Cometh the Hour Read online

  MAISIE CLIFTON

  1972

  25

  WILLIAM WARWICK WAS just about to arrest the wrong person when there was a gentle tap on the door.

  The rule was sacrosanct in the Clifton household. It had to be a serious matter—a very serious matter—before any member of the family would consider interrupting Harry while he was writing. In fact, he could recall the three occasions it had occurred during the past twenty-five years.

  The first had been when his beloved daughter Jessica had won a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury. She had burst into the room without knocking, waving the letter of acceptance, and Harry had dropped his pen and opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. The second was when Emma had won the casting vote over Major Alex Fisher to become chairman of Barrington’s Shipping, and the first woman to chair a public company; another bottle of champagne. And the third he still considered to be marginal. Giles had barged in to announce that he’d been offered a peerage by Harold Wilson and would be taking the title Lord Barrington of Bristol Docklands.

  Harry put his pen down on his desk and swiveled his chair around to face the intruder. Emma walked in, her head bowed, tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks. Harry didn’t need to be told that his mother was dead.

  * * *

  Harry spent more hours working on the eulogy for his mother’s funeral than he had on any lecture, address or speech he’d ever delivered in the past. His final draft, the fourteenth, in which he felt he’d captured her indomitable spirit, ran for twelve minutes.

  He visited St. Luke’s the morning before the service so he could see where he would be sitting and how far it was from the pulpit. He then tested the acoustics to find out how well his voice carried. The Dean of St. Luke’s pointed out that if there was a large congregation, his words might be a little muffled. A useful warning, thought Harry, because the church turned out to be so packed that if the family hadn’t had reserved seats, they would have had to stand at the back. The order of service had been chosen in advance by Maisie, so no one was surprised that it was traditionally English, and very Maisie: “Rock of Ages,” “Abide with Me,” “To Be a Pilgrim” and of course “Jerusalem,” ensured that the congregation sang with heart and voice.

  Sebastian had been selected to read the first lesson. During the last verse of “Abide with Me,” he walked slowly up to the lectern, no longer trying to disguise a slight limp that had taken longer to recover from than the Indian surgeon had predicted. No one could predict how long it would take to recover from the last funeral he’d attended.

  He began to read 1 Corinthians, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, and Giles delivered the second reading, a poem by Kipling, If you can keep your head when all about you … while the choir sang “O Rejoice That the Lord Has Risen.” By the time Harry rose from his place in the front row and made his way to the pulpit during the last verse of “Abide with Me,” there was a sense of anticipation as he climbed the pulpit steps. He placed his text on the small brass lectern and checked the opening sentence, though in truth he knew the whole script by heart. He looked up and, once the congregation had settled, he began.

  “How proud my mother would have been to see so many of you here today, some who have traveled from far and wide to celebrate her amazing life. You just can’t fill the churches nowadays, she used to say. Can’t understand it myself, because when I was a child the sermons went on for over an hour. Dear Mother,” Harry said, looking up at the ceiling, “I promise mine won’t be over an hour, and by the way, the church is packed.” A ripple of laughter broke out, allowing Harry to relax a little.

  “Maisie was born in 1901, in the reign of Queen Victoria, and died at the age of seventy-one, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Second. My bookends, is how she used to describe the two Queens. She began life at 27 Still House Lane, in the back streets of the Bristol docks, and my father, Arthur Clifton, a docker, who was born in 1898, lived at number 37. They didn’t even have to cross the road to bump into each other. My father died when I was only one, so I never knew him, and the responsibility for bringing me up fell squarely on the shoulders of my mother. Maisie was never ambitious for herself, but that didn’t stop her spending those early years scrimping and saving farthings, yes, farthings, to ensure that I was never hungry, and never went without. Of course I had no idea of the sacrifices she had to endure to make it possible for me to attend St. Bede’s as a choral scholar, and later to go on to Bristol Grammar School before being offered a place at Oxford, a city she visited only once.

  “If Maisie had been born today, it would have been a city that would have welcomed her with open arms. How can I be so sure of that? Because at the age of sixty-two, when most people are preparing for retirement, Maisie enrolled at Bristol University, and three years later graduated with a first-class honors degree. She remains to this day the only member of the Clifton family to have managed that distinction. Imagine what she might have achieved if she had been born a generation later.

  “My mother was a regular churchgoer until the day she died, and I once asked her if she thought she’d go to heaven. ‘I certainly hope so,’ she told me, ‘as I need to have a word with St. Peter, St. Paul and our Lord.’ You will not be surprised to hear that I asked her what she intended to say to them. ‘I shall point out to St. Peter that none of the women who were close to our Lord ever denied him, let alone three times. Typical man.’ This time the laughter was sustained. Harry, now feeling in control of his audience, didn’t continue until he had complete silence. ‘And when it comes to St. Paul,’ Maisie said, ‘I shall ask him why it took him so long to get the message.’ And our Lord? I asked her. ‘If you are the son of God, could you please point out to the Almighty that the world would be a far better place if there had only been one religion, because then we could have all sung from the same hymn sheet.’” Harry had never experienced applause in a church before, and he knew it would have delighted his mother.

  “When someone close to you dies, you remember all the things you wished you’d said and it’s suddenly too late to say. I wish I’d understood, appreciated and been fully aware of the sacrifices my mother made, which have allowed me to live such a privileged life, a life I fear I sometimes take for granted. When I first went to St. Bede’s, dressed in my smart navy blazer and long gray trousers, we took the tram from Chapel Street, and I never understood why we got off a few hundred yards from the school. It was because my mother didn’t want the other boys to see her. She thought I would be ashamed of her.

  “I am ashamed,” said Harry, his voice cracking. “I should have paraded this great lady, not hidden her. And when I went to Bristol Grammar School, she continued to work full-time as a waitress at the Royal Hotel during the day, and as a hostess at Eddie’s Club every evening. I didn’t realize it was because that was the only way she could afford the school fees. But, like St. Peter, whenever any of my school chums asked if it was true that my mother worked in a nightclub, I denied her.” Harry’s head dropped, and Emma looked on anxiously as the tears ran down his cheeks.

  “What hardships did she have to endure without ever once, ever once … burdening me with her problems. And now it’s too late to let her know.” Harry’s head dropped again. “To tell her…” he said, desperately searching for his place. He gripped the side of the pulpit. “And when I went to Bristol Grammar School … I didn’t realize.” He furiously turned back a page. “I never realized…” He turned another page. “Whenever any of my school chums asked me…”

  Giles rose slowly from his place in the front row, walked across to the pulpit and climbed the steps. He placed an arm around his friend’s shoulder, and guided him back to his place in the front pew.

  Harry took Emma’s hand and whispered, “I let her down when she most needed me.”

  Giles didn’t whisper when he replied, “No son has ever paid his mother a greater compliment, and right now she’s telling St. Peter, ‘