St Michael's Chester Square

We all went to the Stop The Cuts March! Almost everyone I have ever mentioned in this blog was there, somewhere. If this was Jane Austen it would be the Box Hill picnic though with a lot less dramatic impact and more people and more banners.
Me, the children, exh and the exd friend of exh set off. One son dressed in a storm trooper costume, another in a viking helmet and me in ( I didn't seem to have any marching shoes) wellington boots and a bowler hat. Though all of us being awful ( not the exd friend luckily - he behaved perfectly. ) The boys crying on our street corner because I wouldn't let them take guns. Exh disappearing. Me frazzled for we are meant to be meeting people and we are late. Exh reappearing. With a bubble machine that looks exactly like a gun I have just confiscated. Both boys want the bubble machine and both boys still want guns. I am rolling my eyes and sniping at exh though later I feel I lost track of humour because a bubble machine subverts a gun so well.

Joining the march at parliament square our spirits soar. We become part of something bigger than our leaky bickering boat, and are buoyed up, part of a current - nice nurses, beautiful handstitched TUC banners, good people blowing whistles. At Downing St we all boo. Everyone taking pictures or film. The children surprised by the childishness of adults. BOO!

We meet our friends on the corner of Piccadilly. “HEY HEY, HO HO, THE FUNDING CUTS HAVE GOT TO GO!' From near Green Park I see a church that I have wanted to visit tucked into a dark street like a scene from a period drama. 'STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS. STOP THE CUTS.' Later in Hyde Park we meet more friends and a message comes through on my phone from UL who had been marching with his son saying that banks are being trashed near Cambridge Circus and there is pandemonium. Police sirens scream around Hyde Park Corner and we, the three families coming back to the flat for tea, cut through the opulence of Belgravia to avoid it. Under the nose of policemen a young couple, like insects, black scarves over their faces and really enormous bags, like stretched skin, the shells of cockroachs slung on their backs, carry a crate of beer. Close up, we can see pale skin, and make out skinny youthful faces, a boy and a girl. It is like a black space when they walk past, as if breath is held. All the children are fascinated, open mouthed, their instinctive love of order threatened. What do they have in their bags? They want to know. Why have they got masks on? Why did the policemen not stop them?

Nearing Victoria I see another church. One I didn't know was there, one I must have missed. It is much nearer than some other churches I have already been to. There. I think. I'll do that next. Pleased to have made a discovery. Outside an exclusive Belgravia shop a man in plush corduroy and a blazer pauses, watches us trudging along with our weary children as if we are foot soldiers back from an old battle, as if we are a defeated enemy. Finally back at the flat, eating toasted sandwiches we watch Fortnum and Masons's taken over on the tv. 'Oh' I say. 'What a shame. I love Fortnum and Mason's it's so beautiful.' My more left wing but rich friends scowl at me.

UL tells me later he saw the bloc party kids - a big group of those insect-like, masked youth- move up and out of Trafalagar Square, menacing but choreographed, wearing black and red, banging sticks, marching in formation - intent on trouble. He said they were 'high' but he wasn't sure if it was just excitement and fear or drugs too.

UL and I haven't seen each other much. He was ill, then one of the boys was ill and Exh has been on a babysitting boycott for weeks. We squeeze in a cup of coffee at the British Library before I meet a friend who works there for lunch. Everything feels rather unsatisfactory for I just have too much to do, I don't really have time for either assignation - I haven't yet been to a church, I need to buy hamster bedding, should be working on my novel or editing a friend's photographs for money. We correspond continually - modern electronic love letters of beauty and mundane detail. Homework, meals made, misunderstandings, political debate, It is wonderful and exciting but sometimes I wonder if the gaps between what we write and who we are is too wide. The reality is we are a middle aged couple that repeat themselves, apologise for wearing glasses, and forget they have told each other something already. I know that love is there but it is hard to trust. I worry each sentence exchanged and see trapdoors in everything. I know I will ruin what there is if I keep going with my detective's eye and empty pockets of faith. But I can't seem to help myself.

I write this and then think does it sound too mean? I have become increasingly squashed now between hurting people in my life, telling a story and telling the truth. I discuss this with a writer friend. She suggests writing about it. Being honest about the difficulties. She suggests researching how Charles Dickens responded to opinions on his serialised novels.

'Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Nell and her grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly instalments, his friend John Forster pointed out: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you?" Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win". In tragedy, it is: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". The dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Nell died.

He abides by plot which seems to be the sensible answer. But doesn't really help me. My plot was an accident. Unexpected. Muddled.

I race back from the British Library to the church I saw. Squeezing time before getting the boys from school The main door is shut, but I spot a back door, left slightly open. Pinned wonkily is a poster for a baby singing group. There are two women with smart buggies and cashmere dressed babies approaching and for a minute I think they are smiling at me, but of course it is at each other. 'Is it possible to get into the church this back way?' I ask. 'I just want to have a quick look.' Probably functioning on exhaustion and Munch mask screams behind the perfect make up they are helpful and usher me in. Only when we are all inside, past the kitchen, into the gloom of the vestry is there a sudden suspicious glance, an understandable holding tight of their babies. These are the first-to-arrive-mums, the organised ones but I am beyond their comprehension, a funny woman in patent platform court shoes rattling the bull ring of the locked wooden door into the actual church, then standing at the glass peering into view the interior. Which is almost square with a high ceiling. Stained glass, simple pews. A lot of space. I dare only a quick look before turning and bobbing and thanking my exit. Rushing to Sainsbury's and to get the boys from school.

I don't know I find these Pimlico/Belgravia churches hard to remember, hard to attach to. So difficult that when I went past St Saviour's the other day I couldn't really remember whether I had been inside or not. And when I read that St Michael's like St Paul's Wilton Place was designed by Thomas Cundy Jnr I know I have been to that church but can't quite remember which one it was. Most of the churches I have been to I remember vividly, but these few lack, lack what - a heart, a mystery, authenticity?

Initially a church was not planned in Chester Square ( built 1835) but squeezed into an awkward space meant for a mews when the nearby Chapel of the Lock and hospital was demolished in1842 leaving the new residents with no where to worship. Though it a surprise that the clientele of this 'the most retired and therefore the most satisfying of the Belgravia squares.' Nickolaus Pevsner - would be have been happy to worship in the Chapel of the Lock which had been alongside a leper hospital for women of dubious reputation.
'LOOK HOSPITAL, removed, from its old habitat in Grosvenor Place, to a more appropriate position in the Harrow Road, discharges the functions both of a hospital (established in 1746) and an asylum (dating from 1787) for penitent Magdalenes afflicted with disease, or sincerely desirous of abandoning the "primrose path that leads to the everlasting bonfire."

Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865

'Look or Lock' referring 'to the old French loques, rags, from the linen applied to sores; "but otherwise, and with more probability, from the Saxon loq, shut, closed, in reference to the necessary seclusion of the leper on account of the infectious nature of his disease." (Archer's Vestiges, Part I.)'

Finally ( and yes, I'm rushing ) I find these two things

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/02/yemeni-protest-chants.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/28/cuts-protest-uk-uncut-fortnum

I don't know. Our assumptions of safety get us into trouble sometimes.

Amen.

St Saviour's, Pimlico

Something has happened. Whether I have got more organised or the children's increasing contentment and my own upsurge of happiness has combined to good effect but I am less manic, less stricken with the poverty of time. Before I felt I was running, literally running between everything needing to be done, wheras now, I feel I am ambling, able to take in some of the scenery. I painted my nails at the weekend while the boys played lego. My elder son saying sternly to the younger one, let mum sit there - she can't do ANYTHING while her nails are drying. Thank you. I said, admiring the shiny red gloss and the rare view from the sofa understanding for the first time the benefits of nail varnish.

But really it is as if time itself has expanded. I seem able to fit in two or three dates a week with ul without anyone really noticing. Perhaps if the neighbours watched the windows really carefully they would see him here occasionally after the children have gone to bed or briefly when they are at school. But it isn't just time for dates there just feels more time for everything. Today I did a supermarket shop, the vacuuming, the paperwork, I made appointments for the doctor and the dentist, and registered for tickets for the Olympics. I left the flat clean and tidy to go to St Saviour's on a BB, knowing the church would be open for a Tuesday lunchtime mass, I caught the end of the service, had a good look round, then went and bought hamster bedding (from a newsgents/come pet store), good salami and Italian cheese from the Italian cafe and was back at the flat starting to write with a good two hours clear before picking the children. Even now writing this in the evening - I have already made minestrone soup, tidied up, put the children to bed and again I have a couple of hours stretching ahead. Plus as if this new telescopic time, extends even further I have started reading again. Sitting on the tube and just before I go to sleep. Finally I have read The Corrections ( loved it, but not completely convinced it had the depth of it's touted masterpiece/ maybe squandered 'Christmas' at the end) I have read Invisible by Paul Auster. Oh I love Paul Auster. But it isn't his best. Now I am reading Island on the Edge of the World. The story of St Kilda by Charles Maclean.

St Saviours is at the Vauxhall Bridge Rd end of Lupus Street, just before the tube station. In the not just manic but nearly mad days when we lived round the corner from the other end of Lupus St and had a two mile journey to school each day and another two on the way back and exh was very, very dh - I used the clock on the church to know if we were late or not. Pushing the youngest still in his buggy, encouraging the eldest on his bike, singing, telling stories, chanting positive affirmations and taking deep breaths. Shall we go down the 'secret path' this morning I would encourage as I led them on a route through the vast Churchill Garden estate. Every morning stopping to say 'We're going to rescue you!' to a teddy bear rotting behind a wire fence that had been thrown in a tangled piece of undergrowth behind some flats, his dirty fur and sad face slumped in leaves. We talked about bringing a fishing line to rescue him. Of cleaning him up. Of loving him back to life. I even thought about writing a children's story about the bear and that school route - the herons we spotted at the edge of the Thames dock ( once even a kingfisher ), the tough dogs and very very occasionally tough people we skirted in the estate, the concrete and the patches of nature combined. But perhaps I knew it wasn't really a children's story. Though it was my children's story. There was a slumped unhappy figure in our lives and those boys certainly wanted to love him back to life and even I would have perhaps still have attempted to try on their behalf.

When I creep into the church today it looks completely empty but I can hear the end of the Lord's prayer sing-songed from a side chapel and a woman in orange perched on a chair mouthing the words. I can hear the voices of others but she is the only one I can see. Stepping out of the day into those old words, I can feel the soothing peace. Despite my personal feelings of wellbeing something truly terrible has happened and a church seems a really good place to go.

Yesterday was Valentine's day. My sons made me perfume with a strong top note of toothpaste in a milk carton. UL brought me some supermarket flowers (no one can be completely perfect). Exh broke the rules and let himself into the flat also to leave some flowers. But as I left to pick the boys up from school I miss a call from my bestfriend and then a text comes in. The text is from my elder sons best friend's mother who is living in a refuge, though finally, finally she is going to be housed, but she texts me to say she has terrible news, two children who lived at the refuge and were really good friends with her children were murdered yesterday by their dad. It is all over the news. she says. Reading the text I feel sick to the stomach. I feel angry and shaky. I feel, and this is so instinctive and the thoughts feel so old - so completely weary of men and their dangerous harboured thoughts.

Sometimes I have thought that if I finish this blog I'll do another about madonna and child representations. It is a hard plural to work out - madonnas and child? madonnas and children? Though I imagine if I started looking they would probably be everywhere ( also I could go back into the churches and look again and look more carefully ). I remember at school an amazing and inspiring art teacher teaching us art history and we studied so many - Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Duccio. Now most of those are around the corner at the National Gallery and what a pleasure to find time to see them. But only very recently did I truly understand that these sculptures and paintings are attempts made by generations and generations to describe the bond and strength and sacrifice by mothers for children. I want to find one in this church and think of the strength and power of this woman who escaped this brutal man with her children and then fought in the courts for two years not to allow him access to the children knowing he was not safe. Whilst week in week out testing their spellings, feeding them, washing their clothes, keeping their finger and toe nails straight and short. Oh! but it was overturned. All that strength and fight and journey for them to be murdered. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I am not sure I have the right to write about this, it is not my story. But still I know just enough about chaos to watch at school and see the Mums who feel frightened, the ones with bruises. But I only find a michaelangelo copy of a madonna and child and I don't know how you know what is a copy or not but I felt I did.

It is nice in the church, the communion being taken, the words being said, some nice stained glass, nice kneelers hung neatly on the back of the pews, but nothing I latch onto. A font topped by a huge gothic wooden top like an ornate spire with a pulley system to lift the lid off. I imagine having a baby christened and worrying that the rope would snap, the great heavy wooden structure hurtling to hurt the baby. It is one of the fears that I wake in the night with - that somehow the bunk bed ( which isn't really a bunk bed but a platform bed with a mattress underneath) will collapse and crush my younger son. Lying in the dark I can picture the bolts working loose from the structure, the wooden slats tumbling, the noise of the crash and screaming. But then I make myself listen to the silence, imagine a big 'golf sale' sign arrow that means 'I can't think about this now' and finally tumble back into sleep.

St Saviour's is part of Thomas Cubitt's Pimlico, like square feet of building rolled out with churches attached. Previously it was where vegetables were grown for Westminster and the City of London, with a tea garden in the meadows, reed banks, a steel works and a distillery. Thomas Cubitt pieced together the land from different landowners and by 1839 he had established an eleven acre factory area on the river bank on the present site of Dolphin Square, just round the corner from St Saviour's.
'Here the joinery, glass, plasterwork, steel and marble, as well as some of the bricks and cement for the various building operations were produced, using the latest steam-driven technology, enabling the business in Pimlico and beyond to benefit from the sheer scale of production as well as control of the entire process.'
While Cubitt had to clear most of the older generation gardening businesses out of the area in order to make the roads he then sub-let again for gardening, until he was ready to sponsor building on a large scale in 1840. Like the ferry man who sabotaged the building of Westminster Bridge the market gardeners must have taken this changing world badly.

St Saviour's was consecrated in 1864 and designed by Thomas Cundy. But Pimlico struggled as an area as early as 1852 - Henry Mayhew noted the neighbourhood 'prolific in loose women' in particular he identified this neighbourhood as one where an affluent man might seek a discreet introduction to the sort of 'quiet lady whose secrecy he can reply upon...who in all probability does not reside at any great distance.' Though I also read that at Victoria station there were complaints of being accosted by a 'low class of unfortunates who come from Great Peter Street, Laundry Yard and the black area that lies in the very shadow of the Houses of Parliament' Which is where I live.

Today I ring my best friend back. She says on valentines day afternoon she was upstairs in her house tidying the bedroom and saw flames leaping behind the blinds in the opposite house's bedroom and called the firebrigade. Then she ran across the road and knocked at the door to save the occupants. Her son who is nearly twenty was shouting out of her upstairs window 'Come away mum come away mum come away from the fire'. Standing on the step she suddenly realises somehow ( I don't get this bit but that is what she says) that what she has seen is infact the glint of hundreds of candles and valentine balloons. Too late, the operator says the fire engine is on it's way. The man in his dressing gown descends the stairs, tying the belt and shuffling his parts, opening the door as the fire engine arrives. I hope it was HIS wife I say.


Amen.