Corpus Christi Covent Garden

I buy a street map of London and a pack of fluorescent yellow dot stickers. The boys and I lay the map out on the kitchen table and 'spot' the cross symbols of churches dotted across London. I don't ask them to help but they want to. I am trying to sort out a plan. Where to go to next, how far to go. We take it in turns to laugh uproariously at the amount of stickers used, the amount of churches found, the amount of yellow circles covering the map. There are over a 150 churches that I haven't visited in a central London area stretching from St John's Wood in the North and Kennington in the South then Earl's Court in the West to Whitchapel in the East. Even later when all of us are doing other things, the map is still laid out and we take it in turns
to chuckle as we pass by the table at mum's crazy plan, at the exhausting look of it, at the density of churches in this city. These children have barely ever been to a church, do not really understand what I am up to, but are almost giddy with the madness of the challenge laid out. 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Maddox Ford is one of my favourite novels - the surface tension of the story as tight as a stretched balloon, the bleakness written with an ominous lilting charm, the structure held by spokes of taut engineering - and in it a description of a man lining up a polo shot, an affair, the sidelong squint of concentration and determination - the 'it might just be done' glance. I feel like that now. I am washing up, tidying up, but when I see the map, I stop briefly, suck in my breath and think that 'it might' a pause, 'just be done'.

Since the Royal Wedding I have been suffering a kind of 'low' about my own project. I sort of wished I had stopped then - it would have been roughly a year and would have been a decent ending - a bit of a fanfare finale. I would have been able to hold my head up high that I had the discipline to carry it out and that I had learnt so much by doing it. Though as soon as I left Rymans I realised I should have bought another colour sticker for the churches I have visited and mark them too. But even without I am impressed by the shape made in the midst of the constellation of bright dots for with very little research or plan, just a nosing around, I seem to have caught almost all the local churches in this spiralling net. There is just one Pimlico church left out, left to do, right out towards the river.

I regret now I haven't taken pictures of each church, I regret sometimes too that I haven't just written dry descriptions of each building not muddled myself within their stories. I have become sick of my own slightly melodic moaning - for my rage with exh seems quietly and unexpectedly to have passed. Initially I shocked myself by my own repeated and public telling of the events within our family for what started a quiet painful whisper when I didn't know anyone would read it became a strident and public banging of pots and pans as I knew they were. I hoped and imagined it could help someone else in the same situation - someone struggling with a drunken partner, someone stuck in something they knew they had to escape from - and I still hope this is true. But I woke up one morning recently and thought I am not angry any more, I am repeating myself, it has to stop, the story has to shift, move on, become a better one. I apologise to exh for telling it, but I also wonder if it has been the shortest and cheapest way for me to recover from what happened. I needed to tell it. I needed to come back from the isolation of survival to some sort of acceptance.

At my friend's birthday party standing in a beautiful room in towering high heels and a glass of white wine in my hand with many beautiful women wearing party dresses and handsome urbane men chatting I suddenly realise with humour and horror that some of them know about the fat that hung over my knickers but I am not certain which ones. It makes it hard for me to look people in the eye, worrying that they can only pity me. A failed marriage, a single mum, breadline existence AND the detailed description of that hanging fat. Like those puzzles I had as a child where you searched for faces hidden within the picture there is a shifting searching of their expressions to try and spot who knows. Mainly I feel proud, really proud of what I have achieved by our family's recovery but interested too by my attempt to describe what Diane Arbus called 'What's left after what one isn't is taken is what one is'.

Now I feel I am tipping into a new madness, I want to go to ALL these churches - I want to discover their stories, I am fascinated by the history they tell. Even sometimes passing churches at the edges of surburban London travelling somewhere in the car I think - hmm interesting, how long will it take me to get there? I should get on with my second novel, should try and make more money, Even fiddle with the first one again. But something about being obedient to the task set is attractive. I would like to visit all of them.

Though when I write that I feel exhausted.

In my mapping London book there is a large and beautiful watercolour drawing showing a bird's eye view of the City of London circa 1810 - called the Rhinebeck Panorama - it shows opulent boats crowded on the Thames alongside the Tower of London and infront of the many many spired City. Behind this dense cluster of towers and spires the dome of St Pauls can be seen, even Westminster Abbey in the distance, then London petering out to fields and gentle hills. Ever since I've seen this picture I have thought I would love to match the spires and towers of this old City of London to the churches that still exist today. So maybe that is my plan. The extent of my ambition. I work in the City and look around some days going up to Waterstone's to buy a new book to read to the boys, or a quick look in New Look and there are churches tucked in corners everywhere, squeezed amidst the glass and steel and concrete of the modern buildings. But though it is completely obvious it takes a while for the simple truth to dawn on me the steeples and turrets are hidden now in the height of office blocks, nuzzled alongside banks, an occasional scrap of view appearing overhead. Here in this panaroma the churches that reach up to the sky from low lying buildings are the awe of the skyline. I wonder about the history of London's horizon- of the first spire to The Shard. Man's ambition and attempts at glory. Initially a symbol of the heavenly aspirations of pious medieval men the word is derived from the Old English word spir, meaning a sprout, shoot, or stalk of grass. Though surely a phallic possession of the sky, a boast of power too.

http://www.artfund.org/artwork/7179/the-rhinebeck-panorama-of-london

I discover that the Rhinebeck Panorama is at the Museum of London. That the four sheets were found in the barrel of a pistol in 1941 in America and sold to the museum in 1998. UL and I go to see it. We don't have much time. We never have much time. And sometimes we squander the time we have with misunderstandings and the savagery of old hurts. At the Museum of London we are almost shy in the public light of day but race alongside through the exhibits looking for the picture - ignoring the prehistoric remains, the romans ruins, the medieval section- we miss a whole floor of history, much of the history before there were churches at all until I spot the Panorama up high. Initially I am disappointed. It isn't as sharp as the reproduction I have in the book or as big as somehow I hoped and it is hard to see, with a lot of reflected light. We look slowly, there are tiny soldiers training, a fire has burst out in a South London building and with a 'Where's Wally' instruction the label says can you find a man flying a kite - though we don't. Then I discover magnifying sheets at the side of the picture and with these angled carefully towards the picture it becomes a minature world, almost 3D, the tone and detailed shadows of the architecture like stage sets, the churches like the weft of the fabric of the city. It is fantastic and the pair of us are animated and exuberant by our curiousity and sense of discovery.

I am onto something I think and I feel excited to be on route to the churches of the City to have a map of what is possible, what is there.

I take a Boris Bike up Whitehall, past Trafalgar Square to Covent Garden. It is hot and beautiful. I want to visit St Paul's Covent Garden and also find out about the opening times for the Savoy chapel I know! A church with a hotel! I wouldn't have known about it without my map. But I have placed yellow spots on both. I nose the bike around the cobbled streets of Covent Garden glimpsing St Paul's church initially set back from the road, through a gate with a garden infront of it. I have never ever noticed it before, As I cycle round I realise it's other entrance is on the palazzo of Covent Garden behind a cheering crowd for a clowning acrobat. I go to park the bike, passing a church I didn't know was there, hadn't spotted on my map.

There is a heavy bodied helicopter hovering stationary just a bit further on but almost over head. I like seeing helicopters just above I like the sensation of changed perspective, of being in aquarium, of layers of air above, of something heavy being held still. The docking bay is full. I weave the bike further up, even nearer to the helicopter, almost to Waterloo Bridge, the helicopter is straight overhead now, giving the air a density and the distance of the sky a scale, and again the docking bay is full. I start out again then realise that the Strand has been completely taped off, that there are fire engines and ambulances everywhere and police at every junction, some still taping the roads off. It looks like a newspaper picture of a bomb attack. But there is little urgency to the movements of the emergency services. I check a map but can't see where else to leave the bike, I have to wait until someone ( a Spanish women fiddling with her credit card) takes one. A young american man, just behind me pulls up on a bike and says, I hate this city and we laugh. l go to explore around the Savoy Chapel to keep an eye on whatever is happening here. Then worry I will be caught up in an explosion because I am nosy. The Savoy Chapel, tucked behind the Savoy in a garden should be open but isn't. I cross the Strand again to walk up to St Paul's and the road is now taped off back to Trafalgar Square, policemen loitering on traffic islands. I can see light grey smoke above a high building in the centre of Aldwych that looks like a building site and as I watch the dove grey talc gives way to billows of black smoke. But I think it is just a fire not a terrorist attack though I am unable to catch a policeman's eye to ask.

At St Pauls there are alcoholics gathered in the courtyard and a sign up saying the church is closed for a memorial service. Oh I think I will have to go to the church, I just glimpsed, the one I know I haven't put a yellow dot on. How strange to have a map and a plan, even options and be left still just finding my way about, to find something unknown, unsupposed. The road has been closed for roadworks with those high metal grilles protecting the pavement and as I walk past a drill shakes the soles of my feet and my teeth and the helicopter is still grinding away overhead. But the church is open, I have to step down to a stone floored vestibule and then open a door and into the quiet grey air of a catholic church. It doesn't feel like being in London, it feels as if I am in Spain or Italy. An american woman accosts me, 'Is there about to be a mass here?' 'I don't know.' I say. Slightly alarmed that there might be.

Later I discover that the architect Pownall dropped the church three feet below street level to mollify critics about the height of the church. Built in 1873 nestled between the then Market and the Strand. Maiden Lane was originally a path running along the southern edge of the ‘Covent Garden’ (i.e. Convent Garden) belonging to the monks of Westminster Abbey though later Louis Napoleon, Benjamin Disraeli and Voltaire all lived here, the artist J.M.W. Turner was born here, Edward V11 and Lily Langtry dined here, and the celebrated actor of his day, William Terriss was murdered here by a crazed understudy in 1897. Before all this but discovered only fairly recently in excavations from 1985 and 2005 ( for King Alfred's London had been a shifting legend and a mystery ) it seems King Alfred had built a settlement called Lundenwic, a port and town stretching from Trafalgar Square to Aldwych. Later it looks likely he moved back into the more fortified abandoned roman town of Londinium ( The City), Lundenwic just left, ploughed over reverting to fields.

On wooden pews there are a few bent heads in prayer. I sit. There is a rustling at the altar, bright lights being switched on, an attractive asian woman fiddling with flowers and a bible. It starts to look likely that yes, a service is about to start. Outside the helicopter and the roadworks are loud then muffled to a drone as the door of the church is closed. then wide to the noise as it is opened again, then closed like hands over ears.

Catholic worship was made legal in 1791 and here in Covent Garden there had been a huge presence of open and closet Catholics including such names as St Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, the Jesuit missioner St Robert Southwell, Mary Ward, foundress of the ISBVM’s, St Claude la Colombiere (who introduced devotion to the Sacred Heart to England), Charles I’s architect Inigo Jones, the poet John Dryden and the composer of ‘Rule Britannia’, Thomas Arne ( Rule Britannia coincidentally written for a musical called Alfred about Alfred the Great ) as well as vast numbers of poor Catholics including large Irish colonies swelled by the Potato Famine - many of them working in the market of Covent Garden and living mainly in Drury Lane or the slums of St Giles’, Holborn and Saffron Hill. Initially the London Oratory was opened for Catholic worship in a former dance hall in King William St Charing Cross in 1849- but moved out to the 'village' of Brompton in 1854. By 1872 the land for Corpus Christi was leased though within a few years slum clearance drove out many of the poorer families, reducing parishioner numbers. Later international guests from the nearby grand hotels brought new visitors and congregations.

The church is narrow, as if crammed into an awkward space, thin arches reaching high and spindly to the light of top windows. There is a gentle shabby quietness and slightly yellowing icing sugar walls. Behind me the asian lady has gone into a dark cupboard and I can see the dirty string of a mop and cleaning materials on shelves. At shrines there are candles flickering infront of camp lurid statues. I think about Graham Greene. I feel really really peaceful here. For a minute I think I will stay for the mass but then dither. Stand up. Move across the church, sit again infront of a smaller chapel, the statues skin like pink plastic though plaster, the asian lady eyeing my jumpiness uneasily.


I leave. Back on a Boris Bike, weaving around the Strand still ineffectually taped off, back to the Mall. The flags are still draped triumphantly but I realise there is a cherry picker crane taking the huge heavy draped union jacks down. The Royal Family's grand bunting. Their street party over. Two men working together stowing the flags carefully in a van marked Enterprise - Maintaining the Infrastructure of England. As if this infrastructure was the very fabric of englishness created. I imagine the same van turning up around the country checking on scones and jam and clotted cream and roast beefs and victoria sponges and putting deckchairs out in the rain.

Amen.