Polling closes. Father Dominic gets his church hall back at last. Blossom from the cherries in the churchyard confettis down on him. He walks home along a pathway of pink, and catches himself singing: ‘Why am I always the bridesmaid?’ Day off tomorrow. Where will he go? Bluebells, he thinks. I’d like to see bluebell woods, glorious, glorious bluebell woods, like the kind I remember from childhood. From the coach window on the way to swimming.
He lets himself into the vicarage, and he’s back at the open-air pool, aged about ten, seeing the yellow and blue cubicle doors. He’s climbing to the top of the high diving board, skinny legs, big baggy navy trunks, not Speedos like the other boys, all wrong. ‘Hur hur, Todd’s got his dad’s trunks on!’ High as the trees. He flinches as house martins zoom at him, screaming. Now it’s his turn. Too high! ‘Jump, jump, Todd, you spaz!’ No! No, he daren’t. Tries to retreat. But a hand shoves him in the back, and he’s over the edge, arms, legs windmilling, down into the brutal spank of water.
Dominic hopes, really hopes, it’s a bit easier growing up gay nowadays. That there’s someone there to scoop up the poor spaz in the wrong trunks. Scoop him up and say, ‘I’ve got you. Don’t cry. It’s going to be fine. I’ve got you, darling.’ Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Isn’t that, thinks Dominic, what the Church should be saying?
Chapter 20
O freakish bank holiday weather! No good will come of you! All across the diocese of Lindchester people haul out their lawnmowers and barbecues; they wrestle with deckchairs and loungers. A day of sunshine is all it takes to germinate the seeds of optimism. Hoorah! It’s going to be a gorgeous summer after all! Aren’t we owed one? Don’t we deserve one? Above the water meadows of Cardingforth (all sweet with lambs and Shakespeare’s flowers), the cooling towers spell out the answer: mene, mene . . .
Where are all our friends on this fair bank holiday morn? Dominic opens his sunroof, puts on an Ella CD and drives off on a sentimental journey. Gonna set his heart at ease. He drives far beyond the reach of this narrative, to the Chiltern bluebell woods of old me-e-m-o-ries. He will visit that open-air swimming pool, and find it derelict. I happen to know that the yellow and blue cubicle doors hang crooked now on broken hinges. A filing cabinet lies in the airy deep end, ragwort sprouts between poolside paving slabs. Dominic will gaze up at the turquoise skeleton of the high board and murmur, ‘Oh my God, oh my God!’ Now there’s a sermon illustration if ever he saw one. Sentimental jo-o-urney home.
And where is our lovely dean today? I’m happy to report that Marion is flying high. Quite literally. She’s having a gliding lesson. This is the bank holiday treat the ingenious Gene has cooked up for his beloved, to help her put Lindchester Cathedral into perspective.
Martin the bishop’s chaplain is driving. Driving, driving, driving. Yes! Not epilepsy, after all. See? He knew all along it wasn’t. He told everyone it was just that virus, on top of the stress of marital problems. His life took a decided turn for the better the day he was able to say to the little git, ‘I’ll have the bishop’s spare car keys back now, if you don’t mind.’ The little git kept claiming he’d ‘lost’ the keys, until Paul blew his top and barked, ‘Then find them, and get out of my sight!’ Martin genuinely tried not to gloat.
But Martin has made a rod for his own back today, I’m afraid. This journey is too long. His girls were wild with excitement – ‘The seaside, the seaside! Yay!’ – but now they’re moaning in the back. ‘No, sorry, we’re not nearly there yet. Listen to Harry Potter, please.’ After an hour, Jessica wears him down with her whining and he hands over his iPhone so she can play Angry Birds. Within fifteen minutes she’s sick all over herself, the seat, the car floor and her pink backpack, just like Daddy said.
Sometimes it is scant consolation to be proved right about something, Martin.
And what of Paul and Susanna? Well, they nipped off on Sunday evening to their little bolt-hole in the Peak District. No! Of course they’re not taking Freddie May with them! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Susanna was just being silly when she raised that possibility. Freddie will be fine. Miss Blatherwick has taken him in hand, bless her. And Giles says they’ll be falling over themselves to have a tenor of his calibre in Barchester. So she’s trying not to fret. Anyway, Paul needs a complete break, poor darling. All this Crown Nominations Commission stuff, it’s just so unsettling.
They wake to blue sky and the burbling call of curlews. Just the two of them. In bed. With the day stretching ahead of them. Susanna leaps up at once to bake special marmalade breakfast muffins, to atone for her insensitivity.
The bishop eats the muffin he doesn’t want, and walks out over the moor with his book of verse, dusting off that New Year’s resolution to read more poetry. He hasn’t managed to leave his troubles behind. But God willing, by September – barring wilful self-sabotage – Freddie bloody May should be someone else’s headache. If they can only nurse him through the last few months without major scandals or disasters. Damage limitation, that’s all this year’s been. Paul knows that he and Susanna haven’t managed to help Freddie in any meaningful sense. Maybe no one can? Not until Freddie decides he wants and needs to change.
Well, this is one mistake Paul won’t be making again. Leaving it to Susanna to choose tenants, and being too busy to interview a new employee and delegating it to the diocesan secretary. Couldn’t either of them hear the warning klaxons, or see those whopping great letters flashing ‘Trouble!’ over that golden head? Extraordinary. And yet Paul was to blame as well. A craven impulse, and the moment for bailing out slipped away. Or was it compassion? Once again Paul sees Freddie standing there in the palace hallway, shivering with misery.
Leave off. Leave it alone, he tells himself. He wills his soul to unclench. But into the vacuum rush thoughts of York. They also serve who only stand and wait. Each passing day sears that deeper onto his spirit. The secrecy, the hints, the manoeuvrings. But above all, this intolerable passive waiting. It’s finding him out. He knows he’s being short with people. He’s close to throttling his chaplain, he explodes at Freddie, he even snaps at poor old Suze, who is only ever doing her best. All these years she’s put up with him, loved his unloveliness, gone wherever his job has taken them, never once berated him. She deserves better, God knows. He reminds himself that his first calling is to be a husband. He takes a deep breath. Juniper, heather, bracken. Come on, Henderson, relax. A curlew call goes lassoing up into the blue. Paul sits on a rock and opens his book.
Hmm. I’m not sure Shakespeare’s Sonnets are your best bet for banishing a beautiful golden young man from your mind, bishop. But I appreciate you are a completer finisher, and you started this volume back in January.
. . . O, what a mansion have those vices got,
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed (dear heart!) of this large privilege:
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
Hang on in there, bishop. Only fifty-nine sonnets to go and you can flee to the grumpy cloister of R. S. Thomas’s collected poems.
We must press on. Today is Thursday. Here on Planet Church we mark a festival that slips past unremarked elsewhere: Ascension Day, when we celebrate our Lord’s return to heaven after forty days of resurrection appearances. Early in the morning the choristers of Lindchester (bursting with excitement) are shepherded up on to the cathedral roof to sing from the base of the spire. At evensong tonight the anthem will be Finzi’s ‘God is Gone Up’ (oh, those heart-cramping melodies!). But for now, let’s pop across to Lindford, where Jane (oblivious to Ascension Day) is at her desk in the Fergus Abernathy building, opening her post.
What the hell? A Mars bar? She looked inside the padded envelope and pulled out a plain postcard: ‘I was going to send flowers, but I spent all my money getting my car door fixed. Matt xx’. And a mobile number.
She made a cafetière of coffee. The Mars bar would hit the spot, actually. She unwrapped it. Wait. Did he think she was a greedy pig? Was that what this gift implied? Pah. Jane seized a paperknife (embellished with Lindford County Council crest, God knew why she had it) and stabbed the poor chocolate through its innocent heart. She got out her phone, took a picture of the dead Mars bar, and texted it to the number on the postcard.
The archdeacon was in William House. He did a spectacular nose trick with his coffee. The bishop stared. The dean stared. The entire committee stared. The archdeacon mopped his agenda and apologized. Memo to self: no more cheeky text-checking during finance meetings.
Meanwhile, over in the bishop’s office, Freddie was juggling balls of screwed-up paper.
‘Do you mind?’ snapped Martin, as one bounced off his head.
‘Yes, stop it, Freddie,’ said the bishop’s PA.
Freddie started fiddling with the stapler instead.
‘Tell me more about this audition,’ said Penelope.
‘So there’s like, sight-reading?’ He stapled his T-shirt hem to her desk.
Penelope removed the stapler from him. ‘Well, you can sight-read, can’t you?’
‘You betcha. I can sight-read the ass off a thing.’ He prised his T-shirt free. ‘And then, I’m thinking I could maybe sing the “Queen of the Night” aria?’
‘What, from The Magic Flute? But isn’t that a soprano role?’
‘Yeah, no, yeah, but if I practise I reckon I can ace it?’
‘He’s just winding you up,’ muttered Martin.
‘The fuck I am!’ Freddie tore screamingly into Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen!
‘Shut up!’ shouted Penelope. ‘That can’t be good for your voice!’
‘It’sh a work in progresh, Mish Moneypenny,’ admitted Freddie. ‘But when I was a chorister, hey, I was all over that fucker. Literally. I was that good? Back in the day, I’d totally have ended up a castrato. Lucky escape, yeah, Martin? Still got my boys. Here, wanna check?’
‘Oh, stop that.’ Penelope belted him with Alpha News. ‘You’ll go blind.’
Father Dominic has been off on a wild goose chase this afternoon, looking for a non-existent address where one half of a marriage couple purports to live. Not many sham weddings round this way, but he had alarm bells ringing from the moment they first contacted him. Sure enough, there is no 89a Windermere Gardens in Renfold. He drops in on the food bank, to cheer on the volunteers. He just has time to swing by Waitrose on his way home, to buy a little Day Off Eve treat to crack open after the Ascension Day Eucharist tonight.
(Clergy everywhere, look away now. You will not like this next bit.)
He’s back from the service. He’s about to get the Chablis out of the fridge when he remembers. Fuck! Oh, dear God!
Dominic slides down till he’s sitting on his kitchen floor. The vicarage answer phone will be molten with messages. He daren’t check. Oh, let this not have happened! Rewind, rewind. He’ll say he was taken ill! He was in a car crash!
No. He knows what he must do. He must go now and face the family and tell the truth: I forgot. I just forgot. She died at the age of forty-eight from breast cancer, and I forgot her funeral. He rests his head back against the fridge. He hasn’t got a single rag of an excuse to cover his nakedness. He sees the coffin glide away, the curtains close. Had they found someone to step in? Let light perpetual shine upon her, rest in peace, rise— oh, dear God, forgive me, I’m so sorry.
Ascension Day incense lingers in the dark cave of Lindchester Cathedral. Silence. Rain patters on the roof. Freddie stands alone in the crossing. He rolls his shoulders, relaxes, fills his lungs.
Outside, Giles the precentor pauses as he walks home from the director of music’s house. Good God! Can that be Mr May, actually bothering to rehearse for once? Jephtha. Not a bad choice. He stands and listens.
The vicarage door closes. Dominic gets in his car and sets off. Can it be mended? Even this? Oh, scoop me up, carry me, carry me.
Rain falls in the silent crematorium, on the letters spelling MUM.
Waft her, angels, through the skies
Far above yon azure plain, far above yon azure plain
Glorious there like you to rise, there like you for ever reign . . .
The last note fades. Well, that’s the choral scholarship in the bag, thinks Giles.
Chapter 21
Father Dominic has not been forgiven. I’m afraid the fallout was as bad as he feared. Terrible betrayed tears. Letters to the bishop. Threats of legal action. And on top of that, the lead’s gone from the church roof again. The bastards used the same ladder, the one Dominic had helpfully replaced in the churchyard when he mowed the vicarage lawn. The archdeacon is not going to be very forgiving with Father Dominic, either, is he?
Nor can Dominic forgive himself. How, how had it happened? How could he not have checked his diary? In all his years as a priest he’s never forgotten a funeral! His unpreached sermon, their accusations, the door shut in his face – round and round they go on the carousel of his conscience. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? He has had a kind letter from the retired Methodist minister who stepped in and took the service for him; he’s had nice supportive messages from clergy colleagues. His congregation has been lovely.
It will pass. He knows this. But right now – Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
‘I’m bo-o-ored,’ moaned Freddie on Monday morning. ‘Got a top shecret mission for me, Mish Moneypenny?’
‘You can go and put these up for Giles.’ The bishop’s PA handed him a pile of posters. ‘Tea shop, visitors’ centre, cathedral notice boards. All the usual places.’
‘K.’ Freddie glanced at them. ‘Wait, the Dorian Singers? Fuck, the Dorian Singers? They’re coming here? Omigod, omigod! They’re singing with our choir? How come I didn’t know this?’
‘Well, I really couldn’t say, Freddie – since it’s been common knowledge for months. Honestly, you’re such a dilly daydream.’
‘Yeah. Probably it’s all the meth?’
‘The what? You don’t!’ Freddie grinned at her. ‘You’re being naughty. Anyway, it’s a choir fundraiser. They’re coming as a special favour, because Giles was a chorister with their director.’
‘He was?’ Freddie hugged the pile of posters to his heart. ‘Like. Whoa. Fuck? I’m yeah, major, major music crush here? Met him once. I’d be like, eleven? Three Choirs Festival?’ He subjected Penelope to a detailed analysis of the Dorian Singers’ repertoire; their technical brilliance; the awesome musicality of their director. In his excitement he lapsed into complete coherence. ‘Seriously,’ he concluded. ‘I fucking love that guy. Wanna marry him and have his babies.’
They both glanced at the bishop’s office door.
‘Well, you’ll probably meet him,’ whispered Penelope. ‘You’ll be singing, won’t you?’
‘Yeah, right. Like I’ll get to dep for something like this.’
The director of music, dear reader, has a bit of a dilemma here. Freddie is quietly acknowledged to be the best tenor around, but he is not a member of the cathedral choir. Timothy can’t bring Freddie in and give him showy solos without the cathedral lay clerks exercising their historic medieval right to be a bunch of grumpy old men.
Freddie set off round the Close with the posters. They were all inventing jobs for him to do now that Fuckwit1 had got his driving licence back. They were like, ‘Oh, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, what are we going to do wit
h you? How are we going to keep you out of mischief till you’re finally off our hands?’ Yeah, no, that wasn’t fair. They wanted the best for him, was all. Miss Blatherwick, driving him to Barchester, I mean, literally driving him there, to make sure he didn’t fuck up again? Getting his suit dry-cleaned? Man, he hated that suit. His ‘ooh, look at me, I’m the defendant, I’m the bishop’s chauffeur, I’m a total failure’ suit. God, what if he did fail? What if he cocked up the sight-reading? What if his voice didn’t measure up, or they asked him like personal stuff, and he went blank?
Freddie blu-tacked a poster to the cathedral notice board and tried to remember those careful sentences Miss Blatherwick had come up with. Unhappy phase. Behind him now. Focused on— Fuck, what was he meant to be focused on?
Yeah, but what if he didn’t fail and actually got the scholarship? He’d be starting over where he didn’t know anyone. Having to find part-time work. Sharing a flat with the other scholars. He’d have to always be responsible for shit. The whole time? Gah! He was meant to be an adult, he was meant to be cool with this! He could not go for the whole rest of his life letting people carry him, like he was twelve? I mean, God, it was embarrassing now, think when he was thirty, forty?
Seriously. He couldn’t tell what freaked him out more: failing, or succeeding.
Janet Hooty, wife of the bishop of Barcup, is delivering Christian Aid envelopes on her four streets in Martonbury. These are in the ‘rougher’ area, on a housing estate where other members of the congregation of St Mary’s Martonbury are a bit reluctant to stray. Janet has no time for this kind of nonsense. She and Bob have worked in parishes that make the Hollyfield estate look like Postman Pat’s Greendale. She feels a bit of a pang: this will be her last year in this patch. There’s a new congregation on the estate, and they’ve said they will take over next year. It’s a church plant from St James’s, the big thriving Evangelical church in Martonbury. Much more Paul Henderson’s cup of tea than Bob’s, but he gave the initiative his blessing.
Acts and Omissions Page 13
