Unseen Things Above (13 page)

Iona climbs up to the organ loft to practise for Sunday. At least she won't have to accompany that bloody Tchaikovsky Hymn again till next Trinity. Some Vierne, to cleanse the palate. As she adjusts the stool height she finds herself thinking of Freddie May. His audition. Blowing them away with that
Il Trovatore
aria. Bloody hell. Like he suddenly had four extra ranks of pipes nobody knew about. Pity he was so thick, really.
Actively
thick. Talking to Freddie was like being smacked round the head with short planks. Bless.

The summer solstice approaches. As good Anglicans, we have no truck with all this New Age Stonehenge druidery. There will be no church-sanctioned Fresh Expression of naked cavorting and phallus worship in the Diocese of Lindchester. We might go a bit Celtic, but in the C of E that tends to mean saying some nice circling prayers and singing Iona worship songs, rather than burning Calvinists in wicker cages. In any case, attempting to burn Calvinists is a theological nonsense. If they are meant to burn, they will.

You will be alarmed to hear, then, that our friend the archdeacon rises stealthily on solstice morn while it is still dark, gets in his car and drives off on a secret mission. Elsewhere in the diocese, midsummer frolics will be held to celebrate the engagement of Father Ed to his partner Neil. Hmm. Now I come to think of it, I cannot put my hand on my heart and promise there will be no phallocentric pagan cavorting in the vicarage of Gayden Magna tonight. But we will retain our customary practice of averting the narrative gaze and leaving such things to the reader's imagination. I will just confide that after a happy evening of internet research, Neil hired some scantily clad cocktail waiters. Like a good husband-to-be, he scrupulously refrained from hiring anyone he thought he recognized. (Though it's
possible
he's now following @choirslut90 on Twitter.)

Jane wakes on her birthday to find her doorstep piled with big flat cardboard boxes. The pile is taller than she is. What the hell? The boxes contain long-stemmed red roses from Covent Garden market.

A thousand of them.

Chapter 11

O
h, to be in England, now that June is there! (
Pace
, Robert Browning – surely June is our loveliest month of all?) Mock oranges flower in gardens across the Diocese of Lindchester. Pale pink peony bowls slump and dash themselves in smithereens on pavements. Swifts circle, young magpies churr and chase through treetops. The nights are a-murmur with insects, busy in the honeysuckle and jasmine and nicotiana. Privet hedges bloom. Plane trees scent the towns with a rakish Parisian note. At dusk you may glimpse the eerie ghost moths as they flicker over meadows; while barn owls – like larger ghosts – hunt white and silent along the margins of fields. Who knows? Between English earth and sky, in doorways and under railway arches, in steamed-up cars in abandoned places, perhaps the homeless can sleep a little less clenched these perfumed June nights? (In England – now!)

Petertide. Frantic painting and decorating is going on. There will be eight men and women ordained deacon in Lindchester Cathedral next Sunday.

‘Can you believe, Pedro, a whole year has gone by since I was in such a flap about my new curate's house?'

Pedro makes no reply as he bobs along beside Father Wendy. He has seen something small and furry on the bank ahead. Every nerve quivers for the chase.

‘I don't know how we ever got it done in time! And that naughty boy the archdeacon sent us! He just lay around smoking dope and painting rude pictures on the bedroom wall!' Wendy laughs. ‘Poor Madge was at her wit's end— Whoa there, Pedro! It's just a little vole. We don't need to chase brother vole, remember?'

Father Wendy spares a prayer for the naughty boy, and for all the parishes across the diocese who are in a flap this week about curate accommodation.

It's not just the Diocese of Lindchester that is in a flap. You may be surprised to learn that there will be a thousand #NewRevs ordained priest and deacon this year. What, a thousand rats
boarding
a sinking ship? That's very altruistic of them. Unless the good ship C of E is not quite ready to go down yet after all. I dare say the press will be inclined to dismiss our efforts as rearranging the deckchairs on board the
Titanic
. But we could always ask them how their circulation figures are holding up.

Bishop Bob drives to the cathedral for the senior staff meeting. It's like the beautiful Junes of childhood, he thinks; editing out the misery of exams and sports day. He rounds a bend, the one where the distant cathedral spire on its mound first becomes visible on the road from Martonbury. A shadow falls across him, like the thought of school blighting August. My word, but the diocese is a heavy burden! Each day he must draw a deep breath to steady himself, before once again shouldering the load. Still, the CNC meets to interview the shortlisted candidates in less than a month. We'll have an announcement before the end of the year, God willing.

His thoughts turn to his former bishop. Well, South Africa certainly seems to suit Paul! He looks comfortable in his own skin at last. Really touching that he should make time to visit like that. Quite a big detour on his way to his daughter's. Bob's happy he can now erase the image of Paul, broken and weeping, at his farewell service only six months before. Perhaps – is it fair to speculate? – perhaps in policing himself so fiercely, Paul had appeared to be policing everyone else as well? Is that what caused the air of taut disapproval, and earned him his ‘Mary Poppins' nickname?

Then again, it might simply have been the pressures of the job. Bob has gained some insight into that during the last months! He's weary, bone weary. Janet has started nagging him to visit the GP. Yes, he rejoices for his brother Paul in this evident new lease of life.

Oh, but poor Paul, all the same! Bob was surprised and honoured to be confided in yesterday. They had never achieved much rapport as colleagues, after all. How hard Paul's life must have been. Back when we were growing up, sex was in the very air. Short skirts, free love! But our parents belonged to an earlier era. How did we timid, nicely brought up boys ever find out anything? Headmaster giving a pep talk? Biology lessons? Perhaps an awkward conversation with Dad, and a Ladybird book called
Your Body
(too babyish, but what else was there?). And later on – oh dear! – smutty giggling over
Playboy
. A battered copy of
Fear of Flying
passed under the desk.

Well! If it was difficult for me, what must it have been like for Paul? Where on earth would a clean living Evangelical boy turn to try and make sense of his feelings? No wonder it was a relief to be told this was just an immature phase; that he should marry and put it behind him. Because there would have been nothing else, no other source of knowledge, apart from public toilets and the Jeremy Thorpe case. Though at a private school there might have been a coterie of boys calling one another by girls' names, and so on. Bob frowns. His grammar school imagination fails him here. But anyway, boys like that would only have revolted someone like Paul.

Boys like that? Someone like Paul? He's slipping into generalizations. There is nobody like Paul, he reminds himself. Nobody like me, for that matter. We are all quirky one-off originals, infinitely precious to the Creator.

He drives up cathedral mount. A procession of 4
×
4s streams out through the great arch of the gateway: the school run. He pulls courteously to one side to let them past, although technically, they are supposed to make way for him. (Yet another reminder was issued last week by the head of the Choristers' School, after complaints from angry Close residents.) But Bob waits. Hasn't he dropped children off for school himself in years gone by? Yes, he's probably blocked drives and been a nuisance in his time.

He opens the car windows. It's so warm. He finds his hanky and blots his face. The first wafts of lime blossom are in the air. Heavenly smell, but tree pollen does trigger his hay fever. Seems to be worse than ever this year. Can't stop coughing. So long as he doesn't splutter all through the ordinations this Sunday!

The last car passes, and he trundles through the gatehouse on to the Close. He's not looking forward to this senior staff meeting, to be honest. He fears the upshot will involve him having to take a course of action that will satisfy nobody, least of all his own conscience.

What is the issue that exercises our poor friend Bob so sorely? We will speed ahead a few days to find out. It will involve another visit to the vicarage at Gayden Magna, to call on Lindchester's tumultuous priest. He is not willingly tumultuous. I am sure my readers know by now that Father Ed would kneel quietly throughout compline on drawing pins sooner than instigate a tumult.

It is late evening when we call. Neil has just returned from London, surfing on a successful business wave (he has just schmoozed a new and very wealthy client). It is a while before poor Ed can get a word in.

‘. . . I kid you not. I was on
fire
!'

‘Well done,' says Ed yet again. ‘Um, but listen, I'm afraid I've had a phone call, Neil. I've got to discuss “the status of our relationship”.'

‘Are there any Gordal olives left? Discuss? What's to discuss? Tell them to feck off and mind their own business. Oh, here they are. Want some?'

‘Thanks.' He takes one. ‘But anyway, I've got to sort out an appointment.'

‘Oh yeah, these are
the business
!' Neil eats olives with an urgent Capital City edginess. Can't keep still. Edgy-edgy. ‘Just refuse. Make the buggers come to you. Seriously, I won't have you summoned to the head's office like a naughty wee schoolboy. I mean it. We'll take the fight to them. I've got journalist friends. Let's get our story out there.'

Great. Ed takes Neil by the shoulders and checks his pupils. Yes, those London edges have been pharmaceutically bevelled.

‘Oh, stop that.' Neil bats him away and heads over to the big American refrigerator. ‘It's just nicotine gum.'

‘Of course it is, Neil.'

Neil takes his U'Luvka vodka out of the freezer, oily cold, the way he likes it. ‘So who called you? The arch-demon?'

‘No, it was Bishop Bob's PA.'

‘Och, Bob's a pussy cat.' He gestures with the snakey bottle. ‘Join me?' Ed shakes his head. ‘Seriously, is this because of the party? How the fuck did they hear about it, anyway? It was a private party!'

‘The whole world heard about it. You swore it would be a quiet affair.'

A pause. ‘Yes, well, and
why
aren't the vodka glasses in the fridge where they belong?'

Ed points to the vodka glasses in the fridge.

‘There they are! I'll let you off.' Neil pours himself a large shot in an icy glass. ‘And? Can I help it if things got a bit out of hand? It was the solstice.' He takes a mouthful of vodka. Savours it. ‘Ah, that's better. Good. Want me there for the Spanish Inquisition? For moral support?'

‘No!'

‘Oh, what? Why do you always think I'm going to pee in your pool?'

‘Because you always pee in my pool. Off the top diving board, usually.'

Neil cackles. ‘Come on, Eds, man up. You've got to take the bastards on some time. You're just exercising your legal right to marry. Got that? Your
legal right
. We'll take this to the European Courts if we have to. No omelettes without breaking eggs, big man.'

‘I notice it's only
my
eggs that are getting broken here.'

‘Excuse me?' The air quivers. ‘Are you sure you want to have this conversation? Because I am more than happy to have this conversation right
now
, about how your God-bothering has consistently fucked my life up over the last eighteen years.'

‘Yeah, and talking of fucking your life up, maybe we can have the “nicotine gum” conversation too.'

Neil narrows his eyes at Ed. Then he pours more vodka. ‘Did the buggers from the cleaning firm do a proper job with the party clear-up?'

‘Yes.'

‘Let me rephrase that: if I go and check, will
I
think they did a proper job?'

‘No. But I was answering like a normal person.'

We will leave them to their fencing match. They know all the steps these days, how to feint, how to parry the other's thrusts; it's well choreographed after eighteen years. The vicarage will be the fraught interface between Lindchester and London for a few more hours, until Neil once more satisfies himself he's the boss, and Ed allows him to believe it.

Ed's parishioners adore Neil, by the way. ‘Ooh, you're so naughty!' they tell him. They view him as a flamboyant and rather wicked parrot, and long for him to squawk
Fuck off!
during a big service, so they can be scandalized all over again. As interested onlookers, they believe they have a pretty clear idea who wears the trousers in the vicarage. Poor old parrot-pecked Father Ed, they think.

The truth, of course, is much more interesting. It usually is. Personally, I am not a big fan of trouser-based reductionism as a basis for understanding human partnerships. Perhaps in a simpler age – when one stout pair of leather britches was handed down, father to son, for fourteen generations – we might profitably have asked who wore them. But is it still that simple? Well, some argue that it is, rooting their theology of trousers in creation (it being clear from Genesis that Adam wore them, Eve didn't, and there was no such thing as Steve). All the same, I find it hard to avoid the impression that even in traditional circles, trouser-wearing in twenty-first century relationships is a complex and nuanced thing. We might as well ask, who wears the buskins in Shangri-La? Oh, slippery-slopery thin-end-of-wedgery! We'll have donkeys in kilts before you know it!