Blood Brotherhood (2 page)

‘If you did but know it, the only sin is self-repression,' said the boy, turning his big blue eyes in the direction of the Reverend Clayton to see what effect his effusions were having, and allowing a knowing smile to play around his lips. ‘If you want to do a thing, you've got to follow the impulse through right to the end of the road, because if
you stop yourself you're killing something — it's worse than murder, because you're killing part of yourself.'

From this odd statement of values, the cherub went on to his view of the after life, the spiritual value of various drugs which enabled you to enjoy premature participation in the hereafter, and various other matters too abstruse or jargon-bound to hold the Reverend Clayton's attention. Why on earth, he thought to himself, does everyone think they have to talk religion when they meet a clergyman? If you meet a plumber, you don't feel you have to talk about plumbing. Then the thought struck him that when he met a plumber he generally
did
talk about plumbing, since that in his rectory was primitive in the extreme and had to be fixed by himself, his stipend not running to the sort of professional attention it obviously needed.

He wafted his attention back towards the grubby Shelley in the passenger seat beside him, who seemed to have sensed that he had lost his audience. He had let a pout appear on his unpleasantly full lips during a pause for thought, and he had then turned to the subject of sex, as a sure-fire recipe for getting back his listener's attention.

‘Your generation got hung-up on sex,' he jeered.

‘Well, we certainly didn't talk about it quite so much as yours,' murmured the Reverend Clayton.

‘You thought about it more, though. Nasty little secret thoughts.' (The Reverend Clayton wondered whether he was right, but found he really couldn't remember.) ‘My generation's had to do what your lot only thought of doing, and wanted to do, and didn't dare. And we've done a few things you didn't even dream possible too. Your lot lived their lives in one long wet wank.' He turned round with a taunting smile. ‘You might say you didn't have the courage of your - - - - convictions.'

He had used the gerundival form of a four-letter word which in the Reverend Clayton's youth would only have been heard by those unfortunate young clerics who opted or were sent to carry the faith into the more savage parts
of London's East End. Ernest Clayton pressed his right foot down on the brake, leaned over the be-jeaned and sweat-shirted figure beside him, and opened the passenger door.

‘Get out,' he said.

‘What do you mean?' protested the young man, with his evil-choirboy smile. ‘You said you were going to Hickley. I'm going to Hickley. What's gotten into you?'

The Reverend Clayton summoned up the authority of years in the pulpit and as chairman of frequently acrimonious committee and board meetings.

‘Out,' he said, ‘before I throw you.'

Rather to his surprise, the cherub obeyed. With a contemptuous laugh to hide any disappointment he might feel, he slouched out, and banged the door to. As he started his Mini in motion, Ernest Clayton bent towards the open window, and shouted: ‘I was just obeying my impulse, you know, just obeying my impulse.'

As he drove down the road, he saw the fair-haired figure take up his position by the side of the road again. He had to admit that he hadn't felt so pleased with himself for a long time.

• • •

The Bishop of Mitabezi sat on his aisle seat in the Boeing 727 that was carrying him from the World Council of Churches meeting in Geneva to London, there to change planes for the North of England and, ultimately, by car, for the Community of St Botolph's at Hickley. The Bishop was as near asleep as made no difference, but his fleshy, substantial, episcopal frame still seemed impressive and powerful, as it chafed against the confines of his plane seat.

The meeting had been a success, that was certain, and a feeling of personal achievement pervaded his somnolent form: large sums of money had been voted to various African independence groups, guerrilla fighters struggling to establish legitimate black oppressions; many passionate and blood-thirsty speeches had been made; the Anglican
representative from the mother country had been positively apologetic in all the speeches he made about racial matters, and his lead had been followed by most of the European delegates except the Scandinavians, who were too smug on the subject of race to be apologetic. In fact, as far as he was concerned, a jolly good time had been had by all.

There had been some theology talked too, and here the Bishop never felt at his happiest. But he had, surprisingly, made a considerable impact with a speech towards the end of a debate concerning certain niceties of the communion service, where he had described himself as a worker and a teacher, rather than a thinker, and had appealed for brotherhood and unity and Christian charity and all manner of goodies. Perhaps it was the contrast with his strident truculence in the earlier sessions that had made the delegates receive his speech with a gentle hum of approval. How fortunate that much of the speech could be given again, almost word for word, to the delegates at the St Botolph's symposium!

As he drifted off into total sleep, fragments of the meetings he had just attended, impressions of the world around him, and anticipations for the future merged in his mind:

‘Our brothers in Christ fighting for their independence in . . . legs . . . the body and blood of Our Saviour . . . white legs . . . death to the white oppressors . . . air-hostess's legs . . . blood and devastation . . . the body and blood of Our Lord . . . blood and fire . . . blood . . .'

• • •

On the second-class seat sat the travelling clergyman, his ticket protruding from the breast pocket of his once-smart corduroy jacket, and his keys jingling in his twill trousers. He might have been thought less fortunate than the Bishop of Peckham, for he was surrounded by Liverpudlian youth, all travelling, like him, towards Yorkshire. But, far from minding, he seemed to be revelling in their talk.

Philip Lambton was a clergyman for the young. He was, he thought, young himself, or youngish. Thirty-seven was
no age these days, and he had the happy ability not to look ahead to thirty-eight, thirty-nine. He had a child-like faith in what he was doing, and an enviable faculty of shrugging off unfortunate consequences without a shadow of effort. He loved — innocently — publicity, and he collected his cuttings like any rep. actor.

He had just had a great success. His church, St Finian's, in one of the suburbs of Liverpool, had been the setting (thanks entirely to his efforts) for the performance of a rock Te Deum, performed by a group called the Grots, and composed by their lead guitarist. He had culled texts from the Bible, the Hindu sages, and William Burroughs, and set them to an ear-splitting score that made all the houses in the vicinity of St Finian's near-uninhabitable for days during the rehearsals and performances. The young of the parish, many of whom had not shown their noses in church since their forcible christenings, had been recruited to bellow various simple phrases in chorus. And there had been an awful lot of publicity.

The Reverend Lambton's face lit up in a child-like smile as he thought of how much there had been. The local papers had been full of it for weeks in advance, and one had had a whole-page interview with him, in which he had quoted the injunction to ‘Suffer little children' (ignoring the fact that most of the performers were disconcertingly unchild-like). Then there had been the interview on the
Today
programme — surely the high-spot of his ministry to date. True, it had been cut to a minute and a quarter, and had included only his reply to the local critics and not his disquisition on the spiritual content of the work itself. This had made him sound defensive, which was a pity. But still, the BBC was the BBC — undoubtedly a National Forum. And the contacts he had made would be put to very good use in the future.

Of course there had been critics. Those who tried to do the work of the Lord in a modern, relevant, meaningful way, a way that spoke to today's generation (he'd used all
these phrases in the bit cut out of the broadcast) must expect ridicule and opposition. People had come along complaining about the pervasive odour in the vestry, which they said was certainly not incense. Then there had been the old woman who maintained she saw the Grots' drummer urinating in the font. What fools these people made of themselves! Besides, they were the dying generations. His business was with the young in one another's arms.

He was in the middle of a fatuous reverie, in which his own role hovered between that of boy bishop and leader of a new children's crusade, when he heard the words ‘Rock Te Deum' from the mouth of the youth next to him. He jerked to attention.

‘Dragsville,' said the girl opposite, pulling down the edges of her mouth, and uttering a groan. The rest of the group sniggered, and went on to other matters.

A cloud seemed to have passed over the blue of Philip Lambton's heaven.

• • •

All these, and others, were heading towards the Community of St Botolph's, and towards the strange events that took place there in the late, hot days of July.

T
HE
B
ISHOP OF
Peckham floated blandly from his carriage on the little local train from Leeds to Hickley and bestowed his ticket on the ticket collector as reverently as if it were a communion wafer. He was, in fact, thinking up jokes for his speech.

Once outside the station, his sense of the practicalities of life reasserted itself. His eye took in the grey-brown stone of Hickley, cast a glance of pastoral approval on the moorlands visible above the roof-tops, and then surveyed the waiting taxis. He turned around to appraise his fellow passengers who had got off with him. Most were bustling off towards town and home, but one was eyeing him hesitantly, as if uncertain whether to make the first gesture of approach. He was a tall, weighty young man, over-scrubbed and dressed in a light-weight suit, perilously close to sky-blue in colour. Probably American, thought the Bishop. Or, worse, Canadian. Still, it would halve the cost of the trip, however boring the conversation.

‘Are you for St Botolph's?' boomed the Bishop, and receiving a gesture of assent he ushered the eager young cleric towards the first of the waiting taxis.

‘I deeply appreciate your gesture,' intoned the young man. ‘A truly Christian act.'

The Bishop had a sinking feeling that he was going to get the boring conversation without halving the cost of the fare.

This feeling was augmented as the taxi got under way. After introductions had been expansively performed the young man — whose name was Simeon P. Fleishman — began talking about the absorbing topic of the price of his
rail ticket from London, doing laborious calculations involving different rates of exchange for the dollar. This done, he turned to the equally fascinating subject of fund-raising.

It soon turned out that, to the Reverend Fleishman, the social role of the Church in the modern world meant little more than ways of screwing money out of the congregation, ways which were — even to so modern a bishop as the Bishop of Peckham — breathtaking in their grasp of the principles of high finance, in their capitalist daring, and in their sheer rapacity.

‘We believe,' mouthed the Reverend Fleishman earnestly, ‘that since God's day is one seventh of the full week, true Christians should be willing to donate to their place of worship one-seventh of their weekly income.'

‘Good God,' said the Bishop. ‘And do they?'

‘There is some reluctance to acknowledge the full spiritual force of the argument,' admitted Simeon P., ‘but we are unremitting in getting the message across, and it's gratifying to be able to report that some do, some do.'

‘You must be rolling,' said the Bishop, who enjoyed calculated descents into the vernacular. ‘What on earth do you do with it all?'

A shade flitted briefly over the piercingly honest eyes of the Reverend Fleishman.

‘It goes to the refurbishment of the edifice,' he said, ‘and to the enhancement of the community appeal of our particular Christian message.'

Flim-flam, said the Bishop to himself. Aloud he asked: ‘And your church is . . . er . . . the Episcopalian?'

‘We call ourselves the Church of the Risen Jesus,' said the young man, ‘but basically we're non-denominational.'

The subject was one of great appeal (and some suspicion) to the Bishop, but he was prevented from making any theological explorations of Simeon P. Fleishman's faith by their arrival outside the impressive wooden gate of St Botolph's. While the young man looked on disinterestedly the Bishop haggled over the exorbitant fare, got it reduced
by twenty per cent, and added no tip. The scruples of the middle-class laity were not for him, and he was sure that the Lord (to use a convenient formula) would be no more pleased to see His servants swindled outside His door than any other good host. Finally he emerged from the taxi with a benign sense of good work done, and a nagging feeling that he ought to have had his share of the American's non-denominational pickings.

As the taxi driver did a disgruntled U-turn and drove off, the Bishop and Simeon P. stood for a few moments in silence, stretching their legs in the sunshine and gazing along the impressive length of the Community walls, winding their irregular way across the purple moorlands almost as far as the eye could see.

‘This sure is peaceful,' said the Reverend Fleishman in a reverent tone. ‘Mighty peaceful. Kind of medieval.'

‘Edwardian, dear boy, if not later,' said the Bishop firmly. ‘A refuge from guzzling and womanizing.'

‘That would be Edward the . . .' said the Reverend Fleishman tentatively, obviously wanting to get things right for some future edition of his parish magazine or company statement. But the Bishop decided he had had enough, and tugged at the bell.