Sunday at the Cross Bones: A novel
John Walsh
Fourth Estate £12.99
(978-0-00-713932-3)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70

THE TEASINGLY few known facts about the life and soul of Harold Davidson (1875-1937), Rector of Stiffkey, invite imaginative and frolicsome conjecture. Two musicals in the 1960s, a play, a film, and various biographical inquiries have paved the way to this entertaining, sympathetic, but frustrating novel by John Walsh.

The title of the book comes from a 19th-century rhyme about a week in a working girl’s life: “where will she rest from her tears and moans? Sunday at the Cross Bones” — the old Southwark graveyard for London prostitutes.

Davidson set out to save these women from such an end by leaving his Norfolk parish for much of the week in order to find and befriend them, and look for alternative employment for them. Suspicions, and later allegations, of immorality arose. These were followed by a notorious trial, a public unfrocking, and the humilating spectacle of a ministry-less Davidson appearing in a barrel or cage at Blackpool, on view to the public for twopence a time. He was eventually mauled to death by one of the caged lions, while playing Daniel.

It would be easy for a novelist to revel in a comic condescension, as both the farce and the questionable innocence of a sinner’s saint linger in the air. There is a touch of the Frankie Howerds in much of the book’s humour — sparks in the otherwise dark and pungently described London life of the 1930s.

Walsh, though, is clearly of the mind that Davidson is a damaged hero, probably more of a threat to himself than anyone else — though barely recognised desires, as we know, may lead a person into uncharted waters that can quickly drown.

When I was a bishop’s chaplain, I came to the conclusion that all the best clergy are like moths, flying from time to time frighteningly close to a particular flame that, one day, might burn them badly. Walsh gives Davidson the line: “There is a passion in the pursuit of virtue that must find an outlet sometimes, even in salivatory exchanges.”

Walsh skilfully keeps a lively momentum to the novel by means of excerpts from an imaginary journal by Davidson, from a journ-alist’s notebook, and from letters between a retired major, the Bishop of Norwich, solictors, detectives, and others.

But I was left feeling slightly cheated. What was at the heart of this priest’s obsessive nature? Why did the Bishop (probably) employ someone to take Davidson’s papers? Why was the Church so intent on Davidson’s public humiliation (which shocked George Orwell)? What took place in Davidson’s mind and heart during the tragic Blackpool-fairground years? Was he a frustrated showman who felt he had outgrown small congregations and needed an audience? Or was he simply a naïve, conscientious priest, more willing to follow the Jesus of the Gospels than the Jesus of the diocese? Inevitably, we are left with another version of this clerical enigma.

This well-researched book might have been better with a slightly less strained period language, but this should not stop the reader enjoying what is a stylish and affecting first novel.

Shakespeare told us to sit and see, “minding true things by what their mockeries be”. The parishioners of Stiffkey, remembering no doubt the 3000 people who attended his funeral, still devotedly tend David-son’s grave; and his family con-tinues to work to clear his name.

The Ven. Mark Oakley is the Arch-deacon of Germany and Northern Europe.

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To place an order for this book, email details to CT Bookshop