Читать книгу Ultimate Prizes - Susan Howatch - Страница 29

The clasp lasted three seconds. Then, releasing her, I found myself muttering idiotically: ‘Sorry. Most unedifying. Thoroughly unseemly,’ and those adjectives, so well-worn by an earlier generation of clergymen, added an air of bathos to my horrified reaction; with a few antique words it seemed I had turned a silly slip into melodrama. Finally, to pile indignity upon indignity, I began to blush, and turning my back on Dido I grabbed my Bible from the parapet of the wishing-well. I instinctively knew that my hands should be fully occupied before they succumbed to a second catastrophic urge to wander.

‘Dearest Stephen!’ said Dido enthralled. ‘Why on earth are you apologizing? I can’t see anything wrong with an affectionate hand-clasp between friends!’

All I could say was: ‘You promised not to call me by that name.’ I was still unable to look at her.

‘Archdeacon dear, please don’t be so upset! Of course I adore you passionately, but why should sex ruin our beautiful friendship? I’d never go to bed with any man unless I was married to him, and as I can’t marry you, you’re absolutely safe. Meanwhile you can have no possible desire to go to bed with me – how could you when your wife’s so much prettier and nicer than I am? – so that takes care of beastly old sex, doesn’t it, and leaves us free to enjoy our glorious romantic friendship as you guide me along my spiritual way!’

‘Miss Tallent,’ I said, ‘before I met you I’d have thought it impossible that a woman should be both very sophisticated and very naïve. May I congratulate you on achieving such a remarkable paradox? But I’m afraid the time has come when you must set your naïvety aside.’

‘Oh, I adore it when you’re being so stern and austere! Now Archdeacon dear, stop looking as if you’d like to spank me and calm down for a moment. I’m not in the least naïve; I’m the last word in down-to-earth common sense. If I don’t misbehave with you – and I’ve no intention of doing anything which would wreck our beautiful friendship – how can you misbehave with me? Adultery’s a two-way street.’

I cleared my throat. ‘Not entirely. Theologically speaking –’

‘Oh good, I did so hope there’d be a fascinating theological angle – how delicious!’

‘Miss Tallent –’

‘Dearest Archdeacon, don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone now so that you can glue together your shattered nerves, and I shall keep a chaste distance from you for the rest of the weekend, but when you get home do write and explain all the theological aspects of adultery!’

‘I won’t have time. I’m leaving on Wednesday for my holiday in the Lake District.’

‘Will you send me a postcard?’

‘No, that would be quite improper.’

‘But you’ll pray for me!’

I said in a voice of steel: ‘I pray regularly for all the souls in my care,’ but to my horror I realized I was smiling at her.

‘Well, so long as God’s brought into the situation we can’t go far wrong, can we?’ said Dido, smiling radiantly in return.

‘I think you’d better leave, Miss Tallent, before I really do give way to the urge to spank you.’

With a laugh she danced away from me across the rose garden.