Ah, but the garden misses Susanna’s touch. Bleeding-heart plants nod in untended borders. Roses shoot unpruned since the Hendersons left. The laburnum walk is unforbidden, poised to rain its deadly Zeus-like showers on nobody at all. Everything waits for the new bishop, whoever he may be.
As you may have seen in the press, there was a brief outbreak of squawking in the ecclesiastical henhouse back in February, when it was (wrongly) rumoured that the Church Commissioners had decided to sell the palace and stick the next bishop of Lindchester in a poky little seven-bedroomed house in suburban Renfold. Indignant petitions were worded. SAVE LINDCHESTER PALACE! The bishops of Lindchester had always lived there, since . . .
It emerged that the bishop of Lindchester had, in fact, only lived in this particular house since 1863, when a vigorous and godly Evangelical bishop sold off the other two palaces. The Rt Revd William Emrys Brownlow used the money to clear the city’s slums, provide clean water and good housing for the impoverished leather workers, build a hospital, schools and a theological college. Prior to that, no bishop of Lindchester had ever lived in the Close in such proximity to his clergy and people. It would have been tactless to do so, since they could not have afforded to ape his gracious lifestyle. No, far kinder to retreat to Bishop’s Ingregham and eat quails in aspic with a clear conscience.
Shall we pause to lament the passing of those glorious historic buildings from the Church? Ingregham palace is particularly lovely, with its mellow sandstone walls, its acres of Capability Brown landscaping. Deer park, lake, obligatory historic oak tree that Robin Hood, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles the Second hid up, or where Shakespeare himself stubbed his fag out. I daresay petitions were got up in 1860. What was Bishop Brownlow thinking of, selling off the family silver like that? These treasures are not ours to dispose of – we are but custodians! Our duty is look after them and hand them on intact to the next generation! Yes, there are issues facing the Church, but selling off property is a short-term solution! It’s just throwing money at the problem!
As is so often the case when the problem is ‘lack of money’, the throwing of money at it turns out to be the solution. A great many runty little leatherworkers’ children failed to die of cholera. Many were educated. Scores of earnest young Evangelicals were trained and sent to work in places of great danger and deprivation across the Empire.
But the palace is very lovely. It’s a shame the Church no longer owns it.
We will leave the bishop’s garden in Gavin’s care and glide gracefully to earth outside the deanery instead. Come with me, on tiptoe, to the old scullery, where the Very Revd Marion Randall (just back from a post-Easter break in Portugal) is standing amid open suitcases. She is discussing the identity of the next bishop with her husband. Or rather, not discussing it.
‘There’s nothing to tell. And even if there was, I wouldn’t tell you. We take oaths, you know.’
‘Oaths! How Shakespearian. Ods bodikins! By my lady’s nether beard!’ he declaimed. ‘Like that?’
‘Funnily enough, Gene, nothing like that.’
‘’Zounds, how dull. But can’t you drop a tiny hint? In passing. I can infer. I’m an excellent infer-er.’
‘Yes. And you’re also an inveterate gossip. Which is why I’m not going to tell you anything.’
‘Aha! So you admit you do know something!’
The dean sighed and continued to sort and toss dirty laundry into heaps. ‘Of course I know something. Look, we’re only at the consultation stage. People have been invited to submit suggestions, that’s all. We’ll get a long list from the Washhouse, which we’ll sift, then decide who we want to mandate.’
‘Ooh! Who’s on the long list?’
‘You’re not actually listening.’ She bent and began thrusting a light load into the machine. ‘Nobody yet.’
‘But who’s likely to be on it?’
‘Anyone whose name has come up.’
‘Literally anyone? What if some bonkers old trout suggests her parish priest because he does a lovely mass?’
‘Then I suppose he’ll be on the list. Hence the sifting process. No.’ The dean held up her hand. ‘That’s it. Shut up.’
‘At least promise me it won’t be another swivel-eyed Evangelical pederast with a muffin-making wife.’
Silence.
‘Not funny?’ he enquired.
‘No.’
‘But quite clever?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Another silence. ‘Well, let me go and choose us a homecoming wine. I am confident I can get that right, at any rate.’
My readers will see from this that Gene’s character has undergone no reformation in the last few months. He remains the same disgraceful reprobate. His mission is unchanged, too: to cherish, divert and pamper his beloved wife, and make the task of modern deaning more fun than it would prove were he not on hand (at all times and in all places) with the right wine and the wrong remark.
Marion sets the machine running, then gazes round her. The overhead airer, the Belfast sink, tiled floor. This was where staff of former deans toiled with their washboards and dollies and goffering irons. She thinks about the old servants’ bells still there high up on the deanery kitchen wall in a glass case – BED RM 3, DRAWING RM, TRADES. ENT – though they no longer work. Fell prey to health and safety regs when the deanery was rewired ten years ago. There is a button in Marion’s and Gene’s en suite bathroom (formerly DRESSING RM 1). She imagines her predecessors pressing it and summoning a valet to bring up a hip bath and pink gin. Gene, no doubt, would recreate this scenario with enthusiasm, were she to mention it.
Dear Gene. She smiles. But the brief holiday is already retreating from her mind. The thought bailiffs shoulder their way in to repossess the unpaid-for happiness. The spire. The stuff coming out about the school chaplain from the 1970s. The new bishop of Lindchester – would it be uncomplicated, someone she could work with and not be forever thinking, You are younger than me, less gifted, less experienced . . . ? How wearing it is, all the nuisance of being one of those tipped to be the first woman bishop. To know you’re being talked about. Folk speculating: will she be suffragan somewhere, or is she holding out to be the first diocesan? Barchester, maybe? She shakes her head. Come on, you’re still on holiday till Monday.
She casts her mind back to that basilica. Was it only this morning they were there? Muted palette of browns and terracottas. Easter lilies, a CD of plainsong alleluias playing. High above in the dome, blue sky glimpsed through glass. Peace, beauty. And then to emerge into the big bright spring world! Dazzled by full sunlight, buffeted by the wind, the whirl of life, the vast dome of the sky above. If the inside was the only thing you knew, how could you guess at all this? And yet it made perfect sense. Of course, of course! Would it be like this – resurrection?
She goes through to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.
Gene emerges through the cellar door. With a fey flourish, he presents the wine. ‘1996 Chateau Latour.’
‘Lovely.’
He sees from her face that his magic words have conveyed nothing. ‘Bless you, my darling, I know you love that vinho verde.’ He gives a dainty shudder. ‘But some of it was so young, drinking it was a safeguarding issue.’
And now it is Low Sunday. Where shall I take you today, dear reader? I know that you are eager for news of our various friends. How is Father Dominic faring in his new parish, for example? And what of our lovely bishop Bob, shouldering the weight of the whole diocese during the interregnum? To say nothing of our stout hero, the archdeacon, last seen haring off to New Zealand in pursuit of his lady!
You must be patient. I am going to introduce you to a new character, one I fear you may not find it in your heart to love, but Veronica plays an important part in our tale. There are times when we must stoically eat our plate of school liver (horrid tubes visible) before we are allowed out to play.
Come with me now to a church in Lindford. Not the parish church (where Fr Dominic now serves),
but one nearby with a gothic revival building of the type that looks as though it might soon be cut loose by the evil archdeacon, Matt the Knife, and turned into a supermarket. No, more likely a nightclub called Holy Crap, or something similarly witty. It is in the clubbing district, such as it is, of Lindford. Beside the church is that narrow alley where last year – you may remember the incident – two men picked on the wrong faggot. A CCTV camera now keeps watch. Every Friday and Saturday night the church pitches its gazebo in the little yard behind the railings, and from here the street pastors operate, dispensing love, hot chocolate and flip-flops to the lost souls of Lindford.
We will pop in now and see what’s going on in St James’s church this Low Sunday morning. The first thing you will spot is the lack of pews. The Victorian Society took a tonking here, all right. There are cheerful banners. Someone plays thoughtful music on an electric piano. Can this be another Evangelical stronghold? By no means! This is an inclusive church, my friends, where God is mother and father of all, in the commonwealth not the kingdom of heaven. It is bishop Bob’s kind of a place. Change from the bottom up not the top down. They do good work here in their rainbowy way.
Veronica wears a simple cassock alb and Peruvian stole in bright colours. Lent is now over, so she has laid aside her equal-marriage campaigning rainbow dog collar. She is not the incumbent, she’s a university chaplain. Here comes Geoff the vicar now. It’s a baptism, so he’s wearing the stole with Noah’s ark animals on. I believe somebody made it from upholstery fabric. It would cover a nursery chair very nicely. The baptism will move seamlessly into the Annual Parochial Church Meeting (getting in before the end of April) and be followed by a simple agape meal.
I don’t suppose you want to stay for a church AGM, do you? No. Let us ‘risk the hostile stare’, and tiptoe back out as the congregation stand to sing ‘Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?’ (tune: Kelvingrove).
A glimpse of Veronica is all I vouchsafe you this week, dear reader. Instead, I will whisk you back to the Close and into the study of the Revd Giles Littlechild, the canon precentor. The Littlechilds have just returned from holiday in Heidelberg, visiting in-laws and older son (Gap Ya). Giles has read somewhere that you should do one thing each day that scares you. Opening his work email inbox surely qualifies.
He scrolls through, delicately, like a bomb disposal expert. Excellent. Nothing too dire. But then a new email pings in.
Oh God. A last-minute application for the post of tenor lay clerk. They can’t not interview him, can they? And then they’ll have to appoint him, because he’ll be the best.
Lord have mercy! Frankly, Giles would rather have a tone-deaf moose on the back row of dec than Freddie May.
Acts and Omissions Page 34
