'Why don't you take the rest of the day off?'
'Yes.'
'Take the rest of the week if you'd like,' Chimes said. 'You're a valued member of staff, Elaine; I don't have to tell you that. We don't want you coming to any harm.'
This last remark struck home with stinging force. Did they think she was verging on suicide; was that why she was treated with kid gloves? They were only tears she was shedding, for God's sake, and she was so indifferent to them she had not even known they were falling.
'I'll go home,' she said. 'Thank you for your ... concern.'
The supervisor looked at her with some dismay. 'It must have been a very traumatic experience,' he said. 'We all understand; we really do. If you feel you want to talk about it at any time -'
She declined, but thanked him again and left the office.
Face to face with herself in the mirror of the women's toilets she realised just how bad she looked. Her skin was flushed, her eyes swollen. She did what she could to conceal the signs of this painless grief, then picked up her coat and started home. As she reached the underground station she knew that returning to the empty flat would not be a wise idea. She would brood, she would sleep (so much sleep of late, and so perfectly dreamless) but she would not improve her mental condition by either route. It was the bell of Holy Innocents, tolling in the clear afternoon, that reminded her of the smoke and the square and Mr Kavanagh. There, she decided, was a fit place for her to walk. She could enjoy the sunlight, and think. Maybe she would meet her admirer again.
She found her way back to All Saints easily enough, but there was disappointment awaiting her. The demo- lition site had been cordoned off, the boundary marked by a row of posts - a red fluorescent ribbon looped between them. The site was guarded by no less than four policemen, who were ushering pedestrians towards a detour around the square. The workers and their hammers had been exiled from the shadows of All Saints and now a very different selection of people - suited and academic - occupied the zone beyond the ribbon, some in furrowed conversation, others standing on the muddy ground and staring up quizzically at the derelict church. The south transept and much of the area around it had been curtained off from public view by an arrangement of tarpaulins and black plastic sheeting. Occasionally somebody would emerge from behind this veil and consult with others on the site. All who did so, she noted, were wearing gloves; one or two were also masked. It was as though they were performing some ad hoc surgery in the shelter of the screen. A tumour, perhaps, in the bowels of All Saints.
She approached one of the officers. 'What's going on?'
'The foundations are unstable,' he told her. 'Apparently the place could fall down at any moment.'
'Why are they wearing masks?'
'It's just a precaution against the dust.'
She didn't argue, though this explanation struck her as unlikely.
'If you want to get through to Temple Street you'll have to go round the back,' the officer said.
What she really wanted to do was to stand and watch proceedings, but the proximity of the uniformed quartet intimidated her, and she decided to give up and go home. As she began to make her way back to the main road she caught sight of a familiar figure crossing the end of an adjacent street. It was unmistakably Kavanagh. She called after him, though he had already disappeared, and was pleased to see him step back into view and return a nod to her.
'Well, well -' he said as he came down to meet her. 'I didn't expect to see you again so soon.'
'I came to watch the rest of the demolition,' she said.
His face was ruddy with the cold, and his eyes were shining.
Tm so pleased,' he said. 'Do you want to have some afternoon tea? There's a place just around the corner.'
Td like that.'
As they walked she asked him if he knew what was going on at All Saints.
'It's the crypt,' he said, confirming her suspicions.
They opened it?'
'They certainly found a way in. I was here this morning -'
'About your stones?'
That's right. They were already putting up the tarpaulins then.'
'Some of them were wearing masks.'
'It won't smell very fresh down there. Not after so long.'
Thinking of the curtain of tarpaulin drawn between her and the mystery within she said: 'I wonder what it's like.'
'A wonderland,' Kavanagh replied.
It was an odd response, and she didn't query it, at least not on the spot. But later, when they'd sat and talked together for an hour, and she felt easier with him, she returned to the comment.
'What you said about the crypt...'
'Yes?'
'About it being a wonderland.'
'Did I say that?' he replied, somewhat sheepishly. 'What must you think of me?'
'I was just puzzled. Wondered what you meant.'
'I like places where the dead are,' he said. 'I always have. Cemeteries can be very beautiful, don't you think? Mausoleums and tombs; all the fine craftsmanship that goes into those places. Even the dead may sometimes reward closer scrutiny.' He looked at her to see if he had strayed beyond her taste threshold, but seeing that she only looked at him with quiet fascination, continued. They can be very beautiful on occasion. It's a sort of a glamour they have. It's a shame it's wasted on morticians and funeral directors.' He made a small mischievous grin. 'I'm sure there's much to be seen in that crypt. Strange sights. Wonderful sights.'
'I only ever saw one dead person. My grandmother, I was very young at the time ...'
'I trust it was a pivotal experience.'
'I don't think so. In fact I scarcely remember it at all, I only remember how everybody cried.'
'Ah.'
He nodded sagely.
'So selfish,' he said. 'Don't you think? Spoiling a farewell with snot and sobs.' Again, he looked at her to gauge the response; again he was satisfied that she would not take offence. 'We cry for ourselves, don't we? Not for the dead. The dead are past caring.'
She made a small, soft: 'Yes,' and then, more loudly: 'My God, yes. That's right. Always for ourselves ...'
'You see how much the dead can teach, just by lying there, twiddling their thumb-bones?'
She laughed: he joined her in laughter. She had misjudged him on that initial meeting, thinking his face unused to smiles; it was not. But his features, when the laughter died, swiftly regained that eerie quiescence she had first noticed.
When, after a further half hour of his laconic remarks, he told her he had appointments to keep and had to be on his way, she thanked him for his company, and said:
'Nobody's made me laugh so much in weeks. I'm grateful.'
'You should laugh,' he told her. 'It suits you.' Then added: 'You have beautiful teeth.'
She thought of this odd remark when he'd gone, as she did of a dozen others he had made through the afternoon. He was undoubtedly one of the most off-beat individuals she'd ever encountered, but he had come into her life - with his eagerness to talk of crypts and the dead and the beauty of her teeth - at just the right moment. He was the perfect distraction from her buried sorrows, making her present aberrations seem minor stuff beside his own. When she started home she was in high spirits. If she had not known herself better she might have thought herself half in love with him.
On the journey back, and later that evening, she thought particularly of the joke he had made about the dead twiddling their thumb-bones, and that thought led inevitably to the mysteries that lay out of sight in the crypt. Her curiosity, once aroused, was not easily silenced; it grew on her steadily that she badly wanted to slip through that cordon of ribbon and see the burial chamber with her own eyes. It was a desire she would never previously have admitted to herself. (How many times had she walked from the site of an accident, telling herself to control the shameful inquisitiveness she felt?) But Kavanagh had legitimised her appetite with his flagrant enthusiasm for things funereal. Now, with the taboo shed, she wanted to go back to All Saints and look Death in its face, then next time she saw Kavanagh she would have some stories to tell of her own. The idea, no sooner budded, came to full flower, and in the middle of the evening she dressed for the street again and headed back towards the square.