Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3)

by Catherine Fox

  ‘Do I strike you as someone who gives a fuck?’ He opened the café door. ‘After you, sweet-and-twenty-five. Table for two, please. My young colleague here rather enjoys sitting on the deck— Oh. Too cold today? Never mind.’

  Freddie snorted.

  The barista showed them to a corner table. They sat. Suddenly Freddie clicked. This is it: end of mentoring. I’m being dumped.

  He groped for the menu. It was twitched from his fingers, same as last time.

  ‘Mr May, I deduce from your recent antics – and a flurry of phone calls from Giles – that you want my attention. Me voici. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Oh God! Yeah, no, it’s—’

  ‘Eyes. Look into my eyes.’

  Freddie made himself lock with The Stare. His heart thumped.

  ‘What do you want from me, Freddie?’

  Ah nuts. Don’t choke up. ‘You gotta know what I want?’

  ‘Yes. And you’ve got to know it’s impossible. We’ll have soup of the day with wholemeal bread, and two mineral waters, thanks,’ he said to the barista. ‘It’s never going to happen, and you know it.’

  Freddie made no reply.

  ‘I’m twice your age – ssh! Of course that matters, child. We’re different generations. We’re not peers. Not in any sense of the word are we peers. Ssh. Neither in age nor experience; not socially, academically, sartorially, financially, culturally, grammatically—’

  ‘Jesus! OK. I get it. I’m all-round not good enough for you?’

  ‘Bravo!’ He leant forward and whispered, ‘But then, who is, frankly?’

  Unbelievable. Look at him. Total punch face?

  ‘Here’s what I think, Mr May. Deep down you know there’s no hope, so you’re trying to force me to wash my hands of you.’

  Once more, Freddie made no reply.

  ‘So that you can add me to the list of father figures who’ve betrayed your trust. Well, that’s not going to happen, either. Can you bear to look at me again?’

  Freddie looked.

  ‘We can wind up the mentoring any time you want. But please let’s do it like this – after an adult conversation. All right? Not after some spectacular display of fuckwittery on your part, and high dudgeon on mine. Ah, the soup. Thank you,’ he said to the barista. ‘Let’s eat. Ssh. Benedictus benedicat.’

  Freddie crossed himself, pure reflex. He glared at the food. Man, hate lentil soup.

  ‘How now? Moody?’

  ‘Uh, I didn’t actually order this? Can I get a panini?’

  ‘Ending?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Panino. Panini is plural.’

  Freddie reached out and flicked him on the forehead.

  Heart-stopping pause.

  Then Dr Jacks laughed. ‘Exactly. Could you really stand being with someone who spent his whole time paternalistically correcting your grammar, and telling you you’re tying your laces wrong? Which, incidentally, you are.’

  ‘Whateva.’

  ‘I watched you do it. Weak form of the shoelace knot. That’s why they always come undone. And while trailing laces might be endearing in a six-year-old, I have to confess I find them a little tragic in a grown man.’

  Freddie rolled his eyes. He picked up his spoon. Stirred the spicy fucking lentils. Oh, wait. Wait. He put his spoon down. ‘I get what you’re doing. You’re being an asshole to force me to end it?’

  ‘Well aimed of such a young one.’

  ‘No. Nooo!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Freddie. Hasn’t the mentoring run its course?’ He laid a hand on his arm. ‘Easy, there. I’m here as long as you need me. But there’s a via media between lover and mentor, isn’t there? Friendship. Have a think and let me know.’

  ‘Wha-a-’?’ Freddie stared. ‘Sorry, you wanna be . . . friends with me?’

  ‘I wanna be friends with you, dude.’

  ‘Whoa. Ha ha! Seriously?’ He broke out the slutty smile. The one he’d never quite dared hit him with before. ‘Sweet. So would that be like . . . with benefits?’

  ‘Apart from the immense privilege of being my friend, no.’

  ‘No? G’wan.’ He nudged his knee. ‘We should totally fuck, babe. I don’t mind?’

  ‘You don’t mind.’ Mr Dorian raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that’s deeply flattering, of course.’

  ‘Hnn, kinda came out wrong? But seriously, I’d—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘’K. But if you change your mind . . . ?’

  ‘You’ll be the first to hear. And don’t ever call me “babe”.’

  ‘Cool. Can I call you Andrew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Awesome, Andrew. Can I call you Andy?’

  ‘Not if you wish to continue singing tenor. Now finish your nice soup, and I’ll walk you back.’

  After a swift tutorial on the distinction between a Latin cheek-buss (acceptable) and a snog (really not) Dr Jacks parted with his ex-mentee. He then called on his old school chum, the precentor. They enjoyed a leisurely bitch about the choral world, and then he broke the news.

  ‘No! You can’t step down!’ Giles clutched his wild hair. ‘Argh! But you’re my Imperius curse! Now how am I going to control him?’

  ‘Frankly, my dear . . .’ A languid middle finger.

  ‘And also with you. Let me get this right – you and Mr May are “friends” now?’

  There was a frigid silence.

  ‘Eek!’ Giles made a warding-off cross.

  ‘Yes, friends. I’ve made a career of behaving disgracefully, but I prefer not to look ridiculous.’

  ‘Ah! Saved by your gargantuan vanity!’

  ‘How well you know me.’

  ‘Oh, but whatever shall I do?’ Giles cried. ‘Ground him? Taser him? Geld him?’

  ‘Why not try a little tenderness?’ Andrew rose to leave. ‘My love to Ulrika. Ciao, ciao.’

  From the precentor’s house he made his way to the cathedral Lady Chapel and sat for a while. It was dusk, but light still shone faintly through those Burne Jones angels. He could hear the lay clerks behind him in quire, rehearsing for evensong. Suriano? Yes. He hummed the bass line as the mag unreeled slowly, sadly.

  ‘Depósuit poténtes de sede: et exaltávit húmiles.’

  Candle flames bobbed on the pricket stand. A spotlight shone on the big abstract Annunciation above the altar. It burned and loured. A bright tree against a coming storm, perhaps. A pear tree in blossom – wasn’t that what the artist had told him once? He couldn’t recall.

  The last note of the Amen faded, resolved, yet still yearning. Andrew shook his head. Ah, well. He’d kept the thought of Freddie stashed away for far too long, like that one last unrelinquished bottle of malt. God, what a waste! – but down the sink with it. Even though the label begged Drink Me, I don’t mind. How very Lenten.

  He slipped away before the service, and drove home.

  The reader will see that I misjudged Dr Jacks. He has broken his staff and drowned his book after all. I would love to say that naught shall now go ill for Freddie May, but alas! Red-edged letters from HMRC have begun to drop through the letterbox and blight his happiness. He is still behind on his rent. The job hunt? Not going so well. I’m afraid that he is increasingly tempted to slip off to London and – shall we say – monetize his hobby? Just to like make ends meet. Till the gardening work starts coming in again? Nnnn-nah, probably don’t do that?

  And so February draws to a close. On 1 March Leah Rogers learns that she has got a place at Queen Mary’s Girls’ Grammar School in Lindford, which she has already learnt to abbreviate to QM. Snow and slush and sunshine greet St David’s Day. Refreshment Sunday – the midpoint of Lent – approaches. Rose vestments may be worn by those who enjoy a little harmless liturgical poncing about.

  As we glide on our Anglican wings, we note that spring has begun to lay its first watercolour washes across the landscape: brown-purple over the birches, gold across willows, lichen green on bark and wall, and a blue haze of sky over wet wheat fields. There are
primroses and coltsfoots along the hedges of Lindfordshire. Up on Lindford Common the gorse is in blossom. Of course it is; for when gorse is out of blossom, then kissing’s out of fashion.

  *

  There will be no liturgical poncing in Risley Hill. The fastidious among my readers might be tempted to observe (with a catholic curl of the lip) that there is barely a liturgy at Risley Hill. Let us take a closer look.

  The paint has dried on the wall. But the rector stands a little too close to the intern. Not pervily on purpose. He’s just a friendly guy. Charismatic with a small and large C! Sometimes that gets misinterpreted, just as people misinterpreted Jesus’ relations with women. In Laurie’s experience, it’s in those seasons of great blessing that the attacks come. Satan fearing his citadels are about to fall. They’re experiencing a real outpouring of the Spirit right now. The evil one is going to be seeking to undermine that. Gossip, misunderstanding – Laurie has met with them before.

  Three years ago, the really sad business with Becky and her unhappy marriage. There had been real damage to the reputation of the gospel over that, when the archdeacon pulled the plug on the curacy arrangements. A whiff of sulphur about the timing there, just when the Lord was blessing them with so many new believers, and all the staff were over-extended. But God had sovereignly overruled. He’d sent other workers into the vineyard, amen? And he’d graciously shown Laurie the need to put his trust in Him, not in men.

  Laurie smiles down into his intern’s face.

  ‘Super, Sophie. Gingerbread hearts for Mother’s Day. Such a great idea.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not mine. They always have them in Cardingforth, apparently?’ Sophie smiles up at the rector. ‘The minute I heard, I was, oh, that’s so sweet? We should so do that too?’

  ‘Terrific.’ He lets her enthuse about cellophane and ribbon, bathing her in the glow of his approval.

  They always have them in Cardingforth! Ah, it is as I predicted. Father Wendy’s innovation three years ago has become a sacred tradition. The pedants of the diocese scour the shops for a proper Mothering Sunday card. A thousand times ten thousand daffodils are bunched ready for morning services. Bottles of wine are laid for lightening of Lenten discipline on Sunday. But what is this? Wine in Lindford Vicarage on the Friday before Refreshment Sunday?

  *

  ‘It’s St Piran’s Day,’ said Dominic. ‘Patron Saint of Cornwall. One doesn’t fast on a festival.’

  ‘If you say so, Father,’ said Chloe. ‘Has your mum gone?’

  ‘Yes, thank God!’

  ‘Oh, I love your mum!’

  ‘She calls you “that nice Chinese girl”.’

  ‘Ha ha! Close enough. Does she think we should get married? Here. Swap you.’ She took the champagne and gave Dominic the puppy. ‘Smells good! What are we eating?’

  ‘Homemade Cornish pasties, of course. With my own shortcrust pastry. Don’t tell anyone,’ he whispered to the puppy, ‘but I used lard, Cosmo.’

  ‘Gasp! I may make a citizen’s arrest.’ Chloe poured the champagne. ‘How many have you made? Because, can I be a bit cheeky and invite Ambrose? He’s a bit gloomy and love-lorn at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, poor lamb. Yes, of course.’ Cosmo lapped Dominic’s face. ‘Can’t you buy him a puppy instead?’

  ‘He might be better off,’ agreed Chloe.

  No kidding, thought Dominic. He’d be better off with a pet velociraptor than with young Mr May.

  MARCH

  Chapter 11

  ome! Let us float on high o’er the vales and hills of Lindfordshire. Daffodils dance in graveyard and garden. They stretch in never-ending line along the margins of windowsills and tables, all across the diocese of Lindchester in this week after Mothering Sunday.

  Miss Blatherwick’s little bouquet stands in a crystal vase. The scent pours into the kitchen as she eats her porridge. And then my heart with pleasure fills,/And dances with the daffodils! thinks Miss Blatherwick, for she committed a great deal of poetry to memory in her youth. Her face lights up as she remembers that dear boy running all the way down the nave in his choir robes to hand the flowers over with a kiss.

  Joy! Joy of friendship, of daffodils, joy of blackbird song coming in through the window! Joy of spring! Joy of a simple bowl of porridge! Porridge, such a good thing for a person with diverticular disease to eat. Joy of having diverticular disease and nothing worse! Tiresome but manageable, if one is sensible. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Legumes. Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee!

  Virginia’s daffodils stand on her bedside table. She wakes and smells them. Spring! It’s light at 6.30 now. How fast the time has gone. Her curacy is speeding to an end. Ought she to apply for one of the vacancies in the diocese? It feels right to stay. There’s all her work with benefits claimants – that’s where her heart is. But is now the time to relocate closer to her parents, down in Kent? They are seventy, after all. (Virginia does not move in cathedral circles, or she’d realize that seventy is NO age!)

  Guidance is such a complicated thing. If Virginia has discovered anything in recent years, it’s that she should give up trying to second-guess the will of God. She’d been certain she was called to be a curate at Risley Hill – there had been signs, and confirmation of those signs! – yet here she is in Carding-le-Willow. And it has worked out infinitely better than she’d imagined. She’s learnt such a lot from Wendy, although their churchmanship is so different. And now it’s nearly over.

  Virginia stretches. Sunshine streams in. The angle of the morning light plays tricks with the wall above her. She’s noticed this before, like the goblin face she could always see in Grandma’s walnut wardrobe. Silly. As though the parish decorators would have daubed something that rude in the curate’s house!

  Father Dominic has a little bunch of daffs in his study. Chloe Garner gave them to him for mothering the congregation of Lindford parish church so beautifully. Father Dominic gave Chloe a bunch from Cosmo-doodle, which vanished, simply vanished into thin air! Only to reappear in the car on the way to Chloe’s parents.

  ‘Great. Thanks, Cosmo.’

  Ambrose laughs. She slaps his knee. But at least he’s laughing.

  ‘Any developments?’

  ‘Not really. He thinks I’m called Angus.’

  ‘Angus!’ she hoots. ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea. He only lives on earth part-time.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I noticed that.’

  ‘The rest of the time he’s off being Zeus’s cupbearer.’

  ‘OK. You’ve lost me now.’

  ‘Zeus. In charge of the pantheon? With the thunderbolt? Drives an Aston Martin.’

  ‘Oh, that Zeus.’

  Behind them Cosmo hawks up another daffodil.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ says Ambrose.

  *

  The dean gazes out of the drawing-room window. There is a fine array of spring flowers, and one rogue squirrel-planted crocus in the middle of the lawn. A white hive stands among the lavender and rosemary.

  ‘You’re worrying about the bees again, aren’t you, deanissima?’

  She jumps. ‘Oh, I didn’t hear you coming.’

  ‘Whose job is it to worry about the bees?’ asks Gene.

  ‘Yours, darling. Are you worried about them?’

  ‘Certainly not. I have a bee-verger to do that for me.’

  ‘And what does the bee-verger say?’

  ‘The bee-verger says they are all fine,’ replies Gene. ‘The hive is dry. The roof is sound. The queen is busy laying. The elderly winter bees are tactfully dying off and leaving bequests. The new summer bees will soon be hatching. Swarms will multiply. Everything is progressing nicely, in accordance with the queen’s growth strategy. And as ever, the idle male bee is on hand to service her.’

  The dean eyes him. ‘I believe someone once explained to me what happened to the idle male bee during the mating flight.’

  ‘They’re just bees,’ says Gene loftily. ‘Let’s not anthropom
orphize them.’

  Here, at last, is the first truly spring-like day of the year. All is hazy, as if with holy smoke – smoky sky, smoky white clouds of blossom on the blackthorn. We could almost believe that heaven has leant down and laid its cheek on the landscape. The Linden rushes brown and fast. Great clumps of foam like dead sheep race by, while in the meadows the first lambs gambol, as all good lambs should. Here and there, a turbine twiddles, and a lapwing lollops up into the sky.

  How lovely it all is. On days like these, the blurry light seems to grace even the jagged glass that blooms along pub yard walls, like a flamboyant emerald frost. Rococo flourishes of barbed wire scroll out against the sky. Keep Out.

  In the slick new doorways of Lindford the same message is muttered in anti-homeless studs, like the spikes along every high ledge to keep off the pigeons. It’s the students’ fault. They encourage them. Coming home late, bleeding hearts melting with too much booze, handing over cash. Mutters in pubs. Keep Out. Mutters at the school gate. Keep Out. No wonder the NHS is in trouble. Too many people coming over here looking for a cushy life. The country’s full, go away. I’m sorry, but there it is. Fact.

  Keep Out. Keep Out.

  The council fences off the spaces under bridges and flyovers. Even the kind-hearted mutter. It’s sad, but what can you do? There must be hostels and shelters, surely? The government should tackle it. In the meantime, couldn’t they sleep somewhere else? I don’t know, somewhere out of sight, where we don’t have to think about them and feel bad for being fortunate.

  Keep Out. Keep Out. Mutters everywhere in Lindfordshire, my Lindfordshire.

  Now and then Father Dominic has rough sleepers in his graveyard. So far, it’s not a problem. No needles found by Sunday School children, nobody crapping in the church porch, or scaring off the faithful. They just seem to want to be invisible. And safe. Dominic chats to them and does what he can with hot soup and sleeping bags. He offers to find hostel spaces. The Council are in the process of clearing the big camp from Lindford cemetery. O Lord, don’t let them all come here instead! He hates himself for even thinking this. For cravenly foreseeing the headlines: Single vicar in a five-bed vicarage evicts homeless. He hates the thought of being asked on the Last Day which part of the parable of Dives and Lazarus he’d failed to understand.