Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3)

by Catherine Fox

  ‘So! The game’s afoot!’ Gene raises his glass. ‘To you, deanissima! What happens next? A category five shitstorm makes landfall in the Close?’

  This earns him her most reproachful stare. ‘Gene, you have remembered how many people have died in Haiti this week, haven’t you?’

  He smites his breast.

  After a moment she answers. ‘Well, what happens next is that those people whose jobs are at risk will be informed. Then there’s a period of consultation.’

  He is too chastened to riff on the theme of ‘consultations’.

  ‘I expect we’ll be making any announcements in the New Year,’ she continues.

  This time he can’t resist: ‘Because shafting people in the week before Christmas would be a PR disaster. Even though shafting them in January is probably worse.’

  She does not dignify this truth with a reply.

  There is a culture shift in C of E all right. We respond to it like a bunch of lay vicars choral being forced to sing Graham Kendrick. Or (cast your minds back) like Oxbridge dons in the eighties, having their first brush with the Research Selectivity Exercise.

  Let us pause to recall the unregulated golden age. Those gracious Georgian rectories, the parson on his horse, the palaces with their deer parks, the canonical houses on the Close with their well-stocked wine cellars and staff laying fires of a morning. Queen Anne’s bounty bankrolling us all.

  Ichabod! Was it for this that we trained? How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? God forbid that The Regulators turn our churches into cookie stamp McMellitus franchises, banging on about Jesus, as if Jesus was the answer to the world’s problems. No, let us hang up our harps on the willows along the Cam and the Isis, and sit down and weep as bankruptcy swallows us all.

  ‘Name and shame businesses employing “too many” foreign workers! Arseholes.’ It was Friday afternoon and Jane was in full flight. ‘What next? Businesses employing too many women? Yeah, let’s make sure women aren’t taking the men’s jobs! And while we’re at it, why don’t we make the queers all wear a little badge? Oh, I know –a pink triangle! A Britain of opportunity and fairness! A level playing field. Yeah – that we own. We own the level playing field, and if you can’t afford the rent, ooh sorry.’

  Spider flattened himself against Jane’s office wall and blew his cigarette smoke out of the crack in her window. ‘You’re preaching to the choir here, Jane.’

  ‘Can I just point out that that’s an atheist’s idiom?’ said Jane. ‘Aficionados know the choir spends the sermon Whatsapping each other to say what a bell-end the preacher is.’

  Spider did his wheezy smoker’s laugh. ‘Respect for your insider knowledge there.’

  Jane had not finished. ‘It happened so fast! We woke up one June morning, and everything had changed. Now we, the “liberal elite”, are strangers and pilgrims in this post-truth country. Here we have no abiding city, my friend.’

  ‘Good. Good. I’m liking your biblical imagery here,’ said Spider. ‘And at the edge of our dreams comes the crunch of jackboot on broken glass.’

  ‘Oh, you old poet you!’ said Jane. ‘But yes,’

  They stood looking down over the town of Lindford. Mosley’s blackshirts had marched here, back in the day. Could it really happen again? Spider ground out his cigarette on the window frame and flicked the butt out through the crack.

  ‘Maybe it won’t get that bad?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Maybe it will just be rubbish, not the end of the world?’ said Jane. ‘Like now, only more hate-filled and rubbish. For us, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, for us. But for those at the bottom of the pile . . . ’ He shook his head. ‘So keep the red flag flying, and all power to Corbyn’s elbow, comrade.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Jane. But she simply did not see it happening. Which left what? Dear God, the C of E playing opposition for the next decade?

  The house on Sunningdale Drive still waits, spick and span. Wendy pops back to whisk away the ‘Welcome Home!’ flowers and cake. The fridge hums. It’s home time. She can hear the comp kids as they shout and shamble past.

  Becky must hate this house, Wendy realizes. What happy memories can it possibly hold for her? Maybe she can’t face coming back, and that’s why she bottled out of the meeting with Martin? Not bottled out – rescheduled. Surely Becky must see that every week that passes will cement the girls’ new regime with Dad a little more firmly? Is that what she wants? Wendy closes the front door on the quiet house.

  Over in the far-flung corner of the diocese of Lindchester, Father Ed waits up to hear how Neil got on. It is Saturday night. Or rather, early Sunday morning.

  ‘Heh heh, poacher turned gamekeeper, that’s me, Eds!’ He fills the world’s most expensive kettle. ‘I’m telling you – the world of clubbing looks a wee bit different when you’re on the outside looking in. And not melted off your face,’ he adds.

  ‘Was it what you were expecting?’

  ‘Pretty much, aye. Keeping an eye out for the ones who need it. Chatting to the door staff. Praying.’

  ‘So you enjoyed it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good.’

  But something has just tilted. Neil buries himself in his phone. Ed waits. The stealth kettle silently boils the water on a higher astral plane.

  ‘Fine then.’ Neil skids his phone onto the worktop. ‘I spotted ma wee friend. Coming out of Casa, off his tits, with some guy. He sees Chloe and me and it’s all, hey, no worries, guys, bae’s cool with it. Well, we all know that’s a lie. But what can I say – without sounding like the world’s biggest holier-than-thou hypocrite?’

  Ed hugs him. ‘Listen. That’s all forgotten, Neil.’

  ‘We both know it’s not, big man.’

  ‘Well, forgiven, then.’

  ‘Aye. I don’t always feel it, though.’

  ‘I know. But it’s always true.’

  The kettle clicks off, but they continue to stand there in one another’s arms.

  Chapter 40

  e our strength in hours of weakness.”’

  Father Dominic is still singing his Primary School hymns on Tuesday as he sets off for Morning Prayer. He says the office in church with Virginia these days, rather than in his study, where Mother might burst in at any moment to deliver a triumphant noun-free non sequitur: ‘I always said thingummy was a wotsit!’

  ‘“In our wanderings be our guide.”’

  Bleep! Trrrrrrrrump! Donald the blood pressure monitor starts up his crazy attention-seeking self-inflation again. Argh! Beep-beep-beep! Not now, Donald! I can’t stand stiff-armed like a zombie in full view like this! The next instalment of diocesan cowboys (painters and decorators) watch him as they drink coffee in their van. He carries on walking. Bleep! Trrrrrrrrump! Beep-beep-beep! Oh, stop it! The wretched thing’s going to carry on trying until it gets a ­reading, isn’t it? He gives in and stands still at the end of the drive.

  How lovely life is this crispy autumn morning. He is a bit spaced-out through lack of sleep – the monitor has checked his blood pres­sure every hour during the night. A robin whistles. The air is alive with insects. They drift and float in the sunshine like lit-up snowflakes. Everything is beautiful in the light, he thinks. Even the nasty biters, bless them. And will you just look at his lovely sycamore tree? It’s on fire! Oh, he’s a happy bunny in spite of it all. Because of it all?

  Through endeavour, failure, danger,

  Father, be thou at our side.

  Bleep! Donald deflates. Dominic notes down what he was doing (‘Standing’) and sets off again. He almost wants to skip. He’s like a man who has found treasure buried not in a stranger’s field, but right here, here in his own garden, where it’s been all along.

  Dominic is not the only person in the diocese of Lindchester suffering from sleep deprivation. Our good friend Miss Blatherwick, unable to get comfortable, recites the prayer of St Augustine as the cathedral clock chimes the hours away. ‘“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watc
h, or weep this night.”’ Sometimes she hears nocturnal organ practice, sometimes just the wind and the owls. On the other side of the Close the canon chancellor paces with little Noah Frederick draped over his shoulder like a bar tender’s cloth. Hush. Hush. Don’t cry, little one.

  Hard times. Hard Brexit. Hard hearts in far-off Westminster. No cash for the NHS. There it goes, the bus-side promise of 350 million crocks of gold a week. Off and away it floats, to land somewhere over the rainbow, among figmental white cliffs, where there are no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. Farewell, tenderness. Farewell, Scotland – and who can blame you?

  Christmas appears in department stores and supermarket aisles. Strapped-for-cash parents lie awake and wonder how they’ll afford the kiddies’ presents this year. The pound falls. The hungry poor lie awake and wonder what the hell they’ll do if food prices go through the roof. The hungry rich lie awake and wonder how much longer they can hack this new diet, maybe they should nip downstairs for an organic oatcake?

  In graveyards and doorways the homeless wrap themselves in discarded duvets (cheaper to buy a new one than get them ­dry-cleaned, frankly) and try to sleep. There is a padlock on Luscombe Gardens to keep them out. The more determined kept climbing over the railings, so all the bushes have been cut back to make the place less attractive to rough sleepers. It’s sad, but at the end of the day this is where children play, the ­children of hipster homeowners. We really can’t have needles and bottles and weirdos in the communal garden, here in this gentrified pocket of Lindchester’s Lower Town. Back in the day, this is where the cholera-infested slums were cleared and good housing put up for the malnourished leather workers. A statue of Josephine Lus­combe, campaigner, stands in the locked garden among the scalped shrubs.

  We lie awake in the night, listening. Can you hear it? There’s a train coming. Bound for glory. Mind the gap. Mind the ever-widening gap. And in the daytime, cloud columns rise from the cooling towers in Cardingforth, like smoke from distant cities put to the torch. Horses swish their tails in paddocks, beside electrical substations all humming and mysterious. DANGER OF DEATH KEEP OUT. New houses are going up on the outskirts of Lindford, like a promise of good things to come. But who will be able to afford them?

  Hush! Enough of all this liberal elitist bremoaning! Life goes on. It’s not all bad, is it? Look at the lovely weather we are having, all sun and rain and double rainbows. A wealth of fungi burgeons across the diocese of Lindchester – flamboyant, comic, delicate. It’s everywhere once you start noticing. Let us pause to relish those Regency racehorse-type names – the Blusher, Queen Bolete, the Deceiver. But we are English. We divide the fungal world crudely in two: mushrooms and toxic toadstools. Sometimes we kick them as we pass. No real reason. Just the casual joy of smashing up stuff we have no use for.

  But hush. Hush. Don’t cry. It’s not all bad.

  Somewhere, out on a disused railway track a woman slogs along on her bike and clears her head of this world’s woes. A man cycles along behind, custodian of the banana guard, ready to succour her if she faints and grows weary.

  Somewhere, two vicars get the giggles right before a funeral, when a blood pressure monitor bleeps, and they cannot, very nearly cannot stop laughing in time.

  A woman opens a scary official envelope to find she has been granted leave to remain in the UK.

  A man opens another envelope and finds a cheque for the foodbank.

  A teenage boy gives up his seat on the train.

  A retired midwife drives a little girl home from school, and they sing in the car. ‘“This train is bound for glory, this train.”’

  And up on Lindford Common, where the gorse is blooming – and gorse is always blooming somewhere – two men walk a labradoodle as the sun comes and goes between the clouds.

  ‘Leah?’ whispers Jess. She stands like a little ghost beside her sister’s bed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish Mummy was here.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’re seeing her tomorrow after school, remember? After her and Dad have had their “meeting”?’

  ‘Yes, but I want her to come back for real.’

  ‘She will. Granny says she’s improving all the time.’ Oh God, don’t let her get well. Leah deletes this wish from her mind. But another one flashes up: Don’t let her come back and wreck everything.

  ‘Leah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t really want to go back to our house. Do you?’

  Leah is silent. She must be responsible and say the right thing. She must not scare Jess by yelling, Duh, no! I hate that house! I’d rather kill myself!

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see, Jess.’ That’s what grown-ups say. We’ll see. Which means No. No, you can’t have what you want, you can’t do what you want.

  ‘Can I get into your bed, Leah?’

  Leah hesitates. It’s not Jess’s fault she sometimes still has accidents, even though she’s nearly nine. ‘Um. For a bit, maybe.’

  ‘Yay!’ Jess climbs under the duvet.

  They lie there. A car goes past. Light wipes round the ceiling from the crack in the curtains. It goes quiet.

  ‘Leah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think if we ask her, she’d come and live here instead?’

  Awkward. ‘Um, technically her and Dad are divorced, Jess.’

  ‘Yes, but they could get back together, couldn’t they? There’s a chance they could?’

  ‘Well, I s’pose.’ Yeah – like a bazillion trillion to one chance.

  ‘So shall we ask her tomorrow?’

  ‘Look. It’s complicated, Jess. I know you mean well, but we can’t just invite her. It’s Dad’s house, yeah? We’d have to get his permission first.’

  ‘We could do that! We could ask him now.’ She throws off the duvet. ‘Come on!’

  Leah tugs her back. ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’

  God! She was going to get all whiny now. ‘It’s not quite that simplistic, Jess. We need to be like, tactful. Choose the right moment. Look, you’d better let me do it.’

  Jess snuggles her. ‘Yay! You’re the best, Leah. Just think – she could be here for Christmas!’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see.’ Leah shoves her away. ‘Go back to your own room, Jess. I have to sleep. I have to keep my brain clear coz I’ve got double maths first thing,’ she lies.

  ‘OK!’ Jess skips off like everything’s sorted.

  Like it’s not going to end in tears. Like the answer isn’t always NO.

  You see what I am about here, reader. I am trying to wave my authorial wand and contrive a happy ending for the Rogers family. If only it were that simplistic. But writing a novel is a bit like choreographing tortoises. You try to round them up and point them towards the stage ready for the grand finale, only to discover that some have wandered ponderously off into a distant cabbage patch, or decided to hibernate. Will it all end in tears, despite your author’s best intentions? We’ll have to wait and see.

  You will have inferred that it did not end in tears for Freddie and Ambrose last week, at any rate. That is to say, there were tears, but it was not the end.

  Course, he texted him. Like at gone 3 a.m.? Brose came over, and Freddie was all, you’re crying! Naw. I’m so so sorry. Don’t be crying, Brose. C’mere. Come to bed.

  And they climbed the stairs in the silent house, and Freddie’s room was a mess again, but hey. Ssh. It’s gonna be fine, babe. Trust me?

  It had all been Freddie’s fault, as always. Escalating some dumb thing (Brose complaining about the smell of weed) into a major fight? He was, really? Guess I’d better head into town then, find me some other company that’s less judge-y. Are you cool with that, huh? Yeah, right, trying to escalate things? Coz Brose wasn’t ­playing. He was all, if that’s what makes you happy, Freddie.

  And then he ran into Chloe and Neil, street pastoring? Gah. Pretended to be more wasted than he was, so they wouldn’t like, talk to him? But he just knew what Neil was thinking, coz
he was remembering it too? That time they got it on, only Freddie’s phone rang, and they, like, came to their senses in time?

  So five minutes later, there he was, in a cab heading home? Worst of both worlds – not getting any action, not feeling good about himself, either? Wa-a-ay too mad still for a climb-down, to even begin to think about telling Brose, so you’re right – it doesn’t make me happy? And he went to sleep, same thoughts going round and round: dude, the only thing that makes me happy is being with you, but I’m so gonna trash everything, and I have no idea why?

  Then maybe 3 a.m., this weird hallucinogenic thing happened? Like that time in juvie when it was literally like in the hymn – ‘I woke, the dungeon flamed with light’? This time he knew someone had been sitting there while he slept? Someone had been keeping watch, just keeping watch, and he was safe, and somehow, it was all gonna be OK? So he texted Brose.

  And while he was waiting for Brose to come over, he was thinking about the tiny dude, how he’d caught him? Hey, I got you, guy. I got you. Little heart beating away. Stroking his little back, and thinking, I have no idea what I’m doing here. But he’s yelling, he’s gonna be fine.

  And in a weird way, maybe I can be trusted, you know?

  Chapter 41

  on’t get me wrong, Leah, this is the coolest den ever. But what if we get electrocuted to death? Dzzzzz! Game over!’

  ‘Lyds, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re laying on a roof, not sticking our tongues into sockets.’

  ‘Oh. Good point.’

  They are up on the substation roof. It’s right next to Leah’s house, under a humongous beech tree. They are using their schoolbags as pillows. Nobody else knows about this place. Nobody can see them. Even if Dad comes home and looks out of his study window, he won’t see them. The branches droop down and make walls and a roof. Maybe Leah could get a tent and stay up here? Then nobody would find her and make her go and live with Mum.

  ‘We could be squirrels and this could be our drey,’ she says.

  ‘Cool! Talking squirrels, like maybe in Narnia?’ says Lydia. ‘We could be hiding from the Telmarines!’