Читать книгу Absolute Truths - Susan Howatch - Страница 45

‘Who was that extraordinarily sexy priest?’ muttered Lyle, reappearing after I had parted from Hall at the front door.

‘Today’s English version of Elmer Gantry. He tells me the clergy in the Radbury diocese call Derek’s appalling successor Sunbeam.’

Lyle was still laughing when my lay-chaplain sped out of the office to waylay me. ‘Bishop, about those graphs –’

‘He’ll be with you in a moment, Roger,’ said Lyle, instantly becoming ruthless. ‘He has to have a word with Michael.’ And as I found myself being propelled towards the drawing-room door she added to me sotto voce: ‘Dinkie broke off the engagement this morning, thank God, and poor Michael felt so wretchedly upset that he came straight here for consolation after putting her on the train to London.’

‘You mean he really did want to marry her after all?’

‘No, no, no, of course he didn’t! Deep down he’s sick with relief that it’s all over, but just think for a moment how you’d feel if you’d taken endless trouble to try and “save” someone only to have her kick you in the teeth at the end of it! He’s absolutely mortified that he could have been so idiotic as to practise his idealism on a money-grubbing tart – apparently in the end she just said straight out that he wasn’t rich enough for her. Imagine that! I suppose she was simply too stupid to find a tactful excuse – oh, and talking of stupidity, don’t mention the phantom pregnancy. It turned out he colluded with that lie because it was the only reason he felt would justify me marriage.’

‘But if he didn’t want to marry her anyway –’

‘Well, of course for his pride’s sake he had to pretend that he did! Otherwise he’d have had to admit he’d been a perfect fool and allowed his idealism to lead him up the creek!’

‘But isn’t he having to admit that now? Surely he’s too humiliated to want to face me!’

‘That’s not the point. The point is that because he’s at such a dreadfully low ebb you have the golden opportunity to forge a new relationship by being kind and sympathetic and understanding, and if you dare slink off to London now without seeing him –’

‘All right, all right, all right?’

Terminating this feverish conversation, which had been conducted almost entirely in whispers, I resigned myself to my fate and ventured reluctantly into the drawing-room.

Sprawled on the sofa Michael was drinking black coffee and looking hungover. I noted that his long hair was uncombed, his face was unshaven and he wore no tie. My own father, presented with such a challenge to his standards, would have exclaimed: ‘What a debauched, decadent and downright disgraceful sight! Disgusting!’ but I thought my old friend Alan Romaine would have said gently: ‘You look a trifle wrecked, old chap. Anything I can do to help?’ I tried to keep Alan’s memory in the forefront of my mind as I faced Michael, but it had been Eric Ashworth, not Alan Romaine, who had brought me up and I found it very hard at that moment not to react like a strict Victorian father.

I cleared my throat. ‘You look a trifle wrecked, old chap,’ I said, carefully uttering the right words, but as I spoke I realised with horror that every syllabie vibrated with insincerity. The worst part of this débâcle was that I was genuinely desperate to show kindness, sympathy and understanding. It was just that I was quite incapable of articulating it.

‘Oh, you needn’t pretend you’re not thrilled to bits!’ said Michael exasperated. ‘God, how I detest the hypocrisy of the older generation!’

I struggled to repair my error. ‘Sorry,’ I said, finally managing to sound sincere. ‘I didn’t mean to hit such a false note. And yes – it’s true I’m glad the engagement’s off, but I’m genuinely sorry you’re upset.’

‘Balls! You’re delighted that I’ve got my comeuppance after months of fornication!’

‘I’m much more worried about the mess she may have left you in. Are you in debt?’

‘Well, I had to spend a bit of money on her, didn’t I? She always said money was the only thing that made her feel secure, money never let her down like people did. You see, when her parents’ marriage broke up she blamed herself and –’

‘How much do you owe?’

‘– and she’s been in a mess ever since really, okay, I know she was as dumb as a lobotomised kitten but I was prepared to overlook that because I thought she was really rather sweet underneath all her bloody awful hang-ups, and I thought that if only I could show her there was at least someone who cared, someone who was prepared to stand by her, she’d stop being so money-fixated but –’

‘I don’t want you getting bogged down in debt. If things are really bad –’

‘– but it turned out she’d only shacked up with me because she thought we were millionaires – she saw you as an aristocrat with a big house and a seat in the House of Lords and it never occurred to her that you were just an ordinary middle-class chap who lived rent-free in a Church house and only got the seat in the Lords as a perk which went with the job! Why do the Americans never understand the English class-system?’

‘Look, Michael, I think you’d better tell me how much you owe and then –’

‘You’re not listening to me, damn it! You never listen, do you? You never listen!’

‘I do listen, but all I hear is a lot of romantic adolescent drivel about how you made a fool of yourself in the worst possible way with a girl who was quite unworthy of you! Now answer my question: how deeply are you in debt?’

‘Your problem,’ said Michael furiously, ‘is that you can’t forgive me for having sex with her! Just because you haven’t had sex for years and have never in your life been lucky enough to make love to a steamy American sexpot –’

Lyle walked back into the room.

‘Darling,’ she said to Michael, ‘I’m so sorry your father keeps saying the wrong thing, but I assure you he does understand how horribly upset you feel now that Dinkie’s rejected all your heroic efforts to care for her. You do understand that, don’t you, Charles?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What your father really means, Michael – although he’s too worried about you to make himself clear – is that he hates to think you may be in debt as the result of all your praiseworthy idealism, and he wants to do all he can to help. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Charles?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But Mum –’

‘Hold on, darling, I must get your father launched on the journey to London. Charles, you must have a word with Roger about those graphs – thank you so much for insisting on seeing Michael before you left.’

Battered and baffled I retreated to the hall.

Instantly I was waylaid by my lay-chaplain with a sheaf of papers. ‘Bishop, I really am worried by these graphs I got from the Education minister – I can’t make sense of them at all, and although I’ve had them xeroxed for the committee, I honestly think it might be better to leave them out. On the other hand, if you leave them out paragraph 19(b) of the report becomes incomprehensible, so –’

‘I’ll sort everything out on the train,’ I said, relieving him of the papers as Miss Peabody appeared at my elbow.

‘Oh Bishop, I do apologise for Father Hall’s invasion, but he was so persuasive and so obviously a gentleman –’

‘I thought he looked like an assassin,’ said Roger, unable to resist taking a swipe at Miss Peabody’s cast-iron snobbery.

‘I thought he looked like Heathcliff,’ said the typist, passing by with a mug of coffee.

Edward my priest-chaplain erupted from the office. ‘Bishop, I’ve got Lord Flaxton on the phone – he says he’s discovered that the new vicar of Flaxton Pauncefoot is a member of CND, and he wants to know how you could have licensed a pacifist to work in the diocese. He says the man’s probably a KGB agent.’

‘Don’t get diverted, Charles,’ said Lyle, emerging from the cloakroom with my hat and coat.

Edward, who was new to his job, demanded wildly: ‘Is Lord Flaxton nuts?’

‘Eccentric,’ said Lyle, stuffing me into my coat.

‘But what shall I say to him, Bishop? He’s absolutely livid – breathing fire –’

‘Suggest he has a drink with me at the House of Lords next week.’

‘Here, Bishop,’ said Roger, taking the papers back from me, shoving them into my briefcase and thrusting the briefcase into my arms all within the space of five seconds.

‘Togs for Church House,’ said Lyle, passing me the bag containing my formal episcopal uniform. ‘Darling, I’ll drive you to the station – you don’t have time to search for a parking space.’

‘I’ve got a feeling there was something else I had to say to Edward …’

‘He’s gone back to be beaten up by Lord Flaxton,’ said Roger before I could digest that Edward had vanished from the hall. ‘Do you want him to visit Father Wilton in hospital?’

‘Ah – Desmond, yes, that was it – tell Edward to get hold of the hospital chaplain and explain that Desmond likes to receive the sacrament daily –’

‘Bishop, you’ve run out of time,’ said Miss Peabody, and for one bizarre moment I felt I had been sentenced to a most unpleasant eternity. ‘You must leave at once.’

But another thought had occurred to me. ‘– and tell him to phone Malcolm Lindsay to say we may not need to trouble Bishop Farr about a locum for St Paul’s –’

‘Come on, Charles!’ Lyle was chafing by the front door.

But still I hesitated, my mind refastening on Desmond as it belatedly occurred to me that he might be in no fit spiritual state to receive the sacrament. I told myself firmly that he would always repent of his sins and pray for the grace to do better, but still I was gnawed by doubt. A repentance which did not include confessing his renewed taste for pornography could hardly be construed as acceptable … I started to worry that in my desire to be a compassionate pastor I had been inexcusably sentimental and slack as a father-in-God.

‘Do you have a locum in mind, Bishop?’

‘That man Hall who was here earlier. Tell the Archdeacon – no, on second thoughts I’d better tell him myself –’

‘Charles,’ said Lyle, ‘do you really want to miss both your train and your lunch with Jack at the Athenaeum?’

She finally managed to detach me from the South Canonry.