Glittering Images (12 page)

‘Darling,’ said Miss Christie to Mrs Jardine, ‘you must drink all your lemonade at once and then you’ll feel better. It’s very important to take lots of liquid in hot weather.’

Jardine remarked: ‘Maybe I should take lemonade regularly to prevent irascibility after an arid morning in my study. I’ve just been reading the latest crop of letters on the Marriage Bill from people who think I was the clergyman in charge of Edward VIII’s wedding, and I’m now wishing more fervently than ever that my deplorable namesake had been called by any name other than Jardine.’

This was a skilful attempt to manipulate the conversation back within the bounds of normality, but before a more relaxed atmosphere could be established Mrs Cobden-Smith swept in. ‘Willy, George won’t eat that horsemeat. Do you suppose – oh my goodness, what’s going on? Carrie dear, you simply must make more effort! I know the heat’s trying, but –’

‘Amy,’ said the Bishop, ‘would you kindly stop addressing my wife as if she were an Indian peasant ripe for civilization by the British Raj?’

‘Well,
really
, Alex!’

‘Mrs Cobden-Smith,’ said Miss Christie with unprecedented charm, ‘I wonder if you’d be terribly kind and help me take Carrie upstairs to lie down? You must have had such a broad experience of heatstroke in India and I’d so value your advice – should we call the doctor?’

‘Quite unnecessary,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, greatly mollified, ‘but perhaps she does need to lie down. Come along, Carrie.’

The chaplain then chose an unfortunate moment to rush into the room with bad news. ‘Bishop, the Archdeacon’s on the phone again and he’s in a frightful panic!’

‘Oh, hang the Archdeacon!’ exploded the Bishop. ‘And hang that abominable instrument the telephone!’ But he seized the chance to make a swift exit from the chaos caused by his irritability.

I was surprised how quickly order was restored. Coaxed by Miss Christie, Mrs Jardine drank all her lemonade and said she felt better. The Starmouths arrived, and while they debated what to drink I could hear the Cobden-Smiths discussing George who presently made a lacklustre entrance. Miss Christie summoned the butler to replenish the lemonade jug, but before I had the chance to speak to her about our outing four guests appeared from various corners of the diocese and all opportunity for private conversation was curtailed.

Lunch passed smoothly if tediously. I busied myself by being sociable with a large matron whose favourite topic of conversation was the Mothers’ Union, and although Miss Christie never looked in my direction I occasionally caught Lady Starmouth’s sympathetic glance across the table.

However, by half-past two the party had dispersed and I was preparing in my bedroom for a country excursion far removed from a clerical duty. Off came my clergyman’s uniform. Having pulled on my coolest informal clothes I unbuttoned my shirt at the neck, adjusted the angle of my hat and once more turned to survey my image in the long glass. Immediately I wondered if I had gone too far with the informality; I fancied I looked like a commercial traveller taking a rest from hawking some dubious product, but when I decided to wear a tie I felt much too hot. Shoving the tie back in the drawer I undid the top button of my shirt again and made up my mind that I looked exactly what I was: an off-duty clergyman about to take a pretty woman for a drive in the country.

But then I looked in the glass and saw the spy beyond the clergyman, the image beyond the image, and beyond the spy was yet another man, the image beyond the image beyond the image. Reality blurred; fantasy and truth became inextricably intertwined. I told myself I had imagined the distant stranger but as I felt my personality begin to divide I covered my face with my hands.

Sinking to my knees by the bed I whispered: ‘Lord, forgive me my sins. Deliver me from evil. Help me to serve you as well as I can.’ After that I felt calmer, and when I glanced again in the glass I found that the off-duty clergyman was now the only visible image. He was wearing a severe expression as if to stress that I had no business to let the heat addle my brain, and immediately erasing all morbid thoughts from my mind, I set off to meet Miss Christie.

‘Experience has made it certain that the clergyman’s wife must either throw in her lot unreservedly with her husband’s difficult and distinctive career, and reap her reward with a range and depth of personal influence which are unequalled in the case of any other married woman, or she must separate herself from his work and life with consequences ruinous both to his success and to her own credit, and, we must add, to the happiness of both.’

HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
The Bishoprick Papers

Miss Christie was wearing a pale-green short-sleeved frock, which exposed her slim arms, and flat white sandals, which emphasized her slender ankles. Other fleshier curves were erotically concealed beneath the prim cut of her frock. She was sheltering beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat.

‘Trying not to be recognized?’ I said as we met in the hall.

‘I might ask you the same question!’

‘Well, at least you haven’t said –’

‘– “Oh, how different you look out of your clericals!”’

We laughed, and as I led the way outside to my car it occurred to me that if Miss Christie could cope with every conceivable crisis in an episcopal household she could cope with a Doctor of Divinity who was mad enough to be afraid of his own reflection. Conscious of relief, happiness, nervous anticipation and sexual desire in pleasantly stimulating proportions I decided the afternoon was going to be a success.

Miss Christie suggested that we might drive to Starbury Ring, a megalithic stone circle high on the Downs, and after she had directed me out of the city we headed up the valley to the north. The surrounding hills curved with a voluptuous smoothness in the limpid afternoon light. Leaving the main road we passed some farms and once were trapped behind a slow-moving cart, but otherwise nothing deflected our attention from the steadily unfolding views.

Suddenly Miss Christie said, ‘I ought to take Mrs Jardine for a drive like this. It would do her good. We could even take a picnic and disappear for an entire afternoon.’

‘What about the Bishop?’

‘Oh, I’d leave him behind. He hates eating alfresco. His idea of relaxation is to write a letter to
The Times.
’

‘I hear that was how he made his name before he became Vicar of St Mary’s, Mayfair.’

‘Yes, he didn’t have much else to do when he was a chaplain in North London.’

I saw the chance to pursue my investigation. ‘No one’s yet explained to me,’ I said, ‘why he was living in such obscurity before the translation to Mayfair. What happened to him after he was ordained?’

‘He was given a parish in this diocese – in the slums of Starmouth. He stayed there for seven years and made a success of it, but it was desperately hard work and in the end his health broke down.’

‘That often happens to clergymen in sordid parishes,’ I said, and the next moment I was remembering my friend Philip’s accusation that I lived in an ivory tower. Some guilty impulse drove me to add: ‘However, you mustn’t think I speak from experience. I’m afraid my ministry’s always been among the affluent.’

‘Christ preached to the rich as well as the poor, didn’t he?’ Miss Christie said composed. ‘And Dr Jardine says that spiritually the rich can be just as impoverished as any family on the dole.’

I glanced at her with gratitude but she was looking out of the side-window at the curving hills. After a pause I said, ‘Tell me more about Dr Jardine – what happened when his health broke down?’

‘On the doctor’s advice he resigned his living and borrowed the money to take a long holiday. The rest helped but he still didn’t think his health could stand the strain of another parish so he decided to do some writing and research at Oxford. I expect you know he’s a Fellow of All Souls. However his financial difficulties in those days were so acute that he had to have some sort of benefice, and finally the Warden of All Souls got him this obscure hospital chaplaincy in North London – the living was in the gift of the College.’

‘I gather Dr Jardine had considerable family obligations in Putney.’

‘He was supporting his father, his stepmother and his two sisters,’ said Miss Christie drily. ‘Although he didn’t starve he was hardly well nourished. However the chaplaincy suited him – the hospital was very small, no more than a large alms-house, and as there wasn’t much work to do he used to spend the days in the middle of the week up at Oxford. He wrote some articles, preached various guest-sermons – he already had a reputation as a preacher – and sent letters regularly to
The Times.
Eventually, without Dr Jardine’s knowledge, the Warden of All Souls approached Mr Asquith, who was then Prime Minister, and asked him if something could be done to improve the situation since it was obvious that Dr Jardine’s health was quite restored. Mr Asquith had been enjoying the letters to
The Times
and he immediately remembered that the new vacancy at St Mary’s was in the gift of the Crown.’

‘That’s what we clergymen call an edifying story,’ I said. ‘After many vicissitudes the good get their reward.’

‘I can’t see why you should sound so envious,’ said Miss Christie as if she felt she had been too friendly and was now obliged to redress the balance. ‘You’re obviously in line for the choicest of bishoprics.’

‘You think so?’ I said. ‘I’m flattered. But do you honestly believe I’m fit to be a bishop just because I’ve published a book on the Early Church and can survive at Cambridge Cathedral without quarrelling with the Dean?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t presume to judge your fitness, Dr Ashworth. I leave that to God and Dr Lang.’

I knew I had to demonstrate that I was not prepared to tolerate an asperity drummed up by a guilt that we should be getting on so well. Grinding the car to a halt I switched off the engine, swivelled to face her and demanded, ‘Why the hostility?’

She went white. At first I thought she was white with anger but then I realized she was white with alarm. When she protested, ‘I’m not hostile!’ I said at once, ‘No – so why pretend?’ and leaning forward I kissed her on the mouth.

This was fast behaviour for a gentleman on a sedate afternoon drive with a lady he had known less than twenty-four hours, and for a clergyman the behaviour was so fast that I felt I was travelling at the speed of light. Indeed my speed so stunned Miss Christie that for the first five seconds after our lips touched she behaved as if she were paralysed. Five seconds is a long time when two mouths are joined in a kiss. However on the sixth second the response came, and contrary to my expectations the response was far from hostile. Her mouth opened beneath mine. At once I pulled her closer, but the next moment she was shoving me aside and with reluctance I let her go. Her face was no longer white but a pale pink. I had no idea what colour my face was but I felt as if I had run a hundred yards at high speed, and my mind was swirling not only with thoughts of empty champagne glasses but with images of bright swords, dark tunnels and other ambiguous objects blighted for all time by Freud.

Miss Christie smoothed her skirt – which I had not touched – and as she did so I noticed that she wore a signet-ring on the third finger of her left hand. Finally she said, ‘We met yesterday for the first time. We’re not even on Christian-name terms. Aren’t you behaving a little curiously for a clergyman?’

‘At least I now know you well enough to call you Lyle.’

‘Dr Ashworth –’

‘My name’s Charles. Yes, of course I’m behaving curiously for a clergyman, but whenever someone makes a remark which implies a clergyman should be some sort of stainless-steel saint I want to quote Shylock’s speech from
The Merchant of Venice
– you know the one, the speech where he says he bleeds and suffers just as other people do –’

‘Well, I wasn’t implying –’

‘Weren’t you?’

‘Dr Ashworth –’

‘Charles.’

‘– I’m afraid I’m simply not a candidate for a whirlwind romance –’

‘No, don’t pretend you’re not interested in me! I saw you listening with bated breath last night when Lady Starmouth asked if I had a wife!’

‘I –’

‘Look.’ I adopted my calmest, most rational manner. ‘I could proceed in the conventional way. I could pay you nice, safe little compliments and write you harmless little billets-doux and send you flowers and come down to Starbridge every fortnight to take you out to tea – I could do all that; I’m perfectly capable of behaving like a gentleman and playing the game according to the rules, but where would it get me? Absolutely nowhere. I found that out last night when I made that mild approach and you dodged away around the coffee-cups. Well, dodging around the coffee-cups may be great fun for you, but frankly I’m not prepared to be treated as a minor inconvenience. I want to get to know you very much better as soon as possible – which is why I suggested this drive –’

‘Then why aren’t we driving? I don’t want to spend all afternoon in front of this five-barred gate while you regale me with impassioned nonsense!’

I started the engine and we drove on.

Within minutes we had emerged on to a broad plateau, and ahead I could see a track leading away from the road towards the ridge which marked the summit of the Downs.