Scandalous Risks (52 page)

IV

There was so much I had planned to discuss with him. I wanted to examine all the dark corners of our affair so that the mysteries were finally clarified. I wanted him to tell me truthfully, without prevarication, in words of one syllable, exactly what his relationship with Dido had been not only in 1963 but from the day he married her. I wanted to discover why he had been so ‘bound up’, as Mrs Ashworth had put it, with such an impossible woman who was so absolutely wrong for him. That was the real mystery, of course. In 1963 I had been so young and inexperienced that I had gone off at a tangent chasing a solution to the wrong problem. The mystery had not been whether he had slept with Dido while chasing me. Obviously he had. (Or had he?) At the age of twenty-six I would have found it a massive betrayal if he had been sleeping with another woman, but now I could see that any sex he might have had with her could have been of no more emotional significance than one of his ‘triple whiskies’, a mere tranquilliser which helped keep him calm in stressful times. No, the real mystery was not whether he had slept with Dido but how he had come to be so incurably entangled with her, and it was this question which I was determined he should now answer.

But once again he eluded me. He always did, I realise that now. And Mrs Ashworth was right. We’re not meant to know everything about other people, even those who are closest to us, and we have to accept at the end of the day that not all mysteries are solvable.

Meanwhile he was busy saying he had destroyed me.

‘Darling ...’ I suddenly realised the tears were streaming down my face. He was displaying all his old talent for wrecking my make-up. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t reproach yourself. And I’m not ruined, I did survive, I’m fine.’ Finding a handkerchief I started mopping my cheeks. Fortunately I now used a waterproof mascara.

‘Promiscuity is so often a mark of dislocation,’ he said, ‘of boredom, alienation and despair. One very seldom realises that when one’s young, of course, because the transient pleasure’s so overwhelming. But later the pleasure no longer heals, and then, as in all cases of alienation, one yearns for the putting-right, the making-whole, the unification of the fragmented self’

Trying to speak lightly I said: ‘This sounds like the theology of atonement!’

‘That’s right. At-one-ment. Do you ever go to church?’

I shook my head. No point in saying anything. Nothing worthwhile to say.

‘God’s not there any more?’

I made a big effort. All hostesses have a duty to be sociable, even with retired clergymen who are so
louche
as to talk about God at the wrong moment. ‘Oh, God’s there!’ I said brightly, as if we were discussing some eccentric mutual friend, ‘but He’s not interested in me and I’m not interested in Him. We’re irrelevant to each other nowadays.’

‘If you love someone they never become irrelevant.’

‘Well, obviously He and I don’t love each other.’ I did hope the old pet wasn’t going to become tiresome and spoil our very successful reunion. I tried to work out how I could tell him tactfully that I hated discussing religion because it always reminded me of Starbridge, but then I realised that any such admission would only confirm his belief that he was responsible for my spiritual destruction. I was still floundering for the words which would direct the conversation away from God when he said with strength: ‘You’re saying you’re estranged from God. You’re saying you’re alienated in the wasteland. But that’s the tragedy of mankind which lies at the heart not only of the doctrine of atonement but the doctrine of the Incarnation. We may be estranged from God, but God’s never estranged from us. He came into the world to be at one with us and share our suffering so that mankind may be raised up, reconciled and redeemed. "God was in Christ," as the famous quotation goes, "reconciling the world to himself."‘

‘Yes, I know all that, darling, and of course it’s lovely, so idealistic, but what relation does it have to real life as we live it today in 1975?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly.’ He was getting stronger and stronger. The years were falling away, the clock was being put back, and for a moment I could almost believe we were sitting together again on Lady Mary. ‘I’ll give you an example,’ he said, ‘an example of the principle of atonement in action, of the spirit of the Incarnation still ceaselessly on the move, of how pain and alienation and estrangement, no matter how deep, can be transmuted and healed by the power of love – which is the power of God. I wanted to put things right between us. I came here out of love, and when you saw me you knew that. Then you didn’t just open the door and say hullo. You opened thedoor and you smiled and you ran down the steps and you took me in your arms and you hugged me – and the demons of alienation and estrangement were vanquished at last because my love and your response had cast them out. That old pirate Jon Darrow would have said: "No demon can withstand the power of Christ!" but as a Modernist I prefer to say: "This is the Christian principle in action!" In the end Love – Love with a capital L – is the only thing that matters. I was very wrong about many things back in 1963, but at least I was right about that.’

‘You’re saying Charles Ashworth won the battle but John Robinson won the war?’ I said, again struggling to keep my emotions at bay by adopting a light, amused tone, but he only said urgently: ‘The real truth lies far beyond Ashworth and Robinson – the real truth lies with God Himself. The power of His love is such that although you may consider yourself estranged from Him, He could never consider Himself estranged from you. He’s always longing for the reconciliation – the moment when you turn back to Him, as you turned back to me, and fling wide your arms and vanquish the demon of alienation.’

‘Quite. Well, this theological talk is just like the old days, but –’

He refused to give up. Stubborn, pig-headed old Yorkshire-man. I might have known he’d battle on. Abruptly he said: ‘You remember Holman Hunt’s painting,
The Light of the
World?
’

‘
Oh darling, such an awful old piece of Victorian tat!’

The style may be dated, but the
kerygma,
the message, is eternal. Christ stands outside the closed door, the door with no handle, and waits with his lamp for admittance to the human heart beyond –’

‘All right, it’s
not
just an awful old piece of Victorian tat – I was being revoltingly over-sophisticated. But again, what does all this mean in practical terms today in
_1975?
I know I’ve made
a
complete and utter mess of my life, but it’s far too late now to start all over again!’

‘It’s never too late. That’s the point. It’s always possible to rise from the grave of pain, alienation and despair.’

‘Even when one’s buried beneath a concrete slab?’

‘Yes! Certainly! Even then!’

‘But how do I achieve this resurrection? Go back to the Church?’

At once he became sombre. ‘I know the Church failed you. The Church is as fallible and imperfect as the men who run it, and I could never blame you, after all your experiences, if you hold the Church in contempt. But if you could look past the Church now to the eternal truths which lie beyond –’

‘Yes, they’re still there, I realise that, but how do I connect with them, how do I tune in, how do I dial their number?’

‘They’re not at the end of a telephone line. They’re waiting on your doorstep, and all you have to do is open the great closed door, the door that Holman Hunt painted, the door that has to be opened from within.’

There was a pause. Then I astonished myself by saying: ‘I can picture Christ standing at the great closed door. But I can’t see myself on the inside. I think I’m on the outside, watching him, and beyond the door is my new resurrected life, but I can’t figure out how to get there. So it’s no good Christ just standing by the door with his lamp. That’s too passive. He’s got to act – he’s got to stretch out his hand and grab me so that he can heave me over the threshold.’

‘Then that’s what will happen. One day – and I shall pray it’s one day soon – you’ll see him standing at the great closed door and then as you watch he’ll turn and stretch out his hand.’

‘Darling!’ I had to give him a kiss. He was trying so hard and I loved him so much. ‘All right,’ I said, wanting to make him feel he had succeeded, ‘I’ll pray for that too – we’ll both pray for my much-needed resurrection, but darling, I can’t have you blaming yourself any more for my futile existence. And for God’s sake, don’t think I’m secretly seething with anger towards you. I’ve been angry in the past, I admit, but I promise you I blame you for nothing now.’

It was true. I had forgiven him. But I had to blame someone for my wasted life so all the anger which I had directed outward I now turned in upon myself. With a new ferocity I continued the all-consuming task of blotting out the pain of alienation, and although occasionally I remembered that image of the outstretched hand by the great closed door, no light pierced the darkness of the wasteland where the Great Pollutant still oozed its filth across my soul.

V

Then in 1988, thirteen years after my last meeting with Aysgarth and twenty-five years after the publication of
Honest to God,
I took that wrong turning on the motorway and saw once again as if in a dream the spire of Starbridge Cathedral soaring towards the sky to lure me back to my lost paradise of long ago. And it was there in the cloisters, where Lady Mary’s seat was no longer to be found, that I saw among the milling crowds the man whom I still called my Talisman, the man who then led me into the deserted garden of the Choir School, and it was there, as we sat overlooking the river, that I wept yet again for the life that had been destroyed.

VI

‘Well, the trouble was,’ I said in a voice devoid of emotion as I confessed the emotion I could never forget, ‘I became so very, very fond of my darling Mr Dean.’ Then I broke down, quietly, with the minimum of fuss, and shed two or three discreet tears into a tastefully embroidered handkerchief. In my opinion middle-aged women, who will always look revolting in distress, have absolutely no excuse for bawling away like young girls who will inevitably wind up looking dewy-eyed and lovely.

Nick was very still. He was forty-five now; I was fifty-one. The gap in our ages which had seemed such an abyss quarter of a century ago had been wiped out. We were merely middle-aged contemporaries who had shared fragments of the past. Without the owlish spectacles which had given him such a serious air in his youth, his face had an angular individuality which was striking, and as always, he was intensely watchable. He was wearing off-white slacks, a casually-styled black jacket and one of those modern clerical shirts, pale grey with a thin strip of plastic woven around the neck to symbolise the stiff collar. The informality of his appearance conveyed the impression of a clergyman on the fringes of the Church, someone unconventional, daring, possibly a trifle unorthodox. I wondered vaguely how his life had turned out but I knew little about him beyond the fact that he worked at one of the Guild churches in the City of London. Somebody had told me he counselled AIDS cases, but that rumour was hardly surprising. Everyone counselled AIDS cases nowadays. It was the fashion.

‘Sorry,’ I said, giving my eyes one last dab with the tasteful handkerchief. ‘Silly of me. Take no notice.’

He said again as he had said a few moments before: ‘Forgive.’

‘I did forgive him. Long ago.’

‘But have you forgiven the most important person of all?’ Who’s that?’

‘Yourself.’

I was transfixed. Then I scrabbled for my powder compact and tried to hide my confusion by giving my nose a quick pat with the puff. Despite the fact that my tears had been shed so discreetly, I had still wound up looking revolting. Poor Nick, landed with a middle-aged fright! I resolved to adopt a bright new sociable manner to extricate us both from embarrassment.

‘What are you doing down here?’ I enquired agreeably, dropping the powder compact back in my bag.

‘I’m a consultant to the diocese of Starbridge. The Bishop calls me in sometimes.’

‘Oh yes? What’s your special expertise?’

‘The paranormal.’

I boggled but made a quick recovery. ‘Still treading your mystical paths?’

He smiled but said nothing.

‘Laid any good ghosts lately?’ I said gaily as if I were chatting to a difficult guest at a cocktail party.

‘I’m beginning to think you yourself are a ghost,’ he said, ‘a spirit crying out to be laid to rest.’

Well, darling, you can lay me any time you please! My pleasure.’ I stood up, intent on giving the impression that I was well in command of myself again, and added briskly: ‘Were you on your way to the South Canonry to see the Bishop when you rescued me?’

‘No, I’d already been to the South Canonry and I’d decided to kill time in the cloisters while I waited for evensong ... Will you stroll back with me to the north porch?’

We began to walk up the path away from the river to the door in the wall which separated us from the stonemasons’ yard. After a long silence in which I was wholly absorbed in remembering the evensongs of 1963, he said: ‘Why did you yourself come to Starbridge today?’

‘God knows. But my dear, never mind about me — I’m just languishing on my own private scrap-heap! Tell me all about the Church of England in 1988 — does anyone still remember
Honest to God?
’

‘
Some books have just been published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary. A few middle-aged churchmen are getting nostalgic, but I suspect the younger generation are largely indifferent to the dated theology of the ‘sixties.’

‘So all that starry-eyed radicalism which was going to create the New Reformation —’

‘— expired. The New Reformation ran aground on the rocks of apathy, the Radicals are now thrashing about in a dead end and the Liberals are being knocked so hard that they can only reel punch-drunk from one crisis to the next. This is the day of the conservatives, and the Evangelicals are finally on the march.’

‘My God, that’s exactly what Charley Ashworth prophesied in 1963!’

‘Ah well,’ said Nick dryly, opening the door in the wall, it would be hard to find someone more conservative than Charley.’

‘And where do you stand amidst all these warring factions?’

‘Beyond them.’

We moved into the stonemasons’ yard and as Nick closed the door behind us I said: ‘I remember your father talking of the religion that was beyond fashion. But if you represent timeless mysticism and Charley represents the Evangelicals, who among our former acquaintances now stands for the Liberal-Radical wing?’

‘Ah, that would be Primrose Tait,’ said Nick. ‘She’s a great power nowadays in the Movement for the Ordination of Women.’

‘Oh God!’ I rolled my eyes heavenwards in mock horror, just as I always did whenever a successful woman appeared on the horizon to make me despise myself for my lost opportunities. ‘Thank heavens I’m right outside it all! What a circus!’

Nick said swiftly: ‘So you’re happy on your scrap-heap, are you?’ but pride made me retort: ‘In total bliss, darling! It’s the only place where a worthless old hag of a failure like me could ever feel thoroughly at home!’

‘So that’s how you see yourself, is it? Worthless? A failure? Unforgivable?’

‘Well, be frank, Nick! How do you see me?’

‘I follow a man,’ said my Talisman, ‘who believed that each one of us has worth, and that no one is unforgivable.’

To my horror I found I was unable to deliver a glib reply — or indeed any reply at all.

We re-entered the Close by the main entrance of the stonemasons’ yard, and as we began to move around the vast west front of the Cathedral towards the north porch, I became painfully aware that although I was near enough to touch the walls I was utterly severed from the great mystery beyond them. Then at last the alienation and estrangement, that famous
angst
of twentieth-century man, seemed unbearable. My soul ached. I longed to shed the pollution which poisoned it, but I was so weak. I could only say mildly, absurdly, to Nick: ‘Did you ever see
Ben Hur?
’
No cry for help could ever have been more obscure.

‘The Charlton Heston version?’

‘Yes, there was one part I always remember and it wasn’t that bloody chariot race. It was when Christ was preaching to the crowd — although one never saw the face of Christ, only his back, and one never heard him, they merely played a special kind of music —’

‘I remember.’

‘— and Ben Hur appeared on the edge of the crowd. He was right in the background and one saw him move around the outer fringes — just as we’re doing now, moving around the edge of the Cathedral — and as Ben Hur moved, Christ moved too and one realised that Christ was watching him —’

‘Yes, that was a very dramatic moment.’

‘— but I can’t quite remember what happened next.’

‘Ben Hur was drawn in from the fringes.’

‘He was? But not in that scene, surely.’

‘Then it was later.’

We turned the corner and saw the north porch. Above us, somewhere in the tower below the spire, the bell was tolling for evensong.

‘Well!’ I said brightly, pausing by the porch and wondering what on earth had driven me to ramble on so disjointedly about an ancient Hollywood epic. It’s been heavenly to see you again — keep treading those mystical paths! I suppose you’ll eventually waft back into my orbit some day, just as you always do.’

In reply he took out his wallet, produced a card and handed it to me. The card read: ‘The Reverend Nicholas Darrow, St Bent’s-by-the-Wall, Egg Street, London E.C.2.’

‘Give me a call,’ he said, ‘when you get back to town.’

‘My dear, what fun! But I mustn’t distract you from all your paranormal phenomena!’ I was acutely aware that he had asked for neither my phone number nor my address. The card was a mere gesture of politeness, nothing more, a move which could be labelled ‘concerned’ and ‘caring’, a minor spiritual charade which would salve his Christian conscience.

‘So long, Venetia,’ he was saying with a smile as he turned away into the north porch. He even added that most meaningless of all Americanisms: ‘Take care.’

‘Goodbye, Nick.’ I remained outside, staring after him, his card already screwed up in my hand for deposit in the nearest litter-bin.

Then he stopped. He had reached the huge oak door which led into the Cathedral, and for one long moment he stood there - he stood there as if waiting by the great closed door, and suddenly I thought: Holman Hunt.
The Light of the World
.

I knew then what was going to happen next, but I didn’t dare believe it. My voice cried in my head: he won’t, he can’t, he couldn’t - But he did. And as I stared through my tears in wonder, unable to move or speak, he turned back to me and he stretched out his hand.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Scandalous Risks
is the fourth in a series of six novels about the Church of England in the twentieth century; each book is designed to be read independently of the others, but the more books are read the wider will be the view of the multi-sided reality which is being presented.

The first novel,
Glittering Images,
narrated by Charles Ashworth, was set in 1937.
Glamorous Powers,
narrated by Jon Darrow, opened in 1940, and
Ultimate Prizes
was narrated by Neville Aysgarth after the war. The fifth novel,
Mystical Paths,
will examine the Church in 1968 from the point of view of Nicholas Darrow.

Aysgarth’s thought (though not his private life) derives from the writings of John Arthur Thomas Robinson (1919-1983) in the 1960s. Robinson was born in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral where his father was a canon, and educated at Marlborough and at Jesus College, Cambridge; he gained a degree in classics, a first in theology and a doctorate in philosophy. After he was ordained in 1945 he was a curate at Bristol and a chaplain at Wells Theological College before he became Dean of Clare College, Cambridge and Lecturer in New Testament in the University Faculty of Divinity in 1951. He was still under forty when he was asked by Dr Mervyn Stockwood, then Bishop of Southwark, to be his suffragan (assistant) bishop at Woolwich. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher, was opposed to this appointment, mainly on the ground that Robinson was too young for episcopal rank, but Stockwood persisted and Robinson became Bishop of Woolwich in 1959. By this time he had been married for some years and had four children.

In 196o he gained nationwide notoriety during the Crown’s prosecution of Penguin Books for publishing an alleged obscene novel, the unexpurgated edition of
Lady Chatterley
’
s Lover
by D. H. Lawrence. Robinson agreed to be a witness for the defence, but some of his opinions, taken out of context, provided sensational headlines for the press; his remark that sex was an act of holy communion (widely misinterpreted as Holy Communion) dates from this time. Archbishop Fisher commented: ‘In my judgement the Bishop was mistaken to think that he could take part in the trial without becoming a stumbling-block to many ordinary Christians.’

Less than three years later, in March 1963, Robinson was hitting the national headlines again when the SCM Press published his most famous work,
Honest to God.
In the seven months following publication, 350,000 copies were sold and seven translations
^-
were about to be published. It was, so its publisher David L. Edwards claimed, the fastest-selling book of serious theology in the history of the world, and clearly by trying to restate Christianity in an up-to-date form and by introducing the general public to the writings of modern theologians Robinson connected with a vast religious interest buried deep in what was too often assumed to be a largely Godless and secular society. Dr Michael Ramsey, who had succeeded Dr Fisher as Archbishop of Canterbury, was at first hostile to the book but later revised this initial reaction and admitted: ‘I was soon to grasp how many were the contemporary gropings and quests which lay behind
Honest to God.
’
Robinson received over four thousand letters, some of which were published in
The Honest to God
Debate,
edited by David L. Edwards, in October 1963. This book also contained, in addition to favourable reviews, strong criticism of the book from professional theologians.

After ten years as Bishop of Woolwich Robinson returned to Cambridge as Dean of Chapel at Trinity. This appointment was not altogether a success and Robinson did not become the prophetic voice of the 1970s as many in the Church had hoped that he would. It was noticeable that his New Testament scholarship became increasingly conservative. In 1983 he was diagnosed as suffering from cancer and he died in the December of that year. His last book,
The Priority of John,
was published posthumously, and in reviewing it Canon Leslie Houlden wrote: ‘The public reputation of John Robinson ... was at its height in the sixties. On the theological scene he seemed to epitomise the spirit of that period as well as anyone ... yet to see him as a thrillingly shocking radical was a misconception .. . He hunted with no pack for long but went his own way .. . Those who have seen him as a late Victorian radical born out of due time are perhaps the most discerning.’

Honest to God
is still in print, and in 1988 the SCM Press published
God
’
s Truth,
a collection of essays to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of this landmark in the history of the twentieth-century Church of England.