—
The next few days passed in a blur as David, Arthur, and Bethany, along with Gwyn when she could spare the time, helped Oscar deal with everything from solicitors to funeral arrangements. Bethany was right, Oscar was both stoic and devastated. His mother, Arthur discovered he was the last to know, had been a lover of church music, just like Arthur. She had been mostly a Sunday morning churchgoer in her later years, which was why Arthur had so rarely seen her at the cathedral, but she had a huge collection of LPs of choral and organ music. It was an interest Arthur could have shared if he had bothered to get to know her. Now he could only help transport boxes of records and the turntable that would play them to the choir room at the cathedral. Evelyn had made arrangements long ago with the precentor and the choirmaster to donate her collection to the music program.
She had also left instructions for her funeral that kept both the precentor and the choirmaster busy. She wanted a full Funeral Mass, with the settings for the service music taken from John Rutter’s Requiem. The precentor, who liked nothing more than services full of high ceremony and beautiful music, was in his element and, Arthur noticed, wonderfully solicitous of Oscar. He didn’t seem fishy at all.
On Saturday afternoon, Arthur marveled to see the cavernous nave of the cathedral nearly half full of mourners. If he had not really known Evelyn Dimsdale, hundreds of people in Barchester apparently had. The altar used for Sunday morning worship had been set up in the crossing, and the instrumentalists were already seated on either side when Arthur and Bethany walked with Oscar down the aisle and slipped into the front, reserved pew. David was waiting for them there. Oscar had no siblings, and though two of his cousins sat in the pew behind them, he was adamant that he wanted his closest Barchester friends sitting with him. Apparently, thought Arthur in amazement, that included Bethany.
The choir filed in quietly and took their place behind the altar. The soft sounds of the congregation, the whispers and the shuffling of service bulletins, faded to naught and for a moment Arthur experienced the almost mystical feeling of being a part of a group of five hundred people sitting in absolute silence. And then the “Requiem Aeternam” began, its low, growling opening notes building to the soft, birdlike lux perpetua and then fading away into almost nothing before blooming into the beautifully melodic theme of the composition. Arthur had heard this piece scores of times, both in concert and in recordings, but it had never held such power, such reality, as it did now. This was more than just music, he thought, this was the full realization of the composition: This was a requiem. And, he thought, if this is what it sounds like to be welcomed into heaven, it might be a rather nice place.
When the time came, late in the service, to take Communion, Arthur was torn. He did not think it right, as a nonbeliever, to partake of the elements, but he did not wish to offend Oscar by sitting alone in the pew while the others made the walk up to the altar rail. He knew he could go to the rail and simply receive a blessing—and that wouldn’t be so bad, he supposed. So he stood and made his way to the altar, with Oscar in front of him and Bethany and David behind him. As he knelt next to his friend, Arthur felt a surge of sympathy. He rarely talked to his own parents—they had finally divorced when he was at university and each was remarried to someone whom Arthur quietly despised. The rift between himself and his parents had been gradual, but it seemed, as he crossed his hands over his chest, that he would never kneel at an altar rail in silent grief for either of them. He realized, as the precentor stopped in front of him and whispered a blessing, that his sympathy for Oscar’s loss was tinged with jealousy for what his friend had had. As they walked back toward their pew, Arthur laid a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. Oscar turned to him and wrapped him in a tight embrace that lasted several seconds. Other members of the congregation waited politely in the aisle as Oscar clung to Arthur and Arthur wondered if he was simply the closest person to a grieving man, or if Oscar felt something . . . something for him that he did not feel for anyone else. Finally Oscar let go, giving Arthur one last squeeze on the shoulder and a grim smile that seemed to say, “Life has ended, and life goes on.”
As soon as Oscar was seated in the pew, the choir began the “Pie Jesu.” It was Arthur’s favorite piece in the Requiem, sung for the most part by a single soprano choirboy—a pure and innocent tone that put Arthur in mind of Wordsworth’s idea that children should be seen as fresh from the hands of God. The music shifted from major to minor for a few bars and then back to major as the soprano struck and held a high A-flat, a note of such soaring splendor it did not seem human. Arthur couldn’t help but smile, and he turned to look at Bethany and saw that she was crying—not with grief, he thought from the look on her face, but from the sheer beauty of the music.
He held out his hand toward her, not sure what he should do to comfort her—certainly not a pat on the knee, perhaps a squeeze on the arm. As his hand wavered in the space between them she grasped it with a grip of iron and turned toward him for just an instant. She looked into his eyes, her own rimmed with tears, and then turned back toward the music, not relaxing the grip on his hand the slightest bit—and in that instant Arthur had a stunning revelation. He loved Bethany, was in love with Bethany. Arthur Prescott was fully, neck deep in the mulligatawny in love with Bethany Davis—with much too young for him, much too American for him, much too digital and combative and beautiful and good for him Bethany Davis. As the choir gently underscored the soloist, he realized there were only two possible paths stretching before him—that he would spend the rest of his life listening to her maddening conversational digressions and arguing with her over everything, or that he would spend the rest of his life without her. Both seemed unbearable.
He felt in that moment that he would do anything she asked. If she leaned over and said, “Arthur, we’re going to find the Holy Grail,” then by God he would go and find the damn thing. And if she said they needed to digitize it to render the original superfluous, he would hold it still while she did the deed.
The soprano sang the final high A with an exquisiteness that seemed impossible, and the note hung in the air long after the choirmaster had given his cutoff. Bethany wasn’t crying anymore. But she was smiling, and she was still holding his hand. I, thought Arthur, am in serious trouble.
XII
THE PRIORY OF ST. EWOLDA