Unseen Things Above (34 page)

Oh je
. Felix Joseph Littlechild, you little weasel! She can't let him get away with it, not after all the trouble Freddie May caught for this!

Can she?

Quickly, she shoves the hoodie in and slams the machine door. La la la! Freddie May has a tongue in his head,
ja
? He could have bloody told the dean and the police who the other culprits were! Of course, she must talk to Felix and tell him to own up. Yes, yes. But what if
he
ends up getting a police caution too . . . ?

Ach, Gott!
She sets the machine going and hurries off to give the choral scholars their weekly lesson. And if the four of them weren't also involved in the firework fiasco, then Ulli will eat her broom. There's no way
they
are getting off if her son's going to catch it! And Freddie May is much older, come to think of it. He's nearly twenty-five now, for God's sake! The ringleader ought to take the rap!

She jabs the Song School door keypad (1-6-6-2) and lets herself in. They are late again, the little sods. Bet they're all crapping themselves in case Freddie turns them in. Hah! They won't do anything so daft again in a hurry! So maybe she'll just scare Felix a bit, and tell him he can bloody buy himself a new hoodie. Yes, that might be the best thing.

There. What did I tell you? Murder. They literally (in the Freddie May metaphorical sense of that word) get away with murder!

It's Friday. All around the Diocese of Lindchester laundry is being done. Traditionally speaking, Friday is not washday. But washday no longer exists in this age of automatic washing machines. Every day is washday now. Jane reflects on this as she crams in a load of cushion and sofa covers that have never before been washed in all their twenty years. God, she's a slut!
^*

Jane can remember Mondays when she was a child. The electric boiler with its hose, the blue-marbled rubber mangle on top. And the spin dryer Jane used to sit on (nose in book) to prevent it trundling round the kitchen widdling water as it went. Her only useful contribution. Lord, how domesticity used to eat women alive! Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, bake on Wednesday. Jane grips her ancient trusty Zanussi's sides. Thank you, old friend! A whole day just for washing. Lugging heavy cotton sheets out to the line in the big wicker basket. Despair and rage if it rained unexpectedly while the washing was out and you were a mile away in the library. Winter days of steaming clothes racks round the fire. No wonder Mum swapped to Bri-nylon sheets. And brushed nylon nighties. Ooh, those secret lightning storms under the covers! Oh, the eiderdowns, the candlewick, the sides-to-middled sheets of the pre-duvet era! Tuh. Say that to the young people nowadays, and they don't know what you're talking about.

I don't want to shock you, reader, but Jane is spring-cleaning this morning instead of responding to her emails, updating class registers, reading minutes and agendas, or any of the work cobblers that make cleaning behind the fridge a tempting displacement activity. Danny will be home in a week. Not that she went in for much housework when he was still living here, but his stepmother keeps the house spotless. It's not a competition, and Jane does not have any sense of personal worth bound up in her kitchen surfaces, obviously. But viewed with a little detachment, she concedes that the place is a total disgrace. Furthermore,
if
she's going to rent it out in the New Year, and move in with Matt . . .

Aargh!

Or possibly,
Yay!
?

Jane tries them both. She has to confess,
Yay!
seems nearer the mark. And financially speaking, it's daft to run two separate households. Oh God, is this the slippery slope, though? Will she end up morphing into a Stepford clergy spouse like Susanna Henderson? What if the new bishop's wife takes it upon herself to call round and give Jane some friendly advice, and Jane is obliged to punch her lights out, and it all ends with the police, prison, tabloid headlines and messy divorce?

Or alternatively, what if she stops being a silly mare, and instead contemplates waking up every morning for the rest of her life with that good man beside her? Do you, Jane Margaret Rossiter, take to this idea? I do. I rather think I do. Jane puts on rubber gloves and an Ella Fitzgerald CD and starts cleaning the stove. She's got rhythm, music, her man. What sane woman could ask for anything more?

Across in his pad in Lindford, our friend the archdeacon is also doing some laundry. He's just whacked in a load of brand-new bedding to soften it up a bit. He knows his stuff, does the archdeacon. Knows that even the most undomesticated woman in the world (and his Janey has to be in with a shout for a medal here) appreciates a nice bit of Egyptian cotton sheeting. Pig to iron, mind you, but definitely worth it. He pours in a shot of Summer Breeze fabric softener, and away she goes.

Ha. Just can't get the big soppy grin off his face for any money. He'd love to tell the whole world, but he wouldn't put it past his chum Veronica to lodge a legal objection to their marriage just for the hell of it. The notice is on display in the register office, but it makes sense to keep schtum. He sticks The Proclaimers on and does a spot of cheeky internet browsing, the details of which the reader is at liberty to imagine for themselves. Too right, he's gonna be the man who wakes up next to her.

The Vicar of Gayden Magna is not doing any washing today, because he cannot be trusted to do it properly. A few strategic displays of tissue-related incompetence on Ed's part mean that laundry is now Neil's fiefdom, and no challenge will be brooked. Still, there are always plenty of other things to quarrel about in the vicarage at Gayden Magna.

‘Neil, look, why don't I go on my own to pick up the sketches?'

‘What if he still hasn't done a proper job?'

‘I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyway, they're supposed to be a present for
me
, so surely I get to decide if they're properly framed.'

‘You! You'd be happy if they were Blu-tacked to the wall like a student poster! No, I'm going. He made a dog's breakfast of it first time. I don't trust him.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Neil, they looked absolutely fine! Why do you always have to make difficulties about every—'

‘McIvor.'

Ed gaped. Then he clamped his mouth shut. Exhaled through his nose. ‘Neil—'

‘Bu-bu-bu! Psht! You're doing something I hate, and I need you to stop now, without arguing.'

Ed gritted his teeth and managed to incline his head.

‘Yeah, that's better. Listen, big man, this is me, this is what I'm like. Got that? I'm a perfectionist. So we'll hear no more about it, if you please.' He picked up his keys. ‘Coming?'

On the way they quarrelled about speed cameras, tyre air pressure, whether that large bird of prey was a buzzard or a red kite, how to pronounce ‘vulnerable', and if it was worth risking a ticket by parking on double yellows outside the framing shop. Neil was satisfied he had won every round. Ed had to be satisfied with knowing he was right.

The six newly framed sketches were produced by the long- suffering framer.

‘Actually, I've come round to your view,' he said, as Neil checked them one by one, front and back, mitred corner, bevelled edge, glass, string, hook. ‘They do look better with a slightly darker mount. It lifts them.'

‘What did I tell you?' Neil bent to examine the last picture. ‘Customer's always right, pal.'

Ed caught the framer's eye over the top of Neil's head. He met Ed's gaze blandly. You haven't changed the mount at all, thought Ed. He looked away, loyalty to his fiancé battling with profound sympathy for his victims.

‘Happy now, big man?' Neil asked as they drove home.

‘Yes, absolutely. They're perfect.'

‘No, they aren't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because the wee bastard didn't change the mount at all.'

‘Oh.' Ed blinked. ‘I'm sure he—'

‘Och, I'm not blind. I know the difference between deep cream and sand! And it will drive me mad every time I look at them. But I know you hate making a fuss.' He wiped his eyes and sniffed. ‘That's what really matters to me. That you're happy.'

Ed reached out and laid a hand on his knee. ‘Thanks.'

‘Aye, well. And another thing, that was definitely, but definitely, a red kite.'

‘It was a buzzard, Neil. It didn't have a forked tail.'

‘It was a kite!'

‘Buzzard.'

‘McIvor.'

_____________________

*
Not in the Freddie May sense of that word.

Chapter 30

I
t comes to Miss Blatherwick, over her bowl of porridge, that she is part of the problem. All these years she has quietly believed that she is able, in some small way, to offer solutions. To dispense kind, sensible advice and practical help. To sort things out and brook no nonsense. In short, to carry on playing matron.

And this, it now strikes her, necessarily requires Freddie to continue in the role of naughty chorister. And this can't be good for him. In fact, it may already have done damage. For if she had not chivvied him into applying for the lay clerkship here – where everyone remembers a hundred and one harum-scarum escapades – Freddie might by now be standing on his own two feet as a responsible adult. In another cathedral people would not see and indulge that little tinker still misbehaving on
dec
; they would see Freddie as a man, as the man he is. Yes, without her intervention there would be none of this Peter Pan nonsense he is currently enacting. Playing pirates and redskins around the Close with his band of Lost Boys!

But this in itself is a piece of vanity. As though she were the sun around which Freddie orbited! Countless other bodies exert a gravitational effect, and – Miss Blatherwick discards astrological imagery here in favour of grammatical – Freddie is the subject of his life's sentence, not the object. He is active, not passive.

Nevertheless, it is high time she adjusted her behaviour. She's holding him back. She must stop indulging herself by treating him as a ten-year-old scallywag who still needs his Miss B.

Sunlight slopes into her kitchen from a high window. Dust motes glint; tiny but astonishing flashes in that slanting beam. She has never noticed before – but how beautiful they are! They float, scintillate, turn, fade. Bits of dust, nothing more. They must all settle and be swept away in a duster in due course. But at this precise moment, picked out there by the sun, they seem absurdly glorious and worthy of attention.

And so our steps journey on through the darkness of this passing age. Blossom sugars the winter-flowering cherry branches, where here and there bright leaves still cling. There is a chill in the air now. Sometimes we wake to find a fur of frost on car roofs of a morning. The canonical houses grow cold and canons come in sight, like the poor man of the carol, gathering winter fuel. Years after they have moved on to warmer accommodation the urge to skip-dive for firewood will remain strong.

Leaves limp across roads like wounded creatures. The wind rattles in the lime trees of the Close. In the deanery garden, the palace garden, and behind the Choristers' School, the holly and the ivy wait to be harvested by the flower guild. Pink berries, snowball berries, orange, red, yellow berries decorate hedges again, and under the urban sycamores and planes, leaf stamps mark the pavements like dinosaur footprints.

Dawn is coming. High up on Lindford Common a lonely figure battles uphill through the mist towards the rising sun. He weeps as he runs because he cannot see how he will ever change, ever move his life on, how he will ever grow up enough to win the one he yearns for.
Love me, please love me.
All the other guys? Nothing. Just shadows of you. Because it's you, you I've been looking for? For like, my entire life?

But even if one day his love is returned, Freddie knows deep down that this beloved will fail him, turn out not to be the answer. But that's why he yearns for him! Around, beyond this bright-edged shadow he glimpses, sidelong and refracted, the Beloved – dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart. Oh, he will never get home and be safe! Oh please, oh please. His soul is nothing but an aching O of longing. O Oriens, O Emmanuel. O come. O come.

He crests the hill, lungs bursting. Behind him his long shadow stumbles after like a poor rickety giant. For an instant, though he doesn't see it, a halo of rainbow light gathers in the mist round his shadow's head, and he is touched with glory.

‘All right, then, Mr Archdeacon. It's not important, but I thought I'd just ask: what are you going to wear on The Day?'

‘I don't mind, Janey. What do you want me to wear?'

‘I honestly don't mind either.' Pause. ‘Are you hiring a flash suit?'

‘If you want me to hire a flash suit, I'll hire a flash suit. But it'll make me look like a rugby player up for Sports Personality of the Year. What are you wearing?'

‘I don't know. What do you want me to wear?'

‘Oka-a-ay . . . I'm going to opt for “whatever would make you happiest”.'

‘Answered like a sensible man! However, I note with interest that the thing that would make
me
happiest is now tangled with what would make
you
happiest. So feel free to tell me. Whereupon I will call you a sexist pig.'

‘All righty. In that case, I'd love you to buy yourself another knock-out sexy dress. Red. And tight. I like a sexy tight red dress on my woman.'

‘You sexist pig! OK. I'm on it. And feel free to buy yourself a non-flash suit. Ta-ta for now.'

Dean Marion is away for the first half of this week. She's at General Synod, where among other weighty matters, they will be asked to vote ‘That the Canon entitled “Amending Canon No. 33” be made, promulged and executed.'