A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  There was tension in the air. The dirge continued in deep and haunting mantra but the flickering light revealed nervous eyes. Could the key create beauty? Would the miracle happen this year? And then slow change, as the box began to slide apart. Through the guile of clever engineers, pieces of the box rearranged themselves, turning on pivots, mysterious in movement but transforming the scene. What had once been a locked and rectangular structure now became something quite other: a picture of orchards, sailing ships, gardens and birds in flight made from wood and cloth.

  For those familiar with the ceremony, it was the visual confirmation of their chosen path. Newcomers, however, needed the allegory explained and the Sarkar’s words rarely changed: ‘It is based on the idea that all teaching, however good and true, curdles into something unnatural, institutionalised, like the box. It becomes locked in structures that deprive it of air. The key of deep truth wisely spoken transforms the situation. The key of the one we call True Human opens up the real joy and meaning of life.’

  It was the purpose of the Sarmoun community to be True Human and store this truth, like bees stored honey. Indeed their name, ‘The Sarmouni’ meant ‘The bees’. And as the bees gathered their nectar from many different flowers, so the Sarmoun community gathered their knowledge from many different sources. It was a truth stored carefully, quietly and with little interest in labels, religious or otherwise. Some accused them of being Christians in disguise or Buddhists or Muslim sectarians; others claimed they harboured even more ancient beliefs from Babylonia. Such gossip was of no interest to the Sarkar, however. Let people say what they wished; it was truth rather than label which mattered. His only responsibility was to ensure the continuing quality of knowledge.

  And this knowledge was not to be kept entirely secret. At certain points in history, an emissary would be sent into the world and the truth, like a white dove, released to fly. Had that time now come? The Sarkar would make that decision soon. If truth was unused by those with earthly power, it began to leak away and be lost to the world. Imbalance and disharmony followed. Perhaps the visitor was the man to restore balance and harmony. It was the young man’s passion that had impressed him; his refusal to be pushed away by doubting words.

  Would he now make it to the settlement? There had apparently been problems with the journey but that was as it should be. Nothing good is gained cheaply. He knew the one called Gurdjieff had at least reached the chasm and the rope bridge but nothing had been heard of him since.

  A moth landed on his thin fingers and climbed with difficulty onto his ring. He smiled at the success of the creature’s struggle. The omens were good.

  Twelve

  In preparation for the Detective Inspector’s visit, Abbot Peter wiped a small stain from his monk’s habit. On leaving the monastery, he’d had no other clothes. The desert doesn’t demand a large wardrobe and he’d found it simplest to continue with the same. The alternative was the outrageous choice of the clothes shop, an invention Peter still struggled with. He didn’t mind the second glances his habit brought and appreciated the simplicity it offered each day:

  ‘What shall I wear today, Peter?’

  ‘I shall wear what I wore yesterday.’

  ‘Is it fashionable?’

  ‘It covers my nakedness.’

  ***

  He was currently on his knees, not in prayer but cleaning the carpet with dust pan and brush. One day, he would buy a vacuum cleaner but for now his mind was elsewhere. What would the Detective Inspector ask? Would he be treated as a suspect? What did he know that was important? He remembered the look the Bishop gave Jennifer at the end of the meeting and felt deep unease. Would the Detective Inspector wish to know such things or were they best kept to himself? St Augustine called the eye ‘the window on the soul’ but you could hardly condemn a man for a look, particularly when he was a Bishop.

  Abbot Peter would have to be cautious. A man who lives alone can be dangerous when offered brief importance, becoming garrulous, too eager, intoxicated by the attention. And there would be a battle for authority, there always was. He would bestow it upon the Inspector as soon as he arrived, this was his way, bestow authority on the other from the off and then take it back slowly but steadily as time went by. In his arrogance, Abbot Peter worked for no one and bowed only to the exceptional.

  And perhaps on reflection, as Peter rose from the floor with a well-filled dustpan, the Bishop and Jennifer deserved each other. Both displayed more weaponry than grace. Jennifer was the VWCW - Very Wonderful Church Warden. Head of the local primary school, she still found time to be Church Warden at St Michael’s. People said of her, ‘I don’t know how she does it!’ She’d been particularly wonderful during the interregnum. It literally means ‘between reigns’ and describes the time in a church’s life between one vicar leaving and another arriving. In most businesses, leaders are quickly exchanged, with new feet promptly placed under the desk. Not so in the Church of England. The interregnum at St Michael’s lasted almost a year during which time legal responsibility for the church fell on the shoulders of the church wardens. And the church wardens were the wonderful Jennifer and the vague Roger Stills, presently on pilgrimage in the Holy Land’s West Bank; and if his approach to St Michael’s was anything to go by, probably much exercised there by issues of health and safety.

  Anton Fontaine had been the only applicant for the post; the only priest to respond to the advertisement in the Church Times. He had also been Jennifer’s appointment. The Bishop was known to have had reservations as did some members of the parish, if Edwina Pipe was to be believed.

  ‘The fact is,’ said Mrs Pipe as she removed the altar frontal and lowered her voice, ‘not everyone in Stormhaven wanted a black priest. It wasn’t racial or anything.’

  ‘Well, it was racial,’ corrected Abbot Peter.

  ‘It was racial, yes,’ agreed Mrs Pipe. ‘But fair’s fair, you had to ask the question: what could a black priest from London, who did dancing and the like, know about an English seaside town?’

  ‘What do you need to know?’ Peter had asked, wondering if Mrs Pipe placed him in the same category. After all, what does an Abbot from the desert know about an English seaside town? But she’d ignored him and carried on: ‘It was Jennifer who thought him the right appointment and though the Bishop could have overruled, he chose not to. It was almost like she had something on him!’

  ‘Perhaps the Bishop didn’t wish to appear racially prejudiced,’ said Abbot Peter. ‘It’s a pie easily thrown and one hard to clear up.’ Mrs Pipe attacked a stain with terrible force.

  ‘Though in my experience,’ added the Abbot, ‘a decision without some prejudice or other is a rare thing indeed.’

  ‘But then of course Sally arrived,’ said Mrs Pipe, letting the stain be. ‘So all unease was forgotten.’

  ‘She was wonderful - and reassuringly white?’

  ‘It’s Sally who runs the parish.’

  ***

  Sally was the curate at Michael’s. She’d come to the parish after four years as a social worker. An excellent curate who everyone hoped would one day make someone an excellent... wife. People still thought like that in some seaside towns and, despite coming from Marlborough in land-locked Wiltshire, so did Sally, in a way. It was not public knowledge, but she was not unacquainted with dating sites.

  ‘Just testing the water!’ she’d say. ‘Nothing serious or anything! It’s just a laugh.’

  Her most practical gift was remembering everyone’s name. She remembered adults’ names, children’s names, even the names of goldfish and distant relatives in photos on the mantelpiece. ‘And how’s Gerald getting along,’ she would ask Betty, having seen a photo of her great-nephew six months ago on his farm in the Australian outback. No one had asked about Gerald before; no one had even noticed the picture. Betty decided then and there that she would leave everything to Sally.
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  The children of Stormhaven also loved Sally. She visited their school and made dull lessons fun. One child spoke for many in a ‘Parish questionnaire’ when she said: ‘Sally makes me feel really special.’

  Some wished she was their mother. Sally would say: ‘You have a very good mother of your own!’ even though she didn’t believe it.

  Less public was the fact that Anton and Sally had shared a brief liaison. How do you describe these things? Mrs Pipe knew because she’d seen them in the vestry when they thought themselves alone. And so Abbot Peter knew because Mrs Pipe had to tell someone and this strange man in a habit was quietly reassuring and the most absorbent of listeners.

  ‘Locked away together in all that close confiding,’ said Mrs Pipe. ‘I mean, what else can you expect? It must happen all the time. They were certainly close when I saw them! You couldn’t fit a song sheet between them let alone a hymn book.’

  Some said it was the reason the Bishop opposed the appointment of Anton. They claimed he feared Anton could not be trusted with his young protégé. Sally would go far. But he didn’t want her going too far with the Reverend Fontaine and thereby messing things up for herself. The Bishop had a paternal eye out for Sally.

  And Mrs Pipe was right. The relationship between the two had emerged in the steady practice of professional contact. What exactly it became was not clear. Playful flirting? Excited friendship? Spilling desire? Whatever the answer, the relationship turned out to mean more to curate than vicar. Anton pulled back leaving Sally distraught, and subsequent hours on her knees availed little. And the pain overwhelmed her at the most awkward of times. She’d recently walked out of a wedding she was conducting. Sensing the approach of tears, she claimed her contact lenses were playing up and made for the vestry. She returned a few minutes later, red-eyed but in control.

  Sally was aware of her error but then she’d had to know. Her mistake had occurred after Evening Prayer. She’d shared a kiss or two with Anton in the vestry. Sally had then pulled away and asked the question:

  ‘We need to know where we’re going with this, Anton. Are you thinking of marriage?’

  ‘You are joking!’ he’d said.

  ***

  It takes a murder to make you realise how much you know, thought Abbot Peter as he laid out the shortbread on a plate bought in the charity shop. He could read the paper; the boy had just dropped it on his door step. But with the Detective Inspector due any moment, it made sense to reflect further on last night’s meeting. Other people and incidents now came to mind.

  Take Malcolm Flight, for instance, the Treasurer who seemed to treasure very little. He worked in the supermarket by day and spent the rest of his life painting in the church. Mrs Pipe called him ‘The Ghost’.

  ‘I call him “The Ghost”,’ she said. ‘There I was, sitting in the church all on my ownsome, when suddenly from behind the pillar, this figure appears! Well - I fair jumped out of my seat in terror! That’s why I call him “The Ghost”. You never know where he is. And you never hear him, he just appears.’

  Malcolm had fallen out with Anton when the vicar removed his triptych from the church. Malcolm felt this three-window portrayal of the crucifixion of Christ to be his best work. Anton said it was gloomy and depressing and put it in storage: ‘People do not come to church to hear depressing tales,’ he told Malcolm. ‘They’ve got enough of those at home! We all know you like the dark places, Malcolm, but in that, as in most things, you’re a freak! No offence.’

  Anton would not have noticed Malcolm’s rage and it was unlikely Malcolm noticed it either, not being someone who knew how he felt. He did occasionally explode like a latter-day Vesuvius, when the hot lava inside him forced its way to the surface and then everyone ducked. The last occurrence had been in the supermarket when a colleague had taken his freezer gloves for the second time that day.

  ‘You’ll give them back to me!’ screamed Malcolm, when they met in the meat aisle, bringing the calm retail operation to a dramatic standstill for a moment.

  ‘It’s OK, mate,’ said the glove thief, shocked by the force of reaction. ‘Here they are, all right, I won’t take them again.’

  ‘I’ve never seen him like it,’ he later told Eva on the tills. ‘Like a flaming volcano!’

  But while that was nine months ago, with a verbal warning from the manager attached, Malcolm’s feelings for Clare were more present. Clare Magnussen ran a van rental business and sometimes played the keyboard in church. (The old organ had been broken a while and no one was working too hard to repair it.) In business, Clare was hard, efficient and cool. In church, she was reliable and distant, restricting herself to particular company.

  ‘He’s so low-life,’ she sometimes said, explaining her dislike of someone. There were a large number of ‘untouchables’ as far as Clare, who operated her own unofficial ‘caste’ system, was concerned.

  She was rumoured to be worth over a million pounds, not common in Stormhaven. But she spoke little of her money. She had money, it was hers, she’d worked for it and frankly, it was no one else’s business. Anton, however, had imagined it his and jokily suggested she give more of it to the church.

  ‘Your vans are loaded and so are you!’ he’d said. ‘So why don’t you make a large delivery here, you old miser! We need the cash!’

  He’d also suggested a cosy trip to the cinema, just before the evening meeting, which Peter had overheard.

  ‘I’m not just a vicar,’ he’d said. ‘And you’re not just a very successful business lady. Does the ice queen ever thaw a little?’

  Clare had been shocked. It was her shoulder Sally had cried on in the face of Anton’s rejection. Now the busy vicar was moving in so quickly on her, Clare was disgusted - if a little flattered.

  But you couldn’t treat people like that. He would have to learn.

  Thirteen

  The first step is the hardest, for the first step is the choice, and all else, mere continuation. The decision is taken, the tone set and the feet follow. Certainly Gurdjieff hoped they would, as he allowed his weight and balance to leave the rock edge. Between him and the beckoning void below was nothing more than an untested old rope bridge.

  Was this the only way to the Sarmoun Community? He’d no idea and the only one who did was now gone. He did not waste time in reflection, however; circumstances had their own logic. If the Sarmoun Community wished to stay hidden, they would hardly build wide highways to their door. Make truth difficult. No, impossible!

  The other reality to consider as he stepped into the void was his solitude. Soloviev had also left him, unconvinced of the continuing wisdom of their journey.

  ‘Are we not brothers in the love of truth?’ Gurdjieff had asked on hearing Sol’s doubts.

  ‘There are limits to my love of truth, George Ivanovitch,’ said Sol. ‘I do not want to die seeking it.’

  ‘You die by not seeking it. Is it a half-life you wish for?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I’ll make my way, do normal things like marry, have children and perhaps discover more in my waking than you will from the grave.’

  ‘Without truth, there is no waking,’ replied Gurdijieff . ‘You know these things. That is why you came here.’

  ‘And the Sarmouni will tell us all, I suppose? Everything there is to know - it is written somewhere? A stranger comes to their door, is taken inside and told all things? I don’t think so, George Ivanovitch.’

  ‘Once you believed in such knowledge, Sol. Once you believed in the existence of the secret symbol.’

  ‘The journey here,’ said Sol, ‘it’s given me time to think; there is little else to do on the back of an ass. And my question is this: what can any symbol reveal which you and I do not already know? I am thinking that perhaps I am the ass.’

  They had both looked at the rope bridge, stretched across the darkness.

&nbs
p; ‘So it’s not fear that has brought this change of mind, Sol? Not the deep chasm which makes you a sudden convert to sleep?’

  Gurdjieff knew it was finished. They’d had many adventures together; he’d led and Sol followed. But now his companion was keen to be gone, the friendship spent. They’d watched the skyline dim as their old guide disappeared into the distance. Soon it would be nightfall in the mountains.

  ‘I understand, my friend. You must be on your way,’ said Gurdjieff.

  ‘I must be on my way, yes.’

  ‘Then you live well and I will die well!’

  They clasped each other firmly as they had done many times before. They both then turned, one toward the Silk Road and Bokhara and the other towards the chasm and the mystery beyond.

  Neither looked back and George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff now crossed the bridge alone.

  Fourteen

  The night of the murder,

  Tuesday, 16 December

  The Bishop had opened the Extraordinary Parish Meeting. A large Episcopal cross dangled in dark wood over his purple shirt. As he always explained, it was from Africa, carved for him by some saint in poverty.

  ‘It’s his authenticity card,’ Anton would say. ‘Mention Africa and suddenly you’re compassionate, real, uber-spiritual.’

  The Bishop’s black shoes were shiny and his briefcase to match. He was an organised fellow and eager to proceed with the business in hand.

  ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.’ From his manner, he could have been ordering paper for the photocopier.

  ‘Amen,’ came the mumbled reply.

  There was awkwardness in the air for any number of reasons but the email hadn’t helped. Bishop Stephen blamed the missing church warden, Roger Stills, who wisely left the country shortly afterwards on pilgrimage. The Bishop had sent Roger the agenda for the meeting, to be circulated to all members of the PCC. Unfortunately Roger also circulated the Bishop’s covering letter, in which he’d outlined in some detail Anton’s personal and professional deficiencies as well as Jennifer’s misguided and damaging role in his appointment. Once it was public, there was much dismay. The Bishop wouldn’t apologise, saying only that it was a private email, not intended for public view; Anton laughed it off as he always did, Jennifer was furious and Roger left for the relative peace of the West Bank.