Absolute Truths (24 page)

Hours later when my sons were in bed and I was alone in my
study, I opened the file of sympathy letters which Miss Peabody
had prepared and found on the top a note attached by a paperclip
to a sealed envelope. The note, written on paper embossed with
the Deanery’s address, read: ‘Dear Miss Peabody, I enclose a letter
of condolence for
the Bishop. Please could you see
that it is
passed
unopened to him. Yo
urs sincerely, STEPHEN AYSGA
RT
H.’

Reluctantly, not in the least anxious to know what kind of sym
pathy letter he had concocted but realising that the communication
had to be faced, I broke the seal of the envelope and extracted the
contents.

‘
My dear Charles,’ I read. ‘I was very shocked to hear of Lyle’s
death. I felt that an important strand in a complicated pattern had
been lost, yet at the same time I wondered if the inevitable alteration of the pattern can in some way reweave the threads which
became so unfortunately entangled after the war. If that could be accomplished then we would be witnessing not a diminished pre
sent but a past redeemed.

‘
You may well think that I act in execrable taste by using a
sympathy letter to recall that part of the past which we have both
tried so unsuccessfully to bury, but since death is the point where
we all have to face the realities of life, I venture to hope that you
will see my action not as an embarrassing faux-pas by someone
who never received your social and educational advantages, but as
the gesture of a Christian who believes passionately in the power of Christ to heal those who are alienated from each other, and in
the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem all that has gone wrong.

‘Of course I send you my deepest sympathy on your loss. But
I also send you my deepest apology for my wrong action in 1945,
and I hope that if you respond, as I pray you will, we shall finally
be able to set to rest that part of the past which has poisoned the
atmosphere between us for so long.

‘
Yours most sincerely,
STEPHEN.’

I shuddered. Then I tore the letter into fragments which I burnt
in the ashtray.

I sat looking at the ashes for some time, and at last it occurred
to me that I was no longer ‘playing the game’. Bishops never burnt
sympathy letters in revulsion and harboured unchristian thoughts
about men they detested. I realised I ought to feel ashamed of myself.

But I felt no shame. I was unsure what I did feel, but shame was certainly not among the emotions jostling for pride of place in my mind. I knew I was very upset and I thought I was also very angry, but I was so shattered that it was hard to be sure.

Then I realised that I could take a rest from ‘playing the game’.
The funeral was over. I was on my own. There was no one left whom I had to impress.

I had a double-brandy.

I did try and read some of the other sympathy letters but the words failed to register and after five minutes I dosed the file, went to bed and sank into an exhausted sleep.

I felt as if I had managed to survive a nightmare. But of course
the real nightmare, the real ordeal of bereavement, was now about
to begin.

Some hours later I found myself sitting in my study after taking
the boys to catch the early train to London. Neither Miss Peabody
nor my chaplains nor Malcolm had yet appeared, but all were
due to arrive within the hour. At eleven Nigel would arrive from Starmouth and the work would disappear, like dust vanishing before a Hoover. David, Malcolm’s opposite number in the south
of the diocese, was left behind in Starmouth to hold the fort while
Nigel performed the Herculean feat of attending to the needs of
the whole diocese, but how long my suffragan should be obliged
to continue in this heroic fashion was open to debate. I told myself
that now the funeral
was
over I should return to work straight away.

The telephone began to ring as I sat torpidly at my desk and
contemplated the short journey to the office. After a while I realised
I was gazing at the dust which had accumulated on my desk.
No one had dusted anything lately. No one kept an eye on the
charwoman, who seemed to spend her time drinking cups of tea with the cook-housekeeper and saying what a tragedy it all was.
The cook-housekeeper now devoted her time only to shopping
and serving tepid meals. No one polished my shoes or picked up
my suits from the cleaners or filled my cigarette case or put petrol
in the car. Streams of devoted ladies, who were affiliated in some
way with the Cathedral, offered soup, cakes and even meals which
could be stored in the new deep-freeze, but I could hardly ask any
of these worthy neighbours to fulfil the duties of valet, chauffeur
and personal assistant. Besides, the glittering image had been giv
ing everyone the impression that the Bishop was more than capable
of dealing with humdrum chores. Bishops did not sink into a
helpless inertia, no matter how grave the circumstances; helpless
inertia was not the done thing at all.

I sat, helpless and inert, and listened to the ringing of the telephone.

It rang and rang. In the end it was sheer irritation which drove
me to lift the receiver and murmur: ‘South Canonry.’

Jon said: ‘Congratulations.’

I was so astonished to hear his voice that I failed to grasp why
I was being praised. Jon liked to be quite alone in the mornings
after he had celebrated mass in the family chapel by his cottage.
The fact that he had not only abandoned his routine but walked
up to the main house to make a telephone call made me realise he
had something very serious to say. Struggling to concentrate I said: ‘Jon?’

‘Who else would be telephoning to congratulate you on your
magnificent performance? Charles, I’d like to see you this morning,
and when I say you, I mean YOU, the real Charles Ashworth.
That other person is to be left behind at the South Canonry.’

I was so dazed by this plain speaking that I could only say:
‘What other person?’

‘
The glittering image,’ said Jon crossly, annoyed that I should
be so obtuse, and replaced the receiver with a thud:

I looked at the clock. I had missed matins in order to take the boys
to the station, and although I had planned to go to Communion in
order to keep up appearances I had been too overwhelmed by
inertia to leave my study after I had returned home. I had not read
the office. I had done no spiritual exercises, no theological reading.
I had been entirely preoccupied by the task of behaving properly
in front of my sons and driving them to the station without having an accident. These tasks had consumed my last reserve of energy
so that now all I could do was think: yes, I shall drive to Starrington
to see Jon. But
as
the minutes passed I made no move.

Eventually the thought of the Communion service which I had
missed reminded me of the Cathedral, and the thought of the
Cathedral reminded me not only of Aysgarth but of his letter.

I started to recall the incident to which he had referred, the
incident which Lyle had told me about long ago in 1945. After a
while I found I could even hear her voice.

‘
Neville Aysgarth was there ...’

Neville was Aysgarth’s real name. It was not until some time
after his second marriage in 1945 that people began to follow his new wife’s example and call him Stephen. Dido had declared that
the name Neville had been irrevocably ruined by Mr Chamberlain
and that the name of an early Christian hero was much more
suitable for her husband, but Lyle and I – and I suspect other
people too – had had so much trouble seeing Aysgarth as a Chris
tian hero that we had never wholly achieved the adjustment which
Dido had demanded of us. This was why he was so widely known as ‘Aysgarth’. Caught between the discarded ‘Neville’ and the inappropriate ‘Stephen’, many people found that the surname was
the
most
comfortable way of referring to him in his absence.

‘
Neville Aysgarth was there,’ Lyle said in my memory. She had
been talking about the funeral of her former employer, Bishop
Jardine. The service had been held at the Oxfordshire village to
which Jardine and his wife Carrie had retired.

‘
Neville Aysgarth was there ...’ I could hear her voice so clearly
now that
I
flinched. ‘It turned out we’d both been invited to stay
with Carrie, but after the funeral she went upstairs to rest so
Aysgarth and I were on our own. We were in such a state – I
thought you were dead, his honeymoon with Dido had been a disaster, and we’d both been demolished by the funeral. So we started to drink. I was supposed to be preparing dinner. I was standing by the kitchen sink with a gin-and-tonic the size of a
goldfish bowl while Aysgarth sat at the kitchen table with a triple-
whisky, and then suddenly
–suddenly–
Dr Jekyll became Mr Hyde.
It was so odd that it’s hard to describe what happened next ...’

Lyle’s voice flowed on, urgent and unstoppable. By that time I
had left the chair behind my desk. I was pacing up and down the
room as the memory streamed through my mind.

‘
You remember how serious he was when we first met him at
the Darrows’ wedding in 1940? You remember how we wrote
him off
as
prim and proper? Well, he wasn’t prim and proper. We
got him wrong. He wasn’t prim and proper at all ...’

The study made me feel claustrophobic. Blundering out into the
hall I groped in the cloakroom for my coat.

‘
... and he made a pass at me – I mean a heavy pass – and I
was just so startled that I was a bit slow off the mark in fighting
him off – although I did fight him off, of course I did, I fought
him tooth and nail, but
I
had to fight pretty hard, and in fact I think if he hadn’t been a clergyman he would have gone even
further than he did – but then, thank God, he pulled himself
together and there
was
no harm done – well, no, I can’t quite say
that, because he went to bed with the whisky bottle while I spent
the night sicking up the gin, but at least we did agree the next
morning to treat the entire episode as if it had never happened ...’

I was opening the front door but I had forgotten my hat. I
usually wore a hat when I went out, usually but not always, and
indeed I had realised only the other day that I was wearing a hat
less and
less.
Lyle had said the biggest change in men’s fashion
since the war had been the mass abandonment of hats.

.. and I did decide I wouldn’t mention it to you, but now
that you know I was at Alex’s funeral it’s obviously best that you
should also know exactly what went on there, but you needn’t
worry, darling, because it was just one of those stupid, humiliating
incidents which actually mean nothing at all in the long run, and
now much the best thing to do
is
to forget about it. After all,
we’re hardly going to be seeing Aysgarth every day in future, are
we?’

Having retrieved my hat I opened the front door again but
realised I had left no note to explain my absence. In the office I
pencilled a few words to Miss Peabody.

.. and the truth is I never want to see him again so you needn’t
waste any energy feeling jealous — oh darling, I’m so sorry, don’t
be upset, I love you so much ...’

I suddenly realised I was sitting in the driving-seat of my car
and searching for my key. Several seconds passed before I saw it
was already in the ignition. I had no memory of putting it there.

Rain spattered the windscreen
as
I drove past the Cathedral,
and the west front, shrouded in scaffolding, looked mutilated.
Above the central tower the spire was lost in heavy cloud.

‘
I hate that man,’ Lyle’s voice said in my head
as my
memory
spun forward to 1957, the year I accepted the bishopric and Ays
garth accepted the deanery and we all wound up living in the Close
at Starbridge. ‘Every time I look at him I see the Jardines’ kitchen
and that gin-and-tonic the size of a goldfish bowl.’

‘
But surely if nothing of importance happened — if you fought
him off so furiously —’

‘
Oh yes, yes, yes, don’t listen to me! I’m just temporarily knocked
silly by living alongside the Aysgarths, but I’ll get over it, I’ll
survive ...’

I had reached the main gateway of the Close but I could not remember where I was supposed to be going. The windscreen
wipers were labouring beneath a torrent of rain and beyond the
medieval arch the traffic lights of Eternity Street shone a dull red
in the gloom.

I heard myself say to Jon back in 1957: ‘Lyle’s bothered by
Aysgarth, I can’t think why, he always behaves immaculately
towards her, but now she even says she hates him. Bearing in mind
that nothing truly unspeakable happened between them all those
years ago, don’t you think her behaviour’s a trifle extreme?’

But Jon had said calmly, soothingly, in reply: ‘Now that Lyle’s
the bishop’s wife she’s no doubt excruciatingly embarrassed that
she once got dead drunk with the man who’s become the dean.
I’d say that was a very natural reaction in the circumstances ...’

A horn sounded behind me. I suddenly realised that the car was
stationary in front of green traffic lights, but at least I could now
remember where I
was
supposed to be going.

Turning left into Eternity Street, I crossed the hump-backed bridge over the river and headed rapidly north from the city to
Jon’s home in Starrington Magna.