Glittering Images (46 page)

Deeply ashamed of my dishonesty I promised him I wanted only to live in the truth.

I spent another five days with the Fordites before I felt confident enough of my strength to risk returning to the world. My second attempt at the exercises proved equally humiliating but now that I was relieved of the burden of trying to become a latter-day St Ignatius Loyola I found I could concentrate better; I was no longer distracted by the worry of what Darrow would think of my failure.

Day by day Darrow made further adjustments to my spiritual diet, and gradually I stopped being nervous of the post-mortem and welcomed it instead. His questions clarified my thoughts, pinpointed my weaknesses and gave me an additional incentive to concentrate when the exercises were in progress. It soon became evident that he always knew when I was trying as hard as I could and when I was unwittingly drifting into inertia, and once I trusted him never to underestimate my efforts or to overestimate my ability I was able to surrender myself willingly to his discipline and bend my whole will towards achieving the balanced spiritual life which my problems had so effectively prohibited.

We only discussed the Starbridge situation once more before I left Grantchester. On the evening before my departure I said to him, ‘I’ve been thinking again about whether I should write to Lyle, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if I want to do the normal thing here I should write not to Lyle but to Mrs Jardine. After all, she was my hostess at that terrible dinner and the least I can do now I’m better is to apologize for my drunken behaviour.’

Darrow merely said, ‘What would you expect such a letter to achieve beyond reassuring them of your good manners?’

‘It would reassure them of my stability. It seems to me that if I shoot off a passionate polemic to Lyle now she’d simply dismiss it as further evidence that I’m round the bend.’

‘Very well, by all means write to Mrs Jardine, but tell me, Charles, are you still disturbed by the need to put Lyle in abeyance?’

‘Disturbed but resigned. I do accept that my parents must come first.’

‘I’m sure they’ll prove a substantial diversion … And how do you feel now as you prepare to face the world again?’

‘Nervous. But hopeful because I know I’m taking positive action, working for my own rebirth. I won’t let you down, Father, I promise.’

‘It’s not I whom you mustn’t let down.’

‘I realize that. But aren’t I allowed to see you as a symbol?’

Darrow said lightly: ‘It’s dangerous to see people as symbols! I think you’ll be on much safer ground if you simply regard me as a priest doing the work God’s assigned to him.’ He stood up, added, ‘Come to the Abbot’s Parlour after breakfast so that I can give you my blessing,’ and then before I could reply he was moving swiftly from the room.

The next day we parted in plain style in that lavish parlour. I knelt to receive his blessing, and as I stood to shake his hand he said, ‘This is where a new phase of your ordeal begins, Charles. I’ll be praying hard for you until we meet again.’

It was difficult to thank him adequately but I tried to imbue the conventional phrases with the gratitude no words could ever have expressed. I also tried to give him back the borrowed cross but he waved it aside. ‘No,’ he said, escorting me to the front door, ‘you’ll need that a little longer, I think.’

I thanked him again, slipped the cross around my neck and walked away from him into the world.

After taking a bus into the city I entered my rooms at Laud’s as the Cathedral clock was striking eleven. For one long moment I stared at those familiar but curiously alien surroundings where my glittering image had toiled so arduously to promote the myth of his perfection, but at last I closed the door, set down my bag and walked to the desk to telephone my parents.

Before I lifted the receiver I removed my clerical collar and opened my newly-purchased packet of cigarettes. The first taste of the cigarette evoked an image of the proverbial nectar of the gods, and leaning forward in my chair with my elbows on my desk I inhaled in a trance of satisfaction as I flicked through the pile of correspondence which had accumulated. As usual there were too many bills but several undergraduates had sent me diverting postcards from places scattered throughout Europe and an unknown American professor had written a friendly letter about my book. Ignoring the pile of theological journals and Church newspapers I embarked on my call to Epsom before glancing at the copy of
The Times
which I had just bought. China was still fighting Japan. The Spanish were still fighting each other. The Devil was still stalking Germany. So much for the world. I was just thinking that life in the cloister, despite the lack of women, did have a great deal to offer, when the telephone bell stopped ringing in Epsom as my parents’ long-suffering adenoidal parlourmaid finally picked up the receiver.

‘Hullo, Ada,’ I said after she had announced herself as the Ashworth residence. ‘You sound in good form.’

‘Mr Charles – well, what a lovely surprise! Just a minute, your mother’s out having her hair done but your father’s at home – I’ll get him out of the greenhouse.’

I inhaled deeply from my cigarette. Minutes passed, and I was about to transfer the receiver to my other hand to relieve the muscles which had begun to ache with tension when a series of noises at the other end of the line culminated in my father saying abruptly, ‘Charles?’

‘Good morning, Father. I –’

‘What’s all this? Are you in some sort of trouble?’

My heart began to thud at a brisk pace. ‘I can’t imagine why you should say that,’ I said, and somehow succeeded in burning a hole with my cigarette in the front page of
The Times.

‘And I can’t imagine why else you’d telephone when we’re apparently quite beneath your notice these days! Well, I don’t suppose you want to speak to me. Your mother said she’d be back by twelve. That means one. I’ll tell her you telephoned.’

‘Wait!’ I was dimly aware that for some reason I was grinding out my half-smoked cigarette. ‘Father, I want to come down to Epsom for lunch tomorrow – I was planning to arrive around noon with a bottle of champagne –’

‘
Champagne?
’

‘Yes, I want to bury the hatchet –’ I was now shredding the cigarette to pieces in the ashtray ‘– and I thought the burial would be worth celebrating.’

‘Nasty, pretentious drink, champagne – except at weddings. No need to waste your money. Just turn up tomorrow at noon with a civil tongue in your head and you can be sure the hatchet will be buried six feet deep. Then we can drink a glass of my best sherry and that’ll be that.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You should guard against extravagance, Charles. No need to behave as if you’re a member of the fastest set in town.’

‘No, Father.’

‘Tomorrow at noon, then. Your mother will be very pleased. But make sure you drive carefully and don’t wreck your car pretending you’re a motor-racing hero,’ said my father severely, and hung up the receiver before I could grope for a reply.

I thought of Darrow and took several deep breaths as I held my cross. Then shrinking from all thought of my parents I embarked on the task of attending to the many mundane matters which had accumulated in my absence. Later, on my way to the bank, I paid my respects to my car which was standing safely in the Laud’s forecourt. I felt as if I had come back from the dead; the sense of beginning a new life was becoming stronger.

That evening I wrote Lang a long friendly letter apologizing for my delay in reporting to him, and padded the pages with some carefully selected details of my retreat. That gave me the opportunity to praise Darrow and compose a scholarly paragraph on mysticism. Sandwiched between the irrelevant paragraphs I wrote: ‘In respect of your commission I found no evidence that all was not currently as it should be, and Your Grace will be reassured to know that the complete absence of any proof must render our man safe from hostile forces east of Temple Bar.’ I also added on a less dramatic note: ‘Of course if you wish to see me to discuss this matter further I’ll come to Lambeth immediately, but I fear there’s little I can add beyond the fact that I encountered a most generous hospitality during my visit which passed, in many respects, far more pleasantly than I had anticipated.’

I had now finally escaped from my role of archiepiscopal spy. Sealing the envelope I left my rooms, posted the letter in the pillar-box by the Cathedral and still savouring my liberation from the burden which had triggered the onset of my great ordeal, I returned thankfully to College to dine.

At the end of the evening I poured myself a small whisky to help me sleep but it tasted so vile that I threw it away. The result was that for hours sleep proved elusive, and when my alarm clock rang at six I could hardly open my eyes. However before I could sink back into unconsciousness I remembered Darrow, and seconds later I was struggling out of bed to make coffee.

The exercises seemed bafflingly difficult again, the texts remote, my meditations arid, and as I struggled to concentrate I could think only how odd it was that I should be groping my way so clumsily towards my new life in that room where the glittering image had so adroitly displayed his techniques for acquiring his shallow success. And suddenly in my despair that I should now be so slow and awkward I longed more fiercely than ever for my new life. The longing had no words but I knew I was praying for a strength which had to be granted from without, not dredged up from within where my resources were so enfeebled. It was as if I were saying, ‘Let me live!’ and the next moment Jane was returning to me in my memory. I could see her running across the beach on our honeymoon towards the sea, I could hear her urging joyously: ‘Come on, Charles,
come on
!’ and as the early morning sunlight pierced the window at Laud’s the dead text was pulsating with life before my eyes. ‘Look, Charles – the tide has turned!’ I heard her call, and as the book slipped from my hands I was aware of her love bearing me forward on the tide of my deliverance to the brilliant darkness which lay eternally beyond.

I reached Epsom punctually at noon on that Saturday morning and headed for the outskirts of the town where my parents lived near the race-course. Their house, built at the end of the last century, had six bedrooms, three reception rooms and an acre of garden but my father had resolutely refused to move after his children had left home. This was his house, earned by his own hard work, and he was sticking to it until he was carried out feet first – or so he told my mother whenever she pined for a smart modern bungalow to cocoon them snugly in their old age. Attached to the house was an Edwardian conservatory, called ‘the greenhouse’ by Ada, which had long been the centre of my father’s aspirations as a horticulturalist and was now the ruling passion of his life. As I turned the car into the drive that morning and saw the sun shining on the glass roof I wondered if he had yet succeeded in his ambition to grow oranges larger than plums.

I emerged from the car and pulled on my jacket. I had decided not to wear my clerical clothes, since my father so often made snide remarks about them, and was instead dressed in a pale grey suit and a plain shirt accompanied by my old school tie. I hoped I looked formal without being pretentious, smart without being flashy, well-bred without aspiring to be more than middle-class. In other words I was trying hard to convince my father that no matter what the truth was about my paternity he had not laboured at fatherhood for over thirty-seven years in vain.

Ada opened the front door, and as she stood flat-footed and shining-eyed on the threshold my father’s dog Nelson pranced barking across the floor.

‘That dog!’ said Ada crossly as Nelson waved his front paws at me in excitement, and in response to my enquiry about her health she produced the reply that her bunions were killing her. However this was a traditional response; Ada’s bunions had been killing her for at least twenty years, and after expressing the equally traditional words of commiseration I was finally able to ask, ‘How are my parents?’

‘Ever so pleased you’re visiting, Mr Charles. Madam went out early this morning and bought a new dress. Make sure you notice it but don’t say I – whoops! Here she is! God bless you, Mr Charles, lovely to see you …’ She thudded away towards the kitchens as my mother made a theatrical descent of the stairs.

‘Charles – darling!’

My mother was a woman in her late fifties, still slender, with dark hair, dark eyes and a smart haggard look which was not unattractive. Her chief hobby was her appearance which she maintained with an unflagging dedication. I was sure she dyed her hair and equally sure the idea that she might descend to such vulgarity had never occurred to my father who adopted a naïve attitude to the more esoteric mysteries of the female sex. Her taste in clothes was expensive yet restrained; she was wearing a navy-blue dress accompanied by an unobtrusive strand of pearls.

‘I’m glad to see you still haven’t lost the secret of eternal youth,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I like your dress.’

‘Darling, what wonderful flattery – I adore it!’ As we kissed I noticed she was wearing a delicate scent, and suddenly I pictured her devoting her entire morning to burnishing her glittering image for my benefit. ‘And Charles, how divine you look without that clerical collar! Or will it make you cross if I say that? I mustn’t make you cross … But come outside – I thought we’d have drinks on the terrace and I’m going to mix some champagne cocktails as a special treat. I know that silly old man told you not to bring champagne – how typical! – but why shouldn’t we have some champagne, I’d like to know? I was so thrilled you’d decided to visit us – and so was
he
although he’d never admit it. Honestly, Charles, since he retired he’s been exactly like a bear with a sore head –’