Scandalous Risks (30 page)

IV

‘My darling,’ wrote Aysgarth in a letter which caught the last post and arrived at my flat early on Wednesday morning. ‘I’m devastated that I shan’t be able to get to Lady Mary after all this evening – D, who hasn’t been to evensong for ages, has just announced that she feels spiritual and knows she’s being called to attend. (This is a very typical D remark and is probably more or less true, so you needn’t worry that she suspects anything.) Thank God tomorrow’s Wednesday and we can have plenty of time to talk. I’m just praying the Lady Mary signal doesn’t indicate some dire emergency.

‘Life certainly seems to be increasingly fraught on the ecclesiastical front, and Harriet March’s magnificent sculpture is fast becoming too hot to handle. The traitor Fitzgerald, hatching a fiendish anti-sculpture conspiracy with all the reactionary philistines in Starbridge, has roped in Archdeacon Lindsay who now informs me that I have to seek a faculty (that’s a form of ecclesiastical permission) before I install any structure in the Cathedral churchyard. Now, this would seem to be nonsense as deans are autonomous and neither their cathedrals nor their churchyards are subject to the Chancellor (chief legal eagle) of the diocese who sits in the Consistory Court and grants faculties. But Lindsay informs me that legally the magnificent sward which surrounds Starbridge Cathedral is not in fact a consecrated churchyard (used for burials) but unconsecrated curtilage (mere adjacent land), and all unconsecrated curtilages require a faculty before alteration. Again, this would appear to be rubbish, because although the sward is no longer used for burials it certainly was in the old days, but Lindsay declares that all the burials were irregular since under a Cathedral statute the only consecrated burial ground is the lawn of the cloisters.

‘Well, of course it’s easy to see what happened: once the cloisters’ lawn was full up they started burying people out on the sward – and since no one in the old days would have dreamed of having themselves laid to rest in unconsecrated ground, this must mean that at some time or other the place was consecrated. I pointed this out to Lindsay, but he only said stuffily: "In the absence of evidence of consecration, the statute must prevail." That was more than I could take.
"Evidence?"
I said. "The evidence lies in the few tombstones you can still find embedded in the churchyard’s turf! They prove consecration beyond any shadow of doubt!" But Lindsay dug in his toes, announced that the Chancellor would have to rule where the burden of proof lay, and stalked off

‘So the fight is on, and what I have to prove is that no one has power over that sward except me. I shall collar Gilbert (the Librarian) and get him (i) to look up the appropriate statute in the original Latin (Lindsay only has an English translation), and (2) if no mistake’s been made in interpreting the statute, to start tracking down the inevitable later consecration. There
must
be a record of it somewhere! I just can’t believe that any past Dean of Starbridge would be so unfamiliar with the Cathedral statutes as to permit burials on unconsecrated curtilage.

‘I need hardly remind you that Lindsay is the Bishop’s henchman and I need hardly add that this whole devious episcopal attempt to cut back my power makes me absolutely
furious.

‘
To cap it all – as if I needed more trouble! – our guest preacher for Sunday matins has been knocked over by a motorbike so I’ll have to deliver a sermon in his stead. Dalton’s preaching at evensong, so I can’t ask him, and Fitzgerald insists that he has to go to see his widowed mother that weekend.
(Typical!)
Eddie’s volunteered, always the masochist, but I had to ask him to do an awful job only the other day (chairing the Cathedral guides’ meeting – i.e. presiding over a mass manifestation of verbal diarrhoea) and I really can’t always be exploiting poor Eddie.

‘My darling, forgive this grim catalogue of debilitating anxieties – I can’t tell you how I long to see you again, you’re my life-line and I know that when I see you I’ll be able to dredge up some new strength. Next week looks as if it’ll be even more frightful than this week – three diocesan committee meetings, two big funerals and one of those stupefyingly dull special regimental services stuffed with field-marshals, generals and other prize asses, and mitigated only by a touch of royalty. D, needless to say, has long been planning the buffet-lunch for sixty, and has acquired a fantastically expensive new outfit in order to dazzle the Duke and Duchess. How I remain solvent God only knows, since even D’s substantial private income canhardly be expected to stretch from here to eternity, but so far my bank manager hasn’t cut me dead in Mitre Street. ‘Occasionally, very occasionally I think how nice it would be not to have to worry about money, but I suppose I’m so used to living on a financial knife-edge that I’m now well past the sleepless-nights stage. One can get used to anything in the end, but oh, how
tired
I get of all the strain sometimes, how utterly fed up and exhausted – yet when I see you, so young, such fun, so full of life, then not only does my weariness vanish as if it had never existed but I can remember what it’s like to be happy.

‘Darling, I love you and I can’t wait,
can
’
t wait,
till tomorrow - 2.00 in the Playhouse car-park – do you think this time we’ll finally make it to Starbury Ring? All my love, N.’

Refolding the letter I thought: he can’t stand her; I’m the one he wants.

And all doubt was once more wiped from my mind.

V

‘Starbury Ring!’ I exclaimed. ‘At last!’

We laughed and clutched each other, still breathless from our climb over the ridge from the car-park. Then we staggered forward in search of a suitable place to recover from our uncharacteristic exertion.

Starbury Ring, a mysterious circle of standing stones, was usually described as resembling Stonehenge, but I always thought it was more like Avebury; each stone stood by itself and no three had been placed together to form an arch. On that afternoon the sun shone strongly from a sky dotted with large white clouds, and the view to the horizon, usually misty, was as clear as if it had been drawn by a fine-nibbed pen. A few hikers were wandering around flapping their guidebooks, and there were one or two prone hippies soaking up the vibes, but as usual the site was underpopulated. Retreating into the shade of one of the stones we were easily able to tuck ourselves out of sight of our fellow-visitors.

‘It’s wonderfully phallic, isn’t it?’ I said, gazing at a tall slim stone nearby.

‘Wonderfully!’ he said smiling, and when he took me in his arms nothing mattered, neither the separations, nor the frustrations, nor the suspicions, nor the bewilderment, nor the anguish, nor the tears – nothing mattered except that we were together. I kissed him and hugged him and gasped when he rolled over on top of me and laughed when he rolled all the way over to the other side by mistake, and when he laughed too we clutched each other in an ecstasy of happiness and I heard him whisper: ‘Isn’t this fun?’ But once he released me the fun was wiped out and the frustration was so agonising that my eyes filled with tears. Much humiliated by my weakness but determined not to make a nauseating exhibition of myself, I covered my face with my hands.

‘My darling ...’ Realising how upset I was he tried to take me in his arms again, but at that moment some people walked past and I knew he immediately thought, just as I did, how appalling it would have been if one of those casual passers-by had been known to him.

I began to struggle to my feet. ‘I can’t stand this lack of privacy any longer. Let’s go to my flat.’

Without a second’s hesitation he said: ‘I can’t.’

‘Oh yes, you could!’ I said fiercely, demented enough to abandon my waiting game and hammer at the mystery of his abstinence. ‘You’d take the slight risk involved, but you won’t because you don’t love me enough!’

‘That’s not true!’ He seemed genuinely appalled.

‘Then I don’t understand anything here.’ In exhaustion I slumped against the standing stone.

‘But I’ve explained in great detail! If I don’t come to your flat, it’s not because I don’t love you but because I love you too much to use you for my own selfish purposes when I’m quite unable to offer you marriage. According to John Robinson –’

‘Dr Ashworth thinks John Robinson’s up the creek.’

‘Ah well!’ said Aysgarth at once, all scorn. ‘What else can you expect from a reactionary like Charles?’

The last shreds of my self-control were destroyed. Stepping forward until my face was only inches from his I said rapidly in a voice which shook with emotion: ‘I like that Bishop. I admire him. I think he’s a very clever man with a good sense of humour who talks a lot of sense. All those "Anti-Sex Ashworth" slurs are rubbish. I don’t believe he’s anti-sex at all. He’s obviously got a happy, successful relationship with that wife of his – and she’s
really
fabulous, so intelligent and sensible and sympathetic and unchurchy, in fact I think she’s a truly
Christian
person. So who are you to criticise the Ashworths – you with your unhappy marriage and your neurotic wife who manages to drive everyone up the wall? Who are you to look down your nose at Charles Ashworth just because he has the brains and the training and the guts to swim against the John Robinson tide and stand up for what he believes to be right? Dr Ashworth’s battling away in the
real
world and Mrs Ashworth’s right there alongside him, but we don’t live in the real world, neither of us does when we’re together like this, it’s all a fantasy, all just an unconsummated dream!’

If I had thought I would shock him into silence, I was wrong. Immediately he answered: ‘You’re the most real thing in my life. This is reality,’ and as he kissed me I knew he was right; we were living in the real world, we truly were, and the Ashworths were just a dream couple I had idealised when I was in a disturbed state of mind. And in my sinister hall of mirrors all the glass abruptly tilted to reflect clear, dazzling images once more instead of a horrific assembly of distortions.

‘My darling Mr Dean,’ I whispered, the hated tears streaming down my face, ‘forgive me, I didn’t mean what I said, I didn’t mean it –’

‘It’s all right,’ he said gently, holding me close. ‘I do understand. The Ashworths have been very kind to you – why shouldn’t you stand up for them if you wish? That’s admirable. But never think they have some God-given monopoly on reality because I’m just as capable, I assure you, of being absolutely down-to-earth and realistic.’

‘Then Neville, what exactly’s going on? I accept that your religious beliefs arc very strong and entirely genuine, but –’

‘They are, yes. Do I need another reason for abstaining from adultery?’

‘No, of course not, but –’

‘I can’t quite see why you’re so anxious to shroud me in mystery all the time.’

‘I suppose I’m afraid that you’ve got some sort of peculiar hang-up –’

‘What on earth’s a hang-up?’

‘A psychological block which results in abnormal behaviour.’

‘My darling, you’re the one who seems to be behaving abnormally, suspecting me of lunatic tendencies! How could I hold down a top job in a major organisation unless I was exceptionally sane and well-balanced?’

‘I’m not talking about sanity exactly. I’m talking about –’

‘Why should you think I have one of these hang-up things?’

‘Well, when you were talking about prizes –’

‘Oh good heavens, I got that old
idée fire
under control years ago! Now listen to me. Since you rate realism so highly I suggest you forget the fantastic explanations and focus on the rational thinking which buttresses the moral beliefs which you apparently find so implausible. The rational thinking goes like this: Dido’s thirteen years younger than I am, and the odds are she’ll outlive me. That means I can never offer you marriage, and in the end it’ll be marriage you’ll want. Moreover in a few years’ time you won’t want to be married to a man who’s pushing seventy. You’ll want to be married to a man of your own generation – and so, no doubt, you shall be. Some great paragon will come riding along on his white horse, and –’

‘How loathsome! And even if you’re right, why should that affect us now? While we wait for this big bore to arrive, why can’t we –’

‘Because if you got too involved with me, you’d never even see the great paragon, let alone recognise him as a potential husband.’

‘Thank God – a merciful escape!’

‘No, my dear, that wouldn’t be a merciful escape. That wouldbe a great tragedy – and I’d be responsible. I’d have destroyed your best chance of happiness and probably ruined your life.’ He shuddered so violently that I at last realised how serious he was. ‘To take a woman’s love,’ he said, ‘and then to destroy her – no, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t live with myself afterwards. It would destroy me too.’

‘Oh darling, surely that sort of melodrama only happens in nineteenth-century novels!’

‘You think so?’ He turned away abruptly, and because he then had his back to me I barely heard him add: ‘Women should be preserved from destroyers. Whatever I do I’m going to avoid putting you through hell.’

Before I could stop myself I said: ‘Sometimes when you keep rejecting me like this I feel I’m in hell already.’

When he spun back to face me I saw he was appalled. ‘My darling –’ He broke off, then exclaimed in despair: ‘Maybe I’ve got this all wrong and I should give you up.’

‘Oh no!’ I said at once. ‘I’d be in a far worse hell if you did that!’

He gave me a long kiss before saying: ‘I’ll never give you up, never – at least, not until the great paragon rides out of the mist on his shining white horse!’ And at last he managed to smile at me.

‘But even then – supposing I were to marry just for the social convenience – couldn’t we –’

‘Oh, you aristocrats!’ he said laughing. ‘What a bunch of pagans you are!’

‘But seriously, Neville –’

‘My dear, I don’t share my prizes, and besides ... if you lose a prize it ceases to be a prize any more, doesn’t it?’

‘Here comes that
idée fixe again –
’

‘
Yes, but it’s not an
idée fixe
any more, it’s just a little quirk in my personality. My darling, if you married of course our friendship would have to end. It would be quite immoral if I cast any kind of a shadow over your married life, and anyway you must never, never marry just for convenience.’

‘But if I can’t marry you –’

‘Don’t let’s think of the future,’ he interrupted. ‘Let’s make it a taboo subject, like the past.’ And as he began to kiss me again I knew that juxtaposed to us in the land of allegory the serpent was tightening the grip of his coils.