Acts and Omissions (27 page)

I will not detain you, reader, with a detailed account of the service. Suffice it to say that all goes smoothly, with much merry organ-playing and sweet singing in the choir, and so forth. Bishop Paul preaches from the heart and many are moved, including Gene (to his surprise, Mary Poppins not being his cup of lapsang suchong). There are suitable tributes and presentations. Intercessions are offered.

The end of the service approaches now, so permit me to waft you briefly, on our scriptural eagle wings, up to the triforium, where Freddie May (stone-cold sober) and his three fellow singers are poised to begin their piece.

Man, please let it go OK? Don't let him choke up? It's the tenor part that carries this. They'll fall apart if he chokes. He remembers standing here as a chorister, belting out Allegri, nailing those top notes. Fearless, back in the day. Gah, then there was last Advent, total disgrace, puking between the antiphons. This
has
to go well. He needs to prove to himself he can do this. And he kind of owes it to Paul? Wa-ay down there on his throne. OK. Prayer finishing now. We're on. He rolls his shoulders. Relaxes. Fills his lungs.

‘When peace, like a river, attendeth my way . . .'

Down below the congregation turn to see who's singing. Like a field of sunflowers turning to the sun. Who
is
that? Wow, what an
incredible
voice!

About sodding time, thinks Ulli, the precentor's wife, up there singing the alto line. Finally he stops pissing about and takes himself seriously.

From his throne way up in the chancel Paul recognizes the old hymn. He knows after the first line that he is going to break down. He bows his head. Covers his face.

‘Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come . . .'

Freddie, up in the triforium, sees the bishop of Barcup get up from his seat and cross the chancel.

        My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!

        My sin, not in part, but the whole,

        Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

        Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

The bishop of Barcup climbs the steps to the huge throne, sits beside Paul Henderson, and puts an arm round his shoulders.

        It is well with my soul,

        It is well, it is well, with my soul.

And now the service is over. Let us linger up here among stone angels and rude sculptures carved by disgruntled medieval masons that nobody ever sees. The procession glides back down the aisle, with the bishop of Barcup now bearing the Lindchester pastoral staff. The organ plays something vast and French. People throng and mingle, saying their farewells. There, you almost missed it: Freddie May being hugged by Susanna. And now by Paul. How small they seem from up here. Yes, that passed off all right. You can follow that blond head through the crowds. He's leaving now. Wait, someone else has stopped him. Can it be Martin? It's Martin. Now
they
are hugging! For a moment there I thought Martin was struggling to escape – he's dropped the bishop's robes – but it looks fine. Freddie is rubbing his back for him. I can't really see from up here, but I think Martin is crying. Maybe they are both crying. It is well, it is well.

I will now hurry you to the palace for mulled wine and mince pies, as I sense you are impatient to see how Jane and Matt will conduct themselves.

Jane ignored the archdeacon thoroughly. Even though he was wearing a daft Santa hat. Never before had an archdeacon been so ignored. She ignored the heck out of him as she chatted to the Henderson daughters and worked the room. She continued her robust policy of ignoring him for forty-five minutes, then said her farewells to Paul and Susanna and went to collect her coat.

It is difficult to ignore six foot four of archdeacon if he is blocking your exit from the cloakroom, however.

‘Well, good evening, Mr Archdeacon. Are you well?'

‘Yes, thanks. You?'

‘Yes, thanks. All set for Christmas? I suppose you're staying here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I'm off to New Zealand on Saturday. Seeing my baby boy.' He offered no comment. ‘Want to come with me?'

‘Yes.'

‘No, you don't. Don't be ridiculous. It'll cost a fortune and I'll be vile company. Danny's father is getting hitched. Civil union. They have them out there, unlike this benighted country. What would you say if I asked you to be my civil partner?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘No, you wouldn't. What about that other woman? The one I saw you with in the pie and ale place?'

‘Work colleague. What about the tall skinny bloke I saw you with, the one who looked like a complete tit and I hate him?'

‘Work colleague.'

A smile dawned on the archdeacon's face, like the dayspring from on high. ‘Well, he seemed like a decent bloke. Nice frock, by the way.'

‘It's my “I'm over you, you bastard” frock. What do you like about it?'

‘The zip down the back.'

Jane laughed her filthy laugh. ‘Well, I like your Santa hat. Is that mistletoe on it?'

‘You bet your shapely derrière it is.'

‘Oops, excuse me!' Janet Hooty retreated. She could nip to the other loo instead. Goodness. Well, there you go. Looked like she could cross the archdeacon off the prayer list now.

But where is the lovely Mr May? Is he standing outside the palace, face pressed wistfully to the window like the little matchgirl? Or has he found a silver fox to whisk him away in his convertible for a night of disgracefully rude hotel sex? Or is he, perhaps, with the lay clerks, getting off his tits? None of the above. He's with someone who loves him. Someone who is even now plying him with homemade game pie and Christmas cake, and admonishing him to be good, ring his dad and accept that invitation to spend New Year with him. Yes, Miss B is looking after her boy one last time this year. Freddie does as he's told. I can't believe how good he's being, frankly. He will make up for it later on, by plaguing the archdeacon, with whom he is spending the night. The archdeacon will sit at his study desk and try to book flights to New Zealand. Such are our hero's levels of concentration that he will manage this, despite a (by then) extremely drunk Mr May straddling him, crooning ‘Santa Baby' in his ear and begging him to hurry down his chimney tonight.

And so Christmas comes. All across the diocese of Lindchester people go to church. They go to crib services and christingles, they go to carol services, to Midnight Mass, to the Eucharist on Christmas Day. Hail, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning. They go not only to the cathedral, where one might expect it, but to ordinary parish churches in towns and villages, on housing estates, in pubs and community centres and schools. And not just in the diocese of Lindchester, but right across the nation. And the Church, so long accustomed to decline and further decline, cannot quite make sense of it. The clergy, those watchmen on the walls of faith, strain their eyes to the east. Is it . . . can it be . . . ?

And now with the ever-circling of the year we come back to where we started. Later on our friends will gather in their various groups and houses across the diocese to see in the New Year. Father Dominic will be in his new vicarage, not with his old friend Dr R this year – she is already on the other side of the world, with the archdeacon in hot pursuit. Don't worry, though: Dominic has his lovely mum with him. He is wearing his new Christmas jumper which she bought him. It has reindeer on. Dominic and Mum have had a little chat about this, and decided to believe that these are acrobat reindeer in the early stages of building a reindeer pyramid. And that Mum probably needs to get her eyes tested. Although, yes, it's a lovely cheerful colour!

In the deanery Gene has already put a couple of bottles of something rather gorgeous in the fridge. His beloved is asleep on the sofa in front of the fire. What will this coming year bring? Is he destined to be the first ever bishop's husband in the UK? Heavens to Betsy, he'll need an entire new wardrobe! His jackets will all be lined in mauve silk! His cufflinks will all be cabochon amethysts the size of gobstoppers! He will drink nothing but aviation cocktails! Bleugh. No, he won't. Crème de violette is a bridge too far. Besides, one wouldn't want to be too matchy-matchy. He smiles down at Marion as she sleeps. Darling deanissima. I love you dearly. Pissed though I fear I am.

Over in the precentor's house Ulli is swearing as she tries to wedge another bottle of cava in the overstocked fridge. What the bloody heck is all this crap? Why is she the only one in this house who ever chucks stuff out?
Um Gottes Willen!
She may as well just put all the cava in the hall. It's a bloody walk-in freezer in there anyway.

All is quiet in the canon chancellor's house. Mr Happy Junior has mastered the art of sleeping at last. Quiet, too, is the house of the canon treasurer. They've nipped off skiing for a week.

The palace is empty now. If you were to go and peep through the windows, you'd see bare walls, oatmeal carpets bearing the imprint of vanished furniture.

At 11.55 p.m. tonight people will spill out of houses on the Close and gather in front of the cathedral and wait for Great William to toll in the New Year. Fireworks will blossom, Chinese lanterns will sail by trailing wishes. Hands will be linked and ‘Auld Lang Syne' will be sung. We are all a little older, and maybe a little wiser, than we were twelve months ago.

And so we say farewell to our friends in Lindchester. Bless you all. May all the lights before you turn green. May it be well with your souls.

It is late afternoon. Rooks stream to their roosts and settle. A lone figure walks home along the banks of the Linden. It is Father Wendy. The sun slips below the earth's rim. Bright sky lies in tractor ruts as if the earth were charged with light from below. The shell has cracked and the glory, the glory seeps through. There in the west the folding star winks. Star of wonder. All along the horizon ancient trees stand leafless, black filigree against pale gold, their clinging ivy, their clumps of mistletoe, the ragged magpie nests all etched in patient detail.

Not long now.

Listen! A fluting in the distance, like imagined shepherd-pipes in long ago Bethlehem: a mistle thrush carols in the December dusk.

If you've enjoyed
Acts and Omissions
,
here's a chapter from the sequel

UNSEEN THINGS ABOVE

SPCK

978 0 281 07236 1

June 2015

£9.99

Chapter 1

In homage to our esteemed forerunner, we commence this ecclesiastical tale with the question: Who will be the new bishop?

Back in the year of 185— when this same puzzle absorbed the good folk of Barchester, appointing a new bishop appears to have been a pretty straightforward affair. To be sure, there was some Oxbridge high-table-style manoeuvring behind the scenes. There were raised and dashed hopes, with the press confidently (and, for the most part, wrongly) naming names; and then the prime minister made his choice. Dr Proudie, we read, was bishop elect ‘a month after the demise of the late bishop'. A month! I fear, by contrast, we will still be asking ‘Who will be the new bishop?' for many months to come, while the Crown Nominations Commission ruminates.

Ruminates? Dare I apply so bovine a metaphor to this august body – evoking as it does an image of a herd regurgitating and re-chewing what has already been swallowed and partially digested? Do I wish my reader to picture jaws rolling, rolling, strands of saliva swinging, heads turning ponderously this way and that as the process of discernment toils on? And how – if we pursue this alimentary metaphor to its logical conclusion – are we to characterize its outcome?

No, we had better eschew rumination.

And anyway, they are not an august body. They are just a bunch of ordinary Anglicans operating as best they can in this awkward limbo that the C of E currently occupies (somewhere between 185— and the real world). These days it takes a very long time to appoint a new bishop. It feels especially protracted for those caught up in the process and zipped by oaths into the body bag of confidentiality.

So who will be the new bishop of Lindchester? I have no idea. If you're keen to know early, your best bet is to keep an eye on Twitter. It is possible that someone will award themselves a smiley sticker on the wall chart of self-aggrandisement by being the first to blab what others have appropriately kept under wraps.

We rejoin our Lindcastrian friends just before Low Sunday, that is, the first Sunday after Easter. In parishes across the Diocese of Lindchester this collect may be said:

        Risen Christ,

        for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:

        open the doors of our hearts,

        that we may seek the good of others

        and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,

        to the praise of God the Father.

It
may
be said; but it is not, of course, compulsory. Gone is the golden age of Book of Common Prayer uniformity, the days of ‘Here's a digestive biscuit, take it or leave it.' Gone, too, are the late unlamented days of the
Alternative Service Book
(‘Here's a choice: digestive, Lincoln, rich tea or Garibaldi.') We now inhabit the age of the biscuit assortment. (‘Here, have a rummage.') Heck, we are pretty much in the age of the liturgical bake-off. Provided some of the right ingredients are used, frankly you can go ahead and make your own. Fresh biscuits, messy biscuits, biscuits to play with in a godly manner, old-fashioned traditional biscuits like granny used to bake. Anything, provided there are biscuits to feed the hungry people of the UK! For heaven's sake, tempt them in with the smell of baking!

Like the risen Christ himself, this narrative will find locked doors no obstacle. The hearts and homes of our characters stand ajar to us. We may slip in and snoop around. But let us always seek the good of others, the bishops, priests and people of our tale. As our earlier volume has already shown (alas!) they are quite capable of cocking things up without the mischievous intervention of your author. We set out now to walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace in their company as far as Advent. Advent, the Church's New Year. New Year at the end of November? Yes, there it is again, that strange tension between the two realms we inhabit: the church and the world, with ever and anon the tug of homesickness for the home we have never seen.

Come, reader, and dust off the wings of your imagination. Fly with me once again to the green and pleasant Diocese of Lindchester. Ah, Lindfordshire, from you we have been absent in the spring! Even now, as the month draws to its close, proud-pied April is still dressed in all his trim. Look down now as we glide upon polite Anglican wings, and see how every road edge is blessed with silver and gold. Daisies and dandelions – no mower blade can keep them down. The spirit of youth is in everything! See where eddies of cherry blossom, pink, white, swirl in suburban gutters. Glide with me above parks and gardens, admire the fresh unfurlings of copper beech, the colour of old brick walls; gasp at the implausible lime of the limes! The horse chestnut candles are in bloom, and the may, here and there in the hedgerows, authorizes the casting of clouts. Sheep and cattle graze in old striped fields. Listen! The first cuckoo dimples the air, and for a heartbeat, everything stands still. The waters have receded, but signs of flooding are everywhere across the landscape. Even now, the distant cathedral seems perched like the ark on Ararat, as rainbows come and go behind the cooling towers of Cardingforth.

Let us head now to the cathedral. I'm pleased to inform you that the spire has not crashed through the nave roof in our absence. The historic glass of the Lady Chapel has not slipped from its crumbled tracery and smashed to smithereens. Fear not! Heritage Lottery funding is on its way to prevent so ruinous an end to the work of long-dead glaziers. Restoration work continues on the cathedral's south side, where a vast colony of masonry bees has been ruthlessly exterminated. Dean and chapter (how can they call themselves Christian?) were in receipt of letters from single-issue bee fanatics. A reply drafted by the canon chancellor, referring them to Our Lord's brusque treatment of swine, was never sent.

It is Saturday afternoon. Gavin, the deputy verger, is mowing the palace lawn before the rain starts. All downhill now till Advent, he thinks. The triumph of the Easter brazier still blazes in his mind. New paschal candle lit first go. Cut-off two-litre Coke bottle, that was the secret. Stopped it blowing out. Up and down goes Gavin. Keeping things under control lawn-wise during the interregnum. Tidy-up and big bonfire at the end of summer – there was that to look forward to. Then Advent, six hundred candles. Gavin smiles as he mows his nice straight lines.

Ah, but the garden misses Susanna's touch. Bleeding-heart plants nod in untended borders. Roses shoot unpruned since the Hendersons left. The laburnum walk is unforbidden, poised to rain its deadly Zeus-like showers on nobody at all. Everything waits for the new bishop, whoever he may be.

As you may have seen in the press, there was a brief outbreak of squawking in the ecclesiastical henhouse back in February, when it was (wrongly) rumoured that the Church Commissioners had decided to sell the palace and stick the next bishop of Lindchester in a poky little seven-bedroomed house in suburban Renfold. Indignant petitions were worded. SAVE LINDCHESTER PALACE! The bishops of Lindchester had always lived there, since . . .

It emerged that the bishop of Lindchester had, in fact, only lived in this particular house since 1863, when a vigorous and godly Evangelical bishop sold off the other two palaces. The Rt Revd William Emrys Brownlow used the money to clear the city's slums, provide clean water and good housing for the impoverished leather workers, build a hospital, schools and a theological college. Prior to that, no bishop of Lindchester had ever lived in the Close in such proximity to his clergy and people. It would have been tactless to do so, since they could not have afforded to ape his gracious lifestyle. No, far kinder to retreat to Bishop's Ingregham and eat quails in aspic with a clear conscience.

Shall we pause to lament the passing of those glorious historic buildings from the Church? Ingregham palace is particularly lovely, with its mellow sandstone walls, its acres of Capability Brown landscaping. Deer park, lake, obligatory historic oak tree that Robin Hood, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles the Second hid up, or where Shakespeare himself stubbed his fag out. I daresay petitions were got up in 1860. What was Bishop Brownlow thinking of, selling off the family silver like that? These treasures are not ours to dispose of – we are but custodians! Our duty is look after them and hand them on intact to the next generation! Yes, there are issues facing the Church, but selling off property is a short-term solution! It's just throwing money at the problem!

As is so often the case when the problem is ‘lack of money', the throwing of money at it turns out to be the solution. A great many runty little leatherworkers' children failed to die of cholera. Many were educated. Scores of earnest young Evangelicals were trained and sent to work in places of great danger and deprivation across the Empire.

But the palace is very lovely. It's a shame the Church no longer owns it.

We will leave the bishop's garden in Gavin's care and glide gracefully to earth outside the deanery instead. Come with me, on tiptoe, to the old scullery, where the Very Revd Marion Randall (just back from a post-Easter break in Portugal) is standing amid open suitcases. She is discussing the identity of the next bishop with her husband. Or rather,
not
discussing it.

‘There's nothing to tell. And even if there was, I wouldn't tell you. We take oaths, you know.'

‘Oaths! How Shakespearian. Ods bodikins! By my lady's nether beard!' he declaimed. ‘Like that?'

‘Funnily enough, Gene, nothing like that.'

‘'Zounds, how dull. But can't you drop a tiny hint? In passing. I can infer. I'm an excellent infer-er.'

‘Yes. And you're also an inveterate gossip. Which is why I'm not going to tell you anything.'

‘Aha! So you admit you
do
know something!'

The dean sighed and continued to sort and toss dirty laundry into heaps. ‘Of course I know
something
. Look, we're only at the consultation stage. People have been invited to submit suggestions, that's all. We'll get a long list from the Washhouse, which we'll sift, then decide who we want to mandate.'

‘Ooh! Who's on the long list?'

‘You're not actually listening.' She bent and began thrusting a light load into the machine. ‘Nobody yet.'

‘But who's
likely
to be on it?'

‘Anyone whose name has come up.'

‘Literally anyone? What if some bonkers old trout suggests her parish priest because he does a lovely mass?'

‘Then I suppose he'll be on the list. Hence the sifting process. No.' The dean held up her hand. ‘That's it. Shut up.'

‘At least promise me it won't be another swivel-eyed Evangelical pederast with a muffin-making wife.'

Silence.

‘Not funny?' he enquired.

‘No.'

‘But quite clever?'

‘No.'

‘Oh.' Another silence. ‘Well, let me go and choose us a homecoming wine. I am confident I can get
that
right, at any rate.'

My readers will see from this that Gene's character has undergone no reformation in the last few months. He remains the same disgraceful reprobate. His mission is unchanged, too: to cherish, divert and pamper his beloved wife, and make the task of modern deaning more fun than it would prove were he not on hand (at all times and in all places) with the right wine and the wrong remark.

Marion sets the machine running, then gazes round her. The overhead airer, the Belfast sink, tiled floor. This was where staff of former deans toiled with their washboards and dollies and goffering irons. She thinks about the old servants' bells still there high up on the deanery kitchen wall in a glass case – BED R
M
3, DRAWING R
M
, TRADES. ENT – though they no longer work. Fell prey to health and safety regs when the deanery was rewired ten years ago. There is a button in Marion's and Gene's en suite bathroom (formerly DRESSING R
M
1). She imagines her predecessors pressing it and summoning a valet to bring up a hip bath and pink gin. Gene, no doubt, would recreate this scenario with enthusiasm, were she to mention it.

Dear Gene. She smiles. But the brief holiday is already retreating from her mind. The thought bailiffs shoulder their way in to repossess the unpaid-for happiness. The spire. The stuff coming out about the school chaplain from the 1970s. The new bishop of Lindchester – would it be uncomplicated, someone she could work with and not be forever thinking, You are younger than me, less gifted, less experienced . . . ? How wearing it is, all the nuisance of being one of those tipped to be the first woman bishop. To know you're being talked about. Folk speculating: will she be suffragan somewhere, or is she holding out to be the first diocesan? Barchester, maybe? She shakes her head. Come on, you're still on holiday till Monday.

She casts her mind back to that basilica. Was it only this morning they were there? Muted palette of browns and terracottas. Easter lilies, a CD of plainsong alleluias playing. High above in the dome, blue sky glimpsed through glass. Peace, beauty. And then to emerge into the big bright spring world! Dazzled by full sunlight, buffeted by the wind, the whirl of life, the vast dome of the sky above. If the inside was the only thing you knew, how could you guess at all this? And yet it made perfect sense. Of course,
of course
! Would it be like this – resurrection?

She goes through to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.

Gene emerges through the cellar door. With a fey flourish, he presents the wine. ‘1996 Chateau Latour.'

‘Lovely.'

He sees from her face that his magic words have conveyed nothing. ‘Bless you, my darling, I know you love that vinho verde.' He gives a dainty shudder. ‘But some of it was
so
young, drinking it was a safeguarding issue.'

And now it is Low Sunday. Where shall I take you today, dear reader? I know that you are eager for news of our various friends. How is Father Dominic faring in his new parish, for example? And what of our lovely bishop Bob, shouldering the weight of the whole diocese during the interregnum? To say nothing of our stout hero, the archdeacon, last seen haring off to New Zealand in pursuit of his lady!