Acts and Omissions (21 page)

Chapter 40

In the palace garden in Lindchester the apples and pears ripen, then fall. They rot in the grass, thrumming with the last drunken wasps of summer. Gavin the verger mows them to mush. He keeps it nice and straight, up and down, up and down. Straight lines now, where Freddie May once mowed his big heart. This year in Susanna's pantry the rows of Kilner jars stand empty. The palace stands empty. The Hendersons are still away.

‘Oh, all these crab apples, just going to waste!' she says. ‘And the blackberries! Why didn't I bring a basket? Stupid, stupid! I ought to come back and pick them and make blackberry and apple jelly!'

He takes her hand as they walk down the country lane and says, ‘Darling, you don't have to. It's all right.'

‘And the sloes! Look at them all. It's such a bumper year – that heatwave, it must be the heatwave – and now it's all going to waste! Oh, Paul, Paul, I can't bear it,' she says.

‘I know. My poor darling.'

‘Oh, what are we going to tell people?'

‘We don't have to tell them anything.'

‘No, you're right. Oh, but the girls, what will we tell the girls?'

‘Nothing, for the moment.'

So far, all they have told the girls is that after much heart-searching, Paul decided that the Lord was not calling him to accept the York job. He was not the right person, and therefore he could not in all conscience proceed.

He will resign as bishop of Lindchester, of course. For personal reasons. It will be announced next month. He'll be gone by Christmas to start his next job in January: principal of a new Anglican training college in South Africa. Will Susanna go with him? Oh, she doesn't know, she just doesn't know. She adores South Africa – all those visits when it was their partner diocese, before they moved to Lindchester. But the girls! The grandchildren! Perhaps she will divide her year between the bolt-hole and South Africa?

She thinks: if only the baby had come on time, if only she'd been at home when— Ah, if only she'd never clapped eyes on that Freddie May!

How could she not have noticed? All these decades of lovingly looking after . . . oh, an heirloom, a Chippendale sofa. Polishing its wood, plumping its cushions, lifting any stains, making sure everything was perfect. Only to be told out of the blue it was just a reproduction! Was it still worth polishing? Was she a bigger fool to stop now, or to carry on? Because hadn't she loved the old thing for itself? Wasn't it
her
sofa, her old friend? Wasn't that what counted? The love of the old thing, worthless though it suddenly was? Please say all those years of love made this marriage worth something after all?

But sometimes she can't bear the sight of it. She'd like to plunge her dressmaking shears into its upholstery. Rip it to ribbons. Gouge its fake varnish. Kick it, stab it, burn holes in it. Oh! Then collapse on to it weeping with despair. Because where else can she go? What other support is there?

‘Oh, Paul, it's such a waste. It's all so sad.'

‘I know, darling. I know. I'm so sorry.'

Later that afternoon he goes out walking on his own, leaving her with her box set of
Downton
. He climbs a hill among the dingy bracken and sits on the same rock he sat on in the spring. When the green fronds were unfurling. He remembers it. How manfully he tried, with his volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets, to fend off thoughts of Freddie. Now, like Susanna, he asks himself, How could I not have noticed? Wasn't it
obvious
that he had fallen comprehensively, catastrophically in love with that fair youth? And that it could only end badly? But out alack, he was but one hour mine!

A far-off curlew calls. The wind mourns in the dying heather. How nearly, nearly it didn't happen at all! But for that freak set of circumstances – Susanna away, Freddie distressed, a pastoral hand reached out – it might never have happened. (You fool, to fall like that, a yard from the finishing line!) Yes, were it not for these things, Freddie would have gone, Paul would have escaped all this shame.

Or would he? Maybe there would have been some worse lapse further down the road. So perhaps this shame
is
the escape? He has been saved, but only as through fire. Hauled out of his burning folly by the archdeacon, in the nick of time.

Yes, perhaps he's been saved. He ponders that strange wash of relief when he saw them standing there in the hallway. Like a fugitive, caught at last. Found out. Brought to justice. The running's over. He's been running all his adult life. He's run round his entire globe and come back to the beginning, to find the same thing waiting for him. The worst thing imaginable: it is men he is attracted to, not women.

The curlew calls again. He looks down at his hands. The two rings: wedding ring, episcopal ring. Ah, he should take them off – he's worthy of neither. Not worthy to be called either a husband or a bishop.

But then some words float into his head:
Put a ring on his hand.

He knows the quote. The prodigal. ‘But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. This my son was lost and is found.'

Not found out. Found. He hears the old hymn:

        Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed

        but yet in love he sought me;

        and on his shoulder gently laid,

        and home, rejoicing, brought me.

He has squandered everything. Everything. Wasted it all. But he is home at last. For the first time in all this hell – the first time in decades – Paul breaks down and weeps.

Someone, somewhere, is praying for Paul Henderson. I can tell you who it is: it is our good friend, the suffragan bishop of Barcup. He's standing in his kitchen in Martonbury, waiting for the kettle to boil. It's a grey afternoon here, but his back garden is lit up by the cherry tree and necklaces of Virginia creeper trailing from the high wall. The glory, the glory! Bishop Bob thinks clergy-type thoughts about the fact that it is only death and decay that causes this symphony of colour. How the cloth of our life is woven of joy and sorrow together.

Sorrow. This is what turns his thoughts to Paul. He does not know what led Paul to withdraw from the archbishopric. He would not dream of intruding into those personal reasons, tries not to let himself speculate, even. But he prays.

He is not a Conservative Evangelical, so he is not compelled to school his prayers into words. He does not now, for example, say, ‘Dear Lord, we pray for Paul, bishop of Lindchester, who has recently withdrawn from the post of archbishop of York, for personal reasons. We lift him before you at this difficult time. We pray also for his wife Susanna . . .' Bishop Bob is inclined to think that God is probably already up to speed on the biographical details. And not being a Charismatic Evangelical either, he hesitates to give the Almighty matey advice in the subjunctive mood. ‘So yeah, Father-God, we pray you would, yeah, sovereignly overrule in Paul's situation? And would Paul and Susanna just know your presence right now, Lord, and would their home be a place where your spirit is, yeah, mightily at work? Mmm. We just claim that promise right now, Lord. And would this truly be a season of awesome blessing for them?'

Instead, Bob thinks about Paul. He sees him as he's often seen him: in Lindchester Cathedral, sitting on his big throne. And then he pictures the Lord coming and sitting beside him. There's room for two on that throne. In his mind's eye he sees the Lord put his arms round Paul. Bishop Bob holds this picture in his thought. And all he thinks is Love.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est
. Love, love, love. And there is a yearning, barely clothed in words: be with him, be with him.

And as he stands in his kitchen thinking, yearning, Paul starts to weep up on that hilltop far away.

But what of our friend Father Dominic? I'm afraid we abandoned him rather rudely a couple of weeks ago, just when he was about to be installed as vicar of Lindford. I'm pleased to report that right now Father Dominic is a happy bunny. He has not been in post long enough to cock anything major up, and any small cock-ups will be forgiven in his first year. That is the usual rule at parish level. In Dominic's case, I reckon he has at least two years' grace, on the grounds that however badly he cocks things up, at least he is not a monster like his predecessor.

I say he's a happy bunny, but right now, Dominic is in a bit of a strop. It's Friday. Which we all know is his day off. He's been shopping, and now he is facing the single person's flatpack hell. ‘IT IS ADVISORY TO BE TWO PERSONS DURING ASSEMBLY,' say the instructions. How, exactly, is he to assemble his Bølløks bathroom cabinet if he is only ‘one person', and he has no wife or girlfriend, like the lucky gentleman in the illustration, to hold the tall bit while he wields the Allen key? What is a gay bachelor supposed to do? Clone himself? Why is there no flatpack Grindr, where frustrated chaps with Allen keys can help one another out?

Right on cue his doorbell rings. He's had a constant stream of people bearing jars of jam and chutney to welcome him to Lindford. Enough jam and chutney to last him the rest of his life! He should buy a Bølløks jam cupboard, too! But with a bit of luck, this jam-bearing parishioner will help out with the vicar's DIY dilemma.

It is not a parishioner with chutney. It's his good friend Jane. With whisky. Now we're talking.

Amid much foul language and hateful personal remarks – unlike the illustrated girlfriend, Jane proved incapable of mutely holding the tall bit, she
had
to interfere and offer advice – the cabinet was constructed. It was not perfect, but then, what is? Jane and Dominic were now celebrating their DIY skills with an Indian takeaway.

‘More chutney, vicar?' asked Jane.

‘Shut up. How's the archdeacon? Have you done the deed yet?'

‘Shut up.'

‘You shut up.'

‘I can't tell you anything if I shut up.'

‘Good point. Well, go on then. Tell all.'

Jane rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. She scowled.

‘That would be a no, I take it,' said Dominic. ‘Janey! You're not crying, are you? Don't cry, darling!' He dropped his fork and went and hugged her.

Jane rubbed her eyes. ‘Fuck. Sorry. It's just—'

It was some time before she managed to explain what it just was. An impasse. Seemingly. The archdeacon could not go around wagging a stern finger at fornicating priests if he himself was getting his leg over.

‘We-e-ell, he has a point, there,' said Dominic.

‘
I know he has a fucking point!
' She grabbed some kitchen roll and blew her nose. ‘Sorry.'

Dominic patted her hand. ‘You've got it bad, girl.'

‘I know.'

‘You're going to end up marrying him.'

‘Piss off, you fat ponce,' said Jane. ‘And pour me some whisky.'

Now it is Saturday. The late bell is chiming for evensong. A black Audi convertible parks on Lindchester Cathedral Close. A tall man gets out. He is ungainly, all awkward angles, as he hurries down the steps to the cathedral. His flat feet slap on the flagstones. He disappears through the north door.

A choir dad, you think, rushing in late to hear his son sing his first solo? No, I'm afraid not. That, my friends, was Roderick Fallon on the trail of @choirslut90.

Chapter 41

Roderick Fallon did not find @choirslut90 in Lindchester Cathedral, of course. You might be wondering why he was looking for him here and not in Barchester. The explanation is simple: Freddie failed to update his Twitter profile when he moved in September. I'm relieved to say that he has not been suckered by any of the fake Twitter accounts set up to lure him into permitting access. So all Fallon had to go on was that slutty selfie, the name and the location. (And he acknowledged that, yes, he did wish his boyfriend was hot like @choirslut90.) Google cast up a single nugget: a Lindchester Cathedral Choir CD from 2003, which featured a certain Frederick May as treble soloist. This seemed to clinch Lindchester as a good starting point. Hence Fallon's appearance at evensong last Saturday.

He clattered in late and folded his awkward frame into the last vacant stall in the quire, then a moment later lurched back to his feet like a self-erecting music stand when the choir processed in. He scanned the back row boys of
can
and
dec
as they passed. @choirslut90 was not among them. Fallon did not clock the tall, wild-haired precentor as he glided by.

The wild-haired precentor clocked Roderick Fallon, however. He had time to move from, ‘Oh Lord, what's he doing here?' to a creeping fear (that hostile article, Paul's unexplained withdrawal from the York job), through to strategies for heading off any unhelpful lines of journalistic enquiry, should they arise. All in the space of the psalmody (Day 12: Psalms 65 – 67, ‘Thy clouds drop fatness').

Roderick Fallon was aware that he might have to contend with evasion and ecclesiastical rank-closing. But there was a bigger problem he failed to take into account: that a rapacious newshound who strays into the liminal space of a large medieval cathedral might suddenly find a Hound on his own trail. It was a while since he dusted off his Francis Thompson, I fear. Even the most determinedly lapsed of lapsed Catholics, the most vitriolic hater of The Cloth, really cannot expect to breeze into Byrd's Second Service sung in an ancient hallowed space and escape unscathed. The non-being he so devoutly disbelieved in picked poor Roderick up in the
Mag
and
Nunc
and twanged his heartstrings like a banjo. He was sitting right in the middle of the front row. There was no escape. He consulted the music list, and saw Byrd's
Ave Verum Corpus
looming in the anthem slot.
Fuck.
He ground his teeth. Cursed the Jesuits who got hold of him at seven. Conjured up the most blasphemously pornographic images at his command. Even got out his phone and checked his emails. Still those strong feet followed, followed after.

You may know from experience, dear reader, that trying not to cry in church is as futile as trying not to laugh. You plead, you bite the inside of your cheek, you make wild vows of future good behaviour. But the more you castigate yourself, the more you fan the flames. Roderick hung on till the first
miserere mei
before he crumpled. Oh God, let the gloom hide him! He doubled over as if in prayer.
Miserere mei
. Maybe he could pass it off as contact lens trouble?
O dulcis, O pie, O fili Mariae
! I hate you, don't do this to me, you make-believe bastard!

He was still rather distrait when the service ended. And then, before he could compose himself, he was buttonholed by one of the canons. Some Einstein-haired Trollopian fuckwit, who obtruded his blithering hand-wringing pastoral concern right into Fallon's face. No, I'm
fine
, no, you can't help me, thanks. Unless you can tell me where I can find Freddie May. But the lanky twat was unable to say with certainty where young Mister May had taken himself off to. Bolivia, possibly? Gap yah? Volunteering? Sorry not to be more help.

And because he could still hear (deliberate speed, majestic instancy!) those fecking feet coming after him, Fallon got the hell out of there, without pausing to ask anyone else if they knew the whereabouts of Freddie May. He hared back to his black Audi convertible to find the vergers had given him a parking ticket.

Welcome to Lindchester Cathedral, Mr Fallon.

The reader is not, I hope, too shocked by the precentor's behaviour. He did not precisely lie to Roderick Fallon, although it was a piece of blatant misdirection, admittedly. And in his defence, had Fallon wished to open his heart to the blithering canon, Giles would have heard his confession in all gentleness and sincerity, and absolved him in the appropriate manner.

Giles left the cathedral and crossed the Close to his house putting two and two together as he went. Never! But no matter how he ran this particular calculation, the gobsmacking four he kept getting = the lovely Mr May and his diocesan bishop in some kind of flagrante. This branch of mental arithmetic was rightly discredited, he knew. Probably letting his imagination run away with him. But all the same, should he mention to Paul – when he came back – that Fallon was sniffing round the Close after Freddie May? Text Freddie to alert him? Or just butt out and mind his own business? Oh Lord. In the end he decided to inform the proper authorities: that is, he went and told his wife. In strictest confidence, of course. He stressed that. As did she, when she discussed it with the treasurer's wife. Who very discreetly mentioned it to her husband. Who in all conscience, felt it incumbent upon him to murmur something to the dean.

It is Wednesday morning and Dr Jane Rossiter is swearing at her car radio as she drives to work.

No, you ineffable Tory tosspot, more people are not using food banks because the Trussell Trust is opening more food banks. More people are using food banks because they are fucking
starving
in this green and pleasant land as a result of your evil policies! Yeah, that's right – and I bet if you chucked more lifebelts into the sea, more drowning people would use them too. What, you think people treat food banks like a free McDonald's? Oh, I fancy a takeaway tonight, Chinese? Curry? Ooh, I know, a new food bank's opened round the corner, let's give that a try!

Actually, now I come to look over that rant, it's on the mild side in the swearie department for Dr Rossiter. One tosspot and a single f-word. Perhaps the steady mildness of our friend the archdeacon is working its magic on her vocabulary?

Oh. I spoke too soon. Dr Rossiter is now trying to park. The old staff car park has been closed as part of the university's redevelopment plan. It will be landscaped into a calm little garden. There is alternative car parking provision in a derelict lot behind Tesco. The alternative car park is full. Dr Rossiter drives round and round the streets of Lindford looking for a space within walking distance of Poundstretcher. She gets later and later for her lecture. (The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality.) OK. As you were. Dr Rossiter is as flamboyantly foul-mouthed as ever she was.

Meanwhile, another of our favourite characters is responding in a more temperate manner to her radio. Father Wendy is in her kitchen feeding poor old Lulu. Lulu is not hungry. She sniffs her food and mumbles a mouthful out of politeness, then lets it drop back into the bowl. Wendy sits beside her and strokes her old head.

‘What are they saying now, Lulu?' she asks. ‘Well, I suppose it's true. There are more food banks and more people are using them – but what were they doing before? That's what we have to ask, isn't it?' Father Wendy knows the answer, at least in her cluster of rural parishes. Country living is not all swishing off to Waitrose for quails' eggs in your Hunter wellies and shiny four-by-four. Some people are choosing between mum eating, and the kids eating. Between heating the house and buying food. ‘Thank goodness for our lovely curate, eh, girl. Thank goodness for Virginia!'

Virginia, with her professional background in HR, has been a tower of strength for parishioners who fell through the welfare reform cracks. Virginia lives and breathes Process. This can make her a pain in the bottom at PCC meetings – and in those endless red tape-y personal development review thingies that go with being a training incumbent these days – but her skills are an absolute godsend when someone's benefits get suspended.

‘Thank goodness for Virginia, eh, girl?' Lulu thumps her tail once in agreement. ‘We'll just have to love those prickles off her,' Wendy says. Then she frowns at herself. Perhaps Virginia is only prickly with Wendy? Maybe Wendy is the problem? Oh dear. And besides, maybe people should be allowed to be prickly; perhaps they should be loved, prickles and all? Like Mrs Tiggywinkle?

‘Oh bother. I shouldn't have thought that, should I, Lulu?' From now on she will never quite be able to banish the image of that bustling little Beatrix Potter hedgehog from her mind when she thinks of Virginia.

Meanwhile, Dr Rossiter has found somewhere to park. The archdeacon's drive. Arse and feck. She really does not want to presume upon him, not right now. With things being, as the young people say, complicated. She texts him as she walks: ‘Parking hell. Left my car on your drive. Hope that's OK. Jx'. She's now fifteen minutes late for her lecture and still five minutes' brisk walk away. Plus she's got to lug all her crap uphill to the sweet FA building. Stream of consciousness narrative has much to commend it, but I believe we can dispense with Jane's inner monologue at this point.

It's Thursday. The Hendersons are back on the Close. Susanna bakes. Paul picks up the reins of the diocese. We will pay a visit to the office and listen in.

Martin, the bishop's chaplain, talked him through the weeks ahead. Filled him in on what he'd missed. Was there an elephant in the room? No. They had conspired Englishly to banish the elephant. But it was there, just outside the office window, its large grey flank blocking out the light.

‘Looking ahead to late November now,' said Martin, ‘we have the . . .'

Paul stared at the episcopal diary on the screen while Martin talked. I'll have resigned by then. We'll have to start emptying the house. Getting rid of stuff. So much stuff.

He came to. Martin had just asked him something. ‘Sorry?'

Martin repeated his bullet-pointed question, but by the time he reached the end, the beginning had eluded Paul.

‘I'm afraid I don't know, Martin.'

There was a long silence. Paul saw him thinking: how can you not know the answer to a straightforward question?

‘Is . . . everything all right, Paul?'

There at the window the huge head bowed. A wise sad eye peered in at them. ‘Yes, sorry, yes. A bit distracted. I'm . . . I find myself having to adjust to a new set of expectations, of course.'

‘Of course. I see.'

‘But there we are!' Paul clapped his hands on his knees. ‘Where were we?'

‘The employment tribunal,' repeated Martin. ‘I was asking you which of the following four considerations—'

But here they were interrupted by Penelope, the bishop's PA, who came in bearing a plate of millionaire shortbread from Susanna.

‘Oh, I do miss Freddie! These were always his favourites!' Penelope burst out, as if Freddie were dead, rather than just down the way in Barchester. ‘I worry about that boy, I really do. What's he been up to
now
?'

A pause. ‘How do you mean?' asked Paul.

‘Well, with that horrible journalist looking for him. He came snooping round at evensong on Saturday apparently. You know the one, him, oh, what's his name?'

‘Roderick Fallon?' suggested Martin.

‘That's him!' said Penelope. ‘Oh, I hope Freddie hasn't done anything stupid!'

‘I'm sorry if this sounds callous, Penelope,' said Martin, ‘but I'm sure Paul will bear me out when I say that Freddie May is no longer our problem.'