Acts and Omissions

by Catherine Fox

  In his suffragan’s absence, the bishop of Lindchester has been doing more of the donkey work himself. It is Friday evening and he has just got back from confirming a dozen young teens and adults in one of the farthest flung corners of the diocese, on his day off. Bad bishop. Susanna has forgiven him, and is ready in the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches for him and Freddie, who was driving.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Susanna, once they were seated and eating.

  ‘Fine,’ replied the bishop, in the off-hand manner of a child describing a day at school.

  ‘Did your sermon go down well?’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘Did he preach well, Freddie?’

  Freddie paused just a heartbeat too long before saying, ‘Awesome?’

  The bishop laughed. ‘Now tell me what you really think.’

  ‘Aaaw, c’mon. Man. You can’t ask me that?’ He crammed the sandwich into his mouth to avoid answering.

  Susanna – who bowed to no one in her ability to feel bad about things for which she was in no way responsible – began to panic. ‘I’m sure it was fine, darling. Freddie’s teasing you.’

  ‘No, he’s not. He doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.’ He removed the plate of sandwiches from Freddie’s reach. ‘Come on, I’m genuinely interested in what you think.’

  Freddie slumped over forwards and thumped his forehead on the table. ‘No-o-o-oo. Oh, OK, fine, then.’ He sat up. ‘So yeah. Here’s the thing. When you’re preaching you’re like, doing this jigsaw? Only it’s like I’ve got this killer hangover, yeah, and you’re all, look how it fits together? See? This is God’s amazing plan, it all fits together, and it makes sense and therefore God loves you? Only I’m like, dude, yeah, totally, I so agree with you, only I’ve still got a headache and I’m gonna be sick?’ There was a pause. ‘Know what I’m saying?’

  Paul stared at him.

  ‘So you’re saying Paul’s sermons don’t quite hit the spot for you, emotionally, as it were?’ translated Susanna, to fill the terrible yawning chasm that had opened in her kitchen.

  This chasm, dear reader, was caused by a momentary fit of abstraction on the part of the bishop. He had just benefited from his first glimpse of Freddie’s tramp stamp when he slumped forwards, and had not in fact heard a word Freddie was saying.

  ‘Sorry. Run that past me again,’ he said.

  Freddie coloured. ‘Hey. It’s cool. Forget it.’

  Oh, bishop! That was your moment to own up and make light of it! Paul could see he’d just squashed Freddie and made him feel like a complete idiot. Another couple of seconds passed and the opportunity was well and truly butter-fingered and dropped. Say something! But nothing came to mind. The bishop castigated himself. And then, I’m sorry to say, began to find it amusing. He frowned in an effort to repress this.

  And in that frown poor Freddie read disapproval. He checked his phone: 10.20. What the fuck. It was Friday. He got to his feet. ‘Catch you later, guys.’

  Susanna tilted her head in pastoral anguish as he left. Oh dear! The front door opened, and closed.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she asked. ‘Should we . . . ?’

  ‘Freddie’s an adult,’ said Paul.

  Outside in the dark palace garden a fox wailed, lonely, cold, like the lost soul of a family pet.

  Chapter 17

  Spring? Surely we dare breathe the word ‘spring’ in the diocese of Lindchester? The first chiffchaffs have been heard along the banks of the Linden, cross-stitching the air with song; the water meadows are filling with Shakespeare’s flowers, daisies pied and violets blue, ladies’ smock all silver white.

  Bob Hooty, back from his sabbatical, has missed the worst of the English winter, lucky man. He is in his kitchen now, looking out at his garden. His magnolia is nearly out. A blowsy yellow haze dusts the pussy willow buds, where a bee potters. Barcup is a village near the site of the ancient Saxon shrine of Sexfrot, or some equally implausible saint. But the bishop doesn’t live there. He lives in the town of Martonbury, in the south of the diocese. This is the lot of suffragan bishops. The lines fall to them in suburban places. Not for them the oak-panelled be-moated idiocies inflicted upon diocesan bishops – in which their poor sofas and Billy bookcases look like doll’s house tat – but posh detached houses, probably with an extra downstairs loo and a side door, so visitors and PA don’t have to walk through the house to reach the bishop’s office.

  I like Bob. He’s a good man. Look at him standing in his kitchen on Monday morning, with his All Saints’ Martonbury 150th Anniversary mug of Fair Trade coffee, shaking his head at Radio 4. Ten million pounds for the funeral. He thinks about the poverty he’s just seen. He sighs over austerity measures and the Belgrano. He ponders Spufford and sin, the HPtFtU. And yet outside his kitchen window a blackbird is singing in the magnolia, and the bee still potters in dusty golden bliss. All’s not right with the world, but it’s not all wrong, either. Hope remains. He’s not an empty-tomber, but Easter is what makes the difference.

  Bob is wearing a grey suit and a purple clerical shirt (under his jumper), because he’s going to get in his car and drive to Lindchester for the senior staff meeting and give a brief presentation about his sabbatical. He goes through his little stack of A5 cards one last time. (Bishop Paul uses an iPad.) Bob’s shirt is one of the four he bought when he was consecrated nearly twelve years ago: a little faded at the edges, but still going strong. He’s not quite in sandals and socks, but his brown shoes have a distinct sandally air about them. You can glimpse sock through the little cut-out bits. He has a beard, nicely trimmed, not wild and mage-like. His varifocals are not stylish. Having been bullied by his children into trendy frames in the 1980s, Bob has stuck loyally with them ever since.

  His wife Janet appears in her dressing gown and offers him a cooked breakfast. He declines. She starts cutting the rind off the bacon with a pair of recycled episiotomy scissors, because she’s a midwife. (Don’t worry, they’ve been sterilized.) She makes enough for him too, because he’ll change his mind the minute he smells the bacon cooking.

  ‘I bet Voldemort’s taken over the entire diocese in your absence,’ she says.

  Voldemort, you will be relieved to learn, is not Janet’s name for Bishop Paul. No, Voldemort is the archdeacon of Lindchester.

  The ARCHDEACON! (Sulphur fumes and menacing discords on cathedral organ!) The word alone raises certain expectations in a work of this kind. It is customary for writers to have fun with their archdeacons; to give them a short fuse and a string of expensive hunters, or a secret boyfriend and black leather gloves. We unleash archdeacons as the bishop’s enforcers, to strut across the page striking terror into the hearts of feeble-minded clergy. That said, a novelist has a duty to avoid clichés. You perceive the tension here? I ought to subvert the stereotype and present you with a mild-mannered godly archdeacon, free from foibles and eccentricities. And yet the stereotype exists for a reason: however lovely you are, you don’t get to be an archdeacon unless you have at least a hint of Rottweiler in your psychological make-up. Archdeacons are not paid to be popular. They are paid to get things sorted.

  And that, dear reader, is all the permission I need.

  But you will have to wait a little longer to meet Voldemort. There are, in fact, two archdeaconries in the diocese of Lindchester. One is currently vacant, which gives Bishop Paul the opportunity to appoint yet another stooge. Sorry, to enhance collegiality in the senior staff team. Thus the evil Hendersonian master plan gathers momentum, to go into all the world and make disciples of all people.

  And how is Bishop Paul? You will remember we left him in a not entirely happy frame of mind. He seems to be locked into a pattern of bungling his dealings with Freddie. What Freddie craves is his attention. Paul knows this, but Paul is deeply resistant to being manipulated. In fact, the best way of ensuring that Paul Henderson won’t do what you want is to tiptoe round him hinting and angling. So he refuses point-blank to reward Freddie’s attention-seeking behaviour. Unfor
tunately, the more he withdraws in steely disapproval, the more Freddie ups his game. At what point will Paul’s strategy of taking no notice become negligence? For example, after walking out on Friday night, Freddie did not return till Monday lunchtime. Paul did not enquire where he’d been, but his PA (who always finds these things out) put him in the picture: Freddie hitched to London, scene of his earlier adventures. This is not a welcome development. Paul sees that he urgently needs to find some appropriate way of paying attention on his own terms, not on Freddie’s. He wonders briefly whether to raise this with his trusty archdeacon. He’s seen the two of them together and observed that Matt achieves some secret alchemical mix of banter and boundaries when dealing with Freddie. A light touch and a firm hand – this is what always eludes Paul. But no, the archdeacon is a busy man. Not worth troubling him with this. We will allow Paul a few more days to ponder this, then pop into his office on Thursday afternoon and see how he gets on.

  Paul was due to reappear at any moment from a finance subcommittee over in the diocesan offices. Freddie was sitting at Martin the chaplain’s desk, watching YouTube clips on Martin’s computer while he waited for orders. This was allowed. Penelope was in the room, and Freddie was legitimately logged on under his own user name. He couldn’t get up to any mischief because he did not know Martin’s password. Thought Penelope. Freddie jiggled in his chair, rattled his tongue stud along his teeth, sorted his boys out.

  ‘You’re such a fidget!’ said Penelope. ‘And do you want a tissue? You’re driving me mad sniffing like that.’

  ‘Huh?’ He pulled an earphone out. ‘What’sh that, Mish Moneypenny?’

  Penelope lobbed a box of tissues across. ‘Stop sniffing!’

  ‘Sorry.’ He grabbed a bunch and tossed the box back. ‘It’s the blow.’

  ‘You’ll rot your septum, you silly boy!’

  Fish in a barrel. Literally? Penelope had no bull-ometer. He grinned at her and returned his attention to the screen. I’m sorry to tell you that YouTube was not the only tab open. Freddie was in the episcopal diary again and seriously considering booking Paul and Martin in together for a Swedish massage and pedicure at the local health spa.

  Nah. Probably don’t do that? But Martin, my man— Chaplain1? Time to rethink your password, maybe?

  Footsteps crunched across the gravel. Freddie logged off quickly. The office door opened and Paul and Chaplain1 came in. Freddie gave them a sunny smile. ‘Hey.’

  ‘I’d like my desk back,’ said Martin.

  ‘Please,’ prompted Freddie.

  ‘Please.’

  Freddie scooted the chair backwards across the office. ‘All yours, dude.’

  ‘And my chair. Please.’

  Freddie sighed and trundled the chair back over to the desk with his feet. He stood up close to the recoiling Martin and whispered, ‘Just keeping it warm for you.’

  Paul observed all this with an expression that said he’d like to knock their heads together. ‘Freddie, do you have a moment?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Could you cast your eye over this and give me your perspective on it?’ He had a print-off in his hand. ‘Published last week by the Faith and Order Commission.’

  Freddie was reaching out when he glimpsed the title: Men and Women in Marriage. ‘No. No way. Man, you can’t ask me to read that. Get him to read it, I’m not reading it.’

  ‘I’ve already read it, actually,’ said Martin, without unclamping his teeth.

  ‘I’m specifically asking you to read it, Freddie,’ said Paul, ‘because I’d value your reactions.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, this is my reaction. Not reading it.’

  The distress flares were screaming up into the sky. But he hadn’t stormed out. Paul risked edging the conversation on a little further. ‘Are you . . . able to express why you don’t want to read it?’

  ‘Nope.’ Freddie took hold of the back of Martin’s chair and spun it round.

  Paul waited, willing Martin to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘So yeah, no, it’s like all the grown-ups discussing me in the head’s office, and I’m sent outside the room?’ muttered Freddie. ‘Totally does my head in.’

  ‘Forgive me, but if you refuse to engage with the process, what can you hope to achieve?’ asked Martin.

  ‘I can achieve not having to listen to a load of hate from assholes like you.’

  ‘Excuse me? It’s not—’

  ‘Thanks, Martin,’ said the bishop. ‘Freddie, I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to do that, and I’m sorry. But I’m genuinely interested in what you think and feel.’

  ‘Yeah, well. But what’s the point? Not like you’re gonna change, are you?’ Freddie gave the chair another twirl. ‘So. Anything else you want me to do?’

  Paul turned to Penelope.

  ‘Gavin’s got flu, so the vergers are short-staffed,’ said Penelope. ‘They’re behind on the mowing.’

  ‘I’m all over it,’ said Freddie.

  ‘You’re still banned from using the sit-on mower,’ Penelope called after him.

  ‘La la la!’

  The door banged. ‘Honestly, he’s hopeless,’ said Penelope.

  Excellent. That went well, thought Paul.

  Actually, Freddie had read the report. He had plenty of thoughts and feelings about it. Like, why did it sometimes say ‘we’? Who is this we who knows this stuff about marriage? The Faith and Order Commission? People in general? Not Freddie, that was for sure, sitting outside the head’s office permanently in the wrong. Plus, why’s it all about difference? Why does nobody think marriage is about sameness? Yeah, coz why did Adam go, ‘Here at last is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh’? Unless Eve was someone like him? Adam was all, yay, at last, another one of me! But no way was Freddie saying any of this with Fuckwit1 in the room.

  He collected the big petrol mower from Dave the head verger, who sent him to mow the palace lawn. ‘Keep it nice and straight,’ said Dave. ‘Clippings in the brown bin. Straight lines, not round and round.’

  ‘Straight lines. I hear you.’

  Father Dominic has not read Men and Women in Marriage. He probably should, but hasn’t quite mustered the strength. He knows there’s nothing new in it that he wants to hear. What does he want to hear? Oh, he’s an old softie. He wants it to be like that YouTube clip of the New Zealand parliament, when they announce the passing of the same-sex marriage bill, and the room erupts spontaneously into a Maori love song. He would like to hear the archbishop of Canterbury cry, ‘Unlock the doors!’ and General Synod breaking into song, and the song flooding the entire C of E. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, is it?

  Freddie mows the palace lawn all afternoon in the sunshine. As he mows he sings. It’s the same Maori love song, because he was watching that YouTube clip on Martin’s computer earlier, too, and now he has an earworm. Pōkarekare ana. He knows the words from Sing Up! concerts years ago, when he was a chorister.

  The waves are breaking, against the shores of Waiapu,

  My heart is aching, for your return, my love.

  Because in the end, that’s what it’s about, no? Love? I mean, seriously, fuck everything else. Because what else is there? In the end, what else is there but love? Love love love love love?

  The following morning the bishop opens his bedroom curtains and stares down at the palace garden. Freddie has not kept it nice and straight. The entire lawn is one giant heart.

  Chapter 18

  St George’s Day. His cross flies from the cathedral flagpole. The fields and roadsides of the diocese of Lindchester are bright with dandelions. In years gone by, this was the auspicious day to go out collecting to make your dandelion wine. Now the shaggy golden heads are simply mown into oblivion as weeds.

  The bursar of the Cathedral Choristers’ School is making the most of the patchy sunshine and mowing the sports field. Like the vergers, he’s overworked, but he has a long memory. Need any help, Mr Hoban? No, thank you, Mr May. Because I remember when you broke into
the shed and wrote in fertilizer on the school lawn. Spring of 2003. No amount of mowing that summer got rid of it. But Mr Hoban is grinning as he drives the tractor up and down the field (keeping it nice and straight). Word’s got out, of course. Ha! What Mr Hoban wouldn’t give to see my lord’s face if he’d woken to find SUCK MY COCK mown into his lawn, instead. Got off rather lightly, had the bishop, in Mr Hoban’s humble opinion.

  But that’s quite enough about the scapegrace Freddie May – who, even as I write, is experimentally stapling his thumb, then dripping blood all over this morning’s post and being cuffed by an exasperated Penelope. I know you will be far more interested in the archdeacon of Lindchester. You have been very patient. I had contemplated describing Voldemort in his office in William House brooding over this month’s Lee List; or enumerating his duties and the endless meetings and interviews and installations he must attend; or even detailing the Quinquennial Inspections for which he is responsible (the latter being an Anglican pursuit so recondite that Word has no spelling suggestions to offer). But come with me instead, on the viewless wings of fiction, to a newly vacant vicarage in the centre of Lindford, where I will introduce you to the Venerable (for thus we style our archdeacons) Matt Tyler.

  ‘Has he trashed the place?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid, archdeacon.’ Geoff unlocked the front door with the new keys.

  ‘All righty. Let’s see the damage. Bloody hell.’ The archdeacon stuck his porkpie hat on the stairpost knob and surveyed the hall. He opened the door to his right, put his head in. Laughed. ‘Yep. This qualifies as a bit of a mess. They kept pets, I take it? OK, get a cleaning firm in. The diocese will pay.’