Glittering Images (62 page)

‘All this was desperate enough, but the turn of the screw came when Alex’s sister died and his stepmother had to be imported to the palace. Carrie didn’t hate old Mrs J. – I honestly don’t think Carrie could hate anyone – but Carrie was wholly convinced she couldn’t cope with her. Mrs J. gave her what I think is called an inferiority complex, and made Carrie feel stupid and miserable. Old Mrs J. herself, of course, was a very tough lady indeed and she didn’t just hate Carrie; she despised her.

‘However when old Mrs J. arrived she actually behaved very well – she was so pleased to be back with her Adam – and the real trouble arose not from her hostile behaviour but from the fact that Carrie couldn’t believe old Mrs J. was genuinely trying to be benign – you know how persecuted people feel when they’re on the verge of collapse. I badgered the doctors for help, and after dishing out the pills one of them even suggested a psychiatrist, but Alex reacted as if the man had recommended witchcraft. Alex thinks psychiatry’s rubbish, a sort of heresy on a par with spiritualism.

‘Then finally the crisis reached its climax. Carrie, who was by now refusing to leave the palace and face the world, told Alex she had to have a separate bedroom. No more sex. What was the point, she said, when nothing could come of it. Well, Alex could live without the hope of children but he couldn’t live without the hope of sex. I knew that. Carrie told me everything by that time – poor darling, she had no one else to confide in, but when Alex found out that she’d talked to me about their intimate life he nearly hit the roof. We had a row and he accused me of cultivating an unhealthily confidential relationship with Carrie. I said that was nonsense and he knew it. “You’re lucky she confides in me and not in someone else,” I said, “because you know very well I’ll keep my mouth shut till the Day of Judgement.” He said, “I ought to get rid of you,” and I said, “Oh, don’t be such a damned fool!” He liked that. Alex likes a woman who can talk back to him. He said, “What on earth am I going to do?” and I said, “Stop being such a pig-headed Victorian and get her to a psychiatrist”.

‘So he took her up to London – well, we all three went – and the psychiatrist was a nice man but of course he never got anywhere near a cure; he couldn’t wave a wand to postpone the menopause. However she liked him so we all began to hope, and when he suggested that a little holiday might be beneficial the three of us trekked off to Bournemouth for a few days.

‘Carrie in fart
was
a little better; the psychiatrist wasn’t a complete failure, and when I coaxed her out of the palace to buy clothes for the holiday she was almost her old self again. Alex thought she was cured. Talk about wishful thinking … I said, “You
are
booking three rooms at the hotel, aren’t you, Dr Jardine?” and he said: “That’s a very impertinent question, Miss Christie, and not one which I feel obliged to answer.” Well, we got to the hotel and of course he’d booked a double room for them. I knew it would be a disaster and it was. On the first night Carrie came to me in tears when he was having a bath and said could she spend the night with me in my room. She was in such a state, practically in hysterics, and when she sobbed that she didn’t dare face Alex to tell him I said at once: “Don’t worry, darling,
I’ll
tell him.”

‘They had a bathroom adjoining their bedroom – Alex always likes to be extravagant in hotels. I sat down in my dressing-gown on the edge of the bed and listened to him splashing away and eventually he wandered out with only a towel tucked around his waist. He didn’t see me at first. He just assumed Carrie was there and he said, “The Bishop of Durham has a good story about how he was once accidentally bathed in Sweden by a youthful masseuse – what a pity this hotel doesn’t provide such an interesting facility!” Funny how clearly I remember him saying that; I suppose it’s because I also so clearly remember thinking: this is it, I’ve taken her place, he’s talking to his wife and I’m listening to him talk. And
that
was the moment when I knew I wanted real sex at last.

‘A second later Alex turned and saw me. He went ashen. Then he very carefully put on his dressing-gown and tightly tied the cord.

‘I told him what had happened. He said, “I’d better talk to her,” and I said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea at all – better to leave her where she is tonight and tackle the whole problem afresh in the morning.” He said, “And where are you going to sleep, may I ask?” and I said, “Well, I’m very used to filling in whenever Carrie can’t cope and this is all in a day’s work for me. Why don’t I fill in here too?” And Alex – darling Alex – said, “My dear Miss Christie, we seem to have wound up in the pages of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
– may I suggest we return immediately to the pages of
Barchester Towers
?” And he added, “Please go to your room and tell Carrie she must come back and sleep alone here in this bed while I sleep in the armchair by the fireplace. Tell her I shan’t be cross, shan’t lose my temper, shan’t utter a single word of reproach because I’ll be much too busy going down on my knees and asking God to extricate us all from this highly embarrassing, utterly catastrophic and apparently insoluble mess.”

‘Wasn’t he wonderful?

‘I went back to my room and swore to Carrie she had nothing to fear. Then I told her exactly what I’d said to Alex. Her first reaction was: “But of course! The perfect solution!” and she kissed me. Her second reaction was: “But it wouldn’t be right and Alex would never do it.” However, the next moment she was saying, “It’s so strange though, because I feel it
ought
to be right – do you feel that, Lyle?” and I told her I did. We all in the end felt it was right. But none of us could see how it could be morally done.

‘We cut short the holiday and returned to Starbridge with the excuse that Carrie wasn’t feeling well, but in fact Carrie was much better. She’d seen the light at the end of the tunnel and so had I, but I was so worried about Alex because I knew he was in despair. However after days of confiding in his journal and getting nowhere Alex finally scrapped his iron rule that he should never discuss his marital life with his stepmother, and of course old Mrs J. sorted us out in no time. She
quite
understood that Alex couldn’t live without the hope of sex, and she saw me as playing her own role in a re-enactment of her big romance with Alex’s father. But the past never quite repeats itself, does it? Alex’s father had been a widower, and Alex was still very much a married man.

‘But old Mrs J. had been brought up a Lutheran and she knew that Martin Luther had believed refusal of marital rights should constitute grounds for divorce. She’d also spent twenty-five years living with Alex’s father who thought that clergymen were unnecessary, the legal bureaucracy was an impertinence and that any couple could marry themselves before God without conforming to all the man-made rules of Church and State. Old Mrs J. had absolutely no doubts about what Alex should do, Carrie had no doubts, I had no doubts –

‘But Alex was absolutely tormented.

‘Finally Mrs J. gave me her wedding ring – this ring, my signet-ring. Alex was there. She’d asked to see us both and we were in her room. She said to him, “I want her to have my ring and I want you to put it on her finger.”

‘She more or less married us. But in the end Alex had to do it more tidily; he’s got a very legal streak and he likes ambiguous situations to be properly defined before being neatly filed away. He fetched Carrie. It was late at night by that time and Carrie was getting ready for bed but she came along in one of her stunning negligees – she looked better than she’d looked for months. I was wearing my evening clothes, a rather funereal black dress, but Alex took a rose from Mrs J.’s vase of flowers and fixed it alluringly on my décolletage. He was wearing his episcopal clothes, apron, gaiters, pectoral cross, the lot. Mrs J. was in her usual gunmetal grey. What an odd crowd we must have looked! And what a strange scene it was! Alex made a short speech setting out the position – I think he needed to make a speech to convince himself that what he was doing was right, and of course by the time he’d finished it all seemed so right that one wondered why no one had ever thought of setting us a precedent. He told Carrie he wished to divorce her for refusal to consummate the marriage and said it was his honest belief that this refusal rendered their marriage a purely nominal affair; the spiritual core of the marriage had been destroyed, leaving only the legal formalities, and as far as these were concerned, God certainly didn’t need a gaggle of lawyers to sanctify the dissolution of a spiritual nullity; mutual consent alone was sufficient to dissolve any man-made ties.

‘Alex promised Carrie that he would always maintain her and that for as long as she lived she would be his wife in the eyes of the world. He then asked her if she had any objection to what he’d said, and she answered no, she loved him very much and she was sure this was the best solution; she promised to do her utmost always to be a good wife to him in public. Alex said, “Then before God I declare my marriage to Caroline dissolved,” and after a pause he gave her a kiss and asked her if she wanted to stay on while he married me. She said, “Oh yes, dearest – I put on my best negligée!” and we all laughed but it was a tense moment because we were all so close to tears. Old Mrs J. said suddenly, “Fetch some champagne, Adam, and some glasses for afterwards.” She knew he was temporarily too overcome to go on. So off he went to recover and Carrie went to the lavatory and I sat down by Mrs J.’s wheelchair and Mrs J. held my hand.

‘When Alex came back with the champagne we got married. Again he did it formally, spelling out all the details, saying it must be a secret marriage while Carrie lived. I agreed to the terms, we exchanged vows and he put the ring on my finger. Carrie cried, of course, in her role of “mother of the bride”. It was all very peculiar and emotional. I hugged her and asked her to keep on loving me. She just said, “How could I stop? I’ll always love you both and want you to be happy.”

‘After we’d all had a glass of champagne, ruthless old Mrs J. ordered Carrie off to bed so that she could be alone with us. Then she kissed me and said, “Now I can die knowing Adam will be happy at last” – and she did die, but not for another few months so she was actually able to see how happy he was with me.

‘Meanwhile Alex and I had concluded the wedding-night by going to bed together. It wasn’t like my fantasies – he was in such a state he was impotent at first. He said, “I’m afraid this isn’t like
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
after all,” but I said, “Well, it certainly isn’t like
Barchester Towers
!” Then we laughed and everything was all right.’

Lyle stubbed out her cigarette. It had been a long time since she had looked me in the eyes and now she still kept her face averted from mine as she said rapidly, ‘I’m sorry to take my time over this but I want you to understand exactly how it was.’

‘That’s what I want too. Shall I make some tea now? If we go on tossing off the brandies like this we’ll be insensible before the final curtain.’

She finally dared to look at me. I gave her a reassuring smile. Then releasing her hand I rose to my feet and moved to the pantry to fill the kettle.

Lyle said when I returned, ‘Is the story turning out as you anticipated?’

‘It is and it isn’t. I guessed the bare facts, as you know, but I hadn’t visualized the huge emotional strain involved – and I hadn’t anticipated how everyone would play their parts. Of course I saw Jardine as the instigator –’

‘No, it was me, in the beginning. Then old Mrs J. pushed him over the edge at the end. I wish you could have met her, Charles. She had the most tremendous influence over Alex.’

‘What exactly –’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lyle. ‘I’ve played the model wife, waiting for him to confide, but Alex has always remained reticent.’

‘Maybe there’s nothing to confide.’

‘I’m sure there’s something. I suspect they had one of those intense relationships where sex is either unnecessary or unimportant – sibling relationships can occasionally fall into that category, can’t they, although I’m sure Ingrid and Alex never saw themselves as brother and sister. I know he never saw her as his mother either – he told me he could remember his own mother too clearly, and anyway Ingrid wasn’t maternal. While he was growing up he would have seen her as his father’s wife, but when he found out about the informal marriage – that was when Ingrid left home to keep house for him – I suspect he just saw her as the unattached woman who loved him. I still doubt if they ever slept together – Alex is so devout – but who knows? If the relationship was entirely innocent, why can’t he talk freely about it to me? And why did he rush into that marriage as soon as he could afford to do so – as if he felt it was vital that he should put himself once and for all beyond the reach of temptation?’

‘Perhaps something started in Starmouth, finished when she went back to the old man and then started up again later in North London after the old man died.’

‘I just don’t know. You could equally well argue that he rushed into marriage because he feared the platonic relationship was finally becoming sexual. A man can’t marry his father’s wife, can he, and even though Ingrid’s marriage was so peculiar Alex did in the end believe it to be valid in the sight of God. So he couldn’t marry her – and as he was a devout clergyman no other relationship was possible, but I’ll tell you this, Charles: although we can’t know for certain whether she and Alex were ever lovers I’m quite sure that old Mrs J.’s loathing of Carrie was fundamentally rooted in jealousy.’

‘Was she never jealous of you?’

‘She seemed to decide straight away that it was poindess. In 1932 when I married Alex she was over seventy, she knew she hadn’t long to live and all she wanted was to see her Adam happy. Anyway she liked me. We got on. She adored the wedding – in fact, if I was going to advance a really bizarre theory I’d say she got tremendous vicarious excitement out of pushing me at Alex and imagining us in bed together, but who knows what she really thought? Who even knows where reality lies? Think of all those philosophers – Berkeley and Hume and –’