JANUARY Wolf Moon Part I

Welcome to Lindchester!  I’ve now taken TALES FROM LINDFORD down from my blog, apart from the first instalment. If you’d like to read the whole thing, it’s published in May 2021, by Marylebone House.  Here’s the cover.  Available for pre-order from the SPCK website or from Amazon (book or ebook). 

Prologue

Much has happened, dear reader, since the end of 2016, when we turned the final page on the fictional diocese of Lindchester, vowing never to begin a fresh volume.  Our task back then was to chronicle in weekly instalments the state of the Church of England in times of rapid change, as mediated through the triumphs and disasters of my cast of characters.  However, like a polite afternoon tea unwittingly booked into the same venue as a stag weekend, our parochial storylines were all but overwhelmed by a larger and louder narrative.

              My forebears in the craft sensibly identified a few fertile acres of the past for their serialised tales.  Consider Middlemarch.  Published in 1871-72, the action takes place between 1829-32.  That’s forty years of hindsight.  How much easier to maintain a godlike omniscience when the fashions and tastes of the era are fossilised and the politics all done and dusted.  The past tense instantly commends itself as the proper choice.  None of this faffing about in the present, trying to capture things as they unfurl before our horrified gaze.  Four decades after the event, there’s only so much tension you can inject into ‘Dear God, what will happen to us all? Will they pass the Reform Act of 1832?’ 

In my early days of blogging novels—back when it was a bit of a lark—I used secretly to ask myself the question WWGED?  Answer: George Eliot would never launch out upon a novel without a calm controlled sense of what she was about.  Still, if the good Lord had wanted two George Eliots, he could have intervened back in 1819 and blessed Robert and Christiana Evans with twins.  I can only do my best, acknowledging that George Eliot is Galadriel, beside whom I’m a mere hobbit pestering about second breakfast while The Quest stands upon a knife edge.   

But for all her merits, George Eliot is dead.  I and my readers are not.  We must do the best we can with what we’ve been given.  So up we go, into the loft space again, to stumble among the crates of Lego which wait for unborn grandchildren, and the boxes of crap stored for grown-up sons and daughters until that day (which will never come) when they can afford a place as big as the empty nest their boomer parents now rattle around in.  Somewhere up here under carpet oddments, Christmas decorations, and knackered standard lamps, are our Anglican wings. 

The wind blows outside.  The polythene tacked between beams sucks, bulges, sucks, like tired old lungs.  The water tank warbles.  What are we doing up here, among the cobwebs and memories?  Are we mad to think that it will still fly, this creaking pterodactyl of a structure?  The days of a wing and a prayer are long past.  A handful of feathers and the mercy of God is all the C of E flies on now.  The post-industrial dioceses of England are broke.  The historic ones bolstered by medieval endowments are not much better placed, with hundreds of Grade 1 listed buildings to prop up.  Apart from in the wealthy suburbs, you’ll be a youngster in the congregation if you’re in your fifties.  The worldwide Anglican Communion hangs by a thread.  Who can say whether this year’s Lambeth Conference will be the last?

You know what, dear reader, I’d rather be writing about something else.  (So say all who live to see such times.)  I have no answers for you.  But I do have this imaginary diocese where I can channel what’s in the air, and try and work out what I think, what I am feeling.  Its lands lie between Lichfield and Chester dioceses, which is to say nowhere.  It is a Borset-Barset quintessence of Middle England.  The inhabitants are a bit mad, frankly; but I love them.

Come with me, one more time, dear reader.  Don’t be afraid.  It’s a long way to fall, but underneath are the everlasting arms.

January: Wolf Moon

Dawn breaks over Lindfordshire, in the heart of England.  It’s New Year’s Day, 2020.  The revels are over.  Scorched firework cases lie in empty parks and gardens.  In every litter-strewn town, the streets are as empty as if the Rapture has happened and only we got left behind.  But the world’s not over yet.  In a day or two it will all start up again.  Work.  Brexit.  Life.  But for now, Lindfordshire can roll over and sleep a little longer, under goose down duvets in 1000 thread count cotton covers, or in damp sleeping bags on cardboard beds.  In houses, flats, cars, sofas, hospitals, care homes, hostels, or doorways, he giveth his beloved sleep.

              By 8:30 the first dog-walkers and dedicated runners are out.  A grey-haired woman plods along beside the Linden with her three-legged greyhound.  On the opposite bank, a young blond man cranks out mile after mile.  They call across the river.  Happy New Year!  Happy New Year!  No sign yet of the New Year’s resolution runners.  They are easing themselves in.  New Year’s Day doesn’t count.  It’s a Bank Holiday.  It’s part of the old dispensation.  And so they miss the golden dawn.

              It’s nine o’clock before Jane does her perfunctory stretches and sets off on her 5k jog round Martonbury reservoir.  At 58, she’s stopped kidding herself.  She no longer dignifies the activity with the verb ‘run’.   The only time she gets up speed these days is when she’s going downhill, or slip-streaming a mobility scooter.  But she’s out there.  Facing down the New Year.  She knows if she grinds on, she will outpace the pixies.  

They well and truly got out of their box under the bed again last night.  First it was the advance guard Catastrophizing Squadron swarming all over her (what if Matt dies? what if management closes the history department and I’m out of a job?)  Next up, the Pixies of the Apocalypse (post-Brexit political meltdown in the UK, climate extinction, what if Trump blows us all up?)  Finally, the Bad Person troops parachuted in behind the lines (why are you so selfish and grumpy all the time? You’ve really let yourself go, fatty.)  At this point, it was useless, and Jane had to get up and make a cup of tea.

What a way to greet the New Year.  She and Matt never bothered with the Auld Lang Syne caper these days.  For a busy bishop, an early night felt like the highest treat imaginable.  Jane was vaguely aware of the muffled crump of fireworks at midnight, and mumbled ‘Happy New Year.’  Welcome, 2020!  Sitting at 3am with her mug of chamomile, sleepless and pixie-harrowed.

She’s shaken them off now.  And look, blue sky, smoky light.  The reservoir like a mirror.  There goes a jay.  And a green woodpecker yaffling in the distance.  She can hear the rusty bawling of a donkey.  Bored, probably, now the ‘little donkey on the dusty road’ season is over.  Nothing in his schedule until Palm Sunday now.  Jane knows it’s pure coincidence that the Hill Top Farm donkey is called Nigel, of course.  But she’s still grinning as she meets a set of dog walkers.  They hail each other—Happy New Year!—as they pass.

All across Lindfordshire people smile and greet strangers.  Happy New Year!  Happy New Year!  Another old friend of ours, Chloe, is out jogging in Lindford arboretum, with her labradoodle, Cosmo.  Cosmo is on a lead, lest he ravish some innocent lady dog, and father another litter of pups.  Chloe’s mind turns to the question again.  Is she mad even to be contemplating it?  How do you even broach the subject?  Hi people!  I hear your pain and volunteer?  No.  Forget it.  Too scary.

              But why is it too scary, if it’s coming from love?

              It’s like that song, what was it, You must be kind you must be good and something something chop the wood?  Chloe skips round a puddle, to keep her nice trainers dry.  She wants to be kind and good.  But it’s like running with two dogs—Cosmo screeches to a halt and hunches quivering—you get pulled in two directions. 

‘Good boy!’  She fishes out a poo bag.  I’m a lost cause!  Never once forgot my PE kit, or skived off violin practice.  Did all my homework, passed every exam from 11+ through to Cambridge Law Finals, paid every bill on time, never been in debt or had a speeding ticket or parking fine.  Street pastor.  Member of General Synod! 

              She bends to scoop up the warm handful.  (Never once failed to clean up after my dog.)  Am I brave enough to be kind, if that means other people will think I’m not a good girl? 

Honestly.  A good girl?  ‘I’m 36!’

              A man jogging the other way glances.  ‘Congratulations!’

Darn! She said it out loud.  ‘Happy New Year!’ she calls after him.  He half turns, and raises a hand. 

Chloe is still laughing as she deposits the tied bag in the proper bin.  Is she overthinking it?  Maybe she should be more like Cosmo, just go with her instinct.  Because sometimes the heart knows the shortcut to truth.  So, ask what her body wants, not what the neighbours will think, maybe?

‘Come along, boy.’  She jogs home, with Cosmo bounding ahead, till his lead has spooled out to its full 10 metres.  His world explodes with scent.  Takeaway box, bush, squirrel! Pug pee, bin, goose shit!  He greets them all with a happy Wow!  Wow!

             

Happy New Year, Happy New year!  On the other side of the globe, Australia burns.  Happy New Year doesn’t cut it at the edge of doom.  What words are there left to us?  Even the old Prayer Book falls short:  Send us, we beseech thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rain and showers, that we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort…  We’re on a runaway train.  The failed brakes screech.  We hurtled past Station Moderate years ago. 

It’s dusk on New Year’s Day.  The girls and their mother emerge from the carpet-cushioned popcorn fug of Lindford’s Odeon into the hard air.  They’ve been to see Little Women.  You go in tense, thinks Becky, in case they ruin it, but in fact, it’s made her love the book more than ever—if that’s possible.  Oh, how she adored it as a girl.  Loved it literally to bits.  She still has the falling-apart copy she devoured under the bed covers by torchlight.  Even now, she can remember the longing it unleashed in her.  To be a tomboy like Jo, to sell her hair and save the day, to write stories, have boys in love with her and yet prefer to be just friends.

How come she never managed to infect the girls with the same passion?  Maybe her very passion inoculated them.  With hindsight, she’d have done better to ban Leah from reading it.  Put the book on a high shelf and say ‘it’s far too grown-up’.  Honestly, that girl came out of the womb counter-suggestible.  Jess has always been a dream in comparison.  But Jess isn’t much of a reader, bless her.  Why didn’t I read Little Women to her at bedtime?  Why was I always too tired?  Bad mother.

No.  I’m not a bad mother.  I was doing my best.  I am enough.  She repeats this mantra every time the negative thoughts intrude. 

Leah has stormed on ahead as usual.  There she is at the corner under a streetlight, practicing her karate moves while she waits.  A crisp packet scratches along the pavement.  Becky feels her scalp prickle.  There’s a feeling—like impatience, but not quite that—a surge of something that Becky can only just keep down when Leah is around. 

I am enough. 

Enough for what, though?  Who says?  It should be enough to say to yourself that you’re enough.  But it’s not.  She still needs external corroboration. 

Jess tugs on her hand. ‘Mu-u-um?’

‘Sorry darling.  Miles away.  What were you saying?’

‘The moon!’

Becky looks up.  An almost half-moon glows between the clouds.  ‘Lovely!’

‘I’m going to keep a moon diary,’ says Jess. 

‘Are you?  Lovely!’

‘So you know my new notebook Leah gave me with the moon on?  I’m going to write in that every day.  Plus I’ve got a moon app on my phone.’

‘That’s great!  Is this something for school?’

‘No, I’m just super interested in the moon?’  She swings Becky’s hand in time with their steps.  ‘I know all these amazing moon facts, like, the phases of the moon?  Do you want to know what phase it’s at now?’

‘Yes please!’

‘Waxing jibbous.’

‘You mean “gibbous”.’ 

The hand-swinging stops.  They walk in silence, with moon keeping pace over the rooftops.

‘That actually proves you’re clever,’ adds Becky.  ‘Because it shows you’ve learnt something all by yourself by reading about it.’  She squeezes Jess’s hand.  ‘So well done you.  What else have you discovered?’

Jess says nothing, just looks at the moon and starts humming, sweet and high.  Something from her chorister repertoire.  Becky should know it by now, but she doesn’t.  Bad mother.

‘What about…’  Becky ransacks her threadbare astronomy.  ‘The dark side of the moon?’

But by now they’ve caught up with Leah, who mutters Finally.

‘I know, shall we get a takeaway, girls?’

‘NO!’  Leah drowns out Jess’s Yay!  ‘Have you any idea how unsustainable that is?  I’ve told you like a million times I’m vegan and I only eat locally sourced food.’

‘We could go to Diggers?’ suggests Jess.

‘Diggers is closed, idiot.’

‘Don’t call people idiots, Leah.'

‘People ARE idiots, FYI!’

Leah storms off ahead again.  Becky tamps down that surge.  Right now, it seems like hatred.

‘It’s OK, mum,’ says Jess.  ‘We can have vegan mac ‘n’ cheese again.’

Which I drove to Lindchester Waitrose to buy in my gas-guzzling planet-killing car, Becky doesn’t say. ‘Good plan.’

Jess starts swinging their hands again.  ‘So shall I tell you some more moon facts?’

‘Yes please!’

‘OK!  So there’s like a name for each full moon?  Like each month has a different name?’

‘Wow!  What’s January?’  But she’s maintaining the conversation on maternal autopilot, without hearing.  I am enough.  I am enough. 

Even before the twelfth day of Christmas, trees are stripped and dumped beside wheelie bins.  There’s a surge of something across Lindfordshire—impatience? Resignation?  The party’s over.  We may as well get on with it.  It really is going to happen this time.  Brexit.  End of the month.  But it’s dragged on so long, it doesn’t really feel like anything.  Some people are talking about parties, and demanding that church bells be rung in celebration of our liberty.  Clergy are mentally preparing boiling oil to tip from the bell tower on any would-be ringers.  That’s how the fracture lines go, on the whole.  Remainer clergy with leave parishioners. 

How come we didn’t realise we were singing off two different hymn sheets all this time?  It was right there, under our noses, and we couldn’t see it.  The other half of our nation, in the next town, the next timeline, right next door.  They might as well have been round the back of the moon for all we knew. 

Each morning the sun rises a little sooner and sets a little later.  Minute by minute the night is chipped away.  On we trudge.  Rain falls at last on the other side of the world.  Immoderate rain.  Storms and floods.  They douse the fires for now, but the height of Australian summer is still to come.  500 million animals have died already.  Five Hundred Million.  We can’t see a figure that big.  It goes off the edge of our brains.  What we can see is a tiny pair of koala paws on social media, clinging to the hand of the rescuer who comes with a bottle of water.  We can see the details.  Only the details make it real.

And quietly, with barely a jingle of harness, another horseman of the apocalypse sets out to ride in a distant province of China.