The Bishop in the Massage Parlour
John McNab must be my most illustrious client. I know people who queue up outside the office of the International Book Festival at dawn every year to book a ticket to listen to chaps like him at £12 a shot. It really is an honour and a privilege to spend three quarters of an hour closeted with him, and what’s more, getting paid for the privilege. I can say that of no other man. He visits me fairly regularly, about once every six or seven weeks when he comes to the city on ecclesiastical business. I met him in my first year at the Blue Eden, and we have developed a close relationship. We are above everything else, friends. That’s fucking friends for you!
One day Magda, the manageress, asked me over in one of the vacant alcoves and making sure no one was listening, asked me if I was really the soul of discretion that she had always thought me to be, and one does not say, ‘Eh, actually, I am a blabbermouth … eh … sorry.’ This is almost a matter of life and death, she said with solemnity, and if you betray me, I will never ever speak to you again. I laughed and said, of course I will not betray you, not even for thirty pieces of silver. Would you do it for thirty thousand pieces? She asked. I resisted the temptation to burst out laughing, or say something like for a thousand quid I’d betray my own grandmother. I decided that flippancy was inappropriate at this juncture and instead I solemnly mumbled something like, “Not if I have given you my word…” She stared at me in a funny sort of way, as if I had pieced a great secret of hers. Magda, I asked, would you betray a secret for money. I am not sure, she said, but certainly not the one, I am talking about, as it involves a friend. I don’t need to tell you that I would die rather than betray someone I considered a friend. I guessed that this was no exaggeration, and I nodded, and said, No, Magda, not even under torture. I will never betray you or your friend, not if I give you my word of honour … who’s he? My friend is called John McNab, a childhood friend, Magda said, and burst out laughing. I joined in without understanding the preamble we went through. He will tell you all himself, she said.
It turned out that the aforesaid John McNab is the sobriquet of no less a person than the Bishop of X in the Highlands. He would phone a week in advance from X, saying that he would be in Auld Reekie on such and such a date, for a conciliabule with some bishops and other dignitaries, and arrange a booking. Magda would then make sure that I was informed, and I would cancel dental appointments or whatever in order to make sure I was there.
Over the years, I have gathered a good few details about his trip to the city. He would put up in the middle-of-the-road Osborne Hotel in Queen Street, as he hated luxury and ostentation. He travelled with his young secretary, a young deacon called Richard who was devoted to him, and as such, unwittingly posed some problems to his lubricious schemes. A sort of Sancho Panza to his Quixote. Magda had known ‘John’ for ever and they had many mutual friends. One day, shortly after she had walked out of her marriage to her John, they saw each other at the hundredth birthday party of a mutual family friend, a former bishop, they had got talking, and she had teased him about being pale and out of sorts. You need to go out and have some fun, she had said, never in a million years meaning anything sexual. She thinks John must have been waiting for her to make that very suggestion. How can I? He had asked. As sure as the mercury will drop to -10 in X this winter, I will be found out and my career will be in ruins. Magda clearly saw that the Bishop who knew about her, would not be averse to a little sinful relaxation in the company of some of our houris, and was in fact fishing for that very possibility. Besides she also likes a challenge, and gave the matter a lot of thought. Jodie! She had thought. That happens to be me.
He would confide to me later that he had planned his incursion into our den of iniquity with military precision.
‘The slightest faux-pas and up in flames goes my ambition to be the tenancy of Lambeth Palace,’ he said with a self-deprecating laugh.
The first shot of the campaign was the jogging.
‘Richard,’ he told his amanuensis, ‘write in my diary that on our first Thursday in Edinburgh, I shall be away from five to half past seven, I shall be going jogging.’ Sancho Panza was horrified.
‘But you cannot go jogging, Bishop.’ John frowned, and asked why was that.
‘Why s-s-ir,’ Richard stammered, ‘you never jog here in X in the Highlands.’
‘Does that mean that in order to jog in Edinburgh, you have to jog in Highlands first?’
‘No, Bishop John, what I mean is that as you are unused to exercise, two hours exercising might prove too much.’
‘More like three actually,’ he pointed out.
‘Three!’ Richard wailed.
John had then explained that in X he never had the time and that being in Edinburgh gave him just the opportunity he needed. Richard demurred at first, but then grinned and bowed courteously.
The first time, at five to five, John had prepared himself, put a few requisites in a rucksack, and had changed into proper jogging wear. He left a note on his desk to remind the young deacon and went down into the lobby, where to his surprise, he found Richard, in a tracksuit and with jogging kit on, beaming at him.
‘What are you doing here, Richard?’ The young man said that never in a million years would he contemplate allowing his Bishop to risk the dangers of Auld Reekie without his help. It was his clear duty to accompany him, to put himself in the path of a bullet that someone might aim at him. He explained that he had gone to the length of buying himself the gear.
‘You see Bishop, if anything happened to you, I will never forgive myself.’
‘But the good Lord will, he is much more forgiving than you.’
The man looking forward to a bit of nookie was flabbergasted. How was he going to wriggle out of this mess? However one did not become a bishop if one was not practised in deviousness, he told me.
‘Richard,’ he said to him making a great show of being touched by the solicitude of the young deacon. I know, because great raconteur that he is, the Bishop gave me a full account, ‘You amaze me by your concern, I am greatly touched, but I’ll let you into a little secret, meeting these men of the cloth, steeped in an equal mixture of sophism, politicking, perfidy and holiness, I need to have all my wits about, all my arguments in place, and I find that nothing prepares me so well for the cut and thrust of that solemn occasion as complete solitude. My thoughts need fine tuning, the white noise filtered away… take this as a lesson from me and remember it when one day you yourself end up a Bishop.’ The young deacon beamed and nodded, clearly relishing the hope of a bishopric at some point in his life. The day was saved.
John had meticulously prepared his rucksack. He had put in a rather shabby wooly cap which was what gave him the appearance of someone holding up a bank, a pair of dark glasses, and, he never told me where he found it, a theatrical villain’s moustache from which he had cut off the twirls in order not to attract undue attention.
Cheerily he waved to Richard and began to run down Queen Street. Anybody who saw him might have known that he was the Bishop of X, and that was all right, so far. He made his way through Andrew’s Square and before he turned into Princes Street at Jenner’s, still running, he had deftly manoeuvred his cap and his dark glasses on. At this juncture you would have had to ask him to stop, stand still for a couple of minutes, take his shades off, and allow you to have a good look at him with a magnifying glass in order to discover his identity, but his preparations were not finished. Next he aimed for the Public Toilet in Princes Street Gardens which is at the corner of The Mound. That was where Jekyll would turn into Hyde. Or more appropriately Clark Kent into Superman. He made sure no one had recognised him as he went in. Once inside the loo, he re-adjusted the cap, meticulously stuck his moustache on. He checked himself in the cracked mirror on the wall and was satisfied with his transformation. He put his rucksack on his back again, and emerged into a bustle of Princes Street at the fag end of peak time. In his disguise you would have needed to be a Sherlock Holmes to pierce his real identity. I have always suspected that part of the thrill of cavorting with us girls was in the buzz of doing something so overtly dangerous.
He jogged at a fair rate up the Mound, turning into Market Street, Bank Street, which was all uphill, and out of breath he reached George IV Bridge when he would stop outside the National Library, look at the notice and posters, in other words take a breather, and then run past the Museum opposite the Greyfriars pub. He then kept going until he arrived at the Gate of The Meadows in Lauriston Place. He was relieved to have got there without a hitch. The Blue Eden Sauna was a mere five minute away. The park is usually well frequented in all weathers but he felt safe. He slowed down as he did not want to reach the shop out of breath.
(To be continued)
