Unholy Dying (10 page)

“And the child you're expecting?”

“Well, barring artificial insemination, it couldn't be his, could it, if you believe what I've just said. I go for boys of my own age. Most teenage girls do. As to who it was fathered this one”—she patted her belly—“you can mind your own bloody business!”

She was on the verge of getting up, grabbing Gary, and storming out when she realized she was supposed to be there helping Christopher. She swallowed.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “That was rude.”

She looked into their eyes. The young priest looked admiring, seeming to believe her absolutely. The chairman, his mouth pursed, looked affronted and skeptical. The layman looked nondescript. At least, she thought, they know now I'm not a pushover.

 • • • 

Once he had made the decision, Father Pardoe felt it almost beyond him to wait until Sunday. The urge to skulk, to hide, which a month since had dominated his every movement, had been succeeded by a determination to show that he existed, to show his friend—his onetime friend—the Bishop that the fact that someone had made vicious and untrue allegations against him did not mean that he had instantly become a nonperson. Margaret, he knew, had brought about the sea change in his attitude, and as usual she offered intelligent support.

“Don't hide yourself away at the back,” she said, “as if you'd done something wrong. And don't go to the front, like it was a challenge. Somewhere just forward of the middle would be ideal.”

It amused Father Pardoe that Margaret, or anyone, should be offering him advice on a matter like that. In one sense it could be seen as indicative of his fallen state—she behaved toward him as if he were no longer a priest. On the other hand, she was acting like a friend, the sort of friend a priest rarely or never has among his own parishioners. He wondered, with a flash of insight, if that was what his life had always lacked. He wondered, too, if that was what he had been trying to find in Julie.

Again a vision of Julie's face came to him, this time as she had looked up at him one day in her shabby little flat when Gary started crying in the next room and she knew their little chat about this and that, that had liberated her from the drudgeries of her life was at an end. He remembered her face, and he remembered his reaction too: he had been tempted to stretch over and kiss her. He was very glad now that he had not. But he should not deceive himself that in Julie he had been just looking to find a friend.

On Saturday he went to St. Joseph's in Pudsey for confession. He had been to various churches in Stanningley, Bramley, and Wortley over the past few weeks, out of an instinct not to make one church “his.” He had “his” church. On Sunday morning he had a light breakfast of coffee and toast, then decided to take the bus into the center of Leeds rather than use his car and have to find a parking space. Margaret was going to St. Joseph's, as always. The question of her accompanying him had simply not come up.

The bus was on time, but was held up by an unappetizing-looking man who joined the queue at the last minute and, seeming not to know the Sunday fare, had to have a note changed. He came and sat in a seat two behind Father Pardoe. The bus was a seventy-two, and went along the Headrow. Pardoe got off at the library stop, walked up to St. Anne's, and found himself a seat on the aisle a row or two forward from halfway back. He intended that the Bishop should see him.

It was ten minutes into Mass when he did. The Very Reverend Seamus O'Hare blinked, his mouth twisted involuntarily, then he continued with the Mass. Pardoe's face showed no emotion whatsoever. He was prepared. He took Eucharist from the Bishop, whose face this time was as innocent of any flicker of
emotion as his own. Other people he knew were there, of course, and he tried to acknowledge their acquaintanceship. Most of them, clerical or lay, responded, in some cases with a degree of embarrassment. As Mass drew to a close Christopher Pardoe felt a degree of peace and satisfaction he had not known for a long time. But he was also aware that the Bishop was not pleased.

As the congregation trooped out, Pardoe encountered a former parishioner whose wife had been killed in a horrendous road accident on the motorway near Skipton. The man had moved into a small flat in The Calls to be near his place of work, but most of all out of an instinct to put his former happiness behind him. Now he was thinking he'd made a big mistake. He was eloquent on the loneliness of a big city, the cheerlessness of flats where businesspeople perched rather than lived their lives, his nostalgia for the community at St. Catherine's, where people really did
know
one another.

“Unlike
here
,” he said, nodding around the interior as they made their way through the main door and out into the street, “where people just come on Sunday then scatter to the four winds.”

All the time, and now out in the warm, fresh air, Pardoe listened sympathetically, as he was used to doing, but part of his brain was saying, “He doesn't
know
” and his eye was following the movements of the Bishop, greeting his flock on that pleasant Sunday, being the local pastor whom everyone was happy to have a word from. Pardoe was making his farewells to his friend when he sensed the robed figure coming up behind him.

“If I may have a word, Father.”

Pardoe turned. The tone of the Bishop's voice had been soft, and the set of his face was neutral and perfectly amiable.

“Of course, Bishop. It was a very fine service.”

An infinitesimal pause.

“I am not sure it was wise of you to come. Or considerate.”

Pardoe swallowed, but kept his voice similarly low.

“I've been going to Mass at a variety of places on Sunday. It seemed like an ideal opportunity.”

He got a tiny shake of the head in reply. Then: “But nevertheless you would not deny that you had other motives in first sending me your letter, then in coming
here
?”

Pardoe took a deep breath.

“No, I wouldn't deny that. I seem to be stuck in limbo in Pudsey. No one communicates with me, I get no whisper of what is going on. A committee is investigating these foolish rumors: I have no idea who they are, what they are doing, how long they are likely to take. I have simply been stuck in this horrible position and left here.”

“What is there to tell you before the committee has reached a decision?”

“Quite a lot, I should have thought, as I've already suggested. And I would have liked the assurance that the committee will talk to me, that my side will be heard.”

“That is of course up to them.”

“If I were not heard it would be grossly unjust to me, and also to the congregation at St. Catherine's.”

Thus far the interview had been conducted in low tones, with the utmost apparent amiability. Now the Bishop's expression twisted into hostility, and the low tones took on the character of a hiss.

“I should have thought that your congregation was already making doubly sure that their voice
was
heard.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don't tell me you are ignorant of this—this letter of support, what is in effect a petition.”

“I am totally in ignorance. I have, alas, had no connection whatever with any member of the congregation since I was suspended. I have wondered, in fact, if letters are being forwarded as they should be. I know nothing about any petition.”

“I should like to believe you, because this is emphatically not the way we do things in our Church.”

“Perhaps the way we do things is changing, Bishop. I hope you'd agree, in any case, that denying a man accused of serious misdemeanors the right to be heard is also not the way we should be doing things in our Church.”

The Bishop's head rose arrogantly.

“I have no doubt that the committee will consider the matter in the way that best serves the well-being and reputation of the Church. It is not my intention to interfere. You, of course, may make any representations to them that you choose. In the meanwhile”—he turned full on him a face that was no longer merely stern, but angry—“I would ask you not to embarrass me or place me in a false position by coming to Mass or any other service here at St. Anne's.”

“You are not suggesting I cease going to Mass, are you, Bishop? It is all right, I suppose, if I embarrass Father Connell at Christ the King, or Father Wishart at St. Joseph's?”

“You are being impertinent and sarcastic. You are doing your cause no good at all. There are unpleasant rumors that the press is on to the story. I would strongly advise you—”

He pulled himself up, looked across Cookridge Street, and something like a snarl came over his face. He had heard clicking, and now, feet away from him, he saw a photographer. Father Pardoe, following his gaze, saw the man too, and saw that beside him stood the unappetizing man whom he had noticed on the bus journey in. The cameraman was clicking for dear life, the camera shielding his face, but the other man was
standing by with unconcealed relish in his eyes and the set of his mouth. The Bishop, signally failing to wipe the anger from his face, turned on Pardoe.

“Your doing, I suppose? Your behavior throughout this unfortunate matter has been absolutely deplorable. Whatever the outcome I shall hope never again to have you in a position of trust in this diocese.”

The
West Yorkshire Chronicle
hit the streets around midday on Monday. A story involving a Leeds United footballer brawling in one of the town's nightspots was the page-1 lead story, but Cosmo had got his piece nicely positioned on page 3.

THE PRIEST AND THE TEENAGE MUM
ran the headline. Mothers were always Mums to the
Chronicle
, even if they had murdered their children or were on the streets. Underneath, the story began.

A Roman Catholic priest from Shipley is being quizzed by his Church over his relationship with a teenage mother on the notorious Kingsmill estate in the town.

Julie Norris, nineteen, in an interview with our reporter, said, “He is my spiritual adviser.” However, the Bishop of Leeds has set up a committee to look into the relationship between Father Pardoe, priest at St. Catherine's Church, and Julie, who is pregnant with her second child. They will
also investigate claims that money from the charitable bequest, the Father Riley Fund, intended for parishioners going through difficult times, has been used to fund Julie Norris's lifestyle. Father Christopher Pardoe unexpectedly attended Mass at St. Anne's Cathedral in Leeds yesterday, where a confrontation occurred between him and the Bishop in Cookridge Street.

Julie's parents, in an interview with this paper, said there was “nothing new” about their daughter being in trouble, and that she had been “on the slippery slope” since becoming pregnant at seventeen. They had thrown her out of the family home at that time, and now take the view that she has dug her own grave. Mr. Simon Norris, manager of Shipley's smart Bettaclothes store, said, “Anyone who says it's our fault doesn't know their —— from their elbow.” His view was shared by his wife. A neighbor of Julie's . . .

And so it went on. The picture was masterly. It showed a snarling Bishop in close proximity to Father Pardoe's face. Anyone who didn't know Cosmo Horrocks might have thought he was trying to gain sympathy for the suspected priest.

“It's cunning,” said Terry Beale, sitting on Carol Barr's desk in the early afternoon, holding the early edition. “You'd probably find it was true in its way, except for the description of Mr. Norris's shop as ‘smart.' ”

“I didn't know you knew Shipley.”

“I don't. But if it was smart it wouldn't be called Bettaclothes.”

“But the rest you guess is true?”

“Trueish. I wonder exactly what Julie Norris's ‘lifestyle' is. But when a case like this comes up, people tell all sorts of lies and let slip all sorts of things that incriminate them in a minor
way, and all you have to do is quote them. Mind you, I'd guess that Julie's family are a pretty foul bunch, going by this.”

“Aren't you jumping through Cosmo's hoop, making exactly the judgments he wants you to make?”

“No, I don't think so,” said Terry, stung. “After all, they threw her out.”

“Maybe. On the other hand she could be the sort of slut no parent would want living at home.”

“Now who's jumping through Cosmo's hoop?”

 • • • 

Doris Crabtree gazed out her sitting room window across the neat but sparse expanse of her back garden to the rear view of Julie Norris's ground-floor flat. Nothing to see there these days. The view through the gap made by the demolition of the derelict Council house opposite gave her no sight of Father Pardoe approaching on foot or by car down Kingsmill Terrace, then turning into Kingsmill Rise, then, five minutes later, the curtains being drawn in the bedroom of the lower flat at number five. It just never happened now. Doris Crabtree was a victim of her own success.

Doris had been christened sixty-five years before, among the last of the Dorises, in the Anglican faith, though that had subsequently meant less than nothing to her. The christening had been a gesture by her factory-worker father that, in those years of Depression, he had kept his job while all around him others were losing theirs. The next year he had lost his too, and never had regular work again until the war restored full employment. Though he was thereafter in work until he retired, he was an eternally embittered man, and Doris had grown up in an atmosphere of sour idleness and pinched living, the air full of recrimination. It had proved to be her natural environment.

Doris had never loved in her life, nor been loved, though
which was cause and which was effect would have needed a Solomon to decide. Her life for thirty-five years, since her husband had taken off with another woman who made him equally unhappy, had been as the gossip of the Kingsmill estate. No woman misbehaving with another woman's husband had had her errancy unnoticed or undisseminated by Doris. No man living beyond his income because he was fiddling the till receipts at work escaped speculation on “how he did it on his paycheck.” In the old days she had stood at street corners or at her gate with others of her kind, often in apron and hair curlers, acting as the modern equivalent of a town crier. She had, in her way, enjoyed her life.