Diary of a Sociopathic Vicar – Part 27

There is a belief that vicars only work an hour a week on Sundays. If you’re doing it right then being a vicar will occupy you 24-7, but visiting the infirm, the idiotic, and the deranged is an invisible activity. The public face of a vicar remains the Sunday service.

To encourage vicars to try harder on Sundays, the Dioceses came up with the idea of Lay Reader. This is an ordinary member of the congregation, who - following some minimal training – is permitted to take certain services and preach. The congregation immediately compare performances, forcing the vicar to up their game.

As such, learning a Lay Reader was moving into the area did not cause delight. Still, I dutifully wrote a polite e-mail in reply to “Mordred of the family Williams”. Why couldn’t he just sign as “Mordred Williams”? I hit “send” and put the unpleasant business out of mind.

The next day was spent preparing a submission to the Consistory Court of the Diocese regarding the building of the new church. It’s a bit like planning permission, except the Church has had an extra 1900 years to obfuscate the process. The Diocesan website was confusing and contradictory and numerous phone calls were required. I completed the submission around bedtime.

The following morning, I began the process of dismantling the Sons of Jesus Lemurian so that they would not be able to take over the Church of England. If they were to succeed, then it could interfere with my attempts to become Archbishop of Canterbury. This made them surplus to requirements.

Luckily, I have the services of Porker available to me, and he’s a pretty good forger. Using his skills, I had created a treasure trail of fakes for this secret society. It was the kind of thing they would lap up, with trinkets and pretty pictures and Latin. Now I had to install the items and their clues at the right locations.

The first place on my list was St. Johns, Nebeck. It was rebuilt recently with all the charm of a light industrial unit. I had thought this might mean it lacked hiding places, but I was in luck. I had intimated to the architect that the foundations were failing. When you’ve built a church supposed to last a hundred years, it’s awkward if it falls down after one. When I arrived, he was supervising a JCB that was digging some holes.

“Good grief,” I said. “Michael Garrison! What are you doing here?”

“Oh, er, David, isn’t it? Just routine checks. What are you doing here?”

“I’m a vicar, this is a church,” I replied, peering into a hole.
“I suppose so.”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a grubby leather pouch I’d just dropped into the hole.

“What’s what?”

“That. Looks quite old. Guess you’ll have to report it to the Diocese.”

Michael Garrison peered into the hole.
“Really?”

“Oh yes. Archaeological implications. Dioceses get pretty interested in such things. I wouldn’t touch it until they’ve given you the all clear.”

“But that could take months!”

“I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

“Do I have to tell them?”

I just looked at him, and his shoulders slumped.

“I guess I’d better call them,” he said, walking off and pulling out his phone.

After that it was easy. The other churches were traditional buildings, which made my life simple. Including Norley because I didn’t want the vicar there, Robert Howey, to miss out on the fun. He has occasionally tried to impose himself as my mentor, despite only have a few more years’ experience. He also harbours some strange ideas, such as thinking that the less you talked about God, the more potent your evangelism would be. A form of spiritual homeopathy if you will. It would be an interesting experiment to mix his strange ideas with the strange ideas of a group of heretics. Besides, he had been too quiet recently, and I don’t trust people who suddenly become quiet.

Putting the treasure trail in place took the rest of the week, taking us to the second Souper Saturday. The previous week our soup sales had been helped by Jezzer crashing his bike and killing himself. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on that kind of luck every time.

After we’d finished setting up, Mabel, my fiancée said to me, “Have you seen that Porker had got a stall?”

“Really? What’s he selling?”

“Amber. He’s got necklaces and pendants and everything. Some even have insects in.”

“That sounds very enterprising,” I said.

“I love amber,” said Mabel.

This is the kind of hint that you ignore at your peril, so I said, “We’ve got a few minutes, how about we go and take a look?”
Mable smiled happily, and we wandered over.

“Hello David, Mabel,” said Porker. “Anything take your interest?”

I surveyed his wares. It was true – some of the pendants did have insects inside them. One had particularly drawn Mabel’s eye, and if I was not mistaken had a fine specimen of a house fly embedded within.

“How do you know it’s real?” I asked.

“You do the float test,” said Mabel, before Porker could get a word in. He shrugged, and she pointed to two tubs of water. One had what looked like a piece of amber lying at the bottom, with a Sharpie written notice saying, “FAKE”. The other had a similar notice saying “REAL” and had a piece of amber floating on the surface. Mabel dropped the house fly amber in the water and positively bounced when it floated. This was another of those hints, so I passed Porker the required amount of cash, and Mabel put the dead fly around her neck.

Now I had Porker’s attention I said, “Have you ever seen the inside of the dome of the cathedral in Florence?”

“Only pictures. If I ever get the chance, I’d love to see it up close.”

“The new church will have a dome. Do you think you could paint it?”

“I’d need to see a specification of what you want. And you’d have to sort out the scaffolding, but, yeah, I reckon I could do it.”

“How much?”

Porker stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared off into the middle distance. After a while he said, “If, once I’ve seen the spec, I reckon I can do it, and you’ll let me do it my way, paying any costs...”
I indicated he should continue.

“...A week’s holiday for two in Florence, five-star hotel, all expenses paid, and no red-eye flights.”

I thought a moment, working out roughly how much the package would cost, and said, “Done.”

“So, who will you be going with?” asked Mabel.

“A week’s holiday in a five-star hotel in Italy? I reckon I’ll be able to take my pick,” replied Porker with a grin.

A reasonably successful Souper Saturday followed, and Psycho decided he should start calling himself Souper Psycho. We didn’t sell quite as much soup as before, but it was quite satisfactory, especially as we didn’t have the advantage of dead bodies to help us this time.
Sunday was Sunday, as it always is, and then it was Monday.

At nine o’clock I made the phone call that would seal the fate of the Sons of Jesus Lemurian. I had been unsure how to initiate the process, but then the answer became obvious. A little while ago, the Rural Dean, Torbut Smythe - a member of the same society - had been found dead in the burnt out remains of my church. Coincidentally, I had found a manuscript hidden in the ruins, and used that as the basis for my treasure hunt. The manuscript and the death weren’t connected – that was just my housekeeper murdering someone again – but they weren’t to know that. It was a useful hook to hand a story from.

When the phone was answered, I said, “I know what Torbut Smythe was looking for when he died.”

Disclaimer: Much of the content on the Diocesan website is currently being revised, and it is unfair of Rev. David Wilson to highlight an obscure and little used segment for criticism.