More Tea, Jesus?

by James Lark

  ‘So it’s that simple,’ retorted Ted. ‘The queers are all going to hell.’

  ‘Please, Ted,’ said Sathan Petty-Saphon disapprovingly, ‘I would prefer it if you didn’t use the word “queer”. I’m afraid it’s rather insulting.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Sloper said, rounding on Petty-Saphon. ‘We’re allowed to say they’re going to hell, as long as we don’t insult them!’

  ‘I wonder if we shouldn’t really do either,’ commented Harley Farmer.

  ‘But Harley,’ Petty-Saphon gently smiled, ‘if somebody is destined for hell, surely it is the greater kindness to tell them so?’

  ‘But I think it will be terribly embarrassing if we meet them in heaven,’ he replied, sadly.

  ‘Always assuming there is a heaven …’ muttered Ted.

  Sathan Petty-Saphon decided to take control of the discussion. ‘I think that now is not the time for a lengthy discussion about the scriptural intricacies of this issue.’

  ‘Bloody right it’s not,’ Ted interrupted, ‘so you can stop poisoning this rehearsal with your homophobic opinions and let me get on with conducting this choir.’

  ‘That’s a bit unfair, Ted,’ piped up Gordon Spare from the tenor section, eager to make it clear that he supported what Harriet had said in case anybody thought that he was gay, a possibility which worried him immensely because he was in fact gay. ‘Homophobic is quite a strong word to use – I mean, we’re essentially talking about Biblical values here. The word “homophobic” makes it sound as bad as racism.’

  ‘It is the same as fucking racism,’ spat Ted. ‘You judge someone because of their sexuality, you might as well be judging them by the colour of their skin!’

  ‘It is not the same as racism,’ Sathan Petty-Saphon calmly responded. ‘When Reverend Biddle was appointed for this job, he was clearly able to hide vital facts about his sexuality because they were not externally apparent.’

  ‘Although I always had my suspicions,’ Harriet added.

  ‘If Reverend Biddle had been black,’ Petty-Saphon continued, ‘he could hardly have concealed it from us, could he?’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ exploded Ted. ‘That’s right, if he’d been a black vicar it would have been obvious not to appoint him!’

  ‘That’s racist,’ Gordon Spare said, disapprovingly.

  ‘I don’t think it necessarily matters that he’s gay, does it?’ Harley Farmer asked.

  ‘Of course it matters!’ Harriet Lomas exclaimed. ‘How can he possibly do a good job of being a vicar when he has said yes to the sinful perversions of sexual deviance?’

  ‘But he does do a good job as vicar,’ Harley Farmer replied. ‘I think,’ he added.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Noreen Ponty said, seeing an opportunity to find a compromise in the argument, ‘even if it is a sin to be gay, God can still use a gay person to do a job well.’

  ‘You mean that even though God can’t love a gay person, he can still use a gay person?’ Gordon Spare said, quite pleased to be establishing what he felt was potentially quite a profound theological concept.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Noreen nodded.

  ‘In the same way as God used, say … Hitler,’ Gordon continued, developing the idea. There was an awkward silence.

  ‘How, exactly, did God use Hitler?’ Sloper asked in disbelief.

  ‘Well.’ Gordon smiled, knowingly. ‘Of course the Second World War was a bad thing. Nobody doubts that. But …’ He leant forward in the choir stall, enjoying the fact that he had a rapt audience. ‘It did strengthen the faith of a lot of Christians. That’s all I’m saying. Out of that bad came some good.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ asked Sloper in disbelief. ‘You want us to consider the positive side of several million Jews being slaughtered in concentration camps? Oh yes, I’m sure that was a great faith-building exercise.’

  ‘That’s different, they weren’t followers of the true faith.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Sloper sarcastically retorted, ‘it was okay to kill them because they were Jewish.’

  ‘What is it with you and your racist comments?’ Gordon irritably asked. ‘It’s one thing to disapprove of homosexuals because there’s a scriptural precedent, but you can’t say that kind of thing about Jews. Unless you find a Bible verse to justify it.’

  ‘Do you have a Bible verse to justify comparing gays to Hitler?’ Sloper demanded, disbelief taking his voice into a register sadly lacking in the choir itself.

  ‘I think it’s clear that Gordon didn’t mean the comparison in that way,’ Petty-Saphon reassured him. ‘And at the end of the day I think it’s important that what we’re questioning here is not the rights or wrongs of homosexuality itself, but the propriety of Reverend Biddle’s behaviour, where he has very openly threatened the stability of this church by flaunting his sexual preferences in an inappropriately provocative and promiscuous manner.’

  ‘In what fucking way has he been flaunting his sexual preferences?’ Sloper demanded. ‘I mean, we haven’t seen any evidence of his sexuality, short of a single newspaper article which is frankly of dubious reliability.’

  Petty-Saphon closed her eyes and smiled with a look of regretful despair. ‘I’m afraid to say … I have seen evidence.’

  The singers all attentively held their breath, and even Anne Hudson looked up from a description of Harry’s improbably manly torso.

  ‘Reverend Biddle … has a boyfriend.’ A tiny gasp went up from the choir. ‘And I’m sad to say that, even though he hasn’t introduced him as such, Biddle has been sneaking this man – this stranger – into our church services.’ A few choir members shook their heads in horrified amazement, whilst others secretly wondered whether sneaking somebody into a church service could really be all that bad. ‘Last night, furthermore,’ Petty-Saphon went on, savouring the moment of her greatest bombshell, ‘I saw Reverend Biddle and this man go into the vicarage. Together!’

  This caused a more animated response from the choir. Anne Hudson felt a shiver of excitement as she realised that a scandal not unlike those she was accustomed to reading about in romantic novels was taking place in this very village! That Reverend Biddle could be embroiled in such forbidden passion made him seem much more thrilling, more attractive …

  ‘And so fucking what?’ Ted Sloper growled, putting a stop to the frenzied murmurs. ‘I couldn’t care less if the vicar’s got a boyfriend. Good luck to them, I say. Of course they went back to the vicarage together – and again, who fucking cares?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t care, Ted Sloper,’ Petty-Saphon angrily responded, ‘and to be honest, that doesn’t surprise me; you are hardly the greatest example of upstanding moral character. But I think you’ll find that some of us do care about decent, scriptural moral values, and we’re not going to let this kind of thing carry on without—’

  ‘No, I’ve had enough of this crap, you’ve already wasted half of my rehearsal, now perhaps—’ He was interrupted by the noise of the main door to the church slamming shut. ‘What now?’ he burst out, spinning round to face the new distraction.

  A cold silence descended on the church as every eye looked towards Andy Biddle, nervously grinning as he shuffled in with a man they all knew must be his boyfriend: the gaunt, slightly Jewish-looking man that most of them recognised as the stranger who had been at the back of some of their recent services. ‘Er … sorry, Ted,’ Biddle said sheepishly. ‘Do carry on, we’re just …’

  ‘I think it is high time that you apologised to us all,’ Sathan Petty-Saphon informed him icily. Biddle looked at her uncomprehendingly. She paused expectantly but, seeing his look of confusion, carried on with renewed indignation. ‘Perhaps you don’t think you need to apologise? For your brazen sexual indiscretion? Do you perhaps hope to win us round, by parading this demimondaine, your boyfriend,’ she sneered the word as if it was a disease, ‘in front of your parishioners?’

  There was a moment’s tense silence as Biddle realised what he was accused of, then it dawned on him how terri
bly rude this must look to the Prince of Peace. ‘Oh … Jesus,’ he said apologetically, turning to the man in question.

  ‘Do you hope to make things better by taking the Lord’s name in vain?’ enquired Petty-Saphon, folding her hands with a satisfied look of triumph.

  ‘No … erm, listen, everybody, he’s not … I’m not …’ Biddle paused for breath. ‘If I could introduce you to, er … Jesus Christ … you’ve heard me talk about him …’

  One by one, the assembled company looked at the visitor and saw, with surprise, that he was indeed Jesus Christ. Now that it had been pointed out to them, it seemed so obvious.

  Harriet Lomas’s heart leapt in terror. She could feel Jesus’ eyes on her, piercing her to the soul … He knew, she felt sure; Jesus knew that even as they stood there, her husband was stealing Ted Sloper’s harpsichord. His eyes burned accusingly into her and she felt sure that her guilt must be visible to everybody else. Surely they had all noticed that Jesus was looking at her? She wanted to deny all responsibility, to make it clear then and there that it had been her husband’s idea all along, Bernard’s idea, not hers … but she remained frozen to the spot, silent and terrified.

  Sathan Petty-Saphon, exposed at the front of the group, her arms still folded in false victory, realised that she was in a difficult situation. ‘Indeed …’ she stuttered. ‘That’s all very well, but you can see why this kind of misunderstanding happens, Reverend … and I hold you responsible for not informing us sooner of this visit.’

  ‘But Jesus only introduced himself to me yesterday,’ Biddle insisted, defensively. ‘I haven’t had time to tell people about him. I’ll make sure it goes into the next parish newsletter so that everybody knows, but …’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Petty-Saphon, reluctant to relinquish the centre stage, and still certain that she could rescue the situation. ‘Yes, but what we were discussing …’ She turned to Jesus. ‘… and what I feel Jesus might be able to help us with, at this juncture, is the issue of homosexuality.’

  ‘Now, wait a f … minute,’ Ted Sloper said, managing to avoid a potentially offensive expletive in the nick of time as he caught Jesus’ eye, ‘we were not discussing that. We were about to start this choir rehearsal, at long bloody last.’ Damn! He’d said ‘bloody’. Maybe he could get away with one of those as it wasn’t a very bad swear word. But he’d also thought the word ‘damn’ which was probably worse – did Jesus know about that? Could Jesus read his mind? He was already feeling deeply embarrassed about his failed attempt to get Jesus to sing tenor in his choir – had he used any bad language then? He couldn’t remember. Surely not in front of a complete stranger? Though there might have been a ‘bloody’. Oh fuck, had he said bloody?

  Harriet Lomas continued to feel shame raining down on her. She wanted to leave, but didn’t want to be noticed leaving. Jesus was watching her – he would see, even if nobody else did. Perhaps if she picked up one of the Bibles in the choir stall and had a casual glance through it, she might make a better impression. You couldn’t be all bad if you were reading a Bible …

  ‘I think, Ted,’ Petty-Saphon insisted, ‘there are more important things than your choir rehearsal, now that Jesus is here.’

  ‘How exciting,’ Noreen Ponty whispered enthusiastically to Harley Farmer, ‘we’ve never had Jesus in our church before!’

  ‘What we would like to know,’ Petty-Saphon continued, ‘is a definitive answer to the question of homosexuality.’

  ‘No!’ Ted yelled, his eyes bulging slightly. ‘We’ve got music to rehearse! Have we all forgotten why we bloody came here in the first place?’ Damn, there was another ‘bloody’. Shit – there was another ‘damn’.

  ‘No, Ted,’ Gordon Spare loudly objected, ‘I really think that it’s important to get this sorted out. It’s a question of right and wrong.’ He hoped that if he showed a sincere desire to know the truth, Jesus might not notice that he was actually gay himself.

  Harriet glanced up from the Bible which she wasn’t reading, caught Jesus’ eye and quickly looked back down. The Bible had fallen open at Psalm 50, and Harriet’s eyes were drawn inexorably towards verse 18: When you saw a thief, you consented with him … Harriet began to tremble; she could still feel Jesus watching her.

  Sathan Petty-Saphon ignored everybody else, knowing that she had Jesus’ full attention. ‘All we want to know is whether abnormal sexual activity between two members of the same sex is morally and spiritually degraded and wrong – or whether it can ever be acceptable?’

  ‘I wonder if Jesus has a definitive pronunciation of the word paisible?’ Harley Farmer mused.

  ‘Don’t bother Jesus with trivialities.’ Gordon Spare tutted, turning his attention back to the Son of the Highest and waiting to hear the authoritative answer on homosexuality.

  Chapter 20

  As Harriet Lomas hurried home, an oppressive sense of dread filled her. When she had left the house, it had been with a vague certainty that Bernard wasn’t capable of successfully stealing a harpsichord; that no plan he had devised was ever actually going to reach the stage of being carried out, because Bernard simply wasn’t very good at finishing things.

  As she hastily walked back, any such certainty was fast diminishing, to be replaced by a claustrophobic terror that stealing a harpsichord was probably a mortal sin and the Son of God happened to be here in Little Collyweston at the same time as her husband was doing it.

  Even if Bernard didn’t succeed, Jesus was interested in intentions, wasn’t he? He would know that the deed had been planned, even if wasn’t carried out. Wasn’t that almost as bad?

  Harriet had been painfully aware of the presence of God throughout the choir rehearsal. Throughout the debate about homosexuality (during which Jesus had remained oddly silent), she had been aware only of the Judge of the Living and the Dead watching her, his knowing eyes condemning her complicity in Bernard’s actions. She had flicked through the Bible with increasing urgency, desperately trying to keep her mind from thinking about harpsichords, but somehow she couldn’t rid herself of a vision of Bernard stealing Ted Sloper’s instrument. The way she pictured it, Bernard was lifting the harpsichord out of Ted’s house through a hole in the roof using a large crane, although she knew that couldn’t be Bernard’s actual plan – it would attract far too much attention and, in any case, where would he get a crane from?

  Whatever method he ultimately used, though, Harriet was, in some way, an accomplice to theft.

  She continued to tell herself that she hadn’t wanted Bernard to steal the harpsichord, she had never encouraged the plan, and if she hadn’t actively discouraged it, it was because she knew that Bernard needed these things to keep him occupied. No English court of law would find it in their hearts to condemn her for a single thing. But she had a feeling that Jesus had a rather different set of standards to English law, and the more she tried to justify her actions to herself, the more guilty she felt.

  The choir rehearsal had finally got underway, but Harriet had been entirely incapable of concentrating. Jesus had been sitting in the church, quietly watching the choir – watching her.

  Surely he hadn’t come to Little Collyweston purely because Bernard was stealing a harpsichord? There must be worse things going on in the world, more important sins for him to punish?

  But then, why was he here? Reverend Biddle had been very vague on the subject – perhaps Jesus hadn’t even told him. Unless Jesus was here to deal with her sinful activities – in which case, perhaps Jesus had told Reverend Biddle, and they were both keeping quiet about it until the time was right to …

  To what? Harriet’s imagination started to run wild with increasingly alarming ideas. Was she to be publicly shamed at Sunday’s church service? Would Jesus take her with him to another plane of existence?

  In her youth, a Sunday-school teacher had once told Harriet that before going to heaven, every human being would have to sit down and watch a long film of all the bad things they had ever done. It was an image that had st
ayed with her. She could see herself in a white, sterile room, Jesus standing next to her, her eyes transfixed by a large screen which was showing her again and again the film of Bernard lifting a harpsichord through the roof of Ted Sloper’s house with a crane.

  By the time she reached home, Harriet Lomas was in a state of fraught nervous tension, racked with guilt and terrified by the consequences of what she could only hope hadn’t taken place.

  But any vestiges of hope vanished the instant she stepped into her living room. There, standing proudly where her coffee table had been earlier, was Ted Sloper’s harpsichord.

  ‘It’s quite something, isn’t it!’ said Bernard Lomas, entering the room with his eyes gleaming. ‘Imagine Sloper getting home now. Imagine his reaction! He won’t believe it. Do you think we could ransom it? Or maybe we should send it back to him a piece at a time in little envelopes, eh? What do you think?’ Bernard laughed loudly at the idea. ‘I suppose you’ll want to know how I did it, then? It was remarkably easy, in fact, I got this …’

  ‘What have you done?’ cried Harriet, unable to take her eyes off the harpsichord. ‘You’ve stolen it! It’s stealing!’

  ‘Indeed I have, and I’d do it again,’ replied Bernard, rebelliously. ‘What do you mean, “what have you done”? You know what I’ve done, I’ve been talking about doing it for days.’

  ‘It’s stealing!’ she repeated, a look of panic on her face. ‘I didn’t think that you would actually do it!’

  ‘Why not? For God’s sake, of course I was going to do it. You don’t think I’d sit making all those plans just to keep myself occupied?’

  ‘Well, maybe you should have thought a bit more about the consequences of what you were doing,’ Harriet said, rounding on her husband and letting all the guilt that had been building up inside her spill out in her fury. ‘Did you even think about that? About the trouble you’d get us into? Did you?’