Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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young men can make damned fools of themselves over tarts.’ She paused to give me a kiss. ‘It’ll all come right,’ she said at last, and added with unexpected fierceness: ‘I’ll make it all come right.’
We were just embracing each other as if to crush out my misery when yet again the telephone started to ring.
III
The hospital chaplain was ringing to let me know that Desmond had awoken from the anaesthetic but could remember nothing about the assault; the policewoman stationed at his bedside had departed and the doctor had again recommended that my next visit to the hospital should not take place until the following morning.
‘I feel like murdering that instrument,’ said Lyle, eyeing the telephone as I replaced the receiver. ‘Leave it off the hook while we have dinner.’
Before I could answer, Michael and Dinkie descended from Lyle’s upstairs sitting-room and announced their intention of dining at Jock’s Box, the local lorry-drivers’ café, before departing for London – a statement which drew a wail of protest from Lyle who begged him to leave the long drive until the following day.
‘I’d like to,’ said Michael, ‘but all I can afford is Jock’s Box and the petrol to take us home. I’m not going to let Dad buy me off with a flash of his cheque-book after giving us such a bloody awful reception.’
At this point I decided it would be best for all concerned if I withdrew from the scene so I retired to the cloakroom and did not emerge until I heard the front door close. Returning to the kitchen I demanded: ‘Did he allow you to write the cheque?’
‘No, but as soon as you were out of the way dinner at La Belle Époque became affordable and he said they’d bed down at the nearest guest-house … Where’s your drink?’
Retrieving my glass from the cloakroom I sat down again at the kitchen table and drank in a morose silence while Lyle cooked a mixed grill.
Afterwards as she washed up I distracted myself by switching on the television and staring at the news. Mr Kosygin had received a cool welcome in Peking. Frightful things were happening as usual in Vietnam … I dozed, but it was hardly surprising that I was exhausted. Sexual intercourse was not, for a man of my age, the wisest activity to indulge in before trying to survive a diocesan disaster and a family débâcle.
‘Worn out?’ said Lyle as we toiled upstairs to bed.
But unfortunately my brief doze had revived me and my brain was active again. ‘I’m so worried about Desmond,’ I confessed. ‘I forgot to tell you that according to Dido he was seen recently in Piccadilly Circus with a young man in black learner.’
‘What absolute poppycock – a sexy young man in black leather would never look twice at poor old Desmond!’
‘Poor old Desmond … There’ll be a terrible interview when he’s well enough to discuss the future – if I’m not careful he’ll wind up utterly pulverised.’
‘Being pulverised is the least he deserves and I can’t see why you should wallow in agony about it. Just offer him a full pension and boot him out on the grounds of ill-health. Personally I think he’ll be damned lucky. In the old days he’d have been tried in the ecclesiastical courts and booted out with nothing.’
‘But I can’t help feeling I’ve failed him in some way –’
‘Rubbish! You took him on, didn’t you, when no one else would touch him? If anyone’s failed Desmond it’s Malcolm, never noticing that Desmond was coming apart at the seams!’
‘And who’s responsible for Malcolm?’
‘Charles, you cannot blame yourself for this disaster, I absolutely forbid it! Malcolm slipped up, that’s all, but anyone can make a mistake, even a first-class archdeacon. Now stop agonising, stop thinking about wretched Desmond and switch off. Shall I run your bath for you?’
‘Thank you,’ I said dryly, ‘but I think I still have enough strength to turn on the taps.’
I had a long hot bath and repeated over and over to myself my mantra: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God’. Then I tried to think about Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, but the thought of sexual laxness only reminded me of Michael and the moral wasteland of the 1960s and the horrible changes which were being made in the name of progress. Abolishing the grammar schools, ignoring coffee-bar hooliganism, showering publicity on gangsters like the Kray brothers, turning bad singers into idols, embracing American culture without discrimination (and what on earth was America getting up to in Vietnam anyway?), permitting mass-mockery of distinguished institutions, encouraging the destruction of moral standards, campaigning for the legalisation of homosexuality … I started thinking of Desmond again. Hauling myself out of the bath I opened the medicine cabinet to retrieve my indigestion tablets.
In my dressing-room I said my prayers and tried to meditate on a paragraph written by St Augustine, but my attention soon wandered. How would St Augustine have dealt with Desmond? No full pension rights in those days, no financial sop to offer a fallen brother-in-Christ, but would St Augustine have flinched from the prospect of a fearsome interview? Certainly not. Fortified by God’s grace and supremely confident in his ability to administer a Christian justice he would have faced Desmond without turning a hair.
Feeling episcopally inadequate I returned to the bedroom.
‘What was your meditation piece tonight?’ asked Lyle.
‘I chose a paragraph from The City of God.’
‘Splendid! That must have cheered you up,’ said Lyle with relief, and returned to her library book, a sex-offering by Françoise Sagan.
I picked up The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchinloss and began to toy with the fantasy of replacing the box in Desmond’s wardrobe so that he would never know I had discovered his pornography.
‘Can you really read that book upside down?’ enquired Lyle with interest.
‘No.’ I reversed the book before adding: ‘In the bath I was thinking about Hippolytus and Callistus. No doubt Hippolytus would have urged that Desmond be drummed out of the Church while Callistus would have made some excuse to keep him in.’
‘Callistus reminds me of Bishop Robinson being soppy about sex in Honest to God. Incidentally one of the women in the prayer-group said that excruciatingly boring book actually brought her to Christianity. Yet another example of how God moves in mysterious ways.’
I said vaguely: ‘I must hear about that prayer-group sometime,’ and putting aside my book I switched off the light on my side of the bed. ‘If Callistus were alive today,’ I remarked, ‘he’d be like that new bishop of Radbury, Leslie Sunderland. He has such an optimistic view of human nature that he believes everyone can be brought to Christian perfection by a rational outlook, a decent wage and the National Health Service. In fact when I see him tomorrow at my committee meeting I’m sure he’ll –’ I broke off and sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Ye gods and little fishes! I haven’t looked at those graphs which I have to present to the committee!’
‘Darling, SWITCH OFF. Leave all that until tomorrow – you can perfectly well study the graphs on the train to London. Do you want one of my sleeping pills?’
But I distrusted sleeping pills. They made me feel sluggish the next morning, and I needed my brain to be crystal clear from the moment I woke up. I tried to calm myself by another silent recitation of my mantra.
But I never derived much benefit from mantras. Too often I allowed my mind to drift away down theological avenues, and that night I started thinking of St Paul, writing ‘All things work together for good’ in his letter to the Romans – which had prompted Karl Barth to write his great commentary – which had led to Neo-Orthodox theology – which was a reaction to the liberal theology which had been prevalent before the First War – in which so much