More Tea, Jesus?

by James Lark

‘Don’t be silly, he’s dead.’

  ‘Then what right,’ exploded Bernard, ‘does this Ted fellow have to accuse you of being his mistress?’

  ‘And when I argued with him, he told me to shut up.’

  ‘The French man? Fauré?’

  ‘No, Ted Sloper.’

  ‘The one with the beard?’

  ‘There isn’t anyone with a beard.’

  Bernard stood up. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘There’s no need, Bernard.’

  ‘Tell me where he lives!’ shouted Bernard. He was burning to take an evening’s worth of frustration out on this man, beard or no beard.

  ‘Calm down,’ Harriet ordered her husband. ‘There’s no point in doing anything about it now.’

  Bernard sat down, reluctantly. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go and speak to him. He’s no right …’

  Thus satisfied by a husband’s righteous anger (which approximated a form of sympathy), Harriet picked up her spectacles from the coffee table and put them on, then looked fondly at Bernard. He was such a passionate person. No doubt he would have forgotten all about it in the morning.

  Ted knocked moodily on the door of the vicarage. He wasn’t pleased to be there – by this time of the evening he was usually in the Green Baron and a drink of some kind was always necessary to wash away the taste of the choir rehearsal, but he was fairly sure Reverend Andy Biddle hadn’t asked him round to share a pint. Added to that, Ted always found encounters with the new vicar intensely depressing – it was something to do with the way he was always smiling.

  Andy Biddle opened the door and smiled. ‘Ted!’ he beamed. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  What was wrong with the man? wondered Ted. How could he spend so much time looking happy? He was supposed to be a Christian.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’ Biddle asked, and Ted reluctantly accepted the invitation, stepping into the warmth of the house.

  ‘Tea? I’d offer you a gin and tonic, but I’m completely out of gin. And tonic,’ Biddle laughed, then winced. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I … er … broke my tooth the other day. It hurts when I laugh,’ Biddle chuckled cautiously.

  Why? thought Ted. The man’s in pain and it’s still something to laugh about. This relentless enthusiasm was depressing Ted even more.

  ‘Tea will do,’ he gloomily said, trying to suppress his body’s desperate need for a pint of beer. He followed the vicar into the kitchen, feeling the insipid details of the house drain him of his little remaining resilience. Lots of pastel shades and nondescript watercolours – all new since Biddle’s arrival. Previously, the house had at least radiated some kind of life, having been not so much decorated as left to evolve its bold and frankly hideous décor (Biddle’s predecessor had been quite a different man who certainly would have had some gin).

  Biddle reached down two yellow mugs from a cupboard and started to boil the kettle. ‘How’s the choir?’ he enquired cheerfully.

  ‘Awful,’ Ted replied, wondering if Biddle had asked him round for purely social reasons, and if so, when he could expect to leave.

  ‘Oh?’ Biddle’s face dropped a little, but not enough to make Ted feel any happier. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘No talent,’ Ted responded. ‘There’s not the slightest bit of talent amongst the lot of them. None at all.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’ Biddle chuckled, uncertainly. ‘Well – I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution for that one.’ Ted just stared back grimly, so Biddle added humorously ‘Except perhaps napalm!’

  He quickly repented of the comment, hoping that he hadn’t offended his choir director; he apologetically put on a serious face in case he had.

  ‘They’re so unresponsive,’ Ted sighed, ‘I could insult them to their faces and they wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘I sometimes feel like that about congregations!’ Biddle laughed, then winced again.

  ‘You should see a dentist about that.’

  ‘I, er … I have an appointment with a dentist tomorrow.’ The kettle clicked and Biddle poured hot water into the mugs. ‘Milk?’

  ‘Yes. Two sugars.’ Biddle dutifully stirred sugar into one of the mugs, then carried them through to the living room. ‘I don’t think they realise how important music is to me,’ Ted continued, following Biddle. ‘If they did, they wouldn’t do what they do to it.’

  ‘The work you do with the choir is very much appreciated, Ted,’ said Biddle, gesturing towards one of his armchairs. Ted sat down miserably, feeling ever more trapped in an undesirable situation. ‘I know how much you put into it, and …’ He laughed again, which caused him another jolt of pain that almost made him spill his tea. It was hard enough remaining cheerful in front of Ted Sloper, without this toothache. ‘The choir is getting better every week,’ he lied.

  ‘You think so?’ Ted asked, raising an eyebrow knowingly.

  ‘I’m – not a musician, obviously …’ Biddle swallowed a chuckle before it had a chance to cause him any more pain, wondering why everything he was saying sounded so insincere this evening. ‘But if there’s anything I can do to make things any – er – easier, for you …?’

  ‘Got any napalm?’ Ted asked. Biddle laughed, graciously. Repeated back at him, his joke sounded incredibly tasteless, but at least Ted had taken it in the spirit it was intended – which was obviously not literally.

  In actual fact, Ted thought that it sounded like a good idea.

  ‘How old is Gerard Feehan?’ Biddle suddenly asked. Ted frowned.

  ‘Not sure. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘He sang with the choir years ago. I was trying to get some trebles into it. He was hopeless, of course. But still better than the tone-deaf old biddies singing at the moment …’ He put his head back and looked at the ceiling. ‘What would I give for a few trebles in the choir … you can’t get ’em these days, of course. Kids don’t do singing. It’s hopeless. Hopeless.’

  ‘So how long ago did Gerard sing in your choir?’ Biddle pressed.

  ‘Oh, years ago.’ Ted sat up again. ‘Young Feehan would be about twenty-two now, I’d say. Completely wet, though – always was a queer lad.’

  Biddle nodded thoughtfully. ‘I get the impression he could do with getting away from his mother.’

  ‘We could all do with getting away from his mother,’ Ted said.

  ‘She does have quite a … forceful personality,’ Biddle chuckled.

  Ted was now thoroughly fed up with the vicar’s unnecessary happiness, and still none the wiser about why he had been summoned there. They sipped at their tea wordlessly for a few moments, Ted wondering if this really was intended to be a social invitation – a chance for the new vicar to bond with his choir director. He braced himself for a miserably unexciting and teetotal evening, moving his eyes from the vapid watercolour of a windmill opposite him to the desk in the corner of the living room, a lamp lighting up a disarray of paper and books and a glowing laptop computer. ‘Writing another recipe?’ he enquired.

  ‘Ah-ha!’ replied Biddle and laughed uncomfortably; it was fairly obvious that his discomfort this time was not merely dental in origin and it gave Ted the tiniest feeling of satisfaction.

  ‘Well now,’ Biddle said, hurriedly changing the subject, ‘there is a reason why I wanted you to – er – I hope I didn’t interrupt anything else?’

  Yes, thought Ted, a pint in the Green Baron.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘So what’s it you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘Well, ah …’ Biddle laughed, awkwardly. Ted wasn’t sure whether it was an awkwardness about the subject being broached, or teeth problems again. ‘Mrs Petty-Saphon wrote me a letter this week. She seems quite unhappy about certain … um … aspects of the church services, at the moment.’

  Ted rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘There’s a surprise,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a single service in that church which she hasn’t complained about.’


  ‘Ah, now, I’m not sure that’s entirely – ah …’ Biddle smiled, waving his arms to indicate the vague meaning of his sentence before moving away from it. ‘Anyway, one of the – er – many concerns she voiced was the problem of – ah – sexism in the hymns.’

  Ted blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Some of the hymns have words which she feels are out of place in a society where men and women are more or less considered equals. The expression she used was, er, “outdated patriarchal gender discrimination”.’

  ‘Was it, indeed?’ grunted Ted.

  ‘And as you’re in charge of choosing the hymns, I wonder if you could make whatever – er – changes … might be necessary to render hymns with such – er – references in them … er … useable.’

  ‘They’re useable as they are,’ Ted replied bluntly.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Biddle hurriedly agreed, ‘but a little bit of rewriting would avoid unnecessary offence being caused …’

  ‘Which hymn in particular caused this “offence”, may I ask?’ Ted interjected.

  ‘Right … ah …’ Biddle crossed to his desk and picked up Petty-Saphon’s letter. ‘She felt that the offertory hymn …’

  ‘“Of the glorious body telling”,’ Ted clarified.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The words are by Thomas Aquinas!’ Ted exploded. ‘You’re saying I’ve got to rewrite words that Saint Thomas Aquinas presumably thought were adequate?’

  ‘No!’ protested Biddle. ‘Well, yes …’ he added, apologetically. ‘Aquinas did write them in Latin, so in a way they’ve already been rewritten.’

  ‘By respected English poets.’

  ‘It was only one line,’ Biddle hurriedly reassured him, ‘in the second verse, er … “Man with man in converse dwelling …”’

  ‘It’s poetry,’ Ted insisted. ‘What would you change it to?’

  ‘Mrs Petty-Saphon suggested … er …’ Biddle coughed, uncomfortably. ‘She suggested “Folk in church in converse dwelling …”’ He trailed off. The look on Ted’s face suggested that he was far from impressed by the poetry of Sathan Petty-Saphon.

  Before the tense pause could grow into a fully drawn-out awkward silence, he tried a different tack. ‘Why don’t you go on a recruitment drive?’ he suggested, brightly.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘For singers! Encourage some of the newcomers in the church to join the choir.’ One of the slight concerns Biddle had about St Barnabas was the potential for established churchgoers, the Sathan Petty-Saphons in the congregation, to marginalise those who had just walked in from outside. There had been a fellow at the back of the church for some weeks now who Biddle had vaguely noticed didn’t really seem to want to be there. Well, was it any wonder if nobody knew who he was? Biddle also suspected that the fleeting reference to ‘scruffy outsiders’ in Sathan Petty-Saphon’s letter specifically pointed towards this man; to involve him in the choir would curtail any attempt of hers to act on her disapproval.

  ‘I mean, it would be great to encourage newcomers to become part of the congregation,’ he explained to Ted, ‘especially if they’re a bit undecided about whether to keep coming along …’

  ‘You think that people uncertain about staying in the church should be moved closer to the choir?’ asked Ted, an eyebrow raised.

  ‘Ah,’ Biddle smiled wryly, with an obligatory wince. ‘Yes, well … have a think about talking to some of them, anyway. They might turn out to be good singers, after all.’

  ‘Right,’ sighed Ted, reluctantly. The idea of anyone at St Barnabas turning out to be a good anything seemed pretty unlikely to him and the additional humiliation of approaching strangers on a ‘recruitment drive’ was yet another cross to bear that he could bloody well do without.

  ‘And … er … the problems raised in Mrs Petty-Saphon’s letter …?’ Biddle continued, hopefully.

  Ted stood up. ‘One thing you need to learn,’ he said, sternly pointing at the vicar, ‘is not to listen to everything that woman tells you.’ Biddle sat, momentarily speechless at the sight of Ted’s accusing finger. ‘In fact, don’t listen to anything the bloody woman tells you. It’s part of the job, you just don’t … don’t do it, okay?’ Biddle chuckled unhappily and again let out an involuntary gasp of pain. Ted observed him with a sadistic interest, finding the spectacle of a man unable to stop chuckling in spite of intense physical pain curiously entertaining.

  ‘Right. Well … it’s in your hands, at the end of the day,’ Biddle said, ‘and I take your point about rewriting poetry.’ The perfect Anglican compromise popped into his head. ‘Maybe it would be best to leave out those hymns altogether?’ he suggested.

  Ted said nothing.

  As Ted hurried away from the vicarage in the hope that he might be in time for last orders in the Green Baron, Biddle looked at his half-finished mug of tea with a heavy feeling of foreboding. The meeting had not been a success, and Biddle had a horrible suspicion that Sathan Petty-Saphon’s letter was the prelude to an actual visit. It would have been nice to have something positive to tell her about the hymns issue, since the other part of her letter mostly concerned the omelette and there was very little he could say to defend himself on that subject.

  Perhaps he should tell her he made the omelette as a response to a clear and direct word from God. Let her take it up with the Almighty – at least He was safely away from Little Collyweston. Knowing Sathan Petty-Saphon and the devastating effects such powerful and opinionated parishioners could have in a church, he felt that any actual confrontation between her and Jesus might well lead to a second crucifixion.

  He frowned. Tea always tasted different in a mug. Perhaps it was related to the fact that the mug wasn’t bone china. Of course, he had also brewed the tea in the mug, not something he really approved of – but what else was he to do without his bone-china teapot, which was necessarily part of the tea set he had restricted to use for non-parishioners? And the whole experience of drinking tea was less satisfying when it wasn’t served from his Victorian hostess trolley, which he had found at an inconceivably low price some years ago. He had never been able to confirm that it was actually Victorian, but he felt sure enough of its pedigree not to need that certainty. Certainty, after all, was the opposite of faith.

  He sighed slightly wistfully. It would be ever so decadent to get the hostess trolley out just to make himself a cup of tea. And quite selfish, having denied Ted Sloper the privilege. Perhaps he would need to relax his recently instated mugs-for-parishioners policy, depending on who the parishioner was.

  What was a hostess trolley for, after all?

  Chapter 6

  Vernon Tait liked using his hands. His every comment was accompanied by a suitable gesture to illustrate his feelings about any given subject, which were usually strongly held. He made little attempt to disguise his feelings about Andy Biddle.

  ‘I am delighted,’ he said, expressing his delight with a flat-palmed pat of the air in front of him, ‘to make the acquaintance of another priest in this area. I’ve been looking after the teeth of the church for the best part of a decade, and it never ceases’ (another pointed caress of the air) ‘to thrill me when another priest joins my little flock,’ he put his hand on Biddle’s shoulder, then removed it quickly, as if being careful not to get too tactile too soon, ‘as I like to call it!’ He finished with a welcoming flourish in the direction of the dentist’s chair.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Biddle.

  ‘In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your teeth straight!’ quipped Vernon, one finger raised in knowing jollity. Biddle laughed politely, then winced in pain.

  Vernon was sympathetic about the cause of Biddle’s problems. ‘You know,’ he said, shaking his head and briefly clasping his hands, ‘cake can cause a lot more damage than people give it credit for. And I’m not just talking about erosion or cavities; you’d be surprised how many people have had accidents like yours, you really would.’ Biddle nodded, eager that his
surprise should live up to Vernon’s high expectations. ‘I had a cousin who broke two teeth on a ginger snap, hasn’t touched a biscuit since. I’ve said to him, surely, you know, you could have, like, a digestive biscuit or something, but he won’t touch them. Says it simply isn’t worth the risk. I’m nearly out of mouthwash, Sasha.’

  Biddle heard movement in the next room as he reclined on the dentist’s chair – Sasha, he assumed, whoever he or she was. Vernon leaned over him and he caught a whiff of expensive-smelling aftershave. Vernon grinned. ‘Never mind, we’ll have you all fixed up in a jiffy. Let’s take a look, shall we?’ The chair slowly tilted backwards and Biddle could hear the sound of rubber gloves flexing. Vernon’s face was suddenly very close, the rich scent of his aftershave almost overpowering. ‘Say “ah”,’ requested the dentist. ‘You’ll have to leave the “men” till after I’ve finished.’ He raised his dental equipment as Biddle obliged. ‘Though I know how difficult it can be leaving the men, I can tell you.’ Vernon grinned and began to prod around in Biddle’s mouth.

  Biddle being prevented from communicating in any way, it was left to Vernon to carry on the conversation, which he did with panache. ‘The problem with the church, as I see it,’ he told Biddle, ‘is that it’s too ready to tell people what they’re doing wrong. I’m not saying you’re like that,’ he hastily reassured his captive audience of one. ‘I mean, like I say, I do all the priests in the area and without exception they’re lovely people, they really know their job, but I mean, it’s when the church starts telling people what they ought to do, that’s when it annoys me. It really does.’ His hands being otherwise occupied, Vernon was forced to express his disgust by using even more exaggerated vocal nuances than before. ‘Because that’s not what church is about, is it? That would be like people coming to me and me just telling them they were eating too many sweets. Or rock cakes, in your case. Do you know what I mean? That’s not the church’s business.