Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

‘Great hat! How do you do?’ Michael said, thinking that Gordon Brookes’s lower lip looked too red and wet.

Gordon said, ‘I didn’t realise you knew my name. We haven’t met before, have we?’

Michael swallowed. Although Gordon Brookes’s tone of interrogation was mild, he was still asking a question. Michael had never before been asked how he knew a vicar’s name. Vicars in general seemed to assume that everybody knew who they were. Thinking fast, he worked out that he could afford to be honest about the source of that small piece of information, and that it would be easier than coming up with a lie on the spot.

‘Actually, I looked you up.’

‘Oh?’

‘In Crockford’s. I looked you up in Crockford’s; I like to do my homework, seems only right since I’m imposing on your time and goodwill,’ Michael said in his carefully unplaceable accent, and tried to rest in the fact that this was quite true. Of the books that Michael owned, many were volumes that he had acquired only because he had failed to sell them on the stall. Among them were Crockford’s Directory of the Clergy 1997, and Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Churches . It was the combination of these two that had inspired his curate impersonation technique for robbing churches in the first place, but Gordon Brookes would not, of course, be told that. Crockford’s supplied him with his characters: the names, dates, backgrounds and present positions of the earnest churchmen, invariably curates, whom he impersonated. It supplied him with the same details of the incumbents of the churches he selected for his forays, for the rare occasions on which he might meet up with the vicar rather than a ‘parish worker’. The Jenkins book gave him details of church treasures, both fixed and architectural (which were of course irrelevant to the purpose, though Michael had at times been grateful to be able to make an admiring reference to, say, the Norman reredos or the double hammerbeam roof), but also- and more to the point for Michael- Jenkins described the treasures small, easily liftable and saleable: the minor effigies and busts, silver, pictures, chairs, lecterns, embroideries. Over and above these Michael often found a pleasing range of more humble but attractive objects waiting to be opportunistically pilfered, and the beauty of it was he wasn’t taking things that belonged to people . He was not depriving anyone of anything personal, and if he did cause upset, then at least church people had one another to turn to for comfort. And if God himself were offended, he hadn’t so far got round to showing it. In the meantime, Michael had done well out of candlesticks, church candles, tooled leather Bibles, altar cloths, small and ancient rugs, even sheet music, all of which were the kind of thing that any number of Bath people would pay money for in order to reinforce their belief that they were complex and creative souls whose originality and flair were revealed in the arrangement of their homes. He now noticed that Gordon Brookes was looking at him with some curiosity.

‘Sorry, where did you say you got my name?’

Michael swallowed again, and felt a tiny twitch of his face, the kind that might look to anyone watching like a deliberately tight blink of the eyes. The question, never before asked, was now being asked again. Perhaps it was the loss of the wife that was making this one so cagey, though he seemed to Michael more exasperated than bereaved.

‘Crockford’s. Fount of all knowledge! I say, it is all right for me to see the figures, isn’t it? I’ve looked at them behind the glass, of course, but it’ll be just tremendously exciting to get really close to them.’ He beamed again and tried to look eager. Steady, Michael, he told himself.

In the church Gordon Brookes pulled on a pair of cotton gloves from a drawer at the base of the display cabinet, unlocked the glass door and lifted out one of the two figures. ‘Here’s our St John. Vestry’s the best place, there’s a proper table there,’ he said, making his way to a door at the far end of the church. He could not carry both figures at once, but he seemed prepared to make two trips rather than hand one to Michael to bring. Michael, obedient to some etiquette that suggested it would be unseemly to do so, did not offer to help, but waited patiently by the open case. Gordon came back, took the second figure in his arms, saying only, ‘St Catharine, slightly heavier,’ and Michael followed respectfully.

The vestry smelled of paraffin and chrysanthemums. Two walls were lined with cupboards, and chairs were stacked in one corner. The only other door must lead outside, back towards the vicarage, Michael thought. From a large cardboard box on the floor with ‘Waste paper for Afghanistan’ written on its side in black marker, Gordon Brookes drew a couple of magazines. He spread them over the centre of the table. Without smiling he placed the figures on top of them. Gordon Brookes then tipped his head on one side and gazed at them sentimentally, and it seemed sensible to Michael to do the same. The St Catharine sat on her magazine, partly obliterating the cover photograph of a middle-aged man standing on a rock on the edge of a lake looking through binoculars. The white, sweet-faced Saint Catharine, her eyes cast graciously downwards, was apparently reading the headline ‘Whale watching in Manitoba’. Michael smiled, and Gordon Brookes smiled too.

‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ he said, quite kindly. Michael got his notebook and magnifying glass out of his backpack and put on a pair of spectacles. But he did not sit down, feeling that the most delicate of transactions was being conducted and that even one off-balance move, one over-zealous gesture on his part, would cause the whole fragile bargain to collapse. Gordon Brookes took a step back. Michael smiled at the figures again and then looked at Gordon.

‘Carry on,’ Gordon said, pulling off the gloves and handing them to Michael. ‘I’m no expert so I’ll leave you to get on with it. I’m assuming you know how to handle them.’

Michael almost burst into song. ‘Right! That’s terribly good of you. I do appreciate it. It’s a marvellous opportunity.’ He sat down at the table and squinted purposefully at the figures, wrinkling his nose. Gordon Brookes did not leave. Michael looked at him with the gentlest smile of dismissal he could manage.

‘I’ll be fine, now. Thanks so much,’ he said.

‘Right. Well, I’ll let you get on, while I just potter.’ So that was what he meant by leaving him to get on with it. Get on with it, but I’ll be right here behind you. In the same room. I am not going to leave. Michael’s face twitched behind his glasses. How was he going to manage the amount of bluffing that would now be required? He could drop out of the whole thing, just look at the figures and go. But how could he even think of leaving without them, after this much effort? His heart had been thumping in his throat since he arrived. He coughed. He dared not touch the figures in front of Gordon Brookes. He could not trust his hands not to shake.

‘Don’t let me, er… I’m quite happy here on my own, if you’ve got things to do.’

‘I gather it’s a study of yours. Have you published?’

‘Oh no! Oh, you know, the usual problem. Time! Takes so much time, getting anything knocked into proper shape for a publisher. That’s life. But I chip away, live in hope. You know.’ He turned and looked at the alabaster figures in what he hoped was an informed sort of way.

Gordon turned and started to busy himself with a precarious stack of books and sheets of paper. ‘Choir. They will leave things higgledy-piggledy,’ he murmured. Michael, pretending to consult his notebook, was getting desperate. He had to get Gordon Brookes to leave.