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She skimmed away. After a while I became aware that Shipton was offering me a glass of sherry and I had to make an effort not to down the drink in a single gulp. Images of gleaming thighs and croquet balls chased each other chaotically across my mind until the Dean, buttonholing me purposefully, began to hold forth on his current nightmare: Starbridge Cathedral’s possible destruction. The Germans had recently announced plans to bomb every illustrious British city which had been awarded three stars in the Baedeker guide, and although Baedeker in fact never awarded more than two stars no one believed that this little inaccuracy meant the Nazis were joking. Three heavy raids on Exeter had damaged though not destroyed the Cathedral; Starbridge, not so many miles east of Exeter, was now in the front line.
‘Read any good books lately?’ I said when he paused for breath. The prospect of a blitzed Cathedral was so appalling that I preferred not to talk about it. The Dean might choose to relieve his anxiety by speaking the unspeakable, but I preferred to tell myself that once all precautions had been taken to minimize the damage there was no sense in agonizing over something which might never happen.
‘Books? Ah, it’s interesting you should ask me that …’ Diverted at last from his Cathedral the Dean began to talk about the fashionable Crisis Theology which was now sweeping through the English ecclesiastical ranks in a tidal wave of gloom and doom, but I soon ceased to listen. I was aware that Miss Tallent was trying to vamp my mentor while Alex appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience. His wife Carrie had not accompanied him to Starbridge, and Alex, a youthful sixty-three, was a past master at cultivating the amitié amoureuse, that peculiar pre-1914 relationship between the sexes in which close friendship was celebrated while sex remained taboo. I found this concept delectably erotic and only regretted that the changed moral climate currently made any attempt to achieve such a liaison far too liable to misinterpretation. Nowadays the only men who could safely take such a risk were men like Alex – a retired bishop well over sixty who could not conceivably be suspected of wrong-doing. On that evening in 1942 I had only just turned forty and any flirtation, even of the most innocent kind, was out of the question.
‘Neville dear,’ said my hostess Mrs Ottershaw, massive in moss-coloured velvet, ‘will you take Miss Tallent in to dinner before Dr Jardine bears her off and upsets Lady Starmouth?’
This was a shrewd request. Lady Starmouth, who looked about forty-five but was probably pushing sixty, was Alex’s closest platonic friend. She was watching Miss Tallent’s antics with an indulgent smile which was rapidly becoming glazed, but possibly she was merely trying to keep awake as General Calthrop-Ponsonby expounded on the siege of Mafeking.
‘Why did Bishop Jardine retire so early?’ Miss Tallent asked me as we advanced together to the dining-room, and after I had explained that a mild heart complaint obliged Alex to lead a quiet life she commented: ‘How boring for him! I suppose his wife has to toil ceaselessly to keep him entertained – or is she too antiquated to be amusing?’
‘Mrs Jardine’s not as young as she used to be, certainly, but –’
‘Poor thing! It must be awful to be old!’ said Miss Tallent with feeling, and as she spoke I perceived the source of her charm. She was curiously artless. She said exactly what she thought. Her sincerity, as she spoke compassionately about Carrie Jardine, was genuine. In the artificial world of high society this honesty, coupled with her vitality, would make her so striking that few people would notice how far she was from being pretty. In addition to her irregular features she had a white scar on the side of her forehead and a nose which looked as if it had been broken more than once in the past; by the end of the first course I was telling myself firmly that I had never seen such a plain girl before in all my life.
‘I expect you’re wondering how I got my broken nose and my fascinating scar,’ she said, tearing herself away from her other neighbour, the Earl of Starmouth, in a burst of boredom half-way through the stew. ‘I fell off a horse. I’ve fallen off lots of horses. I like to live dangerously.’
‘So do I,’ said the prim Archdeacon, chastely encased in his archidiaconal uniform. ‘That’s why I went into the Church. Charles Raven once wrote: “Religion involves adventure and discovery and a joy in living dangerously.”’
She was captivated. ‘Who’s Charles Raven?’
‘One of the greatest men in the Church of England.’
‘Singing my praises again, Neville?’ called Alex, teasing me from his position on the far side of the table.
‘Don’t be so naughty!’ said Lady Starmouth. ‘You heard the name Raven just as clearly as I did!’
‘The greatest man in the Church today must surely be William Temple,’ said Dr Ottershaw, naming the new Archbishop of Canterbury who had indeed dominated the life of the Church for decades.
‘Temple’s a very remarkable man,’ said Alex, ‘but I distrust his politics, I distrust his philosophy and I distrust his judgement.’
‘So much for the Archbishop!’ said Lady Starmouth as Dr Ottershaw looked appalled. ‘Now let’s hear you demolish Professor Raven!’
Alex instantly rose to the challenge. ‘How can one take seriously a churchman who favours the ordination of women?’
‘My dear Alex!’ I protested. ‘You can’t write off Raven on the strength of one minor eccentricity!’
‘Very well, I’ll write him off on the strength of his major eccentricity! How can one take seriously a churchman who in this year of grace 1942 is still a pacifist?’
‘But his pacifism proves he has great moral courage,’ said the Dean, unable to resist gliding into the debate, ‘and great moral courage should always be taken seriously. For example, none of us here may agree with Bishop Bell’s criticism of the government, but his moral courage is surely –’
‘Oh, we all know George Bell’s been soft on Germans for years,’ said Alex, ‘but I’d call that pig-headed foolishness, not moral courage.’
‘I must say, I rather agree,’ said Lord Starmouth, ‘although nevertheless one can’t doubt Bell’s sincerity. What do you think, Archdeacon?’
I said in my most neutral voice, the voice of an ecclesiastical diplomatist who was determined never to put a foot wrong in influential company: ‘Dr Bell’s a controversial figure and it’s hardly surprising that his views are hotly debated.’
‘Speaking for myself, I adore the Bishop of Chichester!’ said Dido, as if anxious to inform everyone that despite her ignorance of Professor Raven she knew exactly who Bell was. ‘He’s got such beautiful blue eyes!’
‘You’ve heard him preach?’ I said at once, hoping to discover an interest in church-going.
‘No, I heard him speak in the House of Lords ages ago about the internment camp on the Isle of Man – no wonder they say Bishop Bell makes Mr Churchill foam at the mouth! It’s all terribly Henry-II-and-Becket, isn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope Dr Bell doesn’t wind up a corpse on the floor of his Cathedral.’
The mention of the internment camp stimulated a discussion of the proposed camp for prisoners of war on Starbury Plain, and it was not until some minutes later that I had the chance to resume my private conversation with Miss Tallent.
‘Are you a member of the Church of England?’ I said, mindful that the Scottish father might have been a Presbyterian.
‘But of course! My father – being a self-made man – was most anxious that his children should have all the social advantages he never had!’
‘How amusing for you – and does the Church rank above or below Henley, Ascot and Wimbledon as a place where a successful society girl should take care to be seen?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’
‘No, fortunately for you I have a sense of humour. Do you ever actually go to church at all?’
‘How dare you imply I’m a heathen! Of course I go to church – I’m devoted to the Church – why, I go every Christmas, and I never miss any of the vital weddings and christenings in between!’
I at once spotted the omission. ‘What about the funerals?’
The vivacity was extinguished. Her plain, impertinent little face was shadowed and still. After a pause she said flatly: ‘The last funeral I attended was the funeral of my favourite sister. She died in 1939. After that I vowed I’d never go to another funeral again.’
I saw her wait for me to make some banal religious response, but when I remained silent she added unevenly, ‘She died after childbirth. The baby died too. Afterwards I felt as if someone had chopped me to pieces. I’m still trying to stitch myself together again.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘Yes, sometimes I think I’ll never get over it. At first I thought that the war would be a ghastly sort of blessing as it would give my life a purpose – I saw myself as a noble heroine, sacrificing my comfortable life in order to join the navy and fight Hitler – but of course I was just being stupid. I’m not required to be noble. I’m just a chauffeuse at the naval base. I have a wonderful social life, heaps of friends – and every day I despair because life seems so pointless and unheroic.’
‘Heroism comes in many shapes and forms. Your heroism may lie in the fact that you’re struggling on, day after day, even though you’re bored and miserable. I think you’re being very brave – and I also think that if you keep struggling you’ll eventually break through into a more rewarding life.’
She stared at me. Her bright eyes were now opaque, suggesting endless layers of mystery beneath the artless candour of her conversation. All she said in the end was: ‘I wish I’d met you after Laura died.’
Recognizing the oblique appeal I said at once: ‘You must tell me about Laura,’ but at that moment we were interrupted by Alex, who was keen to lure Miss Tallent back into the general conversation, and her opportunity to confide in me was lost.
At last the stewed plums and the extraordinary custard were either consumed or abandoned, the ladies withdrew and the gentlemen, with the exception of General Calthrop-Ponsonby who had been mercifully reduced to silence by the legendary St Estèphe, began to talk in a desultory manner about current affairs. I was afraid the Dean would start talking about the Baedeker raids again, but instead he showed signs of wanting to resume our earlier theological discussion. I wondered if I ought to warn the Bishop that the Dean was drifting dangerously towards neo-orthodoxy. In my experience conversions to Crisis Theology – or indeed even to the more moderate forms of neo-orthodox thought – inevitably meant fire-and-brimstone threats from the pulpit and much embarrassing talk about sin, not at all the sort of clerical behaviour which would be welcomed by the visitors who attended services in the Cathedral.
‘… of course Niebuhr’s modifying Barth’s theology in important ways … If Hoskyns were alive today …’
I broke my rule about allowing myself only one glass of port, and reached for the decanter to drown my irritation.
By the time the Bishop led his flock to the drawing-room I was sagging beneath the impact of the Dean’s enthusiasm, but as I crossed the threshold my spirits revived. Miss Tallent pounced on me. My pulse-rate rocketed. I was aware of a reckless urge to take risks.
‘Will you think me terribly fast,’ said this dangerous creature whom I knew very well I had a duty to avoid, ‘if I invite you to walk with me to the bottom of the garden and gaze at the river? I feel I need a calm beautiful memory to soothe me during the next air-raid on Starmouth.’
‘What a splendid idea!’ I said. ‘Take me away at once before the Dean begins a new attempt to convert me to Crisis Theology!’
Could any response have been more inappropriate for a dedicated archdeacon?
‘What’s Crisis Theology?’ demanded Miss Tallent as we drifted discreetly outside on to the terrace. ‘It sounds thrilling!’
‘Do I look thrilled?’
‘No, you look wonderfully serene and austere – in fact I was thinking just now in the drawing-room how simply miraculous it is to stumble across a man who’s not utterly beastly. Speaking confidentially, Archdeacon dear, I’ll confess to you that the main reason why I’m not married is because men are in general so utterly beastly to women …’
By this time we had left the terrace and were wandering across the unkempt lawn towards the river which glittered beyond the willows. The moonlight was very bright. I thought of the Baedeker raids, and for a split second I prayed for Starbridge, perhaps under sentence of death for the crime of being beautiful, for the sin of earning two stars in a famous travel guide.
‘… and in fact I wouldn’t mind not marrying at all, but of course a woman has to be married if she wants to be a success in life, and I burn to be a success. So what am I to do? I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve got to take action soon or I’ll wind up a spinster, and one can’t be a successful spinster, it’s a contradiction in terms. I did think of being a successful nun, but they keep such peculiar hours and I’m sure I’d hate being deprived of my silk underwear –’
‘I agree it does sound as if you’re not called to celibacy in the cloister –’ I somehow managed not to dwell on the image of Miss Tallent in her silk underwear – ‘but plenty of women are called to celibacy in the world and manage to live happy, successful, productive lives. The big question here is not, as you seem to think: how will society judge me if I don’t marry, but: what kind of life does God require me to lead?’
‘As far as I can make out, God just wants me to loaf around Starmouth fending off passes from drunken sailors.’
‘Fine. Keep loafing and fending and I’m sure the way ahead will eventually become dear.’
‘But dearest Archdeacon –’
Despite the drunken sailors I can’t quite understand why you’re so convinced most men are beastly to women.’
‘Well, it’s all that pawing and pouncing, isn’t it? Heavens, why I haven’t been pounded into dust years ago I really can’t imagine, and it’s entirely because most men can think of nothing but sex – sex, sex, sex, sex, sex – and it ruins everything, simply ruins it, and sometimes it all seems so sad I want to cry. But I’ll tell you this, Archdeacon dear: if I ever do marry it’ll be to someone high-minded who won’t just look at me and think: “What a nice pair of legs!” I can’t possibly settle for a man who isn’t high-minded, not possibly, anyone low-minded is quite unthinkable.’
‘If a man loves you he’ll see far beyond your legs. I mean – good heavens, what am I saying –’
‘But how do I know if a man loves me, Stephen? You don’t mind if I call you Stephen, do you, it’s such a good pure noble high-minded name –’
‘Miss Tallent, I hate to say this, but I think you’d be bored to death by someone high-minded. Think of that prig Arabin in Barchester Towers! Everyone agrees he’s quite the most tedious hero in Victorian literature.’
‘But if it’s a question of choosing between someone high-minded and someone who’s sex-mad –’
‘Why choose? Why not have someone high-minded and sex-mad?’
‘Heavens, what an amazing suggestion! But does such a man exist?’
‘The human race is infinitely diverse.’ I glanced back over my shoulder at the house. ‘Well, now that we’ve seen the garden by moonlight perhaps we should –’
‘But I want to go down to the river! I want to sit on that wooden seat underneath the willows and have an enthralling discussion with you on the heroes of Victorian literature!’
I looked at the wild garden shimmering in the pale light. I looked at the willow trees, swaying against the night sky. I looked at the glittering water of the distant river. I looked into the land of countless fairy-tales where the hero is changed from a frog to a prince by the casual wave of a magic wand, and I said: ‘Well, all right. But only for five minutes.’
As I had already confessed to her, I liked to live dangerously.
III
The river curled around Starbridge in a loop to divide the city from the suburbs, but at the point where the water glided past the Cathedral Close there were no buildings on the opposite bank, only water meadows, woods and farmland. The inter-war building developments had taken place on the other side of the city where there was no river and no need to build expensive bridges. The water meadows and fields, owned by the Dean and Chapter, were leased to the nearest farmer and bore silent witness to the fact that Starbridge, though a county town, was not an industrial centre driven to expand in all directions. The countryside remained unspoilt beyond the river, and the line of willows at the bottom of the Bishop’s garden completed the illusion that we stood many miles from a city.
‘This was a great garden in Bishop Jardine’s day,’ I said as we sat down on the ancient bench by the riverbank. ‘But when the gardeners went into the army Dr Ottershaw had no alternative but to sanction a wilderness.’
‘Much more exciting! I think the garden in Tennyson’s Maud could have been a wilderness, all tangled and steamy and exotic –’
‘I wouldn’t have thought a modern young woman like you would be interested in Victorian literature.’
‘It was the only thing our stupid governess knew about.’
‘You never went to school?’
‘No, and if I had I’m sure I’d have run away and begun my outrageous society life much earlier – with the result that I’d now be worn out. In fact if I’d been the heroine of a Victorian novel –’
‘Oh, you’d have died of consumption by now, no doubt about that,’ I said, making her laugh, and we began to talk of all the literary heroines who had paid the price demanded by society for the flouting of convention.
The conversation glided on, just like the river, glinting, glittering, gleaming, a hypnotic pattern coalescing into a unity beneath the white bright slice of the moon. Time glided on too, the time which should have been spent in the drawing-room, and every few minutes I told myself we should return to the house. Yet I never moved. The fairy-tale in which I was travelling had become more clearly defined; I now realized I was enacting the role of a male Cinderella and that when the clock began to strike twelve I would be compelled to flee from my princess, but meanwhile I preferred not to think of those inevitable midnight chimes. I thought instead how amazing it was that I, entombed in my sedate cathedral city, should be enjoying a scintillating dialogue with a society girl, and beyond my amazement lurked the absurd satisfaction that I, Norman Neville Aysgarth, the son of a Yorkshire draper, should be conversing in a palace garden with a millionaire’s daughter who had danced with the former Prince of Wales. I always tried hard not to slide into the repellent snobbery of the social climber, and of course I knew a good clergyman should be quite above such embarrassingly worldly thoughts, but the night was very beautiful and Miss Tallent was very amusing and I was, after all, only human.
The metaphorical midnight arrived so suddenly that I jumped. Far away by the house Charlotte Ottershaw called: ‘Dido! What have you done with Neville?’ and I saw my fairy-tale draw to a close.
‘I’ve ravished him!’ yelled Miss Tallent, and added crossly to me: ‘What a bore! Now we’ll have to return to the drawing-room.’
‘And I must be getting home.’ In my imagination I heard Cinderella’s clock relentlessly chiming the hour.
‘Must you? Already? But why?’
The moment had come. I had reached the point in the fairy-tale when Cinderella had been reclothed in her rags after her unforgettable night at the ball. ‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier but I’m hardly at liberty nowadays to keep late hours with charming young ladies. I have a wife waiting for me at my vicarage. We’ve been married sixteen years and have five children.’
For one brief moment she stared at me in silence. Then heaving a sigh of relief she exclaimed: ‘Thank God! Now I shall never have to worry about you pouncing on me, shall I? After all, what could possibly be safer than a married clergyman with five children?’
‘What indeed?’ I said, smiling at her, and that was the moment when I realized what a prize she was, so clever, so stimulating, so attractive, so rich, so celebrated and – most alluring of all – so utterly beyond my reach. The familiar powerful excitement gripped me; I was always deeply stirred by the sight of a great prize waiting to be won. Then I pulled myself together. This prize at least could never find its way into my collection. There was no other rational conclusion to be drawn. In my politest voice I said: ‘It’s been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Tallent. I doubt if our paths will cross again, but I shall certainly pray that you find the happiness you deserve.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ She was aghast. ‘Isn’t it patently obvious that our paths are already divinely interwoven? As soon as you told me at the dinner-table that I was heroic I knew God had sent you to my rescue! Now look here. I want to begin a meaningful new life: I want to be good, I want to be wise, I want to be Christian. You can’t just say blithely: “I doubt if our paths will cross again,” and sail away into the night! Of course I know how busy you must be and naturally I wouldn’t want to take up too. much of your time, but if you could just write me a little spiritual note occasionally –’
‘But my dear Miss Tallent –’
‘You see, I feel I’ve reached the time of life when I simply must have a spiritual adviser. You can write and explain God to me – oh, and you must tell me all about Professor Raven and Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple and all the really vital people whom I ought to know about – and that reminds me, talking of vital people, I’d simply adore to meet your wife. May I call at the vicarage tomorrow?’
I cleared my throat. ‘How kind of you to offer, but unfortunately my wife’s unwell at present. That’s why she didn’t accompany me this evening.’
‘What a pity! But perhaps next time I’m in Starbridge –’
‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you,’ I said, diplomacy personified, but I already knew that Grace wouldn’t care for Miss Dido Tallent at all.
IV
No doubt I have now succeeded in conveying the impression that I’m a sex-obsessed, claret-mad, world-fixated ecclesiastic who deserves to be defrocked without delay. One always runs the risk of creating a false impression when one sets out for the purest of motives – honesty and humility – to portray oneself ‘warts and all’; the warts have a habit of commandeering the artist’s canvas. Let me now try to redress the balance.
First, I doubt if I’m more obsessed by sex than the average man. I admit this mythical ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, as the lawyers call him, probably spends too much time thinking about sex, but the point I’m trying to make is that I doubt if I’m in any way abnormal when I meet an attractive woman and find myself picturing gleaming thighs. Nor need these harmless fantasies signify a tendency to immoral behaviour. A childhood spent among ardent chapel-goers ensured that I learnt early in life about the wages of sin, and out of an acute desire to avoid these terrible deserts I later acquired immense self-control in sexual matters. As a young man I was earnest, idealistic and chaste (more or less; one really can’t expect adolescent boys not to masturbate). Grace had been my first and indeed my only woman – apart from a disastrous lapse before my marriage when I had been an undergraduate up at Oxford. Embarrassment prevents me from disclosing much about this incident, so I shall only say that it followed my introduction to champagne and that the female was a shop assistant at Woolworth’s. From that day to this I can never cross the threshold of any branch of Woolworth’s without experiencing a small secret shiver of shame.
The truth is that on moral issues I hold views which are currently held to be old-fashioned. I believe fornication is degrading to women, who should be treated with the utmost reverence as befits their unique contribution to humanity as wives and mothers. Adultery I look upon not merely as a moral error but as a crime, breaking sacred promises, destroying trust, poisoning love, wrecking the lives not only of the guilty but of the innocent. Sex is like dynamite. If it is used in the right place and at the right time the results can be beneficial, but unless the proper regulations are observed there can only be a disastrous explosion. Those people who indulge in sexual activity as casually as they would down a couple of cocktails are always the sort of people who would find it amusing to play with matches in a bomb factory. As a clergyman I would be guilty of a most unchristian lack of charity if I bounded around yelling ‘Stupid!’ at all these fools, but I do find it an effort sometimes to treat the perpetrators of such mindless incidents – as a Modernist I won’t use that Victorian word ‘sinners’ – with compassion.
My strict attitude to sexual licence extends to the human race’s other pastime which causes so much trouble: drink. The Primitive Methodists of my childhood used to thunder away on that subject with as much verve as they devoted to sexual immorality, so it was hardly surprising that I became a most abstemious young man. In fact my catastrophic initiation into the pleasures of champagne up at Oxford shocked me so much that not another drop of alcohol passed my lips until the day I told Uncle Willoughby that I was going into the Church, but contrary to what the preachers had always proclaimed, this benign brush with whisky failed to consign me to perdition. I was much too poor to afford whisky regularly, and moreover as soon as I became a clergyman I knew I had to be careful in my drinking habits. Successful clergymen never drank spirits. Even as time passed and my tastes became more sophisticated I always made it a rule to drink moderately, and although I concede that on the evening of my meeting with Dido I bent this rule by tossing off an extra glass of port, this was an exceptional, not a commonplace, lapse.
I never drink twice a day. I do smoke, I admit, but never in public and only in my bedroom, usually after sexual intercourse. I like eating, but only wholesome food such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I was brought up to believe that frivolous snacks, such as chocolate, stimulated the sin of gluttony and constituted an unforgivable extravagance. It was only when I was a young man courting Grace that I finally dredged up the nerve – and the money – to rebel against this austerity. I took Grace to the cinema and bought a box of chocolates. I can still remember the fearful guilty thrill of watching Clara Bow oozing ‘It’ as I sank my teeth into a sumptuous peppermint cream.
