Time to Be in Earnest (35 page)

Afterwards we had lunch together at Il Carretto, an Italian restaurant at Notting Hill Gate, where I enjoyed hearing about Miss Lowe’s experience as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital. Hers has been a life of quiet, determined dedication to a job she obviously loved. The hours were normally
long and frequently nurses would stay overtime, as they still do. “After all,” she said simply, “if the patient needs you, you can’t just walk away.”

To David Hebblethwaite’s flat in Powis Square in the evening for supper. The other guest was Sir Derek Pattinson, Secretary-General of the General Synod of the Church of England from 1972 to 1990. It was a good evening but one I had to cut a little short as I needed to be home at half-past ten when son-in-law Peter arrived to spend the night.

This morning I returned from three happy, if busy, days in Cambridge. On Monday morning I gave the Keynote Speech at a conference on “Sexing the Liturgy” held at the university’s Faculty of Divinity in St. John Street. I thought the title a little odd; I associate sexing with chickens. Perhaps “Liturgy and Gender” would have been more appropriate. It was an interesting three days, and educative for me, but I would have benefited more had the acoustics in the large barrel-roofed hall been better. The sound system seemed to amplify but also to distort, although I accept that my hearing isn’t good. The noise level seemed loud but individual words were lost. This made it particularly difficult since some of the young female theologians spoke very quickly, rather as if they were reading a dissertation or thesis and had to get through it in the time. The proceedings will be printed and I shall then have an opportunity to read and, I hope, learn and digest.

I don’t suppose anyone was surprised at the stance I took in my Keynote Speech. I reviewed what I saw as the desiderata of liturgy: that it should be intelligible, which didn’t necessarily mean that it should be modern and up-to-date; that it should be capable of being spoken aloud in church by priest and people; that it should reflect doctrine; and lastly, but not least important, that it should be written in memorable language. Words in their beauty, their simplicity, their numinous power should be capable of so entering our consciousness that we do not need to remember them, search for them or concentrate on them, but rest confidently on their familiarity to bring us into that hoped-for communion with God which is surely at the heart of prayer and worship.

I went on, perhaps rather late in the talk, to speak about gender and worship. I pointed out that Christianity is both an historical and a patriarchal religion. It was a Jewish patriarch, St. Paul, who was chiefly responsible for extending the Judeo-Christian inheritance to non-Jews. Christ Himself taught us to call God “Abba, Father.” I see a difficulty, at least for myself, in accepting such changes as “Mother” or “Sister.” This is surely to substitute one stereotype for another; since God is spirit He can have no gender. Even as a young child I never pictured God as a benevolent Father Christmas sitting in a white nightdress on a heavenly throne.

Between lectures I looked at some of the theological books on sale in the hall. Most seemed to me totally incomprehensible. Obviously doctrinally and philosophically they would be well above my understanding, but it seemed that the sentences themselves were incomprehensible, a string of polysyllabic words strung together from which I could get no meaning. Theology like other professions has its own obscurantism. The problem is surely that theology should impinge on the lives of ordinary non-theologians if it is to have influence. Surely it can sometimes be written in language the intelligent lay man or woman can understand.

One of the women priests to whom I spoke is a hospital chaplain. She said that on a recent visit to the wards she had been accosted by a woman who had said, with extreme anger, “Don’t talk to me about the Church of England! Why did it have to snatch away Princess Di just when she was enjoying her bit of happiness?” I don’t know what answer the priest gave; I could think of none appropriate.

After lunch at Trinity I walked and talked in the Fellows’ garden with the Professor of Divinity, the happiest time of my visit. Inevitably I thought of George Eliot, pacing between the trees in the same garden with a contemporary writer, F. W. H. Myers, and pronouncing on the words God, Immortality, Duty. “How inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.”

I spent the night in the guest room at Peterhouse. This is an eccentric room. It was given to the college by an ex-member, and I suspect that he had something to do with the furnishing. The stairway leading up to the room is a rather disagreeable and violent purplish-red, with an immense coat of arms facing the door. The guest room itself is large, the bed high and curtained with a gold canopy surmounted by two huge crossed keys. The furniture is gilded, and in the bathroom a vast bath has a wide rim as if designed for the bather’s friends to sit round comfortably and chat.
Four litres of bottled water were provided, suggesting that the extraordinary decorations might induce excessive thirst. But it was a comfortable night.

In the morning, by contrast, I had breakfast in the little parlour, in the oldest part of the college. This is an enchanting room, half-panelled and looking out over the lawns and trees, and with a small combination room next door where senior members of the college can relax and read. It was one of those rooms which promote an atmosphere of tranquil meditative happiness and I wished I could spend the day there and write.

Afterwards two other guests, a speaker at the conference and her husband, and I were shown the Perne Library and able to examine some of the college treasures. These include a very early printed book which was obviously designed to deceive the buyer since the printer’s name had been carefully erased. It was beautifully decorated and the print remarkably clear, a fake but still a work of art. The young College Chaplain, Graham Ward, then took me to see the Chapel. The east window, designed by Rubens, is remarkable. Beneath a turbulent sky, a boiling of vivid blue, the figures round the three crosses are crowded together, yet each individual, the two robbers distorted in agony, the figure of Christ, passive and luminous, in the centre of the picture. The window is violent and restless, forcing the viewer to face the reality of what is happening.

I am writing this just before 11 o’clock at night after what has been an enjoyably fulfilling weekend. It began on Friday with a pub lunch with Bud McLintock. Bud’s firm is responsible for the publicity in connection with the Whitbread Awards, one of the most interesting and successful of the literary prizes. She has hopes that the BBC might do a programme about it and we discussed the possibilities. I don’t think television has ever managed to cope successfully with literary prizes. Viewers on the whole probably aren’t interested in shots of dinner-jacketed guests eating and drinking en masse, or in the speeches. But it should be possible to discuss the shortlist in a way that is both interesting and informative. I think viewers and listeners particularly like to hear from
the authors themselves—how they get their ideas, how the book began, what are their methods of writing. It will be good if the Whitbread can be given more publicity on the screen.

Jane arrived in the early evening to spend the weekend. She needed to order some blinds for her Oxford house, so we went first to John Lewis and then walked to the Wallace Collection. I hadn’t been to the Wallace for over a year, but entered it as I always do with a sense of being received into a private house as a welcome visitor. It is interesting how one’s response to some paintings changes while the initial reaction to others is only deepened with every viewing. Titian’s air-sea rescue of Andromeda, which once I thought rather fine, now seems to me half-finished and almost slovenly, while I can never view the Guardis without pleasure, and I particularly love the Bonington oils and watercolours. I received more pleasure—and Jane more amusement—from the armour than I expected, particularly the jousting armour. I tried to imagine the sensation of being screwed into this ornate and cunningly hinged accoutrement designed, judging by the bizarre pointed helmets, to terrify as much as to protect. I can see that, once dislodged from the saddle, the jouster would lie helpless, a gigantic upended beetle.

We read the notice describing the additions planned as a result of the successful application to the Lottery. There is to be a learning centre and also a coffee house for visitors under a glass canopy in the courtyard. Jane and I disagreed about this. Perhaps because of my age, I am always thankful for a place where I can sit and drink coffee after visiting a museum. Jane dislikes the idea of museums—and in particular galleries—becoming places where people will congregate to meet friends, eat, drink and chat. A purist, she prefers to think that visitors are drawn by one need only: to look at the pictures in comfort and relative solitude. I don’t see why they shouldn’t, afterwards, be refreshed with a good cup of coffee.

This morning we went to 11 o’clock Mass at All Saints—or it would be more apt to say that that was our intention. Because we hadn’t listened to the radio or read the papers in detail, I had completely overlooked putting forward the clock by one hour. We got to the church, as we thought, early and wandered around to kill time, then presented ourselves at the firmly closed door at quarter to twelve, thinking it was quarter to eleven. Opening the door, I saw that the church was very full. My instinct was to leave, but Jane, more robust, was determined that, having decided to go to church, to church she would go, and we were shown to
a seat in a side aisle. Afterwards I was very glad that we did go in. I was in time to take Communion, and Jane, who is not a believer, greatly enjoyed, as did I, the singing of Byrd’s four-part setting of the Mass.

Afterwards we walked to Regent’s Park and made our way eventually to the restaurant, where we had a light lunch sitting outside. Although the sun was fitful, the air was warm and moist. Just to breathe, particularly in this green and flower-scented place, was a sensual pleasure.

Each of London’s three main public parks has its distinctive ambience. St. James’s Park is the one I know best, perhaps because I so often walked across it during the years when I worked at the Home Office. Stretching in green and watery beauty between the Palace and Whitehall, St. James’s has always held for me an air of regal propriety and of high policy tinged with mystery. There have been so many espionage TV series in which bowler-hatted men of power pace magisterially together beside the lake exchanging their dangerous confidences. The very birds seem to know themselves privileged.

Regent’s Park is more formally splendid with wide paths leading to Queen Mary’s Rose Garden or the zoo; a less intimate park and one for people intent on going somewhere, pausing less often than in other parks to sniff, touch and wonder.

Hyde Park is redolent of high Victoriana (perhaps because of Kensington Palace), peopled with the small ghosts of supervised children sailing their boats on the round pond while beribboned nurses wheel deep-bottomed bassinets between the flowerbeds of Kensington Gardens. The particular pleasure of Hyde Park lies in the vast acres of grass. Here I can walk for miles in untrammelled solitude, the perfect place to be when I am plotting a new novel.

After we reached home, Jane went out again into Holland Park, reluctant to miss the rest of the daylight, while I sat with the Sunday papers. Jane left to catch the bus to Oxford shortly before ten, so now I am sitting alone in that state of indolent tiredness in which the contemplation of sleep becomes more agreeable than making the effort actually to go to bed.

Tomorrow I leave London by the 10 a.m. train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, where I am to give a lecture to the Scottish Medico-Legal Society.