*
It is Wednesday afternoon when Martin’s phone rings. Unknown caller. Goodness. Perhaps the BL(C)O job? That would be fast. His heart thumps. ‘Hello. Martin Rogers speaking?’
‘Ya-a-ay, Marty! How’re ya doing?’
Oh no, oh no. ‘Freddie! How are you?’
‘I’m good. How are your girls?’
‘Oh, they’re fine, thanks.’
There’s a pause.
‘So yeah, I’m staying with you guys for the summer, right?’
‘Oh! If that’s . . . Yes, yes, of course!’ No-o-o! Martin has been telling himself he’s safe, that Freddie’s bound to get offers he prefers. ‘No, that’s absolutely fine. We’re looking forward to it.’
‘Awesome!’ says Freddie. ‘That’s awesome. Thanks, Marty.’
Even far off in Barchester Freddie seems six inches too close. Martin squirms as if he can feel his lips at his ear. ‘Um, good, well, when might we expect you?’
‘Oh, right, yeah. So term ends this Sunday? Maybe early next week? Miss B’s collecting me, coz wa-a-y too much shit for the train? So when’s good for you guys?’
‘Well. Any time. I’m around all week.’
‘Awesome. Tuesday, then? Cool. I’ll text you. Oh and yeah – rent? Probably we should talk about that? And second of all, any house rules I should know about?’
Don’t squeeze my person? Don’t lick me? ‘Well, I’m sure you know what’s appropriate when you’re a guest in someone else’s house.’ Martin hears in despair how prim he sounds. ‘That’s to say, I’m sure I can trust your judgement.’
Penelope shakes her head vehemently, and mouths ‘No!’
‘Aw. Sweet guy! OK, cool, catch ya later. Love to your girls. Laters, dude.’
‘Um. Bye.’ Martin puts his phone down and wipes his hand on his trousers.
‘Are you mad, Martin?’ demands Penelope. ‘You’ve got to set him some boundaries, or it’ll end in tears. Do you have any idea how naughty he can be?’
Probably a better idea than you do, thinks Martin. ‘It’s just for a few weeks.’
‘That’s quite long enough! I’ll see if I can find the Hendersons’ list of house rules for you.’ She starts searching her computer files. ‘Here we are: No coming home drunk, no banned substances, no stupid or dangerous stunts, no overnight guests, dress appropriately (a duvet is not an item of clothing), use a plate for snacks, don’t drink straight out of the milk carton, don’t borrow any cars/credit cards/computers without permission. Seriously, Martin, you’ll need this. I’ll print it out for you. Paul learned the hard way he had to impose boundaries.’
And look how that turned out, Martin does not say. ‘Thanks, Penelope.’
Father Dominic is crying. He kneels in the little chapel of Lindford Parish Church after midday mass and weeps for the sins of the world. He looks up at the bas-relief above the altar. It shows our Lord kneeling in prayer in the wilderness. Or maybe in Gethsemane. What is he praying, all there by himself under a brown marble sky?
The chapel is dim. One candle flame wobbles, then rights itself. Pray for us, pleads Dominic. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Bodies falling from the sky over sunflower fields, Christians driven from their homes, children shot as they play football on the beach. Son of David, have mercy on us. Pray for us sinners.
Dominic wipes his eyes. Our Lord’s head is bowed. He seems to study his own hands. Could these hands make bread out of stones? Is that what he’s asking himself? If you are the Son of God . . . Or is Christ picturing the nails that will be driven through them tomorrow? Is he the son of God? What kind of God? A god of flashy miracles, or a god who must suffer and die?
Intercessor, friend of sinners, earth’s redeemer, plead for me. Plead for me. I have nothing left. Plead for me and this world you love. In the dim chapel the candle trembles, dims, then rights itself again.
‘So, are we agreed? Friday the twenty-sixth of September? Oh God, that’s so soon! Is that too soon?’
‘No, it’s perfect,’ says Ed.
‘You didn’t even think about it, you useless bugger. I want you to think.’ Neil slaps the Welsh slate worktop in exasperation. (He paid for it; no diocese has that kind of money to blow on a vicarage kitchen.) ‘I want you to ask yourself if a Friday will work? Friday! Ooh, I could slap those selfish cows. Booking up every single Saturday till kingdom come! For their “perfect unique day”, when we all know it’ll just be another fat bird in a strapless frock! Och, well. Friday it is. But September’s not much notice, is it?’ frets Neil. ‘Maybe we should wait till the New Year, and do the thing properly.’
Ed does not want to contemplate what doing the thing properly entails, if this – this evil mesh of Lilliputian imperatives he is currently thrashing under – is not already it.
Neil cuffs him. ‘Oh, what? It’s not like you’re having to do anything! I’m doing it all.’
‘Sorry. Things on my mind today.’
‘Right, like what?’ There’s a pause. ‘Feck. That’s today? The bollocking’s today? Ah shit.’ He bumps his head against Ed’s shoulder. ‘Sorry, big man. Totally forgot. When do you have to set off?’
Another pause. ‘He’s coming here, remember?’
‘He is? The bishop’s coming here?’ Neil snatched the mug out of Ed’s hand and clattered it into the dishwasher. ‘Look at the floor! Where’s the mop?’
‘Stop it! The floor is immaculate! Idiot.’
‘Yes, well. And why is he coming here, I should like to know?’
Ed draws breath. At your insistence. Make the buggers come to you. I won’t have you summoned to the head’s office like a naughty wee schoolboy. ‘Well, never mind, he is. He’ll be here in any minute.’
‘Good.’ Neil folds his arms. ‘I want to be there.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. Hell, yes! If he’s going to pass judgement on my “lifestyle”, I want to be there.’
Ed meets the mental blue-eyed glare. Sparks spike from his fiancé’s hair, pure electric rage glints off diamond ear studs. O-o-o-Kay. Not this battle, then. ‘Fine. But I need you to be polite, and let me do the talking. Promise? Don’t pick a fight.’
‘Pick a fight? Who’s picking a fight? They’re the ones picking a fight! With their fecking “clergy discipline”!’ He stabbed each word into Ed’s chest with a finger. ‘And you can go and iron that shirt properly, it’s a disgrace.’
‘See? This is why I don’t want you in the room! You’re picking a fight with me, now! Oh God, he’s here. Just behave, OK?’
Ed brought Bishop Bob through to the kitchen for a glass of water.
‘This is my fiancé, Neil,’ he said. ‘He’d like to join us, if that’s OK with you, Bishop.’
‘Of course. I’m glad you’re here, Neil.’ Ed passed him the glass. The bishop half-raised a hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I need to . . . sit. Sorry . . .’
I’m glad Neil was there, too. I’m glad that when he was a boy he was packed off to Boys’ Brigade, where, aged eleven, he took a first aid course.
How it all came back to him, who knew? But Neil was there in that church hall again, kneeling on the dusty wooden floor with the dummy. Lads all sniggering, ‘Gi’e him a snog, Fergy!’ St John Ambulance man, big, red hair gone grey. Check the airways. Feel for a pulse. No heartbeat? Don’t worry if you break a couple of ribs. Put your back into it, laddie! Aye, that’s it.
Sure and stedfast. Sure and stedfast. That was the motto.
Aye, he was a goner, the bishop. But Neil kept on. Sure and stedfast, sure and stedfast.
Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,
Will your anchor drift or firm remain?
Neil could hear the old BB hymn pounding as he pounded and prayed and pounded and prayed, until at last the paramedics were there and took over, and the bishop was driven away in the silent ambulance, blue light
s licking round, across the gentle landscape of Lindfordshire.
AUGUST
Chapter 15
It’s late July in Lindfordshire and there’s willowherb like pink smoke over railway embankments and beside canals. Holidaymakers in striped Breton shirts steer narrow boats under humpbacked bridges, where naughty children pelt them with unripe crab apples. The wheat fields are edged with poppies frail as Bible pages. Look – cabbage white and tortoiseshell. Brimstone, red admiral, peacock. All the butterflies of childhood, as if we’ve opened our old copy of What to Look for in Summer, and out they all fluttered.
The train to London clatters past the cooling towers of Cardingforth. Along the river orange and turquoise damselflies still glint. A monstrous dragonfly copters past; then a pair of them manoeuvre in formation, up, up, round, loop the loop, whisking away quicker than the eye can follow. Midges yoyo in clouds above the rushes.
Stand still in any wooded place and you will hear a single bird call, tweep, tweep. No carolling now, that’s all done with, apart from thin bursts of wren song, like the tiniest of organ pipes played by furtive virtuosos. Listen. Somewhere a bird knocks, knocks. A nuthatch, perhaps, or a woodpecker? How still it all is. Waiting. The landscape gathers itself for harvest, plumping up, dozing. Sheep graze the white clover fields beside the Linden, where mirror trees quiver in the water. They fragment as the wind picks up and rushes in the willows like a downpour. And then the silence creeps back.
I will not toy with you any longer, reader. The good bishop is now recuperating after heart bypass surgery. He owes his life to the NHS and, indirectly, the Boys’ Brigade. Were it not for the prompt and vigorous action of Neil Ferguson, Bishop Bob would have died on the quarry-tiled floor of the vicarage of Gayden Magna.
Janet Hooty, being a medical woman, knows a thing or two about your survival chances if you go into cardiac arrest when there’s no defibrillator handy. I doubt a day will go past without her offering a prayer of gratitude for Neil. If she were Susanna Henderson, she would have baked Neil a lavish (artery-clogging) cake of some kind. Instead, she had an orchid in a mauve pot sent to the vicarage. An orchid in a mauve pot! But, no, Neil would not have a word said against it, despite his well-documented scorn of orchids encountered outside rainforests or the lobbies of exclusive boutique hotels.
More interestingly, Neil will not hear a word said against Bishop Bob now, either. Neil, whose contempt of Anglican bishops was so scathing, his rage so molten! Because it was all his fault that poor old Bob had a heart attack. Dragging him all the way out to Gayden Magna on a hot day, stressing him out by putting him in an intolerable position! Fracturing his sternum!
‘Yes, and saving his life!’ said Ed, who for once felt like rapping on his fiancé’s forehead to emphasize his point. ‘Why are you blaming yourself? Why not blame the C of E for putting him in an intolerable position?’
‘Yes, well, and why haven’t you been to visit him? Go visit him,’ Neil ordered. ‘I’ll buy some flowers. Dark calla lilies. No, too funereal. I know, spray roses! Those green-tinged ones? You know the ones – what are they called? Anyway, them. And— Oh, what? Of course you can take flowers! What do you mean, you’re not allowed to take flowers? Everyone takes flowers to hospital! Really? Fascists. Well, chocolates then. Wait, no, should you eat chocolate after a heart attack? Dark chocolate, that’s got antioxidants in, that’s healthy. So, some nice single origin seventy per cent cocoa . . . Wait! Will it need to be Fair Trade? Is he one of those? Better get grapes instead. Please tell me they’ve not banned grapes? Oh, and he’s probably only got that nasty antibacterial NHS sheep dip, so I’m thinking maybe some nice toiletries? Aye. We’ll make him up a wee hospital survival kit, and you can take it. No, I’m not going. I’m allergic to hospitals.’
Ed knew better than to try and check Neil. He was in ‘it’s got to be perfect’ mode. Any attempt to remonstrate would trigger escalation, and then the hospital visit would resemble the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, with camel trains of hand-polished organic grapes and Nubian aromatherapy masseurs laden with oil of pure nard.
‘Well? Don’t just stand there. What do you think?’
‘I think I love you,’ said Ed.
‘Och, stop that. What should we get him? I don’t know anything about bishops, for fuck’s sake. Help me here! I want to do the right thing.’
‘Just a get well card. That would be the right thing.’
Neil sagged against him. ‘Really?’
‘Truly.’ He wrapped his arms round Neil, and they stood there in silence for a while. ‘John Knox giving you a hard time again?’
‘That fecker. I save someone’s life and now I feel like a bad person! What’s that all about?’ Neil wiped his eyes. ‘Och, well. I’ll get him a card, then. Or I could design him one.’
‘He’d like that.’
‘Should it have a religious theme?’ worried Neil. ‘How should I sign it? Kind regards? No, warmest regards? Is that better? Warmest regards?’ Cheered by the fresh vistas of complication opening out in front of him, Neil hurried to his computer.
The days pass, and now it is August. BACK TO SCHOOL! We are in that brief retailing window between beachwear reductions and Halloween masks. Back to school? Half of us haven’t even been on holiday yet! There will be a reward for those still waiting for their two weeks in Portugal: the nice weather here seems to have vanished. They will be able to enjoy the treat of coming home and complaining that the temperatures were in the thirties. What is the point of going somewhere hot and returning to find there’s been a heatwave in the UK in your absence, all your neighbours are tanned, and your hanging baskets dead? To the English, a holiday without meteorological gloating is no holiday at all.
Bishop Bob is out of hospital now. The Hootys will not be spending two weeks in Brittany after all. Bob sits in the lounge (his study is off limits to him), gazes over the garden, and thinks of how he’d longed for that holiday. If I can just make it through till August, then I’ll be able to slump, he’d kept telling himself. Back then, back in his old life. This is how he thinks of it: before, after. Old life, new life. Like his Evangelical brothers and sisters giving their testimony. Everything has changed. His former life looks misty to him now, especially the last weeks before his heart attack. He has no real recollection of that visit to Gayden Magna, cannot even picture the man who saved his life. He did not go down a long tunnel and find Jesus waiting for him. He did not reluctantly agree to return, because his work here was not yet done. All he has is a few vague memories, blurred sepia shots. He has no energy to put them in the right order and they are fading fast.
I was dead, but now I’m alive. I’m saved. Born again.
He trembles with gratitude for everything he once took for granted: the steady miracle of pulse, the fleshware the mind rides on. He has been cracked open like a pistachio. His heart has been rebooted and mended. A wild bird roosts in his ribcage. One day it will take flight for good. But for now, for now, it roosts in him. He places his hand on his chest. Welcome, dear guest. He feels the staples through his shirt. Thank you. For every new breath. For creation, preservation, all the blessings of this life. He rolls on a wave of sleep. It’s a dove he’s nursing, plump breast under his fingers. It broods over him, spirit, breath, wind, over the chaos . . . Blessings. All the blessings.
Janet comes in to check whether he needs anything. Sees him slumped in his chair! She speeds to his side, bends over him to check that he is still breathing, the way she hung over the children’s cots all those years ago. She holds her own breath, waits. Yes, he’s still here, you dope. She breathes out. Her eyes brim with tears and she sits on the sofa to watch him, just to watch him while he dozes. Cots in dim rooms, animal mobiles circling, Brahms Lullaby tinkling slowly, more slowly, into silence. Keeping watch after the nightmare was over. There, there. Everything’s all right.
The lounge is full of flowers and cards. Outside the soft rain falls. A mother blackbird runs across the patio. Stops. Checks al
l round. Runs on. Janet hears the flap of the letter box. Envelopes skim on to the hall floor, but she makes no move. Rain taps. Before long he will wake and give her a sweet smile. Until then, she will watch.
But who is watching over the Diocese of Lindchester? Is our poor friend the archdeacon lamenting, like the prophet Elijah, that he alone is left? My readers will be relieved to hear that the Archbishop of York has heard the cry of his people (as articulated by the diocesan HR manager, Helene) and has sent aid. If you go on the diocesan website you will see that there is now an acting bishop of Lindchester, appointed for twelve months, or until a new bishop arrives, whichever is sooner.
Am I alone in being amused by the term ‘acting bishop’? To me it conjures up the image of His Right Reverence doing voice exercises in the vestry and accidentally including his agent in the General Thanksgiving. Check out the diocesan website, and you’ll find a picture of the acting bishop, the Rt Revd Harry Preece, sitting at a desk in the office, with Penelope handing him a mug of Fair Trade coffee in a Lindchester Cathedral mug. Martin is in the photo too. Not in the photo is Freddie May, although he was present in the office. (The diocesan communications officer was not prepared to pixilate his T-shirt.)
Bishop Harry, you will learn, took early retirement from his suffragan bishop’s role earlier this year, when a handful of small dioceses were merged into one super-diocese, and they ended up with more bishops than they knew what to do with. Harry is married to Isobel, ‘who is also ordained’. The couple have two teenage daughters. Harry looks like a fairly ordinary bloke in the picture. He has a nice smile. Are we going to like him here in the Diocese of Lindchester? A quick Google search outs him as another Evangelical, which in cathedral circles means he’s guilty of being a prat until proved innocent. We shall, of course, reserve judgement; but, wincingly, as though we can already hear the strains of Slane in four/four playing in the background.
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