Stone of Destiny (8 page)

Now that we were there with intent, the Stone looked even larger than I had remembered. Would we really be able to lift such a massive thing? Just looking at its bulk made the whole thing seem impossible. Then an alternative method of getting it down from the five-foot-high Confessor’s Chapel suggested itself. Looking through the two glass doors of the rood-screen, we could see that the broad steps of the Sanctuary would present little difficulty to two, let alone three fairly able men. I had tried the doors on my previous visit, and I knew that they were not locked. The only snag to this plan was that the door we would have to use to get the Stone out of the Abbey was the Poets’ Corner door, which would need to be forced, as it was padlocked in such a way that the lock could not be screwed off, even from inside. But that might not be too difficult. It was the only door to the Abbey made of pine. The rest were of oak, and as hard as whinstone.

We also paid considerable attention to the Coronation Chair, and to the barrier that prevented the public from pressing too closely against it. The latter would offer no trouble. It was hinged and would lift easily away, but the Chair would have to be damaged, since it fitted very closely round the Stone and the wooden flange along the front seemed thicker and stouter on further examination. I decided to try partially to dismantle it with a screwdriver during the night, lest the necessity for speed should force us to tear it apart with a jemmy. The English have run the risk of having their Chair damaged ever since they built it to receive stolen property, but nonetheless we wanted to keep damage to a minimum.

Leaving the Chapel, we passed the plain, unadorned tomb of Edward I of England, who had ravaged our country and removed the Stone 650 years before. ‘Keep Troth’ was his motto. It was a command to others; never a rule of his own conduct. He was as treacherous a Plantagenet as ever raped a child or lied in his teeth.
He had coveted our country, and two countries which should have lived in peace had fought a series of bloody wars, the memory of which could never quite be effaced from the minds of the two peoples. Six hundred years is a long time, but there was a continuity of strife from his time to ours, and his sacking of the Abbey of Scone was, I hoped, to have its more civilised counterpart here in Westminster that very night.

When we got outside, we found that a grey haar had crept in with the darkness, and the night bore that cold cheerlessness which raw frost brings to a big city. The shops, however, were gay with lights, and each pub and each cafe had tricked itself out in tinsel and coloured paper. Christmas was all about us, scarcely the Christmas of the clean snow, the stall and the little Child, but a Christmas nevertheless. Suddenly I felt that perhaps we were all part of a new
Christmas Carol
, and that the little man with the pinched face who stood wistfully looking at the great Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square was really Bob Cratchit on his way home to his children in Camden Town. The moment passed, and again we found ourselves there as strangers, lost to the wonder they all shared. We went among these revellers to Lyons’ Corner House in the Strand, and sat there with them. There, among their celebrations, we held a council of war.

Our first point of discussion was whether or not we should take action that night or wait until the following day, which was Sunday and Christmas Eve. I pointed out that we had had no sleep that night, and, if things went according to plan, we should have no sleep for at least two nights after the operation. I reminded them also that, although there was every sign of revelry around us, the pubs would be open even later on Sunday in celebration of Christmas Eve, and the police would be more occupied with drunks then than they were tonight. The English are no respecters of the Sabbath.

Kay, however, had one eye on the purse, and was not keen to stay in London a moment longer than was necessary. Gavin
wanted to ‘have a bash’ and Alan was no less keen. I agreed. Although I was tired, I was also excited. I was aching to start, and at times tiredness is no bad thing. I am a nervous person, and nervous people are less frightened if they are tired. The reactions are a trifle slower. There is an extra fraction of time between impact and reaction that allows a calculated response and can prevent that swift instinctive movement, which is not always wise and is occasionally cowardly. There is never a better time than now.

We paid our bill and left. I had a long eerie vigil in front of me, but my stomach was full and my mind was clear. Alan and Kay drove off in the Anglia to make themselves familiar with the route west out of London, for it was their duty to head for Dartmoor with the Stone early the following morning. We said au revoir with a carelessness that was quite unassumed, and it was not until they were gone that I realised that if things went wrong I would not see them again until I had passed through prison.

The starlings were raising their ceaseless shrill chattering in the eaves of the buildings as Gavin and I turned into Northumberland Avenue where our old Ford was parked. I raked in my grip and produced the tools of my new profession: a file, a saw, a screwdriver bit, a wrench, a hooded torch, a length of wire, a tin of Vaseline to lubricate the saw, and, of course, the jemmy. I had gathered them together as symbols of my resolution. I had handled them a hundred times. I had fawned on them and looked at them and loved them far more than I had ever loved any inanimate thing. Their value as symbols was past. They had now become real.

Gavin sat watching me as I stowed them about me. The car was small, and as I stretched and stowed I felt that the eyes of all the passers-by were upon me. I had to go outside to put the jemmy in position, as it was too long to manoeuvre easily. Once I had it in the sling I had to be careful how I moved, because it galled me sorely in the groin. When I had my coat on all was hidden except a
slight stoutness, which Gavin made jokes about as we drove along the Embankment.

My laughter was strained and I would have preferred silence. I have an antipathy to working in company, and this time I would especially have preferred solitude because I was nervous and frightened. Yet the fear turned into excitement as we neared the Abbey and I had to screw it down until it was only a pressure along my ribs, occasionally unwinding itself in an involuntary twitch. I do not know if Gavin knew I was nervous. Perhaps he did and was trying to jolly me along. But I tried to hide it from him, as his sympathy would have been unbearable.

We parked the car in the Sanctuary, the open space outside the west door. With a brief ‘Cheerio’ to Gavin I eased myself out of the car, galling my groin on the jemmy as I did so. Then I stood for a moment and adjusted my dress before leaving and walking casually towards the west door. Big Ben struck 5.15 p.m. We were on time.

I passed out of the shining noisy darkness of a London evening. Inside, the light was soft yet it seemed to illuminate me and probe me out as a persistent and sinister visitor. I pulled my heavy coat about me and hated the damning jemmy at my side.

Followed at a distance by Gavin I walked slowly up the north transept, pausing only to gaze at a Latin inscription, or read an English one. The venerable guide was in conversation with a woman and he paid no attention to me. I walked on into the shadows, which seemed to be patches of only slightly less intense light.

I turned as I reached the top of the north transept. It was in comparative darkness. A low rail separated me from the extreme end of the transept, where, under the brief cover of a cleaner’s trolley, I hoped to hide. Down in the aisle, Gavin walked slowly past. No one else was in sight. He nodded to me briefly, absent-mindedly. I crawled under the trolley and having covered my face with my coat lay perfectly still, my head cushioned on my
arm. I noticed I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly. I was in Westminster Abbey. Saliva oozed out my mouth. It made the sleeve of the coat from my father’s tailor’s shop in Paisley soggy. Old people say youth is wasted on the young. Mine wasn’t being.

My own little world was under my coat collar. The steam from my breath condensed on my face and the saliva crept along my sleeve. The hard stone of the Abbey floor was part of it, but the greatest reality was my heart, which thudded and pounded and threatened to stick in my throat and make me vomit.

This, I had always reckoned, would be the most dangerous and trying part. To be caught at any time would be bad enough, but to be caught with my pockets stuffed with housebreaking tools before I had had a chance even to touch the Stone would be ignominy and derision. And I was young enough to fear derision more than anything else.

Gradually I relaxed. My leg ceased to twitch and although I wanted to cough I forced the need into an attic of my mind. Quarter to six struck, and then the hour. Gavin would now be out of the building since it closed at six. My head was still covered and I could not see whether or not the lights were out. I did not dare to look.

When quarter past six struck I tensed and looked up. The lights were out and I was in darkness. I could now move in safety to St Paul’s Chapel, where, since it was under repair, I was certain I could hide without fear of discovery.

I listened and, hearing nothing but the vague susurration of the traffic in the world outside, crept stiffly from my hiding place.
I took off my shoes for silence, and my stockinged feet were noiseless on the cold stone floor. A hundred and fifty feet above me the great vaulted roof soared in the darkness, invisible like a clouded sky. You could reach out and touch the silence as I started to creep along.

I had gone three paces when I suddenly heard a noise. It was the jangling of keys, and even as I listened, a light swept round a corner of the transept and came towards me. Shocked and frightened, I crouched behind a statue, hoping the watchman would miss me.

The jangling stopped and the light shone in my face. I looked up, white and piteous.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ The watchman’s voice was clear and masterful, like the voice of a public speaker. He was tall and bearded, and suddenly I knew that he had been badly frightened. He was restoring his self-confidence by being over-bearing in the presence of the poor moron that he saw before him.

‘I’ve been shut in,’ I said, hanging my head on my chest, and making myself smaller and more like a mouse than usual.

‘Why didn’t you shout then?’ he asked. He was not bullying me, and although he sounded as though he spoke with all the authority of the House of Lords, his voice was not unkind.

‘I thought I’d get a row,’ I said, and my voice quivered on the verge of tears. He told me that this would never do, and I cringed before him. Then he saw my shoes in my hand, and I had to tell him the truth, as I could think of no lie.

‘I was frightened someone would hear me,’ I said, ‘and come and catch me.’

‘Well, put them on,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t hit you over the head. I’m patrolling about here all night, you know.’

For the first time a wild hope flamed up in me that perhaps he would put me out without handing me over to the police, who would be bound to search me. Then as I stooped to put on my shoes, the jemmy slipped from the sling under my armpit, and
only my arm pressing against my side kept it from falling with a clang onto the stone paving of the Abbey floor.

I held it there in a sort of left-sided palsy, and then suddenly we were moving towards the door, the west door, through which I had entered with excitement and pride only an hour before. As we reached the door, he suddenly shot a question at me.

‘What’s your name?’

‘John Alison,’ I replied, with a bland ability to improvise which amazed me.

‘Your address?’

‘Care of Fee, 49 Arlington Street, N14.’

He noted it down on the back of his Post Office Savings Bank book. Then a thought seemed to strike him.

‘Have you any money?’

I told him I had a pound.

‘You’re sure,’ he insisted. ‘You weren’t sheltering in the Abbey because you had nowhere else to go?’

‘No,’ I said. I did not feel that I looked like a down-and-out.

Then he opened the door, led me down the steps, and with a kindly word and a ‘Merry Christmas’ he let me out into the concourse of people who had nothing on their conscience. I hitched the jemmy back into its sling but I did not dare to lift my head and step out like a free man until I was far from the Abbey.

My first reaction was one of jubilation that I had won free of a dicey event. I had showed my willingness to take risks if not my ability to succeed. I had met the most unfavourable of situations, and coped with it with an ability to lie that rather shocked me, but gave me not a little pride as well.

When, from the far side of Parliament Square, I turned and had a last look at the massive building that had almost been my prison, I realised that the Stone was still inside, and I wondered at my temerity and sneered at my complacency. With amazing folly I had thought that I might do something of note and of wonder,
and I had only made myself ridiculous. I envied people who had someone to tell them what to do next, and walked on defeated.