Unseen Things Above

Catherine Fox was educated at Durham and London Universities. She is the author of four adult novels:
Angels and Men
,
The Benefits of Passion
,
Love for the Lost
and
Acts and Omissions
; a Young Adult fantasy novel,
Wolf Tide
; and a memoir,
Fight the Good Fight: From vicar's wife to killing machine
, which relates her quest to achieve a black belt in judo. She lives in Liverpool, where her husband is dean of the cathedral.

First published in Great Britain in 2015

Marylebone House

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.marylebonehousebooks.co.uk

Copyright © Catherine Fox 2015

Marylebone House does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown's Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, are copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The extract from the Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter, from
Collects and Post Communions in Contemporary Language
, is copyright © The Archbishops' Council, 2015. Taken from <
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/collects-and-post-communions/contemporary-language/lenteaster.aspx
>.

The extract from The Book of Common Prayer, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, is reproduced by permission of the Crown's Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–910674–23–9

eBook ISBN 978–1–910674–24–6

Typeset and eBook by
Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Manufacture managed by Jellyfish

For

Margaret, Maeve and Gill,

for being fabulous

Dramatis personae

APRIL

Chapter 1

I
n 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 a long time to come, while the Crown Nominations Commission ruminates.

Ruminates? Dare I apply so bovine a metaphor to this august body? 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 C of E senior appointments 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 wallchart of self-aggrandizement by being the first to blab what others have appropriately kept under wraps.

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

Risen Christ,

for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:

open the doors of our hearts . . .

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. Anything, provided there are biscuits to feed the hungry people of the UK!

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. Let us set out now to walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace in their company as far as 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 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. See where eddies of cherry blossom, pink, white, swirl in suburban gutters.

Hover with me above parks and gardens. The horse chestnut candles are in bloom, and the may blossom authorizes the casting of clouts. Sheep and cattle graze in old striped fields. Listen! A 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.

We will head 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. Restoration work is under way 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, deputy verger and closet pyromaniac, is mowing the palace lawn before the rain starts. All downhill now till Advent, he thinks. The triumph of the Easter brazier still glows 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.

Ah, but the garden misses the touch of Susanna, the former bishop's wife. Bleeding heart plants nod in untended borders. Roses shoot unpruned. 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 bishops 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 leatherworkers, 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 palaces from the Church? Ingregham Palace is particularly lovely, with its mellow sandstone walls, its acres of Capability Brown landscaping, the deer park, the lake. 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! Selling off property is only a short-term solution, a crass attempt to throw money at the problem.

As is so often the case when the problem is ‘lack of funds', 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.

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

We will leave the garden in Gavin's care and swoop 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 Lisbon) 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 Shakespearean. Ods bodkins! By my lady's nether beard!' he declaimed. ‘Like that?'

‘Funnily enough, Gene, nothing like that.'

‘How dull. But can't you drop a tiny hint? In passing. I can infer. I'm an excellent inferrer.'

‘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 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 lights 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 might otherwise 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 presumably toiled with their washboards 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 and Gene's en-suite bathroom (formerly DRESSING R
M
1). She imagines her predecessors 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: would she be suffragan somewhere, or was she holding out to be the first diocesan? She shakes her head. Come on, you're still on holiday till Monday.

She casts her mind back to Lisbon. 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. ‘Nineteen-ninety-six 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 practically 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!

You must be patient. I am going to introduce you to a new character, one I fear you may not find it in your heart to love, but Veronica plays an important part in our tale. There are times when we must stoically eat our plate of school liver (horrid tubes visible) before we are allowed out to play.