Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3)

by Catherine Fox

  ‘Nope. You don’t really see me at all,’ she says. ‘You only see women when you want something from them. Diagnosis: sexist oinker.’

  ‘Oh!’ Freddie gapes. ‘That is so not true!’

  She raises her hands. ‘I’m done.’

  ‘Man. You are so mean to me.’ He juts his lip.

  ‘Plus you’re manipulative,’ she says. ‘But anyway, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing. Just checking in to see how you’re doing.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Gotta run. Late for work?’

  She rolls her eyes as his footsteps crunch away on the drive. Idiot manchild. She leans forward and breathes in the sweet pea scent. Ah! Grandma’s garden. For a second she sees Gran, arms folded, shaking her head. Ah ah, shame on you. Kat sighs. Damn, she was mean to him. Jealous, probably. Because where is she going to find a keeper like Ambrose?

  Synod ends, and the reps from Lindchester wend their way home. Virginia finds herself uncharacteristically weepy. It was all so draining. And then there’s the stress of a house move looming. Is it wrong of her to think that if she weren’t a single woman, the diocese would have sorted her housing out by now?

  Dominic emerged from the Shared Conversation in far better spirits than he’d expected. Present mood: cautious optimism? Of a restrained ‘let’s not hurry’ Anglican kind, of course. Like a mighty glacier moves the Church of England. It was not wall-to-wall homophobia. There were a whole bunch of good-hearted people whose heads hadn’t caught up with their hearts yet, poor darlings.

  Good disagreement. Lordy, it wasn’t cheap, was it? LoveWins was not cheap. He thought about that extraordinary Muslim man who had hugged a suicide bomber and saved dozens of lives. There it was – the best of humanity and the worst of humanity, locked in an embrace at the moment of death. Would he, Dominic Todd, ever be capable of love like that? A love that doesn’t try to save itself, but seeks to absorb violence and hatred in its own flesh, no matter what the cost.

  Across the diocese of Lindchester people wake to the horror of Nice. Father Wendy and her husband turn off the news. They drive to Laura’s grave a hundred miles away, and weep with their arms round one another. Two kilometres of carnage. All those lives ploughed under and smashed. These poor shell-less bodies of ours, evolved as if for trust. Where does it end? What hope is there for us?

  *

  Sunday comes round again, the final day of the choral year. The dean feels tears on her face as she administers the wine. ‘The blood of Christ.’ She makes her way along the communion rail, following the president. The body, the blood. The body, the blood. For a second the roof vaults are reflected in the wine as she holds out the chalice to the woman kneeling in front of her.

  Behind her in the quire a solo voice begins to sing the anthem. ‘Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen!’ Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears. Marion thinks of the emergency cord, hanging all the way down to the floor, plumbing the depths, to where humanity lies helpless, drowning in blood.

  Chapter 29

  he French flag hangs at half-mast up on Cathedral Close. Everything is numb. This week schools will break up, Parliament will go on recess. We limp on, as though the end is in sight and it might all be over soon, the awfulness. We need a break, space to process it. Don’t let anything else bad happen; no more coups, no more massacres, please. Don’t let Trump win.

  Is it partly our fault? Absurd. And yet it feels as though our Brexit butterfly wings have caused hurricanes. What have we done?

  In the midst of this numbscape, the big day arrived. A welcome break from removal firm boxes and trips to the town dump, if nothing else.

  Jane did not buy white stilettos for the occasion. But she did buy a pair of ridiculous white platforms in which to strut her stuff as Mrs Newly Consecrated Bishop. She teamed them with a knock-out tight dress and a sardonic expression. Her fashion sense had been forged in the furnace of the 1980s. Thus her dress was black (in a heatwave, huzzah!), her handbag white, her sunnies white-rimmed and her chunky plastic jewellery black and white. If you cannot be matchy-matchy as Mrs Bishop, Jane would like to know when you can.

  It is not possible, dear reader, for me to smuggle you into Bishopsthorpe to see how Jane conducted herself during that overnight stay with Rupert of York. Nor can we mingle with the glad crowds in the Minster on Tuesday, getting there early to bag a good place in the unreserved seats in order to see our right trusty and well-beloved hero consecrated in his blue-purple (shudder!) episcopal shirt.

  Matt was one of two ordained that day. The other candidate was a woman. The order of service did not contain a rubric If there is to be a spontaneous protest, it may happen here – though it might as well have done. This is the C of E, after all, where dissent can be liturgized into harmless eccentricity. (The congregation rolls its eyes while the protest takes place. In the event of the protest continuing, the dean may instruct the organist to weaponize the organ.)

  Protests notwithstanding, it all went off smoothly. Nobody passed out with heatstroke under a welter of vestments. Certainly it went better in real life than it had done in Jane’s dream the week before, in which she was late for the service because she’d been slummocking about in her trackies reading a novel. The new outfit was nowhere to be found. Shit, bollocks! She was hurtling through a maze of corridors – jerry-built by her subconscious out of her comprehensive school and the Fergus Abernathy building – unable to find the Minster.

  No, the reality was a relief. Matt’s father was beside her, still calling her by her predecessor’s name. Happily, ‘Jen’ was close enough for her to pretend she hadn’t noticed. She might have enjoyed the service more if Danny had been there. But Jane had to concede that skiing in The Remarkables during your half-year break probably had more allure for a twenty-two-year-old. He’d be back for Christmas. Besides, she had her lovely surrogate son on her other side. At one point, she was about to nudge Freddie and whisper: ‘Hey, I get to boff a bishop now. Never done that before!’ when a memory obtruded. Oops. Well held, Jane.

  Once the post-service milling about, photos, and lunch were over, the new bishop of Barcup and his wife headed back to Lindford in the black Mini that coordinated so pleasingly with Jane’s outfit. Matt was driving. Jane fell asleep for Prosecco-related reasons. We can join them as they cross the border of the diocese of Lindchester again.

  *

  ‘Huhhh. Bleah. Was I snoring?’ Jane smacked her lips and sat up. ‘Why’ve we stopped?’ They were parked by a barley field in the middle of nowhere. Her head ached.

  ‘Sorry, can you fire up the satnav?’ said Matt.

  ‘We’re lost! Mister I-know-the-way! Ha ha!’ Jane opened the glove compartment. ‘What’s this?’ She pulled out a flat box. ‘No! What—?’

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘Oh, Matt.’ Ah, that knife-edge, where an upsurge of love wrestled with Fucking hell, what if I hate it? She planted a kiss on his cheek, and opened the box. It contained a chunky silver-and-sea-glass choker.

  ‘Are those happy tears?’ asked Matt.

  ‘They are!’ wailed Jane. ‘It’s gorgeous! Oh, Matt.’ She kissed him again.

  ‘Phew. Well, I thought since I was getting new bling, you should as well,’ said Matt. ‘And I know that if you got your druthers, you’d be heading off down under.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  He gave her what Jane’s mum always described as an old-fashioned look. ‘I’m an ex-copper, Jane. If you google “lecturer posts in New Zealand”, I can put two and two together.’

  Jane closed the box. ‘Please tell me you weren’t checking my browsing history.’

  ‘I don’t take this for granted, Jane – that you’re going to trail around after me and my job.’

  ‘Don’t fucking try to fob me off!’ Sixth months of pent-up row bulged like a monsoon cloud. ‘Yes or no. Were you checking?’

  ‘Not really. I—’

  ‘Not really? What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, I’ll just half-check—’
r />   ‘Look, will you shut up and let me explain?’ he snapped. ‘Your laptop was on, I saw the open tab, that’s all.’

  ‘Why were you nosing around looking at my laptop in the first place?’

  He tipped his head back, closed his eyes.

  ‘And don’t fucking sigh at me, Mister!’

  ‘Janey, can we please not fight?’

  ‘Let’s not spoil your “big day”, you mean?’

  He made no reply.

  She glared out of the window. A pair of white butterflies spiralled above the hedge. Argh. Now I feel like a cow. You made me feel like a cow, you pig.

  ‘Sorry. I need some fresh air.’ She stuck the jewellery box on the shelf, got out of the car and stumbled off in her ridiculous platforms towards a gate.

  Silence. She leant on the top rail and hated herself. Too darn hot. The barley stood motionless. She could hear it ticking in the sun. There was a dark stand of trees and a farm in the distance. Everything was waiting. The whole landscape, pausing between acts. Term had ended on a cosmic scale. And now Big School loomed. Out there. On the other side of summer. But now, now we wait. Tick, tick, tick.

  Matt got out of the car too, came and leant beside her. The sight of the purple sleeve jolted her afresh. Oh God, what have we gone and done?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s all been a bit mad.’ He opened his mouth. ‘Don’t you dare say Brexit and mansplain everything.’

  He slipped an arm round her.

  She leant her head against his big shoulder. The white butterflies spiralled past them. Sometimes she could almost feel his faith, like a powerful engine idling, and then it was possible to believe it might still all be OK in the end.

  ‘God, I wish we didn’t have to go home to box hell.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He smiled. ‘Because I’ve booked us into a nice B & B for the night, in that farm there.’

  ‘What?’ Jane laughed. ‘You old rascal! But I should warn you, I’ve run out of knickers.’

  I will not trouble you with the bishop of Barcup’s reply, reader.

  Over in Martonbury the empty ‘palace’ waits in all its fresh magnolia splendour for Matt and Jane to move in. Bea, the archdeacon of Martonbury, has tootled round with her hoe, to keep the weeds down in the flowerbeds. The garden has fallen off somewhat from the glory years when Janet Hooty reigned. But we cannot keep harking back and moaning. That is to say, we shouldn’t, but we always do. It’s in our Anglican DNA, born as we were amid divorce and dissolution.

  Talking of which, how is everything over at Risley Hill, where the vicar stands too close to his intern? We have often wondered – with Archdeacon Bea – what is going on there, in that apparently lively and growing church. Please don’t say it’s that tired cliché, the adulterous vicar.

  And now someone else is wondering, as he plods round his 5K running route in his £200 running shoes and top-of-the-range compression gear, cutting corners, stopping for a breather, and still kidding himself he ran the full 5K non-stop. (There are parts of 5K his nature waiting to be fully redeemed.)

  Neil finds himself in a bit of a quandary. If he’s going to test out his vocation to be a reader, he can’t skip from church to church. He’ll need the backing of his vicar before selection. He told Neil that, the bishop, in the bar that time. So Neil’s tried to get stuck in at Risley Hill. Joined a home group, and volunteered for the welcome team, the coffee rota, Alpha, prayer ministry, you name it. No dice. Because apparently he’s a young Christian, and needs to be nurtured before taking on a role. He’s trying really hard not to hear the subtext. But nope, it’s there. Gay, out, and in a relationship? Don’t bother volunteering, sunshine.

  He slows to a walk. Steep hill. Stitch. Dying.

  Truth is, he doesn’t fit in. Especially home group. He’s reined in the auld potty mouth, but KINELL! The day after, he wanted everyone to pray about the Brexit train wreck, but would you believe, a couple of them start spouting a bunch of batshit cray cray stuff about the EU building being the Tower of Babel – hello? And the vicar’s wife! Seriously, has nobody noticed she’s a lush? With her wee bottle of ‘water’, and her ‘post-viral vertigo’! As if Neil doesn’t have enough fall-down drunks in the family not to spot the signs at forty paces. It’s like he’s banging on their window, waving his arms, Hoose on fire! and they’re staring out like he’s the crazy one.

  Och. Time to find a new church, eh? What d’ya think? I’m in your hands, pal. He jogs the last quarter mile downhill to the vicarage. ‘“A little talk with Jesus makes it right, all right!”’

  The holiday season starts. Bishop Steve and Sonya set off for France-France, hooray! and spend seven hours in stationary traffic on the road to Dover. Crowds hunt wild Pokémon up on the Close, which is either great fun, or a bloody nuisance, depending on who you ask. Two men with a borrowed labradoodle walk hand in hand, taking it steady, seeing how it goes. Amadeus, the cathedral cat, pours himself down off the deanery wall like a jug of tabby cream. He slinks across the precentor’s yard and springs up onto the kitchen windowsill. He stares in, tail tip twitching, at the Chorister School hamster in his cage.

  The heatwave mutters off into the distance trailing thunderclouds. The church hall in Cardingforth is transformed into Noah’s Ark ready for next week’s holiday club. Martin, the Borough (and Churches) Liaison Officer works with schools and foodbanks to set up out-of-term children’s lunch clubs. He is joined by the new diocesan Social Welfare Officer, Virginia, who will be licensed in the cathedral, come autumn.

  What a lot of licensing and whatnot is lined up for the autumn! Virginia, two new archdeacons and a suffragan bishop. The pre­centor will have his work cut out with the choreography. Doubt-less, there will be requests for modern worship songs, which he must compel the lay clerks to sing. They will react like Regency dandies being required to sully their eyes with a farrier’s bill. But for now, there will be a lull.

  Lord, let there be a lull, prays the dean. The French flag still flutters at half-mast, and now they need a German flag. Munich is on lockdown. Eighty dead in Kabul – an Afghan flag too? She suddenly sees the Close thick with flags, an Olympic Parade of Mourning. Too much, too fast. She wants to turn her face away. Ah well, in two weeks Gene is whisking her off to a mystery destination. Perhaps he’s right, she just needs a holiday.

  Has it always been like this? Rio is less than a fortnight away. Four years since the London Olympics. She’s probably kidding herself, but she looks back on that opening ceremony as though it happened in a different country, and in a long-gone kinder age.

  Chapter 30

  The Lord told Noah to build him an arky-arky!

  Build it out of gopher barky-barky!

  Children of the Lord!

  t’s the first week of the long holidays, and parents in the Cardingforth area are grateful once again to Father Wendy for taking the kids off their hands every morning this week, for a quid a pop.

  Leah Rogers flatly refuses to go. It’s lame and babyish, plus she has to practise her katas for the grading next Sunday, and she’s NOT GOING. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! In the end she agrees (for £5 extra pocket money) to take Jess and collect her at the end of each morning so that Mummy can have a lie-in. Please, Leah, Mummy’s really tired right now.

  Mummy’s in bed when Leah comes back from dropping Jess off. She’s still in bed when they come in at lunchtime. Jess looks at Leah with scared eyes.

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Leah. ‘She’s just tired. I’ll make us cheese toasties.’

  The cheese has gone mouldy, but Leah cuts the mouldy bits off. ‘It’s just penicillin,’ she tells Jess. ‘It’s good for you. It’s been scienti­fically proven.’

  ‘Then why are you cutting it off?’ asks Jess, scared again.

  ‘Duh. So we don’t accidentally overdose.’

  You have to act responsible when you’re an older sibling. You can never let yourself be scared too.

  Father Dominic is not an older sibling, he’s an only child
. How he’d longed for a little brother or sister as a boy, so he could escape from all the babying and be treated like a grown-up. And now – apparently – some feckless Angel of the Intercessions has stumbled upon that childhood prayer at the back of a filing cabinet and belatedly granted a spoof version.

  A frenzy of bleeps breaks into his Morning Office. Oh Lord, now what’s she doing? He belts from study to kitchen.

  ‘Mother, I can smell burning!’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve beaten the flames out.’

  He stares at the charred Renfold Parish Church centenary tea towel in the sink. ‘Well, at least the smoke alarm is working.’ He opens a window.

  ‘The end was dangling over the hob,’ she says. ‘I’ll buy you a new one.’

  ‘Didn’t you smell it?’

  ‘You know I’ve got no sense of smell,’ she says. ‘I’m as— What’s the word for it? Anyway, I’m as thingummy-bob as a post.’

  ‘Or a bat,’ says Dominic. ‘You’re definitely as mad as one.’

  ‘I’ll give you mad, sonny Jim! And besides, it’s mad as a hatter. Oh, yes, they were all mad in the Luton hat factories. It was the mercury fumes.’ She prods the tea towel with the washing-up brush. ‘So the moral of that tale is never play with mercury.’

  ‘I never do.’

  ‘Good. Pass me my crutch, would you, love? Thanks. I’m going to take the bionic hip for a shower.’

  ‘Do you need a hand with the stairs?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll give a yodel if I get into difficulties.’ She clomps towards the hall. ‘Good leg down, bad leg up.’

  ‘No, mother. We’ve been through this. Bad leg down, good leg up.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It is. Fine. You go ahead and try.’

  ‘Ow!’ She laughs. ‘Well, it’s good leg something. I was nearly right. Oopsy, I need a winch. A winch, a winch, a winch.’

  ‘Come along, I’ll give you a bunk up.’ He puts an arm round her waist. ‘I’ve got you. A winch for a wench. Up we go.’