Mystical Paths (19 page)

VI

The Aysgarths — the Dean, Dido and their two children, Elizabeth and Pip — now lived less than thirty miles from London in one of those Surrey villages which have the plastic, picture-book look of an old-fashioned film-set. Beyond the green I saw a fairy-tale church of idyllic proportions, a row of impossibly quaint old-world cottages and a pub called the Rose and Crown, a name which at once conjured up images of an idealised Merrie Englande — or perhaps memories of
Our Island
Story,
that classic children’s history book which sought to prove beyond dispute that England was the greatest country on God’s earth and that any child born on such hallowed soil was incomparably blessed.

Into this intoxicatingly nostalgic cloud-cuckoo-land I drove with my alcoholic charge in my Mini-Cooper, a coarse reminder that the date was 1968. I had never before visited this village but I recognised that special Surrey quality of wealth married to a beautiful setting, of a meticulously preserved rural past which in fact resembled no rural past that had ever happened. I admit that wealth is often married to a beautiful setting in the Starbridge diocese; I don’t mean to slam Surrey too hard, but my county has the good fortune to be farther from London with the result that the villages avoid looking like set-pieces preserved by the National Trust as playgrounds for upper-class commuters.

‘Here we are,’ said Norman, having directed me to his father’s home which had once been a farmhouse. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

I grunted an assent, but I knew as soon as I saw the roses around the front door that the place was going to be one big country cliché. No expense would have been spared to achieve this city-dweller’s dream; I was about to witness a sumptuous pastiche of The Simple Life.

The door opened and an Old English sheepdog bounded out. That was inevitable. There had to be a shaggy dog. It was as indispensable as the roses growing around the door.

Beyond the dog I saw Norman’s half-sister Elizabeth, now no longer a nymphet but a full-blown nymphomaniac of nineteen, and alongside her was a youth whom I belatedly recognised as her brother Pip. He had grown since I had last seen him, and at fourteen was suffering from spots. I automatically thanked God I was no longer an adolescent.

Wow!’ said Nympho-Elizabeth. ‘It’s Nick Darrow!’

‘Hi,’ I said, emerging from the driving-seat and fending off the shaggy dog with my most baleful look.

The shaggy dog fell back and raced around the car to assault Norman.

‘Here, Ringo, here!’ exclaimed Pip, darting to the rescue as Norman let fly a stream of anti-canine abuse.

‘That dog always wants to copulate with visitors,’ said Elizabeth, swinging her long dark hair over her shoulders and reminding me that she was now a fully-fledged steamy brunette. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’

Before I could reply, the well-remembered phenomenon burst from the house. It looked like a cross between the Duchess of Windsor and Edith Sitwell and it talked in a high-pitched gabble which suggested a record being played at the wrong speed.

‘Good God!’ said Dido Aysgarth, boggling at me. ‘It’s Nicholas Darrow — and still wearing jeans and a blue shirt, but I suppose you’re making hay while the sun shines, my dear, because soon it’ll be all black suits and clerical collars, won’t it, and you’ll have to start being grown up, which will be such a relief for your father, no doubt, poor old man, I hear he’s dreadfully ill and has to be nursed night and day but at ninety-five what can one expect and really I dare say it would be a mercy if he was painlessly put out of his misery, though I don’t approve of euthanasia myself and all killing of any kind should be regarded with suspicion which is why I do sympathise with vegetarians, although I’ve got roast beef for lunch today — and of course you
will
stay to lunch, won’t you,
what
an act of Christian charity, driving poor Norman all the way down here,the least we can do is shower you with roast beef — do say you’ll stay!’

‘Thank you, Mrs Aysgarth,’ I said politely in a voice of iron, and then as I looked past her I saw that the Dean himself was watching me from the threshold.

VII

The Aysgarths had been indefatigably hospitable when they had occupied the Deanery at Starbridge, and I soon realised that their gregarious inclinations remained unchanged. The pseudo-farmhouse was stuffed with an eclectic array of guests, all waiting to guzzle the roast beef, and I had no trouble losing myself in the crowd.

James and his wife Jill were present with their young daughter, Norman’s younger son appeared with the French au pair who looked as terrified as if the British were staging a rerun of Waterloo, and Sandy-the-Greek-Freak was circulating with his long-time best friend Boodle, whose real name I never succeeded in discovering. Half a dozen neighbours, all over sixty, were gulping hefty gin-and-tonics and talking in loud voices about how the country was going to the dogs. Mrs Aysgarth’s secretary-companion, Miss Carp, ran around wild-eyed, and from the kitchen came the faint shriek of voices as various minions sweated over the stove. Amidst this heaving racket Norman latched on to a lake of gin-and-French while I found myself clutching a glass of the Pimm’s which had been provided for the younger generation. I didn’t like Pimm’s but I was so dazed by my plunge into this Surrey inferno that I forgot to ask for a Coke. I wondered whether I could tip my drink into the nearest vase of flowers but realised this would be futile as Pip, buzzing around with the Pimm’s jug, would ensure my glass was immediately refilled.

‘Are weekends in Surrey always like this?’ I said when he next passed by.

‘Yes, I’m afraid it’s not so glamorous as Starbridge, but Mum works awfully hard to make the best of things. That paunchy number over there is a judge, and the lady in purple is –’ ‘I’m more interested in you, Pip. What’s new?’

Social chit-chat followed. Pip was at Winchester but rather wishing he wasn’t; life wasn’t such fun now that his voice was breaking and his career as a choirboy was over; he wished he could spend more time studying music, but there seemed no point because everyone said music could never be more than a nice little hobby for anyone who wanted to get on and travel far –

‘Study music,’ I said. ‘Study it morning, noon and night until quavers and dotted minims are coming out of your ears.’ I noticed that Norman was now on his second lake of gin-andFrench but James was having a word with him and I decided to let James cope. When Pip left me I approached the au pair girl and found she spoke good English. Norman’s younger son tried to crawl up my left leg. James’s daughter was busy destroying something. I didn’t connect with children at that time: too young. The shaggy dog was everywhere. Couldn’t connect with him either. I was introduced to the paunchy judge who said: ‘A clergyman, eh? Nice to know one of the younger generation isn’t drugged to the eyeballs and wearing flowers! But he gave my jeans a very cool look indeed. Mrs Judge asked where I had been at school and when I said: ‘Starwater Abbey,’ she remarked: ‘Oh, that’s the Anglo-Catholic place, isn’t it?’ as if it were a zoo. The lady in purple said it had a good scholastic record and had I ever been tempted to go over to Rome, but before I could answer, Nympho-Elizabeth entwined her arm with mine and said Rome was heaven, she’d been there recently on holiday and would I like to see her photos of St Peter’s.

Fortunately at that point Sandy-the-Greek-Freak accosted me and said he was very keen to know what I thought of Vatican II and what a pity it was that the RCs had dropped Latin from the mass. Then Boodle, who I suddenly realised might be playing the same role in Sandy’s life that Perry had played in Christian’s, began to insist that the RCs should dropthe mass altogether. Everyone was getting stoned out of their minds.

‘Is there something wrong with that Pimm’s?’ enquired Pip worried as he arrived back at my side and saw my full glass.

‘Have a gin-and-tonic,’ said Elizabeth, arm still entwined in mine, and managed to make the suggestion sound like an invitation to take my clothes off.

‘My God!’ I heard Dido breathe to Sandy. ‘Norman’s tight as a tick!’

‘
“Quousque tandem abutere,
Norman,
patientia nostra?"
‘
said Sandy, taking a holiday from Greek as he knocked back the Pimm’s.

‘Sandy darling, that’s not terribly helpful, is it?’

James suddenly appeared at my elbow. ‘Nick, how much did Norman drink before he got here?’

‘Too much.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you stop him?’

‘I’d temporarily forgotten my karate lessons.’

‘... and of course it would all be quite different under a Conservative government,’ the lady in purple was declaring.

‘... can’t think what the younger generation’s coming to...’

‘... country’s falling apart ...’

‘... lack of moral fibre ... failure of the Church ...’ .. in my young day ...’

‘My dear Nicholas,’ said Christian’s father, unexpectedly confronting me as I inched around the room towards the door, ‘I’m so anxious to hear how you’re getting on – come to my study after lunch and tell me all your news!’

I thought: he should be saying that to Norman. But Dr Aysgarth had his back to Norman, now on his third gin-andFrench; as far as Norman was concerned, I saw clearly, Dr Aysgarth just didn’t want to know.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said politely. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

VIII

The former Dean of Starbridge had been awarded his doctorate in Divinity not by a university but by the Archbishop of Canterbury; it was a ‘Lambeth’ doctorate, an honour conferred on distinguished servants of the Church. Dr Aysgarth had won this ecclesiastical prize for his work after the war in promoting Anglo-German church fellowship, a cause in which his gift for fund-raising, his managerial skills and his ability to speak fluent German had all been lavishly displayed.

He was a short man, fat and plain, with a ruddy complexion, bright blue eyes and a thin, tough mouth which was periodically transformed into a wide, winning smile. He had interesting hands, square with short fingers, inelegant, incongruous and powerful. They suggested a farmer accustomed to wringing chickens’ necks, not a priest who had collected a first in Greats up at Oxford and an honorary doctorate from Lambeth Palace. At first glance there seemed little to connect him with Christian, physically so different from his father, yet I knew from our previous meetings that the resemblance would become marked as the conversation progressed. The similarity lay in the mouth, the smile, the vocal inflections — and most strikingly of all, in the impression of intellectual force behind an effortlessly self-confident social manner.

‘Sit down,’ he said, showing me into his study, which I realised was the one room that his wife had been forbidden to ruin with her extravagant taste. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling; the desk, worn and chipped, was obviously a friend of many years’ standing; the easy-chair nearby needed reupholstering; the faded patterned carpet was interestingly threadbare. ‘How good of you to bring Norman down from London,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid he’s taking a pounding at the moment from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", but he’ll be fine once Cynthia returns from her little rest at Banbury.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, trying not to boggle at this conversion of extreme marital distress into a slightly off-colour romance witha guaranteed happy ending. I was being meticulous in addressing him as ‘sir’ because as a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant whose biggest difficulty in ecclesiastical life consisted in being nice to Catholics, he might have passed out if I had addressed him as ‘Father’. I suppose I could have addressed him as ‘Mr Dean’ in memory of his old job, but I agreed with my father who thought that all Church dignitaries should drop their grand titles on retirement as a gesture of humility. It was true I often referred to Aysgarth by his old title, but that was just a convenient way of distinguishing him from his sons.

‘I hear Katie’s a bit under the weather too,’ Dr Aysgarth was musing as he settled himself behind his desk and I sat down opposite him in the easy-chair. "‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions," as the Bard says, but I’m sure everything will come right in the end. And talking of charming young women, I hear you’ve just got engaged to Rosalind Maitland. Congratulations! I knew her grandfather, Colonel Maitland, when he was a churchwarden at Starrington Magna and I was the Archdeacon of Starbridge back in the 194-os. How pleased your father must be by your engagement!’

‘Yes, he is. Sir, please could you explain to your wife that he’s eighty-seven, not ninety-five, and that he doesn’t need nursing at all?’

Dr Aysgarth laughed and said: ‘I’m afraid Dido favours an Aramaic style of speech — the exaggeration is supposed to underline what she believes to be the truth, and since she’d heard that your father’s been a little unwell lately —’

‘He’s okay. Still living on his own and fending for himself.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. And what a comfort you must be to him in his old age! My sons are a comfort to me too,’ said Dr Aysgarth serenely, giving me his most charming smile. ‘They’re all doing wonderfully well and so are my daughters. I confess I was fractionally worried when Elizabeth insisted on going up to Oxford, but now I know that was the right decision. You could never call Elizabeth a blue-stocking, could you?’

‘Never, sir.’

‘Says she wants to be a novelist, which is fine because that’s the kind of thing women can do in their spare time after they’re married. Some women, of course, are cut out for a career and I wouldn’t want to deprive them of it – indeed with my liberal principles, I’d demand that they should be employed on equal terms with men – but Elizabeth’s obviously destined for marriage and motherhood.’

I thought Elizabeth was obviously destined for a number of things, none of which had any connection with marriage and motherhood, but of course I kept my mouth shut. I was becoming mesmerised by the conversation’s increasing lack of anything that resembled reality.

‘You must have a talk with her before you go,’ Dr Aysgarth was saying. ‘You’ll find her very entertaining – oh, and do have a word with Pip! I’ve suggested to him that he should go into the Church and aim at becoming the precentor of a great cathedral. That would seem the most satisfactory way for him to combine his interest in music with a first-class career.’

Instantly I was overwhelmed by the urge to wave a bomb over cloud-cuckoo-land. ‘Maybe he should drop out and form a rock-group,’ I said in my most dead-pan voice. ‘There’s plenty of scope nowadays in the music business for a young guy who wants to get on and travel far.’

Dr Aysgarth looked startled but made a quick recovery. ‘Oh, I’m all for being trendy!’ he exclaimed. ‘But I’d still prefer Pip to go into the Church.’

By this time I was quite unable to rein myself in. ‘What about God?’ I said flatly.

‘God?’ said Dr Aysgarth.

‘Yeah, God,’ I said, very cool, very hip, very much the anarchic ordinand of the Swinging Sixties. ‘What do you think He’d prefer?’

‘My dear Nicholas!’

‘Don’t you think God would prefer Pip to become the man God’s designed him to be instead of the man you want him to become? Because isn’t it true that until we become the people God’s designed us to be, each one of us doing our own thing, we can’t begin to serve Him as we should?’

There was a slight pause before Dr Aysgarth said in his smoothest voice: ‘Quite. And naturally my dearest wish is for Pip to do whatever God calls him to do. But I think when you talk so blithely of "doing our own thing" you should take care to distinguish between a God-given call and mere self-centred behaviour.’

‘Right. And we’re all required to put our self-centred behaviour aside, aren’t we? Even you.’

Dr Aysgarth’s bright blue eyes widened. His eyebrows shot up. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘do you make a habit of being so very excessively rude?’

‘No, and I apologise. But I’ve concluded that being rude is the only way to get through to you, Dr Aysgarth, the only way to grab your attention.’

‘And why, may I ask, are you going to such outrageous lengths to grab my attention?’

‘I want to talk about Christian,’ I said, finally detonating the H-bomb.

IX Silence.

The old man opposite me was expressionless. Not a muscle moved around his thin mouth. His brutal hands lay clenched upon the blotter.

‘He’s haunting Katie,’ I said. ‘He’s haunting Norman. In fact I’ve begun to suspect he’s haunting everyone who was close to him, and I believe I’m being called in to perform the necessary exorcism.’

I’d gone too far. I’d not only reached Dr Aysgarth but offered him the opportunity to embark on a verbal disembowelment. A cool, hip, young ordinand should steer clear of old-fashioned picture-language which makes him sound like an actor in an occult B-movie.

‘Oh, so you fancy yourself as an exorcist!’ said Dr Aysgarth, who as a Liberal churchman had probably long ago decided that the Devil was the figment of a fevered mystical imagination. ‘You think you have some special power, no doubt, which enables you to play the wonder-worker, some special knowledge which humbler people don’t possess, some mystical gift which makes you one of a spiritual élite. My dear Nicholas, you’re wasting your time in the Christian Church where all men are equal in the sight of God! You should emigrate to California and found a cult based on the Gnostic heresy!’

‘Sir, I was only speaking metaphorically –’

‘You were speaking arrogantly – as arrogantly as your father used to speak when he erupted from his monastery in 1940 and created havoc in my archdeaconry with a scandalous ministry of healing!’

This was difficult ground. Even my father himself conceded that his attempt at a ministry of healing had been an embarrassing failure. I decided I had to be very meek. ‘I’m extremely sorry, sir; I didn’t mean to give such offence.’

‘Oh yes, you did! You admitted a moment ago that you were being deliberately offensive in order to gain my attention!’

Too late I realised I was dealing with a formidable fighter who excelled in the punch-up, slash-down school of debate. ‘I know I must have appeared a trifle too frank, sir, but –’

‘You were damned rude – why are you now hiding like a coward behind the word "frank"? Do you think wearing jeans and being under thirty miraculously excludes you from a charge of lily-livered hypocrisy? Now listen to me, young man, and I’ll show you how to call a spade a spade! You leave my family alone with their grief. I’ll not stand for any half-baked interference, and if I hear you’ve been bounding around upsetting everyone in sight, I’m going straight to your bishop to complain. Da I make myself entirely clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

We sat in silence while he glared at me. The rage and pain streaming from him lacerated my psyche, and I knew then that he was haunted too.

Finally in an attempt to make peace with him I said: ‘I only want to be a good Christian, serving God in the Church.’ ‘Then may I suggest you learn how to behave? You won’t get far in the Church, you know, if you talk like a lout and act like a charlatan!’

Now it was he who had gone too far. Once again I was quite unable to rein myself in and once again I found myself reaching for an H-bomb. ‘This may amaze you, Dr Aysgarth,’ I said, ‘but not all ordinands want to bust a gut pursuing worldly success in the Church, and maybe if Jesus had been born in 1942 as I was he wouldn’t even have wanted to bust a gut to be an ordinand. Why are you reacting so violently when all I did was mention Christian’s name and express a wish to help the people who are still suffering as the result of his death?’

‘How dare you persist in repeatedly flinging Christian’s name in my face!’ he shouted. ‘I won’t talk about him, do you hear? I absolutely and utterly refuse!’

‘Why? What exactly are you afraid of here, Dr Aysgarth?’ ‘AFRAID?’ By this time he was scarlet with rage. ‘I’m not afraid of anything!’

‘Then you should be. Your family’s falling apart as the result of Christian’s death.’

He rose in his chair and for one moment I thought he was going to lunge across the desk and hit me. But he restrained himself. All he said in a shaking voice was: ‘Leave this room at once.’

‘Did it ever cross your mind that Christian might have committed suicide?’

My second H-bomb exploded. Dr Aysgarth hurtled round his desk, flung wide the door so violently that it slammed against the wall, and yelled at the top of his voice: ‘OUT!’

Poor old bastard. The pain emanating from him was so acute that I could no longer sustain my dislike. Instead I found I wanted to help him – but once again, I didn’t know how.

Deeply concerned I withdrew from the room.

X Sandy-the-Greek-Freak waylaid me in the hall. ‘Come and play croquet.’

‘No thanks. How’s Norman?’

‘Dire. Out cold on Pip’s bed. Why do you always try to brush me off, Nick?’

‘
Do
I?’

‘Yes, you do. Look, come up to my room for a moment — there’s something I want to ask you.’

‘Has it got anything to do with Latin or Greek?’ ‘No, nothing, I promise.’

‘Okay, let’s go. Where’s Boodle?’

‘Walking off lunch with Pip and the dog.’

We retired to the room which Sandy inhabited on his visits home. It was neat and impersonal. I guessed all his most cherished possessions were up at Oxford where he taught Greek and worked on his doctoral thesis.

Sandy was short, like his father, and had thick brown hair, curly at the back. Unlike his father he was thin and wiry. Dr Aysgarth’s remarkable blue eyes looked out of place in Sandy’s unremarkable face.

‘It’s about girls,’ he said as I dumped myself on the window-seat.

This was certainly unexpected. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes, I hear you’re successful with them, one of Marina Markhampton’s set and so on. And Elizabeth says you’ve got sex-appeal.’

‘Elizabeth would think anything in trousers had sex-appeal.’

‘No, she doesn’t think I’ve got any, and she’s right — I haven’t. It’s all rather awkward. 1 do try to get a girlfriend but I can’t seem to keep them interested and I’m getting to the stage where I’m really worried.’

I found myself compelled to ask: ‘You can’t talk to your father about this?’

‘Oh no, no, no!’ Sandy looked horrified. ‘He’s always saying how pleased he is that I’m doing so well with no problemswhatsoever. But I’m sure you’re the ideal person to consult, not just because you can give me some useful tips but because you’re almost a clergyman and I can rely on you to keep this conversation confidential.’

‘Sure. But are your brothers no use to you here either, Sandy?’

‘Oh, I never talk to them, I’m so much younger — and anyway, men don’t normally talk about this sort of problem to one another, do they? It seems to be the unspoken rule that either you don’t discuss women at all or else you give the impression that they all fall down like ninepins as soon as you cross their path. It’s not the done thing to be anything but successful, is it?’

‘Screw the done thing. Ever tried picking up a girl at Burgy’s?’

Sandy looked at me as if I were talking Swahili. ‘Burgy’s?’ ‘Burgy-Bliss, the hamburger chain. Find a working-class girl there who’ll automatically think you’re rich and fascinating as soon as she hears your accent.’

‘But what do I say?’

‘You say: "Is this seat taken?" and when she says no, you sit down at her table.’

‘But what do I say next?’

‘Anything so long as it’s not intellectual.’

‘My God, how difficult life is! But I’ve got to get a girlfriend somehow or people will think I’m not normal, and if Father thought I wasn’t normal it would kill him.’