Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  The Revd Matthew Crampton, Archdeacon of Reydon, drove to St. Anselm’s by the shortest route from his vicarage at Cressingfield just south of Ipswich. He drove towards the Ai2 with the comfortable assurance that he had left the parish, his wife and his study in good order. Even in youth he had never left home without the assumption, never voiced aloud, that he might not return. It was never a serious worry but the thought was always there, like other unacknowledged fears which curled like a sleeping snake in the pit of his mind. It sometimes occurred to him that he lived his whole life in the daily expectation of its ending. The small diurnal rituals which this involved had nothing to do with a morbid preoccupation with mortality, nor with his faith, but were more, he acknowledged, a legacy of his mother’s insistence every morning on clean underclothes, since this might be the day on which he would be run over and exposed to the gaze of nurses, doctors and the undertaker as a pitiable victim of maternal unconcern. As a boy he had sometimes pictured the final scene: himself stretched out on a mortuary slab and his mother comforted and gratified by the thought that he had at least died with his pants clean.

  He had tidied away his first marriage as methodically as he tidied his desk. That silent visitation at the corner of the stair or glimpsed through his study window, the sudden shock of hearing a half-remembered laugh, were mercifully supine, overlaid by parish duties, the weekly routine, his second marriage. He had consigned his first marriage to a dark oubliette of his mind and shot the bolt, but not before he had almost formally passed sentence on it. He had heard one of his parishioners, the mother of a child who was dyslexic and slightly deaf, describing how her daughter had been ‘statemented’ by the local authority and had understood that this meant that the child’s needs had been assessed and appropriate measures agreed on. So, in a very different context but with equal authority, he had statemented his marriage. The words, unspoken, had never been consigned to paper, but mentally he could recite them as if he were speaking of a casual acquaintance, and always of himself in the third person. That brief and final disposal of a marriage was written on his mind, pictured always in italics.

  Archdeacon Crampton married his first wife soon after he became vicar of his inner-city parish. Barbara Hampton was ten years younger, beautiful, wilful and disturbed a fact which her family had never disclosed. The marriage had at first been happy. He knew himself to be the fortunate husband of a woman he had done little to deserve. Her sentimentality was taken for kindness; her easy familiarity with strangers, her beauty and her generosity made her very popular in the parish. For months the problems were either unacknowledged or not spoken of. And then the church wardens and parishioners would call at the vicarage when she was away and tell their embarrassed stories. The outbursts of violent temper, the screaming, the insults, incidents which he had thought happened only to and with him, had spread into the parish. She refused treatment, arguing that it was he who was sick. She began to drink more steadily and more heavily.

  One afternoon four years after the wedding he was due to go out to visit sick parishioners and, knowing that she had gone to bed that afternoon pleading tiredness, had gone to see how she was. Opening the door he thought that she was sleeping peacefully and left, not wishing to disturb her. On his return that evening he found that she was dead. She had taken an overdose of aspirin. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide. He blamed himself for having married a woman too young for him, and unsuitable to be a vicar’s wife. He found happiness in a second and more appropriate marriage but he never ceased to mourn his first wife.

  That was the story as mentally he recited it, but now he returned to it far less often. He had married again within eighteen months. An unmarried vicar, particularly one who has been tragically widowed, is inevitably regarded as the lawful target of the parish matchmakers. It seemed to him that his second wife had been chosen for him, an arrangement in which he had happily acquiesced.

  Today he had a job to do, and it was one he relished while convincing himself that it was a duty: to persuade Sebastian Morell that St. Anselm’s had to be closed and to find any additional evidence that would help to make that closure as speedy as it was inevitable. He told himself, and believed, that St. Anselm’s expensive to maintain, remote, with only twenty carefully-selected students, over-privileged and elitist was an example of everything that was wrong with the Church of England. He admitted, and mentally congratulated himself on his honesty, that his dislike of the institution extended to its Principal why on earth should the man be called Warden? and that dislike was strongly personal, going well beyond any difference in churchman ship or theology. Partly, he admitted, it was class resentment. He thought of himself as having fought his way to ordination and preferment. In fact little struggle had been necessary; in his university days his path had been smoothed by not ungenerous grants and his mother had always indulged her only child. But Morell was the son and the grandson of bishops and an eighteenth-century forebear had been one of the great Prince Bishops of the Church. The Morells had always been at home in palaces and the Archdeacon knew that his adversary would put out his tentacles of family and personal influence to reach the sources of power in Whitehall, the universities and the Church, and wouldn’t yield an inch of ground in the fight to keep his fiefdom.

  And there had been that dreadful horse-faced wife of his, God only knew why he had married her. Lady Veronica had been in residence at the college on the Archdeacon’s first visit, long before he was appointed as a trustee, and had sat on his left at dinner. The occasion had not been a happy one for either of them. Well, she was dead now. At least he would be spared that braying, offensively upper-class voice which it took centuries of arrogance and insensitivity to develop. What had she or her husband ever known of poverty and its humiliating deprivations, when had they ever had to live with the violence and the intractable problems of a decayed inner-city parish? Morell had never even served as a parish priest except for two years in a fashionable provincial town. And why a man of his intellectual ability and reputation should be content to be principal of a small isolated theological college was something of a mystery to the Archdeacon and, he suspected, not only to him.

  But there could, of course, be an explanation and it lay in the terms of Miss Arbuthnot’s deplorable will. How on earth had her legal advisers allowed her to make it? Of course, she couldn’t have known that the pictures and the silver she had given to St. Anselm’s would so appreciate in value over nearly a century and a half. In recent years St. Anselm’s had been supported by the Church. It was morally just that when the college became redundant, the assets should go to the Church or to Church charities. It was inconceivable that Miss Arbuthnot had intended to make multimillionaires of the four priests fortuitously in residence at the time of the closure, one of them aged eighty and another a convicted child abuser. He would make it his business to ensure that all valuables were removed from the college before it was formally closed. Sebastian Morell could hardly oppose the move without laying himself open to the accusation of selfishness and greed. His devious campaign to keep St. Anselm’s open was probably a ruse to conceal his interest in the spoils.

  The battle lines had been formally drawn and he was on his confident way to what he expected would be a decisive skirmish.

  Father Sebastian knew that he would have to have a confrontation with the Archdeacon before the weekend was over, but he didn’t intend it to take place in the church. He was prepared, even eager, to stand his ground, but not before the altar. But when the Archdeacon said that he would like now to see the Rogier van der Weyden, Father Sebastian, having no excuse for not accompanying him, and feeling that merely to hand over the keys would be uncivil, consoled himself with the thought that the visit would probably be short. What, after all, could the Archdeacon object to in the church except perhaps the lingering smell of incense? He made a resolution to keep an even temper and if possible to restrict the conversation to superficialities. Surely in church two priests could talk to each
other without acrimony.

  They made their way down the north cloister to the sacristy door without speaking. Nothing was said until Father Sebastian had switched on the light illuminating the picture, and they stood side by side regarding it in silence.

  Father Sebastian had never found words adequate to describe the effect on him of this sudden revelation of the image and he didn’t attempt to find them now. It was a full half-minute before the Archdeacon spoke. His voice boomed unnaturally loud in the silent air.

  “It shouldn’t be here, of course. Haven’t you ever given serious thought to having it moved ?”

  “Moved where, Archdeacon? It was given to the college by Miss Arbuthnot precisely to be placed in the church and over the altar.”

  “Hardly a safe place for something so valuable. What’s it worth, do you think? Five million? Eight million? Ten million?”

  “I’ve no idea. As far as safety is concerned the altar-piece has been in place for over a hundred years. To where exactly do you propose it should be removed ?”

  To somewhere safer, somewhere where other people can enjoy it. The most sensible course and I’ve discussed this with the Bishop would be to sell it to a museum where it would be on public view. The Church, or indeed any worthwhile charity, could find a good use for the money. The same applies to the two most valuable of your chalices. It is inappropriate that objects of such value should be kept for the private satisfaction of twenty ordinands.”

  Father Sebastian was tempted to quote a verse of scripture for this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor’ but prudently forbore. But he couldn’t keep the note of outrage from his voice.

  “The altar-piece is the property of this college. It will certainly not be sold while I am Warden, nor will it be removed. The silver will be kept in the sanctuary safe and used for the purpose for which it was made.”

  “Even though its presence means that the church has to be kept locked and is unavailable to the ordinands?”

  “It isn’t unavailable. They have only to ask for the keys.”

  “The need to pray is sometimes more spontaneous than remembering to ask for a key.”

  “That’s why we have the oratory.”

  The Archdeacon turned away and Father Sebastian walked over to switch off the light. His companion said, “In any case, when the college is closed the picture will have to be removed. I don’t know what the diocese has in mind for this place1 mean the church itself. It’s too remote to serve again as a parish church even as part of a team ministry. Where would you get a congregation? It’s unlikely that whoever buys the house will want a private chapel, but you never know. It’s difficult to see who would be interested in buying. Remote, inconvenient to run, difficult to reach and with no direct access to the beach. It would hardly be suitable for a hotel or convalescent home. And with the coast erosion there’s no certainty it will be here in twenty years’ time.”

  Father Sebastian waited until he could be sure of speaking calmly.

  “You talk, Archdeacon, as if the decision to close St. Anselm’s has already been taken. I assumed that, as Warden, I would be consulted. No one yet has spoken or written to me.”

  “Naturally you will be consulted. All the necessary tedious processes will be followed. But the end is inevitable, you know that perfectly well. The Church of England is centralizing and rationalizing its theological training. Reform is long overdue. St. Anselm’s is too small, too remote, too expensive and too elitist.”

  “Elitist, Archdeacon?”

  “I use the word deliberately. When did you last accept an ordinand from the state educational system?”

  “Stephen Morby came through the state system. He’s probably our most intelligent ordinand.”

  “The first, I suspect. And, no doubt, by way of Oxford and with the required First. And when will you accept a woman as ordinand? Or a woman priest on the staff for that matter ?”

  “No woman has ever applied.”

  “Precisely. Because women know when they’re not wanted.”

  “I think that recent history would disprove that, Archdeacon. We have no prejudices. The Church, or rather Synod, has made its decision. But this place is too small to cope with women ordinands. Even the larger theological colleges are finding it difficult. It’s the ordinands who suffer. I will not preside over a Christian institution in which some members refuse to take the sacrament at the hands of others.”

  “And elitism isn’t your only problem. Unless the Church adapts itself to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, it will die. The life your young men live here is ridiculously privileged, totally remote from the lives of the men and women they will be expected to serve. The study of Greek and Hebrew have their place, I’m not denying that, but we need also to look at what the newer disciplines can offer. What training do they receive in sociology, in race relations, in inter-faith co-operation?”

  Father Sebastian managed to keep his voice steady. He said, “The training provided here is among the best in the country. Our inspection reports make that plain. And it’s ludicrous to claim that anyone here is out of touch with the real world or isn’t being trained to minister to that world. Priests have gone out from St. Anselm’s to serve in the most deprived and difficult areas here and overseas. What about Father Donovan who died of typhoid in the East End because he wouldn’t leave his flock, or Father Bruce martyred in Africa? And there are others. St. Anselm’s has educated two of the century’s most distinguished bishops.”

  “They were bishops for their age, not ours. You’re talking about the past. I’m concerned with the needs of the present, particularly of the young. We won’t bring people to the faith with outworn conventions, an archaic liturgy, and a Church that is seen as pretentious, boring,

  middle-class racist even. St. Anselm’s has become irrelevant to the new age.”

  Father Sebastian said, “What is it that you want? A Church without mystery, stripped of that learning, tolerance and dignity that were the virtues of Anglicanism? A Church without humility in the face of the ineffable mystery and love of Almighty God? Services with banal hymns, a debased liturgy and the Eucharist conducted as if it were a parish bean-feast? A Church for Cool Britannia? That is not how I conduct services at St. Anselm’s. I’m sorry, I recognize that there are legitimate differences in how we view the priesthood. I wasn’t being personal.”

  The Archdeacon said, “Oh, but I think you were. Let me be frank, Morell.”

  “You have been frank. And is this the place for it?”

  “St. Anselm’s will be closed. It has served the past well, no doubt, but it is irrelevant to the present. Its teaching is good, but is it any better than was that of Chichester, Salisbury, Lincoln? They had to accept closure.”

  “It will not be closed. It will not be closed in my lifetime. I’m not without influence.”

  “Oh we know that. That’s exactly what I’m complaining about -the power of influence, knowing the right people, moving in the right circles, a word in the right ear. That view of England is as out of date as the college. Lady Veronica’s world is dead.”

  But now Father Sebastian’s barely controlled anger found trembling release. He could hardly speak but the words, distorted with hatred, came out at last in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.

  “How dare you! How dare you even mention my wife’s name!”

  They glared at each other like pugilists. It was the Archdeacon who found voice.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve been intemperate and uncharitable. The wrong words in the wrong place. Shall we go ?”

  He made as if to hold out his hand and then decided against it. They walked in silence along the north wall to the door of the sacristy. Father Sebastian suddenly halted. He said, “There’s someone here with us. We’re not alone.”

  They stood for a few seconds and listened. The Archdeacon said, ‘I can hear nothing. The church is obviously empty except for us. The door was locked and the alarm set when we a
rrived. There’s no one here.”

  “Of course not. How could there be ? It was just a feeling I had.” Father Sebastian set the alarm, locked the outside door to the sacristy behind them, and they passed together into the north cloister. The apology had been uttered but words had been spoken by both which Father Sebastian knew could never be forgotten. He was filled with self-disgust at his loss of control. Both he and the Archdeacon had been at fault, but he was the host and he was the more responsible. And the Archdeacon had only articulated what others thought, others were saying. He felt the descent of a profound depression and with it came a less familiar emotion and one more acute than apprehension. It was fear.

  Afternoon tea on Saturdays at St. Anselm’s was an informal affair, laid out in the students’ sitting-room at the back of the house for those who had indicated that they would be in. The number was usually small, particularly if there was a football match worth attending within reasonable distance.

  The time was three o’clock and Emma, Raphael Arbuthnot, Henry Bloxham and Stephen Morby were lazing in Mrs. Pilbeam’s sitting-room which lay between the main kitchen and the passage leading into the south cloister. It was from this same passage that a flight of steep stairs led down to the cellar. The kitchen with its four-oven Aga, its shining steel working surfaces and modern equipment, was out of bounds to the students. It was here in her small sitting-room next door with its single gas stove and square wooden table that Mrs. Pilbeam often chose to cook scones and cake and prepare tea. The room was cosily domestic, even a little shabby in contrast to the surgical cleanliness of the uncluttered kitchen. The original fireplace with its decorated iron hood was still in place and, although the glowing nuggets were now synthetic and the fuel was gas, it gave a comforting focus to the room.

  The sitting-room was very much Mrs. Pilbeam’s domain. The mantel shelf held some of her personal treasures, most of them brought back from holidays by former students: a decorated teapot, an assortment of mugs and jugs, the china dogs she liked, and even a small gaudily-dressed doll whose thin legs dangled over the edge of the mantel shelf