The Painted Bridge A Novel

THIRTY-NINE





Vincent Palmer held the notes for his sermon in front of him on his lap, rolled like a scroll, which he considered the most dignified way of carrying paper. He delivered his sermons as if they were spontaneous but he prepared them minutely beforehand, knew the rhythms he would strike, the metaphors he would employ. It enabled him to deliver them to maximum effect, and with maximum sincerity, as if they were part of himself, as if he spilled his own blood for the congregation.

It was a particular honor that the Bishop had chosen to be present on the fifth Sunday in Lent and one that could only be explained by His Lordship’s appreciation of blood ties, however tenuous. In his note, His Lordship had again made reference to Mrs. Palmer, indicated that he hoped to meet her. He wanted to look her over, evidently. It was the Bishop’s candid opinion, Vincent suspected, that if Anna was not fit to be a clergy wife he should pack her off to the country for good. Disencumber himself.

The sermon, the last in the Lent series, was on the sin and punishment of Gehazi. Its theme was mortification and Vincent believed it the best he had ever penned. Not so much a sermon as a statement, a distillation of everything he believed, everything he was as a man as well as a priest. He felt a shiver of excitement at the prospect of being able at last to display his true worth to the Bishop.

From the robing room, he could hear the congregation pouring in through the large doors at the back of All Hallows. He could hear the whispered admonishments of mothers to their children, the odd cry from a baby too young to know where it was. He felt ready. He’d had a light breakfast of poached eggs and a pot of tea and blackened his moustache with the Colombian powder. He was as prepared as he would ever be.

Clearing his throat, scroll in hand, Vincent strode to his place at the side of the altar. The Bishop was installed in the front pew, he saw, with room to stretch his legs if he cared and away from the hoi polloi, who could smell unpleasant, even and in fact especially on days of notable religious significance. A deep organ note wheezed into the church and the first hymn commenced.

The singing fell away, and the curate read the first and second lessons. There was some form of disturbance at the back as Vincent climbed the steps to the pulpit to deliver the sermon. At least a handful of worshippers generally had to be rebuked for arriving under the influence. He would discover afterward who the miscreants were, couldn’t see them clearly enough to deal immediately with them. Arriving in the pulpit, he spread his hands in a gesture of humility and of welcome, nodded to the congregation, and bowed deeply to the Bishop. Then he began.

“Dearly beloved. All around us, in our streets and places of work, even in our own homes, we see examples of sinners. Brothers and sisters in Christ who have strayed from the path of righteousness. Consider Gehazi, who although he walked this earth almost two thousand years ago, was prey to the same temptations. …”

The protesting creak of the church door cut in on his words, heralding, no doubt, a further disturbance at the back. He stopped and let the silence that grew in the church speak for him, composing his face into a gargoyle frown, to make clear his displeasure. When the silence was once again complete, he continued.

“And the question that Gehazi raises for us today, the question that echoes down the generations, is thus …”

The latecomers had failed to understand his unspoken instruction. The rumpus at the back was growing and as he raised his eyes from his notes, two figures began to walk down the nave toward him. It was a pair of females. One all in red, the shape of an hourglass. The other tall and slender in a sea-green dress. They approached him like a couple coming to make their vows—slowly, their backs straight, heads up, and their gait measured. Between them a small figure took light, skipping steps. It was his shrill voice that pierced the hush pervading All Hallows.

“Father!”

Vincent leaned on the pulpit, groped in his head for the right lines. Silence. Nothing. “Oh Lord,” he said to himself. “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

The pair had halted. Anna was standing by the Bishop, so close she risked stepping on the hem of his robes. What on earth was she doing here? Vincent frowned down at her and in the silence another voice came. It echoed off the stone walls, the cerulean glass in the high windows, the closed eyes of the saints. It was Maud’s stage voice, sweet and ringing, and it had in it a breaking sorrow that pierced him as surely as if a nail had been driven through his flesh.

“Vincent. Which one of us is your lawful wedded wife?”

He could not stop now. He would not stop. Not while the Bishop was in the congregation. The congregation, for the first time ever, were riveted, every last one of them alert and listening with not a whisper arising from the furthest corner of the church. Even the babies were quiet.

Vincent caught the Bishop’s eye and saw that his face was frighteningly, unnaturally composed, displayed no emotion whatsoever. The goodwill was entirely gone from it, Vincent noted.

How dare women try to create confusion in God’s house? Bringing sordid carnal matters under this sacred roof? Vincent lifted up his eyes to the Lord and, as a greater disturbance erupted, with cries of protest and calls of “shame,” the help he sought came to him. He felt his fists unclench and heard authority return to his voice, that authority that came from a greater power. With it came the words. Everything was there, in the Bible. All of human experience and all of human trouble. Old man Job had known it well.

“The days of affliction have taken hold upon me. My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.”

Some of the parishioners were laughing, some jeering. One woman wept. Vincent looked down and saw the Bishop departing with Maud and Anna, all three of their hems trailing on the stone floor and the boy skipping beside them.

Vincent raised his voice higher, lifted it to the rafters in joyful worship; God would hear him if man could not.

“I stood up and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.”