When the News of the World exposes an adulterous vicar, what is the effect on a small community? MARTIN VANDER WEYER reports
IN THE red-hot Aga saga of the vicar, the church secretary, her husband and his mistress, almost everyone has had their say in the tabloid press.
We have heard from Mrs Gillian Roberts about her passion for the Rev Roger Holmes, vicar of Helmsley, in North Yorkshire. We have heard from Adrian Roberts about why he helped the News of the World to set up a secret camera in his marital bedroom to catch his wife in flagrante, and about his love for his fellow churchwarden, Alison Schofield.
We are about to hear more from Mr Holmes himself, who (having resigned when the story broke) has been advertising for work in the classified columns of various weekly magazines.
We have not heard from the blameless Mrs Holmes or from her husband's mistress's husband's mistress's estranged husband, Mr Schofield. And nor have we heard from the little market town where this festival of adultery has been taking place: but let me repair that omission.
I have occasionally written in the Spectator and elsewhere about Helmsley's many blessings. It is probably the perfect English parish - some 2,000 souls, including mine, served by churches of three denominations: besides Mr Holmes's now-vacant Anglican living, we have a lady Methodist minister and a Benedictine priest detached from nearby Ampleforth.
It is cemented together by traditional community activity of all kinds: playgroup, Brownies, British Legion, cricket, bowls, amateur dramatics, fox-hunting, ladies' lunch clubs, an archaeological society and a masonic lodge.
It is large enough to have its own flourishing tourist-fuelled micro-economy but small enough for everyone to be on nodding or gossiping terms with almost everyone else. We have a town hall, an arts centre, several good pubs, three bakeries, two sets of public lavatories, a fish and chip shop and a fire engine. We have sheltered flats for old people and a low-cost housing project (known cheerfully as "Sin City") for the benefit-dependent single mothers. We have two doctors, a dentist, a taxi driver and a feudal lord who allows us to walk our dogs in his park. We have magnificent scenery.
Though I have travelled the world from Oklahoma to Irkutsk, from Tahiti to Marrakesh, I have never come across a finer place to live and I never expect to.
Most of my neighbours think that way too and so it has been disturbing to have the even tenor of Helmsley life riven by the doings of Roger Holmes. We have known the story for ages: the miracle was that it took so long to reach the News of the World. We know, or we think we know, spicy details which still have not got there. But still it was a shock to see it all in black and white and it is a continuing surprise to find the protagonists day after day basking in the photographer's flashlight.
This really is a small town: I can see the tower of All Saints' Church from my window as I write.
All the participants in this soap opera have at some time been guests in my house. Eighteen months ago, when it was still in the realm of barely believable, titillating rumour, Mr and Mrs Roberts, Mrs Schofield and I were appearing in an amateur production of James Robson's romantic comedy Falling Short, in which they played, respectively and with feeling, philandering husband, uptight wife and bohemian mistress. More recently, at the height of the furore which followed the exposure, Mrs Roberts and I were appearing in Abigail's Party - she, rather out of character, as the dowdy genteel divorcee Sue.
"I think we're winning the media battle," she said backstage one evening, less than a week after her naked but indistinct form had graced the Sunday tabloid's spread. What could losing it look like, I wondered, and what a weird reflection of modern life that a parochial church council secretary with a degree in medieval English should so easily resort to the vocabulary of Max Clifford.
I am a Christmas-and-Easter-if-that kind of churchgoer rather than a regular attender at All Saints, so I cannot presume to speak on behalf of Mr Holmes's congregation. But it is obvious that this has been a distressing, deeply embarrasing and burdensome experience for them.
The previous incumbent, who held the living for more than 40 years, was a High Church traditionalist with a devoted following; his widow is still a respected figure in the town.
The appointment as his successor of Roger Holmes, who arrived from a remote parish in the Yukon in 1993, is now seen as a ghastly aberration, one of those disasters which sometimes happen in the process of candidate selection.
He has a strong presence and a good voice for the pulpit: it is easy to see how he might have impressed in an interview.
Though dog-collarless he is still with us, at least until the end of the month and still ebullient - "Brazen!" as one of my dog-walking neighbours put it with a curl of the lip. Risk-taking exhibitionism seems to have been essential to the psychology of his adulterous liaison, which he and Mrs Roberts have declared to be "on-going". At this stage, they have nothing to lose but, with his black homburg, black overcoat and five o'clock shadow, the ex-vicar even seems happy to play up to Mr Roberts's description of him as a "malign influence" - Anne Widdecombe's description of Michael Howard, "something of the night about him" comes readily to mind. It's funny what a whiff of publicity can bring out in people.
And funny how publicity makes people think that their private lives matter to anyone but themselves. The details of Roberts's courtship and marriage, told at length by both partners in the Daily Mail, are utterly mundane.
The sole point of excitement in the entire story is that one party to the entanglement is a man of the cloth. The nation loves a naughty vicar, though preferably not in their own parish.
But even when scandal erupts on their own doorstep, the English are remarkably tolerant. As our dogs cavort across Lord Feversham's ancient parkland, we discuss the latest photo-spread of Gillian and Roger with wry amusement, perhaps extending to mild irritation.
The town's sympathies, naturally, are with the innocents at either end of the daisy-chain, and with the six small children (two to each couple) in the case. We take a dim view of the vicar's deceitfulness but beyond that we are not especially censorious and we are swiftly losing interest.
Helmsley is probably no better or worse than the national average when it comes to adultery and other forms of upstairs misbehaviour. We are not much troubled by what we imagine to be the goings-on of the fox-hunting fraternity or of Sin City.
People have a right to damage their own lives if their hormones drive them to do so but if (like politicians as well as vicars) they hold positions of public trust, they should recognise when the game is up and depart with due humility.
But people do not have a right, a duty or any sane reason to tell their own or others' bedroom secrets to the tabloid press and they make terrible fools of themselves when they do: only the media wins the media battle.
So Helmsley's message to the players in this lurid tale, kindly meant, is: For crying out loud, give it a rest. And in an icier tone we add: Goodbye Roger and may you make your peace with God.
