Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3)

by Catherine Fox

  It is a scrappy off again, on again week. There is no joined-up thinking across Lindfordshire about school holidays. One might have hoped for joined-up thinking in schools, of all places. A nice flowing Marion Richardson line of thought, with no fancy loops. Instead, we get this ransom note mishmash: some schools open, others are closed. It’s a childcare nightmare.

  Where is everyone? The dean has gone away. Not to Havana – no, Havana requires more than the inside of a week, Gene conceded that. Seville? Ooh, what about Capri? What would give his deanissima most pleasure?

  ‘To be honest, Gene, what I’d like most in the world is just to slump in some cottage somewhere.’

  She slept in the car on the way to Shropshire. As she drifted off, she thought of the little lights still flickering in the dark cave of the cathedral, winking out one by one under the foot of the cross. Atrocities in Turkey. Brussels. And now Lahore. That park at Easter, all sunshine and family picnics, games of football. No warning. Who knows how it will be? An airport queue, an underground platform, a lorry crossing the central reservation, cancer, a ruptured artery . . . Every light winking out. Every single light. The terrible pathos of the human condition! How brightly we shine, and then we wink out.

  But what would it be like, she wondered, to wait all night inside the cathedral for the Easter vigil? To hear the great door opening, to see the Paschal light coming, one tiny flame coming towards you through the dark? Coming to wake you. ‘Little girl, get up.’ A tear slid down her cheek. She blotted it before Gene saw. Hush. He is risen. Don’t cry.

  My flesh in hope shall rest,

  and for a season slumber,

  till trump from east to west

  shall wake the dead in number.

  *

  Father Dominic has nipped off on a cheeky break to Gran Canaria. It will not be a highbrow affair, this holiday. He will take a pile of prize-winning novels he’s been meaning to read for yonks, and he won’t open a single one. The archdeacon of Lindchester is doing Low Sunday for him – ooh, just think! If he has Virginia as an associate vicar next year, arranging cover will suddenly get a whole lot easier. Goody-good!

  Virginia’s heart flutters a little every time she thinks about her conversation with Matt. Is this a sign? Guidance? To be the diocesan social welfare officer! Does it have her name on, as the archdeacon seemed to think? Obviously, they will have to wait and see if the funding is there. Then there will be proper process to follow. Virginia would no more try to circumvent proper process than she would fiddle her tax return!

  TAX RETURN! Gah! Except, now he’s got an accountant, he doesn’t feel so angsty. Oh man, the thought that HMRC are gonna send their scary shit to Ambrose, and he’s gonna talk to them? Aw, that’s only like the most romantic thing anyone has done for him ever? Freddie caught that one before it escaped out of his head for once. Mostly there’s this random cog in his brain that slips, and oops! too late, another dumb sentence falls out? Man, he hates when that happens? Coz he kinda wants Ambrose to not think he’s a total airhead. I mean, yeah, no, lost cause. No kidding, the guy has all the evidence, the big old box of Freddie May’s fuckwittery and failure.

  The list of father figures who have betrayed your trust. Na-a-aw, don’t do this to me, don’t make me look at this. Just get out of my head, Andy. I’m so not that walking cliché with unresolved father issues?

  One by one the lights wink out. One day we are going to have to go in there and face it. The box of failures, the cupboard under the stairs, the glory hole.

  APRIL

  Chapter 15

  Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . .

  he drought of March? You’re having a laugh, Geoffrey! But sweet April showers bless Lindfordshire all the same, breathing life into the tender crops. The small birds make melody. Folks long to go on pilgrimage. Off to foreign lands they fly, lamenting the price hike in the school holidays. If they are clergy families, they bundle into the car and head for the holiday cottage borrowed from wealthier relatives and friends, in Devon, or Norfolk, or Northumberland. Stephen Fry’s voice booms out Harry Potter. The clergy person at the wheel thinks I could have been a banker, an entrepreneur, I could have made serious money.

  And just as they did in Chaucer’s day, folks go on pilgrimage to cathedrals. Here in Lindchester, they climb the pilgrim path that snakes round the mount, up to the ancient shrine of St William. They walk in the footsteps of generations of the devout, the halt and the lame, the angst-ridden wealthy. What are they seeking? Answers? A blessing? Or just a spot of culture and a way of entertaining the kids in the holidays? They stop, as their forebears did, for refreshment in one of the hostelries along the road. Vespas, perhaps, where they might encounter a modern incarnation of Chaucer’s squire, as fresh as is the month of May, singing and dancing as he waits tables. There are some video clips doing the rounds on social media, of him belting out ‘O sole mio’ in his stripy Breton top, like a gondolier. He’s becoming a bit of a local celebrity: the singing waitron of Lindchester.

  Down by Gresham’s Boats all the weeping willows sport mops of lime-green hair. Long lappets of weed wave in the Linden. The pussy willows have turned duckling-coloured. The dog’s mercury is out; and look – primrose clumps and celandines among last year’s fallen oak leaves. Ah, those ancient oaks! They might have been cut from eighteenth-century paintings and pasted there, they are so English, so quintessentially English.

  They swear they’ll invade us, these terrible foes;

  They frighten women, children, and beaus,

  But should their flat bottoms in darkness get o’er,

  Still Britons they’ll find to receive them on shore.

  Was there ever a more Heart of Oak region than Lindfordshire? Landlocked, an island within an island, with the islanders’ deep instinct (like the polite natives of the Punch cartoon) to ’eave ’arf a brick at strangers bogusly coming over here, taking our jobs, scrounging our benefits, draining our NHS. We’re full, geddit? England is full. I’m not racist but. #Brexit? Bring it on. ‘Heart of Oak!’ Tis to glory we steer. Britannia triumphant!’

  Kat, the bishop’s EA, generally finds herself in the ‘Not you, love’ category, broadmindedly exempted from the ‘Go Home’ remarks. Yeah, thanks for that, guys. We will join her now in the bishop’s office, as she tractors through the bishop’s emails so that he won’t come home from holiday to an inbox of 300. There’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Hey! Come in, sweet cheeks.’

  ‘Hey. Brought you a Billy cake* from work.’

  ‘Nom nom! Put the kettle on.’

  Freddie obeys, then comes and straddles the spare office chair and rests his chin on the back and gazes at Kat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘So you were right? Turns out he’s into me?’

  ‘Told you.’

  ‘Yeh. Man. Did I read that one wrong. Seriously thought he was straight?’

  ‘Straight? Ha ha ha! You need to book that gaydar in for an MOT!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Freddie lets his arms dangle. He swivels the chair. Sighs.

  ‘And?’ prompts Kat. ‘So are you guys dating now, or what?’

  ‘Dating!’

  ‘Well, are you? Do you like him?’

  ‘Yeah, no, I like him, but.’ He thinks for a bit. ‘I dunno.’

  Kat rolls her eyes. ‘It’s complicated?’

  Freddie fires an imaginary gun at her. ‘You got it.’

  ‘Tell you what. You make the tea, and we’ll see if we can uncomplicate it.’

  Well, I place quite a bit of confidence in Kat’s ability to sort Freddie’s head out for him. While she endeavours to do this, we will rewind and find out how Ambrose finally declared himself. Heavens, I have made my poor reader endure enough less absorbing scenes of a hard-core Anglican nature – why should we skip over this happy moment?

  Freddie whistled as he walked back up the hill from Vespas. Life was looking good. Sun
: shining. Work: good. Finances: good. (Well, getting better.) Voice: good. Still on a high after acing his solo part in the Lindchester setting on Easter Day?

  Except: total downer. The old bastard himself had been there to hear it. Laird. Sir Gregory Laird. Afterwards, he’d been all, and here’s my lovely protégé. Ruffled Freddie’s hair! Actually did that? Can you believe that guy?

  Yeah, Mr Laird, like you didn’t piss on my dreams back when I was fifteen doing my first recital. You’ll probably only ever be average. Nice tenor sound, but average. That was a special moment. And now I’m all of a sudden your blue-eyed boy, your wossname, Pygmalion? Guess you’ve forgotten how you blanked me when my voice broke? Like I could help it! Like I went, wahey, let’s do the voice change right now, and balls up this mega-important première and make Laird look like a dick in front of the entire whole choral world! And fourteen years on you’re telling everyone, here’s my protégé, here’s this amazing talent I nurtured. I always knew he’d go far, this one.

  Fuckwad.

  And I just stood there, like I was agreeing? Yep. Just sucked it up. Inside I was, have you any idea what you did to me? I’m not your fucking protégé, asshole. You fucking ruined my life! But no, I’m six again, just standing there wanting Mr Laird to love me. Love me, pay me some attention. Dude, I would’ve done anything for you to just love me!

  Freddie felt it again as he walked. Gripping his throat, a hand choking off his voice, still not letting him say those things. Gah.

  But Miss B, though? Hero! Shame on you, Gregory Laird.

  Whoa.

  Silence? I mean, Total. Fucking. Silence. Then Laird did his embarrassing Shakespeare bow: ‘What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?’ Turned his back on her and was all, moving on, how are the plans for girl choristers shaping up, Giles?

  Freddie carried on up the hill. Kind of took the edge off his success, whenever he remembered Laird. But the solo. Yeah. That was the business. In his mind, he was seeing the condors, the way they waited, high on the Andes, waited for the sun to come up and the air to warm, and then they just stepped off and rode the thermals. Yeah. Like that?

  ‘Hi, Freddie.’

  ‘Dude, Ambrose! Hey. Didn’t hear you coming? Just finished work. You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here.’ He dug in his pocket for his wallet, peeled off some notes. ‘Ta dah! First instalment for you.’

  ‘Cheers. That’s kind.’

  ‘Hey. De nada, my friend. Thanks for rescuing me?’

  They walked for a moment in silence.

  ‘Know what I’m thinking?’ began Freddie.

  ‘We should get married and buy a puppy?’ suggested Ambrose.

  ‘What? Naw. I was—What?’ He stopped and stared up. Ambrose smiled. ‘I—What breed?’

  ‘Labradoodle?’

  ‘No way! Golden retriever. Anyway, what? That’s not what I was thinking!’

  ‘OK. What were you thinking?’

  ‘I—Aw. Now you made me forget.’

  ‘You have that effect on me, too, to be fair.’

  Uh-oh. Freddie tugged his hair. ‘Um. You’re not . . . uh, coming onto me, here?’

  ‘A little bit,’ admitted Ambrose. ‘Maybe. Is that a problem?’

  Freddie began walking again. Eesh. Awkward. ‘Listen, don’t want to get all judge-y, but you know? Only I kind of have this rule – don’t go with people who are in a relationship?’

  ‘That’s a good rule.’

  ‘Soooo . . .’

  Ambrose waited.

  Shit, what was her name? Hot Chinese babe? Miraculously, it came to him: ‘Chloe?’

  ‘My cousin? What about her?’

  ‘Your cousin!’ Oh God. Wait. Oh. OHHHH! ‘Did you send me a—Was that you, with the little red hearts?’

  ‘That was me.’

  ‘Oh, man.’ His face blazed. ‘Now I feel dumb. Coz I thought— Gah.’ Shit, shit, shit.

  They passed under the big archway and onto the Close.

  ‘You thought she was my girlfriend?’ Ambrose laughed. ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘Oh God, I—Listen, you’re a nice guy and all, but I’m just not . . . feeling it? Sorry. Only I’m kind of coming out of a, a thing, not a relationship, but. There’s this guy – and my head’s still all . . . Make sense? Shit. I mean, obviously, I’d do you. One hundred per cent. If that’s . . . ?’

  Ambrose shook his head. ‘Thanks, but that doesn’t really work for me.’

  ‘Cool. No worries. So all I’m saying is, right now’s not a good time for me?’

  ‘OK.’ Ambrose smiled again. ‘So, hang fire on buying that labra­doodle, then?’

  ‘Yeah. No, retriever! But yeah. Sorry?’

  ‘Not a problem, Freddie. See you around.’

  ‘Bye.’ Freddie watched him disappear into Vicars’ Court. Face palm. Obviously, I’d do you? Classy.

  Ambrose saw the panic in Freddie’s eyes and knew to back off and wait a bit. But he was smiling as he let himself into his little house. He might be reading too much into what Freddie had blurted back there, but it sounded as though the Mighty Dorian had stopped playing dog in the manger at last.

  The local train chuntered from Lindford to Martonbury. Jane was checking how long it was going to take her to get to work, once— Ahem-ahem, my lips are sealed. The daffodils were past their best now on the embankments. Who had planted them? she wondered. Maybe they had simply been tossed away over garden fences as rubbish? It was a windy day. Young trees wagged like metronomes. The train stopped in Barcup. Another time she’d get off here and have a nosy round, see if she could track down the Anglo-Saxon shrine site. Shame the house wasn’t here. Too pricy, probably.

  Off they went again. Next stop Martonbury, where this train terminates. Jane alighted onto the platform, taking all her luggage and belongings with her. Well, there was no denying it: the old town centre of Martonbury was easy on the eye. The brickwork of the Georgian houses was velveted by the weather to a pale terracotta. Jane glimpsed forsythia and magnolia in walled gardens, and caught the tom-catty pong of flowering currant. There was a dinky little butter market in the cobbled square, two real ale pubs, an award-winning family butcher, and a posh cheese shop. She could quite see herself tying a Chanel headscarf under her chin and sallying forth. In gloves. With a basket over her arm. ‘I’ll have a pound of scrag end of neck for the bishop’s broth, my good man. And a bit of skirt.’

  She passed a dress shop – aha! This was the place for her from now on. The mannequins in the window were wearing what Jane’s mum had always described as ‘nice frocks’. I bet they still stock Doreen bras, and petticoats. And bed jackets, probably. Quilted bed jackets.

  The shops petered out as she headed off up Barcup Lane. Of course, the palace (as she persisted in calling it) was not that lovely Queen Anne mansion there, set back from the road behind wrought-iron gates and smothered in wisteria. Oh well. Before long, the Georgian mansions gave way to Victorian terraces, and then she was in Tudorbethan territory. There it was, in all its half-timbered glory. Ha ha ha! Pampas grass! Maybe she could host a diocesan swingers’ party as her first act of hospitality?

  My readers will see that Gene will shortly need to look to his laurels, if he wishes to retain his title as most disgraceful clergy spouse in the diocese of Lindchester.

  * A kind of marzipan, sultana and cherry Eccles cake, baked in honour of William of Lindchester to a genuine medieval recipe dating back to around 2014.

  Chapter 16

  re you sitting comfortably? Skim ahead, if you have a low boredom threshold, for I am about to induct you into the mysteries of The Four Instruments of Communion. It is possible that this phrase conjures up church organs and guitars for many of my readers. Perhaps staunch eight o’clockers might picture the psaltery and harp instead, and cymbals both loud and high-sounding, as duly listed in Psalm 150 (in the ‘if it was good enough for St Paul, it’s good enough for me’ version of the Bible).

  But no, t
his is not what is meant at all. The Four Instruments of Communion are as follows: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. My readers are probably already acquainted with the first three of these (however distantly); but the joyous music of the fourth instrument may not have sounded in your ears yet. I will spare you the bother of googling it, or of prevaricating Englishly (i.e. frowning and saying ‘That sounds familiar . . .’ until the information is furnished; whereupon we pretend we knew all along).

  ‘The role of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) is to facilitate the co-operative work of the churches of the Anglican Communion, exchange information between the provinces and churches, and help to co-ordinate common action.’ Its composition is no mystery, for it is our good pleasure to wash all Anglican laundry transparently and in public. This is our best and costliest gift to our ecumenical partners – to draw the fire of the media, so that everyone else may launder with some degree of privacy. I mention the ACC, not because I am about to play you a sonata on this august instrument – indeed I cannot: they have been meeting in Lusaka, where we may not follow – but more to alert you all to the full range of musical possibilities within Anglicanism. Contrary to the impression given by this narrative, the average Anglican is not a testy university-educated white Englishman. She is an African woman in her thirties living in sub-Saharan Africa on less than four dollars a day. How easy it is, in little Lindfordshire, to lose sight of the fact that we play upon the kora, the kalimba and the drums as gloriously as we do upon the Father Willis.

  Bishop Steve has been following the ACC meeting with much anxious loving care, braced for another dishing-up of the sex marriage brouhaha. He gradually unclenches. Trust in the Lord and do good, he reminds himself. If you sit a bunch of Anglicans down together, they generally find it hard to hate one another. It’s always simpler to demonize at a distance, or in the abstract. He’s guilty enough of that himself. Pennington, the porcupine, quivering his quills of self-justification when under attack, instead of listening, and seeking to understand. And allowing certain lay clerks (bless them) to emerge from screaming stereotype into brothers in Christ, for example.