Читать книгу Absolute Truths - Susan Howatch - Страница 29

No one knew why Aysgarth, a clergyman riddled with ambition, had jeopardised his career in 1945 in order to marry an eccentric society woman whose one talent was to offend the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of time at any social gathering burdened by her presence, but Lyle had long since decided that he had been temporarily unhinged by sex. However, I had never been satisfied by this prosaic explanation because I had never been able to regard Dido as sexually attractive. She had a flat chest and legs like matchsticks; it was fortunate that she was now too old to risk following the current fashion of revealing the knees. Her bumpy nose, broken as the result of a hunting accident in her youth, was set in a face where other irregular features conjured up images of nutcrackers and hatchets. But having catalogued her bad points, let me hastily add that she dressed in excellent taste and always looked exceedingly smart. Let me also add, to do her justice, that her brain, although untrained by a formal education in a school, was razor-sharp. Finally I must praise her loyalty to her husband and admire the fact that even in the most adverse circumstances her devotion to him had never wavered.

‘Charles my dear!’ she exclaimed, sweeping over the threshold before I could even open my mouth to invite her in. ‘Do forgive me for dropping in on you without warning, but as soon as I heard the ghastly news about Desmond Wilton – that peculiar woman Miss Baines phoned me to say she found the body – well, no, to be strictly accurate I must confess it was Tommy Fitzgerald she phoned – you know she’s his charlady – but I happened to be calling on Tommy at the time to discuss the arrangements for feeding the visiting choir after the St Matthew Passion, and as he was making tea when the phone rang I answered it – the phone, I mean – and of course Miss Baines recognised my voice because I sorted out her varicose veins with the hospital after they tried to tell her there was a two-year waiting list –’

‘Come into the study, Dido. Can I offer you a drink?’

‘No, no, quite unnecessary, thank you – was that Michael’s car I saw parked in the drive?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact –’

‘I can’t imagine why young men like sports cars, so draughty in winter, but Michael’s only twenty-four, isn’t he – or is it twenty-five? – and still has quite a lot of growing up to do, I daresay, particularly in regard to women – and quite frankly, Charles, if I may be absolutely candid – and as you know, I’m famed for my candour – if one of my stepsons was mixed up with a foreign drug-addict I’d put my foot down in the firmest possible way – but of course you’re trying to be Christian, aren’t you, which is always so terribly difficult, just as Browning says in the poem. Well, as I was saying –’

‘Do sit down, Dido.’

‘No, I won’t stay, Charles, I mustn’t interrupt your family gathering for more than a minute, but I felt I simply had to tell you, as soon as I heard the news about poor dear Desmond, that I have it on the best authority from a very good friend in London that she saw Desmond at Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night last month, and of course you know what that means, don’t you, because no respectable person would normally be seen dead in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night.’

‘In that case what was your friend doing there?’

‘She’d just left a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.’

‘Maybe Desmond was also emerging from an evening at the theatre.’

‘Not with a young man in black leather, my dear. And my friend, who only wears glasses for reading and who met Desmond years ago when she did charity work for his East End mission – my friend tells me they were less than fifty yards from the public lavatories.’

‘My dear Dido!’

‘I’m only speaking with the welfare of the Church in mind, Charles, and of course we all know Desmond was thrown out of the London diocese after being convicted of soliciting in a public lavatory –’

‘He was not convicted. He was arrested along with the drunk who took a swipe at him, but he wasn’t charged and the incident isn’t generally known. I don’t know who could have told you about it, but –’

‘Oh my dear, we all know, I can’t think how you convinced yourself that you could ever keep that kind of fact a secret, and to be absolutely candid, Charles, I can’t imagine how you ever dared take him on, particularly since you’re so rabid on the subject of homosexuals –’

I tried to repudiate this slander but there was no chance. Dido had merely paused to draw a quick breath and had no intention of being interrupted.

‘– but of course I do realise how soft you are on clergymen who have had nervous breakdowns, and the softness is your way of compensating, isn’t it, for that utterly ruthless line you take on immorality – no, no, don’t think I’m criticising you, my dear, quite the reverse, thank God at least one bishop takes a strong stand against immorality, that’s what I say! I’ve no time for all this silly permissiveness, and I said right from the beginning that Bishop John Robinson was up the creek when he spouted all that rubbish about a New Morality and gave silly young girls the scope to wreck their lives and go down the drain – and talking of going down the drain, I do hope poor dear Desmond can be eased into retirement as soon as possible, because choirboys will be the next step, won’t it, and then you’ll wish you’d acted as soon as you knew he’d been seen in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night with a young man dressed in black leather. And talking of black leather –’

The door of the study opened and in walked Lyle.

‘Dido!’ she exclaimed. ‘I heard your voice as I came out of the kitchen – how sweet of you to call, but you must excuse Charles now because Michael’s paid us a surprise visit and they’re dying to talk to each other.’

Almost panting with relief I escaped into the hall only to realise that the last person I wanted to face at that moment was Michael. I was still inwardly shuddering as the result of Dido’s reference to a ‘foreign drug-addict’, for I had long lived in fear that Michael, moving in Marina Markhampton’s fast London set, would dabble in drugs and wreck his respectable future with the BBC. I wondered what evidence Dido had for labelling Dinkie a drug-addict, but unfortunately I could not reassure myself with the thought that this was another remark generated by Dido’s taste for exaggeration. Dido could well know more about Dinkie than I did. Her two eldest stepsons – the sons of Aysgarth’s first marriage – also belonged to Marina Markhampton’s set, and although they were both now married they often visited their father’s home and could well have talked frankly about Marina’s less presentable friends.

I was still trying to convince myself that Michael was no more likely than Christian or Norman Aysgarth to dabble in drugs, when the doorbell rang yet again. Hardly daring to respond I eased the door open six inches and peered out to identify my next visitor.

It was Malcolm.

‘Thank God!’ I said sincerely, and scooped him across the threshold.