Final Chapter

As Virginia drove home, into the dawn light of November the 1st, believing herself to have ‘got her second wind’ after the tiring, limb stiffening, half sleep of the night before, she thought about the future. Bercow had gone, not quite of his own free will, but he wouldn’t be there to actively get in the way of democracy. There was going to be a General Election and the Brexit Party seemed to be serious about holding the Tories to getting the Brexit job done. The men and women, whose likenesses she had made and wounded, would suffer something, by way of comeuppance, though not all that Virginia had originally had in mind, thanks to the poet/Lib Dem vicar’s butting in on her proceedings. Things might be alright.

Virginia swung right out of the small town and up towards the A1. She leant over towards the left slightly and turned on the cd player, allowing the tracks to progress in chronological order, rather than shuffling. It was another collection of songs from a more generalised list than ‘Songs for Brexit’ and contained much French and German music as well as English, the taste more eclectic. It leaped from Noel Coward to Schubert, Madeleine Dring, to ‘Hutch’, Lord Berners, Britten and on to Rinaldo Hahn and Debussy. Virginia sang along, enjoying being able to sing at the same pitch as both Noel, and Kathleen Ferrier, albeit rather huskily after the cold, stiff, tiring night. Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’ played in piano accompaniment to Hahn’s ‘A Chloris’ began and Virginia struck up in French along with Susan Graham, but forgetting the words she dried up and began to think about what a good example this song was, of how different national cultures had blended on their own, in the mind of one man, with no need for any bureaucratic institution, no scheme of grants from an EU funded body or a Nationally funded ‘Arts Council’. Hahn was just a man, who had made his way from South America to Paris and set a French love poem to his own tune, over the top of a well-known work by a German composer. Then there was Hutch, a black American who could speak seven languages and accompany himself so beautifully at the piano, while singing. He was a living rejection in one body of all the racist, eugenicist, Nazi era propaganda. He had come to Britain and done as much for the war effort, as Vera Lynn in boosting national morale when the Hun were getting uppity. What a pity there wasn’t a Brexit equivalent; the other side had Stormzy, of course, they could keep him. Next was Virginia’s favourite, Maggie Teyte, another example, thought Virginia, of all that was possible, in the time before pan European bureaucracy and institutions. She had been a girl from the Black Country who had become Debussy’s favourite soprano. Bureaucracy and grants and schemes encouraged mediocrity, not brilliance. When anyone could be lent money to pursue their dreams, the truly brilliant had a harder time being discovered among the crowds of would-be also-rans, she concluded. ‘Beau Soir’, accompanied by Cortot came to an end and Virginia took up with Après Une Rêve, relishing the tapering grace of the phrases and Maggie’s breath control, she was more certain of the words than she had been with the Hahn or Debussy. ...Tu m’ appellais, et je quittais la terra...

Then she felt the blow as she hit the back of the lorry in front. Then her soul was in the air, looking down on her body where it lay in the Jag. She felt the souls of all her loved ones and of thousands of strangers, all around her in a great throng. It was their day, after all. She felt the great urge to join them and to stay here, suspended in the air for all eternity. Then she thought “Oh Fuck! Fuck! I was singing in French! I am not going to die singing in French”. The cd player played on. Virginia waited.

She had re-entered her body so many times before, she knew that it was possible, provided the injuries were not too severe. It seemed to take forever for the ambulance to arrive and when it did the cd player had got to another long episode of foreign music which Virginia considered inappropriate for the occasion. While the paramedics got to work, she considered what she had learned in the woods with the funny vicar last night. It took her a while, but as the paramedics started to become concerned, she thought, it was something about the indivisibility of sovereignty. She had long known the importance of that, in relation to the nation state, but the principle was Christian, one could not have two masters. Virginia had had two. She had believed the consequences of her curses and her mischief making were harmless, mostly, but the urge to indulge in it had always been driven by the Devil. That voice, the one external to her dreams that always sounded real, was that him?

The next track began. It was ‘Seek Him That Maketh The Seven Stars’ by Jonathan Dove, in a performance given by the choir of Salisbury Cathedral with wonderful men's singing, and excellent organ playing with that huge 32’ stop. Perhaps it was the sympathetic resonance with that deep bass note that vibrated and shook the particles of her soul which had been dancing chaotically, like motes of dust in the morning light, back into quantum waves and into Virginia, through the narrow gate, the chakra at the top of the skull, which led to life. ‘OK,’ thought Virginia, ‘I will seek Him and Him alone.’ And she remembered the pieces of burnt paper which had been the pictures of all Virginia’s political enemies, floating up as bits of soot above the little, coal fire in the woods, to where the Plough hung in the sky. Yes, Him that maketh the seven stars thought Virginia, warming to her theme, not them that maketh the 28.

“She’s back with us.” Said one of the men in the white coats.