Margot swipes at her nose. She’s starting to feel clammy with conscience.
‘I’d love coffee soon, Gwen, but right now I’m afraid I do have to go out.’
Gwen looks down at the carrier bag she’s still holding.
‘I hope you’re not allergic to nuts.’
She places the bag on the floor by the bedside table, does one last swift recce of the room, pulls on her raincoat belt and backs out into the corridor.
‘People shouldn’t impose on you so much. It’s not fair.’
She leans in suddenly, yanking Margot into a vast spongy hug, then turns and shuffles down the corridor, head bobbing as though reassuring herself. Margot watches, relieved yet stinging with shame, and closes the door as soon as it’s safe. She pulls a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt out of the cupboard and rushes to get changed, desperate to be out of there.
‘Call it an act of charity, M,’ says Clarissa at their table in the Spotted Dick, twenty-five minutes later. ‘I knew you were bound to be at home squeezing your spots and knocking back the Dettol, so thought I’d better intervene.’
‘Pretty good guess.’
Classic Clarissa. She’s the one who needs to talk, apparently, but has pivoted things within seconds so that Margot is now in the role of supplicant. That’s been the shadow-play of their entire eight-year friendship.
‘So, how’s the thesis coming along?’
‘Nice try, Reverend. We’re here to talk about you.’
‘When do you have to submit your first draft?’ No one procrastinates like Clarissa.
‘Real bummer about your flat, M,’ says Clarissa, reaching for some crisps. ‘But then you were always whingeing on about what a dump it was, so maybe being blown to kingdom come was the best result. An act of God, even?’
Margot feels her shoulders relax for the first time in weeks. She pours the rest of her tonic into her glass.
‘Got the PCC eating out of the palm of your hand yet? The names of all the mouth-breathers in the front row off pat?’
‘Naturally.’
‘I’m a teensy bit envious. Who knows, it could have been me. Maybe I took a wrong turn back there, choosing academia over what should have been my true vocation.’
Margot splutters on her lemon slice.
‘What’s so funny, M? I’m a deep well of compassion, not to mention moral rectitude. Parishioners would have lapped me up.’
Margot leans back, cradling her fingers.
‘So, then, you’re up for pastoral visits where you have to force down a slab of three-week-old Battenberg? And where you can’t quite make out whether that sour smell you noticed in the corridor is cat’s piss or something else?’
‘Count me in,’ says Clarissa.
‘Right. And ever ready with your smiley face on, even at the pharmacy counter in Boots, when you’re buying some laxatives or hair remover, just in case someone from the congregation comes over to complain about the lack of chairs with arms?’
‘Where do I sign?’
Clarissa opens the second bag of crisps and scatters a handful on the table.
‘OK, getting serious now, because it’s all good grist to my thesis mill, let’s talk about the antis in your panties. Any of the swivel-eyed brigade put dog shit through your letterbox, just because you’re a girl? Or written to the bishop yet saying you’re defiling their space?’
Margot winces.
‘Would you like it if they were?’
‘Just asking, M. Your fault, anyway, for choosing to work in the most androcentric institution of them all. Though to be fair, you are taking up the feminist cudgels for us all.’
Margot sighs. How many times have they ping-ponged through this?
‘That’s your chosen mission, Clariss. I just want to make it through to July alive.’
‘You can’t let the zombie churches or the pompommed birettas win.’
Margot glances down at her watch. She’s on the early shift tomorrow and the gin is brewing a headache. Clarissa puts out her hand.
‘Seriously, M, I’m so glad we did this. I’ve missed you.’
Margot reaches for her drink. She catches sight of a couple of guys by the bar, one of whom is looking over in their direction.
‘Me too.’ She swirls her ice cubes around. ‘Sometimes it’s like being a hothouse plant. Good to get out and get some fresh Stokey air.’
She glances back at the bar. The two guys are pulling on their jackets. The one who’d looked at her earlier smiles at her as they leave.
‘Talking of which,’ says Clarissa, who never misses, ‘any hotties in the congregation?’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Got to have something to get out of bed for.’
‘The last time most of this lot had sex, Harold Macmillan was still in Number Ten.’
Apart from Fabian, that is, but the less thought about him, the better. He’s been away on some fact-minding mission the past few Sundays and that suits Margot just fine.
‘Demographics dictate there must be at least two or three aged under thirty.’
Margot drains her glass.
‘You know the rules. Don’t cruise the pews—’
‘Don’t fuck the flock, yeah, yeah. So? What’s the answer?’
This has the potential to become another Groundhog Day conversation between them.
‘I can’t even have friends in the parish other than in the most professional, hands-off sense, let alone some guy waiting to rip my clothes off as soon as the chalices are packed away. The parish curtains would twitch off their rails at the moral abomination.
‘Tragic, Margot, tragic. You’re two degrees off frigid already.’
The Wilhurst principal’s parting maxim that your life is a sermon as much as any of the words that you preach is tattooed on Margot’s brain. You either sign up for the role, hook, line and sinker, or you don’t. The thought of becoming involved with anyone until she’s made it safely past next July at the very earliest is unthinkable. But how to explain that to anyone, even – especially – Clarissa?
She reaches across for the second crisp bag, but Clarissa has emptied that one too, even the crumbs. Not such a good sign, she registers. She takes out her lemon slice and chews on that instead.
‘Anyway, I’ve already got an admirer.’
Clarissa jerks upright.
‘M, you dark horse. What’s his name?’
‘Gwen.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘It’s cool. She just happens to be in her late sixties,’ she pauses, ‘a very active, helpful, member of the congregation.’
‘There was me worrying about you being sex-deprived.’
‘In fact, she was just visiting when you called.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Brought over some hand-baked goodies and the lemon and ginger teabags she knows I like.’ Margot swallows. ‘Said she felt sorry I was all alone, holed up in my B and B and wanted to do something to help. Very solicitous, but a bit intense, you know? I was kind of glad when you texted.’
‘Creeped you out?’
She laughs, glad of the release.
‘I guess.’
Clarissa watches her a moment and shrugs.
‘Actually, M, you know, maybe she really was just being nice and your job is to suck it up?’
Margot flushes, the shift of tone unbalancing her.
She walks into the vestry the next day, remarking yet again to herself how much the church’s – indeed, the Church’s – character is reflected in its physical reality. Wilhurst taught her many things as an ordinand: how to decode the mystery of priestly ontology in a Twitter-crazed world or to determine the difference between the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 2000 revisionist Common Worship. But nothing could have prepared her for the clutterfest that is the St Mark’s parish office.
Every surface in here is buried under multiple layers of detritus. Hundreds of dusty out-of-date orders of service, yellowing copes of the Church Times, bul
ging lever-arch files, a bottle of sherry still bearing its ragged Christmas bow, plastic bags stuffed full of tinsel and fading crêpe-paper daffodils stashed beneath the desk. Quite what Brown Owl and the tantric yoga teacher think on their way into the church hall each week is anybody’s guess.
‘Coffee, anyone?’
Roderick glances up and gives her the gimlet glare he seems to have reserved just for her. She smiles back, her determination to build bridges still intact. She knows that he has a long, apparently distinguished, career as a naval chaplain behind him, as well as twenty years’ service here at St Mark’s. Half the congregation seem to knit him jumpers or offer to darn his socks. Even the young mothers treat him as some sort of dilapidated pet. And maybe that simulacrum of domestic care is the whole point? Perhaps the resentment he seems to feel towards her as the newest, youngest, member of the team is because he has no other life to retire to? In his own way, he’s also one of the left behind, just like so many of the millions who have just voted for Brexit.
Jeremy is jotting down yet another of his lists when she walks back in, carrying the tray.
‘Hopefully we can palm off some of this lot onto the Care Bears,’ he says, winking at her. Or the Ever-Readies, as she can’t help thinking of them in private moments. One of them even has a photo of the vicar on her phone as her screen saver.
Roderick steeples his fingers, scowling at no one in particular.
Jeremy takes his mug from the tray, dives in for a chocolate digestive, reconsiders and takes two.
‘Plenty here to share out between us. You especially, Margot.’
Roderick’s mouth sets into a purple line as Jeremy points at his computer screen.
‘The head of Highbury High wants someone to talk to his Year Ten RS group next month. Part of a series of talks by different faith groups from all over Islington. According to the email, you’d be the only female on the list.’
A gravelly growl from opposite her.
‘The school doesn’t specifically ask for Margot, Roderick,’ Jeremy soothes. ‘But an occasion like this needs someone young and hip. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that rules out you and me.’ The chuckle lasts several seconds. ‘Sounds like a perfect chance to reel in a few teens. Stealth marketing. Our chance to show we’re cool.’
‘Sure, be happy to.’
Addressing a class of GCSE students can’t be that much of trial? It’ll make a change from the diocesan events she’s despatched off to for ‘educational purposes’, where the C of E’s fixation with arcane minutiae is exposed in all its non-ironic glory.
Jeremy taps a reply, crumbs dancing off the keyboard.
‘Good thing we’ve got a girl on the team,’ mumbles Roderick, the moment the vicar has stepped outside. Margot looks up, surprised at being spoken to directly.
‘Perfect for all our ministry with children, women, the sick, all the fluffy stuff. Just as our Lord God intended.’
As usual, no eye contact. In fact, she’s not sure she was meant to hear: she’s caught him mumbling to himself a few times and forced herself to put it down to age or corrosive loneliness.
But no. This time, he lifts his chin to face her and sniggers, before returning to his crossword in the Church Times.
A dangerous battle for the long haul, she realises wearily, as wheezy exhalations fill the silence between them.
Chapter 4
Late September
The bus is inching down the Archway Road in almost total gridlock. She’s arranged to be at the school early for a pre-briefing with the head of religious studies, but her dentist’s appointment overran. She’s already twenty minutes late and the parish budget doesn’t run to taxis.
She wipes a smeary arc into the condensation and looks back down at her speaking notes, her nerves starting to jangle. Maybe the icebreaker joke about The Great British Bake Off isn’t right? But then what would hit the spot for a group of fifteen-year-olds, forced to listen to the meanderings of a wannabe priest standing in front them for half an hour?
Is there an Eleventh Commandment she’s missed that stipulates the curate of the parish must always be allotted all youth-related activities? Though the vicar was right, she can’t imagine Roderick doing this particular gig. He scowls if a baby so much as gurgles in church. But he’s almost seventy: it’s not his fault if he has all the energy of a Galapagos turtle.
There’s a discarded Metro on the seat in front of her. She’s just reaching for it, hoping for some kind of serendipitous inspiration, when a hand grips her wrist.
‘Hello, Margot.’ Prissy Pamela, church warden and disapprover-in-chief, as the puffed out powdery cheeks now testify. ‘What a coincidence. May I join you?’
Margot disguises the frustration as she shifts over to accommodate the Waitrose bags and the golf umbrella, arranging her face into the requisite smile.
‘Bit of luck bumping into you. I’ve been wanting to quiz you for a while about that ugly scrap of rug that’s appeared from nowhere in the Kool Gang’s play area. Looks like it’s been dragged out of a skip in Hackney. Do you happen to know who––’
A loud shout from the front of the bus makes them both jump. Someone is arguing furiously with the driver.
‘As I was saying, a piece of tat like that doesn’t give the impression St Mark’s really wants to––’
The noise at the front has intensified. The rest of the bus falls silent, the air acquiring a grainy static.
Margot cranes her neck to try and see what’s happening. A man is swaying by the doors halfway down; she can see the long straggles of filthy hair, the stained raincoat, the tracksuit bottoms dragging along the ground, a couple of plastic bags by his side.
‘For fuck’s sake, open the FUCKING doors!’
Several people shift back towards where she and Pamela are sitting, as the man starts hammering on the glass. He swivels round suddenly and Margot gasps as she sees that he’s a woman, her features pitted and hard, her eyes unfocused, and probably barely older than Margot herself.
‘Let me off the fucking bus!’
They’re at a set of lights, but the driver sits looking straight ahead, his shoulders rigid.
Someone turns towards Margot, an expectant look on his face. Then someone else. And another woman again, to her right. The collar. They’re expecting her to act. This is your job. The fourth emergency service.
The bus abruptly accelerates hard though the lights, sending the woman lurching onto the floor. Her howls send shivers through Margot, like the unearthly shriek of the foxes on Highbury Fields. The woman curls up into a ball, gulping sobs shaking her gaunt frame.
Pamela turns towards Margot, lips pursed.
‘Isn’t it dreadful that someone like—’
‘Sorry, Pamela, but I need to get through.’ She stands and starts to step over the carrier bags.
‘Wait – what, Margot, where in God’s name are you going?’
Margot ignores her, pushing past into the aisle, with what feels like every pair of eyes in the bus trained on her. As she edges forwards, she can see how very frail the woman is, the tiny wrists, the jut of her collarbone. The acrid smell is now hitting her hard.
‘Watch yourself,’ an old man whispers.
‘I wanna get off. Lemme off. Just lemme off.’
Margot kneels down beside the rocking figure, steadying herself on the back of the seat alongside her.
‘Here, hold on to me. We’re almost at the next stop.’
The woman’s cheeks are scarred. She must be at least six or seven kilos underweight. Margot touches her right shoulder and the woman jumps back as though she’s been scalded and glares at Margot. Then she narrows her eyes.
‘Fuck, you a priest?’
Maintain eye contact. Keep it neutral. Keep it together.
‘Fucking perverts. I hate the lot of yous.’
They stay locked in a rigid embrace for a few seconds, then the doors open with a hiss, the driver slams open the inner cab door and runs down the aisle t
owards them.
The speed with which the woman staggers to her feet catches Margot off guard. She’s still kneeling herself as the woman stumbles out onto the pavement, dragging her bags with her. The driver helps Margot back onto her feet without a word and heads back to the front. Just as the doors are closing, the woman whips round again and leans in. The ball of spittle lands dead centre on Margot’s chest.
She’s still shaken when she arrives at the school gate a few minutes later, her notes still on the bus, her hair plastered to her face in the drizzle, her black trousers smudged with dirt from kneeling on the floor.
A gaggle of teenage girls, all wearing hijabs, are chatting outside by the buzzer. One of them spots Margot – or, rather, the collar – and turns to the group, which erupts. It’s not personal, she knows that. But as she squeezes passes and presses on the entryphone, the temptation to retaliate this time is intense.
The blonde on the reception desk takes one look, glances back down and directs a scarlet fingernail to her right. Margot rushes on, then catches her reflection in the trophy cabinet and stops. There’s a women’s toilet opposite, but it’s locked. She spots a men’s toilet two doors down, glances around and takes a chance. Her luck’s in: no one at the urinals, at least.
The stain on her black shirt refuses to budge and she rubs at it so hard that it becomes encrusted with paper flecks. She pinches her cheeks to try and get rid of the pallor and is just applying some lipstick when she stops, hand in mid-air. A cubicle door opens behind her and a tall guy in his early thirties steps out, re-looping his belt.
‘Oh, sorry,’ they both say.
He takes in the picture she presents.
‘The ladies was locked.’ She pushes her hair back. ‘I’m here for the RS talk. You know, St Mark’s?’
‘Got you.’ He tips his head. ‘Bit early for a kissogram.’
He moves to the washbasin alongside her and glances at the lipstick in her hand.
‘Being an anorak isn’t compulsory.’
He holds his hands up in mock submission.
She bites her lip. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong.’
The Girls' Book of Priesthood Page 3
