The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  ‘Can’t say we weren’t warned,’ offers a Hadley type with an expensive haircut and discreet diamanté studs. ‘When I left the Bar, my colleagues – and this is the Bar, let me remind you – told me I was out of my mind to be signing up to such an old boys’ club.’

  ‘You new to all this?’ the first one laughs amidst the laughter.

  ‘That obvious?’

  ‘Fancy joining us for a glass of wine?’

  Margot glances over her shoulder. The St Stephen’s two are now standing on the top step, Roderick alongside them. She bids farewell to the group and dashes off through Paternoster Square, trying to decode what she’s just seen.

  It’s Easter morning, so the weather knows its role. Shafts of sunshine are pouring in through the stained glass, creating multicoloured lozenges of light on the floor of both aisles. Hundreds of fluffy yellow chicks are perched on every available surface, courtesy of Sal and Kath. Huge white lilies spread their skirts like cancan dancers from their vantage point on the pillars either side of the aisle. The entire church is gleaming after yesterday’s ministrations by Gwen’s rubber-gloved band of helpers.

  ‘Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to him and all ages

  To him be glory and power, through every age and forever.’

  ‘Did you know the celebration of the Resurrection is older than the word Easter?’

  Jeremy beams down at the congregation. He adores these big festive days.

  ‘Easter can fall anywhere from the start of March to the third week of April, because it’s so closely tied to the Jewish holiday calendar, based on the solar and lunar cycle.’

  Linda would love that bit. Margot bites her lip.

  ‘Alleluia! Christ is risen!’

  ‘He is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!’

  The gusto of the congregation’s response raises the hairs on her neck. She still finds it magical that an event that happened almost 2,000 years ago can induce such joy in these people today.

  She glances towards the back of the church. There’s a cluster of newcomers – or once-a-year pop-ins – mumbling, stopping, fumbling some more. The vicar will have registered them too.

  Gwen is in the front row, trying to catch her eye. Margot’s still hasn’t pinned down any dates for the book club. She looks away quickly, towards the side aisle where a latecomer is being ushered to his seat.

  Her hand flies to her mouth.

  Tungsten determination stops her looking over in his direction all the way through communion, the post-communion hymn, the presentation of the children’s Easter craftwork and the blessing. He might as well be standing on the dias next to her, his arm grazing hers, for all the difference it makes.

  It’s only as she’s processing back with Jeremy behind the choir at the end of the service that she allows herself a sideways glance. The church is full but they managed to find him a seat between that angular, irritable Welsh woman and a couple of the rowdy Lithuanian children. His head is lowered. He can’t be praying, obviously. But there’s an air of stillness about him. She wants to reach out and touch his neck. She focuses on the back of the vicar’s head.

  People swarm around her as usual after the service, the children barging past in a frenzied search for the hidden Mini Eggs. Half an hour in, Margot finds herself hostage to a twice-yearly drop-in, an earnest woman in her fifties who wants the curate’s views on the precise, the literal, the absolute historical veracity of what happened that day in the tomb. Margot’s desperate to get away, although she can hardly tell her it’s neither the time nor the place for this discussion: it’s manifestly both. Yet her focus is elsewhere, hypnotised by the view in the Easter garden at the back of the church, where Felix is nursing a cup of coffee, leaning down to inspect the pipe-cleaner figures she made with the Kool Gang on Good Friday afternoon. He’s clearly his biding his time until she’s free. What does he think this is – a cocktail party?

  Several minutes of exegesis of the Gospels later, Margot is finally rid of her inquisitor. She looks back towards the garden and her stomach flips. Gwen is now there, facing Felix, gesticulating energetically, her hands close to his face.

  ‘Yummy simnel cake,’ Tommy says, coming alongside her and wiping the crumbs away with a paper napkin covered in Easter bunnies. ‘Jeremy’s had four pieces. I thought we should share things round a bit.’

  She smiles as he moves away with the plate, then swivels right back round. Felix is handing his mug across to Gwen, who takes it with a coquettish pat of her curls. There’s a sliver of a second where he turns and looks straight at Margot. She prays he won’t wave. He doesn’t. Instead, he turns and says something to Gwen and then leaves. Margot watches Gwen watching him go out through the porch and down the front steps. It’s only when he’s completely out of sight that Gwen turns back, delight all over her face, Felix’s mug clasped close like a medieval reliquary, a saintly toenail wrapped in a muslin cloth. She catches Margot looking at her, holds her gaze a moment and walks away towards the refreshment table with her prize.

  ‘And that little performance was what, exactly?’

  She crushes a piece of purple-and-gold foil left over from one of the boys’ eggs into a tiny jagged ball in her fist.

  ‘I came to see you in your natural habitat.’

  ‘You’ve already seen me in it.’ She holds the phone away and gulps down some water to try and calm herself. ‘It was such a dangerous thing to do.’

  ‘Why, though? No one knows anything.’

  ‘In my world, everyone knows everything.’

  ‘You were very good, by the way.’

  She starts tapping a knife against the side of the table.

  ‘Felix, do you have any idea how critical this all is right now? I’m just a couple of months away.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ Felix clears his throat.

  ‘Shit, sorry, you know I didn’t mean that. The whole thing was totally off the cuff. And,’ he pauses, ‘you know, I kind of thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘What, “Easter Surprise, everyone!”? Here’s the curate’s boyfriend, our very own bunny out of the hat.’

  He waits a couple of beats. She closes her eyes.

  ‘You’re being a bit unfair.’

  ‘Am I?’

  She squeezes her fingers into her palms.

  ‘Do you know what?’ he says slowly. ‘I felt really proud to see you up there this morning.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’m trying so hard to understand all this— you, or rather your world.’ He swallows. ‘And you know what? I’m also going through my own stuff right now, sorting everything out with Pattie. Just to put that out there.’

  She draws a long breath, watching the jerky progress of the second hand on the kitchen clock.

  ‘So,’ he takes a long breath sighs, ‘I had a chat to that rather big woman by the garden thingy. The one you keep mentioning, right?’

  Margot’s hands feel clammy.

  ‘She thinks you walk on water.’

  Margot hugs her arm across her chest. Too many wires starting to tangle.

  ‘Look, sorry, Felix, but I’ve got to go. I’ll have talk to you later, OK?’

  She watches her phone skid across the counter top.

  This was the warning she needs.

  It’s early evening when her phone rings.

  She’s been lying here for hours. She won’t answer right now if it’s Felix. Or Clarissa. And, especially, not if it’s her father.

  ‘Sorry to bother you like this on Easter Sunday, Margot. I’m sure you’re in the middle of something fun.’

  She pulls the duvet tighter under her chin.

  ‘It’s fine, Jeremy. Everything OK?’

  A small silence on the other end.

  ‘Well, if you’re not doing anything important, I wondered if we could catch a quick drink?’

  She stares at her face in the mirror, pale and scared.

  ‘Sure. Now?’

  ‘Half an hour from now in
the Heron?’

  Something’s very wrong.

  Chapter 18

  Same day, mid-April

  The barman is sitting on a stool reading the paper. She drops into a window seat to wait for Jeremy.

  Someone’s left a Sunday supplement on the table next to her. The whole magazine is devoted to next month’s general election: a country increasingly divided, the times completely out of kilter. She pushes it away from her.

  Perhaps the reason she’s here is something to do with the Chrism Mass? Roderick spotted her there and fabricated some complaint? Unlikely, though, under the circumstances. Maybe Pamela has been whingeing again about the state of the Kool Gang’s corner. She wouldn’t put it past her. But no, it won’t be that either. A hole in the annual accounts?

  The other possibility is too appalling to even entertain.

  She turns round all of a sudden to see Jeremy staring down at her. The brown eyes are huge behind the yellow frames.

  He sits down next to her, then immediately jumps up again and offers to get some drinks. Forty minutes later and they’re still pushing around bits of inconsequential conversation like tiddlywinks counters.

  She’s at a loss. Maybe he was just lonely and fancied some company after all that family-centric activity this morning?

  Jeremy reaches for another handful of peanuts and gathers himself.

  ‘Margot.’ She waits, still as in a sepulchre. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  She watches him brushing the peanut crumbs off his lap.

  ‘It’s sort of sensitive.’

  Her heart starts to beat harder.

  ‘Someone sent me an email this afternoon.’

  The air thickens, swarming with possibilities, none of them benign. ‘Something about a website.’

  She breathes out.

  ‘Oh, the Church Mole?’

  Jeremy bites his lip.

  ‘No, not the Church Mole, though Roderick’s sermon got top marks, since you ask.’

  His weak smile fades like breath from a mirror.

  ‘Another website. Vic-o-leaks or something.’

  She realises she’s been braced for this for months.

  ‘Vic-i-leaks, that’s it. Written anonymously by a female curate.’ He squashes a fragment of nut beneath his little finger. ‘In north London.’

  Why has she never mentioned it to him? That someone is having a bit of harmless fun pillorying the worst aspects of daily Church life?

  Jeremy pulls a crumpled plastic bag onto his lap and takes out the vestry laptop. He places it on the table between them and starts tapping one-fingered on the keys.

  ‘Look, here we go. “Vic-i-leaks: Her Master’s Voice”. See?’

  The familiar figure in the collar and Zorro mask.

  ‘There are all kinds of handy tips. What colour lipstick to wear at the altar. The best hairstyle for when you’re doing a wedding or baptism. How to fend off randy older priests. It’s all here,’ he coughs, ‘should you need it.’

  She drains the rest of her drink, ice cubes clinking against the glass like tumbrel wheels.

  She could stop him any time, but her tongue won’t move. The pub is silent around them, other than some low-volume pop; even the elderly regulars at the bar are not talking.

  ‘And,’ – she heaves another breath – ‘you think it all sounds like St Mark’s?’

  Jeremy pulls at a thread on his jacket.

  ‘That’s what the email I got today said.’

  She closes her eyes. Please make it so that any second I wake up from this with pins and needles in my arm.

  ‘Someone thinks it’s me dishing the dirt on the parish.’ It’s a statement of fact rather than a suggestion.

  Jeremy pulls a crumpled tissue out of his pocket. She’s tempted to pat his shoulder in support.

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  She looks down, the bridge of her nose stinging.

  ‘You’re the horse that I backed, that I still very much back. But I have to say, this is very odd. Right down to the sherry hidden in the vestments cupboard.’

  She looks back up.

  ‘Who was the email from?’

  He hesitates.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Came from an address like SimpleSaint@hotmail.com or something. As you know, half our congregation don’t even own a PC.’

  Her head echoes. Someone wants to do her real harm. She’s been dangling by her fingernails since July and now someone out there is stamping on her fingers, one by one.

  ‘Of course, I haven’t spoken to anyone else about this. But I can’t keep a lid on it forever. Nothing spreads faster than scandal, and that would damage us all.’

  He looks totally exhausted.

  ‘Jeremy, please believe me. This is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’ve never seen it before?’

  She hesitates. ‘Well, no, but I—’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I swear.’ She lowers her head. ‘At least let me try and find out who’s behind it.’

  Now he averts his eyes.

  ‘Please?’

  He sighs.

  ‘Margot, if you’re doing this as some kind of escape valve, it would be much better if you just admitted it now. Believe me, I know this year as a curate is really tough. You wouldn’t be the first to swerve off the rails.’

  She shakes her head, incredulous.

  Vic-i-leaks: Scenes from Parish Life, 2 April 2017

  Just under three months until P-Day and then everyone will have to stop treating me like I’m wearing L-plates. Most jobs, you do a bit of training and then you’re an old hand. Round here you have to pass Go a billion times before they’ll even let you do a baptism by yourself. Women got the vote a century ago, people. When I’m boss, it’s all going to change. Proper champagne rather than that own-brand sugary fizz at all the receptions for starters. Plus introducing an upper age limit on all parishioners. Anyone over 65 or without their own teeth will have to find a new home, I’m afraid. LOL, just kidding!!!

  Vic-i-leaks: Scenes from Parish Life, 6 April 2017

  Blah fucking blah. These PCC big mouths could bore for Britain. Should have been an Olympic sport last year. This lot can spend an hour arguing over whether the Sunday school should serve Ribena or orange squash. What planet are they on? And who gives a monkey’s about the colour of the new kitchen tiles? We’re supposed to be saving souls here, not starring in Location, Location.

  Vic-i-leaks: Scenes from Parish Life, 15 April 2017

  If I’d wanted to spend every waking hour with the under-8s, I’d have become a teacher. No offence, but this wasn’t exactly why I did all those years of training. Babysitting toddlers and giving primary-school assembles pitched at Pingu or WonderPets level. Give me a break. And the parents. Like a fleet of Apache helicopters winging into view every Sunday morning.

  Margot slams the lid of her laptop. Why didn’t she keep a closer eye on this? Why didn’t she say something earlier? It’s like side-slipping into a parallel universe. As if someone has crept under her skin. That’s the worst thing. She’s just read twenty-two posts and, while there’s no definitive smoking gun, there’s a huge amount here that could be St Mark’s. Her body aches with the effort of not lying on the floor and giving up.

  Simplesaint@hotmail.com. It was barely worth even bothering to type it in, before the message from Mailer Daemon bounced back.

  Get a grip. Female curates are two-a-penny now, half the annual intake. You’re not the only one with frustrations.

  Someone’s clearly out to get you, Margot, and they’re doing a pretty thorough job of it. These are your words, your thoughts. You didn’t actually write them, but you might just as well have done, and no one is going to believe otherwise. You’re toast.

  She can see the Daily Mail headline now. Girl Vicar Dishes the Dirt! Worse, Girl Vicar Dishing the Dirt is Having Affair with Married Parishioner!!!

  Who would have the skills? Who hates her enough?

>   Oliver, Fabian’s nephew. Jeremy said he was a Twitter fanatic. His revenge for not getting the post.

  Margot turns over on the lumpy mattress. Or Gwen? The ultimate insider, in and out of that vestry at least three times a week.

  Cyd? Margot winces. Does she really feel that hostile to her?

  Roderick? He can barely turn on the office laptop. But where’s an ill will, there’s a way. He certainly loathes her enough.

  That Welsh evangelical woman who never comes to Margot’s side of the altar rail. She’s some kind of writer, isn’t she?

  Even Clarissa. Margot shakes her head vigorously. She’d never do anything to harm Margot, no matter how furious she is.

  ‘Who could hate you that much?’ Felix asks, in the tiny bar they’ve found up some forgotten side street at the far end of Crouch End. ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  He reaches for her hand and squeezes it.

  ‘What, you’re telling me someone would go to the trouble of setting up a website supposedly written by you to screw up your entire career?’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve been watching too many Scandinavian thrillers.’

  It’s already a week since Jeremy told her. The walls of St Mark’s have sprouted eyes like a dystopic Dali. It’s as though everyone is waiting for her to put her head into the noose. Everyone except Jeremy.

  But she’s no closer to finding out the architect of Vic-i-leaks and even the vicar’s heroic patience must have limits.

  ‘This really could be the end for me, Felix. I know it sounds like I’m totally paranoid, but everyone, or most people, think it’s me.’

  ‘Seriously?’His expression changes.

  ‘Tell you what, let me speak to a techie friend of mine.’

  She pulls at a thread unravelling on her blouse.

  ‘It’ll be OK, Gogo. Your vicar seems a reasonable guy. It’s most likely all some bizarre coincidence. One of your sisterhood putting the boot in to the Church because she needs to let off steam. Just like you do, right?’