Read Online Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth - Free Book Online Page A

were not compulsory for composers, as they were for poets. Most of the greatest of composers — Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, the list could be extended almost indefinitely — seemed to thrive frugally with one name and no beard, though there were those who, poet-like, were possessed of enormous beards, especially if they came from Russia. It must have been because of the severe winters of their homeland, but the great Russian composers — like the great Russian novelists — seemed to have thick beards like detachable accessories hanging down over the front of their fur coats in an attempt to keep warm. The novelists wore them proudly, like Siberian sporrans, in Highland homage to Sir Walter Scott, their distinguished predecessor in their chosen profession. Some of their beards were so huge that they gave the impression that packs of starving wolves — drawn out from deep within the mystical Russian forests — were hurling themselves at their throats.
    Perhaps, like St. Wilgefortis, she should pray for a miraculous beard. Unlike St. Wilgefortis, she did not need a miraculous hairy outgrowth in order to repel the unwanted attentions of men. She seemed to manage this effortlessly with no help whatsoever from God. It was one of the many gifts she possessed.
    All Saints’ Church contained some appalling sights (not least the Goodchilds and the Griswolds: some churches featured gargoyles, All Saints’ had the Goodchilds and the Griswolds), but the stained-glass windows took some beating. St. Wilgefortis — with a beard like a large hairy apron she had inadvertently tied around herself in the wrong position prior to washing the china — was a mere commonplace sight, someone you would pass in the street without a second glance, compared with some of the other saints depicted: St. Erasmus, St. Pharaildis, St. Bartholomew, St. Agatha …
    The things that were happening to them! The things they were pictured doing!
    There was such richness from which to choose, and she had spent most of her Sundays studying them. This had helped to block out the voice of Dr. Vaniah Odom, and then — in more recent years — the Reverend Goodchild’s voice.
    The artist who worked on them had been a Bearded One with another three-ring circus of a name (they appeared to be compulsory, a different act in each ring — bespangled elephants trumpeting, high-wire acts spinning in mid-air, plumed horses bowing their heads — too much action for the eyes to take in all at once): Elphinstone Dalhousie Barton (the surname did not really live up to the two preceding names, and rather weakened the effect), the father of Mrs. Alexander Diddecott. Elphinstone Dalhousie Barton not only took the name of the church all too literally (trying his utmost to include — with pedantic correctness — a representation of every possible known saint), but proved to be equally literal-minded in his depiction of their symbols and their instruments of martyrdom. He reserved the largest expanses of glass for the saints who had met the goriest ends, and depicted their spectacular demises with an unflinching detail that would not have been out of place in one of the more advanced medical textbooks. They made the most luridly illustrated edition of Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs
seem tame and tentative. Sunday after Sunday she had examined them with a sprightly interest, effortlessly replacing the face of her chosen saint with the face of Dr. Vaniah Odom or the Reverend Goodchild, lingering over the depiction of his disemboweling, his decapitation, his death by swords, by arrows, by axes, by lions. It was an impressive illustration of the consolation that could be found in art.
    Soon — for the greater glory of Goodchild — the congregation would be moving to a new church, and today would be the last service in the original All Saints’. She would miss the bizarre sights in the windows of the old church.
    “A special service,” was the way that the Reverend Goodchild had