He rose and freed a butterfly which was beating its wings against a pane. A gust of over-hot air burst at him through the momentarily open window. He almost said, "It's going to be a scorcher," then remembered the date, the fourteenth of April. A jet from the nearby American air-base screamed across the garden, spinning a rope of smoke behind it, The power and the glory, thought Faulkner, what did that mean now?
Both bishop and clergy arrived promptly at 2.30. Mattock, the new young constable, fussed their cars over the cattle-grid into the park. Most of the cars stopped just inside the gates to let wives and other passengers get out and walk across the green to the church. Faulkner met everybody on the terrace, drawing them through the hall in the courteous way which seemed to make his house their property for the time they were there. His hospitality was his special genius, though he had no knowledge of this.
The little bishop was merry. For someone who slaved fifteen hours a day at an administrator's desk, such functions as introducing a new priest to one of these beautiful time-lost country places lying in the wilds of his diocese came more into the category of recreation than work. He wandered happily from group to group. The response to him, Faulkner observed, was a pleasure verging on radiance. The older clergy seemed to lose their staleness when he chattered to them. As for the young men, they noticeably gained in spiritual confidence or authority. Or something. Faulkner watched with a mixture of embarrassment and longing. God flickered in his brain like a neon sign, one minute with total definition, the next without form or substance.
The Bishop, looking at his watch, said, "Not a sign of him yet, Colonel! I hope that old bus of his hasn't had a breakdown."
Faulkner's confusion was obvious.
"Your new rector, Colonel-remember?" said the Bishop with mock severity.
Mr. Deenman: it was true, the curious, unsettling appointee had clean gone from Faulkner's mind. "The man of the moment!" he smiled-"And me forgetting him!" The gaunt untidy figure rushed into his consciousness; the odd harsh voice, so compelling yet so difficult to understand at times, suddenly filled his ears. Deenman had been the Bishop's nomination after a year had passed without another soul applying for the living. The Bishop was speaking to him again, although now his words contained an underlying seriousness.
"You won't forget him, I'm sure, Colonel." He was really saying, 'Deenman is a lonely, wifeless man who is going to need a bit of unobtrusive help and encouragement."
"He'll be all right, Terence. Never fear."
Why did the Bishop insist on their calling him by his Christian name and yet continue to address him as Colonel?
"I expect he's gone straight to the church," said the Bishop. "We may as well go too, I think. We can wait at the back until he turns up."
The impressive little procession, headed by the blacksmith's teenage son carrying a tall brass cross he had made for his apprenticeship exams, wound its way darkly over the green, Faulkner and the other churchwarden attending the Bishop with wands and solemn steps. Cars were lined up in rows round the churchyard wall and the dead seemed to be slickly wrapped in tinfoil. It was what Faulkner called a good turn-out. Except the bell ringing bothered him by its resonance. He thought that it was probably something to do with the wind-although he had never known such nerve-touching sounds before. Each bell seemed to skilfully slide away from its true note and produce a deliberate travesty of what was expected. The clashing was being built up to some sort of climax. Faulkner's bewilderment changed to anger. As the procession entered the churchyard, the last vestige of shape vanished from the peal and a chaotic shaft of percussive noise took over. "What the hell…?" He turned a half-apologetic face to the Bishop, only to glimpse the serene smile and the silver flash of the crozier. Faulkner's worried glance passed on to Robarts, the people's warden. Robarts was a ringer and had been a tower-captain in his day. But the old shepherd was shambling forward in his usual manner, his features as expressionless as he could make them. You couldn't get anything out of Robarts, thought Faulkner, even if the world was coming to an end. Which was what it sounded like.
They were about to enter the porch when the huge old 1950s Humber which Faulkner had last seen when Mr. Deenman had arrived at the Hall for his interview, and smothered in what appeared to be an entire winter's mud, lurched into view and shook itself to a standstill at the very entrance to the churchyard. He's not going to leave the thing there! Faulkner thought incredulously. Right bang in the way!
The procession had stopped and in a few seconds, bowing in that strangely excessive way of his, Mr. Deenman strode through it to his place at the front of the nave. No good afternoons. Just a gaunt dipping of the large head in its crushed and dusty Canterbury cap. No smile. Once inside the church, however, Mr. Deenman's odd rushing confidence seemed to desert him; the huge strides slowed down and the tall solitary figure passed through the dense congregation with an awe which silenced the whispering. The first notes of the introit, piercingly grave, added to the drama. Nerves, thought Faulkner, rather relieved. Deenman's behaviour up to this moment was beginning to overwhelm him. He saw the new vicar's glance pass from object to object in the chancel. It was as though he were checking an inventory, making sure that everything remained as he left it.
Scarcely moving his head, Mr. Deenman's gaze fell on carved angels and devils, the Mothers' Union banner and all the other ornaments and fittings, while the altar candles blazed in his spectacles, filling the dark eyes with reflected fire. Faulkner remembered now that this was the first time Deenman had seen the church. He recalled how surprised he had been-even a little hurt-when, at the interview, he had offered to show him over it and the new vicar had said, "No, not now. Not yet." Adding stiffly, "I thank you." "He talks rather old fashioned-like," 'Shepherd' Robarts had said approvingly.
The induction went faultlessly, the clever Bishop manipulating the best instincts of the laity. Tolerance and love were manifest. The ancient revolutionary argument of Christ's, philosophy was heard plain and clear. Mr. Deenman played his part to perfection and emerged as an undeniably holy man. He was led by the churchwardens to the door, the font, the lectern and the altar in turn, and making great promises all the way. Finally, he was taken to his rectorial stall, this being the first in a row of magnificent fifteenth century misericordes on the right of the chancel. A curious hesitation occurred at this point, a flight of confidence not unlike that which had affected him when he had first entered the building. He almost sat in the correct seat, then slipped quietly into that next to it. The archdeacon, who was still holding his hand, grinned and insisted on the official stall, and Deenman accepted it, though so gingerly. Faulkner had remarked to Sophie afterwards, "You'd have thought it was the hot seat!" While they sang the Te Deum, Mr. Deenman remained hunched in his place, his eyes fixed on the great painted oak angels roosting in the roof. The time then came for him to make the customary brief speech of thanks. The first few sentences were conventional enough, although Faulkner was once again struck by the rich, rough voice with its unplaceable accent. It was only necessary to say a few polite words. It was obvious that the new rector realised this but that he also was struggling with a compunction to add something personal. This obviously got the bettter of him for, to the controlled astonishment of the packed church, he replaced his cap and began to preach. The magnificently spoken words were crammed together in complicated phrases which were often hard to follow, though the reason for the outburst was plain enough- accusation. Wrath. Faulkner listened, fascinated but made slightly sick, as one listens to a gale.
"What is this that Peter said?" demanded the new Rector, "Wash both feet, hands and head? Verily to open the matter clearly unto you, by these hands are understood opera hominis-the works and deeds of man! For the hands are the principal instruments whereby man does his work and labour."
Here Mr. Deenman held up his hands which Faulkner saw with distaste were extremely dirty, brown and strong but with blackened, broken nails.
"Therefore by the hands
are understood words and deeds… ." The Rector was now staring at the hands of the people in the front pews, his look passing from one to the other, rather like an officer at an army inspection. When he reached Faulkner, he spoke straight at him and pointing. "These thy evil works must be washed clean by penance ere thou go to the great maundy of God, or that thou receive thy Maker!" And he swung round to the altar.
'He can't mean that he is going to refuse me Communion!' thought Faulkner. 'Why? What on earth have I done? What the hell is he getting at? The man must be mad!' He looked at the Bishop for support but he sat on his uncomfortably carved chair with all his usual implacable sweetness.
"And not only thy hands, thy works, but also thy head," continued the Rector, "whereby is understanding of all thy five senses, thy five wits… There is thy sight, thy hearing, thy smelling, thy tasting and thy touching. These senses otherwise called thy five wits must also be by penance washed!" Leaning over the partition made by the sawn-off stump of the rood, he looked into Faulkner's amazed face and said, almost conversationally, "Thy hands, thy hands that did it, they must be by penance washed. . ."
He now turned to the assembled clergy in the choir, then to the long rows of politely listening faces in the nave, and said simply, his hand indicating the apparent peacefulness of the scene, "Haec requies mea. This was my rest. This was my place of quiet. I was to be happy here as long as I lived. But what followed? Nulla requies-no rest…"
A few minutes later, everybody was strolling across the green to the parish tea which had been laid out in the Hall while the bells rang with perfect precision. Mr. Deenman was shuffling along with the other clergy and carrying his surplice over his arm. Sophie saw that it had a large tear near the hem.
"You know that we're expecting you for dinner tonight, Rector!" she cried. She wanted to add, but who is going to get your meals and look after you in the future? How are you going to manage in that big old rectory? "He's going to be a bit of a problem," she whispered to Faulkner. "Darling, are you all right? It is your funny tummy?"
A boy flying a kite was so absorbed that he seemed unaware of the surge of churchgoers. "I won't let you go, I won't let you go," he was muttering over and over to himself as he clung to the string of the desperately straining pink shape.
A few weeks later Faulkner bumped up the Rectory drive with some papers for Mr. Deenman's signature. The barren-looking house with its curtainless, ogling black windows no longer worried him. The new Rector had made himself comfortable in a two-roomed den adjacent to the kitchen and simply ignored the rest of the building. A massive table, a few books, his clothes on hangers dangling from the picture-rail, a stiff little iron bed standing on a square of brown drugget and a priedieu with a padded kneeler appeared to be his total household goods. After his initial shock, Faulkner found himself rather approving this austerity. Why should a nuclear-age parson be obliged to set himself up in Victorian domestic style? He glanced around and seeing that a spade and barrow had been left in the courtyard wandered off in search of Mr. Deenman, now and then shouting, "Rector!" The neglect in the garden really did rather upset him. It worried him to see the untouched lawns and weedy beds. Yet he was determined not to criticize. Things had been easier since he had made up his mind to accept the Rector as he was. "Just let him get on with things in his own way," Sophie had said. "He is so good-everybody says so."
Following the sound made by a machine, Faulkner came across the Rector just beyond where the formal garden ran into a large rough ridge of ground, dense with grass and gorse, and treacherous on the north side with a blackthorn hedge. He had cleared some of the scrub with a scythe and was now trying to plough the clearing with a rotovator. In spite of the modern machine with its cheerful green paint and shining gadgets, there was something in the bowed, fatalistic attitude of its operator which suggested to Faulkner a scene he had witnessed in France, a solitary peasant, chipping away in a vast Norman field with a short-handled hoe, who had seemed to him the essence of everlasting human toil.
The Rector was dressed in old battledress trousers held up with a wide leather belt, a flannel shirt and his clerical collar. The rotovator was either jammed or the Rector did not understand the working of it, for after a yard or two's straight ploughing it seized the initiative and swung the heavy figure round in a mad uncontrolled arc, churning up haphazard scraps of root and gravel. When Faulkner hurried over and switched the thing off, the Rector looked as if he had reached breaking point. His hands trembled and he was almost in tears.
"My dear man, why wear yourself out on this dreadful old bit of ground? It's part of the glebe but nobody has touched it in my lifetime. It's just a donkey acre. If you must have it ploughed, then I'll ask Arnold to bring a tractor up and see what can be done. Though take my word-it's useless." (Why was the silly ass fooling around up here anyway when there was a beautiful bit of kitchen garden simply begging to be dug?)
"Perhaps you're right," said Mr. Deenman. He was making a great effort to recover his dignity, or maybe (thought Faulkner) simply not to show anger and frustration. "It seems a pity, that's all. Not to mention having to give up part of my vocation!" He gave one of his rare smiles.
"Oh come now, Rector! We don't expect you to farm as well as preach!"
"You don't?"
"Why, no, replied Faulkner uncertainly. What was the chap driving at? He changed the subject. "Sophie says I'm to bring you back to supper."
"And I am to bring you back to God."
For a moment Faulkner could scarcely believe his ears. To 'get at him' here, out in the garden, to swing the conversation over like that-it was the limit! All his suppressed dislike of the priest rushed to the surface; he could taste its putrescence in his mouth, it burned like acid in the corners of his eyes, it soaked out of his palms and glutted his stomach. His loathing of Deenman was blind and desperate, like the loathing he had had for a rat which would not die, would not die, though he had beaten his walking-stick into it in a paroxism of revulsion. He had died, for an entire abyss-like minute, but the rat had dragged its frightful wounds away. Deenman was touching him! Jesu… Jesu…
"I thought you were going to catch your foot on that stump. I shall have to dig it out. We'll go over to the church and say the office, then have tea. Call it a day."
"What office?"
"I'm not certain. Perhaps you'd like to choose-it's the Feast of St. Alban." He fumbled in the pocket on the front of the battledress trousers and withdrew a Bible. "That's right-Ezra. They are laying the foundations of the temple. 'The people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping…' Well, that's life for you."
"I think I should go home," said Faulkner. "I told Sophie I wouldn't be long."
"You won't be long-I can promise you that."
"Perhaps I should have said that I'm not very good at this sort of thing-saying offices and all that. I'm just a once-a-weeker I'm afraid."
"Don't worry," answered the Rector. "None of us is very good at it. Here, half a sec, I'll get my cassock."
Again Faulkner noticed the double language, as if two time-divided colloquialisms had joined each other. Then he remembered that Mr. Deenman knew endless unusual things about the Reformation, odd little scraps of social information, customs and the like. He had conducted a party of local historians round the cathedral and Faulkner and Sophie, dutifully trailing in his wake, had been amazed.
The Rector returned from the house with the cassock untidily flung on him and attempting to fasten its many buttons as he half-walked, half-ran to where Faulkner waited. His movements, too, were contradictory, alternating as they did between clumsiness and grace. The cassock heaved around the thick body, a horrible garment, Faulkner decided. Looked as though it had been slept in, or under. Yet it was plain that the Rector assumed it with a sense of honour.
They left the landrover in the drive and walked to the church. Mrs. Howe, cleaning the altar brass, looked up and said, "Rector, Colonel." The building, as usual, was f
reezing cold and smelled cosily of vermin. Faulkner imagined Mrs. Howe going home to tell her family about him being on his knees on a Wednesday afternoon and her husband carrying the news to the pub that evening.
The Rector, after giving the dismantled altar a stare, turned into the Faulkner chapel and plunged before the gaudy tomb of a Robert Faulkner who had died in 1641. An aquamarine light from the east window bathed the alabaster face.
"All that will have to be shifted," said the Rector conversationally. "He's in the altar space."
He spread his books on a chair and knelt. Faulkner crouched a little to his right. Mrs. Howe watched with an expressionless face, her hands continuing to polish at a tremendous rate. For a while the Rector muttered his way through Evensong and Faulkner managed to say the responses. The devotion soon became something normal and ordinary, and his cool English worship gave way to an uninhibited contact with God. As the service proceeded he rationalised all the difficulties which had arisen between himself and the new Rector. They stemmed, surely, from their degrees of belief. The Rector was God-possessed, while he was, well, God-acquainted. He tried to pray. Not to say words but to break through the decent Anglican formula and reach God's ear. A silence. A universe of flint. Sentences which not only fell short of their target but which returned to him like spit in the wind. He was soiled by his own prayer. It didn't work for him and, if he was honest, it had never worked. Being Robert Cosgrave Faulkner, J.P., T.D. hadn't worked either. His life was trivial. It was trivial because it was nothing more than a packet of unexamined gestures. The gesture he made towards heaven was the worst. God was so sick of it that He had sent him a slight coronary (over a year ago now and no further effect) and He had sent him Mr. Deenman. It was time the Rector rose from his knees. Faulkner felt giddy. He was also quite unmistakably aware of a rank odour coming from the cassock and that the bulging shape which pushed through the broken boot in front of him was Mr. Deenman's bare foot.
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