He had lived with his parents in Little Purlock, a village near Chelmsford, and had gone to a minor public school with an ecclesiastical tradition. His school-masters spoke of his strong personality, the dominating influence he had over other boys. He was clever, good at games, never in any serious trouble. He did not mix widely on vacations at home, and people spoke of him as remote and rather forbidding. His parents were the modern squire-equivalents: his father had been early in the public-relations game, and had built up a tidy fortune in the fifties. He and his wife had glad-handed it around the village (the house they lived in had been the manor, and the owner had sold it to go and decay in warmth and comfort on the Algarve), but Denis Crowther had not been interested in playing the young squire. His parents were killed in a plane crash in Yugoslavia when he was nineteen. He had been left reasonably well-off. He kept the house in Little Purlock, but was only there at weekends, as he was working in some junior capacity with a City firm, and kept a flat in London. The first the villagers had heard of his entering the Community of St Botolph’s was some months after he had ceased coming there, when the house was put up for sale.
There were two curious things about the report. It seemed that neither Denis Crowther nor his parents were regular church-goers — Easter communicants at best. Nor, in spite of the traditions of his school, was he remembered there as evincing any adolescent fervours in the matter of religion. It would seem, then, that his discovery of his vocation must have been the result of a sudden conversion. The other oddity was that the police could discover no trace of the activities in the City that the villagers spoke of. Investigations were continuing.
This last fact especially intrigued Croft: why should there be any difficulty in tracing the firm for whom he worked? Could this be a case of a young man leading a double life?
Simeon P. Fleishman bustled much more vividly from the page. He was a graduate of the Bob Jones University, and, according to the report, ‘a highly respected man of God’ in the city of Omaha. He had fired the hearts of congregations at the Church of the Risen Jesus by some ‘truly inspirational’ teaching, and had given some stirring radio addresses which had swelled church funds very satisfyingly. He had invited to the Church ‘many of the truly great evangelical preachers of the day, including your own Doctor Paisley’, and had served for a spell on the National Council of Non-Denominational Churches. He had also been active in politics: he had been a leading member of the ‘Draft Reagan’ and ‘Reagan for President’ Committees, and had chaired a rally which the great man had addressed from horse-back. He had a fine wife, daughter of a mid-West preacher, and two fine boys. They had all appeared together on television, with their dog. Lavish additions were planned to the church of which Simeon Fleishman was minister, and also to the extensive dwelling the congregation provided for him. The report concluded: ‘The Reverend Fleishman is a great and active force for good in the Christian communities of Omaha.’
Oh, God, thought Croft, another committed Christian. Still, it was easy enough to read between the lines. He had already marked Fleishman down as a fat cat on the make, and nothing in the report had led him to alter that opinion. Not a crook, perhaps, in American terms, for there religion was business, as business was religion. But still, one used to sailing on the windy side of the law. Slow but acquisitive, stupid but cunning. An eye to the main chance — but had he the ruthless will to seize it by murder? You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but the cliché that almost always revalidated itself in murder cases was that appearances were deceptive.
The report on Bente Frøystad was much more dubious than the first report on Randi Paulsen. It seemed to have been gleaned mainly from the principal of the theological college which she had attended for the past few years, and from which she was shortly to emerge an ordained minister. There arose from the page a lukewarmness that always seemed about to change into positive disapproval. The principal had spoken of her intelligence, but this did not seem to be a quality he prized too highly; he had spoken of her liveliness, but there seemed to be an implied pursing of the lips; he had spoken of her modern outlook on her faith, and here there seemed to be downright disapprobation. He emphasized that, though free and easy in her attitudes, there was nothing specific in her behaviour that he knew of that could be objected to, or would suggest her unfitted for her vocation. He thought it very probable (not beyond the bounds of God’s infinite grace, translated Croft) that when she had matured a little, and when she had the responsibilities of a parish on her shoulders, her personality would gain in seriousness and moderation. He added that she was an excellent all-round sportswoman, excelling in track-sports and basketball, and a keen fisherwoman.
The second report on Randi Paulsen was very different from the first. A policeman from the nearest largish town described how during her brief incumbency the relations between the practising Christians and the non-practising ones (almost always difficult in small Norwegian communities, and resembling those in the sort of American town where the whites are a smug and confident majority and the blacks a smouldering and resentful minority) had worsened disastrously. Randi had campaigned against the cinema (twice weekly in the local youth club hall, with intervals when the reels were changed) and the dance (on Saturdays, and mentioned only with bated breath by the faithful). On both counts she had won famous victories. Her name stank in the noses of the young people of the area, who meditated various fantastic but vicious plans of revenge. The local weekend drunks similarly bore her no goodwill, and there were one or two teachers in the area (no more than that, for all the schools were overwhelmingly church-dominated, and the non-Christian teachers were almost all those who had lost their faith since their appointment) who resented or ridiculed her activities, and in their feeble way worked against her influence. Her views on sex were puritanical, bordering on the hysterical, but she had found no way to reduce the number of pregnant brides she was forced to marry. She was expected to find some solution to that problem before very long, and it wasn’t thought she’d be handing out transistor radios as an inducement.
The policeman was afflicted by the national itch for fairness and middle-of-the-roadery, and in an attempt to redress the balance, if only by a scintilla of favourable comment, he had added that ‘local people speak of her as a very clever fisher.’ For whatever their religion, Norwegians always have a second God they adore, and that God’s name is fresh fish.
• • •
The Bishop of Peckham was not pleased. As he walked along the corridor from his bedroom and down the murky steps he cleared his throat in little irritable coughs and rubbed his finger along under his nose. This was always a sign to his servants and subordinate clergymen to stop irritating him and let him have a bit of rest.
He had certainly hoped that this whole business of Ernest Clayton’s suspicions had finally been laid to rest, and he had hardly been able to forbear groaning when he found this was not so. On the other hand, he had been lied to, or as good as. The little Ernest Clayton had told him had at least made that much clear. Though he sometimes indulged in the odd innocent sophistication himself, he did not like other people to use them on him. He was a bishop. Like most people who are not too sure of themselves he was very sure of his position, and inclined to wave it at the enemy in moments of stress.
So he was in a far from good mood when he came in to Clayton and Father Anselm in the conference room, and he showed it. They were standing silent and apart, and he looked at them almost balefully.
‘This is a sorry state of affairs,’ he said tetchily. ‘I feel I have been deceived most inexcusably. Of course that is of no great moment as far as I myself am concerned. The point is: the Church itself has been deceived.’
‘Perhaps you will sit down?’ said Father Anselm, his new urbane tone now become almost silky, his gesture towards the chair ceremonious. As the Bishop eased himself unpropitiated into the chair he added: ‘Anger is perhaps not the most profitable emotion at this moment.’
‘But
perhaps it is the most natural,’ said the Bishop forcefully, almost popping out of his chair again. He gazed at the other two as they sat down like a prime minister about to deliver a rocket to two junior ministers who had expressed doubts as to whether every detail of government policy was divinely inspired. ‘Now,’ he said commandingly when they had settled, ‘let us have your explanation.’
‘And pray make it improbable,’ echoed Ernest Clayton, but silently. He was still not quite sure that what they were about to get was in fact to be the truth.
Father Anselm, apparently perfectly relaxed in his chair, intertwined his fingers thoughtfully, and gazed at his two inquisitors with his mariner’s eyes.
‘I think I shall go back, for my beginning, to the circumstances of my coming here,’ he said. ‘That was very nearly twenty years ago. No doubt you both remember that time very well. The climate of opinion was very different then to what it is today. I mean, of course, the climate of moral opinion.’
All at once Ernest Clayton thought: he’s going to tell the truth. And at the very same moment the Bishop’s heart sank in apprehension.
‘There were, you remember, some notable show trials — I refer of course to trials of homosexuals. And the police were spurred on by the popular press in one of its ugly, self-righteous moods. I’m sure I need not go into detail. The Church, I fear, did not play a very enlightened role in the business. You, My Lord, have made a notable speech on the subject, if I remember rightly, but that was later, much later.’
The Bishop looked as if he regretted that speech now as much as any Festival of Light stalwart could wish him to, but he merely said, rather crossly: ‘At the time of which you are speaking I was a simple parish priest. No speech of mine could have had any effect whatsoever on public opinion.’
‘Quite,’ said Father Anselm smoothly. ‘I was not accusing you of moral cowardice. Well, not to go into too many details, it was at this time that I had an urgent need to retire from the world as speedily as possible. To put the matter bluntly, I was told that the police were investigating certain activities of mine.’
‘You were tipped off?’ asked Ernest Clayton.
‘Precisely,’ said Father Anselm coolly. ‘By a friendly policeman. At that time I certainly didn’t anticipate any permanent retirement from the world, but none the less I thought I should make it as apparently permanent as possible. I had always been a devout church-goer, and I had many ecclesiastical contacts. One of them put me in touch with Father Jerome, who was then the head of St Botolph’s. In a matter of days I had been interviewed by him and accepted as a novitiate in the order.’
‘Wasn’t that rather sudden and irregular?’ asked the Bishop.
‘Not particularly. All the necessary formalities were gone through in the course of time. St Botolph’s has always rather prided itself on not being unduly punctilious about such things. Well, as I suppose you will have guessed, I took to the life immediately, as Father Jerome and I had taken immediately to each other. He too was homosexual, of course, though quite unaware of it, and completely lacking in experience. He was a very good man, though terribly incompetent as an administrator. In this respect I could supply what was needed, and he came to rely heavily on me. The other brothers too — if I may be immodest — came to recognize my qualities, and to respect my judgement. That is no doubt why the older of them have accepted so easily the few changes I have made since I took over. In short, Father Jerome recommended me as his successor, spoke of me warmly to the Bishop of Leeds, and when he died about twelve years ago, I was the natural choice to lead the Community.’
Father Anselm’s face was angelically clear and untroubled by doubt or guilt. The Bishop’s, on the other hand, was furrowed and despondent: his worst apprehensions were being realized; he saw the repercussions of this case spreading further and further outwards, ripples from a dirty pebble, disturbing the whole surface. This could very well become the Church scandal of the century, something that made the Stiffkey affair look like minor comic relief.
‘I have always been profoundly grateful for the way in which I entered my vocation,’ continued Father Anselm calmly, not apparently noting the Bishop’s distress, but noting it. ‘In fact, I would go further: Father Jerome was not completely informed of my reasons for wishing to join the order, but he was not completely ignorant of them either, and his action seems to me a model of heroic charity, such as one sees all too rarely in the day-to-day conduct of the Church today.’ He paused. ‘After I took over as head of the order,’ he went on, his voice quite level and his gaze direct, ‘I was determined that the Community should follow his example in this respect.’
‘You mean you determined to turn the place into a homosexual brothel,’ said Ernest Clayton.
‘I knew you would assume that,’ said Father Anselm calmly. Then he leaned forward, his brown-robed body seeming to regain the old back-bone of steel, and the hard, determined tone entering his voice for the first time during the interview. ‘Permit me to say you have a Sunday newspaper mind. You think in terms of wild orgies, “gay” parties, outrageous fun in falsetto voices.’ He leant back in his chair again. ‘Nothing could be farther from the truth. During my period as head of the order, the Community has been a model of order and discipline. Nothing essential has changed, and the day-to-day life has gone on entirely as before. The spiritual life has flourished, peace and decency have reigned.’
‘But the place has become a haven for homosexuals on the run,’ said the Bishop, his mouth pursed in prim disapproval. Father Anselm made a pyramid of his fingers and looked at him quizzically.
‘You are out of date, my dear Bishop,’ he said. ‘Homosexuals are hardly on the run these days. Quite the reverse. It sometimes seems as if it is the heterosexuals who are the persecuted minority now. But of course it is true that over the years before I came here I did build up a certain network of friends and acquaintances, and among those are some — I am very sorry for them — whose tastes run to boys below the “age of consent”, as it’s called. Twenty-one! What an odd age to choose! And sometimes in such cases we have been able to help — usually temporarily, because the life here does not suit such, we find.’
Father Anselm’s bland irony, coming so soon after his rebuke of him, irritated Ernest Clayton intensely.
‘Then you agree the Community has not been a model of chastity,’ he said.
Father Anselm shrugged. ‘What monastery has?’ he said.
‘The monks here take a vow of chastity,’ snapped the Bishop. ‘Will you answer the question properly, please.’
‘Times change, My Lord, and the Church must change with them. You have yourself said the same thing many times in a much more sophisticated way. What creeds of the Church are believed to the letter in this day and age? The important thing is not the letter of that vow, but the spirit. What relationships there have been here have been conducted with great decorousness: there has been no — what’s the word? — flaunting. Quite the reverse. Any sign of that sort of thing I have crushed as soon as it has reared its head.’
‘You have disgraced the order,’ said the Bishop despairingly.
‘I have not . . . publicly . . . disgraced the order,’ said Anselm fiercely. ‘And in my own view there is not one iota of private disgrace either.’ He calmed down suddenly. ‘But you interrupt. The works of charity, and the provision of refuge, which I have seen as part of our contribution at the Community of St Botolph’s to the work of the Church, have rather changed in pattern over the years. For example, in the late sixties and early seventies we had a large number of drug cases — addicts and “pushers” I believe the term is. Perhaps I should add, to forestall Mr Clayton’s vivid imagination, that the Community did not become a centre of psychedelic freak-outs, or anything of that kind. We merely provided a refuge for short periods of time, after which, when they considered it safe, the men would emerge into the outside world. Though one or two in fact opted to become full members of the Community. More recently the police,
spurred on no doubt by busybodies, well-meaning or otherwise, seem to have turned their attention to sexual matters again. Of course the common-or-garden homosexual like myself is safe enough now, as we have said, but those who put a toe beyond the limits set by the letter of the law have been pursued with extraordinary ferocity. So refugees from this sort of persecution have been on the increase these last few years.’
‘No doubt the young man to whom I gave a lift was one such case?’ said Ernest Clayton.
‘Perhaps we should give him a name. He was called Gareth Clifton-Jones. An old Wykehamist, or so he said. Yes, I believe he was a case in point. I did not ask for details, but while he was closeted with me last night he said something which suggested that he was marginally under the age of consent, and living with a Sunday book-reviewer.’
‘You have some sort of secret hiding place, I gather,’ said the Bishop sourly.
‘Exactly. A kind of priest-hole — a fantasy of our founder, which the original builder very ingeniously complied with. It is a small bedroom, hardly more than a cupboard, leading off from my bedroom through a small opening at the head of my bed, and communicating with the outside through a concealed door in the wall. An extravagant notion for nineteen hundred and eight, I fear: perhaps the good man anticipated an evangelical persecution of Anglo-Catholicism. Even with the present Church hierarchy that seems unlikely. But though there has been no real need for it until now, some of our refugees have lived in mortal terror of the police, and we have put them in there for their own peace of mind.’
‘All this is appalling, quite appalling,’ murmured the Bishop.
‘Not at all,’ said Father Anselm forcefully. ‘What we have done has been the purest charity.’
Blood Brotherhood Page 16
