Epilogue: Manchester

Manchester. The spiked tower staring down tower blocks in defiance, as though reminding them that it had seen out centuries, had stood through war and peace, had seen them rise and would see them fall. Election adverts playing across multi-purpose facades, a figure with red rosette calling to a straggling crowd through a loudhailer. Ruth shoved her hands in her pockets and climbed the cathedral steps, Tom shadowing her as ever. He wasn’t wearing clericals, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave them behind, had just hidden them with coat and scarf. Habit.

They made it past the welcomer without recognition – “just having a look around”.

“Have you been here before?”

“A few times.” Ruth glanced at Tom as she said it, saw him struggle to stifle a laugh.

“Well, welcome back, I expect you know your way around, tours are every half hour if you do want to join one. Otherwise, enjoy, there’s a new exhibition…”

Nobody saw you unless they expected to. Ruth drifted up into the choir, brushed her fingers over the carved tracery of the cathedra. How many times she’d sat there, in that seat, when everything had been simpler? Not that it had really been much simpler, just that it felt that way looking back.

“Ruth! And Tom! I didn’t expect to see you…”

She turned quickly. “And I was doing my best not to be seen.”

“I almost didn’t recognise you. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you without clericals…”

She pulled her scarf down with a finger to give a glimpse of the collar. “Just passing through, I’m giving a talk this evening, over in Liverpool, but thought I’d stop off en route. See the old place. Don’t give me away?”

“Of course not. Everyone’ll be so sorry to have missed you.”

“You don’t have to tell them…” She shook her head. “Go on then, Roody. How’s it going?”

“Oh, very smoothly. Night shelter well established. Only minor repairs in need of funding. Old Nicholas is still here, though talking about retiring. Congregations are good.”

“I’m glad to hear it. And you, you’re well?”

“Oh, well enough, for my age.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, it’s good to see you, but if you could just pretend you didn’t see me..?”

“Of course.”

It was good to pray here again, after so long. But to do so without any pressing concern to call her away, without the knowledge that others were watching her, waiting for her. Roody had recognised her, but he was Roody, he’d leave her be, pretend she was just any other visitor.

Anonymity was nice. Anonymity let her cry for a while, silently, and then wipe tears away with a sleeve to stare up at the stained glass with a smile. All would be well, even if it didn’t feel like it. She was tired, but she was not alone, and it would be okay in the end. People had died, and were dying, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be comfort too, didn’t mean that joy wasn’t allowed. Emotions were okay, all kinds of emotions.

And then the hard bit, where roles reversed and she shadowed Tom between rows of granite and marble markers. He stopped in front of one stone, and she wandered along a little further, reading the names and leaving him be, finding a bench and sitting down to wait as he stood looking down. Nothing for her to do but watch as he traced the scar on his arm with the tip of his finger. This trip, their last outing before he went to Nottingham, was personal and precious for both of them, and seemed to embody the shift that had been taking place over the past few months, as they had moved from colleagues to something deeper, something that would last after Tom’s contract came to an end.

He sat down beside her, in the end, and she placed her hand over his, squeezing it gently. Watched a blackbird peck in the grass.

“At least they're together,” he told her. “It was hard enough to manage a burial but mum wasn’t letting anything else happen to that poor, battered body. Put it in the ground, safe and sound, where she could come and visit and leave him flowers, do more than he let her do when he was alive. Then… you remember when she died? I had a week off, to be with her in the hospice, and then... those weeks after she died. The funeral. Her ashes went in there with him, that's what she wanted.”

She nodded. “We prayed for you. There wasn’t much more we could do, losing a mother is hard, especially like that, at your age.”

He watched the blackbird hop to another patch of grass. “Empty, more. Mick was hard, mum was just… the end of an unending road. We had a year, they dragged it out that long. When it’s someone else’s relative, you can be there, offering comfort. When it’s your own… they still expect you to be holding it together, dispensing wisdom, bringing that calm reassurance. You’re hurting just as much as anyone else, you just have to hide it.”

She sat there beside him, silently, nothing to say.

“It’s weird, coming back when so much has changed. It’s like I’ve left them behind, and I’m looking back, but they’re in the past and they’re looking for a different Tom. The Tom who can’t walk without a crutch, who plans everything based on how well his knee will hold up. The young priest, newly ordained, struggling to find his way. I was your chaplain when mum died, a different job then – bare minimum, everything I could spare went to her, you had a lot of patience. But yeah, much less involved, less responsibility. Archbishop’s chaplain is a different job, and I’m doing it differently – doing my job properly, which I wasn’t then. But it’s close enough, I have the same employer as when she knew me, I feel like I can tell her about it and she remembers you and everything. I can pretend it’s the same. And now…. I’m leaving that too. I’m not a newbie fresh out of curacy. I’m about to be an archdeacon. She’d have loved it, she’d have been there at that installation service, so proud of me, worrying about what she should wear for the service like she did for my ordination. And that… and that little sad look, as she tries not to let me know that she’s thinking about Mick.”

“She was proud of you, already. Never mind your job, she was proud of you for who you were, and she’d be even more proud of who you are now. But parents aren’t going to be there for every milestone. They don’t need to be, there’s no need to prove yourself.”

“Mick thought he’d ruined my life,” Tom said abruptly, then fell silent, tracing his scar. There was a long silence before he carried on. “The hardest thing is I can’t tell him. He wrecked his life, he died for a lie that he thought was true. I want to be fourteen again, I want to call out to him from the wheelchair and tell him to come here, tell him not to leave me, tell him I need his help until I get better. He’d have done it, and then he might have forgiven himself.”

She loosened her scarf absent-mindedly, taking her time. “Or he might have run away anyway, and hated himself even more for doing so. It’s not your fault, you can’t change what you did at the age of fourteen. Sometimes… things go wrong. And sometimes nobody can find a way to fix them. There’s nothing you could have done, just let it be a tragedy that happened. Like Emily Grace. Something that shouldn’t have happened, but did, and there’s nothing we can do now, only trust that God is greater than humanity’s surrender. I don’t often talk about eternal life, because our mission is in the world here and now, and because it makes guilt out of grief. But it remains a promise that all will be well, in the end, even when we’re too late to fix it. All will be well, and you and Mick will have your peace.”

He wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. “All these years and I’m still struggling with it.”

“Of course you are. And that’s okay.”

“I’m so tired of it.”

“Of course you are. How many years have you spent blaming yourself? It’s not your fault, but you still blame yourself, because you’re human and we’re very good at guilt. It’s okay to be tired, it’s okay to still be struggling… it’s okay to admit it.”

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “How many more times am I going to cry over this? Nothing’s changed, I feel better for a while and then I’m back here again.”

“You know there’s no answer to that.”

“I just want to be able to move on.”

“Moving on isn’t the same as being okay. You are moving on, you’re carrying on with your life, you’re just taking memories with you.”

“If I could leave them behind, I would.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He turned to stare across at the stone. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“It’s funny, that we spend every effort trying to prevent unnecessary deaths. But once they’ve happened, we talk about how they’re on another shore and in a greater light, and how they’re happier now. Yet we still try to slow people down from going there, and we’re sad once they’ve gone.”

“Because they’re going to get there in the end anyway, but we want them to make the most of this life first.”

“That’s right. But once they’ve gone, even though we trust that they stand in the presence of God, we still grieve. Because this life does matter, it’s the only one we know right now.”

“Just because pain is temporary doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Just because Mick might finally have peace, doesn’t change the fact that he was desperate enough to stuff himself with drugs, that he was in so much pain he just gave up.”

She took his hand between hers. “But it’s still not your fault, Tom. Remember that.”

“They were still my family.”

“We might devote our lives to helping others, that doesn’t mean we can help our own families.”

“Remember your sermon, when you told us that if there was anything we could do for others and we did not do it, we had fallen short?”

“Remember when I told you that every one of us falls short of this ideal, that we can live and work only by the grace of God?”

“He was my brother.”

“Which only makes it harder.”

“I didn’t do anything, so now I’m stuck with the guilt forever. I didn’t even tell mum I was sorry, though I had the chance.”

“She would have told you it wasn’t your fault. If anything, it would have given her more guilt, to know how much it was hurting you. You think you should have protected your brother, don’t you think she felt she should have protected you both? She got to see you building a life, that’s the biggest thing you could have offered her.”

“Every time I come here, I think… how much more I could have done. And it’s too late now. And yes, I know I can’t change the past, I know it’s pointless, I know I’m wasting energy which should go into the here and now.”

“But most of the time, you’re managing that. It’s still weighing on you, but you’re not letting it destroy your life.”

“I almost didn’t have that operation because of it.”

“But you did.” She looked across the rows of graves. “Don’t feel guilty about feeling guilty. That’s the way you really waste energy.” She sighed. “You’re so good at forgiving others, why can’t you forgive yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

“You deserve it, I’ll tell you that a million times if it’ll help. Is there anything I can say that might make a difference?”

“I’m sorry, I know it’s stupid. I’m trying…”

“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound frustrated, I just hate to see you hurting.”

“Aren’t we all hurting, somewhere inside?”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No, but we have to accept it and get on with life.”

“We shouldn’t have to accept it.”

“Emily Grace shouldn’t have died at a week old. She did.”

Ruth sighed. “Don’t give up. Emily Grace’s life here is over, yours isn’t. I know you won’t let this hold you back.”

“Oh, I’ll walk out of here and be back to normal. I’m good at putting things in boxes. It’s just moving, making me think about it.”

“Don’t get too good at that.”

“I’ve had practise.”

She shook her head. “I wish I knew what to say. If there’s anything at all I can do, any time, just say.”

“Including a daily mass of the dead..?”

“Including a conversation about how the love of God is not dependent on arbitrary actions and the harm caused by such misconceptions.”

He laughed. “I pray thee, look mercifully on this poor soul!”

“Always. I pray thee, do the same!”

He sighed and looked away. “You don’t let it go, do you?”

“No. I’d offer you absolution, if you want, but you have to forgive yourself. Seven times seventy times, if necessary.”