Absolute Truths (6 page)

I did not like this card at all but Lyle said Michael was only
trying to shock me and there was no reason why he and I should be unable to down a couple of sherries in the House of Lords bar
while we tried to make up our minds whether we could face
lunching together in the dining-room-
We met. Michael, who had dearly been drinking, ordered a double dry martini. I let him drink one but drew the line when
he demanded another. He called me an old square and walked
out. After that, relations remained cool between us for some
time.

‘
He can’t last long at the BBC,’ I said to Lyle. ‘He’ll get sacked
for drink and wind up in the gutter.’

‘
Nonsense!’ said Lyle, and once again she was right. Michael
continued to work at the BBC and even obtained promotion.
Obviously I needed to give our battered olive branch of peace
another wave. By this time we had reached the end of 1964 and
I invited – even, I go so far as to say, begged – him to spend
Christmas with us. I had hoped he might telephone in response
to this fulsome invitation, but another of his terse little cards
arrived. It said: ‘Xmas okay but don’t mention God. Will be arriv
ing on Xmas Eve with my bird, the one Mum met when she snuck
up to London to see my new pad. Make sure there’s plenty of
booze.’

‘
Oh
God!’
said Lyle through gritted teeth when she read this
offensive communication.

Making a great effort to seem not only calm but even mildly
amused I said: ‘I don’t understand the ornithological reference.’

‘It’s his latest ghastly girl. She’s American.’

‘You never mentioned —’

‘She was too ghastly to mention.’

‘
Well, if he thinks he can bring his mistress here and bed down
with her under my roof —’

‘Darling, leave this entirely to me.’

Michael did spend Christmas with us at the South Canonry, but
the girl was ruthlessly billeted by Lyle at one of the local hotels.
Michael wore no suit. He did not even wear a tie. He was never
dead drunk but he was certainly in that condition known to publi
cans as ‘nicely, thank you’, an inebriated state which fell short of
causing disruption but
was
still capable of generating embarrass
ment. My enemy Dean Aysgarth, on the other hand, was con
stantly accompanied to a variety of services by a veritable praetorian
guard of well-dressed, immaculately behaved, respectable and
charming sons. If I had not had Charley to cheer me up I might
well have expired with despair.

However, Lyle had been working hard behind my back, and on
Boxing Day Michael sidled up to me with a penitent expression.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know that my new year’s resolution will be not to get on your nerves. Can we bury the
hatchet and drink to 1965?’

We drank to the coming year.

‘
I’ve decided that 1965’s going to be a great time for the Ash
worth family,’ said Michael, coming up for air after downing his
martini. ‘I prophesy no fights, no feuds and absolutely no fiascos
of any kind.’

Michael had many gifts but I fear prophecy was not among
them.

THREE

‘
I am going to set before you one of those standing themes
that always ought to be preached about: the relation between
the sexes ... And if we achieve no otter aim, we shalt-at least
show sympathy with those who are concerned to manage
the most baffling and the most ungovernable pan of their
instinctive nature.’

Having completed this portrait of myself, my family and my pro
fessionally distinguished but privately turbulent life — having, in
other words, set the scene for my third catastrophe — it is now
time to describe the crises which battered me in rapid succession
towards the edge of the abyss.

‘
Do you remember,’ said Lyle, taking the telephone receiver off
the hook one afternoon early in the February of 1965, ‘how miser
able we were when we were forced to face the fact that our third
child was never going to exist?’

‘
Vividly.’ I was in an excellent mood for it was a Monday, and Monday was my day off. As Lyle severed our connection to the
outside world, I sat down on the bed to remove my shoes.

‘
And do you remember,’ pursued Lyle, drawing the curtains and
plunging the bedroom into an erotic twilight, ‘how you said God
might know what was best for us better than we did, and I was
so angry that I hurled an ashtray at you?’

‘
Even more vividly.’

‘
Well, I just want to say I’m sorry I hurled the ashtray. We
would never have survived a third child.’

‘
Does this belated 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 glamor
ous 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 nd 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 con
science-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 clois
ters, 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 inappro
priate. 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 receiv
ing 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 hetero
sexual 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 fun! But seriously, Charles –’

‘
Oh, I freely admit I’d hate to be celibate. But that doesn’t mean
God’s incapable of calling me to such a life and it doesn’t mean
either that I’d be incapable of responding to such a call if it came.
By the grace of God –’

– all things are possible. Quite. But Charles, are you really
saying that the Church has nothing to say to these people except
that they should regard their homosexual inclinations as a call to
celibacy?’

The Church has plenty to say to everyone, regardless of their
sexual inclinations. And let’s get one point quite clear: the Church
is
not against homosexuals themselves. Indeed many homosexuals
do excellent work as priests.’

‘
Yes, but they’re the celibates, aren’t they? What I want to know
is —’

‘
My dear, I have every sympathy for anyone, heterosexual or homosexual, who’s severely tempted to indulge in illicit sexual
activity, but the Church can’t just adopt a policy of "anything
goes"! Any large organisation has to make rules and set standards
or otherwise, human nature being what it is, the whole structure
collapses in chaos!’

‘
Yes, I quite understand that, but you still haven’t answered my
question. What happens to the people who just can’t fit into this
neat, orderly world designed by the Church? I mean, have you
ever thought, really
thought,
about what it must be like to be a
homosexual? Your problem is that you haven’t the slightest interest
in homosexuality and you have no homosexual friends.’

‘Surely those are points in my favour!’

‘
Charles, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you!
Now stop being so frivolous and just try to be helpful for a
moment. How would you, in your professional role, advise my
prayer-group to pray for my friend’s homosexual son who’s living
discreetly with his boyfriend in a manner which has absolutely
nothing to do with a promiscuous career in public lavatories?’

I sighed, ground out my cigarette and to signal my resentment
that I was being dragooned into playing the bishop I reconnected
us to the outside world by replacing the telephone receiver
with a thud. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘while I put on my cope and
mitre.’