Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins

by James Runcie

  ‘Nobby?’

  ‘His real name’s Norbert but he nobbles opponents early. Norman Hunter’s the same. Leeds player. Hits the opposing forward before he knows what’s happened.’

  ‘And you’re suggesting I “nobble” Cloughie?’

  ‘Put the frighteners on him, Sidney. He’s a “forward player” all right. You don’t want your au pair girl going back to Germany for an early bath.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leaving the field of play . . . Up the duff . . .’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll get to that stage, Geordie. We don’t have to do anything drastic.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ Keating stood up to order another round at the bar. ‘That’s probably what they all thought at Millingham School. “Don’t worry too much. It’s nothing that serious.” Then, before you know it, the chaplain’s in prison, the science block explodes, and we’re in all sorts of murky waters. If they’d behaved properly to begin with then we wouldn’t have had any of this nonsense. That’s what you’ve got to do with Clough. Go in hard and early. Take the moral high ground – even if it goes down badly.’

  ‘It probably will.’

  ‘But that’s your job. Moral authority. What’s the matter with the clergy? Why can’t you lot practise what you preach?’

  ‘It’s not always easy.’

  ‘Think about it, Sidney. You have to make a stand and compensate for the failings of your colleagues. You’ve got to be twice the man they are. Otherwise you might as well pack it in.’

  Before Sidney could speak to Sabine or follow his friend’s advice, he had visitors. Marcus Pearson’s parents arrived to tell him that their son had been expelled. Could the new archdeacon do anything to intervene and rescind the decision? Perhaps he could speak to the Bishop of Ely, who was Chairman of the Governors, or even to the Archbishop of Canterbury who, they thought, was ‘Visitor’ to the school and therefore the final court of appeal?

  Sidney was surprised by the turn of events. He had thought Marcus Pearson to be in an inviolable position.

  ‘We can’t do much if he confesses to the explosion,’ Sir Joseph Pearson explained. ‘I don’t know what the bloody boy thought he was doing. He’s claimed responsibility for everything.’

  ‘They asked him to apologise to Mr Paine,’ his wife, Lady Marjorie, continued. ‘The headmaster called him into his study and said that if he owned up and said he was sorry then they would find a way to punish him but still keep him at the school. Marcus refused. Instead, he told them he was proud of what he had done and was unrepentant. We can’t understand it. He swore to us on the day itself that he hadn’t had anything to do with it.’

  ‘And,’ his father added, ‘he was playing cricket at the time. I was hoping he might get a good fifty. He’s due the runs.’

  ‘So now we’re going to have to take him back to London,’ Lady Marjorie complained. ‘Is there anything you can do? The headmaster implied that you were doing a bit of investigating. I think you’ve already spoken to Marcus.’

  ‘Indeed I have.’

  ‘And did he claim responsibility?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then why has he done so now?’

  ‘I have an idea, but I need to talk to a few more people before coming to any conclusion, and to one person in particular.’

  ‘Can you tell the school?’

  ‘That is the problem. I am not sure that I can. But I can ask them to reconsider your son’s expulsion.’

  ‘In the light of all we have done for them?’

  ‘No. That would not be the reason. I would be asking, instead, because of what your son has done. I think it may be rather noble.’

  ‘Noble? Marcus? You must have the wrong man. He’s never done anything decent in his life.’

  ‘Perhaps because no one has believed him capable,’ Sidney replied. ‘I am talking about Marcus Pearson. Your son.’

  After the Pearsons had left, Hildegard refrained from asking too many questions. She did not want her husband to be any more distracted from what she considered to be the most pressing event in their lives, namely the potential ruination of their au pair girl. Had Sidney been to see Canon Clough and was he actually going to do anything? If not, then she was going to take matters into her own hands and complain to the dean.

  ‘Don’t do that, my darling.’

  ‘Inspector Keating told me that we had to deal with the problem.’

  ‘Since when did you speak to Geordie?’

  ‘He telephoned. He wanted to change the time when he sees you next. There’s a football match against Portugal. But that’s not the important thing. Are you going to do something about this?’

  ‘We have a meeting of the Chapter this morning. I will have a word afterwards.’

  ‘It will need more than “a word”, Sidney.’

  Christopher Clough was in no mood for compromise when the two men met by the Sacrist’s Gate. ‘The fact is Sabine and I love each other,’ he announced.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Cloughie. You must be forty years older than her.’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  Sidney was not prepared for this. ‘You will look absurd.’

  ‘I have never felt more alive. If you are a connoisseur of beauty, as I am, then the mind hankers after young flesh: perfectly formed, without the flaws of ageing . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Sidney irritably.

  ‘. . . clear in contour, firm to the touch . . .’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you. You are married and your wife hasn’t lost her looks.’

  ‘I think marriage should be about more than physical appearance.’

  ‘Have you seen Sabine’s mouth? It has an extraordinary sense of invitation . . .’

  ‘These feelings are entirely inappropriate,’ said Sidney. ‘I hope you know that.’

  ‘I can’t do anything about it. Love walked in.’

  ‘Well perhaps it’s time it walked out again. I don’t want you seeing her any more.’

  ‘And what if she comes to me?’

  ‘You must send her back to us. Immediately. Hildegard is talking to her too.’

  ‘You speak as if I am some kind of criminal. I am not a danger. She likes seeing me. We have fun together.’

  ‘It’s not acceptable, Christopher. I don’t care what you think of me. I’m not letting things go any further. That’s final.’

  Sidney walked away without waiting for an answer. He was fed up with virtually every situation in which he found himself. Keating was right. The time had come to show the people of Ely what he was made of.

  Adam Barnes lived on the outskirts of Ely in a post-war new-build with a large garden and a view on to field and fen beyond. There was a dovecote in the garden and Sidney talked to Adam’s mother as she fed the birds in her care. She told him that she did not go out much. Her son and her birds were her only company. Her legs ached. She told Sidney how bad arthritis could be.

  ‘It’s not so much the pain but the energy that it takes up. Everything is such an ordeal. You have to work out if it is worth crossing a room. You plan it as a trip, Canon Chambers, thinking of all the things you have to remember so you don’t have to do it twice. I thought I was too young for all of this but it turns out I’m not. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Perhaps I could make one for you?’

  ‘That would be kind. Save me a few journeys.’

  ‘Shall we go inside?’

  ‘No, let’s stay here. It’s a good day. Not that I have many of them. The best I can say is that they are “less bad”. I know I’m not supposed to grumble – my mother always used to say “no one likes a moaner” – but I do have an excuse. Not that it helps. People were sympathetic to my problems at first but they’ve gone back to their lives now. I’m sure you’ve seen all this before. Widows. Desolate mothers.’

  ‘I have learned not to tell people that I can imagine how they feel.’

  ‘I have m
y doves, Canon Chambers. They don’t let me down. I know they will always come back. It’s like the swifts at the beginning of summer. Even after everything that’s happened, I could not imagine leaving here. I’d miss the return of the birds, the way the summer smells. There’s a weight in the air. Can you feel it? Luke could.’

  ‘Adam’s elder brother?’

  ‘I know he’s here. He’s with us in the silences. I just can’t reach him. So I wait. It’s another reason why I don’t like to go out.’

  ‘I don’t want to cause you pain in talking about it. I can tell it’s a difficult subject.’

  ‘Anything that ruins your life probably is. Did they tell you he died?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you guess?’

  ‘I didn’t want to presume. But I’d like you to tell me about it – if it isn’t too much.’

  ‘People think it was because he’d been bullied at school. That’s what they say: the friends, the doctors, the people who try to tell us it was nothing to do with the way he had been brought up and it couldn’t be our fault.’

  ‘Blame, in these cases, is seldom useful.’

  ‘You say “cases” and use the plural. There is only one case that matters to me.’

  ‘Luke was unhappy at school, I take it?’

  ‘From the start. It was odd because we thought it was all getting better. He had a new circle of friends, some of them younger than him. Marcus Pearson was one.’

  ‘The boy who has been accused of the arson?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Barnes, did your son ever tell you why he was unhappy?’

  ‘He didn’t like to say. He thought it would get him into more trouble. His housemaster said it was nothing. I even went to the chaplain. He said Luke needed time to adjust; that adolescence was difficult and that my boy was a late developer. He was an August baby so he was always the youngest in his year; the smallest, too. His voice broke after everyone else’s.’

  ‘Was it when Rev Kev was chaplain?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘I didn’t like that man very much but he was friendly with my husband and Donald said I was being silly.’

  ‘I am not sure that you were. And who was Luke’s housemaster? Was it Trevor Paine?’

  ‘Yes. He was in Galahad. Adam is in Bedivere. You know the houses are all called after the Knights of the Round Table? They advised us that it would be better to keep the boys apart. I’m not sure it was. They were less able to help each other. They almost had to pretend they weren’t brothers because that would be sissy. I wish I’d never sent them there. There’s a good state school that they could have gone to instead. Then they would have been with me. I could have kept them safe and none of this would have happened. But it was my husband’s old school and it “never did him any harm”. What a joke.’

  ‘It “harmed” his eldest son.’

  ‘It killed him. He killed himself. I can’t normally say that out loud.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Normally, I just tell people he died and they are too embarrassed to ask anything else. It’s different with you. You must hear this kind of thing all the time.’

  ‘No two things are ever the same, Mrs Barnes . . .’

  ‘Alice . . .’

  ‘Alice. You lost your son. That is a tragedy.’

  ‘It is. It was. It always will be.’

  ‘At least Adam is safe.’

  ‘You think so? I’m frightened, Canon Chambers. I always think something terrible is going to happen to him too. Once the feeling starts there’s no stopping it.’

  ‘Nothing bad will happen to your son.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I will prevent it,’ Sidney replied, not knowing how he was going to honour such a promise.

  Was Adam safe? Was any child, even his own dearest Anna, ever free from danger? As soon as a son or daughter was placed in the care of others a parent had made an act of trust. If that was misplaced or mistaken, it could soon come to be seen as carelessness or neglect. Perhaps being a parent was to live in a state of constant fear, where the cost of the freedom of youth lay in the anxiety of those who protected it?

  Because the Barnes home was near the railway station, Sidney made an instinctive decision to get on a train and call on Inspector Keating. If everything went smoothly he could manage a round trip to Cambridge in just under two hours. It might have been easier and quicker to telephone, but a visit in person would ensure that his request would be met with urgency and seriousness. He could even wait while the information was retrieved.

  It did mean missing a meeting of the cathedral finance sub-committee. This would probably cause trouble with the dean, but there were plenty of other people who were far better qualified than he was to make recommendations and Sidney decided, perhaps all too imperiously, that his own business was more pressing. Only when he had secured a window seat on a train that allowed a cooling breeze and a delightful view over summer wheat fields did he acknowledge that it was more a case of doing what he preferred to do. His choice of a visit to Cambridge was, of course, much more interesting than a tedious meeting, although it probably wasn’t as important as spending more time with Anna, whom he had continued to neglect despite his determination to appreciate her growing up.

  Why was he doing this then? Was it vanity or was it the idea that he could put his Christianity to practical use? He explained to Geordie Keating that he was just passing.

  ‘Just passing, my arse,’ his friend almost spat. ‘Although, given the context, I probably shouldn’t be talking about that part of the anatomy.’

  ‘There’s no need to be crude, Geordie.’

  ‘You enjoy it really. I’m your dose of the real world.’

  ‘It is “too much with us; late and soon”.’

  ‘Never mind all that. What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like your file on the suicide of Luke Barnes. I presume there was an investigation.’

  ‘What do you want that for? It will probably be with your local boys.’

  ‘But you could get it for me more easily . . .’

  ‘I could. But what if I don’t want to?’

  ‘Is there something to hide?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘You say that, but why wasn’t I informed in the first place?’

  ‘Because, Sidney, this is not one of our inquiries, Adam Barnes is not a suspect unless you have just made him one, and I can’t simply make our library of crimes and misdemeanours at your disposal whenever you fancy.’

  ‘Then I’ll explain why it’s necessary.’

  ‘You are not going to start questioning the coroner’s verdict, are you?’

  ‘I don’t usually go against Jarvis, as you know . . .’

  ‘Then what do you want it for?’

  ‘I want to know where it happened and if the school did anything about it.’

  ‘The family reported it. Death by misadventure, I seem to recall. There was nothing mysterious.’

  ‘That may be, but I am interested in the psychology behind it. What drove a boy like that to take his own life?’

  ‘I imagine he was being bullied.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And I take it that you are going to show me that it was Mr Paine, the victim of the explosion, who was doing the bullying?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Are you then going to try and tell me that the boy did not kill himself after all and that Paine is either an accessory to murder or even a murderer himself?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to get that far. I don’t know yet. I need the file.’

  ‘And what are you going to do while we run around trying to find it in order to justify your little whim?’

  ‘The job I am paid to do.’

  ‘Which doesn’t include this?’

  ‘I don’t know, Geordie. There are times when I think that my job includes every blessed thing in the entire universe.�
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  In the breezy back garden, as they took the dry washing off the line and folded the bed sheets, Hildegard tackled Sabine on the subject of her ‘relationship’ with Canon Clough.

  The au pair girl did not seem to think there was much to worry about. In fact, she was almost amused by her employer’s seriousness. ‘He buys me Babycham. He shows me nice places.’

  ‘But you have been to his house too?’

  ‘I do his ironing.’

  ‘I see. You have plenty of time to do his ironing while we have a Matterhorn piling up here.’

  ‘He has no one to help him. So I do it. Chris gives me money.’

  ‘Chris? You call him Chris?’

  ‘He likes it. He says it makes him feel young again.’

  ‘Don’t we pay you enough?’

  ‘It is good to have more. I would like to buy some more clothes. Some friends want to see the Rolling Stones in London. I hope I go.’

  ‘We’d need to talk about that.’

  ‘Chris says he can pay.’

  ‘He’s not thinking of coming too?’

  Sabine giggled. ‘No. He is too old. I know he is old. Do not worry.’

  ‘And he hasn’t made any suggestions or asked you to do anything you don’t want to do?’

  ‘No. He just watches me.’

  ‘While you do the ironing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really? Isn’t that boring for him?’

  ‘I make it interesting.’

  ‘I’d like to know how ironing can become interesting.’

  ‘I wear my underwear.’

  ‘And nothing else?’

  ‘It is hot. He likes it and I do not mind. I think it is funny.’

  ‘And does Canon Clough do anything while you are ironing?’

  ‘He tells me not to look. Then he goes to the bathroom. I finish my ironing. Then he pays me one pound. It’s good.’

  ‘No, Sabine, it is not good.’

  ‘What is wrong? You think he should pay more?’

  A redbrick building that looked not unlike a Victorian school, Bedford Prison was opened in 1801 by the penal reformer John Howard. Alfred Rouse, responsible for the famous blazing-car murder, had been an inmate before being hung there in 1931, as had the A6 killer James Hanratty. There was little likelihood that the Reverend Kevin Warner would meet the same fate, but his sullen features, unshaven appearance and prison uniform made any idea that he had once been a clerk in holy orders seem improbable.