Scandalous Risks (10 page)

FOUR

‘What is most real to you? What matters most for you? Is it money and what money can buy? I doubt it, deep down. For you know that you "can’t take it with you". And seldom does it bring real happiness. Is it love? That’s a good deal nearer, because it has to do with persons, not things.’

JOHN A. T. ROBINSON

Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich 1959-1969

Writing about
Honest to God in

the
Sunday
Mirror, 7th April 196;.

I

After staying the night in Primrose’s flat, I caught a train the next morning to my country home at Flaxton Pauncefoot, a village which lay ten miles from the port of Starmouth in the south of the diocese. Here I sorted out some appropriate clothes for the holiday, selected a couple of books and dumped my current stock of dirty laundry on the housekeeper who returned it, faultlessly washed and ironed, that evening. Nowadays there are very few advantages in being a member of the aristocracy, but at least one never has to worry about laundries. Nor does one have to waste time shopping for food or sweating over a hot stove. I said to the housekeeper: ‘I’d like baked beans on toast with a poached egg on top, and tell Pardoe to look out a half-bottle of that nice St Julien, the one with the picture of the purple vineyard on it.’ That solved the problem of dinner.

Afterwards, greatly fortified, I phoned my mother to inform her I would be heading for the Hebrides, retired to the blue drawing-room where the television set lurked behind a fire-screen, and watched the latest episode of the comedy series
Down at the Surgery in
which two doctors have their virtue constantly assailed by a stream of diverse nymphomaniacs. The elder doctor was played by Martin Darrow with a professional deftness which prompted me to giggle so hard that I dropped cigarette ash all over the floor. He was far better looking than his young half-brother, but nevertheless I was conscious of the strong resemblance between them. I wondered idly what their father, the ancient hermit, thought of his elder son’s career as a television star.

The next morning I extracted my red MG from the stables, heaved my bags into the back and returned to Primrose’s flat. I had remembered it was Sunday but somehow I managed to arrive too late to attend matins, so taking advantage of the spring sunshine I lounged on the seat in the Deanery’s garden as I waited for everyone to return from the Cathedral. Unfortunately Primrose and the Dean stayed on for the sung Communion service. I should have remembered that possibility and removed myself, but I was still lolling in the sunshine when Dido turned up to torpedo me.

‘So there you are, Venetia! Primrose was under the impression you’d be back in time for matins. I do think you might have telephoned to say you’d be late, but then that’s the upper classes, isn’t it, my dear, always expecting the entire world to fall into step beside them, and personally I’ve always been devoutly thankful that I was merely the daughter of a self-made Scottish millionaire and irredeemably nouveau riche because at least I was taught consideration for others from the cradle. Now –’ She paused for breath as she parked herself purposefully on the bench beside me – I’m so glad I’ve got the chance for a word alone with you, because I think it’s time that an intelligent,
honest
older woman – and as you know, my dear, I always pride myself on my candour – I think it’s time,’ said Dido, without even pausing for breath after this parenthesis, ‘that I gave you a piece of sensible and I hope not unaffectionate advice – because of course I’m very fond of you, Venetia, just as Stephen is, although I do see all your little faults and foibles
rather
more clearly than he does, because darling Stephen’s so noble that he always sees the best in everyone, whereas I, being a realist –and I’m always being complimented on my realism – I, being a realist,’ said Dido, battling her way out of the jungle of this monstrous sentence, ‘take a much more pessimistic view of humanity, and having been a rich young girl myself I know all about the pitfalls waiting to ensnare rich young girls who drift around without any proper
direction –
which brings me to what I want to say.’

I raised an eyebrow and looked hopeful.

‘What you have to do, my dear, is not simply to drift hither and thither like a piece of flotsam – or is it jetsam? – on the sea of life while you dabble in antiques and publishing or sidle off on little holidays to the Hebrides with an elderly clergyman who really should have known better than to invite you – although, of course, I do understand that darling Stephen, so soft-hearted, only wanted to be kind – but I’m afraid he didn’t stop to think, did he, that suggesting a holiday was actually only offering you a way of escaping from your problems, and what you really have to do, Venetia my dear, is not to
escape
from your problems but to face them. To put matters absolutely candidly, if you can’t find a husband you must find a suitably worthy cause to which you can devote your energies, and quite honestly – and I know it’s unfashionable to say this, but since I always believe in calling a spade a spade –’

I raised the other eyebrow and looked even more hopeful. ‘– I think you need to find God. I began my search for God when I was about your age – it was after my favourite sister died – and once I’d started I was always so cross with myself that I’d never started before because religion’s so absolutely fascinating and I can’t understand why it’s not taught properly in schools, especially when they go to such lengths to teach useless things like algebra and hockey. Anyway, once I’d started looking for God I met Stephen and lived happily ever after, and I think the same sort of thing might happen to you if only you could stop being so self-centred. As it happens I know the most wonderful clergyman in London who specialises in spiritual direction, and I’m quite certain that if I were to ring him up and tell him about you –’

‘How terribly kind of you, Mrs Aysgarth, but I’m afraid I’ve absolutely had it with London.’

‘Oh, that won’t last, you’ll go back, you’re a London person. Now my dear, I do hope you’re not thinking that darling Stephen will give you spiritual direction in the Hebrides, because Stephen’s not at all spiritual on holiday, he just likes to sit around eating and drinking and reading detective stories, and I honestly think he’d be most put out if you started chatting to him about God. Anyway, Stephen really can’t start giving spiritual direction to young girls, even here in Starbridge, because he’s much too busy running the Cathedral and keeping the Chapter from murdering each other, and even if he wasn’t much too busy he prefers to exercise his pastoral skills these days among men – and usually German men, as Eddie Hoffenberg will be the first to tell you. And talking of Eddie, I do think you might be kinder to him, he’s
such a nice man
and he’s had such awful tragedies in his life and he just doesn’t deserve to have you and Primrose poking fun at him behind his back. God only knows what the two of you will get up to in the Hebrides – I can just see you egging each other on and smirking in corners – and in fact to be quite candid and to cut a long story short, I think this holiday is a thoroughly bad idea for all concerned. Why don’t you and Primrose run off to Cornwall and leave those two clergymen to recharge their spiritual batteries in peace?’

‘I don’t think Primrose would care for that idea at all, Mrs Aysgarth.’

‘Oh, Primrose! If that girl were to spend a little less time doting on her father and a little more time being nice to Maurice Tait her life would be vastly improved – and so, God knows, would mine! In fact in my opinion you’d be doing us all the biggest possible favour, Venetia my dear, if you lured Primrose away to – no, not Cornwall, too unoriginal, how about the French Riviera? Take her to your sister’s villa at Juan-les-Pins!’

‘I don’t like the French Riviera.’

‘Well, you certainly won’t like the Hebrides. Dr Johnson thought it was quite awful be told Boswell so.’

‘I don’t like Dr Johnson.’

‘Venetia dear, don’t you think you’re being just the teensiest bit negative?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Aysgarth. It really is so kind of you to worry about my spiritual welfare, and I’ll think very carefully about everything you’ve said, I promise.’

We looked at each other. Her hard dark eyes bore a sharp, shrewd, sceptical expression, and although I tried to exude a docile respect I knew she was not deceived. Rising to her feet abruptly she said: ‘I must see about lunch. Why don’t you come indoors and have a chat with Elizabeth? She always feels so hurt when you and Primrose go out of your way to ignore her.’

Smiling meekly but seething with rage I followed her into the house to talk to her daughter.

II

Primrose usually ate her meals in her flat, but for Sunday lunch, that sacred British institution, she joined her family in the Deanery dining-room, and on that Sunday before Easter I sat with her at the long table. As usual on such occasions, a crowd turned up. In addition to Dido’s two children – not only Elizabeth, who was now a precocious fourteen, but little Pip, who was a nine-year-old pupil at the Choir School – there was a female called Miss Carp, known within the family as Polly (in memory of Polycarp, a bishop of the Early Church); she kept the household running while Dido poked her nose into everyone else’s business, popped up to London to patronise Harrods and pampered herself with the occasional attack of nervous exhaustion, a condition which Primrose described as ‘sheer bloody minded self-indulgence’. There had been a succession of au pair girls who had looked after the children, but these creatures had been dispensed with once Pip had begun his career at the Choir School.

The other guests at lunch that day consisted of Aysgarth’s second son by his first marriage, Norman, who lectured in law at King’s College, London, Norman’s wife Cynthia who always looked as if she might sleep with everyone in sight but probably never did (although my sister Arabella always said Cynthia was the vainest, most sex-mad girl she ever met – and coming from Absolutely-the-Bottom Arabella that was really something), Aysgarth’s third son James, the jolly Guardsman who was so good at talking about nothing, James’s girlfriend, whose name I failed to catch although it was probably Tracy or Marilyn or something non-U, Aysgarth’s fourth and final son by his first marriage, Alexander, known as Sandy, who was doing postgraduate work up at Oxford, a chum of Sandy’s called Boodle (I never found out his real name either), two elderly female cousins of Dido’s from Edinburgh who appeared to be quite overwhelmed by all the English, Primrose, me and – inevitably – Aysgarth’s most devoted hanger-on, Eddie Hoffenberg. The two people whom I most wanted to see – Aysgarth’s eldest son Christian and his wife – were conspicuous by their absence.

‘They were here last weekend,’ explained Primrose.

All Aysgarth’s children visited their home regularly and all appeared to get on well with their father who was unfailingly benevolent to them. The contrast with my own family could hardly have been more marked. My elder brother Harold was too stupid to hold my father’s attention for long, and although my brother Oliver was no fool – no genius but no fool – he too was uninterested in intellectual matters. Henrietta, Arabella and Sylvia could only be regarded by my father as pretty little playthings. I drove him up the wall. In consequence family gatherings were notable for my father’s impatience and irritability, my mother’s valiant efforts to pour oil on troubled waters, and my siblings muttering to one another in corners that ‘Pater’ really was getting a bit much and Mama had to be some kind of saint to stand him and only a liberal supply of champagne could save everyone from going completely and utterly bonkers.

At the Aysgarths’ lunch that day everyone talked animatedly, Dido inflicting her usual outrageous monologues on her defenceless cousins – with occasional asides to Eddie Hoffenberg who took seriously his Christian obligation to be charitable – Norman commenting on some judge named Denning (this was just before the Profumo affair made Denning famous), Cynthia describing the work of some besotted artist who yearned to paint her portrait, James saying: ‘Really? How splendid!’ at intervals, Sandy and Boodle arguing over the finer points of Plato’s Dialogue on the Soul, Elizabeth throwing out the information that actually she was an Aristotelian and that Plato simply rang no bells for her at all, Primrose arguing that the whole trouble with the Roman Church was that St Thomas Aquinas had based his
Summa
on Aristotle’s philosophy, and my Mr Dean chipping in to observe that the world was always divided into Aristotelians and Platonists, and wasn’t the treacle tart absolutely first-class. In the midst of all these stimulating verbal fireworks, little Pip, who was sitting thoughtfully on my left, turned to me and said: ‘Do you like the Beatles., Venetia?’

‘They’re a little young for me, Pip, but I liked "Love Me Do".’

‘I think they’re fab,’ said Pip. ‘Much better than Plato or Aristotle.’

One of the most attractive aspects of life with the Aysgarths was the wide range of the topics discussed. I doubt if my parents and siblings had heard of the Beatles in the spring of ‘sixty-three.

Later in the drawing-room I had an interesting talk about politics with Norman but Cynthia became jealous and winkled him away from me. By this time the Dean had shut himself in his study for his post-prandial snooze, but Eddie Hoffenberg was still hovering as if eager to tell me about his osteopath, so I slipped away to take refuge in Primrose’s flat. Primrose herself had departed after lunch with her boyfriend Maurice Tait, one of the vicars-choral who sang tenor in the Cathedral choir and taught at the Choir School. In fact she cared little for Tait (a damp, limp individual whose hobbies were stamp-collecting and supporting the Bible Reading Fellowship) but she liked to keep him around so that she could talk about ‘my boyfriend’ and look worldly. I didn’t despise her for this. I wouldn’t have minded a neutral escort myself, if only to silence the fiends who muttered: ‘Poor old Venetia!’ behind my back, but no limp, damp individual had presented himself for acquisition. I didn’t count Eddie, of course. Not only was his Wagnerian gloom intolerable but he was so ugly that if I had accepted him as an escort the fiends would merely have gone on muttering: ‘Poor old Venetia!’

I also had to face the fact — an unpalatable one for my ego — that Eddie had never actually tried to do more than trap me in corners and talk about his health. He had never invited me to his house on my own or suggested a visit to the cinema — or even invited me for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. Tait always took Primrose for a walk down by the water-meadows after he had lunched with his mother. Primrose would sigh beforehand and say what a bore these walks were, but I suspected that if Tait had failed to appear one Sunday she would have been very cross indeed.

The rest of the day passed most agreeably, providing a tantalising glimpse of what fun life could be when one was accepted by a group of congenial people; at least at the Aysgarths’ house I was never left out in the cold. After tea we all played croquet and I beat everyone except Boodle. There was much laughter as we languished on the lawn. Then having completed my odyssey among the croquet hoops I ate baked beans on toast with Primrose in her flat and we discussed Life, a ritual which involved reviewing the day’s events, pulling everyone to pieces, putting a few favoured individuals together again and tossing the rest on the scrap-heap. This was fun. Primrose had her faults (priggishness, intolerance, intellectual snobbishness) but she was witty and seldom bored me. I only became bored when she was either talking soppily about her father or droning drearily about her work at the diocesan office on Eternity Street. Every time she began a sentence with the words ‘The Archdeacon and I’, my teeth automatically gritted themselves, so when at ten o’clock that evening the dread words tripped off her tongue I waited until she had finished her sentence and then immediately asked if I could have a bath. Half an hour later I was stretched out on the Put-U-Up sofa, now transformed into a bed, and tuning into Radio Luxemburg on my transistor. ‘Good heavens, Vinnie!’ exclaimed Primrose, appearing crossly in curlers as I was smoking a final cigarette and wriggling my toes in time to Elvis Presley. ‘You’re not still listening to that drivel, are you? I can’t understand why you’re so keen on pop music!’

‘No, you wouldn’t. You’re not fundamentally interested in sex.’

‘Honestly, Venetia! What a thing to say!’ She flounced back to her bedroom.

Elvis quivered on vibrantly. As I stubbed out my cigarette I wondered — not for the first time — if anyone would ever invite me to have sexual intercourse, but it seemed like a forlorn hope. Switching off the transistor I pulled the bed-clothes over my head and allowed myself to shed a single furious tear of despair.