Some Rain Must Fall by Michel Faber Page A

putting off Catriona’s visit a little while yet, he returned to St Hilda’s and worked like a slave. McNair was impressed with the wonders his apprentice managed as the year wore on. Only the veil remained, frankly, crap.
    One day, about eight months into the project, Dr Prossercame to visit the church and, in due course, he stopped to appraise the renovated Virgin.
    ‘Her eyes are supposed to be closed,’ said the good doctor.
    ‘Closed?’
    ‘Closed!’
    ‘Well … she’s got to open them some time, has she not?’
    ‘Also, she looks as if a pancake has fallen on her head.’
    ‘No bother, easily fixed,’ grimaced Robbie, pulling his mallet from a loop in his belt. ‘It was a … an interim measure, like.’
    He tapped the statue’s headgear gently but firmly with the mallet, and it fell away in shards.
    By winter St Hilda’s was sound structurally; the weather proved it by raining and hailing down on it night and day without getting in. The floors were smooth and solid, if uncarpeted, and the aisles were symmetrical with repaired pews. The windows were sealed with wire mesh and ordinary glass: an interim measure. As a whole the place looked impressive but cold and rather bare. Resting at the end of a working day, Robbie and McNair drank coffee and discussed St Hilda’s finer potentials.
    ‘You know,’ mused Robbie, ‘I’ve been looking at them old Italian churches. Fellows like Michelangelo did some cracking stuff there, you know. Huge great paintings on the ceilings and all.’
    ‘Yes, well,’ said McNair, ‘Michelangelo’s passed on a few years ago now.’
    ‘I thought mebbe there might be some painters living around here who might like to have a go at these ceilings,’ persisted Robbie. ‘You know: job creation.’
    ‘I’ll raise it with Dr Prosser next time he comeS round.’
    Robbie thought McNair was being sarcastic, but a few weeks later it turned out that McNair had raised it with thebureaucrat. Word came back that when the basic renovation of the church was finished, in 1999, the board might then consider the possibility of commissions ‘Of an artistic nature’.
    ‘It’ll be the next century by then,’ objected Robbie.
    ‘A millennium project,’ grinned McNair. ‘They might get Lottery funding.’
    It was late November before Robbie found the courage to invite Catriona to the church. McNair was away for the day, of course.
    Catriona stood in the transept, enchantingly back-lit by one of the big portable tungsten lamps. She had walked all around the aisles, shyly explored the chancel, but she kept returning to this spot, standing perfectly still, looking up at the ceiling.
    ‘What are those?’ she asked Robbie softly, not pointing with her hands, which hung at her sides as if she’d forgotten she had any. Robbie followed the line of her pale throat up through the air until he, too, was staring straight up.
    ‘You mean those ornamental panels sunk into the ceiling? They’re called coffers.’
    ‘They’re beautiful,’ Catriona murmured.
    ‘They’re about the only decorative part of this place that’s still in good order,’ sighed Robbie. ‘Everything else needs work or replacing.’
    ‘Oh, but you’ll do it, won’t you Robbie?’ she asked him.
    ‘Sure,’ he laughed, a little unnerved, because she sounded as if she was asking him to make some sort of solemn vow.
    Noticing his discomfiture perhaps, she pointed at some vaulted arches converging above the transept and asked what the curvy bits underneath were called.
    ‘Oh, them? They’re called the … ah … groins,’ Robbie said, then blushed.
    Desperate to salvage the moment, Catriona asked another question, the first one that came to her.
    ‘Don’t you think the Virgin Mary looks as if a big pancake’s fallen on her head?’
    It was coming up to Christmas when the bad news came through from Dr Prosser. Regrettably, funding had not been approved for a further year’s work. There had been changes ‘at the