Glittering Images (50 page)

‘Well, as I’ve said, it was all terribly naughty and of course it couldn’t last, and after a few meetings … well, to cut a long story short,’ said my mother, finishing her second cocktail rapidly, ‘it turned out that he was already married – the one in the asylum was his wife – so nothing came of my big romance and eventually he went off to Africa while I married Eric and settled down. But Eric always hated that episode in my past, and that’s why you must never, never let him know that I’ve – oh God, here he is. Not a word, darling, promise me –
not a word
–’

‘I suppose you’re still drinking those disgusting cocktails,’ said my father, emerging on to the terrace with a glass of sherry in his hand. ‘Another bottle of good champagne murdered … Helen, why are you looking so odd?’

‘She’s wondering why she feels no remorse for committing the murder!’ I said lightly but neither of them smiled, and in the silence that followed this trivial but flawlessly smooth response I sensed they both looked at me and saw Dr Romaine.

Despite the depth of my emotional turmoil I worked as hard as I could to make the lunch a success. I kept the peace whenever they began to bicker, I asked after their friends, I listened to interminable stories about Peter’s omissions and the iniquities of Annabel. Finally we discussed the Coronation, and once the discussion had led inevitably to Dr Lang, who had played such a leading role in the ceremony, we were soon talking about the Church of England’s performance during the House of Lords’ debate on the A. P. Herbert Bill.

‘I adore that Bishop of Starbridge!’ said my mother. ‘He’s the only one who seems to know what marriage is all about, and there was a madly attractive photograph of him in last week’s
Illustrated London News.’

‘Bishops have got no business being attractive to women,’ said my father. ‘That man’s paid to be a eunuch in gaiters, not Rudolph Valentino in a mitre. And anyway, what does he think he’s doing, attacking his boss in public? Shady sort of behaviour, if you ask me, but then they say Starbridge isn’t a gentleman. Never went to the right school.’

‘Do you know him, Charles?’ said my mother.

I embarked on a heavily censored version of my recent activities in Starbridge, and the rest of the lunch passed in an atmosphere of hushed delight as my mother savoured the thought of me staying at an episcopal palace and my father mentally marked another lofty cross on the graph of my ascending career. However after my mother had reluctantly observed the convention of the ladies’ withdrawal at the end of the meal, my father said as he lit his pipe, ‘I shouldn’t get too involved with Starbridge, if I were you. It might get you into hot water with Canterbury. Or as you clerics would say: stick to Cantuar and leave Staro well alone. You seem to be mixing with some very dubious people at the moment, Charles, and I’m especially worried about this peculiar monk.’

‘But I promise you he’s a first-class chap, Father – there’s no need whatsoever for you to worry!’

‘Well, of course I’m bloody well going to worry! I spend my life worrying about you, Charles, and now I’m going to worry more than ever – my God, how I got through that meal just now I’ll never know, but I’ve got to keep up appearances because whatever happens your mother must never, never know we’ve discussed Romaine.’

‘Why not?’

‘
Why not?
’

‘Yes, why not? Isn’t it high time the three of us sat down and discussed him so that he can be exorcized once and for all?’

‘I’ve never heard such a mad suggestion in all my life! Of all the idiotic, ridiculous –’

‘Father, I do wish you could talk to this monk of mine – I really think he might help us both here. Why don’t you come up to Cambridge and –’

‘I can’t leave my plants, and anyway I absolutely refuse to talk to some mad meddlesome old monk who should have been put in his coffin and buried years ago!’

‘He’s fifty-seven.’

‘That’s worse. An old monk’s bad enough but a middle-aged monk’s a disgrace. Why isn’t he living with a wife and several children in a nice house with a tennis-court?’

‘Well, now that his wife’s dead and his children are grown up he’s decided he can serve God best by –’

‘The man’s obviously unbalanced. I refuse to see him – and I refuse to go to Cambridge.’

‘Never mind, I’ve already told Mother that I’d like to come back here next week and stay for a couple of days. I think it’s extremely important that we –’

‘Don’t make me laugh! You won’t come back – we won’t see you for dust now! You’ll be too busy chasing bloody Romaine!’

I said, ‘If he’s alive I’d like to meet him – just once, to satisfy my curiosity. But you don’t seriously think, do you, that I’d ever want to be friends with someone who was willing to murder me when I was an inch long?’

‘My God, you astonish me sometimes, Charles! How could a man with your brains make such a bloody naïve remark? For God’s sake stop and think before you open this frightful Pandora’s Box! The rotter’ll charm you and ruin you – I can see it coming –’

‘My dear Father, I’m not a nineteen-year-old virgin female!’

‘Wish you were. Then I could lock you up to keep you safe. My God, if you go down the drain now after I’ve spent nearly thirty-eight years slaving to keep you on the straight and narrow –’

‘I can’t go down the drain – Darrow’s put in the plug, and if only you’d talk to Darrow you might start believing I’m not such a potential rake as you think!’

‘Well, of course I don’t think you’re a –’

‘Yes, you do, it’s monstrously unfair! I know you don’t mean to be unfair – I can see now that you don’t mean it – but you just can’t help yourself and it’s all because Romaine’s haunting this family like an unexorcized ghost –’

‘Well, you won’t exorcize him by digging him up and taking a look at him – you’ll simply get in an even worse muddle than you’re in already! For God’s sake, Charles, go and talk to your mad monk before you do anything catastrophic – perhaps you’ll listen to him even if you won’t listen to me!’

‘I certainly intend to talk everything over with Darrow when I see him again tomorrow, but he’s not mad, he’s one of the sanest men I’ve ever met. Now please, Father – no more quarrels! Put out that awful pipe and let’s join Mother in the drawing-room …’

At three o’clock when I left, my mother hugged me and said with tears in her eyes, ‘You really will come back next week, won’t you, Charles?’

‘Yes, I promise.’ I kissed her and felt the tears spill on to her checks as she held me close.

‘For God’s sake!’ exclaimed my father in a paroxysm of embarrassment. ‘Stop weeping over the boy! Disgusting!’

‘Oh, shut up, you brute!’ my mother shouted at him, and ran sobbing into the house.

‘Stupid woman,’ said my father. ‘I can’t stand that sort of nonsense. It’s very bad for you and not at all how a mother should behave. Parents shouldn’t let their children know when they’re feeling upset and emotional. Irresponsible. Not the done thing at all.’

We shook hands without speaking. Then I said, ‘Goodbye, Father. God bless you,’ and his mouth, already well turned down at the corners, began to tremble.

I got into my car and drove away.

I drove straight to the Epsom public library. The medical directory was waiting for me in the reference section and my hand was steady as I drew the book from the shelf.

Through my mind flickered the multitude of fates which might have overtaken Romaine. He had died of drink in Africa, died a hero’s death in the War, died of old age in England after a long debilitating exile. Alternatively he was alive but no longer a doctor. He had been struck off the register years ago for hard drinking and seducing patients; he was keeping a tobacconist’s shop in Eastbourne or a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road or a public house in Cornwall; he was in a lunatic asylum, an old peoples’ home, a bed-sitting-room; he lived in a mansion with his fifth wife and ten children. Any fate was possible, but if he were alive and still practising in England as a doctor he would be listed in the book which was now in my hands.

The directory opened at the letter M. M for Mother, poor Mother, how she had suffered. N. N for Nativity, my birth on time too soon after that pathetic white wedding. O for the Orgasm which had created me, O for the Penis which had begotten me, Q for the Questions where is he, what became of him –

I reached the letter R. Of course he was probably dead. Or if he were alive he might well be abroad, settled happily in the Colonies.

ROM – ROMA – ROMAI – ROMAINE –

He was still alive.

ROMAINE, ALAN CHARLES –

Charles! My father could never have known the second name; he would have killed her if he had known.

– OAKTREE COTTAGE, STARVALE ST JAMES –

I had heard of Starvale St James. It was not far from my friend Philip Wetherall, the vicar of Starrington Magna. It was a village less than twenty miles from Starbridge.

I had to sit down. I sat there for a long time while people padded to and fro among the bookshelves in the quiet room, but at last I replaced the directory, left the library and embarked on the long drive home to Cambridge.

‘The difficulty of arriving at the truth when one has nothing but human testimony to depend on, is both apparent, and, from a religious point of view, terribly disconcerting.’

HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
Retrospect of an Unimportant Life

The telephone was ringing as I entered my rooms that evening, and when I picked up the receiver my brother Peter said, ‘Charley, it’s me. How did you survive your visit to the Governor?’

‘Just let me feel my pulse and make sure I’m still alive.’

He laughed but said urgently, ‘Charley, what do you think’s going on? Mother seems to be hitting the gin bottle for six every day, the Governor’s deep in his beastly jungle of a conservatory and nothing I do is ever right. The Governor seems to hold it against me that I don’t discuss the office with him in detail, but Charley, he
can’t
expect to keep up with everything now he’s retired! He’s got to learn to let go, but somehow I haven’t the heart to say that – poor old boy, I feel so sorry for him, even though he’s being distinctly beastly to me at the moment. Annabel says I should take a firm line but somehow … I can’t bear the thought of hurting the old boy. Annabel doesn’t quite understand, and honestly, Charley, what with Annabel nagging me on the one hand and the Governor being beastly to me on the other I feel in the mood to emigrate to Australia.’

‘I’ll deal with the demented parents if you can deal with the militant wife. I’m returning next week for a couple of days to sort them out.’

‘Thank God. I knew you’d come to the rescue in the end, Charley – don’t think I didn’t have faith in you, but the truth is I’ve been in such despair –’

‘Hold fast, Peter, and cancel all your plans to emigrate. The Church of England’s finally on its way.’

I fell into bed, slept till six, silenced my jangling alarm clock, spent the required hour on my exercises, dressed in my cassock, attended Communion in the Cathedral, breakfasted, returned to the Cathedral for Matins and the Sung Eucharist, saw my bishop afterwards for ten minutes’ conversation, accepted his invitation to midday Sunday dinner, escaped at three, discovered one of my undergraduates had turned up with his parents at Laud’s, gave them tea in my rooms, returned to the Cathedral for Evensong at six, rushed back to College, threw a few essential items in a bag, staggered to my car, drove to Grantchester and arrived exhausted but still conscious at the Fordite mansion at half-past seven that evening. I had already arranged to stay the night, and the little white-haired monk, welcoming me like an old friend, said he had kept the same room for me. It seemed like the nearest earthly approximation to heaven I had encountered for some time, and on attaining my sanctuary I kicked off my shoes, collapsed on my bed and lay inert as a beached whale for some minutes.

When Darrow arrived all he said was: ‘Obviously you’ve been working hard.’

We smiled at each other. I had sprung to my feet as he entered the room, and now we shook hands. His first question was, ‘You’ve kept up with your exercises?’

I was aware of his priorities; his concern for my spiritual health preceded his curiosity about my parents.

‘Yesterday I felt I might be getting somewhere,’ I said, ‘but this morning I was back in the desert after my view of the oasis.’

‘No doubt you were distracted by yesterday’s events. And your paternity?’

‘We were right. My father is Eric Ashworth but I was begotten by a disastrous doctor called Alan Romaine.’

We did not talk further then; he had merely come to the visitors’ wing to welcome me, but later he returned and we had a long session together. His final verdict was, ‘You’ve done well with your parents and made more progress than I thought you would in such a short time. But where do you feel the battlefield now lies?’

‘Starvale St James.’

Darrow was silent.

‘Is that wrong?’ I said, my confidence immediately dented.

‘It’s neither right nor wrong; it’s merely inevitable. If I hesitate it’s not because I disapprove but because I’m trying to decide the best way to approach this subject which is a very dangerous one and potentially a breeding ground of painful illusions.’