This Was a Man (The Clifton Chronicles #7)(127)

As eleven a.m. struck on the cathedral clock, the organist would strike up the opening bars of All people that on earth do dwell, and the congregation would rise and sing, the dean assured him. From that moment until the final blessing by the dean, the memorial service would be in the safe hands of the Rt Reverend Barry Donaldson, the Bishop of Bristol, and one of Harry’s oldest friends. Giles would only have one role left to play on the ecclesiastical stage.

He had spent weeks preparing for this single hour, because he felt it had to be worthy of his oldest friend and, equally important, that it would have been approved of by Emma. He had even carried out a practice run from Smith Square to St Paul’s at exactly the same time the previous week, to make sure he wouldn’t be late. The journey had taken 24 minutes, so he decided he would leave home at 10.15. Better to be a few minutes early, he told his driver, than a few minutes late. You can always slow down, but London traffic doesn’t always allow you to speed up.





Giles rose just after five on the morning of the memorial service, as he knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. He slipped on a dressing gown, went down to his study and read the eulogy one more time. Like Harry with his novels, he was now on the fourteenth draft, or was it the fifteenth? There were a few changes, the occasional word, one added sentence. He felt confident he could do no more, but he still needed to check the length.

He read it through once again without stopping, just under fifteen minutes. Winston Churchill had once told him, ‘An important speech should take an hour to write for every minute it took to deliver, while at the same time, dear boy, you must leave your audience convinced it was off the cuff.’ That was the difference between a mere speaker and an orator, Churchill had suggested.

Giles stood up, pushed back his chair and began to deliver the eulogy as if he were addressing an audience of a thousand, although he had no idea how large the congregation would be. The canon had told him that the cathedral could hold two thousand comfortably, but only managed that on rare occasions, such as the funeral of a member of the royal family, or a memorial service for a prime minister, and not even all of them could guarantee a full house.

‘Don’t worry,’ he had added, ‘as long as six hundred turn up, we can fill the nave, block off the chancery and it will still look packed. Only our regular worshippers will be any the wiser.’

Giles just prayed that the nave would be full, as he didn’t want to let his friend down. He put down the script fourteen minutes later, then returned to the bedroom, to find Karin still in her dressing gown.

‘We ought to get going,’ he said.

‘Of course we should, my darling,’ said Karin, ‘that is, if you’re thinking of walking to the cathedral. If you leave now, you’ll be there in time to welcome the dean,’ she added before disappearing into the bathroom.

While Giles had been going over his speech downstairs, she had laid out a white shirt, his Bristol Grammar School tie, and a dark suit that had come back from the cleaners the previous day. Giles took his time dressing, finally selecting a pair of gold cufflinks Harry had given him on his wedding day. Once he’d checked himself in the mirror, he paced restlessly around the bedroom, delivering whole paragraphs of his eulogy out loud and constantly looking at his watch. How long was she going to be?

When Karin reappeared twenty minutes later, she was wearing a simple navy blue dress that Giles had never seen before, adorned with a gold portcullis brooch. She’d done Harry proud.

‘Time to leave,’ she announced calmly.

As they left the house Giles was relieved to see that Tom was already standing by the back door of the car.

‘Let’s get moving, Tom,’ he said as he slumped into the back seat, checking his watch again.

Tom drove sedately out of Smith Square as befitted the occasion. Past the Palace of Westminster and around Parliament Square before making his way along Victoria Embankment.

‘The traffic seems unusually heavy today,’ said Giles, once again looking at his watch.

‘About the same as last week,’ said Tom.

Giles didn’t comment on the fact that every light seemed to turn red just as they approached it. He was convinced they were going to be late.

As they drove past the mounted griffins that herald the City of London, Giles began to relax for the first time, as it now looked as if they would be about ten minutes early. And they would have been, but for something none of them had anticipated.

With about half a mile to go and the dome of the cathedral in sight, Tom spotted a barrier across the road that hadn’t been there the previous week when they’d carried out the practice run. A policeman raised his arm to stop them, and Tom wound down his window and said, ‘The Lord Chancellor.’

The policeman saluted and nodded to a colleague, who lifted the barrier to allow them through.

Giles was glad they were early because they were moving so slowly. Crowds of pedestrians were overflowing from the pavement and spilling on to the road, finally causing the car to almost come to a halt.

‘Stop here, Tom,’ said Giles. ‘We’re going to have to walk the last hundred yards.’

Tom pulled up in the middle of the road and rushed to open the back door, but by the time he got there, Giles and Karin were already making their way through the crowd. People stood aside when they recognized him, and some even began clapping.