Death in the opening chapter

FOURTEEN

Bognor had never previously thought of the Lord His God as a fairground attendant, nor as the man in charge of pleasure boats on an artificial lake. He was, however, open to new thoughts, and this one pleased him. He rolled it around his mind as if it were a toy that he had just unwrapped. He tasted it, as if it were an interesting wine to savour, or the first in a packet of Tim Tams or Cherry Ripes; an opportunity to decide once and for all whether Marmite was better than Vegemite. He considered Sebastian a Vegemite sort of priest – bland, all-things-to-all-men, not spikey and sharp like Marmite. He liked people to be Marmites. Difficult presences. The Reverend Sebastian had been a Vegemite in life, bearing the imprint of the last person to whom he had spoken. A true Marmite would have resisted and been a constantly awkward customer. It was only in death that Sebastian had become a Marmite.

‘Life,’ said the bishop, ‘goes on. Like the show. And my friend – our friend – Sebastian, would have wished it that way.’

Only a bishop, thought Simon. Having a pulpit enabled you to look down on other people, wearing ornate frocks and a purple vest gave you a spurious authority, a mitre raised your height and a crook was a staff to lean on, as well as a club with which to beat. If he, or any of his betes noires in government or public, had dared to utter such cliches, they would have been laughed at and scorned. A bishop, however, could get away with such banality.

‘There are two lives here,’ he said from the pulpit, with all the authority of his vestments and his position. ‘The life temporal, fleeting and, perhaps even as the political theorist Thomas Hobbes would have us believe, “nasty, brutish, solitary and short”. And the life everlasting, which is a thing of beauty beyond our comprehension, for eternity is a concept we cannot comprehend.

‘Our friend, my friend, Sebastian, has departed the first of these lives. He has done so unexpectedly and, to our conventional way of thinking, before his time. The reason for, and the manner of his departure, have to be ascertained, for that is the law of this land in which we live. We are singularly fortunate in that we have in our midst one whose whole life has been concerned with such sudden unexpected comings and goings. I have known him for what passes on this Earth for quite a long time, even if, in the eyes of the Almighty, it is no more than a blinking of an eye. I am confident that our friend, my friend, Simon, will solve the matter of Sebastian’s sudden departure correctly, according to the laws of this our land, and that he will do so decorously, respectfully and without fuss.’

Once again, he paused in a manner which Simon was beginning to find suspiciously theatrical. Ebenezer was too like a stage bishop – an episcopal Robertson Hare, an ecclesiastical Derek Nimmo. Too much to be quite true. If he had not known that he was real, Bognor would have had his suspicions. He was like a man playing at being a bishop, a layman assuming a disguise.

‘I,’ said the Rt Rev. Ebenezer, ‘have no more standing in this world than any of you. We are all equal in the sight of the law, and it is in the sight of the law that justice will be done and will be seen to be done. I trust implicitly in my friend Sir Simon Bognor, and I trust that you too will echo that trust and bring that which passes for guilty to be brought to that which passes for justice. I yield to no man in my respect for the true course of such temporal affairs, and yet I feel obliged to enter an eternal caveat.’

He looked around and smiled, though this time it was more of a snarl than a smile.

‘But,’ he said, ‘and it is an important, an all important “but”, there is another country, another judge, another justice. And in the world where this is so, I have a certain locus. I repeat: I have no more status than any of you when it comes to the law of the land, which I respect. However, in the law of God, the eternal, the everlasting, the law to end all laws, I do have a certain standing, for I stand before you as a man of God, as His representative on this Earth, which is of his making. His motive in doing so passeth all understanding and his ways are not the ways of mere mortals. And by the same token his justice is not the same as mortal justice, nor his giving, nor his taking away.’

No pause here, even though the technical construction of his sermon might have demanded it. The bishop was beginning to believe in his own rhetoric; his material was getting the better of him.

‘In other words, Sir Simon will do his duty and we must assist him in whatever way we can. But there is a higher judge, a higher justice, a higher truth. The one does not invalidate the other, nor does it mean that we must stand in the way of man’s law and our own puny attempts to serve it. It does mean, however, that we can not pretend to an understanding of Almighty God, his infinite mercy and his absolute love. God has the final word, for as the evangelist has it, He is not only with the word, he is the word itself, the first word as well as the last.

‘I cannot pretend,’ and here he lowered his voice like the old ham he was, ‘to know the workings of the divine mind. None of us can, but rest assured. His is the Might and His the Right.’

The Bognors exchanged glances and raised all four eyebrows.

Bognor himself was unsure about this division between the temporal and the divine. It seemed to him that the law of the land was running a rather dismal second to the Law of God, which put him into a subsidiary position behind the Lord and his vicar on Earth, viz Ebenezer Lariat. The bishop would say that though, and he had the advantage of the pulpit and an awe-inspiring frock. Bognor reckoned that he too would cut an authoritative figure in episcopal gear, especially when speaking from on high, with a strict ban on heckling or vocal dissent of any kind. Whoever heard of a bishop being disagreed with publicly – especially in church.

On the other hand, his was a strong hand and he had the endorsement of God’s representative. True, this support only extended as far as this life and not the one hereafter, in which, in any case, he was not sure he believed. Who needed authority to deal with heaven, hell and purgatory when he and a majority of ordinary people, including those gathered in St Teath’s did not even believe? No point in one’s writ running in a fictitious place which didn’t exist. Better the nitty gritty, the here and now, than an illusory life to come. In any case, the bishop would say that, wouldn’t he? No, on balance, he was quite pleased.

‘Already,’ continued His Grace, ‘there are rumours surrounding the sudden and unexpected passing of the late Sebastian. It is part of my function as his friend and as God’s appointed representative for this diocese to put an end to such rumours as quickly and as definitively as possible. I have already heard it said that the Reverend Sebastian was gay, I have already heard it said that the Reverend Sebastian was in financial difficulties, involving not just the church roof but some of our most notorious bankers.’ Here he smiled again, for he had made another approximation to a joke. ‘I have even heard that the Reverend Sebastian’s relationship with his bosses, both here and now, as it were, were not what they were.

‘Let me say,’ and here the bishop drew himself up to his full height, which though an inconsiderable five foot four in bare feet, was pretty intimidating when aided by the pulpit and the mitre, ‘once and for all, that those rumours are poppycock, balderdash and completely inappropriate. Not only are they false rumours, but the expression of any seditious thoughts regarding our late brother, nay father, in Christ are, ipso facto, bad, evil and naughty. It is bad to venture a false opinion, but it is even worse, in this instance, to venture an opinion at all. I ask, indeed, I command you, to keep any thoughts about the death of the Reverend Sebastian Fludd. I cannot, of course, prevent you from having thoughts. Nor can I prevent you from conveying such thoughts to Sir Simon, but as far as the Lord God Almighty is concerned, such thoughts should be kept to yourselves where they truly belong.’

The Bognors had been doing their best to follow what, for want of a better word, should be described as ‘reason’, even though both of them felt the bishop was short of logic, and that he was falling back on a position which even mild agnostics such as they believed to be dubious.

Even Bishop Ebb showed evidence of coming to an end of his sermon, if not his tether, for, quite suddenly, he snapped into a peroration. ‘So,’ he intoned, ‘I have two messages. One is a message of warning, and that concerns the death of your pastor and his unexpected removal from this earth. The other concerns the Fludd Festival of Arts and Literature, and expresses the hope that you will enjoy the festival and that much good may come of it.

‘And, in conclusion, I would tell you that both the warning and the hope are to be respected and obeyed, for as Saint John the Divine tells us at the very beginning of his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God”.

‘And now, in the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, Amen.’

So saying, he paused again, beamed at the congregation, made the sign of the cross and tripped majestically down the steps of the pulpit, as the two lay-readers managed to announce that the members of the congregation should rise and sing the hymn ‘Bread of Heaven’ to the tune of Cwm Rhondda. Number 296 in Hymns Ancient and Modern, the 1950 Revised Edition. ‘Guide me, O thou Great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.’ This was the traditional offering at Welsh rugby internationals in Cardiff and on the eve of the Fludd Festival in St Teath’s Church, Mallborne. As such, it was a signal that all was right with the world, and it was, as Sir Branwell had hoped, business as usual.

And yet, it wasn’t.

Outside, on that crisp spring evening, as the churchgoers milled around the Great West Door of their place of worship, there was a buzz of speculation which the words of the Lord their God and of his representative in the diocese had been unable to quell.

‘I always thought there was something odd…’ was the beginning of one conversation.

‘Say what you like, but…’ was the beginning of another.

‘So, who do you think did it?’ was the question which began a third.

This was not at all what the bishop had hoped to achieve as he thundered forth from the pulpit. His voice was evidently no more than tinkling brass and his message lay forlorn and unheeded. It might as well never have been uttered for all the good that it had done, and the bishop, passing among his flock flapped his ears and was duly dismayed.

Eventually, he found Sir Simon and Lady Bognor conversing with their hosts Sir Branwell and Lady Fludd.

‘Over to you, dear boy,’ said the Rt Reverend Ebenezer Lariat, rubbing his hands with a display of enthusiasm which was more apparent than real. ‘Over to you, dear boy!’