Gay Before God
An Awakening Love Forbidden
By The Church
William Bruce
All Rights Reserved
William Bruce
© William Bruce 2013
Published via KDP on Amazon
All characters in this book are entirely imaginary and any resemblance to persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.
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A running theme is a phrase from a song inspired by Psalm 42
where the panting desperation of the hunted deer is a metaphor
for all those caught up in passionate love.
'As the deer pants for the water,
so my soul longs after you.'
Chapter 1
The hands that gripped the letter were shaking, trembling with anger. They were the stubby hands of a fifty-something woman, grown large with child-rearing, comfort eating and years of diminishing self-esteem. Fat hands sprouted fat fingers, each decorated with at least one gold ring. It showed, she thought, a woman of substance; a woman to be reckoned with - a ‘matriarch’ as she liked to call herself. But the rings were not enough; each finger was topped with an expensively manicured nail, bleached, varnished and studded with miniature fake diamonds. These bejewelled talons began to dig deep into the paper.
The letter was not addressed to her. She should not be reading it, both for her own sake and others. Partly she wished she had never opened the envelope, but such was her curiosity and mistrust for those around her, nothing could have prevented her.
Her eyes scanned the page, and narrowed as she read.
I love you more than anyone else. I write this while I still can. Please remember despite all that has happened I always did love you and will go on loving you forever.
She stopped reading and would not continue. She looked up and stared about her, disbelief in her eyes. Two dark brocaded sofas dominated the room, and a lamp stood on an oak table casting a dim light, picking out glints of the gilt frames on the walls. A collection of delicate china ornaments crowded the mantelpiece between two candlesticks, and in the centre stood a brass cross, the starkest of all the things there. To one wall clung a long-case clock ticking the seconds of passing time as it had done for a hundred years. Thick brocaded curtains hung at the cottage windows managing only to muffle the winter weather beyond. In this late afternoon the weak sun had now gone, and the frost was beginning to creep in through cracks under the door. A chill exuded from the very walls of the house; a damp staleness was weeping from the stone-flagged floor. The coal fire battled to glow in an old-fashioned grate. It was the only point of warmth in the room.
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. But there was no one to hear her.
She looked out of place, with her bright red hair betraying the course of worried hands and confused thoughts. Her surroundings did not suit her. It was not her house, not her choice of furniture and pictures. She hadn’t meticulously placed the objects on the mantelpiece, agonizing over detail. Such attention was a foreign language she could not understand and had no desire to learn. To her, the intricacies and ornamentation were merely extra work in cleaning and dusting. Worst of all, it reminded her of her mother’s house; so much clutter and fussiness that belonged to a previous generation.
“Bastard!” was her quiet cursing. “There is no way the bastard will see this.”
For six months this had been her home, or rather the place where she lived. In that time she had made her mark by insisting on modern gadgets such as a coffee machine and a water dispenser, but these seemed as out of place as she was. Nothing could make up for the hours sitting alone at the bedside, nor the shorter hours providing meals, drinks and a martyred disposition to a long line of visitors. So often she had felt bereft, left to cope with the unmanageable; stranded in an unfamiliar place doing unappreciated tasks.
“I hate him, hate him,” she whispered with an embittered shortness of breath.
But it had come to an end. She could escape, back to her old life, her suburban London existence centred on the TV, gossip at work and the occasional visits of her daughters. Now she could put aside the uncomfortable, draining existence of one who waits for someone to die. In her own heart, but never to be admitted, she had longed for this day; perhaps it might never come, thinking she was condemned to a tragic purgatorial life watching a diminishing flame that never quite gets extinguished. Had she believed in God she might have prayed for release, if guilt had not prevented her. Several times she had thought the end had come, but, cruel reprieves had brought her back to this prison. Now the door was flung open, but like those who have served a long sentence, she stood with trepidation on a threshold of bitter-sweet yearnings. Her relief was overshadowed by grief, shame and anger.
“I never wanted this, never wanted any of this,” she pleaded as her eyes focused again on the letter. With determination, her hands began to crush it in her fat fists. There were tears in her eyes, more through rage than sorrow, as she screwed the paper up into a ball and threw it at the open fire. It fell short, bouncing on the rug and coming to rest at the fender. She moved her big body from the chair, picked up the ball and thrust it into the flames with a moan.
At first it sat there, unaffected by the heat, but then with a flash it burst into a glorious light that lasted perhaps five seconds before dying and turning to ash. She picked up the poker and prodded furiously at what remained until it too had been consumed. It was over; there was nothing to show it had ever existed. The secret was hers, and so was the outrage that brought her hands to her face in silent, guilt-ridden despair.
“Mumsie, are you ok?” The words came from a heavy figure at the door, the thick French accent harshly strange in such a place.
She had not noticed him nor knew how long he had been standing there, but she was relieved.
“Victor,” she cried, “I am so pleased to see you. I have done it. I opened it and I have burnt it.”
“Good, it was the best thing you ever did, Mumsie,” he said with a smile. “No one will know.”
“But I think he does know,” she replied. “I think he has asked for it, and maybe even Terry told him.”
“I’ve got a plan,” said Victor. “We can control this. We can show the world what really happened, show what a bastard that James is. It will give me such pleasure to do that.”
“Remember, I am a good mother, and no one can take that away from me,” she said stumbling to her feet as she spoke. “Come, give me a hug,” she demanded.
She took him in her arms, her large frame swallowing him up with only his head and the mop of his blond hair exposed. More tears welled up in her eyes, released by human touch. His eyes stayed dry and, in their inky blackness, narrowed as he stared beyond the room. Already his mind was planning the final devastating and cruel victory.
~~*~~
Some months before, Richard, the Diocesan Secretary, a man of increasing importance, sat at his desk in Church House. He had the best room in the building, chosen for its view of the park, the towering gothic Cathedral behind, and the distant city streets. It was late on a Friday, and most of his staff had gone home.
“I will be off now,” sai
d his Personal Assistant as she came in with the last batch of letters to sign. “Have a good weekend.”
This was something nearly all the staff in Church House said to each other, knowing that most of them would enjoy a thoroughly secular two days. It was enough to work for the church all week, to be paid to service incompetent and ungrateful clergy. For the diocesan staff, going to church on a Sunday would be like going to work a day early.
The PA was an exception. She would be attending church on Sunday afternoon, the splendour of choral evensong at the Cathedral, hopefully without a sermon. There was one last week, a treatise on the authorship of Galatians. It is doubtful anyone in the congregation cared who wrote one of the minor books of the New Testament, and perhaps almost as few cared what it actually said. The Sunday before sermon was a lengthy tirade against Muslims, though not, of course, all Muslims, and certainly not the friendly man at the paper shop. It was the Muslims we see on the news; those who travel to Pakistan and come back to blow themselves up. The congregation were told about the new enemy within: people who take religion too seriously and regard it as a matter of life and death. That sermon might have had relevance, even if it did lack tack, but unfortunately the local paper had printed letters of complaint. Ironically his tone in condemning the extremists had been too fervent, succumbing to the very sin he had warned against. The whiff of possible controversial publicity, even a scandal, had ensured that clergyman would not be invited to preach again for a long time.
The PA’s real reason for attending evensong was to see her son. He had won, or more accurately acquired, a scholarship at the Cathedral Choir School, which provided a quasi-prep school education, and the opportunity to wear the splendid stripy uniforms, a sign of social status in this provincial city. The vivid bands of black, white and green symbolised ‘truth, honesty and perseverance’, though no one quite knew how. The PA was just thankful her son could sing, or at least sing well enough. His place had been assured her even before her son had opened his mouth, because she worked for Richard; what would have happened had he not been able to sing she didn’t know, but there were a few in the choir who, like the congregation, had a limited role in the service. She had often watched some of the young choirboys stand there not even pretending and impervious to the exuberant gesticulations of the choirmaster.
“There are just these to sign,” she said, placing an orderly pile of letters on Richard’s desk. She half expected him to deal with them there and then but he didn’t seem to notice.
The PA was not well paid, but was highly competent and necessarily dealt with some sensitive matters. Most of all she understood the culture of Church House, summed up in the need for confidentiality and loyalty. Along with the job came a small house in the Cathedral Close, nearby for convenience’s sake, both for mother and son. It had a splendid Georgian front door that unexpectedly led to a narrow, dingy hall and a steep staircase put in by the Victorians to access an impressive set of first-floor rooms. The kitchen was somewhat subterranean. The house came with a minimal rent, but also a minimal approach to building maintenance: the windows rattled, the drains were easily blocked, and the electrics regularly short-circuited, but it was part of the charming and often photographed heritage that brought thousands of tourists to admire the Close. It was like so many of the juxtaposed houses that clustered around the Cathedral, like the Church of England itself, a symbol of decaying elegance.
The PA stood at the door before she left on that Friday afternoon expecting a response. Richard did not look up, for he was intently studying the screen of his laptop on his desk.
“Will that be all?” she asked, somewhat annoyed to be ignored.
“Oh, yes,” said Richard, absent-mindedly. “I need to see to this email before I do anything else.”
She left the room only half-wondering what the email might be about and why it avidly engaged his attention. Soon enough she knew she would see it, add its contents to her treasury of secrets that gave her a status amongst the parents who sat in the stalls at evensong. Often some of them would ask her about the rumour of appointments in the diocese. Even when she had not known anything she always gave the impression of being bound by confidentiality, and preserved the look of someone who knows, but cannot tell.
“Just one moment,” shouted Richard, perhaps too urgently. “Do you know if the bishop is in this evening?”
“Yes, he is,” came the satisfied reply, for she was always pleased when she could answer his questions. “He is back from his day out to those wretched parishes on The Fens. Apparently they did nothing but moan at him.”
“Thank you,” replied the grateful Richard, “I will see him later.”
“Don’t forget you have the Freemasons’ Annual Dinner tonight,” she reminded him, “and they may give a donation to the Dean’s Restoration Fund.”
It was as if she had to give him a reason for going, even though he had every intention of fulfilling the engagement. He needed to be there for the contacts he had to nurture. Not a few of the churchwardens of the diocese, always a tricky bunch when it came to diocesan politics, would be present, and a seemingly casual word here and there would be worth more than a page or two in the diocesan magazine. Tonight he had a more urgent reason to attend, for the proprietor of the local newspaper would also be present and he would help in quelling the implications of the engaging email on the screen before him.
The evensong bell began to ring across the Close. Normally Richard would attend but this evening he set off for Bishop’s House instead. He stepped out into the street and as he started to walk through the park he became aware of a mist descending. Swirls of cloud were beginning to obscure the Cathedral tower, and the autumn leaves of the trees rustled under the enveloping blanket. The fog seemed to be arriving quickly, as often it did in this place, blown in from the sea, crossing The Fens, becoming more chill and damp with every mile, until it reached this slight hill on which the Cathedral and the old part of the city were huddled. It meant the vibrant secular city beyond gradually disappeared from view, and those in the Close could pretend they were cut off from the outside world, from the distractions of modern life, transporting them to an idyllic past age.
At the centre of the park stood a statue of the diocese’s most famous bishop who, a hundred years before, had been kind to people in campaigning for sewers and free libraries; a sort of Anglican saint. Venerated and revered in successive generations, he cast a shadow of righteous philanthropy across the consciousness of the whole diocese. Schools and village halls had been named after him, and even one or two churches. But no one knew what he was really like; how, behind that austere Victorian exterior, there was a real man who ate and slept, grew tired and cross, and who cried and loved, as any man can and almost all men do. The larger-than-life bronze shape that stood in the park and was now beginning to be lost in the mist, was a hollow structure; a form without a heart or a brain. A representation of flesh and blood revealing no secrets nor indeed the essential humanity of someone once powerful.
Richard looked up as he passed, and a question came into his head: ‘What would you have done with a problem like this?’ Perhaps, he thought, it was so much easier in those days, when there was more clarity.
By the time Richard had reached the other side of the Cathedral the mist had taken away the upper floors of the houses and shrunk the street he crossed to nothing more than patch of tarmac. Fortunately he knew his way through the gates of Bishop’s House, along the gravelled, episcopal drive and round to the imposing black front door.
“Come in, come in, Richard,” were the bishop’s first words. “So good to see you. I will ask my wife to make us a cup of tea.” The bishop's wife was the perfect assistant, always hovering in the background just out of sight, competent and trustworthy. She remained in earshot so the bishop only had to raise his voice to summon her. Self-effacing, her meekness was beguiling; in private the bishop was subjected to her ferocity. She fashioned his views on women, their supremacy in the
home, protected by traditional values.
“Would you like some of my flapjack, freshly made?” she said, knowing that neither of the men could refuse.
The bishop’s study was large; fitting for a man who had inherited a pastoral cure more than a thousand years old. In times past, in this room, decisions affecting the nation had been taken, and whole tracts of land, with their peasant populations, traded for favours and honours. Around the walls hung the portraits of stern-looking predecessors, varying in size according to their imputed importance. Some had wigs and some had beards, but all had been a force to reckon with: men of learning, substance and good connections. They looked down on the present bishop to remind him of their achievements, when the words they had penned at the very same desk would have been reported on the front page of The Times. It was under this illusory inheritance that the present bishop laboured. He thought what he did and said had an importance far beyond church committees and synods. He thought his brief appearance on the evening TV news programme confirmed his standing in the community. Little did he realise people only a hundred yards away from where he now sat, struggling home through the foggy streets, had no care for what he said.
“All the arrangements for HRH are confirmed,” the bishop said with a satisfied look. “I do like these special visits. It gets us into the papers, for the right reasons.”
“I have selected the staff from Church House who will be in the line-up, ... just the deserving ones, you understand,” said Richard, who liked this side of the job, the glamour of associated importance.
They sat there in a moment’s silence chewing on their flapjack, both men grateful for the way they steered the diocese. Richard scanned the episcopal predecessors on the walls around him with pride, believing their importance could be rekindled in the present age. The institutional structure of the church was there, with, as he often said, a presence in every village and neighbourhood in the county. He chose to forget not everyone had been christened at the font of the parish church, brought up on the services of the Book of Common Prayer, tutored by the school chaplain, and cajoled into attending college evensong. Emotionally he could not see a society where the church was irrelevant, or at most, stood only for nostalgia or tourism. In answer to a need within him he worked to preserve and guard the church, to ensure that as an institution it would be handed down, like a precious family heirloom wrapped in crumpled tissue paper, to the next generation.
Gay Before God: An Awakening Love Forbidden by the Church Page 1
