by James Lark
‘I know you know all this, of course,’ he added hurriedly, ‘but some people, you’d think they thought the church was all about policing the world. I mean, Jesus didn’t come to earth with a truncheon and a helmet, did he?’ Biddle, his mouth still full of dental instruments, was unable to comment. His eyes being the only part of his face able to make any significant response, he could only continue helplessly watching Vernon as the monologue continued.
‘I mean, I’m gay, and obviously there’s people who think that’s wrong, and there’s people in the church who think that’s totally, like – I’m sure you don’t think that, I do all the priests in this area and they’re all lovely about it, but some people, you know, want everybody to do everything their way, and me being gay is, like, a real issue for them.’
Vernon’s proddings continued, and Biddle was unable to reassure him that homosexuality had long since stopped being an issue for him. ‘I had a terrible time when I came out to my mother. I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, you see, and she kept saying, “But Vernon, the Bible says”, and I was like, “No, Mother, the Bible doesn’t say that, that’s just your way of seeing it”, but you see her church had indoctrinated her to think like that, so I didn’t blame her. Mouthwash, Sasha.’
Vernon straightened up and out of the corner of his eye Biddle saw a tall brunette glide in. ‘No, no, no, Sasha,’ Vernon objected, his hands raised in a gesture of horror, ‘it’s green mouthwash for Ordinary time, we’re into Lent now.’ He turned back to Biddle. ‘She’s a complete atheist,’ he moaned, the word ‘complete’ warranting a particularly wide and pointy gesture with his hands.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, that’s what puts people off church, do you know what I mean? They think they’re going to go in there and be told what they can and can’t do. I mean, everyone’s got their own set of standards, haven’t they? And that’s how it should be. Think of bestiality – that’s it Sasha, the purple stuff, put it down on the side, would you? – everyone says bestiality’s wrong, but when you think about it, what is wrong with it, if it’s with a consenting animal?’
Biddle scarcely had time to wonder how one would know if an animal was consenting before Vernon started to tell him anyway. ‘You can tell if an animal’s consenting,’ Vernon said. ‘I know this because I spoke to a farmer once, years ago, when I went to Dorset with my flatmate. He said if a dog chases a sheep, its intestines fall out of its anus – they’re sensitive, you see, they get scared. So if it wasn’t consenting, it would get scared and its intestines would fall out of its anus.’
Biddle was feeling decidedly uncomfortable – even if he had chosen to engage in this conversation, he would have wanted to be in a position to contribute to it. He certainly wouldn’t have elected to listen to it while somebody was poking around in his mouth. ‘So this farmer said to us, you can tell if the sheep wants to have sex with you. We didn’t ask him to elaborate any further, mind you. But like I say, what’s wrong with that, if it’s giving you both pleasure? Why’s that any different from having sex with a consenting human being? I’m not saying I’m into bestiality, I think it’s disgusting myself, I’m just saying it makes you think – if you could just open a bit wider, that’s lovely – it makes you think, doesn’t it?
As Biddle drove up to his house, his tooth mended and his mind broadened to embrace a number of concepts he had never previously stopped to consider, he saw a small, hunched figure sitting on his doorstep.
He was a little disheartened by the sight. He hadn’t exactly expected Gerard Feehan to hit the gay bars as soon as their previous meeting had finished, but the vicarage was no place for young gay men to be hanging about.
Well – not his vicarage, at any rate.
On the plus side, he was now equipped to discuss in depth the pros and cons of bestiality, should it turn out to be one of the issues bothering Gerard this time round.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said as he stepped out of his car, greeting Gerard with an encouraging and now somewhat-expensive smile.
‘Right – stop,’ Biddle said in his calmest, kindliest voice. ‘Why exactly do you think God wants you to remain celibate?’
‘Well …’ Gerard shifted restlessly and hugged his mug of tea to his chest. ‘I … I’ve been thinking about – you know, when I – we were talking – what about yesterday, I was …’ His words were coming out in the wrong order again, but this was a subject he didn’t seem able to discuss without considerable verbal difficulty. ‘I know it’s not – being it – wrong – it isn’t – gay, I mean,’ Gerard hastily added, without making it altogether clear what he did mean, ‘it’s just that I start – whenever I think about – very empty and lonely, I feel – thinking about it, I mean – and I think that that there’s no, God telling me there’s no, that I should spend the rest of my life, I to, to … focussed on him.’
Biddle nodded, slowly digesting the words and reordering them to discover their hidden meaning. ‘I’m not sure that those are the conclusions I would have reached myself,’ he finally commented.
‘I’ve been about it an awful lot,’ Gerard earnestly insisted. ‘Praying, I mean,’ he clarified.
‘I’m sure you have,’ said Biddle, smiling. ‘But who’s been doing all the talking – you or God?’ (Biddle allowed himself a moment of inward satisfaction at having come up, quite spontaneously, with such a profound yet quotable aphorism. A little pithy, perhaps. Maybe a bit too evangelical in thrust. But these were minor worries when, as a statement, it fitted the situation so well. Definitely one to bear in mind and use again.)
Gerard stared awkwardly at his tea, saying nothing. He took one hand off his mug to remove his glasses and began listlessly fiddling with them. ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Biddle asked. Gerard nodded, and fiddled with his glasses. ‘I think that the reason you feel empty and lonely is that you are lonely. I think that you’re putting words into God’s mouth because you’re afraid of going into areas you haven’t been in before.’ Gerard fiddled with his glasses. Biddle cleared his throat. ‘Gerard, God created us to have companions, human companions.’
‘I know …’ Gerard began, fiddling with his glasses.
‘You need to get out,’ Biddle insisted, ‘meet people your own age. Form some relationships, maybe even a special relationship.’ Biddle deliberately met Gerard’s eyes as the boy replaced his glasses – Gerard recoiled from the long, hard stare, looking as if he wished for all the world that the chair he was in would swallow him whole.
Gerard shifted in his seat; he wished for all the world that it would swallow him whole. ‘Just – not sure – I’m …’ he started, and fell silent again. Biddle wondered for a horrific moment if he was going to have to explain the basics of sexual relationships to the boy, doing diagrams on the small blackboard he had in his kitchen for writing memos on. Finally Gerard spoke again. ‘I don’t really – to form that – know how kind of relationship, I don’t, meet people, don’t, really.’
‘Okay,’ said Biddle, kindly, ‘have you thought about going to a – a gay club, perhaps?’
‘Um …’ Gerard coughed, nervously. ‘My mother …’
‘Your mother doesn’t come into this, Gerard. You wouldn’t be taking her with you.’
‘But …’
‘No, you really wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be her sort of thing at all.’
‘No, but …’ Gerard looked at Biddle questioningly. ‘I thought that … part of the point you were – with the omelette – was that in trying to find an place for itself in a hostile world, gay culture has kind of created an artificial sense of identity which actually … um … works against it, as far as the perception of gay … er … people is … er … concerned … and …’ He coughed again. ‘I thought you were probably saying that because of this it’s better not to in the … er … gay … er … scene – become involved.’
Andy Biddle had years of experience in keeping his happy, caring smile on his face in spite of all kinds of provocation. But it was a d
efinite effort to remain smiling after this baffling yet uncharacteristically articulate speech. How had Feehan managed to read all of that into his omelette? How had he managed to say it all when as a rule he couldn’t even string a sentence together?
‘Well, Gerard …’ he began, wondering exactly what he was going to say. No more pithy aphorisms occurred to him, but he felt he ought to keep talking anyway. ‘You’re right, of course, that … that there are things in the world that we have to be careful of. But it’s not a solution to cut yourself off from those things altogether.’ He thought for a moment – a comparison in these situations often helped drive a point home, but he was reluctant to use another cooking metaphor. The omelette experience had made him wary of all foodstuffs – entertaining, yes, but too vague. Biddle sought inspiration from other sources. ‘Imagine if there was a … a duckling … whose mother didn’t dare let it swim in the water in case it caught one of the diseases you can catch from water,’ he said gently, suddenly feeling as he imagined a parent would when reading a story to their toddler.
Gerard leaned forward in his seat, his face showing intense concentration, and Biddle was unnerved by the idea of Gerard Feehan being his toddler. ‘Now – what happens when that duckling becomes a duck?’ Biddle asked.
‘It can’t swim?’ Gerard suggested, with a wide-eyed look of trust that further reinforced the parent/toddler ambience.
In fact Biddle hadn’t considered this possibility, having been thinking on a rather more complex level. ‘Oh …’ he responded, taken aback (and confused by the unfamiliar parental feelings welling up inside him), ‘yes, I suppose it wouldn’t be able to, would it? But what I was also thinking was that it wouldn’t have built up a resistance to the diseases in the water, and would probably get ill straight away and die.’ He looked at Gerard meaningfully. Actually it had confused things unnecessarily to make it about ducks, he thought. He wasn’t sure why ducks had come into his head. But it was too late now. Everything was getting rather confused in this encounter.
Gerard sighed. ‘It’s just …’ he began. ‘I don’t really think …’ he began. ‘The problem …’ he began. ‘I’ve never done – gone to a – done anything like – club – gay – and I wouldn’t really – on my own – what to – know to, what to, to …’
‘Okay,’ Biddle said, ‘tell me when you want to go out, and I’ll go with you.’ It was a bold thing to suggest, he knew, but it was the only way he was going to get the boy out at the end of the day, and it made him feel less like a parent.
‘What?’ Gerard’s mouth hung open in surprise. ‘You can’t!’
‘Why not? You don’t have to be gay to go into a gay club.’
‘But … you’re a vicar!’
‘I don’t think men of the cloth have been banned from gay clubs. Not to my knowledge, at any rate.’
‘But …’ Gerard was running out of excuses. ‘What say, what will, my mother?’
‘Will your mother object to you spending an evening with a vicar?’ Biddle asked. Gerard shrugged.
‘I suppose …’ he answered, helplessly, adding ‘not’ to clarify what he meant.
‘Well then.’ Biddle finished his mug of tea, feeling warmed by a strange, fatherly sense of pride … He immediately stopped the thought before it was fully formed – it wasn’t fatherly pride, it was the glow of having been of use to at least one person this month. It was a new feeling for him, that was all.
He wasn’t sure why he found the idea of being a parent so difficult, but he told himself that it was only because he would never bring up a child as wet as Gerard Feehan, and put the thought out of his head.
‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on wearing vestments,’ he cheerfully informed Gerard, already wondering to himself what people did wear in gay clubs these days. He was already quite looking forward to the outing.
Gerard may have felt less uneasy about the idea of going to a gay club had he known that Jesus had already visited quite a few. After all, the Christ wasn’t just lying in bed between his weekly visits to St Barnabas – had anybody noticed him, they would have seen Jesus visiting many of the area’s lesser attractions over the few weeks he had been back on earth. There are people who would find even the suggestion of Jesus going into a gay club shocking and unseemly, but it was Jesus’ habit of doing shocking and unseemly things that had got him into so much trouble with people the first time round. He had come to help the lonely and the helpless; the clubbing scene, not unlike the church, had proved a big source of both. If Jesus hadn’t been paid much attention there either, it’s because the clubbing scene, like church, is full of people largely interested in external appearances and Jesus had been too busy to spend time tarting himself up to meet people.
But he had at least met some people. Even as Gerard was leaving the vicarage, Jesus was kneeling next to a young woman who was weeping into a gutter outside a noisy club on the outskirts of London. She had sobered up a fair amount in the time he had been talking to her, though if anything she was crying more than she had been when he had picked her up from the ground.
‘Can you tell me where you’re going?’ he asked her, provoking another burst of sobbing.
‘I’m going to hell, I’m going to hell!’ she bawled.
‘No, I mean … where are you going now?’ Jesus clarified. ‘I’ve ordered you a taxi.’
‘Oh … I live in Reading,’ she said, wiping her face and sniffing. ‘But I can’t afford a taxi that far.’
‘It’s paid for,’ Jesus explained, helping her to her feet and towards a waiting cab. He opened the door for her. ‘Stop worrying about hell,’ he advised. ‘For a start, it sounds like you’ve already been there. And in any case, it’s not all that different from Reading.’ She managed a laugh and gave him an inebriated hug, before collapsing into the back of the car. Jesus watched it drive away; he knew that Reading was no paradise, but somewhere in Reading there was a 2-year-old whose face lit up every time she arrived home, if only she would start to notice it.
Jesus turned and disappeared back into the sweat and noise of the club – the night was still young.
Chapter 7
Although Ted Sloper’s life had not worked out in quite the way he would have chosen, it couldn’t be said that he had done badly. Years as a House Master in a public school of some repute had given him the means to live in a cottage which was more than ample for a single man, even one who cohabited with a grand piano and a harpsichord.
He had hated every moment of his time as a House Master, so had given up the job at the public school and established himself in Little Collyweston as a freelance music teacher. Which he hated.
By day, he was free to pursue the interests that, had things worked out differently, he might have once made a career of – largely academic and musical in nature. But at 3.30 p.m. each week day, as the schools started to finish, he sold out his love of music to earn a living. He had given up trying to enthuse or educate pupils a long time ago; now he resigned himself to listening to young people desecrate works that he had once held sacred. He knew that he had betrayed his first love, but he had given up caring about that, too.
He sat next to his grand piano with a pained expression on his face, as a steady stream of pre-teens and, as the day wore on, teenagers, performed indescribable acts of vandalism which neither the music nor the piano deserved. On the other hand, he felt that he must deserve it himself – there was no other explanation for the decades of suffering that lay behind him (and, as far as he could see, ahead).
‘Have you practised that one?’ he asked a 12-year-old boy called Will Ink, who had just struggled through a D-major scale (three interminable octaves) with as little accuracy as was feasible in a major scale.
‘Uh …’ The boy screwed up his face as if trying to reach back through the debris of the week to recall if D-major had featured in his activities at all. Finally he answered, ‘No. Uh … no, I haven’t had time to practise that one.’
Ted nodded wearily. �
�Have you practised A-major?’ Will Ink fiddled with his school tie, thinking hard about this as well.
‘No, no … I didn’t have time to do that this week,’ he replied.
‘I see. Which scales have you had time to practise, then?’ Once again, Will Ink yanked at his tie and cast his mind back, as if the effort of remembering might make up for the failure to make any effort in practising. ‘Have you practised any scales this week?’ Ted finally asked. This seemed to pose more of a conundrum for the boy.
‘Um …’ He looked up to the ceiling as if seeking divine assistance in recalling his week’s work, or perhaps just divine intervention. ‘Uh …’ He contorted his face, hissed through his teeth, looked at the music on the piano, then at the piano keys, then at Ted, then quickly back at the piano keys. ‘Uh … no …’ he finally concluded. ‘No, I’ve been quite busy with … other things.’
‘You’ve been practising your pieces too much, perhaps?’ Ted drily suggested.
‘Uh …’ Will Ink had to agonise over this question as well. Ted waited for the answer, not with patience so much as apathy. ‘Perhaps …’ the conscientious pupil eventually agreed.
‘Okay,’ said Ted, ‘what pieces have you spent the most time on?’
‘Um …’ Another minute to drag the detritus of the week’s efforts from the murky depths of his memory, then: ‘Uh, I haven’t really had a chance to practise any of the pieces this week.’
‘So what you’re saying is that you haven’t practised anything this week?’ Ted concluded.
‘Uh …well, not exactly …’ the boy replied, tugging at his tie again. Ted observed the boy without interest, trying to stop himself from looking at his watch again.
Will Ink was one of his better pupils.
As the boy struggled again to remember – what? Ted hadn’t even asked him a question this time, had he? – the doorbell rang. Ted murmured an insincere apology to his pupil, who couldn’t have cared less in any case, and walked into his hallway.