Scandalous Risks. Susan Howatch
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as a clergyman of the Church of England followed and a curacy was squeezed out of a Westminster parish. (A German was lucky to get any job in Westminster, but the Bishop of London caved in after Aysgarth and Bell staged a joint assault.) When Aysgarth became Dean of Starbridge he at once approached the new bishop on Eddie’s behalf, and Dr Ashworth, striving to exercise a Christian spirit after his own years as a POW, proved unwilling to make any move which could be construed as anti-German. Possibly he also saw the chance of unloading his current diocesan problem, a seedy Starbridge parish in the area of the city known as Langley Bottom where there was a run-down Victorian monster of a church, an equally run-down Victorian monster of a vicarage and a working-class congregation of twenty.
Eddie the masochist embraced this challenge with zest. Having been trained at the Starbridge Theological College in its Ango-Catholic heyday under Nick’s father Jonathan Darrow, he had no hesitation in resorting to the most florid ritualism (traditionally popular among the religious members of the working classes), and before long the parish was rising from the dead. Consolidating his success Eddie slaved on, organising clubs, running Bible classes, raising money. The parishioners, who had at first regarded him with suspicion, came to the conclusion they preferred the attentions of a foreigner, even a German foreigner, to the ministrations of some toffee-nosed English gentleman who had been educated at a public school. (The plebs are such dreadful snobs.) Eddie flourished. The parish boomed. The Bishop was both amazed and admiring. When a residentiary canonry at last fell vacant at the Cathedral, he had no objection to Aysgarth’s suggestion that Eddie’s talents should now be employed in a more elevated sphere, and so Eddie became a canon, working hard at his Chapter duties and beavering away on various diocesan committees. He had arrived. Franz Eduard Hoffenberg, that pathetic young German prisoner of war, had been transformed into a pillar of the English ecclesiastical establishment. All he now had to do was live happily ever after.
Of course being Eddie he remained gloomy but it was impossible for him to dispute that his life was now very comfortable. He had a snug little house in the Close, a surrogate family, the Aysgarths, a reasonable income and a pleasant amount of prestige. No one was surprised when he made a success of the canonry. Discarding without difficulty the Anglo-Catholic trappings which he had used to conquer Langley Bottom, he fitted easily into the Cathedral’s middle-of-the-road pattern of worship. In theological matters he was more conservative than his hero, but like Aysgarth he was an idealist prone to talk soppily about the brotherhood of man when he had downed a couple of drinks. His odd, ungainly, pear-shaped figure was always carefully dressed. He observed English customs rigorously, even declaring how devoted he was to Walls’ pork sausages and Dickens when we all knew he must be hankering for bratwürst and Goethe. Priding himself on his mastery of slang he spoke English almost flawlessly except when he began to ponder on the mystery of suffering. Those were the occasions when I thought he was a joke. Otherwise I just thought he was a thundering bore.
As we encountered each other outside the Deanery that afternoon I inwardly recoiled but nevertheless achieved a passable smile.
‘Hi Eddie,’ I said and automatically added: ‘How are you?’ but that was a mistake. One never asked Eddie how he was. He was all too likely to reply in excruciating detail.
‘Well, as a matter of fact my back’s playing me up again,’ he began, ‘but I’ve found this wonderful osteopath who –’
‘Super! Is the Dean in?’
‘Yes, but we’re just off to evensong. I say, Venetia, I had no idea you were about to visit the Aysgarths!’
‘Ah well, ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes …’ I was trying to edge past him but his bulk was blocking the way. The Deanery, a rambling medieval concoction enhanced by Georgian meddling, had no formal drive up to the front door; instead a pebbled lane at the side of the house led to the old stables, while a flagstone path flanked with lavender bushes led through the front garden. Eddie was planted on the flagstones and I was trying to slink past the lavender.
‘Are you here for long?’ Eddie was enquiring, apparently unaware of my attempts at circumnavigation.
‘No, I’m heading for Oxford.’
The front door swung wide. ‘Venetia!’ cried Aysgarth in delight. ‘What a marvellous surprise!’
‘Mr Dean!’ I said as my spirits soared, and firmly pushing my way past Eddie I clasped Aysgarth’s outstretched hand.
VI
‘Must see you!’ I hissed. ‘Top secret!’
His bright blue eyes at once became brighter and bluer. He loved being conspiratorial with young women. ‘You go on ahead,’ he called to Eddie. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
‘We’re late already, Stephen –’
‘I’ll run all the way to the vestry!’ said Aysgarth lightly, and with reluctance Eddie sloped off through the front gate.
Wasting no time I said: ‘I’ve left home and I need advice. Any chance of a quick word without half the Close breathing down our necks?’
‘Meet me in the cloisters after evensong.’
‘Wonderful! Thanks so much … In that case I might as well go to evensong, mightn’t I?’
‘Why not?’ said the Dean amused. ‘It would help to pass the time!’
As it occurred to me that Dr Ashworth would have responded far more coolly to my lukewarm attitude to worship I exclaimed: ‘How glad I am you’re not the Bishop! I’ve just been hobnobbing with him at the South Canonry.’
‘How on earth did you end up there?’
‘I got mixed up with Charley on the train. Mr Dean, what do you think of Honest to God?’
‘Superb! Quite splendid! A breath of fresh air sweeping through the Church of England!’
‘Yes, I thought it probably was. The Bishop’s decided it’s absolutely the bottom.’
‘The trouble with Charles,’ said Aysgarth as we left the garden, crossed Canonry Drive and entered the churchyard of the Cathedral, ‘is that he was trained as a theologian. Such a pity! A theologian’s approach to religion is nearly always much too cerebral and he inevitably becomes cut off from ordinary believers.’
‘But isn’t this book supposed to be bad for ordinary believers?’
‘Rubbish! It’s the best thing that’s happened to them for years. Robinson’s realised that the ordinary believers are waiting for a new comprehensible interpretation of Christianity which will relate to the lives they’re living right now in the 1960s – they’re not waiting for cerebral restatements by theologians in their dead, dry, alienating academic language!’
‘But if the book’s too radical –’
‘Nothing could be too radical! Let’s have this New Reformation Robinson talks about! Let’s have this New Morality! Now that we’re finally emerging from the long shadow of the war and shedding the millstone of the Empire, we need to celebrate our psychological liberation by making everything new – so why not start by flinging religion into the melting-pot, as Robinson suggests, and recasting our beliefs in a bold, creative dynamic style that’s thoroughly attuned to our day and age?’
I began to feel excited – insofar as one can ever feel excited about a subject such as theology. I was, in fact, very much in the mood for revolution and I deeply fancied the thought of an iconoclastic assault on any part of the established order. ‘Long live Bishop John Robinson!’ I declared, making Aysgarth laugh, and we quickened our pace across the sward to the Cathedral.
VII
At the north porch we parted, Aysgarth walking on to the Dean’s door, the special entrance for the clergy, and I wandering through the porch into the nave. A sidesman showed me to a seat in the choir. This was not an unusual