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