Unseen Things Above

by Catherine Fox

  High above as he passes Gayden Magna a skylark sings. Below lie the rape fields, the silage fields, mown too soon, too often. The old pastures over-grazed, the acres of winter wheat too dense for nesting. Decline, decline; half our skylarks gone in less than a lifetime. Our children grow up never hearing its dare-gale poetry, that blithe spirit spilling rubbed and round pebbles of sounds, and showering music on upturned faces in the morning of no man’s land.

  But today a lark sings above a Lindfordshire meadow. Maybe its nest is on the ground of some neglected strip, some wilder, unprofitable spot. Or perhaps some good-hearted farmer misses that song, and has set aside both land and best interests to coax it back?

  The wedding plans in the vicarage of Gayden Magna grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. You would not believe the colour swatchery, the micro decisions about things which to the mortal eye appear identical. Abdication is not permitted. Father Ed is trapped in an endless optician’s appointment. Is it better like this, or like this? It is the worst of both worlds: to be consulted, yet granted no executive power. He must share the racking anguish over infinitesimally fine gradations of card texture for the invitations, then have his opinion slapped away. Mere acquiescence is not an option. He must actively want what Neil wants.

  ‘You said I could leave all the planning to you,’ protests Ed.

  ‘I am doing all the planning, you useless bugger. You can’t even decide what you want for an engagement present. The party’s next week.’

  ‘I don’t need an engagement present.’

  ‘But I want to give you one, and you agreed. We’ve been through all this, remember? Did you have another think about that painting?’

  ‘It’s not for sale.’

  ‘It might be. I can make them an offer. Let me find out who owns it. Come on, Eds. I want to buy you something you really want.’

  ‘But I liked all the paintings. Any of them.’ Oh, pathetically, amateurishly cavalier! Neil demands hard-core specificity. A decision has to hurt before it’s worth something. ‘The one with the sunlight on the stone steps,’ Ed tries. ‘Remember? All those radiant colours?’

  But Neil is shaking his head. ‘You said the nude.’

  Ed curses himself. He’d let his guard slip and expressed an opinion at the private view. Neil is now locked on to his target like a smart missile.

  ‘Look, I’m having doubts. It’ll be too big for the vicarage. Think about it, Neil. Where would it go?’ He’s on firmer ground here. ‘It would totally diminish the piece if we just stuck it in the hallway.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Ed did not like Hmm. Hmm meant things like, why don’t we buy a property in the Dordogne and hang the painting there? Sometimes he wished Neil was a lowly curate, an out-of-work model, dog walker, anything, just so long as he had no money.

  ‘I’d really love one of the sketches, actually,’ he says. They’d been small, hadn’t they? Less expensive?

  ‘Really? Well, they are gorgeous. Maybe a set of three? Properly framed, not that IKEA tat. Or all six? Ooh, yes. For the dining room? Had any of them been sold, did you notice?’ Neil has his phone out. ‘What’s the number for the cathedral? Actually, you know what, it’s Friday. I may shoot across and refresh my memory.’

  Oh, God. Ed knows that look, that tone. Impeccably casual, like an over-rehearsed actor. ‘He was just visiting, you know. He won’t be there now.’

  Pause. ‘Sorry? Who won’t be there?’

  ‘The blond. The Swedish porn star.’ Why is he doing this? Why does he have to torment himself and his beloved with his scab-picking jealousy?

  ‘Him? Och, he’s nothing. Just a freeloader. A pretty wee freeloader trading on his looks.’

  Ed makes no reply.

  ‘Oh, what? Stop that, Eds. Did you see me leave with him? Was I out of your sight for even one second?’

  He feels ugly. ‘No, you weren’t. Ignore me. Just having one of my wobbles. Sorry.’

  ‘Och, Eds.’ Neil takes Ed’s hand and gives it a shake. ‘Come on, big man. I’m marrying you. I love you.’

  ‘I know. It’s just, I can’t think why you would. Sorry. That came out all needy. I’m fine, darling. You go and look at the sketches again. It’s fine.’

  ‘Yes, it is fine.’ He raps on Ed’s forehead with his knuckles. ‘I’m all yours. Got that?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  ‘Look at me.’ Ed looks. ‘Boys like that, they see me and think “meal ticket”. Whereas you.’ For a second Neil nearly chokes up. Tears sting in Ed’s eyes as well. ‘You look at me and see the man you love. You know I’m a total shite, but you love me anyway.’ Neil wipes his eyes with a fingertip. ‘Can you even think how many years it would take me to train up another one, if I lost you? Exactly. So let’s have no more of this. Go and write a sermon or something, Vicar.’

  Neil gets in his Porsche and heads for Lindchester.

  Ah, the Calvinist conscience! You never can give it the slip. Auld John Knox, popping out like a jack-in-the-box. Puff of hellfire: I saw that, laddie! Pulling your old trick back there, making Ed feel bad for something that’s your fault. Neil hits the steering wheel. Bad man. Poor Eds, he’s the dumb, loyal friend at school you abandon by the broken window, holding your catapult.

  Neil knows deep down that marriage won’t stop him straying. So why’s he insisting on it? All the hassle, the expense, the professional grief it’ll cause with the powers that be? What’s the point of standing up in front of those gathered here today, just to make a vow he knows he can’t keep? Is he trying to convince Ed that though he strays, he has a homing device? Yes! He wants to forsake all others. He wants to say loud and clear: I love you. You are my choice. I will be true to you, as true as I have it in me to be. You are everything in the world to me.

  Except new.

  Aye, bad man, Ferguson. What’s your problem, eh? You’ve got wholesome home cooking, haven’t you? So why the Big Mac? Why those trashy empty carbs you regret even as you stuff your face in a layby? Before you’ve wiped the grease off your chin you’re sick of yourself. It’s never worth it. But my God! Those Pavlovian Golden Arches . . .

  Still, maybe he’s mending his ways? He’d been a good husband-to-be that night, hadn’t he? He’d not slipped out for a breath of fresh air with yon wee slut. Boing! Here’s Revd Knox again. Ah, come on! Gimme a break here! Neil pounds the steering wheel again. Fine, then, so it wasn’t the thought of Ed.

  Neil had caught the stranger watching. Older guy, tall and lean, like a stoat in an Italian suit, watching, watching, across the crowded exhibition while young Happy Meal cruised him. Boyfriend? Boss? Case worker? Neil has no idea. But he can still feel that psychotic stare trained on him. Red laser sights dancing on his forehead. Hey, no worries. He’s all yours, pal.

  The fuss surrounding the Souls and Bodies exhibition has died down now. There were a few tense phone calls, but none of the local school groups pulled out. Each day the vergers lay polythene sheets on the floor, and the cathedral rackets to the sound of children making their own abstract stained-glass art out of tissue paper and cardboard. The far end of the exhibition is now roped off – much to the chancellor’s disgust, but the dean is the boss – and volunteers in blue gowns step forward to alert parents, and prevent unaccompanied small children from entering and having their innocence smirched by a glimpse of penis.

  Willies. Huh. Leah Rogers has seen willies before and they’re lame in her opinion. Daddy is lame for bringing her to this lame exhibition of paintings that aren’t actually of anything. The only good thing is that Jess isn’t allowed to come because it’s Parental Guidance Advised. There are some Grown-Up pictures, but because Leah is a sensible girl, she is allowed to see them.

  Huh. Like she wants to see them. She only tried to get into the exhibition in the first place because she was bored waiting for Daddy to finish work. Well, and because the lady in the blue gown said she couldn’t enter without a grown-up. So she pretended she was all, ‘Oh, I’m so disappoint
ed, but I will obey your stupid rule.’ Then she went round the corner and ducked under the red rope, only they caught her. And then, worst luck, Penelope came along and said, ‘Let’s go and find Daddy, shall we, Leah, he’s in the office!’ in her smiley-sticker voice, like a Reception teacher going, isn’t this exciting, boys and girls! Well done! Have a smiley sticker!

  So now she’s got to look round the exhibition, saying, oh, this is so interesting, another giant painting of NOTHING, while Daddy reads bits out from the leaflet to her like she’s got Special Needs. And now they’ve come to the willy section, which is really inappropriate, she has no interest in it whatsoever.

  ‘Now, Leah, this piece is a bit controversial. Some people have been silly about it, because it’s a painting of a naked man. Or a nude. That’s the proper word if it’s a painting.’

  Really? Because it looks like NOTHING with a great big stripe of more NOTHING going across it.

  ‘But it’s an important piece of serious art. It’s called “That time will come and take my love away”,’ reads Daddy.

  Leah looks at the label. ‘“That time will come and take my love away”, Shakespeare, Sonnet number sixty-four.’

  ‘It’s a quotation from Sonnet number sixty-four, by William Shakespeare.’

  Leah rolls her eyes. I can actually read, for your information, Father.

  Next to it there are some proper drawings. These are of a naked man. Leah just glances. Boring. Someone else is in the exhibition too, worst luck. A man wearing black clothes. He has diamond earrings and a leather bracelet on and a gold watch and dark spiky hair. She can smell his perfume. He’s talking on his mobile while he looks at the pictures, which isn’t allowed, you aren’t meant to use a mobile in the cathedral. Please, please, please don’t let Daddy tell him off. Then he puts his phone away and walks out. Phew, because it’s embarrassing enough with Daddy reading out stuff from the leaflet in his totally embarrassing way like a vicar doing the Bible reading.

  ‘“This is an exploration of the architecture of the human frame.”’ Blah blah. Leah wanders round pretending to look where Daddy’s pointing.

  The man comes back with the lady in the blue gown. Very, very slowly the lady peels tiny round red stickers off a sheet and starts sticking one on each label beside the willy pictures.

  ‘The potency yet vulnerability of. Brushwork. Death. Incarnation. Blah blah.’ Shut up, shut up, shut UP! Why do you have to be SO embarrassing?

  She walks off and lets her eyes sneak a longer look at the nearest drawing. It’s nothing like the giant sausages the boys at school scribble on the whiteboard, like that’s really clever. The willy sort of drapes itself there on the man’s leg, like a pet animal or something.

  Then she sees the man with the diamond earrings watching her. She goes red. He makes a pretend shocked face and puts a hand over his mouth, like the girls at school. This makes Leah do a great farting snort. Like she’s blown a giant raspberry. Honestly, it explodes out of her and echoes round the cathedral. Immediately the man looks away and stares at the big painting with a fake ‘I am an angel, I didn’t do anything’ expression. Leah just cannot, cannot stop laughing.

  ‘Leah, if you’re just going to be silly, I think we may as well go.’

  ‘FINE.’

  The man shakes his head like he’s Really Disappointed in her. She checks Daddy’s back is turned, and swiftly sticks her middle finger up. The man does it back! A grown-up!

  ‘Come along, Leah.’

  She looks back one last time, but the man is talking to the lady now and doesn’t see.

  Coincidentally, Father Dominic is also out trying to find an engagement present. The gift needs to tick three boxes: something Ed will like, Neil won’t despise, and Dominic can afford. He is nearing despair as he walks through Lindford’s biggest mall, the Abernathy Centre. Debenhams? He pictures Neil’s curling lip, before which Dominic’s confidence in his own taste quails and everything seems naff. He surveys his options. Maybe he should abandon this and head off out to some craft place. Pottery, bespoke ebony and silver napkin rings. Something camp and antique? But what? He looks round for inspiration. He’s woefully behind on his Trinity Sunday sermon. H & M, Whittards, Thorntons? I think not.

  By the big chrome waterfall he notices a dark-haired woman in a hoodie with ‘CHAPLAIN’ on the back. She’s handing out leaflets.

  Ex-cuse me? Dominic has a complete Lady Bracknell moment. Last time he looked, he was chaplain to the Abernathy Centre.

  Chapter 10

  It’s the green that strikes him. How green everything is this mid-June in Lindfordshire! It crowds in, assails, assaults him.

  And the faces. He had forgotten how pale Caucasian skin is. His own reflection jolts him these days; but to be surrounded by white faces suddenly— He realizes he can no longer gauge attractiveness. Is this flattish young woman pretty or plain? And that sharp-featured man – handsome? His scale has been recalibrated to African standards.

  Paul Henderson smiles. At least he will be able to wear shorts in Lindfordshire without small curious hands gently exploring the hair on his legs as he stands talking to people. The hire car crosses the border into his old diocese. He must relearn punctuality, reacquire a sense of dissatisfied entitlement and view his glass not only as half empty, but old and considerably smaller than the one in the advert he clearly deserves. He need no longer be struck by the reckless grace of clean water gushing from a tap.

  A memory ambushes him. He’s back in his office in the palace. He can hear a voice through the door, singing: What can wash away my stain? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

  Freddie. Freddie. Of course he’s going to find himself thinking of Freddie, as each passing mile takes him closer to his former life. There’s a pulse of lust he must acknowledge – this is me, I am attracted to my own sex – then set aside. Where is Freddie now? That choral scholarship must be nearly finished. Has he got something lined up? Is someone keeping an eye on him? Keep an eye on him, Lord; keep him safe from the likes of me!

  As he drives, he conjures a paler, angrier version of himself in a parallel universe: the Most Revd Paul Henderson, Archbishop of York. He knows he would have told himself that he needed a chauffeur, that Freddie needed a job, that it made sense to take him with them to Bishopsthorpe. He sees himself denying everything to the very last, even as the tidal wave of scandal broke over him. Well, at least he’d been spared – he had spared everyone – all that. Through the severe mercy of God.

  Paul is still married. His marriage is tender and intimate, physically affectionate, though not sexual. He has not surrounded himself with beautiful African youths and told himself they are pastoral assistants. Suze is flourishing. Yes, yes, she is: happy and occupied with her mama bishop role, using her nursing skills once more. When he asks, she claims her needs are catered for. (But when would Suze admit otherwise?) This is as valid a marriage as many a middle-aged marriage, surely? Faithful, companionable. True, not all his needs are catered for. But nor are those of plenty of married people. And single people. Are we any less human than those fortunate enough to find sexual fulfilment? (Is this truly a marriage?)

  Paul has not made sense of last summer yet. But he has made peace with it, or nearly. It is no longer sins that trouble him. A sin is a sin, get over yourself. There’s provision for that. Clean water laid on for every life. What racks him is the condition of sinfulness, that web of finitude, of fallenness we are all tangled in, thrash and struggle though we might. A tug here sends shivers across the whole matrix. A wrong done cannot be undone; it must run its course. And wrong will come of it and go on coming of it, for generations, maybe, individual repentance and forgiveness notwithstanding. How can this growth be cut out, now it’s wrapped round all our vital organs? (A white man in South Africa – how can he not wrestle with this?)

  On some self-aggrandizing days he feels as though he embodies all the Church’s conflict on the gay debate. The full, irreconcilable spectrum is incarnate in Paul Hend
erson. Save me, Kyrie eleison, I’m sinking! On other days he remembers John Newton. Amazing grace? But what can wash away the sins of a repentant slave trader, when his legacy is with us to this day? He thinks of Newton on his deathbed, with just these two things left: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great saviour.

  Is there provision for the sins of the whole world, not just the sins of John Newton, of Paul Henderson? Can everything be put right? It cannot be so. It must be so. Paul never hears the words of the Agnus Dei nowadays without weeping. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. The intellect balks, but here we are, all sharing the same broken bread, the same cup. Great sinner, small sinner. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

  Well, look at that – he’s gone into automatic! He’s driving towards Cathedral Close, not to the Lindford Travelodge. Paul slows and finds a place to turn round. He’s halfway through the manoeuvre when he recognizes it: that layby. The place where he had to pull over and stop, after he’d dropped Freddie off. Heart breaking. Wind stirring bleached grass. Blond, blond.

  A white carrier bag snagged on thorns inhales, exhales, as the wind passes over it. Paul waits a moment, heart fracturing all over again. Thou best of dearest. But the grass is green now. Roses trail. Brambles are in bloom. This might be another place entirely.