

Zaitsev tried desperately to bring it back on line. The reception for that evening was moved to the following day, and replaced with an all-night session. It broke up at 4:00a.m. without any significant progress. Two members were on the verge of walkin gout, and Zaitsev managed—just—to persuade them to stay. But he was looking and sounding ragged, and the atmosphere was foul.

October 18, day four of the summit, was no better. After the failed all-night session, the atmosphere hadn’t improved. It was in stark contrast to what was going on all around the Conference Centre.

The New West Pier had been deliberately kept open to the public and to normal business. There were sightseers in the Garden, worshippers in the Cathedral, people coming and going in the business quarter, coffees and meals being served in restaurants in the piazzas. And everywhere there were media. The contrast between the summit and the rest of the New West Pier, where there was business as usual, was not lost on them. After the bright opening ceremony, the Troubled Summit phrase began to resurface.

Zaitsev was clearly floundering and the media, like their oceanic counterparts, detected him thrashing around and zeroed in. Some of them, perhaps rather spitefully, recalled the collapse of his attempt to get a vote of no confidence in Rafiq at the General Assembly, and compared it to the imminent collapse of the summit. Zaitsev, they were saying, was the new slang for Collapse.

But if most of the negative media comment was centred on Zaitsev, Olivia wasn’t immune either. Although there was praise for the New Anglicans’ venue and facilities and organisation, there was renewed speculation about her position. Especially after her puzzling and ambiguous Evensong sermon.

Anwar looked around the auditorium. The usual three people were covering her, but the angles and distances weren’t ideal for him to leave her while he checked the Signing Room. So he suggested she should go with him.

“I must check with Gaetano,” she said. “He told me not to go there until the Signing.”

“He’s busy. And,” Anwar added drily, “I think he’d give you special dispensation this time.”

A couple of days ago he would have worried about being seen so much around her, but it didn’t matter now. Zaitsev’s security had already noticed and had raised it with Gaetano, whose explanation—ironically—was No, he isn’t security, he’s just her current sexual partner. They’d probably check, but it didn’t matter. The end time was approaching.

They entered the Signing Room. She greeted the three security people there—two women and a man this time—and looked around her.

“I really don’t like the two styles together,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

“It’s spotless now. It was full of dust and muck for five days, they told me. And you were here all that time.”

He glanced at her.

“Can we,” she said, “move over to the far end?” (It was the end where he’d kept his bucket, but he didn’t tell her.)

“Of course. Why?”

“There’s something I need to say to you privately. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

He felt a stirring, which died abruptly at what she said next.

“If I really felt anything for you, I’d let you go now and give you a chance to survive. In fact, I do feel something—guilt at dragging you into this. So, you can go if you want.”

“You’re speaking to the gallery. You know I won’t go.” He added, “All the things you fight for are things I believe in. I should be proud to protect you, but I’m not. Not particularly. That may be you or me, or both of us, I don’t know.”

She said nothing.

“But I won’t walk away.”