A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  And if she was uncharitable about Anton, Peter struggled to be more positive, seeing little authentic about him except his fear. He talked about changing the world, as some vicars do. But in Peter’s experience, those who insist on changing the world do so only because they can’t change themselves.

  ‘The more frustrated we are with ourselves, the more passionately we harass others,’ he’d say.

  Whatever the truth, things came to a head in the parish and it was only last night that Abbot Peter had chaired a Parish Meeting called by the Bishop to decide on the vicar’s future.

  It had not been a happy last night on earth for Anton, both trial and execution. It was Stephen, the Bishop of Lewes, who had forced the vote through, much against the Abbot’s wishes. Peter had suggested time for reflection. But like one possessed, the Bishop would have none of it; he wanted blood, not reflection.

  And this morning, he had it; all over the vestry, apparently.

  Six

  Like so many Christmas presents, it had simply been waiting for its moment.

  So now the murderer took the virgin notebook from the shelf and started to write. The famous, the clever and the enlightened should always record what they do for posterity. This was their thought as they made their first entry in the murder diary.

  ‘My first day as a fugitive from the law. What do we call it, Day One? Strange feeling and who would have thought it? I am now a murderer, one of “those people” and suddenly beyond the pale. It’s comical in its way. Well, it is! Others look at me and neither know nor suspect. Why should they? I hardly suspect myself. I’m innocent! There’s a sense in which that’s true of course.

  And really, I’m no different now. A lot of women wrote to the Yorkshire Ripper in prison and many sent him gifts. I read that somewhere. So it’s not as if murder makes you suddenly bad in a way that others aren’t. The women who sent presents to Peter Sutcliffe knew that, knew he wasn’t suddenly bad. Murder is part of normality, I haven’t stepped outside any circle.

  I’ll return here.

  It should be all right anyway. I’m still in the circle. It will all blow over, storm in a tea cup.’

  Seven

  The day before the murder

  Tuesday, 16 December

  Jennifer Gold was one of those heads who liked to be on the school gate at both the beginning and the end of the day. Here she sensed the undercurrents that swirl beneath the waters in every school community; here she saw people coming in every way possible.

  ‘My Gary says he’s being picked on again, Mrs Gold.’

  Jodie was a poor excuse for a mother who somehow imagined herself a saint.

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I believe him? He’s a good boy. Not an angel - .’

  ‘ - not an angel, no.’

  Other teachers referred to him as ‘Wasteof’ as in ‘waste of space’, but not all staffroom insight was for sharing.

  ‘But he says he gets picked on,’ continued his mother.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By, well, I dunno - that’s for you to find out.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m just registering the complaint, that’s what I’m doing, standing up for my boy.’

  Jennifer drew Jodie Daniels away from the milling crowd. ‘Mrs Daniels, Gary is very fortunate not to be excluded at present.’

  ‘Now you’re picking on him!’

  ‘Is his father around at the moment?’

  ‘What business is that of yours?’

  ‘He’s generally more settled when his dad is around.’

  ‘What exactly are you allegating?’

  ‘I want Gary to succeed as much as you do, Mrs Daniels. He has his SATs next year and I don’t want him to be dragging the school averages down. But unless he gets his act together he won’t make next year, do you understand me?’

  ‘No need to go into one.’

  ‘And it doesn’t help - are you listening, Mrs Daniels? - it doesn’t help him that you act as his unthinking, unquestioning mouthpiece.’

  ‘I’m his mother for God’s sake!’

  ‘Precisely. So act like his mother rather than his teenage sister. I’m on Gary’s side, believe me, but I won’t be on his side forever. Do you understand? And you won’t want to know me when I turn.’

  ‘I can have a word with him, I suppose.’

  ‘That would be a good idea, Mrs Daniels.’

  Sadly however, this would not be the last confrontation of the day for Jennifer Gold. Tonight, there was an Extraordinary Parish Meeting that had ‘difficult’ written all over it. As one of the two church wardens of St Michael’s, she’d always been Anton’s greatest fan, but knew the forces ranged against him now. At the meeting tonight, the Bishop would be bringing his full armoury and aiming it at both her and the vicar.

  ***

  Bishop Stephen liked his reputation of being firm but fair, even if it was one he’d bestowed upon himself. But the restless Reverend Stevie Wickham was certainly trying his patience.

  ‘Believe me, Stevie, it’s not a gender issue,’ he said in response to the accusation as they sat together in his study.

  ‘Really, Bishop? I simply don’t believe that if I was a man, I’d be sitting here having this conversation.’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘I can think of at least five local clergy who enjoy a whisky more than I do.’

  ‘Let’s not be personal.’

  ‘Probably six.’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘But have any of them been reported for excessive drinking?’

  ‘I can’t of course comment on individual cases, Stevie. That would be most inappropriate.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a “No”. It doesn’t happen, you see. In male clergy, it’s an endearing trait, in female clergy, it’s a problem. Men are loveable rascals, women are sad old soaks.’

  ‘It’s my pastoral responsibility to follow up on these things,’ countered Bishop Stephen, with an overlay of sincerity. ‘The church has a reputation to maintain.’

  ‘And so do you, Bishop, don’t you? Of all the people to be lecturing me on alcohol, I’m not sure you’re the best choice.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Well, I think we all read the story in the Sussex Silt.’

  ‘That rag!’

  ‘But often surprisingly true. Like the story it ran after you’d attended an event at the Town Hall involving generous servings of sherry. You apparently staggered out into the night rather worse for wear and got into a confrontation with some teenagers on Brighton sea front.’

  ‘Here we go again. Pure supposition!’

  ‘Several eye witnesses looked on as you challenged them to a fight after they’d apparently laughed at your briefcase.’

  ‘Shall we get back to you now, Stevie?’

  ‘What was the story? Oh yes, you raised your fists like a boxer and were shouting abuse at them, when a member of the public intervened. You then spun round, tried to punch them instead, lost your balance and fell over at which point they saw your purple shirt and said, “Oh my God - it’s a Bishop!”’

  ‘I have absolutely no recall of such an incident.’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t would you? For so many reasons. But when they called an ambulance, you were sober enough to realise the danger of appearing in some health service records, and so you got up from the pavement and made your escape.’

  ‘As I have said many times in response to these allegations, I have no recollection of the events you’ve described and if you think unsubstantiated gossip is going to help you -.’

  ‘Three adult witnesses, one of them a solicitor as I recall from the Silt. Did you sue the paper?’

  ‘You’re low-life, Stevie, and ove
rweight: alcohol and weight issues. What is it with you fat people? Look at yourself, really! Do you really think that’s a good witness to Christ in the world?’

  There was a tense silence in the room and a short while later the interview was terminated with various warnings. The Bishop hoped he’d made himself clear and it was good that he’d mentioned her weight. Someone needed to say it.

  And with one nettle grasped he now anticipated another. The meeting tonight at St Michael’s would finally bring an end to the absurd tenure of the attention-seeking Reverend Anton Fontaine. Bishop Stephen was well aware that a clear-out of clergy was necessary in the area and he’d start tonight, whatever obstacles the irritating Abbot Peter put in his way.

  ***

  ‘So how’s Clare today?’

  The therapist always started in this way and sometimes she answered and sometimes she just sat and wondered. It wasn’t an easy question to answer.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  This was the third time she’d seen this therapist, who was called Jonathan and seemed pleasant enough. She’d never tried therapy before, never even thought about it. But she sat here now because there was a sense that life could be better in some indefinable way and a friend had said therapy was helping her. And it wasn’t as if Clare couldn’t afford it. The business left to her by her father, and which she had grown, meant that money was not on her particular worry list.

  ‘You haven’t asked about my childhood,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you do with therapists? Blame everyone but yourself?’

  ‘If the client wishes to speak about their childhood it can be helpful.’

  ‘Who’d want to talk about their childhood? I want to go forwards not back!’

  ‘So you want to avoid your childhood?’

  ‘I’m not avoiding it. I just don’t see the point in going there and digging up old graves. I mean, who really benefits from that?’

  ‘We all rationalise our evasion in different ways.’

  Clare sat quietly, feeling dark forces arising then settling. She didn’t need this, she wouldn’t be back, though who could tell, maybe she would? It just seemed such a long and exhausting walk back to the past.

  ‘I was offered a rather deficient form of parenting,’ she said in a matter-of-fact sort of a way.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  How did she mean? She wanted to stay in control, no breaking down because what good would that do? She liked to prepare her lines for the therapist but she hadn’t prepared these.

  ‘My parents were no doubt fairly average human beings but seriously lacking in the parenting department.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And I’m still limping.’

  ‘You feel you’re limping?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I could walk properly.’

  ‘OK. Most people might look at your life and say that you walk very well.’

  ‘I’m not interested in most people.’

  ‘What are you interested in?’

  It was then that Clare remembered the meeting that night. It had been the talk of the parish, of course, but Clare was choosy where she got her gossip from, quality above quantity every time. Anton was a little boy really and not someone Clare could relate to with anything but distance. Yes, he made her laugh sometimes. But was that enough in a vicar? Shouldn’t a vicar be more than an entertainments officer? And the way he’d treated the curate, Sally, was hardly acceptable. Perhaps a worse idiot would replace him, but even so, she hoped he’d get the push tonight and she for one would not be sad to see the back of the Reverend Anton Fontaine.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Jonathan.

  ***

  ‘Not a bad day, thank you very much, not a good day but not a bad day,’ said Betty as she led Sally, the parish curate, into the small front room of her sheltered housing flat.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Sally, glad of the warmth on this cold December day.

  Betty was one of those church stalwarts who was easy to overlook. In a desperate attempt to make contact with new people, it was tempting for the church to forget those whose resilience had kept the show on the road down the years. And few had been more resilient than Betty Dodd, now in her eighty-sixth year.

  ‘You don’t want to worry about Betty!’ Anton had said to Sally in one of their weekly meetings. ‘She’d keep coming through a plague of locusts! It’s the new families we need to visit, the young professionals of Stormhaven. That’s where the action is and let’s be frank, where the money is. Whatever else the church is, it’s a business which needs to wipe its own financial nose.’

  But though from a comfortable home, steeped in the mock-Tudor security of the middle-classes, Sally had spent her working life where the money wasn’t, with people who struggled to wipe their own financial nose.

  ‘So will you become vicar of St Michael’s after being the curate here?’ asked Betty.

  ‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ said Sally, evicting an unwanted crumb from her lap.

  ‘A curacy is a training post after which you go elsewhere.’

  ‘So you make all your mistakes with us and then leave?’

  Sally blushed. She didn’t see herself as someone who made mistakes. But Betty was neither attacking Sally nor joking. She was simply stating a fact which was how she spoke.

  ‘I don’t think much of the new vicar,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose he’s finding his feet,’ said Sally, trying to stay loyal.

  ‘Perhaps you should find them before you start.’

  It was a fair point.

  ‘They’re on the end of your legs, it’s not that hard. I’ve seen seven vicars at St Michael’s.’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘You would have thought there’d be one good one.’

  ‘You seem angry, Betty.’

  ‘You’d be angry if you were me.’

  There was something festering with Betty, but Sally decided to let it go. In ten minutes’ time, she had to be in Boat Street for a funeral visit. It was not the time to encourage emotional spillage.

  ‘Are you okay for the meeting tonight?’ she asked.

  But as she left, the bigger concern for Sally was not whether Betty was okay for the evening’s gathering but whether she herself was. She knew that vicar/curate relationships were often difficult. Clergy friends were full of nightmare stories. As one curate, stuck with a particularly inadequate vicar, recently said to her, ‘How can such a dysfunctional man train anyone? Basil Fawlty would be an improvement.’

  But of course her disappointment with Anton went way beyond training. She didn’t know what outcome she wished for from this evening; indeed it could be said she didn’t know very much at all at present.

  ***

  Malcolm Flight sat in the supermarket canteen, sipping his coffee and reading a biography of the painter Lucien Freud. He was irritated by the writer’s style but, having spent all morning on the tills, he was glad to be away from the tense faces in the queue. He was a steady worker but not a fast one, and daily felt the resentment building as each item was passed through the scanner.

  ‘Can you go a little quicker, mate?’ they’d say, still two away from being served.

  Comments such as that only made Malcolm slow down. Once a university graduate and IT expert, he was now a stubborn supermarket worker. If a customer at the till irritated him he’d put everything down, ring his bell and ask a colleague to find the price of an item, there was always something to query. This could all take a while and from Malcolm’s perspective, brought everything to a satisfying standstill. You didn’t have much power on the shop floor so moments like these had to be cherished.

  Sometim
es customers would throw down their shopping and storm out of the shop in frustration at the delay. The manager got angry but it was no skin off Malcolm’s nose.

  ‘Here, Malc, what’s the capital of Italy?’ asked one of his younger colleagues sharing the coffee break and doing a quiz.

  ‘Rome.’

  ‘Sweet!’

  Malcolm was familiar with being a resource for quizzes and if it wasn’t the Prime Minister of Sweden or the last man to walk on the moon it was his colleagues’ problems with their computers.

  ‘So what are you saying, Malcolm? Is my laptop knackered?’ He didn’t mind. It gave him both a role in the store and a way to relate to people he didn’t really understand.

  The coffee breaks were the highlight of his day, particularly so recently with things so tense at church. St Michael’s had once been his oasis but recent developments had ended all that. Anton had provoked Malcolm into a conflict he genuinely hated. Hopefully after the meeting tonight, he’d no longer be vicar; though whether that would assuage Malcolm’s rage was hard to tell.

  ***

  ‘And now I discover we have a traitor in our midst!’

  ‘I’d appreciate a knock.’

  ‘And I’d appreciate some loyalty!’

  The Reverend Anton Fontaine had poked his head round the office door of Ginger Micklewhite, the church youth worker, who swung round menacingly to face the intruder.

  ‘I presume you’re going to explain yourself?’ said Ginger.

  It was a challenge to combat.

  Anton started: ‘You’re a member of the Third Order of Franciscans, I understand, a catholic organisation?’

  He attempted a smile throughout the question.

  ‘And?’

  ‘So you don’t deny it?’

  ‘Why would I deny it? A catholic conscience is no longer treason in this country.’

  ‘Well, you may not have noticed, Ginger, but this is an Anglican church!’ said Anton airily. ‘The Roman Catholics are five minutes down the road - and four centuries behind us, ruled by a mad pope!’