Ambrose raised a hand, like you do in class, when you’re not sure the teacher’s gonna like it. ‘Actually, you still owe me another fifty quid. For doing your tax?’
‘Shit.’ Freddie’s face burned. ‘Totally forgot about that. Oh man, really sorry.’ He checked his wallet. Shit. Must’ve spent it. ‘Uh, listen, lemme go to the cashpoint?’
‘No rush.’
‘No, no, no. I’m on it.’
‘Well, why don’t I walk down with you,’ Ambrose suggested, ‘and we can stop off at the King’s Head on the way back, and I can buy you a drink. Maybe?’
Gah. ‘Cool. Only I’m buying?’
‘OK.’
They didn’t talk as they headed off the Close and down the hill. Shit, shit, shit. Freddie could hear him humming; sweet, up in his head voice. Ah, here I am giving him seven kinds of grief, but he just carries on being a sweet dude? It should make Freddie wanna play nice, but no. He was all, I’m so gonna make you cry! Like they were fucking choristers for God’s sake, and this was Chinese burns? Man, why couldn’t he just grow up?
They reached the cashpoint. He got seventy out, peeled off fifty. For one second he thought Ambrose was going to refuse it. Felt his temper flare BOOM, but no, Ambrose took the money, and left Freddie scrambling to deactivate his rage.
‘So yeah, cheers for doing my tax?’ he mumbled. ‘Appreciate it. And uh, sorry for being a total bellend. I’m just—’
‘I love you.’
Freddie stared. ‘Dude! You can’t say that!’
‘Say what?’
‘I love you?’
‘I love you too.’
‘No— Gah!’ Freddie covered his face and laughed. ‘Man, you’re so . . . This is like talking to a frog.’
‘A frog!’
They started walking back up the hill to the King’s Arms.
Oh. My. ACTUAL GOD? ‘Yeah, so I had a pet frog, back in the day? Trevor? Totally loved that little dude, I’d be maybe six, seven, chorister, anyway, so yeah, I’d be holding him and he’d be trying to jump away, so I’d have to keep like . . . and when I’m talking to you, the conversation, y’know, jumps and I can’t keep a hold of . . . stuff.’ He snatched a breath. ‘Is all I’m saying.’
They’d reached the pub doorway.
‘Maybe you should kiss me,’ said Ambrose, ‘and see if I turn into a prince?’
‘Yeah, funny guy.’ Man, what’s with you? You’d give him a blowie in a heartbeat, and you’re too shy to kiss him? He leant up quickly. Planted one on his lips. ‘There you go.’
Pause.
‘Did it work?’ Ambrose asked. ‘Try again.’
‘Ha ha ha.’ Freddie opened the door. ‘You coming, or what?’
Ambrose ducked under the low beam. ‘Maybe it takes a while,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll just wake up one morning and find it’s happened?’
On Thursday we signed off our choice with an X, never believing it would really happen. On Friday morning, we woke and found it had. And that nobody had a Plan B. What have we done? What have we done? Did we really mean it? Can’t we wind back? Think again? Uncross the X?
Dean Marion woke in the night to hear rain. The cathedral clock chimed three. Gene was standing at the window looking out at the first grey light of dawn.
‘Is everything all right?’ she whispered.
He was silent a long time.
Oh no, she thought. She heard him sigh.
‘No. I’m afraid everything’s fucked, deanissima,’ he said. ‘And yet at the same time, everything’s all right. If you think you know how the story ends.’
The sun comes up over this green and pleasant diocese. Hay lies in sodden windrows. A slit of sky runs along a water channel through a field, as though the world might split in half. The wind stirs shoals of silver-backed leaves on the trees, and a magpie flies up, wings a blur of light. The bowing grass heads are all light. The river running is light, the church spires rearing, the sheep grazing, the cars driving: they are all light. The children playing, people walking, working, shopping, begging: light. All we see is light; not the things, but the light bouncing off them. Nothing but light.
And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world. This is how it ends. Nothing but the light, streaming back at us from future glory. No words or truths or facts of ours can comprehend it. And yet it is always breaking into our darkness through that tiny pinhole where the two lines intersect. On a green hill far away, where a cross marks the spot.
Chapter 26
n umbrella lies smushed flat on the pavement like a broken daddy-long-legs. We will limp past it into the Luscombe Centre in Lindchester’s Lower Town. Perhaps you had forgotten this place existed? It is on the opposite side of the River Linden, a stone’s throw from Vespas – if you have a good throwing arm, or a medieval trebuchet – hidden, as they say, in plain sight.
Would you like a tattoo? Would you like to place a bet on the European Championship? Who are all these people? Why are they dressed like that? Why are they so fat? Why are they in mobility scooters – wouldn’t they be healthier if they walked? Why are those children not in school? Who wants curry and chips in a tray, with gravy? Who on earth buys their bras from a charity shop? What is this place? Why is everything so ugly and depressing and made of concrete?
From down here in this invisible town, you can look up at the golden weathercock, riding high on the cathedral spire, remote, in another golden world. A world peopled with gentrifiers, hipsters, opera buffs, entrepreneurs, experts and professionals, all chattering as they buy their cortados and pastel macaroons, assuaged by the knowledge that wealth trickles down. Given the chance, would you vote the way they told you? Or would you give them two fingers, and think diddums when their golden playground got trashed?
*
Miss Blatherwick looked out of her kitchen window on Monday morning. Oh my goodness, whatever had happened? She put on her mac and hurried out. The wind roared all around the Close like an autumn gale. Oh no – her poor apple tree had toppled over! It was a heritage variety, a rare Lindchester pippin. The trunk had not snapped, nor had the roots been torn up, but the tree lay aslant across her lawn. Help!
There were little apples on every branch. It would have been a good harvest. That’s what had caused it. It was top-heavy. And all this rain must have weakened the soil. The soil Freddie had cleared so zealously of overgrown shrubs and brambles – maybe they’d been keeping the tree anchored?
Miss Blatherwick stood and stared. Rain freckled her glasses. Could it be saved? Pruned and propped back up, tethered to something? Everything felt like a metaphor to her right now. Oh dear.
She blew her nose and went back inside to ring a tree surgeon.
‘Well, this is fun!’ said Gene on Monday evening. ‘It reminds me of that thrilling childhood moment when someone hits a cricket ball through the classroom window. Everyone stands there paralysed. Except this time it’s not the classroom, it’s the window of the National Rare Glass Museum. Oopsy-daisy, Maisie!’
‘Thanks, darling,’ said the dean.
‘Everyone rounds on Blokey McJokeface Johnson. “Look what you’ve done now, Blokey!” So he scarpers – and who can blame him, frankly?’ Gene warmed to his metaphor. ‘Hark, the distant crash and tinkle of priceless artefacts! Quick! Someone fetch a grown-up! Wait – there are no grown-ups. We are the grown-ups! Nobody has a plan, nobody has a clue! Well played, Britain!’ He clapped. ‘Turn up late to the party, behave boorishly, leave early. And God help the rest of us.’
‘Amen,’ said the dean. ‘Lovely sermon, vicar. Now could you please stop.’
He scraped a foppish bow. ‘I am yours to command, deanissima. Shall we – in a valedictory spirit – open a bottle of something European, and watch England get knocked out of the European Championship?’
The dean laughed. ‘I think I’d back us to beat Iceland, darling.’
Oh dear.
Yes, Miss Blatherwick is right: everything feels like a metaphor
at the moment. The tumbrel rumble of thunder, the battling of sun and cloud, the rainbow of hope arching over everything. Referendum fallout continues to rain down on the whole of the diocese of Lindchester and beyond. What am I saying? Of course beyond! It is not all about us, for heaven’s sake. Poor Freddie was bluntly reminded of that by Ambrose. Perhaps you have wondered about Ambrose, and his saintly forbearance. He is an ox, as we know. But even an ox may be goaded beyond endurance.
We will wind back, briefly, and join them after evensong on that Friday, in the lay clerks’ vestry, as they took off their cassocks.
‘Hey. You doing OK, Brose?’
‘Not really.’
‘Wanna go out for a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Cool.’ Freddie dropped his voice, came close. ‘Want company? I mean, we could chill at yours, maybe?’
‘No. Thanks.’
Freddie flinched away. ‘Dude, are you . . . mad at me?’
Ambrose stared at him in disbelief. ‘Look. I woke up this morning to find £120 billion’s been wiped off the FTSE 100 overnight.’
‘Sure, but—’
‘We’ve screwed the economy. We’ve shafted the Scots, and torn up the Good Friday agreement. We’ve destabilized the whole European political landscape. We’ve trashed the future for the next generation, and legitimized intolerance and racism. This is a nightmare of global proportions. And you’re seriously stressing about whether I’m mad at you? What the hell, Freddie?’
There was total silence as Ambrose hung up his cassock and left. Every eye was tactfully averted. Then one by one, small conversations broke out. Football. Someone’s car had a flat tyre. Our old standby, the weather. Everyone longed to crack a joke to diffuse the tension, but what could they say?
*
The whole nation longs to crack a joke. We cannot bear too much earnestness. We watch one another, take the emotional temperature, try to come to a consensus: too soon to take the piss out of ourselves? Still too soon. And there’s a sick lurking fear that piss-taking may be partly to blame for this mess. We eye our family and friends, sound them out before we rant or gloat. Because who knows how they voted? Who knows why? What swayed them to put their X here, not there? There’s poison in the water supply. Fault lines run through everything and the trolls are out from under the bridge.
In far-off London town Parliament is in disarray, as though someone is rampaging round a bridge party with a leaf blower. Careers whirl away in a flurry of resignations. The stunned days go by. Your author stands like Count Bezukhov on the battlefield in his glasses, asking in sweet bewilderment, ‘What happened?’ What has become of my gentle comedy of Anglican manners? Let us pick our way through the smoking rubble of questions as best we can.
What have we done? (Can it be undone? A second referendum? A loophole? Do enough people have cold feet?) Is that a march of protest, or a tantrum? Was it a fair democratic process, or a pack of lies? A triumph, or a disaster? Best of times, worst of times? It still all depends on your point of view.
And so June skulks away out of the back door when nobody is looking. July the first dawns. All across Britain silent soldiers appear in First World War uniforms. ‘We’re here because we’re here,’ they sing. Because one hundred years ago, day dawned on the Somme and by sunset 19,240 were dead. For our tomorrow, they gave their today.
In our today, there are people going to work. There are children skipping in playgrounds. There are horses grazing in fields. These things are still going on. There are vicars taking services. There’s a woman selling the Big Issue by the station, and a piper piping outside Marks & Spencer. There are fast trains whizzing to London. There are foodbanks and nightclubs. There is a black woman from Watford being told to go home. There is a man out running, running till it hurts, running to see if he can escape himself, running like a hamster in a ball, trapped in the tiny curved-in-on-itself world of his own ego.
And there is a woman with a three-legged dog, praying for the man, as she walks down by the riverside. Praying for this poor world, riven by hatred, riven by love. ‘“Gonna lay down my sword and shield,”’ she sings. ‘“I ain’t gonna study war no more.”’
Jane saw the soldiers in Lindford as she walked to work. She’s been thinking, everything’s fucked. Why am I still here? Why the fuck am I not already packing my bags for New Zealand? For God’s sake, Matt. Why are we here?
And there were the soldiers, like an answer: ‘We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here.’ Because I voted Remain, thought Jane. Because I’m British. Because this is my home. Because I’m still fucking here. I just am.
Freddie cannot escape from his own head. Even if he reaches out, says sorry, it’s still gonna be about him, him being needy, all, please make me feel better about me?
He gets out of the shower, pulls on some sweats. Goes and stands on the landing looking out across the Close towards Vicars’ Court. So he woke up one morning and realized, yeah, it’s happened. Frog’s turned into a prince – but he left it too late. Didn’t believe it in time. He’s been writing a text in his head for days. (Dude, I get that this isn’t about me, it’s a global disaster, but I was only trying to . . .) Just can’t sign it off. He’s not even seen Ambrose all week. There’s someone depping for him – what’s that about? Is it really the labyrinthitis again, like Nigel says? (Dude, heard you’re ill. Sorry if I . . .)
Ah, why am I even here? Everything’s shit, everything’s trashed. The whole country’s fucked. Overnight, everyone hating on everyone else?
But just as he thinks this, he sees the bishop go past. And boom, Jesus is in his head: So what will you do, my friend? About the hating? Suddenly he’s crying. And now here comes that hymn again, the one Neil sang? ‘Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe.’
*
It’s the bishop’s day off. A long overdue evening in with Sonya. The doorbell goes. Hoorah, there’s the Deliveroo guy, early!
‘I’ll get it.’ He opens the door.
Oh bollocks.
‘Hey, Paul. STEVE! So yeah, I’m totally gonna make an appointment with Kat? But that won’t be for like weeks, and I just wanna say it quickly now to your face, coz I like said all the other stuff to your face? Uh, basically, sorry? I was out of order. We disagree, but I don’t wanna be hating any more? Ah shit. Sorry.’
Steve’s heart goes out to him in spite of everything. ‘That’s OK, Freddie. I’m sorry I hurt you.’
‘Thanks, man.’ He wipes his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Won’t happen again. I know I can’t expect you to like, go on forgiving me—?’
‘Yes, you can,’ interrupts Steve. ‘Or I’ll have to stop being a bishop.’
‘Ha ha, I guess.’
They stand a moment, irresolute.
Saved by Deliveroo! ‘Well, here’s our meal. Thanks for coming, Freddie.’
‘No worries.’ A moment’s hesitation. ‘Catch you later.’
Freddie wanders across the Close to the old battlements. He so needed a hug back there? Yeah, right – hugging bishops? How’d that go for you last time, huh? He looks down. There’s the Linden. He can hear it rushing, but he can’t see it through the leaves. Ah, just do it. Text him. Put yourself on the line. He gets out his phone. His whole body is shaking like crazy.
Missing you, sweet guy.
Send?
Delete?
The Linden rushes by, out of sight. How did this happen? Why are we here? I don’t know. But here we all are. Down by the riverside, right by the edge, ready to cross. Lay it down, lay it all down. Sword, shield, the whole lot. Let’s not carry it any longer. Let’s not study war. Let’s lay down our hate. Lay down our fears.
Then lay down our love. Put it all on the line. We can’t do much, but we can forgive each other.
JULY
Chapter 27
he dean woke. No, no, no. Not good. Yet good to wake from, and realize it was a dream. She lay in the grey light. No dawn chorus. One by one, the song
sters had left off. A clattering chatter of magpies in the tree outside the window, that was all. And Gene’s steady breathing beside her.
She allowed her mind to go back and turn the dream over, as if flipping something dead with a stick. A large mother rat with a dead baby rat clutched in its paws, and a trail of tangled misshapen aborted foetuses dragging after it, still attached. The creature was dying. In her dream, she knew she ought to put it out of its misery. But she couldn’t, just couldn’t do it. Even in her dream, she didn’t like herself for this cowardice. The rat was squeaking softly in distress. She knelt and stroked it, and wept for it.
Yes, good to wake from that particular offering of the subconscious. Marion slipped out of bed and went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. While the kettle boiled she looked out across the garden towards the hive in the gathering light. Are you all right, bees? It’s not you I’m fretting about, is it?
Ah. It came to her: an anniversary, of sorts. So many years had now passed, she had to stop and calculate. Seventeen years. She could revisit the episode these days and feel sad. Just sad. As if she were watching some other poor woman, haemorrhaging on the floor of the department store loo, looking at the red emergency cord, knotted up out of reach. She could kneel beside her and stroke her, and weep for the lost only begotten.
‘Everything all right, deanissima?’
‘Oh! I didn’t hear you coming!’ She leant her head on his shoulder. ‘Bad dream, that’s all.’
He held her, and they looked out across garden at the little white hive among the lavender. Were they all still asleep? Oh, the mystery of bees! Their frightening cycle of birth, death and rebirth. ‘The work of bees, and of your servants’ hands.’ Mother bees, mother bees. She was back in the Easter Vigil, with the precentor warbling the words of the Exultet.
O Truly blessed night,
when things of heaven are wed to those of earth,
and divine to the human.
‘It will be all right,’ she said to Gene. Even though it’s still dark now, she thought.
Realms of Glory: (Lindchester Chronicles 3) Page 17