Glittering Images (57 page)

‘My dear Father, do you realize you’ve learnt more about Darrow in a thirty-minute visit than I’ve learnt after hours and hours of conversation?’

‘We talked about our sons and about how bloody awful it is being a parent. He said he used to worry and worry about Martin – that’s his son – in case the boy went to the dogs. Tricky business, being an actor. I asked him if he still worried about Martin and he said, “No, I gave that up five years ago when he came to see me and said he had a small part in a West End play. I thought: here’s this boy, doing well, happy, coming to see me regularly, why torture myself imagining a decadent life which may never happen?” Darrow says he still has the occasional twinge of anxiety, like passing toothache, but nothing compared with the agony he used to suffer. Very interesting. Most interesting chap. Made me think a bit, I can tell you.’

My father paused. I waited, my hands gripping the steering-wheel, my gaze riveted on the road ahead. Eventually my father said in a casual voice, ‘We mentioned you, of course, in passing, but we didn’t say much. Naturally I said how worried I was about you as you were burrowing away digging up a man whom I knew to be an absolute rotter, but Darrow just said, “Worrying takes an enormous amount of time and energy. Are you quite sure the time and energy couldn’t be put to better use?” So I said, “How?” and he said, “Trust him and show that you trust him,” and I said again, “How?” Then Darrow said, “Let him dig up the rotter. Trust him to rebury the bones as he thinks fit.” But I said, “Supposing he makes a mess of it?” And do you know what Darrow said next? He said, “He’s your boy. You’ve brought him up. You’ve made him what he is. Why should he make a mess of it?” And do you know, when he put it like that I couldn’t think of an answer. I did mutter something like, “Well, if he’s off his head anything could happen,” but Darrow said the main reason why you’d got in such a state recently was that you didn’t trust yourself. “But if
you
trust him,” said Darrow, “then he’ll believe he’s trust-worthy and everything will straighten itself out. Children are very much influenced by their parents,” said Darrow, “and that’s why we fathers have an absolute moral duty to make sure not only that our opinions are correct but that we make those correct opinions crystal clear.” Most interesting fellow. Wasted as a monk, of course. Tragic. He might have made a good lawyer. I can just see him having a clever way with the clients and making useful contributions to the partners’ meetings.’

It was the highest possible compliment. I was so lost in my admiration of Darrow’s skill that I nearly missed the turning to Laud’s.

‘Well, thank God you’re not an actor, Charles,’ said my father comfortably as we approached the College. ‘Then I really would have something to worry about, wouldn’t I? But since you’re a clergyman I suppose I can just sit back and let you get on with it. After all, despite everything you’ve managed to turn into a mature sensible sort of fellow, and with that interesting mad monk keeping you on course I see no reason why everything shouldn’t come right in the end.’

That concluded the life of the glittering image. It began to die, and as I remembered Darrow’s metaphor I saw the whole noxious weed, complete with its excavated roots, start to wither away in the sun.

I somehow succeeded in parking my car in the College forecourt. ‘Thank you, Father,’ I said. I wanted to say more but no words came, and all the time the glittering image was withering away, no longer needed, dying on every level of my mind.

‘Now don’t start behaving like a nasty emotional foreigner again, Charles, because my nerves couldn’t stand it. In fact just take me to your rooms as quickly as possible and give me a stiff whisky, there’s a good chap, before my nerves give out altogether. God knows it’s not every day I meet a mad monk.’

The glittering image finally expired but I wasted no time saying a requiem over the corpse. I smiled at my father, said, ‘I think we could both do with a drink,’ and we headed in harmony for my rooms.

‘My only regret,’ I said later to Darrow, ‘is that I couldn’t have hidden behind a bush in the garden and witnessed that miracle you wrought with my father.’

‘What miracle?’ said Darrow amused. ‘He was an easy case – a simple decent man, not stupid, who was burning to know how he could put matters right. Of course I’m not claiming I solved all his problems, but at least I offered him a new way of looking at the problem which was foremost in his mind … And talking of Romaine, are you still feeling nervous about his visit to Cambridge next weekend?’

‘Yes – although now that I don’t have to spend all my energy trying to convince my father I’m not going to the dogs, maybe I’ve got a chance of survival.’

Darrow said frankly, ‘Romaine could certainly make heavy demands on your new reserves of strength. I think a little nervousness is not unjustified.’

‘I wish he wasn’t coming.’

‘Cheer yourself up with the knowledge that he’s bound to try hard to make the occasion a success.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of. If it’s a success what do I do with him afterwards? I still can’t see how to fit him into my life.’

‘Worry about that later. The situation may seem much clearer after you’ve talked to him on Sunday …’

‘Friendship, however begun, is a voyage of discovery., full of perils and surprizes.’

More Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
ed.
E. F. BRALEY
.

Romaine sent me a note to say he hoped to reach the Blue Boar on Saturday evening but would not expect to see me until after the morning services the next day. I spent much time wondering whether I should call at the hotel to offer him a drink but decided I was being sufficiently hospitable by inviting him to dine in hall on Sunday. However that conclusion made me feel mean so to assuage my guilt I arranged that a bottle of whisky should be waiting in his room to greet him on arrival. As soon as this arrangement had been made I started worrying in case I was corrupting a heavy drinker.

In the midst of these tortuous psychological gymnastics I embarked on writing a sermon. I toiled away, constructing what I hoped would be a homiletic masterpiece, but was constantly racked by doubt. Were there too many obscure references? Did I sound hopelessly priggish? Was my thesis sufficiently stimulating to stave off the coughing of bored choirboys and the somnolence of elderly worshippers? Laymen have no idea what anxiety clergymen can suffer as they engage in their struggle to communicate the word of God, and even another clergyman might have had difficulty imagining the degree of anxiety I was now enduring as I struggled to communicate the word of God not only to my congregation but to the stranger whose ineffectual contraceptive skill during adultery had somehow resulted years later in the appearance of yet another clergyman in the Sunday pulpit.

The Bishop was absent, having been invited to preach in Durham, and the other two Canons were on holiday, but the Dean was there to share the work of the Sunday services with me. Matins began; I noted Romaine in the congregation and at last after the third hymn I mounted the steps into the pulpit and declared my text from Isaiah: ‘“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of Our God shall stand for ever.”’

‘I always think that’s the most moving text,’ said Romaine later as we walked back to Laud’s. ‘I feel it puts all the triumphs and tragedies of life into a proper perspective, and of course that was your theme, wasn’t it? Or at least one of your themes – it was all so interesting and I liked the story of the monk who drew a cat carrying a mouse in its mouth in the margin of the manuscript. My Chinese lady liked cats; in fact I thought a lot of her as you spoke – and I thought of your mother too and of how I’d quoted Wordsworth to her – I was always quoting Wordsworth to your mother, Wordsworth and Browning – and when you said, “The grass withereth” I thought of that passage about the “splendour in the grass” until past and present seemed to merge and I felt most uncommonly emotional. Well, as a matter of fact, I
am
rather an emotional sort of chap. I tell myself it’s the French blood. My grandfather came over here to teach French to a London merchant’s family and then he married an English girl and stayed on – oh God, there I go again, droning on about myself! It’s time you got a word in edgeways. How did you set about constructing that splendid sermon? How hard you must have worked! I’m sure it took a long time to write.’

We eventually reached my rooms at Laud’s.

‘What a marvellous place!’ said Romaine, gazing around at the very ordinary main chamber which served as a drawing-room, dining-room and library. ‘How comfortable you’ve made it, how conducive to bookish labours! And look at your beautiful prints of Cambridge! If I had a fortune I’d spend it all on pictures – so isn’t it lucky that my present fortune, such as it is, belongs entirely to my wife who has very proper ideas about how it should be spent! I’d have squandered the lot in no time.’

I offered him a drink before we went down to hall to dine.

‘Well, I don’t mind if I do,’ said Romaine, ‘although I feel a bit of a cad filching whisky from you after you’ve been so uncommonly handsome as to decorate my hotel room with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. What a treat! My wife doesn’t approve of expensive whiskies and she watches the level in the decanter like a hawk – and quite right too, of course. I need someone to keep me in order.’

‘Did you tell her about me?’

‘She guessed. When she first met me seventeen years ago I was rather more like you than I am now. Her first question when she returned home after your visit was, “When the hell did
that
happen?” but when I said soothingly, “Oh, that was just a little awkwardness in Epsom in the Naughty Nineties, my dear,” she nearly hit the roof. “Don’t try to tell me it was a little awkwardness when it was obviously a bloody catastrophe!” she said, putting me in my place, so I found myself confessing everything. “And how many more little awkwardnesses are going to crawl out of the woodwork, I’d like to know?” she demanded in a voice of thunder, so I said meekly that there weren’t any more because this little awkwardness had taught me a lesson I’d never forgotten, and she then made that exasperated noise which in books is always written p-s-h-a-w. I have to tread very carefully there, I’m afraid, poor Bea, because it’s a great sadness to her that she’s been unable to give me children. I knew from the start that it would be much better if I came on my own to Cambridge this weekend because you’d simply remind her that some other woman had succeeded where she’d failed … But here I am, prattling on about myself again! Now, my dear Charles, this time you really must get a word in edgeways. Are you working on a new book?’

It was the question which my father had never asked. Halting in the midst of pouring myself a sherry I demanded, ‘How did you know I’d already written a book?’

‘I thought that as you were a Doctor of Divinity you might have published something stunning, so I telephoned Blackwells at Oxford and ordered your book as soon as they told me about it. I must say I was most entertained by your account of all those frenetic debates which raged about the Trinity! When one thinks of all the awful things that go on today – Hitler, Mussolini, the Spanish Civil War – one can’t help but enjoy escaping into a faraway world where the one big topic of conversation was whether the Son was of the same substance as the Father!’

Here was someone who understood. The temptation was irresistible. Handing him his whisky I began to talk about the Council of Nicaea.

‘That really was the most splendid meal, Charles, and the claret was out of this world – how you resisted the temptation to have more than one glass I just don’t know. I say, I did enjoy myself! But should I slink off to the Blue Boar now? I don’t want to get in your way if you’ve got more important things to do.’

‘I’m free till Evensong at six.’

‘Can I come to that too?’

‘My dear Dr Romaine –’

‘Charles, I insist that you call me Alan. After all, since you were so generous as to sign yourself by your Christian name in that nice little note which brought tears to my eyes –’

‘My dear Alan, if you want to come to Evensong, who am I to stop you? But first I suggest we have coffee – black coffee –’

‘It’s all right, I’m actually extremely sober – I could operate now and not even make a slip of the knife. Shall I tell you about the time I took out that very curious appendix in Bombay?’

‘Well –’

‘No, I don’t think I will, I mustn’t put you off doctors for life … Oh, here we are again, back in this nice room – did you have a house when you were married, or a flat? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want you to think I’m prying into your marriage – and talking of marriage what do you think of the A. P. Herbert Bill – the Matrimonial Causes Act, as it now is? Divorce for insanity at last! Thirty-eight years too late for me, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing some other young fool won’t have his life wrecked just because he thinks he can walk on water. But what an exhibition the Church made of itself in the House of Lords! The only one who talked any sense was the Bishop of Durham – oh, and the Bishop of Starbridge, of course. Now
there’s
a man after my own heart! Have you met him?’

I began to talk about Dr Jardine.

‘Jolly nice brandy this is, Charles. Black coffee’s never quite the same without brandy, I always think, and I’m glad to see you’re having a little drop to pep you up for Evensong. Well, this is all absolutely fascinating. Probably it’s just a schoolgirl’s crush of Miss Lyle’s, you know – unconsummated. Shall I tell you why I say that?’