Acts and Omissions

by Catherine Fox

  ‘Yeah, no. Paul, I’m trying to like forgive him? Because Jesus? But I— what? Why are you looking at me like that?’ He broke off. ‘Ah, crap. You think I don’t—? Look, I know I’m a total fuck-up, Paul, but I do believe and everything, I really love him, y’know? Man. Look, never mind.’

  ‘Freddie!’ Paul came round from behind his desk, reached out a hand.

  A pastoral gesture gone wrong.

  So wrong. And yet so right. At last, at last – this is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh!

  Salt. Sweet. Come slowly – Eden –

  The bishop is like a man who leans against a wall, only to find it is a door. He plunges down, down, into the cellar he’d denied he owned. And finds it full of all the vintage wine sealed up decades before.

  SEPTEMBER

  Chapter 34

  In the palace garden the wind wanders down the forbidden laburnum walk. All the gold has fallen. The dry pods whisper: ssh, ah ssh!

  ‘Whoa. Wild! That I was not expecting. Seriously, Paul? Whoa.’

  Up there on the ceiling a strand of cobweb lifts, falls, lifts. Suze must’ve missed it. Bible commentaries. Theology. Shelves of it. He can see it all looming there, way up above, over where they ended up.

  Here on the carpet.

  He hears Paul’s breath. There’s a catch in it, like a sob.

  Ah, shi-i-it. Why does he have to be such a whore? When’s he gonna learn to say, ‘No way, nothing doing,’ to the closet cases? Every time he forgets what a big deal it is for them. He’s like, ‘Oops, sorr-ee, knocked that vase over there!’ And they’re all, ‘Omigod! No! That’s priceless Ming dynasty!’ Which kind of leaves him thinking, yeah? So another time maybe don’t play ball indoors, dude? I mean, c’mon.

  Freddie shuts his eyes. Gah. Here comes the whole ‘I’m not gay, I can’t believe I let you do that!’ thing. Can’t we like fast-forward over this part? To the bit where we go, ‘Yeah, we shouldn’t’ve – but know what? Actually, we did.’ Followed by the bit where we do it again, and again, because, hey, the Ming’s trashed now?

  ‘So, yeah. That was intense there. Mmm, mmm. I’m guessing it’s been a while?’

  ‘Freddie, I’m not going to discuss my marriage with you.’

  ‘Naw! Du-ude! I mean, since you’ve been with a guy?’

  Nothing.

  Outside in the dark he hears a fox wail.

  Then it’s like he’s spilt an icy drink on himself. Oh Jesus. Please don’t say I’m the first?

  All over the diocese of Lindchester life goes on. The sun sets, it rises. Lives begin, lives end in Lindford General Hospital. Lawns are mown. New school uniform is bought. People put the bins out. Up above, planes slide across the blue. Food banks feed the desperate families who are counting the days till school breakfast club starts again. Clouds still billow from the Cardingforth cloud factory. Swallows congregate on wires, apples ripen and fall ungathered along railway embankments.

  Yes, life goes on as though nothing has happened in the palace. Can we pretend nothing has? Can we pick up the pieces, glue them together again? Put the vase back on the shelf and say nothing? Hope nobody notices?

  The following morning, the archdeacon – all unaware of his bishop’s plight – showers, shaves carefully, then dresses in baggy shorts and a polo shirt, sticks his porkpie hat on and drives out to the pub where he has agreed to meet his . . . date? Is that the word for Dr R? What is the right vocabulary for this, when you’re middle-aged? Middle-aged! He feels like a fourteen-year-old! Nudging his friend and daring him to go and say, ‘My mate says to tell your mate he fancies her.’

  Nobody looking at the big sunshiny man in his little car would guess at the freak adolescent storms tearing across his inner landscape.

  Likewise, Jane is in a bit of a stew. What price your feminism now, Dr Rossiter? The bed is heaped with every garment she owns – tried on, then flung aside for the crime of making her feel fat. Now she regrets her snooty resolve not to grace the . . . date? occasion? date (was it a date?) with a new outfit. Fa-a-ark. Now what? Get the legs out, maybe? Black T-shirt dress? Denim skirt? But that will involve some urgent shin topiary. Time for the (yikes!) ancient epilator? No, shaving’s less painful. Does she have any razors, though? And what about her moustache?

  Shut up, you silly mare. How come you’re even having this conversation with yourself? Where will this madness end? With a Brazilian? Oh lordy, lordy, do blokes expect that nowadays? Not the middle-aged ones, surely? No, middle-aged blokes are probably still perfectly happy with your basic traditional lady-sporran. Unless they watch a lot of porn. Which archdeacons don’t, presumably.

  Or do they?

  Will you shut up? We’re talking about a walk and a pub lunch, not a dirty weekend, for God’s sake.

  Anyway, forget the skirt: lardy pallid legs, and no skirt-appropriate summer footwear. Still too sunny for boots, more’s the pity. If only it were autumn! Fall, leaves, fall! Die, flowers, away! True, the youngsters all seem to wear trainers with frocks, but Jane knows she’ll feel like a mad woman if she tries. She could go the whole hog, get a plaid shopping trolley, a fleece with cats on, and about two hundred badges on her lapels to pull the look together. Not an ensemble famed for its sex appeal, however. So maybe—

  Shit! The time!

  Khaki linen trousers, black top, big silver jewellery, film-star sunnies. It’ll have to do. She bangs the door shut and leaps into her car and drives to the canal-side pub where the archdeacon is already parked and waiting under a fig tree, like an Israelite in whom there is no guile.

  Shall we tag along?

  Matt was the veteran of too many sharings of the Peace to be fazed by Jane’s greeting. She’d decided in the car: a peck on the cheek. No, both cheeks. Suavely, insouciantly, in the French manner.

  She negotiated the first side successfully, but then bumped jaws, noses. How hard, how indescribably hard it is to be English! Simply garstly. Jane’s mood veered towards hysterical as she finally landed a peck on his other cheek.

  ‘You’ve shaved! I haven’t. That’s why I’m in me kecks.’ She plucked at her trouser thighs as if she was about to curtsey to him. ‘I was thinking about shaving, but I’ve run out of razors, and I couldn’t bring myself to use the mother-plucker. Sorry, too much information?’

  ‘Mother-plucker?’

  ‘Epilator. It’s what Danny calls it.’

  ‘Ah! And Danny is?’

  ‘My son. Currently in New Zealand with his dad. But don’t ask me about him, or I’ll cry.’

  Not surprisingly, a silence followed this embargo.

  ‘So,’ said Jane. ‘What’s your view on Brazilians?’

  Equally unsurprisingly, there was another silence. I’ve gone completely mad, she thought.

  ‘Well,’ said Matt, ‘I’m an admirer of their free-flowing fast-paced style of football.’

  ‘Of course you are. OK, I’m shutting up now.’

  He smiled, and began ambling along the towpath, hands in pockets. After a couple of paces he crooked an elbow at her. She slid her arm through his. They walked in silence. A narrow boat puttered by trailing a cloud of blue smoke.

  We’re stepping out! I’m stepping out with an archdeacon! Arm-in-arm!

  Cabbage whites lolloped round a purple buddleia. She could smell the dank water, a whiff straight from childhood. Long nature walks with Mum. Their version of a summer holiday, because there was no money to go away anywhere. Mum dinning the names of plants into Jane’s head, Jane mulishly refusing to respond.

  Still knew all the names, though. Dock. Deadly nightshade. Rowan. And that there was a hazelnut tree. She bit her tongue to stop herself bombarding him with botanical erudition. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Argh. She glanced up at him and he smiled again.

  Relax! It’s called companionable silence. He hasn’t throttled you and shoved you in the canal yet, so let’s assume he likes you.

  The opposite bank was a haze of pink, where puffs of willowherb seed crowded a field
edge. A half-built house stood among nettles. They passed back gardens with neat lawns. A hammock slung between apple trees. Idyllic. Jane remembered how she’d almost bought a tiny canal-side cottage back when Danny was on the way. But someone had pointed out that she’d never relax: toddler, deep water. So she’d bought the house on Sunningdale Drive instead.

  She could move now, though, couldn’t she? Start over anywhere she liked. Her world no longer bristled with sharp edges and sudden drops. Blind cords! Toppling wardrobes! Plastic bags! It was time to decommission the klaxon of maternal alarm. Ah, but even so, it was still a death-trap, this planet of ours.

  They passed under a brick bridge. The archdeacon had to duck his head. They emerged into the sun again.

  ‘We’re never more than a phone call away from heartbreak,’ she said.

  He squeezed her hand with his arm. ‘No, we’re not.’

  She remembered: his wife died. Isn’t that what Dominic had said?

  ‘How’s young tarty-pants doing?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit pouty. Probably because he couldn’t go running. Or dogging, or whatever he gets up to. But anyway, he’s mobile again, so I dumped him back on the Hendersons yesterday. Then he’s off to Argentina next week for a fortnight. I bullied him into it.’

  ‘Good work, that woman.’

  ‘Yep. I should perhaps mention that I’m extremely bossy. What do you say to that, Mr Archdeacon?’

  ‘Whatever you tell me to say, ma’am.’

  ‘Is the correct answer!’ She felt him squeeze her hand with his arm again. ‘So what does archdeaconing entail?’

  ‘Basically, I’m the bishop’s leg-breaker.’

  ‘Ha! I’d say Paul’s quite capable of doing his own leg-breaking. In his quiet steely way.’

  ‘You know Paul?’

  So Jane ended up confessing her shady religious past.

  ‘Shame the Church couldn’t keep hold of you,’ said Matt.

  ‘God no! I’d’ve made a terrible priest! I’d be drunk on vino sacro by eleven in the morning, and punching the old ladies. Does this pub do real ale, by the way?’

  ‘You’re a real ale kind of gal?’

  ‘Certainly am.’

  He stopped. Laid a hand on his heart. ‘Dr Rossiter, will you marry me and have my children?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had my tubes tied and I don’t believe in marriage, but with those caveats in mind, broadly speaking, yes.’

  ‘Peachy,’ said the archdeacon. And kissed her.

  Father Dominic is sitting among cardboard boxes in his study. Spragg’s Haulage of Lindford are moving him. Of course they are. Clergy who are moving in the diocese of Lindchester are required to get three quotes, one of which must be Spragg’s Haulage of Lindford. The diocese will then choose the cheapest. Which will be Spragg’s Haulage of Lindford. Old Mr Spragg, young Mr Spragg, and the boy. Dominic is terrified that old Mr Spragg will have a coronary while attempting to lift something. He will be found crushed and lifeless under Dominic’s pastel green Smeg fridge. Yet if this is what it will take before the diocese allows its clergy to use Pickfords, then old Mr Spragg will not have died in vain.

  He is packing his books himself, because he doesn’t trust the Spraggs to do it properly. Young Mr Spragg had looked at all the shelves for a long time, ruminating. In the end he said, ‘You’ve got a lot of books, your reverence.’

  Lord, have mercy. How many vicars have you moved in your career? Yes, we do tend to have a lot of books.

  His phone rings.

  ‘I’m phoning to let you know how it went.’

  ‘Not listening. La la la— What?!’

  ‘I said, he asked me to marry him.’

  ‘No! Tell me everything!’

  So she does.

  It’s Wednesday morning. The bishop watches in the driver’s mirror as Freddie walks away towards the station. Train to Heathrow, plane to Argentina. He will be back briefly in a fortnight to collect his stuff, but Paul has made it clear that he will be out when that happens. Miss Blatherwick will drive him to Barchester. And that will be it.

  The vase is back on the shelf. The cellar door is shut.

  Paul watches till the shaggy blond head has vanished through the station entrance. There. All done. He pulls away from the drop-off zone and drives home. He’s only gone half a mile when he has to stop in a layby.

  Thistledown breaks from the clumps and drifts off. The blackberries are ripe. Blond grass heads, blond, blond, bend in the wind. A lorry roars past, rocking the car.

  Paul knows he’s not having a heart attack. Only last month he underwent a whole barrage of tests in Harley Street at the Church Commissioners’ expense. Routine for all senior appointments. So he knows he is in rude good health for a man of fifty-eight.

  There is nothing wrong with the bishop’s heart.

  It’s just that it is breaking.

  Chapter 35

  ‘So, who’s your new boss going to be, deanissima?’ Gene asks Marion. ‘Who will be the next bishop of Lindchester, when our right-trusty and well-beloved Mary Poppins is translated?’

  Marion sighs from behind the Guardian. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know. The process won’t even start until his move’s announced. And then it’ll take ages because of all the baby-boomers retiring. There’s a backlog.’

  ‘A backlog of bishops! Is that the proper collective noun? Sounds rather rude. Backlog. Or is that just me?’

  ‘It’s just you, Gene.’

  ‘But will you have the power to veto any mad homophobic Evanjellybabies they try to appoint?’

  ‘I’ll almost certainly be on the Crown Nominations Commission. I can make my feelings known.’

  ‘And if we translate that out of cathedral circumbendibus into English, does it mean “You bet your ass! I’m gonna veto the shit out of them!”?’ The dean makes no reply. ‘It still grieves me that you can’t be the next bishop. I quite fancy playing bishop’s wife. My first act of hospitality would be a cleansing ritual; an exorcism, if you will. I’d give the entire palace over to an epic three-day homosexual orgy.’

  ‘You do womble on sometimes, darling. I’m actually trying to read the paper here.’

  ‘There will be no more triple choc chip muffins in my glorious reign! I piss upon lemon drizzle cake! Ooh. Unfortunate visual. I will never regard lemon drizzle cake in the same light again. Well, never mind: when I preside in the palace, it will be all foie gras and fat juicy ortolans, served by naked altar boys. And filthy innuendo will be our lingua franca. Touch wood. Fnurr fnurr.’

  The dean lowers her paper and gives him a headmistressy stare. ‘Incredible. I never thought this possible, but you’ve just succeeded in making me glad that the women bishops measure failed to get through Synod.’

  Gene bows. ‘I am but your motley fool, my lady.’

  Even as Gene is speaking, the smell of triple choc chip muffins fills the palace. Susanna is back home from her grandmothering duties. She is not a stupid woman. She noticed at once that there was something different about her husband. He looked . . . not quite himself. Younger, somehow. Had something happened to him? What could have happened to him?

  Suddenly, she freezes, measuring jug in hand. The truth bursts upon her.

  He’s trimmed his eyebrows! Susanna smiles and heats the cream to make the chocolate ganache icing. Finally! Aren’t men funny? It must be ten years since she ventured a little hint that his eyebrows were getting a bit bushy. And she’d got the distinct message to back off. As far as Paul was concerned, she could fill the palace with her cushions and rose-petal potpourri, but his eyebrows were his own. A last bastion of undomesticated masculinity. Like a shed. Bless him!

  I invite my readers to say ‘Amen’ here, even if so far they have not warmed to Paul Henderson. Bless him now, in all his anguish. Despite his new metrosexual eyebrows the poor bishop is wrestling to subdue himself to the world of afternoon tea, with its bone china and petits fours. He must remember to sip and crook his little finger again and use
the silver sugar tongs. Not easy, after those nights of mindless gluttony in the Freddie May eat-all-you-can carvery.

  Outwardly he seems calm, but Paul is wandering in the smoking ruins of his soul’s city. He’s numb with disbelief at the Total. Sudden. Breakdown in law and order. His head still roars with the avenging mob. Roiling through his streets, sacking treasuries, torching libraries, profaning every altar.

  How could he be so stupid?

  At least he has some perspective: he’s nobody special. He knows he is not the first middle-aged man to make a fool of himself over a pretty blond. He will not be the last. It happens all the time.

  But ah, dear God, this is the first time it has happened to him!

  And it must be the last. Get the army in. Curfews. Crackdowns. Go and sin no more.

  You may be wondering, reader, what on earth he is playing at. Really, bishop? You are seriously proposing to sweep this under the vestry carpet? You think you can say a quick sorry to God, then proceed, without further reflection, to the archiepiscopacy of York?

  You may be sure he doesn’t think this. I don’t believe there is a man in the Church of England today who keeps shorter accounts with God. Yes, he is currently shielding Susanna, but Paul is by no means trying to pretend nothing’s happened. I would say he’s temporarily paralysed. He cannot see what the godly course of action is, how to get out of this mess he has brought upon himself – and potentially on his family, his friends, the whole Church.

  Can he trust Freddie’s promise of silence? (‘Dude, I so wouldn’t do that to you! And hello? – you think I want the tabloids all over my past?’) Oh, but maybe it would be a relief to be exposed, a severe mercy? Or must he bear this alone until his dying day? Hypocrisy! Martyrdom? If not silence, then who ought he to confess to? And what – dear God! – what is he now? What does it all mean? Well, whatever else he is, he’s an adulterer. And betrayer of a vulnerable young man in his care. He has violated every pastoral trust. He’s just the latest in a line of predatory older men in Freddie’s life, isn’t he?