‘These statues,’ said the bishop. ‘Have you a pocket torch?’ Father Angwin did not reply. ‘Then give me a tour,’ the bishop demanded. ‘Start here. I cannot identify this fellow. Is he a Negro?’
‘Not really. He’s been painted. A lot of them have. That’s St Dunstan. Don’t you see his tongs?’
‘What has he got tongs for?’ the bishop asked rudely. He stared at the saint in a hostile way, his paunch thrust out.
‘He was working at his forge when the devil came to tempt him, and the saint seized his nose with red-hot pincers.’
‘I wonder what sort of temptations you might get while working at a forge.’ The bishop peered into the darkness. ‘There are a lot of them, Father. You have more statues than any church in the diocese.’ He passed on down the aisle. ‘How did you get them? Where did they come from?’
‘They were here before my time. They’ve always been here.’
‘You know that is impossible. They were someone’s decision. Who is this woman with the pliers? This place is like an ironmonger’s shop.’
‘That’s Apollonia. The Romans pulled her teeth out. She’s the patron saint of dentists.’ Father Angwin looked up into the martyr’s downturned, expressionless face. He stooped and took a candle from the wooden box at the statue’s foot, and lit it from the solitary flame that burned below Dunstan. He carried it back with care, and fitted it into one of Apollonia’s empty candle-holders. ‘Nobody bothers with her. They don’t go in for dentistry here. Their teeth fall out quite early in life, and they find it a relief.’
‘Pass on,’ said the bishop.
‘Here are my four Church Fathers. You will see St Gregory in his Papal tiara.’
‘I cannot see anything.’
‘You must take my word for it. And St Augustine, holding a heart, you see, pierced with an arrow. And the other Fathers here, St Jerome with his little lion.’
‘It really is a very small beast.’ The bishop leant forward, put himself nose to nose with it. ‘Not realistic at all.’
Father Angwin put his hand on the lion’s arched mane, and traced the length of its stone back with his forefinger. ‘I like him the best of all the Fathers. I think of him in the desert with his wild eyes and his bare hermit’s knees.’
‘Who’s left?’ said the bishop. ‘Ambrose. Ambrose with his hive.’
‘St Beehive, the children call him. Similarly it was mentioned in the parish some two generations back that Augustine was the Bishop of Hippo, and since then I am afraid that there has been a great deal of confusion among the juveniles, passed on carefully, you see, by their parents.’
The bishop made a little growl, deep in his throat. Father Angwin had the feeling that he had somehow played into the bishop’s hands; that the bishop would think that it mattered, if they were confused.
‘Can it matter?’ he said quickly. ‘Look at St Agatha here, poor Christian soul, carrying her breasts on a dish. Why is she the patron saint of bellfounders? Because a little mistake was made, with the shape; you can understand it. Why do we bless bread in a dish on 5 February? Because as well as looking like bells they look like bread rolls. It is a harmless mistake. It is more decent than the truth. It is less cruel.’
They had passed by now almost to the back of the church, and in the north aisle, opposite them, there were more saints; St Bartholomew clutched the knife with which he had been flayed, St Cecilia her portable organ. A Virgin, with the foolish expression imparted by a sickly smile and a chipped nose, held her blue arms out stiffly under her drapery; and St Theresa, the Little Flower, glowered from beneath her wreath of roses.
The bishop crossed the church, and looked up into the Carmelite’s face, and tapped her foot. ‘I make exceptions, Father,’ he said. ‘Our boys in the trenches of Flanders addressed their prayers through the Little Flower, and some of those who did so were I daresay not Catholic at all. There are saints for our time, Father, and this one here is a shining example to all Catholic womanhood. Perhaps this one may stay. I will give it consideration.’
‘Stay?’ the priest said. ‘Where are they going?’
‘Out,’ said the bishop succinctly. ‘And where, I care not. Somehow, Father Angwin, I shall drag you and your church and your parishioners into the 1950s, where we all quite firmly belong. I cannot have this posturing, Father, I cannot have this idolatry.’
‘But they are not idols. They are just statues. They are just representations.’
‘And if I were to walk out on to the street, Father, and I were to lay hold of one of your parishioners, do you think he would be able to distinguish, to my satisfaction, between that honour and reverence that we give the saints and that worship that belongs to God?’
‘Windbag,’ said Father Angwin. ‘Dechristianizer. Saladin.’ He pitched his voice up. ‘It isn’t what you think. But the people here are very deficient in the power of prayer. They are simple people. I am a simple man myself.’
‘I am aware of that,’ the bishop said.
‘The saints have their attributes. They have their areas of interest. A congregation latches on to them.’
‘They must latch off,’ said the bishop brutally. ‘I won’t have it. These are to go.’
As he passed Michael the Archangel, Father Angwin looked up and saw the scales in which that saint weighs human souls, and he dropped his eyes to Michael’s foot: a bare, muscled, claw-like foot, that had sometimes seemed to him like the foot of an ape. He passed under the gallery, into the thicker, velvet blackness where St Thomas himself, the Angelic Doctor, stood central and square on his plinth, his stone gaze on the high altar, and the star that he held in his fine hands shedding lightless rays into the greater dark.
When they returned to the house, the bishop was boisterous and offensive. He wanted more tea, and biscuits too. ‘I won’t dispute it,’ he said. ‘I won’t dispute it any more. Your congregation have superstitions that would disgrace Sicilian peasants.’
‘But I am afraid,’ Father Angwin said, ‘that if you take away the statues, and next the Latin, next the feast days, the fast days, the vestments –’
‘I said nothing about this, did I?’
‘I can see the future. They won’t come any more. Why should they? Why should they come to church? They might as well be out in the street.’
‘We are not here for frills and baubles, Father,’ said the bishop. ‘We are not here for fripperies. We are here for Christian witness.’
‘Rubbish,’ Father said. ‘These people aren’t Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.’
When Agnes Dempsey came in with the Nice biscuits she could see that Father Angwin was in a poor state, quivering and sweating and passing his hand over his forehead. She hung about in the corridor, to catch what she could.
‘Well, come now,’ the bishop said. She could hear that he was alarmed. ‘Don’t take on so. I’m not saying you may not have an image. I’m not saying that you may not have a statue at all. I’m saying we must make an accommodation to the times in which we live.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Father said, adding audibly, ‘you fat fool.’
‘Are you quite well?’ the bishop said. ‘You keep talking in different voices. Insulting me.’
‘If the truth