Читать книгу Shanghai - Christopher New - Страница 15

THE CATHEDRAL'S PEWS were nearly all filled when Denton arrived, and a grave, tall sidesman with watery brown eyes motioned him to a chair in the aisle. He leant forward, covering his eyes, and whispered a prayer. When he sat upright again he had already forgotten the words he'd muttered, as though he'd prayed mechanically, as unconsciously as he breathed or blinked. He glanced round at the grey stone arches of the nave and up at the tall stained glass windows, which the burning sunlight outside struggled to pierce. Everything was new; the dark wooden pews, the unworn flagstones, the vivid colours in the windows, the fresh grey pillars. Musing treble notes wandered up and down the bass drone of the organ like ivy caressing a great broad tree. Denton thought of St George's at Enfield - so much smaller and dimmer than this magnificent airy building. He thought of Emily in her pew with her parents, lowering her eyes with a secret smile when he glanced at her from the choir stalls.

He clung to the poignant image, part-memory, part-fiction, until his eye was caught by the figure of Mr Brown walking up the nave toward a pew near the pulpit. A tall, stout lady rested her hand on his arm. They progressed at a stately gait, their heads erect and motionless until they reached their pew, when Mr Brown handed his wife in first with a grave inclination of his massive-browed bald head.

Denton glanced over the rest of the congregation, sweat oozing from his pores despite the gently-squeaking punkahs that fanned the air above their heads. All the people in the nave were evidently rich - taipans, he supposed. You could tell by their clothes, the women in gorgeous dresses and sweeping, wide-brimmed hats, the men in faultlessly-cut silk suits. Watching them, Denton felt vague confused, feelings both of envy and of alienation. He knew that he wanted to wear fine clothes like Mr Brown, to have a sedan chair waiting outside the cathedral, to belong to the Shanghai Club, to be looked upon with awe by people like himself. Yet he felt he was not like Mr Brown and the other taipans, and never would be. There was some essential difference that would always keep him removed from them, their lives unassimilable. His mind slipped off to the church at Enfield, where the congregation were all workmen and shopkeepers in stiff dark suits with frayed button holes and shiny collars, the grime still under their fingernails.

Shanghai was beginning to unsettle him. He was becoming dimly aware of possibilities in the distance that had lain far beyond the level horizon of his life even when he'd been accepted for the teachers' training college and his father had said he was out of it now, he'd never have to work in a factory.

To stifle his unease, he joined in the opening hymn with a loud voice, following the choir's tenor descant.

Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him,

Praise the everlasting King.

Denton waited, listening to the hushed coughing and the closing hymn books and the shuffling feet, determined to concentrate now on the worship of God. He gazed up at the gaunt face of the Dean, who had turned by the altar to face the congregation. But even while he was watching the Dean's grey head and penetrating, deep-set eyes, his fickle mind had slipped off again, and he was wondering about Emily his hand surreptitiously straying up to the pocket where her letter nestled. What would she be doing now? Sleeping? What would she be wearing? A nightdress? And under the nightdress? a voice whispered, while the memory of the girl on Mason's veranda, her breast uncovered beneath his tunic, floated across his mind. He jerked his mind guiltily back to the Dean, who had begun intoning in a high, strained voice, his eyes fixed in vacant reverence above their heads.

'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves....'

He could feel a warm slow trickle of sweat rolling slowly down his cheek. Behind the Dean, over whose head a punkah moved slowly to and fro as though it were a blessing hand, he saw the choristers turning the pages of their hymn books, the leaves fluttering like little white butterflies.