More Tea, Jesus?

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‘Well now,’ Biddle said, hurriedly changing the subject, ‘there is a reason why I wanted you to – er – I hope I didn’t interrupt anything else?’

Yes, thought Ted, a pint in the Green Baron.

‘No,’ he said. ‘So what’s it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Well, ah …’ Biddle laughed, awkwardly. Ted wasn’t sure whether it was an awkwardness about the subject being broached, or teeth problems again. ‘Mrs Petty-Saphon wrote me a letter this week. She seems quite unhappy about certain … um … aspects of the church services, at the moment.’

Ted rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘There’s a surprise,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a single service in that church which she hasn’t complained about.’

‘Ah, now, I’m not sure that’s entirely – ah …’ Biddle smiled, waving his arms to indicate the vague meaning of his sentence before moving away from it. ‘Anyway, one of the – er – many concerns she voiced was the problem of – ah – sexism in the hymns.’

Ted blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

‘Some of the hymns have words which she feels are out of place in a society where men and women are more or less considered equals. The expression she used was, er, “outdated patriarchal gender discrimination”.’

‘Was it, indeed?’ grunted Ted.

‘And as you’re in charge of choosing the hymns, I wonder if you could make whatever – er – changes … might be necessary to render hymns with such – er – references in them … er … useable.’

‘They’re useable as they are,’ Ted replied bluntly.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Biddle hurriedly agreed, ‘but a little bit of rewriting would avoid unnecessary offence being caused …’

‘Which hymn in particular caused this “offence”, may I ask?’ Ted interjected.

‘Right … ah …’ Biddle crossed to his desk and picked up Petty-Saphon’s letter. ‘She felt that the offertory hymn …’

‘“Of the glorious body telling”,’ Ted clarified.

‘That’s right.’

‘The words are by Thomas Aquinas!’ Ted exploded. ‘You’re saying I’ve got to rewrite words that Saint Thomas Aquinas presumably thought were adequate?’

‘No!’ protested Biddle. ‘Well, yes …’ he added, apologetically. ‘Aquinas did write them in Latin, so in a way they’ve already been rewritten.’

‘By respected English poets.’

‘It was only one line,’ Biddle hurriedly reassured him, ‘in the second verse, er … “Man with man in converse dwelling …”’

‘It’s poetry,’ Ted insisted. ‘What would you change it to?’

‘Mrs Petty-Saphon suggested … er …’ Biddle coughed, uncomfortably. ‘She suggested “Folk in church in converse dwelling …”’ He trailed off. The look on Ted’s face suggested that he was far from impressed by the poetry of Sathan Petty-Saphon.

Before the tense pause could grow into a fully drawn-out awkward silence, he tried a different tack. ‘Why don’t you go on a recruitment drive?’ he suggested, brightly.

‘A what?’

‘For singers! Encourage some of the newcomers in the church to join the choir.’ One of the slight concerns Biddle had about St Barnabas was the potential for established churchgoers, the Sathan Petty-Saphons in the congregation, to marginalise those who had just walked in from outside. There had been a fellow at the back of the church for some weeks now who Biddle had vaguely noticed didn’t really seem to want to be there. Well, was it any wonder if nobody knew who he was? Biddle also suspected that the fleeting reference to ‘scruffy outsiders’ in Sathan Petty-Saphon’s letter specifically pointed towards this man; to involve him in the choir would curtail any attempt of hers to act on her disapproval.

‘I mean, it would be great to encourage newcomers to become part of the congregation,’ he explained to Ted, ‘especially if they’re a bit undecided about whether to keep coming along …’

‘You think that people uncertain about staying in the church should be moved closer to the choir?’ asked Ted, an eyebrow raised.

‘Ah,’ Biddle smiled wryly, with an obligatory wince. ‘Yes, well … have a think about talking to some of them, anyway. They might turn out to be good singers, after all.’

‘Right,’ sighed Ted, reluctantly. The idea of anyone at St Barnabas turning out to be a good anything seemed pretty unlikely to him and the additional humiliation of approaching strangers on a ‘recruitment drive’ was yet another cross to bear that he could bloody well do without.

‘And … er … the problems raised in Mrs Petty-Saphon’s letter …?’ Biddle continued, hopefully.

Ted stood up. ‘One thing you need to learn,’ he said, sternly pointing at the vicar, ‘is not to listen to everything that woman tells you.’ Biddle sat, momentarily speechless at the sight of Ted’s accusing finger. ‘In fact, don’t listen to anything the bloody woman tells you. It’s part of the job, you just don’t … don’t do it, okay?’ Biddle chuckled unhappily and again let out an involuntary gasp of pain. Ted observed him with a sadistic interest, finding the spectacle of a man unable to stop chuckling in spite of intense physical pain curiously entertaining.

‘Right. Well … it’s in your hands, at the end of the day,’ Biddle said, ‘and I take your point about rewriting poetry.’ The perfect Anglican compromise popped into his head. ‘Maybe it would be best to leave out those hymns altogether?’ he suggested.

Ted said nothing.

As Ted hurried away from the vicarage in the hope that he might be in time for last orders in the Green Baron, Biddle looked at his half-finished mug of tea with a heavy feeling of foreboding. The meeting had not been a success, and Biddle had a horrible suspicion that Sathan Petty-Saphon’s letter was the prelude to an actual visit. It would have been nice to have something positive to tell her about the hymns issue, since the other part of her letter mostly concerned the omelette and there was very little he could say to defend himself on that subject.

Perhaps he should tell her he made the omelette as a response to a clear and direct word from God. Let her take it up with the Almighty – at least He was safely away from Little Collyweston. Knowing Sathan Petty-Saphon and the devastating effects such powerful and opinionated parishioners could have in a church, he felt that any actual confrontation between her and Jesus might well lead to a second crucifixion.

He frowned. Tea always tasted different in a mug. Perhaps it was related to the fact that the mug wasn’t bone china. Of course, he had also brewed the tea in the mug, not something he really approved of – but what else was he to do without his bone-china teapot, which was necessarily part of the tea set he had restricted to use for non-parishioners? And the whole experience of drinking tea was less satisfying when it wasn’t served from his Victorian hostess trolley, which he had found at an inconceivably low price some years ago. He had never been able to confirm that it was actually Victorian, but he felt sure enough of its pedigree not to need that certainty. Certainty, after all, was the opposite of faith.

He sighed slightly wistfully. It would be ever so decadent to get the hostess trolley out just to make himself a cup of tea. And quite selfish, having denied Ted Sloper the privilege. Perhaps he would need to relax his recently instated mugs-for-parishioners policy, depending on who the parishioner was.

What was a hostess trolley for, after all?

Chapter 6

Vernon Tait liked using his hands. His every comment was accompanied by a suitable gesture to illustrate his feelings about any given subject, which were usually strongly held. He made little attempt to disguise his feelings about Andy Biddle.

‘I am delighted,’ he said, expressing his delight with a flat-palmed pat of the air in front of him, ‘to make the acquaintance of another priest in this area. I’ve been looking after the teeth of the church for the best part of a decade, and it never ceases’ (another pointed caress of the air) ‘to thrill me when another priest joins my little flock,’ he put his hand on Biddle’s shoulder, then removed it quickly, as if being careful not to get too tactile too soon, ‘as I like to call it!’ He finished with a welcoming flourish in the direction of the dentist’s chair.

‘Thank you,’ said Biddle.

‘In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your teeth straight!’ quipped Vernon, one finger raised in knowing jollity. Biddle laughed politely, then winced in pain.

Vernon was sympathetic about the cause of Biddle’s problems. ‘You know,’ he said, shaking his head and briefly clasping his hands, ‘cake can cause a lot more damage than people give it credit for. And I’m not just talking about erosion or cavities; you’d be surprised how many people have had accidents like yours, you really would.’ Biddle nodded, eager that his surprise should live up to Vernon’s high expectations. ‘I had a cousin who broke two teeth on a ginger snap, hasn’t touched a biscuit since. I’ve said to him, surely, you know, you could have, like, a digestive biscuit or something, but he won’t touch them. Says it simply isn’t worth the risk. I’m nearly out of mouthwash, Sasha.’

Biddle heard movement in the next room as he reclined on the dentist’s chair – Sasha, he assumed, whoever he or she was. Vernon leaned over him and he caught a whiff of expensive-smelling aftershave. Vernon grinned. ‘Never mind, we’ll have you all fixed up in a jiffy. Let’s take a look, shall we?’ The chair slowly tilted backwards and Biddle could hear the sound of rubber gloves flexing. Vernon’s face was suddenly very close, the rich scent of his aftershave almost overpowering. ‘Say “ah”,’ requested the dentist. ‘You’ll have to leave the “men” till after I’ve finished.’ He raised his dental equipment as Biddle obliged. ‘Though I know how difficult it can be leaving the men, I can tell you.’ Vernon grinned and began to prod around in Biddle’s mouth.

Biddle being prevented from communicating in any way, it was left to Vernon to carry on the conversation, which he did with panache. ‘The problem with the church, as I see it,’ he told Biddle, ‘is that it’s too ready to tell people what they’re doing wrong. I’m not saying you’re like that,’ he hastily reassured his captive audience of one. ‘I mean, like I say, I do all the priests in the area and without exception they’re lovely people, they really know their job, but I mean, it’s when the church starts telling people what they ought to do, that’s when it annoys me. It really does.’ His hands being otherwise occupied, Vernon was forced to express his disgust by using even more exaggerated vocal nuances than before. ‘Because that’s not what church is about, is it? That would be like people coming to me and me just telling them they were eating too many sweets. Or rock cakes, in your case. Do you know what I mean? That’s not the church’s business.

‘I know you know all this, of course,’ he added hurriedly, ‘but some people, you’d think they thought the church was all about policing the world. I mean, Jesus didn’t come to earth with a truncheon and a helmet, did he?’ Biddle, his mouth still full of dental instruments, was unable to comment. His eyes being the only part of his face able to make any significant response, he could only continue helplessly watching Vernon as the monologue continued.

‘I mean, I’m gay, and obviously there’s people who think that’s wrong, and there’s people in the church who think that’s totally, like – I’m sure you don’t think that, I do all the priests in this area and they’re all lovely about it, but some people, you know, want everybody to do everything their way, and me being gay is, like, a real issue for them.’

Vernon’s proddings continued, and Biddle was unable to reassure him that homosexuality had long since stopped being an issue for him. ‘I had a terrible time when I came out to my mother. I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, you see, and she kept saying, “But Vernon, the Bible says”, and I was like, “No, Mother, the Bible doesn’t say that, that’s just your way of seeing it”, but you see her church had indoctrinated her to think like that, so I didn’t blame her. Mouthwash, Sasha.’

Vernon straightened up and out of the corner of his eye Biddle saw a tall brunette glide in. ‘No, no, no, Sasha,’ Vernon objected, his hands raised in a gesture of horror, ‘it’s green mouthwash for Ordinary time, we’re into Lent now.’ He turned back to Biddle. ‘She’s a complete atheist,’ he moaned, the word ‘complete’ warranting a particularly wide and pointy gesture with his hands.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, that’s what puts people off church, do you know what I mean? They think they’re going to go in there and be told what they can and can’t do. I mean, everyone’s got their own set of standards, haven’t they? And that’s how it should be. Think of bestiality – that’s it Sasha, the purple stuff, put it down on the side, would you? – everyone says bestiality’s wrong, but when you think about it, what is wrong with it, if it’s with a consenting animal?’

Biddle scarcely had time to wonder how one would know if an animal was consenting before Vernon started to tell him anyway. ‘You can tell if an animal’s consenting,’ Vernon said. ‘I know this because I spoke to a farmer once, years ago, when I went to Dorset with my flatmate. He said if a dog chases a sheep, its intestines fall out of its anus – they’re sensitive, you see, they get scared. So if it wasn’t consenting, it would get scared and its intestines would fall out of its anus.’

Biddle was feeling decidedly uncomfortable – even if he had chosen to engage in this conversation, he would have wanted to be in a position to contribute to it. He certainly wouldn’t have elected to listen to it while somebody was poking around in his mouth. ‘So this farmer said to us, you can tell if the sheep wants to have sex with you. We didn’t ask him to elaborate any further, mind you. But like I say, what’s wrong with that, if it’s giving you both pleasure? Why’s that any different from having sex with a consenting human being? I’m not saying I’m into bestiality, I think it’s disgusting myself, I’m just saying it makes you think – if you could just open a bit wider, that’s lovely – it makes you think, doesn’t it?

As Biddle drove up to his house, his tooth mended and his mind broadened to embrace a number of concepts he had never previously stopped to consider, he saw a small, hunched figure sitting on his doorstep.

He was a little disheartened by the sight. He hadn’t exactly expected Gerard Feehan to hit the gay bars as soon as their previous meeting had finished, but the vicarage was no place for young gay men to be hanging about.

Well – not his vicarage, at any rate.

On the plus side, he was now equipped to discuss in depth the pros and cons of bestiality, should it turn out to be one of the issues bothering Gerard this time round.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said as he stepped out of his car, greeting Gerard with an encouraging and now somewhat-expensive smile.

‘Right – stop,’ Biddle said in his calmest, kindliest voice. ‘Why exactly do you think God wants you to remain celibate?’

‘Well …’ Gerard shifted restlessly and hugged his mug of tea to his chest. ‘I … I’ve been thinking about – you know, when I – we were talking – what about yesterday, I was …’ His words were coming out in the wrong order again, but this was a subject he didn’t seem able to discuss without considerable verbal difficulty. ‘I know it’s not – being it – wrong – it isn’t – gay, I mean,’ Gerard hastily added, without making it altogether clear what he did mean, ‘it’s just that I start – whenever I think about – very empty and lonely, I feel – thinking about it, I mean – and I think that that there’s no, God telling me there’s no, that I should spend the rest of my life, I to, to … focussed on him.’

Biddle nodded, slowly digesting the words and reordering them to discover their hidden meaning. ‘I’m not sure that those are the conclusions I would have reached myself,’ he finally commented.

‘I’ve been about it an awful lot,’ Gerard earnestly insisted. ‘Praying, I mean,’ he clarified.

‘I’m sure you have,’ said Biddle, smiling. ‘But who’s been doing all the talking – you or God?’ (Biddle allowed himself a moment of inward satisfaction at having come up, quite spontaneously, with such a profound yet quotable aphorism. A little pithy, perhaps. Maybe a bit too evangelical in thrust. But these were minor worries when, as a statement, it fitted the situation so well. Definitely one to bear in mind and use again.)

Gerard stared awkwardly at his tea, saying nothing. He took one hand off his mug to remove his glasses and began listlessly fiddling with them. ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Biddle asked. Gerard nodded, and fiddled with his glasses. ‘I think that the reason you feel empty and lonely is that you are lonely. I think that you’re putting words into God’s mouth because you’re afraid of going into areas you haven’t been in before.’ Gerard fiddled with his glasses. Biddle cleared his throat. ‘Gerard, God created us to have companions, human companions.’

‘I know …’ Gerard began, fiddling with his glasses.

‘You need to get out,’ Biddle insisted, ‘meet people your own age. Form some relationships, maybe even a special relationship.’ Biddle deliberately met Gerard’s eyes as the boy replaced his glasses – Gerard recoiled from the long, hard stare, looking as if he wished for all the world that the chair he was in would swallow him whole.

Gerard shifted in his seat; he wished for all the world that it would swallow him whole. ‘Just – not sure – I’m …’ he started, and fell silent again. Biddle wondered for a horrific moment if he was going to have to explain the basics of sexual relationships to the boy, doing diagrams on the small blackboard he had in his kitchen for writing memos on. Finally Gerard spoke again. ‘I don’t really – to form that – know how kind of relationship, I don’t, meet people, don’t, really.’

‘Okay,’ said Biddle, kindly, ‘have you thought about going to a – a gay club, perhaps?’

‘Um …’ Gerard coughed, nervously. ‘My mother …’

‘Your mother doesn’t come into this, Gerard. You wouldn’t be taking her with you.’

‘But …’

‘No, you really wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be her sort of thing at all.’

‘No, but …’ Gerard looked at Biddle questioningly. ‘I thought that … part of the point you were – with the omelette – was that in trying to find an place for itself in a hostile world, gay culture has kind of created an artificial sense of identity which actually … um … works against it, as far as the perception of gay … er … people is … er … concerned … and …’ He coughed again. ‘I thought you were probably saying that because of this it’s better not to in the … er … gay … er … scene – become involved.’

Andy Biddle had years of experience in keeping his happy, caring smile on his face in spite of all kinds of provocation. But it was a definite effort to remain smiling after this baffling yet uncharacteristically articulate speech. How had Feehan managed to read all of that into his omelette? How had he managed to say it all when as a rule he couldn’t even string a sentence together?

‘Well, Gerard …’ he began, wondering exactly what he was going to say. No more pithy aphorisms occurred to him, but he felt he ought to keep talking anyway. ‘You’re right, of course, that … that there are things in the world that we have to be careful of. But it’s not a solution to cut yourself off from those things altogether.’ He thought for a moment – a comparison in these situations often helped drive a point home, but he was reluctant to use another cooking metaphor. The omelette experience had made him wary of all foodstuffs – entertaining, yes, but too vague. Biddle sought inspiration from other sources. ‘Imagine if there was a … a duckling … whose mother didn’t dare let it swim in the water in case it caught one of the diseases you can catch from water,’ he said gently, suddenly feeling as he imagined a parent would when reading a story to their toddler.

Gerard leaned forward in his seat, his face showing intense concentration, and Biddle was unnerved by the idea of Gerard Feehan being his toddler. ‘Now – what happens when that duckling becomes a duck?’ Biddle asked.

‘It can’t swim?’ Gerard suggested, with a wide-eyed look of trust that further reinforced the parent/toddler ambience.

In fact Biddle hadn’t considered this possibility, having been thinking on a rather more complex level. ‘Oh …’ he responded, taken aback (and confused by the unfamiliar parental feelings welling up inside him), ‘yes, I suppose it wouldn’t be able to, would it? But what I was also thinking was that it wouldn’t have built up a resistance to the diseases in the water, and would probably get ill straight away and die.’ He looked at Gerard meaningfully. Actually it had confused things unnecessarily to make it about ducks, he thought. He wasn’t sure why ducks had come into his head. But it was too late now. Everything was getting rather confused in this encounter.

Gerard sighed. ‘It’s just …’ he began. ‘I don’t really think …’ he began. ‘The problem …’ he began. ‘I’ve never done – gone to a – done anything like – club – gay – and I wouldn’t really – on my own – what to – know to, what to, to …’

‘Okay,’ Biddle said, ‘tell me when you want to go out, and I’ll go with you.’ It was a bold thing to suggest, he knew, but it was the only way he was going to get the boy out at the end of the day, and it made him feel less like a parent.

‘What?’ Gerard’s mouth hung open in surprise. ‘You can’t!’

‘Why not? You don’t have to be gay to go into a gay club.’

‘But … you’re a vicar!’

‘I don’t think men of the cloth have been banned from gay clubs. Not to my knowledge, at any rate.’

‘But …’ Gerard was running out of excuses. ‘What say, what will, my mother?’

‘Will your mother object to you spending an evening with a vicar?’ Biddle asked. Gerard shrugged.

‘I suppose …’ he answered, helplessly, adding ‘not’ to clarify what he meant.

‘Well then.’ Biddle finished his mug of tea, feeling warmed by a strange, fatherly sense of pride … He immediately stopped the thought before it was fully formed – it wasn’t fatherly pride, it was the glow of having been of use to at least one person this month. It was a new feeling for him, that was all.

He wasn’t sure why he found the idea of being a parent so difficult, but he told himself that it was only because he would never bring up a child as wet as Gerard Feehan, and put the thought out of his head.

‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on wearing vestments,’ he cheerfully informed Gerard, already wondering to himself what people did wear in gay clubs these days. He was already quite looking forward to the outing.

Gerard may have felt less uneasy about the idea of going to a gay club had he known that Jesus had already visited quite a few. After all, the Christ wasn’t just lying in bed between his weekly visits to St Barnabas – had anybody noticed him, they would have seen Jesus visiting many of the area’s lesser attractions over the few weeks he had been back on earth. There are people who would find even the suggestion of Jesus going into a gay club shocking and unseemly, but it was Jesus’ habit of doing shocking and unseemly things that had got him into so much trouble with people the first time round. He had come to help the lonely and the helpless; the clubbing scene, not unlike the church, had proved a big source of both. If Jesus hadn’t been paid much attention there either, it’s because the clubbing scene, like church, is full of people largely interested in external appearances and Jesus had been too busy to spend time tarting himself up to meet people.

But he had at least met some people. Even as Gerard was leaving the vicarage, Jesus was kneeling next to a young woman who was weeping into a gutter outside a noisy club on the outskirts of London. She had sobered up a fair amount in the time he had been talking to her, though if anything she was crying more than she had been when he had picked her up from the ground.

‘Can you tell me where you’re going?’ he asked her, provoking another burst of sobbing.