By now Sonya had run out of rude words. Apart from one. It waited there behind glass, like those little red hammers for smashing train windows in an emergency. She contemplated it. Yes.
‘Bugger!’ she shouted (quietly). ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ She sat down on her suitcase. Blinked back the tears. Maybe she could go and find a cheap hotel? But the cathedral porter in his lodge – she’d have to get him to open the big gates again. She’d have to explain, and then the whole world would know she was an idiot.
Footsteps.
She scrambled up. The case tumbled over. Oh, gosh! Hope they didn’t hear me swearing. She tried adopting an ‘everything’s fine, I’m not even slightly locked out’ pose.
The footsteps paused. ‘Hey, Mrs Pennington?’
‘Oh, hi. Is that Freddie?’
‘Yeh. Everything OK?’
‘Oh, fine, thanks. I was just.’
He came across the drive. ‘You locked out?’
‘Out,’ she agreed. ‘Yes. What an idiot, honestly.’ She blinked, so that he’d think it was her contact lenses playing up. ‘Oh well. S’pose I’ll have to go and wake the precentor up and get the spare.’
‘Want me to do that?’
She wavered. So tempting. ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Hey, no worries.’
‘OK then. No, wait. Oh!’ She thumped her fist into her palm. ‘It’s just that I did this to them last month, and I don’t want them to think—!’ He was giving her a funny look now. ‘Bother. Contact lenses. Must’ve got something, a bit of.’
‘Listen.’ He glanced round and stepped closer as if he was about to tell her a secret. ‘So maybe you could’ve like, left a window open?’
‘—open. Well, I doubt it. Steve always checks. He’s very.’
‘Yeah, no, but maybe I could look? You know, in case? Before we disturb Giles?’
‘—Giles. Well . . .’
‘Hey, no worries,’ he repeated. ‘I’m on it.’
He slipped off his coat and tossed it on the step. She watched him vanish round the corner. A clanking. He was never shinning over that big gate, was he? The car was ticking on the drive as it cooled. Sonya rubbed her hands. Her breath smoked. Bright glinty stars above the spire. So flipping cold! Should’ve brought gloves. She wormed her hands up the opposite sleeves of her coat.
Clang of feet on iron. He must be up on the fire escape. Golly, maybe Steve had left a window open! Sonya took a step, and stumbled over her case. For an awful couple of seconds she was hurtling over the drive, fighting to get her hands free to break her fall. Face! Gravel! A & E!
Phew! She winkled her hands back out of her sleeves. Oh my days. Well. That could’ve gone a lot worse! She picked up Freddie’s coat and folded it. A parka. Were they still called parkas? It had a big furry-edged hood. She got a whiff of his body spray. Familiar, like those pungent shrubs you smelt in parks.
Suddenly the palace burglar alarm ululated. A moment later, feet came pounding down the stairs. The alarm cut off in mid-wail.
Then the door opened. ‘There you go, Mrs P. Attic skylight was kind of open?’
‘Wow!’ She stared. ‘Thanks. You turned the alarm off!’
‘Uh, right. So probably you guys should, like, change the code?’
‘Of course – you used to live here!’
‘Back in the day.’ He had his fists in his jeans pockets, arms rigid. He looked down and scuffed up the gravel with his feet. ‘So.’
She hadn’t just blundered, had she? Had she blundered? There’d been talk, but she didn’t know anything. ‘Well, thanks for rescuing me!’
‘Not a problem.’
Sonya held out his coat for him. ‘Here you are. Thanks again. You’re a total star!’
‘Welcome.’ He shrugged the coat on. ‘Night.’
She watched as he jogged off across the gravel drive.
Gah! Should not have done that, numbnuts. Should’ve walked past, not gone back in there, into his old room, where he and Paul . . . Oh, man. All flooding back now. Should’ve known this was gonna kill. Coz hadn’t he loved Paul? But felt kind of betrayed by him as well? Almost hated him for being weak, when he should’ve been all, no, we can’t do this, Freddie, it’s not right?
But maybe it was right – for Paul to finally embrace the truth about himself? And hey, not like Freddie couldn’t’ve stopped him. Or not come on to him in the first place? Though to be fair, he really wasn’t coming on to him, more just desperate and needing a hug? Ah, forget it. Crossed wires. Ancient history. We’ve all moved on since that time.
I suspect this cannot be dismissed as ancient history. However, I acknowledge that right now my readers might be more interested in the envelope full of little red hearts that Freddie received on Valentine’s Day. He still has no idea who was responsible. He thinks, maybe Totty? To like cheer him up? Man, he’d love to think it was genuine, that he has a real admirer. In his dreams it’s Dr Jacks . . . He pictures his mentor’s pained expression, the curled lip.
Nah. In his experience, something that makes you go, aw sweet, that is so thoughtful! Nine times out of ten, it’s gonna be a woman. Honestly? He kind of prefers women. I mean, yeah, no, obviously he prefers cock, but for company? He’s gotta say women. All through school, his closest friends were girls. Oh God, don’t say he’ll turn out to be one of those gay guys who just gets sick of it all, and ends up marrying a girl and having babies, cos in the end, kindness is what matters, at the end of the day?
He lets himself into the empty house.
Half-term passes. The second Sunday of Lent. The choir are back. An old anthem, but what is this? A new voice?
Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long:
and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee;
and verily, every man living is altogether vanity.
Ears prick up in the cathedral. Orlando Gibbons, of course. The new alto lay clerk? We haven’t heard him sing solo before.
Whoa, thinks Freddie. Nice set of pipes, dude. Totally hadn’t registered that.
Rain falls, falls across the diocese of Lindchester. It weeps on the homeless, the benefitless, on the weak and helpless. It falls on fractured tree limbs beside train tracks. Trees hacked down for the crime of leaf shedding, for being in the wrong place, for being trees.
How small we are, how fleeting. We are altogether vanity, walking in vain shadow. Ancient trees with your grey piers, your whispering grace-filled aisles – you will outlast us all. The meek shall inherit the earth. I hope your leaves drift in forgiveness over our graves when we are all gone.
Chapter 9
t’s time. High time. Miss Blatherwick has already left it one extra week. She rings the consultant’s secretary. Engaged. She tries all morning, until she finally gets through. The consultant has been away on holiday. Miss Blatherwick can expect a letter within one to two weeks. If she hears nothing after two weeks, she may ring again.
Being an Englishwoman of a certain generation, Miss Blatherwick thanks the consultant’s secretary and rings off, feeling as though she’s been pestering. What Miss Blatherwick lacks is a shirty middle-aged son or daughter to hassle the hospital on her behalf. Interestingly, there are no limits to the amount Miss Blatherwick would hassle officialdom on someone else’s behalf. She would, for example, doorstep the Almighty Himself in the cause of Freddie May.
Freddie, Freddie, Freddie. Over a year ago, Miss Blatherwick concluded that her constant matroning of her beloved boy was keeping him in Neverland. Furthermore, it was self-serving, arising from her own need to be needed. She renounced all scolding, advising and organizing, and for some months she was rewarded by the sight of him maturing into a responsible young man.
What has gone wrong? Freddie, Freddie, Freddie. Perhaps one ought to— No, now is not the time to go back on her resolve. This wavering is just a symptom of her current predicament. How one clings to one’s own frail sense of importance in the face of mortality. Why, she has even caught herself fantasizing about
her will! It’s all a pitiful attempt to bolster the ego against fears of insignificance. Of course Freddie will cope without her. In the cold light of day one can see that to bequeath him some extravagant sum would be almost as ill-judged as leaving everything to Amadeus, the cathedral cat.
Miss Blatherwick hassles the Almighty in fine Lenten style. Keep my Freddie both outwardly in his body, and inwardly in his soul. Find him a dear someone to be with. Defend him from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul. Keep him. Keep him safe.
As we have already intimated, there is a dear someone. But the dear someone sits twiddling his thumbs in the wings, while that arch-manipulator, Mr Dorian, continues to stride about centre stage of Freddie’s heart and raise tempests. Just between ourselves, I suspect Dr Jacks is enjoying his rough magic a little too much to abjure it quite yet. Bad man.
Lindfordshire endures a spot more wrathful nipping cold. Father Wendy walks Pedro (shivering in his tartan coat), and finds herself remembering school milk. Those third of a pint bottles, how on mornings like this they arrived in the classroom frozen. Frozen milk! She can feel those big feathery crystals on her tongue and tickling her throat. Teacher used to put the crate beside the radiator to defrost it. Oh, the horrid sicky taste of warm full fat milk. And waxed paper drinking straws, with their barber’s pole stripes of red or blue, that unspiralled when soggy.
‘All gone, Pedro,’ she sighs. ‘All gone. We live in a plastic homogenized world!’
Wendy plods on, pondering whether we are all heading for a plastic homogenized C of E. Was something being lost in all this urgent Renewal and Reform? She knew Guilden Hargreaves had grave concerns. So did the other theological college principals. Yet General Synod had got behind the proposals. Her curate, Virginia, had come back buzzing with enthusiasm. The harvest is white. Wendy can see the pettiness of whinging to the Lord of the Harvest that he’s sending the wrong kind of worker into the fields.
‘Don’t listen to me, Pedro. I’m just being squeamish. Poor Bishop Steve! He’s herding a whole bunch of grumpy cats, isn’t he?’
Frost skulks in the shadows. A thrush sings, sings a careless rapture. Wendy stops, shields her eyes and squints up at the pussy willow buds. They blaze white like tiny LED bulbs. Magpies cluster in a birch tree. Chack! Chack! Their tails lift like latches with each call. Six for gold, seven for a secret, eight, nine, ten!
‘What do you suppose ten’s for, Pedro? Ten for Brexit, maybe? Oh, what’s going to happen to us? Are we really just going to scarper and pull up the drawbridge?’
Little Lindfordshire! The good folk here do not favour the EU. True, I speak in sweeping generalizations. Dr Rossiter would scrawl ‘Support!’ all over this. But the reader will get a flavour of the debate when I say that Lindcastrians are prone to testiness about imagined EU interference with the Lindfordshire sausage. If leaving the EU is what it takes to regain control of sausage rights, then so be it. Human rights will just have to take their chances.
But enough politics. Father Wendy heads back to her car and sets off to Mums and Tots in Cardingforth. How are our other characters faring? We do not pretend to a godlike omniscience in this narrative. Our eye cannot be on every sparrow. However, I am aware that it is some weeks since we ventured into the wilds of rural Lindfordshire and did a flypast of Gayden Magna vicarage.
It is a sorry fact that the amount of money you spend on your kit is inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend on your sport. Those £200 running shoes and the top-of-the-range compression gear currently languish in the wardrobe.
I knew this would happen, Neil.
To be fair, Eds hasn’t said it out loud. But all fine and well for you, skinnymalink. Couldn’t put on weight if I force-fed you deep-fried Mars bars. Come the famine, you’ll be nowhere, pal.
Not that Neil is fat. He’s just been underweight all his life till now. Och, and running buggers your knees, anyway. Got to think long term and look after your joints. Maybe cycling? Within seconds he’s sucked into the world of carbon frames and aerodynamic drag, with auld John Knox nipping his heid about wasting money. Six grand for a bike?! Aye, but would you just look at it? Neil sees himself scything down country lanes, lean and black and frictionless . . .
Father Ed comes home from visiting and catches Neil shutting his laptop a bit too quickly.
‘How was your day, big man? Soooo, I’m just off for a run. I’ll cook when I’m back.’
Ed listens to him scurrying up the stairs, and closes his eyes. He has not yet reached the stage of telling himself he’s just imagining things. That would mean admitting the possibility there might be something to imagine. The over-explained Wednesday evenings in London. The wide blue ‘Would I lie to you?’ gaze.
Ah, he’s just imagining things.
Archdeacon Bea is not imagining things, however. That is the smell of fresh paint.
‘Have you been doing a spot of decorating, Laurie?’
The rector of Risley Hill laughs his easy laugh. ‘Well spotted, Bea! Yes, we have. We sprang a bit of a leak in Gertrude. Or was it Henry?’ He appeals to the two churchwardens, who make some typically English ny-ma-ha-mmm bleats that might be agreement. ‘Anyway, as you can see – a quick lick of paint, and good as new!’
He is the kind of man who stands just a touch too close with his sincerity knob dialled right up. The paint fumes are not disguising the rat that Bea can smell. She checks through the paperwork. Looks up at the wall.
‘Is this where you had problems with damp at the last inspection?’
He tilts his head. Frowns. ‘A very good question. Gosh. I wonder?’ He looks up at the wall. The churchwardens look up at the wall. They all stand there looking, as if waiting for the fingers of a hand to appear and write Yes, it bloody is, and you know it.
‘Well,’ says Bea. ‘I’m going to make a note that this is now urgent, and needs seeing to within eighteen months. How does that sound?’
He nods. ‘Grand idea. Great. Super. Thanks, Bea.’
Hmm, thinks Bea, as she drives home. Nothing she could put her finger on. Everything else was in order – registers, insurance, safeguarding, fire extinguishers. Still, something smelt wrong with the set-up at Risley Hill. Could it be the rector himself – spiritually a damp wall with a quick lick of paint? Something to double-check with Matt. Bea smiles. And if Matt gets the Barcup job, she can boot Revd Lick O’Paint firmly off her desk onto his.
Yes, Matt is on the shortlist. Bishop Steve has brought Bea into the picture, because he needs a woman a member of the senior staff on the interview panel. The other interviewers are the two chairs of diocesan synod (lay and clergy) and the diocesan secretary. Steve is pleased with the shortlist – four strong candidates. He’s also happy that Marion has given her nod of approval to exploring the restructure. Today he is rather a happy bishop.
This does not mean that there are no flies in the episcopal ointment, however. He catches sight of one persistent irritant as he heads home for lunch from a meeting with the diocesan education officer. He’s seized by the urge to deal an unambiguous swat.
Freddie sees the bishop coming. He remembers: Nuts! I was meant to go and talk to him. When was that?
‘Freddie. A word.’
Too late to duck into Vicars’ Court. ‘Hey. Listen, really sorry about missing that appointment?’ Uh–oh. Seriously pissed. ‘And the whole Facebook thang?’
‘I got your note, thanks. Let’s draw a line under it,’ says the bishop. ‘Now. Talk me through what happened that night. What were you thinking?’
Freddie freezes. Fuck, he’s heard the gossip. ‘Right. Uh, my bad. So I’d been out clubbing? Ah, and probably I’d, yeah, overdone it? A bit?’ He winces. ‘Ah, a lot?’
‘You were drunk!’ The bishop’s hand goes to his heart. ‘Freddie, I can’t tell you how bad that makes me feel.’
‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Freddie spreads his hands. ‘But the street pastors? They loo
ked after me? Honest to God, it was just that one time?’
Pause.
‘Are we talking about the same thing here?’ asks the bishop. ‘You let Sonya into—’
‘Ohh! You mean that.’ Freddie feels his face burn. ‘Nah, I wasn’t drunk then. I was just—’ High. He bites it back in time. La la la.
‘Listen, idiot!’ Guy looks ready to shake him. ‘I took a look at that fire escape. How the hell did you get from there onto the roof?’
Freddie throws up his hands. ‘Just swang and jumped, I guess?’
‘Are you mad? If you’d fallen!’
‘Nah. Spider monkey genes? Plus a shedload of parkour?’
‘I don’t care! Don’t you ever, ever, EVER do it again.’
‘Sure. Hey, hundred per cent, I won’t ever.’
He sees the bishop draw breath, then let it out. ‘But thank you for rescuing my wife. Another time, confine your gallantry to fetching the spare key from the precentor.’
‘Hey. Not a problem.’ Freddie backs away and sprints home before the bishop starts asking about the street pastors. Oh boy, that was death!
As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him!
There waiting on the drive is a silver Aston Martin DB9.
Chapter 10
reddie hesitated, and was lost. The driver’s door opened. Andrew Jacks got out.
‘O mentee mine, where are you roaming?’
Freddie blushed. Dude, do you have to be so loud? ‘Listen, Dr Jacks, I—’
‘O stay and hear, your mentor’s coming!’
‘Listen—’
‘Let me buy you lunch.’ He clicked his fingers and pointed. ‘Laces.’ Freddie bent and tied them. ‘That’s better. Hand? Thank you. Come along.’
Freddie found himself being walked to the same coffee shop just down the hill from the Close. They passed the new alto (not Angus, but he kept wanting to call him Angus?), who gave them a ‘Really?’ look.
‘Trip no further, pretty sweeting . . .’
What is with you today? ‘Uh, Dr Jacks, could you maybe stop singing? Only people are staring?’
Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3) Page 6
