Unseen Things Above (21 page)

Then somehow he managed to balls up the sneaky self-medication. Cue the night terrors. It's coming, it's after him, and he's screaming for Maw, but his voice won't work. Fighting, fighting to get out of bed, but something's pressing him down, and Eds has gone, Eds has left him! No! Hunting for him in the dark room, the dark house, room after room, screaming for Eds, not knowing if he's awake, or if this is still the same feckin' nightmare.

‘I'm here, Neil. It's OK. I'm here.'

‘Don't leave me, don't leave me, Eds, please don't leave me.'

‘I won't leave you. Ssh. I'm here. It's all OK.'

And because he was still off-his-tits melted, he only went and told him what he'd done. Nearly done. OK then, fine:
would've
done, but for wee choirslut90 being more righteous than him.

Anyway.

Neil drinks his First Class complimentary coffee. He'd come so close to wrecking everything with that confession.
Of course
Eds read him the riot act. ‘Forsaking all others! What's the point, Neil, I mean, what
is
the point? What does marriage mean to you, if it doesn't mean being faithful?' The wedding's still in the balance, but he's going to prove to Eds he's serious about this.

He leans his head back against the white headrest, closes his eyes. Och, if only he'd kept his big gob shut . . . But no, no. This has to be better. To be out in the open at last? No more lying, no more cheating, no more covering his tracks. He's a gritty Scot. He can do this. He can stand out here in a kilt and let the east wind of truth whistle round his baws for once. And in a totally weird way, it feels safer.

Maybe because he knows he's loved? In spite of everything, that good man still loves him.

Freddie May is running, running, running. Reckons he can get a quick 10K in before work. Gah. Still hasn't returned that call. Oh man, total mistake to come out with no music. Coz now the
Jaws
theme's going round his head again.
Dun dun, dun dun . . .
Must ring, must get on to that before Scary Mentor calls again. Or worse, turns up in Lindchester to mentor him in person. No, he wouldn't do that, would he? Oh, Jesus.
DUUUUNNN DUNN!

Thing is, the very thought of making that call reminds him what a total home-wrecking shite he can be sometimes. What's
with
you? I thought after Paul we were gonna never do this again. No more married guys, spoken-for guys. In the same fucking house even! How bad is that? Oh God, Marty's right, why's he forever hitting on Harry? Wahey! Let's have
another
go at trashing some nice guy's life! Why does he have to be so
needy
? No, to be fair, staying by himself in a big empty house is doing his head in. Yeah, probably that's not helping. But Philip and Philippa will be back from holiday by next week, so he'll have company, and term will start and there'll be like structure to his life again?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. There's nobody he can say it to. I mean yeah, no, course he said it at the time, but understandably? Neil's not impressed. For one second there he thought he was gonna get his face smacked, literally? Which would
not
have gone well. Oh, man. If he could only say sorry to the fiancé as well, but even he can see that's not a super-smart idea? Dude, I'm so sorry, I nearly did your fiancé, only, yeah, then I like didn't? And he'd be all, what? I don't know what you're even talking about! And what makes it like a million times worse is that he's only just yesterday worked out who the fiancé is? Rector of Gayden Magna? Totally sweet guy.

In the distance the fast train to London slices across the landscape. Silence closes back in. A buzzard cruises over the stubble fields. Freddie's shoulders itch under his vest. New tatts healing up now. Sting of sweat telling him he's alive. Yeah, that's why he's running till it hurts. It needs to hurt.

The totally sweet guy arrives back at the empty vicarage. He's just said Morning Prayer in one of his village churches. Two weddings there this Saturday. Wall-to-wall weddings all summer. He's sick of it. No, that's not fair. It's what comes of being vicar of a photogenic church. He goes to the kitchen and fills the kettle. You wouldn't have thought it possible to spend nearly £200 on a kettle, but Neil kept on going till he found a way.

As Ed stands waiting for the world's most perfect kettle to boil, a phrase from the canticle comes back to him:
In the tender compassion
of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us.
Neil's night terrors, his phobia about being abandoned. A childhood of being passed around the extended family while his mother was ‘not so well', or his father was ‘away on business'. Tender compassion – that's what he feels for Neil. His heart is tender.

Too right it bloody is! Because Neil has yet again picked up a steak mallet and tenderized it. Ed stares down at the quarry-tiled floor. He thinks of Bishop Bob. Cracked sternum, but – thanks to Neil's ministrations – alive. Yes, Neil is something of a heart specialist. He's fighting to rescue us now, thinks Ed; to rescue our engagement, the marriage. That same Scots terrier tenacity. But will anything really change? This new transparency, this accountability – how long will it last?

‘You can check my phone, my emails, any time, Eds. Go on, check my messages.'

Ed shakes his head. ‘I'm fine, Neil. I don't need to do that.'

As if you're not capable of deleting stuff, opening a new email account, buying a pay-as-you-go phone. Darling, I don't need to check your messages, I can just check your eyes. After eighteen years Ed can read cheating there as easily as coke or Vicodin. But the sweeties have all been flushed away, Grindr deleted, naughty wee tarts unfollowed on Twitter. Everything will be different from now on.

But
I
haven't changed, thinks Ed. Tenderized? I'm
flayed
by the idea of you with him. I can't look at those beautiful sketches you bought me now. I don't even want them in the house. Jesus, I can't stand it! Him. Moved to Lindchester, with his dirty pretty smile, his trampy clothes, his feral smell. Permanently available, twenty minutes away by Porsche. I can't compete! How can I compete with a greedy amoral twenty-four year old?

Stop,
stop
tormenting yourself! Neil came to his senses in time, didn't he? He chose to walk away from temptation. Yes, draw confidence from that. Marriage, fidelity – they mean something to Neil, they must do. Ed makes his coffee, goes through to his study and kneels. He stares up at the crucifix on the wall. This horrible storm of jealousy will pass. It's like the weather, it will blow over. My heart will mend.

Jesus, grant me this, I pray,

ever in thy heart to stay;

let me evermore abide

hidden in thy wounded side.

*

It's late afternoon. Miss Blatherwick is in the choir vestry, checking that the boys' surplices have been laundered and ironed to her satisfaction. Why she's doing this, when it's none of her business, is beyond her. Chapter took the decision to employ an ironing service two years ago. This is silly. She's behaving like an elderly busybody who can't retire gracefully.

She sits down rather hard on a wooden bench to give herself a good talking to. The air reeks faintly of historic BO from lay clerk cassock armpits. In her mind's eye the vestry crowds with memories, decades of ghost choristers, flitting through, darting jerkily like a time-lapse nature film of a beehive.

Yes, she sees what's troubling her; what she's trying to put right by ensuring the surplices are kept crisp and white as driven snow. Those boys we so criminally failed. The cathedral laundry! It looks very much as though she'll be required to give testimony next month, and the whole lot will be washed in public court. And now this deeply distressing news from Rotherham. The scale of it! One wonders now if anything has changed, whether in fact things are worse than ever, if all this diligent safeguarding and chaperoning is futile. One is sometimes tempted to think that nothing will ever be learned, other than the depressing lesson that there will always be those who prey on children, and children whose story will not be believed.

No. This won't do. Miss Blatherwick has no time for any weak-minded counsel of despair. However bad things are, one can always do the good thing that lies to hand, however small. She takes her mobile phone from her handbag and composes a text: ‘WD YOU LIKE TO COME 4 dinner toñight¿ 7PM BB'

A moment later her phone buzzes in reply: ‘HELL YEAH! LOVE YA MISS B Fêã¿reddie XX'

Miss Blatherwick smiles and gets creakily to her feet. Dratted hip. But she's on the waiting list now, mustn't grumble. She scans the familiar room. That carpet could do with a good hoover. She gathers a couple of dirty mugs to wash and carries them carefully down the spiral stairs to her home.

And thus Miss Blatherwick's heart goes out to this Lost Boy of hers. Freddie's heart goes out to the man he has wronged; whose heart goes out to the man he loves and despairs over. And where does Neil's heart go? Well, I think it creeps by a strange backwoods route to Bishop Bob, not in prayer exactly, but he's like a man pacing to and fro outside a building, nerving himself to go in. He doesn't quite know it yet, but he wants to talk to Bob. About life and death and maybe forgiveness. And Bob – while Janet packs the car to drive them both off at last for a two-week break in the Hendersons' bolt-hole – Bob prays for his brother and stand-in, Bishop Harry, who at this precise moment is praying for Dean Marion, who is lighting a candle at the shrine of William of Lindchester, and praying for her persecuted brothers and sisters in Iraq.

It is gloomy here behind the high altar. As she sets her candle on the stand among the rest, Marion thinks of all the other candles lit at this moment across the globe. All the prayers, all the hearts leaning, yearning, towards some other heart. Linking us. I would like to see these threads of thought lit up across a night-time map, she thinks. A shimmering filigree linking soul to soul. She tries to picture it. Would it throb with tenderness across space and time? If I could only see that, then perhaps each frail strand of mine would not seem so futile. Saints in heaven, pray for us.

It is Thursday morning. Jane looks down at the bathroom scales. What?! I demand a second opinion, you rude bastard! She gets off and on again. The scales stick to their guns. Right! Time for a run, Lardy Muldoon. She tiptoes back to the bedroom and tries to jiggle the drawer open without waking the large corpse that lies face down across her bed snoring. Broken his iron rule about stopping over, bless him. She can bring him breakfast in bed for once. Come on, open. The drawer jerks right out and tips a tangle of knackered sports gear on the floor.

Bollocks!

But the archdeacon snores on. Poor love. Desperately in need of a holiday. Jane excavates through the fossilized gear of lost eras: Pleistocene sports bra to tether the mighty bazoomers of doom, Mesozoic leggings, Palaeozoic vest. She struggles into them, drops a kiss on the sleeping bald head, and tiptoes downstairs.

Come along, trainers on, you lazy tart. Yay! This'll be FUN!

After a few stretches, Jane puts the door on the latch and creeps out. She skirts round the archdeacon's Mini parked across her drive and sets off at a lumbering pace. It's actually quite a nice day. Red berries crowd the rowan branches. Almost their first anniversary! And they will even manage to snatch a couple of sneaky days away together next week. Jane smiles as she runs. Yeah, life's pretty good right now.

The archdeacon wakes with a hideous lurch, as though he's involuntarily undergone the ice bucket challenge. Crap! He leaps out of bed. No time for a shower even. Flings yesterday's clothes on. Late, late, late! Rings Penelope, tells her to let Harry know he's on his way.

‘Janey?' He crashes down the stairs two at a time. She's not in the kitchen. Dammit. He reads her note:
Gone for a run. Pastries when I get back. xx

Damn, damn, damn! He scrawls an explanation, grabs his keys and hurtles out of the house.

This won't do, Matt. You know this won't do. He has to grit his teeth to stop himself driving like chuffing Jehu. You've got to sort this. Decide if you're going for the suffragan job, and if you are, you've got to tell her. Because you're going to have to choose. This is a fork in the road you're approaching.

No. It's a roundabout. It's a flipping roundabout and I've been driving round and round it for months, trying to kid myself I can go in two directions at once without choosing. I'm a fraud. A big old fraud. And a sinner.

‘The archdeacon's on his way,' calls Penelope through the open office door. ‘He'll be about twenty minutes.'

‘Thanks,' says Harry. He whiles away the time checking the post. There's an envelope marked ‘Private and Confidential' addressed to him. He opens it and reads the contents.

‘Bishop? Are you all right in there, Bishop?' calls Penelope.

‘I'm fine, thanks,' replies Harry. ‘Just banging my head on the desk.'

The envelope contains a formal complaint (Form 1a, with written evidence and other documents attached) of misconduct against the Archdeacon of Lindchester, for conduct that is unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of the clergy. The complainant is one Revd Dr Veronica da Silva.

SEPTEMBER

Chapter 19

T
his diocese! Argh! Poor Bishop Harry sat up straight and smiled brightly at Penelope when she hurried in to check that he was all right. Once she was reassured, he scribbled a cartoon of an angry woman priest, and another of a big bald archdeacon. In his mind's eye, he Blu-tacked them to the dartboard he had foolishly not brought with him to Lindchester from his previous job, where it had performed such a key role in stress management.

Ho hum. Sad to say, Harry knew CDM procedures like the back of his hand. The letter of acknowledgement had to go off straight away to the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva.
Not
one for Penelope to handle. Then he needed to refer the matter to the diocesan registrar within seven days, who would get back to him within twenty- eight days to advise whether there were grounds to proceed with the complaint. And in Harry's experience, diocesan registrars seldom earned themselves the nickname Captain Reckless. This thing would have to run its course like some baroque combine harvester scrupulously shelling a walnut.

He looked at his watch. There was time to take a walk and compose himself before Matt's arrival, so that he could act as though he had not just received a letter dobbing him in for shacking up with his girlfriend. He gave the desk one final thump with his forehead and went outside to stroll round the palace garden.

The palace garden! Perhaps this has long been a matter of concern for the keen horticulturalists among my readers. I fear it has been neglected for almost a year now. You may remember how poor Susanna, in her distress, simply let the fruit fall from the trees and rot. The herbaceous borders were not tidied, nor the clumps divided in the autumn. And then along came a vast pathetic fallacy of a gale that laid waste to everything. I am sure that shortly before the new bishop moves in, a task force will sweep through and make things presentable. Whispers continue to suggest that it will be Guilden Hargreaves, but we do not expect an announcement for a couple more weeks, and even then we will still be a long way off the enthronement (or ‘installation', if the next bishop is squeamish about pride of man and earthly glory).

I will begin a new paragraph here so that my readers can make themselves comfortable before I launch into another verse of ‘Here we go round the ecclesiastical mulberry bush'. Ready?
This is the way
we make a bishop, make a bishop, make a bishop!
You might be forgiven for supposing that the process of consultation, mandating, longlisting, shortlisting, interviewing, praying and pondering, and finally choosing a candidate would constitute making an appointment. Not so, my friends! We will pass lightly over the business of DBS-enhanced disclosure and medicals on Harley Street (with mandatory prescription of statins). We will allude in passing to a name going forward to Her Majesty. All of this takes many months, during which time the preferred candidate must maintain complete radio silence. He must have no contact with the diocese and he may not even go and look round the palace he will be living in.

I trust the reader has not lost sight of the fact that there must also be
a process of election
. Dean Marion is standing by to receive a letter from the sovereign instructing her to summon her College of Canons for the purpose of electing a new Bishop of Lindchester. Then comes the second letter instructing them to elect person X. These days person X will be the person the CNC has selected, rather than some foppish favourite of the monarch who nobody wants, and who may tiresomely need assassinating at some future date. Marion will duly summon her canons, and those who fail to show will be declared ‘contumacious'. Sadly she can no longer seize their goods (a practice Gene had expressed an interest in exercising on her behalf, having taken a fancy to the prebendary of Gayden Magna's consort's Porsche). The canons will duly appoint X as their new bishop. If they fail to do so, I believe Her Majesty will dismiss the lot of them and appoint a College of Canons who will do her bidding. It is a process of election familiar in many parts of the globe.

There then follows a Confirmation of Election in York. Well, assuming our man is already a bishop somewhere. If not, he'll need to be consecrated somewhere along the way. After this, the new bishop is
officially
the new bishop and may style himself +Lindcaster in his Christmas cards if he is a bit of a ponce. He still needs to pay homage to the sovereign by kissing her hand (‘a brush of the lips, not a slobber') and then he may be installed/enthroned in Lindchester and the cathedral choir may sing Parry's
I
Was Glad
, as cathedral choirs will under such circumstances, and
finally
there will be a Bishop of Lindchester in place a mere fifteen months after the previous bishop left. Which makes Dr Proudie's elevation to Bishop of Barchester in 185— ‘a month after the demise of the late bishop' seem like something from a work of fiction.

The implication of all this for the palace garden, then, is that nobody is falling over themselves yet to weed the borders.

And now it is September. Season of perversely hot summer weather, rendering school playing fields rock hard and skinning knees without mercy during the first rugby lessons of the year. Paint fumes linger in classroom and corridor. Swallows natter on wires. There goes the crocodile of choristers in their cherry red caps filing to the Song School. Aw, look at the tiniest tots, in grey shorts and new blazers, faces a-tremble with homesickness. Freddie May watches them go, and remembers. But I predict that the tots, like most other choristers, will look back on these years and stoutly defend them as magical.

Choral term has not started yet, but the boys must be drilled in their Mags and Nuncs; taught to rrrrroll their Rs and inducted into the mystery of when it is proper to pronounce salvation ‘sal-vacey-ohn'. They must get the silliness out of their system and not snort at ‘O loud be their trump' or naughtily slur ‘our souls' into arseholes. Finally, they must master the Lindchester style of pointing for the psalmody, which is different from that of all other cathedrals, and considered superior; just as other styles are considered superior in other cathedrals, although we know in Lindchester (with a faint smirk) that they are wrong about that.

‘She's sent me some rainbow shoelaces!'

‘Hello, Dominic! I'm very well thanks,' said Jane. ‘I'm just embedding reasonable adjustments into next year's curriculum.'

‘Yes, yes, shut up. Rainbow shoelaces!'

‘Well, why not? It's an anti-homophobic bullying thing.'

‘All the deanery clergy got a pair! I refuse to wear them! It's not a church thing! It's Stonewall and it's football!'

Jane waited until Dominic's rant sputtered out into silence. ‘And how may I help you, my darling? Would you like me to hold her down while you garrotte her with your rainbow laces?'

‘The letter has the diocesan logo on it, as well as the chaplaincy's and St James' Church. I bet nobody's been consulted. God! It's as though she's the diocesan LGBT officer! And she is not!'

‘Take it up with the diocese, then.'

‘I will! I hate being bullied and manipulated like this.'

‘Yes, it must feel as if she's colonized the moral high ground and now nobody's allowed to query her views without being yelled at,' Jane sympathized.

There was a dangerous silence. ‘Meaning what, exactly?'

‘Nothing,' said Jane. ‘I was reflecting upon the tenor of the Scottish independence debate. You aren't allowed to disagree with the Yes campaign. That would be like questioning equal marriage.'

‘And that, right there, is where you ruined it, Jane. That last cheap shot.'

Jane laughed her filthy laugh. ‘They should have phrased the referendum question the other way round. Nobody wants to get behind a No campaign, like a bunch of freedom-hating naysayers. We
all
want to say Yes. God, but it's like bloody
King Lear
though, isn't it? All the flamboyant poetry and romance on one side, all the prosaic truth on the other. Hello? Are you still there?'

‘I'm strangling myself with my rainbow laces out of sheer boredom.'

‘But with pride, I hope. Listen, why don't you complain to Matt about Our Lady of the Laces? She's taking the diocese's name in vain. She shouted at him about women bishops, so he'll be on your side.'

‘It's not about taking sides, Jane.'

‘Oh. I thought we were talking about the Church of England.'

‘Why don't you go and embed some reasonable adjustments up your arse?' enquired Dominic. ‘And then do you want to come for lunch?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘It's only salad and soup. I've had to revert to my fat man trousers.'

‘I hear you, brother. I'll bring yogurts for pudding.'

‘Oh, joy.'

As it happens, Dominic is not the only one feeling manipulated by the Revd Dr Veronica da Silva. The Vicar of St James' Church, Lindford is sitting in his church office, stunned. The door was slammed shut five minutes earlier by Veronica. His head is still ringing.

All he tried to do was gently press her about it. But the issue shifted from whether Veronica ought to have put the church and diocesan logo on the letter heading, to whether Geoff, by his refusal to support Veronica's campaign, was tacitly condoning homophobia within the Church and, by extension, legitimizing the persecution and murder of gays and lesbians under totalitarian regimes everywhere. What? What just happened there? Geoff closes his eyes. Is it me? He waits in the silence.

Christ in me. Christ with me.

Traffic goes by outside the church. He hears the screech of magpies clashing in the plane tree. There is no reasoning with her. Every time he seeks to clarify something, the goalposts shift. This has never happened to him before; he has never encountered anyone so impossible to deal with! Yes, he's disagreed with people – bitterly, sometimes – but he's never encountered this . . . what? This sense of wrestling with an empty coat, not a person. Where, where to find Christ in the experience?

And then there are the apparent discrepancies in her CV. He's been too preoccupied with the CNC process. He kept telling himself the archdeacon's silence must mean that there's nothing to worry about. No, it's no good, he'll just have to hassle Matt again, if only to set his mind at rest.

The Porsche of the consort of the prebendary of Gayden Magna is currently parked on double yellows outside the picture-framing shop near the gatehouse to the Close. Neil has just dropped off the six sketches to get them
properly
framed. (We spare a prayer here for the poor sod who has just blithely said, ‘No problem, I'll do that for you.') Neil emerges back on to the street. Shit. It's the wee slut. With
him
, Psycho Boyfriend, from the exhibition. Neil scoots into the car before he's spotted. Heh heh! The
Jaws
tune makes sense now. Not more righteous than me after all – just more scared of his other half!

‘Um, dude, why are we . . . holding hands?'

‘Because I'm your mentor.'

Gah. Freddie's brain is in meltdown. Literally? Barely knows which way they're walking. Mentor's shoes clip along the cobbles. Omigod, omigod, this is totally happening? I'm totally walking along with Andrew Jacks? Like we're together?

‘My instructions were clear: to take you in hand and give you a steer where necessary.'

Freddie snorts. ‘Ha ha, dude, I think that was like, metaphorical?'

The hand holding his tightens. ‘I dare say. But you show signs of flight. Are you scared of me, Mr May?'

‘Um, yeah?'

‘Oh, good.' They stop. ‘Let's try here.'

They're outside a coffee shop. ‘Sure.'

A black Porsche roars past them. They go in. A little barista appears, super-excited to see them.

‘Hey, guys? How're YOU today? Table for two?' So she's a Kiwi, greeting them like long-lost rellies? ‘Wanna stay inside? Or would you rather sit outside on the dick?'

Mentor turns to Freddie, eyebrow raised. ‘Would you enjoy that?' Freddie explodes with mirth again. ‘Thank you, we'll sit outside.'

He steers Freddie out to the narrow deck looking down over the rooftops of old Lindchester. ‘Vowel shift: fascinating phenomenon. What a lovely spot.' He gazes out. ‘But then, I am famously fond of decks.'

‘
Stop
that.' Freddie wipes his eyes. ‘You're a bad man.'

‘I have never claimed otherwise.'

They sit opposite one another. Omigod, omigod. Freddie reaches for the menu, so he won't have to look at him. The menu is twitched from his fingers.

‘Your full attention, please, Mr May.'

‘Oh, God. OK!' He braces himself, glances at those light grey eyes. ‘OK. Cool. I'm listening.' Silence. ‘Look, about that time you rang me? So yeah, I totally meant to get back to you, only—'