CHC / Sacred Heart / Wesleyan Chapel, Horseferry Road

Yes. I saw the Pope. Briefly, on the friday. The boys were not back from swimming when I got home from work and I just walked up and waited for him to come out of Westminster Abbey. From far away I could recognise the stoop of his dipped head and the padding of white and red satin on the step of the abbey. Shortly after, the cavalcade of darkened windows sped past, a lady infront of me saying, 'I knew he'd come this way, I knew he'd come this way'. But I didn't really feel anything one way or the other, except perhaps that I had stood in the right place. Though I think I clapped or waved. And later wondered why.

There are only two churches left nearby now and both are on Horseferry Road. After these two I will have to go a little bit further afield - though not far really, Pimlico and St James or up Whitehall.
The Baptist Chapel on Horseferry road has a metal grille across the door and a billboard chained to the wall advertising Sunday services and a lunchtime one too but I have never seen the door open. It looks like a kind of Gordon Ramsey's nightmare of a church, a bit dirty, a bit down at heel, a chapel time forgot. Hmm, but I will have to try to go, and increasingly I have a sinking feeling that I will have to go to a service or run in and out through the jaws of that concertina metal gate at service time. The other church is only a few buildings away, on the corner, with stained glass and a porch and a pretty garden. Though I have only seen the door open once and the very young mums smoking on the church steps looked really doubtful when I said I wanted to have a quick look in and I bottled it. Also I have never managed to work out what sort of church it is - there is no sign and no advert of services.

I feel I am struggling. Not just with the churches. I went to Westminster Archive with a to do list. I had found a booklet at the archive 'Tracing the History of Your House' ( I think home would be a better word really, I can't be the only person without a house interested in history but perhaps I am just being prickly) and thought it was going to be easy. I had decided since Westminster Abbey to start at the beginning - to start at 1885 when this block was built or as near as I could, and then trace the families that had lived here. In the 1888 electoral register I had already found George Harry Davidson listed (women did not have the vote, were not listed) but the booklet said that 'The census enumerators' returns for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891 are often the most exciting source for house historians. They list all the occupants present on census night. From 1851 their precise ages, occupations and places of birth are recorded together with their relationship to the head of the household' I imagined the knock at this door, and the feeling of importance answering who you all were, small faces peering out.

But in the Archive I felt only anxious. I didn't know how to work the microfiche and the pages jumped and danced, as I jiggled the glass plate, finding the magnified worn edges of photographed dust on acetate, then spinning across spidery scrawl. Just these Peabody blocks alone had pages and pages of dense black ink, like ants crawling. I couldn't read the script very well, the letters of the blocks were completely undecipherable and I felt increasingly agitated. I scrawled and scrawled through the names, the addresses, trying to match letters to other letters, trying to spot Davidson. Nothing was clear. My guess would be that in 1891 Thomas Roadnight a 34 year old Police Constable from Bucks in Aylesbury lived here with his wife Julia 33, daughter Jessie 10 and son Frederick 8 but at the moment it doesn't feel a very good guess ( though I have had an idea to match the capital letters of nearby street names from maps of the time to the block letters to decode the writing and will go back and try this) but even writing this I just feel anxious. I thought discovering these people would be fascinating and affirming but actually somehow it is the opposite, these invisible people make me feel invisible too. I'm not even sure that is right, but all that living: that noisy, hungry, shouting, kissing, bodily fluid living seemed transient, just a baton to be passed on.

I will keep going but have realised I had previously been lucky, stories just falling into my lap.

Late Sunday afternoon I pace that corner of Horseferry Rd. I must be able to get into one of them I reason. Though the old dread of entering a church, of looking needy returns. To be a supplicant. I see the door of the nameless church open, a small square sign says CHC and and I climb the stairs. In the porch there are many leaflets and I can hear a shuffle of presence inside the building. Through square stained glass window tiles I see people standing still. But strangely there is no noise, no music, no prayer. I shift uneasily pressing into the swing door. It doesn't give easily.

Of course I can't do it. Leaflets in hand I am back down the stairs, back down the street, then back home.

When I check CHC it stands for Cardinal Hume Centre, opened in 1986, set up as part of the work of Cardinal Hume to help the community to help the homeless. A hostel built later in 1989. Not a church at all.

But then history unfolding, it was originally a Wesleyan chapel built in 1814, then bought by the mother of the Countess of Gainsborough in 1927 and dedicated to the convent of Sacred Heart in thanks for a son recovering from a serious illness. Some demoliton took place, some building work started, then bombed out on 14th May 1944. Building started again in 1962 and was completed 1963 but the sisters of the eucharist vacated the sacred heart convent in 1986 and the centre was established. A strange combination on the same site, a methodist chapel from the tradition of preaching open air, in fields, in towns, taken over by an order of catholicism. After all John Wesley called the pope the antichrist. But in London both had been outsiders - hosting meetings in homes, suffering persecution and arrests, perched here, on this corner opposite where the workhouse had been.

Walking back from school the next morning, still proud in my new blue gold trimmed coat, I meet a man with grizzled face, crumpled in a full suit and bowler hat. I smile.
'What you laughing at.' He says.
Nothing. I said. 'You look great.'
Like a magician his stories unfold like coloured handkerchiefs from pockets. 'The funny thing was, I was standing under a building site, bang wang, a bucket of white paint, right on top of me,' His arms upraised, eyebrows up, eyes beady, 'But there, just infront of me, a bag full of all this.' He gestures to his suit. 'And oh my goodness look at these!' He points to his toes. 'Hundred pound shoes.' I nod. Looking at the shiny satin tie. 'And you know, the other night? Fishing....' He is a showman. There might be doves under that hat. There is enough time for me to savour the idea. Him. Hungry but resourceful. In his suit. Fishing. 'Out pops a man in a bra and pants.' he says 'Oooh, and he said, will you fiddle with me willy?' Then, quick like brackets in the conversation, ' I just need one pound forty.' I give him two pounds.

The lollipop lady on our street watches the transaction with suspicion. In the many surprising things about where I live a lollipop lady is another one.