Unseen Things Above

by Catherine Fox

  ‘Have you borrowed Philip’s keys?’

  ‘Ah, right, about that. I’ll totally put them back? Hhnn. Probably I should’ve asked first?’

  ‘Oh, Freddie.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Dean.’

  She sighs.

  He steps closer. ‘Mrs Dean? Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really, if I’m honest. I’ve got rather a lot on my mind.’

  ‘The new bishop thing? Yeah, saw that on Twitter just now. Can I . . . do anything?’

  Yes, you can stop adding to my problems, you feckless dummy. ‘Not really, thanks. Unless . . . Would you sing that anthem again? It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Hey. You bet. Cool. So we always sang it back in the day? When I was a chorister? Back then I was, yeah, yeah, Hurford again. Kind of, it was just part of the repertoire? But now, when everything’s fucked— gah, sorry, Mrs Dean! When things are like . . . complicated? Still sometimes I . . . coz, yeah, I mean the words? And then it’s like, y’know? If that makes sense?’

  Marion shakes her head and almost smiles. ‘Well. In a way, Freddie.’

  ‘Awesome.’ He walks back to the far end of the quire. And then his voice, that bright dark-edged voice, shucks off its earthbound stumbling and soars:

  In the hour of my distress,

  When temptations me oppress,

  And when I my sins confess,

  Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

  When I lie within my bed,

  Sick in heart and sick in head,

  And with doubts discomforted,

  Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

  Marion – sick in heart and head at what has happened, and at what must come – lets the tears fall quietly, knowing they are hidden by the dark.

  That was last Wednesday night. Since then, as you may well imagine, there has been much soul-searching and not a little recrimination over the leak. Some very stiff emails were sent. But so far nobody has confessed. Fallon, of course, refuses to name his source.

  Marion – as chair of the Lindchester CNC – has been testing the truth of Kipling’s ‘If’ poem to its limits. She has kept her head while all around were losing theirs and blaming her. The truth she has spoken has been twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, and she has endured that. She will not, as a result, attain the ultimate dignity of becoming A Man; but in due course I hope she will be a bishop. Frustratingly, she is powerless to correct the impression Fallon’s piece created, because to do so would involve revealing the confidential discussions of the CNC. While intolerant views – no, homophobic views – were aired, that was not the full story. But on the whole, Marion, Bishop Harry and the diocesan communications officer, along with Bishop elect Steve, have handled the flak deftly. Completely off the record and for your ears only, the communications officer did console himself by composing a spoof press release that Gene himself could scarcely have improved upon. (‘“I’m not a bigot. Some of my best friends are shirt-lifters,” says Lindchester dean.’)

  It will blow over. Marion knows it will. But right now she’s still smarting. At night she cannot prevent the merry-go-round of suspicion setting off on another mad twirl. Who was it? Which member of the CNC had spoken to Fallon? One by one she calls the local members to the stand and cross-examines them. Nobody cracks. She’d swear to their innocence. They are good folk! Fallon, the key witness in the case, thwarts her by claiming his right to silence. It’s clear he’s seen at least one crucial email. How much more does he know? Maybe it was a member of the national CNC? But why, why? Surely it served nobody’s interests, advanced nobody’s cause. Because the whole process of senior appointments has been held up for ridicule. Yes, the system’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement on what went before!

  Ah, leave off your fretting, Marion, she chides herself. Hush that fairground in your soul. The cathedral clock chimes. Two a.m. The wind sighs and the deanery windows rattle. Hush, my soul.

  But no! The jangly music starts up, and off we go again. Could it have been Guilden himself? Every instinct rejects that idea. Of course he will be feeling crushed and disappointed – as everyone does, when they are shortlisted but don’t get the job! There’s no way he’d want to be dissected in the press, or have the world’s nose metaphorically pressed to his windows! Besides, he will have known from the feedback what happened, that Steve simply performed better. Can she acquit herself? Did they just use the Diocesan Growth Strategy as an escape route from bitter division? No! Yet she cannot deny the secret relief. Oh, leave it. Leave this pointless picking over the bones. Comfort me . . . Outside the clock chimes three. Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

  Yes, it will blow over, just as other catastrophes have done. In the meantime, things remain pretty grim. My readers will no doubt remember that Roderick Fallon has a spot of previous with Lindchester. Almost a year ago he experienced the chagrin of watching the most stupendous episcopal catch of the decade twist off his hook and vanish into the weeds. It is not the purpose of this tale to suggest that journalists are driven by vengeful malice, any more than we seek to imply that canons curse and precentors like their tipple. However, I hope I may persuade you that Roderick Fallon, when he opened this particular can of CNC worms, was energized by more than a simple journalistic desire to expose institutional homophobia and see truth prevail.

  At a local level Fallon shot himself in the foot. His piece belittled the Lindchester CNC members. This is like belittling a family member. While we reserve the right to abuse our mad aunts and surly teens in whatever terms we choose, we don’t take kindly to a stranger wading in. Thus colleagues, sniffy about having yet another Evangelical thrust upon them, had to execute a swift about-turn. Perhaps Fallon was on the side of life? I leave that to my reader to determine. But moral rectitude is seldom palatable when dished up with a large side order of obnoxiousness.

  The top secret dinner was therefore much more convivial than it might otherwise have been. I am pleased about that, for Steve is lovely too, and Sonya is not a nightmare. There is no tick beside Steve’s name on the Senior Appointments list in the ‘WI’ column. (‘Wife Impossible’.) So the meal was lovely, lovely, lovely. Perhaps a little too much wine was drunk? That is not for me to say. At any rate, not a whiff of Poppinsical disapproval was detected on the face of the bishop designate. He laughed very hard at the canon treasurer’s impersonations. Yes, provided Steve is biddable in matters liturgical, the cathedral canons have high hopes that this might be workable.

  And he will be biddable! Unlike Mary Poppins, he gets cathedrals and the choral tradition and knows his place. During the meal it emerged – gloriously! – that Steve had actually been a chorister at another cathedral in his youth, back when he was still called ‘Stephen’ (or Pennington Major), and before he tragically went off on some summer camp and fell into the clutches of the evanjellybabies. Such a man was to be pitied, not reviled; much as one might pity someone who, through no fault of his own, had lost an arm in a baler. These were the sentiments laboriously expressed by the precentor in the taxi home. ‘Du hast gesoffen, darling,’ observed his wife.

  Meanwhile, back in their little vestry, the vergers have been congratulating themselves once again on issuing Fallon with a ticket last year when he parked in the Close. He was not specifically targeted. I can vouch for the fact that, in a completely even-handed way, the vergers of Lindchester Cathedral will ticket any illegally parked convertible, be it Audi, Merc, Porsche or BMW. Another time it will be personal, though. I am sorry to say that Gavin has even been speculating about how much damage a carelessly driven cherry-picker might do to an S5 Cabriolet if it happened to be left on yellow lines.

  October has arrived, bringing with it storms and rain and hail. But today it is calm. Freddie May is out running. You may already have inferred that he did not flounce off to London, get off his tits and paint ceilings. Instead, he remained in Lindchester, where he amended his life according to his mentor’s word. His online presence is now impeccably professional. After a night of heart-searching, it came
to him that there might be a helpful distinction to be made between getting picked on for being gay, and getting picked on for being a dickhead. So the following morning, without even being prompted, he sent grovelling emails to the director of music and the canon precentor, in which he lamented his hissy fit, his indiscreet use of social media, and begged to be given another chance. Happily, the director of music and the precentor were inclined to mercy. What role the new tail suit had in this, I cannot say: but it hangs on the back of Freddie’s bedroom door like a mentorly presence, where it sternly monitors his every move.

  Totty (to whom Freddie’s heart is open and from whom no secrets are hid) very much admired the suit. She stood over Freddie (as Miss Blatherwick had done when he was a chorister) till he’d produced a proper handwritten thank you note like a well brought up boy. ‘Yeah, no, he’ll go mental, he said I could only thank him once?’ Freddie protested in vain. ‘Rubbish! He’ll be expecting a thank you note,’ said Totty. And Totty was right, for the letter prompted a reply, beautifully handwritten in fountain pen: You’re welcome, sweetheart. A x

  OMFG! Freddie had no words to express his feelings on reading this, just a shaken Scrabble bag of letters. Nor can I easily articulate them. I would need to gauge star height and take ocean depth soundings in order to calculate just how much in love poor Freddie now is.

  And so he goes out running. The world is fuzzy-edged today; it is all padded and wadded with mists and old man’s beard, with thistledown and willowherb seeds. High wisps of mare’s tail clouds and vapour trails drift in the blue. Come with me now, and we will fly from Lindchester out along Freddie’s long punishing route towards Cardingforth. Look, a golf course down there, pearlized in dew, the greens frosted like sage leaves, like sea glass. Velvety brown fields have a watercolour wash of winter wheat. It rained in the night, and now the roads are blinding. Sheep graze in faded water meadows. How green it all is, the trees still in leaf – in October! Oh, uncanny. Where are the frozen puddles of childhood, the red noses on the way to school? Look at the Linden! It lies a ribbon of mirror as Freddie pounds along the bank.

  We climb, then swoop, then climb again – ah, how our DNA knows the art of flying: we come from the birds! – and below we watch Freddie pass under a graffiti-tagged bridge, and then for a straight mile the railway unspools beside the river, sunlight wincing along the tracks as we fly. Pylons play like giants across the landscape, cat’s cradle, French skipping. They stride massive, yet invisible to the human eye trained only to be offended by wind turbines. Magpies in pairs swirl between ash trees. Joy, joy! And there’s a jay on a fence, dandy flash of chequered turquoise, like underpants glimpsed over waistband.

  That is Carding-le-Willow below us now. See the houses backing on to the railway line? Little conservatories and plastic gutters tick softly in the sun’s warmth. Brambles tangle up an embankment where old sofas have been toppled over the back fence, out of sight, out of mind.

  Freddie runs on. Distant spires rise from clumps of trees, the parishes of rural Lindfordshire, the old prebendal lands, all Gaydens great and small, and the wise and wonderful Itchington Episcopi. Cardingforth is a mile off now, with its Cotman idyll of a humpbacked bridge: the halfway point. Steam ascends to heaven from the cooling towers, so quiet, so benign, so unlike the mushroom clouds that menaced the edges of our childhood.

  On the other bank a white-haired woman walks in her floral wellies, with a three-legged greyhound on a lead. The leak has been weighing heavily on Father Wendy’s mind too. I dare say the reader is anxious to be reassured that she kept her oath of confidentiality, and has spoken to nobody about the deliberations of the CNC. Alas, I can offer no such consolation. Wendy has blabbed everything. There is nothing that Pedro doesn’t know about the affair.

  ‘Oh, Pedro, Pedro, Pedro! What a mess this is. Poor Marion! I’m trying my hardest not to think unkind thoughts about whoever talked to the press. Why do you suppose they did it? Oh, you’re right, it must feel like a life-and-death matter, mustn’t it? It is a life-and-death matter! We only have to look at what’s happening to gays and lesbians in other parts of the world. Oh dear, Pedro! If only Guilden had interviewed better! But he just doesn’t find the diocesan growth strategy congenial, does he? With the best will in the world, he wasn’t going to be able to take Lindchester forward. Whereas Steve . . . Yes. He’ll do the job, won’t he? Yes?’

  But Pedro has seen something. Moorhen? Moorhen! There, emerging from the rushes on the path ahead. He tugs on his harness. Wendy laughs. ‘Not yet, darling, I’m sorry. We’ll take you back to Northumberland in half term, I promise. And you can chase seagulls to your heart’s content.’

  So who did blab? Was it Geoff? No. But a chill crossed his heart when the news broke and the angry emails exploded in his in-box. He felt to blame. Why? He hadn’t spoken to anyone, he’d taken no phone calls in anyone’s hearing, he’d never left important emails open and unattended.

  But had he been sufficiently careful? He can’t prove anything. Can’t even ask, because that would unleash a tidal wave of toxic counter-accusation. He tries to imagine going to Marion and saying, ‘I think it may have been my colleague checking my private emails without permission.’ No, he can’t, he just can’t.

  And now Fallon expertly re-stokes the fire with another feature, this time upending a vat of scorn on the House of Bishops and their deliberations on ‘Facilitated Conversations’. He expatiates on hypocrisy and double standards. He alludes to cases where senior church figures are sitting in judgement on gay priests who want to marry, while they themselves are subject to disciplinary procedures for conduct that is unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of the clergy . . .

  The communications officer gives the archdeacon the heads up. Matt reads the piece in his office. Ooo-kay. Looks as though Fallon’s got him in his sights. No prizes for guessing who his source is. Matt drums his fingers on his desk. He has not yet sent off his respondent’s reply. He’s playing the waiting game because he’s a bloody-minded sod when his chain is yanked. And it’s been well and truly yanked now. You bet your rainbow laces it has.

  Father Ed doesn’t see Fallon’s article till that evening. He’s just finished reading it when he hears Neil’s key in the door. Neil (still in disgrace for his overcompetitive behaviour at the Harvest Beetle Drive) sweeps in with a blast of London. Kiss, kiss, c’mon, let’s eat out, big man.

  Ed taps the page. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about this, Neil?’

  ‘Me? No. Not read it.’

  Ed stares into those wide, honest-as-the-day baby blues.

  ‘Oh, what?’ Neil gets his U’Luvka out of the freezer. ‘Och, it’s just Roddy doing his thing.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t read it,’ says Ed. ‘Please tell me you didn’t put him up to this?’

  Neil pours a shot. ‘Yes, well, and why hasn’t the recycling been taken out?’

  Chapter 24

  It’s Friday. Ed sits in his study and emails his spiritual director:

  Dear Father Malcolm,

  Can I arrange to see you very soon, please? I find I’m not coping. If it isn’t possible to meet this week, please pray for me. Briefly, the things I need to talk over concern Neil. I am finding his behaviour impossible to deal with. I can’t seem to get him to understand how deeply what he’s doing distresses me, and how talking to journalists impacts on my role as priest in the diocese. Sometimes I cannot see a way forward for us at all.

  If you can make time this week, I’d be most grateful.

  Ed

  In the next room, Neil drafts a letter to Bishop Bob:

  Dear Bob Bishop Robert Right Reverend Sir Lord Bishop,

  You probably won’t remember me Just a note to say, I hope you are recuperating on the mend now. Ed and I are I was wondering whether you are up for feeling well enough yet to receive visitors, as I would very much really appreciate value appreciate the opportunity to visit come and see you some time to talk through some issues just to say �
��Hi’ just to introduce myself and FUCK WANK.

  Neil starts again: ‘Dear Bishop, I was wondering if WANK!!!!!’

  Neil gets in his car and drives to Martonbury. Ed hears the Porsche snarl off into the distance. Where is Neil going now? Ed never asks any more. It is either something perfectly innocent (so why check?) or Neil will lie (so why check?).

  The email is sent. There’s nothing he can do now but wait. Father Malcolm might be busy, he might be away for a few days, on holiday for two weeks. Ah, God! What is Ed going to do with himself? What is the point of bothering to take a day off any more, if he and Neil can’t seem to be in the same room without fighting?

  So Ed gets out of the vicarage and walks for miles in the rain. From Gayden Magna to Gayden Parva. From Gayden Parva to Itchington Episcopi. I am the vicar here. And here. And here. I am a priest, a clerk in holy orders and prebendary of Gayden Parva. This is what I am. From Itchington Episcopi to Turlham. He walks and walks. As if this is Rogationtide and he’s beating the bounds, beseeching, begging for mercy. Help me, help me. From Turlham back across more prebendal acres to Gayden Parva again. Along lanes where, since Anglo-Saxon times, priests innumerable have trudged, trudged, ridden their horses, driven their carriages, their Austins, Fords, Skodas. Under Midlands skies, in Lindfordshire rain and Lindfordshire mud. Loving the people, hating the people, blessing them, baptizing them, marrying and burying them.

  I really don’t matter, thinks Ed. I am just passing through. He pictures his name on the long, long list of incumbents, from Walter de This, Henry de la That, through plain English names, John Wyatt, Richard Graves, down the list, down past Reformation, Protectorate, Restoration, through plague, famine and war, and again war. And today the vicar is Father Edward Bailey. And after him, what? A handful more? Are these the twilight years of the parish system that has shaped our inner and outer landscape all these centuries? He looks up at the spire of Gayden Parva church. Will its significance one day be as obscure as stone circles?