Glittering Images (25 page)

I allowed her time to compose herself, but when she showed no sign of reappearing I followed her. The trees were guarded by dense undergrowth; it took me longer than I had anticipated to find a gap in that barrier of bramble bushes, but once I had stepped into the shadows I saw her at once. She had retreated to a secluded spot on the far side of the spinney and was sitting amidst a patch of bracken. I glimpsed the strained lines of her red sunfrock as she clasped her knees in a foetal position, and as I drew nearer I could see her shoulders shaking as she wept. She had taken off her glasses but when she heard me coming she scrabbled to retrieve them.

I knelt down, covering her hands with mine, and the glasses remained unworn. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I should never have brought you here.’

‘I thought I could take it, but …’ She began to cry again.

I put my arm around her. It was an instinctive gesture born of guilt and I withdrew almost immediately as prudence triumphed over sympathy, but the message had been communicated; she looked up.

‘My God, this is strange!’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘It’s just as if you’re him and it’s happening all over again.’

We stared at each other. Then as I slowly put my arm around her once more I knew beyond doubt that it was not she who had suggested that walk to the river nineteen years ago and not she who had made the first move beyond the bounds of convention.

I said, ‘I think I’m going to do something very stupid,’ and I kissed her on the mouth. Then I said, ‘Of course I’m crazy but I’ll think about that later,’ and I kissed her again.

All she said when I eventually eased aside the straps of her sunfrock was, ‘I don’t want you to suffer the torment Alex suffered. Oh God, Charles, if only you knew what we went through –’

‘It’s different this time. I’m not married.’

‘Yes, but –’

I interrupted her with a kiss. More time passed and when at last I paused to slip off my jacket she said no more about suffering but merely reached out to touch my collar.

She whispered: ‘I remember the way it fastens at the back.’

And then I knew I could begin to think the unthinkable.

‘I am grieved that you also have to sustain the shock and shame of clerical scandals … how much clerical failure and scandal I have witnessed. I am sure our way is far more difficult than most men realise: and that of all men we have most need to remember: “Let he that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”’

More Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
ed.
E. F. BRALEY.

The bracken was cool against my hot skin. I was aware of that coolness as I fought and won the initial battle for control over my excitement which was very deep and very powerful. There was only one awkward moment. It came when I sensed she was ready and moved myself into position between her thighs. She said suddenly, ‘You’re going in.’

I halted. ‘It’s too soon?’

‘No, no –’ She pulled me close and kissed me with such fervour that disaster nearly intervened. I had to twist my mouth away to regain my control.

When I could speak again I said, ‘It’s safe? Will I have to withdraw?’ but again she said, ‘No, no –’ and again she pulled me close until at last I began to penetrate her.

The first ninety seconds were marred by my dread of an early finish, but once I was inside she seemed more aware of that danger and I was conscious of her sensitivity as she matched her response to mine. Gradually the disadvantages stemming from abstinence faded and the rewards became predominant; once the battle for control had been won I knew I could sustain myself for a long time.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Dumb question!’

‘The bracken’s hardly a well-sprung mattress.’

‘I wouldn’t even care if it was concrete.’ She raised her mouth to mine and later I heard her murmur, ‘It’s been such a long time.’

‘How long?’

‘Three years. I was so tired of the pain of nothing working out … And you?’

But I merely drew her into a different position and thrust myself deeper into her hot curving flesh.

When we had finished we were too exhausted to do more than lie in silence and watch the blue sky beyond the overhanging branches of the tree above us. My mind was empty. I knew the pain would begin later but meanwhile I was anaesthetized, every fibre of my body satiated and every ache of tension smoothed away. I longed again, as I had longed so often before, for the intimacy of married life, but that reminded me of Lyle and immediately my mind began to divide. I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could erase the present by refusing to look at it, but still my two personalities struggled to separate in a battle which lay beyond my understanding.

‘Cigarette?’ said Loretta, retrieving a packet from her handbag.

‘Thanks.’ I was diverted. My mind emptied itself again and the battle was suspended.

After we had smoked in idleness for a time she said, ‘How the hell do you manage, not being married?’

‘Contrary to popular belief no one ever dies of chastity.’ I began to trace the outline of her breasts with one finger.

‘True, but let’s be honest – chastity can be pretty damned uncomfortable. Why haven’t you remarried?’

‘Why haven’t you?’

‘Oh, I’m an easy case to explain.’ She too started tracing. I felt her finger slowly circle my chest. ‘My analyst and I figured out that (a) most men can’t cope with my brains, (b) most men can’t cope with my success, (c) I don’t like playing second fiddle, (d) I’m not domestic, (e) my husband was enough to put anyone off marriage for life, and (f) I’ve never really got over Alex; I kept waiting to meet someone who could match him and by the time I realized that wasn’t going to happen I was past the age when I felt inclined to compromise.’

‘You must have loved him very much.’

‘Well, of course we’d have married if it hadn’t been for that dumb wife. My husband wouldn’t have been a problem because by the end of 1918 he’d drunk himself to death, but you know, Charles, I often wonder how Alex and I would have got along. I’m not fundamentally a religious person and I’ve got an independent streak which might have made marital life difficult. In fact I think I’d have been a very unsatisfactory wife for a bishop.’

‘But if you’d married Jardine at that stage of your life when your mature personality still wasn’t completely formed –’

‘Yes, I might have adapted, but we’ll never know, will we? It’s the world of might-have-been … like that second marriage you’ve never made. Why don’t you want to remarry?’

‘I do.’ I stubbed out our cigarettes and began to caress her again.

‘Then why haven’t you done so years ago? Maybe you’re like me. Maybe deep down you don’t want to get married at all.’

‘But I do! I must! I – oh, don’t let’s talk about it any more, I hate even thinking of my baffling and intractable problems –’

‘But maybe you should. Some problems don’t just go away by themselves. They’re like demons and they have to be exorcized.’

‘Well, I don’t know any exorcists and I’ve got my demons under control,’ I said, but as soon as the words left my mouth I panicked. ‘Oh my God, what am I doing, what’s happening to me –’

‘Charles – darling –’

‘I’m all right,’ I said, ramming myself so deep inside her that she gasped. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right, I’m all right –’

I had anaesthetized myself again.

The panic faded.

I settled down to saturate myself in sex.

This time the experience began differently. It was darker, more disjointed, but I knew it reflected my inner disorder and she knew it too for she sought in various subtle ways to soothe me. I responded. Slowly I relaxed until at last I was the one on my back in the bracken and her soft flesh above me was a delicious contrast to the hard ground beneath my spine. The only unsuccessful moment came when I guided us into different positions in an attempt to share her finish; we slipped apart and the climax came when I was outside her.

‘Damn.’

‘It’s okay.’ She held me tightly in her arms while we recovered and only released me when I reached again for the cigarettes. Eventually I said after meditating on her present pleasure and her past abstinence: ‘I suppose it’s easier for a woman to cope with chastity.’

‘Thanks. I’ll think of that next time I’m dying of frustration. I’m sure it’ll be a great comfort.’

‘I’m sorry, that was appallingly insensitive of me –’

‘Funnily enough Alex made a remark like that too. He spoke as if no woman could possibly imagine what hell the celibate life could be.’

‘How did
he
manage before he married at thirty-seven?’

‘I don’t know and later I always wished I’d asked. In the old days Evelyn and I often used to speculate about his early life, but we never reached any firm conclusions.’

‘Tell me, how much does Lady Starmouth actually know about you and Jardine?’

‘Well, she knew at the end that Alex was just as much in love with me as I was with him – I mean, she saw us, we couldn’t have kept it from her, we were in pieces. However there was no question of her not standing by us and doing all she could to cover up the mess. She’d made up her mind that Alex was going to go right to the top of the Church of England.’

‘Wasn’t she angry with you for jeopardizing him?’

‘Livid. But she forgave me. You might not think it, but Evelyn’s another of those rare people who really do make an effort to live up to their religious beliefs.’

‘How appalled she must have been when I found out about you!’

‘She said she nearly died. She apologized to me because she had explained the incident away by depicting me as a tiresome neurotic female and Alex as purity personified, but what choice did she have? I took the same line just now at lunch, but of course … the truth was very different.’

‘The love was always reciprocated?’

‘Always. We fell in love right away when we met in 1917, but my God, how he fought against it! That awful curate whom he used to bring along as a chaperone! And those awful minutes alone at the Starmouths’ house whenever Evelyn was called away to the phone – but he never kissed me, not even then. It would have been too dangerous; anyone could have walked in … But the worst part was visiting him at home with his wife. I didn’t want to go but he felt the fact that his wife had received me would kill any gossip which might be simmering.’

‘What were his feelings about his wife by that time?’

‘When we were here he said he’d realized on his honeymoon that he’d made a frightful mistake but he was sure the situation would be redeemed when they had a family. Well, the kids didn’t happen, did they, though back in 1918 she’d just had a baby and no one knew she’d never conceive again. Alex said it had been a terrible year, the child arriving stillborn, Carrie having a nervous breakdown, he getting no sex for months on end … He didn’t exactly mention sex in the same breath as Carrie and the baby, but I had no trouble getting the message that sex was important to him. In fact in the end he said, “The marriage could be worse. When Carrie’s well she’s very dutiful.” Dutiful! Ugh! What a repulsive Victorian euphemism! That was one of the moments when I remembered he was seventeen years older than I was. Anyway I was vilely jealous to think of her having him several times a week and I became more jealous than ever when he told me he’d be happy to make love every night. However he said he thought that would be selfish – probably he was frightened in case she developed a dislike for it. It meant so much to him that he was prepared to exercise a moderate amount of restraint.’

‘I simply can’t understand how he could have stayed chaste from his ordination till the age of thirty-seven. Surely he must have had lapses!’

‘Maybe – but maybe not. Remember Freud. Sex can so often be affected by what’s going on in the mind.’

‘You think there could be psychological as well as religious reasons for Jardine’s chastity during those years?’

‘Where sex is concerned,’ said Loretta, ‘anything’s possible. For instance, his father was one of the hellfire-and-damnation school and that kind of guy can make his children feel guilty about sex, particularly if he feels guilty about it himself. Alex might have taken some time to get over that. Then when he was ordained he was so violently Anglo-Catholic (reacting against Dad the Fundamentalist) that he even vowed himself to celibacy, so obviously it took him some time to get over
that.
Then he was given some terrible parish where he slaved himself into a physical if not a nervous breakdown, and
that
must have sublimated his sexual energy nicely. But the most important factor of all was that he was never deprived of female companionship for long, and personally I believe that loneliness, rather than lack of sex, is often the reason why celibacy becomes intolerable. He had this stepmother –’

‘Here we go again. I keep hearing about this stepmother. I’ve even wondered if they were having an affair.’

‘I’d doubt that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t think Alex would ever enter into a continuing illicit relationship,’ said Loretta, voicing my own insuperable objection to this theory. ‘He proved that when he rejected me. It would have been easy for us to have had an affair – after all, I was living apart from my husband in my own apartment but he wouldn’t do it even though he was crazy about me.’