Glittering Images (23 page)

‘I promise you that if Dr Lang ever learns of your existence it certainly won’t be from me. He merely dispatched me to Starbridge to make certain Dr Jardine’s impregnable from scandal, but I’ve come to the conclusion that although Dr Jardine’s made the occasional pastoral mistake there’s no question of any serious moral error.’

‘Then why are you here? I mean, don’t get me wrong – I’m delighted to meet you, but I can’t quite see –’

‘This is where I make my confession,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’ve come here out of sheer curiosity because I’ve become an admirer of the Bishop and I’d like to hear more about those days in Mayfair when he was the same age as I am now. Are you by any chance free for lunch? There’s an attractive hotel at Box Hill with a reputation for good food.’

She was intrigued. ‘Will you produce a curate to preserve the proprieties?’

I laughed. ‘I don’t have a curate!’

‘In that case, yes, lunch would be wonderful – many thanks!’ She laughed too. ‘Alex used to bring a curate whenever he called at my apartment,’ she said, shedding ash from her cigarette with a casual flick of her wrist. ‘“Mr Jardine”, I used to call him in those days – how we didn’t all die of respectability I’ll never know but I didn’t call him Alex until right at the end when I put my cards on the table and found I’d overplayed my hand.’

I said uneasily, ‘Perhaps you’d rather not talk about him.’

‘Charles, it’s twenty years since I met Alex Jardine and nineteen years since I last saw him. A lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since then.’

‘Nevertheless –’

‘I’m the reassuring proof that contrary to all the sentimental nineteenth-century novels, frustrated romantic love needn’t prove fatal. In fact if you want to talk about him I’d enjoy a reminiscence. What a man he was! Of course I can see why I fell for him and it wasn’t just because I was lonely after a broken marriage. It was because he didn’t regard it as an inexcusable breach of good taste for a woman to be born with brains. Oh, he was such fun! We used to laugh and laugh, even with the curate in attendance … But we can talk more about Alex at lunch. Tell me about you. Evelyn said you’d written a book which had mesmerized all the theologians …’

Time slipped lissomly away as the conversation glided from my book to a survey of academic life on both sides of the Atlantic. I forgot Jardine. I even forgot lunch until somewhere a clock struck twelve and Loretta said: ‘I’d better throw on some rags suitable for a country outing.’ And as she rose to her feet she added, ‘Maybe I’ll follow in Evelyn’s footsteps after all and start collecting clergymen! They’re obviously much more fun than stamps or antiques.’

I laughed, just as she had intended that I should, but all the time I was wondering if in her lavish use of that casual American charm, she was making a determined effort to annihilate those suspicions of mine which so obstinately refused to die.

Three-quarters of an hour later I broke my rule of abstinence from midday drinking and took a sip of a very dry Chablis. We were sitting in the dining-room of the hotel two miles away, and beyond the window of our alcove the garden stretched to the river which wound beneath the densely wooded slopes of Box Hill. I had been tempted to order champagne, but no clergyman had any business to be offering champagne to a lady he had known less than two hours. Merely by taking her out to lunch I was once more travelling at the speed of light, and I was well aware that I now had to be careful. I had not misinterpreted Loretta’s unEnglish informality. I knew she could never have maintained her friendship with Lady Starmouth if her reputation had been other than exemplary, but her personality was so conducive to unguarded friendship that it would have been easy to make the mistake of assuming she was an adventuress. I suddenly remembered Lyle talking of the mystery of personality during our visit to Starbury Ring, and I thought that although Loretta was emanating an aura of gregariousness the reality beyond this mask was almost certainly more complex than I could at present perceive.

‘Is this the moment when I embark on my journey into nostalgia?’ she inquired when Jardine’s name inevitably recurred in our conversation. ‘What a wonderful opportunity to be self-indulgent!’

‘Well, if you’re absolutely sure you don’t mind –’

‘A couple more glasses of this beautiful wine and you’ll be wondering how to stop the tidal flow of my reminiscences! But let me just ask you this: how much do you already know?’

That was an awkward question. Since I wanted to see how closely her account tallied with the official version, the less I revealed the better. With care I said, ‘Dr Jardine mentioned your sad circumstances in 1917 and how he’d tried to help you.’

‘I hope he stressed how ruthlessly he observed the proprieties. I don’t want you to think he played Edward VIII to my Mrs Simpson.’

‘But I’ve already told you I don’t suspect him of any serious error!’

‘True. But I still have this nasty feeling,’ she said lightly, looking me straight in the eyes, ‘that you think we had a swing together from those Mayfair chandeliers.’

‘Dr Jardine was newly married and had just received a dazzling preferment,’ I said, looking straight back. ‘I don’t find it so difficult to believe he ruthlessly observed the proprieties.’

The waiter arrived with our soup but as soon as he had departed she said, ‘Alex’s hands weren’t just tied by the marriage and preferment. He had to be particularly careful where I was concerned because in those days a woman who left her husband was socially as dead as a dodo. It’s true that the War was hammering away at the conventions, but of course as a clergyman Alex had to keep up the good old pre-War standards and so I wasn’t surprised when his wife at first refused to receive me … However eventually he persuaded her to invite me to tea in the name of Christian charity.’

‘What was your verdict?’

‘On Carrie? I thought she was pathetic. There she was with this husband who was just plain dynamite, and all she could do was simper around in a tea gown and talk about the weather! My first reaction was: how does he stand it? I was bored to tears inside of five minutes. However I should have realized that no stranger really knows what goes on in any marriage – God knows, no none had a clue what was going on in mine – and the truth was that Carrie suited Alex down to the ground. He didn’t want to be married to a brain-box. He wanted to be married to an ornament who always went to bed looking sizzling in her latest Parisian nightgown. However it didn’t occur to me then that Carrie could have her sexy side. I was very young, only twenty-one in 1917, and although I’d learnt a thing or two from my awful husband – whom you British would call a sod – I was still hopelessly ingenuous when it came to interpreting human relationships. I just jumped to the conclusion that the marriage was a failure and that Alex was longing for some extra-marital entertainment.’

‘But no devout clergyman could even consider adultery, let alone commit it!’

‘Sure, but I was very ignorant and I just thought clergymen were laymen in fancy dress. I didn’t realize that a clergyman really does see life a little differently from the average boring old layman who’s only interested in chasing sex and money.’

‘You weren’t religious?’

‘Not in the least, and certainly not after a hellish marriage. The War was another reason too why I misread the situation. I’d become quite used to the idea of everybody surreptitiously sleeping with everyone else whenever they could snatch a few days’ leave from the horror of the Front – not that I was ever promiscuous; my husband had made me feel no man could possibly do other than throw up in my presence, but when Alex showed no signs of throwing up I naturally started to hope.’

‘But you concealed your feelings.’

‘Of course. Evelyn would have been shocked if she’d known how I felt, and Evelyn was my life-line – I’d have gone to pieces without her. But in fact concealment wasn’t so difficult – one can conceal almost anything if one lives in the hope that eventually one’s dreams are going to come true, and my dream was that Alex would have an affair even if there was no possibility of divorce and remarriage. My God, how naïve I was! It truly is the most crippling handicap not to have a religious upbringing. I thought I was so smart but suddenly I found out that a complete dimension of my mind lay undeveloped and that spiritually I was on a par with an imbecile.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I’m old enough to be less arrogant and more humble … Maybe religion comes with age. I don’t believe in the Incarnation – sorry, Charles! – so I guess I’m not a real Christian, am I, but I do believe in God now and I certainly admire Christ as a great man so I shan’t feel too much of a hypocrite when I go to church with Evelyn next Sunday.’

‘Did Jardine try to talk about Christianity to you?’

‘Oh sure, and when
he
talked about it I believed the whole story – Incarnation, Virgin Birth, the lot. But then Alex could make you believe anything – and not just because he could mesmerize you with those amazing golden eyes. He had tremendous powers of logic and reason. In fact I always thought he’d have made a good lawyer – the kind who can argue that black really is white and that if you keep seeing black you have some grave defect in your vision.’

I laughed before saying, ‘But if you were learning about Christianity from the most persuasive of instructors, why didn’t you see that you were wasting your time being in love with a clergyman?’

‘How could I see? Love’s blind, and my love was blind until one day in 1918 when … Has Alex told you about this?’

‘About Lady Starmouth’s brother being killed in action? Yes. Dr Jardine said he came down to Starmouth Court to call on her, and after lunch when she was resting you suggested a walk so that you could reveal your feelings.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘That’s the way it was.’ She took another sip of her wine. ‘We walked down to the bridge over the river … How lovely it was! Such pretty country! There’s a railroad track running parallel to the river in this valley but it’s cleverly constructed on an embankment so it somehow avoids being a blot on the landscape. I remember I was just admiring the view when this little train appeared like a clockwork toy below us and huffed and puffed its way into the woods. We both laughed and said how cute it was – and that was the moment when he realized exactly how I felt about him … Why, Charles, how bemused you look! What’s the problem?’

‘I was trying to work out how you looked down on the railway line from that bridge over the river.’

‘Well, we –’ She stopped. ‘You know the location?’

‘Yes, I do. I was brought up near here at Epsom.’

‘Ah.’ She sipped her wine composedly. ‘Well, then it’ll be easier for you to understand what I’m talking about. When we left Starmouth Court we walked along the road to the bridge and then turned off along a path which followed the river-bank. But after a few minutes we turned off that path too and followed a track which led under a second bridge – the railroad bridge – and into a steep field which had a clump of trees in the middle of it. You’ll recall the field I mean – it’s clearly visible from the main highway.’

‘I remember it well, yes,’ I said, but I was thinking of Jardine’s statement with its massive omission: ‘We walked to the river. We walked back.’ I heard myself add, ‘I remember picnicking in that field when I was a boy and waving at the passing trains.’

‘Alex and I waved at our train too. How we laughed! But then the next moment the train was gone and I finally began to understand what being a clergyman was all about.’ She paused before saying abruptly, ‘Alex said he couldn’t abandon the vows he’d made at his ordination. He quoted the Bible, something about how once you’d put your hand to the plough you couldn’t turn back, and finally he just said: “I’m not going to end up like my father”.’

‘Ah!’

‘Freudian, wasn’t it? But in fact God left Freud far behind in the end. Alex said: “Try to understand. God’s not a fairytale. He’s real, He’s there and I have to serve Him as a clergyman, but I won’t be able to serve Him if I break His rules.” Then he put it in another way. He said, “If I broke the rules I’d be damaging myself, sliding into a divided life which induces a cancer of the soul; it would be the end of my life as I know it and the beginning of a new life where I’d wind up in a hell of guilt, mentally ill and cut off from God.” He made it all seem so blindingly obvious – and of course I just couldn’t take it. A man who not only had principles but lived up to them! I felt as if my cynicism had been blasted to bits; I felt not only rejected but defenceless, annihilated … Poor Alex! I sobbed and sobbed and the scene was – oh, indescribably harrowing! But Alex, from a clerical point of view, was perfect. No wonder he’s a bishop now. He deserves to be.’

We had both finished our soup and again conversation ceased as the waiter removed our plates. Then I said, ‘I think Dr Jardine deserves to be a bishop too. But then I never seriously thought that anything you said would make me think otherwise.’

I sensed rather than saw her relief.

We settled down to enjoy the remainder of our meal.

All I could think was how much she must have loved him not only to defend him to the hilt nineteen years after the disaster but to defend him at such cost to her self-esteem. In fact the most suspicious aspect of the present situation was Loretta’s frankness. Even after allowing for her American informality I thought it highly unlikely that she would welcome the opportunity to talk to a stranger about a painful episode which showed her in such a pitiable light.