‘Well,’ he said. No more, but Coffin knew what he meant.
Some time ago he had saved John Coffin’s life by providing pints of the special type of blood Coffin had needed. Just like John Coffin, his friends said, to need blood only another copper could provide. Cowley was not a man to call in a debt but the fact was there in the background. He was owed something.
‘I think the matter is settled, Tom.’ The truth was that the whole building, once the main station house for one of the largest boroughs in his new unit, the old Leathergate, was due to be demolished to make way for a new structure. The museum could have been moved to new premises, but there was a strong plea for centralization and economy.
‘It’s territory, John, you shouldn’t give away territory. Thameswater ought to have its own museum.’
He had a point there and Coffin acknowledged it, but he had other things to fight for; his new authority had to establish its identity in face of rivalry, envy, and indifference. Perhaps they should keep their own museum. Thameswater stood for the future, but it couldn’t ignore its past. A past gave you another dimension, a kind of legitimacy. And this area had always had a strong character, brawling, lively and independent.
Perhaps Tom Cowley had instinctively hit upon a truth.
‘I’ll see you at the reception, Tom.’
He put the telephone down, conscious that he had not handled the conversation well, and that one more old friend would go about saying John Coffin’s changed, promotion’s done him no good. There were a lot of other Toms in his life, men he’d started out with, served with and now left far behind.
Promotion always did change you, there was no way round it. You were changed, those around you changed towards you.
His doorbell sounded. One long commanding peal. The front door was two winding flights down; even if you hurried it took time. The bell sounded again.
‘All right, I’m coming.’
Outside was a small, sturdy boy, carrying in his arms what looked like a bronzed urn. Behind him was Mimsie, he had been right about the hat, another woman, by appearance a blood relation to Mimsie Marker, and the street sweeper, always called Alf, surname unknown. The three adults were leaving the talking to the boy.
‘We brought this to you, sir.’
‘You did? Why?’ Coffin was on his guard, it was wiser so with lads, some of whom you could trust and some of whom you couldn’t. Mimsie in the background was a kind of credential, she was far too streetwise to come near anything that might mean trouble. He thought the boy was about ten, with an alert, lively face, which might have been called cheeky once, but that expression was not so much used now. ‘What is it?’
‘Can I put it down, sir? It’s heavy.’
‘Not till you’ve told me what it is?’
‘It’s a burial urn, sir.’ The boy’s voice was serious. ‘It’s got the ashes of a dead man in it.’ He did put it down, thus demonstrating an independence of spirit which Coffin was to get to know.
‘Or woman,’ said Mimsie from the background.
‘Or woman. And we found it in the gutter. But it says St Luke’s Church, so we brought it to you.’
The urn which was of a fair size, bigger than such urns usually are, was certainly made of metal even if not of bronze. It looked more like a garden urn that had been adapted for this purpose.
But on it was a printed label: Black and Binder, Funeral Parlour. On the label was a typed address: St Luke’s Church.
‘What was it doing in the gutter?’
‘I don’t know, sir, I just found it. I found it first, and then these ladies and gentlemen came along and we discussed what to do. Then we thought we’d better bring it to you.’
A corporate decision, eh? ‘It feels too heavy to be just ashes.’ Too big, he thought.
The urn was closed by a lid with a small knob on top. Watched by the three, he tried to raise it. The lid gave easily. He lifted it up, casting aside prudence which suggested that it could be a bomb.
Then he dropped the top back quickly.
‘No, not ashes,’ he said.
Inside was a head. He saw the matted hair, the dull open eyes, the stained, blotched skin, and felt the whiff of decay. He could not tell if he was looking at the head of a man or a woman.
Stella Pinero was downstairs in the old vestry, now converted into her smart dwelling place, but as yet bare of furniture. She heard the voices on the staircase and wondered what was going on.
‘I know that voice,’ she said to herself, standing in what would be her bedroom. ‘Doesn’t change.’ Her knowledge of that voice went years back.
Stella had her own entrance on one side of a newly created lobby where John Coffin also had a front door. There was a third door already prepared for the so far unfinished third residence in the Chapel of St Jude. Stella could have waited to move into this flat, which had many attractions including a large stained glass window, but she did not feel holy enough. Also she did not believe that the stained glass would suit her complexion, yellow and blue were not her colours, not on the face, anyway.
‘And I am in a hurry to get settled,’ she had explained to Lætitia Bingham, whom she had known even before the start of the Theatre Workshop project but had recently got to know much better. ‘But this place looks fine,’ and they had settled down to discuss the details of No. 2, St Luke’s Mansions. ‘Who did your interior decorating? Flora Apsley? I thought I recognized her style.’
‘I think she’s good on city properties, gets the colours right. She’s done her homework, knows the sort of person who’s going to live here. I mean, it’s no good putting in a huge freezer for someone who hasn’t even got a window-box to grow tomatoes in and isn’t going to eat at home much, anyway’. Letty had assessed what the way of life of Stella, and for that matter of her half-brother John, was going to be.
‘Right,’ said Stella.
‘But you want a good-sized refrigerator even if it’s only for the ice cubes and champagne bottles.’
Stella gave her landlady a wary look. ‘I’m into still mineral water myself,’ she said. She was on a diet, trying to lose the weight put on over the last eighteen months of not much work. She always gained weight when she wasn’t working and lost it the moment she was acting again. Another reason for never retiring, she thought, although an ex-husband with no money and a child at boarding-school were reason enough.
‘And, of course, an efficient microwave is an essential,’ went on Letty. ‘You know how to use one?’
‘Right,’ said Stella. ‘I can even cook with a wooden spoon.’
The two women went to the same hairdresser in both London and New York, it made a kind of bond. In Los Angeles, where their hairdresser also had a branch, they had not as yet made contact. Letty said her husband had ‘a lot of business there’ but she herself went but rarely. Stella said she went there only when she was filming and she ‘hadn’t done a lot of that lately’.
‘And the carpets and curtains suit, do they?’
‘Yes, fine, to my taste, strong but neutral.’ Unlike John Coffin, Stella travelled light and would be bringing no carpets with her, just her clothes, some books, a few photographs (and even of these she had had a therapeutic clear-out only the other day), and a treasured ornament or two.
‘Oh look, and there’s a splendid shelf in the