A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  ‘I understand, Sir. I want to learn.’

  ‘Then you will learn! You will learn of the nine soul structures of humankind.’

  ‘This is the teaching of the Enneagram?’

  He had decided that questions were the best path to staying alert.

  ‘The Enneagram describes nine different journeys of the human psyche. It describes the journey away from our true selves when young and it describes the return journey that becomes possible in adult life.’

  ‘The journey away from our true selves and then the journey home?’

  ‘That’s right, the destruction and recreation of each soul. And at its heart is this claim: each of us has chosen one of those nine ways, one of those nine paths, as our model.’

  ‘You mean one of the paths is our path in particular?’

  ‘Indeed. We may relate to several, to all in some way or other. But one path above all others controls our particular selves. Some people call the path away from true selves our ‘compulsion’.

  ‘So our compulsive behaviour is behaviour which takes us away from our true selves; in other words, that which destroys us?’

  ‘Correct. These compulsions are the basic construct of our personality and significantly define our life. After all, we create around us what we are within.’

  ‘A frightening thought.’

  ‘In one way, but also rather hopeful. We only have to notice the compulsion to find the world a far more wonderful place.’

  ‘That makes sense. So, let me understand - the Enneagram describes nine ways of being? First a journey away from truth, dominated by our personality and then a journey home to our true selves which we left behind.’

  ‘You are a good student.’

  ‘And each individual has chosen one such way?’

  ‘In a manner, though there was little conscious choice, for the path was set in the early years of life, when we had feelings but no words to describe them. But you are broadly right. There are nine spaces on the symbol, numbered from one to nine each describing a different path. And everyone dwells in one of those spaces; everyone has chosen one of those paths.’

  ‘Do you know which path I have chosen?’

  ‘I could hazard a guess.’

  ‘And will you tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The journey to the shrine is the shrine itself.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It is for you to find your space.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘The Enneagram is concerned, above all, with your intentions. It is not what you do that matters, but why you do it - this is the key. And that particular investigation is best carried out by you.’

  ‘That is a subtle and uncomfortable investigation.’

  ‘The investigation of motive? Indeed. We have here in our hands a sharp knife, which cuts to the marrow of our existence. We must handle this knife carefully.’

  George Ivanovitch was less concerned with careful handling than with finding out more. He wanted to hear each space described but first had a more general question. ‘And tell me - is there anyone beyond the Enneagram’s reach? Is this a time-bound understanding or perhaps just for the people of Asia or the Americas or the North Pole?’

  ‘No’ said the Sarkar. ‘It’s both a timeless and universal symbol. All are within its reach. Every human who has ever lived, in whatever part of the world, they each walked one of these paths, each lived a specific number from one to nine.’

  Gurdjieff was relieved. Anything less than a timeless and universal understanding would have meant prompt and disappointed departure. He had come here for deep truth, truth which would not fade with time or travel.

  ‘So is the Enneagram a religion, a new way to follow?’

  ‘Not at all. It is insight not religion. It can be used by those with faith and those with none. It asks only accurate reflection on our self.’

  ‘Not a popular pastime.’

  ‘But fruitful for those who attempt it.’

  The desire in Gurdjieff almost stained the air in its urgency. They had talked round the subject enough. He wished to hear the nine states described.

  ‘So now you will reveal the nine different spaces, the nine different paths?’

  ‘In a while,’ said the Sarkar, ‘and not here.’

  ‘Not here? Then where?’

  ‘We must walk to the Seeing Stone.’

  Thirty One

  But Tamsin couldn’t wait until evening to hear about the Enneagram. What was gained from waiting? How did the saying go? ‘Patience is a virtue, catch it if you can, found seldom in a woman and never in a man.’ Rubbish. Tamsin was with the men on this one; waiting was for losers. And so that afternoon, as they sat in Stormhaven police station, awaiting further news from the pathologist - ‘don’t expect someone quirky or amusing like in the TV programmes’ she’d warned Peter - she also demanded that he get this Enneagram nonsense out of his system so they could get on with the case.

  Peter said: ‘We haven’t got time now.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ she said, ‘at least five minutes, maybe ten. That’s long enough to assess the evidence. I don’t want your life story - just the bare bones of the theory, taught you by your father?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fine. But I hope when I tell you the whole thing’s nonsense - not to pre-judge at all - you won’t get all precious about it as though it’s some irreplaceable family heirloom. Fathers are wrong sometimes - wildly.’

  ‘His English was poor, I grant you. My father, your grandfather, was an Armenian Russian and speaking with him was a little like speaking with a child; but a child with disturbing insight.’

  ‘How was it disturbing?’

  The Abbot prepared for Tamsin to be offended.

  ‘He said everyone was asleep to their true selves.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He said that each person was an idiot, sleepwalking through life.’

  ‘Not a teaching designed to win friends.’

  ‘No, but he did win devotees.’

  ‘Most nutcases do.’

  ‘Those prepared to face their own idiocy. And this is where the Enneagram symbol became important.’

  ‘This child’s drawing here?’

  Tamsin looked at the roughly-drawn circle drawn on the back of the envelope, with nine marks equally spread round the circumference and each with a number by it.

  ‘That’s right. Forgive the graphics but this symbol describes nine ways people forget who they are; nine different ways to lose your true self and become unhappy - and rather dangerous in the world.’

  ‘And you say everyone has chosen one of these ways?’

  ‘Very good, I’m impressed.’

  ‘So every human has a number, from one to nine?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think this was part of the Inspector’s course.’

  ‘Or is it just that I learn quickly?’

  ‘And this number affects who they are and how they behave.’

  ‘So how do people discover their space?’

  ‘To find it, you have to discover what sort of idiot you are; or to put it in a more acceptable manner, you need to discern your central compulsion around which your phoney personality grew.’

  ‘And what if I don’t believe my personality is phoney?’

  ‘Then you are most deeply asleep.’

  Tamsin went quiet, a resistant silence the Abbot was familiar with.

  ‘And you believe that all this can help find murderers?’ she asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Because you know people’s numbers?’

  ‘It’s a gift I have, unfortunately.’

  �
�You know their number even if they don’t know it themselves?’

  ‘Very often, yes. And this is what made the final parish meeting before the murder so interesting. I suddenly realised that the nine of us gathered in that room represented the entire Enneagram symbol. There was one of each number present, from one to nine.’

  ‘Like an Enneagram training course!’

  ‘If you like, yes, though I’ve always tried to avoid those.’

  ‘And what are the chances of this miracle?’

  ‘Very slim and I probably would have forgotten all about it. Yet once events unfolded, I began to reflect on the nine types of idiot in the room that night.’

  ‘Including yourself, of course.’

  ‘Believe me, I know my idiot well, even if on this occasion he wasn’t a killer. But I did ponder which idiot was, which particular idiot had cracked in these circumstances and why. Which compulsion in that circle was so inflamed and painful that murder became the only way? Find the fault line and we find the murderer.’

  ‘So what number am I?’

  Thirty Two

  ‘Is this allowed?’ asks Betty.

  ‘I think we’re all consenting adults,’ says Ginger.

  ‘I just want to make sure everyone’s all right,’ says Sally.

  It was her idea that all those who attended the fateful meeting the night before should gather at 6.00 p.m. in the parish room, the only church space presently available to them.

  It was the first time they’d been together since the meeting, though there were one or two absentees. Anton was dead, Clare and the Bishop were missing and Abbot Peter investigating.

  ‘Strange to think that the five of us were all sitting here last night,’ says Malcolm.

  ‘Seems like a world away,’ says Jennifer.

  Ginger then speaks: ‘I note no one is sitting in Anton’s seat.’

  They all look at the empty chair where the vicar had sat to hear the evidence against him and ultimately, to receive his cruel marching orders: death by raised hands.

  ‘And no Clare?’ asks Jennifer.

  ‘The police are still looking for her,’ confirms Sally. ‘I haven’t heard anything more from them.’

  The implication being that as soon as they knew anything, she’d be the first to know.

  ‘But should we be talking at all?’ asks Betty, concerned about the rights and wrongs of them gathering in this manner. ‘After all, we’re the suspects. It’s obvious they think one of us did it.’

  ‘I think you’re in the clear, Betty!’ says Sally.

  ‘What about the Bishop?’ asks Ginger.

  The Bishop was not with them either. Sally had decided against inviting him.

  ‘It could have been the Bishop,’ says Ginger. ‘We all know what he thought of Anton.’

  ‘Which makes him an unlikely murderer, too obvious,’ says Malcolm knowingly. ‘You have to find the hidden relationship.’

  Ginger says: ‘Sometimes murder is obvious, Malcolm. Sometimes there’s nothing complicated about it at all. Trust me.’

  ‘I really don’t think it’s him,’ says Malcolm, who’d never spoken to Ginger before, as far as he could remember. Sometimes violence separates; sometimes it brings together and on this occasion, it was the latter. The fact that these five people now sat in the same room talking, revealed how unspoken cliques are smashed by circumstance. Here was a new community, suspicious, frightened, shocked, needing to talk and each quietly wondering if they were sitting next to a sadistic killer.

  ‘It’s never the Bishop,’ says Jennifer glibly, like some tired hackwriter at a script meeting.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because Bishops are too concerned with their careers! A murder can seriously damage a CV - though not as much as being gay, of course.’

  After a day at school playing the wonderful head, Jennifer had a lot of sarcasm to get out of her system.

  Sally adds: ‘I didn’t ask the Bishop because I thought he’d be too busy.’

  ‘And probably he’d try and take over,’ says Ginger.

  ‘Not that Bishop Stephen doesn’t have his fair share of secrets,’ contributes Jennifer. ‘And murder investigations tend to flush out plenty of those. I hope we’re all ready for that? All ready for our secrets to be laid bare?’

  There is an uneasy pause.

  Sally says: ‘I don’t think we should sit here accusing people.’

  ‘So why are we here?’ asks Betty, who has now started knitting.

  ‘Well, to look out for each other. I’m still your curate and these are difficult times.’

  ‘But you might also be our murderer,’ says Malcolm with a smile. Sally blushes and looks irritated.

  ‘And how likely is that, Malcolm?’ asks Ginger.

  ‘Isn’t it always the one who finds the body?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, so mind your mouth.’

  ‘Children, children!’ says Jennifer.

  Ginger’s anger is almost a physical presence.

  Jennifer says: ‘I have to say, Ginger, that if you’d been sent to my office by a teacher, I’d tell you to go back to the playground and find a role other than that of Sally’s minder. It’s not helping you or her.’

  ‘I’m not Sally’s minder. She doesn’t need a minder.’

  Jennifer’s raised eyebrows and knowing smile undermine Ginger’s words.

  Betty says: ‘I think it’s very sad about Clare.’

  ‘We must just hope and pray,’ says Sally, glad the subject has changed.

  ‘But does that actually mean anything?’ asks Malcolm.

  ‘Does what mean anything?’

  ‘I mean, it’s what we always say, ‘we must hope and pray,’ it’s the standard line, but how’s it going to help? How’s hoping and praying going to help Clare now?’

  His voice began to crumble.

  ‘She could be anywhere,’ says Sally. ‘She’s an independent woman.’

  ‘No,’ says Malcolm. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Well how could you possibly know that?’

  ‘I just do.’

  Not long after that, Betty decided she was going home, unsure the police would be in favour of this unofficial meeting, particularly after Sally confirmed they knew nothing about it.

  ‘You didn’t ask them?’ says Jennifer with astonished amusement.

  ‘What are you like, Sally!’

  Others followed Betty soon afterwards, leaving the curate alone to lock up. She’d liked to have gone into the main body of the church but that area remained off-limits and seemed a step too far.

  It hadn’t been quite the support group she’d anticipated.

  Thirty Three

  ‘Stormhaven is a place of rest and quiet for both resident and visitor alike. A place to change down a gear or two, take a break.’

  Peter was reading from a brochure as they sat together in Sandy View at the end of the first day to review the case. Tamsin had asked for a brief background to Stormhaven, never having set foot in the place before this morning.

  ‘You mean it’s boring?’

  ‘Not at all, no. People transpose their inner boredom onto places, quite unfairly of course. Stormhaven is merely unpretentious.’

  ‘Code for “no decent shops”.’

  ‘The shops struggle, I agree, but the gulls swoop and scream and the elderly park along the seafront, looking out on the waves from the warmth of their cars.’

  ‘Don’t go into advertising.’

  ‘It has the air not of a town past its best but of one that perhaps never quite reached it. Stormhaven tried to be noisy and fun but failed.’

  ‘It could almost be you, Uncle.’

  ‘But of course things have not always been t
hus.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. The town once housed the court of King Arthur.’

  ‘No, Stormhaven is one of the few places not to make that claim. But Alfred the Great’s palace was found at nearby West Dean which he used as a defence against the Vikings. And during the thirteenth century, this was a major port in the south of England, exporting wool, importing wine and it was very wealthy.’

  ‘Sounds like a Waitrose sort of place.’

  ‘Pretty upmarket, yes. But then the fourteenth century was less kind. Raided constantly by the French, the place was sunk commercially with the arrival of the Black Death. By the middle of the century, the town was largely burned down and residents were both few and depressed.’

  ‘So no change there then.’

  ‘They’d lost their harbour to Newhaven, a few miles down the coast - they still hate the people of Newhaven - and were so poor they couldn’t afford to send a representative to parliament.’

  ‘Waitrose closes and a Morrisons opens?’

  ‘For the residents of Stormhaven, the humiliation was complete and the humiliated are not pleasant people to know.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It’s just an observation.’

  ‘No one likes being humiliated.’

  ‘No, and the humiliated fight back. Believe me, there have been dark episodes in the history of the town; things about which no one is proud.’

  ‘Spoken of in hushed whispers?’

  ‘Indeed. But with the coming of the railway in 1864, everyone expected change. Here was a new chapter in their civic history and high hopes abounded. There were plans for a magnificent pier, five seaside gardens and bold Victorian buildings along the front. They would transform this backwater into a proper seaside town, with all the fun of the fair and arcades for public amusement.’

  ‘I’m sensing a “but” in the air.’

  ‘A large one. The money ran out long before any pier was built or visitors came. Instead, they all went to Brighton with its gay royal air, easy access to London and famous Pavilion.’

  ‘You can’t blame them. It beats a blanket and thermos on the Stormhaven stones.’

  This had never occurred to Abbot Peter but made sense of his love for the place.