Judgment Day Read Online Free Page B

be something that needs interfering with. The school?”
    “I am not,” said Clare with dignity, “intending a career of interference. And in any case the Parent Teacher Association is in the hands of a cabal comprising that estate agent opposite and various cronies. They don't like me. I alarm their wives and they don't care for my tone of voice. No chance of a coup d'etat there. Besides, there'd be no joy in it. It's a perfectly good school, all one could do is raise money for the minibus fund. No standing at the gates with a placard demanding educational justice. Sorry—have to think again.”
    “Perhaps it's not really a problem,” he suggested. “Since you say you're perfectly happy.”
    “I never said any such thing. Who ever experienced perfect happiness? Certainly not me. Not with my temperament, but I'm as happy as I would ever expect to be, and grateful with it.”
    “That's all right,” said Peter. “Don't mention it.”
    “Not to you, you nit. To something altogether more metaphysical.”
    “Nevertheless, I think local involvement might be no bad thing.”
    “Putting down some roots?”
    He began to grind coffee. “You've always rather dug yourself into places before. What about something else, then? A course at the local university?”
    “No thanks. I've had quite enough education already, goodness knows what any more would lead to. No, that won't do. We shall have to give the matter some serious thought. You may well be right. And now tell me about this Brussels thing.”
    *  *  *
    Sydney Porter said good night to the other members of the Parochial Church Council outside the vicarage and crossed the Green to his house. Passing the church, he paused for a moment to look at it, thinking both of its ailments and its antiquity. He had been surprised to learn of its age. Sydney was not very strong on history, he knew; doing a sum in his head he reckoned the foundation of the church as not long after 1066, a date that was familiar. Well, given that it stood to reason that it wouldn't be in very good shape, structurally. Though only bits of it were from then, of course, most of it was much newer. Funny how you never really gave a lot of thought to how long a place had been there; you acted as sidesman, Sunday after Sunday, saw to the hymn books, locked up on alternate nights, without ever really thinking about that.
    The church on the corner of Mansell Road had been big and black, not like this at all, a big black London church. It had dwarfed the houses, rather than the other way about. Coming back that morning in 1941 it had been the only solid thing left, standing foursquare alongside the row of blasted shells. Only later, going in, had he seen the wreckage within, the floor and seats white with fallen plaster,the chancel open to the sky, the altar a mess of splintered wood and rubble. He had stood there a long time, alone; outside the rescue squads were working still, their boots crunching on broken glass.
    They were going to be hard put to it to raise all that cash; and the vicar, not a go-ahead sort of man, either. A long haul, it would be. Not that there wasn't money about, you only had to look around you to see that. But not much of it would come the way of the restoration fund, Sydney suspected. He let himself into the house and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Tea and a biscuit, and the television news, and see what was on after, and an early night if it wasn't up to much. He stood at the window while the kettle boiled; dark now and lights at windows around the Green, discreet, glowing, curtained squares, except the big house by the vicarage where they were bright and bare so that you could see clean into the rooms, a man and woman in one, a kitchen, sitting at a table with glasses in their hands. Those new people. I've got good eyesight, Sydney thought, man of my age, good as when I was in the Navy, all but; he drew his own curtains and went through into the lounge.
    He sat in