Scandalous Risks. Susan Howatch
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o’clock that evening the dread words tripped off her tongue I waited until she had finished her sentence and then immediately asked if I could have a bath. Half an hour later I was stretched out on the Put-U-Up sofa, now transformed into a bed, and tuning into Radio Luxemburg on my transistor.
‘Good heavens, Vinnie!’ exclaimed Primrose, appearing crossly in curlers as I was smoking a final cigarette and wriggling my toes in time to Elvis Presley. ‘You’re not still listening to that drivel, are you? I can’t understand why you’re so keen on pop music!’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You’re not fundamentally interested in sex.’
‘Honestly, Venetia! What a thing to say!’ She flounced back to her bedroom.
Elvis quivered on vibrantly. As I stubbed out my cigarette I wondered – not for the first time – if anyone would ever invite me to have sexual intercourse, but it seemed like a forlorn hope. Switching off the transistor I pulled the bed-clothes over my head and allowed myself to shed a single furious tear of despair.
III
Easter was the following weekend. In the interval I loafed, smoked and vegetated, unwilling to think deeply about the future and telling myself I needed a few days of absolute rest in order to recuperate from the horrors of London life. I did toy with the idea of reading Honest to God but the desire to escape from my problems by being intellectually mindless was so strong that I could only reread Primrose’s childhood collection of Chalet School books.
Finally I was roused from my torpor by the spectacle of Easter in a great cathedral. I avoided the Good Friday services but attended matins on Sunday morning and was rewarded when Aysgarth preached a most interesting sermon about how Christianity was all set to undergo a dynamic resurrection, recast and restated for the modern age. The Bishop, who was ensconced in his cathedra at one end of the choir, spent much time gazing up at the east window as if he were wondering how it could possibly be cleaned.
The next day Aysgarth was obliged to supervise the conclusion of the special services, but on Tuesday he was free to depart for the Hebrides; he and Eddie planned to drive to Heathrow airport and leave the car in the long-term car-park. At half-past eight that morning after Primrose had departed for her office I wandered across the courtyard of the stables to say goodbye to him, but no sooner had I entered the house by the side-door than I heard Dido’s voice, throbbing with emotion, in the hall. Automatically I stopped dead. I was still well out of sight beyond the stairs.
‘… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I absolutely swore I wouldn’t break down like this, but I do so wish you were coming to Leicestershire – I know horses bore you, but you could read quietly in the library and –’
‘Darling –’
‘– and at least you’d be there. I just think it’s so sad for Elizabeth and Pip that we’re never together on our own as a family –’
‘But that’s not true!’
‘Not on our own, Stephen – there’s always someone from your first marriage there – all right, we won’t talk of Primrose, but it just seems so wrong that we’re not going to be together –’
‘But when Lord Starmouth offered me the lodge the first thing I did was ask you to come with me!’
‘How could I when I’m ill every time I try to go in a plane?’
‘I was quite prepared to go overland, but since you were adamant that nothing would induce you to go to the Hebrides –’
‘I thought you’d back down and come to Leicestershire. I never dreamed you’d run off instead with Primrose and Eddie and – my God! – Venetia –’
‘What’s wrong with Venetia? Isn’t she Primrose’s best friend and the daughter of one of my own oldest friends?’
‘I don’t give a damn who she is, that girl’s sly, not to be trusted, a trouble-maker –’
‘My dearest, I really don’t think this conversation does you justice –’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just that I feel so depressed, so alone, so utterly abandoned –’
There was a silence. I guessed he had been driven to silence her with an embrace. Pressing my back against the wall of the passage I held my breath and waited until at last she said tearfully: ‘How I hate separations!’
‘I’ll write every day.’
‘If only there was a phone at this stupid place –’
‘I’ll try and phone from the nearest village.’
‘Promise?’
‘Of course I promise.’
‘Oh Stephen …’ Another silence elapsed before Aysgarth said abruptly: ‘Here’s Eddie with the car. Quick, take my handkerchief and dry your eyes – where are the children?’
‘I don’t know … Elizabeth! Pip! Your father’s leaving!’
At once I slipped silently away.
IV
Primrose and I began our journey north twenty-four hours later after the day-long diocesan conference of the Young Christians for Peace, an event which Primrose had helped to organise and which apparently could not take place without her. Primrose had always been an enthusiastic organiser. She had acquired the taste for power when she had become a Girl Guide leader, and since then the local branches of the Student Christian Movement, the Bible Reading Fellowship, the Missions to Africa Fund and the Inter-Faith League had all benefited from her efficient interference.
‘You really ought to get interested in some worthwhile cause, Venetia!’ she exclaimed as she returned, flushed with triumph, from her conference. ‘If I were to do nothing but read dated schoolgirl books, watch television and listen to Radio Lux., I’d go mad in no time!’
I refrained from argument; I was all for a quiet life, and since I was a guest in her flat I had a moral obligation to be docile, but I realised then that Mrs Ashworth had been correct in deducing that Primrose and I had reached the parting of the ways.
Meanwhile we had to go on holiday together. Driving to Heathrow in my MG we caught a late-morning flight to Glasgow and arrived in the town of Stornoway, the capital of the Outer Hebrides, in the middle of the afternoon. Although it was the largest settlement on the island of Lewis and Harris, the town was small and the airport was primitive. On stepping out of the little plane I felt a soft damp wind on my cheek. A vast vista of white clouds and green treeless wastes stretched before me, but when I had an immediate impression not of desolation but of peace I realised my mood of torpor was at last beginning to dissolve.
‘There’s Eddie,’ said Primrose.
Eddie’s ungainly figure was clad in the English holiday uniform of grey trousers, a casual shirt and a tweed jacket, but he still managed to look like a foreigner; the uniform was much too well-tailored. He was driving a hired car, a faded white Morris which had seen better days but which bucketed along the narrow roads with surprising spirit. Lewis, I realised as I stared out of the window later at Harris, was the tame, domesticated part of the island. Harris was all bare hills and sinister peat-bogs and glowering little lakes with hardly a croft in sight. Yet I was intrigued. It seemed light years away from London, and beyond the village of Tarbert we appeared to leave civilisation behind completely. A single-track road adorned with the occasional hardy weed wound through brutal hills. Now and then the sea was visible as a lurid strip of midnight blue. Squalls of rain swooped down from the hills and swept away along the coast. Rainbows appeared fleetingly during improbable bursts of sunshine. The car groaned but battled on. I began to be excited.
‘Is there really anything at the end of this road, Eddie?’
‘Wait and see!’ He pulled