Absolute Truths (21 page)

At that time in 1965 Jon had been separated from his beloved
Nicholas for longer than they had ever been separated before, and
the result was that the master was now pining for the puppy.
Having come down from Cambridge with a degree in divinity,
Nicholas had decided to do two years of voluntary work in Africa
before proceeding to theological college to train for the priesthood.
He had now been away for five months. Cool, laconic little letters
would arrive regularly at the Manor, and Jon would pore over
every one of them in a fever of quite unnecessary anxiety. Often I was shown the letters and asked for an opinion, but no matter
how hard I tried I was unable to allay this somewhat neurotic
paternal concern. Once I did say gently: ‘He is twenty-two. I think you must give him a little leeway now to make mistakes and learn
from them,’ but poor old Jon, my former superhuman
hero
,
remained
beset with the problems arising not only from parent
hood at an advanced age but from a recluse’s over-fearful view of
the outside world.

When I arrived at Starrington Manor that night I drove past
the main entrance and followed the boundary of the grounds for
another mile until I reached a door set in the wall. This was the
quickest way to Jon’s cottage, much quicker than following the path through the grounds from the main house, and Lyle’s call
earlier to the Community had ensured that the door was unlocked
when I arrived. Jon had no telephone at his cottage, not even a
private line which would connect him to the Manor and those
who looked after him.

Having parked the car on the verge I opened the door and
began the short walk to the dell where Jon’s cottage had been built
beside the family chapel. It was dark among the surrounding trees
and the air was very cold; I was relieved to step beneath the light
which shone above the front door.

‘
Jon – I’ve arrived!’ I called in order to avoid startling him by
a sudden thump on the panels, and the next moment I was face
to face, just as I had been in 1937, with my spiritual director,
friend and mentor, Father Jonathan Darrow.

Jon had been very tall, well over six foot, but he had begun to
stoop so that we were now almost the same height; I have yet to
shrink from six foot one. Apart from the stoop he had changed
remarkably little since I had first met him. He possessed one of
those lean, well-proportioned frames which age well, and although
his grey hair was thinner it was not scanty. He had an unusually
pale complexion, and this pallor made the shadows created by the
angular bone structure of his face more striking. His eyes, very
clear, very grey, always giving the impression of seeing everything
there was to see, were quite unchanged from that day in 1937
when he had introduced himself to me at the Fordites’ house in
Grantchester.

‘
Take the chair by the fire, Charles,’ he said after he had ushered
me across the threshold. ‘It’s cold out there tonight.’

‘
I do apologise for dumping myself on you outside normal
visiting hours, but ...’ The few people whom Jon consented to
see without an appointment were expected to arrive between four
and five in the afternoon and stay no more than half an hour.
When I was consulting him professionally instead of merely paying
a social call to see how he was, I would make an appointment to
meet him earlier in the day, and although Jon had always told me
that I could call upon him at any time and without prior warning,
I was careful not to abuse this privilege. Normally I would never
have visited him in the evening.

Generously waving away my apologies, Jon pottered off to his
kitchen to make tea.

He lived in one large room. Bookcases flanked the stone fireplace
where logs were burning; a bunk-bed with a built-in wardrobe
and drawers occupied one wall; a small table with two chairs stood
by the window. Usually there were no pictures anywhere, but in
recent months Jon had taken to displaying a photograph of his
absent Nicholas on the chimney-piece. A crucifix hung on the wall
above the bed. The wooden floor was uncarpeted apart from a rug
on the hearth, and on this rug a large tabby-cat sat gazing at the
flames. Jon was a cat-lover. I preferred dogs and could never quite
understand this passion of Jon’s, but I accepted it as one of his
idiosyncrasies. Unlike most cat-lovers he never behaved in a frivo
lous fashion with the animal but always treated it as if it were an intelligent child who could be relied upon to behave impeccably.
This particular cat had been around for some time but had been
preceded by other tabbies, all displaying an uncanny empathy with
their master.

When he returned with the tea I offered him the armchair into
which I had collapsed on my arrival, but he refused, saying he was
sure I needed the comfort more than he did. Once the tea
was
poured out he drew up a chair from the table and sat facing me
across the hearth.

At last I felt able to relax. Having taken a sip from my cup I
said: ‘Can you guess what’s happened?’

‘
No, of course not! How many more times do I have to tell you
that I don’t experience telepathy on demand?’

I laughed. ‘But you’ve always predicted trouble on this particular
front!’

‘
In that case I suppose you’ve had another row with Aysgarth.’

‘
Not yet. But I feel angry enough to want to beat him up.’ Every
bishop — indeed every clergyman — should have at least one person
to
whom he can express feelings which are utterly unacceptable when expressed by a man who is supposed to epitomise all the
Christian virtues. As soon as the words were spoken I felt a great
easing of my tension, as if a painful boil had been lanced.

‘
Lim,’ said Jon, putting aside his cup of tea in order to pick up
the cat.

When I had first met him I had been so debilitated that he had
been obliged to take a strong lead in our conversations; a spiritual
director’s primary task when working with those who seek his
guidance is to develop and nurture the life of prayer in accordance
with the unique needs of each soul, but when a person
is
in pieces,
unable to pray at all, the spiritual director’s first task
is
necessarily to glue the pieces together by reintegrating the personality — that
is
to say, by regrounding the soul in God. In my own case this
had been achieved when I had first sought his help in 1937, and over the years as I had developed as a priest I found that during our meetings Jon said increasingly little while I said increasingly
more. We had now reached the stage where I did most of the
talking. I would set out my problems
as
bluntly as I liked (lancing
the boil), examine them with as much detachment as I could muster
(applying the antibiotic) and try to work out how I could solve
the problems in a way which would be acceptable to God (healing
the wound by a continuing care and attention). Jon, punctuating
my monologue with the occasional sentence, would help me organ
ise my thoughts; he would shine a spotlight on possible options, make recommendations about prayer and at the very least try to
ease me along the path which led to a more enlightened perspective
on my problems.

Continuing in my initial task of lancing the boil, I now embarked
on a monologue. Jon listened and nodded and eventually tucked
the cat under his arm
as
he stood up to pour me some more tea.

‘
... and what am I supposed to do?’ I demanded after I had
told him of Aysgarth’s current negotiations with Christie’s. ‘The
m
an’s a disaster for the Cathedral, for the diocese — arid for me as the bishop. Obviously there’s a financial mess. Maybe he’s drinking
too much again as well, and maybe — though heaven forbid! —
there’s some woman involved. The truth is I should have battered
him into resigning back in 1963 — well, I would have done if I
hadn’t been so afraid of the damage to the Church resulting from
a scandal. Perhaps he thought I was soft and stupid, letting him
get away with it. Maybe I
was
soft and stupid. More fool me.
Bishops have got to be strong and adroit. If we were in the secular
world ... Yes, I know we’re not, but nevertheless I’m a senior
executive in a big corporation and I just can’t afford not to crack
down on a manager who threatens to blacken the corporate image.’

said Jon.

‘
All right, all right, all right, I know you’re thinking that drawing
a
parallel with big business is inappropriate! But I’m talking now
about the way things are, not the way things ought to be — I’m
talking about the real world, the world I have to work in every
day, and the truth is that people expect a strong lead from bishops.
People want certainties, they need to feel that the bishops haven’t
abandoned tradition and still have high standards of moral
behaviour — and of course I mean "moral" in the widest sense of
the word, I’m not just talking about sex. That new Bishop of
Radbury — the one who succeeded my friend Derek Preston — said
today he welcomed the doctrine of relativism which says there are
no absolutes, he said he found it liberating, but how could he be
so spiritually blind? If everything is relative, even moral standards,
then we descend to the law of the jungle in double-quick time —
and that means pain and suffering for innocent people. What are
the authorities doing, appointing a man like that to a bishopric?
It’s so bad for the Church! All this liberalism’s a disaster. The
whole decade’s a disaster. Let me tell you that unless we stand firm
and stick to traditional moral values, we’ll all be swept down the
drain into hell.’

‘Hm,’ said Jon, stroking the cat behind the ears.

‘
Radbury — Leslie Sunderland — was spouting a lot of drivel
which implied sexual permissiveness doesn’t matter. Sometimes I
think those liberals don’t know anything about real life at all.
Treating sex as no more than a handshake — and saying deviant
behaviour should be regarded as normal, even when statistically it
can never be normal, never be more than the preference of a small
minority — well, it’s all so unreal, such a distortion of all the truth
I’ve ever witnessed. When I think of Lyle and what she went
through ... How can people say sexual sin is unimportant? How
can they say it doesn’t matter? I’ve seen people laid waste by it. It
does matter. It matters horribly. All suffering matters, whether it’s
the gross kind which exists only in concentration camps or the
everyday kind which exists in human relationships. Don’t tell me
suffering doesn’t matter! All this liberal-radical blindness to pain
makes me sick .. .

‘
And talking of sexual sin, I’ve got an appalling problem which
has just blown up concerning Desmond Wilton — remember me
telling you about Desmond who was booted out of the London
diocese after a lavatory disaster? Well, it now turns out that Des
mond’s been keeping pornography again, and that ghastly woman
Dido Aysgarth’s going around bleating about ...’ I outlined the
Desmond fiasco. ‘... and the oddest thing happened this morning
after I’d returned home from the hospital,’ I said, as the cat put
both paws on Jon’s chest and gazed up at him adoringly. ‘Just as
I was worrying about finding a suitable locum, this extraordinary
priest turns up — early forties, divorced, quite obviously big trouble
— and tells me not only that he’s willing to be an Anglo-Catholic
locum but that he’s set on muscling his way into my diocese to
start a healing centre! Imagine that — a shady wonder-worker on
the loose! But do you know what I do? Do I say "no thanks" and
dismiss him in double-quick time? No, I don’t! I tell him to come back for another interview! How could I conceivably have been
so soft and stupid? The only possible answer is that the Desmond crisis had temporarily deranged me, because of course I can’t pos
sibly do what he wants, it’s out of the question. He says he’s a
celibate, but he’s exactly the sort of priest who’d have a sex-life on
the quiet when he wasn’t cavorting around exuding charisms in a
cassock.

‘
It’s all Desmond’s fault. If he hadn’t upset me so much — yes,
yes, yes, I know he couldn’t help being the victim of random
violence, I know I mustn’t be angry with him, but I was so shat
tered by that pornography — I mean, what can one do with a priest
who keeps that sort of stuff, what can one do? Obviously he’ll
have to go away and have the appropriate treatment, but I can’t take him back, I just can’t, it’s too much of a risk, and anyway I
have to keep up the standards among my clergy, I can’t tolerate
that sort of behaviour, it’s letting the side down in the biggest
possible way, it’s too devastating for the Church. So I’ll have to
sack him, but oh, the strain of it all, the sheer
hell
of being a bishop
sometimes — it all makes me wish yet again that I’d never left
Cambridge — all right, I know Cambridge was a narrow, back
biting community in some ways, but I could always escape there
into my histories of the Early Church, and here I can’t escape, I hardly ever get the time to write about Hippolytus and Callistus,
and I just get angrier and angrier with all these frightful people
who seem determined to drive me completely up the wall ... Jon, stop making love to that cat and SAY SOMETHING, for heaven’s
sake, before I have an apoplectic fit and drop dead!’

Jon carefully set the cat down on the floor. Then he looked me
straight in the eyes and said one word. It was: ‘Forgive.’

‘
Oh good heavens ...’ I had been sitting on the edge of my
chair but now I sank back against the upholstery with a groan. ‘It’s all very well for you to say that! You’re a hermit, but I’m out
there in the real world and I just can’t afford —’