by Ashly Graham
The doughnut struck Dark full in the face and knocked the bails of his sunglasses off his ears, and the reverend jumped back, automatically raising his arm for protection. Then William George Bunter’s bargewoman of a mother, her stockinged legs rubbing together like coarse sandpaper, bustled up the nave with a speed unnatural in one of her corpulence and snatched her son by the hand. Casting a look of loathing at Dark over her shoulder, she hauled the boy back to the crowd that had gathered around the hot-water urn on the trestle-table at the west end.
Dark, confused, cast about for his sunglasses on the floor, picked them up bent but unbroken, put them in his pocket, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and brushed sugar off his cassock. Parents! In future he would forbid parents to bring their offspring to services—the brats were even worse than the foul animals that the Church of England tolerated and held annual Blessing services for. The squalling of children and barking of dogs had oft punctured the balloon of his rhetoric.
Dark spotted the second fastball while it was still airborne, and ducked, so that this time it hit the devil lady on the cheek. It was another doughnut and must have been fresher than the first, for the DL wiped away a dollop of strawberry jam with an embroidered square of lace that she withdrew from her reticule. Dark wished that he had not ducked.
The members of the congregation who had massed around the font formed into ranks and columns, and advanced. All of them were armed with cake and buns and shortbread and other hardened patisseries, and readying their aims.
‘Fire at will!’ bellowed the hearing-impaired Mrs Bawtrey, the senior warden, who was standing on the step around the font to get a clear view. Her retiring and soft-spoken junior, Mrs Patnode, while refraining from active combat had not declared herself a conscientious objector and was standing in for Effie as leader of the Church Rat team prepared to pass ammunition forward from the back of the church so that it could be distributed by child powder-monkeys. When the assailants in the front had projected their missiles they would kneel down like musketeers in battle so that the row behind could have a clear shot while they reloaded.
‘Hey, Flabby, get a load of dis,’ yelled one parishioner; and a well-aimed flapjack flew past his ear and smacked into the pulpit. ‘Dat’s what we thought of your sermon, you dirty louse.’
‘’Open yer cake’ole, yer fat pig, and there’s plenty more where this comes from,’ screamed another very large powerful-looking woman. The slab of cake, which went wild, hit a beam and showered both Dark and the DL with dried fruit and crumbs.
The pair took cover behind the front bench. ‘When I told you what I wanted you to say, Dark,’ the devil lady hissed, ‘I meant it. What on earth has possessed you, you blithering idiot?’
More flak from the batteries burst in front of them. Dark detected a pleasant aroma of vanilla, and inhaled a cloud of icing sugar that sent him into a coughing fit. When he recovered, and raised his head above the oak parapet with the idea of catching the next delivery and consuming it, he was lucky enough to be struck in the mouth by a cream bun that disintegrated upon impact. He dropped out of the line of fire to blow the cream out of his nostrils into his handkerchief and eat the remainder. Licking his fingers and peering over the top of the pew, confident that there was more where that came from, he saw the church’s soldiers marching as to war up the nave with their teeth bared in a most un-Christian manner.
Those behind them had assumed stances with one foot in front of the other, like longbowmen at the battle of Crécy as they released their cloth-yard shafts. As Froissart wrote in his Chronicles, reporting on the massacre, in the translation by Lord Berners, “Then the englysshe archers stept forthe one pase and lette fly their arowes so hotly and so thycke that it semed snowe.”
Dark became concerned for his safety. Slumping to the floor he envisioned his lynching in the churchyard, hung from the propped-up horizontal limb of a five-hundred-year-old yew tree. ‘Do you think,’ he stammered to his employer, ‘if you stood up and invited everyone to drinks at the Old Rectory that they might…’ But it was too late for diplomacy: the aggressors were upon them, and the reverend raised his knees and covered the sides of his head with his arms, in anticipation of the blows that were about to fall.
‘Bash! Take that, Dark. Your sermon stank.’
‘Splat! “The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!” Cream-faced, Flabby…geddit? Here’s another cream bun from me, Barebones Barney, from beyond the pale, an’ a waste of good Devonshire it is. Here, let’s work it into your face a liddle with my foot, not that it’ll do anything for your ugly complexion.’
‘Whop! That one’s from Beryl’s Great-Great-Great-Aunt, for the children, and the children’s children, and the children’s children’s children.’
‘Lost your sweet tooth, have you, Fatso? Here, have a boot sandwich. Oomph! Sorry if the leather’s a bit tough, it’s four hundred years old.’
‘Don’t let me catch you on the Other Side, you big tub of lard, or you’ll really be sorry. Bonk!’
‘Dark you may be, Dark, but where you’re headed it’ll be light enough for me to find you. You can run but you can’t hide, not from my Boer knobkerrie, which ain’t lost none of its….thwack! Feel what I mean?’
After several cups of unsweetened instant coffee were poured over his head, and more of tea, the irreverent reverend decided to make a break for it and scrambled to his feet. Wiping Nescafé from his eyes he lowered his head and, yelling blue and other shades of murder, charged towards the door. The devil lady, who had anticipated his action, was already halfway there. Her orbs were like blazing carbuncles and she was cursing and clearing a path with tail rampant, which, having grown to double its usual size, was whirling and whipping to left and right and stabbing at anything that was within reach.
But with the exception of more incoming patisserie, Dark felt no resistance at all as he forged ahead and made as to fend off the blows from either side. He registered neither sensation nor pain from the punches, kicks and stomps that he had sustained and was continuing to receive. His ribs were not stove in, his skull was not cracked, his arms were not broken, and his jellied frame was unbruised.
Unlike the attack, the realization hit him hard: that his assailants were not extant parishioners at all. They were phantom members of an Ophelian fan club. They were ex-villagers; villagers emeritus who, apparently reluctant to depart for the Great Beyond, continued to show up at her Services and would do anything to defend her. They were nothing but a gang of gormless ghosts, an effluvium of ineffectual ectoplasm. Though deceased and defunct, inanimate and for all intents and purposes lifeless, dead they were but not like Darling Clementine lost and gone forever. The snuffed were still sniffing.
But though as a group they were extinct, they were no more grisly than they had been in the flesh, which was not hanging off them in strips; nor were they carrying their heads under their arms, and rattling their skeletons to frighten him. Having neither sticks nor stones at their disposal, nor flesh to pound him with, the most harmful weapons in the arsenal of these disenfranchised spirits, other than words, were flapjack and shortbread.
Dark, slowing, observed that all the corporeal members of the congregation were still at the bell-tower end, clutching mugs of coffee and tea and commenting on the barrage. Emboldened, the reverend puffed out his chest, and brushed away with disdain the cobwebby phantasms that continued to leer in his face and affect to assault him. Spotting a doughnut with a weak trajectory, he leaped with some agility, caught it single-handed and swallowed it as he passed through the door and joined his mentor outside where she was awaiting him. The devil lady’s tail had reverted to its former size and curled up under her coat for a nap.
‘Ah, there you are, Dark. Look, I’ve changed my mind. You turned in a creditable performance, showed some initiative. The other side lost its cool, that’s a good sign. You have a less than bright future ahead of you if you play your cards right.’
The volte-face was as unexpected as what
had taken place within, and perplexing, but to Dark it came as a relief. ‘Well, ah…thank you, ma’am, I’m sure. Though I wasn’t expecting...the ghosts, why are they all here?’ Dark wrung caffeinated beverage out of his sleeve.
‘Forget the ghosts, they’re easy to deal with. “Illegitimi non carborundum”…“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”. Most of ’em are headed in the wrong direction anyway—translation: right direction. Not upwardly mobile. It’s the others we’re after, the live ones who were all cowering at the back. You, Dark, you will be a fisher of women as you help me reel them in.’
‘I’m not sure I…’ He did not play cards, he did not fish.
‘It’ll be a piece of cake bringing that lot home.’
‘Gotcha.’
Almost affectionately, the devil lady handed the reverend a piece of Bakewell tart that she was intending to eat on the way home, before she thought of her figure. She had lost five pounds and was only five more from her goal. She smiled. ‘Tell you what, Dark, I’ll settle your dry-cleaning bill if you give it to my man. Right, I’m off. I say, such glorious spring weather, what? The rain’s stopped and the sun’s here to stay, I think. Carry on, Dark.’
The DL sauntered off, whistling. On her way down the path she noted that the primroses were out on the banks to either side, and was glad that she had decided to come afoot rather than on horseback. Her satanic stallion, meanwhile, was not happy about being confined to barracks, and very put out that the wire fence surrounding its paddock was twenty feet high and carried enough volts to blow every transformer in the area.
Father Fletcher munched as he stood and watched her depart. No one else had yet emerged from the church. The overarching branches of the tall trees that lined the path formed a Gothic vault above the DL’s head as she walked down the lane to the Street.
‘Such a baffling and bothersome bint.’ After bending his damaged sunglasses back into a semblance of shape without breaking them, and wearing them askew, Fletcher Dark trudged off in her wake.
*
In hopes of avoiding further
Unpleasant and injurious treatment
From a world antipathetic to his appearance
And reputation,
A snake went to Evensong
Trusting to find amongst the congregation,
Amidst canticle and antiphon,
Those from whom his scales
Might fall from their eyes.
There to his joy, though naturally
An adder cannot hide
Or fade the zigzag markings on his back,
To blend and render unremarkable
The fearful pattern,
Initially his meek expression was greeted
With pious faces all around.
But then it was that
—Buttressed by stone, adorned with architrave—
Several pillars of the community, still
Flushed from Sunday lunch, flushed deeper still,
Observing that this sun-dried metaphor
For evil, and engineer of their Edenic Fall
Had appeared to mock
Their subcutaneous livery.
Indeed, so vehement was their reaction
To this base reptile, though sanctuary guaranteed
Him immunity from physical abuse,
He was unceremoniously hustled to the door,
The least timorous moving to the fore,
And forced to withdraw.
Despite being no stranger
To rough treatment, it weighed upon him
That one who shed his skin
To wear the colours clearer on his sleeve
Should by a body bodily be cast as well.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The devil lady had a migraine, and compounding the pain in her head was the continuing presence of the demons and imps in the fire. Contributing further to her discomfort was the content of a long letter that the Bishop had sent to Father Fletcher, who had brought it to the Old Rectory after breakfast.
His Right Reverendship the bishop suffragan, having failed to gain a much-desired promotion after his archdeacon had leaked to the Diocesan Vacancy-in-See Committee of the House of Bishops that his boss was taking an unhealthy interest in parish affairs, was determined to remove this stain upon his character.
Chewing straws with yokels and soil his robes in farmyards were not part of his job description, the bishop knew that. For while the General Synod disapproved of its executives evincing interest in the affairs of the sees under their control, it frowned upon any who became actively involved. Micromanagers it scowled upon. Only when this junior prelate had cast his eyes upwards and demonstrated the requisite otherwordliness would he be considered as senior bishop material.
Nonetheless, the bishop also knew that his archdeacon was not to be trusted, and on the principle of “ if you want something done properly you must do it yourself”, he had resolved to take personal charge of dealing with whatever was rotten in the parish of Denmark. Only then could he return with confidence to the task of furthering his career.
Verbally chiselling his marbled prose with care, the Bishop dictated to his new Estuarian-spoken youthful and well-endowed secretary, Gail, a letter asking by whose authority the addressee, Father Fletcher Abraham Dark, had been appointed vicar; adding that perhaps he had been labouring under a misapprehension in believing that such decisions were his and his alone to make. The Episcopal Bull went on to remind Dark that the office of Patron, or holder of the Right of Presentation to a Benefice, no longer existed; a fact that a certain Mrs Diemen, as he understood her name to be, was apparently not aware of. This woman seemed to be possessed of the quaint notion that the Living of the parish within her supposed fiefdom was hers to be handed out like candy to children.
His Right Reverendship shuddered, remembering his infantile experience while returning from holiday with a former object of his affections, Jody. Furthermore, his letter went on, not only had this woman had the brazen effrontery, the gall, to kick out his appointed vicar, the Reverend Nate Posey; but she had also requisitioned as her residence the Rectory, which the Bishop was more or less certain was still the property of the Church.
Having ended the letter by expressing the desire to be favoured by a prompt reply, and remaining, Sir, everything but Father Fletcher’s humble, obedient and Christian servant, the Bishop sat back and contemplated his amanuensis, Gail. He imagined himself in the library at the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall, reading a desultory morning newspaper as he anticipated a tremulous luncheon in Gail’s company—he would take her with him when at last he was admitted to the inner circle of bishops—at a restaurant off the New King’s Road that had been recommended to him by a Westminster canon residentiary as a popular venue for such encounters; or perhaps a little hole-in-the-wall place in Wapping that a Southwark Cathedral verger had overheard was fit for purpose.
At lunch Gail would consume three bottles of Babycham, and behave so amenably that her boss might dare to hope unto himself that, being a bachelor and barely on the wrong side of fifty years old, if he diligently pressed his suit she might want to get to know him better, yea, even in the biblical sense. After lunch his Right Reverendship would return to the Athenaeum and spend an hour in the company of Morpheus surrounded by a number of his fellow snoring prelates who had similar plans for the evening. And then, his carnal appetite refreshed, at eight o’clock in a pressed heather-mixture suit he would press his suit, fuelled by red Hungarian wine and veal goulash side by side with Gail on a banquette at the Gay Hussar on Greek Street in Soho.
As she read the letter and tried to assess its import, and what she should do about it, the devil lady’s head buzzed and throbbed. She was about to crumple it up and throw it into the fire, but decided against it on the grounds that the resident demons would seize it and use it as evidence against her. It was then that she noticed a handwritten scrawl of a PS: “As soon as Our schedule permits, We intend to make a Visitation to Our parish in order
to view the situation for Ourselves.”
At first the devil lady did not like the sound of that postscript. But there was a dark cloud in every silver lining, and the publicity to be gained by making a party hat of a prelate’s mitre would show everyone in the village the futility of resistance. To beat the bish on her territory would be a major coup, one that would get the demons off the premises in a twinkling and earn her a most favourable report at home. It might even be enough to win her promotion to the management position that she so longed for, thereby relieving her of the constant pressure to produce new business; which, were it not bearable because it had to be bearable, would have been unbearable. The devil lady was so cheered by the thought that her headache disappeared, and she rang the bell for her manservant and told him to pour her a double dollop of whisky.
‘But it’s only eleven o’clock,’ he said reproachfully, eyeing the demons, who had ceased their corybantic antics and mock duelling with pitchforks to stare at her. Then, because they were not agreed on what the correct time was, being ignorant of Greenwich Mean Time and indeed the concept of Time altogether, the occupants of the fireplace began disputing with each other. The only things they agreed upon was that it was impossible to verify that it was eleven o’clock in the morning (they could not see the clock on the chimney-piece), whatever that meant, and that they needed to find out what whisky was and why anyone would want to drink it.