The Times Magazine - UK (2022-05-21)

(Antfer) #1
26 The Times Magazine

n one of those mildly diverting
coincidences, my very first day in
church is the Rev Richard Coles’
very last. It’s Sunday, 9.30am, and the
spring sunshine sets the stained glass
windows of the Church of St Mary the
Virgin in Finedon, Northamptonshire, on
fire – their 14th-century majesty in very
British, bathetic contrast to the huge
pump-action bottle of anti-bac next to
the pulpit, and the posters advertising “Craft
and Chat!” sessions pinned up by the door.
“Vicars come and go,” Coles says
philosophically to a congregation of roughly
60 people who have come to see his final
Eucharist. He’s reading from an iPad – very
modern – and his voice is a fabulous, tender
rumble: it’s how you would imagine your most
loved, tattered old teddy bear would speak.
“This was the philosophy of a former priest
here, Geoffrey. He arrived in 1217.”
Everyone stands to sing a hymn, and as a
church newbie, I note that this hymn – like the
ones before – seems to have been written in a
key that means you either sing it at a very low
pitch, like Lee Hazlewood, or go at it in a very
high pitch, like that of Kate Bush attacking
Wuthering Heights. Like the Obamas, I choose
to go high, while speculating that a hymn
book called Hymns in a Practical, Mid-Range
Key would be an immediate bestseller.
The difficulty of this song, key-wise,
perhaps explains why its volume is matched
by a hearing aid at the back of the church
that’s feeding back, and the crows cawing in
the bell tower outside.
The Eucharist ends, the congregation
files out – many at the slow, dignified pace
necessitated by their age – and Coles stands
at the church door, saying goodbye to his
parishioners. He gives a final service tonight


  • but, for many, this is the last time they will
    see their vicar of 11 years. Many are in tears.
    “Last day, Holy Father,” says one upright
    old gentleman, whose face is wet from crying.
    “Last day.”
    “We will miss you,” says another, patting his
    arm in that way English people do when, if
    they came from a more emotional, exuberant
    country, they would be weeping hysterically
    and maybe firing guns into the air. Instead,
    she gives him a jar of homemade marmalade.
    It has not all been sweetness and light
    during Coles’ years in Finedon. One mentally
    ill parishioner used to regularly come and
    threaten Coles with a bomb and a knife
    (“She didn’t actually have them”) because
    she wanted to marry him. Another satisfied
    himself with merely shouting, “F***ING
    DUMBLEDORE!” out of his van window as
    he drove past Coles in his cloak, on the way to
    a funeral. And Coles was apparently infamous
    for being disorganised with the church admin

  • red “Final Reminder” letters for the church


gas bill were the norm. But there’s no doubt
that Coles was deeply loved here – there is a
“goodbye party” tonight for him that seems to
involve half the village scuttling around with
carefully clingfilmed plates of sandwiches and
cake while trying to be “secret”.
After everyone has left, I go over to talk to
Coles. Just as he opens his mouth, the bells in
the tower start peeling. They’re very loud.
“It’s a tradition, when the vicar leaves,” he
shouts. “They ring you out.”
I wait a moment for it to end.
“It lasts for three and a half hours,” Coles
bawls. “Do you want to go and wait in the
vicarage? I just have to inter some ashes.”
Twenty feet away, all in black, a family
stand by a gravestone, waiting. One of them
is holding an urn.
“There’s a very large removal truck in the
driveway. Just shimmy round it,” Coles says,
walking over to the family. By the time he’s
reached them, he’s in full, beautiful sympathy
mode: taking their hands and talking them
through what happens next.
I walk to the vicarage. There is, indeed, a
huge truck blocking the driveway. Once I’ve
squeezed past it – smearing myself in moss
from the fence – the first thing I see is a huge
skip, filled with dozens and dozens and dozens
of empty bottles: champagne, wine, whisky.
It takes a moment to place them, and when
I do, it’s with a feeling of unbearable sadness:
the removal men are clearing out the long-
hoarded and hidden things in the garage,
and Richard’s partner, the Rev David Coles,
who died in 2019, was – along with being a
musician, gardener, priest and much loved
part of the community – an alcoholic. The
church that they both served in would not
allow them a church wedding. Before being
allowed to live together at the vicarage, they had
to vow to be celibate. And, in a recent piece
Coles wrote for The Sunday Times, he explained,
in a voice that ached with restrained rage, that
he was now leaving the church because the
rising forces in the Church of England are
“conservative, punchy and fundamentalist in
terms of scripture”. Churches, he said, were
“places where gay people are not welcome,
and that rules me out.
“In the past few months I have had a
growing number of inquiries from same-sex
couples dismayed to discover their relationships
do not qualify for a blessing, or asking for
reassurance that their kids in church schools
will not be made to feel awkward for having
two dads or two mums. The former I am not
permitted to do [the Church of England does
not recognise same-sex marriages]; the latter
I am unable to, I am sorry to say.”
In other words, Coles – the softly spoken,
public schoolboy national treasure who
descended from the sky dressed as an angel
on Strictly Come Dancing, who is obsessed with

dachshunds, adored by his parishioners, and is
almost certainly the only priest anyone in this
country can name, save the Archbishop of
Canterbury – has become too radical for the
Church of England.
When I get into the vicarage, it’s full of
what I increasingly realise, through the day,
is a very large tribe: people who love Richard
Coles very much. Earlier, in the church, the
warden, Jane, had said to me, “He talks to you
like you’re the only one, doesn’t he? I’ve lost
count of the people who’ve said, ‘I’ve just met
my new best friend,’ after they’ve met him.
I mean... It’s everyone.”
Kate, who has come up from Golders
Green, is the late David’s sister; his brother,
Mark, is there too, with his two children. They
are there to pack up Coles’ house for him as
he busily attends to his final vicarly duties.
Kate takes me on a tour of the garden:
this was David’s pride and joy. He built the
timber summerhouse, where Richard writes

I


As a church newbie,


I realise hymns are


sung either very low,


like Lee Hazlewood, or


high, like Kate Bush


Caitlin and Coles in his church, St Mary the Virgin, Finedon

GETTY IMAGES, BBC

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