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Charley’s parents’ house is quite close to the church, so we leave the car where it is and walk down there after the service. There are signs directing us around the house to a large marquee, which has been set up in the garden. At one end of the marquee there is a bar, and the food has been laid out at the other. John was right, there is enough here to feed an army; the tables look they might buckle at any minute under the weight of the food. We help ourselves to a glass of champagne from the bar and circulate. Ed and Charley are happily passing Amelia round to anyone who wants a cuddle, and she still appears to be loving the attention. Every so often Toby gives me his glass to hold so he can take a picture.
“You must be Madison,” a voice says from behind me, and I turn to find myself face to face with the vicar. “I’m Sharon. I didn’t get a chance to say hello properly before, so I thought I’d come and do it now.”
“Nice to meet you, Sharon,” I reply. “How long have you been here? The last time I came the vicar was an old guy.”
“That would have been Tom,” she tells me. “He retired just over a year ago, and I’ve been here for six months.”
“Where were you before?”
“This is my first incumbency. I was a curate in a church in Northamptonshire before I came here.”
“What’s the difference between a curate and a vicar?” I ask. “I watched a few episodes of Grantchester, and James Norton was a curate in that, wasn’t he?”
“A curate is like a trainee vicar,” she explains. “When you’re first ordained, you’re ordained as a deacon and you go off to work as a curate under an experienced priest and learn the ropes. For the first year you can’t do the ABCs, meaning you can’t absolve anyone from their sins, you can’t bless anything, and you can’t consecrate the bread and wine for communion. After the first year they ordain you again, as a priest this time, and then you serve another two or three years as a curate before you can apply for your own parish.”
“So you apply? you don’t just get told where to go?”
“No. Some churches are like that. In the Salvation Army, for instance, they give you your ‘marching orders’ and you have to go wherever they send you, but in the Church of England you apply and go through a selection and interview process in the same way that you would for any other job. My husband,” she indicates a man out playing with a small boy in the garden, “was particularly keen to move here because it’s much easier for him to get to London than it was from Northampton.”
“OK, and when you get your own parish, that’s when you become a vicar?”
“Not necessarily. It depends on the parish. It gets quite complicated, but basically you could be a vicar, a priest-in-charge or a rector, depending on the setup.”
My mind is starting to spin. Who knew this was all so complicated? I decide to head back to safer ground.
“Well, I have to say I was relieved it wasn’t Tom. I had visions of him dropping Amelia into the font.”
“Yes, I heard he was quite frail towards the end. Babies can be a hazard; some of them wriggle, and you have to watch they don’t grab your glasses or the lapel mic. Amelia was good as gold though.”
“Isn’t she supposed to cry when you baptise her? I thought that was supposed to be a sign of the devil coming out.”
“I’m afraid that’s a bit of an old wives’ tale. Quite a few of them do cry though. Even though we make sure the water is nice and hot when we pour it into the font, the stone cools it down pretty quickly, and I think it shocks them a bit. Is this your partner?” she asks as Toby approaches.
“No, he’s just a friend.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that you looked so close.”
At that moment there’s a howl from the little boy, who has evidently fallen over and grazed his knee.
“Oh, bloody hell, what’s he fallen over now?” Sharon exclaims, and my eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry, I’d better go and check he’s OK.”
“What did I miss?” Toby asks.
“Apart from the sweary vicar and the fact that the Church of England is the most confusing organisation I think I’ve ever come across? Nothing much. Charley was right though, she’s nice. Misguided, but nice.”
“Misguided how?” Toby asks.
“She thought we were a couple,” I laugh.
“Yes, that is misguided,” he smiles. “I’m way out of your league!”
“You think that, if it helps,” I tell him, putting on my most patronising voice. “Quick, Charley and Ed are free. It’s time I had another cuddle with my god-daughter.”
“For someone who professes not to be maternal, you’re not very convincing, you know that?”
“Amelia’s special, that’s all. She’s not just any baby, she’s my best friend’s baby and my god-daughter.”
By the time we’ve eaten lunch and drunk a series of toasts to Amelia it’s nearly five o’clock. I’ve got to be on an early morning flight to Oslo, so we make our excuses and leave. As I drive home, Sharon’s remarks come back to me and I chuckle to myself at the thought of Toby and I being a couple. I wonder if she’s friends with the mad woman we met on the plane the first time we travelled together?
