if I were to walk out on to the street, Father, and I were to lay hold of one of your parishioners, do you think he would be able to distinguish, to my satisfaction, between that honour and reverence that we give the saints and that worship that belongs to God?’
‘Windbag,’ said Father Angwin. ‘Dechristianizer. Saladin.’ He pitched his voice up. ‘It isn’t what you think. But the people here are very deficient in the power of prayer. They are simple people. I am a simple man myself.’
‘I am aware of that,’ the bishop said.
‘The saints have their attributes. They have their areas of interest. A congregation latches on to them.’
‘They must latch off,’ said the bishop brutally. ‘I won’t have it. These are to go.’
As he passed Michael the Archangel, Father Angwin looked up and saw the scales in which that saint weighs human souls, and he dropped his eyes to Michael’s foot: a bare, muscled, claw-like foot, that had sometimes seemed to him like the foot of an ape. He passed under the gallery, into the thicker, velvet blackness where St Thomas himself, the Angelic Doctor, stood central and square on his plinth, his stone gaze on the high altar, and the star that he held in his fine hands shedding lightless rays into the greater dark.
When they returned to the house, the bishop was boisterous and offensive. He wanted more tea, and biscuits too. ‘I won’t dispute it,’ he said. ‘I won’t dispute it any more. Your congregation have superstitions that would disgrace Sicilian peasants.’
‘But I am afraid,’ Father Angwin said, ‘that if you take away the statues, and next the Latin, next the feast days, the fast days, the vestments –’
‘I said nothing about this, did I?’
‘I can see the future. They won’t come any more. Why should they? Why should they come to church? They might as well be out in the street.’
‘We are not here for frills and baubles, Father,’ said the bishop. ‘We are not here for fripperies. We are here for Christian witness.’
‘Rubbish,’ Father said. ‘These people aren’t Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.’
When Agnes Dempsey came in with the Nice biscuits she could see that Father Angwin was in a poor state, quivering and sweating and passing his hand over his forehead. She hung about in the corridor, to catch what she could.
‘Well, come now,’ the bishop said. She could hear that he was alarmed. ‘Don’t take on so. I’m not saying you may not have an image. I’m not saying that you may not have a statue at all. I’m saying we must make an accommodation to the times in which we live.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Father said, adding audibly, ‘you fat fool.’
‘Are you quite well?’ the bishop said. ‘You keep talking in different voices. Insulting me.’
‘If the truth insults you.’
‘Never mind,’ said the bishop. ‘I am of robust character. But I think, Father Angwin, that you must have an assistant. Some young chap, as strong as myself. It seems to me you know next to nothing of the tide of the times. Do you look at television?’ Father Angwin shook his head. ‘You don’t possess a receiving set,’ said the bishop. ‘You should, you know. Broadcasting is our greatest asset, wisely used. Why, I cannot count the good that has been done in the Republic, in helping the denominations understand each other, by Rumble and Carty’s “Radio Replies”. Depend upon it, Father, that’s the future.’ The bishop smote the mantelpiece, like Moses striking the rock.
Father Angwin surveyed him. Irish as he was, where had he got that Anglo complexion, rosy and cyanosed by turn? At a public school, surely, a minor English public school. If it had stood to Father Angwin, the bishop would not have been educated, or at least not in that way. He needed to know who was Galileo, and to chant in choir for a few hours at a time. The lives of the saints would have been enough for him, and the movement of the spheres, and a touch of practical wisdom on dairy farming or some such, that was useful to a pastoral economy.
All this he voiced to the bishop; the bishop stared. Outside the door Miss Dempsey stood with her blue eyes growing brighter, sucking one finger like a child who has burnt it on the stove. She heard footsteps above, in the passage, in the bedroom. It is ghosts, she thought, walking on my mopping. Angelic doctors, virgin martyrs. Doors slammed overhead.
The rain had stopped. Silence crept through the house. The bishop was a modern man, no patience with scruples, no time for the ancient byways of faith; and what can you do, against a modern man? When Father Angwin spoke again, the note of contention had gone from his voice; fatigue replaced it. ‘Those statues are as tall as men,’ he said.
‘Get help,’ said the bishop. ‘You have plenty of help. Get the parishioners to assist. Get the Men’s Fellowship on to it.’
‘Where am I to put them? I can’t break them up.’
‘Well, agreed. It wouldn’t be wholly decent. Stack them in your garage. Why don’t you do that?’
‘What about my vehicle?’
‘What? Is that the thing, outside?’
‘My motor car,’ Father said.
‘That heap of junk? Why not expose it to the elements?’
‘It’s true,’ Father Angwin said humbly, ‘it’s a worthless car. You can see the road through the floor as you drive.’
‘I can remember,’ the bishop said abrasively, ‘when chaps got about on bicycles.’
Chaps, Father thought. Chaps is it, now? ‘You couldn’t go to Netherhoughton on a bicycle,’ he said. ‘They’d knock you off it.’
‘Good heavens,’ the bishop said. He looked over his shoulder, being imperfectly certain of the geography of this most northerly outpost of the diocese. ‘Are they Orangemen up there?’
‘They have an Orange Lodge. They are all in it, Catholics too. They have firework parties in Netherhoughton. Ox-roasts. They play football with human heads.’
‘At some point you exaggerate,’ the bishop said. ‘I am not sure at which.’
‘Would you care to make a pastoral visit?’
‘Indeed not,’ said the bishop. ‘I have pressing matters. I must be getting back. You may keep Thomas Aquinas, St Theresa the Little Flower and the Holy Virgin herself, only try if you can to get her nose repaired.’
Miss Dempsey moved away from the door. The bishop came out into the hall and gave her a piercing look. She wiped her hands nervously on her pinny and knelt on the floor. ‘May I kiss the ring, M’ lud?’
‘Oh, get away, woman. Get into the kitchen. Contribute something practical, will you?’
‘The bishop cannot abide the piety of the ignorant,’ Father Angwin said.
Miss
