The Journal: February Short Story Competition

It was a grey morning in November when my brother decided that enough was enough. Of course this wasn’t an instant decision; it had been creeping up on him for some years. Slowly, of course, but nevertheless it had been on his mind.

My journey of exploration through his life on reading the journals he kept, though painful, revealed such a miasma of tragic occurrences that I could not believe how the Church had kept a lid on all this.

On the whole, he had not been outwardly unhappy; one could almost have described him as contented. Good old Philip with the worthy job, the perfect wife and a couple of well-behaved children. The two girls had inherited their mother’s looks according to my brother, whose relationship with his daughters seemed tolerant but slightly distant.

Looking back, his parishioners did begin to see the changes, although being abroad at the time, I only discovered this at the funeral. He grew his hair, appeared unkempt and frequently relied on his Rector to conduct services at short notice. He grew more unreliable at time went on, and this inevitably was brought to the attention of the Dean.

Well of course being the youngest of four, all boys, much to our mothers disappointment, I suppose it was inevitable that he should feel guilty for not having been born a girl. As a small child, looking back, mother didn’t cut his hair until he went to school. There were other less obvious pointers, but we were far too involved with our own adolescent rebellions to see it for what is was, a subtle moulding of our youngest sibling, an androgynous looking child in family photographs, and ignored for the most part by our father, but never far from mother. So it was all the more surprising when he married when straight from theological college. He married Jennifer, one of the most beautiful women that I had ever seen, but unsuited as anyone I could imagine to become the wife of a humble assistant rector.

Rereading his correspondence during the five years of his marriage, and in the light of what actually happened, I suppose that I should have realised was much missing from these accounts of his life, but I didn’t. Consumed by my own quest to make sense of the world in a different continent, I accepted his missives at face value. Reading his diaries after the event gave me an insight which made me aware that I should have questioned his accounts, but we were never close, and he seemed to me to be happy in his calling, but he was in fact, just going through the motions.

None of us were aware until afterwards of Jennifer’s long term affair with the Dean’s wife. I’m not sure the Dean was aware of it either until the two women decided to set up home in a modest house in the next village, and informed their respective husbands. Philip had known of the affair from the beginning.

Philip’s diary entry was strangely accepting of the situation, almost philosophical about the loss of his wife and children, and the enormous scandal that would undoubtedly ensue. But reading his accounts of the last five years of his increasing distress and loss of identity, not to mention his spiritual battles, I saw how he could have indeed greeted this change in his situation with something close to relief. Had he been the biological father of the two girls, and in love with his wife, I imagine would have been more of a loss. Jennifer’s admission that both were fathered by the Dean was recorded in the journal, quite unemotionally, as was his inability to consummate the marriage, recorded just after they returned from honeymoon in Wittering.

Reading further, it becomes increasingly obvious that his reliance of the support of the Dean, in matters emotional and spiritual was his only support through this turbulent time. It’s also obvious to see how Philip could have misconstrued this relationship, and the Dean, undoubtedly through his feelings of guilt, continued to encourage this. His rejection of Philip’s affection, and Philip’s subsequent heartbroken response continued for pages, in direct contrast to the passionless recording of other events in his life.

It was at this low point in Philip’s life that the Bishop quite rightly decided that the Parish needed help, and a young newly ordained curate was appointed to help.
Near despair and bereft of support from his Dean, or his wife, Philip began to slowly emerge from his grief and self-hatred, and things were much better for a while. Now it was not in fact revealed to Philip that this youngster was the Archbishop’s son, so when the inevitable happened and they became closer than may have been considered suitable or appropriate, the consequences were such that my brother decided on a course of action that would lead to his death.

I have to confess I found the whole sequence of events distressing, and blamed myself to a degree that my lack of involvement or concern about these events, was a failing; a lack of some duty of care to my youngest sibling. My mother, was of course, partly to blame, but what about the Church’s part in this? It seemed that Philip believed in the doctrine that love was the key to life, and his relationships, from his writings were the epitome of this. Apart from that early reference to his inability to consummate his marriage, it seemed that sex was never mentioned, it seemed to be an irrelevance in his relationships, but emotionally he seemed unable to relate to females close to him. There were no clues in his journals as to why he married Jennifer. Was it perhaps a pact between the two of them, in order to conform to societal norms?

I will never know, but my brother’s funeral was not the only one I attended in November of that year. The Archbishop’s son was also buried a day later. Of course, there was no connection in the press between the two events; I attended purely because the Archbishop’s wife was my godmother.