by Jim Syrah
Transubstantiation. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? More than enough for Lancelot Pritchard to choke on, though the coroner won’t be giving the official cause of death until this afternoon. Of course, it’s not a word she’ll use. Not many do. Really, only those in the trade. People like me: The Reverend Martin Higgins.
‘Martin Higgins’ doesn’t have quite the same ring as ‘Lancelot Pritchard’, does it? The Venerable Lancelot Pritchard, Prebendary of High Marten, to give him the full works. But that’s as venerable as he’s going to get, Sir Lancelot, the insufferable bastard. Forty-seven. Same age as me. About the only thing we have in common, other than being ‘men of the cloth’. (Strange phrase that, always makes me think of glove puppets.) And even then, two men cut from rather different kinds of fabric, you’d have to say. LP would be a sumptuous velour. And me? Probably a cotton and polyester mix.
We’d met at theological college while studying for the priesthood. I’m not sure why we kept in touch. Perhaps in order to bring out the worst in each other. I guess we succeeded.
But, back to transubstantiation. What on earth is it, you may be wondering? So, here begins the First Lesson. (Don’t worry; I’m not going to make a habit of it). ‘Transubstantiation’ is the belief that, when we God-botherers take Holy Communion, the bread and wine that’s dished out actually turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.
Incredible? I couldn’t agree more. But try telling that to the late Lancelot Pritchard. I certainly did, repeatedly. For a start, I told him, it makes you a cannibal; eating human flesh and drinking human blood. Christianity isn’t some kind of vampire movie, Lance, my friend. (I used to call him Lance just to annoy him.)
“Well, Martin,” he said, perfect in his condescension, “you may know better. But I remain more inclined to put my faith in the words of Our Lord. The Last Supper. You remember?”
God, he was pompous.
“Just about, thanks.”
“I quote: ‘And he took bread, and gave it unto them, saying, this is my body…’ Sounds pretty categorical to me.”
He smiled benignly, a smile that never failed to rile me.
“I can’t believe, Lance, that someone as smart as you, can be so literal-minded. I mean, you don’t believe we’re all in this mess because a snake got a girl to eat an apple.”
“Not in so many words, no.” His long fingers formed a defensive fan across his hollow chest.
“Are you familiar with the work of Sassetta?”
“No. Never heard of him.”
It was exactly the answer he wanted and expected.
“Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta,” Lancelot intoned. “Italian painter. Siennese school. Fifteenth century. A particular favourite of mine.”
He gestured towards a spot he’d been eyeing on the wall behind my, doubtless, red and perspiring face. “And that’s his greatest work, in my judgement.”
I should explain that we were in his ‘set’ of rooms. He was at the time chaplain to one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, a sinecure of almost unimaginable cushiness. I, by contrast, was rector of a parish way down the road in Didcot, as penniless as it was godless.
Lancelot had invited me to dine at High Table; mainly, I assume, to underscore how much better he’d fared than me since ordination. It certainly wasn’t for the cuisine, which was like lead: grey, dull, and heavy. Not that this mattered to Lancelot who sat with his sleek, short-sighted head bent over the plate, jerkily eyeing the leathery venison like a prospecting cockerel. He ate very little but that hardly mattered as his main goal for the evening was not to fill his stomach but to inflate his ego, principally at my expense. In this he succeeded handsomely. He was as completely at home among the wood panelling and silver salvers as I was ill at ease.
I have blotted out (or drowned in a waste of red wine) the full roll-call of those I offended, but I’m sure it was quite extensive. Lancelot, sensing serious collateral damage to his standing among the Fellows, ushered me away after only one glass of after-dinner Sauternes to the safe haven of his study. And my first encounter with Sasseta.
The painting was quite small, about the dimensions of a reasonably generous box of chocolates, and not easy to decipher among the velvety shadows of Lancelot’s domestic décor. From what I could make out in the gloom, it wasn’t very interesting either. A group of clergy and laity loitering near the altar of a claustrophobic-looking Romanesque church. Only one figure stood out from the statuesque throng: a bald-headed priest in a black cassock, his body bent backwards almost at right angles from the waist. It was the contorted, near impossible, nature of his pose that first attracted attention. But there was something else.
“What on earth is that?” I murmured.
It looked like a long strand of black seaweed issuing almost vertically from the unfortunate priest’s mouth.
“That’s the Devil, hooking out his soul.”
“Really?” I raised a sardonic eye-brow and looked closer. I could just make out what might have been a pair of horns and a pointed tail, suspended in mid-air.
“Gosh. You’re not joking.”
“Of course, I’m not. The painting is called ‘A Miracle of the Eucharist’.” He eyed me sternly over the rim of his glasses. “It’s a cautionary tale, Martin. For those who doubt the truth of transubstantiation.”
I had to stifle an impulse to giggle. “Really? Do tell me more.”
“With pleasure.” He cleared his throat, as though about to deliver a lecture.
“The scene before us depicts the death of a young monk in the very act of taking Holy Communion. Why is he dying? Because he does not truly believe in the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord. His duplicity and bad faith have cost him his immortal soul.”
“And what about that?” I asked.
It looked like a red rag being waved by the chief priest.
“Oh, that’s The Host being miraculously transformed into the flesh of Christ.”
(Second, and final, Lesson: ‘The Host’ is the fancy religious name for the little wafer of bread used in communion. It comes, apparently, from the Latin word, hostia, meaning a sacrificial victim.)
Lancelot shook his head sadly. “Too bad that this miscreant didn’t live to witness that most holy mystery.”
I despised the sudden palpitation of my heart almost as much as I despised Lancelot. And I resolved there and then to have nothing more to do with this sanctimonious bore and his silly affectations.
It was a resolution I kept for the best part of ten years. During that time, I married and divorced, and drifted through middle age in a grim procession of isolated and unrewarding parishes. I lacked the stomach for the grunt work of being a parish priest. I found most of my flock boring and their sins deficient in both variety and ingenuity.
So it was that my life ground to a halt in a damp Pennine village of moss and granite. I forgot all about Lancelot Pritchard and his unsavoury obsession with cannibal Christianity. (If asked, I would probably have said Sassetta was a kind of pasta sauce.)
Until that is, I was filling-in for a colleague one Sunday in the nearest town of any size, Barnard Castle. It was a dank, grey day in November and I was in no hurry to return to the dismal silence of my vicarage. As dusk settled, I found myself outside the huge faux-French chateau that sits incongruously on the edge of town and houses the Bowes Museum.
My dog-collar won me free entry. I had the place pretty much to myself and wandered aimlessly through its cavernous chambers, crammed so densely with paintings that my befuddled gaze seemed to skid drunkenly from wall to wall. Until, finally, it was snagged by something both forgotten and familiar.
Wedged unassumingly below a towering canvas depicting a storm-tossed battlefield peopled by men in silk stockings and powdered wigs, was the original of the odd little painting over which Lancelot and I had parted company in Oxford a decade earlier.
The blurb described it as one of the ‘crown jewels’ of the museum’s collection. It was certainly better than the battlefield scene.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
There was something about the voice, its pitch and cadence, that was unmistakable. I didn’t even need to look round. But when I eventually did, I saw that I was mistaken. The figure at my shoulder was nothing like Lancelot Pritchard. For a start, he was huge. Great rolls of pasty fat hung round his jowls, making his face look like porridge that had cascaded out of an overturned bowl. The hands that struggled to meet across the vast, ballooning belly, sported fingers like a batch of unbaked baguettes. His breathing was the only quick thing about the man. It came in shallow, greedy, spurts.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I…”
“Of course, you do, Martin.” The smile, despite having to struggle up from a deep crevasse of fat, was so utterly condescending it clinched the matter beyond doubt. It didn’t look like Lancelot but it was Lancelot.
“I know. I’ve changed.” He gulped down quick draughts of air. “Severely atopic. Allergic to just about everything. Swell up like a balloon. Believe it or not, I eat like a bird.”
“I remember,” I said.” Must be very difficult for you.”
His shoulders heaved. “My Cross. Willingly borne.”
I thought of several possible replies. “Quite a coincidence, Lance. Meeting like this.”
“Not at all. I knew you were here.”
“Of course, you didn’t.”
“I assure you I did. Our Lord guided me to you. And Sassetta.” His smile made his eyes vanish. “We’re worried about you.”
In the deserted cafeteria, Lancelot watched me demolish a generous slice of cherry cake, while he sipped a cup of hot water. Such was the intensity of his allergies, he announced proudly, even a morsel of gluten might prove fatal. Between sips of water, he recounted the latest chapter in his brilliant career.
He was now, he confided, spiritual counsellor to the Archbishop of York. A role that brought with it a Georgian house near the cathedral and the right to roam wherever the Spirit led (including, it seemed, Barnard Castle on a damp Sunday in November).
Unfailingly, he added, a ghastly parody of a smile contorting his bloated face, it led him to those in need of spiritual renewal.
Back at my vicarage, with the rats scampering playfully behind the rotten wainscoting, my mind gnawed away at the meaning of Lancelot’s sudden re-emergence. His longstanding transubstantiation shtick was tiresome enough, but this new claim of intimacy with the Almighty was too much to bear. Though, about one thing I felt sure he was right. A time of trial (it was a biblical phrase which I felt Lancelot would appreciate) was fast approaching.
In fact, it took months of sycophantic grovelling to induce Prebendary Pritchard to preach to us at St Everilda’s. It was late May and, by sheer coincidence, the feast of Corpus Christi. The very time when Lancelot and his ilk really get their rocks off on the whole flesh-and-blood riff. Much to my irritation, the credulous old ninnies in the annoyingly large congregation seemed transfixed by Lancelot’s ghoulish account of what Holy Communion was really about. Even this, though, proved thin gruel compared with what was to follow.
In my own defence, I should say that even now it doesn’t seem to me to be the responsibility of the priest leading communion to inquire whether the would-be communicant has any special dietary requirements. I mean, it’s not a restaurant for God’s sake!
And I’m quite sure Lancelot knew exactly what he was doing when he stretched out his great swollen paw to take the communion wafer, as I intoned the words: ‘The body of Christ, broken for you.’
Call it an act of blind faith, call it supreme arrogance on his part. Does it really matter? The fact is Lancelot convinced himself that he was swallowing, not a lump of gluten-rich bread, but the actual flesh of Christ. And more fool him because a couple of minutes later, as he hauled his quivering bulk up from the altar rail, Prebendary Lancelot Pritchard of High Marten came crashing down the nave of St Everilda’s like a pole-axed redwood. Dead on arrival.
It took more than an hour this evening to drive back from the coroner’s court in the wastes of Darlington. I followed the old road over the moor, needing time and space to clear my head. In that, and in more than that, it seems I failed. Yes, Lancelot died of a massive heart attack. No surprises there. But, according to the coroner, it was brought on not, as I naturally assumed, by an extreme allergic reaction to the gluten he had so cavalierly consumed (she was at pains to stress there was no sign of any ‘atopic event’) but by a previously undiagnosed heart disorder, which chose that very moment to make its dramatic entry and slay him on the spot.
What do I make of it? I wish I knew. Yes, I’m heartily glad to be rid of him at last. But I have to confess I hoped (and laboured) for something more. I longed with every sinew of my twisted heart to deliver a fitting coup de grace to the affected nonsense about the flesh and blood of Christ of which Lancelot had made such a meal for so long.
Why the hell, I still want to know, didn’t the communion wafer put paid to him, as it surely should have done? I refuse to believe it was because Lancelot was right after all and that the wafer he swallowed was really gluten-free flesh. That I couldn’t stomach.
As I dropped down off the moor, a watery sun glinted mischievously on the crouching bulk of the Bowes Museum. And beneath the complaint of the toiling car engine, I thought I could hear a too familiar voice following me home:
‘We’re worried about you, Martin. We’re still worried.’
Jim Syrah started his long journey as a writer with a sharpened pencil and an Olivetti 22 portable typewriter. In the intervening decades the equipment has changed but his efforts to produce engaging work in journalism, fiction, and poetry have not. He’s probably not getting much better, but hopefully he’s not getting a lot worse.
