But the archdeacon snores on. Poor love. Desperately in need of a holiday. Jane excavates through the fossilized gear of lost eras: Pleistocene sports bra to tether the mighty bazoomers of doom, Mesozoic leggings, Palaeozoic vest. She struggles into them, drops a kiss on the sleeping bald head, and tiptoes downstairs.
Come along, trainers on, you lazy tart. Yay! This’ll be FUN!
After a few stretches, Jane puts the door on the latch and creeps out. She skirts round the archdeacon’s Mini parked across her drive and sets off at a lumbering pace. It’s actually quite a nice day. Red berries crowd the rowan branches. Almost their first anniversary! And they will even manage to snatch a couple of sneaky days away together next week. Jane smiles as she runs. Yeah, life’s pretty good right now.
The archdeacon wakes with a hideous lurch, as though he’s involuntarily undergone the ice bucket challenge. Crap! He leaps out of bed. No time for a shower even. Flings yesterday’s clothes on. Late, late, late! Rings Penelope, tells her to let Harry know he’s on his way.
‘Janey?’ He crashes down the stairs two at a time. She’s not in the kitchen. Dammit. He reads her note: Gone for a run. Pastries when I get back. xx
Damn, damn, damn! He scrawls an explanation, grabs his keys and hurtles out of the house.
This won’t do, Matt. You know this won’t do. He has to grit his teeth to stop himself driving like chuffing Jehu. You’ve got to sort this. Decide if you’re going for the suffragan job, and if you are, you’ve got to tell her. Because you’re going to have to choose. This is a fork in the road you’re approaching.
No. It’s a roundabout. It’s a flipping roundabout and I’ve been driving round and round it for months, trying to kid myself I can go in two directions at once without choosing. I’m a fraud. A big old fraud. And a sinner.
‘The archdeacon’s on his way,’ calls Penelope through the open office door. ‘He’ll be about twenty minutes.’
‘Thanks,’ says Harry. He whiles away the time checking the post. There’s an envelope marked ‘Private and Confidential’ addressed to him. He opens it and reads the contents.
‘Bishop? Are you all right in there, Bishop?’ calls Penelope.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ replies Harry. ‘Just banging my head on the desk.’
The envelope contains a formal complaint (Form 1a, with written evidence and other documents attached) of misconduct against the Archdeacon of Lindchester, for conduct that is unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of the clergy. The complainant is one Revd Dr Veronica da Silva.
SEPTEMBER
Chapter 19
This diocese! Argh! Poor Bishop Harry sat up straight and smiled brightly at Penelope when she hurried in to check that he was all right. Once she was reassured, he scribbled a cartoon of an angry woman priest, and another of a big bald archdeacon. In his mind’s eye, he Blu-tacked them to the dartboard he had foolishly not brought with him to Lindchester from his previous job, where it had performed such a key role in stress management.
Ho hum. Sad to say, Harry knew CDM procedures like the back of his hand. The letter of acknowledgement had to go off straight away to the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva. Not one for Penelope to handle. Then he needed to refer the matter to the diocesan registrar within seven days, who would get back to him within twenty- eight days to advise whether there were grounds to proceed with the complaint. And in Harry’s experience, diocesan registrars seldom earned themselves the nickname Captain Reckless. This thing would have to run its course like some baroque combine harvester scrupulously shelling a walnut.
He looked at his watch. There was time to take a walk and compose himself before Matt’s arrival, so that he could act as though he had not just received a letter dobbing him in for shacking up with his girlfriend. He gave the desk one final thump with his forehead and went outside to stroll round the palace garden.
The palace garden! Perhaps this has long been a matter of concern for the keen horticulturalists among my readers. I fear it has been neglected for almost a year now. You may remember how poor Susanna, in her distress, simply let the fruit fall from the trees and rot. The herbaceous borders were not tidied, nor the clumps divided in the autumn. And then along came a vast pathetic fallacy of a gale that laid waste to everything. I am sure that shortly before the new bishop moves in, a task force will sweep through and make things presentable. Whispers continue to suggest that it will be Guilden Hargreaves, but we do not expect an announcement for a couple more weeks, and even then we will still be a long way off the enthronement (or ‘installation’, if the next bishop is squeamish about pride of man and earthly glory).
I will begin a new paragraph here so that my readers can make themselves comfortable before I launch into another verse of ‘Here we go round the ecclesiastical mulberry bush’. Ready? This is the way we make a bishop, make a bishop, make a bishop! You might be forgiven for supposing that the process of consultation, mandating, longlisting, shortlisting, interviewing, praying and pondering, and finally choosing a candidate would constitute making an appointment. Not so, my friends! We will pass lightly over the business of DBS-enhanced disclosure and medicals on Harley Street (with mandatory prescription of statins). We will allude in passing to a name going forward to Her Majesty. All of this takes many months, during which time the preferred candidate must maintain complete radio silence. He must have no contact with the diocese and he may not even go and look round the palace he will be living in.
I trust the reader has not lost sight of the fact that there must also be a process of election. Dean Marion is standing by to receive a letter from the sovereign instructing her to summon her College of Canons for the purpose of electing a new Bishop of Lindchester. Then comes the second letter instructing them to elect person X. These days person X will be the person the CNC has selected, rather than some foppish favourite of the monarch who nobody wants, and who may tiresomely need assassinating at some future date. Marion will duly summon her canons, and those who fail to show will be declared ‘contumacious’. Sadly she can no longer seize their goods (a practice Gene had expressed an interest in exercising on her behalf, having taken a fancy to the prebendary of Gayden Magna’s consort’s Porsche). The canons will duly appoint X as their new bishop. If they fail to do so, I believe Her Majesty will dismiss the lot of them and appoint a College of Canons who will do her bidding. It is a process of election familiar in many parts of the globe.
There then follows a Confirmation of Election in York. Well, assuming our man is already a bishop somewhere. If not, he’ll need to be consecrated somewhere along the way. After this, the new bishop is officially the new bishop and may style himself +Lindcaster in his Christmas cards if he is a bit of a ponce. He still needs to pay homage to the sovereign by kissing her hand (‘a brush of the lips, not a slobber’) and then he may be installed/enthroned in Lindchester and the cathedral choir may sing Parry’s I Was Glad, as cathedral choirs will under such circumstances, and finally there will be a Bishop of Lindchester in place a mere fifteen months after the previous bishop left. Which makes Dr Proudie’s elevation to Bishop of Barchester in 185— ‘a month after the demise of the late bishop’ seem like something from a work of fiction.
The implication of all this for the palace garden, then, is that nobody is falling over themselves yet to weed the borders.
And now it is September. Season of perversely hot summer weather, rendering school playing fields rock hard and skinning knees without mercy during the first rugby lessons of the year. Paint fumes linger in classroom and corridor. Swallows natter on wires. There goes the crocodile of choristers in their cherry red caps filing to the Song School. Aw, look at the tiniest tots, in grey shorts and new blazers, faces a-tremble with homesickness. Freddie May watches them go, and remembers. But I predict that the tots, like most other choristers, will look back on these years and stoutly defend them as magical.
Choral term has not started yet, but the boys must be drilled in their Mags and Nuncs; taugh
t to rrrrroll their Rs and inducted into the mystery of when it is proper to pronounce salvation ‘sal-vacey-ohn’. They must get the silliness out of their system and not snort at ‘O loud be their trump’ or naughtily slur ‘our souls’ into arseholes. Finally, they must master the Lindchester style of pointing for the psalmody, which is different from that of all other cathedrals, and considered superior; just as other styles are considered superior in other cathedrals, although we know in Lindchester (with a faint smirk) that they are wrong about that.
‘She’s sent me some rainbow shoelaces!’
‘Hello, Dominic! I’m very well thanks,’ said Jane. ‘I’m just embedding reasonable adjustments into next year’s curriculum.’
‘Yes, yes, shut up. Rainbow shoelaces!’
‘Well, why not? It’s an anti-homophobic bullying thing.’
‘All the deanery clergy got a pair! I refuse to wear them! It’s not a church thing! It’s Stonewall and it’s football!’
Jane waited until Dominic’s rant sputtered out into silence. ‘And how may I help you, my darling? Would you like me to hold her down while you garrotte her with your rainbow laces?’
‘The letter has the diocesan logo on it, as well as the chaplaincy’s and St James’ Church. I bet nobody’s been consulted. God! It’s as though she’s the diocesan LGBT officer! And she is not!’
‘Take it up with the diocese, then.’
‘I will! I hate being bullied and manipulated like this.’
‘Yes, it must feel as if she’s colonized the moral high ground and now nobody’s allowed to query her views without being yelled at,’ Jane sympathized.
There was a dangerous silence. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘I was reflecting upon the tenor of the Scottish independence debate. You aren’t allowed to disagree with the Yes campaign. That would be like questioning equal marriage.’
‘And that, right there, is where you ruined it, Jane. That last cheap shot.’
Jane laughed her filthy laugh. ‘They should have phrased the referendum question the other way round. Nobody wants to get behind a No campaign, like a bunch of freedom-hating naysayers. We all want to say Yes. God, but it’s like bloody King Lear though, isn’t it? All the flamboyant poetry and romance on one side, all the prosaic truth on the other. Hello? Are you still there?’
‘I’m strangling myself with my rainbow laces out of sheer boredom.’
‘But with pride, I hope. Listen, why don’t you complain to Matt about Our Lady of the Laces? She’s taking the diocese’s name in vain. She shouted at him about women bishops, so he’ll be on your side.’
‘It’s not about taking sides, Jane.’
‘Oh. I thought we were talking about the Church of England.’
‘Why don’t you go and embed some reasonable adjustments up your arse?’ enquired Dominic. ‘And then do you want to come for lunch?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘It’s only salad and soup. I’ve had to revert to my fat man trousers.’
‘I hear you, brother. I’ll bring yogurts for pudding.’
‘Oh, joy.’
As it happens, Dominic is not the only one feeling manipulated by the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva. The Vicar of St James’ Church, Lindford is sitting in his church office, stunned. The door was slammed shut five minutes earlier by Veronica. His head is still ringing.
All he tried to do was gently press her about it. But the issue shifted from whether Veronica ought to have put the church and diocesan logo on the letter heading, to whether Geoff, by his refusal to support Veronica’s campaign, was tacitly condoning homophobia within the Church and, by extension, legitimizing the persecution and murder of gays and lesbians under totalitarian regimes everywhere. What? What just happened there? Geoff closes his eyes. Is it me? He waits in the silence.
Christ in me. Christ with me.
Traffic goes by outside the church. He hears the screech of magpies clashing in the plane tree. There is no reasoning with her. Every time he seeks to clarify something, the goalposts shift. This has never happened to him before; he has never encountered anyone so impossible to deal with! Yes, he’s disagreed with people – bitterly, sometimes – but he’s never encountered this . . . what? This sense of wrestling with an empty coat, not a person. Where, where to find Christ in the experience?
And then there are the apparent discrepancies in her CV. He’s been too preoccupied with the CNC process. He kept telling himself the archdeacon’s silence must mean that there’s nothing to worry about. No, it’s no good, he’ll just have to hassle Matt again, if only to set his mind at rest.
The Porsche of the consort of the prebendary of Gayden Magna is currently parked on double yellows outside the picture-framing shop near the gatehouse to the Close. Neil has just dropped off the six sketches to get them properly framed. (We spare a prayer here for the poor sod who has just blithely said, ‘No problem, I’ll do that for you.’) Neil emerges back on to the street. Shit. It’s the wee slut. With him, Psycho Boyfriend, from the exhibition. Neil scoots into the car before he’s spotted. Heh heh! The Jaws tune makes sense now. Not more righteous than me after all – just more scared of his other half!
‘Um, dude, why are we . . . holding hands?’
‘Because I’m your mentor.’
Gah. Freddie’s brain is in meltdown. Literally? Barely knows which way they’re walking. Mentor’s shoes clip along the cobbles. Omigod, omigod, this is totally happening? I’m totally walking along with Andrew Jacks? Like we’re together?
‘My instructions were clear: to take you in hand and give you a steer where necessary.’
Freddie snorts. ‘Ha ha, dude, I think that was like, metaphorical?’
The hand holding his tightens. ‘I dare say. But you show signs of flight. Are you scared of me, Mr May?’
‘Um, yeah?’
‘Oh, good.’ They stop. ‘Let’s try here.’
They’re outside a coffee shop. ‘Sure.’
A black Porsche roars past them. They go in. A little barista appears, super-excited to see them.
‘Hey, guys? How’re YOU today? Table for two?’ So she’s a Kiwi, greeting them like long-lost rellies? ‘Wanna stay inside? Or would you rather sit outside on the dick?’
Mentor turns to Freddie, eyebrow raised. ‘Would you enjoy that?’ Freddie explodes with mirth again. ‘Thank you, we’ll sit outside.’
He steers Freddie out to the narrow deck looking down over the rooftops of old Lindchester. ‘Vowel shift: fascinating phenomenon. What a lovely spot.’ He gazes out. ‘But then, I am famously fond of decks.’
‘Stop that.’ Freddie wipes his eyes. ‘You’re a bad man.’
‘I have never claimed otherwise.’
They sit opposite one another. Omigod, omigod. Freddie reaches for the menu, so he won’t have to look at him. The menu is twitched from his fingers.
‘Your full attention, please, Mr May.’
‘Oh, God. OK!’ He braces himself, glances at those light grey eyes. ‘OK. Cool. I’m listening.’ Silence. ‘Look, about that time you rang me? So yeah, I totally meant to get back to you, only—’
‘Ssh.’ He waits till Freddie stops squirming and tugging his hair, and manages to hold his gaze. ‘Thank you. Rules of engagement. You may trust me one hundred per cent. Anything we discuss goes no further. I am not part of the “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Freddie?” task force. Ssh, don’t interrupt. You can say anything, ask anything, call me any name under the sun – as indeed you already did last year. I’m unshockable. Please don’t bother being winsome: I have no charm receptors in my brain. No need to impress me, I am already impressed, or I wouldn’t be here. Finally, don’t lie to me. I will be able to tell, and it will piss me off. So, to summarize: say what you like and I will listen. And then you will listen to me and do as you’re told. How does that sound?’
Freddie blinked. ‘Honestly? Like you’re a kind of a bell end?’ Whoa. Scary silence. ‘Um, you said I
could say anything?’
‘Ah! I see – you’d finished. I was waiting to be told to go fuck myself.’
‘Gah, about that? Really sorry. I just kinda lost it? Only then, later? I tried to, like, take what you said on board, and address it? And not be all, you know? Thing is, yeah? I’m, I’m like, gah, kinda everything’s always all—’
He has his hand up. ‘I’m going to stop you there, Mr May, as you are no longer making sense. And we need to order.’ He turns to the barista. ‘Double espresso, and a glass of mineral water, San Pellegrino, if you have it? Excellent. Freddie.’
‘Oh, um, yeah, can I get a latte?’
The waitress leaves. Freddie looks out over the town. A seagull comes in, legs dangling, to land on a roof ridge. This is death. No, no good. Can’t handle this. Got to get out.
There’s a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t take fright, darling.’
Ah nuts, now he’s gonna cry?
‘What’s on your heart?’
‘Dude, I like, I just . . . can’t do this? I’m a fuck-up, yeah? I fuck stuff up, I can’t do this, this, being a grown-up thing, OK?’ Are you mad? Shut up! ‘I know it’s lame, but I can’t handle myself, the money, running my life, the whole, gah, being responsible for shit? I’m trying to be like, organized, but . . . What?’
He laughs. ‘Nobody expects you to be organized! You’re a divo. Divos have managers.’ Freddie stares. ‘Be kinder to yourself. We are none of us omnicompetent. Ah, thank you.’
The waitress sets down the drinks. Freddie holds it together till she’s gone. Ah, nuts. Like when he was six? Boarding for the first time, Mum’s just left him? Can’t stop sobbing. Dude just waits, puts a hand on his arm. Then Freddie’s telling him the stuff he’s never told anyone. Like he’s opened that cupboard where he’s been hiding junk for years and now the whole fucking lot is falling out, just falling out, falling out.
Yeah. Turns out he’s pretty much unshockable.
And then, like three coffees and a million paper napkins later? ‘Oh, God. Dude, I am totally in love with you?’
Unseen Things Above Page 18
