The Single Vicars Club

This the short story that I submitted for my open university course, which has been described by my tutor as a 'magical and quirky' and 'reminiscent of the Witches of Eastwick.'

Here it is anyway:

The Single Vicars Club

For ten years of my life I was an angel. You know - a proper angel with blond hair, perfect white skin and pink virginal lips, sent by God to do His work on earth. I don’t know why God chose me in particular. I know He works in ways we don’t understand. Maybe it was because I spent a lot of time alone. Maybe it was because my mother was dead and my father barely noticed I was alive. Maybe it was because I was smart and I would know what he wanted me to do. Or maybe it was because I was fifteen years old, had slept with over a hundred men and had never felt anything for any of them. Yes, yes I think that’s probably what it was. Why do I think this? Because the work that God wanted me to do didn’t require his usual recruits, like charity workers or clean cut families. No, for this task he needed someone to fuck.
Let me tell you about my meeting with God. It was the bathroom of my mother’s old house, on my fifteenth birthday. I was in front of the mirror applying make-up, trying to cover up spots and make my nose look less crooked, when a cloud of steam rushed into the room. ‘I bless you,’ a voice said as I spun around.
‘I bless you with the Holy Spirit.’
For a moment the world turned white and I couldn’t see or smell, but then just as quickly the steam cleared, and back in the mirror I saw the most perfect face I could ever have imagined. Waves of blond hair, gleaming white teeth, eyes brighter than gold and skin as soft as a cloud – it was the face of angel. And written next to it in the steam was a message. It said:
To love is to be human.
Clare Tempest - show my disciples how to love.
It took me another ten years to work out how exactly I needed to do this.
The first one to join the Single Vicars club was Michael Adams, a wiry waif of a clergyman who I had known since my days in the seminary. Back then he had been shy and nervous, but had come into his own when orating the word of God. However since he had been given his own congregation to preach to, his abilities had worn off.
‘I...I j-j-j-just don’t feel like they understand what I’m saying,’ he said, picking the rosemary off a lamb steak. ‘It’s like I am preaching down to them, r-r-r-r-rather than spreading God’s teachings.’
I gulped my stew like a snake eating a mouse.
‘I can see them yawning and whispering to each other. They don’t care what I have to say and...and to be honest C-C-C-Clare, I’m not sure I do either.’
‘You were always so passionate Michael,’ I said, wiping my forehead with a napkin.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But, b-b-b-but I’m not sure I believe in it anymore.’
He looked down at the table and discarded his plate with a shrug.
‘I don’t think I believe in anything.’
I studied his grey hair, his pale skin and his skeletal physique and saw a cold cadaver. He was dying. They were all dying. They needed my help, and in the only way someone as beautiful as me could.
‘Well then,’ I said, tempting his hand into mine. ‘What are we going to do to make you believe again?’
Let me tell you again, sex meant nothing to me. When I took Vicar Michael back to my apartment that night I was simply trying to help someone in need like any other good Christian would; and when he leaped on me like a starved animal, lapping at my neck and slobbering over my body, I knew that this a desperate man who had nowhere else to turn.
If there is someone drowning in the river, and you happen to be the strongest swimmer in the world, what are you going to do? What would anyone do?

After our encounter Vicar Michael was a man transformed. His masses were delivered with such enthusiasm and belief that his congregation doubled within a month. People wanted someone like him. They wanted to be as happy and as honest as he seemed to be.
You must remember he was only a man, and a man with a beautiful woman is twice the man without.
Soon I received calls from Father Raymond of Gloucester, Reverend Talbot of Tewkesbury and even the Bishop of Marlow, all enquiring into my services. These were men on the edge, who were about to quit the Church for good, or possibly even worse. They didn’t need counselling or a trip to Rome. They just needed a reminder of who God was and what incredible gifts he had blessed us with.
You probably think I’m being overdramatic don’t you? You probably think I’m a deluded whore who sleeps with superior men to keep my ego satisfied. You don’t think there’s anything wrong with my partners at all.
Well, you’re wrong. You have no idea what it was like. You have no idea what pressures these men are under, giving their love to God, and only God. I have seen what they went through to try and prevent their desires from escaping; the first priest I worked with smashing his fists into the mirror every morning and shouting:
‘It’s you. It’s you. No-one else!’
Until one day the mirror smashed and he picked up some shrapnel and used it to slit his throat. Then when his replacement refused to look at me and spent hours each night running his fingers through a rosary, sweating with a fever.
Okay, they didn’t have to be celibate, but that’s the way the Church taught it. Abstinence was the true way. Temptation lead to sin, and austerity showed commitment to God. I wanted to help these men. I wanted to show them how to desire and how to bring love back into their lives. ‘Uhhnnnggg!’ groaned the Bishop of Bath in ecstasy.
‘Oh God!’ boomed the Vicar of Wakefield.
‘You’re so beautiful, so beautiful,’ wept Father Dawson of Chester.
Night after night I met them and wore through their cages of morality, and at the end they were happier individuals for the experience. I was Mary Magdalene and Mother Theresa rolled into one. The healer, the angel of God. The word made flesh.
Church attendances soon began to thrive and a wave of happiness spread through the clergy. At the annual conference of Bishops a few weeks later there was a new item on the agenda:
‘Love.
Love of life.
Love of humanity.
Love of the world.’
In the audience a hundred priests and vicars nudged each other in the stomach, all thinking the same thing:
‘Clare Tempest, the Vicar of Barneswick. The most beautiful woman in the world.’

Three months after this I was summoned to a meeting with the Archbishop of York at Bishopthorpe Palace. I paced through the grand corridors nervously, admiring the fine art, the golden ornaments and the statues carved out of marble, and realized that what I was doing was right, that amongst all this beauty and art lay a foundation of lust and desire. This was God’s gift to us and in order to be happy we had to express it in the world.
‘Clare,' the Archbishop said, rising from a golden throne. 'Clare Tempest. My, I have heard about you, but you really are quite the angel aren’t you?'
He grinned like a politician and gestured for me to shake his hand. It was solid and with fingers like icicles.
'Thank you Archbishop,' I said. 'I have only what God has given me.'
His eyes critiqued every inch of my body like it was a yearly balance sheet.
'Yes,' he said. ‘I suppose we all do. Now Clare, tell me what has been happening to you over these last few months. Tell me about how you have been affecting what happens in our church.’
His eyebrows flickered and his fingers rubbed a ring on his index finger.
‘Well,’ I said, releasing a glimpse of gleaming teeth. ‘Ten years ago I had a visit from God…’ I related everything in the most honest way I could, about why I was an angel and how this angel was bringing the Church into the light.
‘So you have reminded us how to love,’ said the Archbishop flicking his eyebrows again.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I think that maybe I have succeeded.
‘I think maybe you have,’ he said.
He shuffled in his seat.
‘You know what is happening now don’t you?’ he said. ‘You know what some people are saying.’ ‘Yes. ‘
‘They call you a whore and a harlot, nothing but a blond bimbo who is sleeping her way to the top.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed.
‘It is a sad truth in our world that that is what happens to women like you,’ said the Archbishop. ‘They are labeled and persecuted by those who do not understand.’
A light reflected from his gold ring into my eyes.
'Do you...do you feel that they do not understand?'
Then he smiled and opened out his arms.
‘I think you have done a great service for the Church Clare. I think that to our parishioners we can appear superior, and that our message can seem false when preached by these austere men. None of us are above desire Clare. All of us ate from the tree of knowledge. We accepted the offering of the apple and we have no choice but to live with this.’
He leaned forward and placed a warm palm onto my shoulder.
‘But now is the time for you to stop Clare. Now is the time for you to return to your own life. Let the single vicars find their own way now. I think they will be fine.’
He sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘Remember this Clare Tempest. Celibacy can do strange things to a man or a woman. But promiscuity can be just as dangerous.’

For the next few months I should have been a vicar bursting with pride. I had completed God’s task. I’d had the Archbishop of York, the second highest minister in the land, congratulate me for my work. I had provided joy and happiness to hundreds of clergymen and thousands of Christians all over England, who could now feel God in themselves and see him all over the world.
But I didn’t feel like that at all. If anything I felt like all those vicars who had come to me for help.
When I stood alone at the pulpit preaching happiness and understanding I felt an empty void inside me, and as a human being I became redundant, a wallflower stood at the side while the happy couples joined for the last dance. I still looked like an angel and I still could have any man I wanted, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t need sexual gratification – I needed to be special. I wanted people to need me, not just to listen and feel happy.
Maybe you were right. Maybe I was just a whore, desperate all along.
I began to go to single nights and strip clubs to find men with the same desperation that the celibate vicars had, but it wasn’t the same. They wanted me and I would let them have me. They didn’t have to stop themselves.
One morning I was at the mirror looking at my perfect olive skin and golden eyes and the great cross on my cassock, and I realised that there was nothing left. I had served my purpose. I still couldn’t feel love or desire, and nothing had changed. I would be miserable forever.
Then I looked closer and saw something. It was small blemish on my forehead, a little mark about the size of a pin. A spot. A red spot on my perfect face.
There was something else. In the middle of my nose was a little lump. It was the same lump that I had when I was a teenager, which all the other girls had laughed at, and even though I applied mascara and concealer it wouldn’t go away. In fact if anything the lump got bigger. Then I saw that the spots had spread and I could smell sweat under my arms. Even in my mouth there was a new bitter taste where the enamel had eroded on my teeth.
With each blemish, each lump and each odour, a warm feeling spread through my body. I felt my heart beat, my throat gasp and a strange sickness form in my stomach. Love. I needed love.
The ten years were over. God’s work was complete and the angel had flown back to heaven. It was my life to lead now, and I knew what I needed to do.