Acts and Omissions (14 page)

Chapter 26

Midsummer. Wild roses scramble up embankments and over hedges. Down by Gresham's Boats tourists clash punt poles on the Linden. The tea shops of Lindchester are bustling. Undergraduates, released from exam bondage, make day trips to Historic Lindchester to picnic on its riverbanks and chunder on its cobbles.

The Dorian Singers' concert this coming Saturday is sold out. I fear we must attribute their popularity as much to the theme music for
that
TV drama as to their technical brilliance. Many of our favourite people will be there in the audience. Some will have complimentary tickets and sit on the front row covertly reading a Bible commentary; others will be unable to afford a ticket, and will sell programmes instead, then lean on a pillar, gaze hungrily at the director, and drift off into Dorianland for a spot of choral sex.

Wendy will be there. She's bought a ticket for Madge as well, to say thank you for all her help with the curate's house. Jane and Dominic are going, but sitting in the cheap seats a long way from the stage. This may not matter too much, because it is the Dorian Singers, and who knows where those nutters will sing from? The cathedral administrator, a very nice gentleman called Terrence Hodgeson nearing retirement, has risked life and limb inching along narrow walkways up in the clerestory with the canon precentor, whimpering ‘Health and safety!' and begging Giles not to allow the Dorian Singers up here.

It is Monday. Freddie – nose mending and black eyes faded to a pair of dark circles – is back in the bishop's office after his week of painting and decorating. Penelope has already confiscated the stapler and told him to step away from the guillotine. In desperation, she's given him the Dorian Singers' photocopied programmes to fold.

‘No! Hugo Milton-Hayes? No way! I was at school with him. How come
he's
in the Dorian Singers? Fucking drama queen countertenor. Huh.'

‘Is it Dorian as in Dorian Gray?' asked Penelope.

‘I'm guessing Dorian mode? Like the white notes, D to D on the keyboard?' Freddie sang it for her.

‘How on earth do you know? Have you got perfect pitch?'

‘Nah, I can just like remember what a D sounds like?'

‘That
is
perfect pitch,' hissed Martin without looking round.

‘No, Marty, it's
actually
pseudo-absolute pitch.' Freddie prowled across to where Martin was sitting.

‘Freddie,
leave
!' shouted Penelope, in her best dog-training voice.

‘Wha-a-at? I was just going to give him a back rub.'

‘Well, don't. You know he doesn't like it.'

Must we go through this soap opera every single day, thought Martin. The pathetic ‘Look at me, aren't I a naughty boy?' routine, which Penelope simply colludes with. Martin clenched his teeth so hard his ears started ringing.

‘What can wash away my stain? Nothing but the—'

‘Excuse me?' Martin snapped. ‘Some of us are trying to work.'

But Freddie raised his voice till it filled the office. ‘What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.'

For a moment everything stood still. Penelope replaced the receiver she'd just picked up. Martin's forefingers stopped their vicious pecking at the keyboard. The bishop, behind his closed door, paused and listened.

‘No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.'

It's so wrong, thought Martin. Why would God squander such an incredible gift on that little shite? It was like the proverbial gold ring in a pig's snout.

Silence. ‘Man, I love what they do with that hymn. The harmonies?'

‘Oh, Freddie!' Penelope wrung her hands. ‘I'm sure you're good enough to be in the Dorian Singers. Why can't you just focus and sing properly like this all the time?'

‘Boys just wanna have fun, Mish Moneypenny.'

Certainly the precentor's boys just wanna have fun. Even now, at the eleventh hour, Lukas and Felix Littlechild do not want to revise for their A-levels and GCSEs. Normally Ulrika cracks down on idleness in all its teen forms, but on Friday her vigilance is impaired by pre-concert stress. Mr high-maintenance Dorian himself will be staying in their guest room. She's already had one row with Giles about this. (‘Book him into a hotel, for God's sake!' ‘No, he's an old friend!') So now she's got to find time to hoover behind the wardrobe, and make a supermarket trip to stock up on the sodding bloody organic soya milk and San Pellegrino bottled water and whatever the bloody hell other stuff he has to have. Grrrr. She slams the front door and devotes long compound nouns in her mother tongue to Mr Dorian as she drives to Waitrose. My colloquial German is rusty these days, but I can tell you that
Schwein
,
Scheiß
and
Schwanzlutschen
are all in the mix.

I will also tell you a secret: Ulrika is a tiny bit scared of Mr Dorian.

The lawn of 16 Lime Crescent, Carding-le-Willow has been mowed. Well, ploughed, really. But it will improve. The shrubs have been hacked back. There is a nice bouquet of flowers and a homemade cake waiting in the kitchen. I do hope Virginia feels cherished by her new vicar and parish when she moves in on Saturday. It is a pity that her curacy arrangement at Risley Hill didn't work out. (Matt the Knife pulled the plug on that one after the rector of Risley Hill fell so disastrously in love with the wife of the bishop's chaplain.) We must hope that Virginia does not feel like she's been fobbed off with second best. Personally, I think Wendy will make an excellent training incumbent. Would the rector of Risley have baked Virginia a cake that is both gluten and lactose free? I doubt it.

Timothy Gladwin, the cathedral director of music, has been working hard this week. So has the cathedral choir, men and boys (still no girl choristers at Lindchester, I'm afraid). If you wander past the Song School you may have your withers wrung by snatches of ‘For the beauty of the earth'. This concert – a fundraiser for the choir trip to Germany in the summer – is a very big deal indeed. Timothy feels the pressure keenly (he too is a bit scared of Mr Dorian). Thrilling to perform with the Dorian Singers, of course, even though they'll mainly be doing cheesy Rutter numbers and crowd-pleasers. The Hallelujah Chorus, for God's sake!

Gene, the husband of the dean, is looking forward very much to this concert, and the post-concert bash afterwards. He was most disappointed to hear that Timothy's distinguished predecessor, Sir Gregory Laird – normally a stalwart of these concerts – had arranged a prior engagement the instant he heard that Mr Dorian was performing. Shame. Gene had been looking forward to some choral fireworks. (Cf. Laird's even-handed review of the latest Dorian Singers' CD: ‘Dumbed-down and toe-curlingly meretricious in its sheer saccharine awfulness.')

Well, Timothy need not have worried. The concert was a riotous success and nobody plunged to their death from the clerestory. I will now hurry my readers off to the post-concert party, where Freddie May will do what Freddie May does best – take aim and shoot himself flamboyantly in the foot.

Quickly, now. Shoulder your way through the crowds unfurling their umbrellas. We're heading to the deanery, where the performers are already mingling with the great and the good. The bishop is being talked to by the high sheriff. There's Susanna, head tilted pastorally as she listens to the headmaster's wife. Gene is pouring drinks and stirring up trouble wherever he can. Come.

‘Freddie May! As I live and breathe! How the fuck are
you
?' Hugo Milton-Hayes hugged him. ‘Guys, guys, I was at school with this nob-head.' Freddie was introduced to several other younger members of the Dorian Singers who were stationed by the booze. ‘Hey, can you still do that Buddhist monk thing? Listen up, guys, you gotta hear to this!'

‘Seriously, you don't want to?' But Freddie allowed himself to be persuaded. That tortured drone emerged from his lips again, like bagpipes warming up.

The noise drew the attention of the director himself. Picture a serial killer styled by Tom Ford and you have him; in his early fifties, tall, lean, silver-dark, with psychotic pale grey eyes. He crossed the room, like a shark slipping between surfers and positioned himself in front of Freddie. Freddie broke off, and blushed to the roots.

‘Do that again.'

Freddie obeyed.

Mr Dorian looked as if a puppy was widdling on his trouser leg. ‘Dear God. Please stop.'

‘How are you even
doing
that?' asked Hugo.

Freddie, stuttering with hero worship, blurted something about Tuvan throat singing? Harmonics?

‘And freakishly virtuosic breath control,' said Mr Dorian. He favoured Freddie with a long sociopathic stare. ‘Well, well. Little Freddie May, all grown up.'

A jolt passed through Freddie. Remembered! By the great Mr Dorian!

‘Who's your voice teacher these days?'

‘Um, so yeah, I like, um, I haven't actually got one right now?'

‘Really? What stage are you at?'

‘Right, ah, so it's complicated? I'm like, I've taken time out? But I've got a choral scholarship at Barchester?'

Mr Dorian dismissed the eavesdroppers with a wave, then perused Freddie's face, taking in the broken nose, the fading black eyes. ‘How's the voice? When you're not murdering it.'

Gene drew near, scenting the makings of a good row. He watched with interest as Freddie stood on one foot tugging his hair, as if he were in a school corridor explaining why his homework was late.

‘Oh, you know?'

Mr Dorian indicated that he did not know.

‘Like, it's kind of average? You know, a nice tenor sound, but it's never going to be anything special?'

‘How can you possibly know that?'

‘So yeah, someone warned me I couldn't expect my adult voice to like . . . yeah.'

The director pounced. ‘Who was this?'

Silence.

‘Because I'd question the credentials of anyone who told a twelve-year-old boy that.'

‘Yeah? Well, actually I was more like fifteen' – ooh! a promising spark, thought Gene – ‘and I think he knows what he's talking about?'

‘Aha, I discern the presence of the sainted Gregory hovering! Yes?' The director swirled his San Pellegrino in its glass. ‘And, what? You internalized Laird's godlike pronouncement and simply rolled over?'

Go, go! urged Gene. He saw Freddie's jaw clench. High time someone gave Mr May a boot up his cute little arse.

‘Purely out of interest,' went on Mr Dorian, ‘why not try to prove the old bastard wrong instead? Why this pattern of self-sabotage Giles has been telling me about? Pre-empting the possibility of failure?'

To Gene's delight, Freddie's switch tripped. ‘Look,
fuck
you, asshole! Seriously, go fuck yourself. Don't fucking analyse me. You know nothing about me!'

The director allowed a glacial pause. Then he leant close and said very, very quietly, ‘What is your problem, exactly, Mr May? Care to enlighten me? It seems to me you've got it all – you're a born performer; you're blessed with youth, looks, and talent; you have the technical grounding, the connections. People would kill for your advantages – yet you stand there like a big girl bleating, “I'm only kind of average”.'

By now Freddie was ashen. The director waited for a response. None came.

From the other side of the room the bishop saw something was amiss.

‘Well, Freddie, this has been lovely,' said Mr Dorian. ‘Let's do it again some time. Here,' he tucked a card in Freddie's shirt pocket and patted it. ‘If you're ever looking for work, get in touch. I can always use a good tenor. All the best in Barchester.' He inclined his head. ‘And now I'll go and fuck myself.' He sauntered back to where the precentor was standing.

Gene watched him go, savouring the bouquet of this encounter. When he turned back, Freddie had vanished.

‘Dr Jacks,' said Giles, ‘I do hope you weren't being a brute to poor Mr May?'

‘I certainly was. Mr May called me an asshole.'

‘You
are
an asshole, Andrew.'

‘While this is undoubtedly true, I don't have to take it from him,' said the director. ‘I have music stands older than that little prick.'

The bishop, still trapped in conversation with the high sheriff, watched, helpless, as Freddie flung himself out through the deanery door into the night.

Chapter 27

Sunday morning. All across the diocese of Lindchester people are up early. It's a big day. The eight men and women who were ordained deacon last year will be priested. Loyal parishioners will come from those eight different parishes to the cathedral to support them. They have slain the fatted sausage roll for the bun fights in church halls later. Posh frocks will be donned, fascinators deployed. Teenage boys will be scolded out of trainers. Middle-aged men will be perplexed to discover that their best suit trousers have shrunk.

So why all the fuss? What does priesthood mean? Well, this being the C of E, the answer is a resounding ‘it depends'. In high-church circles it is taken with hushed seriousness. The day when you celebrate your first Mass is etched on your memory like a wedding anniversary. You might even have little cards made announcing the date. For vulgar low-church types, however, priesting just means ‘you get to do the magic bits'. It will be possible to spot the low-church ordinands at the service today. They'll be the ones in black preaching scarves, not white stoles. The stole/scarf battle is by no means as bitter as it was thirty years ago; but believe me, Sayre's Law about university politics applies to the Church: ‘The feuds are vicious because the stakes are so low.'

Training incumbents pack their robes bags. Great: a Sunday when they don't have to do anything other than rock up in the cathedral. Our friend the archdeacon will be there to give the liturgical thumbs up to the bishop that, yes, the ordinands have taken the necessary oaths and made the Declaration of Assent.

The suffragan bishop of Barcup puts his crosier into his car. It's a genuine shepherd's crook, made of honest wood and iron. Bob puts it in the car all by himself, because he does not have a chaplain to do it for him. Janet will not be accompanying him. She'd rather go to her parish church. Last time she went to a big cathedral bash one of the stewards bounced her with the words, ‘You can't sit there, it's reserved for the bishop's wife.' Susanna leapt in and intervened, before Janet could say, ‘Listen, mush, I
am
the bishop's wife!' Bob the bishop puts on a CD of Taizé chants and drives to Lindchester, sunning himself in the goodness of the Lord. What a nice man he is.

But not everyone is happy on this happy day. Timothy, the cathedral director of music, has a back row crisis. His tenor choral scholar has gone down with gastric flu. So have two of the tenor lay clerks. (I ought perhaps to mention that gastric flu often strikes after a choral night on the town.) Freddie May isn't answering his phone, probably because he got comprehensively wasted too, after flouncing out of last night's party. Who on earth can Timothy find to busk their way through Schubert in G at this notice? The tenor solo line! With the best will in the world, the two tenor lay clerks left standing will struggle. Don't say he's going to have to ditch the
Benedictus
!

Virginia Coleman wakes in her new home in Carding-le-Willow. Fresh paint in the air and boxes piled in every room. This time next week she'll just have finished her ordination retreat and be heading for the cathedral to be ordained deacon! Can she do this? Is she really cut out for this? All by herself? She barely knows her training vicar – oh, if only the first arrangement hadn't fallen through! It's never so lonely for ordinands with spouse and family. Virginia watches the clouds through her curtainless window and feels very small, stripped of the skills that took her to senior management in her old life.

All at once the task of unpacking and making a home in this 1960s box feels undoable. She needs to get out. To IKEA? But who will help her make her Billy bookcases? To church? No, she's in limbo. It would be awkward to turn up to worship before she's officially the curate. The cathedral? She could go to the priests' ordination. Hide at the back, anonymously. That way she'll be more able to get her head round next week. Picture where she'll be sitting, standing, kneeling. Yes, that will help. It will be all right. He who calls you is faithful, she reminds herself. He will do it. There, hanging on the back of the bedroom door, are her new robes. Cassock, surplice, white stole, black preaching scarf. It feels absurd. As if next Sunday will be World Book Day at school, only this time she'll be dressing up as a vicar, not as Hermione Granger.

Timothy tries Freddie again. Still no answer. Nobody's answering. He leaves desperate messages for every half-decent tenor he can think of, then canters across to the Song School. He'll have to start the practice and hope someone gets back to him before the service.

The cathedral has already come to life. The stewards are putting ‘Reserved for Ordinand's Family' signs on the front rows. The flower guild are spritzing the large yellow and white floral displays. Techie guys in black prowl like ninjas, trailing cables and checking the CCTV cameras and screens. Where are the vergers, though?

The vergers are in their vestry taking a break and eating choc-anana muffins. Susanna has just popped over with a batch still warm from the Aga, to thank them for all their hard work. This pisses Ulrika off when she finds out, because it feels like a criticism: why didn't the
precentor's wife
make muffins for the vergers, eh? But sodding heck, Ulrika is not getting into all that rubbish! They get paid, don't they? Bad enough that she has to find organic sodding bloody peppermint tea for Dr Picky-Picky Jacks. And then he asks, ‘Is it filtered water?' (
So eine Frechheit!
)

I think the vergers deserve muffins, personally. (And even if they don't, the quality of home-baking ought not to be strained. In the course of justice, none of us should see triple choc chip cookies.) I happen to know that the vergers worked far into the night dismantling the concert stage and rearranging the entire cathedral floor space for this morning's service.

We will leave the vergers to their muffins and duck instead into the chapel of St Michael, where Dr Picky-Picky Jacks is kneeling. He has just finished saying the Morning Office. Does that surprise you? It's been a decade since those noviciate years, but their routine is now carved deep on his soul.

His chilly stare is locked onto the Annunciation above the altar. He's troubled by the light in it. The way it evokes that sense of the Other breaking in. As he stares he feels a presence draw alongside; some Being far beyond even his monstrous capacity to control, intimidate, destroy. So it's back again, is it? This stubborn love that just will not give up on him; this rock he cannot believe in, yet which he must always return to and shipwreck himself on and be saved. The divine No, which is also the Yes.

This Annunciation is more a threat than a promise. Unsurprisingly, given the artist. He knows her well; may even have been around when this huge canvas was painted, for all he can remember. God, these lacunae, these drink-corrupted files.

Behind him in the cathedral the organist begins to practise. Widor. His hands briefly play a phantom manual on the hymnbook ledge. Vestigial muscle memory. He looks at the scar on his left forearm, a souvenir from that black, black night fifteen years ago, when he fell through a plate-glass window and severed those finger and thumb tendons.

Ah well.

Coloured light pools on the stone floor. He raises his eyes to its source. To be a window, through thy grace! The blond Burne-Jones angels glow. He thinks of the lovely Mr May. And smiles. Then shakes his head at that impulse of his to torment, manipulate, spoil, simply because he can. Yes, you are an asshole, Jacks. He stands, crosses himself, and leaves the chapel.

Already the candidates' families and parishioners are arriving for the 10.30 start. Giles is in an advanced state of control freakery over the choreography. He bitches under his breath about the bishop's liturgical illiteracy. He's already been forced to issue a stern disciplinary warning to the lay clerks about smirking during the Evangelical worship songs Paul has insisted upon having during the administration of communion. Fortunately Giles saw off the abomination of desecration inflicted by Evangelicals upon ‘Be thou my vision' – Slane! in four/four! – last week, after a head-to-head with the bishop's chaplain.

The bishop, in all his liturgical illiteracy, is about to head across to the cathedral to greet the ordinands and pray with them. As he stands in the palace hallway in front of the mirror to slip in his dog collar, he hears the familiar sound of Freddie May retching on the drive. Excellent. Paul sighs. What am I going to do with that boy? Nothing. I'm going to do nothing. This is not my problem. In a couple of weeks we'll be off on holiday. Then it will be August, and in September he'll be safely in Barchester, thank the Lord. The bishop gathers up his robes and heads out of the house.

And now he must repent. Freddie did not go out and get wasted last night after all. In fact, he has just come back from a ten-mile run. The bishop rebukes himself.

Freddie is doubled over, hands on knees, panting, sweat dripping. But he glances up and grins.

Paul smiles back. ‘Good run?'

‘Meh.' Hand wobble. ‘Bit slow.'

‘Your phone's been ringing.'

Thumbs up. Another bout of dry-retching. ‘Gah. Ffff . . . kinell.' He spits on the gravel.

‘Lovely, Frederick.'

Freddie straightens, then peels up his vest and wipes his face with it.

‘Right. Good. Well, do join Susanna and me for lunch if you'd like to.' The bishop sets off for the cathedral. As he walks he labours to erase that musclescape – abs! pecs! piercings! – from his mind.

And suddenly he remembers. Gropes in his jacket pocket. Pats himself down. Gone! It
was
this suit, wasn't it, the charcoal grey pinstripe? Never say it's fallen out somewhere! Has Suze found it? Oh, Lord! The awful hilarity of it seizes him. Later. He'll have to worry about this later.

It is not the intention of this narrative to visit evil upon its characters. We may rely upon the characters to run into trouble quite unaided. But for today, in Lindchester Cathedral in the Ordination of Priests, all is well. Virginia, hiding in a side aisle, watches Bishop Paul's face on the screen as he lays his hands on the head of each candidate in turn. She sees the care, the tenderness there. ‘Send down the Holy Spirit on your servant for the office and work of a priest in your Church.' Next week, God willing, she will be able to approach that new doorway, knowing a friendly presence is waiting to greet her on the other side.

Yes, all is well. Paul gets the names of all the candidates right. Nobody gets a heel stuck down an aisle grating, or stands on the back hem of their cassock when kneeling. Nobody's phone goes off. The retired bishop who led the ordination retreat preaches well. The small person stating very audibly, ‘But I have to go
now
!' gets there in time. Nobody knocks over a full chalice. No lay clerk is caught smirking on CCTV, even when singing the phrase ‘vibrating love' (tune: Danny Boy).

During the
Benedictus
the terrifying Mr Dorian closes his eyes and smiles when the tenor solo line comes in. He breathes in – ah! – as though he can smell the apricots ripening on heaven's terrace.

Kind of average, my arse, Mr May.