Glittering Images. Susan Howatch
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sometimes whether we made the right decision when we installed a telephone. It’s so terribly hard for the chaplain when people ring up at awkward moments … Oh, here’s Willy! Come and meet my brother, Dr Ashworth.’
I was introduced to a Colonel Cobden-Smith, a hale gentleman in his sixties with a pink face, white hair and a cherubic expression. He was accompanied by his wife, a thin energetic woman who reminded me of a greyhound, and by a very large St Bernard dog who padded majestically through the room to the terrace on his way to water the flowerbeds.
‘I know nothing about theology,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith to me as soon as we had been introduced. ‘I always say to Alex that I know nothing about theology and I don’t want to know anything either. As far as I’m concerned God’s God, the Church is the Church, the Bible’s the Bible and I can’t understand what all the arguments are about.’
‘Funny business, religion,’ mused her husband, uttering this dubious remark with such an ingenuous admiration that no clergyman could have found him offensive, and began to talk about a Buddhist monk he had met in India.
The young chaplain bustled back into the room. ‘So sorry, Mrs Jardine, but you know what the Archdeacon’s like when he rings up in a panic …’
I was introduced to Gerald Harvey. He was a short bespectacled man in his early twenties who seemed to be perpetually out of breath, and I wondered whether the Bishop of Starbridge regularly reduced his chaplain to this state of wild-eyed anxiety.
‘… and I’ve heard about your book, of course,’ he was saying, ‘but I confess I haven’t read it because all those ancient arguments about the Trinity simply make me want to tear off my dog-collar and enlist in the Foreign Legion – oh my goodness, there’s the doorbell and the Bishop’s still not down! I’d better go and see if anything’s wrong.’
He dashed away again. I was surprised that Jardine had selected such a plain, unsophisticated and clearly unintellectual chaplain, but before I could speculate on the existence of sterling virtues which would have qualified Harvey for his post, the butler announced the arrival of Mr and Mrs Frank Jennings. Jennings, I soon discovered, had just been appointed to teach dogmatics at the Theological College in the Close. He himself was unremarkable in his appearance but his wife was a pretty young blonde, and remembering Jack’s gossip I wondered how far her looks had qualified the couple for an invitation to the episcopal dinner table.
‘I found your book most stimulating,’ Jennings said to me agreeably, but before he could continue his wife exclaimed: ‘Good gracious, Frank, look at that gigantic dog!’
‘Alex had a dog once,’ said little Mrs Jardine as the St Bernard made a stately return to the room. ‘He called it Rhetoric. But we were living in London at the time and poor little Rhet was run over by such a vulgar Rolls-Royce – really, I’ve never felt the same about motor cars since … Do you have a dog, Dr Ashworth?’
‘No, Mrs Jardine.’
‘Do you have a wife, Dr Ashworth?’ called Lady Starmouth, giving me a friendly look with her fine dark eyes.
I was acutely aware of Miss Christie’s hand pausing in the act of pouring out glasses of sherry for the newcomers.
‘I’m a widower, Lady Starmouth,’ I said.
‘All clergymen ought to be married,’ said the authoritative Mrs Cobden-Smith, offering a handful of water biscuits to the St Bernard. ‘They say the Roman Catholics have frightful trouble with their celibate priests.’
‘They say the Church of England has frightful trouble with its married clergy,’ said a strong harsh well-remembered voice from the doorway, and as we all turned to face him the Bishop of Starbridge made a grand entrance into his drawing-room.
IV
Dr Jardine was a man of medium height, slim and well proportioned, with dark greying hair and brown eyes so light that they were almost amber. The eyes were set deep and wide apart; by far his most arresting feature, they were capable of assuming a hypnotic lambent glaze in the pulpit, a physiological trick which Jardine used sparingly but effectively to underline his considerable gifts as a preacher. His quick abrupt walk revealed his energy and hinted at his powerful restless intellect. Unlike most bishops he wore his gaiters with élan, as if conscious that he had the figure to triumph over the absurdity of the archaic episcopal costume, and when he entered the room he was radiating the electric self-confidence which his enemies decried as bumptious and his admirers defended as debonair.
‘Don’t be alarmed, everyone!’ he said, smiling after the opening remark which had won our attention. ‘I’m not about to secede to Rome, but I can never resist the urge to counter my sister-in-law’s scandalously dogmatic assertions … Good evening, Dr Ashworth, I’m delighted to see you. Good evening, Jennings – Mrs Jennings – now, Mrs Jennings, there’s no need to be shy. I may be a fire-breathing bishop but I’m extremely tame in the company of pretty ladies – isn’t that so, Lady Starmouth?’
‘Tame as a tiger!’ said the Countess amused.
‘We used to have some good tiger-shoots in India,’ reflected Colonel Cobden-Smith. ‘I remember –’
‘I saw such an adorable tiger at the zoo once,’ said Mrs Jardine, ‘but I’m sure it would have been so much happier back in the wild.’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Bishop robustly, accepting a glass of sherry from Miss Christie. ‘If the unfortunate animal had been in its natural habitat your brother would have come along and murdered it. Did you arrive in time for Evensong, Dr Ashworth?’
‘I’m afraid I was late getting here. The traffic around London –’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t award black marks for missing services. Now, Mrs Jennings, sit down and tell me all about yourself – have you managed to find a house yet?’
As his wife was purloined by the Bishop, Jennings began to tell me about his arduous quest for a property in the suburbs. Occasionally I offered a word of sympathy but for the most part I sipped my sherry in silence, eavesdropped on the other conversations and kept a surreptitious watch on Miss Christie.
Lady Starmouth suddenly glided into my field of vision. ‘I think you must be the youngest canon I’ve ever met, Dr Ashworth! Does this mean the Church is at last beginning to believe it’s not a crime to be under forty?’
‘The canonry came with the job, Lady Starmouth. When Archbishop Laud founded Laud’s College and Cambridge Cathedral in the seventeenth century he stipulated that the College should appoint a doctor of divinity to teach theology and act as one of the Cathedral’s residentiary canons.’ I suddenly realized that Miss Christie was looking straight at me, but when our glances met she turned away. I continued to watch as she picked up the sherry decanter again but Colonel Cobden-Smith cornered her before she could embark on the task of refilling glasses.
‘… and I hear you were Dr Lang’s chaplain once,’ Lady Starmouth was saying. ‘How did you meet him?’
Reluctantly I averted my gaze from Miss Christie. ‘He gave away the prizes during my last year at school.’
‘You were head boy of your school, of course,’ said Jardine from the depths of the sofa nearby.
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ I said surprised, ‘yes, I was.’
‘How clever of you, Alex!’ exclaimed Mrs Jardine. ‘How did you guess Dr Ashworth had been head boy?’
‘No boy attracts His Grace’s attention unless he shows signs of becoming a walking advertisement for Muscular Christianity.’
‘I adore Muscular Christianity,’ said Lady Starmouth.
‘If Christianity were a little more muscular the world wouldn’t be in such a mess,’ said the forthright Mrs Cobden-Smith.
‘If Christianity