Celebrating Multiculturalism

“We have,” the imam explained, “plans for a new Islamic Cultural Centre and Mosque on this derelict land.”

The mayor examined the plans thoughtfully.

“It should be all right,” he said, “I don’t think there’s anything of archaeological significance there.” The borough archaeologist had explained to him that the emphasis of archaeology had changed recently. British history was being de-emphasised in favour of the celebration of multiculturalism. The old plans of the area, along with a lot of other obsolete records, had been burnt some time ago in a major clean-out of the borough archives. The mayor could dimly remember his father telling him there had been jerry-built slums there, without proper sewerage or drainage. A V-1 hit had made many of the houses uninhabitable and after the war they had been pulled down and the land left vacant.

Paradoxically, he could see that the land, with its Thames-side frontage, would today be of enormous value to a developer. He wondered vaguely why it had never in the past been used for heavy industry. When he was a child, there had been a kind of “feeling” that it was a bad place. Children had, he remembered, been reluctant to play there, unlike some of the other bomb-sites, but had run across it for dares. The mayor smiled a little to himself, thinking of Nigel Kneale’s classic television series from the 1950s, Quatermass and the Pit, about a folk-memory of something horrible lurking under the streets of London. No need at all to mention any of that here.

“It should be an amenity to the area,” he agreed. There was an artist’s impression of delicate, soaring minarets, crusted with elaborate but image-free carving. Tiny figures of men were shown in the drawings, walking beside the river or, in one picture, kneeling in prayer. “It’ll cost a pretty penny,” he went on.

“I do not think that should be a problem,” another of the delegation told him. “It is university land, and will fit in naturally with the new Middle East Studies Centre. I am sure funds can be forthcoming.”

“It should,” added another, “bring a great deal of money to the borough. There will be students’ accommodation, and they will of course be supporting the local businesses.”

“Well,” said the mayor, “it will be a chance for us to give back something of what we have had from the Middle East.” He couldn’t think at that moment of any examples of what they had had. Numerals? Chess? The mayor didn’t play chess and thought people who did so were snobs. But like his companions he was an expert at keeping his remarks general and benevolent. Coffee, perhaps? Yes, coffee was something. Thinking of this, he had the coffee handed round with an appropriate comment.

There would not, the mayor felt sure, be any trouble getting the plans past the council, quite apart from the fact that the derelict land was an eyesore. Various city-twinning arrangements had provided some most enjoyable holidays for those fortunate enough to be on the borough’s International Committee.

It was all “brown land”. If the site had any significant history it had been lost. A barren patch in the great human coral-reef of London. Lord Said Khan, one of the prominent leaders and eminent persons appointed to facilitate relations between the government and the Muslim community, was approached to advise on any problems. Given the university’s ownership of the land, though it was not contiguous to the campus, and the large endowment which had been made to set up the new department for Middle Eastern and Arabic studies, no trouble was anticipated. The mayor found Lord Said Khan gracious and accommodating.

Surrounded by the city as it was, the flat wasteland, as Lord Said Khan pointed out, looked deceptively large, though in truth it was large enough. Digging for the foundations had proceeded without a problem.

About ten feet down, human bones were discovered. They were plainly old, and there were a lot of them in a small area. A medieval cemetery, it seemed, though the bones were piled at random on top of one another instead of being buried in an orderly way. The mayor, when he heard about it, wondered vaguely if there was any connection between this long-forgotten burial place and that old feeling that there was something not right about the land. Folk-memory? The bones might have been of interest to scientists, but not to those involved. They were broken up by workmen with cloths over their faces and taken away. The mosque would not be directly over this part of the site.

There was another minor obstacle. A church occupied part of the site of what would be the approaches. A quick check, however, indicated that this need not be a great problem. It was not very old by English standards, and not one of Wren’s churches, nor, as the borough archaeologist confirmed, of any architectural significance.

Moreover, it was empty and derelict. It had been damaged in the Second World War by the same V-1 explosion that had wrecked many of the houses, and its congregation had lacked the funds to repair it. Moreover, that congregation had steadily declined so that it had for some time been closed.

The Church of England, anxious to prove its progressive and anti-capitalist credentials, has given it over to squatters from the “Occupy” movement. The gravestones in the churchyard had long ago been removed and were stacked, broken and moss-grown, against the outer wall. The wording had flaked off most of them in the English winters and save for a letter or two they could not be read. While the church still owned this sliver of land, a few telephone calls from Lord Said Khan’s Middle Eastern sources put matters right. It was conveyanced to the larger parcel of university land which surrounded it, and from there to the trustees of the new building complex. As a church it had been deconsecrated long before.

More bones were unearthed, along with the remnants of a wooden cart. Brown, crumbling, plainly very old. Workmen smashed them up and the remains went off for landfill.

Lord Said Khan himself came to inspect the site with the imam and the mayor when the excavation was largely complete. There had been no trouble. The only small problem that remained was the best way of getting rid of the actual structure of the church.

The land conveyances had been invisible and unremarked, hidden deep in the university minutes. This, however, was not invisible, and the actual demolition might cause protests if some of the right-wing press were to get hold of it. Lord Said Khan decided to see it for himself. He knew from much experience that there was nothing to end press indignation as quickly and thoroughly as a fait accompli, and nothing to shut journalists up like someone who actually knew what they were talking about. New sources of indignation would swiftly be found. The vituperations of a few columnists after the event could be brushed aside with one of the moderate statements, paying tribute to the celebration of multiculturalism, which had done so much to build his career. It would be helpful if a member of the Royal Family could be found to endorse the project.

With the excavations completed, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to mark the beginning of the next stage. Lord Said Khan sat between the mayor (who liked sitting with a lord) and the senior archbishop. The head of the digging was unfortunately unwell and had been unable to attend. The archbishop asked, very diplomatically, about the future of the old church. Lord Said Khan answered with at least equal diplomacy.

“It’s not ours any more, anyway,” the archbishop remarked. “We have more of those old piles than we know what to do with.

“Of course,” he went on, with a barely perceptible gesture of amusement, “some of the laity can be troublesome.”

“I can assure you,” Lord Said Khan told him, “that it will be treated with all due respect.” He was rewarded by a bright clerical smile. At the back of the minds of several present was the fact that the last two church demolitions, both to make way for mosques, had been marred by unruly demonstrations. Worryingly, the second of these, partly encouraged by the so-called “Reconquesta” movement, had been larger than the first. Police had intervened, and a grandmother had been blinded by a rubber bullet. Official investigations were still proceeding, and there had been a discreet, very-much-off-the-record, word from the Prime Minister. This time, the police presence was obvious from the beginning, even though the demolition proper of the old church had not yet begun. People wearing Reconquesta shirts, who had shown signs of assembling earlier in the day, had already been removed. That, however, was the government’s problem. On the edge of the little gathering a single ragged man with a powerful smell and a sign was shouting imprecations and prophecies of doom. No one took any notice of him. The official party, indeed, might be said to have ignored him even more thoroughly than if he had not been there at all.

The archbishop, by arrangement, cut the ribbon. He was presented with a coin or medallion that had been found in the remains of the old cart. “Perhaps it will be something for the diocesan museum,” he remarked, pocketing it. “God is not mocked!” cried the ragged man, to the archbishop’s deep, unspoken embarrassment. In time the police removed him.

Lord Said Khan had already thought out a plan for the church. A few weeks of quiet vandalism and it would be beyond any easy repairing. Destroy some of the supporting structural columns, and there would be no one to make a fuss if the entire building were demolished for health and safety reasons. Let it be gradually brought to complete ruin, and the final demolition would be quick and uncontroversial.

Lord Said Khan had got where he was by being, in modern jargon, “hands on”. It was obvious that before drawing up any detailed plan of action, he would look inside the building himself, though he had never been in a Christian church and felt uncomfortable about the prospect.

The last vicar of the church was found after a few days’ search. Lord Said Khan felt that it would confirm the genuinely multicultural nature of the development if he and the archbishop came to what he hoped would be the final inspection, along with the imam and two members of the university.

The key had been lost but the squatters had broken the main door down long before and the inspecting party had no trouble entering the building. It was largely dark, its windows broken and boarded up, the altar-stone, lamp, pews, font, rood-screen and lectern removed long ago. The squatters had already done much of the work of demolition and had in addition left graffiti over the walls. Though they had also left a number of probably flea-ridden mattresses (which the inspecting party avoided) near the entrance to the crypt, along with empty bottles and syringes, the building was silent and, during the day, deserted. Memorial brasses from the Victorian era had been prised off the walls and sold to scrap-metal merchants. A baroque-style marble statue of some long-deceased naval hero had lost its head, but a chipped marble cannon and anchor remained supporting the trunk and tight trousers. Whistling wind and long bars of sunlight from the open sky above indicated where lead had been stripped from the roof. A single small black bat fluttered by high overhead. Pigeon-droppings below the belfry tower indicated well-established nests. The stairs leading to the belfry were broken, and the archbishop said the bells were gone. There was a scuffling that suggested mice or rats. Indeed a dead rat, swollen with corruption, lay on the floor near the doorway. It seemed obvious to Lord Said Khan that the church would have no real mourners, though there were groups who protested about the demolition of any old buildings. It was, he thought, already too late for them. The whole thing was redolent of irreparable decay.

“It is a pity this beautiful building must be demolished,” he remarked to the vicar and archbishop. That should help confirm his goodwill. He made a mental note to repeat something like it for the public record. But the vicar did not reply. He seemed distracted by something. He did not answer, breathing loudly as though in distress. As he walked he seemed unsure of his footing. Though he had no experience of such things, Lord Said Khan wondered if he had been drinking alcohol.

Lord Said Khan leaned against a flaking wall. It already felt somehow unsteady. Then he realised it was not the church building that seemed unsteady and swaying, but himself.

It was not merely an impression. He definitely felt unwell. He had not imagined that merely being inside the abandoned shell of a Christian church could have such an effect. But others in the party also complained of feeling ill. Even the vicar looked sick, his skin even paler than usual and blotchy. Lord Said Khan was glad to get out into the open air. He would never see the place again, he thought. In this he was correct.

Lord Said Khan had the imam drive him to the House of Lords, noticing that he steered rather shakily. He dined there, and then crossed to the Palace of Westminster for an informal meeting with the Prime Minister, the Minister for Multiculturalism and Community Relations and the university’s vice-chancellor, briefing them on his version of events. He was feeling better by then, and the evening passed pleasantly, though he was disgusted to find a flea-bite on his stomach when undressing. Next day he caught a plane to Mecca, joining the jostling millions of pilgrims making the Hajj.

However, the old church was not gradually demolished, as he had planned. It was destroyed a fortnight later from a high-altitude bomber, part of the emergency government’s panic-stricken, patently futile, gestures against the unleashed raging wildfire of the bubonic plague.