Easter

by Michael Arditti

Genres: City Life

Synopsis

The parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale is preparing for Easter. In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Vicar explains that Christ's crucifixion and redemption are taking place every day. He little suspects that, before the week's out, he and his entire congregation will be caught up in a latter-day Passion story which will tear apart their lives. Michael Arditti's magnificent novel is both a devastating portrait of today's Church of England and an audacious reworking of the central myth of Western culture. Taking the form of a traditional triptych, it is at once intimate and epic, lyrical and analytic. Shocking events unfold against a backdrop of meticulously observed religious services. High Church ritual, evangelical revivalism and the ancestor-worship of the English gentry are all subjected to merciless scrutiny.

Release date: April 1, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 391

Sample

Although, in recent years, polemics against religion have topped the bestseller charts, novels exploring the nature of faith remain rare. Even so, I was taken aback by the consternation which greeted the news that I was writing a contemporary Passion story set in a London parish. When I added that much of the narrative took place in church services, the expressions of alarm grew overwhelming. Nevertheless, I persisted in the belief both that the subject was a valid one and that I stood in a long and honourable literary tradition.

In the past, the prominence of clergymen in fiction reflected the dominance of the church in society. From Sterne’s Parson Yorick, Fieldings Parson Adams and Goldsmith’s Dr Primrose through Austen’s Mr Elton and Eliot’s Rector Cadwallader to Trollope’s Reverend Harding and Bishop Proudie, the English novel abounded in portraits of clerical life. In recent years, the Anglican flag has been kept flying by writers as diverse as Trollope’s relative, Joanna, Susan Howatch and Barbara Pym, but it is no coincidence that, in our more fragmented age, the most celebrated fictional clerics have been not members of the established church but the whisky priests of Graham Greene.

A mere 2.1 per cent of the population attends Anglican services each week, and yet the church enjoys a significance in the nation’s life way beyond its numbers, as shown by Gerald Scarfe’s sculpture in the ill-fated Millennium Dome in which a cleric joined a judge and a politician among the burdens weighing down the man in the street. Clergy are still regarded as moral arbiters in a country that is nominally Christian. Any writer who wishes to explore the discrepancy between public and private behaviour could do worse than go to church.

The church suffers from the problems of any institution that is based on faith. Just as ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ was an inspiration to millions who later became disillusioned with the Communist state, so ‘Thou shah love the Lord thy God (and) Thou shah love thy neighbour as thyself appeals to millions who are appalled by the established church. A curate in Easter, accused of mocking the foundations of the church, speaks for many when he answers, ‘Not the foundations … merely some later embellishments which stand like a rood-screen obscuring the cross.’ Without the church, Christ’s message would never have survived; with it, it has been dangerously compromised.

There are two churches in my novel: the Church of England and the church in England. Like many people, I reserve my respect for the latter. The former is a historical construct and theological balancing act: the via media which, in reality, seems closer to the via mediocre. As every schoolchild knows, it was founded by Henry VIII to effect his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. What fewer children know – or clergy seem prepared to acknowledge – is that divorce is the one area of personal relationships that Christ himself condemned. Such selective interpretation of biblical teaching is grist to the mill of a novelist concerned with moral conflict.

One of my aims in writing Easter was to paint a comprehensive social portrait of a kind that has largely disappeared from the contemporary novel. Nowhere but the church could I find an institution where all the different classes and racial and sexual groups stood (and sat and knelt) side by side. In my fictional parish of St Mary-the-Vale, Hampstead, I have been able to place a property developer intent on defrauding the church, an admiral’s widow mourning her son, a Holocaust survivor denying her past, the daughter of an African chief escaping persecution, a lesbian artist christening her daughter, a homeless man seeking refuge and scores of others, without any sense of strain. Clergy are fond of claiming that the church’s true wealth lies in its people. If so, then a novelist has been the beneficiary.

The clergy themselves remain as worthy of fictional study as they were in the days of Trollope. As countless ‘Vicarage Rat’ and ‘Reverend Romeo’ headlines have shown, in no other profession is the disparity between aspiration and achievement so stark. Clergy are placed in an impossible position, not least by the expectations of the laity. We require them to be better than the rest of us and yet resent them for appearing superior. We demand that they ‘stand in the person of Christ’ and yet that they fully engage with a secular society. We insist that they be people of high intellectual calibre and staunch moral fibre while paying them a stipend at which a waiter would turn up his nose. They are our own spiritual conflicts writ large.

Far from being the remote figures of popular myth, the clergy grapple every day with the problems of social exclusion. Caught up in the crossfire of doctrinal disputes and desperate to stave off their own sense of powerlessness, they throw themselves into parish social work. But, at night, when the official social workers (along with doctors and teachers and other middle-class professionals) go home to the leafy suburbs, the clergy alone remain at the heart of the inner city. It is the vicarage bell that victims of fights and domestic violence, vagrants and drunks, the mentally disturbed and emotionally scarred, ring at all hours of the day and night. The surprise should be not that someone has written a novel about the contemporary church but rather that no one has written a ‘Holy Joe’ equivalent of The Bill.

It is often said that the only two valid subjects for literature are sex and death, and church life contains lashings of both. The aphrodisiac aspect of vicars may be hard for a layman to appreciate, but the symbolism makes it clear when, dressed in brightly coloured robes and haloed by a heady cloud of incense, they stand – and, at certain services, prostrate themselves – before their congregation. The combination of authority and humility, along with the lure of forbidden fruit, proves to be irresistible to people of both sexes and all sorts. A gay priest told me that he never attracts as many offers as when he wears his clerical collar on the Tube. One heterosexual vicar reported enduring a campaign of harassment from an admirer who even forged love letters to herself in his name, while another recalled entering his church after Harvest Festival to find a parishioner naked in the vestry, singing ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and brandishing a root vegetable.

The social comedy and sexual dysfunction of the church are potent themes for a novelist, particularly at a period when the conflict between liberalism and reaction is entering a crucial stage. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, a reputed liberal, has shown himself so eager to appease the African bishops on matters of sexual conduct that the Church of England is in danger of turning into the Church of Nigeria. Ultimately, however, what drew me to write about the church is the figure of its founder, whose image and teaching have been the predominant influence on Western culture for 2,000 years. Notwithstanding their glaring contradictions (bringing not peace but a sword while turning the other cheek; extolling the lilies of the field while preaching the parable of the talents), Christ’s words exert a more powerful hold on my imagination than those of anyone else. And Easter, the most important church festival, offers the perfect opportunity to examine the relationship between the spiritual and the secular, the sacred and the profane, and between humanity and God.

London, September 2007



        The Curate straightens his alb, kisses his stole and strides out to meet the donkey.



‘Break a leg,’ shouts Terry, the organist, who doubles as director of the Hampstead Amateur Light Operatic Society.

Blair winces and smiles. He is as sensitive to a theatrical reference as a right-wing pundit to a mention of his radical past.

He hurries down the churchyard path to greet the director of the City Farm who is waiting at the gate. He turns his attention to the donkey, whose demeanour as it leaves the van displays little awareness of the symbolic burden it is to bear.

‘You won’t try to ride him, will you? Only he has a weak back. We had some trouble with the Methodists last year.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not Christ.’ ‘He likes you.’

The donkey’s tongue tickles the hairs on Blair’s wrist. He pulls a carrot from his cassock.

‘May I?’

‘Sure. But whatever you do, no sugar-lumps. He’s diabetic.’



        The Vicar prays with the servers and choir.



Huxley Grieve stares across the sacristy and searches for God. Eleven bowed heads mock him with the ease of their reverence. He reminds himself that it is the start of the most important week in the Church year. He dissects himself for an emotion to fit the occasion, but all he finds are words … second-hand words which he has spoken for twenty-eight years running.

The fault doesn’t lie in the words. He has kept his love for the poetry of Cranmer’s prayer-book even when the mysteries behind it have seemed false. He sometimes fears that its resonant phrases have become not only the shape but the substance of his faith, as they roll like soft-centred chocolates on his tongue.

The problem lies rather in the practicalities. He has to approach the services more like a choreographer than a priest, ensuring that the servers have rehearsed the unfamiliar routines and that the Pascal Candle is ordered, trying to second-guess the number of worshippers so as not to over-consecrate. He has heard it said of art that God exists in the details; the opposite is true of church. He is as tied to a checklist as a mother of the bride.

Is this the true sacrifice of priesthood: that his mission to bring the love of Christ to his congregation, particularly in this Holy Week celebration of His Passion and Resurrection, is precisely what prevents him from sharing it? Administration alienates him from the very sacraments that sustain his faith.

If that were so, it would at least give him some hope, like Beethoven writing music he could never hear. But he fears that the truth is less benign. He is obsessed by a dream that he had on Friday night. He was preaching from the top board at a swimming baths. As he spoke, people plunged in all around him. His words inspired them to ever more dangerous dives. But there was no water in the pool and they fell flat onto their bloody, broken faces. They lay on the bottom in supermarket piles, until the only ones left listening to him were children too young to dive.



        The Curate returns to the sacristy.



‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ Blair explains. ‘I had to see a man about a donkey.’



        The people gather by Whitestone pond. The sidesman hands out orders of service.



Hugh Snape gazes at his fellow worshippers blinking in the sunlight. Away from the pillars and pews, they seem to lack conviction, like conscripts to the Salvation Army. Theirs is a world of private prayer not of standing up and being counted on street corners. Their only other outdoor service is on Remembrance Sunday, and that is almost secular, more Queen and Country than God.

He watches the steady stream of cars flowing north, some to token family lunches, others to beat the queues at B&Q. The indifference of the motorists threatens him. One van does stop and a long-haired youth shouts a question. Rosemary Trott rushes up to explain. ‘I’m the sidesman,’ she declares with her tweed-skirted diction. He wonders whether, were the word the more neutral ‘usher’, she would be so insistent about its use.

An irritating giggle alerts him to the group of young men gathered by the boarded-up hamburger stall. They would do better in a Roman Catholic church with regular confession. He shudders to think of their backlog of sins.



        The sidesman hands out palm crosses.



‘I’ve brought my own,’ says Eleanor Blaikie, waving Rosemary aside with a large frond cut from her conservatory. Stevenson, the parrot perched on her shoulder, squawks at the sudden swing. ‘I see no reason I should make do with a miniature simply because I’m not in the choir.’



        The procession approaches, led by the Crucifer. The Acolytes follow, then the choir, the Curate with the donkey, the Thurifer and the Vicar. A policeman brings up the rear.



The donkey is greeted with enthusiasm by the children and wariness by the adults.

‘Drawing attention to himself,’ Eleanor says to her companion Edith. ‘We’ll be having cattle at the carol service next.’

‘It would never have happened in Father Heathcote’s day,’ Edith agrees.

‘Why can’t that boy hold the cross up straight?’ Jeffrey FinchBuller asks his wife Thea. ‘It’s quivering like a juggler’s pole.’

‘Well of course; it’s a circus,’ Thea replies. ‘Even the Vicar’s in red.’

‘It’s all too high for me,’ Myrna Timson says to her daughter Petula, while pulling her grey felt hat over her ears.

‘I wonder what it cost,’ Hugh says to his wife Petula. ‘I hope it hasn’t come out of church funds.’

‘Sh-sh,’ Petula says to both of them. ‘The choir can hardly make themselves heard.’



        The choir sings

        Hosanna to the Son of David,

        the King of Israel.

        Blessed is he who comes

        in the name of the Lord.

        Hosanna in the highest.



Thea inspects the women of the congregation, neatly dividing the lambswool from the angora. She envelops herself in her fur coat with the defiance of one who still serves British beef. If anyone had told her that she would spend Sunday morning on a traffic island by Hampstead Heath, she would have laughed. She is sorely tempted to hail one of the cabs cruising past, until she remembers her grandson. Lloyd is to be christened in St Mary’s on Saturday and she has a duty to ensure that the church is sound. So far the signs are not good. The Vicar can’t be blamed for the limp crosses, car-horn accompaniment or even the Thurifer’s losing battle with exhaust fumes, but he should have anticipated the donkey.

Couldn’t they have found one who would be less susceptible to the children’s stroking? Its reactions would cause a riot on Brighton beach. Perhaps they thought that the sacredness of the occasion would tame its animal nature. If her own is anything to go by, there is little chance.

She weighs up the danger of the donkey attacking a toddler. The little black girl with the glass beads is uncomfortably close. She cannot believe that she, alone, is alert to its arousal. If they all want to play the innocent, so be it. Besides whom would she tell? The fearsome-looking woman with the dead fox around her neck and live parrot on her shoulder? The woman who handed out service-sheets as if she were giving them prep? Hugh? Petula? And let them attempt to make intimacy out of innuendo? Worst of all would be Jeffrey who might interpret it as a request.



        The Vicar delivers his homily.



‘I wonder if, before I start, I might ask you all to move in a little closer. I know that you like to keep your distance, to “preserve your own space”, as it were.’ Huxley fears that his tone, designed to ingratiate, simply grates. ‘But it would hardly do for me to lose my voice at the beginning of Holy Week, would it?’

The only reply comes from the rattle of drills as workmen, their white chests attesting to their recent release from winter vests, take advantage of the Sunday lull to dig up the road.

‘Come on now. No one’s going to bite you.’ He watches the compromise shuffle of a congregation which prefers to love its neighbour by proxy. Only Myrna Timson seems grateful for his licence and clasps her daughter’s hand. She looks set to do the same to her son-in-law but ends up brushing the back of his anorak with her sleeve. The rest put up barriers as solid as pews. He is filled with despair. They have reduced the body of Christ to a pile of uncoordinated limbs. Gone is all sense of community. Noli Me Tangere might be the crux of the creed.

He is seized by an urge to tear up his notes and to preach on the text ‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another’, but he resists. Instead, he clears his throat, more of frustration than phlegm, and begins.

‘Once again I stand before you at the start of Holy Week, the week that is for Christians – and, indeed, for the whole world, did it but know – the most important of the year. In the events of this week lie the clearest answer any of us will ever find to the mystery of life. This is the week in which God enters into human suffering. Our task is to offer an adequate response.’

The response of the drills is relentless, like drums accompanying a tumbril, drowning the victim’s last words.

‘We now go to take part in the Passion story ourselves. As we make our way back down the hill – and, indeed, in all our services this week – let us remember that the liturgy is not a commemoration but a re-enactment. Christ’s crucifixion and redemption are taking place every day. It’s an eternal cycle which Holy Week enables us to experience as a single moment. We may be living many centuries after AD 33 but we all play roles in the story. Which one are you? Judas? Peter? Veronica? Pilate? The informer? The liar? The comforter? The washer of hands? Let us reflect on it as we walk to the church, singing the processional hymn.’



        Ride on! ride on in majesty!

        Hark! all the tribes Hosanna cry!



Thea has earmarked her role as ruthlessly as an actress owed a favour. Her choice is Mary who massaged Christ’s feet with her hair. Since they met when He was on His way to Jerusalem, it fits temporally as well as temperamentally. The thought of the hot oil dripping from His toes onto her scalp is so overwhelming that she stops to draw breath, only to find herself next to the Anoraks, her private name for Petula and Hugh Snape, the aptness of which is doubly apparent today. Worse, there is Petula’s mother Myrna – Moaner behind her back and sometimes to her face if she is caught off guard – with her threadbare hair and doughy features, trundling along on her thigh-thick ankles. She would make even the Red Sea smack of Blackpool. Suddenly Palestine looks a less enticing prospect.

It seems hard that she should be connected – she refuses even to think ‘related’ – to these people by marriage. She has never discussed Russell with Laura, in spite of enjoying the sort of intimacy with her daughter only possible for a mother who regains her figure straight after giving birth. That may be the problem. If she had huffed and puffed and talked disinheritance, she might have dissuaded her from this tradesman’s-entrance wedding. Christ’s is not the only story to be repeated every day.

Seeing Petula poised to speak, she strides forward, only to be attacked on a second front.

‘Are you regular?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ For a moment she is back with Nanny and syrup of figs.

‘At the church.’ A moon-faced woman beams at her.

‘No. My husband and I have come because our grandson is to be christened here next week.’

‘Same with us. Father and I are down for our son Joe’s wedding.’ She decides to play dumb. ‘Your father?’

‘Oh no, that’s just what I call him. He’s Dave; I’m Maureen … ’ I bet you are, she thinks.

‘We’ve come down from Rochdale.’

‘How brave.’ And, displaying the form that conquers all in the winter-sales sweep-stake, she breaks free.



        Ride on! ride on in majesty!

        In lowly pomp ride on to die.



Myrna has no doubt of her role in the Passion story: she is one of the lame, cramming the streets of Jerusalem desperate for a touch of Jesus’ hem. Ever since the onset of phlebitis, she feels as though she has been walking on stilts. Nevertheless, she strains to keep pace with her family, dismissing Petula’s offer of a moment’s rest. She must demonstrate her stamina; she must prove that she will not hold them back.



        Ride on! ride on in majesty!

        The last and fiercest strife is nigh.



Resolute to the last, Rosemary refuses to restrict herself to one of the weeping and wailing women of Jerusalem. Her shoulders are as broad as any man’s. She might choose Simon of Cyrene, if it weren’t for his colour. Blackness would be going too far. On which note, she frowns at the sight of the Vicar’s wife walking with Femi Olaofe. Trust Mrs Political Correctness to make a point. What’s more, she seems to have picked up a tramp with every intention of taking him into church. Has she no consideration for those who have worked for two days on the Easter spring-clean? And Rosemary knows that she is fated to be Veronica after all.



        The procession reaches the church. The choir sings the antiphon:

        As the Lord was entering into the holy city, the children of the Hebrews foretold the resurrection of life. With branches of palm trees, they cried out: ‘Hosanna in the highest’.



Hosannas turn to hopelessness as Jessica Grieve approaches the church. She rallies by adopting its own tactic of hating the sin but loving the sinner. Who would not love this particular sinner? St Mary-in-the-Vale stands before her in all its mock-Gothic splendour: the turreted tower topped with the double bellcote, the twisting bands of yellow, red and black brick, like the pages of a geology textbook come to life, as if the building itself were an answer to those Victorian fundamentalists who wanted to squeeze fourteen billion years of creation into a single week.

She reserves her hatred for the capital ‘C’, the Church that has blighted her life for thirty years, that has given her nothing to call her own, not even her husband. Huxley laughed when she called him a bigamist, but his marriage to the Church is far more than a metaphor. It is the essence of his being. Another woman she could handle; but how can anyone compete with God?

The early days were the worst. While Huxley stood golden-robed at the altar, she was left with the church-mice – only poorer – in a tumbledown vicarage that they could not afford to heat, living on the breadline which ran through the house like the mismatched carpet. For years while the children were small, they survived on charity. And it was given so grudgingly: a few pounds here, from the Friends of the Clergy for school uniforms; a few there, from the Corporation of Sons of the Clergy for family holidays. Even then there was a catch; after all, vicars can’t be choosers. What good was praying ‘lead us not into temptation’ and then going abroad? So they sat in a windswept beachhut in Sidmouth, nursing sodden dreams of sunny Spain.

She is dismayed by the depth of her bitterness. She sounds like an ageing back-bencher or jilted bride. God – rhetorical device not Supreme Being – save her from joining the ranks of the wreckers, undermining other peoples’ faith because she has none herself. Then, as she watches the congregation streaming into the porch, she realizes why she still comes to church after fifty years of a message so bland that it might as well be in Esperanto. Others have faith in God; she has faith in Huxley. Their means is her end. Just the sight of him standing head and shoulders above the crowd, his white hair and whiskers as distinguished as his nineteenth century namesake’s, fills her with love.



        The procession moves up the nave. The Curate leads the donkey around the church. It takes fright at the cloud of incense and defecates by the font.



Thea gazes at the gorgeously gaudy interior and feels underdressed. A vision of opulence opens up before her. Arcades of angels draw her eyes to the chancel screen, as delicately illuminated as a letter in a mediaeval manuscript. Above her head, a midnight blue roof sends out shooting stars along golden ribbing. Beneath her feet, a mosaic floor throws up fragmentary faces from childhood tales. A rose window casts a kaleidoscope pattern from saint-filled petals, while zigzags of zebra-striped tiles encircle the walls. The burnished glow and musky scent imbue her with a deep sense of belonging. In a flash, she is transported to the Room of Luxury at Harrods. And, although there is nothing on sale but candles, she is at peace.

Before taking her seat, she moves to inspect the font. One glimpse of its alabaster base and panels of inlaid marble assures her that she can entrust Lloyd to its waters as confidently as to the family christening-robe. She makes to follow Jeffrey only to find that her foot is caught. But it is not a rut; it is shit. And, when she tries to shake it off, the shoe sticks to the floor. She casts a venomous glance at the donkey, ambling down the aisle with an insouciant toss of its tail. Hugh Snape, walking a step behind, proves to be an unexpected Prince Charming, retrieving the shoe, wiping it on his service-sheet, and handing it to her with a flourish. Mustering her shattered dignity, she hobbles up the nave, while the hymn-book woman runs across with a shovel.

‘Gangway,’ she cries lustily. ‘I was a land-girl during the war.’



        The Curate leads the donkey through the Lady Chapel, past the organ and out through the sacristy.



‘Never act with children and animals, eh Father?’ says Terry from the look-out post of his loft. Blair responds with a watery smile.



        The congregation takes its seats.



Trudy England makes her way to the centre of the church. Too far forward and she might draw attention to herself; too far back and she might be left on her own. The middle-ground has been her life-long preference and, at sixty-seven, she is too old to change.

Her immediate concern is to avoid the angels which, in her view, should be left to rest invisibly on peoples’ shoulders, and not hung in an all too vivid flight path above their heads. Her weekly prayers are regularly interspersed with thoughts of rusty nails, rotten wood and falls as fatal as Lucifer’s. But her search for a secluded spot only leads to a new danger.

‘Why won’t any of you sit beside me? Is it because you think I’ve got no money?’

Her next concern is to avoid Bertha whom she has regarded as a witch ever since she told her that there was an age-old curse on her house and a plague-pit underneath it. Her suspicions are reinforced by Bertha’s clothing – why else would she wear a rain-hat indoors and an apron outside her coat? – and, above all, by her eyebrows, which bulge like two tadpoles on the verge of becoming frogs. Judging that it would be unwise to offend her, she tentatively squeezes into the pew.

‘Don’t crowd me, dear,’ Bertha says, as soon as she is settled. ‘There’s the whole church for you to sit in.’

She slides away, making sure to stay smiling, while Bertha unwraps a sweet.



        The Vicar announces Hymn 98.

        All glory, laud and honour

        To thee, Redeemer King.



Lionel hesitates at the porch; the woman who suggested the meal has gone inside with no word as to whether he is supposed to follow. A rumble in his stomach convinces him to take a chance. He steps inside and squints as though it were summer. His eyes need time to accustom themselves to the glow. He stares at the stony faces, both sculpted and human. Only the angels seem happy, hanging from the pillars like swimmers preparing to dive. They make him want to laugh but he thinks better of it. He takes off his cap for the first time in weeks and starts to cough. Then he cups some water from the basin and tries to wipe the dirt from his face. His skin sticks to his fingers. He feels as if he is back at school and waits for someone to tell him where to go. Sure enough a woman comes towards him.



        A member of the congregation reads the Old Testament lesson.



Rosemary intercepts the tramp at the holy-water stoup. ‘Here you are,’ she says, handing him two hymn-books, a prayer-book and the Easter leaflet, which he holds as if with a broken arm. ‘You sit at the back with me,’ she says, sacrificing personal comfort to the general good. As he gapes at the church, she makes sure to keep the collection box in constant view.



        The Curate reads the epistle.



Huxley listens to the music of Blair’s voice, while the words float past, as sonorously superfluous as opera. He struggles to concentrate, willing the familiar cadences to restore his faith like a longlost memory at the sight of home. But they mock him like the doorway of a dream.

His gaze drifts over the double-edged beauty of the church, which now appeals more to lovers of the Gothic than of God. It survives as a relic of a bygone age when the parish and the community were one and an artist’s vision extended beyond posterity. He has care of its treasures if not of its souls. He looks at the gloomy picture in the gilded frame and entitles it ‘Study in brown hats and blue rinses’. He does not ask for a larger congregation – he has long lost faith in miracles – simply a more representative one. Christ’s message is universal; why has his become so restricted? No priest could feel more like St Francis, as the shrill voices peck at the prayers and warble the hymns.

Watching Blair walk back to his seat, his heart is full of envy. There is a man who can cross the Eden mosa