We will slip in behind her before the door closes, and form an opinion. This is Kat. Not Kate. Kat. She is what makes Steve’s job viable, and for that, we love her. (Or hate her, depending on what we think of Steve’s job.) Steve departed from usual Church practice in making this appointment. Conventional wisdom states that you need to appoint someone who understands the Church, and is a good enough PA. Instead, Steve knew he needed the best person he could possibly poach from the secular world, trusting that he or she would quickly master the Church side of things.
Kat has mastered the Church side of things. I’m sorry to tell you that she finds a lot of it hilarious. How shall we describe Kat? We will wring our hands and fluster about. Well, she’s quite tall, a tall handsome young woman, um, with dark hair, dark curly hair, brown eyes . . . ? Oh, you know who I mean. We will describe her in every possible way without mentioning it. Because that might be seen as racist, and we’re not racist.
Kat is used to this, of course; just as she is used to people asking her where she’s from. I’m from Watford, where are you from? No, where’s your family from? From Watford; where’s your family from? No, no, where’s your family from originally? From London; and where’s your family from originally? So far, nobody in Lindchester Cathedral has pressed this line of questioning one stage further, and asked which of Kat’s parents or grandparents slept with a black person.
Kat shakes her head. Bless them. She makes a mug of tea and settles down to the bishop’s emails. Footsteps come crunching across the palace drive. She looks up. Great. The toxic tenor. What does he want?
‘Hey . . . I wanna say . . . Kate?’
‘Kat. Hi, Freddie. What can I do for you?’
‘Ohh, yeah, so I was wondering, is Steve in?’
‘’Fraid not. He’s in London today. House of Bishops. Anything I can help you with?’
There’s a lo-o-ong pause. Kat smiles encouragingly, as she pictures tumbleweeds rolling across the vast desert spaces of Freddie’s brain. A coyote howls in the distance.
‘Um. So can I, like, see him? When he’s back? I kinda like . . . just quickly?’
‘Let me take a look in his diary for you.’ She checks. ‘OK, he’s got a slot two weeks today at eleven-thirty. Does that work for you?’
‘Gah. Yeah, no, yeah, I mean, is that like the earliest? Only, yeah.’
Kat double-checks. ‘Yep. ’Fraid so. Want me to book that in for you?’
Freddie tugs his hair. ‘Gngnnaah. Hhnnhh. Cool. Yeah. Probably you should do that?’
‘OK. All done. Eleven-thirty, Monday eighth of Feb.’ She gives him her beamiest smile.
‘Cool. Thanks, uh . . .’ He grimaces.
‘Kat,’ she supplies.
‘Yeah, Kat.’
Well, well, well, thinks Kat. So we’ve had a little change of heart, have we? She logs onto Facebook. Sure enough, toxic tenor has deleted his outrageous anti-Steve rant. What prompted that? she wonders. The puzzle detains her for a full three seconds. Kat’s priorities are Steve’s priorities, and Freddie May is not high on the list.
Perhaps the reader is more curious than the bishop’s EA? I will explain. Giles (the precentor) and Timothy (the director of music) – after a brief arm-wrestle over whose responsibility it was – manned up and braced Mr May together. They charged him with removing his frankly actionable Facebook diatribe. Mr May flamboyantly declined. The poor precentor was left with no option but to make a phone call to an old friend.
And so it happened that last Sunday night, while Freddie was sprawled on his bed . . . Hmm. How to phrase this delicately? While Freddie was Enjoying some Me Time, a text arrived. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING. REMOVE THAT POST, OR FIND ANOTHER MENTOR. This acted like a bucket of icy water on the soul. Freddie abandoned the matter in hand, and deleted his rant, teeth literally chattering.
Ah, how one deep calleth another! Not just a bucket, a waterfall! Vast Niagaran cataracts of icy dread, each icier than the last. All thy waves and storms are gone over me! Freddie’s behind on his rent. He’s broke. Everyone’s mad at him. Giles, Timothy, Mrs Dean, his mentor. Even Jesus is mad at him! He’s hiding from Jesus, coz Jesus is all, Freddie, why are you even doing this, why are you still hating on people? Didn’t we talk about this when the plane landed safely?
Plus he hasn’t done his tax return yet!
Oh God, oh Jesus! He knows this dumb shit is all about desperately wanting Dr Jacks to love him. He tried so hard to be a grown-up, and nada. Mentor’s not interested. So it’s back to fucking stuff up. Even though mentor’s never gonna play this game; he’s never gonna play any game. Man, Dr Jacks is like off-the-scale un-manipulatable? So why, why’s Freddie still doing it? Here’s why: You won’t love me, huh? Then watch this – gonna force you to hate me, dude.
Poor Freddie sees all this – and yet he has no power of himself to help himself. We asked, rhetorically, in an earlier chapter: where is the person willing to save Father Ed from Freddie May? We now ask: where is the person willing to save Freddie May from himself? Close at hand. Fear not, gentle Anglican reader (you who have, perhaps, caught yourself in the act of praying for the fictional Mr May). Last September Freddie’s gaydar – fritzed to smoking bits by mentor-infatuation – allowed someone to slide under without a blip. I have mentioned this person, but I dare say (like Freddie) you barely noticed. Anyway, this good man waits, still undetected, until Freddie stops crying for the moon and is ready to settle for someone who would only give him the whole earth.
Most of our characters are being obliged to wait for something. That good saint, Miss Blatherwick, is waiting for test results. If she has not heard in six weeks, she may ring the consultant’s secretary for an update. From this, she sensibly concludes that it is not urgent, or they would have whisked her in immediately. So she waits.
Leah Rogers must learn to possess her soul in patience too. She has to wait until 1 March to hear which grammar school she will be starting next September. She has already passed her 11 plus (yes, we still have the 11 plus here in the 1950s, just as some of us in the Close still have our milk delivered by actual milkmen), but Leah must wait for Allocation Day. Will she get into her First Choice?
Just between ourselves, she will not. Nobody is allowed to mention this any more, but her real First Choice was to be a girl chorister at Lindchester Cathedral. (Huzzah, a Girls’ Choir at last!) Only Mum and Dad said no, even with a scholarship they couldn’t afford the fees. Yeah, like they couldn’t save up? Why couldn’t they get proper jobs like other people’s parents? Then we wouldn’t be so poor all the time. Why did they have to be so useless?
(I should just whisper that Mum and Dad were actually protecting Leah here. While Leah is ‘Gifted & Talented’, she has all the musicality of an eager potato.)
‘I spect you only want to be a chorister coz of Freddie May.’
Oops! Jess still had a red slap-mark on her face two hours later.
Anyway, who wants to be a chorister? Singing is lame. And another thing: no way is Jess going to pass her eleven-plus, coz she’s so dumb, so ha ha.
Who else is waiting? Well, the Lindchester members of General Synod wait for the gathering next month, of course. They book London hotels and advance train fares. The diocesan housing officer waits to see how big a headache storm Gertrude will cause him vis-à-vis the vicarages of the diocese. The bishop waits for the dean’s decision on rationalizing cathedral and diocesan structures. Father Dominic waits for his bathroom scales to stop being so bloody rude, and acknowledge all his hard work. Jane is still waiting for Matt to fess up about applying for the bishop of Barcup job, because Matt is waiting for the right moment to broach the subject.
And we all wait for spring. It is just getting light at 7.30 a.m. now. In all the parks and gardens of Lindfordshire, the crocuses are up like clusters of pale toadstools. Here and there, a slip of white among the snowdrop spikes. The thrush finalizes his spring repertoire. Collared doves call: Croo croo croo. The wild plums blossom. See how long the afterno
ons are now? Fear not, little flock.
‘Good God!’ The dean guffaws. ‘What on earth is THAT?’
‘That, deanissima, is a glow-in-the-dark banana guard.’
Marion laughs so hard the whole bed shakes.
‘You never know when you might need to find your banana in the dark,’ says Gene.
‘I suppose that’s a paradigm of the church too?’ she manages.
‘“Lead, kindly guard”,’ warbles Gene, in his best Peter Pears voice. ‘“The night is dark, and I am far from home . . .”’
It is Thursday night. The storm lands. Gene snores through it all. Marion goes to the window and looks out into the whirling dark. Ah, I keep asking to see the distant scene, she thinks. One step is not enough for me. I’m hankering for what might have been, too. That bishopric I nearly got. The CNCs that come and go without mandating me. Lead thou me on!
Then, as she watches the churning night, God speaks: ‘He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.’ And in that moment she knows she is in the right place. Here. Now. Even though the storm rages. This is where she is called to be.
Marion goes back to bed. On her bedside table, the banana guard glows green amid the encircling gloom. Another fit of laughter shakes her.
‘The tide’s turned, Pedro,’ says Father Wendy. ‘Yes, I think it really has. The majority are now in favour of equal marriage. If we trust the survey. Do we trust it?’
Pedro offers no opinion. It is Saturday afternoon. The Linden is high. They are dodging hailstorms. Look! Catkins. Knots of rusty old ash keys. Molehills slung out across a green field like flicked paint. Father Wendy notes it all as she passes. Moorhens, coots. Black clouds, bright sun. Rainbow!
She is the only one here, now, noticing. Look at your world, look, look at your glorious world. Wendy shines up her soul and reflects it all back.
Chapter 6
afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted! Hot on the heels of Gertrude comes Henry. Lampposts wag and knock, barricades crash over, trampolines take to the air like flying saucers above suburban gardens. In the bare treetops, hear the frrrrrrp! of shredded carrier bags.
Winter will pass. February is a short month, thank God. Those with eyes to see – and who remember to look up – glimpse strange clouds in the cold morning sky, clouds that gleam iridescent as mother-of-pearl. Father Wendy sees them, and stands by the Linden, lost in wonder, love and praise.
Candlemas arrives. Solemn Eucharist in the cathedral. One last curl of Epiphany smoke, and away with the nativity sets. For a moment, we forget ourselves, burst into liturgical glossolalia and remark that Quinquagesima is almost upon us. Let someone interpret: next Sunday is the last one before Lent (which, in common usage, is the relaunch of the New Year diet season).
Spring, yes, real signs of spring now. Jane trudges round Lindford arboretum after nicking off work early. She sees swathes of snowdrops quivering in the wind and her soul leaves the gloomy haunts of sadness. The boughs of mighty limes twist and creak above her. She thinks of those Victorian worthies who planted saplings, knowing they’d never live to see them full grown. Thanks, guys. Thanks for the big trees. The green spaces. For sending it on ahead of you and bequeathing the likes of me a spot of beauty in an ugly town. But what are we bequeathing to our great-grandchildren? An asset-stripped planet, flooded, burnt and fracked to death. Yeah, sez you, Dr Rossiter – who recycles her cans, then hops on a plane to New Zealand.
She ploughs straight through those ankle-deep puddles that lie across the path. You won’t catch Jane mincing round trying not to get her trainers wet. Splosh, splosh, splosh. She gets a perverse hit of nostalgia for the crunching tackle, taste of mud, seeing stars. Happy days.
Then she is overtaken by a young woman who twinkles past in pink running shoes, her long shiny black ponytail bouncing.
Pah. You wouldn’t last thirty seconds in a scrum, Missy. Snap you like a Barbie doll, I would.
The snowdrops are out in the palace garden too, but the bishop of Lindchester is not here to admire them. He is away in Cambridge, getting a spot of in-service training with his fellow diocesans. You know the rules: we may not follow him and listen in on their sessions. Those of my readers who prefer not to gaze directly at the practical outworking of the Green report – but rather to view them through the palantíri of social media and the church press – should avert their gaze here. Bishop Steve returns to Lindchester and reports that it was excellent – as indeed did those deans (our lovely Marion included!) who subjected themselves to the ghastliness of a mini-MBA last year, and found it brilliant.
Sorry, I’ve stopped. Proper High Elvish hand-wringing will now resume: well, of course Stevangelical would say that. Is he not a Cantuarian café-church going-for-growth stooge, synchro-swimming in the talent pool with his fellow Greenites to ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’? The age of the true Church of England is passing. The age of the orcs has begun. We shall sail into the Westcott West and fade tastefully away.
Finally, the bathroom scales are Father Dominic’s friend! He has lost half a stone since 1 January, by a tried-and-trusted combination of being good, and cranking away on the cross-trainer in what his mother (on a long visit, exploring the possibility of relocating to Lindford) has been instructed never again to refer to as his ‘glory hole’.
‘Why not? That’s what it is.’
‘Never you mind. We’re calling it the basement.’
‘Well, it’s full of clutter whatever you call it.’
‘Be that as it may.’
‘I’m going to google glory hole. I bet it’s one of those euphemisms of yours.’
Spring is in the air. Tomorrow’s sermon is written. What better way to celebrate losing your first half-stone – and to escape from your mother reading out eye-watering entries from Urban Dictionary and asking ‘if anybody really did that’ (why had he bought her an iPad for Christmas?) – what better way of celebrating than by going out for a last-Saturday-before-Lent drink with an old friend?
Oh, Dominic! Have thirty years of friendship not taught you that you are on a hiding to nothing trying to celebrate with Jane Rossiter?
‘Yeah, right,’ said Jane. ‘The majority of Anglicans who never darken the doorway of the church are now in favour of equal marriage.’
‘Look, they self-identify as Anglicans,’ said Dominic. ‘So why don’t you shut up and stop picking holes in something I bet you haven’t even read?’
‘Personally, I self-identify as a rugby player,’ remarked Jane. ‘I never play, I’m not a paid-up member, but it’s the rugby club I consciously never go to, ergo I’m a rugby player. I’m not a gym bunny – although I live quite near the health club, and I never go to that either. Because that’s the equivalent of the Wesleyan chapel that self-identifying Methodists don’t go to.’ She raised her Prosecco. ‘But cheers, and hoorah for progress.’
‘Oh, fuck off.’
Jane repented. ‘For what it’s worth, I honestly do think the tide has turned.’
‘What you think is worth shit, Jane.’
Jane repented further. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Truly.’ Still pouting. ‘Plus you’re definitely looking trimmer.’
There was a long silence. Oh Lord. Had she ridden him too hard?
Dominic picked up his glass and took a swig of Prosecco. ‘Why are you always so mean to me?’
‘Am I the meanest old woman you ever have seen?’
‘Yes, you are. Hit the road’ – he leant forward and narrowed his eyes – ‘Jackie.’
‘Oh! Low blow!’ Dominic was one of the very few people who knew Jane’s real name, the one she’d ditched at Oxford, along with the Babycham and stilettos.
‘You drove me to it.’
‘I know I did. Gary.’
‘Ah, ah!’ He wagged a finger. ‘That’s only my middle name. Doesn’t count.’
There, they are friends again. I think we can leave them to it now. We will head out of the nice bar they are sitting in, and brave the bacchanalia
of a typical Saturday night in Lindford.
It is raining. There goes a pink-sashed hen party. Maid of honour. Mother of the bride. The bride-to-be in her veil and L-plates. They shed pink feathers as they pass. A pink helium balloon is snatched at by the wind: Here Come The Girls! They vanish into a club. Music throbs. Bouncers guard entrances where youngsters queue coatless in the cold.
In the upper room of St James’s church, Lindford, a group of people pray. Outside the party rages on. Sirens tear past. Shouts. A burst of song. Breaking glass in the alley below. I bet the prayer group sits smug and pious in their cosy room, insulated from all that drunkenness and sin. I bet they are a bunch of hypocrites judging everyone else. The Church is full of them.
The Church that exists in the secular imagination, that is.
These people are genuinely not holier-than-thou. But they may well be kinder. This is the prayer wing of the street pastors. All through this cold night they will receive updates by text message from the foot soldiers out there doing the stuff. Not judging, just doing the stuff. Not using the stuff as a Trojan horse to sneak the gospel into the unsuspecting drunk’s citadel, even. Just doing the stuff. Because who else is doing it?
That’s what Chloe thinks, anyway. Chloe is a street pastor. We saw her earlier, overtaking Jane in Lindford arboretum. Jane, as we saw, dismissed Chloe as a Barbie doll. That was a shameful piece of objectification rooted in the kind of internalized male gaze issues Dr Rossiter would be the first to interrogate, had she not just been overtaken by someone younger, fitter and slimmer than herself.
Chloe is both tougher and older than she looks. She is thirty-one, a solicitor and a lay member of General Synod. Tonight she is walking round her usual street pastor route, chatting to doormen, to the police, to regulars who recognize her. Basically, she looks out for anyone unable to look out for themselves. The lost ones, the ones who get left behind. Shepherd-less sheep.
She turns into the alley beside St James’s. And she finds someone. I know you, she thinks. He is sitting on a step in the back doorway of a club, arms wrapped round his head. Chloe squats beside him. Her blue street pastor’s coat rustles.
Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3) Page 4