It’s Mr. Dunworthy, Polly thought, wanting to know why I haven’t checked in yet. No wonder he likes it so much.
She wasn’t particularly impressed. The painting was smaller than she’d expected and stiffly old-fashioned, and now that she looked at it again, Christ looked less impatient than unconvinced anyone was going to answer his knock. Which was probably the case, considering the door obviously hadn’t been opened in years. Ivy had twined up over it, and weeds choked the threshold.
“I’d give it up if I were you,” Polly murmured.
“I beg your pardon, miss?” a voice said at her elbow, and she jumped a foot. It was an elderly man in a black suit with a waistcoat. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, “but I saw you looking at the painting, and-I hadn’t realized they’d opened the church again.”
She was tempted to say yes, that the bomb squad or the man in the cassock had given her permission to come in, but if he decided to check… “Oh, was it closed before?” she said instead.
“Oh, my, yes. Since Thursday. We’ve had an unexploded bomb under the west end. They only just now got it out. It was a near thing there for a bit. The gas main caught fire and was burning straight for the bomb. If it had reached it, it would have blown up the lot of us, and St. Paul’s. I’ve never been happier in my life than to see that monstrous thing driven away. I’m surprised Dean Matthews decided to reopen the church, though. It was my understanding it was to have remained closed till they’d rechecked the gas main. Who-?”
“I’m so glad they did decide to open it, then,” Polly said hastily. “A friend of mine told me I must see St. Paul’s when I came to London, particularly The Light of the World. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s only a copy, I’m afraid. The original was sent to Wales with the cathedral’s other treasures, but we decided it simply wasn’t St. Paul’s without it. It had hung here all through the last war, and we felt it was vital it be here through this one, particularly with the blackout and the lights gone out in Europe and Hitler spreading his nasty brand of darkness over the world. This reminds us that one light, at the least, will never go out.”
He looked at it critically. “I fear it’s not a very good copy. It’s smaller than the original, and the colors aren’t as vivid. Still, it’s better than nothing. See how the light seems to be fading, and how the artist has made Christ’s face exhibit so many emotions at the same time: patience and sorrow and hope.”
And resignation, Polly thought. “What is it a door to?” she asked. “One can’t tell from the painting.”
He beamed at her as if she were a bright pupil. “Exactly. And you’ll note the door has no latch. It can only be opened from the inside. Like the door of the heart. That’s what is so wonderful about the painting. One sees something different in it each time one looks at it. We like to call it our ‘sermon in a frame,’ although the frame’s been taken to Wales as well. A lovely gilded wooden thing, with the Scripture which the painting depicts on it.”
“‘Behold I stand at the door and knock,’” Polly quoted.
He nodded, beaming even more. “‘If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him.’ The artist’s tomb is in the Crypt.”
With Lord Nelson’s. “I’d love to see it,” Polly said.
“I’m afraid the Crypt is closed to visitors, but I can show you round the rest of the church, if you’ve the time.”
And if Dean Matthews doesn’t come in and announce the church is still closed and demand to know what I’m doing here, she thought. “I’d love to see it, if it’s no trouble, Mr.-?”
“Humphreys. It would be no trouble at all. As verger, I often conduct tours.” He led her back down the aisle and over to the central doors where, presumably, he began those tours. “This is the Great West Door. It’s opened only on ceremonial occasions. On other days we use the smaller doors on either side,” he said, and she saw there was another door in the south aisle, the twin of the one she’d come through. “The pilasters are of Portland stone,” he continued, patting one of the rectangular pillars. “The floor where we are standing-”
Is where the Fire Watch stone will be, Polly thought, the memorial dedicated to the memory of St. Paul’s fire watch, the volunteers “who by the grace of God saved this church.” And the only thing left after the pinpoint bomb.
“-is made of Carrara marble in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern,” Mr. Humphreys said. “From here one can see the full length of the cathedral. It’s built in the shape of the cross. To your right-” He walked over to the south aisle to a makeshift wooden partition just this side of the vestibule, “is the Geometrical Staircase, designed by Christopher Wren. As you can see, it’s currently boarded up, though a final decision on what to do hasn’t been made.”
“What to do?”
“Yes, you see, the staircase offers the best access to the roofs on this end of the church, but at the same time it’s extremely fragile. And irreplaceable. But if an incendiary were to fall on the library roof or the towers… It’s difficult to know what to do. Over here-” he walked up the south aisle to an iron grille, “is the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George with its wooden prayer stalls. The banners which ordinarily hang above them have unfortunately been removed for safekeeping.”
The seventeenth-century cherubs had been, too, and the nave’s chandeliers and most of the monuments in the south aisle. “Some of them were too heavy to move, so we’ve put sandbags round them,” Mr. Humphreys said, leading her past a stairway with a chain across it and a notice: To the Whispering Gallery. Closed to Visitors.
And so much for the Whispering Gallery, Polly thought as the verger led her into the wide central crossing beneath the dome, where there was another chained staircase.
“This is the transept,” he said. “It forms the crosspiece of the cathedral.” He led her into it to show her the monument to Lord Nelson, or rather, the stack of sandbags hiding it, and several other piles of sandbags concealing statues of Captain Robert Scott, Admiral Howe, and the artist J. M. W. Turner. “The south transept is chiefly interesting for the carved oak doorcase by Grinling Gibbons, which unfortunately-”
“Has been removed for safekeeping,” Polly murmured, following him from the transept into the choir and the apse, where he pointed out the organ (removed for safekeeping), the shrouded statue of John Donne (in a shroud of sandbags in the Crypt), the High Altar, and the stained-glass windows.
“We’ve been very lucky so far,” Mr. Humphreys said, pointing up at them. “They’re too large to board up, but we haven’t lost a single window.”
You will, Polly thought. By the end of the war they’d all have been smashed. The last one had been taken out by a V-2 that had crashed nearby.
Mr. Humphreys led her back down the other side of the choir, pointing out the buckets of water and stirrup pumps lined against the wall. “Our greatest worry is fire. The underlying structure’s of wood, and if one of the roofs were to catch fire, the lead would run down into the cracks between the stones, and they’d burst as they did when the first St. Paul’s burned. It was utterly destroyed during the Great Fire of London, when this entire part of the city burned.”
And will again three months from now, Polly thought. She wondered if Mr. Humphreys was part of the fire watch. He looked too old, but then again, the Blitz had been a war of old men and shopgirls and middle-aged women.
“But we shan’t let that happen again,” he said, answering her question. “We’ve formed a band of volunteers to keep watch for incendiaries on the roofs. I’m on duty tonight.”