It would of course be possible to write a long description of such a celebrated controversial figure as Dr Alexander Jardine, but I shall leave his daring Modernist views to the theologians, his nouveau-riche episcopal extravagances to the social historians, his combative fiery personality to the psychologists, his personal attractions to the ladies and his career as a priest to God. My own brief description of his apparel, so monstrously inappropriate even for a retired churchman, will, I trust, convey both the essence of his debonair attitude to life and my own opinion of a priest who feels called to court all the publicity which unfortunately the press are only too happy to provide.
‘So we meet again!’ he exclaimed as if we were in the habit of bumping into each other, but in fact I had only met him once before. After he had retired from his bishopric in 1937 he had come to Grantchester to seek advice about his future from someone who by chance knew rather more about him than most people did, but since he was the kind of man who seeks advice but seldom takes it our meeting had hardly been fruitful. During our interview I had done my best to overcome my
antipathy sufficiently to treat him with charity; nevertheless when I heard no more from him afterwards I had assumed my charity had failed to ring true, and the news that morning of his benign intervention on my behalf had come as a considerable surprise to me.
‘Well!’ said Jardine, as I reflected on Dr Ottershaw’s reminder that sometimes God did indeed move in mysterious ways. ‘Do we shake hands?’
‘I can’t imagine why not.’
‘No? Back in 1937 I received the distinct impression that you disapproved of me!’
I saw then that my disapproval had rankled with him and that his present intervention represented a desire to prove to me that he was not such a bad fellow after all. I regarded this as an indication of a disturbed psyche. We should not spend our time worrying obsessively about what others may think of us; this shows an unhealthy preoccupation with the self.
‘If I gave you the impression of disapproval,’ I said, ‘then I must take the blame for the unsatisfactory nature of our meeting. I’m glad to see you well, Jardine, and I’m greatly in your debt for enlightening Dr Ottershaw about my career at Ruydale.’
‘That old scatterbrain! I assure you that if
I’d
still been occupying the palace you wouldn’t have been left to moulder for months in a rural backwater!’
Seeing my expression as I mentally reeled in the face of such bumptious discourtesy to Dr Ottershaw, Aysgarth said in a rapid attempt to change the subject: ‘Have you heard that Dr Jardine’s writing his memoirs?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand that’s the reason for his visit to Starbridge.’ I turned to Jardine. ‘Or are the memoirs merely providing an excuse to look up old friends?’
‘Now why should you make me feel as if even looking up old friends is a sin? What a very formidable fellow you are when you radiate that chilling austerity!’ said Jardine lightly, and added amused: ‘You should warm up a little by writing your own memoirs – I’m sure they’d make fascinating reading!’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘you know as well as I do that when
one’s a priest all the best stories can never be told.’ I turned to take my leave of Aysgarth but Jardine remained determined to engage me in conversation, and suddenly beneath the mask of levity I sensed the complex restless priest who was lonely enough to resent my lack of warmth. With a sinking heart I realized that I had to make a new effort to be charitable, and reminding myself of Jardine’s recent important intervention in my life I began to wonder if God had propelled me into this meeting for some special purpose. As far as I could see I had merely called at the vicarage of my own free will in order to be polite.
‘Before you rush off,’ Jardine was saying, ‘you must let me congratulate you belatedly on your marriage. A wife whom I’m told is charming and intelligent as well as good and devout is indeed one of the ultimate prizes … Have you ever talked to Father Darrow, Neville, about your quest for the ultimate prizes?’
Aysgarth at once said: ‘No,’ and looked wary, but his mentor ignored this hint that the subject should not be pursued. ‘Neville grew up in adverse circumstances,’ he explained to me, ‘and in order to inspire himself into surmounting them he saw life as a quest for prizes – not just the commonplace prizes which were available to people from more comfortable backgrounds, but the ultimate prizes – the common prizes glorified. What this means in practical terms, of course, is that Neville’s always chasing perfection.’
Aysgarth cleared his throat. ‘Before Mr Darrow reminds me that perfection is unattainable in this world, may I make it clear that I’m not a monster of worldly ambition? My one desire is to serve God to the best of my ability –’
‘– and what’s wrong with worldly ambition if it helps you fulfil that exceedingly laudable aim? For example, you’re surely not ashamed of your Balliol scholarship which led you into a world where you could at last approach Christianity intellectually!’
‘Well, I do agree, certainly, that the ultimate prize of a place at Oxford represents worldly ambition in its most acceptable form, but I’m sure Mr Darrow’s thinking –’
‘Darrow’s wound up with the perfect wife, the perfect home and the perfect new career – all ultimate prizes – so don’t start imagining that he’s too holy to know what ambition means! Why, I’ll wager that at this very moment he’s savouring his prospects at the Theological College and calculating his chances of becoming the principal!’
Aysgarth looked so acutely embarrassed that I decided it was time to ride to his rescue. ‘Come now, Jardine!’ I said in the voice of an abbot addressing a boisterous monk who was continually smitten by the urge to show off. ‘You’re just being provocative because you want to puncture what you’ve mistakenly diagnosed as hypocrisy on Aysgarth’s part and priggishness on mine. In actual fact Aysgarth’s very properly modifying your cavalier attitude to worldly ambition, and my expression of amazement which no doubt greeted your remarks springs not from priggishness but from concern. Surely a priest of your eminence should be declaring that true perfection lies only in the absolute values and that the ultimate prize for any soul can only be union with God?’
I had thought that this shaft would put the Bishop firmly in his place but I was mistaken. ‘My dear Darrow,’ he said exasperated, ‘have you entirely lost your sense of humour? I sincerely hope you didn’t leave it behind with your habit when you left the cloister!’
‘I haven’t lost my sense of humour – I’ve merely retained my good taste. Good-day to you both and God bless you,’ I said in a tone which would have silenced even the most recalcitrant monk, and strode from the room without looking back.
On the train to Starrington I conceded that I had responded too severely to Jardine’s remarks and regretted that I had not been more patient with a man who was obviously unhappy. His bitter comment about my wife, home and new career indicated jealousy; his jibe about my ambition to run the
Theological College suggested that his desire for my approval had declined into a resentful dislike when that approval had failed to appear. I had never thought Jardine spiritually gifted. Now, with his career cut short and his time devoted to the dubious art of autobiography, a form of writing in which both honesty and humility are famous for their absence, he seemed to be drifting deeper into a spiritual dead-end.
Remembering my speculation that God might have propelled me into the interview I wondered if I were supposed to assist Jardine in some way, but I remained convinced that he was beyond my help, particularly now that our antipathy had hardened. Then I wondered if I were supposed to help Aysgarth; I was in fact deeply concerned that a young priest of such promise should have such a questionable mentor, but I could hardly offer my services as a counsellor unless I were invited to do so, and it seemed highly unlikely that Aysgarth, mindful of our past antagonism, would ever turn to me for help.
I thought of him, clever efficient Aysgarth, running his private and public lives with such conspicuous success, and I wondered what went on in his head when he talked to God. However one of the commonest errors a counsellor can make is to assume everyone is secretly writhing beneath the weight of intractable problems. Perhaps Aysgarth was one of those fortunate people who sail through life without encountering any major difficulties. Perhaps after surmounting his troubled background his path through life had been enviably smooth.
I might have continued to speculate for some time in this idle and unprofitable fashion, but I was too excited about my new career to ponder on Aysgarth for long. When I arrived home I found that Anne was out, visiting Romaine to discover whether she had succeeded in embarking on a second pregnancy, so I hurried straight to my cell to write to Francis. By this time my room was a cell no more; it had become a study, a silent witness to my final adjustment to the world. I had possessions. The room now boasted four shelves of books, a modern lamp, an easy-chair with a footstool (had I finally come to terms with old age?) and a pretty water-colour of the chapel
which my grand-daughter had painted from the sketch drawn on her Easter visit. On the shelf above the fireplace stood the photographs of my family, including my grandson in his new Naval uniform. I felt very pleased that Colin had chosen to serve in the Navy; I thought it would give us something to talk about at last. For a second I prayed, as I did every day, for his safety, but then I turned aside from all thoughts of the war and fingered the plain wooden frame which I had made to hold the photograph of my parents on their wedding-day.
I pictured my father’s reaction to my appointment. ‘The Theological College at Starbridge? Very distinguished! And how suited to your gifts – what scope for a rewarding career!’ he would have said with genuine pleasure, and as his words echoed in my imagination I found myself wondering if I would indeed wind up running the Theological College. But of course that sort of idle thought, reeking of worldly ambition, came straight from the Devil and had to be ruthlessly suppressed. My task was to serve God, not to serve myself by pursuing the road to self-aggrandizement, and suddenly I was thinking of Aysgarth again, Aysgarth and his ultimate prizes.
It occurred to me then that God in his subtle way had propelled me into that interview at the vicarage not so that I could help either Jardine or Aysgarth (how arrogant that I should have automatically assumed I was being called in to play the wonder-worker!) but so that I should be prompted to meditate deeply, before I began my new career in the world, on the nature of ambition and its often ambivalent fruits. Of course one should regard any expression of ambition with suspicion, even if it appeared not to be centred on the self, but had I perhaps defined ambition’s ultimate prize too narrowly when I had declared it could only consist of the soul’s union with God? Perhaps Jardine had not after all been so wildly astray in taking a broader view and Aysgarth’s chase for the prizes should not be automatically condemned. If perfection lay in the absolute values, that bridge between our world and ultimate reality, then perfection could be grasped by embracing those absolute values and trying to incorporate them into one’s
daily life. Naturally one’s success would be limited, since the human race could never fully achieve perfection on this earth, but the absolute values could indeed be seen as ultimate prizes, something for man to aim at, a target for his innate acquisitive streak, a symbol luring him to stretch upwards to a better life when he might otherwise sink downwards into an animal existence which was unworthy of his unique power of reason and self-awareness.
I saw then in a moment of revelation that I too had gone chasing the prizes, the ultimate prizes of Truth, Beauty and Love, and now at last my quest had borne recognizable fruit: I had grasped the Truth about my past, an achievement which had set me free to serve God in a new way; I had found the chapel, that symbol of Beauty, which would forever stand at the centre of my life, and I had in Anne received the Love that made me whole and would eventually transform me, so I hoped, into a better man.
As I thought of those absolute values which reflected the spiritual world I suddenly saw them as Plotinus would have seen them, overflowing from the fountainhead past tier after tier of existence, the waters of ultimate reality bathing the world in light. Then I thought how the Christians had adapted Platonism, centring the absolute values in the person of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit which poured forth through the world into the minds and hearts of men. Why had not Plotinus become a Christian? I had often asked myself that question but Plotinus had left no answer. Perhaps he had disliked the organization of the Early Church; mystics are notoriously antipathetic to organizations. Or perhaps he had merely felt that Christianity was a bastard religion, half-Hellenic, half-Semitic, just another syncretistic approach to the One, an approach which could only fall short of the glories of Greek philosophy. Or perhaps he had even felt that to be Christian in those days was to limit oneself to one sect, a prospect which would not have interested him as he strove to address all mankind. ‘The mystical faculty,’ Plotinus had declared encouragingly, ‘is one which all possess but few use.’
Could he conceivably have felt that those who used it could dispense with organized religion and that organized religion itself was only an aid to enlightenment for those whose mystical faculty would have remained otherwise undeveloped? This was the age-old trap which had ensnared so many mystics, but it was hard to imagine Plotinus, described by his disciple Porphyry as a man of great goodness and humility, ever being arrogant enough to divorce his mysticism from a formal religious context. Plotinus had been a deeply religious philosopher, and in his formal Hellenism mysticism and religion were inextricably entwined.