by James Lark
‘We all have times, Mick, when we question who we are, what we are. I’ve certainly had times when I’ve looked at what I am, what I do, and wondered if there’s any good in it at all.’ Biddle smiled encouragingly. ‘But Jesus has been there as well.’
Pender momentarily wondered if there was any ground to be gained from a ‘Vicar Claims Jesus Was Gay’ story, but thought that there was a much stronger angle to be gained from Biddle’s evident uncertainty – sure, the man hadn’t actually admitted to being gay, but that in itself was a sign that he was uncomfortable with it. Biddle had all but admitted he was living a double life, one half virtuous and priest-like, the other half – well, Pender could hint at whatever lurid form that might take. Hints were generally enough in this context. ‘Mick,’ Biddle was saying, ‘you need to remember that who you are is something to rejoice in, not to worry about. Wasn’t one of the main things Jesus said “do not be afraid”?’
As Pender’s look of thoughtfulness turned into a distant smile, Biddle felt those words speaking into his own life as well – and, for the first time in a long while, felt a sense of peace and certainty about his career.
As they walked back to the front door, Pender turned to Biddle and gave him a smile of genuine gratitude. ‘Thank you, Reverend Biddle,’ he said, trying to retain the suggestion in his expression of a recovering tortured soul, though finding it hard to conceal his exultation.
‘Andy – please, call me Andy.’
‘Andy. Thank you, you’ve been … a tremendous help.’
Biddle felt a sudden surge of love. Everything about his life was so clear now, thanks to this man’s honesty. ‘Thank you, Mick,’ he smiled. ‘You’ve been a help to me, too. I don’t mind telling you that before you arrived I was questioning a lot of things and – well, your problems have helped me confront some of mine, I think.’
Pender continued to smile. The whole ‘vicar tortured by self-loathing’ angle was becoming stronger by the minute.
Biddle was so overcome with the satisfaction of seeing the young man smiling, with a look of such genuine release after the suffering he had so evidently felt when coming in, that he impulsively hugged Pender.
Pender mutely received the embrace – he didn’t feel that it was a particularly gay hug, but he could probably use it in his article all the same.
Pender Gannit strolled back to his car. It had all gone better than he had hoped. There were some gaps to fill in, but the story was there – the actual facts he wasn’t in possession of he could more or less hint at, the beauty of journalism being that people could be very easily guided into drawing the conclusions they were meant to draw.
He was wondering how it could possibly have been more perfect when Gerard Feehan walked round the corner approaching the vicarage. They both stopped.
Pender uttered cursory thanks to a God he did not believe in and smiled at Gerard. Gerard looked uncertain – Pender decided to play it as casually as possible.
‘Didn’t I see you in church on Sunday?’ he asked; it was one chat-up line that he had never used before.
‘Oh, er … er … I don’t know. Probably. Yes.’ The nervousness Pender had found endearing was now actually arousing him.
‘I thought so. You were at Different last week as well, weren’t you?’ Gerard looked around anxiously, but didn’t reply. ‘You were the one who lost your contact lens, right?’ Pender grinned.
‘Oh. Oh, yes, that was. That was me.’ Gerard was blushing and Pender was having to mentally hold back from throwing himself at him. ‘I was … it was … a bit, all, er … embarrassing. I – quite stupid – I felt. Sorry.’
His words were all coming out in the wrong order. Cute. ‘I don’t think many people noticed,’ Pender reassured Gerard. It was the least believable of the string of lies he had been telling over the last hour, but Gerard looked up and smiled hopefully. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Happens all the time, anyway.’ The boy seemed suitably reassured, and Pender dared to reach out and touch his cheek. He flinched, but stayed where he was. Pender kept his hand on Gerard’s cheek.
‘You’re kind of attractive, you know?’ Pender told him.
Gerard gazed back in disbelief. Something in his head was telling him that this wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening, that people weren’t interested in him and he especially wasn’t noticed by good-looking, nice men. Pender’s hand on his cheek was like electricity, flowing through his whole body. He felt his chest tighten and his heartbeat quicken and he waited for the dream to end.
It didn’t end. Pender suddenly moved towards Gerard and the next instant they were kissing. Gerard felt the unfamiliar experience of an unknown tongue pushing into his mouth; he was briefly repulsed by it before he felt a rush of excitement and found he was pushing back, then it was over as suddenly as it had started. He gasped.
Pender fixed Gerard with his eyes. The boy was his and he knew it.
‘My car’s just round the corner,’ he said. ‘Will you come back with me?’ Gerard stared at Pender, transfixed by his hypnotic gaze, not daring to give an answer. Pender ran his hand down Gerard’s T-shirt and curled his fingers over the waistband of his jeans. ‘Well?’
Chapter 14
Gerard Feehan woke up in another man’s bed.
He would hardly have believed it could be another man’s bed, except that it wasn’t his own and there was another man in it.
Gerard studied the sleeping form beside him. Pender Gannit did not have an especially impressive physique – he was too lazy and drank too much to be in good shape, and confident enough to get away with it – but to Gerard the naked body next to him, half covered up by the white bed-sheet, was a heavenly vision, a glimpse of perfection.
Gerard gingerly reached out and let his hand rest on Pender’s smooth, cool chest.
‘Fuck off, I’m sleeping,’ Pender mumbled.
Gerard whipped his hand away. Of course, he should never have touched Pender when he was asleep, that was terribly selfish.
Guiltily, Gerard turned over and shut his eyes, trying to get back to sleep himself. Moments later, he felt a body pressing itself against him. Evidently Pender had changed his mind.
Gerard watched Pender’s hand run carelessly down his chest, then slip in between his legs with considerably less lightness of touch. He experienced a sinking feeling at the aggressively sexual move. He was worried that he was experiencing a sinking feeling – this was sex, after all, which was what everyone wanted and enjoyed. Except that he wasn’t sure that he had enjoyed it very much. His memory of the night before had congregated into a series of snapshots of himself pinned to the bed like a preserved butterfly, helplessly sprawled in different positions. The images had frozen in his mind like insects preserved in amber, as if he had been watching the activity from outside his body while it had happened. But he also remembered being painfully aware of what was happening to his body at the time, and he wasn’t sure that he was really looking forward to it happening again.
He looked up into Pender’s eyes, which were now alert and eager. ‘Morning, beautiful,’ said Pender. Gerard didn’t reply – he still felt rather shy, he wasn’t certain of the right things to say, so he kept his mouth shut (unless specifically required by Pender to do otherwise).
Suddenly, the meaning of Pender’s words hit Gerard. It was the morning. The next day. His mother would have missed him – what would he tell her? She would want to know where he had been, what he had been doing and with whom, and none of those things were going to meet with her approval at all.
He could worry about it later, he thought, as Pender’s head disappeared beneath the sheets, but the disturbing image of his mother would not go away. He could see her stern, disapproving face uttering words of condemnation as Pender’s lips worked their way unceremoniously down his body – how about the Reverend Biddle, he could say he’d spent the night with him – it would be true enough to say he had gone to see the vicar, it was just that things had taken an unexp
ected turn. Pender turned Gerard over in the bed, Gerard passively allowing Pender’s tongue to rove over and into his whole body – for a moment he felt as though Pender’s tongue was all the way up inside his ribcage, vigorously licking his lungs clean – then the picture dissolved into his mother briskly beating eggs and Gerard was aghast at feeling aroused with this image in his head. He was about to apologise when he remembered that Pender couldn’t see the images in his head; as far as Pender was concerned, he was relaxed and enjoying it and –
‘Relax, will you?’ said Pender, irritably, then went back to servicing Gerard with considerably more efficiency than he ever displayed in the office.
Gerard shivered as he felt Pender’s tongue probing him again, with eggs being beaten in his mind, only now they were being beaten by the beaming figure of Reverend Biddle –
He would have to tell Reverend Biddle, of course. In case his mother went to ask. He wondered about telling Reverend Biddle what had happened – would the vicar approve? And how much detail would he want? He wasn’t sure that he would be capable of being specific about what was happening, as he wasn’t sure of the technical terms. If there even were technical terms for what Pender was doing now –
Gerard imagined himself sitting in Biddle’s living room, the vicar smiling sympathetically as Gerard told him the minute details of what was happening. For some reason in his mind Biddle was still beating eggs, presumably to make an omelette. It was an image which made it incredibly difficult to concentrate on having sex.
Or was this sex yet? Did it only start being sex when Pender put his – thing – it seemed silly to feel ashamed of the word when he’d been touching somebody else’s, but his mother was still hovering in the room somewhere and she had told him it was a dirty word.
Perhaps Biddle would be disgusted with Gerard – Gerard was momentarily worried and wondered if he was also disgusted with himself – after all, he was having sex with a complete stranger.
Assuming this really was sex, at the moment … Gerard thought it wasn’t technically – but then, was it really sex if he wasn’t having it with a girl?
How was he supposed to know these things? Everything at school had been about sex between a man and a woman. He wouldn’t even know about that except for the fact that he had dared to fake his mother’s signature on the note to let him attend sex education lessons. ‘Everything you need to know about sex I will tell you, as and when you need to know,’ she had told him, refusing to sign the note herself. Well, she wasn’t here now, was she?
Except that she was, she was peering over them, her stern, disapproving face glaring down at Gerard’s look of abandon. He screwed up his eyes to shut her face out of his mind and tried to control himself a bit more, not make any noises, but he gasped as Pender carried on – was there a word to describe what he – with his finger, and leant over and kissed him –
She wouldn’t know the technical terms he was wondering about, probably – even if she did, he suspected she would consider them dirty words and wouldn’t tell him. It didn’t matter, anyway. He had enjoyed it, hadn’t he? And wanted it to carry on forever, until he enjoyed it – not that he wasn’t enjoying it –
Except that he needed to get home to tell his mother where he had been – or rather, where he hadn’t been –
Pender’s head suddenly emerged from the tangle of sheets and he pushed Gerard’s legs over his shoulders then reached for the bedside cabinet – Gerard closed his eyes again and waited for the cool touch of lubricant the same as last night – he wondered if there would be sex in heaven, and would it be different or perhaps they would do it flying, like angels –
Angels didn’t have sex, though, did they?
And could he expect to go to heaven, now? He had thought he was alright the night before, but now he was wishing he’d gone back to the vicarage and checked first.
Not angels maybe so much as butterflies – he saw the dead butterflies, pinned down again, like Pender was now pinning him down, pushing into his sprawled body, trapping him – ‘God, you’re tight’ – Andy Biddle’s smiling, nodding face – adding milk to the egg mixture –
Gerard had remembered it was painful, but he’d forgotten quite how painful – he gasped as Pender continued to push and the pain seared through him and he shook his head trying to tell Pender to stop, it was too much, it was more than he could take, but Pender carried on – his voice wasn’t working, anyway –
For a horrible moment he saw himself naked in Reverend Biddle’s armchair and it was the vicar standing over him with his egg whisk –
He almost thought he was going to black out, but when he didn’t, he realised that Pender was inside him, filling him, moving in and out, slowly at first but once the rhythm – the beat of the egg whisk – took hold – this was sex, now, wasn’t it? – though it felt rather as though Pender was having sex with him, and not the other way round – Biddle’s omelette sizzling away, now faster and it was as if a large and wonderful – his mother again, looking critically at Gerard pinned to the bed like a butterfly, such a beautiful thing yet so violently preserved and painful but oh, so wonderful thing was filling Gerard up – Come to think of it, he needn’t have faked her signature after all. He almost laughed except that he was in too much pain – he hadn’t needed to know the slightest thing about reproduction, he never would – but at least he didn’t have to sit in with the third years and read on his own, like Amanda McClean, because her parents were strict Catholics –
With Amanda McClean still at the front of his mind, he felt Pender climax inside him with a loud moan, and realised that it wasn’t Pender moaning, it was him, and the egg white being poured into the frying pan and gently solidifying – and Pender pulled away and briefly kissed him, while he continued to feel the energy ebb out of him, panting and whimpering with painful ecstasy.
Then the empty, guilty feeling. Like after masturbating, but worse because he’d done it with somebody else. He was sure, now, that he couldn’t expect to go to heaven. But perhaps it had been worth it. It had been sex, after all.
In the silence, he remembered that he’d sort of fancied Amanda McClean. But that was a long time ago.
Pender was pulling on his trousers. ‘Better get you back home,’ he said to Gerard.
‘Yes.’ Gerard felt disappointed. He wanted to hold onto Pender, cling to him as he had the night before, when he had never felt so close to any other human being, even his mother. He had never felt a face so close to his before.
‘I’ll drop you off before I go to work.’ Pender looked at Gerard. ‘You live with your parents, don’t you?’
‘My mother,’ Gerard said. ‘My father – um – when I was ten, he—’
Left? Died? wondered Pender. It didn’t matter. He recalled the fierce-looking woman next to Gerard at church. ‘Will she want to know where you’ve been?’
‘Yes. I could I was I thought …’ Why couldn’t he get his words to work properly? ‘I tell her – visiting – visiting Reverend Biddle.’
Pender raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, yes? You’ve spent the night there before, have you?’
‘No. But I – I’m sure people stay with him, have, have done, er … before.’
Pender nodded with a knowing smile. ‘I’ll bet.’ He started to pack up a small bag for work – he’d get his story written up, then he could take the afternoon off.
‘So …’ Gerard still found it hard to talk to Pender, and Pender didn’t seem to be paying him much attention, but it was important. He struggled to form the words in his mind before saying them; he effortfully made his lips form the sentence and his voice came out, tiny and distant. ‘So when I can I see you again?’
Pender turned round from packing his bag, distracted. ‘I’m sorry?’
Gerard found that he couldn’t repeat the question, simple as it was. He was frozen, preserved in amber, like a trapped insect. A dead angel.
Chapter 15
Later that week, Andy Biddle was leaving the vicarage to
help Sathan Petty-Saphon put out the chairs for the church entertainment when he noticed that a postcard was lying on his doormat next to the Cogspool Evening Gazette. He picked them both up, looking with a smile at the picture on the postcard, a beautiful depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding Christ – it looked Italian but he didn’t recognise it so he turned it over to see who the artist was.
He couldn’t help but notice what was scrawled in green felt-tip pen on the back:
FORNICATING PIG
He frowned. That wasn’t what he had expected. Parishioners often sent him postcards from their holidays abroad, but the messages they wrote were usually of a more general nature. ‘Fornicating pig’ was a very specific greeting.
It had obviously been delivered by hand – there was no stamp or address – and whoever had written it had evidently intended it for somebody else. But he couldn’t imagine who. Who in Little Collyweston could possibly be described as a fornicating pig?
He turned the card over again, looking from the simple beauty of the picture back to the simple hatred of the words on the back.
He noted that the former was attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna.
It was baffling, and rather disturbing. It was not the kind of message he expected people in his parish to write, and he felt glad that, by the grace of God, he had been able to intercept it before whoever it was intended for could see it.
He put the postcard down on the kitchen worktop. He would have to decide what to do with it later, but he couldn’t very easily hand it in as misdelivered post, or make enquiries about who it might have been intended for. ‘Before we share the peace this morning, I wonder if anybody is expecting a postcard addressed to “Fornicating pig”?’
Biddle put the newspaper down next to the postcard and the headline caught his eye. He stopped, picked up the paper and unfolded it slowly.