he added, in case his volunteer hadn’t quite picked up on the full ramifications of the bacon deficiency.
‘So … you have eggs?’ Jesus responded, calmly.
‘That would be the other fifty per cent, yes,’ Roy impatiently replied.
‘Fine,’ nodded Jesus. ‘I’ve just the recipe.’
‘What, eggs and eggs?’ Roy sarcastically countered.
‘In the form of an omelette,’ Jesus agreed.
‘Oh, right.’ Roy poked his head out of the kitchen door and squinted; the shelter was filling up fast and there seemed to be rather a lot of new faces today. ‘Though we’ll run out of eggs I expect.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the new volunteer smiled back, ‘I’m good at making food go round a lot of people.’
Biddle had indeed broken a tooth, a diversion which caused Bishop Slocombe considerable merriment and Biddle considerable pain. In the long run, however, Biddle had achieved the near impossible feat of bringing the argument about serving to an end before it got violent, so he began to feel that in his own minor way he had managed to martyr himself.
Had God broken his tooth to prevent violence? Was this actually an act of divine intervention, he an unwitting pawn in a cruel trade-off for a greater good in the midst of a larger game? Was that what being a priest was all about?
As the Bishop administered more wine (the best he had to offer by way of an anaesthetic), Biddle explained that he had been in his new parish for so short a time that he hadn’t yet managed to register with a dentist.
‘Oh, you mustn’t worry about that,’ Slocombe exclaimed, refilling Biddle’s glass, ‘you must go to my dentist. He’s in Cogspool – he does every priest in the area.’
Biddle was not convinced that this was the best qualification for a dentist.
Chapter 4
As Biddle cycled unsteadily up the darkening road towards his house some hours later than he had intended to return, he saw a small, hunched figure sitting on his doorstep. He sighed – if it was the drunk man needing the toilet again why couldn’t he use the bus stop like everyone else? But as Biddle got closer he saw that it wasn’t a man at all – or at least, barely.
‘It’s … Gerard, isn’t it?’ he asked, wishing he’d brought some chewing gum to cover up the Chianti still lingering on his breath. A pale face looked up at him through misted glasses.
‘Oh – er – Mr … Reverend Mr,’ the boy began, uncertainly.
‘I’m sorry, have you been waiting long?’ Biddle asked, hoping that his visitor had only come to leave some kind of message. He didn’t want to be uncharitable, but lunch with Bishop Slocombe had been more punishing than usual and right now what he needed more than anything else was a long soak in the bath with a good book. Not the Good Book, which wasn’t really designed for bath-time reading. He would have another stab at Weaving the Spell of Civilisation, an Indian novel which was not necessarily a good book either, but which had been recommended to him by a friend as brilliant and life-changing. It had proved to be neither; in fact, he had only ploughed on with it because he felt that it was the sort of multicultural writing he ought to be aware of as a vicar. After all, there might actually be people in his parish, even in his church, who had read it as well.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, remembering that there was a boy on his doorstep. ‘Did you – er …?’
‘It’s – I wanted to – there was something, to talk with you … about …’ Gerard Feehan said, earnestly and a little incomprehensibly.
Biddle sighed inwardly. A vicar’s work was never done.
‘Well,’ he said brightly, ‘you’d better come in, hadn’t you?’ He gave Gerard a broad, reassuring smile, then winced at the pain that suddenly shot from his tooth.
It wasn’t at all helpful that it hurt so much to smile. As a vicar, he saw it as one of his duties to smile a lot, especially when parishioners visited him and smiling was essential to put them at their ease.
On the other hand, he gathered from the worried look on Gerard’s face that it was going to take a lot more than smiling to put this visitor at ease. He needed something comforting, homely and even a little authoritative; it was on occasions such as these that the Victorian hostess trolley which he had found at a remarkably low price several years back really came into its own.
A while later, Biddle sat opposite Gerard Feehan in the vicarage living room with freshly poured tea and an atmosphere of comforting, homely authoritativeness. ‘I don’t know,’ Gerard Feehan was saying, his face contorted in thought. ‘My mother?’
Biddle restrained himself from saying ‘tsk’.
‘Gerard,’ he began, trying to maintain his kindliest voice whilst adding a subtle note of teacherly sternness. ‘What makes you think that your mother has anything to do with it?’
‘Well …’ Feehan shifted awkwardly in his armchair, almost knocking off the teacup on the saucer perched next to him. Biddle instinctively leapt forward to catch the cup; seeing the vicar lurching towards him, Feehan nervously bolted halfway out of his seat, this time actually knocking his cup of tea off the arm of the chair. Biddle narrowly reached it in time to avert disaster; the cup successfully caught, Feehan rather unnecessarily grabbed at it, almost succeeding in upsetting it for a third time. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ he nervously apologised.
Biddle wondered if it might be an idea to start giving his parishioners tea in plain old mugs – possibly the ones that he got free from Leading in Love, a Christian organisation of whose actual aims he was unsure, unless they were to keep vicars supplied with mugs bearing their logo. He was growing aware that a whole generation had been brought up unequipped to deal with cups and saucers, or for that matter Victorian hostess trolleys; the trust won by his vicarly tea-serving utensils might not really be worth the risk to his carpet.
‘Erm … listen, not to worry, it’s only a carpet after all!’ he laughed, wincing at the resultant stab of pain in his tooth.
‘Are you alright?’ Feehan nervously enquired, anxiously holding the cup and saucer in place with a shaking hand.
‘It’s … nothing, just a tooth problem,’ Biddle explained.
‘You should see a dentist about it,’ Gerard suggested helpfully.
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Biddle replied. ‘You were telling me about your mother,’ he reminded Feehan.
‘Oh – well, I …’ The young man drew in a long breath and looked down at his knees. ‘I get on – my mother – with her, very well, you see.’ He coughed; he was not enjoying this conversation. He wasn’t sure if he really should have brought up the issue in the first place, and having done so he was wishing very much that he hadn’t. Conversations were not his strong point at the best of times, and this one was proving particularly difficult, especially since his words had started coming out in the wrong order.
‘Why do you think that has anything to do with the way you feel?’ Biddle asked, after a pause.
‘I thought …’
