Absolute Truths (71 page)

‘
I can understand why you’re worried,’ added Harriet, still
as
non
chalant as if she had just passed some remark about the weather,
‘but I came here to set your mind at rest. After feeding Stephen
such a big lie about you, I feel honour-bound to make amends by
feeding you a big slice of truth about him: With astonishment I
noted that she appeared perfectly sincere.

‘
I see,’ I said, but although I was prepared to believe she wanted
to deliver the truth, I wondered very much whether she had access
to it. Could Aysgarth really have been such a fool as to confide in this unreliable woman? The possibility seemed incredible, but on
the other hand Aysgarth was notorious for taking scandalous risks.
I decided to keep an open mind. ‘Is this some plot you and Stephen
have cooked up to give him a little breathing-space?’ I demanded,
seeing no reason to be other than frank.

‘
No. Look, I’ll tell you what happened. He rang me up half an
hour ago and stormed at me for telling the fib— except that Stephen
doesn’t storm, he’s too much of a poppet. He was just very
depressed and said I’d made everything worse; he said he was sure
you suspected him of mismanagement, embezzlement and God knows what else. That was when I decided I had to ride here to
his rescue. My darling Mr Dean! I can’t stand by and see him
crucified when he’s being so wonderfully creative about raising all
that ghastly money —’

‘Did you say "creative"?’

‘
Where fund-raising’s concerned he’s an artistic genius. All he
needs now, I promise you, is a little time to —’

‘Make everything come tight?’

‘
Precisely!’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘It will.’

‘
But what do you really know about it?’

‘
Everything. Well, no, perhaps not quite everything. In fact cer
tainly not everything. But what I do know is that he’s a hero and
I’m going to fight tooth and nail for him.’

Carefully setting aside my twinges of envy that Aysgarth should
have a sexy woman so devoted to his welfare — and of course I
could now recognise and acknowledge every ignominious twinge — I tried to work out how I could persuade her to give me more
information. Again I found no reason for being other than com
pletely frank. Perhaps I was afraid that if I tried to execute some
smooth diplomatic manoeuvre I would give her another chance
to
accuse me
of hypocrisy.

‘
Okay,’ I said, deliberately picking the Americanism to signal
that I was willing to be informal and even, in a careful way, cosy.
‘You may have trouble believing this, but I think we’ve wound up
on the same side. The very last thing I want is for Stephen to be
crucified for creative fund-raising.’

‘Honestly?’

‘
Honestly. I’ve got to consider the welfare of the Church, and
the thought of a lot of dirty ecclesiastical linen being washed in
public is a nightmare.’ I paused but when I saw she was willing
to believe me, I added with more confidence: ‘Of course there’s a
limit to what I can do. I can cover up mismanagement which has
resulted from bad decisions made in good faith, but what I can’t
cover up is mismanagement which has spiralled into fraud. So
what I’ve got to do now is to stop him before he crosses that fatal
border — or has he already crossed it? Harriet, if you have any
information at all about what he’s been doing, I do beg you for
his sake to —’

‘
All I really have,’ she said carefully, is an unproved theory. I
think he was in a mess but now he’s almost got himself out of it.
That’s why I’m convinced that the best thing you can do now is
nothing.’

‘
I can’t tell you how much I long to do nothing! But what was
this mess he got into?’

‘
I think poor old Dido and all those ghastly offspring bled him
white. As I told you yesterday, Charles, Stephen’s not the villain
of this story. He’s the hero.’

Finishing her sherry she set down her glass and began to move
restlessly around the room. ‘Didn has a private income,’ she said,
pausing by the window to stare out into the dark, ‘but it’s all on trust so she can’t touch the capital, and Stephen has no money
apart from what he earns. That means that although they live
comfortably they’ve nothing to fall back on if disaster strikes.’

Wandering on again around the sofa she arrived back at the
hearth where I was still standing. ‘Back in 1963,’ she said, ‘Stephen
and Dido went through a private crisis. I don’t know what it was,
but it wasn’t connected with the fiasco about my sculpture,
couldn’t have been, because Dido didn’t give a damn whether the
sculpture went in the churchyard or not. As the result of this crisis
Dido indulged in some huge spending sprees in London — you
know how some women plunder shops when they’re under emo
tional stress. Stephen’s story was that she was going through a
difficult menopause, but I think there must have been more to it
than that because whatever the crisis
was
it happened suddenly
and it was devastating. I say that not just because of the effect on
Dido but because of the effect on Stephen; one moment he was
bouncing along buoyantly, and the next moment he was so
ploughed under that he couldn’t even get to Venetia Flaxton’s
wedding. And you know how close he is to Lord Flaxton. They’ve
been friends for nearly twenty years.’

She paused but when I remained silent she added: ‘Anyway
Dido ran up some heavy bills and was in such a state she had to
see a psychiatrist — I’m sure you know how prone she is to nervous
trouble. And when I say "psychiatrist" I don’t mean something
available on the National Health. I’m talking about Harley Street
and more bills. Then to cap it all, Primrose decided to get married.’

‘
It was certainly a lavish wedding.’

‘
I thought the expenditure was ridiculous — in fact I even
asked
him if he felt guilty about her in some way, but he just laughed
and said how amusing I was. I wasn’t seeing much of him by that
time, but he did come out to my house for a drink one evening
to tell me about his son Norman, who’d got strapped for cash
trying to keep that blue-blooded wife of his in style -- Stephen was
being asked to help out with the overdraft. And during all this
time, in case you’ve forgotten, he was paying enormous school
fees; Pip’s not a scholar at Winchester and Elizabeth has no bursary
at Roedean. Stephen’s first family was cheap to educate because
everyone got some sort of useful hand-out, but that second family
eats money — and now there’s more expense coming up because Elizabeth wants to be a deb and do the season. Can’t you just see
Dido chafing to organise a ball at Claridge’s?’

‘
So what you’re saying
is —’

‘
My theory is that in 1963 a number of circumstances combined
to drive him deep into debt. And at the end of 1963 —’

The West Front Appeal was launched and money began to pour
in at a great rate. Then once he had sole control of the fund —’

‘
It would just have been a loan, Charles. He would have had
every intention of paying it back.’

‘How? If he had no capital and spent every penny of his income —’

‘
He would have created a scheme,’ she said at once, ‘a brilliant scheme for repayment.’ She picked up her empty glass again and
looked at it. Then: The stock market,’ she said firmly, looking
straight at me with her limpid green eyes. ‘He would have tried
the stock market. He would have gambled, won, put a bit back,
gambled again —’

and finally made the trip to the well once too often.’

‘
Not necessarily! But he’d need some time to work off such a
large debt. That’s why I’m sure that if you gave him the extra time
it would be the most sensible thing you could possibly do.’

After a pause I said: ‘And this is all just an unproved theory of
yours.’

‘
Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Wholly unproved ... Can I have another
drink?’

I refilled her glass before saying: ‘I’m not sure I find the theory
plausible. For a start, I happen to know Stephen presented some
acceptable accounts last year. If he was in debt, as you suggest, I
don’t see how he could have squared the accounts unless the whole
debt had been repaid, and if it had indeed been repaid, why is he
now apparently still working to make everything come right?’

‘
He might have borrowed a sum from somewhere else in order
to get the accounts straight and then returned it after the accounts
were approved.’

‘
If he borrowed money, what did he
use as
collateral? He doesn’t even own his own home! And if he was able to raise money from
another source, why didn’t he go there in the first place instead of
filching money from the Appeal?’

She was still staring at me blankly when the telephone rang, and as if welcoming the chance to escape she turned aside. ‘I must go.’

‘
I’ll see you out,’ I said, no longer bothering to hope the call
was from Michael and fearing only that it was from Sheila, finally
losing patience
as
she waited at the Staro Arms.

‘If you want to answer that —’

They’ll ring back if it’s important.’ As I opened the front door
and stepped out with her into the porch I said suddenly: ‘I can’t
help noticing your stress on Stephen as a hero. It’s
as
if he’s
reminding you of a hero you’ve lost.’

The telephone finally ceased ringing as Harriet stopped to stare
at me.

‘
Perhaps,’ I said, ‘I should say
the
hero you’ve lost. Captain
March certainly cut a heroic figure.’

‘
How very perceptive of you.’ She hesitated for a moment before
saying: ‘Donald was quite different from Stephen physically, of
course, but yes, he too was an idealist, and yes, he too had his naive side and yes, in spite of all his
Boy’s Own
fun and games he
too was capable of a genuine heroism.’ And turning aside she
added over her shoulder: ‘We were well suited. I made love to my
sculptures
and he made love to his mountains and we met when
we had nothing better to do. I’m sure most people think the
marriage was a failure and that I’ve forgotten him.’

‘But you haven’t.’

‘
No, he haunts me. I keep looking and looking for him in other
men, but although sometimes I seem to catch a glimpse of him he’s never really there ... It’s all guilt, of course. Silly of me, isn’t
it? But I’d like to tell him I’m sorry now that I always put my
sculpture first. In the end we had so little time together.’

She began to drift over to her car and I drifted with her. The
night air was very cold and the grass on the front lawn was white
with frost. Our footsteps crunched on the frozen gravel.

think he would have forgiven you,’ I said. ‘After all, you
understood about his mountains.’

‘
Bloody mountains! After they killed him I wanted to emigrate
to Holland and never see so much as a molehill again.’ Opening
the door of her car she paused to look back at me. ‘Maybe you’re
not such a thug after all,’ she said, changing the mood of the
conversation by speaking lightly. ‘Maybe I could even be tempted to do a small model of your head some day. Your bones are really
very well arranged.’

‘So glad they meet with your approval.’

We smiled at each other and it was not until she was sitting in
the driver’s seat that I added: ‘Let me know if you change your
mind about telling me the whole truth.’

She slammed the door so that the light inside the car was extinguished, and when she wound down the window her face was just
a white blur in the darkness. All she said was: ‘Just give him the
chance to make everything come right.’

Then she drove away very fast down the drive.