The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  Margot backs out, a somnambulist, fully absorbing the facts of this small, broken family. She stands on the landing in front of the Monet print, at which she’s barely given a second glance since the day she arrived. The vase of freesias on the side table, the water cloudy brown inside. All the other details surrounding her in plain sight, present but invisible to her.

  She breathes in and starts moving up the stairs to the attic room, an intruder in too far to pull back now.

  She stops at the top step, paralysed by the thought of the grief Cyd has experienced on the other side of this door, alone.

  Today would have been Margot’s mother’s fifty-fifth birthday.

  She’s been pacing up and down for about ten minutes, looking over at the house down the road, trying to steady herself, afraid she lacks the courage of whatever convictions she still possesses.

  In the half-a-dozen times or so she’s been inside it, she’s never once seen a photograph of his wife. Maybe when she goes over and presses that buzzer, she’ll be able to put a face to her guilt at last.

  It takes her another five minutes but, finally, she crosses over the road and lifts her hand.

  ‘Hi.’

  Her chest feels as though a steel band is being tightened around it.

  He stares at her with an expression that contains so much more than shock. Heavy blue bags sag under his eyes.

  ‘Christ. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to get hold of you? Why the hell didn’t you call me back.’

  He sighs and lifts his arms towards her.

  She doesn’t move. She glances up at the window above them then back at him. She must see this through.

  He folds his arms across his chest.

  ‘I even picked up the phone a couple of times about to call your vicar, I was so worried.’

  The anger in his voice is like a physical slap.

  ‘Can we go for a walk somewhere, Felix?’ Even the smell of the hall behind him is pulling her in.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please?’

  Felix scans her face. She looks down. He does nothing for a few moments, then she hears him snatching his keys off the hook and kicking the door closed behind him.

  ‘OK. Lead on.’

  She’s rehearsed this endlessly over the past couple of days. But walking alongside him now, with not just his hurt, but the contours, the smell of him a physical fact, her script deserts her.

  Their feet are out of step as they walk along the backstreets near his home in spiny silence. A barbeque is in full swing over on one corner, meaty smoke pouring out over their heads. Someone opens a bottle with a defiant pop.

  A few steps further on, Felix stops and swivels round to face her.

  ‘How do you think I felt when you wouldn’t answer any of my messages?’ He swallows hard. ‘I didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘No, no.’ Her nerves are taut with the effort of denying her every instinct. The emotion on his face is so raw, she has to turn her head away.

  ‘There must be some way out of all this?’

  She puts more space between them.

  ‘Or maybe you don’t want there to be?’ He thrusts his hands in his pockets.

  She can’t afford to do this.

  ‘In which case why exactly did you come today?’

  She takes a long shuddering breath.

  ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  A young couple saunter past. The guy catches Margot’s eye and smiles.

  ‘You were saying?’

  ‘It’s about Cydney.’ Her voice cracks. ‘Armstrong.’

  He leans in towards her, his lips set in a hard line.

  ‘I know she’s in trouble.’

  ‘And? Since when has that been front-page news?’

  ‘With the police.’

  He blows out his cheeks.

  ‘She told you that?’

  A silent reel is unspooling in her head. The hunched figure in the attic, face pulpy with tears.

  ‘Sorry, let me just check where we are here. You’ve blanked me for two weeks and now you’ve pitched up on my doorstep to interrogate me about Cydney.’ He blows out his cheeks. ‘Jesus, of all people.’

  She grabs hold of the garden fence behind her.

  ‘I need to know whether you’re pressing charges.’

  He lets out a bark of fury. ‘What, so anyone can stroll in and commit massive criminal damage and we should just say, Oh well, never mind?’

  A couple of young boys slice past them on the pavement, doing wheelies on low-slung bikes.

  ‘You should withdraw the charges.’ She stops. ‘Because, well, I—’

  He tips his head.

  ‘Yes?

  ‘It wasn’t Cyd.’

  ‘Fuck, what are you talking about?’

  ‘She was with me,’ she screams. ‘We were shopp—’

  He grabs hold of her shoulders.

  ‘Stop it, Margot!’

  She twists out of his grip.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  She feels like she might pass out.

  ‘You need to drop the charges.’

  He rubs his mouth, pushes back his hair. For an insane second, she wonders, if he might be about to hit her.

  ‘My room was completely trashed,’ he says very slowly. ‘Books torn to pieces, class notes, stuff I’d had for years. All kinds of crap scrawled all over the walls. I actually felt like throwing up when I walked in. She even smashed an engraving my father gave me.’

  Margot’s shoulders slump.

  ‘She’s fifteen, Felix.’ Her voice is scratchy. ‘Her mother ran away and is having a baby with someone else. Her father’s a train wreck. She’s been hanging around with a guy who could easily be ten years older than her.’ She grabs his arm. ‘Surely you can show her some compassion?’

  ‘Compassion?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You’re not serious? You have no idea how many second chances she’s had. How many times I’ve had her back when other people had completely had it up to here with her.’ He slices his finger across his throat. Then he looks at her and the fight seems to leave him. ‘In any case, it’s not my call. You know that. The head has a policy of zero tolerance for stuff as bad as this. It’s my job to enforce it. If we let her off, what kind of example is that?’

  ‘What makes you so sure it was her?’

  Something passes quickly across his face. He walks away from her towards over to the curb, then turns back to face her.

  ‘Everyone knows. She was boasting to all her crew about payback time, after I gave her and some of the others detention.’

  Margot leans back against the fence.

  ‘You’re supposed to be taking care of her, not throwing her to the police like, like—’

  ‘Like a Christian to the lions?’ His voice has risen so much, someone looks over, concerned, from the other side of the road. ‘You were the one living in the same house. Wasn’t it up to you to take care of her – given she was right there under your nose? Isn’t that your job?’

  She can’t stop a huge sob escaping her.

  Felix runs his hand across his face again.

  ‘Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I—’

  ‘Just drop the charges, Felix. Please. Do it for me, if not for her.’

  He leans in for her hand, but she pulls away.

  ‘I just told you. It’s in the head’s court.’ He walks back up alongside her ‘And what if people found out I’d done something like that for you?’

  Margot stares at him. Surely he’s not threatening her?

  ‘Along with all the other disgusting stuff, she,’ – he takes a breath – ‘she scrawled something on the wall.’ He bites his lip. ‘About you.’

  She holds herself very still.

  ‘She didn’t name you. But it didn’t take much figuring out. And don’t ask, because I’m not going to tell you.’

  He reaches out again for her hand, bu
t Margot stares at it, then wrenches herself away and charges back along the road.

  He calls her name just once.

  I feel like I’m wrapped in a sea mist, unable to see any way ahead. Help me to have the strength to get through these last few days with some shred of dignity. I’ll never be a priest now, but I still don’t want to let You down in the trying.

  Chapter 24

  Late June

  Four thirty a.m. A greasy film of sweat clings to Margot as she turns on the spit. She can’t perjure herself. But she knows Felix won’t, can’t, back down. She feels numb at the thought of him, her loss.

  And what does it all mean for Cyd? A young offenders’ institution? A permanent criminal record?

  What did she write about her on that wall?

  And he was right. If anyone should have known the extent of Cyd’s pain it was he, above anyone. She has no excuse.

  She stares up at the shadows on the ceiling. Her last Sunday as deacon. Her last as part of the Church, ever?

  The irony is, though, as she takes her seat at the side of the altar, this feels like a good-energy day. There’s a buzz in the air she can’t explain. The pews are unusually bursting for early July. She sits with her hands folded, somehow experiencing the resigned calm of one who has accepted her time has almost run out. That green-ink email from a parishioner to the archdeacon could arrive in his inbox any day. If this is her valedictory appearance, the congregation seems to be arranged in their usual seats as if for this exact purpose. The flower ladies in a small posy in the third row below the lectern. Assorted members of the PCC sprinkled to the left and right of the aisle, ready to take up their assorted roles of reading, serving the chalice, doing the collection or offering this week’s prayers. The coffee tables laid up at the back, white tablecloths fluttering in the breeze from the porch. Even Pamela pumped her hand warmly this morning when she walked in. It felt like being handed her last cigarette before the appointment with the firing squad.

  The life of this church will continue, exactly as it has for the past 181 years, long after Margot herself is a smudgy footnote in its history.

  ‘Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Redeemer’ swells to its boisterous finale. She looks down at the front rows, people’s mouths wide in appreciation of the choice of hymn.

  Jeremy gives a gruff cough and walks over to the lectern for the notices. It’s bread-and-butter business: the final tally from last week’s fundraising picnic, the second airing of the marriage banns for a couple no one can quite place, the summer schedule for the Kool Gang, the monthly request for all the bakers to come and reclaim their Tupperware boxes.

  ‘Anyway, saving the best ’til last,’ Jeremy says, looking up and pushing his glasses onto his head. ‘I hope you all have next Sunday in your calendars because, exactly one year after she joined us, our own Margot is going to be priested by the Bishop of Stepney at St Martin-in-the-Fields. It’s a huge celebration for St Mark’s and we hope many of you will join us there.’

  Sal and Kath grin over. Margot tries to return the smile.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll all join me in thanking Margot for all she’s done over the past year as curate. Her work with the Kool Gang, the educational talks, the—’

  ‘SHAME!’

  Jeremy ducks down as though someone has just hurled a missile at him. There’s a second or two when the world stops turning and Margot’s breath slows to a whisper. Then a loud clattering on the dias and Roderick appears at the front of the altar. He shuffles forwards and faces the pews, arms stretched out wide, head thrown back. He rips up his order of service with a flourish, jumps off the step and marches down the aisle with a speed and agility that is as shocking as it’s impressive.

  Here it is, then.

  An excited hum rises to a keening ululation as people turn to look at each other. No one else moves from their seat for a few seconds. Then someone stands abruptly and pushes past the rest of his pew towards the central aisle. A woman on the far side does the same. Then another. And another. It’s like a tableau of Antony Gormley figures coming to life. Two minutes later and a dozen or so have shoved and shuffled their way to the centre of the church. Margot and Jeremy stare at them in disbelief. But she has just about enough presence of mind to see it’s a motley, predictable crew: a handful of Roderick’s septuagenarian groupies; that tight-lipped widow who insisted in Margot’s first week that canon law forbids the ordination of women; a couple of moth-eaten Roderick lookalikes; the small gaggle of swivel-eyed charismatics for whom it was only a matter of time.

  Margot’s eye is caught by a movement to the right of the pillar. Fabian is now on his feet in the third row, fingers raking through his hair. He sneers over at her as he marches down to join the rest.

  An awed hush fills the church. Margot looks at the faces in the first few rows. Something momentous is happening; they just haven’t quite worked out what.

  She has. High Noon. The Pied Piper of Highbury seizing his revenge.

  The refuseniks have gathered in a half-moon around the coffee table, Roderick standing out in front of them. He’s lost twenty years in five minutes. The arthritic stance, the snivelly shakiness, the gloomy torpor: all gone. In their place stands a commanding figure, shoulders straight, ramrod -acked, the assertive naval chaplain of three decades earlier. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or, in his case, cometh the woman, goeth the man.

  His transformation would be inspiring if it wasn’t so catastrophic. She’s aware that Jeremy is now staring at her, his cheeks ashen. The entire congregation is staring at her. A couple of sobs break out near the front. A giggle here and there.

  Margot drags herself upright and walks with legs of lead to the spot halfway down the aisle where the Gospel is read.

  The silence crackles.

  ‘This is about me, isn’t it?’

  ‘Self-obsessed as ever, Margot.’

  ‘No, I just—’

  ‘“Let women keep silence in church.” One Corinthians, fourteen thirty-four.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to talk about this in private, Roderick?’ Jeremy asks from far behind her, his voice tremulous and small.

  ‘This is between me and her.’

  ‘But, Rod—’

  ‘“A woman should learn quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man.” One Timothy two, eleven to fifteen.’

  Is he going to work his way through the whole of St Paul?

  ‘I mean, where’s it all leading? Our Mother who art in heaven? The Father, Daughter and Holy Ghost?’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ bellow a couple of his cohorts.

  ‘You women are trying to pull the Church out from under us. Feminisation, be damned.’

  Margot walks further down the aisle. People are now scrambling up onto the pews for a better look. She tries to steady herself.

  ‘Roderick, God’s actions in the world are to set all humanity free. Including women. God created mankind as both male and female.’ She wills the catch in her voice to subside. ‘My calling is no less meaningful than yours.’

  Roderick also takes a couple of steps back up the aisle towards. There’s a murmur in the pews around her.

  ‘“Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is head of the Church.” There were no female disciples. Your sex,’ – he purses his lips in disgust – ‘makes you unfit to serve and minister at God’s Holy altar.’

  Unfit. That has to be the cue. She waits for the torrent to start, bracing for the catcalls.

  But nothing comes. No one else speaks. And all of a sudden, she feels a charge of energy coursing through her.

  ‘There were no non-Jewish disciples either. And Jesus displayed a shockingly liberated treatment of women. The first person to whom the risen Christ revealed himself was Mary Magdalene.’

  ‘A whore.’

  A heartbeat.

  ‘A disciple and a believer.’

  �
�A mistake.’ His voice has risen an octave. ‘Male-to-male representation is the only faithful one. Two thousand years of tradition can’t be wrong.’

  He grins at his followers.

  ‘You’re the one who’s wrong!’ It’s her mother’s voice she can hear ringing out now, clear and commanding. ‘There are no gender connotations in the symbol of bread and wine. And we’re in Highbury in 2017, not Palestine in AD 75.’

  ‘Moses. Isaiah. David. Elijah. The Pope and all the Holy Fathers. Male. All male.’ There are flecks of spit on his chin.

  ‘Ruth? Priscilla? The prophetess Huldah? The judge Deborah? Phebe, Tabitha?’ A row of coffee ladies nod in the pew next to her. ‘The ordination of women bishops was approved two and a half years ago, Roderick. Did you miss it?’

  Roderick snorts.

  ‘Oh, and the head of the Church of England also happens to be female.’

  He swats this away as well.

  ‘A women’s role in church is as backstage helper.’

  So much fury been stored up inside him for years. One enormous liturgical sulk since 11 November 1992. Every ordination, every photo of a smiling incumbent outside her new parish church, a dagger to his left ventricle. And then Margot comes along in his home patch, to add insult to the injury.

  ‘It’s a matter of hermeneutics, Roderick.’

  ‘Herman who?’

  ‘The theory of interpretation. The word “spirit” was feminine in the Hebrew so—’

  ‘You and your poncy Cambridge pretentiousness,’ he spits. ‘We’ve had enough of experts. What everyone here wants is plain English. Lessons for life. Simple stuff. None of your ologies and your isms and thinking you’re so much better than the rest of us. Put all that into your blog of yours, didn’t you, Margot?’