Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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enlightenment mean you’ll stop feeling queasy whenever anyone cites the quotation: “All things work together for good to them that love God”?’
‘No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote – which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’
‘It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’
‘It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’
Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamorous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black leather boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.
Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was no doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for out of my private income and now periodically triggering pangs of guilt that I should be living in such luxury while the majority of my clergy shivered in icy vicarages.
‘Isn’t the central heating turned up rather high?’ I said conscience-stricken to Lyle.
‘Certainly not!’ came the robust reply. ‘Bishops need to be warm in order to function properly.’
I thought Hippolytus would have made a very acid comment on this statement, but of course he had not been obliged to endure the numbing effect of an English February. Fleetingly I pictured Bishop Callistus toasting himself without guilt in front of a brazier of hot coals as he planned his next compassionate sermon to adulterers.
Our bedroom at the South Canonry faced the front of the house, and from the windows we could see beyond the huge beech-tree by the gate and across the Choir School’s playing-field to the southern side of the Cathedral: the roof of the octagonal chapter house was clearly visible above the quadrangle formed by the cloisters, and beyond this roof the central tower rose high above the nave to form the base of the spire.
‘Why are you gazing glassy-eyed at the curtains?’
‘I was thinking of the Cathedral beyond them. Since you’ve just apologised for throwing the ashtray at me all those years ago, let me now apologise for wanting our bedroom to face the back garden when we moved here.’
‘Thank you, darling. But of course I realised that was because you were slightly neurotic about Starbridge at the time. Imagine wanting to face a boring old back garden when you had the chance to face one of the architectural wonders of Europe!’
I laughed dutifully at the memory of this foolishness.
In contrast to the tropical temperature generated by the new heating system the bedroom presented a cool, austere appearance. The modern furniture was white; my wardrobe and tallboy, inherited from my father, stood in my dressing-room next door. Lyle had chosen the white furniture, just as she had chosen the ice-blue curtains and the wintry grey carpet. At first I had thought: how cold! But soon I had realised that the coldness became erotic when it formed the background for Lyle’s collection of nightwear. Lyle had never adjusted her wardrobe to her advancing years. Having kept her figure she had no trouble buying exactly what she liked, and what she liked had changed little since I had first met her. During the day she wore simple, elegant suits and dresses in chaste, muted colours and looked like a very exclusive executive secretary – or perhaps like a grand version of the lady’s companion she had been in the 1930s when she had run the palace so efficiently for the Jardines. But at night the air of propriety was discarded and amazing creations foamed and frothed from the ice-white wardrobe. Then indeed my pity for the celibate bishops of the Early Church knew no bounds.
‘What would I do,’ I said as I slid between the sheets, ‘if you weighed twelve stone and wore flannel nightgowns and had hair like corrugated iron?’
‘Die of boredom. And what would I do if you were bald and paunchy and looked like an elderly baby?’
‘I’m sure you’d find some stimulating solution.’
An amusing interlude followed. I find it curious that it should be so widely believed that no one over sixty can possibly be interested in sexual intercourse, and I find it well-nigh scandalous that so many people today still believe that Christianity is against sex. Christianity has certainly experienced bouts of thinking that there are better ways of occupying one’s time – in the Early Church, for instance, when the end of the world was believed to be imminent, procreation was inevitably regarded as a self-indulgent escape from the far more urgent task of saving souls – but today it is generally recognised among Christians that sexual intercourse is good. It is the abuse of sexual intercourse which causes all the problems and which prompts Christians like me to speak up in the hope of saving people from being exploited, tormented and wrecked. At Cambridge my undergraduates had nicknamed me ‘Anti-Sex Ashworth’, but no sobriquet could have been more inappropriate. I may be an ardent moralist but I put a high value on sex – which explains why I am an ardent moralist. I detest the fact that this great gift from God is regularly devalued and degraded.
‘St Paul should have had sex regularly,’ said Lyle later as we lit our cigarettes.
‘Why have you got your knife into St Paul all of a sudden?’
‘He was beastly to women and queers.’
‘That’s a highly debatable statement. If one takes into account that some of the Epistles weren’t written by him –’
‘What would St Paul have said to the woman in my prayer-group who broke down last week and told us her son was deeply in love with another man?’
‘I’m sure he’d have been extremely kind to her.’
‘But she doesn’t want mere kindness, Charles, least of all for herself! She wants her son to be accepted, particularly by the Church. She says: is it right that a promiscuous homosexual can confess to an error and receive absolution while two homosexuals who practise fidelity in a loving relationship are barred from receiving the sacrament?’
‘She’s mistaken in assuming that a promiscuous homosexual would automatically receive absolution. I certainly wouldn’t absolve anyone I thought intended to continue committing buggery in public lavatories.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Also I don’t think you should lose sight of the law of the land. Homosexual acts are illegal. You surely can’t expect the Church to condone law-breaking en masse!’
‘But what are ordinary, law-abiding homosexuals supposed to do, Charles, if they have no gift for chastity? After all, most heterosexual men find chastity quite beyond them – how would you yourself manage if I ran off and left you on your own?’
‘I’d run after you and haul you back.’
‘What