Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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Michael had promised Lyle last Christmas that he would never call me a dinosaur again.
It was a pity he had not also promised to end his association with his American mistress. Miss Kauffman, whose first name (I cannot describe it as Christian) was Lurlene, had called herself Dinkie at an early age as the result of misunderstanding the slurred speech of her inebriated mother. The latter was supposed to have held out her empty glass with the plea: ‘Dinkie darling!’ and her offspring, obediently refilling the glass with gin, had not realised until much later that the word ‘Dinkie’ had referred to the drink. One always had to remember, when contemplating Miss Kauffman, that her early life had been far from ideal.
As she stood on my doorstep on that February evening in 1965 she could have been any age between eighteen and thirty, although she had taken care to tell Michael she was two years his junior. She had a figure which she was careful to expose in all weathers, and as soon as she took off her coat I saw that the hemline of her tight black skin lay well above her knees while the V-neck of her right black sweater plunged recklessly in the direction of her navel. In short, she looked like the tart she was, and Michael had been keeping her for some months at his flat in London. I had assumed in the beginning that he had picked her up on the street, but had learnt later to my astonishment that he had met her through his friend Marina Markhampton, the notorious young socialite whose grandmother, Lady Markhampton, was one of my neighbours in the Cathedral Close. Apparently Dinkie had once had a temporary job in the art gallery where Marina worked, and Marina, spotting someone who would amuse her fast set, had taken a fancy to her.
After the job in the art gallery had ceased, Dinkie had made no attempt to find other employment. Uneducated, culturally illiterate and vulgar beyond belief, she walked as if parodying Marilyn Monroe and spoke in a purring voice which injected even the most innocent statement with a sexual innuendo. Michael, of course, thought she was quite wonderful.
‘Hot news!’ he was exclaiming to Lyle, who by this time had joined us in the hall. ‘And I’ve gone AWOL from the Beeb for twenty-four hours to break it to you!’
‘We would have called you,’ purred Miss Dinkie, ‘but we wanted it to be a lovely, lovely surprise!’
I saw Lyle’s smile freeze. I myself was aware of shivering lightly, like a tree ruffled by a Siberian breeze, and as the chill of understanding smote me, Michael slipped his arm around Dinkie’s waist and announced in triumph: ‘We’re going to get married!’
I could almost hear Lyle thinking: over my dead body. But all she said in an emotional voice was: ‘Darling!’ This struck me as an immensely clever response, astonished, affectionate but committing her to nothing.
‘Well, well, well!’ I said, aching with rage behind my most charming smile. I tried and failed to utter some other banality, and Lyle, seeing I was in difficulties, immediately made the decision to ease me from the scene.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, Charles!’ she said to me. ‘Plunge down into the cellar and get the champagne! Now, Michael, take Dinkie into the drawing-room to get warm while I go into the kitchen to inspect the deep-freeze. We must all have a lavish dinner!’
This cunning manoeuvre enabled us to wind up together within seconds behind the closed kitchen door.
‘What on earth are we going to do?’ I was in despair.
‘Don’t worry, leave this entirely to me.’
‘I just can’t understand how he could possibly –’
‘There are two explanations: either he’s doing it to drive you round the bend – which doesn’t seem likely since you’ve done nothing lately to infuriate him – or else she’s got her claws sunk so deeply into him that he can’t work out how to shake her off and he’s come down here for help.’
‘You mean she might be pregnant?’
‘Good heavens, no, that type would never put her figure at risk! But she might have made Michael think she was.’
‘I suppose it’s just possible that she could be genuinely in love with him –’
‘Love? That sort of cheap floozie wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word! She’d think it meant having sex three times a day.’
‘But could Michael perhaps be genuinely in love with her?’
‘Don’t be idiotic, Charles – how could he be when he’s lived with her long enough to exhaust her very limited possibilities? Now don’t panic – this is what we do: first of all we serve champagne and exude charm. Then once the champagne’s disappeared I’ll bear Dinkie off to my sitting-room and – oh good heavens, there goes the doorbell again!’
‘That really must be Malcolm. Shall I –’
‘Yes, you whisk Malcolm into your study and I’ll tackle the love-birds single-handed. On second thoughts I can probably handle them better if you’re not there.’
We parted, she descending the cellar steps to fetch the champagne, I hurrying back across the hall. Once more I flung wide the door to welcome my archdeacon, and once more I found myself receiving a far from pleasant surprise.
My next visitor proved to be Dido Aysgarth, the wife of my enemy, the Dean.
IX
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