Unseen Things Above (20 page)

‘Certainly. But aren't you taking Martin?'

‘Should I?'

‘Well, he
is
the bishop's chaplain,' said Penelope.

‘Gosh, I've never had a chaplain,' Harry said wistfully. ‘No, don't worry. Seems a bit daft for two of us to trek out there.'

‘More than happy to come with you,' said Martin.

‘Hey, lemme drive you?' said Freddie. ‘I totally know this entire diocese coz I was Paul's chauffeur back in the day?'

‘I think you'll find you're no longer insured,' muttered Martin.

‘And? Not like I've forgotten how to drive.'

‘That's not the point.'

‘Yeah? Screw you, Marty.'

‘Please don't fight over me, darlings,' said the bishop. ‘You're both very kind, but why don't you take the evening off? Penelope, if you could print off those directions, I'm sure I can manage. Thanks for the coffee.' He took it back to his office.

Martin returned to his computer.

There was a silence.

Then Freddie yawned massively, stretched and rumpled his hair. ‘Laters, guys.' He slouched off like a rough beast, towing laces and paint fumes and Le Male in his wake.

The holiday season speeds to its close. After the bank holiday we will no longer be able to pretend there's anything left of the summer. Once again there will be meltdowns in Clark's shoe shop. Good mothers will sew Cash's nametapes into new uniforms. Bad mothers will scrawl their child's name on the labels in Biro. Academics will ask themselves how the vacation has fled with so little writing getting done. School leavers prepare for uni by rewatching the entire Harry Potter oeuvre. Apples ripen and fall un-scrumped.

Martin's daughters will be home tomorrow from their fortnight in Portugal. Jane and Dominic will shortly return from France, having eaten and drunk not wisely but too well. The archdeacon will collect them from the airport at some ungodly hour. Father Wendy is back from two weeks in Northumberland, where Pedro has run free on miles of sand.

He sits at her feet now in her study, as she talks to her curate Virginia. They have just done a belated end of first year review thingy. Not entirely a comfortable experience, because Virginia kept having to put her vicar right on points of process; but there, it's done, and they are now eating cake. Gluten- and lactose-free cake, which Wendy has made specially, because she's so lovely.

‘So, is there anything else?' asks Wendy. Oh, no. Eek. There's something horrid.

‘It's awkward. Please don't think I'm trying to angle for information about the new bishop. But there's a rumour that it's Guilden Hargreaves.'

‘Mmm,' says Wendy.

‘Personally, I have no problem with that. But there are a lot of people in this diocese who aren't happy with the way the Church seems to be going on the gay issue,' says Virginia. ‘So if the rumours are right, there's going to be a lot of protest and opposition. Including in our own congregations, Wendy. I know he's single now, but he used to have a partner. People just aren't comfortable with that. Do we have a statement prepared?'

‘Um, not as such, no. I think we can play it by ear, can't we?'

Virginia frowns. ‘We need to be proactive. As a member of the CNC who made the appointment, I'm worried you'll be a target, and—'

‘Oh, let's just trust that God can work through it all.' She puts a hand on Virginia's arm. ‘I'm sorry. That sounded very preachy! I wish I could tell you everything, but—'

‘Of course you can't!' Virginia looks shocked at the very suggestion.

‘Anyway, we should have an announcement in September some time, so it's not too long to wait. There's no point fretting until then.'

‘She's right, though, Pedro,' says Wendy after her curate has gone. ‘A lot of folk are going to be very unhappy. Oh, dear.'

But Pedro is off in dreamland, chasing gulls on an endless Northumbrian shore.

A new choral year looms. Timothy, the director of music, is in the Song School library with a group of helpers, trying to impose order on decades of chaos. The windows are flung wide. Laurence, the cathedral organist, sits quietly in the corner with a rubber, erasing historic pencil marks from a dog-eared set of Stanford in G. Miss Barbara Blatherwick was here yesterday, but is off seeing the consultant about her pesky hip today. In her absence lewd lyrics for ‘The Lonely Goatherd' are being improvised.

‘A young lay clerk with a bar in his scrote heard . . .' sings Iona.

‘Lay-ee-odl-ay-ee!' yodel the others responsorially.

‘Apropos of nothing,' says Nigel, the senior lay clerk, ‘what's happening with Mr May? Is he locked in his bromance with the bishop's chaplain, or is he moving on to the Close?'

‘Giles says the canon treasurer has agreed to take him in,' says Timothy from the top of a ladder. ‘God! This dust must be an inch thick!' He brandishes his ostrich feather duster.

‘You can't touch those cobwebs, Mr Director!' cries Nigel. ‘They have a preservation order on them!'

‘Look, we never sing matins any more,' says Iona, ‘so I vote we chuck this whole lot into the skip.'

There is an outcry at this dangerous heresy. It is tantamount to burning books, and only Nazis burn books. And so the
venites
, the
benedicites
, all the beloved settings of yesteryear, are allowed to crumble until some dim future when choirs carry smart tablets and paper is no more.

The funeral is over. Father Ed leaves the graveyard at Gayden Parva. The tumbled monuments are properly roped off now. A stone angel lies flat in the long grass. Ed pauses near the cross by the ancient yew.
God is Love
. Someone has strimmed the nettles at its foot down to stumps.

In my dying moments, what will still matter to me? he wonders. Will
proving my point
feel important? Or will love be all that remains of us? All I want to do is pledge myself to you, Neil. For better, for worse, richer, poorer, until it ends – as it surely must – here. At the grave. That is the only point I want to make by marrying you. It should be about you and me, not bishops and archbishops.

Or was that just selfish? Ed feels his toes curling in his black funeral shoes at the thought of ‘a feature with Roddy'. Having to be photographed in the too-sharp bespoke wedding suit Neil would bully him into. Then afterwards, the whisky-soused night that would end in Neil and Fallon playing atheist Top Trumps (which non-existent God is viler – Catholic or Calvinist?) and Ed going to bed alone.

God is Love. God is Love.

Ed can still see Bishop Bob dying on the kitchen floor. And Neil fighting to save him – while I stood by wringing my hands and praying. Maybe Neil's right? Maybe we've got to fight? Yes, I should stop being so squeamish. Man up and fight for our legal right to be married.

He gets into his car and heads back home. As he turns down the lane towards Gayden Magna, he passes Neil driving the other way. He blows him a kiss. Neil gurns and sticks two fingers up. Everything is normal.

Martin remains in the chapel of St Michael after evening prayer. He needs to make his peace with Freddie. What happened back there in the office this morning? he asks himself. We've been getting along fine! He's moving out tomorrow. Please don't let it end on a bad note like this.

He tries to humble himself. Yes, I was snippy. Judgemental. I'll apologize. Martin recrosses his legs, violently kicking the chair in front. A tourist jumps, then stares at him. Martin makes a deprecatory gesture, then bows his head again. A fit of giggles seizes him. Did she think I just booted the chair on purpose in a fit of rage?

I
am
angry! Why am I angry?

Because he's doing it again! He's like a silly little boy jumping up and down going, ‘Notice me, notice me, Dad!' Martin feels like booting the chair again. Picking it up and hurling it through the stained-glass window, through those silly blonde Burne-Jones angels. Why?

You're older, Martin. You should have more self-control.
His mum's voice, when he was fighting with his sister. He flushes. Is
this
what's going on? Some kind of pathetic sibling rivalry? Maybe I'm still just a little boy inside, too?

Martin feels that
clunk
as an inner door unlocks. This keeps happening in family therapy!
Please don't fight over me, darlings.
Martin cringes up inside like a sea anemone as the truth prods him: I behave like a jealous little boy when Freddie's around. Yes, because he's naughty and he blatantly gets away with it! Except he doesn't. No. He's lonely, and I must be kind to him.

Martin gets up and heads back to the palace. He's deep in thought and doesn't see the black Porsche till the last second. Brakes squeal. He leaps back. The car reverses, window down. Martin stares into a pair of mad blue eyes.

‘Got a death wish, pal?' With a rude chirp of tyres the Porsche speeds off.

It's dark now. Not everyone is sleeping in the Diocese of Lindchester tonight. The dean keeps her nightly vigil in front of the red N symbol. How tangled everything is. Have we made the right choice of bishop? Yes? No? How can we not think about our persecuted brothers and sisters? Our decisions affect them! Yet it can't be right to try and placate tyrants! Evil prevails when the good do nothing, not when they act. Or does it prevail despite our good actions? Let it not prevail, let it not prevail.

In the vicarage of Gayden Magna Ed is awake. He sits in the dark dining room among the bubble-wrapped sketches – his engagement present! – and cries. Neil is asleep upstairs. Still reeking of Le Male. I can smell him on you. He'd say it, but he can't. Can't. Stand it. Just cannot
stand
hearing Neil deny it. Lie to him. Again.

Chapter 18

I
present you, reader, with a timeless English scene. It is the last week of August and the early morning sunshine has a smoky quality. Plums ripen. Giant puffballs bulge in dewy meadows. The countryside has harvest on its breath.

A tall, thin figure in clerical black passes through a graveyard and out under the lichgate. Behind him the spire rises classically among copper beeches and old limes as if posing for a watercolour. He walks along the lane towards a lovely Georgian rectory. Ah, look at it! Cream painted, perfectly proportioned. Admire the sweeping drive, the neatly trimmed box hedges, the dovecote, the orangery! Covet those espaliered fruit trees hugging the venerable walls of an unseen vegetable garden! And see: borders full of hollyhocks, like embroidered tray cloths. He approaches the wrought-iron gates . . .

And walks past. Down the lane he goes, towards a grim 1970s house at the far end of what was once the Rector of Gayden Magna's apple orchard, because this is the early twenty-first century, not the early nineteenth.

Oh, well.

Sometimes I wish we could turn the clock back and find a way of not selling off all the lovely old vicarages. Or at the very least, revisit the possibility of building new ones with a bit more flair. Not all the wealth and energy of an energetic wealthy designer could bully this parson-box into a
House Beautiful
(Welsh slate and quarry tiles notwithstanding). The Lindchester diocesan architect back in the 1970s only had one set of plans. I think the idea was that clergy could move from parish to parish happy in the knowledge that their carpets and curtains would always fit perfectly in their charmless new home.

How easily we might improve on the current state of affairs, if we could only rewind and try again! Let's go back and
not
make that stupid decision, then everything will be all right. Let's tell ourselves that hindsight has bestowed fresh information unavailable at the time. Above all, let's pretend we didn't realize back then it was stupid, stupid, thrice stupid, when we went ahead and did it anyway.

‘Dude, probably we shouldn't . . . ?'

‘
Definitely
we shouldn't, you bad boy!'

‘Yeah. We
soooo
shouldn't . . .'

Pause.

‘Och, fuck it. C'mere, gorgeous.'

‘Whoa! Mmmmm, ahh . . . Oh, God . . . Wait. Lemme just . . . 'kinoveralls . . .'

‘Allow me.'

But occasionally, when we have barely completed Phase One of Project Stupidity, something intervenes and saves us from ourselves. A phone bursting into the
Jaws
theme tune in a back pocket, for example:

Duuuuun dun!

‘Gah!'

‘Ignore it.'

Duuuuuuun dunn! Duun dun, duun dun, DUUN DUN . . .

‘Mmm-nngh, please? No, listen. Sorry. Listen. Dude, I should get this . . . Ah, nuts.'

Silence.

‘There. As you were, soldier.' Pause. ‘Oh, what? No, c'mon!'

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's just . . . I mean, dude, your fiancé? Gah. My bad. Really sorry?'

‘Well, fuck!'

He is more righteous than I.
Where was that from? The Good Book, probably. Must have heard it in Sunday School.
He is more righteous than I.

Nearly a week on, and it dawns on Neil that
this
is why he so nearly bitch-slapped him. Shamed by a wee hoor who rents himself out as topless feckin' cocktail waiter!
Dude, your fiancé?
Ooh.

Neil drums his nails on his First Class table. He scowls out of the train window. Really not liking himself this morning. Away off in the distance he glimpses the cathedral on its mount, spire like a preacher's finger. Not liking himself. At. All. Daft wee stoner, be like kicking a puppy. Bad man. And thank God he hadn't ran that poor bastard over on the palace drive, either! Attack of John Knox-itis on the way home, predictably. But hey, no point hurting Eds by fessing up to something that never even happened, was there? That would be selfish. Here's your engagement present, kiss kiss, love ya, big man!