Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox Page B

mesh, needles, wounds, seepage, or anything latex. There can be a parent–child dynamic to bedside visits. Forty-nine stitches, father, look! Look, father, it’s still oozing! Look, Dad, watch me, Dad! Even after a quarter of a century in Holy Orders poor Dominic remains squeamish. Dead bodies: not a problem. Suppurating ulcers: good Lord, deliver us. He gets into his trusty Honda and sets off.
    Audi, Schmaudi.
    Wednesday. White smoke! A new pope, and we Anglicans are still waiting to enthrone the next archbishop of Canterbury. The mills of Anglicanism grind slower than those of Rome.
    Thursday, late afternoon. Dean Marion looks at her watch. Just time for a quick cup of tea before evensong. She’s been in a senior staff meeting. As usual, she feels like Switzerland. (Hmm. Come to think of it, I will not pursue that metaphor any further. I foresee a risk of characterizing the bishop as a Nazi.) As usual, Marion feels like an embodiment of Anglicanism: a via media between the warring forces of change and conservatism.
    The bishop has a Growth Strategy. (Lindchester: A Missionary Diocese!) Everything must be strategically lined up behind mission: all the systems, the finances, the processes, every parish, every appointment. And the cathedral must become a missionary cathedral. I will now permit you a fastidious shudder, followed by a short interlude of hand-wringing. Ready? Off you go:
    Ew! Oh, my dear, how crass! How vulgarly McDonaldizingly Evangelical! As if the mission of the Church can be reduced to evangelism, and success to numbers, and the priesthood to doing , not being! Anyway, we tried a Decade of Evangelism and it didn’t work.
    And . . . stop.
    The bishop has powerful allies in his corner. The Church Commissioners have sunk a not inconsiderable sum into promoting this shift towards missional thinking. But cathedrals are bastions of conservatism. Hence Marion’s dilemma. She has been won over by the bishop’s proposals (while remaining temperamentally allergic to them); but she knows many of her flock – to say nothing of colleagues and staff – will fight them tooth and nail. She must bring folk to look at tables and figures, at incontrovertible evidence demonstrating that growth is possible, that the relentless decline in numbers can be reversed. She must commend strategies that have already been proven effective elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. And folk will dig their heels in.
    Meanwhile, the safeguarding issue at the Choristers’ School rumbles on. And Linda, Marion’s high-maintenance PA (inherited from the previous dean), is off with stress again. Stress (with a whiff of litigation) is Linda’s default mode when asked to change her working methods. Does Marion have the heart for another employment tribunal? John the Bastard was vanquished before Christmas, and since then – coincidentally? – someone has been sending Marion little turd offerings in padded envelopes. The police are involved. There is talk of CCTV for the deanery porch.
    Oh, and the south side of the cathedral is falling down. They’ve just finished propping up the north side, and the laws of stonemasonry – nay, of physics itself! – dictate that the pressure now exerted by the restored side must push the crumbly side over, unless 4.6 million pounds’ worth of work is undertaken, let’s say, now-ish.
    Marion has not given anything up for Lent. She doesn’t need to.
    She lets herself in. A pile of post waits for her in the deanery hallway on the round mahogany table. Gene appears. He sees her poor weary face. ‘Would like me to cook Coquilles St Jacques for you, in the nude with a red rose clamped between my teeth?’
    â€˜You know what, Gene? Just a cup of Earl Grey. That would be lovely. But thank you for the offer.’
    â€˜It’s because you’re worth it,’ he says.
    Saturday. Tomorrow is Passion Sunday. It is also St Patrick’s Day.