Ultimate Prizes
Ultimate Prizes
Susan Howatch
The author’s most famous and well-loved work, the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century.Neville Aysgarth, archdeacon, and right-hand man of the Bishop of Starbridge, has spent his life chasing worldly success. In 1942 he has a perfect wife, a perfect family and a perfect future in the Church of England - all ultimate prizes. Then Aysgarth meets an attractive young socialite and is soon dangerously and chaotically involved in adultery, hypocrisy and obsession. Tormented and on the brink of ruin, he must at last face the truth about himself, his marriage and the mysterious past he cannot discuss as he chases the most vital prize of all - his own survival…Witty, wise and compelling, Ultimate Prizes powerfully explores both the temptations of sex and success, and the ultimate themes of sin and salvation.
Susan Howatch
ULTIMATE PRIZES
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_ff83ba5d-e828-5155-ba43-056ee5c5c0cb)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1989
Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1989
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006496915
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007396429
Version: 2018-10-08
PRAISE (#ulink_d1af7714-207d-5717-9c11-d56793a7cd27)
From the reviews:
‘This superbly intricate ecclesiastical tale … irresistible’
Church Times
‘A fascinating story’
Publishers Weekly
‘Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind … everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern’
New Woman
‘A mesmerising storyteller’
Daily Telegraph
‘One of the most original novelists writing today’
Cosmopolitan
‘She is a deft storyteller, and her writing has depth, grace and pace’
Sunday Times
CONTENTS
COVER (#u3012be30-ba6a-588a-9a50-68ed1f0ae6d5)
TITLE PAGE (#u95f8b38f-edbe-5ef4-9ed8-944f26942c10)
COPYRIGHT
PRAISE (#ulink_dd8eaa0b-ca93-5742-880d-58559a3cfeaa)
PART ONE: CRISIS
ONE (#ulink_fb25bd07-7a2a-5c95-86e2-697454f102b9)
TWO (#ulink_2d83b690-2208-5a24-8c5e-5cf5dad10f8f)
THREE (#ulink_b4672f74-72e1-5736-be94-c514307d1ce9)
FOUR (#ulink_fabe8b98-dc86-5b55-8b11-44d8ac4ef7a1)
FIVE (#ulink_18553d62-064b-5ef8-9396-0cdaca444ef5)
SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
PART TWO: UNDER JUDGEMENT
ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE: SALVATION
ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE CRISIS (#ulink_b211bcf6-4aea-599d-835b-10c35961fdd6)
‘It is in the failure to achieve integration … that personalities too often make shipwreck, either breaking down (physically or mentally) under the strain of conflict or abandoning any real desire for an effective synthesis.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge,1932–1950
The Creator Spirit
ONE (#ulink_13591f5d-11ba-5a85-a2f4-3c8f8a7871d2)
‘Many of us have a hard fight to control our passions …’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
The Creator Spirit
I
The most appalling feature of the morning after I nearly committed adultery was my lack of surprise. I was scared out of my wits, racked by regret and almost prostrated by shame, but a virtuous amazement was notably absent. For some time my life had resembled a ball of wool kidnapped by a kitten, and now, after the preliminary unravelling, I was apparently experiencing the start of the inevitable tangled mess.
As we all know, adultery is far from uncommon, particularly in springtime and particularly among people in the prime of life, but it happens to be an activity which disqualifies me from my job; if a clergyman commits adultery he becomes spiritually disabled, unfit for further service. Even in that spring of 1945 when the entire population of England was no doubt gripped with the desire to celebrate the war’s end by wallowing in corybantic copulation, clergymen were still expected to keep their minds on God and their eyes on their wives. And why not? In my opinion such exemplary behaviour is the least that the Church of England should expect of its men. Everyone knows that all the best clergymen live in domestic bliss and never have an adulterous thought in their lives.
I was one of the best clergymen. I was forty-three years old and had already risen to a rank usually occupied by men in their fifties and sixties. ‘What is an archdeacon?’ my Germans had asked in their prison-camp on Starbury Plain, and when I had begun to explain how the diocese of Starbridge was divided into two archdeaconries, one of the Grade C men, the unrepentant Nazis, had exclaimed impressed: ‘Ah, so you’re the Bishop’s Gauleiter!’ I was sure I was no such thing, but the implication that I was a man of power and authority was true enough. As my Uncle Willoughby would have said, I had ‘Got On’ and ‘Travelled Far’ in my chosen profession, with the result that any possibility of moral failure was now quite unthinkable.
I thought about it. ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,’ St Paul had written to the Corinthians, and on the morning after I almost committed adultery I found these words had assumed a new and sinister immediacy.
I knew what I had to do: I had to repent (which I did, with every fibre of my being), pray for forgiveness (which would be granted because of my genuine repentance) and go on being the first-class archdeacon which I undoubtedly was. Yet when I sank to my knees I found the formula was failing to work. My repentance, though genuine, was ill-defined and ultimately ineffectual. I did not understand why I had wound up in such a mess, and without understanding, how could I promise that my appalling behaviour would never be repeated?
I remained kneeling, not chatting garrulously to God like some woolly-minded mystic, but trying to concentrate on the spiritual force of Christ as I struggled for enlightenment, and gradually I felt strong enough to face a very unpalatable truth. The main reason I was now in such a spiritual mess was because three years ago, in the May of 1942, I had met Miss Diana Dorothea Tallent.
With a shudder I began to recall that seductive first meeting with Dido.
II
The fatal dinner-party was given by my Bishop, Dr Ernest Ottershaw, at his episcopal palace in Starbridge. This statement evokes a grandeur which unfortunately, by that stage of the war, was little more than a memory. Gone were the lavish sophisticated dinner-parties of Dr Alex Jardine’s pre-war episcopate. Dr Ottershaw, who had succeeded Alex in 1937, offered a hospitality which wartime economies and the increasing dearth of servants had systematically drained of glamour.
Both wings of the palace were now closed. In the main section of the house the Ottershaws were cosseted only by the butler Shipton, a famous ancient monument, and by a couple of elderly maids who were obviously retained more for charitable than for utilitarian reasons. It was rumoured that Mrs Ottershaw had learnt how to boil an egg to present to her husband at supper on Sunday nights when the servants were resting their varicose veins, and it was even said she was keen to acquire more advanced culinary skills, but Shipton refused to countenance such ambition. He was still recovering from the Bishop’s attempt to learn to drive after the chauffeur had gone into the army – we were all still recovering from that well-meaning episcopal whim which had destroyed one of the palace gateposts – and Shipton, an archconservative, was firmly of the opinion that bishops and their ladies should never develop ideas below their station.
Heaven alone knows who had produced the food on the evening when I met Dido, but it was well in accord with the recent Government edict which proclaimed that no restaurant could charge more than five shillings for a meal or serve more than three courses. Rationing had become increasingly severe; in the dark mysterious stew which emerged from the episcopal kitchen, lonely chunks of meat could occasionally be glimpsed swimming alongside the potatoes and carrots. Pudding consisted of bottled plums covered by a sauce which Mrs Ottershaw tried to pass off as custard. She even said it contained a real egg, a disclosure which made me wonder if the Bishop had nobly volunteered to forego his Sunday supper that week. Fortunately the meal was redeemed by a claret provided by one of the guests, the Earl of Starmouth, who had a reputation for being benevolent to the clergy.
Lord and Lady Starmouth were the most aristocratic guests present but they were not the guests of honour. The dinner was being given for Dr Ottershaw’s predecessor, my mentor Alex Jardine, who had been living near Oxford since his premature retirement in 1937 and who was now visiting Starbridge to consult the official records of his episcopate; he was working on his autobiography. Alex was keen on claret and lukewarm towards Dr Ottershaw, two facts which led me to suspect that the Earl of Starmouth had provided the legendary St Estèphe not merely out of Christian charity but in a desire to ensure that the dinner-party fell well short of disaster.
The other guests consisted of the Dean and his wife, who were almost as old as the Ottershaws but not nearly so endearing, their neighbour in the Cathedral Close General Calthrop-Ponsonby, who could talk of nothing but the Boer War, the Ottershaws’ unmarried daughter Charlotte, now a Wren at the naval base in Starmouth, and Charlotte’s new friend, the former debutante of the year and the darling of the society gossip columnists, Miss Dido Tallent. Marooned improbably among so many nineteenth-century relics, she exuded such vitality that I was at once reminded of a diamond, glittering wickedly among a prim collection of pearls.
Like Charlotte Miss Tallent was serving in the navy, and as soon as I saw her I thought how appropriate it was that she should be able to call herself a Wren. She was slight, bright-eyed, quick, sharp and volatile. Her dark hair was immaculately waved, her sleek uniform swooped in and out of a dramatically small waist and her scarlet lipstick emphasized the whiteness of her teeth. She had a small bosom, but that was of no consequence to me. I’m not one of those men who are obsessed by the symbols of motherhood. I like legs. Naturally I was unable to see Miss Tallent’s legs from top to bottom, but one glimpse of her ankles inspired me to imagine firm gleaming thighs. In fact so absorbed was I by this potent fantasy that I barely heard Charlotte Ottershaw’s introduction and had to ask for the name to be repeated.
‘Haven’t you heard of me?’ exclaimed Miss Tallent amazed. ‘What a sheltered life you must lead!’
‘Archdeacons never lead sheltered lives!’ retorted Charlotte. ‘This one’s constantly roaming the north and west of the diocese in order to pounce on any clergyman who misbehaves!’
‘What happens in the south and east?’
‘Not much. The other archdeacon prefers to play croquet.’
‘What’s wrong with croquet? I adore all games with balls,’ said Miss Tallent in a formidably innocent voice, and gave me a very straight look with her impudent bright eyes.
I cleared my throat, wondered dizzily if the ambiguity had been intentional and asked myself why I was so suddenly unable to think of anything but sex. Who exactly was this fantastic creature? I had heard of her but my knowledge was sketchy because I never read gossip columns unless the sexton accidentally left his Daily Express behind on the churchyard bench; like all good clergymen I confined my excursions into the world of secular journalism to The Times. However with the aid of the sexton’s Express and the glossy magazines which nervous tension drove me to read in the dentist’s waiting-room, I had learnt that Miss Tallent moved in the best society despite the fact that her father was a self-made Scottish millionaire. I had of course long since dismissed her as a frivolous creature I would never meet, and yet here she was, in a bishop’s drawing-room – in my bishop’s drawing-room – giving me impudent looks and talking about balls. I could hardly have felt more confused if I had been confronted by one of Orson Welles’ invaders from Mars.
‘Dido, how can you possibly say you enjoy all games with balls?’ Charlotte was protesting, sublimely unaware, just as a bishop’s daughter should be, of the sensational double entendre. ‘Only the other day you remarked that cricket –’
‘Oh, don’t let’s start discussing English perversions! What did you say this distinguished clerical gentleman’s name was?’
‘Neville Aysgarth.’
‘Neville! How dreadful, I am sorry! Mr Chamberlain’s ruined that name for all time. I think you should be called Stephen, Archdeacon, after the Christian martyr. It has such noble, serious, earnest associations, and I can tell you’re noble, serious and earnest too, blushing at the mere mention of such a frivolous sport as croquet … Oh, there’s the exciting Bishop Jardine – introduce me, Char, quick, quick, quick! I’m simply passionate about controversial clerics …’
She skimmed away. After a while I became aware that Shipton was offering me a glass of sherry and I had to make an effort not to down the drink in a single gulp. Images of gleaming thighs and croquet balls chased each other chaotically across my mind until the Dean, buttonholing me purposefully, began to hold forth on his current nightmare: Starbridge Cathedral’s possible destruction. The Germans had recently announced plans to bomb every illustrious British city which had been awarded three stars in the Baedeker guide, and although Baedeker in fact never awarded more than two stars no one believed that this little inaccuracy meant the Nazis were joking. Three heavy raids on Exeter had damaged though not destroyed the Cathedral; Starbridge, not so many miles east of Exeter, was now in the front line.
‘Read any good books lately?’ I said when he paused for breath. The prospect of a blitzed Cathedral was so appalling that I preferred not to talk about it. The Dean might choose to relieve his anxiety by speaking the unspeakable, but I preferred to tell myself that once all precautions had been taken to minimize the damage there was no sense in agonizing over something which might never happen.
‘Books? Ah, it’s interesting you should ask me that …’ Diverted at last from his Cathedral the Dean began to talk about the fashionable Crisis Theology which was now sweeping through the English ecclesiastical ranks in a tidal wave of gloom and doom, but I soon ceased to listen. I was aware that Miss Tallent was trying to vamp my mentor while Alex appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience. His wife Carrie had not accompanied him to Starbridge, and Alex, a youthful sixty-three, was a past master at cultivating the amitié amoureuse, that peculiar pre-1914 relationship between the sexes in which close friendship was celebrated while sex remained taboo. I found this concept delectably erotic and only regretted that the changed moral climate currently made any attempt to achieve such a liaison far too liable to misinterpretation. Nowadays the only men who could safely take such a risk were men like Alex – a retired bishop well over sixty who could not conceivably be suspected of wrong-doing. On that evening in 1942 I had only just turned forty and any flirtation, even of the most innocent kind, was out of the question.
‘Neville dear,’ said my hostess Mrs Ottershaw, massive in moss-coloured velvet, ‘will you take Miss Tallent in to dinner before Dr Jardine bears her off and upsets Lady Starmouth?’
This was a shrewd request. Lady Starmouth, who looked about forty-five but was probably pushing sixty, was Alex’s closest platonic friend. She was watching Miss Tallent’s antics with an indulgent smile which was rapidly becoming glazed, but possibly she was merely trying to keep awake as General Calthrop-Ponsonby expounded on the siege of Mafeking.
‘Why did Bishop Jardine retire so early?’ Miss Tallent asked me as we advanced together to the dining-room, and after I had explained that a mild heart complaint obliged Alex to lead a quiet life she commented: ‘How boring for him! I suppose his wife has to toil ceaselessly to keep him entertained – or is she too antiquated to be amusing?’
‘Mrs Jardine’s not as young as she used to be, certainly, but –’
‘Poor thing! It must be awful to be old!’ said Miss Tallent with feeling, and as she spoke I perceived the source of her charm. She was curiously artless. She said exactly what she thought. Her sincerity, as she spoke compassionately about Carrie Jardine, was genuine. In the artificial world of high society this honesty, coupled with her vitality, would make her so striking that few people would notice how far she was from being pretty. In addition to her irregular features she had a white scar on the side of her forehead and a nose which looked as if it had been broken more than once in the past; by the end of the first course I was telling myself firmly that I had never seen such a plain girl before in all my life.
‘I expect you’re wondering how I got my broken nose and my fascinating scar,’ she said, tearing herself away from her other neighbour, the Earl of Starmouth, in a burst of boredom half-way through the stew. ‘I fell off a horse. I’ve fallen off lots of horses. I like to live dangerously.’
‘So do I,’ said the prim Archdeacon, chastely encased in his archidiaconal uniform. ‘That’s why I went into the Church. Charles Raven once wrote: “Religion involves adventure and discovery and a joy in living dangerously.”’
She was captivated. ‘Who’s Charles Raven?’
‘One of the greatest men in the Church of England.’
‘Singing my praises again, Neville?’ called Alex, teasing me from his position on the far side of the table.
‘Don’t be so naughty!’ said Lady Starmouth. ‘You heard the name Raven just as clearly as I did!’
‘The greatest man in the Church today must surely be William Temple,’ said Dr Ottershaw, naming the new Archbishop of Canterbury who had indeed dominated the life of the Church for decades.
‘Temple’s a very remarkable man,’ said Alex, ‘but I distrust his politics, I distrust his philosophy and I distrust his judgement.’
‘So much for the Archbishop!’ said Lady Starmouth as Dr Ottershaw looked appalled. ‘Now let’s hear you demolish Professor Raven!’
Alex instantly rose to the challenge. ‘How can one take seriously a churchman who favours the ordination of women?’
‘My dear Alex!’ I protested. ‘You can’t write off Raven on the strength of one minor eccentricity!’
‘Very well, I’ll write him off on the strength of his major eccentricity! How can one take seriously a churchman who in this year of grace 1942 is still a pacifist?’
‘But his pacifism proves he has great moral courage,’ said the Dean, unable to resist gliding into the debate, ‘and great moral courage should always be taken seriously. For example, none of us here may agree with Bishop Bell’s criticism of the government, but his moral courage is surely –’
‘Oh, we all know George Bell’s been soft on Germans for years,’ said Alex, ‘but I’d call that pig-headed foolishness, not moral courage.’
‘I must say, I rather agree,’ said Lord Starmouth, ‘although nevertheless one can’t doubt Bell’s sincerity. What do you think, Archdeacon?’
I said in my most neutral voice, the voice of an ecclesiastical diplomatist who was determined never to put a foot wrong in influential company: ‘Dr Bell’s a controversial figure and it’s hardly surprising that his views are hotly debated.’
‘Speaking for myself, I adore the Bishop of Chichester!’ said Dido, as if anxious to inform everyone that despite her ignorance of Professor Raven she knew exactly who Bell was. ‘He’s got such beautiful blue eyes!’
‘You’ve heard him preach?’ I said at once, hoping to discover an interest in church-going.
‘No, I heard him speak in the House of Lords ages ago about the internment camp on the Isle of Man – no wonder they say Bishop Bell makes Mr Churchill foam at the mouth! It’s all terribly Henry-II-and-Becket, isn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope Dr Bell doesn’t wind up a corpse on the floor of his Cathedral.’
The mention of the internment camp stimulated a discussion of the proposed camp for prisoners of war on Starbury Plain, and it was not until some minutes later that I had the chance to resume my private conversation with Miss Tallent.
‘Are you a member of the Church of England?’ I said, mindful that the Scottish father might have been a Presbyterian.
‘But of course! My father – being a self-made man – was most anxious that his children should have all the social advantages he never had!’
‘How amusing for you – and does the Church rank above or below Henley, Ascot and Wimbledon as a place where a successful society girl should take care to be seen?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’
‘No, fortunately for you I have a sense of humour. Do you ever actually go to church at all?’
‘How dare you imply I’m a heathen! Of course I go to church – I’m devoted to the Church – why, I go every Christmas, and I never miss any of the vital weddings and christenings in between!’
I at once spotted the omission. ‘What about the funerals?’
The vivacity was extinguished. Her plain, impertinent little face was shadowed and still. After a pause she said flatly: ‘The last funeral I attended was the funeral of my favourite sister. She died in 1939. After that I vowed I’d never go to another funeral again.’
I saw her wait for me to make some banal religious response, but when I remained silent she added unevenly, ‘She died after childbirth. The baby died too. Afterwards I felt as if someone had chopped me to pieces. I’m still trying to stitch myself together again.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘Yes, sometimes I think I’ll never get over it. At first I thought that the war would be a ghastly sort of blessing as it would give my life a purpose – I saw myself as a noble heroine, sacrificing my comfortable life in order to join the navy and fight Hitler – but of course I was just being stupid. I’m not required to be noble. I’m just a chauffeuse at the naval base. I have a wonderful social life, heaps of friends – and every day I despair because life seems so pointless and unheroic.’
‘Heroism comes in many shapes and forms. Your heroism may lie in the fact that you’re struggling on, day after day, even though you’re bored and miserable. I think you’re being very brave – and I also think that if you keep struggling you’ll eventually break through into a more rewarding life.’
She stared at me. Her bright eyes were now opaque, suggesting endless layers of mystery beneath the artless candour of her conversation. All she said in the end was: ‘I wish I’d met you after Laura died.’
Recognizing the oblique appeal I said at once: ‘You must tell me about Laura,’ but at that moment we were interrupted by Alex, who was keen to lure Miss Tallent back into the general conversation, and her opportunity to confide in me was lost.
At last the stewed plums and the extraordinary custard were either consumed or abandoned, the ladies withdrew and the gentlemen, with the exception of General Calthrop-Ponsonby who had been mercifully reduced to silence by the legendary St Estèphe, began to talk in a desultory manner about current affairs. I was afraid the Dean would start talking about the Baedeker raids again, but instead he showed signs of wanting to resume our earlier theological discussion. I wondered if I ought to warn the Bishop that the Dean was drifting dangerously towards neo-orthodoxy. In my experience conversions to Crisis Theology – or indeed even to the more moderate forms of neo-orthodox thought – inevitably meant fire-and-brimstone threats from the pulpit and much embarrassing talk about sin, not at all the sort of clerical behaviour which would be welcomed by the visitors who attended services in the Cathedral.
‘… of course Niebuhr’s modifying Barth’s theology in important ways … If Hoskyns were alive today …’
I broke my rule about allowing myself only one glass of port, and reached for the decanter to drown my irritation.
By the time the Bishop led his flock to the drawing-room I was sagging beneath the impact of the Dean’s enthusiasm, but as I crossed the threshold my spirits revived. Miss Tallent pounced on me. My pulse-rate rocketed. I was aware of a reckless urge to take risks.
‘Will you think me terribly fast,’ said this dangerous creature whom I knew very well I had a duty to avoid, ‘if I invite you to walk with me to the bottom of the garden and gaze at the river? I feel I need a calm beautiful memory to soothe me during the next air-raid on Starmouth.’
‘What a splendid idea!’ I said. ‘Take me away at once before the Dean begins a new attempt to convert me to Crisis Theology!’
Could any response have been more inappropriate for a dedicated archdeacon?
‘What’s Crisis Theology?’ demanded Miss Tallent as we drifted discreetly outside on to the terrace. ‘It sounds thrilling!’
‘Do I look thrilled?’
‘No, you look wonderfully serene and austere – in fact I was thinking just now in the drawing-room how simply miraculous it is to stumble across a man who’s not utterly beastly. Speaking confidentially, Archdeacon dear, I’ll confess to you that the main reason why I’m not married is because men are in general so utterly beastly to women …’
By this time we had left the terrace and were wandering across the unkempt lawn towards the river which glittered beyond the willows. The moonlight was very bright. I thought of the Baedeker raids, and for a split second I prayed for Starbridge, perhaps under sentence of death for the crime of being beautiful, for the sin of earning two stars in a famous travel guide.
‘… and in fact I wouldn’t mind not marrying at all, but of course a woman has to be married if she wants to be a success in life, and I burn to be a success. So what am I to do? I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve got to take action soon or I’ll wind up a spinster, and one can’t be a successful spinster, it’s a contradiction in terms. I did think of being a successful nun, but they keep such peculiar hours and I’m sure I’d hate being deprived of my silk underwear –’
‘I agree it does sound as if you’re not called to celibacy in the cloister –’ I somehow managed not to dwell on the image of Miss Tallent in her silk underwear – ‘but plenty of women are called to celibacy in the world and manage to live happy, successful, productive lives. The big question here is not, as you seem to think: how will society judge me if I don’t marry, but: what kind of life does God require me to lead?’
‘As far as I can make out, God just wants me to loaf around Starmouth fending off passes from drunken sailors.’
‘Fine. Keep loafing and fending and I’m sure the way ahead will eventually become dear.’
‘But dearest Archdeacon –’
Despite the drunken sailors I can’t quite understand why you’re so convinced most men are beastly to women.’
‘Well, it’s all that pawing and pouncing, isn’t it? Heavens, why I haven’t been pounded into dust years ago I really can’t imagine, and it’s entirely because most men can think of nothing but sex – sex, sex, sex, sex, sex – and it ruins everything, simply ruins it, and sometimes it all seems so sad I want to cry. But I’ll tell you this, Archdeacon dear: if I ever do marry it’ll be to someone high-minded who won’t just look at me and think: “What a nice pair of legs!” I can’t possibly settle for a man who isn’t high-minded, not possibly, anyone low-minded is quite unthinkable.’
‘If a man loves you he’ll see far beyond your legs. I mean – good heavens, what am I saying –’
‘But how do I know if a man loves me, Stephen? You don’t mind if I call you Stephen, do you, it’s such a good pure noble high-minded name –’
‘Miss Tallent, I hate to say this, but I think you’d be bored to death by someone high-minded. Think of that prig Arabin in Barchester Towers! Everyone agrees he’s quite the most tedious hero in Victorian literature.’
‘But if it’s a question of choosing between someone high-minded and someone who’s sex-mad –’
‘Why choose? Why not have someone high-minded and sex-mad?’
‘Heavens, what an amazing suggestion! But does such a man exist?’
‘The human race is infinitely diverse.’ I glanced back over my shoulder at the house. ‘Well, now that we’ve seen the garden by moonlight perhaps we should –’
‘But I want to go down to the river! I want to sit on that wooden seat underneath the willows and have an enthralling discussion with you on the heroes of Victorian literature!’
I looked at the wild garden shimmering in the pale light. I looked at the willow trees, swaying against the night sky. I looked at the glittering water of the distant river. I looked into the land of countless fairy-tales where the hero is changed from a frog to a prince by the casual wave of a magic wand, and I said: ‘Well, all right. But only for five minutes.’
As I had already confessed to her, I liked to live dangerously.
III
The river curled around Starbridge in a loop to divide the city from the suburbs, but at the point where the water glided past the Cathedral Close there were no buildings on the opposite bank, only water meadows, woods and farmland. The inter-war building developments had taken place on the other side of the city where there was no river and no need to build expensive bridges. The water meadows and fields, owned by the Dean and Chapter, were leased to the nearest farmer and bore silent witness to the fact that Starbridge, though a county town, was not an industrial centre driven to expand in all directions. The countryside remained unspoilt beyond the river, and the line of willows at the bottom of the Bishop’s garden completed the illusion that we stood many miles from a city.
‘This was a great garden in Bishop Jardine’s day,’ I said as we sat down on the ancient bench by the riverbank. ‘But when the gardeners went into the army Dr Ottershaw had no alternative but to sanction a wilderness.’
‘Much more exciting! I think the garden in Tennyson’s Maud could have been a wilderness, all tangled and steamy and exotic –’
‘I wouldn’t have thought a modern young woman like you would be interested in Victorian literature.’
‘It was the only thing our stupid governess knew about.’
‘You never went to school?’
‘No, and if I had I’m sure I’d have run away and begun my outrageous society life much earlier – with the result that I’d now be worn out. In fact if I’d been the heroine of a Victorian novel –’
‘Oh, you’d have died of consumption by now, no doubt about that,’ I said, making her laugh, and we began to talk of all the literary heroines who had paid the price demanded by society for the flouting of convention.
The conversation glided on, just like the river, glinting, glittering, gleaming, a hypnotic pattern coalescing into a unity beneath the white bright slice of the moon. Time glided on too, the time which should have been spent in the drawing-room, and every few minutes I told myself we should return to the house. Yet I never moved. The fairy-tale in which I was travelling had become more clearly defined; I now realized I was enacting the role of a male Cinderella and that when the clock began to strike twelve I would be compelled to flee from my princess, but meanwhile I preferred not to think of those inevitable midnight chimes. I thought instead how amazing it was that I, entombed in my sedate cathedral city, should be enjoying a scintillating dialogue with a society girl, and beyond my amazement lurked the absurd satisfaction that I, Norman Neville Aysgarth, the son of a Yorkshire draper, should be conversing in a palace garden with a millionaire’s daughter who had danced with the former Prince of Wales. I always tried hard not to slide into the repellent snobbery of the social climber, and of course I knew a good clergyman should be quite above such embarrassingly worldly thoughts, but the night was very beautiful and Miss Tallent was very amusing and I was, after all, only human.
The metaphorical midnight arrived so suddenly that I jumped. Far away by the house Charlotte Ottershaw called: ‘Dido! What have you done with Neville?’ and I saw my fairy-tale draw to a close.
‘I’ve ravished him!’ yelled Miss Tallent, and added crossly to me: ‘What a bore! Now we’ll have to return to the drawing-room.’
‘And I must be getting home.’ In my imagination I heard Cinderella’s clock relentlessly chiming the hour.
‘Must you? Already? But why?’
The moment had come. I had reached the point in the fairy-tale when Cinderella had been reclothed in her rags after her unforgettable night at the ball. ‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier but I’m hardly at liberty nowadays to keep late hours with charming young ladies. I have a wife waiting for me at my vicarage. We’ve been married sixteen years and have five children.’
For one brief moment she stared at me in silence. Then heaving a sigh of relief she exclaimed: ‘Thank God! Now I shall never have to worry about you pouncing on me, shall I? After all, what could possibly be safer than a married clergyman with five children?’
‘What indeed?’ I said, smiling at her, and that was the moment when I realized what a prize she was, so clever, so stimulating, so attractive, so rich, so celebrated and – most alluring of all – so utterly beyond my reach. The familiar powerful excitement gripped me; I was always deeply stirred by the sight of a great prize waiting to be won. Then I pulled myself together. This prize at least could never find its way into my collection. There was no other rational conclusion to be drawn. In my politest voice I said: ‘It’s been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Tallent. I doubt if our paths will cross again, but I shall certainly pray that you find the happiness you deserve.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ She was aghast. ‘Isn’t it patently obvious that our paths are already divinely interwoven? As soon as you told me at the dinner-table that I was heroic I knew God had sent you to my rescue! Now look here. I want to begin a meaningful new life: I want to be good, I want to be wise, I want to be Christian. You can’t just say blithely: “I doubt if our paths will cross again,” and sail away into the night! Of course I know how busy you must be and naturally I wouldn’t want to take up too. much of your time, but if you could just write me a little spiritual note occasionally –’
‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’
‘You see, I feel I’ve reached the time of life when I simply must have a spiritual adviser. You can write and explain God to me – oh, and you must tell me all about Professor Raven and Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple and all the really vital people whom I ought to know about – and that reminds me, talking of vital people, I’d simply adore to meet your wife. May I call at the vicarage tomorrow?’
I cleared my throat. ‘How kind of you to offer, but unfortunately my wife’s unwell at present. That’s why she didn’t accompany me this evening.’
‘What a pity! But perhaps next time I’m in Starbridge –’
‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you,’ I said, diplomacy personified, but I already knew that Grace wouldn’t care for Miss Dido Tallent at all.
IV
No doubt I have now succeeded in conveying the impression that I’m a sex-obsessed, claret-mad, world-fixated ecclesiastic who deserves to be defrocked without delay. One always runs the risk of creating a false impression when one sets out for the purest of motives – honesty and humility – to portray oneself ‘warts and all’; the warts have a habit of commandeering the artist’s canvas. Let me now try to redress the balance.
First, I doubt if I’m more obsessed by sex than the average man. I admit this mythical ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, as the lawyers call him, probably spends too much time thinking about sex, but the point I’m trying to make is that I doubt if I’m in any way abnormal when I meet an attractive woman and find myself picturing gleaming thighs. Nor need these harmless fantasies signify a tendency to immoral behaviour. A childhood spent among ardent chapel-goers ensured that I learnt early in life about the wages of sin, and out of an acute desire to avoid these terrible deserts I later acquired immense self-control in sexual matters. As a young man I was earnest, idealistic and chaste (more or less; one really can’t expect adolescent boys not to masturbate). Grace had been my first and indeed my only woman – apart from a disastrous lapse before my marriage when I had been an undergraduate up at Oxford. Embarrassment prevents me from disclosing much about this incident, so I shall only say that it followed my introduction to champagne and that the female was a shop assistant at Woolworth’s. From that day to this I can never cross the threshold of any branch of Woolworth’s without experiencing a small secret shiver of shame.
The truth is that on moral issues I hold views which are currently held to be old-fashioned. I believe fornication is degrading to women, who should be treated with the utmost reverence as befits their unique contribution to humanity as wives and mothers. Adultery I look upon not merely as a moral error but as a crime, breaking sacred promises, destroying trust, poisoning love, wrecking the lives not only of the guilty but of the innocent. Sex is like dynamite. If it is used in the right place and at the right time the results can be beneficial, but unless the proper regulations are observed there can only be a disastrous explosion. Those people who indulge in sexual activity as casually as they would down a couple of cocktails are always the sort of people who would find it amusing to play with matches in a bomb factory. As a clergyman I would be guilty of a most unchristian lack of charity if I bounded around yelling ‘Stupid!’ at all these fools, but I do find it an effort sometimes to treat the perpetrators of such mindless incidents – as a Modernist I won’t use that Victorian word ‘sinners’ – with compassion.
My strict attitude to sexual licence extends to the human race’s other pastime which causes so much trouble: drink. The Primitive Methodists of my childhood used to thunder away on that subject with as much verve as they devoted to sexual immorality, so it was hardly surprising that I became a most abstemious young man. In fact my catastrophic initiation into the pleasures of champagne up at Oxford shocked me so much that not another drop of alcohol passed my lips until the day I told Uncle Willoughby that I was going into the Church, but contrary to what the preachers had always proclaimed, this benign brush with whisky failed to consign me to perdition. I was much too poor to afford whisky regularly, and moreover as soon as I became a clergyman I knew I had to be careful in my drinking habits. Successful clergymen never drank spirits. Even as time passed and my tastes became more sophisticated I always made it a rule to drink moderately, and although I concede that on the evening of my meeting with Dido I bent this rule by tossing off an extra glass of port, this was an exceptional, not a commonplace, lapse.
I never drink twice a day. I do smoke, I admit, but never in public and only in my bedroom, usually after sexual intercourse. I like eating, but only wholesome food such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I was brought up to believe that frivolous snacks, such as chocolate, stimulated the sin of gluttony and constituted an unforgivable extravagance. It was only when I was a young man courting Grace that I finally dredged up the nerve – and the money – to rebel against this austerity. I took Grace to the cinema and bought a box of chocolates. I can still remember the fearful guilty thrill of watching Clara Bow oozing ‘It’ as I sank my teeth into a sumptuous peppermint cream.
Now, no doubt, I’ve created the impression that I’m not a rake worthy of defrocking but a prig worthy of a kick on the bottom. How hard it is to get the balance of a self-portrait right! Let me stress that I try very hard not to be priggish. Christ came into this world to be at one with us, not to stand apart and look down his nose at our antics, and as a Liberal Protestant who believes strongly in the centrality of Christ I can hardly ignore the example he set. Certainly, despite my strict views on morality, I never feel morally superior. How can I, when every time I pass a branch of Woolworth’s I remember that I’m as prone to error as anyone else? Moreover although I have strict moral standards I don’t consider myself strait-laced, and I suggest that anyone who does consider me a trifle on the sober side has no idea what being strait-laced is all about.
Being strait-laced, as anyone brought up among strict Nonconformists knows, means not only spurning extra-marital sex, chocolates and the demon drink but avoiding the theatre, the cinema, the wireless, playing cards and novels. I have insufficient time and money to go often to the cinema or the theatre nowadays, but I enjoy playing cards with the children and I never miss the broadcast of ITMA, that most perfect of comedy programmes. I also read modern novels for relaxation. I may not read about sex in the News of the World; that would be dabbling with prurient trash. But I do read about sex in the work of D. H. Lawrence; that, I submit with all due respect, is keeping abreast of modern literature.
Grace enjoyed reading in the old days, but by 1942 her life as an archdeacon’s wife and the mother of five children barely allowed her enough time to open a book. At this point I must state unequivocally that Grace was the most wonderful woman in the world and the best possible wife for a clergyman and I adored her. I do want to make that absolutely clear. For sixteen years we had enjoyed the most perfect married life without a single cloud marring the marital sky. At least, if I’m to be entirely accurate, I have to admit little wisps of cloud did occasionally appear but they seldom lasted long. Even the most perfect marriages have to suffer little wisps occasionally. One is, after all, obliged to exist in real life and not between the pages of a romantic novel.
Garnishing my perfect marriage, like gilt lavishly bestowed upon the gingerbread, were my perfect children. I know that as their parent I may be judged hopelessly prejudiced, but people outside the family did constantly comment on my offsprings’ good looks, good manners, high intelligence and remarkable charm, so I venture to suggest I can’t be entirely deluding myself. Needless to say, it was a matter of the very greatest satisfaction to me that I had succeeded in winning two of the ultimate prizes of life: a perfect marriage and a perfect family.
Now I suppose I sound smug, worthy of another kick on the bottom, so let me add honestly that family life did have its ups and downs. However the problems never seemed insuperable and the children never seemed intolerable. My favourite was Primrose, who I thought quite beautiful, although I know men always view their daughters through rose-tinted spectacles, particularly when they have only one daughter to view. Grace and I had called her Primrose in memory of the first flower I had given Grace many years before at St Leonards-on-Sea, the genteel resort on the Sussex coast where my mother had spent her widowhood in the company of my sister Emily. My brother Willy and I had never lived at St Leonards; we had been boarded out in London in order to receive our education, but three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and in the summer, Uncle Willoughby had given us the money for the train journey to Sussex, and it was on one of these seaside holidays that I had met Grace, who was visiting cousins. I was seventeen; she was two years younger. When I gave her the primrose she kept it, pressed it, framed it and finally gave it to me on our wedding night seven years later. Even now the memento still hung over our bed. In view of this flagrant – but not, I suggest to any revolted cynic, unusual – sentimentality, it was hardly surprising that we should have decided to call our first daughter Primrose, and finally after the advent of Christian, Norman and James, Primrose made her grand entrance into the world. Our perfect family was now complete. All that remained for me to do was to work out how I was going to pay for the public-school education of three sons.
It was at this point that one of those little wisps of cloud appeared in the sunlit marital sky, and unlike all the other little wisps in the past this one failed to fade away. Grace and I discovered to our shock that Primrose had not after all completed our perfect family, and in 1941 Alexander (named after my mentor Bishop Jardine) arrived at the vicarage.
When I had finished accepting the will of God, just as a good clergyman should, I decided I would have to adopt a much more rigorous approach to contraception. This subject, I need hardly add, is one of the most awkward matters with which a clergyman can ever become involved. As far as I can gather, everyone in the Church practises contraception, even bishops, but no one in a clerical collar will ever admit to such behaviour because the Church can never surmount its ancient conviction that interfering with procreation is a bad thing. The last Lambeth Conference had barely softened this negative attitude, and a vast amount of hypocrisy had attended the debates on married life. It was noticeable that those bishops who thundered most eloquently on the evils of contraception were always the celibates. The married bishops with their neat little families of two or three children tended to sink into a deafening silence.
Having been brought up to believe God helps those who help themselves I had never agonized over the rightness of contraception; it had always seemed plain enough to me that it was my responsibility, not God’s, to protect my wife’s health, and so the question which bothered me most about contraception was not whether I should practise it but how it could be achieved. French letters may have been widely available since the end of the First War, but a clergyman can hardly be seen to purchase them. Nor can he seek help from his doctor who might be scandalized by such a questionable resolution of the Church’s murky official attitude.
I knew from the start of our marriage that the responsibility for regulating the arrival of children must be mine; it was inconceivable that Grace should be soiled by the knowledge which should belong only to fallen women, and after Christian’s birth I made the sensible decision to ignore the ancient religious disapproval of coitus interruptus. This form of contraception has a dubious reputation, but if one regards it as a discipline which is capable of developing one’s control and thus enhancing one’s performance, the obvious disadvantages soon cease to be intolerable.
I confess I didn’t practise this discipline all the time. That would have been too demanding, even for a man who enjoyed a challenge, but Grace’s monthly health was so regular that it was easy to work out when special care was required. After Christian’s birth in 1927, Norman arrived in 1930, James in 1933 and Primrose in 1937. No exercise in family planning could have been more successful, and that was why we were so shocked by Alexander’s conception. None of the other children had begun life as an accident.
After he was born I pulled myself together, made the necessary unpalatable deductions and began my travels in ‘mufti’ to the port of Starmouth to forage anonymously for French letters. I disliked these sordid expeditions very much. I felt they constituted conduct quite unbecoming to an archdeacon, but I refused to regard my behaviour as morally wrong and I had no doubt that Christ, who had held marriage in such high regard, would forgive these unsalubrious machinations to protect my wife’s health, maintain my emotional equilibrium and preserve my happy family life.
By this time that happy family life had become more than a little frayed at the edges, and although my new approach to contraception prevented further unravelling, I became conscious, as time passed, that the frayed edges were failing to repair themselves as swiftly as I had hoped. In fact by the May of 1942 when I met Dido I had begun to be seriously worried about Grace as she struggled to survive the stresses and strains of life at the vicarage.
It’s not easy being a clergyman’s wife. Parishioners make constant demands. Social obligations multiply. Her husband requires her support in a multitude of ways both obvious and subtle. Even in a peaceful country parish these responsibilities can be oppressive but we were no longer living in the country. The archdeaconry of Starbridge was attached to the benefice of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, a famous ancient church in the heart of the city, and I was also an honorary canon – a prebendary, as they were called in Starbridge – of the Cathedral. I knew everyone who was anyone in that city, and as my wife, Grace was obliged to know them too. Grace was a cut above me socially; her father had been a solicitor in Manchester, but people from the North can be intimidated by people from the South, and Starbridge, wealthy, southern Starbridge, was not a city where Grace could easily feel at home.
Alex had appointed me to the archdeaconry in 1937, shortly before Primrose had been born. Christian had been away at prep school but Norman and James had still been at home. Struggling with two active small boys, a newborn baby, a large old-fashioned vicarage, unfamiliar surroundings, a host of unknown parishioners and an increasingly elaborate social life, Grace had slowly sunk into an exhausted melancholy. Alexander’s arrival had been the last straw.
In vain I suggested remedies. I proposed extra domestic help, but Grace found it tiring enough to cope with the charwoman who came every morning of the working week. I offered to engage a live-in nursemaid instead of the girl who appeared in the afternoons to take the children for a walk, but Grace, who was the most devoted mother, could not bear to think of another woman usurping her in the nursery. I told her not to get upset if the house became a little dusty or untidy but Grace, who was a perfectionist, could not endure living in a home which was other than immaculate. Thus the melancholy exhaustion had persisted, aggravated when she was unable to live up to her impossibly high standards, and on the evening of the Bishop’s dinner-party she had been too depressed to attend.
‘I’ve nothing to wear,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ I refrained from pointing out that this was inevitable so long as she persisted in spending all her clothing coupons on the children, but when I assured her that she would always look charming in her well-worn black evening frock all she said was: ‘I can’t face Lady Starmouth.’ This was an old problem. Lady Starmouth, effortlessly aristocratic, faultlessly dressed and matchlessly sophisticated, had long been a source of terror to Grace. I saw then that any further attempt at argument would be futile; I could only plan a suitable apology to offer the Ottershaws.
When I arrived home from the palace that night I was alone. Alex was staying with us, but he had lingered at the party, as befitted the guest of honour, and we had agreed earlier that we would return to the vicarage separately. As my wife was supposed to be suffering from a migraine it would have looked odd if I had failed to leave the palace early.
My key turned in the lock, and as soon as the front door opened I heard the baby howling. Seconds later Grace appeared at the top of the staircase. She was white with weariness and looked as if she had been crying. ‘I thought you were never coming home! I’m so worried, I can’t think properly – Sandy can’t keep his food down, won’t go to sleep, won’t stop crying, and I can’t bear it, can’t cope, can’t –’
‘My dearest love …’ As she staggered down the stairs into my outstretched arms and collapsed sobbing against my chest I thought of all the letters which I had written to her during our long courtship. After we had become secretly engaged I had always addressed her in my romantic correspondence by those same words. ‘My dearest love, today I finally put my schooldays behind me …’ ‘My dearest love, today I arrived in Oxford for the start of my great adventure …’ ‘My dearest love, today I finally gave up all thought of a career in the law, so I’m afraid I shall never make my fortune as a barrister …’ ‘My dearest love, I know young men aren’t supposed to marry on a curate’s salary, but if one takes into account the little income you inherited from your grandmother, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be together at last …’ How I had chased my prize of the perfect wife and what a delectable chase it had been! In fact the chase had been so delectable that I had even feared marriage might be an anti-climax, but fortunately I had soon realized there would be new prizes to chase on the far side of the altar: the perfect home, the perfect marital happiness, the perfect family life …
The baby, bawling above us in the nursery, terminated this irrelevant exercise in nostalgia. ‘My dearest love,’ I said firmly, ‘you really mustn’t let the little monster upset you like this! Go to bed at once and leave him to me.’
‘But he vomited his food – I think he might be ill –’
I finally succeeded in packing her off to bed. As she stumbled away I noticed that the hem of her nightdress had unravelled and for a second I knew I was on the brink of recalling Dido Tallent, smart as paint in her naval uniform, but I blocked that memory from my mind by invading the nursery.
Alexander was standing up in his cot and looking cross that he had been obliged to scream so hard for attention. He fell silent as soon as I entered the room.
‘I’m afraid this behaviour is quite impermissible,’ I said. I never talk down to my children. ‘Night-time is when we sleep. Noise is not allowed.’
He gazed at me in uncomprehending rapture. Here indeed was entertainment for a fourteen-month-old infant bored with his mother. I patted his springy brown hair, which reminded me of my brother Willy, stared straight into the blue eyes which were so like mine and picked him up in order to put him in a horizontal position on the sheet. He opened his mouth to howl but thought better of it. Instead he said: ‘Prayers!’ and looked so intelligent that I laughed. ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Prayers come before sleep.’ I felt his forehead casually but it was obvious he had no fever and I suspected he had only vomited out of a desire to discover how much fuss he could create. As he watched fascinated I recited the Lord’s Prayer for him, said firmly: ‘Good night, Sandy,’ and retired to examine the picture of Peter Rabbit which hung on the far wall. After a while I glanced back over my shoulder and when I saw he was watching me I exclaimed: ‘How quiet you are! Well done!’ At that point he smiled and allowed his eyes to close. I was still taking another long look at Peter Rabbit when I heard the welcome sound of even breathing and knew I could safely creep away.
‘The Kraken sleeps,’ I said to Grace as I joined her in our bedroom. By this time she was dry-eyed but very pale.
‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘I let him know who was the boss. Sometimes I think you’re too soft with him.’
‘I’m not soft with him! I’m just a normal loving mother, and if you’d ever had a normal loving mother yourself –’
‘My mother adored me.’
‘Well, I suppose she did in her own peculiar way, but –’
‘Grace, is this really the moment to start talking about my mother?’
‘It’s never the moment to start talking about your mother!’
‘Then why drag her into the conversation?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–’ Once more Grace dissolved into tears.
Guilt smote me. ‘My dearest love … forgive me …’ Sinking down on the bed I kissed her in despair but when the tears continued I announced: ‘I’m going to say my prayers,’ and escaped to the dressing-room. For ten seconds I concentrated on breathing deeply. Then having steadied my nerves I stripped off my clothes, stood naked in the middle of the floor and stretched myself until my muscles ached. This manœuvre also proved soothing. When I shed my clerical uniform I felt younger, more flexible, possibly more light-hearted, certainly more adventurous. Perhaps women undergo a similar psychological liberation whenever they shed their corsets.
Having donned my pyjamas I said my prayers at a brisk pace, gave the Bible a thoughtful tap, stared into space for two minutes and came to the conclusion that my next duty was to embark on a ministry of reconciliation. Accordingly I extracted the necessary item from the locked box at the back of the wardrobe and returned to the bedroom.
Grace had dried her eyes. That boded well. She had also brushed her hair. That boded well too. Grace had long straight dark hair which during the day she wore twisted into a coil on the top of her head. That was how she had worn her hair when her mother had first allowed her to abandon her pigtails, and I had never allowed her to wear it in any other way. During the 1920s she had wanted to cut her hair short but I had said: ‘Why destroy perfection?’ and the crisis had passed. Later, in the 1930s, she had wanted to curl her hair, but that idea too I had refused to countenance; I had always felt that Grace’s delicate Edwardian look was the last word in beauty and elegance. She was five foot four inches tall, a height which was perfect because even when she was wearing high-heeled shoes there was no risk of her being taller than I was. Even after bearing five children she was still remarkably slender and graceful – not quite as slender as she used to be, certainly, but then one really can’t expect one’s wife to look like a young bride after sixteen years of married life.
As soon as I returned to the bedroom she said in her calmest, most sensible voice: ‘Darling, I’m very, very sorry. How boring for you to come home to such a tiresome scene! How was the dinner-party?’
I was conscious of a relief of gargantuan proportions. My wife was being perfect again. All was well. ‘Oh, dreadfully dull,’ I said, sliding into bed and giving her a kiss. ‘I envied you missing the meal. There was a most extraordinary custard which was supposed to have had an egg in it.’
‘What sort of an egg?’
‘Mrs Ottershaw wasn’t saying.’ I switched off the light.
‘Was Charlotte there?’
‘Yes. With a friend.’
‘A man? How exciting! I do hope Charlotte gets married!’
‘Unfortunately it was just another Wren. And General Calthrop-Ponsonby was there, still breathing fire against the Boers, and Mrs Dean was holding forth about the Girl Guides as usual while her husband tried to convert me to Crisis Theology or neo-orthodoxy or whatever one wants to call the latest variation on the theological rubbish fathered by Karl Barth –’
‘How glad you must have been to get home!’
‘I’m always glad to get home,’ I said, unbuttoning the flies of my pyjamas.
‘Darling, I really am sorry I was so awful earlier –’
‘No need to say another word about it. We’ll ring down the curtain on the scene, pretend it never happened and celebrate your splendid recovery. At least … you have recovered, haven’t you, darling?’
‘Oh yes!’ she said at once. ‘I’m fine now. Everything’s absolutely fine, just as it always is.’
A vast relief overwhelmed me again as I prepared to bring my ministry of reconciliation to a triumphant conclusion.
It never even occurred to me that I might be grossly deluding myself.
TWO (#ulink_a0176fd6-570d-57f7-89ec-0fcedb71b811)
‘First loves do not always keep their glamour.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
I had just stubbed out my post-coital cigarette when I heard the front door close in the distance and realized that Alex had returned from the palace. Beside me Grace had already fallen asleep. Leaving the bed I pulled on my discarded pyjamas, grabbed my dressing-gown and padded downstairs to attend to my guest.
Alex had paused to read the headlines of the Starbridge Weekly News which had been delivered that morning and abandoned on the hall chest. He was a man of medium height, just as I was, but we had different builds. I’m stocky. He was thin as a whippet and as restless as a cat on hot tiles. His thinning grey hair was straight, sleek and neatly parted. His ugly yellowish-brown eyes radiated an impatient vitality which was defiantly at odds with the heavy, sombre lines about his mouth. As always he was immaculately dressed.
‘Would you like some tea before you turn in, Alex?’
‘A corpse-reviver would be more appropriate! Why on earth did Ottershaw invite that old bore Calthrop-Ponsonby?’
‘I think he feels sorry for him.’
‘How typical! Ottershaw would even feel sorry for a man-eating tiger who wanted to eat him for breakfast … How’s Grace?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘Hm.’ He dropped the newspaper abruptly on the hall chest. ‘Can we go into your study for a moment, Neville? I’ll decline your kind offer of tea but there’s something I’d like to say to you.’
Obediently I led the way across the hall. I was anxious to return to bed as I was now very tired, but Alex was not only my present friend but my past benefactor and I always made every effort to oblige him.
I had first met him in 1932 when he had become the Bishop of Starbridge. Having long since decided that it was best to live in the South if one wanted to Get On and Travel Far, I had pulled all the Oxonian strings at my disposal and sought ordination from Alex’s predecessor Dr Hargreaves who had been scholarly, moderate in his Protestantism, tolerant of Modernist thought – and in fact exactly the type of leader I had had in mind when I had been called to enter the Church. Eventually I had become a curate in a village only two miles from Starbridge, and every morning I had been able to look out of my bedroom window at the distant Cathedral spire as it soared triumphantly upwards, symbolizing my high hopes for the future.
After my curacy I had been appointed Rector of Willowmead, a picturesque market-town in the north of the diocese, and it was here, after Dr Hargreaves’ death in 1932, that Alex had entered my life.
I disliked him at first. He was abrupt to the point of rudeness, but I discovered later that he had had many problems on his arrival in the diocese and the strain of solving them had temporarily taken a toll on his charm. The next year, on his second visit to my parish, he was at his best. He inquired courteously about my life history and when he discovered we had much in common – the early loss of a parent, the grinding experience of genteel poverty and the increasing determination to triumph over the inequities of the British class system – I was at once adopted as a protégé. Possibly I would have been promoted without his special interest but that was by no means certain. In a national institution such as the Church of England, which was hidebound by tradition and dominated by men of the upper classes, a self-made man could only rely on help from another self-made man who knew what it was to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. Alex was a Fellow of All Souls, but he had never been to public school. United by our modest backgrounds we had long since entered into the conspiracy which had enabled me to squeeze under the closed door of the established order into the privileged room beyond, and it was this tacit comradeship, acquired on the battlefield of the class system, which gave our mutual respect a strong emotional edge. Of course we never displayed emotion to each other; we were, after all, Englishmen. But although we belonged to different generations I considered him my closest friend.
In the summer of 1937 he began to have trouble with the Archdeacon of Starbridge, an elderly man who had developed the habit of flying into senile panics, and after this millstone had been manipulated into retirement Alex offered me the archdeaconry. I myself was not sorry to leave Willowmead. I had organized the parish into a model of Christian efficiency and had been secretly longing for some time for new worlds to conquer. My translation to Starbridge came at the most appropriate moment, but unfortunately no sooner had I been installed at St Martin’s in the September of 1937 when Alex was obliged to retire from the bishopric.
At first I was much upset, not only because I was fond enough of Alex to be concerned about his health, but because I was acutely aware that I could ill afford to lose such an influential patron. I awaited Dr Ottershaw’s arrival with trepidation, but to my great relief my fears proved groundless.
In general there are two types of bishops: holy bishops and what I call chairman-of-the-board bishops. The latter are by nature businessmen with gregarious personalities and a flair for organization; their inevitable worldliness is mitigated by the spirit of Christ, and their success as bishops depends on the degree of mitigation. Holy bishops, on the other hand, usually have no talent for administration and need much time to themselves in order to maintain their spiritual gifts; their success as bishops depends less on the grace of God than on their willingness to delegate their administrative duties continually to talented assistants.
Alex was a chairman-of-the-board bishop. Dr Ottershaw was a holy bishop. I was the talented assistant who thrived on delegated administrative duties – and within a month of his arrival I had realized that Dr Ottershaw and I were made for each other. I even realized that had Alex remained in office we would almost certainly have quarrelled. Alex had a notoriously combative manner; I had an equally undesirable weakness for wielding a verbal sledgehammer. That premature retirement might have been unfortunate in many ways, but at least it had enabled us to preserve the friendship which now in 1942, ten years after our first meeting at Willowmead, we both valued so highly.
As we entered my study that night he said almost before I had closed the door: ‘Will you think me intolerably impertinent if I offer you some paternal advice?’ and at once I said lightly: ‘You know very well I enjoy your impertinence – go ahead!’ But I was alarmed. I have an aversion to people in authority who dole out paternal advice. Such behaviour always reminds me of my Uncle Willoughby.
‘It’s about young Miss Tallent.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said, somehow contriving to remain cool as the temperature in the room appeared to soar to a tropical heat.
‘Yes.’ Alex, whose hatred of hypocrisy and endless crusades for truth had won him plenty of enemies during his episcopate, was hardly a man to be deterred by coolness. ‘Neville, next time you meet an alluring young woman at a dinner-party, don’t disappear into the moonlight with her for more than five minutes. And next time you meet Miss Tallent – if there is a next time – don’t disappear with her at all. I’m a great believer in the pleasures of an amitié amourcuse, but such friendships are best conducted with happily married women escorted by their happily married husbands. Dabbling with a fast little miss isn’t conducting an amitié amoureuse. It’s playing with fire and asking for trouble.’
‘Quite.’ To my fury I realized I was blushing; this unfortunate adolescent handicap is one which I have never quite managed to outgrow. Deeply embarrassed I turned aside to realign the photographs of my children on the mantelshelf.
After a pause Alex said tersely: ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I always speak my mind, as you know, and on this occasion I’m speaking purely out of a concern for your welfare. You mean a great deal to me, Neville. I’m very fond of you – and I’d hate to see your career take a wrong turn.’
I was outraged. To spell out his affection – to indulge in sentimental utterances – to violate our delightful friendship by acting like some mawkish heavy-handed father – it was intolerable. Speech was quite beyond me. I could only grab the photograph of Grace and start polishing the silver frame furiously with my sleeve.
‘Don’t misunderstand,’ said Alex at last. ‘I’m sure the little escapade tonight was innocent. But where an attractive woman’s concerned any man – even a clergyman – perhaps especially a clergyman – has an almost limitless capacity for self-deception.’
I finished polishing the frame and set it back on the mantelshelf. Then I said in my politest voice: ‘I take your point. Thank you for your advice. Is there anything else you wish to say?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact there is.’ I should have remembered that when Alex was exercising his compulsive candour he was virtually unstoppable. ‘Can you tell me if there’s a financial reason why you don’t have a nursemaid living in to attend to my delightful godson in his more exuberant moods? Because if there is indeed a financial reason I hope you won’t be too proud to accept my offer of help. I’ve money to spare and I’d be happy to do anything which might ease the situation.’
Once more I was appalled. In my stiffest voice I said: ‘What situation?’
‘My dear Neville, I’ve been staying here for three days and I’m neither blind nor deaf! It’s patently obvious to me that Grace is at the end of her tether!’
‘Nonsense. I concede she’s a little tired at the moment because she’s still recovering from the Easter holidays, but now that the three older boys are back at school she’ll soon recover. Very good of you to offer help but it’s not necessary. No problems financially. No problems of any kind, thank you.’
‘Neville, I know you’re a proud man, but wouldn’t you find it helpful – just for once – to admit that everything in the garden isn’t quite as lovely as it ought to be? If Grace is so exhausted that she can barely cope with her domestic duties, how can she possibly deal satisfactorily with her responsibilities as an archdeacon’s wife? She deliberately evaded the dinner-party tonight, didn’t she? Well, as it happens that wasn’t a disastrous evasion, but what are you going to do when a really crucial engagement turns up, an engagement vital for the well-being of your career? Or in other words, how is Grace going to summon the extra energy she’ll need to keep up with you in the future? If you were to engage a nursemaid –’
‘That’s not what Grace wants. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the nursery.’
‘Then engage a full-time cook-general!’
‘That’s not what Grace wants either. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the kitchen.’
‘I’m getting rather tired of hearing what Grace wants! What do you want? It seems to me, judging from your behaviour tonight, that you’re beginning to feel short-changed!’
Somehow I managed to control my temper. I heard myself say in my most colourless voice: ‘You couldn’t be more mistaken, Alex. You’ve utterly misread the situation, but on the other hand, why should I expect you to read it correctly? The truth is no outsider can really know what goes on in any marriage.’
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Alex dryly, deciding to wipe the tension from the conversation by exercising his caustic wit. ‘No one knows the half of what’s gone on in mine.’ He turned aside but as he opened the door he was unable to resist the urge to proffer still more unwanted advice. ‘Deposit Primrose and Sandy with a kind neighbour,’ he said, ‘and take Grace away for a second honeymoon before you get tangled up with another fast little miss.’
‘There won’t be another fast little miss. Perhaps you can’t be blamed for drawing quite the wrong conclusions from my idiotic behaviour with Miss Tallent, but let me assure you now, once and for all, that Grace is a perfect wife and I adore her.’
‘Splendid! Very well, I’ll now stop overstepping the mark in my usual outrageous fashion and take myself off to bed before you try to hit me with those clenched fists of yours. Good night, Neville. God bless you. And do try to remember that I’ve spoken only with your welfare in mind …’
II
I was so angry with this cavalier attempt to meddle in my marriage that although I was tired I lay awake fuming for over an hour in the dark. I hated Alex thinking that Grace was temporarily less than perfect. I hated him telling me facts I already knew. And I hated him suggesting facile solutions when I knew very well that the problem was more complex than he in his ignorance supposed. I could not simply impose a cook-general or a nursemaid on Grace against her will. After all, it was she, not I, who would have to deal with the woman, and if Grace felt unable to cope with a stranger in either the kitchen or the nursery, any effort on my part to employ someone suitable would only be a waste of time. Also I knew from past experience that Grace interpreted my suggestions about employing additional help as implied criticisms of her ability to be the perfect wife and mother. Then no matter how hard I tried to reassure her that no criticism was intended, she became more depressed than ever. Eventually, I was sure, the problem would be alleviated when Sandy ceased to need constant maternal supervision and embarked on his career as a schoolboy, but until that golden moment when he skipped off to begin his first day at kindergarten, it seemed my best course of action was to help Grace by being loyal, loving and endlessly sympathetic. I had to make up my mind never to complain about her melancholy, never to reproach her for shying away from the social life she should be sharing with me and never, never, never to lose my temper. I was always mindful of the fact that Sandy could hardly have been conceived without my assistance, and if he was now complicating our lives I had a moral duty to ameliorate the situation by being a perfect husband.
Remembering my loss of temper earlier I winced, but at least I was able to console myself by recalling my subsequent ministry of reconciliation. How wrong Alex had been to assume that I was being short-changed in the bedroom! Even after sixteen years of marriage I was never deprived in that area – except on those occasions when Grace was in an advanced state of pregnancy or suffering from migraine or too exhausted to do anything but pass out. However, those exceptions were of no consequence, since one could hardly expect married life to be one long sex romp. Even D. H. Lawrence had never tried to describe Mellors and Lady Chatterley with five children. My brother Willy had smuggled a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover into England after a holiday in Paris and I had read the book with interest, but personally I thought it was greatly inferior to Lawrence’s other work.
Remembering that Lawrence’s own marriage had been childless I began to think of Alex again. His childless marriage was certainly far from successful, and it occurred to me to wonder how far his own marital discomfort had influenced his interpretation of my dilemma.
Alex had said lightly that no one knew much about his marriage, but I suspected I knew all too well what had gone on. Having married his intellectual opposite after a whirlwind courtship, it seemed clear that he had long since regretted his folly. Even with no children to distract her his wife Carrie had been unable to master her increasing responsibilities as Alex had travelled rapidly up the Church’s ladder of preferment. In 1927 when he had been appointed Dean of Radbury he had even been obliged to engage someone to keep her life in order, and it had been this companion, an icy virgin with a deceptively steamy appearance and a brain like an adding machine, who had run first the deanery at Radbury and later the palace at Starbridge. The companion had eventually left to get married, much to the Jardines’ fury, and since 1937 a variety of women had been hired and fired in the unending struggle to keep Carrie organized. Even now Alex was living quietly in a small village, Carrie was incapable of running her life without help. What a burden for any husband! Alex used to joke bravely about his ménage à trois, but I thought his marriage must be the height of dreariness.
The one redeeming feature was that Carrie in her elderly way was still pretty. It had seemed logical to assume the Jardines enjoyed something which resembled a sex life – how else could Alex have made his marriage tolerable? – but now I found myself wondering if the heart condition which had terminated his career had also terminated the intimate side of his marriage. Curiously enough he always seemed very fit, bursting with energy, but if he had been so quick to detect a nonexistent sexual frustration in my marriage it seemed logical to deduce he was no stranger to sexual frustration in his own.
I sighed, feeling sorry for him, and with my anger finally conquered I succeeded in falling asleep.
The next morning I was confused to discover that I still felt angry with him but for a different reason. I could accept that he had spoken out of the best of motives; I could even accept that he had been justified in feeling concern about Grace; but what I found hard to accept was the way he had conducted the interview. Displaying the delicacy of an elephant and the sensitivity of a rhinoceros he had charged around trying to impose his conclusions upon me without regard for my willingness to accept them, and although such behaviour might possibly be forgivable when displayed by some well-meaning Victorian father I thought it was quite unforgivable when displayed by a clergyman. I myself had no great pastoral gifts. My talent was for administration, but I knew enough about pastoral work to realize that when counselling someone in trouble one’s prime duty was to listen, not to make speeches, to nurture trust, not to destroy it. In some fundamental way my trust in Alex had been impaired by that bruising interview. I still admired him as a man; I still respected him as a friend. But I did not want to discuss my private life with him ever again.
This was a disturbing conclusion, but fortunately in the early mornings I was always too busy to dwell on unpleasant thoughts. My first task was to make the tea. I always performed this chore because I felt that the least Grace deserved was a husband who delivered the early morning tea to her in bed. Having accomplished this ritual I withdrew to my dressing-room, read the Office and meditated conscientiously on the appointed verses from the Bible. Being Low-Church in inclination if not in practice – my services were carefully aimed at the middle-of-the-road moderate majority in the Church of England in order to avoid unfortunate controversy – I preferred to focus my spiritual exercises on the Bible before applying myself to my prayers.
After this interval I shaved and dressed. Usually I wore my archidiaconal uniform, but if my engagements were informal – or if the weather was so hot that the wearing of gaiters became intolerable – I had enough courage to resort to a plain clerical suit. I’m not the kind of man who enjoys tripping around in an antiquated fancy dress.
When I eventually left my dressing-room I headed for the nursery, where Sandy would be waking up, and put some toys in his cot to keep him quiet. By seven o’clock I had reached my study where I aimed to put in an hour’s work before breakfast. On that particular morning I caught up with my sympathy letters – after three years of war one had to take great care that the sentiments expressed sounded genuine – paid a couple of bills and studied two archidiaconal files, one relating to new gutters for a church with a persistent damp wall and the other concerning a parish quarrel over a new font. I decided it would be prudent to ask the diocesan surveyor to look at the old gutters and even more prudent to ask the diocesan lawyers to advise on whether the font was, legally speaking, a font. The outraged churchwarden was insisting that it reminded him of a lavatory.
I yawned. The archdeaconry was quiet. No fallen steeples, no dispute about plastic flowers on graves, no rural dean suffering from delusions of grandeur, no curate going berserk with choirboys, no vicar letting off Anglo-Catholic liturgical fireworks, no verger blowing his brains out. Finding myself with five minutes to spare before breakfast I drew up a plan for my Sunday sermon and plucked a few pertinent quotations from my trusty memory. My brother Willy always said I had a mind like a vacuum cleaner; I can effortlessly absorb any information from the sublime to the ridiculous and regurgitate it, sometimes years later, with an efficiency bordering on the robotic.
At breakfast I admired the new bow in Primrose’s hair, glanced at the headlines of The Times, read the latest letter from Christian at Winchester, answered the telephone, picked Sandy’s rusk off the floor twice and asked Alex if he intended to spend all day in the Cathedral library, where he was studying the records of his episcopate.
‘No, I’m having a rest from my autobiography today,’ he said, surprising me. ‘I’ve decided to take a train to Starvale St James and call on Lyle.’
Lyle, now Mrs Charles Ashworth, was the icy companion who had run the Jardines’ household so efficiently before her unwelcome defection to the state of matrimony in 1937.
‘She probably won’t want to see me,’ Alex was saying as he idly applied marmalade to his toast, ‘but I thought it would be too ridiculous if I left the diocese without calling on her. I intend to arrive on her doorstep waving the olive branch of peace.’
‘Better late than never, but why not phone her first? Your olive branch will be wasted if you arrive on her doorstep and find she’s gone out for the day!’
‘I’ll take the risk. If I ring she might simply slam down the receiver – I can’t tell you what a tangle we all got into back in 1937 –’
‘I always thought it sounded the most grotesque storm in a teacup and I can’t believe Lyle won’t welcome the chance to end the estrangement. Do you want a lift to the station?’
He accepted the lift. I noted with compassion that he had bought expensive presents for Lyle’s two sons. Evidently he was anxious that his olive branch should be substantial.
‘Remember me to Lyle, won’t you?’ I said. ‘As it happens I’ll be coming her way soon. An incensed churchwarden at Starvale St James is complaining that the new font looks like a urinal.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Alex vaguely, and when he failed to smile I knew his thoughts were far away.
Leaving him at the station I called at the diocesan office on Eternity Street to collect my special allowance of extra petrol coupons, suffered myself to be cornered by various officials who saw me as a channel to the Bishop, escaped into the High Street to buy cigarettes and finally parked my car in the old vicarage stables behind Butchers’ Alley just as the clock of St Martin’s chimed the half hour. I was fractionally late for the morning conference with my curates, but to my relief I saw no bicycles parked outside the vicarage gate. I disliked my curates arriving ahead of me and looking insufferably virtuous as I walked into the room. Much better that they should arrive panting and apologetic while I was sitting coolly behind my desk.
I opened the front door. I withdrew my key from the lock. And I paused, paralysed with shock, as my hand remained on the latch. I had heard a laugh in the morning-room where we received the parishioners who called on us, but this laugh belonged to no one who lived within the parish of St Martin’s – in-Cripplegate. Automatically, without stopping to think, I blundered forward into the hall.
Grace was saying: ‘That’ll be Neville. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just tell him you’re here.’
I plunged across the morning-room threshold. Grace, who had almost reached the door, hastily recoiled. As our visitor sprang to her feet I saw us all as three puppets jerking on the ends of some exceedingly erratic strings.
‘Hullo Stephen!’ said Dido, whose memory I had, of course, been conscientiously suppressing all morning, and gave me a bold, bright, impudent smile.
‘Good morning, Miss Tallent,’ I said, rigid with rage behind my clerical collar. I was acutely aware that Grace was wearing her oldest dress, the one she only wore around the house, and that she looked faded, fatigued and unfashionable. In contrast Dido, seemingly poured into her sleek naval uniform, looked saucy, sexy and scintillating. I could have slapped her.
Suddenly I became aware of Sandy’s presence. In the profound silence which followed the formal exchange of greetings he staggered across the floor and offered me one of his toy bricks.
‘Thank you, Sandy.’ I took the brick and gripped it so hard that my fingers ached. Then in a passable attempt to achieve a smooth social manner I said to Dido: ‘How kind of you to call, but I’m afraid you must excuse me. I have an urgent meeting now with my curates.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of troubling you when you’re so busy!’ exclaimed Dido with that wide-eyed candour which I found so fatally compelling. ‘I just called to leave my card and enquire if your wife was better.’ Giving Grace her warmest smile she added confidentially: ‘You didn’t miss much at the Bish’s dinner-party – your husband was the only redeeming feature.’
The doorbell rang.
‘I’ll go!’ said Grace, scooping up Sandy.
‘No, I’ll answer it –’
‘No, it’s all right, Neville –’
We collided in the doorway before Grace succeeded in escaping into the hall.
‘I’m obviously causing chaos as usual,’ said Dido. ‘I’ll leave at once.’
I realized I was still holding Sandy’s brick. It was bright red, the colour of violence, volcanic fire and technicolour blood. It also matched Dido’s lipstick. Setting the brick down on the table with meticulous care I somehow managed to say to Dido in my politest voice: ‘If you feel you must go, then I shan’t try to detain you, but I apologize if you’ve been made to feel unwelcome.’
‘Oh no, your wife was charming! We got on terribly well!’
‘Miss Tallent –’
‘Oh, I do wish you’d stop calling me that! Why don’t you call me Dido, just as everyone else does?’
‘I’m most flattered that you should wish to be on such friendly terms with me, but I’m afraid a clergyman has a duty to be formal towards a young lady he’s known less than twenty-four hours.’
‘But I’m sure Jesus would have called me Dido without a second thought! He never bothered to be formal with the good-time girls!’
I opened my mouth to say coldly: ‘I fear I can only consider that remark to be in excessive bad taste,’ but the words were never spoken. To my horror I realized I was smiling. ‘You’re outrageous!’ I exclaimed in despair. ‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’
‘But don’t you remember? You’re going to be my spiritual guide and write me uplifting letters!’
‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’
‘You didn’t think I was serious, did you? You didn’t think I meant what I said, but I swear to you I’m deeply in earnest and absolutely desperate. I know you think I’m stupid and frivolous and not worth bothering about, but –’
‘Everyone’s worth bothering about. But don’t you think your local clergyman would be better placed than I am to give you the guidance you need?’
‘That celibate fish? He’s only fit to be lightly grilled on both sides and served to the congregation with parsley sauce!’
I made a quick decision, the kind of quick decision capable administrators make, a cool practical decision untainted by emotional involvement. There was no doubt this girl was genuinely distressed and adrift. It seemed reasonable to suppose she was suffering from that particularly debilitating confusion which so often follows a severe bereavement, an appalled recognition of her own mortality and a consequent questioning of her way of life. With the right help this self-examination could lead to a vital spiritual growth. Who was I to regard her with such unchristian cynicism because she had spent too many years as a mindless society girl? In a very real sense Dido’s tasteless comment about Jesus had hit the mark of truth. He would never have walked past her with his nose in the air, and since I was one of his followers neither should I.
Abruptly I altered course. ‘Very well,’ I said, adopting a crisp authoritative tone. ‘If you honestly believe I can help you I’ll answer your letters – but on one condition. You must address me as “Archdeacon”, I must address you as “Miss Tallent” and our correspondence must be a model of propriety.’
‘That’s three conditions, not one! But never mind, I accept them all with rapturous gratitude.’ She smiled radiantly at me. ‘Goodbye, Archdeacon dear. I’m off to the post office to buy a large supply of stamps.’ And leaving me wondering how on earth I could have been quite such a fool, she sailed triumphantly from the room.
III
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t think it was important.’
‘But she’s famous! She almost married that millionaire – and then there was the film star – and everyone knows she flirted with the Prince of Wales!’
‘I don’t find that sort of thing very interesting.’
‘Well, she obviously found you very interesting indeed! Why in heaven’s name did she call you Stephen?’
‘The name Neville reminded her of Mr Chamberlain.’
‘But what was she doing calling you by your Christian name when you’d only just met her?’
‘Oh, society people have very peculiar manners these days. Like people in show business.’
‘Well, it all sounds very fast to me! Why, she even said she talked to you on your own for half an hour in the garden!’
‘Only about Victorian literature.’
‘But what did everyone think when you disappeared for half an hour with a society flirt?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I think that designation’s a little uncharitable, Grace. Not even a society girl’s beyond redemption.’
‘Don’t tell me she wants you to redeem her!’
I cleared my throat again. ‘Well, as a matter of fact she did show signs of wanting a complete change of direction. I’ve promised to write her a line or two in response to any queries she may have about spiritual matters.’
‘Honestly, Neville! I wouldn’t have thought you could be quite so naïve!’
‘And I wouldn’t have thought you could be quite so catty and cynical!’
Grace suddenly drooped as if all the strength had drained out of her. Immediately I hated myself. ‘My dearest love –’ I took her in my arms – ‘I know it all seems highly irregular, but what’s a clergyman to do when he’s asked for spiritual advice? He can’t refuse to give it simply because the person in search of help is someone with whom he’d never normally associate!’ I kissed her before adding: ‘Of course I’ll show you every letter.’
‘Don’t be silly. You know that’s not necessary.’ She clung to me briefly before turning away with the abrupt comment: ‘The curates have arrived.’
‘Bother the curates.’ I grabbed her back into my arms and said in my firmest voice: ‘I love you very much – as I trust I proved to you last night – and for me you’ll always be the only woman in the world. Why on earth should I even look twice at a saucy little piece of nonsense like Dido Tallent?’
That indeed was the question.
IV
Alex returned at noon after bearing his olive branch to the village of Starvale St James where Lyle had rented accommodation a year ago. She normally lived in Cambridge, where before the war her husband had been a canon of the Cathedral and a theologian at the University, but after Ashworth had been sent overseas with his regiment Lyle had preferred to retreat temporarily to the country so that her young children would be in a safer place. Ashworth had an elderly friend in Starvale St James – none other than the irate churchwarden who was now persecuting me about the font – and Lyle, already familiar with the diocese after her years with the Jardines, had decided she ran less risk of being lonely there than elsewhere in the English countryside.
When Alex returned I had just finished speaking on the telephone to the Bishop, who was in a flap about the proposed prisoner-of-war camp on Starbury Plain. It was by no means certain that we would be allowed any contact with the prisoners but the Bishop felt we should at least plan as if some form of pastoral work, no matter how limited, would be permitted. However unfortunately the camp, if built, would stand in the other archdeaconry, and the other Archdeacon, Hubert Babbington-French, was now openly proclaiming that the only good German was a dead German. No wonder the Bishop was in a flap; it wasn’t every day he had to deal with an eminent cleric bent on bawling out unchristian slogans. Obviously the idiotic Babbington-French would have to be steered away from the wretched Huns, but I had a nasty feeling that the Bishop in his despair was planning to steer me towards them. I was willing to do my duty and attempt to behave in a Christian manner towards even the most repulsive Nazi, but the prospect was far from enthralling, particularly when we were all waiting to see if Hitler opened his Baedeker guide at the wrong page. I was now privately very worried indeed about the prospect of an attack on Starbridge, for my vicarage was in the centre of the city, but Grace, following the example of the Queen, had said that the children stayed with her and that she intended to stay with me – and I, of course, had to stay at St Martin’s. I could only thank God we had a good air-raid shelter and pray that Hitler, diverted by the fighting on the Eastern Front, lost interest in reading travel guides.
I was just wondering if I should hold daily services at lunch-time to cater for all the city workers who would be experiencing a strong compulsion to pray for deliverance, when the door of my study opened and Alex strode in. There was a spring in his walk, a smile on his face and a carnation in the buttonhole of his smart lounge suit.
‘Do I deduce that the hatchet was safely buried?’ I said amused after we had exchanged greetings.
‘I think it would be more accurate to say that we managed to ease the hatchet into a coffin to await a full burial later – but at least that’s a step in the right direction! We sat in the garden and drank tea for twenty minutes.’
‘Only twenty minutes?’
‘She had to attend a committee meeting of the Women’s Institute. But she sent her love to Carrie, so it would seem the ice is definitely broken.’
‘Splendid! And what did you think of her boys? That little Charley says he wants to be a clergyman.’
‘So he told me.’ Alex, who had been pacing around the room in his usual restless fashion, now stopped jingling the coins in his pockets and started eyeing the telephone. ‘I’d so much like to tell Carrie about the meeting,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I put through a call on your extension upstairs?’
‘Not at all – go ahead,’ I said, and embarked on a letter to the Red Cross about the parish food parcel for British prisoners of war.
I was half-way through this task when I was interrupted by the arrival of my diocesan bête noire, a clergyman named Darrow about whom I shall say more later. I mention him now only because it was at this time that he began his career at the Theological College in the Cathedral Close, a fact which became of considerable importance to me in 1945 after I had almost committed adultery.
On that morning in 1942 when Darrow arrived without warning on my doorstep and breezed arrogantly into my study, the Theological College was in the midst of a crisis because of the wartime shortage of staff, and on the previous evening at the palace Alex had been able to provide Dr Ottershaw with the vital information that Darrow had had experience in the training of clergymen. Darrow had had experience in many other clerical fields too – driving archdeacons well-nigh round the bend was only one of his more esoteric activities – but now is not the moment to expand on his buccaneering career in the Church. His purpose in calling at the vicarage that morning was to thank Alex for recommending him to the Bishop, but he wound up by delivering an insufferably priggish lecture on the theme that the ultimate prize for any priest – as a bigoted Anglo-Catholic he always called clergymen ‘priests’ – could only be union with God.
‘How did I manage to keep a civil tongue in my head?’ demanded Alex as soon as Darrow had stalked out. ‘I must be getting saintly in my old age! And to think that according to Lyle her husband remains one of Darrow’s most devoted admirers!’
‘Ashworth’s busy being an army chaplain in North Africa. If he was trying to run an archdeaconry where Darrow was on the rampage, he’d soon modify his admiration, I promise you! What on earth will life be like at the Theological College once that pirate prances through the front door?’
‘I prophesy charismatic wonders, incense in the College chapel and a collective nervous breakdown for the remaining staff. And talking of nervous exhaustion … Am I forgiven for speaking my mind to you about Grace last night?’
‘Of course.’
‘I really am sorry if I upset you, Neville.’
‘My dear Alex, let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget all about it!’
‘Very well, but before the curtain finally reaches the ground, may I just ask if you’re taking my advice about bearing Grace off on a second honeymoon?’
‘Drop the subject, Alex, there’s a good fellow – just drop it,’ I said, brandishing a voice of steel alongside my friendliest smile, and he hastily began to talk of other matters.
But that night in the bedroom I found myself saying to Grace: ‘How would you like a week’s rest before the school holidays begin? We could leave Primrose and Sandy in Manchester with Winifred and go to a hotel in the Lake District.’
Grace, who had been brushing her hair, paused to stare at me in the triple mirror. ‘But is it still possible to take holidays there?’
‘I’m sure it is. Holiday-makers are only banned from the south and east coasts.’
‘But I couldn’t possibly leave Sandy with Winifred! He’d wear her out.’
‘Maybe she wouldn’t mind being worn out in order to give you a rest! After all, you’re always saying what a wonderful sister she is.’
‘Yes, but she’s not as patient as I am, and –’
‘No one’s as patient as you are with that little monster! Personally I think a touch of impatience now and then would do him no harm at all!’
‘But Neville –’
‘Why are you beating around the bush like this? The issue’s really very simple: do you or don’t you want a second honeymoon?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to say I do, won’t I?’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed, no longer making any effort to conceal my exasperation. ‘What sort of answer’s that?’
‘The sort of answer which I’m sure you require of a perfect wife.’
‘Grace, if you weren’t so constantly obsessed with perfection you wouldn’t make such ridiculous statements!’
‘I obsessed by perfection? But Neville, you’re the one who’s obsessed! You – chasing the prizes of life, never able to rest, never being satisfied –’
‘What rubbish, of course I’m satisfied! I’ve got the perfect wife, the perfect home, the perfect family – I’ve won all the ultimate prizes of life! Well, nearly all of them –’
‘Darling, listen to me.’ Rising to her feet she turned her back on the triple mirror and we faced each other. ‘I’m not a prize. I’m a person. I can’t just be kept in a glass case on a mantelshelf. I have to move in the real world, and in the real world I can’t be this perfect wife of your dreams. I do try to be – I keep trying and trying – I try so hard because I don’t want to disappoint you, but –’
‘You could never disappoint me.’
‘No? Supposing I tell you that I don’t want to go away to the Lake District unless we take Sandy and Primrose with us? Darling, we simply can’t dump them on poor Winifred for a week! It’s just not fair to her, and besides I wouldn’t enjoy myself – I’d spend my whole time worrying in case they were unhappy. I admit I do want a rest, but I’d much rather wait until our family holiday in July.’
‘Very well.’ I turned away.
‘Neville –’
‘No need to say another word. You’ve spoken your mind and I still think you’re perfect. Happy ending. Now let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget I ever mentioned the idea,’ I said in the most equable voice at my command, and withdrew at once to my dressing-room.
V
I found myself unable to concentrate on the Evening Office, and an attempt to pray proved futile. However when I eventually returned to the bedroom in my pyjamas Grace said at once: ‘Darling, could we compromise? If we changed our plans and spent our family holiday in the Lake District instead of Devon, we could leave all five children with Winifred for the first forty-eight hours and have that little holiday alone together after all. I don’t think Sandy could destroy Winifred in two days, and since Christian and Norman are old enough to be helpful with the younger ones, I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying about how they were getting on.’
‘Splendid! I’ll cancel Devon immediately.’
‘We’ve left it rather late in the day to change our plans – and of course it would involve a longer journey just when the government’s telling us we shouldn’t travel unless we have to –’
‘We do have to – and I’m sure we can easily find a cottage to rent. I’ll look at the holiday advertisements in today’s Church Gazette.’
She kissed me. ‘You’re not cross with me any more?’
‘My dearest love!’ I said. ‘When have I ever been cross with you?’ And before either of us could answer that question I took her in my arms.
VI
The letters began to arrive. Dido wrote as she talked: fluently, with eccentric punctuation. She used a pencil which always began sharp and ended blunt, probably as the result of her copious underlinings.
‘Dear Archdeacon, before I bare my soul to you I must tell you all about my background so that you can see my troubles in some sort of illuminating perspective …’
I learnt that her father had made a fortune by profiteering during the First War, and had consolidated his wealth by adventurous skulduggery in the City. He was currently chairman of an enterprise called the Pan-Grampian Trust and now played golf regularly with various luminaries of the Bank of England in an effort to consolidate his hard-won respectability. In addition to his house in Edinburgh and his nine-bedroom flat overlooking Grosvenor Square he had not only the usual millionaire’s castle in the Highlands but a country mansion in Leicestershire where his daughters had pursued their passion for hunting. His wife, however, never left Edinburgh.
‘… poor Mother is a good person but very shy. How glad I am that I haven’t inherited this devastating handicap! Fortunately Father’s mistresses have all possessed gregarious dispositions in addition to superb connections in society, so my sisters and I have been able to surmount the difficulties which were inevitably created by Mother’s beautiful retiring nature.
‘Merry (that’s my sister Muriel, now Lady Wyvenhoe) and darling Laura (who became the Honourable Mrs Anthony Fox-Drummond) and I (who’s so far become no one at all) were always invited everywhere, and since Father spent money like water on our coming out, I can’t say I ever found it a handicap to be a jumped-up Scot – indeed quite the reverse, we were all regarded as exciting novelties and given a licence to be entertaining. So no matter how outrageous we were, people just said: “Poor little things, they don’t know any better, but what a gorgeous breath of fresh air they are, blowing away all the boring cobwebs from London society, let’s invite them to masses more balls and tea-dances and cocktail parties so that we can all continue to be madly amused!” So that was what happened and we were a simply enormous success, even when for a laugh we put on our Scottish accents, although of course our governess was told to make sure we knew how to talk like English ladies and in consequence we grew up bilingual.
‘Anyway, Archdeacon dear, you may disapprove of me talking faultless English and so pretending to be what I’m not, but let me assure you that in every other respect I’m entirely honest. I always say to a new friend right from the start: “My father’s a self-made man (though one of Nature’s Gentlemen, of course) and my mother doesn’t go out and about in society because she’s afraid she’ll be thought common (a fear naturally enhanced by her beautiful retiring nature)” – and once all that’s been said everyone relaxes because they know exactly where they stand and no one feels in the least deceived …’
In another letter she told me about her three brothers, all employed in her father’s financial empire, but I realized that since they were many years her senior they had played little part in her growing up.
‘… but I’ve always been very close to my sisters – well, we had to stick together, you see, because since Father was so busy making money and my brothers were so busy at public school learning how to be English gentlemen and Mother was so busy being retiring, no one had much time for us except Blackboard our governess (Miss Black) and even she was always wishing she was somewhere else, so Merry and Laura and I formed what we called The Triple Alliance in order to conquer the world and make everyone take notice of us. I was devastated, simply devastated, when Merry married that sporty bore Wyvenhoe, all polo and fishing and shooting thousands of poor little birds in August (I think he only married Merry to gain permanent access to Father’s grouse moor). Her marriage destroyed our Triple Alliance and I knew things would never be the same again and I was right, they never were. She lives up in Leicestershire now, although of course she has a house in London, and I seldom see her. But I recovered from losing Merry. It was losing Laura that nearly killed me.
‘Darling Laura was the light of my life, we were closer than most twins, only twelve months apart, we did everything together, everything, Merry was always the odd one out as she was two years older than Laura, three years older than me. Laura and I were presented at Court together and shared our first season, and later the Prince of Wales (I’m sorry, I know he’s the Duke of Windsor now, but for me he’ll always be our gorgeous Prince of Wales) – he said he would have danced with both of us simultaneously if he had had two pairs of arms (My dear, Mrs Simpson was simply seething!) and life was thrilling, such fun, how we laughed, and then Laura, darling Laura, fell in love with Anthony, and at first I minded dreadfully but after a while I told myself it was wicked of me to begrudge her such happiness, so I made up my mind not to be jealous of him, and once I’d done that I realized he was such a nice man, so sweet-natured, the son of a peer but really quite normal, and they got married in 1938 and they were so happy, living in London – which meant I could still see Laura every day – and then she started a baby and she was so thrilled – we were all so thrilled, even me, although I did have a little shudder at first at the thought of having to share her with yet another person – ugh! how contemptible of me, I despised myself for being so selfish! – and then …
‘Disaster, tragedy, DEATH. Why do such things have to happen, why, why, why, I cried for days, I felt as if half myself had been amputated and all the world seemed such a dark place without Laura’s special light – and when I looked back at all the parties, all the champagne and the caviar, I could only think: Death always wins in the end. Oh, what a dreadful moment that was, so black, so brutal, so absolutely terrifying – and suddenly all my party memories seemed so sinister, I seemed to see a death's head grinning at every feast, and that was the moment when I knew parties would never be the same again because I would always be thinking: EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY FOR TOMORROW WE DIE, and the word DIE would always remind me of horrors past and horrors still to come.
‘Well, when I realized there was no escape from that terrible truth, no escape on the dance-floor, no escape in the saddle at a hunt, no escape among the cocktails at Grosvenor Square, I saw that the only thing to do was not to run away but to stand my ground and try to look Death straight in the face – and once I’d done that I knew I had to live, and when I say live I mean not frittering away time but using time profitably – I knew I had to find some way of life which was real, as real as Death, the toughest reality of all.
‘At that moment the war arrived, and as I told you I thought the answer was to join the Wrens, but that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. What I now find – and this is really most peculiar, in fact highly unnerving – is that the person I appear to be in public, the person everyone thinks I am, has nothing to do with my new true self. Everyone thinks – including you, I suspect, Archdeacon dear – that I’m still just a frivolous little piece of nonsense, but that old false self’s smashed to bits now, all the fragments are gone with the wind, and my current great task is to find the right life for my new true self and so make myself into a real person at last – because only when I become a real person, living in harmony with my new true self, will I be able to face that other real person. Death, on equal terms and not be afraid of him any more.
‘Well, I know that all sounds rather turgid, so I’ll spare you further soul-searching by announcing that I believe I see the first step I have to take: I must get married. (I mentioned this when we met, but now I can explain the decision in its proper context.) The plain fact of the matter is (as I more or less implied earlier) that despite emancipation and women voting and being doctors and bus conductresses and so on, our society considers any woman who’s not married is a failure, and I think that if I’m to have a meaningful life and be truly me, I’ve got to be a success. I mean, I wouldn’t be happy otherwise, and how could I live meaningfully if I was miserable?
‘Now Archdeacon dear, I know you were terribly original and said it could be fulfilling to be celibate (by which I assume you meant not only unmarried but chaste although I believe, strictly speaking, to be celibate merely means to be unmarried) but to be brutally frank I don’t think celibacy would suit me at all. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex, which has always seemed to me as if it must be quite dull in comparison with hunting – although darling Laura said it was all rather heavenly – sex, I mean, not hunting – after all, hunting’s really heavenly, no “rather” about it – and … oh bother, I’ve lost my way in this sentence, I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex (as I was saying) but I simply couldn’t bear the social stigma of being unmarried. But please don’t think I’m just enslaved by a rampant-pride. You see, the one thing I’m good at is being social, so I feel sure that God’s calling me to be a social success, but of course now I realize it can’t just be the kind of facile self-centred success I used to enjoy when I was my old false self. It must be a meaningful social success – the social success of a wife who strives to help her husband (who of course must be a really worthwhile man) in his dynamic and outstanding career. Then I could feel useful and fulfilled knowing that he was feeling useful and fulfilled and I’m sure we’d both live happily ever after.
‘It’s a glorious vision, isn’t it? Or so I think now, but when it first unfurled itself I confess I did have grave doubts because I knew very well I felt so lukewarm towards men that I couldn’t quite conceive of ever summoning the desire to marry one of them. I did tell you at the dinner-party, didn’t I, about my lukewarm state, but I wasn’t quite honest with you about my reasons for being anti-man. I said I couldn’t bear the way men regarded me as just a pair of legs, but there’s rather more to my antipathy than that. You see, I’m still recovering from being in love with the wrong man for six years. His name’s Roland Carlton-Blake. (If I tell you he likes to be known as Rollo you’ll guess at once what kind of a man he is, so I shall merely confirm your suspicions by telling you that before the war he called himself a gentleman of leisure and other people called him a playboy). Now he’s a soldier in Cairo and as he’s got some sort of desk job I doubt if he sees any fighting, but I can imagine him passing his leisure hours by riding around the pyramids and pretending to be Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.
‘Why did I fall for this ghastly creature, you ask? Well, primarily for all the usual reasons, he was so handsome, so glamorous, he rode to hounds so beautifully, and life always seemed to be so gay and amusing when he was around, but the real reason why I liked him was that he never tried to jump on me and I appreciated this so much that I began to believe he really did love me for myself and not just for my legs. So I wound up thinking: That’s the one man I could bear to marry – I shouldn’t even mind if he was disgusting when he was having sex – because quite frankly, I don’t see how men can avoid being disgusting when they have sex, so the great thing is not to mind when they do.
‘Anyway, earlier this year before he was posted to Egypt I decided to propose to him. After all, it was obvious after six years that he wasn’t going to do it, so I proposed and then he told me he was in the midst of an affair with an actress.
‘As a matter of fact I knew her, she was rather nice, but when I found out I felt absolutely crushed, and I said to Rollo: “Why did you never ask me to be your mistress if you’re the kind of man who does that sort of thing?” He just laughed. He said: “You’d have said no and slapped my face!” – which was actually true, as I can never see the point of coming second (being a mistress) when one can come first (being a wife). I’ve always thought fornication was a dead-end career for a woman, almost as futile as lesbianism.
‘Very indignantly I said to Rollo: “All right, I admit I wouldn’t have been your mistress, but I could have been your wife and then you wouldn’t have had to skulk around fornicating in such an undignified manner.” Oh, how cross he was when I said that! “I’m always very dignified when I fornicate!” he cried indignantly. “All my mistresses consider me a paragon of discretion!” “ALL your mistresses?” I shouted. “You mean you’ve had others?”
‘Oh Mr Aysgarth, you’ll think me very naive, especially as I’m a society girl who’s supposed to be the last word in sophistication, but you see, I loved him and love is blind and I wanted so much to believe he was pure and noble behind his dashing façade, quite different from all the other men in the world who appear to see me as a cross between a cream cake and an ice-cream cornet. Even Father, who’s so well behaved with his mistresses, only having one at a time and never in the same city as Mother – even Father and my brothers seem to see me as no more than a box of chocolates whenever they take time off from their full varied interesting lives to remind themselves of my existence. How I wish I’d been born a man! Gender’s such a prison sometimes, especially when one wants one’s new true self to be recognized and respected.
‘Anyway to return to Rollo I said: “How would you feel if I were to tell you that I’d been sleeping with everyone in sight for six years despite the fact that I’d regularly been saying that I loved no one but you?” And Rollo said as if I was being very stupid: “Oh, that wouldn’t have been playing the game at all! A man with mistresses is just living a normal life. A woman with lovers is just being a slut. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it?” At which point I drew myself up to my full height and looked him straight in the eyes and declared: “Your world, perhaps. But not mine.”
‘I told him I never wanted to see him again, but the awful part was I did want to, I missed him terribly, and it was just as well he was sent to Egypt or I might have weakened. I still loved him even though I could see he was just a selfish lout with the brains of a flea. I thought: that’s the last straw – I’ve lost first Laura and now Rollo, why don’t I just fling myself in the Thames? But I couldn’t bear the thought of being a failure and anyway I’m not the suicidal type, so I staggered on day after day until finally I had a big stroke of luck: I met Charlotte Ottershaw when I was transferred to the Starmouth Naval Base, and as soon as she started talking about her father the Bishop I saw my salvation. It was the Church of England. I thought: there’s where I can find a man who’s good and noble and pure, who won’t see me just as a box of chocolates and who’ll never betray me with someone else! Clergymen have to be virtuous because it’s all part of the job, and so adultery and fornication would be absolutely OUT.
‘Well, Archdeacon dear, I knew at once that I’d had a revelation and I was fearfully excited because I thought I could see the way ahead at last, but then I started feeling depressed again because I realized I knew nothing, beyond a few random facts, about the C. of E. and absolutely nothing about theology and philosophy and all the earnest things good pure noble men talk about. So I told myself that I’d got to find someone who’d teach me what I needed to know because my good pure noble man would at least expect his wife to be able to talk church language intelligently, it would be a sort of minimum requirement for the job. I think I’m actually quite clever, though it’s a wonder I ever learnt anything from Blackboard. Father thought education for women was a waste of time and Mother thought it was positively harmful so I suppose I’m a victim of a bizarre form of child neglect, but although I expect I often appear quite scatterbrained I’m not really stupid at all.
‘So now that you’ve agreed to be my Guide, Philosopher and Friend I must urge you not to assume I’m a fool and water down your erudition accordingly. I want to know everything, even the difficult bits. Can we start with the Church itself? I’d be so grateful if you could give me some information about the most important people, the sort of information which isn’t in Who’s Who – although I had such a fascinating time with Who’s Who the other day, I looked up the Archbishop of Canterbury and I think it’s so extraordinary that his father was Archbishop of Canterbury too – I wonder what the odds are against such a thing happening? It makes the Temples into a sort of dynasty, doesn’t it, and fancy Frederick being over sixty when William was born, maybe more men should take up religion so that they can keep bounding around when rakes like Rollo are chairbound with gout and hardened arteries.
‘I think William Temple will be a tremendous Archbish, he’s so substantial, isn’t he, and I don’t just mean in weight. He’s so human and sympathetic, not like that pompous old prig Archbishop Lang who was so beastly to the Prince of Wales. Now, what I want you to tell me is this: what does William Temple think? Someone said he was a Christian Socialist and someone else said his thought is a blend of Hegelian Dialectic and Platonic Idealism. I’ve heard of Plato (just) but who or what is Hegelian? It sounds like a kind of cloth – or possibly a very grand butler – and the syllables have such a thrillingly sumptuous ring. Write soon, I implore you, and expound on these esoteric mysteries to your most grateful disciple, DIANA DOROTHEA TALLENT.’
Much amused I immediately picked up my pen and seized the chance to divert myself from the problems I was unable to face.
VII
I thought she would soon lose interest in the intellectual aspects of the Church, but her desire to learn persisted until I could only conclude her interest was genuine. I kept my explanations simple, in the belief that clarity is more important to beginners than complex detail, and I did make an effort not to talk down to her. Again Dido responded with gratitude.
‘… and thank you so much for explaining about divine Hegel – I was enrapt and shall now see everything in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. My personal thesis was the frivolous society girl, my antithesis is the serious-minded student thirsting for enlightenment, but what will my synthesis be??? No, don’t answer that question, just go on telling me what churchmen think – or rather, think. (When people think, it might only be about the weather, but when they think, it can only be about things that are vital.)
‘Charlotte says you’re a Protestant, not a Catholic, which is most confusing as I thought the whole point of the Reformation in England was that we got rid of the Catholics, said “Yah!” to the Pope and lived happily ever after as the Protestant Church of England. Why are these Catholics still around? Anyway I’m glad you’re a Protestant, Protestant services are so deliciously austere and I’ve never been keen on all those flamboyant candlelit genuflections and horrid smells which the Church of Rome finds so essential.
‘Charlotte also said you were a Liberal Protestant, which sounds so enlightened, though I’m told “Liberal” in religion isn’t the same as “Liberal” in politics, which is just as well since the political Liberals are nearly extinct. Finally Charlotte said you were a Modernist, which sounds thrillingly wild and abandoned, like those artists who throw a pot of paint at the canvas and call the result A SUNNY AFTERNOON IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. Now Archdeacon dear, do tell: what do all these exotic Church labels really mean?’
By this time I was so enjoying the task of expanding her intellectual horizon that I savoured her letter for an entire week while I reflected on my reply. Finally after a friendly opening paragraph I wrote:
‘… and now let me address myself to your enquiries. The Reformation did indeed re-form the Church in England into the Church of England, but although Catholicism was greatly purged during the following decades it was never eliminated. It had a strong resurgence in the last century (the phenomenon was known as the Oxford Movement) and even today, although most of the Church is Protestant there is a powerful, vocal and influential Anglo-Catholic minority. The pertinent word here is “Anglo”. They’re our own home-grown breed of Catholics, loyal to the Church of England and owing no allegiance to the Pope. However, they’ve become increasingly keen on the idea of reunion with Rome, a pipe-dream which I’m bound to say I believe to be not only Utopian but misguided.
‘This Anglo-Catholic group is known as the High-Church party. Opposite them on the other wing of the Church are the Protestant Evangelicals, also known as the Low-Church party, another powerful and vocal group which unfortunately has suffered from indifferent leadership during this century. This no doubt helps to explain how the Anglo-Catholics have managed to grab power in so many important places, but the Evangelicals will rise again and put the Anglo-Catholics back in their place, of that I’m quite sure. Catholicism is fundamentally alien to the British temperament. The tradition of the stiff upper lip, the modest understatement and the horror of foreigners is incompatible with a tradition of embarrassing emotion, ritualistic excesses and the ethos of Southern Europe.
‘In between these two militant wings lie the middle-of-the-road moderates who constitute the majority of church-goers. The services I conduct are aimed at this majority although I do incline to Low-Church practice. Certainly nothing would induce me to dabble with incense, auricular confession, perpetual reservation of the Sacrament or any other cause so dear to the Anglo-Catholic heart.
‘I should perhaps explain here that the Evangelicals play down the importance of the Liturgy (the centrepiece of Anglo-Catholic worship) and play up the importance of the Bible and the sermon. Nonconformist Evangelicals (those Protestant sects which don’t belong to the Church of England, such as the Methodists and the Baptists) can be fatally bibliolatrous (that is to say, they often believe every word of the Bible to be literally true) but in the Church of England, which places such a high value on enlightened scholarship, I’m glad to say that such a crude approach to religious truth is rare. Although I’m a Low-Churchman by inclination I have always insisted that my religion be compatible with the best modern scholarship – and that, my dear Miss Tallent, brings me to MODERNISM.
‘Modernism cuts across all parties in the Church of England. It also existed in the Roman Catholic Church (in a far more extreme form, I may add, than it existed among the Protestants) but the trend was exterminated by Papal decree earlier in this century. In other words, it’s as possible to be a High-Church Modernist as it is to be a Low-Church Modernist. Modernism is less a creed than an attitude of mind.
‘In short, we believe in reinterpreting Christianity in the light of modern knowledge. Consequently we welcome all scientific advances – in geology, anthropology, psychology, chemistry, physics and so on – and use them as a springboard to an expanded spiritual enlightenment. This leads, inevitably, to the expression of theological views which startle conservative people in all parties of the Church and scandalize the ordinary layman – with the result that Modernists are occasionally accused of heresy. This is usually quite unjustified. All genuine Modernists (and here I discount the eccentric crackpots who give the movement a bad name) hold fast to the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection and the concept of Eternal Life. They are therefore orthodox believers. But exactly how Jesus was the Son of God and in what manner he was resurrected and in what sense one is to interpret “Eternal Life” – these are questions which the Modernists hold are open to constant revision in the light of modern knowledge. For example, Modernists don’t believe in miracles; they don’t believe in anything which contradicts the scientific order. But they still believe that Jesus was the sort of man whom people believed capable of performing miracles; they still believe in the absolute centrality of Christ to the Christian faith.
‘Because the Modernist movement is based on an attitude of mind and not a creed, there’s a large amount of disagreement among us. Some Modernists believe that women should be ordained, for example, but in my opinion such a view is too extreme. I always take care to be moderate and sensible in my Modernism so as not to give needless offence to my superiors. It’s well known that Raven’s support of the ordination of women has cost him a bishopric. When extreme views are under consideration, one always has a moral duty to discern where to draw the line.
‘To sum up, my moderate Modernism complements the so-called Liberal Protestant theology which evolved among enlightened Victorians. I believe (and this belief chimes with Darwin’s work) that the world is evolving steadily in accordance with God’s purpose for mankind, a purpose which is fundamentally good and benign. I believe that sin and evil aren’t as important as man’s basic goodness, the goodness which is exemplified for all time by Our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that God is immanent in this world and that the Holy Spirit is present as a spark in every member of mankind.
‘Because of my adherence to such beliefs I strongly disapprove of the new school of theology which is trying to displace the glory and the nobility and the intellectual quality of Liberal Protestantism with an anti-intellectual, pessimistic, degrading approach to God’s creation. This neo-orthodox school (I use the word neo-orthodox because the theology is in some ways a barbarous reversion to old-fashioned Calvinism) is also known as the theology of Crisis (the word “Crisis” being used in a somewhat technical sense and meaning that we’re all undergoing the ordeal of awaiting God’s judgement). It emphasizes mankind’s sin and misery and says that God isn’t immanent but utterly transcendent, quite unknowable by man. Meanwhile the role of Christ is played down; he merely becomes a salvation event. How repellent! Instead of the forgiveness and compassion of Christ we’re offered the judgement and punishment of God; instead of the Christian message of hope we’re offered a vision of hell and despair. Yet this “neo-orthodoxy” is a rising tide, thriving on the suffering and guilt produced by two world wars. God is seen not putting Himself at one with us out of love and compassion but standing over and above us as He plays the stern father and metes out the punishment. All I can say is that to those of us who are revolted by the concept of stern fathers meting out punishment, this theology is utterly nauseating.
‘And now, Miss Tallent, if you’re still conscious after my diatribe against neo-orthodoxy, I shall end this sermon by apologizing for writing to you at such length. Should you, however, be interested in hearing more about Liberal Protestantism, I can describe in my next letter the thought of the quintessential Liberal Protestant of the twentieth century, Dr Charles Earle Raven, a former canon of Liverpool Cathedral who’s currently Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Master of Christ’s College. As I’ve already mentioned, his more extreme flirtations with Modernism are best ignored, but his general credo is one with which I find myself profoundly in sympathy …’
I thought that having wheeled on the heavy intellectual artillery I might have reduced Dido to a bemused silence, but never was I more mistaken. Replying by return of post she embraced my cannon-fire with delight.
‘… and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for taking the time and the infinite trouble to introduce me to this new world where I feel sure my future husband is lurking behind some Liberal-Protestant-Modernist bush! What a romantic name Charles Raven is! I feel he ought to be a hero in a novel by Elinor Glyn. Is he handsome? And how old is he? More details, please – oh, and when you write back, could you explain what difference there is, if any, between “idealism” and “Idealism” with a capital I? Liberal Protestants sound beautifully idealistic, so romantic, but on the other hand William Temple, who is said to be a Platonic Idealist (among other things), must need to be very down-to-earth and unromantic as he’s the Archbishop of Canterbury and obliged to deal with all the cynical politicians. What is this Idealism which belongs to Plato? Explain, please!
‘What worries me is that idealists (in the colloquial sense) aren’t usually successful in life and I need to marry a potentially successful husband so that my social gifts can come into full play. But on the other hand perhaps the Church is the one place where idealists can be madly successful with the result that the episcopal bench in the House of Lords is simply littered with idealists – like that extraordinary Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, who’s always saying we mustn’t be beastly to the Germans who aren’t Nazis, although how he expects us to separate the wheat from the chaff when they’re up in the sky bombing us to bits, I really can’t imagine.
‘Oh, how I’d love to be a bishop’s wife! I’d run the episcopal palace very efficiently and organize gorgeous garden-parties for the diocesan clergy and give fascinating little dinner-parties for sixteen every week and I’d raise lashings of money for the Poor and dress very tastefully whenever I had to open a fete, and I’d wear wonderful hats when I visited the House of Lords to hear my husband speak – and I’d behave beautifully at Lambeth and Bishopthorpe whenever we were invited for a weekend with the Archbishops, because by that time I’d be well-educated and serious-minded and quite different from the ignorant creature I am now. I’m sure some future bishop must see my potential if only I can meet him – and I’m beginning to see him quite clearly now in my mind’s eye.
‘I want a Liberal Protestant (definitely not an Anglo-Catholic or a neo-orthodox Protestant) with Modernist leanings, and he must be a few years older than me, but not too old, say around forty – in the prime of life – and being nouveau riche myself I shan’t mind if he’s not blue-blooded so long as he speaks correctly and knows how to behave. He should be an Oxford man but a Fellowship of All Souls is not essential. (One can’t have everything.) He should have a deep voice – so masculine – and preach sermons which make me want to cry (I always cry when I feel spiritually uplifted) but he shouldn’t rant and roar. His manner should be cool, austere and dignified.
‘I shan’t mind if he’s not handsome but he must have something about him which is irresistibly attractive – deepset blue eyes perhaps (so heroic) – or a high forehead or broad shoulders or (most scrumptious of all) a very straight firm mouth which represents a MASTERFUL NATURE. I’ve never seen the point of pursuing the sort of man who allows a woman to trample all over him. Men must be men, otherwise why bother, one might just as well live with a woman. I’m sure there must be quite a few men in the Church of England or else it wouldn’t be such a powerful national institution, although bounders like Rollo always say that the men who are against fornication are always the ones who are incapable of it. But bounders like Rollo have no choice but to say that, have they? It’s the only way they can make their weakness look like strength.
‘Well, Archdeacon dear, I’ll stop prattling now, but do write soon – don’t leave me in suspense for a whole week this time – and make sure you give me a few tips on how I can spot a neo-orthodox supporter at fifty paces and take immediate evasive action. Ever your devoted disciple, DIDO TALLENT. P.S. What is soteriology?’
I phrased my reply to this last question when I was shaving. I looked into the mirror at my deepset blue eyes, my high forehead and my straight firm mouth and thought: My dear Miss Tallent, the word ‘soteriology’ refers to matters pertaining to salvation, a state which may well elude you if you continue to write flirtatious letters to a married man …
And I vowed to terminate the correspondence.
But I didn’t. Instead I wrote: ‘My dear Miss Tallent, I’m a clergyman, not a dictionary, so I shan’t waste time defining soteriology; I shall merely ask who’s been talking to you of soteriological matters! It sounds to me as if you’ve already brushed against a follower of neo-orthodoxy. Did he thunder that we’re all “under judgement”? If ever you hear this phrase, the odds are that you’re in neo-orthodox country and you should beat a quick retreat to more Liberal pastures.
‘Meanwhile rest assured that if I meet a Liberal Protestant with the kind of Modernist leanings which would never damage his chance of episcopal preferment, I shall unhesitatingly point him in your direction! Professor Raven, I fear, is quite unsuitable, being not only a non-starter as a bishop (see my previous letter) but far too old for you (nearly sixty). He’s also a married man – and I’m afraid you really can’t go around chasing married clergymen. “There’s no future in that,” as a clever woman bent on capturing a future bishop might say, and I think on the whole you’d be best advised to look for a husband of your own age. Men of forty nowadays are usually either married or homosexual. And now to intellectual matters. Platonic Idealism is the father of our colloquial “idealism”. The Greeks believed …’ And for a further two pages I wrote fluently on the subject of Plato’s philosophy.
I was just congratulating myself on conducting this exceedingly enjoyable correspondence with such faultless propriety – a correspondence which my perfect wife never once asked to see – when my harmless epistolary friendship began to swing stealthily out of control.
I was invited by Lady Starmouth to spend a weekend at the Earl’s country house.
THREE (#ulink_9333ad11-cece-57fa-afc1-eab44c379ed3)
‘Comfort, power, the applause and wonder of men – is there any Church in Christendom, or any Christian soul, not deeply tainted with these things?’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
The Cross and the Crisis
I
I was greatly surprised by the invitation. I had met the Starmouths through Alex soon after he had appointed me his Archdeacon in 1937, but they had remained mere distant acquaintances, and although Lady Starmouth had a reputation for befriending clergymen I had always suspected she found me too dull to merit her special attention. Certainly in her presence I had found it difficult to shake off a sense of social inferiority which made me appear shy and awkward. Yet now for some reason Lady Starmouth had decided to take trouble with me. Moreover in the same post I received a letter from the Earl himself saying that he did hope I was free to accept his wife’s invitation as he was most anxious to hear me preach. Would I deliver a sermon at his local parish church? Now I was no longer merely surprised. I was amazed and excited. Lord Starmouth was one of the most influential laymen in the Church of England and always spoke on important Church matters in the House of Lords. If he wanted to hear me preach I was indeed being thrust into the ecclesiastical spotlight.
‘What an opportunity!’ I exclaimed in jubilation to Grace.
‘It’s very exciting for you – and so kind of Lady Starmouth to invite us both,’ said Grace, ‘but of course I can’t possibly go.’
There was a silence. We were in the study where I had been opening the morning’s second post. As soon as I had read the vital letter, I had called Grace to join me.
‘It’s you they want,’ she said in a rush as the silence lengthened. ‘They’re just inviting me out of politeness, and it would be much better if you went on your own.’
All I could say was: ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘But the children –’
‘You’re coming with me.’
‘But what on earth shall I wear?’
‘Buy whatever’s necessary.’
‘But the coupons –’
‘Steal them.’
‘Neville!’
‘All right, borrow them! I was just trying to make you understand how absolutely vital it is that you come with me! It would be the height of foolishness if you evaded this invitation – Lady Starmouth would almost certainly be sceptical about any excuse you might make, and if she feels she’s been snubbed, what kind of position do you think that would put me in?’
‘In that case we’ll have to take the children with us.’
‘Don’t be absurd! We can’t do that when the children haven’t been invited! We’ll have to leave them with Nora or one of your other friends.’
‘I don’t like to impose –’
‘No, but this is the one occasion where you must be ruthless – or if you really can’t face tackling Nora I’ll tackle Emily. I’ve no scruples at all about imposing on my sister in urgent circumstances.’
‘I always feel so awkward about asking Emily to have the children when she has no children of her own –’
‘Nonsense – they’ll provide a welcome diversion from that dreary husband of hers! Now listen to me, Grace. I quite understand why you should feel this weekend will be an ordeal, but it’s an ordeal you’re perfectly capable of surmounting – all you’re being required to do is to look pretty and be polite. I’m not trying to throw you to the lions. I’m just trying to ensure you don’t miss out on an exciting and worthwhile excursion. Make up your mind you’re going to enjoy yourself! Why not? Why shouldn’t it all be great fun?’
But Grace only said in despair: ‘How I wish we’d never left Willowmead!’ and I heard her stifle a sob as she rushed from the room.
II
‘I didn’t mean it, Neville – of course I didn’t mean it – I just feel nostalgic about Willowmead sometimes, that’s all …’
I had followed her to our bedroom where she had retreated to calm down, and as we faced each other we could hear the charwoman talking good-naturedly to Sandy as she worked in the drawing-room below us. Primrose was at nursery school as usual. I was supposed to be on my way to a diocesan committee meeting, and I was acutely conscious of the clock ticking on the bedside table as I was obliged to delay my departure.
‘I know how much you loved Willowmead,’ I said, ‘but we’ve been happy in Starbridge too and we’re going to go on being happy here.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’
‘To be honest, I find the Starmouths intimidating as well. But one can’t spend one’s life cowering in corners just because one feels socially inferior!’
‘No, of course not. Will there be a maid, do you think, to unpack our suitcases? I don’t want anyone seeing my darned underwear.’
‘In that case I’ll tell the servant we don’t require help with the unpacking. Now Grace, stop worrying yourself into a frenzy, there’s a good girl, and make up your mind you’re going to be strong, brave and resourceful!’
‘Yes. All right. I’ll try,’ she said, but my heart sank as her shoulders drooped.
Willing myself not to despair I hurried off to my meeting at the diocesan office on Eternity Street.
III
Starmouth Court stood not, as might be assumed, near the port of Starmouth in the south of the diocese, but eighteen miles from London in the county of Surrey; the Earl’s connection with Starmouth was lost in the mists of antiquity. When we eventually arrived at our destination on a sunlit Saturday morning in July, I was just as horrified as Grace to discover not a friendly country house but a tall stout elderly mansion of forbidding proportions. Accustomed though I was to calling at the various grand houses in my archdeaconry, I had never been invited to stay the night in these places and the thought of being a guest in the Starmouths’ overpoweringly dignified country seat made me feel for a moment like a fallen woman obliged to take refuge with a formidable maiden aunt.
Built high on a hillside the house was surrounded by trees and approached by a long winding drive which strained both our nerves and the engine of the chauffeur-driven motor which our hostess had sent to meet us at the station. ‘“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came,’” I muttered to Grace before the Dark Tower was revealed as the plump Queen Anne palace. I allowed myself one quick shudder before resolving fiercely to appear self-possessed. ‘Isn’t it exactly like the country house in a detective story?’ I murmured to Grace with a heroic attempt at nonchalance. ‘I foresee corpses in the library, a sinister butler lurking behind the green baize door and Hercule Poirot hovering in the shrubbery!’
But Grace was too terrified to reply.
We were admitted by a stately footman to a hall the size of a tennis court. Vast pictures of men in togas were suspended from points so remote as to be barely visible. An enormous arrangement of flowers stood in what appeared to be a pseudo-Greek vase. Then I realized there was nothing pseudo about the vase. It had that dim ancient look which is impossible to reproduce, and it reminded me of countless visits to the British Museum on wet Saturday afternoons in my childhood when Willy and I, boarded out with strict Methodists, had taken refuge once a week in the sights of London.
‘Nice flowers,’ I said casually to Grace in an automatic effort to signal to the footman that I found the hall itself too mundane to merit a comment. ‘Very well arranged.’
I had barely finished speaking when a door banged, footsteps pattered swiftly in our direction down a distant corridor and the next moment someone was bursting joyously into the hall. A familiar peel of laughter rang out. A well-remembered voice cried: ‘Welcome to Starmouth Court!’ And with horrified delight I recognized my disciple.
IV
‘Did you know she was going to be here?’ demanded Grace as soon as we were alone in the bedroom which had been assigned to us, but my stupefaction was so obviously genuine that she never doubted my denial. Moving to the window I saw that the room was placed at the back of the house and overlooked a formal garden which unfolded upwards in a series of terraces before rolling out of sight over the summit of the hill. On the lowest lawn twin rows of classical statues eyed each other across a sward dotted with croquet-hoops. The sun was still shining radiantly, reminding me that I felt much too hot.
‘She should have told me,’ I said as I automatically took advantage of the opportunity to remove my clerical collar. ‘Why on earth didn’t she mention it in her last letter?’
‘I suppose she thought it would be fun to surprise you.’ Grace was already unpacking her darned underwear before a servant could materialize, like the genie of the lamp, between her and the open suitcase.
‘I don’t like those sort of surprises.’ I began to roam around the room. The brass bedstead gleamed. Lifting the counterpane I absent-mindedly fingered the very white sheets.
‘I suppose they’re real linen,’ said Grace. ‘And look at those towels by the washstand! Can they possibly be linen too?’
‘Must be pre-war. But expensive things always look new for years.’ I stared around at the room’s luxury, so subtly sumptuous, so tastefully extravagant, and before I could stop myself I was saying: ‘I suppose you’re still wishing you hadn’t come.’
‘Oh no!’ said Grace at once. ‘Now that the adventure’s begun I’m enjoying myself – in fact I’m sure you were right and it’s all going to be great fun!’
I did realize that Grace was belatedly exercising her intelligence, but I found I had no desire to consider the implications of this new canny behaviour. I merely smiled, gave her a grateful kiss and began to unpack my bag.
V
Everyone was very kind to Grace, who despite her tortuous self-doubts was as capable as I was of being socially adept in unfamiliar circumstances. Certainly no one was kinder than Dido who lavished attention on her to such an extent that I was almost ignored. More than once I told myself conscientiously how relieved I was that my disciple was on her best behaviour; it seemed all I now had to do, in order to survive the weekend with my clerical self-esteem intact, was to stick close to my wife and keep my eyes off Dido’s legs which seemed to shimmer like erotic beacons whenever I glanced in her direction. I even thought in a burst of optimism that I might soon be able to write off my embarrassingly carnal preoccupation with Dido as an example of that well-known phenomenon, the middle-aged man’s vulnerability to the charms of youth. However although I was keen to reduce my feelings to a trivial inconvenience I suspected I was still too young to be in the grip of a middle-aged malaise. Or was I? If my diagnosis was correct I could only shudder. If I was like this at forty, what would I be like at fifty? I had a fleeting picture of myself at sixty, an elderly lecher surrounded by young girls, and it was not at all a cheering vision for a churchman who had always been anxious to Get On and Travel Far.
The weekend gathering at Starmouth Court was hardly ‘smart’ in society’s sense of the word, although Lady Starmouth ensured that the atmosphere was friendly and cultivated. In addition to my disciple, who was on a seventy-two-hour leave, the guests consisted of a residentiary canon of Radbury Cathedral and his wife, a contemporary of the Earl’s from the House of Lords, a bossy lady of uncertain age who worked in London for Jewish refugees and who talked of Bishop Bell with the enthusiasm women usually reserve for film stars, an etiolated civil servant from the Ministry of Information, and the Starmouths’ youngest daughter Rosalind, who had been a debutante with Dido in 1933; her husband was now serving with the Army in India. I soon felt confident that I could hold my own in this company, even with the Canon who was at least twenty years my senior, but nonetheless I was careful to temper my growing self-confidence with a quiet unassuming manner. Alex had warned me more than once that the upper-classes disliked a newcomer who was too strident.
‘Whatever you do,’ I said to Grace as we changed for dinner on the night of our arrival, ‘don’t mention to that bossy Miss Wilkins who’s obviously in love with Bishop Bell that I may be having contact with German prisoners in the future at the new camp on Starbury Plain. Once one starts discussing the Church’s attitude towards Germans Bell’s name’s bound to come up and I don’t want to get involved in any conversation which is politically controversial.’
‘But I thought you admired Bishop Bell!’
‘Yes. Privately. But I don’t want anyone thinking I’m “soft on Germans”.’
‘I’m sure no one would think –’
‘Oh yes, they would! The trouble is that politically speaking Bell’s dynamite. Why has he been passed over for senior bishoprics? Because over and over again he’s stood up in the House of Lords to hammer away at the government and in consequence even though he’s no pacifist people are convinced he’s soft on Germans!’
‘But he’s not soft on Nazis, is he? The people who accuse him of being soft on Germans aren’t really being fair –’
‘No, but I just don’t want to get into one of those arguments about whether it’s possible in wartime conditions such as these to make a distinction between the Nazis and the non-Nazis in Germany – I don’t want to get into any argument about the morality of saturation bombing. Of course Bell’s right to champion the cause of the suffering Germans – all the Christian and Jewish refugees before the war, all the Christians and Jews now in the concentration camps, even all the Germans who are loathing every moment of Hitler’s rule but have somehow managed to stay free – and of course it’s absolutely wrong to say, as that ass Babbington-French says, that the only good German’s a dead German, but Bell shouldn’t try to tell Churchill how to run the war. It’s madness, absolute madness – as well as professional suicide – and I can’t support it. We’ve got to stay solidly behind Churchill, got to – how else are we going to survive this appalling ordeal?’
‘Oh darling, I do understand and I do agree with you – please don’t think I’m criticizing! Where would we all be now if it wasn’t for Mr Churchill? Not at Starmouth Court, that’s certain! It’s just that I can’t help admiring Bishop Bell for standing up for Christian values in such very adverse circumstances and at such personal cost to himself –’
‘Yes, he’s a hero.’ I moved to the window to stare out at the terraced lawns. ‘Charles Raven stays in his academic ivory tower and preaches pacifism,’ I said, ‘but George Bell’s out there in the chaos, battling away doggedly for God in a world gone mad. I used to admire no churchman more than Raven, but now I think … well, never mind what I think. As I said earlier, it’s best to keep quiet on the subject of the Bishop of Chichester.’
Much to my surprise Grace suddenly kissed me and said: ‘I’m glad you admire him so much. That’s the real you, isn’t it?’
‘Real me?’ I was much pleased by this unexpected gesture of affection.
‘The man behind the successful archdeacon.’
‘The successful archdeacon’s the real me too.’
‘Yes, but –’
I suddenly caught a glimpse of the time. ‘We ought to be going downstairs,’ I said, trying not to sound nervous at the thought of the grand meal ahead. ‘Are you ready?’
We hurried down to dinner.
VI
After the ladies had retired from the table, Lord Starmouth abandoned his other guests to a discussion of the Desert War – now grimmer than ever after the shattering fall of Tobruk less than three weeks before – and motioned me into a quiet corner by the sideboard.
‘Alex Jardine’s always spoken highly of you,’ he said, ‘but perhaps now is the moment when I should confess it wasn’t Jardine who prompted my wife’s invitation to you this weekend.’
‘Then I must assume it was Dr Ottershaw.’
‘As a matter of fact it wasn’t him either. Ottershaw’s been singing your praises for years, I admit, but I’m ashamed to say my wife and I ignored him. No, your cause has been promoted by Miss Tallent, Archdeacon.’
I stifled a gasp, prayed not to blush and belatedly realized that my mouth was open. I managed to close it.
‘Dear little Dido!’ said the Earl, taking advantage of the fact that his advanced years gave him a licence to be openly sentimental about young girls. ‘She showed me the letters.’
This time I was unable to stifle a gasp. My mouth had sagged open again.
‘Your letters!’ said the Earl, smiling at me benignly. ‘I really must congratulate you, Archdeacon – what an epistolary tour de force! I particularly liked your essay on the Incarnation, complete with Professor Sanday’s Modernist development of the kenotic aspect. Lucky little Dido, I thought, stumbling across a clergyman who could so ably guide her along her spiritual way.’
By a mighty effort I recovered myself sufficiently to say: ‘I’m glad my efforts met with your approval, my Lord.’
‘Well, as soon as I’d read the letters I said to my wife: “I must hear this man preach!” I look forward immensely to your sermon tomorrow – and little Dido, I might add, is in a veritable fever of anticipation.’ The Earl sighed with pleasure, though whether at the thought of my sermon or of ‘little Dido’ it was impossible to discern. ‘There’s a heart of gold underneath all that flashy behaviour,’ he confided, ‘and I’m delighted she’s become more serious lately. I suspect she’s been very unhappy. London society’s an awful business. I’m glad my daughters married quickly and didn’t have to rattle about for too long … Now tell me this, Archdeacon: do you think little Dido should marry into the Church? You may not have realized this, but she’s set her heart on it –’ That was when I finally dared to believe that Dido had been highly selective in her choice of letters ‘– and to be honest I can’t quite see her in a vicarage. I don’t think she realizes how old-fashioned the Church is in so many ways and how conventional her behaviour would have to become. She’d be better off with a land-owning politician, I think – someone who has a house in London and a few hundred acres somewhere in hunting country.’
‘Possibly so.’ A still small voice was now busy whispering in my mind that with Dido at my side no ecclesiastical prize would be unobtainable, but I knew very well that this voice came not from God but from the force which old-fashioned churchmen called the Devil and which I, as a good Modernist, recognized as the dark side of my ego. I have no wish to make excuses for the dark side of my ego, but perhaps I might be permitted to attempt to justify the desire to do as well as I possibly could in my career – the desire which my critics would unhesitatingly label as an ambition quite unbecoming to a clergyman.
Ambition, like everything else in one’s life, must be dedicated to the service of God. When I dreamed of preferment I had no wish merely to serve myself; I only wanted to get into a position where I could serve God to the very best of my God-given ability, and the truth was that my God-given ability was not for living on locusts and wild honey as a holy man in the wilderness. My talent was for administration. My archdeaconry ran like clockwork. My curates were trained, groomed and buffed to a high lustre. I had only to cast an eye on any diocesan department and bureaucratic slovenliness instantly evaporated. I could put the Bishop through his paces so painlessly that he ceased to be depressed by paperwork.
Now, I’m willing enough to admit that this gift of mine is not spiritually exciting, but I submit, with all due respect, that not every clergyman is born to be a St Francis of Assisi or a St Ignatius Loyola. My duty was not to waste time bemoaning my limitations, but to dedicate my gift, modest as it was, to God’s service. Am I deceiving myself when I speculate that God was probably glad to receive it even though it was sadly lacking in spiritual glamour? I think not. After all, someone has to run the Church of England, that historic witness to the power of the Christian faith, and since in an imperfect world a Church can hardly thrive on a diet of undiluted holiness, first-class administrators must always be essential for its welfare.
In short, I felt I could justify my ambition to travel upwards in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What I could never justify was a desire to travel that road in the company of a woman who wasn’t my wife. That was utterly reprehensible and no good clergyman would ever allow himself to sink so low – a statement which was the equivalent of saying the thought had never occurred to me because I was such a good clergyman. Wiping it from my mind with shame I resolved to forego the pleasure of making love to my wife beneath an earl’s roof that night and instead spend time polishing my sermon.
Alex had once advised me that a clergyman addressing the upper classes from the pulpit should never forget that they had received, no matter how unwillingly, a good education; he had recommended including at least one well-known quotation at the start of the sermon, as they would feel clever when they recognized the words and this self-satisfaction would put them in a benign, receptive mood. Accordingly when writing the sermon I had begun with a quotation from Browning (‘How very hard it is to be a Christian!’), glided into Tennyson (‘Ring out the darkness of the land; ring in the Christ that is to be’), brushed against T. S. Eliot (‘Each venture is a new beginning’), and bound all these lines together with one of my favourite biblical texts: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, yea and forever,’ – words which I always felt offered comfort, particularly in an unstable, war-torn world.
Starmouth Court stood in the parish of Leatherhead, a pleasant country town not far from the outer reaches of the South London suburbs, and the fine Norman church overlooked the valley of the River Mole, so called for its habit of burrowing underground in unexpected places. I wondered if the vicar minded when his distinguished parishioners imposed guest-preachers on him, but when he greeted me with unflinching cordiality I deduced he was more than ready to welcome a holiday from homiletics. The service began. The moment for the sermon arrived, and without wishing to brag I must confess that I made the most of my golden opportunity.
It was after lunch when I was cornered by Lady Starmouth. Having discovered that afternoon rests were permitted to guests, Grace had slipped away to our room in order to drum up some extra stamina and I had wandered outside for a stroll in the grounds. I wound up prowling aimlessly from terrace to terrace as I tried to pretend I had no desire to bump into Dido.
‘Archdeacon! Just the man I wanted to see,’ exclaimed my hostess, eventually ensnaring me as I loafed around the rose garden’s wishing-well. ‘Let’s sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you about Dido.’
‘Ah!’ I said. The monosyllable might have seemed unadventurous but at least it had the merit of being uncontroversial. I allowed myself to be steered to an elegant wrought-iron seat which overlooked a bed of oppressively feminine red roses.
‘I really must congratulate you, Mr Aysgarth,’ said Lady Starmouth, dark eyes very friendly, and bestowed upon me one of her most gracious smiles.
‘Oh?’ I said, dumb as any uncouth Yorkshire yokel. In panic I ordered myself to abandon these absurd monosyllables.
‘Come now, Archdeacon!’ said Lady Starmouth, effortlessly charming, subtly grand. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! Of course you’re well aware that Dido’s in love with you, and of course you realize that I’m congratulating you on your skill in dealing with her infatuation.’
‘Ah!’ I said again. No wonder Yorkshiremen had a dour reputation. All I needed to complete my imitation of the wooden-headed provincial northerner was a cloth cap. Furious with myself for being so crippled by shyness I cursed the entire English class system and tried to pretend my hostess was merely one of my middle-class parishioners.
‘I’m not sure I entirely agree with your diagnosis of Dido’s feelings, Lady Starmouth,’ I said, somehow producing a casual smile, the kind of smile a clever clergyman produces when he’s talking of worldly matters to a sophisticated older woman. ‘She’s not in love with me. She’s in love with what I represent.’
‘That’s a shrewd remark and confirms my opinion that you’re no fool. But Archdeacon, I think it’s time someone helped you by throwing a little extra light on what could prove to be an inflammable situation. The truth is, I’m afraid, that Dido’s a very naughty little girl. Oh, I concede there are extenuating circumstances – the father’s a rogue, the mother’s unpresentable, new money always produces vulgar consequences – but nevertheless one can’t escape the fact that the Tallent children were thrown into society with only hired old crones to chaperone them, and since those three girls had no education, no breeding, no proper childhood discipline and no real inkling of how they should conduct themselves, it’s hardly surprising that their social successes – based, I may say, entirely on their ability to flirt – should have resulted in scandal and tragedy. Dido’s told you the whole sad story, I presume?’
‘She did mention –’
‘Merry’s married to a compulsive gambler, Laura’s dead and Dido has a reputation for … shall we call it mischief? She makes fools of the decent men and chases the rakes. Has she talked to you about Rollo Carlton-Blake? He’s a confirmed bachelor with a penchant for loose women of the lower classes, as everyone told her years ago, but Dido took no notice of what everyone told her and I believe I know why. Au fond that girl doesn’t want to get married, Mr Aysgarth, and that’s why, consciously or unconsciously, she falls in love with men who are either impossible, like Carlton-Blake, or unavailable, like you. I once had an American friend who was like that. She too fell in love with a very promising young married clergyman and nearly ruined him – although I’m glad to say he survived and became a bishop. Such women are dangerous … But perhaps you’d already reached that conclusion and were wondering how to extricate yourself?’
‘I must be quite honest,’ I said, heart sinking as I realized I was being compelled to lie, ‘and say I’m anxious to extricate myself, but as a clergyman I can’t help but be mindful of the fact that I might be promoting a genuine spiritual awakening by writing to her. As the Bible says, one mustn’t quench the smouldering flax or break the bruised reed. Any new moral awareness should be carefully nurtured.’
‘Quite. That’s very conscientious of you, Mr Aysgarth, and indeed my husband said much the same thing when Dido resurrected her old friendship with Rosalind in order to cultivate our acquaintance on your behalf, but be warned and take care … And now,’ said Lady Starmouth, having completed her verbal disembowelling of my disciple, ‘let’s turn to pleasanter subjects. What a very charming and delightful wife you have! I do hope she’s enjoying herself.’
Immediately I suspected that this was no new subject but merely a different aspect of a certain sinister theme. ‘We’re both enjoying ourselves immensely, Lady Starmouth!’ I said, feigning a sunny-natured innocence. ‘It’s been the most memorable weekend!’
‘How delighted I am to hear you say so!’ Lady Starmouth had evidently decided that a little sunny-natured innocence of her own was now called for. ‘I’d heard a rumour that your wife doesn’t care much for social occasions.’
‘Really?’ I said surprised. ‘How extraordinary! She has a wide circle of friends and of course her parish duties – which she performs to perfection – require her to be very sociable indeed.’
‘How proud you must be of her! An excellent wife is so essential for a clergyman. I once knew a very unfortunate clergyman’s wife,’ said Lady Starmouth, again wielding her clerical memories with ruthless skill. ‘She spent her whole time weeping on a chaise-longue because she couldn’t cope with her responsibilities. The effect on the poor husband was quite devastating, but fortunately in the end he obtained the necessary domestic help – always so essential for a clergyman’s wife, don’t you think? – and I’m glad to say they lived happily ever after. More or less.’ She gave me yet another of her radiant smiles and rose to her feet. ‘I’m reminded of your sermon this morning,’ she added lightly. ‘“How very hard it is to be a Christian” – and how very hard, Browning might have added, it is to be a clergyman! But of course since you’re a clever devout man with an admirable wife who offers you every support, I’m sure you find life far easier than some of your less fortunate brethren.’ And having signalled to her new protégé that she was happy to lavish approval on him so long as he had the good sense to keep his private life in order, she drifted gracefully away from me across the rose garden.
VII
The immediate result of this scene was that I wanted to punch Alex on the nose for gossiping about me to his favourite ladyfriend, but then I calmed down and reflected that I had jumped to a conclusion which was most unlikely to be true. Devoted as Alex was to Lady Starmouth, he would hardly have disclosed to her details about my domestic troubles; any clergyman would have judged our conversation about my private life to be confidential. Reluctantly I was driven to assume that some other person – perhaps Mrs Ottershaw, commenting on Grace’s absence from the fatal palace dinner-party – had indiscreetly murmured that the Archdeacon’s wife seemed to be quietly fading away at the vicarage, and Lady Starmouth had consequently made her own shrewd deductions about what was going on in my marriage. I saw clearly that she liked Grace but doubted her stamina, that she liked me but worried that I might land up in a mess, and that she disliked Dido very much indeed but was prepared to tolerate her for a weekend in order to humour her husband.
Feeling considerably shaken by this benign but bruising encounter with my hostess, I put aside all thoughts of a chance encounter with Dido among the roses and withdrew to the house. No one was about. Padding upstairs I glided along a thick carpet past portraits of voluptuous Georgian ladies and quietly eased open the door of the bedroom in an attempt to avoid waking Grace. But she was not asleep. To my dismay, exasperation and – worst of all – anger, I found her sobbing softly into her pillow.
I shoved the door shut. Then making a belated effort to control my feelings I slumped down on the bed beside her and said in my most neutral voice: ‘So the truth is you hate it here. You were only pretending to enjoy it.’
I had thought such bleak statements might jolt her into a denial but she merely nodded her head in despair as she made a futile attempt to wipe away her tears.
‘And of course you’re missing the children.’
Another nod. More tears began to fall.
Rising to my feet I took off my jacket and hung it carefully over the back of the nearest chair; because of the heat I had changed from my archidiaconal uniform to a plain clerical suit immediately after lunch. Then I removed my collar and slumped down on the bed again. These trivial movements helped to calm me. My voice was still devoid of resentment when I said: ‘Well, it’s no good having anything but a candid talk, is it? We’ve got to try to solve this problem.’
Grace made yet another attempt to mop up her tears but by this time her eyes were red and swollen. I realized it was going to be impossible for her to go down to tea.
‘Now,’ I said, trying to take control of the situation by adopting a brisk sensible manner, ‘the first thing we have to do is to find out why you’re so unhappy. I’m not talking about your present misery. I’m talking about the more general unhappiness which I know has been afflicting you for some time. When exactly did it all begin? Was it when we found out Sandy had been conceived and you started to worry about how you were going to cope?’
I was, of course, busy laying the foundations for an unanswerable argument that we should employ a live-in nursemaid, so I was expecting her to reply ‘Yes’ to my question. It came as a considerable shock to me when she said: ‘No, this has nothing to do with Sandy. He simply complicated a situation which already existed.’
I stared at her. ‘You’re saying this unhappiness existed before Sandy was conceived in 1940?’
‘Yes, I first became aware of it when we moved to Starbridge in ’37, but now that I look back with the wisdom of hindsight I believe the seeds of my unhappiness were sown in 1932.’
‘At Willowmead? But that’s impossible! You were so happy there!’
‘Yes, but that’s when things started to go wrong.’
‘But what on earth happened at Willowmead in ’32?’
‘You met Alex Jardine. As soon as he started taking an interest in you he was a malign influence on our lives.’
I was speechless.
‘I’ve never liked Alex,’ said Grace in a rush. ‘Never. I know you were always ambitious, but I felt he stoked up your ambition so that it blazed in all the wrong directions –’
‘What on earth are you talking about? It was his sympathetic interest which gave me the confidence I needed to make the most of my God-given abilities!’ I was now very shocked indeed. ‘My dear Grace, I can hardly believe you feel like this about Alex! He’s always admired you so much and said what a perfect wife you were for a clergyman!’
‘Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I dislike him – I always feel he sees me as no more than an appropriate accessory, like a pair of gloves. Poor Carrie! No wonder they’re unhappily married.’
‘But they’re devoted to each other!’
‘I don’t think he’s devoted to her at all. Think of all the times we’ve heard him being sarcastic when poor Carrie makes one of her stupid remarks!’
‘Well, I agree there’s a large amount of surface irritation, but I’m sure that underneath he’s –’
‘Underneath I think he’s actually a rather nasty piece of work – and I’m absolutely convinced that his influence has had a disastrous effect on our marriage.’
‘But how can you possibly blame Alex for –’
‘Very easily. It was Alex who singled you out from all the other clergy in the diocese and gave you ideas above your station –’
‘Ideas above my station? Good heavens, Grace, which century are you living in? I’m not a Victorian servant!’
‘No, you’re a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make – and Alex has been constantly encouraging you, bringing you to Starbridge, giving you grand ideas by introducing you to people like the Starmouths, spoiling you with that glamorous preferment which I often think quite turned your head when you were too young to know better –’
‘Well, of course I know you’re a cut above me socially and entitled to look down on me if you please, but I must say I find your attitude offensive and your accusations insane. But then women are notoriously irrational when they’re upset and wives are notoriously peevish when they find they can’t keep up with their husbands any more –’
‘And who put us in a position where I can’t keep up with you any more? Who turned my gentle, sensitive, shy, romantic husband into someone else altogether?’
‘Nobody’s turned me into anything. People evolve, Grace! They don’t just stand still! You can’t expect me to remain as I was when we first met on the beach at St Leonards!’
Once again she dissolved into tears of despair.
‘My dearest love …’ I suddenly realized that I too was in a state of extreme emotional distress. There was a knot of tension in my stomach and I was aware of a vague nausea which threatened to become acute. In the end all I could say in a stricken voice was: ‘You don’t really think of me as just a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make, do you?’
Still crying she shook her head and flung her arms around my neck. Eventually she managed to whisper: ‘Forgive me.’
I suddenly felt I could not bear her misery a second longer, and wanting only to terminate this truly appalling scene I said unevenly: ‘I’m the one who should be asking for forgiveness. My dearest love, tell me what I can do to make you happy again – I’ll make any sacrifice for your sake, I swear it.’
Grace screwed her sodden handkerchief into a ball and gripped it so hard that her knuckles shone white. ‘Give up your archdeaconry. Give up Alex. And give up that double-faced little bitch who’s bent on ruining you.’
I was silenced. As I automatically took a pace backwards she raised her head to look me in the eyes. ‘Well, you did say,’ she said in a shaking voice, ‘that you’d make any sacrifice.’
‘I’m sorry but in my vocabulary “to make a sacrifice” doesn’t mean “to commit professional suicide”.’ I got a grip on myself and managed to add in a calm polite voice: ‘I can’t resign my position as Archdeacon; I honestly believe I’m doing the work God’s called me to do. As for Alex, I’m sorry, but I can’t give him up; it would be the height of ingratitude after all he’s done for me. I’ll make an effort not to inflict him too often on you in future, but it’s quite unthinkable that I should ever say to him –’
‘And Dido Tallent? Don’t let’s pretend, Neville. I know you find her attractive. Wives always do know when their husbands’ attention strays in that particular way.’
‘If you think for one moment that I’ve ever done anything wrong with her –’
‘No, of course I don’t think that! I’ve lived with you for sixteen years and I know better than anyone what a very good, devout man you still are in spite of everything – and that’s exactly why this present crisis is such a nightmare. I feel you’re on the brink of going to pieces in some very profound way which I’m unable to understand.’
‘Going to pieces? Me? But my dear Grace, you’re the one who appears to be disintegrating!’
‘Yes, but I’m only disintegrating because you’re going to pieces! Neville, there’s something dreadfully wrong here, I’m sure there is, and to tell you the truth I don’t really believe our fundamental problem is my unhappiness. I think my unhappiness is just a symptom of something far more complex and sinister.’
‘You’re raving.’ Turning aside from her I replaced my collar and jacket. My Bible was lying on the bedside table. Trailing my fingers across the cover I said: ‘I’m not going to pieces. There are no fundamental problems in our marriage. The only difficulty I have to resolve is how I can make you happy again, and now, by the grace of God, I’m going to work out exactly what I have to do to put matters right.’ Picking up the Bible I headed for the door, and it was only when my fingers clasped the handle that I added casually over my shoulder: ‘Of course I’ll terminate my association with Miss Tallent. I can see clearly now that I’ve been in the wrong there, and I’m very sorry if my acquaintance with her has contributed to your unhappiness.’
I made my exit. My mind was in chaos. In the hall I got in a muddle and dived down the wrong marble passage with the result that I left the house by an unfamiliar side-door. Skirting the kitchen garden I staggered through an orchard and steered myself around a succession of high yew hedges. I was just beginning to feel like one of Kafka’s characters, lost in some nightmarish metaphysical maze, when I found myself back in the rose garden – and there by the wishing-well stood my disciple, quite alone at last, dark hair combed and curled to perfection, dark eyes glowing with a bewitchingly artless delight as I found myself propelled down the grass path to her side.
‘Archdeacon dee-ah!’ she exclaimed, mimicking the drawing-room drawl of an earlier generation of society women. ‘How too, too lovely!’
‘I think not,’ I said, reaching the well. ‘Miss Tallent, I regret to have to inform you –’
‘What a ghastly phrase! That’s the sort of jargon people in trade use when they tell a customer that some important item’s going to be out of stock for six months! Now stop being so beastly pompous, Archdeacon dear, and let me tell you that your sermon this morning was quite wonderful and I was so proud of you and I felt so spiritually uplifted that I soaked two entire handkerchiefs! Isn’t life absolute heaven?’
Without a second’s hesitation I said: ‘Yes, I feel as if it’s spring again after a long dull winter!’ And having delivered myself of quite the most reckless remark any married clergyman could have uttered to a flirtatious young woman, I abandoned my Bible on the parapet of the wishing-well and impulsively clasped both her hands in mine.
FOUR (#ulink_1af801dd-59b5-57b8-8897-85504617f21c)
‘Passion cannot be eliminated: it can be kept uncontaminated, be sublimated, as the jargon of today would say.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
The clasp lasted three seconds. Then, releasing her, I found myself muttering idiotically: ‘Sorry. Most unedifying. Thoroughly unseemly,’ and those adjectives, so well-worn by an earlier generation of clergymen, added an air of bathos to my horrified reaction; with a few antique words it seemed I had turned a silly slip into melodrama. Finally, to pile indignity upon indignity, I began to blush, and turning my back on Dido I grabbed my Bible from the parapet of the wishing-well. I instinctively knew that my hands should be fully occupied before they succumbed to a second catastrophic urge to wander.
‘Dearest Stephen!’ said Dido enthralled. ‘Why on earth are you apologizing? I can’t see anything wrong with an affectionate hand-clasp between friends!’
All I could say was: ‘You promised not to call me by that name.’ I was still unable to look at her.
‘Archdeacon dear, please don’t be so upset! Of course I adore you passionately, but why should sex ruin our beautiful friendship? I’d never go to bed with any man unless I was married to him, and as I can’t marry you, you’re absolutely safe. Meanwhile you can have no possible desire to go to bed with me – how could you when your wife’s so much prettier and nicer than I am? – so that takes care of beastly old sex, doesn’t it, and leaves us free to enjoy our glorious romantic friendship as you guide me along my spiritual way!’
‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘before I met you I’d have thought it impossible that a woman should be both very sophisticated and very naïve. May I congratulate you on achieving such a remarkable paradox? But I’m afraid the time has come when you must set your naïvety aside.’
‘Oh, I adore it when you’re being so stern and austere! Now Archdeacon dear, stop looking as if you’d like to spank me and calm down for a moment. I’m not in the least naïve; I’m the last word in down-to-earth common sense. If I don’t misbehave with you – and I’ve no intention of doing anything which would wreck our beautiful friendship – how can you misbehave with me? Adultery’s a two-way street.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Not entirely. Theologically speaking –’
‘Oh good, I did so hope there’d be a fascinating theological angle – how delicious!’
‘Miss Tallent –’
‘Dearest Archdeacon, don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone now so that you can glue together your shattered nerves, and I shall keep a chaste distance from you for the rest of the weekend, but when you get home do write and explain all the theological aspects of adultery!’
‘I won’t have time. I’m leaving on Wednesday for my holiday in the Lake District.’
‘Will you send me a postcard?’
‘No, that would be quite improper.’
‘But you’ll pray for me!’
I said in a voice of steel: ‘I pray regularly for all the souls in my care,’ but to my horror I realized I was smiling at her.
‘Well, so long as God’s brought into the situation we can’t go far wrong, can we?’ said Dido, smiling radiantly in return.
‘I think you’d better leave, Miss Tallent, before I really do give way to the urge to spank you.’
With a laugh she danced away from me across the rose garden.
II
Collapsing on the wrought-iron garden-seat, where earlier Lady Starmouth had declared with such incomparable style how very hard it was to be a clergyman, I clutched my Bible as if it were a life-belt and forced myself to face the unspeakable. I had fallen in love. Hitherto I had believed that only irrational women could succumb to the full force of an amour fou, yet here I was, collapsed in a heap, almost asphyxiated by the reek of red roses, and shivering with desire from head to toe. This was no middle-aged inconvenience. This was a passion of the prime of life. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I was appalled.
Automatically I started recalling my seven-year courtship of Grace, but although I had embarked on this period of my life in a fever of calf love my feelings had matured into a solid reliable devotion and I had never experienced the suspension of my rational faculties. On the contrary, I had plotted my marriage campaign with military precision, calculating down to the last farthing when I would be able to afford the trip to the altar, scheming how I might win my future father-in-law’s consent while I was still so young, rehearsing the necessary speech to my mother until I was word-perfect. By no remote stretch of the imagination could I describe myself as having been demented with love. In fact in the light of my present madness I was almost tempted to wonder if I had ever really loved Grace at all – but that was an insane thought which only indicated the disintegration of my reason. Of course I had loved Grace. I had adored her. She had been exactly the kind of wife I knew I had to have.
‘Such a fetching girl!’ said my mother benignly in my memory. ‘So quiet and refined – and with a hundred and fifty pounds a year of her own! Darling Neville, I couldn’t be more pleased …’
The memory terminated. Wiping the sweat from my forehead I pulled myself together and resolved to fight this monstrous insanity which had assailed me. Why was I loafing amidst the nauseating stench of roses and thinking of my mother? That was hardly constructive behaviour. I had to start planning how I could cover up the disaster as efficiently as a cat burying a mess, and while I was engaged in this vital task I had to pretend to the whole world – but especially to Grace – that I was my sane, normal self.
That was the moment when I remembered our forty-eight-hour second honeymoon which was due to take place before we embarked on our family holiday. Common sense, liberally garnished with a strong instinct for self-preservation, now told me that this was not the time, in the sixteen-year-old history of my perfect marriage, to spend forty-eight hours entirely alone with my wife. My most sensible course of action was to hide from her among the children as I shored up my defences and made myself impregnable to the violent assaults of my irrationality.
Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees I clasped my hands, squeezed my eyes shut and said to God silently in desperation: ‘Lord, help me, save me, protect me so that I can consecrate myself afresh to your service.’ Then I waited, trying not to feel as if I were whistling in the dark, but I experienced no easing of my fear and anxiety. Evidently my prayer was not going to be answered in any simple straightforward way, and at last, wiping the sweat again from my forehead, I nerved myself to return to the house.
III
‘Darling,’ I said to Grace as I entered the bedroom and found her struggling into an afternoon frock, ‘I feel I’ve been at fault in failing to realize how very unhappy you are when you’re separated from the children. Why don’t I start my task of making you happier by suggesting that we forget our little holiday alone together this week? Instead of leaving for Manchester on Wednesday we’ll travel north with all the children on Saturday and go straight to the cottage.’
She was pathetically grateful. ‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind –’
‘Say no more. It’s settled.’ Having given her a kiss I eyed the frock and said: ‘You don’t really want to go down to tea, do you? I’ll say you have a migraine.’
‘Well, I know I look a fright after all those tears, but I hate the thought of putting you in an awkward position –’
‘That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should be happy. Are you sure you even want to go away on our family holiday? Perhaps you’d rather just stay at home and rest.’
‘Don’t be silly, I could never rest at home – there’s always so much to be done! No, I can hardly wait for the holiday – although now that we don’t have to abandon the children with Winifred I do wish it wasn’t too late to alter our plans again and go to Devon as usual.’
‘It’ll be fun to have a change.’
‘I’m not very good at changes,’ said Grace.
I thought: And not very good at fun either.
But that comment was contemptible and I despised myself for letting it loose in my consciousness.
It was then that I first began to have misgivings about our family holiday in the Lake District, but I had no premonition of disaster. I was no mystical dreamer, and as a good Modernist I didn’t believe in clairvoyance.
IV
Nine weeks after that fatal dinner-party at the Bishop’s palace Starbridge remained intact, but Canterbury had been battered as a reprisal for the RAF’s formidable raid on Cologne at the end of May. In both cities the cathedrals remained standing, monuments to hope in a world demented with the lust for destruction. Hitler, bogged down in Russia but boosted by Rommel’s victorious manœvrings in the Desert, had apparently in a fit of absent-mindedness turned over the Baedeker page which described Starbridge, but it was too soon to take our escape for granted, and meanwhile the ruins of Bath, York, Norwich, Exeter and Canterbury served to remind us of the nightmare which could still come true.
‘How wonderful it’ll be to escape from all thought of air-raids for two weeks!’ said Grace, but of course there was no real escape from the war. At the start of the school holidays, following advice from the Government, I warned the children about the dangers of playing with long metal tubes, metal balls with handles, canisters which looked like thermos flasks and glass bottles of every description. It seemed unlikely that we would come across unexploded bombs in the Lake District, but the Luftwaffe sometimes jettisoned their cargo in unexpected places, and I felt nowhere in England was completely safe.
Meanwhile on a more mundane level Grace had been struggling with the bureaucratic regulations attending the issue of the new ration-book which was to replace at the end of the month the three ration-books already in use. Rationing was on the increase. The children were aghast to hear that the supply of sweets was about to be limited, and as soon as the older boys returned from school they rushed out to splurge their pocket-money on tuppenny-ha’penny blocks of ration chocolate in defiance of the slogan ONLY ASK FOR IT IF YOU REALLY NEED IT. Neither Grace nor I had the heart to stop them. All chocolates and sweets were being removed from the automatic machines, and at fêtes and funfairs sweets were forbidden to be donated as prizes. The heavy hand of wartime government was closing upon us ever more tightly for the big squeeze. SAVE BREAD, we were exhorted and given fifty different ways of serving potatoes. IS YOUR PURCHASE REALLY NECESSARY? we were repeatedly asked, and when we arrived at the station to begin our journey north the first poster we saw was the Railway Executive Committee’s stern directive: DO NOT TRAVEL. I at once felt guiltily that we should have stayed at home after all.
To my dismay I discovered that in a new burst of austerity the restaurant car had been withdrawn from the train, but fortunately Grace – perfect as always – had foreseen this danger and packed a picnic basket. The children alleviated the tedium of the journey by guzzling biscuits which for some reason were one of the few foods still in plentiful supply.
I mention these details of life on the Home Front not merely to underline the essential dreariness of the war, punctuated as it was for us by the almost inconceivable horror of random murder by travel guide, but to show that I was living in an atmosphere of austerity and repression which drove better men than I to seek refuge in the insanity of a grand passion. I’m not offering an excuse for myself, and I’m certainly not suggesting my madness had its origins in a two-ounce sweet ration and a shortage of bread, but when deprived in one area of life human beings tend to compensate themselves in another, and if a fully accurate picture of my crisis is to be drawn, an explanation of my insanity must include the drab stress of existence on the Home Front.
A clergyman with a wife and five children can seldom afford the luxury of taking his family on holiday to a hotel, and even when the children were fewer in number I had found it less awkward as well as more economical to rent a neat, clean, spacious cottage near Woolacombe in Devon for our annual sojourn by the sea. I had discovered this idyllic retreat while exploring the advertising columns of the Church Gazette, and when in May I had embarked on a search there for a cottage in the Lake District, it had never occurred to me that I might not repeat my earlier success. Having spotted an advertisement which lyrically described an appropriate haven for my large family I had written without a second thought to the owner to secure a booking.
When we eventually arrived at this idyllic retreat after an exhausting journey on an erratic train, a bone-jolting excursion in a decrepit bus and a muddy walk up a lonely lane, I realized in rather less than three seconds that I had brought my family to a rural slum. The key lay under the front doormat, just as the landlord had promised, but no other facility matched my expectations. Fortunately, since it was summer, the evening was light; the prospect of being obliged to master oil lamps and an old-fashioned kitchen range was bad enough, but in the dark it would have been intolerable. I can never understand why people become dewy-eyed and sentimental about the past. Life without gas, electricity and decent plumbing must have been one long unromantic round of time-consuming inconvenience.
Primrose, stupefied by tiredness, began to wail that she was hungry. Christian, after a speedy reconnaissance, reported: ‘There appears to be no lavatory. Shall I start digging a hole in the garden?’ Grace said: ‘I think I have a migraine coming on,’ and sank down on the nearest chair. Sandy, who had been asleep in her arms, was woken by this abrupt manœuvre; he promptly started to scream. James said: ‘I don’t want to go to the lavatory in the garden,’ and Norman commented gloomily: ‘I wish we were in Devon.’ Setting down the heavy suitcases which I had been carrying, I dredged up my last ounce of strength, tossed off a quick prayer for divine support and prepared to perform any miracle not contrary to the laws of physics.
Grace was ordered to lie down on the moth-eaten material which covered the sofa. Christian was dispatched to make a second attempt to find something which resembled a lavatory. Norman and James were sent upstairs to make the beds. Primrose was given an apple, left over from our picnic lunch, and put in charge of Sandy. In the picnic-basket I also found a half-eaten roll which I stuffed into Sandy’s mouth to keep him quiet. Then having assembled some logs from a pile which I found outside the back door I lit the kitchen range with the aid of an old newspaper which I found on the filthy floor of the larder. As I morosely watched the feeble smouldering of the logs I tried not to remember that a mere week ago I had been dining in the height of luxury at Starmouth Court.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Grace, struggling nobly from the sofa.
‘No, you stay exactly where you are.’ I filled the kettle, found the ration we had brought with us and unearthed a teapot from a cupboard which stank. Meanwhile Christian had returned to report the existence of a privy and Norman was shouting from upstairs that there were no sheets but plenty of blankets. We appeared to be making progress.
‘Take the suitcases upstairs and start unpacking,’ I said to Christian. ‘Do Sandy’s first.’
‘That infant smells as bad as the privy,’ remarked Christian, who was fastidious.
‘Why do you think I told you to unpack his bag first? We need a clean nappy.’ I had taken a plate from the dresser and was now busy extracting some spam from a large tin.
‘I’ll find the nappy,’ said Grace, making a new effort to struggle to her feet.
Sandy started to roar again.
‘I simply can’t understand,’ observed Christian languidly, ‘why infanticide isn’t more common.’
‘What’s infanticide?’ said Primrose as Christian and Grace trailed away upstairs together.
‘Baby-killing, my love.’ I opened two large cans of baked beans just as the kettle showed signs that it might one day come to the boil. Sandy was still roaring but when I gave him a baked bean he spat it out. Turning back to the table I found that the spam was being investigated by a mouse. Without thinking I snarled: ‘Bugger off, you bally blighter!’ – a response which avoided blasphemy (just) but was hardly a fitting exclamation for a clergyman. In a paroxysm of rage I hurled a spoon, but the animal merely frisked down the table-leg and scampered to safety across the floor. Primrose screamed. Sandy stopped crying and immediately began to chant: ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ with zest. (Why is it that small children have such an unfailing talent for picking up bad language?) Seconds later Christian, Norman and James, all waving nappies, clattered down the stairs to inform me that Grace had had to rest again as she was feeling faint.
‘Well, don’t just stand there waving nappies as if they were Union Jacks! Get some cotton wool and the talcum powder – and some lavatory paper might be useful too, if one can judge by the smell –’
‘There isn’t any lavatory paper,’ said Christian.
‘Nonsense, there must be.’
‘I don’t feel very hungry,’ said Norman, eyeing the spam. ‘This conversation’s putting me off my food.’
‘Rubbish – stop being so feeble!’ I said with a robust good humour which bordered on the saintly. ‘Is that the spirit which built the Empire?’
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘I think the mouse went to the lavatory on the table.’
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ shouted Sandy.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Norman, bolting for the back door.
‘Who taught Sandy to say bugger?’ demanded Christian in delight as he searched the kitchen cupboards for lavatory paper.
‘Daddy, did you hear me? I said: “I think the mouse – ”’
‘Yes, my love. Pass me that rag hanging by the sink, please.’
‘Neville.’ Looking up I saw Grace, white as a winding-sheet, in the doorway. She was carrying the cotton wool and the talcum powder. ‘I’ll change Sandy.’
‘Very well,’ I said, deciding that this was the moment when I would be ungrateful if I continued to refuse my wife’s noble offers of help, ‘but afterwards you’re to go straight to bed – and let’s hope there are no bedbugs.’
‘I simply can’t understand how the Church Gazette could have allowed –’
‘It’s not the fault of the Church Gazette. One can’t expect them to inspect all the properties they advertise. The fault was mine for not immediately realizing that “old-world charm” meant “no modern conveniences”.’
‘Gaudeamus igitur!’ cried Christian, flourishing a roll of toilet paper.
‘Christian, stop behaving like a precocious undergraduate and stir the baked beans. James, go outside and see if Norman’s finished being sick.’
‘Is Norman ill?’ said Grace alarmed.
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘what are bedbugs?’
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ shouted Sandy with zest.
Grace reeled. ‘Sandy! Christian, did you –’
‘No, Mother, not guilty, absolutely not. I say, these beans look a bit odd –’
‘Here’s Norman,’ said James. ‘I think he might be dying.’
‘I feel terrible,’ said Norman, looking like death.
‘It’s always so metaphysically interesting,’ mused Christian, very much the Winchester scholar, ‘when feelings so precisely mirror appearances.’
‘Shut up, you great big beastly brute!’ yelled Norman.
‘Enough!’ I barked as Grace started swaying in the doorway. ‘Grace and Norman – go to bed at once before you both pass out. Christian, make the tea. James, start spooning out the baked beans. Primrose, bring over those plates from the dresser. Sandy –’ I sighed and reached for the toilet paper. There were times when even I, a devout clergyman dedicated to preaching the joys of family life, was obliged to admit that being a husband and father could leave a lot to be desired.
V
‘Why can’t Sandy learn to do without nappies?’ asked Primrose later when the spam and baked beans had been consumed. ‘I gave up nappies when I was much younger than he is.’
‘All babies are different, my love.’
‘You may think you’re clever,’ said Christian to Primrose, ‘but I walked, talked, gave up nappies and translated The Iliad well before my first birthday.’
‘Show-off!’ retorted Primrose, who was a girl of spirit.
‘Did he really, Daddy?’ said James worried.
‘No, of course not!’
James who was nine, had begun to realize that he was not so clever as his older brothers, and I knew he was mortified that he never came top of his class. Unlike Christian and Norman, he would never lighten my financial burdens by winning a Winchester scholarship, but I thought in the end he would be happy enough; he was popular with his contemporaries and keen on cricket. In some ways he was the son with whom I felt most at ease. His sunny nature made him restful and his normality provided a soothing contrast to the intellectual pyrotechnics displayed by his more gifted brothers. In my judgement he was on course to becoming a thoroughly decent, presentable young man and I was very pleased with him. So much for James.
Primrose, now sitting next to me in her privileged position as the Only Daughter, was approaching her fifth birthday and would one day, I thought, prove to be a brilliant conversationalist; already she was fascinated by language and never missed an opportunity to expand her vocabulary. Since for a woman intelligence is less important than looks I spent much time worrying that she might wind up a blue-stocking, and it was with relief that I noted she showed signs of turning into a delectable blue-eyed blonde. I foresaw a splendid career ahead of her as a wife and mother, a prospect which filled me with paternal pride. So much for Primrose.
Sandy, now dozing against my chest, was going to be very clever, perhaps even as clever as Christian. When he was not indulging in his fondness for vulgar language he was capable of stringing together sentences of extraordinary quality for a child who was still little more than a baby. His latest masterpiece, delivered that day on the train, was: ‘Peter Rabbit has great sartorial elegance but I prefer the coat worn by Benjamin Bunny.’ Of course Christian had taught him the phrase ‘sartorial elegance’, but Sandy’s remarkable achievement lay not only in pronouncing the words but in using them correctly. I judged a Winchester scholarship inevitable and was already basking in delight. So much for Sandy.
Norman, now upstairs as he battled with his malaise, was twelve years old and engaged in a nonstop contest to prove he was as clever as his older brother. If James was the son with whom I felt most relaxed, then Norman was the son with whom I could most obviously sympathize; I too had spent my childhood in a nonstop contest with my older brother. It was a contest which I had won but which I suspected Norman was destined to lose, although he remained far too clever to give me cause for anxiety. He never failed to receive glowing school reports which made me sigh with satisfaction. So much for Norman.
Finally there was Christian, now sitting opposite me at the far end of the table. What can I say to convey the unique quality of this, the most extraordinary member of my family? I could never write ‘so much for Christian’ at the end of a brief description of him, because no brief description could convey more than the bare bones of his personality. Perhaps I can best capture the aura of glamour he exuded by stating that Christian was the idealized son which men so often dream of fathering but so rarely ever do. Christian was the self I would like to have been, a genetic miracle, my own self glorified. Exceptionally clever, blessed with the gift of reducing every classics master he encountered to a stunned admiration, talented at games, popular with his contemporaries, he was fifteen years old, still growing and evidently destined to be not only charming, witty and accomplished but tall, dark and handsome.
I regarded him with a deep, fierce, utterly private devotion which I was quite unable to articulate. I could be demonstrative with Primrose because men were allowed to show affection towards their daughters, but with my sons I had a horror of indulging in any behaviour which might be judged sentimental. The kindly authority I exercised had never included barbarous physical punishment, but no matter how much I wanted to demonstrate my affection I was unable to do more than produce an air of mild good will. In Yorkshire we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves – and perhaps too I could never quite forget Uncle Willoughby declaring in 1909 that a sentimental father who slobbered over his male offspring was the kind of fool who inevitably wound up in an early grave.
‘Daddy …’
I returned to 1942 with a jolt. ‘Yes, James?’
‘After the war ends, what will happen to the newspapers? There won’t be any more news, will there?’
‘There’ll be blank pages edged in black,’ said Christian, ‘to mark the utter cessation of journalism. But who says the war’s going to end? As far as I can see it’s all set to go on for ever.’
‘Nonsense!’ I said roundly. ‘Think of Napoleon! Once he attacked Russia he was finished – the British army merely had to mop him up at Waterloo.’
‘I wish the British army would start mopping up Rommel in the Desert.’
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘why aren’t you in the army?’
‘The Bishop said he couldn’t spare me from my work in Starbridge. Not all clergymen are called to serve God in the army, even in wartime.’
Christian said suddenly: ‘Do you ever regret abandoning your pacifism after Munich?’
‘Sometimes. I still believe pacifism is intellectually consistent with Liberal Protestantism, but unfortunately Herr Hitler doesn’t leave much room for intellectual consistency.’
‘I’m beginning to think it’s Liberal Protestantism which doesn’t leave much room for intellectual consistency. How can you play down evil and maintain your optimistic view of the universe when you’re confronted with a catastrophe like Nazism? I mean, what do you do with someone like Adolf Hitler? You can’t simply pat him on the head, cite the compassion and forgiveness of Christ and say cosily: “Go thy way and sin no more!”’
I was much taken aback. I had to remind myself that fifteen-year-old adolescents were notorious for questioning their parents’ views. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what you do with someone like Hitler,’ I said abruptly. ‘In practical terms you fight him. And in spiritual terms you pray for him and remember that there’s a divine spark in every human being.’
‘But isn’t that hopelessly idealistic? Isn’t that out of touch with the reality of the evil going on here? Try talking to the Jews about Hitler’s divine spark!’
‘Idealism is also a reality – the reality to which we must all continually aspire.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Christian, I’ve had a long hard day, I’ve wound up in a hovel and quite frankly I’m not in the mood to discuss theology. Can we continue this debate later?’
‘I’m sorry, I just wanted to have a real conversation with you for once.’
I stared at him. ‘But we always have real conversations!’
‘No, they’re usually about Latin and Greek and how well I’m doing at school.’
‘Well, what’s so unreal about all your splendid successes?’ I stood up with one arm encircling Sandy and held out my free hand to Primrose. ‘Bedtime, my love,’ I said to her, ‘and let’s hope that tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep we’ll find our holiday taking a turn for the better.’
‘It could hardly get much worse,’ said Christian.
But he was wrong.
VI
Norman’s condition showed no improvement the next morning. Grace – perfect as always – had remembered to bring a thermometer, and when we discovered he had a high fever I trekked to the nearby village in search of a doctor. Influenza was diagnosed. Grace was obliged to spend most of her time caring for the invalid. The weather was not only wet but cold. The younger children quickly became fractious.
It was on the fifth day after our arrival, just as Norman’s condition began to improve, that Grace fainted. Rushing upstairs in response to Norman’s frightened yell for help, I found she had collapsed on the bedroom floor.
‘I haven’t felt well for some time,’ she whispered later, ‘but I was afraid you’d think it was the last straw if I couldn’t cope.’
When the doctor returned he ordered her sternly to stay in bed. Afterwards he told me that she had probably made matters worse by ignoring all the signs that she had caught Norman’s influenza.
But Grace did not have influenza. She had caught a chill after being soaked on a shopping expedition – it could never have happened in Devon where the village shop stood next door to our cottage – and now she was suffering from pneumonia.
At eleven o’clock that night she began to have difficulty with her breathing. On arrival the doctor took one look at her and said: ‘She must go to hospital at once.’ He made no attempt to summon an ambulance. He drove us to the hospital at Keswick in his own car. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that Christian was old enough to be left in charge at the cottage.
Soon after she was admitted to hospital she became delirious and the pneumonia was finally diagnosed. I telephoned her sister Winifred in Manchester. To my great relief she at once offered to come to my rescue. I was unable to leave the hospital, and although Christian was capable of taking charge of four children for a short time I could hardly leave him without assistance for more than twenty-four hours.
The day passed. Winifred arrived and could barely bring herself to leave the hospital. I had to remind her sharply that if she wanted to help her sister she should attend to the children. Winifred cried but left. More time passed. The sympathetic nurses offered me cups of tea but I could hardly drink. Eating proved quite impossible.
For some time Grace was unconscious but in the evening when the sun was setting far away in the other world beyond the hospital walls, she opened her eyes and said clearly: ‘I can’t go on. But I must. She’d never care for the children.’
For a long moment I was so appalled, so overpowered by my guilt and my shame that I was unable to speak. Then leaning forward I clumsily clasped her hands as if I could somehow infuse her with strength, and stammered: ‘You mustn’t say such things. You mustn’t even think them. I love you and no one else but you and you’re going to live.’
She died a minute later.
FIVE (#ulink_1af801dd-59b5-57b8-8897-85504617f21c)
‘Passion may be dangerous, but for all that it is the driving-force of life …’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
Instinctively I knew that my best chance of maintaining an immaculate self-control was to organize the chaotic aftermath of the tragedy with the efficiency of the born administrator. I dealt with the hospital personnel. I made the necessary urgent telephone calls. I drew up a list of the other essential matters which required my attention. I prepared a short speech to deliver to my children and memorized it; I even bought extra handkerchiefs to mop up all the tears.
After dealing with the children I dealt with the local vicar who called in performance of his Christian duty, and I dealt with Winifred who by this time was well-nigh prostrated by her shock and grief. Having drafted the notices for The Times and the Daily Telegraph I wrote the innumerable necessary letters and decided which of Grace’s favourite hymns should be included in the funeral service. I was ceaselessly active. Sleep was shunned as far as possible because I was afraid of what might happen when I could no longer control my thoughts. From past experience I knew that if one wanted to preserve one’s sanity in adverse circumstances one had to ring down the metaphorical curtain in one’s mind in order to hide the horrors which had taken place onstage, and how could one be sure of keeping the curtain down once sleep had impaired one’s ability to play the stage manager?
After a while I realized that the curtain was trying to rise even when I was fully conscious, and I became engaged in a deadly struggle to keep it in place. It tried to rise when Christian stammered: ‘How could God have allowed such a dreadful thing to happen?’ and although I embarked on an answer I found I was unable to complete it as I would have wished. I did manage to say: ‘In a world where nothing bad ever happened we’d be mere puppets smiling at the end of manipulated strings,’ but then the curtain began to rise in earnest and I could not speak of the great freedom to be, to love and, inevitably, to suffer which made us not unfeeling puppets but human beings forever vulnerable to tragedy. Instead all I could say was: ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ as I struggled to nail my curtain to the ground.
But no sooner was the curtain back in place than Winifred was exclaiming in a burst of detestable feminine emotion: ‘Neville, you don’t deserve this – you were such a devoted husband, and everyone always said what a wonderful example you and Grace were of a truly Christian marriage!’
Once more the curtain started to rise and once more I managed to grab the hem before it could sail out of reach. I said woodenly: ‘Tragedy’s so difficult to discuss, isn’t it? Better not to try,’ and with a mighty effort of will I heaved the curtain down, but I was to have no respite. The curtain was developing a sinister life of its own.
‘Are you sure Mummy’s happy with Jesus?’ said Primrose. ‘No matter how nice Jesus is, I think she’d be happier with us,’ and a second later my nurse Tabitha was saying in 1909: ‘Your Pa’s gone to heaven to be with Jesus.’ Then in my memory I heard Willy cry outraged: ‘How dare he!’ while Emily asked: ‘When will Jesus let us have him back?’ A world had ended then and a world had ended now, the new tragedy eliding with all my most terrible memories as the curtain began to go up and up and up … But I hung on to the hem with my last ounce of strength and doggedly refused to let go.
The funeral service was held at St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate before the private interment at the cemetery, and when the Bishop himself offered to help I was spared the task of finding another clergyman to take the service I would have been unable to conduct. The ancient church, originally founded for the benefit of the workmen who were building the Cathedral, was packed with mourners, and the small graveyard too overflowed with those wishing to pay their respects.
The Bishop was superb. Dr Ottershaw had his episcopal shortcomings; as his Archdeacon I knew them better than anyone, but he was a good, decent man, and in his goodness and his decency his Christian message of hope lightened the darkness which must always surround the mystery of suffering. There were no sentimental clichés from Dr Ottershaw, only profound religious truths expressed with exquisite simplicity, and I felt not only relieved but grateful that my children were at last able to hear the message which my fear of emotional breakdown had prevented me from giving them.
It occurred to me that my disciple would have soaked at least one handkerchief as she listened to the Bishop, but of course I could not allow myself to think of Dido.
I glimpsed her before the service and she spoke to me afterwards, but only the briefest of conversations was possible. After the exchange of greetings she merely said: ‘I’ll write, I promise. I was too upset to write before,’ and as she disappeared I saw her eyes shone with tears. Perhaps she was merely feeling emotional in the wake of Dr Ottershaw’s address, but perhaps too she was temporarily overcome with all manner of ambiguous feelings.
After the concluding rites in the cemetery I continued to deal with everyone who required my attention until at last, much later, I found myself alone with my brother and sister in the vicarage kitchen as my curtain once more tried to rise. I was struggling fiercely with the hem but to my terror I realized it was sliding out of my grasp. I thought: I mustn’t look at the stage, can’t look, won’t look, no one can make me look. Then I suddenly realized I had spoken the words aloud. As Willy and Emily looked at me appalled I muttered: ‘Sorry. Mind wandering. Very tired,’ and covered my face with my hands.
Emily said drearily: ‘I’ll make you some tea.’
‘For God’s sake, woman!’ exploded Willy. ‘He’s already drunk enough of your tea to float Noah’s Ark! Neville, where the hell’s the bloody whisky?’
‘There isn’t any. I don’t drink spirits.’
‘Well, all I can say is it’s about time you started!’
‘Really, Will!’ said Emily scandalized. ‘What would Mother say if she were alive!’
I said: ‘I don’t want to talk about Mother.’
‘Neither do I,’ agreed Willy. ‘Let’s keep the old girl buried six feet deep or else I’m going to hit the bottle in the biggest possible way.’
‘Really, Will!’ said Emily again in her primmest voice. ‘How can you talk like that after what happened to Father!’
I said: ‘I don’t want to talk about Father.’
‘Good God, Em, you don’t believe all that bloody rubbish about Father dying of drink, do you? That was just a vile slander put out by Uncle Willoughby!’
Leaping to my feet I shouted: ‘I don’t want to talk about Uncle Willoughby!’ But then I collapsed in my chair and once more covered my face with my hands.
Willy said: ‘I’m going to the off-licence to buy some whisky.’
Emily said: ‘I’m going to make tea.’
Recognizing their desire to offer comfort I was soothed by their careful avoidance of emotion, and after a while I thought I was strong enough to drag down the curtain again. But I was wrong. I was so weak that I glanced at the stage first, and there waiting for me in 1909 was Uncle Willoughby, rich, robust and ruthless as he hitched up his coat-tails to warm his backside at the parlour fire. ‘… and I’ll not say one word against your father, poor miserable idle stupid fellow that he was, because it’s not right to speak ill of the dead, even when a weak selfish thoughtless fellow with a wife and three children has the intolerable effrontery to the in penury. So all I’ll say is this: if you two lads want to save yourselves from hell and damnation –’
‘Here’s your tea, Nev,’ said Emily in 1942.
‘– if you two lads want to save yourselves from hell and damnation,’ bawled Uncle Willoughby, outshouting her in 1909, ‘and save yourselves from the miserable fate of winding up a failure in a coffin before you’re forty, you’ll work and you’ll work and you’ll work until you’ve dug yourself out of this shameful black pit, and you’ll never forget – never as long as you live – that there’s only one road to salvation and that’s this: you’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to stay out of the coffin – you’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to be happy and safe – you’ve got to go chasing the prizes in order to Get On and Travel Far …’
‘Poor Nev,’ said Emily in 1942. ‘You can shed a tear if you like. I’ll look the other way and afterwards we can pretend it never happened.’
‘For God’s sake!’ I shouted and blundered out of the kitchen into my study. Willy arrived five minutes later with the whisky and banged on the door until I let him in.
‘Em driving you round the bend? How her husband stands all that tea I don’t know. What a mystery marriage is, but of course I’m just a bachelor schoolmaster who observes society’s mating customs from afar … Do you remember when you said to me on the beach at St Leonards all those years ago: “I’m going to marry the perfect girl and have the perfect family and live happily ever after”? I’d never even considered getting married, and yet there you were, seventeen years old, with that misty look in your eyes, the look of the dyed-in-the-wool romantic, the look Father always wore when he read us “The Charge of the Light Brigade” –’
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Susan Howatch
The author’s most famous and well-loved work, the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century.Neville Aysgarth, archdeacon, and right-hand man of the Bishop of Starbridge, has spent his life chasing worldly success. In 1942 he has a perfect wife, a perfect family and a perfect future in the Church of England - all ultimate prizes. Then Aysgarth meets an attractive young socialite and is soon dangerously and chaotically involved in adultery, hypocrisy and obsession. Tormented and on the brink of ruin, he must at last face the truth about himself, his marriage and the mysterious past he cannot discuss as he chases the most vital prize of all - his own survival…Witty, wise and compelling, Ultimate Prizes powerfully explores both the temptations of sex and success, and the ultimate themes of sin and salvation.
Susan Howatch
ULTIMATE PRIZES
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_ff83ba5d-e828-5155-ba43-056ee5c5c0cb)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1989
Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1989
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constrains in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006496915
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007396429
Version: 2018-10-08
PRAISE (#ulink_d1af7714-207d-5717-9c11-d56793a7cd27)
From the reviews:
‘This superbly intricate ecclesiastical tale … irresistible’
Church Times
‘A fascinating story’
Publishers Weekly
‘Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind … everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern’
New Woman
‘A mesmerising storyteller’
Daily Telegraph
‘One of the most original novelists writing today’
Cosmopolitan
‘She is a deft storyteller, and her writing has depth, grace and pace’
Sunday Times
CONTENTS
COVER (#u3012be30-ba6a-588a-9a50-68ed1f0ae6d5)
TITLE PAGE (#u95f8b38f-edbe-5ef4-9ed8-944f26942c10)
COPYRIGHT
PRAISE (#ulink_dd8eaa0b-ca93-5742-880d-58559a3cfeaa)
PART ONE: CRISIS
ONE (#ulink_fb25bd07-7a2a-5c95-86e2-697454f102b9)
TWO (#ulink_2d83b690-2208-5a24-8c5e-5cf5dad10f8f)
THREE (#ulink_b4672f74-72e1-5736-be94-c514307d1ce9)
FOUR (#ulink_fabe8b98-dc86-5b55-8b11-44d8ac4ef7a1)
FIVE (#ulink_18553d62-064b-5ef8-9396-0cdaca444ef5)
SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
PART TWO: UNDER JUDGEMENT
ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE: SALVATION
ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE CRISIS (#ulink_b211bcf6-4aea-599d-835b-10c35961fdd6)
‘It is in the failure to achieve integration … that personalities too often make shipwreck, either breaking down (physically or mentally) under the strain of conflict or abandoning any real desire for an effective synthesis.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge,1932–1950
The Creator Spirit
ONE (#ulink_13591f5d-11ba-5a85-a2f4-3c8f8a7871d2)
‘Many of us have a hard fight to control our passions …’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
The Creator Spirit
I
The most appalling feature of the morning after I nearly committed adultery was my lack of surprise. I was scared out of my wits, racked by regret and almost prostrated by shame, but a virtuous amazement was notably absent. For some time my life had resembled a ball of wool kidnapped by a kitten, and now, after the preliminary unravelling, I was apparently experiencing the start of the inevitable tangled mess.
As we all know, adultery is far from uncommon, particularly in springtime and particularly among people in the prime of life, but it happens to be an activity which disqualifies me from my job; if a clergyman commits adultery he becomes spiritually disabled, unfit for further service. Even in that spring of 1945 when the entire population of England was no doubt gripped with the desire to celebrate the war’s end by wallowing in corybantic copulation, clergymen were still expected to keep their minds on God and their eyes on their wives. And why not? In my opinion such exemplary behaviour is the least that the Church of England should expect of its men. Everyone knows that all the best clergymen live in domestic bliss and never have an adulterous thought in their lives.
I was one of the best clergymen. I was forty-three years old and had already risen to a rank usually occupied by men in their fifties and sixties. ‘What is an archdeacon?’ my Germans had asked in their prison-camp on Starbury Plain, and when I had begun to explain how the diocese of Starbridge was divided into two archdeaconries, one of the Grade C men, the unrepentant Nazis, had exclaimed impressed: ‘Ah, so you’re the Bishop’s Gauleiter!’ I was sure I was no such thing, but the implication that I was a man of power and authority was true enough. As my Uncle Willoughby would have said, I had ‘Got On’ and ‘Travelled Far’ in my chosen profession, with the result that any possibility of moral failure was now quite unthinkable.
I thought about it. ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,’ St Paul had written to the Corinthians, and on the morning after I almost committed adultery I found these words had assumed a new and sinister immediacy.
I knew what I had to do: I had to repent (which I did, with every fibre of my being), pray for forgiveness (which would be granted because of my genuine repentance) and go on being the first-class archdeacon which I undoubtedly was. Yet when I sank to my knees I found the formula was failing to work. My repentance, though genuine, was ill-defined and ultimately ineffectual. I did not understand why I had wound up in such a mess, and without understanding, how could I promise that my appalling behaviour would never be repeated?
I remained kneeling, not chatting garrulously to God like some woolly-minded mystic, but trying to concentrate on the spiritual force of Christ as I struggled for enlightenment, and gradually I felt strong enough to face a very unpalatable truth. The main reason I was now in such a spiritual mess was because three years ago, in the May of 1942, I had met Miss Diana Dorothea Tallent.
With a shudder I began to recall that seductive first meeting with Dido.
II
The fatal dinner-party was given by my Bishop, Dr Ernest Ottershaw, at his episcopal palace in Starbridge. This statement evokes a grandeur which unfortunately, by that stage of the war, was little more than a memory. Gone were the lavish sophisticated dinner-parties of Dr Alex Jardine’s pre-war episcopate. Dr Ottershaw, who had succeeded Alex in 1937, offered a hospitality which wartime economies and the increasing dearth of servants had systematically drained of glamour.
Both wings of the palace were now closed. In the main section of the house the Ottershaws were cosseted only by the butler Shipton, a famous ancient monument, and by a couple of elderly maids who were obviously retained more for charitable than for utilitarian reasons. It was rumoured that Mrs Ottershaw had learnt how to boil an egg to present to her husband at supper on Sunday nights when the servants were resting their varicose veins, and it was even said she was keen to acquire more advanced culinary skills, but Shipton refused to countenance such ambition. He was still recovering from the Bishop’s attempt to learn to drive after the chauffeur had gone into the army – we were all still recovering from that well-meaning episcopal whim which had destroyed one of the palace gateposts – and Shipton, an archconservative, was firmly of the opinion that bishops and their ladies should never develop ideas below their station.
Heaven alone knows who had produced the food on the evening when I met Dido, but it was well in accord with the recent Government edict which proclaimed that no restaurant could charge more than five shillings for a meal or serve more than three courses. Rationing had become increasingly severe; in the dark mysterious stew which emerged from the episcopal kitchen, lonely chunks of meat could occasionally be glimpsed swimming alongside the potatoes and carrots. Pudding consisted of bottled plums covered by a sauce which Mrs Ottershaw tried to pass off as custard. She even said it contained a real egg, a disclosure which made me wonder if the Bishop had nobly volunteered to forego his Sunday supper that week. Fortunately the meal was redeemed by a claret provided by one of the guests, the Earl of Starmouth, who had a reputation for being benevolent to the clergy.
Lord and Lady Starmouth were the most aristocratic guests present but they were not the guests of honour. The dinner was being given for Dr Ottershaw’s predecessor, my mentor Alex Jardine, who had been living near Oxford since his premature retirement in 1937 and who was now visiting Starbridge to consult the official records of his episcopate; he was working on his autobiography. Alex was keen on claret and lukewarm towards Dr Ottershaw, two facts which led me to suspect that the Earl of Starmouth had provided the legendary St Estèphe not merely out of Christian charity but in a desire to ensure that the dinner-party fell well short of disaster.
The other guests consisted of the Dean and his wife, who were almost as old as the Ottershaws but not nearly so endearing, their neighbour in the Cathedral Close General Calthrop-Ponsonby, who could talk of nothing but the Boer War, the Ottershaws’ unmarried daughter Charlotte, now a Wren at the naval base in Starmouth, and Charlotte’s new friend, the former debutante of the year and the darling of the society gossip columnists, Miss Dido Tallent. Marooned improbably among so many nineteenth-century relics, she exuded such vitality that I was at once reminded of a diamond, glittering wickedly among a prim collection of pearls.
Like Charlotte Miss Tallent was serving in the navy, and as soon as I saw her I thought how appropriate it was that she should be able to call herself a Wren. She was slight, bright-eyed, quick, sharp and volatile. Her dark hair was immaculately waved, her sleek uniform swooped in and out of a dramatically small waist and her scarlet lipstick emphasized the whiteness of her teeth. She had a small bosom, but that was of no consequence to me. I’m not one of those men who are obsessed by the symbols of motherhood. I like legs. Naturally I was unable to see Miss Tallent’s legs from top to bottom, but one glimpse of her ankles inspired me to imagine firm gleaming thighs. In fact so absorbed was I by this potent fantasy that I barely heard Charlotte Ottershaw’s introduction and had to ask for the name to be repeated.
‘Haven’t you heard of me?’ exclaimed Miss Tallent amazed. ‘What a sheltered life you must lead!’
‘Archdeacons never lead sheltered lives!’ retorted Charlotte. ‘This one’s constantly roaming the north and west of the diocese in order to pounce on any clergyman who misbehaves!’
‘What happens in the south and east?’
‘Not much. The other archdeacon prefers to play croquet.’
‘What’s wrong with croquet? I adore all games with balls,’ said Miss Tallent in a formidably innocent voice, and gave me a very straight look with her impudent bright eyes.
I cleared my throat, wondered dizzily if the ambiguity had been intentional and asked myself why I was so suddenly unable to think of anything but sex. Who exactly was this fantastic creature? I had heard of her but my knowledge was sketchy because I never read gossip columns unless the sexton accidentally left his Daily Express behind on the churchyard bench; like all good clergymen I confined my excursions into the world of secular journalism to The Times. However with the aid of the sexton’s Express and the glossy magazines which nervous tension drove me to read in the dentist’s waiting-room, I had learnt that Miss Tallent moved in the best society despite the fact that her father was a self-made Scottish millionaire. I had of course long since dismissed her as a frivolous creature I would never meet, and yet here she was, in a bishop’s drawing-room – in my bishop’s drawing-room – giving me impudent looks and talking about balls. I could hardly have felt more confused if I had been confronted by one of Orson Welles’ invaders from Mars.
‘Dido, how can you possibly say you enjoy all games with balls?’ Charlotte was protesting, sublimely unaware, just as a bishop’s daughter should be, of the sensational double entendre. ‘Only the other day you remarked that cricket –’
‘Oh, don’t let’s start discussing English perversions! What did you say this distinguished clerical gentleman’s name was?’
‘Neville Aysgarth.’
‘Neville! How dreadful, I am sorry! Mr Chamberlain’s ruined that name for all time. I think you should be called Stephen, Archdeacon, after the Christian martyr. It has such noble, serious, earnest associations, and I can tell you’re noble, serious and earnest too, blushing at the mere mention of such a frivolous sport as croquet … Oh, there’s the exciting Bishop Jardine – introduce me, Char, quick, quick, quick! I’m simply passionate about controversial clerics …’
She skimmed away. After a while I became aware that Shipton was offering me a glass of sherry and I had to make an effort not to down the drink in a single gulp. Images of gleaming thighs and croquet balls chased each other chaotically across my mind until the Dean, buttonholing me purposefully, began to hold forth on his current nightmare: Starbridge Cathedral’s possible destruction. The Germans had recently announced plans to bomb every illustrious British city which had been awarded three stars in the Baedeker guide, and although Baedeker in fact never awarded more than two stars no one believed that this little inaccuracy meant the Nazis were joking. Three heavy raids on Exeter had damaged though not destroyed the Cathedral; Starbridge, not so many miles east of Exeter, was now in the front line.
‘Read any good books lately?’ I said when he paused for breath. The prospect of a blitzed Cathedral was so appalling that I preferred not to talk about it. The Dean might choose to relieve his anxiety by speaking the unspeakable, but I preferred to tell myself that once all precautions had been taken to minimize the damage there was no sense in agonizing over something which might never happen.
‘Books? Ah, it’s interesting you should ask me that …’ Diverted at last from his Cathedral the Dean began to talk about the fashionable Crisis Theology which was now sweeping through the English ecclesiastical ranks in a tidal wave of gloom and doom, but I soon ceased to listen. I was aware that Miss Tallent was trying to vamp my mentor while Alex appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience. His wife Carrie had not accompanied him to Starbridge, and Alex, a youthful sixty-three, was a past master at cultivating the amitié amoureuse, that peculiar pre-1914 relationship between the sexes in which close friendship was celebrated while sex remained taboo. I found this concept delectably erotic and only regretted that the changed moral climate currently made any attempt to achieve such a liaison far too liable to misinterpretation. Nowadays the only men who could safely take such a risk were men like Alex – a retired bishop well over sixty who could not conceivably be suspected of wrong-doing. On that evening in 1942 I had only just turned forty and any flirtation, even of the most innocent kind, was out of the question.
‘Neville dear,’ said my hostess Mrs Ottershaw, massive in moss-coloured velvet, ‘will you take Miss Tallent in to dinner before Dr Jardine bears her off and upsets Lady Starmouth?’
This was a shrewd request. Lady Starmouth, who looked about forty-five but was probably pushing sixty, was Alex’s closest platonic friend. She was watching Miss Tallent’s antics with an indulgent smile which was rapidly becoming glazed, but possibly she was merely trying to keep awake as General Calthrop-Ponsonby expounded on the siege of Mafeking.
‘Why did Bishop Jardine retire so early?’ Miss Tallent asked me as we advanced together to the dining-room, and after I had explained that a mild heart complaint obliged Alex to lead a quiet life she commented: ‘How boring for him! I suppose his wife has to toil ceaselessly to keep him entertained – or is she too antiquated to be amusing?’
‘Mrs Jardine’s not as young as she used to be, certainly, but –’
‘Poor thing! It must be awful to be old!’ said Miss Tallent with feeling, and as she spoke I perceived the source of her charm. She was curiously artless. She said exactly what she thought. Her sincerity, as she spoke compassionately about Carrie Jardine, was genuine. In the artificial world of high society this honesty, coupled with her vitality, would make her so striking that few people would notice how far she was from being pretty. In addition to her irregular features she had a white scar on the side of her forehead and a nose which looked as if it had been broken more than once in the past; by the end of the first course I was telling myself firmly that I had never seen such a plain girl before in all my life.
‘I expect you’re wondering how I got my broken nose and my fascinating scar,’ she said, tearing herself away from her other neighbour, the Earl of Starmouth, in a burst of boredom half-way through the stew. ‘I fell off a horse. I’ve fallen off lots of horses. I like to live dangerously.’
‘So do I,’ said the prim Archdeacon, chastely encased in his archidiaconal uniform. ‘That’s why I went into the Church. Charles Raven once wrote: “Religion involves adventure and discovery and a joy in living dangerously.”’
She was captivated. ‘Who’s Charles Raven?’
‘One of the greatest men in the Church of England.’
‘Singing my praises again, Neville?’ called Alex, teasing me from his position on the far side of the table.
‘Don’t be so naughty!’ said Lady Starmouth. ‘You heard the name Raven just as clearly as I did!’
‘The greatest man in the Church today must surely be William Temple,’ said Dr Ottershaw, naming the new Archbishop of Canterbury who had indeed dominated the life of the Church for decades.
‘Temple’s a very remarkable man,’ said Alex, ‘but I distrust his politics, I distrust his philosophy and I distrust his judgement.’
‘So much for the Archbishop!’ said Lady Starmouth as Dr Ottershaw looked appalled. ‘Now let’s hear you demolish Professor Raven!’
Alex instantly rose to the challenge. ‘How can one take seriously a churchman who favours the ordination of women?’
‘My dear Alex!’ I protested. ‘You can’t write off Raven on the strength of one minor eccentricity!’
‘Very well, I’ll write him off on the strength of his major eccentricity! How can one take seriously a churchman who in this year of grace 1942 is still a pacifist?’
‘But his pacifism proves he has great moral courage,’ said the Dean, unable to resist gliding into the debate, ‘and great moral courage should always be taken seriously. For example, none of us here may agree with Bishop Bell’s criticism of the government, but his moral courage is surely –’
‘Oh, we all know George Bell’s been soft on Germans for years,’ said Alex, ‘but I’d call that pig-headed foolishness, not moral courage.’
‘I must say, I rather agree,’ said Lord Starmouth, ‘although nevertheless one can’t doubt Bell’s sincerity. What do you think, Archdeacon?’
I said in my most neutral voice, the voice of an ecclesiastical diplomatist who was determined never to put a foot wrong in influential company: ‘Dr Bell’s a controversial figure and it’s hardly surprising that his views are hotly debated.’
‘Speaking for myself, I adore the Bishop of Chichester!’ said Dido, as if anxious to inform everyone that despite her ignorance of Professor Raven she knew exactly who Bell was. ‘He’s got such beautiful blue eyes!’
‘You’ve heard him preach?’ I said at once, hoping to discover an interest in church-going.
‘No, I heard him speak in the House of Lords ages ago about the internment camp on the Isle of Man – no wonder they say Bishop Bell makes Mr Churchill foam at the mouth! It’s all terribly Henry-II-and-Becket, isn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope Dr Bell doesn’t wind up a corpse on the floor of his Cathedral.’
The mention of the internment camp stimulated a discussion of the proposed camp for prisoners of war on Starbury Plain, and it was not until some minutes later that I had the chance to resume my private conversation with Miss Tallent.
‘Are you a member of the Church of England?’ I said, mindful that the Scottish father might have been a Presbyterian.
‘But of course! My father – being a self-made man – was most anxious that his children should have all the social advantages he never had!’
‘How amusing for you – and does the Church rank above or below Henley, Ascot and Wimbledon as a place where a successful society girl should take care to be seen?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’
‘No, fortunately for you I have a sense of humour. Do you ever actually go to church at all?’
‘How dare you imply I’m a heathen! Of course I go to church – I’m devoted to the Church – why, I go every Christmas, and I never miss any of the vital weddings and christenings in between!’
I at once spotted the omission. ‘What about the funerals?’
The vivacity was extinguished. Her plain, impertinent little face was shadowed and still. After a pause she said flatly: ‘The last funeral I attended was the funeral of my favourite sister. She died in 1939. After that I vowed I’d never go to another funeral again.’
I saw her wait for me to make some banal religious response, but when I remained silent she added unevenly, ‘She died after childbirth. The baby died too. Afterwards I felt as if someone had chopped me to pieces. I’m still trying to stitch myself together again.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘Yes, sometimes I think I’ll never get over it. At first I thought that the war would be a ghastly sort of blessing as it would give my life a purpose – I saw myself as a noble heroine, sacrificing my comfortable life in order to join the navy and fight Hitler – but of course I was just being stupid. I’m not required to be noble. I’m just a chauffeuse at the naval base. I have a wonderful social life, heaps of friends – and every day I despair because life seems so pointless and unheroic.’
‘Heroism comes in many shapes and forms. Your heroism may lie in the fact that you’re struggling on, day after day, even though you’re bored and miserable. I think you’re being very brave – and I also think that if you keep struggling you’ll eventually break through into a more rewarding life.’
She stared at me. Her bright eyes were now opaque, suggesting endless layers of mystery beneath the artless candour of her conversation. All she said in the end was: ‘I wish I’d met you after Laura died.’
Recognizing the oblique appeal I said at once: ‘You must tell me about Laura,’ but at that moment we were interrupted by Alex, who was keen to lure Miss Tallent back into the general conversation, and her opportunity to confide in me was lost.
At last the stewed plums and the extraordinary custard were either consumed or abandoned, the ladies withdrew and the gentlemen, with the exception of General Calthrop-Ponsonby who had been mercifully reduced to silence by the legendary St Estèphe, began to talk in a desultory manner about current affairs. I was afraid the Dean would start talking about the Baedeker raids again, but instead he showed signs of wanting to resume our earlier theological discussion. I wondered if I ought to warn the Bishop that the Dean was drifting dangerously towards neo-orthodoxy. In my experience conversions to Crisis Theology – or indeed even to the more moderate forms of neo-orthodox thought – inevitably meant fire-and-brimstone threats from the pulpit and much embarrassing talk about sin, not at all the sort of clerical behaviour which would be welcomed by the visitors who attended services in the Cathedral.
‘… of course Niebuhr’s modifying Barth’s theology in important ways … If Hoskyns were alive today …’
I broke my rule about allowing myself only one glass of port, and reached for the decanter to drown my irritation.
By the time the Bishop led his flock to the drawing-room I was sagging beneath the impact of the Dean’s enthusiasm, but as I crossed the threshold my spirits revived. Miss Tallent pounced on me. My pulse-rate rocketed. I was aware of a reckless urge to take risks.
‘Will you think me terribly fast,’ said this dangerous creature whom I knew very well I had a duty to avoid, ‘if I invite you to walk with me to the bottom of the garden and gaze at the river? I feel I need a calm beautiful memory to soothe me during the next air-raid on Starmouth.’
‘What a splendid idea!’ I said. ‘Take me away at once before the Dean begins a new attempt to convert me to Crisis Theology!’
Could any response have been more inappropriate for a dedicated archdeacon?
‘What’s Crisis Theology?’ demanded Miss Tallent as we drifted discreetly outside on to the terrace. ‘It sounds thrilling!’
‘Do I look thrilled?’
‘No, you look wonderfully serene and austere – in fact I was thinking just now in the drawing-room how simply miraculous it is to stumble across a man who’s not utterly beastly. Speaking confidentially, Archdeacon dear, I’ll confess to you that the main reason why I’m not married is because men are in general so utterly beastly to women …’
By this time we had left the terrace and were wandering across the unkempt lawn towards the river which glittered beyond the willows. The moonlight was very bright. I thought of the Baedeker raids, and for a split second I prayed for Starbridge, perhaps under sentence of death for the crime of being beautiful, for the sin of earning two stars in a famous travel guide.
‘… and in fact I wouldn’t mind not marrying at all, but of course a woman has to be married if she wants to be a success in life, and I burn to be a success. So what am I to do? I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve got to take action soon or I’ll wind up a spinster, and one can’t be a successful spinster, it’s a contradiction in terms. I did think of being a successful nun, but they keep such peculiar hours and I’m sure I’d hate being deprived of my silk underwear –’
‘I agree it does sound as if you’re not called to celibacy in the cloister –’ I somehow managed not to dwell on the image of Miss Tallent in her silk underwear – ‘but plenty of women are called to celibacy in the world and manage to live happy, successful, productive lives. The big question here is not, as you seem to think: how will society judge me if I don’t marry, but: what kind of life does God require me to lead?’
‘As far as I can make out, God just wants me to loaf around Starmouth fending off passes from drunken sailors.’
‘Fine. Keep loafing and fending and I’m sure the way ahead will eventually become dear.’
‘But dearest Archdeacon –’
Despite the drunken sailors I can’t quite understand why you’re so convinced most men are beastly to women.’
‘Well, it’s all that pawing and pouncing, isn’t it? Heavens, why I haven’t been pounded into dust years ago I really can’t imagine, and it’s entirely because most men can think of nothing but sex – sex, sex, sex, sex, sex – and it ruins everything, simply ruins it, and sometimes it all seems so sad I want to cry. But I’ll tell you this, Archdeacon dear: if I ever do marry it’ll be to someone high-minded who won’t just look at me and think: “What a nice pair of legs!” I can’t possibly settle for a man who isn’t high-minded, not possibly, anyone low-minded is quite unthinkable.’
‘If a man loves you he’ll see far beyond your legs. I mean – good heavens, what am I saying –’
‘But how do I know if a man loves me, Stephen? You don’t mind if I call you Stephen, do you, it’s such a good pure noble high-minded name –’
‘Miss Tallent, I hate to say this, but I think you’d be bored to death by someone high-minded. Think of that prig Arabin in Barchester Towers! Everyone agrees he’s quite the most tedious hero in Victorian literature.’
‘But if it’s a question of choosing between someone high-minded and someone who’s sex-mad –’
‘Why choose? Why not have someone high-minded and sex-mad?’
‘Heavens, what an amazing suggestion! But does such a man exist?’
‘The human race is infinitely diverse.’ I glanced back over my shoulder at the house. ‘Well, now that we’ve seen the garden by moonlight perhaps we should –’
‘But I want to go down to the river! I want to sit on that wooden seat underneath the willows and have an enthralling discussion with you on the heroes of Victorian literature!’
I looked at the wild garden shimmering in the pale light. I looked at the willow trees, swaying against the night sky. I looked at the glittering water of the distant river. I looked into the land of countless fairy-tales where the hero is changed from a frog to a prince by the casual wave of a magic wand, and I said: ‘Well, all right. But only for five minutes.’
As I had already confessed to her, I liked to live dangerously.
III
The river curled around Starbridge in a loop to divide the city from the suburbs, but at the point where the water glided past the Cathedral Close there were no buildings on the opposite bank, only water meadows, woods and farmland. The inter-war building developments had taken place on the other side of the city where there was no river and no need to build expensive bridges. The water meadows and fields, owned by the Dean and Chapter, were leased to the nearest farmer and bore silent witness to the fact that Starbridge, though a county town, was not an industrial centre driven to expand in all directions. The countryside remained unspoilt beyond the river, and the line of willows at the bottom of the Bishop’s garden completed the illusion that we stood many miles from a city.
‘This was a great garden in Bishop Jardine’s day,’ I said as we sat down on the ancient bench by the riverbank. ‘But when the gardeners went into the army Dr Ottershaw had no alternative but to sanction a wilderness.’
‘Much more exciting! I think the garden in Tennyson’s Maud could have been a wilderness, all tangled and steamy and exotic –’
‘I wouldn’t have thought a modern young woman like you would be interested in Victorian literature.’
‘It was the only thing our stupid governess knew about.’
‘You never went to school?’
‘No, and if I had I’m sure I’d have run away and begun my outrageous society life much earlier – with the result that I’d now be worn out. In fact if I’d been the heroine of a Victorian novel –’
‘Oh, you’d have died of consumption by now, no doubt about that,’ I said, making her laugh, and we began to talk of all the literary heroines who had paid the price demanded by society for the flouting of convention.
The conversation glided on, just like the river, glinting, glittering, gleaming, a hypnotic pattern coalescing into a unity beneath the white bright slice of the moon. Time glided on too, the time which should have been spent in the drawing-room, and every few minutes I told myself we should return to the house. Yet I never moved. The fairy-tale in which I was travelling had become more clearly defined; I now realized I was enacting the role of a male Cinderella and that when the clock began to strike twelve I would be compelled to flee from my princess, but meanwhile I preferred not to think of those inevitable midnight chimes. I thought instead how amazing it was that I, entombed in my sedate cathedral city, should be enjoying a scintillating dialogue with a society girl, and beyond my amazement lurked the absurd satisfaction that I, Norman Neville Aysgarth, the son of a Yorkshire draper, should be conversing in a palace garden with a millionaire’s daughter who had danced with the former Prince of Wales. I always tried hard not to slide into the repellent snobbery of the social climber, and of course I knew a good clergyman should be quite above such embarrassingly worldly thoughts, but the night was very beautiful and Miss Tallent was very amusing and I was, after all, only human.
The metaphorical midnight arrived so suddenly that I jumped. Far away by the house Charlotte Ottershaw called: ‘Dido! What have you done with Neville?’ and I saw my fairy-tale draw to a close.
‘I’ve ravished him!’ yelled Miss Tallent, and added crossly to me: ‘What a bore! Now we’ll have to return to the drawing-room.’
‘And I must be getting home.’ In my imagination I heard Cinderella’s clock relentlessly chiming the hour.
‘Must you? Already? But why?’
The moment had come. I had reached the point in the fairy-tale when Cinderella had been reclothed in her rags after her unforgettable night at the ball. ‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier but I’m hardly at liberty nowadays to keep late hours with charming young ladies. I have a wife waiting for me at my vicarage. We’ve been married sixteen years and have five children.’
For one brief moment she stared at me in silence. Then heaving a sigh of relief she exclaimed: ‘Thank God! Now I shall never have to worry about you pouncing on me, shall I? After all, what could possibly be safer than a married clergyman with five children?’
‘What indeed?’ I said, smiling at her, and that was the moment when I realized what a prize she was, so clever, so stimulating, so attractive, so rich, so celebrated and – most alluring of all – so utterly beyond my reach. The familiar powerful excitement gripped me; I was always deeply stirred by the sight of a great prize waiting to be won. Then I pulled myself together. This prize at least could never find its way into my collection. There was no other rational conclusion to be drawn. In my politest voice I said: ‘It’s been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Tallent. I doubt if our paths will cross again, but I shall certainly pray that you find the happiness you deserve.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ She was aghast. ‘Isn’t it patently obvious that our paths are already divinely interwoven? As soon as you told me at the dinner-table that I was heroic I knew God had sent you to my rescue! Now look here. I want to begin a meaningful new life: I want to be good, I want to be wise, I want to be Christian. You can’t just say blithely: “I doubt if our paths will cross again,” and sail away into the night! Of course I know how busy you must be and naturally I wouldn’t want to take up too. much of your time, but if you could just write me a little spiritual note occasionally –’
‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’
‘You see, I feel I’ve reached the time of life when I simply must have a spiritual adviser. You can write and explain God to me – oh, and you must tell me all about Professor Raven and Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple and all the really vital people whom I ought to know about – and that reminds me, talking of vital people, I’d simply adore to meet your wife. May I call at the vicarage tomorrow?’
I cleared my throat. ‘How kind of you to offer, but unfortunately my wife’s unwell at present. That’s why she didn’t accompany me this evening.’
‘What a pity! But perhaps next time I’m in Starbridge –’
‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you,’ I said, diplomacy personified, but I already knew that Grace wouldn’t care for Miss Dido Tallent at all.
IV
No doubt I have now succeeded in conveying the impression that I’m a sex-obsessed, claret-mad, world-fixated ecclesiastic who deserves to be defrocked without delay. One always runs the risk of creating a false impression when one sets out for the purest of motives – honesty and humility – to portray oneself ‘warts and all’; the warts have a habit of commandeering the artist’s canvas. Let me now try to redress the balance.
First, I doubt if I’m more obsessed by sex than the average man. I admit this mythical ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, as the lawyers call him, probably spends too much time thinking about sex, but the point I’m trying to make is that I doubt if I’m in any way abnormal when I meet an attractive woman and find myself picturing gleaming thighs. Nor need these harmless fantasies signify a tendency to immoral behaviour. A childhood spent among ardent chapel-goers ensured that I learnt early in life about the wages of sin, and out of an acute desire to avoid these terrible deserts I later acquired immense self-control in sexual matters. As a young man I was earnest, idealistic and chaste (more or less; one really can’t expect adolescent boys not to masturbate). Grace had been my first and indeed my only woman – apart from a disastrous lapse before my marriage when I had been an undergraduate up at Oxford. Embarrassment prevents me from disclosing much about this incident, so I shall only say that it followed my introduction to champagne and that the female was a shop assistant at Woolworth’s. From that day to this I can never cross the threshold of any branch of Woolworth’s without experiencing a small secret shiver of shame.
The truth is that on moral issues I hold views which are currently held to be old-fashioned. I believe fornication is degrading to women, who should be treated with the utmost reverence as befits their unique contribution to humanity as wives and mothers. Adultery I look upon not merely as a moral error but as a crime, breaking sacred promises, destroying trust, poisoning love, wrecking the lives not only of the guilty but of the innocent. Sex is like dynamite. If it is used in the right place and at the right time the results can be beneficial, but unless the proper regulations are observed there can only be a disastrous explosion. Those people who indulge in sexual activity as casually as they would down a couple of cocktails are always the sort of people who would find it amusing to play with matches in a bomb factory. As a clergyman I would be guilty of a most unchristian lack of charity if I bounded around yelling ‘Stupid!’ at all these fools, but I do find it an effort sometimes to treat the perpetrators of such mindless incidents – as a Modernist I won’t use that Victorian word ‘sinners’ – with compassion.
My strict attitude to sexual licence extends to the human race’s other pastime which causes so much trouble: drink. The Primitive Methodists of my childhood used to thunder away on that subject with as much verve as they devoted to sexual immorality, so it was hardly surprising that I became a most abstemious young man. In fact my catastrophic initiation into the pleasures of champagne up at Oxford shocked me so much that not another drop of alcohol passed my lips until the day I told Uncle Willoughby that I was going into the Church, but contrary to what the preachers had always proclaimed, this benign brush with whisky failed to consign me to perdition. I was much too poor to afford whisky regularly, and moreover as soon as I became a clergyman I knew I had to be careful in my drinking habits. Successful clergymen never drank spirits. Even as time passed and my tastes became more sophisticated I always made it a rule to drink moderately, and although I concede that on the evening of my meeting with Dido I bent this rule by tossing off an extra glass of port, this was an exceptional, not a commonplace, lapse.
I never drink twice a day. I do smoke, I admit, but never in public and only in my bedroom, usually after sexual intercourse. I like eating, but only wholesome food such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I was brought up to believe that frivolous snacks, such as chocolate, stimulated the sin of gluttony and constituted an unforgivable extravagance. It was only when I was a young man courting Grace that I finally dredged up the nerve – and the money – to rebel against this austerity. I took Grace to the cinema and bought a box of chocolates. I can still remember the fearful guilty thrill of watching Clara Bow oozing ‘It’ as I sank my teeth into a sumptuous peppermint cream.
Now, no doubt, I’ve created the impression that I’m not a rake worthy of defrocking but a prig worthy of a kick on the bottom. How hard it is to get the balance of a self-portrait right! Let me stress that I try very hard not to be priggish. Christ came into this world to be at one with us, not to stand apart and look down his nose at our antics, and as a Liberal Protestant who believes strongly in the centrality of Christ I can hardly ignore the example he set. Certainly, despite my strict views on morality, I never feel morally superior. How can I, when every time I pass a branch of Woolworth’s I remember that I’m as prone to error as anyone else? Moreover although I have strict moral standards I don’t consider myself strait-laced, and I suggest that anyone who does consider me a trifle on the sober side has no idea what being strait-laced is all about.
Being strait-laced, as anyone brought up among strict Nonconformists knows, means not only spurning extra-marital sex, chocolates and the demon drink but avoiding the theatre, the cinema, the wireless, playing cards and novels. I have insufficient time and money to go often to the cinema or the theatre nowadays, but I enjoy playing cards with the children and I never miss the broadcast of ITMA, that most perfect of comedy programmes. I also read modern novels for relaxation. I may not read about sex in the News of the World; that would be dabbling with prurient trash. But I do read about sex in the work of D. H. Lawrence; that, I submit with all due respect, is keeping abreast of modern literature.
Grace enjoyed reading in the old days, but by 1942 her life as an archdeacon’s wife and the mother of five children barely allowed her enough time to open a book. At this point I must state unequivocally that Grace was the most wonderful woman in the world and the best possible wife for a clergyman and I adored her. I do want to make that absolutely clear. For sixteen years we had enjoyed the most perfect married life without a single cloud marring the marital sky. At least, if I’m to be entirely accurate, I have to admit little wisps of cloud did occasionally appear but they seldom lasted long. Even the most perfect marriages have to suffer little wisps occasionally. One is, after all, obliged to exist in real life and not between the pages of a romantic novel.
Garnishing my perfect marriage, like gilt lavishly bestowed upon the gingerbread, were my perfect children. I know that as their parent I may be judged hopelessly prejudiced, but people outside the family did constantly comment on my offsprings’ good looks, good manners, high intelligence and remarkable charm, so I venture to suggest I can’t be entirely deluding myself. Needless to say, it was a matter of the very greatest satisfaction to me that I had succeeded in winning two of the ultimate prizes of life: a perfect marriage and a perfect family.
Now I suppose I sound smug, worthy of another kick on the bottom, so let me add honestly that family life did have its ups and downs. However the problems never seemed insuperable and the children never seemed intolerable. My favourite was Primrose, who I thought quite beautiful, although I know men always view their daughters through rose-tinted spectacles, particularly when they have only one daughter to view. Grace and I had called her Primrose in memory of the first flower I had given Grace many years before at St Leonards-on-Sea, the genteel resort on the Sussex coast where my mother had spent her widowhood in the company of my sister Emily. My brother Willy and I had never lived at St Leonards; we had been boarded out in London in order to receive our education, but three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and in the summer, Uncle Willoughby had given us the money for the train journey to Sussex, and it was on one of these seaside holidays that I had met Grace, who was visiting cousins. I was seventeen; she was two years younger. When I gave her the primrose she kept it, pressed it, framed it and finally gave it to me on our wedding night seven years later. Even now the memento still hung over our bed. In view of this flagrant – but not, I suggest to any revolted cynic, unusual – sentimentality, it was hardly surprising that we should have decided to call our first daughter Primrose, and finally after the advent of Christian, Norman and James, Primrose made her grand entrance into the world. Our perfect family was now complete. All that remained for me to do was to work out how I was going to pay for the public-school education of three sons.
It was at this point that one of those little wisps of cloud appeared in the sunlit marital sky, and unlike all the other little wisps in the past this one failed to fade away. Grace and I discovered to our shock that Primrose had not after all completed our perfect family, and in 1941 Alexander (named after my mentor Bishop Jardine) arrived at the vicarage.
When I had finished accepting the will of God, just as a good clergyman should, I decided I would have to adopt a much more rigorous approach to contraception. This subject, I need hardly add, is one of the most awkward matters with which a clergyman can ever become involved. As far as I can gather, everyone in the Church practises contraception, even bishops, but no one in a clerical collar will ever admit to such behaviour because the Church can never surmount its ancient conviction that interfering with procreation is a bad thing. The last Lambeth Conference had barely softened this negative attitude, and a vast amount of hypocrisy had attended the debates on married life. It was noticeable that those bishops who thundered most eloquently on the evils of contraception were always the celibates. The married bishops with their neat little families of two or three children tended to sink into a deafening silence.
Having been brought up to believe God helps those who help themselves I had never agonized over the rightness of contraception; it had always seemed plain enough to me that it was my responsibility, not God’s, to protect my wife’s health, and so the question which bothered me most about contraception was not whether I should practise it but how it could be achieved. French letters may have been widely available since the end of the First War, but a clergyman can hardly be seen to purchase them. Nor can he seek help from his doctor who might be scandalized by such a questionable resolution of the Church’s murky official attitude.
I knew from the start of our marriage that the responsibility for regulating the arrival of children must be mine; it was inconceivable that Grace should be soiled by the knowledge which should belong only to fallen women, and after Christian’s birth I made the sensible decision to ignore the ancient religious disapproval of coitus interruptus. This form of contraception has a dubious reputation, but if one regards it as a discipline which is capable of developing one’s control and thus enhancing one’s performance, the obvious disadvantages soon cease to be intolerable.
I confess I didn’t practise this discipline all the time. That would have been too demanding, even for a man who enjoyed a challenge, but Grace’s monthly health was so regular that it was easy to work out when special care was required. After Christian’s birth in 1927, Norman arrived in 1930, James in 1933 and Primrose in 1937. No exercise in family planning could have been more successful, and that was why we were so shocked by Alexander’s conception. None of the other children had begun life as an accident.
After he was born I pulled myself together, made the necessary unpalatable deductions and began my travels in ‘mufti’ to the port of Starmouth to forage anonymously for French letters. I disliked these sordid expeditions very much. I felt they constituted conduct quite unbecoming to an archdeacon, but I refused to regard my behaviour as morally wrong and I had no doubt that Christ, who had held marriage in such high regard, would forgive these unsalubrious machinations to protect my wife’s health, maintain my emotional equilibrium and preserve my happy family life.
By this time that happy family life had become more than a little frayed at the edges, and although my new approach to contraception prevented further unravelling, I became conscious, as time passed, that the frayed edges were failing to repair themselves as swiftly as I had hoped. In fact by the May of 1942 when I met Dido I had begun to be seriously worried about Grace as she struggled to survive the stresses and strains of life at the vicarage.
It’s not easy being a clergyman’s wife. Parishioners make constant demands. Social obligations multiply. Her husband requires her support in a multitude of ways both obvious and subtle. Even in a peaceful country parish these responsibilities can be oppressive but we were no longer living in the country. The archdeaconry of Starbridge was attached to the benefice of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, a famous ancient church in the heart of the city, and I was also an honorary canon – a prebendary, as they were called in Starbridge – of the Cathedral. I knew everyone who was anyone in that city, and as my wife, Grace was obliged to know them too. Grace was a cut above me socially; her father had been a solicitor in Manchester, but people from the North can be intimidated by people from the South, and Starbridge, wealthy, southern Starbridge, was not a city where Grace could easily feel at home.
Alex had appointed me to the archdeaconry in 1937, shortly before Primrose had been born. Christian had been away at prep school but Norman and James had still been at home. Struggling with two active small boys, a newborn baby, a large old-fashioned vicarage, unfamiliar surroundings, a host of unknown parishioners and an increasingly elaborate social life, Grace had slowly sunk into an exhausted melancholy. Alexander’s arrival had been the last straw.
In vain I suggested remedies. I proposed extra domestic help, but Grace found it tiring enough to cope with the charwoman who came every morning of the working week. I offered to engage a live-in nursemaid instead of the girl who appeared in the afternoons to take the children for a walk, but Grace, who was the most devoted mother, could not bear to think of another woman usurping her in the nursery. I told her not to get upset if the house became a little dusty or untidy but Grace, who was a perfectionist, could not endure living in a home which was other than immaculate. Thus the melancholy exhaustion had persisted, aggravated when she was unable to live up to her impossibly high standards, and on the evening of the Bishop’s dinner-party she had been too depressed to attend.
‘I’ve nothing to wear,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ I refrained from pointing out that this was inevitable so long as she persisted in spending all her clothing coupons on the children, but when I assured her that she would always look charming in her well-worn black evening frock all she said was: ‘I can’t face Lady Starmouth.’ This was an old problem. Lady Starmouth, effortlessly aristocratic, faultlessly dressed and matchlessly sophisticated, had long been a source of terror to Grace. I saw then that any further attempt at argument would be futile; I could only plan a suitable apology to offer the Ottershaws.
When I arrived home from the palace that night I was alone. Alex was staying with us, but he had lingered at the party, as befitted the guest of honour, and we had agreed earlier that we would return to the vicarage separately. As my wife was supposed to be suffering from a migraine it would have looked odd if I had failed to leave the palace early.
My key turned in the lock, and as soon as the front door opened I heard the baby howling. Seconds later Grace appeared at the top of the staircase. She was white with weariness and looked as if she had been crying. ‘I thought you were never coming home! I’m so worried, I can’t think properly – Sandy can’t keep his food down, won’t go to sleep, won’t stop crying, and I can’t bear it, can’t cope, can’t –’
‘My dearest love …’ As she staggered down the stairs into my outstretched arms and collapsed sobbing against my chest I thought of all the letters which I had written to her during our long courtship. After we had become secretly engaged I had always addressed her in my romantic correspondence by those same words. ‘My dearest love, today I finally put my schooldays behind me …’ ‘My dearest love, today I arrived in Oxford for the start of my great adventure …’ ‘My dearest love, today I finally gave up all thought of a career in the law, so I’m afraid I shall never make my fortune as a barrister …’ ‘My dearest love, I know young men aren’t supposed to marry on a curate’s salary, but if one takes into account the little income you inherited from your grandmother, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be together at last …’ How I had chased my prize of the perfect wife and what a delectable chase it had been! In fact the chase had been so delectable that I had even feared marriage might be an anti-climax, but fortunately I had soon realized there would be new prizes to chase on the far side of the altar: the perfect home, the perfect marital happiness, the perfect family life …
The baby, bawling above us in the nursery, terminated this irrelevant exercise in nostalgia. ‘My dearest love,’ I said firmly, ‘you really mustn’t let the little monster upset you like this! Go to bed at once and leave him to me.’
‘But he vomited his food – I think he might be ill –’
I finally succeeded in packing her off to bed. As she stumbled away I noticed that the hem of her nightdress had unravelled and for a second I knew I was on the brink of recalling Dido Tallent, smart as paint in her naval uniform, but I blocked that memory from my mind by invading the nursery.
Alexander was standing up in his cot and looking cross that he had been obliged to scream so hard for attention. He fell silent as soon as I entered the room.
‘I’m afraid this behaviour is quite impermissible,’ I said. I never talk down to my children. ‘Night-time is when we sleep. Noise is not allowed.’
He gazed at me in uncomprehending rapture. Here indeed was entertainment for a fourteen-month-old infant bored with his mother. I patted his springy brown hair, which reminded me of my brother Willy, stared straight into the blue eyes which were so like mine and picked him up in order to put him in a horizontal position on the sheet. He opened his mouth to howl but thought better of it. Instead he said: ‘Prayers!’ and looked so intelligent that I laughed. ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Prayers come before sleep.’ I felt his forehead casually but it was obvious he had no fever and I suspected he had only vomited out of a desire to discover how much fuss he could create. As he watched fascinated I recited the Lord’s Prayer for him, said firmly: ‘Good night, Sandy,’ and retired to examine the picture of Peter Rabbit which hung on the far wall. After a while I glanced back over my shoulder and when I saw he was watching me I exclaimed: ‘How quiet you are! Well done!’ At that point he smiled and allowed his eyes to close. I was still taking another long look at Peter Rabbit when I heard the welcome sound of even breathing and knew I could safely creep away.
‘The Kraken sleeps,’ I said to Grace as I joined her in our bedroom. By this time she was dry-eyed but very pale.
‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘I let him know who was the boss. Sometimes I think you’re too soft with him.’
‘I’m not soft with him! I’m just a normal loving mother, and if you’d ever had a normal loving mother yourself –’
‘My mother adored me.’
‘Well, I suppose she did in her own peculiar way, but –’
‘Grace, is this really the moment to start talking about my mother?’
‘It’s never the moment to start talking about your mother!’
‘Then why drag her into the conversation?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–’ Once more Grace dissolved into tears.
Guilt smote me. ‘My dearest love … forgive me …’ Sinking down on the bed I kissed her in despair but when the tears continued I announced: ‘I’m going to say my prayers,’ and escaped to the dressing-room. For ten seconds I concentrated on breathing deeply. Then having steadied my nerves I stripped off my clothes, stood naked in the middle of the floor and stretched myself until my muscles ached. This manœuvre also proved soothing. When I shed my clerical uniform I felt younger, more flexible, possibly more light-hearted, certainly more adventurous. Perhaps women undergo a similar psychological liberation whenever they shed their corsets.
Having donned my pyjamas I said my prayers at a brisk pace, gave the Bible a thoughtful tap, stared into space for two minutes and came to the conclusion that my next duty was to embark on a ministry of reconciliation. Accordingly I extracted the necessary item from the locked box at the back of the wardrobe and returned to the bedroom.
Grace had dried her eyes. That boded well. She had also brushed her hair. That boded well too. Grace had long straight dark hair which during the day she wore twisted into a coil on the top of her head. That was how she had worn her hair when her mother had first allowed her to abandon her pigtails, and I had never allowed her to wear it in any other way. During the 1920s she had wanted to cut her hair short but I had said: ‘Why destroy perfection?’ and the crisis had passed. Later, in the 1930s, she had wanted to curl her hair, but that idea too I had refused to countenance; I had always felt that Grace’s delicate Edwardian look was the last word in beauty and elegance. She was five foot four inches tall, a height which was perfect because even when she was wearing high-heeled shoes there was no risk of her being taller than I was. Even after bearing five children she was still remarkably slender and graceful – not quite as slender as she used to be, certainly, but then one really can’t expect one’s wife to look like a young bride after sixteen years of married life.
As soon as I returned to the bedroom she said in her calmest, most sensible voice: ‘Darling, I’m very, very sorry. How boring for you to come home to such a tiresome scene! How was the dinner-party?’
I was conscious of a relief of gargantuan proportions. My wife was being perfect again. All was well. ‘Oh, dreadfully dull,’ I said, sliding into bed and giving her a kiss. ‘I envied you missing the meal. There was a most extraordinary custard which was supposed to have had an egg in it.’
‘What sort of an egg?’
‘Mrs Ottershaw wasn’t saying.’ I switched off the light.
‘Was Charlotte there?’
‘Yes. With a friend.’
‘A man? How exciting! I do hope Charlotte gets married!’
‘Unfortunately it was just another Wren. And General Calthrop-Ponsonby was there, still breathing fire against the Boers, and Mrs Dean was holding forth about the Girl Guides as usual while her husband tried to convert me to Crisis Theology or neo-orthodoxy or whatever one wants to call the latest variation on the theological rubbish fathered by Karl Barth –’
‘How glad you must have been to get home!’
‘I’m always glad to get home,’ I said, unbuttoning the flies of my pyjamas.
‘Darling, I really am sorry I was so awful earlier –’
‘No need to say another word about it. We’ll ring down the curtain on the scene, pretend it never happened and celebrate your splendid recovery. At least … you have recovered, haven’t you, darling?’
‘Oh yes!’ she said at once. ‘I’m fine now. Everything’s absolutely fine, just as it always is.’
A vast relief overwhelmed me again as I prepared to bring my ministry of reconciliation to a triumphant conclusion.
It never even occurred to me that I might be grossly deluding myself.
TWO (#ulink_a0176fd6-570d-57f7-89ec-0fcedb71b811)
‘First loves do not always keep their glamour.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
I had just stubbed out my post-coital cigarette when I heard the front door close in the distance and realized that Alex had returned from the palace. Beside me Grace had already fallen asleep. Leaving the bed I pulled on my discarded pyjamas, grabbed my dressing-gown and padded downstairs to attend to my guest.
Alex had paused to read the headlines of the Starbridge Weekly News which had been delivered that morning and abandoned on the hall chest. He was a man of medium height, just as I was, but we had different builds. I’m stocky. He was thin as a whippet and as restless as a cat on hot tiles. His thinning grey hair was straight, sleek and neatly parted. His ugly yellowish-brown eyes radiated an impatient vitality which was defiantly at odds with the heavy, sombre lines about his mouth. As always he was immaculately dressed.
‘Would you like some tea before you turn in, Alex?’
‘A corpse-reviver would be more appropriate! Why on earth did Ottershaw invite that old bore Calthrop-Ponsonby?’
‘I think he feels sorry for him.’
‘How typical! Ottershaw would even feel sorry for a man-eating tiger who wanted to eat him for breakfast … How’s Grace?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘Hm.’ He dropped the newspaper abruptly on the hall chest. ‘Can we go into your study for a moment, Neville? I’ll decline your kind offer of tea but there’s something I’d like to say to you.’
Obediently I led the way across the hall. I was anxious to return to bed as I was now very tired, but Alex was not only my present friend but my past benefactor and I always made every effort to oblige him.
I had first met him in 1932 when he had become the Bishop of Starbridge. Having long since decided that it was best to live in the South if one wanted to Get On and Travel Far, I had pulled all the Oxonian strings at my disposal and sought ordination from Alex’s predecessor Dr Hargreaves who had been scholarly, moderate in his Protestantism, tolerant of Modernist thought – and in fact exactly the type of leader I had had in mind when I had been called to enter the Church. Eventually I had become a curate in a village only two miles from Starbridge, and every morning I had been able to look out of my bedroom window at the distant Cathedral spire as it soared triumphantly upwards, symbolizing my high hopes for the future.
After my curacy I had been appointed Rector of Willowmead, a picturesque market-town in the north of the diocese, and it was here, after Dr Hargreaves’ death in 1932, that Alex had entered my life.
I disliked him at first. He was abrupt to the point of rudeness, but I discovered later that he had had many problems on his arrival in the diocese and the strain of solving them had temporarily taken a toll on his charm. The next year, on his second visit to my parish, he was at his best. He inquired courteously about my life history and when he discovered we had much in common – the early loss of a parent, the grinding experience of genteel poverty and the increasing determination to triumph over the inequities of the British class system – I was at once adopted as a protégé. Possibly I would have been promoted without his special interest but that was by no means certain. In a national institution such as the Church of England, which was hidebound by tradition and dominated by men of the upper classes, a self-made man could only rely on help from another self-made man who knew what it was to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. Alex was a Fellow of All Souls, but he had never been to public school. United by our modest backgrounds we had long since entered into the conspiracy which had enabled me to squeeze under the closed door of the established order into the privileged room beyond, and it was this tacit comradeship, acquired on the battlefield of the class system, which gave our mutual respect a strong emotional edge. Of course we never displayed emotion to each other; we were, after all, Englishmen. But although we belonged to different generations I considered him my closest friend.
In the summer of 1937 he began to have trouble with the Archdeacon of Starbridge, an elderly man who had developed the habit of flying into senile panics, and after this millstone had been manipulated into retirement Alex offered me the archdeaconry. I myself was not sorry to leave Willowmead. I had organized the parish into a model of Christian efficiency and had been secretly longing for some time for new worlds to conquer. My translation to Starbridge came at the most appropriate moment, but unfortunately no sooner had I been installed at St Martin’s in the September of 1937 when Alex was obliged to retire from the bishopric.
At first I was much upset, not only because I was fond enough of Alex to be concerned about his health, but because I was acutely aware that I could ill afford to lose such an influential patron. I awaited Dr Ottershaw’s arrival with trepidation, but to my great relief my fears proved groundless.
In general there are two types of bishops: holy bishops and what I call chairman-of-the-board bishops. The latter are by nature businessmen with gregarious personalities and a flair for organization; their inevitable worldliness is mitigated by the spirit of Christ, and their success as bishops depends on the degree of mitigation. Holy bishops, on the other hand, usually have no talent for administration and need much time to themselves in order to maintain their spiritual gifts; their success as bishops depends less on the grace of God than on their willingness to delegate their administrative duties continually to talented assistants.
Alex was a chairman-of-the-board bishop. Dr Ottershaw was a holy bishop. I was the talented assistant who thrived on delegated administrative duties – and within a month of his arrival I had realized that Dr Ottershaw and I were made for each other. I even realized that had Alex remained in office we would almost certainly have quarrelled. Alex had a notoriously combative manner; I had an equally undesirable weakness for wielding a verbal sledgehammer. That premature retirement might have been unfortunate in many ways, but at least it had enabled us to preserve the friendship which now in 1942, ten years after our first meeting at Willowmead, we both valued so highly.
As we entered my study that night he said almost before I had closed the door: ‘Will you think me intolerably impertinent if I offer you some paternal advice?’ and at once I said lightly: ‘You know very well I enjoy your impertinence – go ahead!’ But I was alarmed. I have an aversion to people in authority who dole out paternal advice. Such behaviour always reminds me of my Uncle Willoughby.
‘It’s about young Miss Tallent.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said, somehow contriving to remain cool as the temperature in the room appeared to soar to a tropical heat.
‘Yes.’ Alex, whose hatred of hypocrisy and endless crusades for truth had won him plenty of enemies during his episcopate, was hardly a man to be deterred by coolness. ‘Neville, next time you meet an alluring young woman at a dinner-party, don’t disappear into the moonlight with her for more than five minutes. And next time you meet Miss Tallent – if there is a next time – don’t disappear with her at all. I’m a great believer in the pleasures of an amitié amourcuse, but such friendships are best conducted with happily married women escorted by their happily married husbands. Dabbling with a fast little miss isn’t conducting an amitié amoureuse. It’s playing with fire and asking for trouble.’
‘Quite.’ To my fury I realized I was blushing; this unfortunate adolescent handicap is one which I have never quite managed to outgrow. Deeply embarrassed I turned aside to realign the photographs of my children on the mantelshelf.
After a pause Alex said tersely: ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I always speak my mind, as you know, and on this occasion I’m speaking purely out of a concern for your welfare. You mean a great deal to me, Neville. I’m very fond of you – and I’d hate to see your career take a wrong turn.’
I was outraged. To spell out his affection – to indulge in sentimental utterances – to violate our delightful friendship by acting like some mawkish heavy-handed father – it was intolerable. Speech was quite beyond me. I could only grab the photograph of Grace and start polishing the silver frame furiously with my sleeve.
‘Don’t misunderstand,’ said Alex at last. ‘I’m sure the little escapade tonight was innocent. But where an attractive woman’s concerned any man – even a clergyman – perhaps especially a clergyman – has an almost limitless capacity for self-deception.’
I finished polishing the frame and set it back on the mantelshelf. Then I said in my politest voice: ‘I take your point. Thank you for your advice. Is there anything else you wish to say?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact there is.’ I should have remembered that when Alex was exercising his compulsive candour he was virtually unstoppable. ‘Can you tell me if there’s a financial reason why you don’t have a nursemaid living in to attend to my delightful godson in his more exuberant moods? Because if there is indeed a financial reason I hope you won’t be too proud to accept my offer of help. I’ve money to spare and I’d be happy to do anything which might ease the situation.’
Once more I was appalled. In my stiffest voice I said: ‘What situation?’
‘My dear Neville, I’ve been staying here for three days and I’m neither blind nor deaf! It’s patently obvious to me that Grace is at the end of her tether!’
‘Nonsense. I concede she’s a little tired at the moment because she’s still recovering from the Easter holidays, but now that the three older boys are back at school she’ll soon recover. Very good of you to offer help but it’s not necessary. No problems financially. No problems of any kind, thank you.’
‘Neville, I know you’re a proud man, but wouldn’t you find it helpful – just for once – to admit that everything in the garden isn’t quite as lovely as it ought to be? If Grace is so exhausted that she can barely cope with her domestic duties, how can she possibly deal satisfactorily with her responsibilities as an archdeacon’s wife? She deliberately evaded the dinner-party tonight, didn’t she? Well, as it happens that wasn’t a disastrous evasion, but what are you going to do when a really crucial engagement turns up, an engagement vital for the well-being of your career? Or in other words, how is Grace going to summon the extra energy she’ll need to keep up with you in the future? If you were to engage a nursemaid –’
‘That’s not what Grace wants. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the nursery.’
‘Then engage a full-time cook-general!’
‘That’s not what Grace wants either. She couldn’t bear another woman constantly in the kitchen.’
‘I’m getting rather tired of hearing what Grace wants! What do you want? It seems to me, judging from your behaviour tonight, that you’re beginning to feel short-changed!’
Somehow I managed to control my temper. I heard myself say in my most colourless voice: ‘You couldn’t be more mistaken, Alex. You’ve utterly misread the situation, but on the other hand, why should I expect you to read it correctly? The truth is no outsider can really know what goes on in any marriage.’
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Alex dryly, deciding to wipe the tension from the conversation by exercising his caustic wit. ‘No one knows the half of what’s gone on in mine.’ He turned aside but as he opened the door he was unable to resist the urge to proffer still more unwanted advice. ‘Deposit Primrose and Sandy with a kind neighbour,’ he said, ‘and take Grace away for a second honeymoon before you get tangled up with another fast little miss.’
‘There won’t be another fast little miss. Perhaps you can’t be blamed for drawing quite the wrong conclusions from my idiotic behaviour with Miss Tallent, but let me assure you now, once and for all, that Grace is a perfect wife and I adore her.’
‘Splendid! Very well, I’ll now stop overstepping the mark in my usual outrageous fashion and take myself off to bed before you try to hit me with those clenched fists of yours. Good night, Neville. God bless you. And do try to remember that I’ve spoken only with your welfare in mind …’
II
I was so angry with this cavalier attempt to meddle in my marriage that although I was tired I lay awake fuming for over an hour in the dark. I hated Alex thinking that Grace was temporarily less than perfect. I hated him telling me facts I already knew. And I hated him suggesting facile solutions when I knew very well that the problem was more complex than he in his ignorance supposed. I could not simply impose a cook-general or a nursemaid on Grace against her will. After all, it was she, not I, who would have to deal with the woman, and if Grace felt unable to cope with a stranger in either the kitchen or the nursery, any effort on my part to employ someone suitable would only be a waste of time. Also I knew from past experience that Grace interpreted my suggestions about employing additional help as implied criticisms of her ability to be the perfect wife and mother. Then no matter how hard I tried to reassure her that no criticism was intended, she became more depressed than ever. Eventually, I was sure, the problem would be alleviated when Sandy ceased to need constant maternal supervision and embarked on his career as a schoolboy, but until that golden moment when he skipped off to begin his first day at kindergarten, it seemed my best course of action was to help Grace by being loyal, loving and endlessly sympathetic. I had to make up my mind never to complain about her melancholy, never to reproach her for shying away from the social life she should be sharing with me and never, never, never to lose my temper. I was always mindful of the fact that Sandy could hardly have been conceived without my assistance, and if he was now complicating our lives I had a moral duty to ameliorate the situation by being a perfect husband.
Remembering my loss of temper earlier I winced, but at least I was able to console myself by recalling my subsequent ministry of reconciliation. How wrong Alex had been to assume that I was being short-changed in the bedroom! Even after sixteen years of marriage I was never deprived in that area – except on those occasions when Grace was in an advanced state of pregnancy or suffering from migraine or too exhausted to do anything but pass out. However, those exceptions were of no consequence, since one could hardly expect married life to be one long sex romp. Even D. H. Lawrence had never tried to describe Mellors and Lady Chatterley with five children. My brother Willy had smuggled a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover into England after a holiday in Paris and I had read the book with interest, but personally I thought it was greatly inferior to Lawrence’s other work.
Remembering that Lawrence’s own marriage had been childless I began to think of Alex again. His childless marriage was certainly far from successful, and it occurred to me to wonder how far his own marital discomfort had influenced his interpretation of my dilemma.
Alex had said lightly that no one knew much about his marriage, but I suspected I knew all too well what had gone on. Having married his intellectual opposite after a whirlwind courtship, it seemed clear that he had long since regretted his folly. Even with no children to distract her his wife Carrie had been unable to master her increasing responsibilities as Alex had travelled rapidly up the Church’s ladder of preferment. In 1927 when he had been appointed Dean of Radbury he had even been obliged to engage someone to keep her life in order, and it had been this companion, an icy virgin with a deceptively steamy appearance and a brain like an adding machine, who had run first the deanery at Radbury and later the palace at Starbridge. The companion had eventually left to get married, much to the Jardines’ fury, and since 1937 a variety of women had been hired and fired in the unending struggle to keep Carrie organized. Even now Alex was living quietly in a small village, Carrie was incapable of running her life without help. What a burden for any husband! Alex used to joke bravely about his ménage à trois, but I thought his marriage must be the height of dreariness.
The one redeeming feature was that Carrie in her elderly way was still pretty. It had seemed logical to assume the Jardines enjoyed something which resembled a sex life – how else could Alex have made his marriage tolerable? – but now I found myself wondering if the heart condition which had terminated his career had also terminated the intimate side of his marriage. Curiously enough he always seemed very fit, bursting with energy, but if he had been so quick to detect a nonexistent sexual frustration in my marriage it seemed logical to deduce he was no stranger to sexual frustration in his own.
I sighed, feeling sorry for him, and with my anger finally conquered I succeeded in falling asleep.
The next morning I was confused to discover that I still felt angry with him but for a different reason. I could accept that he had spoken out of the best of motives; I could even accept that he had been justified in feeling concern about Grace; but what I found hard to accept was the way he had conducted the interview. Displaying the delicacy of an elephant and the sensitivity of a rhinoceros he had charged around trying to impose his conclusions upon me without regard for my willingness to accept them, and although such behaviour might possibly be forgivable when displayed by some well-meaning Victorian father I thought it was quite unforgivable when displayed by a clergyman. I myself had no great pastoral gifts. My talent was for administration, but I knew enough about pastoral work to realize that when counselling someone in trouble one’s prime duty was to listen, not to make speeches, to nurture trust, not to destroy it. In some fundamental way my trust in Alex had been impaired by that bruising interview. I still admired him as a man; I still respected him as a friend. But I did not want to discuss my private life with him ever again.
This was a disturbing conclusion, but fortunately in the early mornings I was always too busy to dwell on unpleasant thoughts. My first task was to make the tea. I always performed this chore because I felt that the least Grace deserved was a husband who delivered the early morning tea to her in bed. Having accomplished this ritual I withdrew to my dressing-room, read the Office and meditated conscientiously on the appointed verses from the Bible. Being Low-Church in inclination if not in practice – my services were carefully aimed at the middle-of-the-road moderate majority in the Church of England in order to avoid unfortunate controversy – I preferred to focus my spiritual exercises on the Bible before applying myself to my prayers.
After this interval I shaved and dressed. Usually I wore my archidiaconal uniform, but if my engagements were informal – or if the weather was so hot that the wearing of gaiters became intolerable – I had enough courage to resort to a plain clerical suit. I’m not the kind of man who enjoys tripping around in an antiquated fancy dress.
When I eventually left my dressing-room I headed for the nursery, where Sandy would be waking up, and put some toys in his cot to keep him quiet. By seven o’clock I had reached my study where I aimed to put in an hour’s work before breakfast. On that particular morning I caught up with my sympathy letters – after three years of war one had to take great care that the sentiments expressed sounded genuine – paid a couple of bills and studied two archidiaconal files, one relating to new gutters for a church with a persistent damp wall and the other concerning a parish quarrel over a new font. I decided it would be prudent to ask the diocesan surveyor to look at the old gutters and even more prudent to ask the diocesan lawyers to advise on whether the font was, legally speaking, a font. The outraged churchwarden was insisting that it reminded him of a lavatory.
I yawned. The archdeaconry was quiet. No fallen steeples, no dispute about plastic flowers on graves, no rural dean suffering from delusions of grandeur, no curate going berserk with choirboys, no vicar letting off Anglo-Catholic liturgical fireworks, no verger blowing his brains out. Finding myself with five minutes to spare before breakfast I drew up a plan for my Sunday sermon and plucked a few pertinent quotations from my trusty memory. My brother Willy always said I had a mind like a vacuum cleaner; I can effortlessly absorb any information from the sublime to the ridiculous and regurgitate it, sometimes years later, with an efficiency bordering on the robotic.
At breakfast I admired the new bow in Primrose’s hair, glanced at the headlines of The Times, read the latest letter from Christian at Winchester, answered the telephone, picked Sandy’s rusk off the floor twice and asked Alex if he intended to spend all day in the Cathedral library, where he was studying the records of his episcopate.
‘No, I’m having a rest from my autobiography today,’ he said, surprising me. ‘I’ve decided to take a train to Starvale St James and call on Lyle.’
Lyle, now Mrs Charles Ashworth, was the icy companion who had run the Jardines’ household so efficiently before her unwelcome defection to the state of matrimony in 1937.
‘She probably won’t want to see me,’ Alex was saying as he idly applied marmalade to his toast, ‘but I thought it would be too ridiculous if I left the diocese without calling on her. I intend to arrive on her doorstep waving the olive branch of peace.’
‘Better late than never, but why not phone her first? Your olive branch will be wasted if you arrive on her doorstep and find she’s gone out for the day!’
‘I’ll take the risk. If I ring she might simply slam down the receiver – I can’t tell you what a tangle we all got into back in 1937 –’
‘I always thought it sounded the most grotesque storm in a teacup and I can’t believe Lyle won’t welcome the chance to end the estrangement. Do you want a lift to the station?’
He accepted the lift. I noted with compassion that he had bought expensive presents for Lyle’s two sons. Evidently he was anxious that his olive branch should be substantial.
‘Remember me to Lyle, won’t you?’ I said. ‘As it happens I’ll be coming her way soon. An incensed churchwarden at Starvale St James is complaining that the new font looks like a urinal.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Alex vaguely, and when he failed to smile I knew his thoughts were far away.
Leaving him at the station I called at the diocesan office on Eternity Street to collect my special allowance of extra petrol coupons, suffered myself to be cornered by various officials who saw me as a channel to the Bishop, escaped into the High Street to buy cigarettes and finally parked my car in the old vicarage stables behind Butchers’ Alley just as the clock of St Martin’s chimed the half hour. I was fractionally late for the morning conference with my curates, but to my relief I saw no bicycles parked outside the vicarage gate. I disliked my curates arriving ahead of me and looking insufferably virtuous as I walked into the room. Much better that they should arrive panting and apologetic while I was sitting coolly behind my desk.
I opened the front door. I withdrew my key from the lock. And I paused, paralysed with shock, as my hand remained on the latch. I had heard a laugh in the morning-room where we received the parishioners who called on us, but this laugh belonged to no one who lived within the parish of St Martin’s – in-Cripplegate. Automatically, without stopping to think, I blundered forward into the hall.
Grace was saying: ‘That’ll be Neville. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just tell him you’re here.’
I plunged across the morning-room threshold. Grace, who had almost reached the door, hastily recoiled. As our visitor sprang to her feet I saw us all as three puppets jerking on the ends of some exceedingly erratic strings.
‘Hullo Stephen!’ said Dido, whose memory I had, of course, been conscientiously suppressing all morning, and gave me a bold, bright, impudent smile.
‘Good morning, Miss Tallent,’ I said, rigid with rage behind my clerical collar. I was acutely aware that Grace was wearing her oldest dress, the one she only wore around the house, and that she looked faded, fatigued and unfashionable. In contrast Dido, seemingly poured into her sleek naval uniform, looked saucy, sexy and scintillating. I could have slapped her.
Suddenly I became aware of Sandy’s presence. In the profound silence which followed the formal exchange of greetings he staggered across the floor and offered me one of his toy bricks.
‘Thank you, Sandy.’ I took the brick and gripped it so hard that my fingers ached. Then in a passable attempt to achieve a smooth social manner I said to Dido: ‘How kind of you to call, but I’m afraid you must excuse me. I have an urgent meeting now with my curates.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of troubling you when you’re so busy!’ exclaimed Dido with that wide-eyed candour which I found so fatally compelling. ‘I just called to leave my card and enquire if your wife was better.’ Giving Grace her warmest smile she added confidentially: ‘You didn’t miss much at the Bish’s dinner-party – your husband was the only redeeming feature.’
The doorbell rang.
‘I’ll go!’ said Grace, scooping up Sandy.
‘No, I’ll answer it –’
‘No, it’s all right, Neville –’
We collided in the doorway before Grace succeeded in escaping into the hall.
‘I’m obviously causing chaos as usual,’ said Dido. ‘I’ll leave at once.’
I realized I was still holding Sandy’s brick. It was bright red, the colour of violence, volcanic fire and technicolour blood. It also matched Dido’s lipstick. Setting the brick down on the table with meticulous care I somehow managed to say to Dido in my politest voice: ‘If you feel you must go, then I shan’t try to detain you, but I apologize if you’ve been made to feel unwelcome.’
‘Oh no, your wife was charming! We got on terribly well!’
‘Miss Tallent –’
‘Oh, I do wish you’d stop calling me that! Why don’t you call me Dido, just as everyone else does?’
‘I’m most flattered that you should wish to be on such friendly terms with me, but I’m afraid a clergyman has a duty to be formal towards a young lady he’s known less than twenty-four hours.’
‘But I’m sure Jesus would have called me Dido without a second thought! He never bothered to be formal with the good-time girls!’
I opened my mouth to say coldly: ‘I fear I can only consider that remark to be in excessive bad taste,’ but the words were never spoken. To my horror I realized I was smiling. ‘You’re outrageous!’ I exclaimed in despair. ‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’
‘But don’t you remember? You’re going to be my spiritual guide and write me uplifting letters!’
‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’
‘You didn’t think I was serious, did you? You didn’t think I meant what I said, but I swear to you I’m deeply in earnest and absolutely desperate. I know you think I’m stupid and frivolous and not worth bothering about, but –’
‘Everyone’s worth bothering about. But don’t you think your local clergyman would be better placed than I am to give you the guidance you need?’
‘That celibate fish? He’s only fit to be lightly grilled on both sides and served to the congregation with parsley sauce!’
I made a quick decision, the kind of quick decision capable administrators make, a cool practical decision untainted by emotional involvement. There was no doubt this girl was genuinely distressed and adrift. It seemed reasonable to suppose she was suffering from that particularly debilitating confusion which so often follows a severe bereavement, an appalled recognition of her own mortality and a consequent questioning of her way of life. With the right help this self-examination could lead to a vital spiritual growth. Who was I to regard her with such unchristian cynicism because she had spent too many years as a mindless society girl? In a very real sense Dido’s tasteless comment about Jesus had hit the mark of truth. He would never have walked past her with his nose in the air, and since I was one of his followers neither should I.
Abruptly I altered course. ‘Very well,’ I said, adopting a crisp authoritative tone. ‘If you honestly believe I can help you I’ll answer your letters – but on one condition. You must address me as “Archdeacon”, I must address you as “Miss Tallent” and our correspondence must be a model of propriety.’
‘That’s three conditions, not one! But never mind, I accept them all with rapturous gratitude.’ She smiled radiantly at me. ‘Goodbye, Archdeacon dear. I’m off to the post office to buy a large supply of stamps.’ And leaving me wondering how on earth I could have been quite such a fool, she sailed triumphantly from the room.
III
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t think it was important.’
‘But she’s famous! She almost married that millionaire – and then there was the film star – and everyone knows she flirted with the Prince of Wales!’
‘I don’t find that sort of thing very interesting.’
‘Well, she obviously found you very interesting indeed! Why in heaven’s name did she call you Stephen?’
‘The name Neville reminded her of Mr Chamberlain.’
‘But what was she doing calling you by your Christian name when you’d only just met her?’
‘Oh, society people have very peculiar manners these days. Like people in show business.’
‘Well, it all sounds very fast to me! Why, she even said she talked to you on your own for half an hour in the garden!’
‘Only about Victorian literature.’
‘But what did everyone think when you disappeared for half an hour with a society flirt?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I think that designation’s a little uncharitable, Grace. Not even a society girl’s beyond redemption.’
‘Don’t tell me she wants you to redeem her!’
I cleared my throat again. ‘Well, as a matter of fact she did show signs of wanting a complete change of direction. I’ve promised to write her a line or two in response to any queries she may have about spiritual matters.’
‘Honestly, Neville! I wouldn’t have thought you could be quite so naïve!’
‘And I wouldn’t have thought you could be quite so catty and cynical!’
Grace suddenly drooped as if all the strength had drained out of her. Immediately I hated myself. ‘My dearest love –’ I took her in my arms – ‘I know it all seems highly irregular, but what’s a clergyman to do when he’s asked for spiritual advice? He can’t refuse to give it simply because the person in search of help is someone with whom he’d never normally associate!’ I kissed her before adding: ‘Of course I’ll show you every letter.’
‘Don’t be silly. You know that’s not necessary.’ She clung to me briefly before turning away with the abrupt comment: ‘The curates have arrived.’
‘Bother the curates.’ I grabbed her back into my arms and said in my firmest voice: ‘I love you very much – as I trust I proved to you last night – and for me you’ll always be the only woman in the world. Why on earth should I even look twice at a saucy little piece of nonsense like Dido Tallent?’
That indeed was the question.
IV
Alex returned at noon after bearing his olive branch to the village of Starvale St James where Lyle had rented accommodation a year ago. She normally lived in Cambridge, where before the war her husband had been a canon of the Cathedral and a theologian at the University, but after Ashworth had been sent overseas with his regiment Lyle had preferred to retreat temporarily to the country so that her young children would be in a safer place. Ashworth had an elderly friend in Starvale St James – none other than the irate churchwarden who was now persecuting me about the font – and Lyle, already familiar with the diocese after her years with the Jardines, had decided she ran less risk of being lonely there than elsewhere in the English countryside.
When Alex returned I had just finished speaking on the telephone to the Bishop, who was in a flap about the proposed prisoner-of-war camp on Starbury Plain. It was by no means certain that we would be allowed any contact with the prisoners but the Bishop felt we should at least plan as if some form of pastoral work, no matter how limited, would be permitted. However unfortunately the camp, if built, would stand in the other archdeaconry, and the other Archdeacon, Hubert Babbington-French, was now openly proclaiming that the only good German was a dead German. No wonder the Bishop was in a flap; it wasn’t every day he had to deal with an eminent cleric bent on bawling out unchristian slogans. Obviously the idiotic Babbington-French would have to be steered away from the wretched Huns, but I had a nasty feeling that the Bishop in his despair was planning to steer me towards them. I was willing to do my duty and attempt to behave in a Christian manner towards even the most repulsive Nazi, but the prospect was far from enthralling, particularly when we were all waiting to see if Hitler opened his Baedeker guide at the wrong page. I was now privately very worried indeed about the prospect of an attack on Starbridge, for my vicarage was in the centre of the city, but Grace, following the example of the Queen, had said that the children stayed with her and that she intended to stay with me – and I, of course, had to stay at St Martin’s. I could only thank God we had a good air-raid shelter and pray that Hitler, diverted by the fighting on the Eastern Front, lost interest in reading travel guides.
I was just wondering if I should hold daily services at lunch-time to cater for all the city workers who would be experiencing a strong compulsion to pray for deliverance, when the door of my study opened and Alex strode in. There was a spring in his walk, a smile on his face and a carnation in the buttonhole of his smart lounge suit.
‘Do I deduce that the hatchet was safely buried?’ I said amused after we had exchanged greetings.
‘I think it would be more accurate to say that we managed to ease the hatchet into a coffin to await a full burial later – but at least that’s a step in the right direction! We sat in the garden and drank tea for twenty minutes.’
‘Only twenty minutes?’
‘She had to attend a committee meeting of the Women’s Institute. But she sent her love to Carrie, so it would seem the ice is definitely broken.’
‘Splendid! And what did you think of her boys? That little Charley says he wants to be a clergyman.’
‘So he told me.’ Alex, who had been pacing around the room in his usual restless fashion, now stopped jingling the coins in his pockets and started eyeing the telephone. ‘I’d so much like to tell Carrie about the meeting,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I put through a call on your extension upstairs?’
‘Not at all – go ahead,’ I said, and embarked on a letter to the Red Cross about the parish food parcel for British prisoners of war.
I was half-way through this task when I was interrupted by the arrival of my diocesan bête noire, a clergyman named Darrow about whom I shall say more later. I mention him now only because it was at this time that he began his career at the Theological College in the Cathedral Close, a fact which became of considerable importance to me in 1945 after I had almost committed adultery.
On that morning in 1942 when Darrow arrived without warning on my doorstep and breezed arrogantly into my study, the Theological College was in the midst of a crisis because of the wartime shortage of staff, and on the previous evening at the palace Alex had been able to provide Dr Ottershaw with the vital information that Darrow had had experience in the training of clergymen. Darrow had had experience in many other clerical fields too – driving archdeacons well-nigh round the bend was only one of his more esoteric activities – but now is not the moment to expand on his buccaneering career in the Church. His purpose in calling at the vicarage that morning was to thank Alex for recommending him to the Bishop, but he wound up by delivering an insufferably priggish lecture on the theme that the ultimate prize for any priest – as a bigoted Anglo-Catholic he always called clergymen ‘priests’ – could only be union with God.
‘How did I manage to keep a civil tongue in my head?’ demanded Alex as soon as Darrow had stalked out. ‘I must be getting saintly in my old age! And to think that according to Lyle her husband remains one of Darrow’s most devoted admirers!’
‘Ashworth’s busy being an army chaplain in North Africa. If he was trying to run an archdeaconry where Darrow was on the rampage, he’d soon modify his admiration, I promise you! What on earth will life be like at the Theological College once that pirate prances through the front door?’
‘I prophesy charismatic wonders, incense in the College chapel and a collective nervous breakdown for the remaining staff. And talking of nervous exhaustion … Am I forgiven for speaking my mind to you about Grace last night?’
‘Of course.’
‘I really am sorry if I upset you, Neville.’
‘My dear Alex, let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget all about it!’
‘Very well, but before the curtain finally reaches the ground, may I just ask if you’re taking my advice about bearing Grace off on a second honeymoon?’
‘Drop the subject, Alex, there’s a good fellow – just drop it,’ I said, brandishing a voice of steel alongside my friendliest smile, and he hastily began to talk of other matters.
But that night in the bedroom I found myself saying to Grace: ‘How would you like a week’s rest before the school holidays begin? We could leave Primrose and Sandy in Manchester with Winifred and go to a hotel in the Lake District.’
Grace, who had been brushing her hair, paused to stare at me in the triple mirror. ‘But is it still possible to take holidays there?’
‘I’m sure it is. Holiday-makers are only banned from the south and east coasts.’
‘But I couldn’t possibly leave Sandy with Winifred! He’d wear her out.’
‘Maybe she wouldn’t mind being worn out in order to give you a rest! After all, you’re always saying what a wonderful sister she is.’
‘Yes, but she’s not as patient as I am, and –’
‘No one’s as patient as you are with that little monster! Personally I think a touch of impatience now and then would do him no harm at all!’
‘But Neville –’
‘Why are you beating around the bush like this? The issue’s really very simple: do you or don’t you want a second honeymoon?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to say I do, won’t I?’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed, no longer making any effort to conceal my exasperation. ‘What sort of answer’s that?’
‘The sort of answer which I’m sure you require of a perfect wife.’
‘Grace, if you weren’t so constantly obsessed with perfection you wouldn’t make such ridiculous statements!’
‘I obsessed by perfection? But Neville, you’re the one who’s obsessed! You – chasing the prizes of life, never able to rest, never being satisfied –’
‘What rubbish, of course I’m satisfied! I’ve got the perfect wife, the perfect home, the perfect family – I’ve won all the ultimate prizes of life! Well, nearly all of them –’
‘Darling, listen to me.’ Rising to her feet she turned her back on the triple mirror and we faced each other. ‘I’m not a prize. I’m a person. I can’t just be kept in a glass case on a mantelshelf. I have to move in the real world, and in the real world I can’t be this perfect wife of your dreams. I do try to be – I keep trying and trying – I try so hard because I don’t want to disappoint you, but –’
‘You could never disappoint me.’
‘No? Supposing I tell you that I don’t want to go away to the Lake District unless we take Sandy and Primrose with us? Darling, we simply can’t dump them on poor Winifred for a week! It’s just not fair to her, and besides I wouldn’t enjoy myself – I’d spend my whole time worrying in case they were unhappy. I admit I do want a rest, but I’d much rather wait until our family holiday in July.’
‘Very well.’ I turned away.
‘Neville –’
‘No need to say another word. You’ve spoken your mind and I still think you’re perfect. Happy ending. Now let’s ring down the curtain on the scene and forget I ever mentioned the idea,’ I said in the most equable voice at my command, and withdrew at once to my dressing-room.
V
I found myself unable to concentrate on the Evening Office, and an attempt to pray proved futile. However when I eventually returned to the bedroom in my pyjamas Grace said at once: ‘Darling, could we compromise? If we changed our plans and spent our family holiday in the Lake District instead of Devon, we could leave all five children with Winifred for the first forty-eight hours and have that little holiday alone together after all. I don’t think Sandy could destroy Winifred in two days, and since Christian and Norman are old enough to be helpful with the younger ones, I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying about how they were getting on.’
‘Splendid! I’ll cancel Devon immediately.’
‘We’ve left it rather late in the day to change our plans – and of course it would involve a longer journey just when the government’s telling us we shouldn’t travel unless we have to –’
‘We do have to – and I’m sure we can easily find a cottage to rent. I’ll look at the holiday advertisements in today’s Church Gazette.’
She kissed me. ‘You’re not cross with me any more?’
‘My dearest love!’ I said. ‘When have I ever been cross with you?’ And before either of us could answer that question I took her in my arms.
VI
The letters began to arrive. Dido wrote as she talked: fluently, with eccentric punctuation. She used a pencil which always began sharp and ended blunt, probably as the result of her copious underlinings.
‘Dear Archdeacon, before I bare my soul to you I must tell you all about my background so that you can see my troubles in some sort of illuminating perspective …’
I learnt that her father had made a fortune by profiteering during the First War, and had consolidated his wealth by adventurous skulduggery in the City. He was currently chairman of an enterprise called the Pan-Grampian Trust and now played golf regularly with various luminaries of the Bank of England in an effort to consolidate his hard-won respectability. In addition to his house in Edinburgh and his nine-bedroom flat overlooking Grosvenor Square he had not only the usual millionaire’s castle in the Highlands but a country mansion in Leicestershire where his daughters had pursued their passion for hunting. His wife, however, never left Edinburgh.
‘… poor Mother is a good person but very shy. How glad I am that I haven’t inherited this devastating handicap! Fortunately Father’s mistresses have all possessed gregarious dispositions in addition to superb connections in society, so my sisters and I have been able to surmount the difficulties which were inevitably created by Mother’s beautiful retiring nature.
‘Merry (that’s my sister Muriel, now Lady Wyvenhoe) and darling Laura (who became the Honourable Mrs Anthony Fox-Drummond) and I (who’s so far become no one at all) were always invited everywhere, and since Father spent money like water on our coming out, I can’t say I ever found it a handicap to be a jumped-up Scot – indeed quite the reverse, we were all regarded as exciting novelties and given a licence to be entertaining. So no matter how outrageous we were, people just said: “Poor little things, they don’t know any better, but what a gorgeous breath of fresh air they are, blowing away all the boring cobwebs from London society, let’s invite them to masses more balls and tea-dances and cocktail parties so that we can all continue to be madly amused!” So that was what happened and we were a simply enormous success, even when for a laugh we put on our Scottish accents, although of course our governess was told to make sure we knew how to talk like English ladies and in consequence we grew up bilingual.
‘Anyway, Archdeacon dear, you may disapprove of me talking faultless English and so pretending to be what I’m not, but let me assure you that in every other respect I’m entirely honest. I always say to a new friend right from the start: “My father’s a self-made man (though one of Nature’s Gentlemen, of course) and my mother doesn’t go out and about in society because she’s afraid she’ll be thought common (a fear naturally enhanced by her beautiful retiring nature)” – and once all that’s been said everyone relaxes because they know exactly where they stand and no one feels in the least deceived …’
In another letter she told me about her three brothers, all employed in her father’s financial empire, but I realized that since they were many years her senior they had played little part in her growing up.
‘… but I’ve always been very close to my sisters – well, we had to stick together, you see, because since Father was so busy making money and my brothers were so busy at public school learning how to be English gentlemen and Mother was so busy being retiring, no one had much time for us except Blackboard our governess (Miss Black) and even she was always wishing she was somewhere else, so Merry and Laura and I formed what we called The Triple Alliance in order to conquer the world and make everyone take notice of us. I was devastated, simply devastated, when Merry married that sporty bore Wyvenhoe, all polo and fishing and shooting thousands of poor little birds in August (I think he only married Merry to gain permanent access to Father’s grouse moor). Her marriage destroyed our Triple Alliance and I knew things would never be the same again and I was right, they never were. She lives up in Leicestershire now, although of course she has a house in London, and I seldom see her. But I recovered from losing Merry. It was losing Laura that nearly killed me.
‘Darling Laura was the light of my life, we were closer than most twins, only twelve months apart, we did everything together, everything, Merry was always the odd one out as she was two years older than Laura, three years older than me. Laura and I were presented at Court together and shared our first season, and later the Prince of Wales (I’m sorry, I know he’s the Duke of Windsor now, but for me he’ll always be our gorgeous Prince of Wales) – he said he would have danced with both of us simultaneously if he had had two pairs of arms (My dear, Mrs Simpson was simply seething!) and life was thrilling, such fun, how we laughed, and then Laura, darling Laura, fell in love with Anthony, and at first I minded dreadfully but after a while I told myself it was wicked of me to begrudge her such happiness, so I made up my mind not to be jealous of him, and once I’d done that I realized he was such a nice man, so sweet-natured, the son of a peer but really quite normal, and they got married in 1938 and they were so happy, living in London – which meant I could still see Laura every day – and then she started a baby and she was so thrilled – we were all so thrilled, even me, although I did have a little shudder at first at the thought of having to share her with yet another person – ugh! how contemptible of me, I despised myself for being so selfish! – and then …
‘Disaster, tragedy, DEATH. Why do such things have to happen, why, why, why, I cried for days, I felt as if half myself had been amputated and all the world seemed such a dark place without Laura’s special light – and when I looked back at all the parties, all the champagne and the caviar, I could only think: Death always wins in the end. Oh, what a dreadful moment that was, so black, so brutal, so absolutely terrifying – and suddenly all my party memories seemed so sinister, I seemed to see a death's head grinning at every feast, and that was the moment when I knew parties would never be the same again because I would always be thinking: EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY FOR TOMORROW WE DIE, and the word DIE would always remind me of horrors past and horrors still to come.
‘Well, when I realized there was no escape from that terrible truth, no escape on the dance-floor, no escape in the saddle at a hunt, no escape among the cocktails at Grosvenor Square, I saw that the only thing to do was not to run away but to stand my ground and try to look Death straight in the face – and once I’d done that I knew I had to live, and when I say live I mean not frittering away time but using time profitably – I knew I had to find some way of life which was real, as real as Death, the toughest reality of all.
‘At that moment the war arrived, and as I told you I thought the answer was to join the Wrens, but that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. What I now find – and this is really most peculiar, in fact highly unnerving – is that the person I appear to be in public, the person everyone thinks I am, has nothing to do with my new true self. Everyone thinks – including you, I suspect, Archdeacon dear – that I’m still just a frivolous little piece of nonsense, but that old false self’s smashed to bits now, all the fragments are gone with the wind, and my current great task is to find the right life for my new true self and so make myself into a real person at last – because only when I become a real person, living in harmony with my new true self, will I be able to face that other real person. Death, on equal terms and not be afraid of him any more.
‘Well, I know that all sounds rather turgid, so I’ll spare you further soul-searching by announcing that I believe I see the first step I have to take: I must get married. (I mentioned this when we met, but now I can explain the decision in its proper context.) The plain fact of the matter is (as I more or less implied earlier) that despite emancipation and women voting and being doctors and bus conductresses and so on, our society considers any woman who’s not married is a failure, and I think that if I’m to have a meaningful life and be truly me, I’ve got to be a success. I mean, I wouldn’t be happy otherwise, and how could I live meaningfully if I was miserable?
‘Now Archdeacon dear, I know you were terribly original and said it could be fulfilling to be celibate (by which I assume you meant not only unmarried but chaste although I believe, strictly speaking, to be celibate merely means to be unmarried) but to be brutally frank I don’t think celibacy would suit me at all. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex, which has always seemed to me as if it must be quite dull in comparison with hunting – although darling Laura said it was all rather heavenly – sex, I mean, not hunting – after all, hunting’s really heavenly, no “rather” about it – and … oh bother, I’ve lost my way in this sentence, I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t mind doing without sex (as I was saying) but I simply couldn’t bear the social stigma of being unmarried. But please don’t think I’m just enslaved by a rampant-pride. You see, the one thing I’m good at is being social, so I feel sure that God’s calling me to be a social success, but of course now I realize it can’t just be the kind of facile self-centred success I used to enjoy when I was my old false self. It must be a meaningful social success – the social success of a wife who strives to help her husband (who of course must be a really worthwhile man) in his dynamic and outstanding career. Then I could feel useful and fulfilled knowing that he was feeling useful and fulfilled and I’m sure we’d both live happily ever after.
‘It’s a glorious vision, isn’t it? Or so I think now, but when it first unfurled itself I confess I did have grave doubts because I knew very well I felt so lukewarm towards men that I couldn’t quite conceive of ever summoning the desire to marry one of them. I did tell you at the dinner-party, didn’t I, about my lukewarm state, but I wasn’t quite honest with you about my reasons for being anti-man. I said I couldn’t bear the way men regarded me as just a pair of legs, but there’s rather more to my antipathy than that. You see, I’m still recovering from being in love with the wrong man for six years. His name’s Roland Carlton-Blake. (If I tell you he likes to be known as Rollo you’ll guess at once what kind of a man he is, so I shall merely confirm your suspicions by telling you that before the war he called himself a gentleman of leisure and other people called him a playboy). Now he’s a soldier in Cairo and as he’s got some sort of desk job I doubt if he sees any fighting, but I can imagine him passing his leisure hours by riding around the pyramids and pretending to be Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.
‘Why did I fall for this ghastly creature, you ask? Well, primarily for all the usual reasons, he was so handsome, so glamorous, he rode to hounds so beautifully, and life always seemed to be so gay and amusing when he was around, but the real reason why I liked him was that he never tried to jump on me and I appreciated this so much that I began to believe he really did love me for myself and not just for my legs. So I wound up thinking: That’s the one man I could bear to marry – I shouldn’t even mind if he was disgusting when he was having sex – because quite frankly, I don’t see how men can avoid being disgusting when they have sex, so the great thing is not to mind when they do.
‘Anyway, earlier this year before he was posted to Egypt I decided to propose to him. After all, it was obvious after six years that he wasn’t going to do it, so I proposed and then he told me he was in the midst of an affair with an actress.
‘As a matter of fact I knew her, she was rather nice, but when I found out I felt absolutely crushed, and I said to Rollo: “Why did you never ask me to be your mistress if you’re the kind of man who does that sort of thing?” He just laughed. He said: “You’d have said no and slapped my face!” – which was actually true, as I can never see the point of coming second (being a mistress) when one can come first (being a wife). I’ve always thought fornication was a dead-end career for a woman, almost as futile as lesbianism.
‘Very indignantly I said to Rollo: “All right, I admit I wouldn’t have been your mistress, but I could have been your wife and then you wouldn’t have had to skulk around fornicating in such an undignified manner.” Oh, how cross he was when I said that! “I’m always very dignified when I fornicate!” he cried indignantly. “All my mistresses consider me a paragon of discretion!” “ALL your mistresses?” I shouted. “You mean you’ve had others?”
‘Oh Mr Aysgarth, you’ll think me very naive, especially as I’m a society girl who’s supposed to be the last word in sophistication, but you see, I loved him and love is blind and I wanted so much to believe he was pure and noble behind his dashing façade, quite different from all the other men in the world who appear to see me as a cross between a cream cake and an ice-cream cornet. Even Father, who’s so well behaved with his mistresses, only having one at a time and never in the same city as Mother – even Father and my brothers seem to see me as no more than a box of chocolates whenever they take time off from their full varied interesting lives to remind themselves of my existence. How I wish I’d been born a man! Gender’s such a prison sometimes, especially when one wants one’s new true self to be recognized and respected.
‘Anyway to return to Rollo I said: “How would you feel if I were to tell you that I’d been sleeping with everyone in sight for six years despite the fact that I’d regularly been saying that I loved no one but you?” And Rollo said as if I was being very stupid: “Oh, that wouldn’t have been playing the game at all! A man with mistresses is just living a normal life. A woman with lovers is just being a slut. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it?” At which point I drew myself up to my full height and looked him straight in the eyes and declared: “Your world, perhaps. But not mine.”
‘I told him I never wanted to see him again, but the awful part was I did want to, I missed him terribly, and it was just as well he was sent to Egypt or I might have weakened. I still loved him even though I could see he was just a selfish lout with the brains of a flea. I thought: that’s the last straw – I’ve lost first Laura and now Rollo, why don’t I just fling myself in the Thames? But I couldn’t bear the thought of being a failure and anyway I’m not the suicidal type, so I staggered on day after day until finally I had a big stroke of luck: I met Charlotte Ottershaw when I was transferred to the Starmouth Naval Base, and as soon as she started talking about her father the Bishop I saw my salvation. It was the Church of England. I thought: there’s where I can find a man who’s good and noble and pure, who won’t see me just as a box of chocolates and who’ll never betray me with someone else! Clergymen have to be virtuous because it’s all part of the job, and so adultery and fornication would be absolutely OUT.
‘Well, Archdeacon dear, I knew at once that I’d had a revelation and I was fearfully excited because I thought I could see the way ahead at last, but then I started feeling depressed again because I realized I knew nothing, beyond a few random facts, about the C. of E. and absolutely nothing about theology and philosophy and all the earnest things good pure noble men talk about. So I told myself that I’d got to find someone who’d teach me what I needed to know because my good pure noble man would at least expect his wife to be able to talk church language intelligently, it would be a sort of minimum requirement for the job. I think I’m actually quite clever, though it’s a wonder I ever learnt anything from Blackboard. Father thought education for women was a waste of time and Mother thought it was positively harmful so I suppose I’m a victim of a bizarre form of child neglect, but although I expect I often appear quite scatterbrained I’m not really stupid at all.
‘So now that you’ve agreed to be my Guide, Philosopher and Friend I must urge you not to assume I’m a fool and water down your erudition accordingly. I want to know everything, even the difficult bits. Can we start with the Church itself? I’d be so grateful if you could give me some information about the most important people, the sort of information which isn’t in Who’s Who – although I had such a fascinating time with Who’s Who the other day, I looked up the Archbishop of Canterbury and I think it’s so extraordinary that his father was Archbishop of Canterbury too – I wonder what the odds are against such a thing happening? It makes the Temples into a sort of dynasty, doesn’t it, and fancy Frederick being over sixty when William was born, maybe more men should take up religion so that they can keep bounding around when rakes like Rollo are chairbound with gout and hardened arteries.
‘I think William Temple will be a tremendous Archbish, he’s so substantial, isn’t he, and I don’t just mean in weight. He’s so human and sympathetic, not like that pompous old prig Archbishop Lang who was so beastly to the Prince of Wales. Now, what I want you to tell me is this: what does William Temple think? Someone said he was a Christian Socialist and someone else said his thought is a blend of Hegelian Dialectic and Platonic Idealism. I’ve heard of Plato (just) but who or what is Hegelian? It sounds like a kind of cloth – or possibly a very grand butler – and the syllables have such a thrillingly sumptuous ring. Write soon, I implore you, and expound on these esoteric mysteries to your most grateful disciple, DIANA DOROTHEA TALLENT.’
Much amused I immediately picked up my pen and seized the chance to divert myself from the problems I was unable to face.
VII
I thought she would soon lose interest in the intellectual aspects of the Church, but her desire to learn persisted until I could only conclude her interest was genuine. I kept my explanations simple, in the belief that clarity is more important to beginners than complex detail, and I did make an effort not to talk down to her. Again Dido responded with gratitude.
‘… and thank you so much for explaining about divine Hegel – I was enrapt and shall now see everything in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. My personal thesis was the frivolous society girl, my antithesis is the serious-minded student thirsting for enlightenment, but what will my synthesis be??? No, don’t answer that question, just go on telling me what churchmen think – or rather, think. (When people think, it might only be about the weather, but when they think, it can only be about things that are vital.)
‘Charlotte says you’re a Protestant, not a Catholic, which is most confusing as I thought the whole point of the Reformation in England was that we got rid of the Catholics, said “Yah!” to the Pope and lived happily ever after as the Protestant Church of England. Why are these Catholics still around? Anyway I’m glad you’re a Protestant, Protestant services are so deliciously austere and I’ve never been keen on all those flamboyant candlelit genuflections and horrid smells which the Church of Rome finds so essential.
‘Charlotte also said you were a Liberal Protestant, which sounds so enlightened, though I’m told “Liberal” in religion isn’t the same as “Liberal” in politics, which is just as well since the political Liberals are nearly extinct. Finally Charlotte said you were a Modernist, which sounds thrillingly wild and abandoned, like those artists who throw a pot of paint at the canvas and call the result A SUNNY AFTERNOON IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. Now Archdeacon dear, do tell: what do all these exotic Church labels really mean?’
By this time I was so enjoying the task of expanding her intellectual horizon that I savoured her letter for an entire week while I reflected on my reply. Finally after a friendly opening paragraph I wrote:
‘… and now let me address myself to your enquiries. The Reformation did indeed re-form the Church in England into the Church of England, but although Catholicism was greatly purged during the following decades it was never eliminated. It had a strong resurgence in the last century (the phenomenon was known as the Oxford Movement) and even today, although most of the Church is Protestant there is a powerful, vocal and influential Anglo-Catholic minority. The pertinent word here is “Anglo”. They’re our own home-grown breed of Catholics, loyal to the Church of England and owing no allegiance to the Pope. However, they’ve become increasingly keen on the idea of reunion with Rome, a pipe-dream which I’m bound to say I believe to be not only Utopian but misguided.
‘This Anglo-Catholic group is known as the High-Church party. Opposite them on the other wing of the Church are the Protestant Evangelicals, also known as the Low-Church party, another powerful and vocal group which unfortunately has suffered from indifferent leadership during this century. This no doubt helps to explain how the Anglo-Catholics have managed to grab power in so many important places, but the Evangelicals will rise again and put the Anglo-Catholics back in their place, of that I’m quite sure. Catholicism is fundamentally alien to the British temperament. The tradition of the stiff upper lip, the modest understatement and the horror of foreigners is incompatible with a tradition of embarrassing emotion, ritualistic excesses and the ethos of Southern Europe.
‘In between these two militant wings lie the middle-of-the-road moderates who constitute the majority of church-goers. The services I conduct are aimed at this majority although I do incline to Low-Church practice. Certainly nothing would induce me to dabble with incense, auricular confession, perpetual reservation of the Sacrament or any other cause so dear to the Anglo-Catholic heart.
‘I should perhaps explain here that the Evangelicals play down the importance of the Liturgy (the centrepiece of Anglo-Catholic worship) and play up the importance of the Bible and the sermon. Nonconformist Evangelicals (those Protestant sects which don’t belong to the Church of England, such as the Methodists and the Baptists) can be fatally bibliolatrous (that is to say, they often believe every word of the Bible to be literally true) but in the Church of England, which places such a high value on enlightened scholarship, I’m glad to say that such a crude approach to religious truth is rare. Although I’m a Low-Churchman by inclination I have always insisted that my religion be compatible with the best modern scholarship – and that, my dear Miss Tallent, brings me to MODERNISM.
‘Modernism cuts across all parties in the Church of England. It also existed in the Roman Catholic Church (in a far more extreme form, I may add, than it existed among the Protestants) but the trend was exterminated by Papal decree earlier in this century. In other words, it’s as possible to be a High-Church Modernist as it is to be a Low-Church Modernist. Modernism is less a creed than an attitude of mind.
‘In short, we believe in reinterpreting Christianity in the light of modern knowledge. Consequently we welcome all scientific advances – in geology, anthropology, psychology, chemistry, physics and so on – and use them as a springboard to an expanded spiritual enlightenment. This leads, inevitably, to the expression of theological views which startle conservative people in all parties of the Church and scandalize the ordinary layman – with the result that Modernists are occasionally accused of heresy. This is usually quite unjustified. All genuine Modernists (and here I discount the eccentric crackpots who give the movement a bad name) hold fast to the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection and the concept of Eternal Life. They are therefore orthodox believers. But exactly how Jesus was the Son of God and in what manner he was resurrected and in what sense one is to interpret “Eternal Life” – these are questions which the Modernists hold are open to constant revision in the light of modern knowledge. For example, Modernists don’t believe in miracles; they don’t believe in anything which contradicts the scientific order. But they still believe that Jesus was the sort of man whom people believed capable of performing miracles; they still believe in the absolute centrality of Christ to the Christian faith.
‘Because the Modernist movement is based on an attitude of mind and not a creed, there’s a large amount of disagreement among us. Some Modernists believe that women should be ordained, for example, but in my opinion such a view is too extreme. I always take care to be moderate and sensible in my Modernism so as not to give needless offence to my superiors. It’s well known that Raven’s support of the ordination of women has cost him a bishopric. When extreme views are under consideration, one always has a moral duty to discern where to draw the line.
‘To sum up, my moderate Modernism complements the so-called Liberal Protestant theology which evolved among enlightened Victorians. I believe (and this belief chimes with Darwin’s work) that the world is evolving steadily in accordance with God’s purpose for mankind, a purpose which is fundamentally good and benign. I believe that sin and evil aren’t as important as man’s basic goodness, the goodness which is exemplified for all time by Our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that God is immanent in this world and that the Holy Spirit is present as a spark in every member of mankind.
‘Because of my adherence to such beliefs I strongly disapprove of the new school of theology which is trying to displace the glory and the nobility and the intellectual quality of Liberal Protestantism with an anti-intellectual, pessimistic, degrading approach to God’s creation. This neo-orthodox school (I use the word neo-orthodox because the theology is in some ways a barbarous reversion to old-fashioned Calvinism) is also known as the theology of Crisis (the word “Crisis” being used in a somewhat technical sense and meaning that we’re all undergoing the ordeal of awaiting God’s judgement). It emphasizes mankind’s sin and misery and says that God isn’t immanent but utterly transcendent, quite unknowable by man. Meanwhile the role of Christ is played down; he merely becomes a salvation event. How repellent! Instead of the forgiveness and compassion of Christ we’re offered the judgement and punishment of God; instead of the Christian message of hope we’re offered a vision of hell and despair. Yet this “neo-orthodoxy” is a rising tide, thriving on the suffering and guilt produced by two world wars. God is seen not putting Himself at one with us out of love and compassion but standing over and above us as He plays the stern father and metes out the punishment. All I can say is that to those of us who are revolted by the concept of stern fathers meting out punishment, this theology is utterly nauseating.
‘And now, Miss Tallent, if you’re still conscious after my diatribe against neo-orthodoxy, I shall end this sermon by apologizing for writing to you at such length. Should you, however, be interested in hearing more about Liberal Protestantism, I can describe in my next letter the thought of the quintessential Liberal Protestant of the twentieth century, Dr Charles Earle Raven, a former canon of Liverpool Cathedral who’s currently Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Master of Christ’s College. As I’ve already mentioned, his more extreme flirtations with Modernism are best ignored, but his general credo is one with which I find myself profoundly in sympathy …’
I thought that having wheeled on the heavy intellectual artillery I might have reduced Dido to a bemused silence, but never was I more mistaken. Replying by return of post she embraced my cannon-fire with delight.
‘… and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for taking the time and the infinite trouble to introduce me to this new world where I feel sure my future husband is lurking behind some Liberal-Protestant-Modernist bush! What a romantic name Charles Raven is! I feel he ought to be a hero in a novel by Elinor Glyn. Is he handsome? And how old is he? More details, please – oh, and when you write back, could you explain what difference there is, if any, between “idealism” and “Idealism” with a capital I? Liberal Protestants sound beautifully idealistic, so romantic, but on the other hand William Temple, who is said to be a Platonic Idealist (among other things), must need to be very down-to-earth and unromantic as he’s the Archbishop of Canterbury and obliged to deal with all the cynical politicians. What is this Idealism which belongs to Plato? Explain, please!
‘What worries me is that idealists (in the colloquial sense) aren’t usually successful in life and I need to marry a potentially successful husband so that my social gifts can come into full play. But on the other hand perhaps the Church is the one place where idealists can be madly successful with the result that the episcopal bench in the House of Lords is simply littered with idealists – like that extraordinary Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, who’s always saying we mustn’t be beastly to the Germans who aren’t Nazis, although how he expects us to separate the wheat from the chaff when they’re up in the sky bombing us to bits, I really can’t imagine.
‘Oh, how I’d love to be a bishop’s wife! I’d run the episcopal palace very efficiently and organize gorgeous garden-parties for the diocesan clergy and give fascinating little dinner-parties for sixteen every week and I’d raise lashings of money for the Poor and dress very tastefully whenever I had to open a fete, and I’d wear wonderful hats when I visited the House of Lords to hear my husband speak – and I’d behave beautifully at Lambeth and Bishopthorpe whenever we were invited for a weekend with the Archbishops, because by that time I’d be well-educated and serious-minded and quite different from the ignorant creature I am now. I’m sure some future bishop must see my potential if only I can meet him – and I’m beginning to see him quite clearly now in my mind’s eye.
‘I want a Liberal Protestant (definitely not an Anglo-Catholic or a neo-orthodox Protestant) with Modernist leanings, and he must be a few years older than me, but not too old, say around forty – in the prime of life – and being nouveau riche myself I shan’t mind if he’s not blue-blooded so long as he speaks correctly and knows how to behave. He should be an Oxford man but a Fellowship of All Souls is not essential. (One can’t have everything.) He should have a deep voice – so masculine – and preach sermons which make me want to cry (I always cry when I feel spiritually uplifted) but he shouldn’t rant and roar. His manner should be cool, austere and dignified.
‘I shan’t mind if he’s not handsome but he must have something about him which is irresistibly attractive – deepset blue eyes perhaps (so heroic) – or a high forehead or broad shoulders or (most scrumptious of all) a very straight firm mouth which represents a MASTERFUL NATURE. I’ve never seen the point of pursuing the sort of man who allows a woman to trample all over him. Men must be men, otherwise why bother, one might just as well live with a woman. I’m sure there must be quite a few men in the Church of England or else it wouldn’t be such a powerful national institution, although bounders like Rollo always say that the men who are against fornication are always the ones who are incapable of it. But bounders like Rollo have no choice but to say that, have they? It’s the only way they can make their weakness look like strength.
‘Well, Archdeacon dear, I’ll stop prattling now, but do write soon – don’t leave me in suspense for a whole week this time – and make sure you give me a few tips on how I can spot a neo-orthodox supporter at fifty paces and take immediate evasive action. Ever your devoted disciple, DIDO TALLENT. P.S. What is soteriology?’
I phrased my reply to this last question when I was shaving. I looked into the mirror at my deepset blue eyes, my high forehead and my straight firm mouth and thought: My dear Miss Tallent, the word ‘soteriology’ refers to matters pertaining to salvation, a state which may well elude you if you continue to write flirtatious letters to a married man …
And I vowed to terminate the correspondence.
But I didn’t. Instead I wrote: ‘My dear Miss Tallent, I’m a clergyman, not a dictionary, so I shan’t waste time defining soteriology; I shall merely ask who’s been talking to you of soteriological matters! It sounds to me as if you’ve already brushed against a follower of neo-orthodoxy. Did he thunder that we’re all “under judgement”? If ever you hear this phrase, the odds are that you’re in neo-orthodox country and you should beat a quick retreat to more Liberal pastures.
‘Meanwhile rest assured that if I meet a Liberal Protestant with the kind of Modernist leanings which would never damage his chance of episcopal preferment, I shall unhesitatingly point him in your direction! Professor Raven, I fear, is quite unsuitable, being not only a non-starter as a bishop (see my previous letter) but far too old for you (nearly sixty). He’s also a married man – and I’m afraid you really can’t go around chasing married clergymen. “There’s no future in that,” as a clever woman bent on capturing a future bishop might say, and I think on the whole you’d be best advised to look for a husband of your own age. Men of forty nowadays are usually either married or homosexual. And now to intellectual matters. Platonic Idealism is the father of our colloquial “idealism”. The Greeks believed …’ And for a further two pages I wrote fluently on the subject of Plato’s philosophy.
I was just congratulating myself on conducting this exceedingly enjoyable correspondence with such faultless propriety – a correspondence which my perfect wife never once asked to see – when my harmless epistolary friendship began to swing stealthily out of control.
I was invited by Lady Starmouth to spend a weekend at the Earl’s country house.
THREE (#ulink_9333ad11-cece-57fa-afc1-eab44c379ed3)
‘Comfort, power, the applause and wonder of men – is there any Church in Christendom, or any Christian soul, not deeply tainted with these things?’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
The Cross and the Crisis
I
I was greatly surprised by the invitation. I had met the Starmouths through Alex soon after he had appointed me his Archdeacon in 1937, but they had remained mere distant acquaintances, and although Lady Starmouth had a reputation for befriending clergymen I had always suspected she found me too dull to merit her special attention. Certainly in her presence I had found it difficult to shake off a sense of social inferiority which made me appear shy and awkward. Yet now for some reason Lady Starmouth had decided to take trouble with me. Moreover in the same post I received a letter from the Earl himself saying that he did hope I was free to accept his wife’s invitation as he was most anxious to hear me preach. Would I deliver a sermon at his local parish church? Now I was no longer merely surprised. I was amazed and excited. Lord Starmouth was one of the most influential laymen in the Church of England and always spoke on important Church matters in the House of Lords. If he wanted to hear me preach I was indeed being thrust into the ecclesiastical spotlight.
‘What an opportunity!’ I exclaimed in jubilation to Grace.
‘It’s very exciting for you – and so kind of Lady Starmouth to invite us both,’ said Grace, ‘but of course I can’t possibly go.’
There was a silence. We were in the study where I had been opening the morning’s second post. As soon as I had read the vital letter, I had called Grace to join me.
‘It’s you they want,’ she said in a rush as the silence lengthened. ‘They’re just inviting me out of politeness, and it would be much better if you went on your own.’
All I could say was: ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘But the children –’
‘You’re coming with me.’
‘But what on earth shall I wear?’
‘Buy whatever’s necessary.’
‘But the coupons –’
‘Steal them.’
‘Neville!’
‘All right, borrow them! I was just trying to make you understand how absolutely vital it is that you come with me! It would be the height of foolishness if you evaded this invitation – Lady Starmouth would almost certainly be sceptical about any excuse you might make, and if she feels she’s been snubbed, what kind of position do you think that would put me in?’
‘In that case we’ll have to take the children with us.’
‘Don’t be absurd! We can’t do that when the children haven’t been invited! We’ll have to leave them with Nora or one of your other friends.’
‘I don’t like to impose –’
‘No, but this is the one occasion where you must be ruthless – or if you really can’t face tackling Nora I’ll tackle Emily. I’ve no scruples at all about imposing on my sister in urgent circumstances.’
‘I always feel so awkward about asking Emily to have the children when she has no children of her own –’
‘Nonsense – they’ll provide a welcome diversion from that dreary husband of hers! Now listen to me, Grace. I quite understand why you should feel this weekend will be an ordeal, but it’s an ordeal you’re perfectly capable of surmounting – all you’re being required to do is to look pretty and be polite. I’m not trying to throw you to the lions. I’m just trying to ensure you don’t miss out on an exciting and worthwhile excursion. Make up your mind you’re going to enjoy yourself! Why not? Why shouldn’t it all be great fun?’
But Grace only said in despair: ‘How I wish we’d never left Willowmead!’ and I heard her stifle a sob as she rushed from the room.
II
‘I didn’t mean it, Neville – of course I didn’t mean it – I just feel nostalgic about Willowmead sometimes, that’s all …’
I had followed her to our bedroom where she had retreated to calm down, and as we faced each other we could hear the charwoman talking good-naturedly to Sandy as she worked in the drawing-room below us. Primrose was at nursery school as usual. I was supposed to be on my way to a diocesan committee meeting, and I was acutely conscious of the clock ticking on the bedside table as I was obliged to delay my departure.
‘I know how much you loved Willowmead,’ I said, ‘but we’ve been happy in Starbridge too and we’re going to go on being happy here.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’
‘To be honest, I find the Starmouths intimidating as well. But one can’t spend one’s life cowering in corners just because one feels socially inferior!’
‘No, of course not. Will there be a maid, do you think, to unpack our suitcases? I don’t want anyone seeing my darned underwear.’
‘In that case I’ll tell the servant we don’t require help with the unpacking. Now Grace, stop worrying yourself into a frenzy, there’s a good girl, and make up your mind you’re going to be strong, brave and resourceful!’
‘Yes. All right. I’ll try,’ she said, but my heart sank as her shoulders drooped.
Willing myself not to despair I hurried off to my meeting at the diocesan office on Eternity Street.
III
Starmouth Court stood not, as might be assumed, near the port of Starmouth in the south of the diocese, but eighteen miles from London in the county of Surrey; the Earl’s connection with Starmouth was lost in the mists of antiquity. When we eventually arrived at our destination on a sunlit Saturday morning in July, I was just as horrified as Grace to discover not a friendly country house but a tall stout elderly mansion of forbidding proportions. Accustomed though I was to calling at the various grand houses in my archdeaconry, I had never been invited to stay the night in these places and the thought of being a guest in the Starmouths’ overpoweringly dignified country seat made me feel for a moment like a fallen woman obliged to take refuge with a formidable maiden aunt.
Built high on a hillside the house was surrounded by trees and approached by a long winding drive which strained both our nerves and the engine of the chauffeur-driven motor which our hostess had sent to meet us at the station. ‘“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came,’” I muttered to Grace before the Dark Tower was revealed as the plump Queen Anne palace. I allowed myself one quick shudder before resolving fiercely to appear self-possessed. ‘Isn’t it exactly like the country house in a detective story?’ I murmured to Grace with a heroic attempt at nonchalance. ‘I foresee corpses in the library, a sinister butler lurking behind the green baize door and Hercule Poirot hovering in the shrubbery!’
But Grace was too terrified to reply.
We were admitted by a stately footman to a hall the size of a tennis court. Vast pictures of men in togas were suspended from points so remote as to be barely visible. An enormous arrangement of flowers stood in what appeared to be a pseudo-Greek vase. Then I realized there was nothing pseudo about the vase. It had that dim ancient look which is impossible to reproduce, and it reminded me of countless visits to the British Museum on wet Saturday afternoons in my childhood when Willy and I, boarded out with strict Methodists, had taken refuge once a week in the sights of London.
‘Nice flowers,’ I said casually to Grace in an automatic effort to signal to the footman that I found the hall itself too mundane to merit a comment. ‘Very well arranged.’
I had barely finished speaking when a door banged, footsteps pattered swiftly in our direction down a distant corridor and the next moment someone was bursting joyously into the hall. A familiar peel of laughter rang out. A well-remembered voice cried: ‘Welcome to Starmouth Court!’ And with horrified delight I recognized my disciple.
IV
‘Did you know she was going to be here?’ demanded Grace as soon as we were alone in the bedroom which had been assigned to us, but my stupefaction was so obviously genuine that she never doubted my denial. Moving to the window I saw that the room was placed at the back of the house and overlooked a formal garden which unfolded upwards in a series of terraces before rolling out of sight over the summit of the hill. On the lowest lawn twin rows of classical statues eyed each other across a sward dotted with croquet-hoops. The sun was still shining radiantly, reminding me that I felt much too hot.
‘She should have told me,’ I said as I automatically took advantage of the opportunity to remove my clerical collar. ‘Why on earth didn’t she mention it in her last letter?’
‘I suppose she thought it would be fun to surprise you.’ Grace was already unpacking her darned underwear before a servant could materialize, like the genie of the lamp, between her and the open suitcase.
‘I don’t like those sort of surprises.’ I began to roam around the room. The brass bedstead gleamed. Lifting the counterpane I absent-mindedly fingered the very white sheets.
‘I suppose they’re real linen,’ said Grace. ‘And look at those towels by the washstand! Can they possibly be linen too?’
‘Must be pre-war. But expensive things always look new for years.’ I stared around at the room’s luxury, so subtly sumptuous, so tastefully extravagant, and before I could stop myself I was saying: ‘I suppose you’re still wishing you hadn’t come.’
‘Oh no!’ said Grace at once. ‘Now that the adventure’s begun I’m enjoying myself – in fact I’m sure you were right and it’s all going to be great fun!’
I did realize that Grace was belatedly exercising her intelligence, but I found I had no desire to consider the implications of this new canny behaviour. I merely smiled, gave her a grateful kiss and began to unpack my bag.
V
Everyone was very kind to Grace, who despite her tortuous self-doubts was as capable as I was of being socially adept in unfamiliar circumstances. Certainly no one was kinder than Dido who lavished attention on her to such an extent that I was almost ignored. More than once I told myself conscientiously how relieved I was that my disciple was on her best behaviour; it seemed all I now had to do, in order to survive the weekend with my clerical self-esteem intact, was to stick close to my wife and keep my eyes off Dido’s legs which seemed to shimmer like erotic beacons whenever I glanced in her direction. I even thought in a burst of optimism that I might soon be able to write off my embarrassingly carnal preoccupation with Dido as an example of that well-known phenomenon, the middle-aged man’s vulnerability to the charms of youth. However although I was keen to reduce my feelings to a trivial inconvenience I suspected I was still too young to be in the grip of a middle-aged malaise. Or was I? If my diagnosis was correct I could only shudder. If I was like this at forty, what would I be like at fifty? I had a fleeting picture of myself at sixty, an elderly lecher surrounded by young girls, and it was not at all a cheering vision for a churchman who had always been anxious to Get On and Travel Far.
The weekend gathering at Starmouth Court was hardly ‘smart’ in society’s sense of the word, although Lady Starmouth ensured that the atmosphere was friendly and cultivated. In addition to my disciple, who was on a seventy-two-hour leave, the guests consisted of a residentiary canon of Radbury Cathedral and his wife, a contemporary of the Earl’s from the House of Lords, a bossy lady of uncertain age who worked in London for Jewish refugees and who talked of Bishop Bell with the enthusiasm women usually reserve for film stars, an etiolated civil servant from the Ministry of Information, and the Starmouths’ youngest daughter Rosalind, who had been a debutante with Dido in 1933; her husband was now serving with the Army in India. I soon felt confident that I could hold my own in this company, even with the Canon who was at least twenty years my senior, but nonetheless I was careful to temper my growing self-confidence with a quiet unassuming manner. Alex had warned me more than once that the upper-classes disliked a newcomer who was too strident.
‘Whatever you do,’ I said to Grace as we changed for dinner on the night of our arrival, ‘don’t mention to that bossy Miss Wilkins who’s obviously in love with Bishop Bell that I may be having contact with German prisoners in the future at the new camp on Starbury Plain. Once one starts discussing the Church’s attitude towards Germans Bell’s name’s bound to come up and I don’t want to get involved in any conversation which is politically controversial.’
‘But I thought you admired Bishop Bell!’
‘Yes. Privately. But I don’t want anyone thinking I’m “soft on Germans”.’
‘I’m sure no one would think –’
‘Oh yes, they would! The trouble is that politically speaking Bell’s dynamite. Why has he been passed over for senior bishoprics? Because over and over again he’s stood up in the House of Lords to hammer away at the government and in consequence even though he’s no pacifist people are convinced he’s soft on Germans!’
‘But he’s not soft on Nazis, is he? The people who accuse him of being soft on Germans aren’t really being fair –’
‘No, but I just don’t want to get into one of those arguments about whether it’s possible in wartime conditions such as these to make a distinction between the Nazis and the non-Nazis in Germany – I don’t want to get into any argument about the morality of saturation bombing. Of course Bell’s right to champion the cause of the suffering Germans – all the Christian and Jewish refugees before the war, all the Christians and Jews now in the concentration camps, even all the Germans who are loathing every moment of Hitler’s rule but have somehow managed to stay free – and of course it’s absolutely wrong to say, as that ass Babbington-French says, that the only good German’s a dead German, but Bell shouldn’t try to tell Churchill how to run the war. It’s madness, absolute madness – as well as professional suicide – and I can’t support it. We’ve got to stay solidly behind Churchill, got to – how else are we going to survive this appalling ordeal?’
‘Oh darling, I do understand and I do agree with you – please don’t think I’m criticizing! Where would we all be now if it wasn’t for Mr Churchill? Not at Starmouth Court, that’s certain! It’s just that I can’t help admiring Bishop Bell for standing up for Christian values in such very adverse circumstances and at such personal cost to himself –’
‘Yes, he’s a hero.’ I moved to the window to stare out at the terraced lawns. ‘Charles Raven stays in his academic ivory tower and preaches pacifism,’ I said, ‘but George Bell’s out there in the chaos, battling away doggedly for God in a world gone mad. I used to admire no churchman more than Raven, but now I think … well, never mind what I think. As I said earlier, it’s best to keep quiet on the subject of the Bishop of Chichester.’
Much to my surprise Grace suddenly kissed me and said: ‘I’m glad you admire him so much. That’s the real you, isn’t it?’
‘Real me?’ I was much pleased by this unexpected gesture of affection.
‘The man behind the successful archdeacon.’
‘The successful archdeacon’s the real me too.’
‘Yes, but –’
I suddenly caught a glimpse of the time. ‘We ought to be going downstairs,’ I said, trying not to sound nervous at the thought of the grand meal ahead. ‘Are you ready?’
We hurried down to dinner.
VI
After the ladies had retired from the table, Lord Starmouth abandoned his other guests to a discussion of the Desert War – now grimmer than ever after the shattering fall of Tobruk less than three weeks before – and motioned me into a quiet corner by the sideboard.
‘Alex Jardine’s always spoken highly of you,’ he said, ‘but perhaps now is the moment when I should confess it wasn’t Jardine who prompted my wife’s invitation to you this weekend.’
‘Then I must assume it was Dr Ottershaw.’
‘As a matter of fact it wasn’t him either. Ottershaw’s been singing your praises for years, I admit, but I’m ashamed to say my wife and I ignored him. No, your cause has been promoted by Miss Tallent, Archdeacon.’
I stifled a gasp, prayed not to blush and belatedly realized that my mouth was open. I managed to close it.
‘Dear little Dido!’ said the Earl, taking advantage of the fact that his advanced years gave him a licence to be openly sentimental about young girls. ‘She showed me the letters.’
This time I was unable to stifle a gasp. My mouth had sagged open again.
‘Your letters!’ said the Earl, smiling at me benignly. ‘I really must congratulate you, Archdeacon – what an epistolary tour de force! I particularly liked your essay on the Incarnation, complete with Professor Sanday’s Modernist development of the kenotic aspect. Lucky little Dido, I thought, stumbling across a clergyman who could so ably guide her along her spiritual way.’
By a mighty effort I recovered myself sufficiently to say: ‘I’m glad my efforts met with your approval, my Lord.’
‘Well, as soon as I’d read the letters I said to my wife: “I must hear this man preach!” I look forward immensely to your sermon tomorrow – and little Dido, I might add, is in a veritable fever of anticipation.’ The Earl sighed with pleasure, though whether at the thought of my sermon or of ‘little Dido’ it was impossible to discern. ‘There’s a heart of gold underneath all that flashy behaviour,’ he confided, ‘and I’m delighted she’s become more serious lately. I suspect she’s been very unhappy. London society’s an awful business. I’m glad my daughters married quickly and didn’t have to rattle about for too long … Now tell me this, Archdeacon: do you think little Dido should marry into the Church? You may not have realized this, but she’s set her heart on it –’ That was when I finally dared to believe that Dido had been highly selective in her choice of letters ‘– and to be honest I can’t quite see her in a vicarage. I don’t think she realizes how old-fashioned the Church is in so many ways and how conventional her behaviour would have to become. She’d be better off with a land-owning politician, I think – someone who has a house in London and a few hundred acres somewhere in hunting country.’
‘Possibly so.’ A still small voice was now busy whispering in my mind that with Dido at my side no ecclesiastical prize would be unobtainable, but I knew very well that this voice came not from God but from the force which old-fashioned churchmen called the Devil and which I, as a good Modernist, recognized as the dark side of my ego. I have no wish to make excuses for the dark side of my ego, but perhaps I might be permitted to attempt to justify the desire to do as well as I possibly could in my career – the desire which my critics would unhesitatingly label as an ambition quite unbecoming to a clergyman.
Ambition, like everything else in one’s life, must be dedicated to the service of God. When I dreamed of preferment I had no wish merely to serve myself; I only wanted to get into a position where I could serve God to the very best of my God-given ability, and the truth was that my God-given ability was not for living on locusts and wild honey as a holy man in the wilderness. My talent was for administration. My archdeaconry ran like clockwork. My curates were trained, groomed and buffed to a high lustre. I had only to cast an eye on any diocesan department and bureaucratic slovenliness instantly evaporated. I could put the Bishop through his paces so painlessly that he ceased to be depressed by paperwork.
Now, I’m willing enough to admit that this gift of mine is not spiritually exciting, but I submit, with all due respect, that not every clergyman is born to be a St Francis of Assisi or a St Ignatius Loyola. My duty was not to waste time bemoaning my limitations, but to dedicate my gift, modest as it was, to God’s service. Am I deceiving myself when I speculate that God was probably glad to receive it even though it was sadly lacking in spiritual glamour? I think not. After all, someone has to run the Church of England, that historic witness to the power of the Christian faith, and since in an imperfect world a Church can hardly thrive on a diet of undiluted holiness, first-class administrators must always be essential for its welfare.
In short, I felt I could justify my ambition to travel upwards in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What I could never justify was a desire to travel that road in the company of a woman who wasn’t my wife. That was utterly reprehensible and no good clergyman would ever allow himself to sink so low – a statement which was the equivalent of saying the thought had never occurred to me because I was such a good clergyman. Wiping it from my mind with shame I resolved to forego the pleasure of making love to my wife beneath an earl’s roof that night and instead spend time polishing my sermon.
Alex had once advised me that a clergyman addressing the upper classes from the pulpit should never forget that they had received, no matter how unwillingly, a good education; he had recommended including at least one well-known quotation at the start of the sermon, as they would feel clever when they recognized the words and this self-satisfaction would put them in a benign, receptive mood. Accordingly when writing the sermon I had begun with a quotation from Browning (‘How very hard it is to be a Christian!’), glided into Tennyson (‘Ring out the darkness of the land; ring in the Christ that is to be’), brushed against T. S. Eliot (‘Each venture is a new beginning’), and bound all these lines together with one of my favourite biblical texts: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, yea and forever,’ – words which I always felt offered comfort, particularly in an unstable, war-torn world.
Starmouth Court stood in the parish of Leatherhead, a pleasant country town not far from the outer reaches of the South London suburbs, and the fine Norman church overlooked the valley of the River Mole, so called for its habit of burrowing underground in unexpected places. I wondered if the vicar minded when his distinguished parishioners imposed guest-preachers on him, but when he greeted me with unflinching cordiality I deduced he was more than ready to welcome a holiday from homiletics. The service began. The moment for the sermon arrived, and without wishing to brag I must confess that I made the most of my golden opportunity.
It was after lunch when I was cornered by Lady Starmouth. Having discovered that afternoon rests were permitted to guests, Grace had slipped away to our room in order to drum up some extra stamina and I had wandered outside for a stroll in the grounds. I wound up prowling aimlessly from terrace to terrace as I tried to pretend I had no desire to bump into Dido.
‘Archdeacon! Just the man I wanted to see,’ exclaimed my hostess, eventually ensnaring me as I loafed around the rose garden’s wishing-well. ‘Let’s sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you about Dido.’
‘Ah!’ I said. The monosyllable might have seemed unadventurous but at least it had the merit of being uncontroversial. I allowed myself to be steered to an elegant wrought-iron seat which overlooked a bed of oppressively feminine red roses.
‘I really must congratulate you, Mr Aysgarth,’ said Lady Starmouth, dark eyes very friendly, and bestowed upon me one of her most gracious smiles.
‘Oh?’ I said, dumb as any uncouth Yorkshire yokel. In panic I ordered myself to abandon these absurd monosyllables.
‘Come now, Archdeacon!’ said Lady Starmouth, effortlessly charming, subtly grand. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! Of course you’re well aware that Dido’s in love with you, and of course you realize that I’m congratulating you on your skill in dealing with her infatuation.’
‘Ah!’ I said again. No wonder Yorkshiremen had a dour reputation. All I needed to complete my imitation of the wooden-headed provincial northerner was a cloth cap. Furious with myself for being so crippled by shyness I cursed the entire English class system and tried to pretend my hostess was merely one of my middle-class parishioners.
‘I’m not sure I entirely agree with your diagnosis of Dido’s feelings, Lady Starmouth,’ I said, somehow producing a casual smile, the kind of smile a clever clergyman produces when he’s talking of worldly matters to a sophisticated older woman. ‘She’s not in love with me. She’s in love with what I represent.’
‘That’s a shrewd remark and confirms my opinion that you’re no fool. But Archdeacon, I think it’s time someone helped you by throwing a little extra light on what could prove to be an inflammable situation. The truth is, I’m afraid, that Dido’s a very naughty little girl. Oh, I concede there are extenuating circumstances – the father’s a rogue, the mother’s unpresentable, new money always produces vulgar consequences – but nevertheless one can’t escape the fact that the Tallent children were thrown into society with only hired old crones to chaperone them, and since those three girls had no education, no breeding, no proper childhood discipline and no real inkling of how they should conduct themselves, it’s hardly surprising that their social successes – based, I may say, entirely on their ability to flirt – should have resulted in scandal and tragedy. Dido’s told you the whole sad story, I presume?’
‘She did mention –’
‘Merry’s married to a compulsive gambler, Laura’s dead and Dido has a reputation for … shall we call it mischief? She makes fools of the decent men and chases the rakes. Has she talked to you about Rollo Carlton-Blake? He’s a confirmed bachelor with a penchant for loose women of the lower classes, as everyone told her years ago, but Dido took no notice of what everyone told her and I believe I know why. Au fond that girl doesn’t want to get married, Mr Aysgarth, and that’s why, consciously or unconsciously, she falls in love with men who are either impossible, like Carlton-Blake, or unavailable, like you. I once had an American friend who was like that. She too fell in love with a very promising young married clergyman and nearly ruined him – although I’m glad to say he survived and became a bishop. Such women are dangerous … But perhaps you’d already reached that conclusion and were wondering how to extricate yourself?’
‘I must be quite honest,’ I said, heart sinking as I realized I was being compelled to lie, ‘and say I’m anxious to extricate myself, but as a clergyman I can’t help but be mindful of the fact that I might be promoting a genuine spiritual awakening by writing to her. As the Bible says, one mustn’t quench the smouldering flax or break the bruised reed. Any new moral awareness should be carefully nurtured.’
‘Quite. That’s very conscientious of you, Mr Aysgarth, and indeed my husband said much the same thing when Dido resurrected her old friendship with Rosalind in order to cultivate our acquaintance on your behalf, but be warned and take care … And now,’ said Lady Starmouth, having completed her verbal disembowelling of my disciple, ‘let’s turn to pleasanter subjects. What a very charming and delightful wife you have! I do hope she’s enjoying herself.’
Immediately I suspected that this was no new subject but merely a different aspect of a certain sinister theme. ‘We’re both enjoying ourselves immensely, Lady Starmouth!’ I said, feigning a sunny-natured innocence. ‘It’s been the most memorable weekend!’
‘How delighted I am to hear you say so!’ Lady Starmouth had evidently decided that a little sunny-natured innocence of her own was now called for. ‘I’d heard a rumour that your wife doesn’t care much for social occasions.’
‘Really?’ I said surprised. ‘How extraordinary! She has a wide circle of friends and of course her parish duties – which she performs to perfection – require her to be very sociable indeed.’
‘How proud you must be of her! An excellent wife is so essential for a clergyman. I once knew a very unfortunate clergyman’s wife,’ said Lady Starmouth, again wielding her clerical memories with ruthless skill. ‘She spent her whole time weeping on a chaise-longue because she couldn’t cope with her responsibilities. The effect on the poor husband was quite devastating, but fortunately in the end he obtained the necessary domestic help – always so essential for a clergyman’s wife, don’t you think? – and I’m glad to say they lived happily ever after. More or less.’ She gave me yet another of her radiant smiles and rose to her feet. ‘I’m reminded of your sermon this morning,’ she added lightly. ‘“How very hard it is to be a Christian” – and how very hard, Browning might have added, it is to be a clergyman! But of course since you’re a clever devout man with an admirable wife who offers you every support, I’m sure you find life far easier than some of your less fortunate brethren.’ And having signalled to her new protégé that she was happy to lavish approval on him so long as he had the good sense to keep his private life in order, she drifted gracefully away from me across the rose garden.
VII
The immediate result of this scene was that I wanted to punch Alex on the nose for gossiping about me to his favourite ladyfriend, but then I calmed down and reflected that I had jumped to a conclusion which was most unlikely to be true. Devoted as Alex was to Lady Starmouth, he would hardly have disclosed to her details about my domestic troubles; any clergyman would have judged our conversation about my private life to be confidential. Reluctantly I was driven to assume that some other person – perhaps Mrs Ottershaw, commenting on Grace’s absence from the fatal palace dinner-party – had indiscreetly murmured that the Archdeacon’s wife seemed to be quietly fading away at the vicarage, and Lady Starmouth had consequently made her own shrewd deductions about what was going on in my marriage. I saw clearly that she liked Grace but doubted her stamina, that she liked me but worried that I might land up in a mess, and that she disliked Dido very much indeed but was prepared to tolerate her for a weekend in order to humour her husband.
Feeling considerably shaken by this benign but bruising encounter with my hostess, I put aside all thoughts of a chance encounter with Dido among the roses and withdrew to the house. No one was about. Padding upstairs I glided along a thick carpet past portraits of voluptuous Georgian ladies and quietly eased open the door of the bedroom in an attempt to avoid waking Grace. But she was not asleep. To my dismay, exasperation and – worst of all – anger, I found her sobbing softly into her pillow.
I shoved the door shut. Then making a belated effort to control my feelings I slumped down on the bed beside her and said in my most neutral voice: ‘So the truth is you hate it here. You were only pretending to enjoy it.’
I had thought such bleak statements might jolt her into a denial but she merely nodded her head in despair as she made a futile attempt to wipe away her tears.
‘And of course you’re missing the children.’
Another nod. More tears began to fall.
Rising to my feet I took off my jacket and hung it carefully over the back of the nearest chair; because of the heat I had changed from my archidiaconal uniform to a plain clerical suit immediately after lunch. Then I removed my collar and slumped down on the bed again. These trivial movements helped to calm me. My voice was still devoid of resentment when I said: ‘Well, it’s no good having anything but a candid talk, is it? We’ve got to try to solve this problem.’
Grace made yet another attempt to mop up her tears but by this time her eyes were red and swollen. I realized it was going to be impossible for her to go down to tea.
‘Now,’ I said, trying to take control of the situation by adopting a brisk sensible manner, ‘the first thing we have to do is to find out why you’re so unhappy. I’m not talking about your present misery. I’m talking about the more general unhappiness which I know has been afflicting you for some time. When exactly did it all begin? Was it when we found out Sandy had been conceived and you started to worry about how you were going to cope?’
I was, of course, busy laying the foundations for an unanswerable argument that we should employ a live-in nursemaid, so I was expecting her to reply ‘Yes’ to my question. It came as a considerable shock to me when she said: ‘No, this has nothing to do with Sandy. He simply complicated a situation which already existed.’
I stared at her. ‘You’re saying this unhappiness existed before Sandy was conceived in 1940?’
‘Yes, I first became aware of it when we moved to Starbridge in ’37, but now that I look back with the wisdom of hindsight I believe the seeds of my unhappiness were sown in 1932.’
‘At Willowmead? But that’s impossible! You were so happy there!’
‘Yes, but that’s when things started to go wrong.’
‘But what on earth happened at Willowmead in ’32?’
‘You met Alex Jardine. As soon as he started taking an interest in you he was a malign influence on our lives.’
I was speechless.
‘I’ve never liked Alex,’ said Grace in a rush. ‘Never. I know you were always ambitious, but I felt he stoked up your ambition so that it blazed in all the wrong directions –’
‘What on earth are you talking about? It was his sympathetic interest which gave me the confidence I needed to make the most of my God-given abilities!’ I was now very shocked indeed. ‘My dear Grace, I can hardly believe you feel like this about Alex! He’s always admired you so much and said what a perfect wife you were for a clergyman!’
‘Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I dislike him – I always feel he sees me as no more than an appropriate accessory, like a pair of gloves. Poor Carrie! No wonder they’re unhappily married.’
‘But they’re devoted to each other!’
‘I don’t think he’s devoted to her at all. Think of all the times we’ve heard him being sarcastic when poor Carrie makes one of her stupid remarks!’
‘Well, I agree there’s a large amount of surface irritation, but I’m sure that underneath he’s –’
‘Underneath I think he’s actually a rather nasty piece of work – and I’m absolutely convinced that his influence has had a disastrous effect on our marriage.’
‘But how can you possibly blame Alex for –’
‘Very easily. It was Alex who singled you out from all the other clergy in the diocese and gave you ideas above your station –’
‘Ideas above my station? Good heavens, Grace, which century are you living in? I’m not a Victorian servant!’
‘No, you’re a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make – and Alex has been constantly encouraging you, bringing you to Starbridge, giving you grand ideas by introducing you to people like the Starmouths, spoiling you with that glamorous preferment which I often think quite turned your head when you were too young to know better –’
‘Well, of course I know you’re a cut above me socially and entitled to look down on me if you please, but I must say I find your attitude offensive and your accusations insane. But then women are notoriously irrational when they’re upset and wives are notoriously peevish when they find they can’t keep up with their husbands any more –’
‘And who put us in a position where I can’t keep up with you any more? Who turned my gentle, sensitive, shy, romantic husband into someone else altogether?’
‘Nobody’s turned me into anything. People evolve, Grace! They don’t just stand still! You can’t expect me to remain as I was when we first met on the beach at St Leonards!’
Once again she dissolved into tears of despair.
‘My dearest love …’ I suddenly realized that I too was in a state of extreme emotional distress. There was a knot of tension in my stomach and I was aware of a vague nausea which threatened to become acute. In the end all I could say in a stricken voice was: ‘You don’t really think of me as just a Yorkshire draper’s son on the make, do you?’
Still crying she shook her head and flung her arms around my neck. Eventually she managed to whisper: ‘Forgive me.’
I suddenly felt I could not bear her misery a second longer, and wanting only to terminate this truly appalling scene I said unevenly: ‘I’m the one who should be asking for forgiveness. My dearest love, tell me what I can do to make you happy again – I’ll make any sacrifice for your sake, I swear it.’
Grace screwed her sodden handkerchief into a ball and gripped it so hard that her knuckles shone white. ‘Give up your archdeaconry. Give up Alex. And give up that double-faced little bitch who’s bent on ruining you.’
I was silenced. As I automatically took a pace backwards she raised her head to look me in the eyes. ‘Well, you did say,’ she said in a shaking voice, ‘that you’d make any sacrifice.’
‘I’m sorry but in my vocabulary “to make a sacrifice” doesn’t mean “to commit professional suicide”.’ I got a grip on myself and managed to add in a calm polite voice: ‘I can’t resign my position as Archdeacon; I honestly believe I’m doing the work God’s called me to do. As for Alex, I’m sorry, but I can’t give him up; it would be the height of ingratitude after all he’s done for me. I’ll make an effort not to inflict him too often on you in future, but it’s quite unthinkable that I should ever say to him –’
‘And Dido Tallent? Don’t let’s pretend, Neville. I know you find her attractive. Wives always do know when their husbands’ attention strays in that particular way.’
‘If you think for one moment that I’ve ever done anything wrong with her –’
‘No, of course I don’t think that! I’ve lived with you for sixteen years and I know better than anyone what a very good, devout man you still are in spite of everything – and that’s exactly why this present crisis is such a nightmare. I feel you’re on the brink of going to pieces in some very profound way which I’m unable to understand.’
‘Going to pieces? Me? But my dear Grace, you’re the one who appears to be disintegrating!’
‘Yes, but I’m only disintegrating because you’re going to pieces! Neville, there’s something dreadfully wrong here, I’m sure there is, and to tell you the truth I don’t really believe our fundamental problem is my unhappiness. I think my unhappiness is just a symptom of something far more complex and sinister.’
‘You’re raving.’ Turning aside from her I replaced my collar and jacket. My Bible was lying on the bedside table. Trailing my fingers across the cover I said: ‘I’m not going to pieces. There are no fundamental problems in our marriage. The only difficulty I have to resolve is how I can make you happy again, and now, by the grace of God, I’m going to work out exactly what I have to do to put matters right.’ Picking up the Bible I headed for the door, and it was only when my fingers clasped the handle that I added casually over my shoulder: ‘Of course I’ll terminate my association with Miss Tallent. I can see clearly now that I’ve been in the wrong there, and I’m very sorry if my acquaintance with her has contributed to your unhappiness.’
I made my exit. My mind was in chaos. In the hall I got in a muddle and dived down the wrong marble passage with the result that I left the house by an unfamiliar side-door. Skirting the kitchen garden I staggered through an orchard and steered myself around a succession of high yew hedges. I was just beginning to feel like one of Kafka’s characters, lost in some nightmarish metaphysical maze, when I found myself back in the rose garden – and there by the wishing-well stood my disciple, quite alone at last, dark hair combed and curled to perfection, dark eyes glowing with a bewitchingly artless delight as I found myself propelled down the grass path to her side.
‘Archdeacon dee-ah!’ she exclaimed, mimicking the drawing-room drawl of an earlier generation of society women. ‘How too, too lovely!’
‘I think not,’ I said, reaching the well. ‘Miss Tallent, I regret to have to inform you –’
‘What a ghastly phrase! That’s the sort of jargon people in trade use when they tell a customer that some important item’s going to be out of stock for six months! Now stop being so beastly pompous, Archdeacon dear, and let me tell you that your sermon this morning was quite wonderful and I was so proud of you and I felt so spiritually uplifted that I soaked two entire handkerchiefs! Isn’t life absolute heaven?’
Without a second’s hesitation I said: ‘Yes, I feel as if it’s spring again after a long dull winter!’ And having delivered myself of quite the most reckless remark any married clergyman could have uttered to a flirtatious young woman, I abandoned my Bible on the parapet of the wishing-well and impulsively clasped both her hands in mine.
FOUR (#ulink_1af801dd-59b5-57b8-8897-85504617f21c)
‘Passion cannot be eliminated: it can be kept uncontaminated, be sublimated, as the jargon of today would say.’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
The clasp lasted three seconds. Then, releasing her, I found myself muttering idiotically: ‘Sorry. Most unedifying. Thoroughly unseemly,’ and those adjectives, so well-worn by an earlier generation of clergymen, added an air of bathos to my horrified reaction; with a few antique words it seemed I had turned a silly slip into melodrama. Finally, to pile indignity upon indignity, I began to blush, and turning my back on Dido I grabbed my Bible from the parapet of the wishing-well. I instinctively knew that my hands should be fully occupied before they succumbed to a second catastrophic urge to wander.
‘Dearest Stephen!’ said Dido enthralled. ‘Why on earth are you apologizing? I can’t see anything wrong with an affectionate hand-clasp between friends!’
All I could say was: ‘You promised not to call me by that name.’ I was still unable to look at her.
‘Archdeacon dear, please don’t be so upset! Of course I adore you passionately, but why should sex ruin our beautiful friendship? I’d never go to bed with any man unless I was married to him, and as I can’t marry you, you’re absolutely safe. Meanwhile you can have no possible desire to go to bed with me – how could you when your wife’s so much prettier and nicer than I am? – so that takes care of beastly old sex, doesn’t it, and leaves us free to enjoy our glorious romantic friendship as you guide me along my spiritual way!’
‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘before I met you I’d have thought it impossible that a woman should be both very sophisticated and very naïve. May I congratulate you on achieving such a remarkable paradox? But I’m afraid the time has come when you must set your naïvety aside.’
‘Oh, I adore it when you’re being so stern and austere! Now Archdeacon dear, stop looking as if you’d like to spank me and calm down for a moment. I’m not in the least naïve; I’m the last word in down-to-earth common sense. If I don’t misbehave with you – and I’ve no intention of doing anything which would wreck our beautiful friendship – how can you misbehave with me? Adultery’s a two-way street.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Not entirely. Theologically speaking –’
‘Oh good, I did so hope there’d be a fascinating theological angle – how delicious!’
‘Miss Tallent –’
‘Dearest Archdeacon, don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone now so that you can glue together your shattered nerves, and I shall keep a chaste distance from you for the rest of the weekend, but when you get home do write and explain all the theological aspects of adultery!’
‘I won’t have time. I’m leaving on Wednesday for my holiday in the Lake District.’
‘Will you send me a postcard?’
‘No, that would be quite improper.’
‘But you’ll pray for me!’
I said in a voice of steel: ‘I pray regularly for all the souls in my care,’ but to my horror I realized I was smiling at her.
‘Well, so long as God’s brought into the situation we can’t go far wrong, can we?’ said Dido, smiling radiantly in return.
‘I think you’d better leave, Miss Tallent, before I really do give way to the urge to spank you.’
With a laugh she danced away from me across the rose garden.
II
Collapsing on the wrought-iron garden-seat, where earlier Lady Starmouth had declared with such incomparable style how very hard it was to be a clergyman, I clutched my Bible as if it were a life-belt and forced myself to face the unspeakable. I had fallen in love. Hitherto I had believed that only irrational women could succumb to the full force of an amour fou, yet here I was, collapsed in a heap, almost asphyxiated by the reek of red roses, and shivering with desire from head to toe. This was no middle-aged inconvenience. This was a passion of the prime of life. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I was appalled.
Automatically I started recalling my seven-year courtship of Grace, but although I had embarked on this period of my life in a fever of calf love my feelings had matured into a solid reliable devotion and I had never experienced the suspension of my rational faculties. On the contrary, I had plotted my marriage campaign with military precision, calculating down to the last farthing when I would be able to afford the trip to the altar, scheming how I might win my future father-in-law’s consent while I was still so young, rehearsing the necessary speech to my mother until I was word-perfect. By no remote stretch of the imagination could I describe myself as having been demented with love. In fact in the light of my present madness I was almost tempted to wonder if I had ever really loved Grace at all – but that was an insane thought which only indicated the disintegration of my reason. Of course I had loved Grace. I had adored her. She had been exactly the kind of wife I knew I had to have.
‘Such a fetching girl!’ said my mother benignly in my memory. ‘So quiet and refined – and with a hundred and fifty pounds a year of her own! Darling Neville, I couldn’t be more pleased …’
The memory terminated. Wiping the sweat from my forehead I pulled myself together and resolved to fight this monstrous insanity which had assailed me. Why was I loafing amidst the nauseating stench of roses and thinking of my mother? That was hardly constructive behaviour. I had to start planning how I could cover up the disaster as efficiently as a cat burying a mess, and while I was engaged in this vital task I had to pretend to the whole world – but especially to Grace – that I was my sane, normal self.
That was the moment when I remembered our forty-eight-hour second honeymoon which was due to take place before we embarked on our family holiday. Common sense, liberally garnished with a strong instinct for self-preservation, now told me that this was not the time, in the sixteen-year-old history of my perfect marriage, to spend forty-eight hours entirely alone with my wife. My most sensible course of action was to hide from her among the children as I shored up my defences and made myself impregnable to the violent assaults of my irrationality.
Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees I clasped my hands, squeezed my eyes shut and said to God silently in desperation: ‘Lord, help me, save me, protect me so that I can consecrate myself afresh to your service.’ Then I waited, trying not to feel as if I were whistling in the dark, but I experienced no easing of my fear and anxiety. Evidently my prayer was not going to be answered in any simple straightforward way, and at last, wiping the sweat again from my forehead, I nerved myself to return to the house.
III
‘Darling,’ I said to Grace as I entered the bedroom and found her struggling into an afternoon frock, ‘I feel I’ve been at fault in failing to realize how very unhappy you are when you’re separated from the children. Why don’t I start my task of making you happier by suggesting that we forget our little holiday alone together this week? Instead of leaving for Manchester on Wednesday we’ll travel north with all the children on Saturday and go straight to the cottage.’
She was pathetically grateful. ‘Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind –’
‘Say no more. It’s settled.’ Having given her a kiss I eyed the frock and said: ‘You don’t really want to go down to tea, do you? I’ll say you have a migraine.’
‘Well, I know I look a fright after all those tears, but I hate the thought of putting you in an awkward position –’
‘That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should be happy. Are you sure you even want to go away on our family holiday? Perhaps you’d rather just stay at home and rest.’
‘Don’t be silly, I could never rest at home – there’s always so much to be done! No, I can hardly wait for the holiday – although now that we don’t have to abandon the children with Winifred I do wish it wasn’t too late to alter our plans again and go to Devon as usual.’
‘It’ll be fun to have a change.’
‘I’m not very good at changes,’ said Grace.
I thought: And not very good at fun either.
But that comment was contemptible and I despised myself for letting it loose in my consciousness.
It was then that I first began to have misgivings about our family holiday in the Lake District, but I had no premonition of disaster. I was no mystical dreamer, and as a good Modernist I didn’t believe in clairvoyance.
IV
Nine weeks after that fatal dinner-party at the Bishop’s palace Starbridge remained intact, but Canterbury had been battered as a reprisal for the RAF’s formidable raid on Cologne at the end of May. In both cities the cathedrals remained standing, monuments to hope in a world demented with the lust for destruction. Hitler, bogged down in Russia but boosted by Rommel’s victorious manœvrings in the Desert, had apparently in a fit of absent-mindedness turned over the Baedeker page which described Starbridge, but it was too soon to take our escape for granted, and meanwhile the ruins of Bath, York, Norwich, Exeter and Canterbury served to remind us of the nightmare which could still come true.
‘How wonderful it’ll be to escape from all thought of air-raids for two weeks!’ said Grace, but of course there was no real escape from the war. At the start of the school holidays, following advice from the Government, I warned the children about the dangers of playing with long metal tubes, metal balls with handles, canisters which looked like thermos flasks and glass bottles of every description. It seemed unlikely that we would come across unexploded bombs in the Lake District, but the Luftwaffe sometimes jettisoned their cargo in unexpected places, and I felt nowhere in England was completely safe.
Meanwhile on a more mundane level Grace had been struggling with the bureaucratic regulations attending the issue of the new ration-book which was to replace at the end of the month the three ration-books already in use. Rationing was on the increase. The children were aghast to hear that the supply of sweets was about to be limited, and as soon as the older boys returned from school they rushed out to splurge their pocket-money on tuppenny-ha’penny blocks of ration chocolate in defiance of the slogan ONLY ASK FOR IT IF YOU REALLY NEED IT. Neither Grace nor I had the heart to stop them. All chocolates and sweets were being removed from the automatic machines, and at fêtes and funfairs sweets were forbidden to be donated as prizes. The heavy hand of wartime government was closing upon us ever more tightly for the big squeeze. SAVE BREAD, we were exhorted and given fifty different ways of serving potatoes. IS YOUR PURCHASE REALLY NECESSARY? we were repeatedly asked, and when we arrived at the station to begin our journey north the first poster we saw was the Railway Executive Committee’s stern directive: DO NOT TRAVEL. I at once felt guiltily that we should have stayed at home after all.
To my dismay I discovered that in a new burst of austerity the restaurant car had been withdrawn from the train, but fortunately Grace – perfect as always – had foreseen this danger and packed a picnic basket. The children alleviated the tedium of the journey by guzzling biscuits which for some reason were one of the few foods still in plentiful supply.
I mention these details of life on the Home Front not merely to underline the essential dreariness of the war, punctuated as it was for us by the almost inconceivable horror of random murder by travel guide, but to show that I was living in an atmosphere of austerity and repression which drove better men than I to seek refuge in the insanity of a grand passion. I’m not offering an excuse for myself, and I’m certainly not suggesting my madness had its origins in a two-ounce sweet ration and a shortage of bread, but when deprived in one area of life human beings tend to compensate themselves in another, and if a fully accurate picture of my crisis is to be drawn, an explanation of my insanity must include the drab stress of existence on the Home Front.
A clergyman with a wife and five children can seldom afford the luxury of taking his family on holiday to a hotel, and even when the children were fewer in number I had found it less awkward as well as more economical to rent a neat, clean, spacious cottage near Woolacombe in Devon for our annual sojourn by the sea. I had discovered this idyllic retreat while exploring the advertising columns of the Church Gazette, and when in May I had embarked on a search there for a cottage in the Lake District, it had never occurred to me that I might not repeat my earlier success. Having spotted an advertisement which lyrically described an appropriate haven for my large family I had written without a second thought to the owner to secure a booking.
When we eventually arrived at this idyllic retreat after an exhausting journey on an erratic train, a bone-jolting excursion in a decrepit bus and a muddy walk up a lonely lane, I realized in rather less than three seconds that I had brought my family to a rural slum. The key lay under the front doormat, just as the landlord had promised, but no other facility matched my expectations. Fortunately, since it was summer, the evening was light; the prospect of being obliged to master oil lamps and an old-fashioned kitchen range was bad enough, but in the dark it would have been intolerable. I can never understand why people become dewy-eyed and sentimental about the past. Life without gas, electricity and decent plumbing must have been one long unromantic round of time-consuming inconvenience.
Primrose, stupefied by tiredness, began to wail that she was hungry. Christian, after a speedy reconnaissance, reported: ‘There appears to be no lavatory. Shall I start digging a hole in the garden?’ Grace said: ‘I think I have a migraine coming on,’ and sank down on the nearest chair. Sandy, who had been asleep in her arms, was woken by this abrupt manœuvre; he promptly started to scream. James said: ‘I don’t want to go to the lavatory in the garden,’ and Norman commented gloomily: ‘I wish we were in Devon.’ Setting down the heavy suitcases which I had been carrying, I dredged up my last ounce of strength, tossed off a quick prayer for divine support and prepared to perform any miracle not contrary to the laws of physics.
Grace was ordered to lie down on the moth-eaten material which covered the sofa. Christian was dispatched to make a second attempt to find something which resembled a lavatory. Norman and James were sent upstairs to make the beds. Primrose was given an apple, left over from our picnic lunch, and put in charge of Sandy. In the picnic-basket I also found a half-eaten roll which I stuffed into Sandy’s mouth to keep him quiet. Then having assembled some logs from a pile which I found outside the back door I lit the kitchen range with the aid of an old newspaper which I found on the filthy floor of the larder. As I morosely watched the feeble smouldering of the logs I tried not to remember that a mere week ago I had been dining in the height of luxury at Starmouth Court.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Grace, struggling nobly from the sofa.
‘No, you stay exactly where you are.’ I filled the kettle, found the ration we had brought with us and unearthed a teapot from a cupboard which stank. Meanwhile Christian had returned to report the existence of a privy and Norman was shouting from upstairs that there were no sheets but plenty of blankets. We appeared to be making progress.
‘Take the suitcases upstairs and start unpacking,’ I said to Christian. ‘Do Sandy’s first.’
‘That infant smells as bad as the privy,’ remarked Christian, who was fastidious.
‘Why do you think I told you to unpack his bag first? We need a clean nappy.’ I had taken a plate from the dresser and was now busy extracting some spam from a large tin.
‘I’ll find the nappy,’ said Grace, making a new effort to struggle to her feet.
Sandy started to roar again.
‘I simply can’t understand,’ observed Christian languidly, ‘why infanticide isn’t more common.’
‘What’s infanticide?’ said Primrose as Christian and Grace trailed away upstairs together.
‘Baby-killing, my love.’ I opened two large cans of baked beans just as the kettle showed signs that it might one day come to the boil. Sandy was still roaring but when I gave him a baked bean he spat it out. Turning back to the table I found that the spam was being investigated by a mouse. Without thinking I snarled: ‘Bugger off, you bally blighter!’ – a response which avoided blasphemy (just) but was hardly a fitting exclamation for a clergyman. In a paroxysm of rage I hurled a spoon, but the animal merely frisked down the table-leg and scampered to safety across the floor. Primrose screamed. Sandy stopped crying and immediately began to chant: ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ with zest. (Why is it that small children have such an unfailing talent for picking up bad language?) Seconds later Christian, Norman and James, all waving nappies, clattered down the stairs to inform me that Grace had had to rest again as she was feeling faint.
‘Well, don’t just stand there waving nappies as if they were Union Jacks! Get some cotton wool and the talcum powder – and some lavatory paper might be useful too, if one can judge by the smell –’
‘There isn’t any lavatory paper,’ said Christian.
‘Nonsense, there must be.’
‘I don’t feel very hungry,’ said Norman, eyeing the spam. ‘This conversation’s putting me off my food.’
‘Rubbish – stop being so feeble!’ I said with a robust good humour which bordered on the saintly. ‘Is that the spirit which built the Empire?’
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘I think the mouse went to the lavatory on the table.’
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ shouted Sandy.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Norman, bolting for the back door.
‘Who taught Sandy to say bugger?’ demanded Christian in delight as he searched the kitchen cupboards for lavatory paper.
‘Daddy, did you hear me? I said: “I think the mouse – ”’
‘Yes, my love. Pass me that rag hanging by the sink, please.’
‘Neville.’ Looking up I saw Grace, white as a winding-sheet, in the doorway. She was carrying the cotton wool and the talcum powder. ‘I’ll change Sandy.’
‘Very well,’ I said, deciding that this was the moment when I would be ungrateful if I continued to refuse my wife’s noble offers of help, ‘but afterwards you’re to go straight to bed – and let’s hope there are no bedbugs.’
‘I simply can’t understand how the Church Gazette could have allowed –’
‘It’s not the fault of the Church Gazette. One can’t expect them to inspect all the properties they advertise. The fault was mine for not immediately realizing that “old-world charm” meant “no modern conveniences”.’
‘Gaudeamus igitur!’ cried Christian, flourishing a roll of toilet paper.
‘Christian, stop behaving like a precocious undergraduate and stir the baked beans. James, go outside and see if Norman’s finished being sick.’
‘Is Norman ill?’ said Grace alarmed.
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘what are bedbugs?’
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ shouted Sandy with zest.
Grace reeled. ‘Sandy! Christian, did you –’
‘No, Mother, not guilty, absolutely not. I say, these beans look a bit odd –’
‘Here’s Norman,’ said James. ‘I think he might be dying.’
‘I feel terrible,’ said Norman, looking like death.
‘It’s always so metaphysically interesting,’ mused Christian, very much the Winchester scholar, ‘when feelings so precisely mirror appearances.’
‘Shut up, you great big beastly brute!’ yelled Norman.
‘Enough!’ I barked as Grace started swaying in the doorway. ‘Grace and Norman – go to bed at once before you both pass out. Christian, make the tea. James, start spooning out the baked beans. Primrose, bring over those plates from the dresser. Sandy –’ I sighed and reached for the toilet paper. There were times when even I, a devout clergyman dedicated to preaching the joys of family life, was obliged to admit that being a husband and father could leave a lot to be desired.
V
‘Why can’t Sandy learn to do without nappies?’ asked Primrose later when the spam and baked beans had been consumed. ‘I gave up nappies when I was much younger than he is.’
‘All babies are different, my love.’
‘You may think you’re clever,’ said Christian to Primrose, ‘but I walked, talked, gave up nappies and translated The Iliad well before my first birthday.’
‘Show-off!’ retorted Primrose, who was a girl of spirit.
‘Did he really, Daddy?’ said James worried.
‘No, of course not!’
James who was nine, had begun to realize that he was not so clever as his older brothers, and I knew he was mortified that he never came top of his class. Unlike Christian and Norman, he would never lighten my financial burdens by winning a Winchester scholarship, but I thought in the end he would be happy enough; he was popular with his contemporaries and keen on cricket. In some ways he was the son with whom I felt most at ease. His sunny nature made him restful and his normality provided a soothing contrast to the intellectual pyrotechnics displayed by his more gifted brothers. In my judgement he was on course to becoming a thoroughly decent, presentable young man and I was very pleased with him. So much for James.
Primrose, now sitting next to me in her privileged position as the Only Daughter, was approaching her fifth birthday and would one day, I thought, prove to be a brilliant conversationalist; already she was fascinated by language and never missed an opportunity to expand her vocabulary. Since for a woman intelligence is less important than looks I spent much time worrying that she might wind up a blue-stocking, and it was with relief that I noted she showed signs of turning into a delectable blue-eyed blonde. I foresaw a splendid career ahead of her as a wife and mother, a prospect which filled me with paternal pride. So much for Primrose.
Sandy, now dozing against my chest, was going to be very clever, perhaps even as clever as Christian. When he was not indulging in his fondness for vulgar language he was capable of stringing together sentences of extraordinary quality for a child who was still little more than a baby. His latest masterpiece, delivered that day on the train, was: ‘Peter Rabbit has great sartorial elegance but I prefer the coat worn by Benjamin Bunny.’ Of course Christian had taught him the phrase ‘sartorial elegance’, but Sandy’s remarkable achievement lay not only in pronouncing the words but in using them correctly. I judged a Winchester scholarship inevitable and was already basking in delight. So much for Sandy.
Norman, now upstairs as he battled with his malaise, was twelve years old and engaged in a nonstop contest to prove he was as clever as his older brother. If James was the son with whom I felt most relaxed, then Norman was the son with whom I could most obviously sympathize; I too had spent my childhood in a nonstop contest with my older brother. It was a contest which I had won but which I suspected Norman was destined to lose, although he remained far too clever to give me cause for anxiety. He never failed to receive glowing school reports which made me sigh with satisfaction. So much for Norman.
Finally there was Christian, now sitting opposite me at the far end of the table. What can I say to convey the unique quality of this, the most extraordinary member of my family? I could never write ‘so much for Christian’ at the end of a brief description of him, because no brief description could convey more than the bare bones of his personality. Perhaps I can best capture the aura of glamour he exuded by stating that Christian was the idealized son which men so often dream of fathering but so rarely ever do. Christian was the self I would like to have been, a genetic miracle, my own self glorified. Exceptionally clever, blessed with the gift of reducing every classics master he encountered to a stunned admiration, talented at games, popular with his contemporaries, he was fifteen years old, still growing and evidently destined to be not only charming, witty and accomplished but tall, dark and handsome.
I regarded him with a deep, fierce, utterly private devotion which I was quite unable to articulate. I could be demonstrative with Primrose because men were allowed to show affection towards their daughters, but with my sons I had a horror of indulging in any behaviour which might be judged sentimental. The kindly authority I exercised had never included barbarous physical punishment, but no matter how much I wanted to demonstrate my affection I was unable to do more than produce an air of mild good will. In Yorkshire we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves – and perhaps too I could never quite forget Uncle Willoughby declaring in 1909 that a sentimental father who slobbered over his male offspring was the kind of fool who inevitably wound up in an early grave.
‘Daddy …’
I returned to 1942 with a jolt. ‘Yes, James?’
‘After the war ends, what will happen to the newspapers? There won’t be any more news, will there?’
‘There’ll be blank pages edged in black,’ said Christian, ‘to mark the utter cessation of journalism. But who says the war’s going to end? As far as I can see it’s all set to go on for ever.’
‘Nonsense!’ I said roundly. ‘Think of Napoleon! Once he attacked Russia he was finished – the British army merely had to mop him up at Waterloo.’
‘I wish the British army would start mopping up Rommel in the Desert.’
‘Daddy,’ said Primrose, ‘why aren’t you in the army?’
‘The Bishop said he couldn’t spare me from my work in Starbridge. Not all clergymen are called to serve God in the army, even in wartime.’
Christian said suddenly: ‘Do you ever regret abandoning your pacifism after Munich?’
‘Sometimes. I still believe pacifism is intellectually consistent with Liberal Protestantism, but unfortunately Herr Hitler doesn’t leave much room for intellectual consistency.’
‘I’m beginning to think it’s Liberal Protestantism which doesn’t leave much room for intellectual consistency. How can you play down evil and maintain your optimistic view of the universe when you’re confronted with a catastrophe like Nazism? I mean, what do you do with someone like Adolf Hitler? You can’t simply pat him on the head, cite the compassion and forgiveness of Christ and say cosily: “Go thy way and sin no more!”’
I was much taken aback. I had to remind myself that fifteen-year-old adolescents were notorious for questioning their parents’ views. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what you do with someone like Hitler,’ I said abruptly. ‘In practical terms you fight him. And in spiritual terms you pray for him and remember that there’s a divine spark in every human being.’
‘But isn’t that hopelessly idealistic? Isn’t that out of touch with the reality of the evil going on here? Try talking to the Jews about Hitler’s divine spark!’
‘Idealism is also a reality – the reality to which we must all continually aspire.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Christian, I’ve had a long hard day, I’ve wound up in a hovel and quite frankly I’m not in the mood to discuss theology. Can we continue this debate later?’
‘I’m sorry, I just wanted to have a real conversation with you for once.’
I stared at him. ‘But we always have real conversations!’
‘No, they’re usually about Latin and Greek and how well I’m doing at school.’
‘Well, what’s so unreal about all your splendid successes?’ I stood up with one arm encircling Sandy and held out my free hand to Primrose. ‘Bedtime, my love,’ I said to her, ‘and let’s hope that tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep we’ll find our holiday taking a turn for the better.’
‘It could hardly get much worse,’ said Christian.
But he was wrong.
VI
Norman’s condition showed no improvement the next morning. Grace – perfect as always – had remembered to bring a thermometer, and when we discovered he had a high fever I trekked to the nearby village in search of a doctor. Influenza was diagnosed. Grace was obliged to spend most of her time caring for the invalid. The weather was not only wet but cold. The younger children quickly became fractious.
It was on the fifth day after our arrival, just as Norman’s condition began to improve, that Grace fainted. Rushing upstairs in response to Norman’s frightened yell for help, I found she had collapsed on the bedroom floor.
‘I haven’t felt well for some time,’ she whispered later, ‘but I was afraid you’d think it was the last straw if I couldn’t cope.’
When the doctor returned he ordered her sternly to stay in bed. Afterwards he told me that she had probably made matters worse by ignoring all the signs that she had caught Norman’s influenza.
But Grace did not have influenza. She had caught a chill after being soaked on a shopping expedition – it could never have happened in Devon where the village shop stood next door to our cottage – and now she was suffering from pneumonia.
At eleven o’clock that night she began to have difficulty with her breathing. On arrival the doctor took one look at her and said: ‘She must go to hospital at once.’ He made no attempt to summon an ambulance. He drove us to the hospital at Keswick in his own car. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that Christian was old enough to be left in charge at the cottage.
Soon after she was admitted to hospital she became delirious and the pneumonia was finally diagnosed. I telephoned her sister Winifred in Manchester. To my great relief she at once offered to come to my rescue. I was unable to leave the hospital, and although Christian was capable of taking charge of four children for a short time I could hardly leave him without assistance for more than twenty-four hours.
The day passed. Winifred arrived and could barely bring herself to leave the hospital. I had to remind her sharply that if she wanted to help her sister she should attend to the children. Winifred cried but left. More time passed. The sympathetic nurses offered me cups of tea but I could hardly drink. Eating proved quite impossible.
For some time Grace was unconscious but in the evening when the sun was setting far away in the other world beyond the hospital walls, she opened her eyes and said clearly: ‘I can’t go on. But I must. She’d never care for the children.’
For a long moment I was so appalled, so overpowered by my guilt and my shame that I was unable to speak. Then leaning forward I clumsily clasped her hands as if I could somehow infuse her with strength, and stammered: ‘You mustn’t say such things. You mustn’t even think them. I love you and no one else but you and you’re going to live.’
She died a minute later.
FIVE (#ulink_1af801dd-59b5-57b8-8897-85504617f21c)
‘Passion may be dangerous, but for all that it is the driving-force of life …’
CHARLES E. RAVEN
Regius Professor of Divinity,
Cambridge, 1932–1950
A Wanderer’s Way
I
Instinctively I knew that my best chance of maintaining an immaculate self-control was to organize the chaotic aftermath of the tragedy with the efficiency of the born administrator. I dealt with the hospital personnel. I made the necessary urgent telephone calls. I drew up a list of the other essential matters which required my attention. I prepared a short speech to deliver to my children and memorized it; I even bought extra handkerchiefs to mop up all the tears.
After dealing with the children I dealt with the local vicar who called in performance of his Christian duty, and I dealt with Winifred who by this time was well-nigh prostrated by her shock and grief. Having drafted the notices for The Times and the Daily Telegraph I wrote the innumerable necessary letters and decided which of Grace’s favourite hymns should be included in the funeral service. I was ceaselessly active. Sleep was shunned as far as possible because I was afraid of what might happen when I could no longer control my thoughts. From past experience I knew that if one wanted to preserve one’s sanity in adverse circumstances one had to ring down the metaphorical curtain in one’s mind in order to hide the horrors which had taken place onstage, and how could one be sure of keeping the curtain down once sleep had impaired one’s ability to play the stage manager?
After a while I realized that the curtain was trying to rise even when I was fully conscious, and I became engaged in a deadly struggle to keep it in place. It tried to rise when Christian stammered: ‘How could God have allowed such a dreadful thing to happen?’ and although I embarked on an answer I found I was unable to complete it as I would have wished. I did manage to say: ‘In a world where nothing bad ever happened we’d be mere puppets smiling at the end of manipulated strings,’ but then the curtain began to rise in earnest and I could not speak of the great freedom to be, to love and, inevitably, to suffer which made us not unfeeling puppets but human beings forever vulnerable to tragedy. Instead all I could say was: ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ as I struggled to nail my curtain to the ground.
But no sooner was the curtain back in place than Winifred was exclaiming in a burst of detestable feminine emotion: ‘Neville, you don’t deserve this – you were such a devoted husband, and everyone always said what a wonderful example you and Grace were of a truly Christian marriage!’
Once more the curtain started to rise and once more I managed to grab the hem before it could sail out of reach. I said woodenly: ‘Tragedy’s so difficult to discuss, isn’t it? Better not to try,’ and with a mighty effort of will I heaved the curtain down, but I was to have no respite. The curtain was developing a sinister life of its own.
‘Are you sure Mummy’s happy with Jesus?’ said Primrose. ‘No matter how nice Jesus is, I think she’d be happier with us,’ and a second later my nurse Tabitha was saying in 1909: ‘Your Pa’s gone to heaven to be with Jesus.’ Then in my memory I heard Willy cry outraged: ‘How dare he!’ while Emily asked: ‘When will Jesus let us have him back?’ A world had ended then and a world had ended now, the new tragedy eliding with all my most terrible memories as the curtain began to go up and up and up … But I hung on to the hem with my last ounce of strength and doggedly refused to let go.
The funeral service was held at St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate before the private interment at the cemetery, and when the Bishop himself offered to help I was spared the task of finding another clergyman to take the service I would have been unable to conduct. The ancient church, originally founded for the benefit of the workmen who were building the Cathedral, was packed with mourners, and the small graveyard too overflowed with those wishing to pay their respects.
The Bishop was superb. Dr Ottershaw had his episcopal shortcomings; as his Archdeacon I knew them better than anyone, but he was a good, decent man, and in his goodness and his decency his Christian message of hope lightened the darkness which must always surround the mystery of suffering. There were no sentimental clichés from Dr Ottershaw, only profound religious truths expressed with exquisite simplicity, and I felt not only relieved but grateful that my children were at last able to hear the message which my fear of emotional breakdown had prevented me from giving them.
It occurred to me that my disciple would have soaked at least one handkerchief as she listened to the Bishop, but of course I could not allow myself to think of Dido.
I glimpsed her before the service and she spoke to me afterwards, but only the briefest of conversations was possible. After the exchange of greetings she merely said: ‘I’ll write, I promise. I was too upset to write before,’ and as she disappeared I saw her eyes shone with tears. Perhaps she was merely feeling emotional in the wake of Dr Ottershaw’s address, but perhaps too she was temporarily overcome with all manner of ambiguous feelings.
After the concluding rites in the cemetery I continued to deal with everyone who required my attention until at last, much later, I found myself alone with my brother and sister in the vicarage kitchen as my curtain once more tried to rise. I was struggling fiercely with the hem but to my terror I realized it was sliding out of my grasp. I thought: I mustn’t look at the stage, can’t look, won’t look, no one can make me look. Then I suddenly realized I had spoken the words aloud. As Willy and Emily looked at me appalled I muttered: ‘Sorry. Mind wandering. Very tired,’ and covered my face with my hands.
Emily said drearily: ‘I’ll make you some tea.’
‘For God’s sake, woman!’ exploded Willy. ‘He’s already drunk enough of your tea to float Noah’s Ark! Neville, where the hell’s the bloody whisky?’
‘There isn’t any. I don’t drink spirits.’
‘Well, all I can say is it’s about time you started!’
‘Really, Will!’ said Emily scandalized. ‘What would Mother say if she were alive!’
I said: ‘I don’t want to talk about Mother.’
‘Neither do I,’ agreed Willy. ‘Let’s keep the old girl buried six feet deep or else I’m going to hit the bottle in the biggest possible way.’
‘Really, Will!’ said Emily again in her primmest voice. ‘How can you talk like that after what happened to Father!’
I said: ‘I don’t want to talk about Father.’
‘Good God, Em, you don’t believe all that bloody rubbish about Father dying of drink, do you? That was just a vile slander put out by Uncle Willoughby!’
Leaping to my feet I shouted: ‘I don’t want to talk about Uncle Willoughby!’ But then I collapsed in my chair and once more covered my face with my hands.
Willy said: ‘I’m going to the off-licence to buy some whisky.’
Emily said: ‘I’m going to make tea.’
Recognizing their desire to offer comfort I was soothed by their careful avoidance of emotion, and after a while I thought I was strong enough to drag down the curtain again. But I was wrong. I was so weak that I glanced at the stage first, and there waiting for me in 1909 was Uncle Willoughby, rich, robust and ruthless as he hitched up his coat-tails to warm his backside at the parlour fire. ‘… and I’ll not say one word against your father, poor miserable idle stupid fellow that he was, because it’s not right to speak ill of the dead, even when a weak selfish thoughtless fellow with a wife and three children has the intolerable effrontery to the in penury. So all I’ll say is this: if you two lads want to save yourselves from hell and damnation –’
‘Here’s your tea, Nev,’ said Emily in 1942.
‘– if you two lads want to save yourselves from hell and damnation,’ bawled Uncle Willoughby, outshouting her in 1909, ‘and save yourselves from the miserable fate of winding up a failure in a coffin before you’re forty, you’ll work and you’ll work and you’ll work until you’ve dug yourself out of this shameful black pit, and you’ll never forget – never as long as you live – that there’s only one road to salvation and that’s this: you’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to stay out of the coffin – you’ve got to go chasing the prizes if you want to be happy and safe – you’ve got to go chasing the prizes in order to Get On and Travel Far …’
‘Poor Nev,’ said Emily in 1942. ‘You can shed a tear if you like. I’ll look the other way and afterwards we can pretend it never happened.’
‘For God’s sake!’ I shouted and blundered out of the kitchen into my study. Willy arrived five minutes later with the whisky and banged on the door until I let him in.
‘Em driving you round the bend? How her husband stands all that tea I don’t know. What a mystery marriage is, but of course I’m just a bachelor schoolmaster who observes society’s mating customs from afar … Do you remember when you said to me on the beach at St Leonards all those years ago: “I’m going to marry the perfect girl and have the perfect family and live happily ever after”? I’d never even considered getting married, and yet there you were, seventeen years old, with that misty look in your eyes, the look of the dyed-in-the-wool romantic, the look Father always wore when he read us “The Charge of the Light Brigade” –’
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Susan Howatch
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The author’s most famous and well-loved work, the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century.Neville Aysgarth, archdeacon, and right-hand man of the Bishop of Starbridge, has spent his life chasing worldly success. In 1942 he has a perfect wife, a perfect family and a perfect future in the Church of England – all ultimate prizes. Then Aysgarth meets an attractive young socialite and is soon dangerously and chaotically involved in adultery, hypocrisy and obsession. Tormented and on the brink of ruin, he must at last face the truth about himself, his marriage and the mysterious past he cannot discuss as he chases the most vital prize of all – his own survival…Witty, wise and compelling, Ultimate Prizes powerfully explores both the temptations of sex and success, and the ultimate themes of sin and salvation.