Archbishop

A novel

Michele Guinness

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781444753387
• Print ISBN:
  9781444753370

Five years from now, the Church of England is on its knees. Yet one woman is making a difference, and when she is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, anything could happen.Vicky Burnham-Woods is a master of diplomacy, and deeply committed to bringing the church back into the heart of community and cultural life - but not everyone wants a woman at the top, and behind the scenes dark forces are moving.Can the first ever female Archbishop of Canterbury last long enough to achieve her mission?

Part One

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2020

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It’s been leaked! That woman – Ab of C. Deeply shocked. Is it true?

Thought we agreed – no place for women in the Palace. Thinks she’s Joan of Arc, ranting, raving, rousing the rabble. ‘Our Lady of the Lame Dogs and Lost Causes.’

Don’t object to powerful women. Bedded a few in my time. But this one . . . a can of worms. All pouts and petticoats. Marches, protests, demonstrations. Keep religion out of politics, for God’s sake.

I worry for the church – and the country. If you agree, let’s meet. Somewhere discreet. Devise a plan – damage limitation.

So many better candidates. This may be the time for such a man as you.

One

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Christ’s own ‘God-forsaken-ness’ on the cross showed me where God is present, where God had been present in those nights of deaths in the fire storms in Hamburg and where God would be present in my future whatever may come.

Jürgen Moltmann

January 2020

‘I have the PM’s Secretary for Senior Appointments on the phone, Bishop,’ Marissa announced breathily from the study doorway, lingering just a little too long to disguise the curiosity beneath her usual veil of quiet professionalism.

‘Thanks, Marissa,’ Vicky replied. ‘Just wanting my advice on some appointment or other, no doubt.’

‘Of course,’ Marissa acknowledged, with a short smile of relief. ‘Probably wanting to make another woman bishop, and needing you to show her the ropes.’

‘Probably,’ Vicky agreed, resisting a further response to her secretary’s attempt to explain the call, as bewildered by it as she was. It was on the tip of her tongue to joke, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t be Canterbury. I’ve only been here four years.’

But something stopped her – a sudden, stomach-lurching disquiet.

She watched the door close, waited for Marissa’s quiet footfall to recede down the corridor, closed her eyes in a moment’s desperate prayer, then picked up the phone.

‘Gerard. How are you? How’s the PM?’

‘I need to see you urgently, Bishop,’ he said without preamble. ‘Can I come later today? Or tomorrow.’

A man whose social graces appeared to have undergone surgical removal, she said to herself, wrestling with a growing sense of foreboding.

‘Gerard, I’m a bishop. My diary is full of unmovables and unchangeables. Confirmations, lectures, sermons . . .’

‘I appreciate that, Bishop. What can you cancel most easily?’

Vicky picked up her e-phone and flashed quickly through her diary. Even the most recent bookings had been in for months. Nothing could be cancelled without causing dismay to a significant number of people. But she had, in fact, kept a slot free the following afternoon for reading, reflection, sermon preparation, and a visit from the hairdresser. Rare luxuries.

‘Later tomorrow afternoon?’ she sighed.

‘Tomorrow afternoon would be excellent, Bishop. Er, given your high profile, I’d prefer it if there were no prying eyes. Can you encourage your staff to go home early without arousing their suspicions?’

‘How very cloak and dagger, Gerard,’ she laughed, and it jarred, sounding slightly shrill. ‘Come at 5 p.m. I can guarantee that at that time on a Friday my staff will all be enjoying the beginning of a weekend off. It’s my policy.’

‘Perfect.’

For the intervening hours Vicky picked at the Appointments’ Secretary’s motives as if they were scabs on a new tattoo. What could be so important that it would bring him to her late on a Friday afternoon, when most sensible non-clergy were heading for home and a two-day break? She told herself repeatedly that it wouldn’t, couldn’t be Canterbury. But where else was there an urgent vacancy? The previous incumbent had hardly been the church’s most exciting offering, but he had seemed a gentle, thoughtful, godly man – too sensitive, if anything; hardly the sort of man to have a secretive other life. She had loved and felt for him. Never envied him his impossible task, not for a moment. Grieved over his lonely, indecorous end.

No. They wouldn’t appoint a woman to the post. It was too soon. It would ruffle too many feathers, put a fraught, dismembered church at greater risk of final schism. It had been demanding enough for her African brother bishops to accept her as an equal. Their reaction if a woman was appointed to the church’s most senior leadership role didn’t bear thinking about. Did Gerard want her advice on the appointment of another female bishop? He had never sought her opinion before. Perhaps the PM wanted to sound her out on issues around urban deprivation, one of her ecclesiastical specialities, as recognised by the press, if not her fellow bishops, who resented having their efforts at diocesan regeneration passed over.

Everything the first female bishop did was always going to be big news, she reassured ‘the boys’, as she referred to them (though she still groused to her husband about their petty jealousies).

But if that was what the PM wanted, why did he not speak to her himself?

‘It must be Canterbury,’ Kelvin teased her. Inevitably, Marissa had told her chaplain about the call.

‘Don’t say so, not even in jest, Kelvin. My blood runs cold at the thought. I’m only just getting the hang of being a bishop.’

Her relationship with Kelvin was close – closer, she suspected, than most bishops with their chaplains. In many ways he was more like the younger brother she had never had. Was that a female propensity, to dispense with the professional formalities in favour of friendship? Was it wise? But she could never look at his vulnerable, scarred and shaven head, his gold earrings and midnight shadow, without feeling a surge of wonder and thankfulness that strong partnerships, both personal and professional, could sprout from the most unlikely beginnings. For her, Kelvin was the personification of reparation, of hope in every broken relationship.

He had been reluctant to apply for the chaplain’s post.

‘Bishop’s poodle? Not on your life, Vicky.’

‘Would I have asked you to apply if I’d wanted a pet?’

‘Church Scrapes the Barrel,’ had been the unforgiving headline in the press. ‘Is our new bishop so strapped for talented clergy that she needs to appoint a chaplain with a criminal record?’ Vicky had been furious on Kelvin’s behalf and had her press officer, a former Daily Express hack called Mike Barnes, send off a strong response. ‘Kelvin Craddock has been vicar of some of the most difficult urban parishes in the country and proved himself to be a resourceful, loving and outstanding priest. This is a man re-born, whose past was redeemed by the transforming love of Christ, and who knows enough of the power of forgiveness and restoration to share it wherever he happens to be.’

‘Holy mackerel, I’ve turned into Saint Paul,’ he’d said with a broad grin when he saw it.

‘I wish,’ Vicky replied.

Theirs had been an unusually comfortable working partnership, and he would be loath to let her go, even for Canterbury.

‘Does the Archbishop still have to wear a frock coat and tights for state banquets?’

‘I think, at least I hope, that tradition died a short while back.’

‘A pity. You’d look a great deal sexier than the men. Far better legs, if I may say so.’

‘You may not,’ she said tartly, hiding her smile. Give a man an inch . . .

Gerard Lancaster rang the bell of Bishop’s House at 5 p.m. on the dot. From an upstairs window Vicky had watched his bulky, black figure emerge from the car and lumber towards the house. The Appointments’ Secretary was a broad-shouldered man, covered, almost from head to toe, in an over-large cashmere coat that looked more like it was wearing him than the other way round. He stood on the doorstep, looking around furtively. She was tempted to demand, ‘Password?’ as she opened the door to him, but thought better of it and offered to take his coat instead. He refused politely.

‘Ready for a quick getaway?’ she teased.

‘Heavy,’ he explained.

‘Ah,’ she said.

He followed her into the sitting room, but before she had time to offer him tea, he delved into his briefcase and handed her a letter. Then he removed his coat, laid it carefully over the arm of the settee and sat down next to it. She sat down opposite him, gingerly fingering the letter which had carried in the cold from outside, hardly breathing. A wave of intense heat rose from the base of her spine to her hairline, depositing beads of sweat in every nook and cranny of her body on its way. The joys of the menopause, she said to herself, and went on sitting stock-still, Lancaster’s eyes focused on the letter, willing her to open it.

She postponed the moment for as long as she could, knowing instinctively that once she did, her life would never be the same again. The clock ticked, her heart raced, and the Secretary’s stomach made a slight, low gurgling sound, but his eyes never left the envelope in her lap. Unless she meant to keep him in her sitting room as a permanent fixture, she had no choice but to read its contents.

The letter, of course, as she had expected it must, said exactly what she had desperately hoped, to the very last second, it did not. She was aware that her hands had begun to tremble a little, and could ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also By Michele Guinness
• Title Page
• Imprint Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Part One
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Part Two
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Part Three
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-one
• Twenty-two
• Twenty-three
• Twenty-four
• Twenty-five
• Twenty-six
• Twenty-seven
• Part Four
• Twenty-eight
• Twenty-nine
• Thirty
• Victoria Burnham-Woods - CV
• Sources