Queen's Chapel, St James's

I go back to Rymans and buy purple stickers then stick them on the map to mark the churches I have been to. Dark dots radiating out from Westminster Abbey, clustering near the centre then broadening out into Pimlico, Chelsea, Mayfair and two stray dots south of the river. The only yellow dot ( marking churches I haven't been to on this street map of London) surrounded by purple ones still is the Queen's Chapel at St James's. I have tried a couple of times to get in, but it is only open on Sundays for services and is only open certain months of the year.

I try again when the boys are away with exh and his mum, though I haven't finished writing Corpus Christi. I think oh good I am going to speed the whole project up, go back to visiting a church a week, mainly write about the churches IT IS GOING TO BE GREAT I THINK.
The night before UL and I drink too much, argue, cry and then walk through London in the middle of the night, holding hands. It feels way too dramatic for the sort of people we are really. When we were together we never spoke much of love or ourselves - we just were. We did things side by side and we allowed each other enormous personal freedom. By the end I wanted to talk about love, I wanted a plan. I probably sat like a slightly intense puppy waiting for that ball - but it never came. Now and completely unexpectedly it has been dropped at my feet.

I wake that sunday morning way too early feeling delicate and slightly desperate. The flat is quiet. This would be my life without the children I think and it feels unbearable. All that myself. All that not them. For they are so completely and utterly fascinating to me. I am not sure if at the core of me is depression or joy sometimes but having limitations to being me - all that thinking about myself - the worry and energy and slight paranoia and over bearing generosity - seems more manageable spread out and focussed on two clever bright and funny boys. I wonder how I will suffer when they've had enough, grown out of it completely - and it is a title for something - all that me. Though - and possibly because so much of myself has been provided - they are nonchalent and rebellious of it already. But adapting at each age from the tiny dry and nervous papery nappies of new borns and the beat of their sparrow hearts under soft baby gros to the seemingly endless school uniform trousers growing too short and feet too big for trainers and vivid moments when I turn to watch them, sometimes just briefly, with absolute wonder and pride and laughter. I hope when the time comes it will just be a new stage. Somedays I shout at them. ' You NEED to grow up to be smart, clever, funny, kind young men.' YOU CAN DO IT!' And oh oh oh I hope they do.

I walk through St James's Park on a sunday morning and it is packed. There is a royal wedding knock on to tourism. The crowds are thronging. Enthusiastic about where they are. Though all the flags are gone and the flesh of the pink tarmac where that beautiful and jaunty navy Aston Martin drove is slightly naked without them.

The Queen's Chapel is tucked at the side of the little street alongside St James's Palace on the opposite side. A white house flat to the street - nicely proportioned, a simple gable roof, large windows like wide-opened eyes and a high forehead. There is a verger standing outside the chapel and when I nod to her and ask if it is ok to come in, she takes me in and seats me. It is hushed and wealthy, though less secret than the dark surprise of the packed Chapel Royal which is it's sister church. This Chapel is open in the summer the other - the Chapel Royal in the winter. Here light pours in from huge windows of blurry old leaded glass, and the ceiling though strangely only half gilded is oppulent. There is rich gold plates at the altar and a painting. I spend ages looking at this picture trying to work out what it is before realising I should put my glasses on. When I do I see a mother and baby with another child and I can't remember what I thought it was before I could see it. It had just seemed a mystery. The organ is playing majestically. A woman on her own, of roughly the same age and reassuringly not grand is seated next to me. I think wouldn't it be funny if we were doing the same thing. Then I think what if she were a 'mystery worshipper'. You would probably need to be a dedicated reader to know who 'Mystery worshipper' is? But there is a site
http://www.ship-of-fools.com/mystery/specials/london_05/index.html
that reviews church services and early on, when I first went very fearfully into churches, avoiding services, barely getting into them at all I seemed to be in their wake. Early on my friend even said if your life was a film - mystery worshipper would be the romantic interest. Though at that point I didn't know I needed one.

At the back I can see the choir and clergy gather in the sunshine of the pavement before the procession down the aisle. I recognise some of them from before, the little mice boys, the man with the black folded and pleated sleeves but it is less surprising, less Alice in Wonderland. The establishment of establishment is more open here because it is daylight and also because we face forwards towards the altar not each other watching the procession. Maybe too the trappings of establishment have had a resurgence, even since I wrote the Chapel Royal - standing alongside a ladder at the Royal Wedding watching golden coaches and soldiers I was moved by the continuity of history and the acceptance of it even if I didn't really believe what I was being moved by or tacitly accepting.

Next to this other woman - strangely more like me than I anticipate in this church - and someone who also declines the communion offered when the congregation rises and queues at the altar. I sense a relief from both of us - I am pleased not to be the only outsider and she must be pleased I don't need to clamber past her to get to the altar. Or both.

As communion is taken the choir sing Tallis. Thomas Tallis was part of the Chapel Royal ( living within St James's Palace) from 1543 and composed and performed for Henry V111, Edward V1, Mary 1 and Elizabeth 1 (1558 until he died in 1585). As composer and organist under the royal wing he managed to avoid the religious controversies of the times though he remained an unreformed roman catholic. It was a difficult and suspicious position to be. Early in his career he was part of the monastery at Holy Cross in Waltham until the abbey was dissovled in 1540. There he acquired a volume of treatises by Leonel Power at this dissolution and preserved it - one of the treatise prohibited consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves. Later Queen Elizabeth granted him and Byrd 21 years sole rights to compose polyphonic music from 1575 and a patent to print and publish music too, which was one of the first arrangements of that type in the country. I struggle to understand this. The restrictions sound very tight. UL is a muscian and when I ask him he sends me a thoughtful essay explaining the central ideas of of sacred proportion, of chiming simple notes perfectly.

In the service with the beautiful music and the choir's voices building one of those boys - not much older than my son and with reassuringly scruffy hair and a thoughtful but not goody goody expression, opens his mouth, and this sound of gold and heaven and height soars out - his eyes slightly baffled by the voice he posseses.

I think the personal restriction of having a family has made me happier, more fulfilled, more open to people, more keen on joy.

At a time when Catholic worship was illegal in England The Queen's Chapel was built as a roman catholic place of worship for the Spanish Infanta to aid negotiations in a potential marriage with Charles 1 that fell through. Though it was then used for the wife he married - the french catholic Henrietta Maria. The beautiful building was completed in 1629 causing resentment and suspicion, indeed it's plain exterior was meant to deflect this outcry. But in troubled times it contributed to the conflict that eventually erupted between Charles and Parliament into the English Civil War and Charles 1's eventual execution infront of the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall.

Both the Queen's Chapel and the Banqueting house were designed by Inigo Jones - a welsh catholic cloth makers son who travelled in Italy studying architecture with 'Collector' Earl of Arundel. He brought a version of the Italian architect Palladio's work home and translated it into early Palladianism here in England. Based on the proportion and symmetry of formal classical temples of the Ancient Greeks and Romans Inigo Jones fascination even led him to our own ancient structures - he was the first to measure Stonehenge. I don't know why - I find the scene, those old stones on a windswept plain being studied by a man in the thrall of classical mathematics beautiful and mysterious.

Walking back from dropping the boys off at school one morning I hear and then see a horse drawn cart move across the traffic lights crossroads of Horseferry Road and Marsham Street, I have been deep in thought about the boys, about writing this, about all the things that make my life. I look up and laugh as if there is a tear in modern life and some old bit of history is coming towards me, two beautiful horses pulling this open carriage with two men in top hats perched high. On our street, on the thin dark street that Charles Dickens called 'Devil's Acre' the street where my sons have said that they are scared by something - it feels dark to them - a building oppposite has been taken over by a pack of youth. I wonder if they are squattting. They sit and smoke at the huge windows and watch people pass below though my brother who is a surveyer came to dinner one night ( roast chicken, gratin dauphinoise and salad) and texted me as he left to say that he forgot to tell me his company surveyed a brothel down here. I think how funny, the ground is the same, this dark street has not changed.

Amen

Westminster Chapel

Sunday. The boys with their Dad at his mum's for the weekend. A day of rest indeed. The flat so quiet that I hear the neighbours wake up. Sandwiched between single mums of single girls I know we are the noisy ones in our block but the quiet of the area at the weekend, with no passing traffic is like an island. I think we must drive the neighbours crazy. Those boys shout MUM! when they wake up. They shout when they go to bed. I miss them though. I wish we'd watched the football together last night. Instead I went to a party to watch it. Missed the goal walking down Seven Sisters lane without an AZ.

But today I have written and worked and read. Then I miss them again. Panic that they will have a car crash and die. That in my heartbreak I will start smoking after eight years abstinence ( I worry there is some sneaky desire to do this here - almost like the bonus.) Sometimes I can even imagine dragging on the cigarette. Perhaps I have to explain that their Dad did drive them home from his mum's once so drunk that they went missing for a couple of hours, finally appearing, Dad's face bloated, swaying, falling like a felled tree in the boys bedroom. I shouted and threatened to call the police, and then realised I couldn't do it infront of the boys. Though later, I called the social services. I don't know how many of the rest of you have done that but it didn't feel good. He has stopped drinking now, but still, it is hard to lose the fears.

As it is a Sunday, I think I should get out there and try and and get in a church that always seems closed. But then a whole new area of dread opens, does that mean actually going to a service? I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. Though since I have started this project I have discovered this fascinating site - mystery worshipper/ ship of fools - http://www.ship-of-fools.com/mystery/. When I first found it, after visiting St Matthews, not sure exactly what my plan was, I thought I had a rival, or even that the task I had set myself had been done. But Mystery worshipper is a detailed account of pew comfort, biscuit count and the unquantifiable measure of worship, of the feeling of god. Oh, oh, I am always pleased after visiting a church if I find mystery worshipper has been before. I love the tiny details of their undercover mission. I feel we are in each other's footsteps. I laugh that I could indeed be wrongly unmasked as mystery worshipper if I got to close to service time. Or spot them myself. Apparently they leave a calling card in the font. Should I do something similar?

I have been skirting Westminster Chapel for weeks. It is a huge church, almost half way between our flat and Buckingham Palace. I can't work out from the outside exactly what denomination it is. I can barely describe it. Dull brown brick, Italianate arches, a church from a Hitchcock film, but less interesting. I know the afternoon service is at 5.30 and try to go at 4pm. I can't get in. I go back at about 5.10. The automatic glass sliding doors open. There are two men at the front desk, like cloakroom attendants. I have braced myself. 'I know your service is about to start but I would love to have a quick look inside the church.' They wave me in. At that moment, briefly, I think maybe I can just go ahead with it.

I can't explain my own reticence to be visible, to take a stand, to stand out, but walking through those doors into a huge room, like a theatre in tiers, with people dotted around chatting - I have taken on way too much for myself. In the centre stage is the kit for a band, and a huge tv display screen, with bad graphics procaiming their message for the Lord. Behind this ugly paraphernalia is a beautiful huge organ, another wizard of oz prop. I can't explain my reaction but I can't stay. I find it creepy, I don't want to smile and be welcomed. I bolt. An old lady at the door misunderstands my movement out, and for ages we are both left holding the door, welcoming each other into the church. I feel like a comedy baddie on the run.

I have to go with how it is. But I don't have much description. Though, when I return home, and google the church, the history is riveting. It is probably the earliest church I have been to. Initially the chapel started in 1840, in what was 'one of London's poorest slums- rife with prostitution, squalor and drug addiction. Alms houses and schools were built, orphans were cared for and work schemes were organised for unemployed men. Rev Martin's gospel-preaching and Biblical authority made Westminster Chapel stand out as a light of hope. Even influential leaders of that time like Lord Shaftesbury and Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey began to hear of the Chapel's impact in the area.' So popular was the chapel that by 1860 a 1,500 seater building, the building I went into today was designed and built opening in 1864. Between 1904 with Dr George Campbell Morgan and then his even more celebrated successor Dr Lloyd Jones until 1968, they had queues round the block. People queueing to hear the friday evening lectures and the sunday sermons. Their words travelling the world, big in USA, even Korea.

I have begun to be inspired by the history of this area's transition, the frantic building of churches in the late 19th century and I have bought a series of local maps, Westminster and Victoria 1869, 1894, 1916. I feel that I am onto something, as I colour in the churches on the b/w maps, noticing the increase of feltpenned rectangles as time passes. I'm not sure what yet. But just a fascinating movement of change. Of intention for good.

And yes, mystery worshipper had been before. Reporting on the plentiful digestive biscuits, and a 52 minute sermon! MW horrified by such length. Though my concerns about hanging around at the back of the church are validated by this short report:
'What happened when you hung around after the service looking lost?
Nothing much. Few spoke to me and I spent some time sitting alone on a chair by the wall. One man in full camouflage gear came and spoke to me. He offered me his phone number and said I should visit him and see his neighbour's cat. He also said if I ever needed prayer I could phone him and he would come and pray with me, since he liked prayer. Oddly enough, I declined the invite.'

My boys came home safe and sound.

amen