The Archdeacon's Bottle of Gin

A birthday gift for the Archdeacon has surprise consequences.

The Archdeacon's Bottle of Gin

The Archdeacon of St. Jude's laid aside his Sudoku puzzle, stuck, as he often was, on a cluster of sevens-, and stretched his arms toward the ceiling of his study. He peered out of the window, through the heavy, leaded glass, to see if his 10 a.m. appointment was finally making an appearance.

It was mid-July, the height of a lush, humid English summer. The lime trees lining the road were in full, heavy leaf, their sticky sap coating the roofs of parked cars in a shimmering, invisible glue. They were beautiful, certainly, but they were also a logistical nightmare. Their ancient roots had long since declared war on the municipal paving stones, causing the path to lift and buckle like a miniature mountain range.

I really must ring the council, thought the Archdeacon, his conscience prickling. He reached toward his old, oak desk, a magnificent piece of furniture that had survived three bishops and a direct hit from a wayward cricket ball in the fifties to retrieve a pen. He needed to write himself a reminder note, but the desk was a topographical map of administrative chaos. He decided, nobly, that the note could wait until after coffee.

The Weight of the Office

This particular Archdeacon was a man haunted by the ghost of his former parish. He missed the beautiful flint church that overlooked the town like a watchful hen; he missed the commodious rectory with its drafty halls, and most of all, he missed his flock. Three years ago, he had been a Rector and a Rural Dean, a man with a specific territory and specific names to pray for.

The Bishop, a man of immense charm and very little practical sense, had assured him he was "just the man for the job" of Archdeacon. For the first six months, the phone had rung constantly with people "seeing how he was getting on." In reality, they were checking to see if he had cracked under the pressure yet.

An Archdeacon, he had discovered, is a shepherd who has lost his sheep and gained a fleet of spreadsheets. He lived in a "Church House", a high-standard 1920s build with excellent plumbing but a distinct lack of soul and was responsible for the entire archdeaconry. His particular patch consisted of nine deaneries. Each deanery held up to twenty-nine parishes.

Mathematically, that meant nearly three hundred churches, three hundred vicars, and six hundred churchwardens. It was a staggering amount of responsibility, involving leaky roofs, warring flower guilds, and the occasional theological crisis.

The Archdeacon's house sat in the center of a bustling town, but his back garden was a sanctuary of silence. Once a week, a gardener arrived to battle the weeds. The man worked with a religious fervor, clearly under the impression that every dandelion pulled was a literal brick being laid in his mansion in heaven. He assumed that when he finally parked his lawnmower in St. Peter's garden shed, his service to the Archdeacon would be noted in the Great Ledger.

The Real Archdeacon

To help him navigate this sea of ancient stone and human temperament, the Archdeacon had a part-time secretary. He called her "The Real Archdeacon," a title she accepted with a thin, tired smile. In his humble opinion, she did all the work. She was a woman of infinite patience and a terrifyingly efficient filing system.

She intercepted the calls from disgruntled vicars, typed the endless "Letters of Visitation," and, most importantly, managed the Archdeacon's diary. Her greatest masterpiece was the scheduling of annual inspections. It was possible to inspect three churches in a single day, provided they were close together. With three hundred buildings to visit, she had to plot his routes with the precision of a military campaign. She couldn't allow him to criss-cross the deaneries like a haphazard bee; she had to be the navigator of his life.

As August approached, so did the Archdeacon's birthday. The secretary always bought him a gift, something sensible, like a book on medieval gargoyles or a high-quality fountain pen. But this year, she felt he needed something more medicinal!

She decided on a bottle of gin.

"He can take it to Sandy Bay," she whispered to herself while standing in the supermarket aisle. "He can drink it on the beach while the children bury his legs in the sand. He works so hard. He deserves the best."

She looked at the price tag of a large bottle of Gordon's. It was a staggering amount, a significant dent in her weekly wage, but she felt a surge of professional martyrdom. She bought it, along with a roll of thick, cream-colored wrapping paper and a birthday card that featured a very sober, very respectable illustration of an owl.

The Departure

The next morning, she placed the heavy, clanking gift in the center of his desk.

"It's for your holiday," she told him as he stared at the package. "Don't open it now. Just... pack it. It's for the beach."

"How very kind of you," the Archdeacon beamed, moving the bottle to the sideboard in the dining room to keep it away from the tidal wave of mail on his desk. "I shall relish it, I assure you."

The morning of his departure was, as always, a flurry of panic. There were letters to dictate, emails to ignore, and a sudden, violent crash from the street outside. The Archdeacon leaped to the window.

A runaway car, seemingly possessed by a demonic spirit, was rolling backwards down the hill. It gathered speed before slamming into the front of a safely parked vehicle with a sickening crunch of metal and a spray of glass.

"Oh my God!" the Archdeacon cried. "She must have forgotten the handbrake!"

The secretary, who was busy shredding old faculty reports, looked up. "'She'? How do you know it was a woman, Archdeacon?"

He turned, looking sheepish and a tad embarrassed. "I... well, it was a purely statistical guess."

"Whoever it was," the secretary said, peering over his shoulder, "the person in the parked car will get the blame. The law always favors the one in front in these matters. Very unfair."

The Archdeacon sighed, hoping he wouldn't be called as a witness. He didn't have time for the police; he had a bottle of gin and a guest house in Sandy Bay calling his name.

The Martyr in the Office

For the two weeks the Archdeacon was away, the secretary worked with the intensity of a monk illuminating a manuscript. She cleared the filing. She shredded enough paper to fill a bedding store. She designed a new, multi-colored spreadsheet for the inspection returns.

She even took on the heavy lifting. She wrapped boxes of Churchwarden Handbooks--dense, boring tomes--and lugged them to the Post Office herself after her paid hours were over. She did this with a sense of grim satisfaction. She was the engine of the Archdeaconry, humming along while the Captain was at the seaside.

The only company she had was the Archdeacon's cat. The cat was a creature of profound arrogance who expressed its affection by leaving "presents" under her desk. Most mornings began with the secretary clearing away a dead shrew or a half-eaten sparrow. Once or twice, the cat left something even larger and more aromatic under the settee, in a spot that even the longest broom handle couldn't reach.

She took it all in her stride. She pictured the Archdeacon on the beach, a cold glass of gin and tonic in his hand, toasted by the summer sun. It made her white, lank hair and her pale, office-bound cheeks feel like a badge of honor.

The Return

The Archdeacon returned on a Monday, looking tanned, rested, and suspiciously happy. Over coffee, he showed her photographs of Sandy Bay. There were the children, faces smeared with chocolate ice cream; there was his wife, looking radiant in a wide-brimmed sun hat; and there was the Archdeacon himself, standing in front of the "Seaview Guest House," looking like a man who hadn't thought about a leaky church roof in a fortnight.

"It's hard to get back into the swing of things," he sighed, eyeing the mountain of mail she had so meticulously sorted.

"I've placed the urgent items on top," she said, her voice a model of efficiency. "And there are the emails."

She opened the Inbox. Amidst the flurry of messages from the Diocesan Office and the Bishop's chaplain, one unusual address caught her eye. It was from the guest house in Sandy Bay.

"Dear Archdeacon," she read aloud, her voice beginning to tremble with a strange, cold heat. "I am writing to thank you for the very generous gift of a large bottle of Gordon's gin. It was most unexpected and welcome. Ted and I sat up after the guests were in bed and had a marvelous toast to your health. We also found your mobile phone charger..."

The secretary stopped reading. Her cheeks, which had been pale for three years, suddenly flushed a deep, dangerous crimson.

"He gave it away," she whispered to the cat. "He gave my gin to the landlady."

"Damn!" the Archdeacon barked, though he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his trousers. A Bible, perched precariously on the corner of his desk, had finally succumbed to gravity. As it fell, it had knocked his full coffee cup directly into his lap.

"Damn, damn, damn!" he shouted, leaping up and flapping at his soaked trousers.

The Longest Ruler

The next day, the Archdeacon was away at a Property Meeting at the Diocesan Office. The secretary arrived at 9 a.m. sharp. She sat down at her desk and reached for the map of the nine deaneries.

It was a beautiful map, dotted with three hundred tiny crosses representing the churches. She picked up her longest wooden ruler--the one with the brass edge.

She looked at the list of churches due for inspection. Normally, she would group them by village, making his life easy. But today, she had a different vision.

She placed the ruler on the map. She found a church in the far north of the Archdeaconry, a tiny, drafty chapel with a very steep hill. Then, she moved the ruler to a church in the extreme south, accessible only by a narrow, winding lane that was perpetually blocked by tractors. For the third inspection of the day, she chose a cathedral-sized parish in the far west, where the vicar was known to talk for three hours without drawing breath.

She calculated the driving time. It was impossible. He would spend six hours in his car, zig-zagging across the county like a confused sparrow. He would be late for every appointment. He would have no time for lunch. He would certainly have no time for Sudoku.

"That should do it," she murmured, her voice as smooth as high-quality gin.
She leaned down and stroked the Archdeacon's cat behind the ears. The cat purred loudly, leaning into her hand. As she looked at the map, and the grueling, nonsensical route she had created, she could have sworn the cat was smiling.

Outside, the lime trees swayed in the breeze, their sticky leaves waiting to coat the roof of the Archdeacon's car. It was going to be a very long autumn.