James Lark - More Tea, Jesus?

‘They’re so unresponsive,’ Ted sighed, ‘I could insult them to their faces and they wouldn’t notice.’

‘I sometimes feel like that about congregations!’ Biddle laughed, then winced again.

‘You should see a dentist about that.’

‘I, er … I have an appointment with a dentist tomorrow.’ The kettle clicked and Biddle poured hot water into the mugs. ‘Milk?’

‘Yes. Two sugars.’ Biddle dutifully stirred sugar into one of the mugs, then carried them through to the living room. ‘I don’t think they realise how important music is to me,’ Ted continued, following Biddle. ‘If they did, they wouldn’t do what they do to it.’

‘The work you do with the choir is very much appreciated, Ted,’ said Biddle, gesturing towards one of his armchairs. Ted sat down miserably, feeling ever more trapped in an undesirable situation. ‘I know how much you put into it, and …’ He laughed again, which caused him another jolt of pain that almost made him spill his tea. It was hard enough remaining cheerful in front of Ted Sloper, without this toothache. ‘The choir is getting better every week,’ he lied.

‘You think so?’ Ted asked, raising an eyebrow knowingly.

‘I’m – not a musician, obviously …’ Biddle swallowed a chuckle before it had a chance to cause him any more pain, wondering why everything he was saying sounded so insincere this evening. ‘But if there’s anything I can do to make things any – er – easier, for you …?’

‘Got any napalm?’ Ted asked. Biddle laughed, graciously. Repeated back at him, his joke sounded incredibly tasteless, but at least Ted had taken it in the spirit it was intended – which was obviously not literally.

In actual fact, Ted thought that it sounded like a good idea.

‘How old is Gerard Feehan?’ Biddle suddenly asked. Ted frowned.

‘Not sure. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘He sang with the choir years ago. I was trying to get some trebles into it. He was hopeless, of course. But still better than the tone-deaf old biddies singing at the moment …’ He put his head back and looked at the ceiling. ‘What would I give for a few trebles in the choir … you can’t get ’em these days, of course. Kids don’t do singing. It’s hopeless. Hopeless.’

‘So how long ago did Gerard sing in your choir?’ Biddle pressed.

‘Oh, years ago.’ Ted sat up again. ‘Young Feehan would be about twenty-two now, I’d say. Completely wet, though – always was a queer lad.’

Biddle nodded thoughtfully. ‘I get the impression he could do with getting away from his mother.’

‘We could all do with getting away from his mother,’ Ted said.

‘She does have quite a … forceful personality,’ Biddle chuckled.

Ted was now thoroughly fed up with the vicar’s unnecessary happiness, and still none the wiser about why he had been summoned there. They sipped at their tea wordlessly for a few moments, Ted wondering if this really was intended to be a social invitation – a chance for the new vicar to bond with his choir director. He braced himself for a miserably unexciting and teetotal evening, moving his eyes from the vapid watercolour of a windmill opposite him to the desk in the corner of the living room, a lamp lighting up a disarray of paper and books and a glowing laptop computer. ‘Writing another recipe?’ he enquired.

‘Ah-ha!’ replied Biddle and laughed uncomfortably; it was fairly obvious that his discomfort this time was not merely dental in origin and it gave Ted the tiniest feeling of satisfaction.

‘Well now,’ Biddle said, hurriedly changing the subject, ‘there is a reason why I wanted you to – er – I hope I didn’t interrupt anything else?’

Yes, thought Ted, a pint in the Green Baron.

‘No,’ he said. ‘So what’s it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Well, ah …’ Biddle laughed, awkwardly. Ted wasn’t sure whether it was an awkwardness about the subject being broached, or teeth problems again. ‘Mrs Petty-Saphon wrote me a letter this week. She seems quite unhappy about certain … um … aspects of the church services, at the moment.’

Ted rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘There’s a surprise,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a single service in that church which she hasn’t complained about.’

‘Ah, now, I’m not sure that’s entirely – ah …’ Biddle smiled, waving his arms to indicate the vague meaning of his sentence before moving away from it. ‘Anyway, one of the – er – many concerns she voiced was the problem of – ah – sexism in the hymns.’

Ted blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

‘Some of the hymns have words which she feels are out of place in a society where men and women are more or less considered equals. The expression she used was, er, “outdated patriarchal gender discrimination”.’

‘Was it, indeed?’ grunted Ted.

‘And as you’re in charge of choosing the hymns, I wonder if you could make whatever – er – changes … might be necessary to render hymns with such – er – references in them … er … useable.’

‘They’re useable as they are,’ Ted replied bluntly.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Biddle hurriedly agreed, ‘but a little bit of rewriting would avoid unnecessary offence being caused …’

‘Which hymn in particular caused this “offence”, may I ask?’ Ted interjected.

‘Right … ah …’ Biddle crossed to his desk and picked up Petty-Saphon’s letter. ‘She felt that the offertory hymn …’

‘“Of the glorious body telling”,’ Ted clarified.

‘That’s right.’

‘The words are by Thomas Aquinas!’ Ted exploded. ‘You’re saying I’ve got to rewrite words that Saint Thomas Aquinas presumably thought were adequate?’

‘No!’ protested Biddle. ‘Well, yes …’ he added, apologetically. ‘Aquinas did write them in Latin, so in a way they’ve already been rewritten.’

‘By respected English poets.’

‘It was only one line,’ Biddle hurriedly reassured him, ‘in the second verse, er … “Man with man in converse dwelling …”’

‘It’s poetry,’ Ted insisted. ‘What would you change it to?’

‘Mrs Petty-Saphon suggested … er …’ Biddle coughed, uncomfortably. ‘She suggested “Folk in church in converse dwelling …”’ He trailed off. The look on Ted’s face suggested that he was far from impressed by the poetry of Sathan Petty-Saphon.

Before the tense pause could grow into a fully drawn-out awkward silence, he tried a different tack. ‘Why don’t you go on a recruitment drive?’ he suggested, brightly.

‘A what?’

‘For singers! Encourage some of the newcomers in the church to join the choir.’ One of the slight concerns Biddle had about St Barnabas was the potential for established churchgoers, the Sathan Petty-Saphons in the congregation, to marginalise those who had just walked in from outside. There had been a fellow at the back of the church for some weeks now who Biddle had vaguely noticed didn’t really seem to want to be there. Well, was it any wonder if nobody knew who he was? Biddle also suspected that the fleeting reference to ‘scruffy outsiders’ in Sathan Petty-Saphon’s letter specifically pointed towards this man; to involve him in the choir would curtail any attempt of hers to act on her disapproval.

‘I mean, it would be great to encourage newcomers to become part of the congregation,’ he explained to Ted, ‘especially if they’re a bit undecided about whether to keep coming along …’

‘You think that people uncertain about staying in the church should be moved closer to the choir?’ asked Ted, an eyebrow raised.

‘Ah,’ Biddle smiled wryly, with an obligatory wince. ‘Yes, well … have a think about talking to some of them, anyway. They might turn out to be good singers, after all.’