The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers Page A

room at the Hôtellerie Saint-Yves. I’m a lark like you, and like you I like the cathedral to myself.’
    ‘I’m sorry if I interrupt your peace,’ Agnès said.
    Alain stopped smiling and looked at her. ‘Have some sausage. It’s excellent. I get it from the stall in the market. And there’s wine. Or coffee. I bring a thermos. It saves going up and down.’
    ‘ OK . Thank you.’ She accepted a couple of slices of sausage cut expertly with his penknife. ‘What do you do up there?’
    ‘We’re cleaning back to the original thirteenth-century surface, where it still holds. A surprising amount does, maybe eighty per cent in the ambulatory. Where there are gaps we restore.’
    ‘How is it done?’
    ‘The restoration or the cleaning?’
    ‘I suppose I meant the cleaning.’
    ‘You really want to know? Or are you being polite?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘With patience, mainly. First of all we vacuum off the accumulated grime. Most of that comes from centuries of candle smoke. Then we apply chemical compresses to lift off the more engrained dirt and the grease. There’s a lot of that. Then there’s a further cleaning process at the micro level, a sort of gentle abrasive technique, not unlike what fashionable women have done to their skin, I hear. Probably not unlike what you do for floors. Just a bit more refined.’
    ‘I don’t “do” anything.’
    ‘You clean.’
    ‘That’s not important.’
    ‘Cleaning is important.’
    ‘Not the kind I do.’
    He looked at her again. ‘Everything that is done well is important. That’s the basis of all this here. All this’ – he waved his arms like a conductor energetically leading an orchestra to a final crescendo – ‘was built by people who believed that they worked for the glory not of themselves but of God. Or the Mother of God, I should say.’
    ‘I like cleaning it,’ Agnès allowed.
    ‘So do I. So, we’re colleagues. Both cleaners if not for the Mother of God at least for her finest establishment on this earth.’
    ‘Today’s the day I clean the labyrinth,’ Agnès said, emboldened.
    He jumped up. ‘I know. Victor came in last night to clear the chairs. He’s taking his mother to Paris this morning to the heart clinic.’
    They walked down the nave and then stood, side by side, looking down at the strange old design.
    Alain said, ‘Odd thing, isn’t it, to find in a church?’
    ‘I like the pattern.’
    ‘Maybe the neural pattern of the brain.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘It’s as good a guess as any. It’s the pattern that makes it fit in here. If you look about it’s all circles and squares, octagons and pentagons, diamonds and triangles. And crosses of course. But crosses are not just crucifixes. They’re axes.’ He crossed his forefingers and she noticed again his hands. Workman’s hands.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The windows too.’
    ‘Well, see,’ Alain said, ‘look around you. It’s all shapes. Look at those columns – they alternate, see, some octagonal, the others round. All the proportions here are based on geometric principles but it’s just that bit enough off centre to be natural – which is why the whole effect feels so immediately satisfying. Our faculties sense it subliminally before we consciously register it. The master builders who were in charge would have been skilled geometers as well as architects.’
    Agnès looked down the empty nave at the grey-green columns rising like a regulated avenue of sturdy ancient trees to a heaven of cross-ribbed vaults above. And then down at the oddly compelling pattern on the floor.
    ‘With so much to look up at, it’s funny that for this you have to look down.’
    Again he looked at her, but this time with a face that spoke admiration. ‘That’s a very shrewd observation. I’d not thought of it. And believe me I’ve thought a good deal about this labyrinth.’
    ‘I was told it was a maze.’
    ‘No. A maze has deliberate tricks in it. False trails. Dead ends. This is a labyrinth