Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation

by James Runcie

  The concert began with a frenzy of strobe lighting over a wash of deep red, and a chaos of drums, percussion and bass guitar that Amanda mistook for tuning up. After a couple of numbers the band then settled into ‘Careful with That Axe Eugene’, a number that instantly reminded Sidney of Fraser Pascoe’s murder.

  ‘Do they sing at all?’ Amanda shouted into Sidney’s ear. ‘Or are they just going to wail?’

  ‘I think the lyrics come later.’

  ‘Now I know why it’s called “prog-rock”. They play every chord in turn and hold on to each one for as long as possible.’

  ‘I think this is just the build-up. I’m rather enjoying it. Have you ever heard anything like it?’

  ‘We’ve had twenty minutes of this and nothing has built up to anything at all.’

  Things livened up with ‘Sysyphus’ and ‘Atom Heart Mother’ but Amanda insisted that the music sounded like the space-age soundtrack for a film she had no intention of seeing. The evening was not exactly a success and Sidney wished Hildegard had been able to come. She would have been more broadminded about the soundscape and amused by the seriousness of performers tripping to their own music before a crowd of secular charismatics.

  Amanda cheered up by the time they got to dinner. She had persuaded the maître d’ at Mirabelle to let them eat late, and ordered champagne as an early celebration of Sidney’s birthday. There were only a few days left before Lent and she told him that if he was going to stop drinking this year, he might as well stock up now.

  ‘I don’t think it works quite like that, Amanda.’

  ‘I don’t know how you do it. Abstinence from anything is such a bore.’

  ‘Restraint is the road to redemption,’ Sidney replied, quaffing his first glass.

  Amanda laughed at the gulf between word and deed and they were almost back to their old routine. She was relieved to be able to speak, saying that she had only agreed to come to the concert as it gave them a chance to talk properly afterwards and resume a bit of normality. She still found social events difficult and she had lost some of her confidence in situations where she didn’t know people well. But she was enjoying her new job at the British Museum. In fact she had already discovered a ‘sleeper’: a previously misattributed work which she thought to be a presentation drawing of a young male nude by Michelangelo for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri. The circumstances were still hush-hush.

  ‘It seems you have “a saucerful of secrets”, to quote from one of the songs of tonight. Is it exciting?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s a lot more interesting than that farrago of noise, I must say. If you ask me, Pink Floyd’s main secret, if that really is what they call themselves, is how on earth they persuade people to come to their psychedelic howling.’

  ‘I liked it. All those lyrics about setting the controls for the heart of the sun and the man making the shape of questions to heaven.’

  ‘I couldn’t understand a word of it. In any case, you’re just saying that to be provocative.’

  ‘We have to move with the times.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sidney. It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were jiving to jazz.’

  ‘You were doing the dancing, Amanda. I was only watching.’

  ‘I distinctly remember you jiving. Quite badly, in fact.’

  ‘An aberration of my youth.’

  ‘It’s depressing to dwell on past mistakes.’ Amanda put down her menu. ‘I think I’ll have the crab and avocado, or maybe the devilled kidneys. That would require some additional red wine. That’s probably just as well, as I’m in need of fortification.’

  ‘That sounds ominous.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ she continued, after dispatching their order. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, golly, Amanda.’

  ‘I should warn you, it’s quite awkward.’

  ‘Is it about the divorce?’

  ‘No, that’s all done and dusted.’

  ‘And it’s not Henry?’

  ‘Not at all. He is no longer any part of my life.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s a new admirer?’ Sidney asked, attempting a comical raise of one eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Even if I had one I’m hardly likely to tell you at this stage. No, it’s trickier than mere romance.’ Still Amanda hesitated.

  ‘What is it then? Spit it out.’

  ‘Leonard.’

  Sidney’s voice jumped an octave. ‘Leonard?’

  ‘Your former curate.’

  ‘I know who he is. I didn’t realise you had been seeing him.’

  Amanda signalled to the waiter to refill their glasses and told him off. ‘It’s always so annoying when you store the bottle away from the table. Please don’t.’ She then turned back to Sidney. ‘We’re friends too. Leonard’s one of the few men in whose company I’ve never had to worry if there’s any ambiguity of feeling.’

  ‘Do you mean you worry about most men?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’ve stopped seeing them. I don’t like meeting new people. They either want my “understanding” about their marriage, or they flirt and hope for something more, or they talk about some kind of business initiative or charitable foundation in a roundabout attempt to extort money.’

  ‘I would have thought that marrying Henry had put a stop to all that.’

  ‘Well, now I’ve put a stop to him.’

  ‘And so you were having lunch with Leonard?’

  ‘Drinks. I took him to Claridge’s. He likes places that are a teensy bit camp, as I am sure you can imagine.’

  ‘I never really think of Leonard in that way, mainly because I don’t think he sees himself as anything other than a celibate priest.’

  ‘Which is why our conversation was so troubling, Sidney.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘He asked me for money.’

  ‘Leonard?’

  ‘Quite a lot. Fifty pounds. A loan.’

  ‘Did you ask him what it was for?’

  ‘Personal reasons, he said. Perhaps he’s got himself into terrible debt? He did say that he was in a pickle.’

  ‘And did you agree to lend it to him?’

  Amanda hesitated as their starters were delivered to the table. ‘I did. I said I would give it to him in cash next week. As you know, I like Leonard very much and he seemed quite relieved. Then we talked about Michelangelo and the British Museum.’

  ‘Ah, yes. T.S. Eliot. Women come and go talking of Michelangelo.’

  ‘Actually we talked about the sonnets. Leonard was very helpful. He knows them, of course.

  ‘Veggio co’ bei vostri occhi un dolce lume,

  Che co’ miei ciechi già veder non posso . . .’

  ‘Italian was never my strong point, Amanda.’

  ‘But detection is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Amanda leant back in her chair and folded her arms. It was a familiar gesture that always meant trouble. ‘You know perfectly well, Sidney. I’d like you to talk to Leonard as soon as you can. You need to get to the bottom of all this. You’re his friend, aren’t you? Something, or someone, is making him frightened.’

  After his return from London, and his abandoning of yet another course of Lenten abstinence on the dubious grounds that ‘tension’ and his ‘volume of work’ required the necessary consolation of alcohol, Sidney picked up the phone to hear that his presence was required in Cambridge. Geordie announced that the arson victim who had prevented his attendance at the Pink Floyd concert needed a pastoral visit.

  ‘I think you know him. He remembers you from that case we had when we first worked together: Lord Teversham, the man who was killed during a production of Julius Caesar.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Simon Hackford.’

  ‘Good heavens!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Yes. I do remember him.’

  ‘Hackford is, as you may know, something of a homosexualist.’

  ‘Not
“–ist”, Geordie. He is simply a homosexual.’

  ‘They say they’re one in twenty these days.’

  ‘I’m surprised the figure is so low.’

  ‘You have a way with these kind of people, Sidney. I thought you could be of assistance.’

  ‘I hope I have “a way” with everyone, Geordie, whoever they are and in whatever situation they find themselves.’

  ‘The thing is, the man doesn’t want us to investigate. He says the stress will get to his nerves. I hope it’s not an insurance scam like the photographer we had a few years back.’

  ‘I don’t think Simon Hackford would set fire to his own shop. He loves those antiques too much.’

  ‘At least there wasn’t much damage. It certainly wasn’t a professional job; they used the kind of Molotov cocktail any amateur could knock up in a shed; although the lock was picked, so it did take some knowhow.’

  ‘No witnesses?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘None so far. You don’t get many of them at two in the morning.’

  ‘A local man?’

  ‘Possibly, but Hackford’s well liked and it’s hard to find anything against someone whose main love, apart from the obvious, is eighteenth-century English furniture.’

  ‘Perhaps it was meant as a warning. Something to scare him?’

  ‘It could be that. I’m not sure, Sidney. I’d like you to have a word with Hackford. He’s Leonard’s friend, isn’t he?’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘I was waiting for you to tell me; and I have noted that you deliberately didn’t hand over the information, even when I gave you the opportunity. Don’t think you can keep things from me, Sidney. Our friendship comes first.’

  ‘Priests do have their own code of confidentiality.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to have stopped you in the past. Hackford trusts you. Thousands wouldn’t.’

  ‘I think you’ll find thousands do,’ said Sidney with uncustomary arrogance. He was not going to let Geordie have the last word.

  Simon Hackford’s antique shop was situated in Trumpington Street, almost opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum, with four clear windows in which were displayed a tasteful collection of china, landscape paintings, portraiture and traditional English furniture. The front door had been destroyed and there were scorch marks across the floor, but the main area of the blaze had been confined to a walnut chest and gilded mirror. As such, the physical damage was relatively minimal; the emotional trauma of such a deliberate attack, Sidney suspected, was likely to be worse.

  The proprietor was a well-preserved man in his early fifties, dressed in a three-piece double-breasted Prince of Wales suit, as if the layers of cloth could give him some form of protection against the modern world. His was a look of quiet decoration; discreet but stylish cufflinks, an understated watch, a pale-blue spotted handkerchief, and a navy silk tie worn over the same Turnbull & Asser shirt his father had owned. Tradition, perhaps, and a belief in the aesthetics of connoisseurship, had meant to keep him safe from contemporary barbarism.

  Hackford was known for his ability to spot high-quality silver. He had made money after finding a lost set of apostle spoons but had then let his most lucrative patron down by failing to spot a Gainsborough at a country auction. In the early 1950s he had been part of a lavender marriage, the result of both parties trying to please their parents, but since his divorce some five years previously he had been careful to keep a low profile.

  He told Sidney that he could not imagine anyone who would have wanted to burn his shop down.

  ‘Leonard’s been so on edge,’ he added.

  ‘That’s unlike him.’

  ‘About the Bedford thing.’

  Sidney was confused. This was new information and had nothing to do with the arson. ‘What Bedford thing?’

  ‘You must know. You’re an archdeacon.’

  ‘But not in Leonard’s diocese.’

  ‘He’s being considered for a bishopric.’

  ‘Leonard? But he’s only been at St Albans for three years.’

  ‘They like him there.’

  ‘A bishop.’ (And before me! Sidney thought before being ashamed of himself.) ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Bedford. It’s vacant.’

  ‘I’ve just recommended one of our own clergy for the position. But Leonard would be far better.’

  ‘He’s not so sure. Will you talk to him, Sidney? Not about this, but about his future. I’ve been so worried. He’s been such a supportive friend and I don’t want to add to his anxiety.’ He waved his arm in the direction of the fire damage. ‘I am sure this was just a one-off.’

  ‘It does seem unfortunate. You haven’t had any unusual visits recently? People watching when you lock up?’

  ‘The police have asked about all that. I’ve told them I’d rather not make a fuss. It’s probably not even worth claiming on the insurance. I’ll just have to cough up.’

  ‘But your shop has been attacked. The police can’t stand idly by; otherwise the perpetrators triumph. We have to defend ourselves against those who would do us ill.’

  ‘But what if I don’t want a confrontation? What if I am happy with my privacy?’

  ‘Is something else troubling you, Simon? Something that you would rather tell me than the police?’

  ‘It doesn’t take too much to make me nervous. If you could have a proper chat with Leonard I would be grateful. I don’t want him getting all worked up about my worrying.’

  ‘He’ll be concerned about you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Talk to him, Sidney. It’s not been easy recently. He’ll tell you.’

  Rather than arranging to meet Leonard directly, Sidney took a more tangential approach, using the opportunity of their joint attendance at a forthcoming conference at Church House to discuss matters informally. He did not want his former curate to think he was barging in, but he was pretty sure they would both have limited patience with the bureaucratic minutiae involved in the formation of a new synodical form of government for the Church of England. The possibility of a mutual escape was almost guaranteed.

  It was a bitter afternoon when they emerged into the Westminster gloom. Sidney offered Leonard a toasted teacake and a warming brew at the Army & Navy store. After reviewing the events of the day and exchanging ecclesiastical tittle-tattle, he pressed his friend for a little more information. He had heard rumours . . .

  Leonard hesitated, his teacake suspended midair. ‘Rumours?’

  ‘About a forthcoming appointment.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely. I am sure it will all go away.’ Leonard resumed eating as if the swallowed teacake would also involve the disappearance of the subject-matter.

  ‘A bishopric?’

  ‘I have let them know that it is too soon.’

  ‘You don’t want it?’

  ‘I don’t feel I’m ready, Sidney.’

  ‘And is that the only reason?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Leonard’s lack of a direct answer convinced Sidney to press further. He asked if everything was all right. Why hadn’t he been told, for example, about the arson attack on Simon Hackford’s shop?

  ‘I didn’t think it was anything to do with you.’

  ‘But Keating is the investigating officer. He’s your friend too.’

  ‘Simon doesn’t want a fuss.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  Leonard turned to his tea. ‘Everything’s been a bit difficult recently.’

  ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’ Sidney asked. ‘You haven’t run into financial difficulties or anything like that?’

  ‘No, nothing, really. But thank you for your concern.’

  Sidney felt that he was getting nowhere. He tried a more oblique route to the heart of the matter. ‘I was with Amanda last week . . .’

  ‘And how is she?’

  ‘We were talking about her potential discovery of a drawing by Michelangelo. I’m sure she must have mentioned it when she last saw you.�
��

  ‘She did.’ Leonard perked up, relieved to be talking about something else. ‘We had a long discussion about Renaissance theories of beauty and the quest for the ideal; how we, as mere mortals, may have to start from people we love and the world around us, but the idea is to transcend our merely sensual experience and reach out for the divine.’

  ‘A religious approach to art, almost?’

  ‘Exactly. How successful those artists were at following their prevailing beliefs is another matter. I said that it’s probably easier to grasp the theory when in the presence of a beautifully proportioned young man or woman but it’s a lot harder with people who’ve got their flesh in all the wrong places. Amanda was quite amused.’

  ‘Oh, I think she likes a balance between scholarship and larky conversation.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been that risqué before. But, with her, you feel you can say anything. She gives you confidence, don’t you think? I suppose that’s why you’ve always got on so well.’

  Sidney stuck to his guns. He was not going to be sidetracked into a discussion of his affection for a woman who was not his wife. ‘Why have you asked her for money, Leonard?’

  Leonard put down his teacup and their companionable mood was gone. ‘She told you?’

  ‘Amanda is my oldest friend.’

  ‘She is a friend of mine too. She promised it would go no further.’

  ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I trusted her.’

  Sidney thought that Leonard might walk out, but they hadn’t paid and he was not the type to make a scene. ‘She is worried about you; and now I am too. Why do you need the money, Leonard?’

  ‘I don’t want to tell you. It would put you in a difficult position.’

  ‘Is it something illegal?’

  ‘Not according to the laws of the land. Although it is not something that is spoken about very much in the Church.’

  ‘Does it concern your private life?’

  ‘Do I need to spell it out?’

  Sidney decided that he would have to help his friend get to the point, whether he liked it or not. ‘Is someone blackmailing you, Leonard?’

  ‘I knew as soon as we started this conversation that you would guess. I wish we hadn’t got into all this.’

  ‘You know that I am one of your greatest supporters. I will do nothing to harm you. And I am still your priest.’