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
