Widows & Orphans (32 page)

‘No, they had no one available. But members of the congregation were queuing up to pitch in.’

After helping Henry to prepare the hall for the quarterly strategy meeting, Duncan followed him back to the vicarage.

‘Any more news on the takeover?’ Henry asked, bringing two steaming mugs of coffee to the kitchen table.

‘It’s ninety-nine per cent certain we’ll go with Newscom. They’ve made a derisory offer for the shares but a decent one on jobs and pensions. So no one should be dependent on Press Fund handouts.’

‘I can’t see them keeping on “Notes from the Pulpit”.’

‘Me neither. It’ll be twenty pages of celebrity interviews and gossip with a four-page insert of local news. I can’t work out if the community will lose its mouthpiece because the
Mercury
’s failed or the
Mercury
’s failed because there’s no longer a community that needs a mouthpiece.’

‘Perhaps a bit of both?’

‘Still, why should anyone care so long as they can log on to a chat room full of like-minded people? Internet communities – what a contradiction in terms!’

‘Be fair, you’ve never been the web’s biggest fan.’

‘I’ve always said it’s a useful source of information –’

‘And misinformation.’

‘That too. But there it ends. People talk about “a virtual world”, yet they use it to give their lives authenticity. They look at what’s on their screens rather than in front of their eyes. What’s that phrase of St Paul’s about our imperfect vision?’

‘“For now we see through a glass darkly.”’

‘Right. That’s another metaphor that’s become a reality. Except that the glass is a screen.’

‘I wouldn’t repeat that to any of the big shots at Newscom if you’re hoping for a place in their integrated media team.’

‘It’s too late. I’ve already received my marching orders.’

‘Really? That’s their loss. I’m very sorry.’

‘It was inevitable. There’s no way I could have worked for the new management.’

‘So have you given much thought to what’s next? Will you even stay in Francombe?’

‘You won’t get rid of me that easily. Can you keep a secret? I’ll be moving in with my new wife.’

‘You’re going to marry Ellen? But that’s wonderful!’

‘You must promise not to breathe a word. We’ve not even told family.’

‘My lips are sealed. But you can’t stop me praying for you. I’m delighted – absolutely delighted – for you both.’

‘Thank you. Let’s hope everyone else feels the same.’

‘Still no rapprochement between Jamie and … I forget the other boy’s name?’

‘Neil. No, quite the reverse. It’s no longer just the fallout from Christmas. They’ve both been involved – thank God at one remove – in a vicious attack on my mother’s carer. He was queer-bashed in the Nature Reserve.’

‘I know.’

‘You do? How?’

‘The chaplain at the Princess Royal is a friend,’ Henry replied, giving nothing away.

‘I tried to ring you this morning,’ Duncan said, seizing the moment. ‘But I got no answer from your mobile.’

‘I lost it yesterday when Brandy and I were w-a-l-k-ing on the beach.’

‘No, you lost it in the woods,’ Duncan said sadly. ‘The police found it next to the spot where Chris was attacked.’

Henry stood up slowly and moved away from the table. For several moments he gazed out of the window, before turning back to Duncan.

‘What must you think of me?’ he asked, sweat beading on his brow.

‘The same as ever. That you’re the best friend I have in this town.’

‘Ah yes. They should carve it on my grave. Always a friend, never a lover. Like a cautious investor I prefer to spread the risk.’

‘Is it such a risk?’

‘You tell me. I’m fifty-six years old. I’ve never known love, except for God’s love of course. I bang on about that on a daily basis. But if it really were infinite, would He have made me gay?’

‘You can’t mean that?’ Duncan said, alarmed by the depth of his self-loathing. ‘I thought it was only evangelicals who went in for all the “male and female created He them” twaddle.’

‘Yes, like my old Director of Ordinands who claimed to know that homosexuality was a sin because every time he thought about it his genitals came out in a rash. Don’t smile! It’s the gospel truth. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not speaking for anybody but myself. God gave me a vocation and then made it impossible for me to fulfil it. I preach about the need to be whole and at the same time I’m forced to compartmentalise my life. Do you know what it is to long for someone’s touch? I don’t mean Ellen’s or anyone special’s. Just a. n. Other’s. I can go for weeks when my only human contact – that’s physical contact – is the Sign of Peace. Let’s hope that my congregation is more at peace than me.’

Duncan walked across the room to hug him but lost his nerve. ‘Would you like some more coffee?’ he asked, veering towards the kettle.

‘I’ve been told to cut down on caffeine. But thanks.’

‘So don’t you ever … touch anyone when you’re in the woods,’ Duncan asked hesitantly.

‘Never,’ Henry replied with a sad smile. ‘I’m what’s politely called a Peeping Tom. It sounds so quaint. Like a character in
a children’s storybook: Old Peeping Tom ambled down the lane. I can think of more appropriate names for it.’

‘Please tell me if it’s none of my business,’ Duncan said, never more conscious of the barrier that Henry’s priesthood posed to intimacy, ‘but have you ever had a lover?’

‘You mean before I made impotence my saving grace: psychic castration?’ He glanced at Brandy, placidly licking his scrotum. ‘I suppose it depends on your definition. I’ve never made love with the same man twice.’ Duncan struggled not to betray his shock. ‘But there was one unforgettable night in my early twenties with a German language student in Brighton. His skin was so pale – almost translucent – apart from his penis, which was significantly darker, like a steeple that had been added later. We only met once but he’s been the stuff of my romantic – no, what the hell, erotic – fantasies for nearly thirty years. I’m sorry. Does that disgust you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I was wrong. The problem isn’t that God made me gay and a priest, but that He made me gay and a priest and an Anglican. He could at least have made me an RC. Then loneliness would have been my natural state.’

‘Perhaps you should leave God out of the equation for a change?’

‘Perhaps I should. But of all my desires the deepest, the most overpowering, is to serve a God I’m no longer sure I believe in – or at least that I believe in the way I’m supposed to. Isn’t that perverse?’

‘No, what’s perverse is to shoulder all this guilt.’

‘Trust me, this is nothing. Catholics have guilt; Calvinists have guilt; Anglicans just have lassitude.’

‘Not from where I’m standing.’

‘No doubt you consider me the worst kind of hypocrite?’

‘I’m not in the job of judging. But you did endorse our Clean up the Woods campaign after the attack on Dragon.’

‘I pray “Lead me not into temptation”. Perhaps I should
change it to “Give me strength to resist the temptation I can’t avoid”?’

‘Aren’t you worried about being recognised or even bumping into one of your parishioners?’

‘It’s already happened. Although men come here from halfway down the coast (especially now it’s listed on websites), it’s mainly the same old faces, particularly at this time of year. Have you never wondered why Chris is so hostile when I visit your mother?’

‘I assumed it was generic. He sees being gay and a vicar as incompatible.’

‘No, he sees being voyeuristic and a vicar as incompatible. And he’s right. Did I go to his rescue when those lads were laying into him?’

‘You rang for the ambulance,’ Duncan said, the words sticking to his tongue.

‘How do you know that?’

‘The police traced the call.’

‘Of course! Maybe I should have run back here and pretended I’d heard his cries for help? But even I’m not that much of a coward. So,’ he said, digesting the information, ‘the cat’s out of the bag, eh Brandy?’ He smiled at the dog, who wagged his tail. ‘They’ll summon me to give evidence in court.’

‘There may not be a trial. One of the youths has already confessed. Craig, Derek Weedon’s son.’

‘I’ll have to inform the bishop: hand in my resignation.’

‘Why?’

‘How can I stand in the person of Christ … how can I celebrate the Eucharist when people know the sort of man I am?’

‘What people? The culprits are under eighteen so the case can’t be reported.’

‘There’ll be rumours, gossip.’

‘In other words, business as usual. And if anyone does ask, you can say you were taking Brandy for a late-night walk.’ The dog sprang to his feet. ‘No, sorry, boy, false alarm,’ he
said, stroking his muzzle. ‘And as for the “person of Christ” thing, I’m no theologian but Christ was a man, wasn’t He? I’ve never understood all the dualism stuff: so much ink – and blood – spilt on arcane conjecture. I prefer to think of Him as a good man with a touch of the divine. But even if I were a regular churchgoer, I’d want a vicar with experience of human frailty.’

‘Feet of clay?’

‘Doesn’t the Bible say that’s what we’re all made of?’

Having declined Henry’s invitation to lunch, Duncan heard from him again in the late afternoon with news that he had given a witness statement to the police in which, taking Duncan’s advice, he claimed to have been out walking Brandy when he chanced on the attack. He refuted Craig’s allegation that Chris had made advances to him while he was urinating, insisting that, on the contrary, Craig had flaunted himself in the thicket, holding out his penis ‘like a canapé’. To his immense relief he was not called to testify in court since all three defendants, faced with the incontrovertible evidence on film, pleaded guilty: Craig and Alan to assault occasioning actual bodily harm; Rosalie to aiding and abetting an assault.

Despite all the stories of legal logjams – many of them in the
Mercury
– the hearing, which had been expedited on account of the defendants’ youth, was held the following Thursday. The court was closed, with only parents and, by special dispensation, step-parents present, which, given that Craig, Alan and Rosalie were all the children of divorce and only Rosalie’s mother had yet to remarry, ensured that the public benches were more than usually full. With Duncan not permitted to attend – let alone report – proceedings, he was dependent on Linda for the facts, which she gave him by phone later in the day during a break from consoling Derek.

The prosecutor had opened the case with an account of the attack, after which the magistrates watched the footage on DVD and studied photographs of Chris’s injuries. The
prosecutor read out witness statements from Sue, whose attempt to exculpate her friends by detailing how much they had smoked and drunk merely added to the general picture of delinquency, and Henry, whose description of Craig exposing himself ruled out any plea of ‘homosexual panic’. She concluded with a victim impact statement from Chris that dwelt more on his emotional than his physical trauma. The defence solicitors offered mitigation, focusing in each instance on their clients’ broken homes and lost childhoods (which made painful listening on the public benches). The magistrates retired for barely ten minutes before the chairman announced their verdict. In respect of Rosalie, they ordered a pre-sentence report and instructed her to return to court in two weeks’ time. In respect of Craig and Alan, they decreed that the savagery of the attack, compounded by its filming, left them no choice but to impose the maximum sentence: two years in a young offender institution.

The sentence was harsher than Duncan had expected. He asked Linda to convey his sympathies to both Craig and Derek, but her curt ‘We’ll see’ showed that, like her husband, she blamed him for forcing Craig’s hand.

‘I don’t always agree with Derek but in this case he’s right. You would have felt differently if it had been Jamie.’

‘Of course. But I hope I’d have acted the same.’

‘What a comfort it must be to you, Duncan!’ Linda said. ‘Free of all the doubt and confusion that plague us ordinary mortals.’

Duncan mulled over her gibe as he went down to the boardroom to check that everything was in place for the morning. He had asked his mother and sister to Mercury House to ratify the sale of the company to Newscom. Barring a miracle, it would be the last board meeting ever held there and he felt deeply moved as he gazed up at the array of ancestors, not least his great-grandfather, whose judicious choice of portraitist (a Sotheby’s expert had valued the Sargent painting
at £280,000) had been a factor in Newscom’s decision to buy the company outright, taking on both its assets and liabilities. While paying a token £10,000 each for his, Adele’s and Alison’s shares, and transferring both the editorial and production operations to its Basingstoke headquarters, they had undertaken to preserve the title, retain the majority of the staff, provide a generous redundancy package for the rest and, crucially, protect the pension fund.

At ten o’clock the next day Alison, who had driven down from London, brought Adele to Mercury House, where Duncan greeted them together with Dudley Williams, the long-serving accountant whom Adele valued as much for his deference as for his expertise. Dudley outlined the terms of the Newscom offer, adding that in his view it was by far the best available. Duncan was both relieved and touched when Alison not only endorsed it but proposed ‘a vote of thanks to my brother for all his hard work’. Adele was less magnanimous. With a pronounced sniff, she implied that the sale was the final proof of his mismanagement. Pointing to his father’s portrait, she declared that her one consolation was that he had been spared this humiliation, before grimly signing the papers. Then with a sweeping glance around the room as if she were playing herself in
The Mercury Story
, she inclined her head towards Dudley and tottered out. Her children soon followed, returning to Ridgemount where Duncan took the opportunity to underline the change in her circumstances. Although the deal with Newscom protected her share of his father’s pension, the loss of the annual dividend would require her to cut her expenditure drastically.