Stone of Destiny (9 page)

Then I thought of the nightwatchman with whom I had crossed swords and scored a contemptible victory. Success had been on my side, but so had the advantages, for I knew all that went on, and was fighting for a cause and striving for my own personal liberty, while he was only patrolling for pay. He had treated me gently and courteously; he had set me free when he could have exerted his petty authority. Yet when it came out in what circumstances we had met, he would become the reproach of his superiors, and the gibe of his equals. Added to my misery was the thought that if a real victory lay between us as two humans that night, the victory was his. He had acted at Christmastime in a true Christmas spirit; he had made no room for me in his church, but he had seen that I was not penniless when he turned me away. The fact that I had to accept his kindness as a sort of betrayal of him troubled me greatly and I could find little consolation in knowing that the whole sorry business arose from this un-Christian English church keeping property at Westminster that did not belong to it. I greatly admire gentleness as a virtue, and I met gentleness in the Abbey that evening.

I never met the watchman again or heard what became of him. I like to think that he was a trainee curate and that he settled into a quiet living and became beloved of his flock; that he never read the works of Tom Paine or Samuel Butler, or had philosophical doubts. He represents the other Church of England, the one I admire. I have a tiny copy of the Book of Common Prayer, the Cranmer and Latimer one, which I read from time to time. I love it. A smile of affection comes to my lips when I think of this other Church of England and its night-watchman. His concern for me and how he ascertained that I had enough money for a night’s lodging struck a dissonant chord with the drunken celebrations I saw all round me. Although I am one of life’s doubters I left the Abbey with a lurking feeling that
I may be missing something that was very precious to the man who had just turned me out.

I wondered about this as I walked aimlessly along the Embankment, contradicting myself with every thought. I was resigned to a long wait, because we had made no provision to meet should things go wrong. It had never occurred to me that I might be caught and ejected, and that a rendezvous point would be necessary, and, somehow, I had to stop the others trying to make contact with me inside the Abbey when zero hour approached. I was much criticised by many of my friends for my lack of foresight in this instance, but foresight can only see through a fog. Hindsight is the only clear vision. We had not been planning for failure. We had been planning for success. However by one of the series of coincidences that were to mark everything we did, I found Gavin’s car, which I had left only two hours before. It was standing on the Embankment, and I waited beside it in the bitter frost and drew on a cigarette. I knew that Gavin would arrive shortly and I would have to explain how I had bungled matters and let everyone down.

After about quarter of an hour I saw him coming jauntily towards me. He wore no coat, but his hands were lost in a massive pair of sheepskin gloves. A cigarette poked skywards from the corner of his mouth. He was almost on me before he saw me, and then he stopped dead in his tracks and the cigarette fell to the pavement.

‘How did you get here?’ he asked as he stooped to pick it up. His amazement was justified. He knew I had been locked in the Abbey.

‘I walked,’ I said sourly and ungraciously.

He unlocked the car door and we both got in.

‘I got caught,’ I said, and told him the story. He listened to me to the end without a word, and then he started the car and drove off.

‘You can thank your lucky stars you’re not in there.’ He jerked
a fur-clad thumb towards the bulk of New Scotland Yard, which loomed over us. I was too dejected to reply.

We parked the car in Northumberland Avenue and moved over to Trafalgar Square, where Gavin had arranged to meet Kay and Alan after their return from making themselves familiar with the west road out of London.

We waited moodily at the Underground entrance in the square. They were late, and I was in no mood for conversation. As the minutes dragged by it seemed to me that there had been another hitch, and that Alan and Kay would never materialise out of the thousands who teemed about the giant Christmas tree in the breeze-blown spray of Trafalgar’s fountains. I moved away from Gavin and watched the crowds and listened to the great noise which was soothing in its strength and impersonality. When I came back to the subway feeling less of a failure, I found Gavin talking to Kay and Alan. He was explaining what had happened.

Nothing more was said about the Stone since we were all feeling pretty sick. Alan, with a cheerfulness that was not faked, and which did not grate, suggested that we should cross over the road and ‘eat our Christmas dinners’. It was only a few hours since we had fed, but we all suddenly realised that it was good advice. The human body seems to be able to go without sleep for lengthy periods, but the longer the period the more food is required. In the last stages of the expedition, when I had only catnapped during a period of over 100 hours, I found myself eating ravenously and continuously. After the meal, we crossed over Northumberland Avenue and sat in the Anglia and held a council of war.

I told them in detail what had happened. Among the remarks the watchman had made to me was one which filled us all with dismay. He had told me that it was a dangerous business being in the Abbey after hours, for there were watchmen prowling round all night.

To me this did not ring true. My information was that there was only one watchman, and I could not see him doing his rounds more than once every two hours. But, on the face of it, it was plausible. After all, I had been caught. My information might have been false, and if the watchman were correct we might as well press the starter and go home.

We considered trying the same plan again the following night, but gave it up as too dangerous. I could have wept with impotence and shame. Here we sat in the centre of London; reivers, moss-troopers, pseudo men of action, frustrated by one bearded watchman. It seemed to me that we had failed, but it was unthinkable that we should go home yet. On the other hand a coarse and blundering attempt could only end in further failure, and bring disrepute down on our country and on ourselves.

‘Don’t forget we are wasting money,’ I said. ‘And the man who gave us it can ill afford it.’

Kay’s voice came from the back of the car: ‘There are still more nights and more chances.’

‘We might break in from the outside,’ said Alan, who had not shown the slightest dismay at our initial failure.

‘Or we might try a cheeky attempt in daylight,’ I added, forgetting my cautious thoughts of a moment before.

Alan summed up what we all thought.

‘Bruce watched his spider seven times. We’ve only tried once. Let’s go along to the Abbey and look for spiders.’

We all laughed. Gavin started the engine and we turned into Whitehall and made once again for the Abbey.

We stopped the car in Old Pie Street, and Gavin and Alan got out. I stayed with Kay because I did not want to be seen twice on the same night by the same watchman. The other two went off to prowl around and glean what information they could. They penetrated to the Dean’s Yard, and from the Dean’s Yard to the Cloisters, and returned to report that they had seen nothing but a drunken cockney lying in the gateway from the Sanctuary to the Dean’s Court.

‘We didn’t think it was the Dean himself,’ said Alan. ‘So we passed by on the other side.’

We made several other excursions that night, but they were all as fruitless as the first, and towards eleven o’clock we decided to call it a day. We knew that in Glasgow our friends would be waiting and wondering and anxious, and wanting some report from us, but we had little to report to them, and we saw no reason to telephone them to tell them that we had failed. We went instead for some hot coffee, because the temperature was dropping fast, and indeed London was in for one of its coldest nights for many years.

It was now late and the streets were full of drunks. The whole West End was jammed with people determined on having a good time to celebrate the birth of Christ, no matter how much it cost them. We eased the car through them and swore at them, as there were many who were clumsy in drink. Time and again we pondered on their reactions should they know why we were among them. We felt like a bubble of Scotland in the centre of a hostile stream.

It was now imperative that we should find somewhere to sleep, for it was getting late and we were very tired. Kay was adamant on the subject.

‘We can’t go back to Glasgow with all our money spent and no Stone. We’ll sleep in the cars and save three pounds.’

The temperature was 10 degrees below outside, and our breath was freezing on the windows. We had had only snatches of sleep for 36 hours and none of us had been warm since we left Glasgow. Murder might have been in our hearts as we turned on Kay, but underlying her economy was a strange truth. In the cars we lived as a sort of community of mutual support. Together in the cars we preserved our fragment of Scotland and our comradeship and our integrity of purpose, all of which we might have lost had we sought warmth and soft beds.

We drove to a side turning past the Albert Hall, and pulled
into the parking space in the centre of the road, one car nose to tail behind the other. It must have been well into the early hours of Christmas Eve by now, because the streets were much quieter. In the hotel opposite to where we sat, the manager came hopefully to the door at the sound of car engines, and seeing two shabby little cars, encrusted with mud, prepared to refuse us a bed. To his obvious anger, however, we did not get out of the cars, and after a while he went to an upstairs window, whence he glared balefully down at us. Plenty of people spent the night in their cars when touring, so there was nothing he could do to harm us.

With our breath freezing on anything we breathed on, we settled down to pass the night.

I have never been so cold in my life. If this was martyrdom, I preferred the fire of the stake. London was in one of its periodic Moscow moods, and I swear I saw wolves scavenging the streets. Feet, ears and hands we had long since ceased to worry about, but now it seemed impossible to keep up body heat. We were not dressed for palavering about in Arctic conditions, and with no engine to give its meagre heat our breath froze immediately on the windows. In the car in front Kay and Alan had the luxury of the two ragged blankets from the bed in my digs, but in our car, Gavin and I had to make do with an old coat. The night developed into a struggle for that coat.

Every half-hour throughout the night one or other of us, in either of the cars, would waken up and start the engine and race through the streets, hoping to find a coffee stall or an early morning cafe. Gavin and I had to be particularly careful, as our car had no antifreeze, and a burst cylinder would have ruined the expedition. We were all heartily glad when six o’clock came, and we decided to go somewhere, try to eat breakfast, and thaw out.

At breakfast we were not so much cold, as stiff and twisted and petrified into distorted shapes. We must have looked like four Highland reivers as we sat, miserable and silent, eating our congealed sausages. We all still wore our coats. Gavin and I
wore heavy overcoats and a growth of stubble on our chins. Alan was hidden in the depths of a duffel coat, from which every now and again he peered like a wren out of a nest, to invite us to ‘spend your holidays in the sunny south’. Kay managed her mug while dressed in scarf, polo neck, slacks and gloves, and the waiter was not impressed. However, we kept talking about our long cold run up from Ilfracombe, and no doubt he took pity on us.

We lingered over breakfast to the last possible moment, and then drove aimlessly round the city, for it was very early on Sunday morning, and no one was abroad. We did not know that by this time tomorrow we would have made off with the Stone, but each of us knew in our hearts that we were going to have another try. When the streets began to stir, we parked the cars in Northumberland Avenue, and went up to Charing Cross station to look for baths. Take a cold, demoralised man and give him a jug of hot water and a razor, and if he is worth his salt, he will be spring heeled and glowing inside 10 minutes; give him a bath and he will be a superman.

There are no baths at Charing Cross so we took a tube across to Waterloo. It was magnificent. We lay and steeped until the attendant came and thumped on the doors and abused us. British Rail seemed to pick their minor officials for their rudeness, but it was just as well. Not having relaxed for 48 hours or more, it would have been fatal had we steeped until we were soft and sleepy.

Sleep was indeed far from us. When we were clean and warm we held a council of war. We were all uneasy since we were spending a lot of money. We would have felt inadequate for the rest of our lives had we been forced to creep back ignominiously over the Border, having had a cheap holiday at a friend’s expense. On the other hand we did not wish to force ourselves into rash and clumsy action. Alan and Gavin wanted very sensibly to leave the next attempt until night-time, when, with all the knowledge we had gleaned, we might force an entry from the outside. I
thought, however, that this was scarcely possible, and I wanted at least to consider a daylight attempt. The 20-year-old plan, evolved, I think, by Compton MacKenzie and Councillor Gray in the days of their youth, had been to create a diversion in the nave while a party of men attacked the Stone and carried it out the back door of the Margaret Chapel.