Becoming Mrs. Lewis(50)
This time I found myself at St. Paul’s perched on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in London, where I might be closest to God or myself or whatever great sorrow moved within me. It was an Anglican church, and I’d seen the old black-and-white photos of it surrounded by smoke from the bombings of the 1940 blitz. The great dome of the cathedral built in the 1600s, a round mountain of man’s tribute to God, had survived. Men had stood all night, passing water buckets and fighting to save what now stood as my sanctuary, and I climbed to it with knees shaking, entered with the remnants of my torn life trailing behind.
This time the church was empty, my footsteps echoing under the vast dome as I approached the altar. The English baroque style was a sharp contrast to the Gothic spires of the Abbey. There was too much for my eye to absorb—gold and winged archways, jewels and embellished carvings, and stained glass everywhere as the scenes of Christ’s life unfolded before me. Sunlight spilled from the windowed dome overhead, falling upon me, the floor, the pews, and carved statues. Ropes held me back from approaching the gold and marble altar, three candlesticks on top—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The dark wood pillars on either side were twisted, leading my sight upward, past the arched stained glass of Christ on the cross, higher still to the dome, where marble angels looked heavenward as if to remind us we were being guarded and loved.
I’d once heard Jack say, or had I read it, that sometimes a soul would cry out, “Thy will be done” to God and other times, with fury say instead, “Fine, have it your way.”
I knelt on a padded bench and uttered the latter.
What could I have done differently? I begged the tortured Christ in stained glass.
My parents had warned me—Why can’t you be softer, nicer, and kinder? Prettier? More like Renee? Why couldn’t I? Was this my punishment for such self-will?
I stayed for I don’t know how long, until finally I grew restless. I rose and made my way to the stairs that led to the Whispering Gallery, where I could climb to the dizzying top of the dome itself, as if maybe there I might finally reach God. Higher and higher I climbed, counting each of the 257 steps. The dome itself reminded me of Davy and his intense interest in the constellations, and a poem unraveled in my mind.
“I’ll make a magic to ferry you soon,” I mumbled out loud. I would rescue my sons from the sickness of Bill and Renee. I would build a new life with them.
The Whispering Cathedral was so named because one person could stand against the ornate golden wall to whisper, and another, standing far away but holding his ear to the same wall, could hear what was said. Even in all my confusion, something in it summoned my deep connection to Jack, and I wondered if I murmured something here and now, in this sacred space against these walls, he might somehow hear me.
Instead it was Jack’s words that came to me, an echo from one of our letters. God did not love us because we were lovable, but because he is love.
I wandered to a window and felt in the deepest part of me that I would return to England, but with my sons by my side. Fantasy? I didn’t know. Maybe. But in that moment it felt true. The city below was shrouded in mist, and from there I could see the cavernous abscesses of earth blasted by bombs dropped from on high, the ruined churches, remnants of World War II and the same horror that had sent the children to Jack’s house.
I left the hallway and followed a stairwell down to enter a library and trophy room, where I found a verger in robes.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” He bowed his head down and then up. “Welcome to St. Paul’s.”
“It is glorious,” I said, my voice full of the shed and unshed tears of the past two days.
His face softened, as if he could see my pain shimmering around me. “I urge you to rise to the belfry as they ring the one o’clock hour with one hundred tolls of the bell.”
“Yes.” I nodded at him. “Can you show me the way?”
“Follow me, please.”
We reached the top of the bell tower, where a group of people were clustered expectantly, awaiting the great ringing. A young woman with three children clinging to her hem leaned toward me. “Those bells up there weigh seven tons,” she said. “Isn’t that marvelous?”
I smiled at her. “Marvelous indeed.”
“They say it is the largest ring of bells in the world.” She pointed, and I cranked my neck back to see the bells and wheels above me, feeling dizzy.
“A ring of twelve bells,” the friar stated.
The room was warm: a circular space with pale-yellow plaster walls and photos of the grand cathedral framed and hung. Twelve men entered the room to stand on foot-high wooden platforms. Their muscles bulged from their tight shirts as if to burst as they grabbed the ropes hanging from the plaster ceiling and at once, in unity, began to pull.
One resounding ring after the other filled the tower. In a great stationary dance, the men pulled and grunted, they swung and moved, as the bells tolled. Of the ten people there, most ran from the tower, but others only covered their ears. I did neither. I stood still and allowed the reverberating air to swallow me whole.
I stayed and felt the enormous noise vibrate through my body. Chills ran through me, and I shivered with the unceasing sounds, which were cleansing me, coursing through my veins, through my mind and my spirit. The tenor and the fifth ringing together, not synchronized or in harmony but in perfect sublime sound. My boundaries dissolved; transcendence enveloped me. God was with me, and always had been. He was in the earth and the wind, in the ringing and in the silence, in the pain and in the glory of my life.