Ashes to Ashes Read Online Free Page B

together with the lack of height underneath each spiral, made me feel as if I was being crushed. Shaking with fear, I knew that once I’d counted a hundred steps I had to be at least near to the top. But I’d really underestimated the climb and I’d reckoned without the passageway. Just underneath the Whispering Gallery there is a passageway of such claustrophobic narrowness it really does make you wonder about just how small people must have been in the old days. Christ knows why it’s there! But as I shuffled, whimpering, along its length, my head scraping against the ceiling, I felt as if I were in some sort of mausoleum. When the stairs up to the actual gallery at the end began, I was almost relieved. By the time I got to the top, a combination of lack of air, exhaustion and fear about how I was going to get down a pitch-dark spiral staircase once I’d finished whatever I was doing, made me incapable of speech. Standing in the doorway at the top of the staircase, I shook and sweated and wondered whether my heart would stop. The Whispering Gallery, even in darkness, is awe inspiring. It runs around the base of the great dome on the inside and is, like the rest of the cathedral, made of stone. Or rather, it is mostly made of stone. As I leaned forward to look as far as I dared at the vast space in front of and below me, I saw that just underneath the railings around the inside of the gallery is a wide wooden platform. Logically, if wood is cared for properly, it’s as safe as stone to step upon. But my barmy mind reeled away from this wooden part of the gallery in horror.
    All around me men were passing buckets, running and shouting in what was, to me, such a dodgy and dangerous place. It seemed that an incendiary bomb had become lodged in the fabric of the dome and was starting to burn a hole. Because the Watch were mainly architects they spoke about what was happening in terms of how it was affecting the structure.
    One said to another, ‘If those timbers inside the dome are already alight, the air cavity underneath will turn that into an inferno. The dome will be completely kaput! It’ll drop down into the cathedral like a ruddy stone!’
    I didn’t know at the time, but St Paul’s dome is actually two domes, an inner one that you see from inside the cathedral, very ornate and decorative, and an outer one, seen from the street, made of wood and lead. Between the two is a brick funnel construction with air spaces all around it. So if the outer dome burned strongly enough to release the air from the cavity the whole thing would go up and, in the worst possible case, send the lantern and the Golden Ball and Cross on top of the dome crashing down into the cathedral. I was to learn a lot about architects and architecture that night.
    ‘Get up to the Stone Gallery!’ I heard someone shout as I stood at the top of the stairs, my heart still banging like a steam hammer.
    The Stone Gallery is on the outside of the cathedral, about a hundred more stairs above the Whispering Gallery. I may have been away from the crypt, but I was quickly realising that being above ground in the cathedral came at a price to someone as unfit as I was. How could these blokes even think about going up to the Stone Gallery just after they’d climbed up so high already? I lit a fag to help calm myself down. It helped a bit.
    ‘What are you doing up here?’
    Mr Andrews was obviously someone who had the knack of appearing and disappearing at will. Looking as he did – and not in the slightest bit out of breath either – was unnerving.
    I don’t know whether it was because I couldn’t hear any actual bombing then or because for some reason I’d lost my fear all of a sudden, but my words didn’t stumble this time.
    ‘I’m looking for Mr Phillips,’ I said. ‘He’s a watchman.’
    ‘Phillips?’ Mr Andrews frowned. ‘What do you want with Mr Phillips? The watchmen are trying to save the cathedral, he—’
    ‘Mr Phillips brought in