Glittering Images, page 4
Everyone turned to look at me. Miss Christie at once moved forward to make the introductions, but she was a long way away and the plump, pretty little woman forestalled her.
‘Dr Ashworth!’ she exclaimed, beaming at me. ‘How nice to see you! I hope your motor journey wasn’t too difficult but it must have helped that the weather was fine. Isn’t the weather beautiful? All the sunshine’s so good for the garden.’
I did not need to be told that I was being addressed by my hostess. ‘How do you do, Mrs Jardine,’ I said, smiling as I took her hand in mine. ‘It’s very kind of you to have me to stay.’
‘Not at all, it’s spendid for Alex to have someone clever to talk to! Now let me introduce you to everyone. Miss Christie you’ve met, of course, and here –’ she turned to the couple who had been debating Peter Pan ‘– are Lord and Lady Starmouth who have always been so kind to us ever since Alex was Vicar of St Mary’s, Mayfair. They have such a delightful house in Curzon Street and Alex stays there when he has to be up in town for the debates in the House of Lords – oh, heavens, perhaps I shouldn’t mention the Lords’ debates, especially as you’re a friend of the Archbishop’s – Lyle, am I dropping some frightful brick?’
‘Dr Ashworth,’ said Miss Christie, ‘is probably only thinking how pleasant it must be for the Bishop to stay with friends whenever he’s up in town.’
But in fact I was thinking that the good-looking Countess of Starmouth might well be one of Jardine’s ‘lovely ladies’, faithfully chaperoned by one of the gentlemen whom Jack had described as ‘boring old husbands’. However this unflattering description hardly did justice to the Earl of Starmouth who looked alert enough to be entertaining even though he might have been on the wrong side of seventy. Perhaps Lady Starmouth kept him young; I estimated that she was at least twenty years his junior.
‘My wife collects clerics,’ said Lord Starmouth to me as we shook hands. ‘She’ll collect you too if you’re not careful.’
‘I adore clergymen,’ agreed his wife with that aristocratic frankness which never fails to make the more reticent members of the middle classes cringe with embarrassment. ‘It’s the collar, of course. It makes a man seem so deliciously forbidden.’
‘What can I offer you to drink, Dr Ashworth?’ said Miss Christie, middle-class propriety well to the fore.
‘A dry sherry, please.’ No ambitious clergyman drank cocktails at episcopal dinner parties.
A young man in clerical garb bustled into the room, muttered, ‘Bother! No Bishop,’ and bustled out again.
‘Poor Gerald!’ said Mrs Jardine. ‘I really wonder sometimes whether we made the right decision when we installed a telephone. It’s so terribly hard for the chaplain when people ring up at awkward moments … Oh, here’s Willy! Come and meet my brother, Dr Ashworth.’
I was introduced to a Colonel Cobden-Smith, a hale gentleman in his sixties with a pink face, white hair and a cherubic expression. He was accompanied by his wife, a thin energetic woman who reminded me of a greyhound, and by a very large St Bernard dog who padded majestically through the room to the terrace on his way to water the flowerbeds.
‘I know nothing about theology,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith to me as soon as we had been introduced. ‘I always say to Alex that I know nothing about theology and I don’t want to know anything either. As far as I’m concerned God’s God, the Church is the Church, the Bible’s the Bible and I can’t understand what all the arguments are about.’
‘Funny business, religion,’ mused her husband, uttering this dubious remark with such an ingenuous admiration that no clergyman could have found him offensive, and began to talk about a Buddhist monk he had met in India.
The young chaplain bustled back into the room. ‘So sorry, Mrs Jardine, but you know what the Archdeacon’s like when he rings up in a panic …’
I was introduced to Gerald Harvey. He was a short bespectacled man in his early twenties who seemed to be perpetually out of breath, and I wondered whether the Bishop of Starbridge regularly reduced his chaplain to this state of wild-eyed anxiety.
‘… and I’ve heard about your book, of course,’ he was saying, ‘but I confess I haven’t read it because all those ancient arguments about the Trinity simply make me want to tear off my dog-collar and enlist in the Foreign Legion – oh my goodness, there’s the doorbell and the Bishop’s still not down! I’d better go and see if anything’s wrong.’
He dashed away again. I was surprised that Jardine had selected such a plain, unsophisticated and clearly unintellectual chaplain, but before I could speculate on the existence of sterling virtues which would have qualified Harvey for his post, the butler announced the arrival of Mr and Mrs Frank Jennings. Jennings, I soon discovered, had just been appointed to teach dogmatics at the Theological College in the Close. He himself was unremarkable in his appearance but his wife was a pretty young blonde, and remembering Jack’s gossip I wondered how far her looks had qualified the couple for an invitation to the episcopal dinner table.
‘I found your book most stimulating,’ Jennings said to me agreeably, but before he could continue his wife exclaimed: ‘Good gracious, Frank, look at that gigantic dog!’
‘Alex had a dog once,’ said little Mrs Jardine as the St Bernard made a stately return to the room. ‘He called it Rhetoric. But we were living in London at the time and poor little Rhet was run over by such a vulgar Rolls-Royce – really, I’ve never felt the same about motor cars since … Do you have a dog, Dr Ashworth?’
‘No, Mrs Jardine.’
‘Do you have a wife, Dr Ashworth?’ called Lady Starmouth, giving me a friendly look with her fine dark eyes.
I was acutely aware of Miss Christie’s hand pausing in the act of pouring out glasses of sherry for the newcomers.
‘I’m a widower, Lady Starmouth,’ I said.
‘All clergymen ought to be married,’ said the authoritative Mrs Cobden-Smith, offering a handful of water biscuits to the St Bernard. ‘They say the Roman Catholics have frightful trouble with their celibate priests.’
‘They say the Church of England has frightful trouble with its married clergy,’ said a strong harsh well-remembered voice from the doorway, and as we all turned to face him the Bishop of Starbridge made a grand entrance into his drawing-room.
IV
Dr Jardine was a man of medium height, slim and well proportioned, with dark greying hair and brown eyes so light that they were almost amber. The eyes were set deep and wide apart; by far his most arresting feature, they were capable of assuming a hypnotic lambent glaze in the pulpit, a physiological trick which Jardine used sparingly but effectively to underline his considerable gifts as a preacher. His quick abrupt walk revealed his energy and hinted at his powerful restless intellect. Unlike most bishops he wore his gaiters with élan, as if conscious that he had the figure to triumph over the absurdity of the archaic episcopal costume, and when he entered the room he was radiating the electric self-confidence which his enemies decried as bumptious and his admirers defended as debonair.
‘Don’t be alarmed, everyone!’ he said, smiling after the opening remark which had won our attention. ‘I’m not about to secede to Rome, but I can never resist the urge to counter my sister-in-law’s scandalously dogmatic assertions … Good evening, Dr Ashworth, I’m delighted to see you. Good evening, Jennings – Mrs Jennings – now, Mrs Jennings, there’s no need to be shy. I may be a fire-breathing bishop but I’m extremely tame in the company of pretty ladies – isn’t that so, Lady Starmouth?’
‘Tame as a tiger!’ said the Countess amused.
‘We used to have some good tiger-shoots in India,’ reflected Colonel Cobden-Smith. ‘I remember –’
‘I saw such an adorable tiger at the zoo once,’ said Mrs Jardine, ‘but I’m sure it would have been so much happier back in the wild.’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Bishop robustly, accepting a glass of sherry from Miss Christie. ‘If the unfortunate animal had been in its natural habitat your brother would have come along and murdered it. Did you arrive in time for Evensong, Dr Ashworth?’
‘I’m afraid I was late getting here. The traffic around London –’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t award black marks for missing services. Now, Mrs Jennings, sit down and tell me all about yourself – have you managed to find a house yet?’
As his wife was purloined by the Bishop, Jennings began to tell me about his arduous quest for a property in the suburbs. Occasionally I offered a word of sympathy but for the most part I sipped my sherry in silence, eavesdropped on the other conversations and kept a surreptitious watch on Miss Christie.
Lady Starmouth suddenly glided into my field of vision. ‘I think you must be the youngest canon I’ve ever met, Dr Ashworth! Does this mean the Church is at last beginning to believe it’s not a crime to be under forty?’
‘The canonry came with the job, Lady Starmouth. When Archbishop Laud founded Laud’s College and Cambridge Cathedral in the seventeenth century he stipulated that the College should appoint a doctor of divinity to teach theology and act as one of the Cathedral’s residentiary canons.’ I suddenly realized that Miss Christie was looking straight at me, but when our glances met she turned away. I continued to watch as she picked up the sherry decanter again but Colonel Cobden-Smith cornered her before she could embark on the task of refilling glasses.
‘… and I hear you were Dr Lang’s chaplain once,’ Lady Starmouth was saying. ‘How did you meet him?’
Reluctantly I averted my gaze from Miss Christie. ‘He gave away the prizes during my last year at school.’
‘You were head boy of your school, of course,’ said Jardine from the depths of the sofa nearby.
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ I said surprised, ‘yes, I was.’
‘How clever of you, Alex!’ exclaimed Mrs Jardine. ‘How did you guess Dr Ashworth had been head boy?’
‘No boy attracts His Grace’s attention unless he shows signs of becoming a walking advertisement for Muscular Christianity.’
‘I adore Muscular Christianity,’ said Lady Starmouth.
‘If Christianity were a little more muscular the world wouldn’t be in such a mess,’ said the forthright Mrs Cobden-Smith.
‘If Christianity were a little more muscular it wouldn’t be Christianity,’ said the Bishop, again displaying his compulsion to argue with his sister-in-law. ‘The Sermon on the Mount wasn’t a lecture on weight-lifting.’
‘What exactly is Muscular Christianity?’ inquired Mrs Jardine. ‘I’ve never been quite sure. Is it just groups of nice-looking young clergymen like Dr Ashworth?’
‘“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”’ said the Bishop, raising his eyes to heaven as he quoted Hamlet.
‘More sherry, anyone?’ said Miss Christie, finally escaping from Colonel Cobden-Smith.
‘Dinner is served, my Lord,’ said the butler in a sepulchral voice from the doorway.
V
The dining-room was as vast as the drawing-room and it too faced down the garden to the river. I had wondered if the gentlemen were required to ‘take a lady in’ to dinner, but Mrs Jardine gave no instructions and as we all wandered informally into the dining-room I was hoping I might claim the chair next to Miss Christie. However there were place-cards, and a quick glance told me I was to be disappointed. Although I shared with the Bishop the pleasure of being seated next to Lady Starmouth my other neighbour proved to be the formidable Mrs Cobden-Smith and meanwhile, far away on the opposite side of the table, Miss Christie was once more finding herself trapped with the Colonel; to my irritation I saw he was clearly delighted by his undeserved good fortune.
After the Bishop had said grace we all embarked on a watery celery soup, a disaster which was subsequently redeemed first by poached trout and then by roast lamb. The main course was accompanied by a superb claret. I almost asked the Bishop to identify it, but decided he might subscribe to the view that in Church circles a keen interest in wine was permissible only for bishops or for archdeacons and canons over sixty. With a superhuman exercise of will-power I restricted myself to two glasses and was aware of Jardine noticing as I declined a third.
‘Leaving room for the post-prandial port, Canon?’
‘Oh, is there port, Bishop? What a treat!’ I assumed an expression of innocent surprise.
The dinner surged on, everyone talking with increasing animation as the claret exerted its influence. Mrs Cobden-Smith asked me about my background, and having established the exact shade of my class she was sufficiently reassured to give me the benefit of her opinions which ranged from the futility of giving the working classes houses with bathrooms to the folly of listening to the Indian natives who wanted independence. When I could escape from Mrs Cobden-Smith’s attentions Lady Starmouth pounced and I found myself being subjected to a far more subtle inquisition. Lady Starmouth wanted to know about my wife, but when I volunteered little information in response to her oblique enquiries she decided to probe my views on a topical subject affecting matrimony; I was asked what I thought of A. P. Herbert’s celebrated Marriage Bill which had triggered Jardine’s attack on Lang in the Lords.
The knowledge of how much I owed the Archbishop was never far from the surface of my mind. I said politely, ‘I’m afraid I disapprove of divorce being made easier, Lady Starmouth.’
‘My dear Dr Ashworth, you surprise me! I thought you’d have very liberal modern views!’
‘Not if he’s the Archbishop’s man,’ said our host, breaking off his conversation with Mrs Jennings.
‘I’m no one’s man but my own, Dr Jardine!’ I said at once. I felt unnerved as well as annoyed that he had seen straight through my dutifully conservative stance.
‘Well spoken!’ said Lady Starmouth.
‘Do you approve of divorce at all, Canon?’ said Lord Starmouth with interest.
This placed me in a fresh dilemma. If I wanted to be entirely loyal to Lang, who followed the teaching on divorce in St Mark’s Gospel, I would have to say that I believed marriage to be indissoluble, but I was now anxious to show Jardine that I was no mere sycophantic echo of the Archbishop. On the other hand some loyalty to Lang was essential; I could hardly espouse Jardine’s extreme and controversial views. I decided to seek the diplomatic middle course by jettisoning St Mark in favour of St Matthew.
‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that adultery should be a ground for divorce – for both sexes, just as Our Lord said.’
‘So you disapprove of the rest of A. P. Herbert’s Bill?’ said Jennings, coming late to the conversation and manifesting the teacher’s desire to clarify a clouded issue. ‘You don’t believe that the grounds for divorce should be extended to include cruelty, insanity and desertion?’
‘Precisely.’
‘So!’ said Jardine, unable to remain silent a moment longer, his amber eyes lambent at the prospect of debate. ‘You would approve a divorce, would you, Dr Ashworth, if a man spends ten minutes in a hotel bedroom with a woman he’s never met before – yet you would deny a divorce to a woman whose husband has subjected her for years to the most disgusting cruelties?’
‘I’m not denying the remedy of a legal separation in such a case.’
‘In other words you’d condemn her to a miserable limbo, unable to remarry! And all because you and the other clerics who tow the High Church line insist on clinging to an utterly fallacious interpretation of Our Lord’s teaching in the Synoptic Gospels!’
‘I –’
‘You don’t seriously think Our Lord was talking about divorce as a lawyer, do you?’
‘I think Our Lord was talking about what he believed to be right!’ I was aware that all other conversation in the room had ceased; even the servants by the sideboard were transfixed.
Jardine said truculently, ‘But he wasn’t talking legalistically – he wasn’t, in advance of Christian history, claiming to be another Moses, the supreme law-giver. He was a life-giving spirit, not a legal code personified!’
‘He was indeed a life-giving spirit,’ I said, ‘and he illustrated the true life of Man – he made clear the principles of right human action, and I think we ignore his teaching at our peril, Bishop!’
‘But what exactly was his teaching on divorce?’ demanded Jardine, ripping open the hole in my argument. ‘The Gospels don’t agree! I think the clause permitting divorce for adultery was inserted into St Matthew’s Gospel in an attempt to correct the legalistic way in which the early Church had thoroughly misunderstood the teaching of Jesus –’
‘That’s Brunner’s theory, of course, but Brunner’s notorious for remodelling Christianity to suit the twentieth century –’
‘Brunner’s reinterpreting Christianity in the light of the twentieth century, and what’s wrong with that? Every generation has to interpret Christianity afresh –’
‘Bishop, are you saying that A. P. Herbert has a license to rewrite St Matthew?’
‘– and one of the outstanding aspects of Christianity is that Christ preached compassion and forgiveness, not an inflexible hardness of heart. How long were you married, Dr Ashworth?’
‘Three years. But –’
‘And during those three years,’ pursued Jardine, ‘did you have no glimpse of what the state of matrimony could be like for others less fortunate than yourself?’
‘That’s absolutely irrelevant to the theological point under discussion!’
‘You were happily married, I assume?’
‘Yes, I was – and that’s exactly why I’m opposed to debasing the institution of marriage by a set of fashionable divorce laws which go far beyond the teaching of Christ!’
‘It’s people who debase marriage, not laws – people who would keep a couple yoked together in circumstances which would have made Christ weep! Tell me, how long have you been a widower? It must be hard for you to remain single when you regard marriage as such a blissfully ideal state!’
