Mystical Paths. Susan Howatch
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so close to Cambridge the monks there are well accustomed to helping clever men who have lost touch with their souls.’
‘I don’t think he’s lost touch with his soul. He just wants advice on shaping his future.’
‘When someone talks about reaching a dead end you can be certain his soul’s well out of reach of his fingertips,’ said my father tartly, and pottered off to his little kitchen to prepare Whitby’s evening fish.
I was so embarrassed by my failure to secure Christian an audience that I made no attempt to contact him, but in September, just as I was preparing to return to Cambridge for my final year, I received a phone call from his friend Perry Palmer in London.
‘I’m throwing a party on the Saturday after next,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Any chance you’ll be able to come? Marina and the gang will be there so you won’t be entirely marooned among old fogeys in their mid-thirties like me.’
I felt sure Christian had prompted the invitation. ‘Thanks, Perry,’ I said. ‘Great.’ As an afterthought I added warily: ‘Elizabeth Aysgarth won’t be there, will she?’ but Perry answered with a laugh: ‘No, I don’t go in for nymphets!’
I then had to work out where I could stay the night. On previous visits to London I had stayed with the Fordite monks in the guest-wing of their headquarters near Marble Arch, but I knew from past experience that the guest-master became stroppy if I stayed out late. I decided I was tired of stroppy guest-masters, tired of my father behaving as if London were one big moral cesspit, tired of being treated as anything less than a fully-grown adult male.
‘I’ll stay with one of my friends,’ I said to my father.
‘That’s not acceptable to me, Nicholas. If you’ve got to go to London, you must stay with the monks.’
‘But that’s such a pain in the neck!’
We eyed each other balefully. This was the danger zone where the generation gap yawned and my desire to be independent in the manner of the 1960s clashed with my father’s antiquated ideas about what was proper for a young man of twenty.
‘If you refuse to stay with the Fordites,’ said my father, ‘then you must stay with Martin. He’ll look after you.’
‘I don’t need looking after! Maybe I’ll cadge a corner in Michael Ashworth’s pad – surely you can’t object if I stay with a bishop’s son!’
‘You may stay with Charley but not with Michael,’ said my father, who had somehow found out that Michael had been chucked out of medical school for laying every nurse in sight. ‘However, I must say that I don’t approve of this modern habit of scrounging hospitality, and in my opinion you should always wait to be invited before you turn up on a friend’s doorstep and put him to a certain amount of inconvenience. With members of one’s family, of course, it’s different. They have a duty to provide for you, but even so, a thoughtful, unselfish man will be scrupulous in trying not to impose himself on any household merely in order to make his life easier.’
Hopeless old Victorian. ‘People are more casual nowadays, Father.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed the decline in good manners over the last half-century. Now, Nicholas, why don’t you approach Martin before you approach Charley? I’d really feel much happier if –’
‘The last thing I’m going to do is stay with that old creep!’
Bad move, Nicholas. Bad, bad move. But the old man was driving me up the wall. Taking a deep breath I tried to grab some patience out of thin air. Mustn’t upset the old boy. If he had a stroke and died –
‘Father, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude, the words just sort of slipped out, but you see, Martin and I … well, I mean … okay, I know we’ve got you in common and I know he’s a good son, coming down here regularly and gushing all over you, and I’m sure you’re right when you say he has many fine qualities, but … he’s so old, you see, and not quite my sort of person, and –’ I stopped before saying the words ‘I can’t stand him’ but my father heard them anyway as they flashed across my mind.
‘I’m extremely disappointed by that speech,’ he said in the kind of voice priests use for funerals. ‘You’ve upset me very, very much.’
I wanted to smash something. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’ But I knew as I spoke that there was only one way of putting things right. Off I sloped to telephone my half-brother.
‘Don’t worry, Martin, I’m sure it’s quite impossible – I know how busy you are –’
‘Not too busy to help you out.’
‘I’ve refused to stay with the Fordites because they don’t understand about late-night parties, and Father said I had to stay at your flat, but since I wouldn’t dream of foisting myself on you –’
‘Foist away.’
‘– there’s no need for you to issue an invitation. I just have to tell Father, you see, that I’ve approached you but you can’t help. Okay, Martin, sorry to have troubled you, ’bye.’
I then phoned Charley-the-Prig Ashworth, who had been ordained that summer and was now working at St Mary’s church in Mayfair.
‘I hate to make demands on your Christian charity, Charley,’ I said, ‘but can I sleep on your floor on Saturday week?’
‘Of course you can! I admit it is a little tricky because we’ll have four student Christians from Africa staying in the curates’ flat then, but I’m sure we can find you a quiet corner somewhere –’
I didn’t fancy student Christians from anywhere. ‘It’s okay, Charley, I’ll try Michael.’ I could always insist to my father that Michael had turned over a new leaf.
‘I don’t think you’d be terribly welcome there, old chap. He’s got a new girlfriend who always seems to be around to answer the phone. Talks with an American accent and sounds as if she can’t wait to be censored by the Lord Chamberlain.’
‘Gosh, not Dinkie!’
‘You know her?’ Charley was suddenly very cool.
‘She’s a friend of Marina Markhampton’s.’
‘Honestly, Nick, I think you ought to watch it – that’s a very fast crowd. Look, come and stay at the flat – you can have my bed. I’ll kip down with the Africans in the living-room.’
The thought of being ‘saved’ by this evangelical crusader of unimpeachable virtue was enough to make me want to puke.
‘No, don’t worry, Charley, I’ll go to the Fordites.’ I phoned Martin again. ‘Sorry to keep bothering you, but –’
‘– but the old man’s putting on his crucified look and you’re at your wits’ end.’
‘Don’t you speak of my father like that!’ I yelled, finally driven to the luxury of venting my rage.
‘He’s my father too, you know! Look, sonny, I don’t know what your problem is, but –’
‘Stop talking to me as if I was six!’
‘Then stop behaving as if you were two! I’ll see you on Saturday week – let me know what time you’ll be arriving,’ said Martin, and hung up.
I decided I loathed everyone over thirty. Then I remembered Christian and amended thirty to forty. After that decision I found myself wondering how Michael had managed to convert Dinkie into his live-in telephone receptionist. Did his father know? And what could the Bishop have said once he had recovered from his apoplectic fit? Was it possible that Michael could pass Dinkie off as a ‘nice girl’ and take her home to the South Canonry for visits? But no, Dinkie couldn’t be passed off as anything but a siren, and Uncle Charles, being a man of