Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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a pause I said in my most neutral voice: ‘Really.’ But before I could say more we were interrupted – to my relief – by the buzzer of the intercom.
‘You must leave for the station in twenty minutes, Bishop,’ intoned Miss Peabody, ‘and don’t forget that you still have to talk to Roger about the government’s education graphs.’
‘Thank you.’ I replaced the receiver. Well, Mr Hall,’ I said, rising to my feet. ‘I confess this has been an interesting interview – and certainly, despite your marital status, I wouldn’t object to engaging you on a temporary basis as a locum, but –’
‘Thank you so much, Bishop, I knew I could rely on you to be flexible. Now, I’d only need about twenty minutes to explain my. plans for the healing centre, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a slot for me in your diary, particularly since I can come back here at any hour of the day or night –’
There was a tap on the door and Lyle peeped in. ‘Excuse me, Charles, but Michael’s here again. Could you have a quick word with him before you rush off to London?’
I immediately wanted Hall to expound for twenty minutes on his healing centre.
Meanwhile Hall himself was saying rapidly: ‘I’ll see Miss Peabody, shall I, to fix a time when I can come back?’
As I heard myself consenting docilely to this suggestion, it occurred to me to wonder if I had been hypnotised.
III
‘Who was that extraordinarily sexy priest?’ muttered Lyle, reappearing after I had parted from Hall at the front door.
‘Today’s English version of Elmer Gantry. He tells me the clergy in the Radbury diocese call Derek’s appalling successor Sunbeam.’
Lyle was still laughing when my lay-chaplain sped out of the office to waylay me. ‘Bishop, about those graphs –’
‘He’ll be with you in a moment, Roger,’ said Lyle, instantly becoming ruthless. ‘He has to have a word with Michael.’ And as I found myself being propelled towards the drawing-room door she added to me sotto voce: ‘Dinkie broke off the engagement this morning, thank God, and poor Michael felt so wretchedly upset that he came straight here for consolation after putting her on the train to London.’
‘You mean he really did want to marry her after all?’
‘No, no, no, of course he didn’t! Deep down he’s sick with relief that it’s all over, but just think for a moment how you’d feel if you’d taken endless trouble to try and “save” someone only to have her kick you in the teeth at the end of it! He’s absolutely mortified that he could have been so idiotic as to practise his idealism on a money-grubbing tart – apparently in the end she just said straight out that he wasn’t rich enough for her. Imagine that! I suppose she was simply too stupid to find a tactful excuse – oh, and talking of stupidity, don’t mention the phantom pregnancy. It turned out he colluded with that lie because it was the only reason he felt would justify me marriage.’
‘But if he didn’t want to marry her anyway –’
‘Well, of course for his pride’s sake he had to pretend that he did! Otherwise he’d have had to admit he’d been a perfect fool and allowed his idealism to lead him up the creek!’
‘But isn’t he having to admit that now? Surely he’s too humiliated to want to face me!’
‘That’s not the point. The point is that because he’s at such a dreadfully low ebb you have the golden opportunity to forge a new relationship by being kind and sympathetic and understanding, and if you dare slink off to London now without seeing him –’
‘All right, all right, all right?’
Terminating this feverish conversation, which had been conducted almost entirely in whispers, I resigned myself to my fate and ventured reluctantly into the drawing-room.
Sprawled on the sofa Michael was drinking black coffee and looking hungover. I noted that his long hair was uncombed, his face was unshaven and he wore no tie. My own father, presented with such a challenge to his standards, would have exclaimed: ‘What a debauched, decadent and downright disgraceful sight! Disgusting!’ but I thought my old friend Alan Romaine would have said gently: ‘You look a trifle wrecked, old chap. Anything I can do to help?’ I tried to keep Alan’s memory in the forefront of my mind as I faced Michael, but it had been Eric Ashworth, not Alan Romaine, who had brought me up and I found it very hard at that moment not to react like a strict Victorian father.
I cleared my throat. ‘You look a trifle wrecked, old chap,’ I said, carefully uttering the right words, but as I spoke I realised with horror that every syllabie vibrated with insincerity. The worst part of this débâcle was that I was genuinely desperate to show kindness, sympathy and understanding. It was just that I was quite incapable of articulating it.
‘Oh, you needn’t pretend you’re not thrilled to bits!’ said Michael exasperated. ‘God, how I detest the hypocrisy of the older generation!’
I struggled to repair my error. ‘Sorry,’ I said, finally managing to sound sincere. ‘I didn’t mean to hit such a false note. And yes – it’s true I’m glad the engagement’s off, but I’m genuinely sorry you’re upset.’
‘Balls! You’re delighted that I’ve got my comeuppance after months of fornication!’
‘I’m much more worried about the mess she may have left you in. Are you in debt?’
‘Well, I had to spend a bit of money on her, didn’t I? She always said money was the only thing that made her feel secure, money never let her down like people did. You see, when her parents’ marriage broke up she blamed herself and –’
‘How much do you owe?’
‘– and she’s been in a mess ever since really, okay, I know she was as dumb as a lobotomised kitten but I was prepared to overlook that because I thought she was really rather sweet underneath all her bloody awful hang-ups, and I thought that if only I could show her there was at least someone who cared, someone who was prepared to stand by her, she’d stop being so money-fixated but –’
‘I don’t want you getting bogged down in debt. If things are really bad –’
‘– but it turned out she’d only shacked up with me because she thought we were millionaires – she saw you as an aristocrat with a big house and a seat in the House of Lords and it never occurred to her that you were just an ordinary middle-class chap who lived rent-free in a Church house and only got the seat in the Lords as a perk which went with the job! Why do the Americans never understand the English class-system?’
‘Look, Michael, I think you’d better tell me how much you owe and then –’
‘You’re not listening to me, damn it! You never listen, do you? You never listen!’
‘I do listen, but all I hear is a lot of romantic adolescent drivel about how you made a fool of yourself in the worst possible way with a girl who was quite unworthy of you! Now answer my question: how deeply are you in debt?’
‘Your problem,’ said Michael furiously, ‘is that you can’t forgive me for having sex with her! Just because you haven’t had sex for years and have never in your life been lucky enough to make love to a steamy American sexpot –’
Lyle walked back into the room.
‘Darling,’ she said to Michael, ‘I’m so sorry your father keeps saying the wrong thing, but I assure you he does understand how horribly upset you feel now that Dinkie’s rejected all your heroic efforts to care for her. You do understand that, don’t you, Charles?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What your father really means, Michael – although he’s too