He reminded me of a drawing of a clergyman I’d seen in the vintage catalogue of the clergy outfitters in Westminster, which, like Dean, was on life’s slow train, stopping at all stations. I had been collecting my cathedral vestments, and the quietly clipped lady sales assistant had brought out the museum file of old catalogues, the pages now in plastic sachets for protection. There was an ink sketch of a clerical figure – male, of course – in a “short summer cassock, with breeches and stockings”. The illustration was probably from the 1930s.
I could imagine Dean Crowhurst wearing breeches and stockings, and not just for private recreational purposes. He was tall with deep-set eyes and lean and sunken cheeks, but not unhealthy; a metabolism that was apparently unchallenged by intake. He ate, but only for fuel. He could only be attractive to a woman without natural juices. So that would be most female Church of England congregants then.
“Come in, Natalie,” he said, bending his abnormally long frame to sweep some self-satisfied City glossies off the low round table next to a faded moss-green sofa. “Coffee?”
Of course he’d have a pot ready. He’d have had a fresh pot sent up at exactly the right time. Two cups, I noted. We were on our own. Some effortless pleasantries out of the way, Dean placed his elbows on the arms of his cheap winged chair and rested his fingers together like a spider on a mirror. He started with his ritual update on the legal action against me for nicking a truck in a famine zone, which had been dragging on for years.
“I hear that the Sudan business may at last be coming to a satisfactory conclusion,” he said. “I’m glad of that. As you know, I’ve always been frustrated that I can’t assist. But no doubt the Bishop knows best. I can only hope the lawyers have supported him well enough. He will speak to you, and I gather that Lambeth Palace wants to be in at the kill.”
Dean had always smarted that the Diocese had insisted on running my case rather than the Chapter, which had a cosy concord with the City’s law firms.
“If that’s the case, then it may be that we can finally close this quasi-criminal file of yours and you can prevail as a free clergywoman without a stain on your escutcheon. I have to say that I’ve always held that a disciplinary procedure for you would have been quite inappropriate, given the public interest. I’m hoping that you’ll have come out of it rather well.”
“If that’s the case, I’ll be glad it’s over too, Dean,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Somebody said the other day that your file had been retitled GTA? I didn’t follow.”
“Grand Theft Auto,” I said. “It’s a computer game.”
“Indeed,” he said. “How charmingly informal.” And he shifted slightly in his chair to indicate a change of subject. “I thought today we’d just touch on the progress of women bishops at General Synod,” he continued, his lower lip rising like a fender.
So here we bloody go, I thought. What I hadn’t told Tony on my doorstep that morning was that some muppet on a Sunday newspaper had been in touch to ask if I would be included in a wildly speculative round-up of the likely candidates to be the first bishop without men’s bits. I’d learned that you didn’t talk to journalists about other journalists, or there’d be a feeding frenzy. But she’d suggested I was the “wild card”, given what Dean called the Sudan business.
“I’m happy where I am,” I’d said to that reporter, but I was aware that was a churchy reply. It’s meant to imply that the nature of religious vocation doesn’t have the same structural aspirations as secular life. That might have been true in my case, but generally it’s nonsense. The upper reaches of the Church of England are a hotbed of morose entitlement, as venal as any commercial body.
“If parliamentary time can be found towards the end of this session,” Dean was intoning, “we could plausibly see the first female names on shortlists by spring next year. Normal rules of meritocracy will apply, but the CNC may well be anxious to ensure that, in an environment of recruitment that isn’t exactly, ahem . . .” – he was doing what he imagined was roguish theatricality – “. . . accustomed to executive search in this quarter of the Church’s human resource, it would want to be sure that likely candidates were being properly identified. And . . .” – pause for imaginary effect – “. . . were likely to accept the sacrament of consecration.”
The Crown Nominations Commission, the office that forwards names of likely bishops to the prime minister and ultimately to the monarch, makes a Freemasons’ Lodge look like a drop-in centre. It wears its secrecy like fetish gear and gets off on the confidentiality of its deliberations. I wondered who Dean knew on it. I didn’t really know where he stood on the issue of women bishops. I imagined he played by the book, with a dollop of disdain. General Synod, the Church’s parliament made up of houses of bishops, clergy and laity, had voted decisively for removing the legal obstacles for women, already ordained priests, to be made bishops. There was an irresistible rationale to that, even among most traditionalists and the predominantly male-gay Anglo-Catholic wing, to which Dean belonged, who nevertheless grew weepy over the theology of fatherhood.
In the way of the glacial Church, it had taken several years and would take several more of self-flagellation and hand-wringing about how to make provision for these lachrymose bachelors, but for now the
