More Tea, Jesus?

Chapter 3

Having already prepared one meal that morning, Andy Biddle decided that a microwavable beef casserole was all he could be bothered to make for his lunch. Much as he liked the romantic idea of a hearty Sunday roast, he spent his day of rest preparing the Lord’s table and it wasn’t practical to come up with complicated cuisine for his own pleasure as well.

He was about two thirds of the way towards a fully heated casserole when he spotted the reminder on his kitchen noticeboard saying ‘lunch with Bishop – Sunday’. Cursing with words that vicars are perhaps supposed to know about but probably shouldn’t use, he aborted the microwave and hurried upstairs to change back into a clerical shirt.

The problem with his kitchen noticeboard, he thought to himself, was that there was too much on it. He was hardly going to notice a tiny reminder about lunch when he had the parish newsletter staring out at him, replete this month with a poorly reproduced picture of Mrs Hall holding her prize-winning window box. As he hurried back downstairs fixing his dog collar into place, he paused briefly to glare at the offending photograph, which looked more like a leprous troll playing the accordion. How was he supposed to concentrate on important reminders with that there?

Biddle briefly considered driving to the Bishop’s house, but the consumption of large quantities of alcohol was virtually an obligation at Bishop Slocombe’s lunches so he decided it would be wiser to cycle. Not that cycling home drunk was particularly wise, but the protection of God (one of the perks of his job) counted for a lot on these occasions.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Bishop Slocombe demanded twenty-three minutes later, glowing in all of his red splendour as he steered Biddle into his house. ‘Were you doing a special mass or something?’ The Right Reverend Findlay Slocombe was the suffragan bishop of Cogspool; this was something of a booby prize as suffragan bishoprics went, subject to the same kind of concealed snickering amongst Anglican clergy as that endured by the Bishop of Maidstone, but that didn’t stop Slocombe from acting as if he sat in one of the most esteemed positions in the hierarchy of primates.

‘Sorry, it was a family service,’ Biddle told him, adopting a weary grin designed to win him enough sympathy for his tardiness to be overlooked.

‘Dreadful things,’ tutted the Bishop. ‘Never get involved with them myself. You should put some lay-reader or trainee priest in charge.’

‘In my opinion, family services ought to be a special mass,’ a voice called from the living room. Biddle recognised both the voice and the philosophy of Reverend Alex Milne: the mass – and the Anglican devaluation of it – was one of his pet subjects, being as he was a frustrated Catholic. Since his PhD had been paid for by the Anglican Church, he had felt an obligation to be ordained an Anglican priest; as a result, he had become exceedingly bitter about almost everything in the church. In fits of pique he still threatened to go over to Rome.

‘I am aware of the importance of the mass,’ Biddle shouted back, anticipating Alex’s oft-repeated dictum that nothing could be more family than the mass. ‘I’ve instigated a family communion every two months at St Barnabas,’ he went on with a hint of pride; he was quite used to this kind of argument, having spent many hours at theological college drinking rosé with Milne and disagreeing about theology. Their friendship thus established and cemented, they had continued to provide each other, if not with constant support, then certainly with rosé. The rosé was a vital common factor in their friendship, because their approaches to ministry had continued to drift ever further apart.

Biddle entered the Bishop’s living room and was immediately submerged in an opera he couldn’t identify – Slocombe had a fairly loose understanding of the concept of background music. Milne turned round from a bookcase to frown at him. ‘How is a family communion different to an ordinary mass?’ he challenged, raising his voice further to combat the strains of whatever opera was pumping from the stereo.

‘The children stay in the service,’ Biddle explained, ‘so it’s more geared towards them. In the same way as a family service is rather … er … less structured,’ he continued, deciding not to use his recent omelette as an example of just how unstructured family services could get, ‘family communion follows a looser pattern than the usual mass. I’m sure I must have told you that I’ve written my own special version of the liturgy.’

‘No,’ responded Milne, raising his dark eyebrows suspiciously, ‘I don’t think you have mentioned that. What sort of special version?’

‘Obviously it follows the same form as the standard version, but it’s more accessible for the young people. You know, some of it’s a bit much for children – death and broken bodies, that sort of thing.’

‘You can’t remove death from the mass, Andy,’ Milne said, rolling his eyes. ‘Death is central to the mass.’

‘No no no, of course I haven’t removed it,’ Biddle hastily clarified, ‘I’ve just reworded it. You know what I mean, instead of “this is my blood which has been shed for you”, I say, “this is the sign of my new covenant with mankind.” That sort of thing.’ Much as Biddle admired Milne’s seriousness and devotion to tradition, he couldn’t help feeling that his whole outlook was singularly lacking in joy. As young, eager theologians it had been all very well to affect a general dissatisfaction with everything in the church – that was a normal part of preparation for the priesthood, and the hours spent drinking rosé and conferring on factious approaches to Christianity were a necessary way of venting such frustration. But Biddle had grown out of that (the frustration, if not the rosé); Milne hadn’t. Somehow pale and distanced, he seemed to be increasingly wallowing in his own misery. Which Biddle thought was a shame.

‘Stop talking about the mass, for God’s sake,’ Bishop Slocombe interrupted, glowing pompously. ‘Who’s for sherry?’

Bishop Slocombe did, in fact, literally glow. He was undoubtedly the reddest person Biddle had ever known. His natural shade was a deep, glowing pink, which became increasingly saturated in hue when Slocombe was drinking or laughing (both of which, in any case, tended to lead to the other). There was a rumour that at an Episcopal Christmas party some years back, the Bishop had become so red as a result of imbibing that he had been convinced he was getting the stigmata.

Glowing with the merry bright red shade that indicated he had already enjoyed several glasses himself, Slocombe thrust a sherry into Biddle’s hand.

‘Why? Just … why?’ persisted Milne.

‘Come on, Alex – blood, it’s not very nice, is it?’

At this, Milne gave him a deeply withering look. ‘You need more misery in your religion,’ he scowled.

‘Blood not very nice?’ repeated Bishop Slocombe, apparently interested in discussing the mass all of a sudden. ‘What do you tell them they’re drinking, for God’s sake?’

‘Um …Ribena,’ admitted Biddle.

‘What?’ the Bishop and Milne simultaneously exploded.

‘Ribena,’ repeated Biddle, rather unnecessarily.

‘I don’t understand, you tell them the wine has turned into Ribena?’ Slocombe asked, glowing with agitation.

‘No, we use Ribena. So the children can drink it.’

‘But you can’t use Ribena,’ spluttered Milne, ‘you can’t say that Ribena is the blood of Christ!’

‘It’s more of a symbolic thing,’ Biddle explained.

‘That demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the mass,’ Milne declared.

‘Oops, you’ve got the purple whore started,’ said Bishop Slocombe, who wasn’t entirely sympathetic towards Milne’s Catholic sensibilities.

‘Look, it’s … it’s not a proper mass,’ Biddle said, ‘it’s a shortened version, just for the symbolism.

‘You’ve shortened the mass? What exactly do you think church is for?’

Biddle smiled. It was the same as any number of their previous conversations. ‘It is felt to be a bit long for some of the younger members of St Barnabas,’ he gently explained. (In actual fact it was also too long for many of the adults in St Barnabas, and over the years various cuts had been made to ensure that it didn’t overrun. Neither had Biddle been entirely averse to adopting the abridged version when Sathan Petty-Saphon had explained all about it; but he kept this to himself as he was sure it would not be well-received by the Bishop, even less so by Alex.)

‘Too long?’ the latter was expostulating. ‘There’s no sense of time in mass.’

‘There certainly wasn’t any sense of time by the end of the mass I took this morning,’ Bishop Slocombe commented. ‘They fill the chalice rather full at St John the Evangelist, I often end up drinking rather more of the Lord than is good for me.’ He puffed his cheeks out and exhaled loudly, as if trying to suggest that this was something he regretted deeply.

‘How exactly can the Lord be bad for you?’ Biddle queried.

‘Oh, be quiet, you old evangelical,’ Slocombe said, slapping him on the back, ‘drink some more sherry.’

‘Too long …’ Milne was muttering.

‘And you can shut up as well!’ Slocombe continued. ‘Dear God, why is it that the moment you two get close to each other, a fearsome debate always breaks out about some sacrament?’

Alex Milne tried to suppress his annoyance. Biddle’s slipshod attitude had started to aggravate him to a level that would threaten their friendship if he thought about it too hard. But it frustrated him to recall the radical zeal that Biddle had so promisingly shown when training when he looked at the perfect cliché of a country priest standing in front of him. It was clear that Andy had become a middle-of-the-road semi-evangelical by pure default: it required the least effort and only a very hazy understanding of theology.

He wouldn’t have slipped so easily into that routine working in an urban church. That was a job which required the kind of effort that Biddle wouldn’t understand, any more than he could grasp the theology behind the underlying reality or substance of Christ’s body in the – but it wasn’t really about that, was it? It was – unbeckoned, other images were flooding into his mind – it was – what was it? It was – he couldn’t concentrate because of the aching, hollow, demanding-to-know-why eyes – a boy, the tiniest crack in his voice –

‘… been a while, how’s it going?’ Biddle was saying.

‘Oh.’ Milne tried to pull himself away from his angry, confused thoughts. He needed to move on and there was no point in reinforcing the common perception of himself as a miserable bastard. ‘Yes, same as usual – getting by, in the same old lonely way,’ he said with a miserable smile.

Bishop Slocombe shook his head at Milne’s response. Miserable bastard, he thought. He looked over to Biddle, who was an equal prayer concern, though the problem was the opposite – when did he ever stop smiling? And was he really as ignorant as he sounded? Surely not, but all the same – it was worrying to have a priest who was so happy all the time. Perhaps if there was some way to combine Milne and Biddle genetically, that would produce the ultimate Anglican priest. Slocombe wondered if there might be government funding for such an experiment.

He turned his mind back to the more immediate problem of refilling his glass with sherry.

Biddle had a feeling that Alex’s answer hadn’t been an entirely positive statement, but it didn’t feel like the right place to follow it up, what with Bishop Slocombe glowing impatiently and trying to chivvy them through to the dining room.

‘We’ve finished the sherry,’ he was saying, as he quickly gulped down the glass he had just poured himself, ‘I’ll uncork some wine, shall I? Red?’ Since the cork was already half out of the bottle nobody felt the need to answer.

As they went through to the dining room they were greeted by Mary, Bishop Slocombe’s cook, who was unloading dishes from a hostess trolley and glowering at the assembled company. Mary was an elderly Welsh woman who had been employed by the church since the age of Constantine. She rarely said a word, her cooking was at best variable, and she surveyed everybody she met with a continual scowl. However, her long life had been devoted wholly to the church, and there was little doubt that she had a place reserved in heaven, in which she would probably spend the rest of eternity scowling at the angels and archangels.

‘Thank you, Mary!’ Biddle smiled, in an attempt to coax the tiniest hint of happiness from the cook. Instead, he received an even fiercer glare. He often had similar experiences with babies and dogs, which bothered him because he was sure he possessed an unthreatening, friendly face.

‘Alright, Mary, I’ll do the rest,’ Slocombe told her, and with a look of disgust the old lady slowly left the room. Biddle’s attention was suddenly caught by the hostess trolley she was wheeling out with her. It was the kind of item that genuinely excited him.

‘I like your hostess trolley,’ he commented.

‘I’ll just go and turn the music up in the other room,’ Slocombe said.

‘Do you remember my hostess trolley?’ Biddle asked Milne. Milne shook his head. ‘I picked it up for a remarkably good price some years back. I’m sure I must have shown it to you.’

Milne shook his head. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘It’s Victorian. Bit of a bargain.’

They heard the operatic strains from the living room rise in volume. Bishop Slocombe was a lover of music, or at least that which fitted into his somewhat narrow preferences, and he saw one of his ministries as sharing the music he loved with those around him. Including his next-door neighbours.

He returned flourishing a newspaper. ‘I was saying to Alex,’ Biddle told him, ‘I picked up a very nice Victorian hostess trolley myself some years ago for a remarkably good price.’

‘Oh, hold on, yes, I do remember,’ Milne suddenly recalled, ‘I left a bottle of port on it once. You don’t still have it, do you?’

‘Lovely picture of your favourite person in the Guardian,’ Slocombe said to Milne, throwing the newspaper down in front of Milne. It was folded to a large photograph of the Pope stepping from an aeroplane.

‘Doesn’t he look splendid?’ Milne observed.

‘Once upon a time you’d have been burned for being a Catholic,’ Slocombe gloated.

‘Once upon a time you would have been burned for being a Protestant,’ Milne calmly replied.

Biddle felt he had rather excluded himself from the conversation thanks to his Victorian hostess trolley, bargain though it might have been. ‘I suppose,’ he said, edging his way back into the discussion, ‘we get the best of both worlds, don’t we? Being Anglican, I mean. We take the best parts of the Catholic liturgy, the best music from the Anglican tradition …’

‘Some of us use the best music from the Anglican tradition,’ Bishop Slocombe interrupted, staring pointedly at Milne. Milne frostily returned Slocombe’s stare, mentally preparing to defend the modern mass settings he favoured, musically simplistic though they were, for their congregational advantages.

‘If you do want to elevate music to a point at which the congregation cease to be involved in it …’

‘If I wanted to involve my congregation in the music, then I’d rather sing evangelical worship songs than your modern Roman crap,’ Bishop Slocombe barked. Milne recoiled as if he had been slapped; Biddle winced. ‘As Anglicans, we have the finest choral tradition in the history of music behind us, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Um … of course, technically, that wouldn’t be the Anglican tradition so much as the Lutheran tradition,’ Biddle argued, trying to divert the conversation in a direction that would take it well away from the topic of evangelical worship songs.

‘What? The Lutherans never had a Dyson. They never had a Stanford! And don’t you dare invoke the name of Bach, it’s all overrated anyway. Now have some wine and shut up.’ He poured a large glass of wine for each of them. ‘Better not have too much of this myself,’ he added, ‘I’ve given it up for Lent.’

Like the mass, there was no sense of time in Bishop Slocombe’s dinners, which were more of a liquid nature than solid. Mary’s beef casserole, which turned out to be uncharacteristically tasty, was clearly only a side-dish to Slocombe’s regular and overzealous measures of Chianti. Yet how ironic it was, thought Biddle, that he had ended up eating a beef casserole almost exactly the same as the one that he had been microwaving earlier on. Of course, the homemade version was considerably more real than the two-for-the-price-of-one microwavable dish he’d initially expected, something he thought might form the basis for a sermon. Perhaps another cookery sermon involving a microwave meal and a genuine casserole.

‘I was wondering,’ the Bishop slurred, turning again to the newspaper on the table as Mary glowered into the room to collect their dirty plates, ‘if I was getting off a plane, would I want to be the Pope?’ He paused, dramatically. ‘Or would I want to be Cher?’

‘I really ought to be going soon,’ mused Biddle, who was distracted a second time by the hostess trolley that Mary had pushed into the room with her, not least because it was loaded with cakes this time.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Milne told Bishop Slocombe. ‘It would have to be Cher.’

‘I wouldn’t be happy kissing the tarmac whenever I got off a plane,’ Slocombe declared. ‘You don’t catch Cher kissing tarmac.’

‘Do you think they clean the tarmac for him before he gets off the plane?’ Milne wondered. ‘In the name of hygiene, I mean.’

Biddle turned the newspaper towards him and studied the photograph. ‘He looks quite happy there,’ he observed. ‘But I bet he’s wondering if they’ve cleaned the tarmac for him.’

‘He’s probably also wondering whether he’d prefer to be Cher,’ Slocombe added.

‘Cher sins a lot, of course,’ Milne said thoughtfully.

‘But she can get away with that. Being Cher,’ Biddle pointed out.

‘Indeed!’ Slocombe agreed, enthusiastically. ‘I’d absolve her, any day.’

‘I bet you would.’

‘I suppose the Pope would be more likely to be able to get away with sinning if he was Cher,’ Biddle continued. ‘But as it is, he’s the Pope. So he can’t, really.’

‘And he is a very good man,’ said Milne, reverently.

‘He’s just not Cher,’ Slocombe insisted.