Unseen Things Above

by Catherine Fox

  Martin can see how neat it would be: a year on, to invite into his home the very man he had maliciously dumped into a safeguarding case. To say loud and clear, ‘I trust you with my daughters.’ His heart thumps. I should do it.

  I could do it, couldn’t I?

  I will do it! And then, like a little tumble of dominoes, come two more decisions. He will agree to those sessions of Family Therapy the children’s mother has suggested, and he will apply for the BLO job after all.

  (Mirth cramps his stomach again. If he gets the job, his first act will be to adjust the title, that’s for sure.)

  Yes. He grips the wall top. He will action these three points. Good. He turns and heads back towards the palace, completing his lap of the Close. He passes under the high window where the clarinettist is still practising. The phrases spool out with an effortlessness that floats on years and years of diligent practice.

  *

  It is Wednesday evening. Dr Jane Rossiter has a problem: what to do with a thousand dead roses? Her house smells like a compost heap. If she were a thrifty homebody like Susanna Henderson she might have planned ahead and made a hundred jars of rose petal jelly. She might have dried the flower heads for potpourri. As it is, she failed to press even a single bloom in the pages of the family Bible (which she does not in fact own, so I suppose we must excuse her).

  The very best she can salvage from the situation at this late stage is to recycle them all conscientiously in the brown wheelie bin. Ah, sorry end to the archdeacon’s grand gesture! We see her now, making repeated trips down her overgrown garden path, scattering wizened petals behind her and shoving armfuls into the bin amid much swearing. What a churlish woman you are, Dr Rossiter! Yes, a hundred red roses would have been easier to cope with. And true, a thoughtful lover might have augmented the gift of a thousand red roses with the gift of, say, fifty vases. But wasn’t it exuberantly romantic to have your shabby house – every vase, bottle, jar, bowl, jug, mug, sink, bath, loo cistern even – bursting with glorious roses for ten days? And still to have so many spare you could strip petals to make paths over worn-out carpets up your tatty stairs, and so to rose-strewn bed? Wasn’t that a tiny bit fun? Shame on you for muttering, ‘Yes, but who’s the one bloody clearing it all up, though?’

  Jane leans her weight on the bin lid, to crush in the final dead bouquet. Swifts circle overhead. She stands there for a moment, hands on the bin. Smell of dead flowers. Rank wafts of buddleia and privet blossom on the breeze. The rowan berries are already turning orange. A year, nearly, since she and Matt first got to know one another. Where’s this all heading? She looks at the bin and it strikes her as depressingly symbolic: he’s offering her more than she can possibly cope with. He has said nothing further about getting married, he’s agreed to her terms; but she knows that marriage is what he wants. So is this what his love is like? A thousand red roses: appearing on her doorstep undeserved, astounding while they last, but in the end destined for the wheelie bin? Dear Matt, dearest Matt, what in hell’s name am I going to do with you?

  Oh, she may as well go and get that daft bit of paper and be done with it.

  Yes, why doesn’t she?

  Because every single time she runs this idea past herself, she gets the same answer: a marriage certificate is not just a daft bit of paper. Even at its most minimalist and non-bridal, the ceremony still represents something Jane’s deepest being recoils from. She just cannot abide the thought of being someone’s wife.

  She stomps back into her dreary house to hoover up dead rose petals.

  Somebody else is doing the recycling tonight. Yes, it is Felix Littlechild, son of the canon precentor. He up-ends the big green box into the wheelie bin. A vast crash of shame echoes round the Close, broadcasting this week’s alcohol consumption. The giant Brazil flag has vanished from the front of the house. Felix will be taking out the recycling for the next seven months, I’m afraid. Seven fucking one! How was that even possible? Please let Argentina win, please, please, or Mother will be impossible to live with. He closes the bin lid on all the tragic Brahma beer bottles.

  The only silver lining is the thought of Mother attending the Cathedral Patrons Dinner in September, and conversing with the old farts in their own language. She’ll do it, too. Ha ha! Legend! Dad will go mental, but there’s nothing he can do. There’s a Total Frickin AWESOMENESS to how embarrassing Mutti is. Seriously, he’s in awe of it these days. Felix walks back to the house, kicking the recycling box across the drive in front of him.

  Across the Northern and Southern provinces suitcases are being packed ready for General Synod, which meets this week for its July session in York. Bishops, archbishops, and all the company of Anglicanism. Some have booked train tickets, some have had train tickets booked for them, some will drive, some will be driven; but all shall pack cases. Yes, in these austere days clergy no longer have servants to fill carpetbags with port, Macassar oil, monogrammed shoe-trees and I know not what frippery pertaining to a more gracious era.

  As you are aware, we cannot concern ourselves with suitcases outside the Diocese of Lindchester; nor will I detain the reader with detailed lists of synod members and the clothes they are packing. Let generalizations suffice here. The clergy must decide whether to go in mufti, the lay members must pack something a bit posh to wear to the Minster on the Sunday, and everyone is wondering what they did with all the bumf about fringe events; oh well, never mind. I suspect all the members are pretty tense about how the crucial vote will go on Monday. The debate about women bishops is being served up again, to see if the House of Laity manage to eat their swede this time, so everyone will be allowed out to play.

  Actually, I think it must be a pretty lonely business to find yourself in the position of opposing the measure. To be the ‘one or two individuals spoiling it for everyone else’, and getting shouted at by the whole school. And now the governors are threatening to come in and knock their heads together if they don’t play the game.

  Oh, dear. Let us pray that the debate will not be framed in these playground terms. Let it be gracious and generous. But oh, let right prevail!

  Such are the prayers of the Dean of Lindchester as she packs her case for synod; but that is what we have come to expect of the Very Revd Marion Randall. Though she has strong feelings on this issue, she remains doggedly courteous in the face of even the most outrageous misogyny. Well done, Mrs Dean! That said, Marion has no need to be obnoxious. She has a man to do that for her.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Marion.

  ‘This, your deanship, is a magnum of Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame rosé, nineteen-ninety. In case you have reason to celebrate on Monday. Or in case you don’t. On the grounds that there is no situation in life which cannot be improved by a bottle of champagne.’

  ‘Except possibly an AA meeting,’ said Marion.

  ‘Oh, tilly-vally! Even an AA meeting. These recovering alcoholics are such dull company. Here. Pop it in your case to share with your fellow top lady clerics on Monday night. You can get shit-faced, and lay bets about who gets to be bishop first.’

  ‘Thank you, darling.’ Marion hefted the bottle in one hand. ‘But I’m not sure it’ll fit. It’s very big.’

  ‘As the chauffeur said to the bishop.’

  Marion levelled her headmistress stare at him.

  ‘Still not funny?’

  ‘Still not funny, Gene.’

  ‘Oh.’ He watched as she tried nestling the bottle among her clerical shirts. ‘On another topic entirely, ought we to volunteer one of our many spare rooms to lodge the lovely Mr May?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just for the summer? I’ll undertake to wield the riding crop if he misbehaves.’

  ‘I dare say. But he’d drive me bananas. I question the wisdom of appointing him, frankly. But that’s Giles’s call, not mine.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll run off and join the opera before long, never fear.’ Gene watched her futile packing efforts. ‘May I make a tiny suggestion? If you turfed the pious
paperwork out – which you won’t find time to read – you’d have room for the fizz. However, I will leave you to weigh those priorities up for yourself, Deanissima.’ He planted a kiss on her forehead and left.

  Maybe I need a bigger case, thought Marion. Now there’s a metaphor for my life. She was going to need a steamer trunk at least to accommodate the great burden of stuff she was going to end up carrying in the coming months. All the nonsense about who’ll be the first woman bishop. Not to mention the CNC.

  Could we really take that step? Appoint an openly gay bishop? Is Lindchester ready for that? Is the C of E ready for that? But perhaps those were the wrong questions. Maybe she ought to ask, ‘If he performs best at interview later this month, how can we not appoint Guilden Hargreaves?’

  Oh, Lord. The women bishops debate is just the knuckle-cracking before the real fight, isn’t it? Marion evicts the paperwork and sticks the champagne in her case instead.

  Chapter 14

  When it came to it, Father Wendy couldn’t stand the tension, so she went for a walk. She was sitting on a bench beside the Linden when her phone buzzed late on Monday afternoon. A damselfly hung, then flickered away, then hung once more over the water’s edge, like a strand of turquoise electricity. Wendy fondled Pedro’s silky ears. The phone buzzed again.

  ‘That’ll be Doug texting me the results, Pedro. Is it “Yes” this time?’

  It’s already decided, she thought. And I’m still sitting here, suspended in a bubble of not knowing.

  ‘This is Schrödinger’s text message, Pedro! Until I check, it’s both “Yes” and “No”, isn’t it?’

  As usual, Pedro had nothing to contribute to Wendy’s philosophical musings. He was focused on the rushes, and the rustling there that seemed to promise a water rat, or a coot; something to chase.

  ‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’ Her hands were trembling.

  ‘YES. Passed in all 3 houses. So pleased for you darling. xx’

  The message wavers. Twenty-two years since synod voted in favour of women priests. She texts ‘Thnx. Bless you xx’ and puts her phone away.

  ‘I watched that vote on TV,’ she told Pedro. ‘Well, half watched it.’

  November. Her sitting room was the high seas. Three kids under five. How endless those afternoons seemed, waiting for Doug to come in and take over the childcare, so she could snatch some sermon preparation time! Little Laura, sitting round-eyed in a cardboard box on the big blue blanket. Wendy still has a photo, with the bulky old TV on in the background, broadcasting church history in the making. Her two little boys in their pirate hats and eye-patches, rowing their box galleons with plastic tennis rackets and wooden spoons across the powder blue main.

  Ahoy, ahoy! Why are you crying, Mummy?

  It’s happy tears, because it’s good news. Mummy can be a vicar now.

  I don’t want you to be a vicar, I want you to stay Mummy!

  Oh, don’t worry, I will never stop being your Mummy.

  That’s what she told them. Oh, dear. If Lulu were still alive, she’d be crying with me, thought Wendy. She wiped her eyes and reached down to stroke Pedro.

  ‘But here we both are, boy.’

  And if Laura were still here, I’d be texting her to say ‘Hooray!’ Reminding her of the vote she was too little to remember. A short lifetime ago. Maybe Wendy should take a selfie? Then she’d have a photo of this moment to go alongside the other. If I could time-travel, I would go back with this picture and show it to that hassled young deacon, run ragged by small children and parish duties. Look, look at this plump, white-haired woman, late fifties now, sitting on a bench with her three-legged rescue dog. Do you recognize her? What would you do differently, if you could have known this was what lay ahead?

  What would we all have done differently? Was that the golden era – the wall down, apartheid ending, the towers still standing – and we blinked and missed it? Or is this the golden era? The wall dividing men from women broken down, and (despite the prophets of doom) the poor old Church of England still standing. Ah, let every moment be golden! Every moment that we still have left.

  Father Wendy got to her feet. ‘Come along then, Pedro.’

  A swan glided by with five big, scruffy, fluffy cygnets. Pedro leaned stealthily on his harness, to test Wendy’s reactions. She laughed. ‘Well, unless you can walk on water, I don’t rate your chances, boy.’

  They made their way back along the riverbank, both limping, Pedro on his three legs, Wendy on her dodgy knees. ‘Oof! What a couple of old crocks we are!’ And because there was nobody about, Wendy began to sing:

  O Jesus, ever with us stay,

  Make all our moments calm and bright.

  All along the water’s edge damselfly filaments zizzed in the sun as though already arcing with holy light.

  You may have been there at synod for the announcement, or perhaps you were among those following the debate on Twitter. (Oh, that heart-thumping hiatus when everyone was #praying!) Most of you will have seen the news coverage. The eagle-eyed may even have spotted the Very Revd Marion Randall in the background of one of the interviews, celebrating with her fellow top lady clerics – something she later regretted, because it looked a bit gloaty. (And because Gene caught her on national TV pouring unchilled Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame rosé 1990 into plastic tumblers.)

  The cathedral precentor followed the synod debate. His loyal wife was beside him, to cheer loudly (from the diaphragm) a second great victory in as many days. She took the opportunity to remind him that the Lutheran Church in Germany had appointed its first woman bishop back in 1992, which meant that in ecclesiastical terms, as in all matters footballing (and let’s face it, in just about everything), Germany ruled. YESS!!

  He evicted her from his study on the grounds that he had intercessions to write for evensong. She left. Then she stuck her head back round the door to add: ‘And I can’t believe we still don’t have girl choristers here in Lindchester! What the bloody heck is going on, you load of sodding dinosaurs? Sort it out, please!’ She closed the door, then burst back in abruptly to check that Giles was not doing a Nazi salute.

  The idea! Brr! Giles regarded her blandly, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.

  How will the news of women bishops be received across the Diocese of Lindchester? In general, with bemusement and vague good will; for in general they are not practising Anglicans, and don’t really care that much. It is hard for me to bear this in mind, viewing the world as I do through my stained-glass spectacles.

  People under the age of thirty would doubtless greet the news with a ‘Well, durr.’ Of course women can be bishops. What’s your problem, exactly? Older Lindcastrians, who have some nostalgic memory of traditional churchgoing and an all-male priesthood, may wonder with a pang where this modernizing will end. God forbid we should rip the pews out of the church they never attend! Can’t the dear old place stay the same as it’s always been, so they can go on singing ‘Morning has broken’ and ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ whenever they turn up? Obviously, women should be allowed to become bishops. Except . . .

  It’s tricky to articulate this tiny snag of resistance out loud. But won’t the mystique go out of things if someone like your mum, your sister, like a girl you were at college with, becomes a bishop? Think of the captain of a large ship in dress uniform – doesn’t masculinity still add a je ne sais quoi to the image that would be fatally undermined by, well, bosoms?

  In that world-within-a-world which is the C of E, how will the news be received? The Diocese of Lindchester is a moderate place, a landscape of gentle fields and hills, seldom very high, or very low. It has its Evangelicals, but they are of an open and charismatic kind. It has its Catholics, but we know Father Dominic, don’t we? He likes women. It seems to him that the Virgin Mary had a priestly role in being the god-bearer.

  The Diocese of Lindchester lacks mighty bastions of GAFCON-flavoured Conservative Evangelicalism; it lacks spiky high parish
es wobbling on the brink of the ordinariate. Opposition to women bishops exists, but it is not concentrated, it is not militant and organized. There are members of the Prayer Book Society, but they are not armed and dangerous (think of them as the Anglican wing of the Sealed Knot). Witness the reaction to Dean Marion’s appointment a few years back. A lot of people were not happy. Some left the cathedral, others stayed away on the Sundays when she was presiding. There are a handful of conservative priests who still do not recognize her authority, and refuse to turn up at the Maundy Thursday Chrism service in the cathedral, despite the episcopal three-line whip (i.e. ‘I will be jolly, jolly, jolly annoyed if you don’t come’). The Choristers’ School chaplain famously swept out to another job (‘Goodbye, Father! Don’t forget to write!’). But overall, people have come round to the idea. In fact, the good folk of the diocese rather wish that Bishop Paul could have hung on another year, then Lindchester would be in the running to be the diocese with the first woman bishop.

  Does this give us grounds to suppose they would welcome Guilden Hargreaves as their bishop? I honestly do not know the answer to that. The CNC will be interviewing the shortlisted candidates on Monday and Tuesday of next week. This means we can look for an official Downing Street announcement in, ooh, about four or five months.

  Bishop Bob is rejoicing quietly about the vote as he gets on the train home from York. He sleeps on the journey, poor man. If someone hadn’t woken him at Manchester to change trains, I fear he would have slept all the way to Liverpool. The burdens of high office take their toll. Not long now till he’s on holiday, though. Obedient to his wife, he’s made a doctor’s appointment for early next week. The biggest shadow left on the horizon before France is that horrible conversation he must have with the vicar of Gayden Magna on Friday morning. Oh, Lord! Bob respects Ed, and his heart bleeds for him. If he could, he would bless his marriage in a second; but what about the unity of the Church, the concerns of the wider Anglican Communion? The pain and tension here are truly heartbreaking.