Unseen Things Above (35 page)

I hope, O pedant reader, you did not get excited there. ‘Promulged' is not a typo, it's an archaic form of ‘promulgated'. We like our archaisms here on Planet Anglicanism. Where else does one encounter the words ‘apparitor' and ‘porrect' (which pleasingly, spellcheck wishes to correct to ‘correct')?

So: you say promulgate, I say promulge, let's call the whole thing off. Fortunately, it won't come to that this time round. Arguments are done and dusted, as far as General Synod goes. The relevant website notes: ‘This will be the final rubber stamp on the legal process permitting women to be ordained as bishops. The vote is a formality.' We are, of course, permitted to wrangle about this unofficially for as many decades to come as we care to; but the serious combatants are now hunched in their bunkers strategizing for the next battle. Having disappointed the media by our inability to tear the Anglican Communion into ribbons over women, doomy predictions are now focused on the gay issue.

Will the Most Revd Dr Michael Palgrove be the captain at the helm when the good ship Anglicanism finally gets scuttled by its warring crew? But that is to adopt a very Anglo-centric view. The Anglican Communion worldwide is more a flotilla than a ship, and the Most Revd Dr Michael Palgrove is perhaps better viewed as the admiral on board the titular flagship. He may lead, but he cannot compel the fleet to follow. The captains on board the GAFCON vessels have long been tapping their compasses, sending up distress flares and semaphoring, ‘Ahoy! Check your readings! Is north no longer north on board the
Canterbury
?'

Has our destination changed? Or are liberal instruments more finely calibrated, better able to discern true north amid the distortions of culture, the warping shash of context?

But anyway. Let this not blight our celebrations. Huzzah for General Synod! We can now, for the first time in history, officially appoint women bishops. In the C of E, I mean. There have been Anglican women bishops elsewhere in the Communion since 1989. The sees currently vacant may now engage in a seemly scramble behind the scenes to appoint England's First Woman Bishop. Stealthy manoeuvring has already begun, in the manner of rush-hour commuters trying to steal a march by suavely positioning themselves on the platform where they believe the train doors will open.

If you wish, you can nip to the bookies and have a flutter on Dean Marion. Unless you come from a Nonconformist background, and even a church tombola still smacks of Satan (who with bath salts and York Fruits seeks to lure you down the slippery slope to gambling on the Sabbath). I have been told that the odds on Marion Randall are rather good.

From all over the diocese, clergy – or lay readers, or churchwardens – drive to Lindchester to buy Advent candles from the cathedral shop, where sales of the Dorian Singers' new CD are brisk (word's got out: it's Freddie May in his nuddy pants on the cover). Well, I say they drive to Lindchester, but that is to gloss over the increasing numbers who adopt the dastardly practice of ordering their Advent candles online. But however they are purchased, five Advent candles are required: four for the Sundays in Advent, one for Christmas Day. Depending on churchmanship, that's one white, one pink, three purple; or one white, four purple; or one white, four red. Artisan, smokeless, beeswax, pillar, tapered, large, small, oil-filled, ‘natural candles that visibly burn down', ‘nylon candles that eliminate wax spills'. From choice overload and micro-decisions: Good Lord, deliver us.

Advent rings are fetched out of vestry cupboards. Advent wreaths are bought, or dug out of lofts and garages. Advent carols are rehearsed. In traditional parishes, fruit and suet are laid in ready for the making of Christmas puddings on Stir-up Sunday (aka the Sunday of Christ the King).

Before long the gigantic cathedral tree will arrive in Lindchester and be dropped into its socket on the lawn in front of the west end, right in the middle of Gavin's labyrinth. He's mowed it flat now in readiness – to the dismay of little Chad William, the chancellor's son – but from high above, the stone saints, the gargoyles and pigeons, the pest control man's Harris hawk, the masons and naughty lay clerks up on the scaffolding may still trace the faint pattern if they wish.

Only four more Fridays. Leah has worked it out. Only four more Fridays-after-school spent in this office. Ever. Daddy's new job starts in January, and from then on Mummy will drop her and Jess off at his new office in Lindford, which is a lot closer to school. Oh, it's so convenient for everybody, Mummy doesn't have to use so much petrol and Jess won't get car-sick. So everyone's a winner!

Like Leah cares. Tuh.

Last Friday Bishop Harry and Penelope were saying to Daddy, ‘We need continuity, can you give us one day a week until the next bishop gets here?' Leah prayed with her fingers crossed:
Let him say yes, say Friday! Say yes, say Friday!
Right, like prayer ever works. Because they decided Wednesdays. So this is the last four Fridays left. Whatever. Like who even cares?

Leah sits at Daddy's desk and does her maths homework. Jess is under the desk playing with lame-tastic Barbie. If you stay really quiet, grown-ups forget you're there. They think homework uses up your entire whole brain, so there's no brain power left over to listen to what they're saying. Seriously, who needs an invisibility cloak? Grown-ups are so dumb.

The archdeacon is getting married next week. Massive big secret. And the woman priest who everyone hates is going to Australia, and now she's off with stress. Massive big secret. And Bishop Bob might be going to take early retirement. Massive big secret. Do they seriously think Leah can't hear them? Maybe they think she's as dumb as Jess, who can't even crack the grown-up so-called ‘code' of leaving gaps, and going ‘hmm-hmm', and saying ‘You Know Who', like they are talking about Voldemort. What kind of a duh-brain do you have to be, if you can't work out who A Certain Lay Clerk is? (Next year she is
so
going to get some roman candles and fire them off like a gun in the back garden.)

But today nobody is talking. It's boring. Why does everything in her life have to be so boring? She might as well be DEAD. She gives a push and the office chair spins. Someone has put a mitre and a bra on the big pink teddy bear, which is really inappropriate and childish. The clock says 4.20. Quickly, she fills in all the gaps on the sheet with random numbers, coz who cares about stupid maths? Oh, look, I got zero out of twenty, that is very disappointing, I am very disappointed, but I tried my best, Miss, that is what counts.

It's cold and it's getting dark, but Leah goes outside and does kata on the palace drive. Because she's working towards her next grade, obviously. Not because she might see the choir men going to their practice soon, or anything.

Gah! Face-palm. Friday. She's there again, poor kid. So Freddie heads round the Close the long way. Still, come the New Year, Marty will have started the (ha ha ha!) BLO job in Lindford. Maybe Freddie will swing past the palace on the last week, do a farewell kata with her? Yeah, be good to do that. He jogs to the Song School. Totally reminds him of himself back in the day? Three Choirs, hanging around Dr Jacks, all notice me, notice me!

And it totally kills him to think: that poor kid out there going through her moves in the dark? The one who can't see it's never, ever gonna happen? Honestly? – that's him.

So, that woman priest everyone hates is ‘off with stress'. Do we believe her? Do we heck. Still, from Geoff's point of view as her clergy colleague, it is a huge relief. He will not have to stand at the altar with her, pretending that her dagger handle is not jutting between his shoulder blades. Geoff has been cited as one of the causes of her stress. To my mind, this is a bit like all of the other reindeer filing a complaint against Rudolph for bullying in the workplace. With his sensible head on, Geoff knows this: but it still distresses him out of all proportion, and though he knows it is out of proportion, this doesn't assuage the distress. Only time will mend this one. Time, and the absence of Veronica.

Why should she be allowed to get away with this? The tendency of this narrative is to imply that ultimately, there is no getting away with things. That is why we strain our eyes to the east in Advent – with all the yearning of a mother at the arrivals gate at Heathrow, straining for the first glimpse of her great shambling ogre of a son, back from New Zealand after nearly two years of absence. We watch and wait and long for the coming judgement. Or the coming mercy. Are they one and the same? Two sides of the same coin? Two different coins as far apart as the east is from the west? But by that, do we mean sunrise and sunset, or the Greenwich meridian? Maybe justice and mercy are divided by the entire universe, yet paired; quantumly entangled in ways the non-physicist cannot comprehend, so must humbly accept?

I will abandon this argument. Because right now, in the vicarage of Gayden Magna, a less metaphysical conundrum is being teased out, as Ed and Neil try to hang the six newly framed sketches in the dining room without killing one another.

‘I'm telling you, that looks fine to me, Neil.'

‘It's not straight. No way is that straight.'

‘Well, it's straight enough. Oh, for God's sake, Neil!'

‘I'm downloading a spirit level app.' He hums while he waits. Another old Sunday School chorus. ‘Mercy there was great and grace was free. Here we go. Ha! See there? See? I was right. Move that end up a bit. Not
that end
, you tool! Hey! Where do you think you're going?'

‘Call me when you're done, Neil, and I'll come and admire it.'

‘Hello? We were supposed to be doing this together. As a couple? And another thing!'

Ed sighs. ‘What?'

‘Listen, I want Bishop Bob to marry us.'

‘Neil, he isn't allowed to, and we can't ask him. It's not fair on him—'

‘I know that! What, do I look stupid? Do you think I want to give him another heart attack? If I'm honest, I'm thinking with hindsight you were wrong to drag him out here to meet us. I mean, you weren't to know, obviously.'

Ed gawps in disbelief. ‘That was
you
! You insisted on it!'

‘Well, we'll not argue. I'm thinking he's not long off retiring, is he? Can he maybe marry us when he's retired?'

‘No! Get it into your head: C of E clergy are barred from conducting same-sex marriages. If you insist on Bob doing it, you'll have to wait till the legislation changes.'

‘Och, well. Maybe we should get civil partnered while we wait? Then we'd be
something
. I hate all this . . . this no proper status thing, Eds. Think about it? I know you're dead set against it, but will you at least consider it?'

‘What? What are you on about? I'm not dead set against it. That was you, remember? You're the one pushing for—'

‘Well, you're wrong, but we'll not argue. Psht! Stop arguing. Just promise you'll think it over?'

‘I don't
need
to think it over! I'd do it now, Neil.'

‘Aye, you say that, but I mean, do it
soon
. ASAP. Before—'

‘You're not listening!'

‘I
am
listening! Ssh! – before Christmas. Coz we could, our notice is still valid. That's what I'm saying.'

‘And I'm saying
Yes
. Idiot! YES, let's do it! Shall I ring the register office now?'

‘Och, no need. Way ahead of you.' Neil grins. ‘Wanna get hitched next Friday, big man?'

Chapter 31

W
ake, O wake! with tidings thrilling

The watchmen all the air are filling,

Arise, Jerusalem, arise!

Jane watches her sleeping son. He lies on the sofa under a nice cuddly red throw. Jane bought the throw when it became clear that no amount of brute force was sufficient to cram the sofa cushions back into their shrunken covers. Danny lies like a felled pylon, face down, snoring. Jane remembers how you lose sleep at university, then spend the rest of your life trying to catch up. And if you go on to become a mother, that second tsunami of sleep deprivation means your infrastructure never fully recovers. And this is why I am such a grumpy old cow, my darling boy. I blame you. She strokes the mane of black curls back from his face. He doesn't stir.

Bookends. Those choo-choo train bookends. Where did they get to? Jane can picture them. Handmade, wooden, brightly painted. A gift from Paul and Susanna Henderson, the closest Danny had to godparents. Bookends and an illustrated Children's Bible. Packed off to the charity shop in some purge or other, probably that time she humanely culled the menagerie of soft toys. Oh dear, and that Mother's Day necklace, wooden beads from a car-seat cover, strung on an orange bootlace. Should've kept that. I could've worn it to my – argh! Deep breath and say it – WEDDING.

This is a bookend moment. The close bracket round Danny's childhood. There was a life before Project Motherhood, and there will be life beyond. Two decades ago – straight out of hospital – she'd sat by his cot (reeling, schnockered with exhaustion!) and watched her little curled-up dab of a thing, burrowed face down into the sheet, black wisps on his head, bum in the air. This is it; from now on, the wheels on the motherhood bus go round and round. I've got to drive safely, keep you alive and drop you off in adulthood in one piece. Brahms' ‘Lullaby' tinkling in the background. Garish yellow activity bear clamped to the cot bars.

Totally
verboten
, allowing your babe to sleep face down, but no matter how dutifully I put you on your back, you ended up on your front. Ha, my first insight into your sweet stubbornness. And now I'm watching you again, fast asleep, aged nearly twenty. Knowing full well that there's no way you're going to come clothes shopping with me today. No, sadly, I can no longer chop you in the back of the knees, fold you into your buggy and strap you firmly in place.