Unseen Things Above

by Catherine Fox

  Neil squeezed Ed’s hands. ‘Listen. I’m sorry for running my big gob. I get that it makes things hard for you. I mean the whole Roddy and Veronica thing. So I’ll tell him to get back in his basket, we’ll not be doing the interview. OK?’

  ‘I’m sorry – what interview?’ Silence. ‘You promised him we’d do an interview?’

  Ed watched the lie forming. Like a big blatant bubble, right in teacher’s face, while denying he had any gum. I’m sick of being the grown-up in this relationship, he thought.

  ‘Course not! It’s just . . . He may have that impression, is all. Oh, fine then, fine. I’ll un-tell him. I’ll cancel. That’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘Please do that, Neil.’ The grip tightened. ‘Oh, God. Now what?’

  ‘Um. Listen, you know I told you I saw Roddy in London – no? Oh. Well, anyway, I did and we got to talking over drinks? Well, he was ranting about the scoop that got away – you know what he’s like – the last bishop, the one there was all the talk about? Well. Thing is, I might’ve given him a wee tip-off there. About who might know. And now I’m thinking we should maybe warn . . . him?’

  ‘Who? Oh, God. Not Freddie May?’

  ‘Aye.’ Neil winced. ‘And I was thinking, maybe it would be better coming from you . . . ?’

  ‘No. No! I hate him. You can’t ask me to do this, Neil.’

  ‘But I promised you I’d never contact him again! Please? I feel really bad, big man. Roddy’ll eat him and spit out the feathers, poor wee daftie.’

  ‘No. I’m not doing it.’

  It’s Monday morning. The pest control man flies his Harris hawk round Lindchester Cathedral Close, to keep the pigeon population down. Round the spire, off, off forth, over rooftop and chimney pot, striding high there, out across battlement and wooded slope, then back to the falconer’s call, jesses trailing (oh, my chevalier!). But there is no gold-vermillion moment for the pest control Harris hawk. It is never allowed to make the kill. The public doesn’t like to see that. So the falconer feeds it a defrosted turkey poult, and puts it back in its cage. He is still loading the cage into the back of his van when the first pigeon sidles to the edge of the roof, cocks his head and peers down with a bonkers eye. It’s all right boys, he’s going.

  It was the dean who went to find Miss Blatherwick first thing this morning, and told her that the court appearance later in the week – for which she had been preparing her soul for so many months – would be cancelled. The accused died in his sleep last night. Peacefully in his sleep.

  Miss Blatherwick sits now in the choir vestry, in the armpitty smell of ancient cassock. There’s the familiar choral detritus of scores, folders, half-eaten packets of Polos, and wind-up racing nuns. Well, there will surely now be an enquiry into how the cathedral and diocese handled the business all those years ago. Aged bishops and deans (as well as aged matrons!) will still have to endure seeing the behaviour of the 1970s scrutinized through twenty-first century lenses. None shall escape; except the former chaplain who slipped away last night. Or will he? Was that departure actually peaceful?

  Miss Blatherwick is not a universalist. She believes that it is possible to reject the grace of God. It has to be, or whither free will? If grace were inescapable, and all are tumbled into heaven, willy-nilly, then how is one to justify this appalling charade of human suffering? What is one to say to those little boys whose presence she can still sense here in this room? Never mind, dear, it’s just a theological experiment, and in heaven all tears are wiped away?

  And yet one longs to be a universalist! For not a single soul, however corrupt, to lie beyond redemption. And indeed, how could there be limits to grace – or whither God’s omnipotence? Well, well, finer minds than hers have puzzled over this old chestnut. The question now was, what one ought to do? She had been all prepared, as it were dressed up in Sunday best, and now there was no court ordeal to be faced. What is she to do with this surplus energy?

  But this is to wallow in self-absorption. As if she mattered! How must the victims be feeling? Cheated; how could they feel anything other than cheated? Perhaps this feels like the ultimate in closing of ranks, that the Almighty himself is now collaborating and moving the perpetrator on one last time without bringing him to book! Fanciful? Perhaps. But how one clings to the notion of judgement! Surely death is not a getting off the hook, but a calling to account! It is not so very long now till Advent. She can almost hear a voice singing at the dark west end of the cathedral. I look from afar, and behold I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth . . .

  And it will not be long now before Miss Blatherwick herself will be called to account. Without being morbid, she’s had her three scores years and ten. And when that day comes, what can one do but throw oneself on the mercy of the court? And find it in abundance, one hopes. As one must hope the chaplain had done, although every instinct cries out for vengeance.

  Perhaps my readers are hankering for justice to be done in the matter of the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva? I know I am. I chafe with Jane and Matt at the thought that she is now privy to an account of their relationship. I long, as Jane does, to deck her in the student bistro, when she comes and sits near Jane’s table and stares at her. Jane knows perfectly well that Veronica would love nothing more than to provoke a confrontation, but I’m glad to report that Veronica has underestimated the ocean depths of Jane’s counter-suggestibility. No bathysphere can plumb those dark fathoms, where eyeless bioluminescent monsters pulse, and extremophiles unknown to science seethe in boiling sulphur vents.

  Bishop Harry has read over Matt’s response and today he will decide that this offence does not merit a formal rebuke. And yes, Veronica will contest this decision loudly, and I dare say she will get on the phone to her new best, best friend, Roddy (she adores Roddy). Neil is no longer answering her calls, for some reason.

  I ought to take you, reader, into the consciousness of the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva. I promised at the beginning of this tale that no doors are locked to the long inquisitive nose of my narrative. And yet, I must confess I balk at the idea of voyaging deep into the terrain of Veronica’s psyche. I have no maps, and all the agreed landmarks of human interaction shift as I approach them. The best I can do is direct you to the internet with the hint that you might search ‘personality disorder’. I am with Dominic on this one: I can’t bear to be in the same room as her. Perhaps this tells us something? I wonder whether something intolerable happened to her as a small child. Something which no decent, kind person could look upon. We sense in her some unnamed thing, some suffering creature, flayed, nailed to a wall and still alive, but way beyond our ability to save. Sadly, this does not make the day-to-day business of loving Veronica any easier. We are deflected from pity by all the manipulation, the gob-smacking confabulations, by her ravenous attention-seeking; and in the end we must flee, because it feels as though we can barely save ourselves – let alone her – from the monster.

  Anyway, Jane has other things to occupy her. She cannot expunge Dominic’s accusation from the blackboard of her brain. It stands in chalky block capitals for the whole class to see (Jane’s brain hasn’t yet adopted interactive smart boards). YOUR VIEW OF MARRIAGE IS OUTMODED. Naturally, she has had many arguments with him since he told her this, arguments in which he was trounced and made to whimper like a pup. Admittedly, these arguments have only taken place in Jane’s head. She reflects on this with her usual academic rigour: why haven’t you pursued this conversation with Dom, eh? Afraid he’s right? Dammit. Yes, I’m beginning to wonder. My students don’t seem to have any hang-ups about marriage, do they? Heck, they don’t even seem to have problems with becoming Mrs Husband’s-Name, for God’s sake! Maybe I should talk to them about this? Or preferably to some other paid-up Young Person not attending Poundstretcher. Well, Danny would be back soon. And there was young tarty-pants. Not seen him for a bit. (Pang of displaced maternal guilt.) Hope he’s getting on all right, and not putting too much lay into his clerking. Maybe she s
hould hunt him down and get his opinion on all this marriage business.

  And that is why Jane was found in Lindchester Cathedral on Thursday for choral evensong. She lurked in the nave, rather than rushing to bag one of the prebendal stalls in the quire, like a normal cathedral Anglican. This meant that she was cut off from the liturgical action by the elaborate quire screen; but she rather liked that sense of watching from the outside. As though there were indeed another realm where angels ascended and descended, and went about the business of heaven without Jane Rossiter having to conjure it all into existence by the sheer force of her faith.

  Purcell setting. She’d narrowly missed Day 15, with its psalmathon. The familiar collects slipped past. Lighten our darkness. How it brought back memories of gear-crunching in Book of Common Prayer term at theological college. Father, Son and Holy Spost. Now came the anthem. Brahms. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen. Ah, there was Freddie’s voice, unfurling the tenor line like a shining ribbon of gold. She smiled. How effortless he made it sound.

  Jane didn’t bother standing when the service was over and choir and clergy processed out. Freddie caught her eye as he passed, so she could just wait here till he’d got his kit off.

  That’s when she spotted him: Roderick Fallon, coming down the quire like an animated angle-poise lamp. Ooh, little speed-bump of dread under the wheels there! Why was he sniffing around? He couldn’t be after Matt, could he?

  She watched as he approached, secure in her middle-aged invisibility. Not that Fallon had ever had an eye for The Ladies. Yes, not hard to do a reverse ageing process and discern in this middle-aged man the lanky undergraduate she had hated. There was still something of the etiolated ugly-pretty boy about him, the big mouth, like Mick Jagger racked in some dungeon till he was six foot two. Fallon was obviously waiting for someone. Maybe Jane should go over and ruin his day?

  She was pondering how best to achieve this when Freddie appeared. Oh well, another time. Jane grabbed her bag and got to her feet.

  But Fallon stepped forward and intercepted Freddie.

  Uh-oh.

  But never fear. Our good friend Father Ed – because he is so lovely – did get in his car and drive to the Close to warn Freddie last Friday after all. (No, Neil does not deserve him.) The result was that Freddie recognized Fallon at once, and launched the most spectacular short plank offensive that Jane was ever privileged to overhear. Would you like to listen in?

  ‘Excuse me. Freddie May?’

  ‘Ohh, hey! Well, hey, you! How’re you doing? God, how’s things?’

  ‘Um, not sure we’ve met, actually. Roderick Fallon.’

  ‘Oh, thank God for that!’ Radiant smile. ‘Thought we’d fucked and I’d forgotten? No offence.’

  ‘Right. I’m a journalist. You may remember tweeting me last summer?’

  ‘Yeah! Actually, no? I tweet a lot of guys? I mean, a lot of guys?’ Tongue stud.

  ‘I’m sure. This was in connection with Paul Henderson.’

  ‘Hnn. Paul . . . ? Ohh! Bishop Paul!’

  ‘Yes. Bishop Paul Henderson.’

  ‘Bishop Paul.’ Long boss-eyed pause. ‘Awesome.’

  ‘Yes. Do you remember tweeting me, to say you could tell me a lot of things about Bishop Paul Henderson? Late last summer?’

  ‘I did? Hnn. Maybe?’

  ‘You have no recollection of that?’

  ‘Nu-uh. Maybe I was off my tits?’ Big happy grin. ‘Happens.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking you were his chauffeur?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you lived with him?’

  ‘Yeah. Him and Suze. Totally love those guys!’

  ‘Well, maybe we could talk? Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘Yeah, we should totally do that some time, but right now I’m meeting my aunty? Hey, Aunty Jane!’

  Aunty Jane does a little finger wave.

  ‘Can I have your number, then?’

  ‘Hey, you so can, only, thing is? Lost my phone?’

  ‘Have you now. Well, here’s my card. Ring me, and we can fix a time.’

  ‘Awesome. Catch ya later . . . I wanna say . . . Roger? Roderick! Cool, I’ll ring you sometime, Roddy?’

  I regret to say that when Roderick returned to his car, he discovered that the vergers had given him another ticket, even though he was legitimately parked this time.

  Chapter 26

  There. Jane deletes her browsing history. Those searches never happened. She did not just go on the Church of England website and force herself to wade through the marriage service with its smorgasbord of prefaces and declarations, vows and proclamations, blessings and registrations. No, siree. Nor did she go on gov.uk and familiarize herself with registry office Marriages and Civil Partnerships to find out all about Giving Notice At Your Local Register Office; or calculate that if she got a move on, they could theoretically get it done and dusted while Danny was in the country.

  Nope, Jane did none of these things.

  It is now half term. The cathedral choir is on vacation. The canon treasurer and his wife have nipped off to Norfolk for a clan gathering. Friends of Freddie May – aware that the devil finds work for idle tenors – may relax. He is not rattling around that big house all by himself. No indeed; Freddie May has been invited to join the Dorian Singers (omigod, only the actual Dorian Singers?) to record their Christmas CD. The director has looked with favour on Freddie’s sanitized online presence and rewarded him with paid work. They will be recording in some secret location with a fabulous acoustic in the far north, where we, alas! may not follow. I’d say Freddie is excited and terrified in equal measure. Dr Jacks stalks the corridors of his brain like Professor Snape, wand raised to perform the Humiliatus curse. But recently he has started to appear in the guise of Mr Darcy as well: In vain I have struggled, Mr May! It will not do. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you!

  Well, the truth will probably lie somewhere between these literary paradigms. At any rate, Freddie will gain some valuable experience singing with this group of top-notch musicians. If he’s lucky he may also get to carry Mr Dorian’s music case, and be suffered to hang around and adore him in whimpering inarticulacy. So Freddie packs a holdall and heads for Lindchester station. Yeah! Finally, he’s got his shit together, his dreams are coming true?

  Uh-oh. Was that the gun-foot klaxon going off again?

  I dare say the reader is hankering to know about Jane and Freddie’s discussion, the one that led to all the internet browsing Jane is now pretending never happened. Come with me, back to last week, and we will hover in the October dusk, and watch them as they leave the cathedral. There they go now, arm in arm across the Close (while over on the far side Fallon, like a gangly Rumpelstiltskin, stamps on his parking ticket so hard I’m afraid his leg will go right through the cobbles). Freddie and Aunty Jane pass under the gatehouse and down the steep street to Lindchester’s Oldest Pub. Or perhaps this one is the Smallest? Most historic English towns boast a couple of each. Anyway, the pub in question has a fine selection of locally brewed ales, and that’s what’s important here. Watch them enter the King’s Head, or the Caput Regis, as it is waggishly known in choral circles. And now we glide down to street level, fold our viewless wings, and slip in after them.

  ‘So, I imagine you’re all in favour of marriage, little nephew? Cheers.’ Jane raised her Old Lindcastrian Gold.

  ‘Course. What’s not to be in favour of?’ He clinked his Peroni glass against her pint. ‘Why? Has Matt popped the question? Omigod! He has! You’re blushing. That is so sweet! Go for it! Ooh, want me to sing during the signing of the—’

  ‘Hold your horses, sunshine. Nobody’s getting married.’ Jane took another pull of her pint. ‘No, I’m . . . simply trying to understand what the big love affair with marriage is, all of a sudden.’

  ‘Ha ha ha! Sure you are, Jane.’

  ‘Shut up, this is purely academic. Yes, so speaking as a hairy- legged old feminist, I’ve always viewed marriage as an
oppressive institution.’

  ‘Wha-a-a’? No way! Oppressive how? Seriously, Matt’s gonna, like, oppress you? God, I’d marry him in a heartbeat if he asked me.’ He stroked her arm. ‘Aw, c’mon, Janey, why don’t you guys get married?’

  Jane cantered him through a brisk little history lecture, footnoted throughout by a Marxist-feminist interrogation of the institution as she understood it. He listened meltingly, shaking his head, as though she were his granny grumbling on about why she couldn’t be doing with Kindle, she liked the feel and smell of a proper book.

  ‘Yeah, no, I get what you’re saying, only it’s not like that any more?’

  ‘Oh? What is it like, then? Go on. Elucidate.’

  ‘So yeah, it’s more . . . Um, y’know? He’s my everything and I’m his? For better and worse? For ever?’ He began tugging his hair and fidgeting. Classic body language of the student who has not familiarized himself with the set text. ‘Hey, would you stop with the whole bitch-tutor from hell thing?’

  ‘Sorry. But can we focus on the question of whether everyone’s just mesmerized by the shiny twenty-thousand pound wedding, for a moment? Because my concern is—’

  He sighed. ‘God, you’re so . . . explain-y. You sound like a biologian, Jane!’

  She laughed. ‘I think “biologist” is the word you’re after, sweetums.’

  ‘Whatever. Like Dawkins? Einstein-evolution-genes-science. Boom! NO GOD, religious dickheads! And I’m all, whoa, but what about in your actual soul? Where you can literally feel God? Like, look, listen.’ Freddie sang her part of that evening’s anthem: Mein’ Seel’ verlanget und sehnet sich nach den Vorhöfen des Herren. ‘Make sense?’

  ‘Lovely, but what’s all that got to do with marriage?’

  ‘So yeah, I’d give anything to marry the man I love? My soul longs. To be joined, in the sight of God and yeah, everyone?’ He spread his hands. ‘I don’t know what else to tell you.’

  ‘Well, sorry to piss on your bonfire, but you’re still just trying to map yourself on to the Hollywood romance narrative, like a good little consumer. You say you’d give anything to marry to the man you love. And who is that, eh? You don’t know, you’ve not met him!’ Freddie flinched. ‘Well, sorry, but that’s not a million miles from my starry-eyed undergraduates, who tell me they’ve got their entire wedding planned. They aren’t even in a relationship, and they’ve already chosen the fucking bridesmaids’ shoes, for God’s sake!’