Ring Road (9 page)

The sun finally came out on Friday, breaking through after what seemed like months of gloom, what seemed like years of low grey cloud and drizzle, what seemed, in fact, to some of us here like the new Dark Ages, the return of the famous ‘black springs' of the 1950s when there wasn't a green vegetable till August and the only thing you could buy in the market throughout the summer was potatoes. When the cloud lifted, Francie McGinn turned his face to the big blurred halo in the sky and thanked the Lord.

‘Altostratus,' he said.

Francie has always been interested in the weather and he had gone into the ministry, the two things being somehow connected in his mind, something to do with storms and rainbows and the supernumerary. Francie would not have been your obvious choice as a minister, what with his lack of any obvious social skills, his terror of public speaking and his terrible psoriasis, which always tended to flare up when Francie had to address a congregation, but God does seem to have a sense of humour and so, when He called Francie,
in His infinite wisdom He did not call him to a nice quiet life working in an office, as a filing clerk perhaps, or an assistant administrative officer in the local council – recently relocated, of course, from its fine old five-storey stucco building overlooking the People's Park, with a girdled and globe-breasted Queen Victoria standing guard outside on a plinth, to a new purpose-built place on the ring road. No, God works in mysterious ways and He seems curiously uninterested in the workings and decisions of local councils, so when He called Francie – a sweet, shy, nervous man – He called him not to a life of pleasant quietness but to a life which involved a lot of standing up in front of large and not always sympathetic crowds speaking to them enthusiastically about Jesus. It was a calling which required certain skills of exposition and expostulation, and a certain amount of necessary hand-waving, which Francie, who had always been a little stiff in his manner, had never quite mastered. His sermons were examples of free association, in which he grappled with, and was often floored by, complex passages of Scripture and the use of the microphone. Just watching him up there at the front of his congregation was enough to break your heart. It was enough to bring you to tears, or to your knees.

As if both to identify and to defy his own native lack of ability, Francie had had an alphabet painted around what in other churches would have been called a nave, but which in Francie's church, the People's Fellowship – a place on South Street, which used to be the old Johnson Hosiery Factory, round the back of the Quality Hotel – was just a blank back wall lit by halogen spots and uplighters. The alphabet read, in thick black letters three and four feet tall:

The sign painter, Colin Crawford, who was a friend of a friend of a member of the congregation, and who had learnt his trade years ago in the Tech's once renowned sign-writing classes, seems to have run into problems with some of the more difficult consonants – what good things does God do that begin with the letters Q and Z? – but the effect was impressive nonetheless.
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When Francie stood up to preach, sweating into the microphone, at the front of that hall, you had the impression of a performing flea caught up in the pages of a vast Bible.

From an early age, certainly from when I first knew him, Francie had described himself as a Bible-believing Christian. The Bible, to Francie, was a bit like God is to most other Christians: something to be relied upon and worshipped, but
which nonetheless remains utterly inscrutable and not necessarily something you'd ever be able to understand.
*

Francie was naturally a quiet and modest man, but he was ambitious for Jesus, and was always coming up with exciting new schemes for promoting God's Word in and around town. He would sometimes take a full-page advertisement in the local paper announcing forthcoming events and in the summer he held evening meetings in the car park in the centre of town, out in front of the Quality Hotel, near the new faux bandstand, with its brick podium and tarpaulin-effect sheet-steel covering, where every night he erected a large sign announcing an ‘Open Air Gospel Meeting', just in case anyone was in doubt as to exactly what a group of twenty or thirty adults wearing Bermuda shorts and big grins and sunhats were doing, shaking their tambourines and playing guitars and handing out tracts to amused skateboarders and passers-by. Everyone knew it had to be something to do with Jesus – where we live, there's no other excuse or explanation for such behaviour. This is not Miami Beach, or Brighton. In the winter Francie tried Fish-and-Chip Biblical Quiz Nights and Line Dancing, Ladies' Pool Nights and Indoor Carpet Bowls for the over-sixties, and there were, of course, all the usual weekly Parenting Classes and Toddlers' Groups and Bible Studies, but the highlight of every year was undoubtedly his Good Friday
Carvery and Gospel Night, an evening which included the Preaching of the Word, Country Gospel Music by Bobbie Dylan and all-you-could-eat barbecued meats, provided by Tom Hines, who is a brother of a member of the congregation, all for a very reasonable £5 per head.

A couple of years back Francie's wife, Cherith, was on a detox diet, which meant she couldn't eat dairy products, bread, pasta, oranges and half a dozen other foodstuffs, including red meat, and in order to display solidarity with his wife Francie was doing the diet too, so they were both going to have to miss out on the Good Friday Carvery, something they usually looked forward to: the closest they usually got to meat was supermarket mince, which is at best an approximation. It was for her liver, Cherith said, the detox diet, but to be honest she could probably have done to lose some weight, as could their teenage daughter, Bethany, who had not been tempted by the diet, and who had also secretly started smoking cigarettes and going out with boys who were non-Christians, and who wore black eyeliner to church, and who, during her father's sermons, sometimes sat sending text messages of a sexual nature to her friends.

That Easter, the year of the diet, Francie and Cherith were also having a new kitchen put into their house on the estate – nothing too expensive, nothing too flash, but, as all the elders of the church agreed, it did need updating – and whether it was the stress of the kitchen, or the lack of protein and carbohydrates and the smell of the barbecued meats, or perhaps the manifold charms of Bobbie Dylan herself that did for Francie I do not know.

Bobbie Dylan was christened Roberta and was not a fan of Bob Dylan until she heard the
Saved
album, and then it was but a short leap into the whole world – the admittedly small but pleasantly cosy world – of Christian rock, a world which the leather-trousered Roberta now bestrode like the proverbial colossus.

Roberta had been converted at the age of twenty. There is probably no good or bad age to become a born-again Christian, but twenty is perhaps one of the worst. It meant that Roberta had enjoyed a few years of tasting the fruits of this world and now, as she emerged into her mid-thirties, she could still taste the many, the complex flavours on her tongue: the terrible sweetness of all those things that as a born-again Christian she knew it was right to deny herself. She tried not to think about it too much and it was not something she liked to admit, but sometimes she had a hankering after the world and its ways. Sometimes, for instance, at night, in her one-bedroom flat on Kilmore Avenue – with its lovely en suite, tiled and decorated by her own fair hand, with a nice fish motif and a power shower – she would drink several glasses of Chardonnay while watching American television programmes in which strong women with beautiful hair and clavicles and good upper-body strength boasted to each other of their sexual conquests, and their ability to please and to dominate men. Just watching them Roberta would feel ashamed and excited. Watching
ER
had the same effect, and also Sebastian Faulks's novel
Birdsong.

Not that the world of Christian rock didn't have its excitements. Roberta had toured extensively throughout Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and had been to many Christian rock festivals throughout Europe – in Germany, for example, and in Holland. She had released no fewer than five CDs of her own original material and although she hadn't yet had a breakthrough in America, where the competition was pretty fierce in its own Christian way, she was already big in Korea, where Christians seemed to appreciate her work, which was influenced by the many traditions of Christian and sacred music: gospel, soul, country and mid-period Bob Dylan.

Like Bob Dylan, and like many another rock musician, Roberta had been tempted at times by rock‘n'roll's inevitable accompaniments and attractions. There were times when she
feared that sitting in recording studios late at night with unshaven men drinking beer would prove her undoing.

But when it came to Francie's Good Friday Carvery and Gospel Night Roberta's mind was set firmly on her music and her ministry. She had showered and washed her hair, and laid out her best clothes: a pair of black leather trousers, a white long-sleeved blouse and a pair of black boots with a slight heel. She had straightened her hair with straightening irons, put on a little lipstick – a sheer glossy rose – and applied some kohl and some mascara round her dark-brown eyes. The look was a combination of rock chick and bride of Christ which she hoped was pleasing both in the eyes of God and of man.

As for Francie, he was wearing his usual minister's outfit: a brown car coat with pockets large enough to accommodate a Good News bible, a range of tracts and a Scripture Union diary; a pair of grey sta-prest casual trousers, the pockets jangling, full of keys and small change for emergencies (Francie does not possess or carry credit or charge cards, and encourages his congregation to cut up their own); a blue bobbled V-neck pullover thinning around the elbows; a check shirt with blue and red biros tucked in the breast pocket; and a good plain pair of Clark's shoes from Irvine's (‘Clark's, Norvic and Bective Brands for Ladies, Kiltie Shoes for Children, Savile Row for Gentlemen'), the laces securely double knotted. He looked, in fact, like most of us do here, both the men and the women: the unmistakable look of people who are not in full charge of their own wardrobes, people who get dressed once a year by Father Christmas and who do not feel any further need to add to or to accessorise their festive knitwear, or to worry about some small thing like a wrong-sized shirt collar or polyester pants. Francie had gone straight from being dressed by his mother to being dressed by his wife, both of whom were more interested in questions of value for money than any considerations of style or current fashions, but fortunately
clothes had never been important to Francie. Apart from a couple of troublesome years in his teens when he had rebelled against hand-me-down duffel coats and had insisted on a red harrington and dealer boots, he did not dress to impress. It was not necessary. Francie was not setting out to attract the attentions of the opposite sex. He had never kissed another woman apart from his wife and, indeed, he could probably count every kiss he had bestowed upon her, in every place and everywhere, although, actually, recently the kisses had become rather scarce.

Not that Francie's and Cherith's was a loveless marriage. On the contrary. Their lives were fulfilled in many ways. They enjoyed the fellowship of the congregation and they both regarded it as a privilege to be able to minister together: this was their role and their mission in life, and they desired little else, although sometimes, if he were honest, Francie would have to admit to entertaining improper thoughts. Sometimes, for example, he wondered if he'd have been better off as a Catholic priest. He liked the idea of a sacramental role, something that involved a little less Doing – fewer committees and less street evangelism – and a bit more good old-fashioned Being. Sometimes he thought he wouldn't at all have minded a Roman collar, or wearing a soutane. And sometimes he imagined female members of his congregation modelling swimwear.

On that Good Friday, though, such thoughts were far from Francie's mind. On that fateful night Francie was worrying about the kitchen.

He and Cherith had argued before coming out – after they'd eaten their microwaveable quiche and a salad consisting of a small hard tomato, two sticks of celery, a pyramid of sweet-corn and half an iceberg lettuce, the barbecued meats at the Carvery being strictly prohibited to them. They had argued again – for it was not the first time – about what an appropriate work surface for the new kitchen might be. A laminate
was cheapest, of course, which is what Jesus would have wanted, but Cherith had been trying to persuade Francie that a good hard solid wood or even a granite surface would wear better, and so in the long run it would please Jesus and the elders of the fellowship just as much. Francie quoted Scripture – ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God', Luke 6:20 – and Cherith rejoindered with some verses of her own – ‘In the house of the righteous there is much treasure', Proverbs 15:6 – which was something they only ever did when they were really annoyed with one another. In the end they had left the house having to agree to disagree.