Absolute Truths (38 page)

Slowly I achieved a recovery. Little Miss Elizabeth was so charming
that I soon felt certain that all the gossip about her was baseless.
She declared how ‘super’ I was on television and how ‘fabulous’
I looked in my formal uniform and how ‘groovy’ gaiters were,
much nicer than the purple cassocks which Archbishop Ramsey
favoured, and had anyone ever told me that when I was in uniform
I looked just like the hero of an eighteenth-century novel.

This was all so pleasant that I temporarily forgot the horror
latent in Dido’s ‘little dinner-party for sixteen’, but soon my hostess
was returning with the information that she had specially
rearranged the placing of the guests so that I could be seated next
to ‘dear brilliant Loretta, so intellectual’. Barely had I recovered
from this sledge-hammer blow to my equilibrium when Venetia’s
father Lord Flaxton cornered me and began to talk about how the
country was going to the dogs. Making a supreme effort I managed
to say’yes’ and ‘no’ when required.

At the dinner-table Aysgarth, very deferential, invited me to say
grace and for three appalling seconds I thought I was going to be
unable to string the appropriate words together. Fortunately my memory staged a recovery before people could wonder if I was
suffering from the onset of senility, and we all sat down to consume
our soup. I found myself unable to identify the soup’s principal
ingredient. It could have been mushrooms but it might possibly
have been chicken. The liquid was pale, thick and tepid.

‘
Well, Bishop!’ said Loretta on my left after we had recovered
from this affront to our tastebuds. ‘What a surprise it is to see you
again!’

‘
Astounding,’ I said, effortlessly achieving a note of deep sin
cerity, and paused to examine the silver-mark on my soup-spoon.
‘But perhaps I’m only surprised because I didn’t think you’d be
accepting dinner invitations at the moment. After I’d re-established
contact with Enid I did realise it wasn’t beyond the realm of possi
bility that we might meet again.’

I said cautiously: ‘You’d lost touch with Lady Markhampton?’

‘
Long ago, yes. After all, I was very much younger, I lived three
thousand miles away and I never knew her as well as I knew Evelyn.
But once we’d met again at Evelyn’s funeral we began to exchange
letters — and then one thing led to another —’

‘
— and now here you are.’

‘
Here I am,’ she agreed dryly. ‘Fun, isn’t it?’

‘
White or red, Charles?’ enquired Aysgarth, who was circulating
with the wine bottles.

Resisting the impulse to reply: ‘Both,’ I said: ‘White, please.’
Hock promptly splashed into my glass.

‘Loretta?’

‘
I’ll try the claret, Stephen. I feel in the mood for something
smooth, European and interesting.’

‘
If Englishmen considered themselves Europeans I could make
the most dashing reply to that remark!’ declared Aysgarth, unable
to resist sinking into flirtatiousness. He poured the wine and
moved on.

‘
Cute, isn’t he?’ said Loretta amused. ‘I guess I never did get
over my weakness for Englishmen.’ And as I nerved myself at last
to look at her directly, she smiled straight into my eyes.

The people around us were already talking with animation. Lord
Flaxton was saying: ‘In my young day ...’ while Christian was
declaring: ‘... and
as
soon
as
I saw that production of
Lysistrata
I realised ...’ And Dido was bawling across the table to Lady
Markhampton: ‘... and at Harrods I saw the most divine dress
which I knew I
had
to have, and so I rang up my sister Merry
who just so happened to be staying at Claridge’s, and I screamed
at her: "My dear!" I screamed. "Come and see this absolutely
divine ..."‘ And Primrose was saying: ‘Well, of course the Greeks
treated women
as
subhuman, everyone knows that, and if you ever
analyse the work of Aristophanes you’ll find ...’ And Aysgarth
was enquiring: ‘White or red?’ as he paused by the morose Sir
Miles Calthrop-Ponsonby, and Sir Miles Calthrop-Ponsonby
growled: ‘No damned German rubbish for me, Dean, and that
damned claret gives me indigestion.’

But Loretta and I were quite silent as we looked at each other
across a graveyard of buried memories, and for a moment I felt
as
if we were separated from the other occupants of the room by a
wall of glass.

At last she said: ‘It’s okay,’ and I realised with an overpowering
relief that I was safe. ‘I mean,’ she added in case anyone was
eavesdropping, ‘it’s okay to
come
out with all the usual clichés
such as ‘where are you living now" and ‘what are you doing at
the moment". I shan’t be bored, I promise you.’

Finally daring to share her ironical amusement I said: Tell me
everything.’

I have no intention of describing here exactly what took place
when I
met
Loretta in 1937. It is sufficient to underline the fact
that the meeting occurred at the time of my spiritual breakdown
when I found myself temporarily unable to behave
as a
clergyman
should. I hardly think it necessary to add that once I had fully
recovered and embarked on my second marriage, 1 never looked
at any woman but Lyle.

Loretta had already been a professor when I first
met
her, and although in the United _States this
title
is more widely available
than it is in England, she had consolidated her early success to the
point where even a former Cambridge professor was obliged to
regard her achievements with respect.
She was an authority on
seventeenth-century English literature and had published three
books on the
subject; since her retirement she had been working on a definitive study of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. When I
enquired about her home I was told that she shared a New York
apartment with several thousand books and a very large plant
which had survived infancy by thriving on coffee-dregs. The plant
had become so large, in fact, that she was beginning to feel intimida
ted by it. Had I ever read John Wyndham’s
The Day of the
Triffids?
She was sure she already had too much in common with
the beleaguered heroine of a science-fiction novel.

I listened and nodded and laughed as I tried to absorb this
information which told me so much and yet so little, but all the
time I was concentrating on our dialogue I was carrying on a silent
conversation with myself. I was trying to remember how old she
was. Was she two years my senior or four? She looked about ten
years my junior, although I could sec now I had been mistaken in
thinking she could pass for fifty. But what a superb triumph she
had achi
^e
ved over the ravages of
time!
I concluded that American
women had much to teach the women of England on the subject
of growing old with glamour.

Loretta began to ask me about my post-war career at Cambridge.
The hour-glass figure which had so attracted me at the age of
thirty-seven was now a mere potent memory, but the cunningly-cut
pink trouser-suit played down the vanished waist while the frilly
white blouse emphasised that her bosom was still resplendent. The
trouser-suit was really most remarkable. I dislike trousers on a
woman, but this trouser-suit was designed in such a way that its
wearer’s femininity was not destroyed but enhanced; in fact the more I looked at that suit the more erotic it seemed.
I
had never before seen such an outfit. I was entranced. America is without
doubt the most astonishing country and despite its shortcomings
I cannot help but admire the innovative – one might almost say
courageous – vitality of its inhabitants. I was quite sure no English
woman would have dared to wear a pink trouser-suit to a clerical
dinner-party. I wondered what Lady Markhampton privately
thought of her friend’s nerve. I wondered what Dido thought. I
wondered what Lyle would have thought. I supposed the tra
ditional British reaction would have been to say that allowances
had to be made for foreigners.

Having reached that conclusion it occurred to me that I should
turn my attention to my other neighbour at the table before every
one noticed how well Loretta and I were getting on, so I had a
word with Lady Flaxton. However,
as
her main interest in life was
gardening, a subject about which I knew little, our conversation
was necessarily brief. 1 then exchanged a few sentences with Chris
tian’s friend Palmer, who was sitting opposite me. He was one of
those well-mannered young bachelors who lead quiet, conven
tional, law-abiding lives in which little of interest ever happens.
Not for the first time I thought how typical it was of Christian to
choose such a bland foil for his brilliant intellect and exceptional
good looks.

By this time the curious soup had disappeared and we were
consuming some excellent roast lamb accompanied by leeks in a
first-class cream sauce. Unfortunately the potatoes were
undercooked, but since I had now switched from the hock to the
claret, which was magnificent, I felt more inclined to be charitable
about the erratic nature of the cook’s achievements.

Having paid the obligatory amount of attention to Lady Flaxton
and young Palmer I turned back to Loretta.

‘
I’ve visited New York several times,’ I said. ‘I’ve given guest-
lectures there and preached at St Thomas’s on Fifth Avenue.
Whereabouts is your apartment?’

‘
Not far from St Thomas’s. In fact that’s. my local Episcopal
church.’

‘That sounds as if you actually go there.’

‘Sure I go there! Why shouldn’t I?’

‘
But in 1937 you were just a vague theist!’

‘
I got wiser with age. Or maybe I should say that I became a
Christian as the result of an encounter with a priest. I felt I needed
to understand him and his God.’

‘An Anglican priest?’

‘
Yes,
but he wasn’t an American Episcopalian. He was a clergy
man of the Church of England.’

‘Am I allowed to ask his name?’

‘
Why not? It was Charles Ashworth,’ she said amused, and
turned away from me to respond to an overture from her other
neighbour, Lord Flaxton, who also appeared to be fascinated by
the pink trouser-suit.

I was so astounded by her disclosure that my knife slipped in
my hand and one of the undercooked boiled potatoes shot off the
plate to torpedo my glass of claret.

‘
Bull’s eye!’ cried Christian with an inebriated wit. ‘Well played,
my lord!’

‘
Don’t worry, Charles!’ shouted Dido before I could draw breath
to apologise. This table-cloth adores claret – soaks it up all the
time!’

‘
Have another glass,’ said Mine Host the Dean, appearing speed
ily at my elbow with the decanter.

‘
... and I must say, I very much admire America for not suc
cumbing to the demon socialism,’ Lord Flaxton was confiding to
Loretta, and added to me: ‘Don’t you agree, Bishop?’

I did agree but this
was a
mistake because I then got embroiled in one of those futile conversations about politics in which every
one who opposes socialism and espouses the conservative cause is written off as a tiresome old reactionary. I happen to oppose social
ism because I am a realist; in my opinion socialism is fatally flawed
because it has far too high an opinion of human nature.

‘
St Augustine –’ I began but was interrupted. The dinner-party
was hotting up as the last of the lamb vanished and everyone
abandoned the potatoes. The claret decanter appeared to have
acquired a life and will of its own.

‘
No conservative theologian has ever been able to grasp the
essence of social problems!’ declared Lord Flaxton, the agnostic who always voted with the Liberals in the House of Lords.

‘
Nonsense!’ I said. ‘What about Reinhold Niebuhr?’

Moral Man and Immoral Society,’
said Primrose, quoting the
title of Niebuhr’s most famous book
as
Lord Flaxton looked
flummoxed. ‘Our problem is an immoral society which the con
servatives are unwilling to change. Women —’

‘
We should all go forward with the Liberals!’ proclaimed Lord
Flaxton. ‘We should all adapt to modem times!’

‘
But my dear, you haven’t adapted at all!’ said his wife with
bewitching mildness. ‘You
live
exactly as you did before the war!’

The Liberal party was destroyed by the war,’ said Lady Mark
hampton. ‘The First War, I mean.’

‘
Everything was destroyed by the First War,’ said Primrose.
‘Philosophies, social systems, antediluvian attitudes to women —’

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,"‘ declaimed
little Miss Elizabeth with a fetching dramatic flourish.

‘
Dear Lord Tennyson,’ said Dido. ‘Always so apt. Christian,
why are you hogging the decanter? Give everyone a refill!’

‘
Eat, drink and be merry,’ said Christian, swaying as he rose to
his feet.

‘
For tomorrow we die,’ said his friend Palmer with a singular
lack of originality.

‘Sit down, Christian,’ commanded Primrose. ‘I’ll play Ganymede.’

‘
A woman can’t play Ganymede unless she changes sex,’ objected
Lord Flaxton.

‘
People change sex all the time nowadays,’ said Dido. There was
the most extraordinary article in one of the papers last Sunday —’

‘
Feminists have a hidden urge to change sex,’ said Lord Flaxton. ‘"O
temporal O mores!" What
decadent times we live in!’

‘
I thought you were urging us all to adapt to them,’ said Ays
garth, the killer in debate.

‘
There’s no reason why one can’t heave a nostalgic sigh for the
old order,’ retorted Lord Flaxton, ‘even while one accepts the
inevitability of change and the duty to adapt to it.’

‘
But not all change is inevitable,’ I said. ‘History does in fact
prove that some things never change at all.’

‘
In my opinion,’ said Aysgarth, having knocked back the last of the claret, ‘history proves that all things change all the time.’

‘
Who said "history is bunk"?’ asked Dido of no one in particular.

‘
"Those who do not know history,"‘ quoted Loretta, "are doomed to repeat it."‘

‘
Who said that?’ demanded several voices simultaneously, and 1
said before Loretta could reply: ‘George Santayana.’

‘
I do so adore intellectual dinner-parties!’ exclaimed Dido. ‘Isn’t
this one absolutely heavenly?’

Repressing the urge to get drunk I left my new glass of claret
untouched and asked Palmer to pass me the jug of water.