Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox Page B

successfully lobbied for a three-month extension to his stay with them, by the way.)
    â€˜What do you think, Susanna?’ they will ask in the office. What does Susanna think? She doesn’t know, she just doesn’t know ! She doesn’t want anyone to be hurt and left out, so her instinct is to support gay marriage. ( Equal marriage, Susanna!) But then there’s the Bible and the worldwide Anglican Communion to think about. Oh dear, oh dear! She tips three packets of chocolate chips into the mixture. As soon as they’re baked she’s going to take a plate of warm cookies through to the office to cheer everyone up. Susanna is not so naive as to think that home-baking has a genuine soteriological function. She knows she cannot solve the gay issue in the C of E with her triple choc chip cookies. But she can make the world a little bit nicer, a little bit kinder. And who are we to denigrate small acts of kindness? Those who perform them will surely not go without their reward.
    A bit of kindness will not go amiss in the bishop’s office this morning. The diocesan communications officer is busy briefing the bishop in his study. Penelope, the bishop’s PA, is fielding emails. She now has a new and closely guarded password which Freddie does not know. Thinks Penelope.
    The bishop’s chaplain is at his desk scowling at some paperwork. The Revd Martin Rogers is in his mid-thirties and looks like an Action Priest™ fresh out of the box: buzz-cut hair, be-zipped and multi-pocketed navy blue trousers, all-terrain hybrid trainer-shoes and a navy blue fleece over his navy clerical shirt. Armed with Bible and Swiss army knife at all times, he looks poised to mountain bike over the peaks and take the gospel to Hull. He is not actually reading his paperwork through his flexible titanium-rimmed glasses, because that little git Freddie May is in the room.
    The little git is waiting to drive the bishop to his radio interview. He lolls in a swivel chair, with last night still gleaming over him like a smutty halo. He yawns, stretches vastly, rumples his hair, sorts the nads out, checks his phone, smirks, swivels the chair back and forth. He looks as though he might slide off at any moment. His clothes look as though they might slide off at any moment. Skin-tight, or falling off: that would just about sum up the clothes of Freddie May. He starts humming ‘I Believe in Miracles’, and working his tongue stud into the gap between his front teeth. Martin can hear it.
    â€˜Would you stop doing that, Freddie?’ says Penelope. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’
    Freddie rears up without warning: ‘Maggie-eee Thatche-e-er! Po-o-ope Benedict! Uganda-a-a! Westboro fucking Baptist Church! Martin Rogers! Can you hear me? Your boys took one hell of a beating yesterday! Your boys took one hell of a—’
    Martin snatches up the staple gun on his desk and fires off a volley of staples in Freddie’s direction. They fall harmlessly onto the carpet. Martin goes back to his paperwork.
    â€˜Oooh!’ Freddie pours himself out of his chair and slinks over to Martin’s desk.
    But here’s Susanna with her plate of cookies, thank goodness. Martin will not get a tongue in his ear this morning. He will not be squeezed or tweaked or cupped. He’s had to endure all these things over the past nine months. I don’t want you to imagine that he makes a note of each separate incident. He is not logging a record for HR. There’s no way he’s going to make himself ridiculous by lodging a complaint about sexual harassment in the workplace. But that’s what it is, though, isn’t it? It’s bullying. Martin is powerless to cope with it. Sometimes it reduces him to tears, almost. Aha, because he is seething with repressed homosexual lust! the reader concludes. Wrong: because it catapults him straight back to the misery of school – the other boys hiding his underpants after