The Benefits of Passion

by Catherine Fox

  But before long tensions began to emerge. Barney worked too hard. There was never enough money. Isabella developed a passionate hatred of the swirly carpet. Barney was of the opinion that carpets were expensive and they could put up with it for two years. He came back to bare boards one afternoon.

  ‘I’m going to have it sanded and varnished,’ announced Isabella.

  ‘How much will that cost?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A hundred quid?’

  ‘Isabella, we don’t have a hundred quid.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do it myself then,’ she replied.

  She did. It was far harder than she’d supposed, but stubbornness kept her going. Nothing, however, would persuade Barney to spend a penny on getting that essential Persian rug. Isabella seethed each time she crossed the bare floor.

  The summer ended.

  ‘Well,’ said Barney with a sigh. ‘That’s the slack period over.’

  And he meant it. He grew busier with every passing week. Sermons, services, visiting, youth groups, school assemblies, meetings. Endless bloody meetings! Isabella vowed to smack the head of the next idiot who remarked to her that clergy only worked one day a week. Sometimes he was out five evenings in a row. She began to wish he had a nine-to-five job. Something he could leave behind and say, ‘That’s it for the day.’ But there were always other things he should be doing. Worthy things. Old ladies wanting home communion, Bible commentaries to read, people dying of cancer. And above all – God. How was she supposed to compete with God for her husband’s time and attention? I don’t get a bloody look-in, she stormed inwardly as she stood at the altar rails. But then she felt guilty for even thinking such things.

  She tried to pray for patience. Barney was under pressure and her complaints would only add to his burden. Resentment found outlets in trivial things, however. Why did he leave his bloody dog-collars lying about the kitchen? Why couldn’t he put the sodding answer machine on during meals?

  ‘Why do you have to clutter up the dining-room table?’ she snapped one day. ‘You’ve got a study, haven’t you?’

  He looked up from his sermon preparation. ‘But I want to be with you.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you wheedling prick,’ she said. ‘You just want your own way.’

  He sighed like a martyr and carried on reading.

  This was the last straw. ‘Stop treating me like your mother!’ she yelled.

  ‘Stop behaving like my mother, then.’

  ‘It’s not me, you bastard! It’s you. You just expect me to slot into your life. You haven’t made a single concession to the fact that you’re married, have you? The only difference is that you don’t have to pay a cleaning lady any more and you get to have sex.’

  ‘I also get to work my butt off and pay the bills.’

  Isabella was so angry she almost felt her eyes bulge. ‘Fuck you!’

  She stormed out, got into the car and drove to the nearby town. I’m bloody well going to buy a new dress, she thought, slamming the car door. She strode to her favourite shop, which sold the kind of smart, sexy, expensive clothes she liked best. But by the time she reached it she was feeling like a silly spoilt bitch. Poor Barney! She stared mournfully at her reflection in the plate glass and vowed to become a better clergy wife. A notice caught her eye: Full time Sales Assistant required. Apply within. Twenty minutes later she walked out with a job.

  If Barney was pleased by this development, he didn’t say so, but for the next few months they rubbed along quite happily. Isabella got used to the mindless tedium and backbreaking hard work of her job. Christmas approached. She proved to be extremely good at persuading men to part with huge sums of money and reigned supreme in Lingerie.

  Barney, of course, was insanely busy in the run-up to Christmas. Isabella watched him one evening as he stood in the kitchen bolting down a sandwich, tying his shoelaces and answering the phone simultaneously. ‘Just a minute! Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ she asked.

  He got back after midnight, too tired for sex.

  ‘I’m worried about you,’ said Isabella.

  ‘Things will calm down in the New Year,’ he promised.

  He began double-booking himself. Isabella had to field phone calls from people waiting for him to arrive and take their meeting when she knew he was miles away with the youth group. He was so unhappy that she bit her lip and didn’t complain when he couldn’t come to her work’s Christmas party, although weeks before he’d promised he would.

  But at last it was over. They drove up to his parents’ house after the Christmas morning service. Barney spent almost the entire holiday asleep on the sofa.

  Mrs Hardstaff surveyed her poleaxed son sardonically. ‘So how does married life suit you, Isabella?’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Isabella fiercely.

  ‘If you’re married to a sweet-tempered man,’ agreed Mrs Hardstaff, with a smirk.

  New Year came. Isabella made another resolution to be a better clergy wife. After all, she had known he was ordained when she married him. It was time to knuckle down and support and enhance his career in every way she could. This meant mundane things like not giving a derisive snort when the Crimplene ladies told her she was a lucky woman. It meant refraining from saying, ‘I’m not his bloody secretary,’ when people expected her to know Barney’s movements or take complex phone messages for him. It meant not nagging when he was out every night and worked on his day off.

  But these were all negative things. Isabella longed to do something positive. One evening inspiration struck. She rang the Bishop and invited him and his wife for dinner.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Barney when she told him. ‘Tell me you’re kidding, Isabella.’

  ‘I’m not. They’re coming on the seventeenth. Make sure you don’t arrange anything else.’

  ‘You can’t do this!’ said Barney in horror. ‘Isabella, I’m a very, very junior clergyman. Junior clergy do not just invite bishops round for dinner.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it looks like courting favour.’

  ‘Well, I am. I want to help you in your career.’

  He let out a cry of anguish. ‘Isabella, try to understand. The Church doesn’t work like that. The surest way of not getting on is to look over-ambitious.’ He sat down and sank his head despairingly into his hands.

  ‘You want me to ring them and cry off?’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Barney. ‘They’ll have to come. Just promise me you won’t do anything like this again.’

  ‘Only trying to help,’ she said, offended. Bloody stupid organization, the Church.

  The day drew near. Watercress soup, mused Isabella. And boeuf Wellington. Would Barney regard two desserts as sycophantic? He had grudgingly promised to be in early to lay the table and entertain His Right Reverence and wife while Isabella stirred the soup.

  She got in from work on the seventeenth laden with shopping. Six fifteen. It was going to be tight. She made the pastry and began chopping the watercress. Where the hell was Barney? She opened the wine to let it breathe and started the lemon syllabub. Seven o’clock. She darted upstairs to change out of her work clothes. He’s forgotten. The bastard’s forgotten. She raced downstairs, scrubbed the potatoes and poured herself a glass of wine. By seven thirty the table was set, the soup was simmering, the oven was hot and Isabella was drunk. She wrapped the beef in pastry and put it on the baking tray. There was something suggestive about its pallid form. I mustn’t, she thought. I mustn’t, but I’m going to. She cut up the remaining bits of pastry carefully and stuck them on.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Bishop Michael! And Mrs Hibbert!’ She clutched the door-frame. ‘Come in!’

  The Bishop’s wife glanced sharply at Isabella as she handed her a bunch of carnations and a bottle of wine.

  ‘Something smells delicious,’ said the Bishop.

  They went through to the sitting room.

  ‘I’m afraid my husband has been inexplicably’ – Isabel
la brought the word out carefully – ‘delayed. Can I offer you a drink?’

  ‘Sherry, please,’ said the Bishop. ‘How kind of you to invite us.’

  ‘I’m told it isn’t the done thing for curates to invite their bishop to dinner. I do apologize. I’m new to the Church,’ said Isabella. She handed him a brimming glass.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied the Bishop gallantly. Sherry dripped on to his trousers. ‘We’re delighted.’

  ‘Well, Barney thought you’d think he was currying favour.’

  The Bishop made an urbane gesture.

  Isabella gave him a sunny smile. ‘Still, if I had to suck up to a bishop, you’d be the one I’d choose. As the actress has often remarked to you, no doubt. Sherry, Mrs Hibbert?’

  ‘Fruit juice, please,’ said Mrs Hibbert, forbiddingly.

  And stuff you too, lady, thought Isabella. She slopped apple juice into a glass and handed it to her. A car pulled up.

  ‘That will be Barney,’ she said. Relief broke out on their faces. Isabella peered out of the window and had the satisfaction of seeing Barney stare at the Rover on the drive and mouth, ‘Oh, shit!’ He flew in and shook hands with the Hibberts.

  ‘Have you been here long? I got held up at a baptism rehearsal,’ he explained, with his wonderful disarming smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ said Isabella. ‘Everything’s under control. I’ve been keeping them entertained.’

  Barney stared at his wife with a wild surmise. She retreated to the kitchen but he shot out after her.

  ‘You’re drunk! I don’t believe this.’ He prised the glass from her hand. ‘Don’t you dare touch another drop!’

  She squared up for a fight. ‘Well, where were you, big boy?’

  ‘Ssh!’ He glanced at the door in agonies. ‘Promise me, Bella.’

  If he says sorry, she thought. If he says sorry, I’ll behave. She waited. He mistook her silence for docility and went back to his guests, taking her glass with him.

  Bottoms up, thought Isabella, swigging from the bottle.

  The soup course swam past. Barney hissed threats at her as they cleared away the bowls and took in the vegetables. She gave him the finger.

  ‘Don’t do this to me, Isabella,’ he begged.

  She opened the oven door and viewed her creation. She was about to repent when she heard Barney murmur an apology for his wife’s behaviour.

  Right!

  She bore the steaming boeuf Wellington triumphantly in and thumped it down on the table. Barney closed his eyes in despair. The Bishop and his wife found themselves staring at a vast pastry fertility symbol.

  ‘Can I tempt you, Mrs Hibbert?’ enquired Isabella.

  Barney and the Bishop winced as she plunged in the knife and hacked off a bleeding chunk.

  It was a short meal.

  The Bishop was sure they would understand if he and his wife had to slip away. An early start the next day . . . Barney followed them out to the car and Isabella knew he was apologizing again. Mrs Hibbert had left her handbag, but Isabella couldn’t have cared less. They drove off and she heard Barney coming back to the house.

  ‘You owe me an apology!’ she yelled, getting in first.

  ‘I?’ he spluttered. ‘I owe you an apology?’

  ‘You promised you’d –’

  ‘I’m not discussing it. You’re drunk.’ He began clearing the table.

  ‘Talk to me!’ she yelled, as he carried the plates to the sink. He made no reply. She grabbed what was left of the beef and hurled it at him. It bounced off his head in a shower of crumbs. He stood stock still with his back to her.

  Oh Gawd! ‘Barney . . .’

  He turned and flung the jug of apple juice over her.

  ‘You bastard!’ she screamed, pelting him with potatoes.

  ‘Right.’ He picked up the cut-glass dessert bowl and advanced towards her.

  She turned to run but slipped over on the wet floor. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’ He sat astride her and daubed her with handfuls of lemon syllabub.

  ‘I hate you, you pig!’ She landed a sticky slap on his face while he peeled her clothes away.

  ‘You asked for this,’ he panted.

  Before long she was mewing like one of the legendary kittens in his father’s hayloft.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said afterwards. ‘That’ll teach me a sharp lesson.’

  ‘You’re impossible,’ he mumbled into her neck.

  The doorbell rang. Barney lurched up.

  ‘That’ll be Mrs Hibbert,’ said Isabella dreamily. ‘Coming back for her handbag.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t! Look at you.’ He began mopping frantically at his clothes before hurrying to the door.

  Isabella heard the Bishop’s voice say, ‘I’m so sorry. My wife – Ah, thank you.’

  The door closed again.

  ‘Dear God!’ lamented Barney. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

  ‘Did you interrupt a row?’ asked the Bishop’s wife as he got back into the car.

  ‘I believe I interrupted something,’ mused the Bishop. ‘He had syllabub in his eyebrows.’

  ‘What are you giggling about?’ asked Will.

  ‘Nothing. Go to sleep.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Annie tried to spend some time each morning with her Bible. She wanted to pray and discern God’s will for her, but she had never felt so spiritually lethargic. Restraining her wandering thoughts had always been difficult, but now it was worse than ever. She realized one morning that instead of praying she had been thinking for fifteen minutes about lemon meringue pie – whether she might bake one and eat it. I don’t believe this! she wailed in despair. Here I am in the middle of the most difficult spiritual crisis of my life, and all I can think about is lemon meringue pie. Will laughed when she told him.

  ‘What’s the matter with me?’ she lamented.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ was his reply.

  A couple of days later she received a postcard that jolted her out of her lethargy. It was from Isobel. She was having a lovely time in Normandy. There was mention of churches and cathedrals, but not of cider and Calvados. Isobel would only ever visit Rome in order to disapprove of what the Romans did, thought Annie. Then came the thunderbolt: ‘I’ve got my curacy lined up, by the way. I’m going to Asleby-on-Tees, where you did your placement last summer.’

  Annie stared at the tidy writing. She placed the card carefully on the table. Without warning, a sense of all she had lost washed over her. Isobel had a curacy, and Annie did not. Asleby had felt so right. She had been a round peg in a round hole for once in her life. She remembered walking the streets with Harry the vicar, sensing how he loved and prayed for his parish, how he knew it and the people inside out. He was a born parish priest. Lucky, lucky Isobel, sobbed Annie. To be part of that work, seeing lives change and wounds healed and the kingdom drawing nearer. That was what had fired her, the whiff of advent in the wind. The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. But when she’d gone back to Coverdale her life had felt like a glory hole stuffed with useless broken things. Other people’s views and creaky old frameworks had squashed her into a corner. She had seized on the nearest passing saviour – Will – only to find herself in a different corner mourning what she had lost.

  Johnny was right. Her vocation had just been lying low. She could hear the call coming again, not in words; but there, slipping in between one heartbeat and the next, there – the soul’s birthday, the advent wind.

  That Sunday she went up for communion. She had a low view of the sacrament, being in some ways still a Nonconformist at heart, but as she queued in the aisle she knew this time would be different. Her pulse began to race. What if she had the kind of charismatic experience she had always half craved, half dreaded? Supposing she were ‘slain in the Spirit’ and lay unconscious on the carpet for twenty minutes with everyo
ne tutting and stepping over her? The organ began playing as she reached the communion rails. Johnny made his way along the row. Her hands trembled as she held them out for the bread. The body of Christ keep you in eternal life.

  At the time she thought nothing had happened, after all, but as she stood at the back singing the last hymn, she realized everything had changed. It was the same noisy church – she registered the toddler bashing a bunch of keys on to the pew. She was the same Annie Brown, pregnant failed ordinand living with her difficult lover. But there had been a shift of perspective. These ordinary things seemed caught up in something bigger.

  She tried to explain this to Johnny after the service.

  He grinned. ‘So you want a job?’

  ‘I think I do,’ she said in surprise.

  ‘Ha’away. I’ll show you something.’

  He led her out of the church.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  They were hurrying towards a nearby estate with him still grinning as though they were up to no good. Children’s voices piped, ‘Hiya, Johnny!’ as they passed. He waved and called back. Annie gazed at the tower blocks and blocks of maisonettes. It was the place that had seemed so desolate to her the day Tubby had sent her to pray and wander. Nothing here to feast the eyes on, she had thought.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  He stopped. They were in the middle of a courtyard. Washing flapped on lines in the little yards.

  ‘Is the Gospel relevant here?’ asked Johnny. ‘Can it work?’

  She looked around, doubtingly, knowing what the right answer was supposed to be. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Yes, it can,’ he said passionately. ‘It can. But I’m damn sure Anglicanism can’t. I know these people. I baptize them, I bury them. Once in a while I marry them. But Sunday worship? Nah.’

  ‘What’s the answer?’

  ‘You’ve got to start from scratch. Build something new. That’s what I want to do.’