Barbara Erskine - Time’s Legacy

The household into which Abi had been born had been aggressively godless. Her father, the world-renowned chemist Professor Harry Rutherford, had drummed a compulsory atheism into his only child from the first. When she had gone up to Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford and chosen to read history he had nearly had apoplexy, but her lack of talent in maths and the sciences at school could neither be overlooked nor sidestepped and he was forced to give in with good grace to the inevitable fact that chemistry would never be her thing. He even understood his daughter’s love of sacred music. Music was his own passion, sacred music an illogical but profound side shoot of something that had a comfortable root in mathematical progressions. The areas of her life which involved healing and intuition and irrational spiritual longings she kept very carefully to herself. Had he known that sometimes she lingered in churches and cathedrals to sit, lost in thought which sometimes turned to prayer, he would have disowned her on the spot. As it was, her decision to study theology and later to seek ordination led to a quarrel which had kept them apart for five years in spite of her best efforts to effect some kind of reconciliation. Since her move back to Cambridge she and her mother had met alone, secretly, for furtive lunches in small restaurants in the narrow winding streets of the old city far from the modern science laboratories which were still her father’s usual habitat even now he was retired.

Laura Rutherford was a deeply spiritual woman but she had no time at all for the strictures and structures of the church. ‘I am afraid you will regret this, sweetheart,’ she had said with a sigh, when Abi had told her of her emerging vocation, ‘but you have to follow your own star. You will always have my blessing, whatever you do. You know that.’ Her own worship was centred on her love of plants, her world famous garden, the time she spent alone in the company of flowers. With her husband she was able to maintain a sufficient level of scientific involvement with horticulture and plant chemistry to keep their marriage stable and happy over its thirty-five years of existence. Her private beliefs, whatever they were, she kept to herself. Neither her husband nor her daughter were a party to them.

Her mother greeted Abi at the front door and they hugged each other with guilty glee. ‘It’s so lovely to see you!’ Laura led the way indoors. ‘Darling, Harry! I’m quite glad to be shot of him for a few days. He is such a bigot!’ There was a bleak emphasis on the last word which brought Abi up short. She caught her mother’s hand and swung her round to face her. ‘Mummy? Is everything OK?’

Laura nodded. ‘Of course, darling. Now, you tell me what has been happening to you. I was very surprised to hear you had moved. Why the sudden flight from the Rectory? Has that oleaginous man been pawing you?’

Abi let out a snort of laughter. ‘He’s not oleaginous. He’s basically a nice person, but yes, we were getting a bit too close and his fiancee objected. All over now. The bishop had a word. It’s strictly business from now on.’

Laura led the way into a garden full of roses. ‘You still shouldn’t be working with a man like that. How can you concentrate on your job!’ her mother retorted.

‘It is my job to learn to get on with people. To manage situations. To cope with men like Kier. If I fall at the first fence I might as well give up.’ Abi flung herself down on a mossy stone bench. A small fountain trickled gently in the circular pond at their feet.

Her mother sat down next to her. She smiled fondly at the water spout. ‘Solar powered. Isn’t that clever.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘You are not talking about your clients here. Your parishioners. Whatever you call them. You are talking about sexual harassment at work.’

Abi shook her head. ‘I have to deal with it, Mummy. God must have sent me to St Hugh’s for a reason.’

Her mother glanced across at her. ‘Perhaps God is trying to show you that you are in the wrong place. In the wrong job.’

Abi looked away. ‘I’m not in the wrong job!’

‘So, you’re enjoying it?’ Laura turned back to the fountain, studying the moving rainbows in the water with exaggerated care.

There was a short pause. ‘I’m finding it a bit tough, actually,’ Abi said at last. ‘It’s not just Kier. It’s the whole pastoral thing. It was so different before, in my last parish. I saw myself as a healer, not a social worker. Now I’m expected to give advice, recite an austere prayer, but keep my distance from people and I hate it.’ She bit her lip. It sounded shameful, said out loud like that. ‘It must be what God wants for me, and I have dedicated myself to serving him, but -’ She paused.

There was so much missing from the reality of being a priest now, compared with her expectations, she didn’t know where to start. She had tried again and again to face what was wrong, to pray about it, to ask God what she should do differently, to try and find why so much was missing in her life now that had been there before, even when she was a student. The sense of the numinous. The wonder. The absolute knowing that there was so much there which cannot be seen but which is known absolutely deep inside. It was a certainty which made the whole world shine and that shine had gone. ‘I’m not very good at poverty and obedience, I suppose. I didn’t sign up to be a nun! Everything I do here presents some kind of conflict. I’m a mystic by nature, but I have to be a realist as well. I have such a sense of duty towards this job, and yet, I long to be free. I know I have a calling but now I want to rebel at every turn. I want to help and heal, but apparently I’m not allowed to. I want beauty and passion and a sense of the sacred in my worship! It’s not there. I sense the other world around me, but I don’t dare mention it. It is as though Kier is terrified of anything spiritual. There is no Mystery in what I do. With a capital M. At least not when -’

‘Not when?’ Laura did not look up. Her hands in her lap were clenched.

‘Not when Kier is there. It’s his way, I suppose. He is a sincere, dedicated man, and he believes in what he is doing, he’s passionate, but he bullies the congregation. He talks about sin all the time, never the hope and beauty of God’s love. He works to rigid rules as though he’s afraid to allow any mysticism to escape. In fact as though he’s afraid of everything.’

Laura grimaced. ‘It sounds to me as though it’s Kier who is your problem, not God! Don’t you take services on your own? Can’t you do your own thing?’

‘Not very often. I take them at the little church in the parish, but even there I am always conscious of being watched. Spied on. Someone is always there to sneak back and tell him I’m doing something wrong.’

‘He sounds awful.’

Abi laughed. ‘No. It’s just a different approach to mine. I have to learn his way of doing things. He’s also warm and funny and very charismatic in his own way.’

‘He doesn’t sound any of those things from what you are saying.’

Abi opened her mouth to deny it, but somehow the words didn’t come.

That evening when she walked into her flat there was a message on her phone from Kier asking her to meet him over at St John’s. They arrived more or less together and he ushered her in, closing the door behind them. Carefully deliberate in his action he turned the key and taking it out of the lock he put it in his pocket.

‘Why did you do that?’ She looked at him, startled.

He shrugged. ‘I often do in the evenings when I am over here alone. You know as well as I do there are some rough types around. Once or twice they have come in and tried to cause aggro. It can be a bit intimidating.’ He walked a few steps away from her, looking troubled. He was dressed more informally than usual, an open-necked shirt under a casual jacket and with a slight sense of surprise she caught sight of a silver cross on a chain around his neck.