Mystical Paths (44 page)

IV

‘In order to grasp what was happening,’ said Perry to Lewis, ‘you’ve got to understand my relationship with Christian. Otherwise nothing will make sense. God, my mouth’s so dry I can hardly speak! I’d better have some soda-water.’

‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Lewis instantly, heading for the siphon on the sideboard.

‘Thanks. Sorry, I seem to be treating you as a butler ... But I think the two of you must have shocked me into a recovery because I’m beginning to feel better.’ He drank deeply from the glass of soda-water before saying to Lewis: ‘I had a rotten childhood, parents in India, shipped off early to school in England, boarded out in the holidays – but everything changed when I went to Winchester and met Christian. That wasn’t just because he proved to be such a good friend; it was also because his family more or less adopted me, and I finally began to realise that life could be fun.

‘Now how do I describe Christian to Lewis in a single sentence, Nick? I can only say: he was so gifted that he often seemed arrogant, but the arrogance was only superficial and beneath it he was a good person, very decent – very "white", as we used to say in the old days. Funny how all that schoolboy slang keeps coming back to me.

‘You’re probably thinking by now, Lewis, that you’re listening to someone talking about the big romance of his life, but you’d be wrong. Of course nowadays, when everyone’s continually leaping into bed with everyone else, it’s hard to remember that there used to be a less frenetic era – in fact it’s probably impossible for someone as young as Nick to understand that relationships don’t always have to be about sex, that sex isn’t the be-all and end-all of existence, that it’s even possible to do without bloody sex altogether, but maybe you, Lewis, as a member of my generation –’

‘I’m not merely a member of your generation; I’m a priest who considers himself called to celibacy. It’s really all a question of how you want to organise your energy, isn’t it? If you pour enough energy into your work, you’re not going to feel so driven to romp around in your leisure hours.’

‘Exactly! Well, if you believe that, you won’t be overcome by scepticism if I say that Christian’s energy before he married all went into his work. And so did mine. It still does. Never mind why.’ He paused but when Lewis made no attempt to cross-question him he exclaimed impatiently: ‘Damn it, why am I pussy-footing around when you’re both men of God who know the
Boss
will strike you dead if you break a confidence!

If you really want to know,’ said Perry, allowing us no time to comment on this sinister vision of God, ‘I was seriously assaulted when I was seven. That was one of the reasons why I was so relieved to form an alliance with Christian at Winchester. Some boys never get bullied or brutalised; they’re too golden, too successful, too popular.

‘But the friendship didn’t just consist of my cowering in a golden boy’s shadow. I became of great importance to Christian. Always he was the subject of attention from both sexes, but although when he was young this was gratifying to his ego he soon got very bored with people worshipping him passionately, and my virtue in Christian’s eyes was that I was invariably, indestructibly non-sexual. So you can see, can’t you, how we suited each other? I was the person he could always relax with; he was the person I could always trust never to involve me in sex. But let me make one thing quite clear: he was heterosexual. And so was I. I like women, although for some years now I’ve tended to run with a homosexual crowd because I discovered that relationships with women inevitably ended awkwardly when I backed down. Homosexuals are capable of behaving awkwardly too, of course, but if you reject a homosexual he’s much more likely than a woman to say:
"C
’
est
la vie!"
and pass on to the next possibility ... Sorry, Lewis, you probably think I’m digressing, but unless I make the sex-angle absolutely clear you could jump to all manner of wrong conclusions.’

‘I’m more than grateful to you for putting me in the picture.’

Well, now I’ve setup the picture let me turn on the spotlight. Christian began to unravel towards the end of 1964, but it wasn’t an overnight phenomenon; the trouble had actually been brewing for a long time. He’d become dissatisfied with his marriage. That was obvious by 1963, but in my opinion the dissatisfaction began after Helen was born in 1961. (That’s his second daughter, Lewis.) Katie had had a tiresome sort of pregnancy and Christian said to me: ‘Why can’t she be more like my mother? My mother never whined and moaned likethis." That was when it dawned on him, I think, that he’d wound up with the wrong wife.’

‘Why do you think he chose Katie in the first place?’

‘Oh, he idolised his dead mother and wanted a wife who was just like her. I know how Freudian that sounds, but it needn’t be a recipe for disaster, need it? It seems to me that a lot of men marry women who remind them of their mothers yet manage to live happily ever after.’

‘That’s certainly true.’

‘However, unfortunately Katie’s resemblance to the first Mrs Aysgarth was only skin-deep. Christian’s mother was one of those middle-class women who appear delicate but are actually much tougher than they look; when her husband was Archdeacon of Starbridge, she ran that vicarage at St Martin’s and looked after her five children with the minimum of hired help. But Katie the aristocrat not only looked delicate; she
was
delicate, the exotic flower perpetually wilting in the conservatory. And worst of all she mooned over Christian like the heroine of the dreariest kind of romantic novel, and the one thing Christian couldn’t stand was being doted on with unceasing passion. He found it oppressive and exhausting. He was fond of Katie, of course – loved her certainly in the beginning – but he should have married someone like Venetia (does Lewis know who I mean, Nick?), a woman who’s neither conventionally beautiful nor conventionally feminine but who nevertheless has tremendous brains and style. Venetia’s just as much an aristocrat as Katie, but she doesn’t cling, she doesn’t dote and she could have kept Christian constantly amused.

‘Marina helped the marriage to some extent – she too had the style and brains to keep him amused – but since Christian wasn’t suffering from a conventional form of the seven-year itch, the amount of help she could offer was limited. In fact what happened was that although the marital trouble was temporarily eased, his dissatisfaction spread to other areas of his life and he became noticeably depressed – although the word "depressed" nowadays is so overworked that you may misunderstand me when I use it. Christian’s depression was what medieval men would have identified as the sin of sloth. The word was – oh God, I’ve forgotten, how typical, brain failing –’

‘Accidie,’ said Lewis.

‘That’s it. A sort of listless world-weariness which becomes debilitating. He went on functioning, but it was a tremendous effort and in the end he was barely able to go through the motions of his day-to-day existence. His last book was poor. He couldn’t be bothered to offer hospitality to his undergraduates. He couldn’t be bothered to take his family for a holiday. He couldn’t be bothered to do anything much. He was just marking time, it seemed, waiting for someone to put the spice back into his life ... And eventually someone did.’ Perry stopped. ‘Wait a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ve just realised this is tricky’. I’m not sure how to go on.’

‘It’s okay, Perry,’ I said. ‘I’ve talked to Martin.’

‘You have? But how extraordinary – I never thought you and Martin were that close! Well, in that case – my God, I must have a splash of brandy in this soda-water – no, don’t get up, Lewis, I’ll do it, I’ve got to stop treating you as the butler. Well, in that case,’ repeated Perry, darkening the soda-water, ‘I can speak freely. What on earth did you think of the story, Nick, when Martin talked to you?’

‘Martin was in fact very cagey,’ said Lewis before I could reply. ‘Nicholas realised there’d been an emotional involvement but was left uncertain how far, if at all, it had been satisfied.’

‘Well, in the beginning nothing happened,’ said Perry. ‘They met in the summer of 1963 – not long after Marina’s classic Starbridge orgy, Nick – when Martin was appearing at the Starbridge Playhouse in the pre-West-End run of
Present
Laughter
and the Aysgarths threw a party for the cast at the Deanery. Christian and Katie had come down from Oxford for the weekend and I’d come down from London. I sensed that Martin was deeply attracted, but Christian was behaving with his usual detachment and I felt sure Martin would soon realise he was wasting his time. Martin wouldn’t have been put off by the fact that Christian was married, of course – married. menoften have a busy time on the homosexual circuit – but since Christian never encouraged Martin by even the flicker of an eyelash it seemed doomed to remain a one-sided love affair. In addition I knew from my theatrical friends that Martin had for some reason taken to living like a monk – someone even said he’d started going to church – so in those circumstances I thought he’d make every effort to overcome the attraction.

‘After that first encounter they met a few times at various social gatherings and still nothing happened, but then at the end of 1964 they met at a cocktail party of Venetia’s. This time I wasn’t present; there was a flap on at the office and I had to work late. Christian said nothing to me afterwards, but obviously Martin had decided to chuck up the ascetic life and obviously Christian had given the required flicker of an eyelash because the next thing I knew my homosexual pals were all gossiping about Martin and Christian.

‘I didn’t believe it. I just didn’t believe it. My first instinct was to find Christian, shake him till his teeth rattled and shout: "Have you gone out of your mind?’’ but then I calmed down and realised I had to be ultra-cool. After all, that was the secret of my relationship with Christian: no messy emotional scenes. ‘So I got a grip on myself and tried to work out why Christian was behaving in a way that I knew was wholly out of character – and the more I thought about it the more convinced I became that Christian really had blown his mind and that the preceding months of accidie had been the necessary ps
^y
chological prelude to this complete freak-out. That sounds as if I’m saying a man has to be mad to have a homosexual affair, but of course I don’t mean that at all. What I’m saying is that I don’t think a man who was as heterosexual as Christian was would have had a homosexual affair unless he was under abnormal stress – like the men in prisons, for example, who in the absence of women feel driven to turn to their own sex.’

‘He’d never had a homosexual affair before?’

‘Never. If he had I’d have known about it.’

‘A case of repression, perhaps.’

‘No, he just had no interest. He wasn’t even interested in verbal queer-bashing. His indifference was monumental.’ ‘No wonder you were shocked by the affair!’

‘Yes, but when I finally concluded he was in deep psychological trouble I was able to put on my best neutral manner and seek him out. He was wary at first but when he saw I had no intention of criticising him he was overpoweringly relieved. I remember thinking: miracle number one: I’ve saved our friendship. Now for miracle number two: saving Christian.

‘But obviously it was going to be tough. "I’m in another world!" he said as he tried to explain what was going on. "I’ve escaped from Christian Aysgarth! Whenever I’m with Martin I’m someone completely new!" And
that,
you see, was what fundamentally attracted him. Not Martin. Not the homosexual expression of love. But the escape into another identity, the psychological release obtained from behaving as if he were someone else. And as soon as this truth dawned on me I knew the romance was doomed.’

‘How did it all end?’

‘Messily. Christian ditched poor Martin in the nastiest possible way, cutting him dead at a straight party, referring to him as a bloody queer, doing everything, in fact, except spitting in his face. It was wrong, rotten, revolting, and I was very angry, but I knew I still had to keep calm, just as I knew that this monster walking around being bloody awful wasn’t the Christian I knew any more. It was as if his old personality had terminal cancer — as if it were being eaten away by a malign growth which was taking him over — but no, that sounds much too fanciful and I don’t deal in fantasy. I’m a rational man.

‘Meanwhile, parallel to the Martin fiasco, there was another sexual horror-story going on. You won’t believe this, Nick, but —’

‘Dinkie.’

‘My God, you know everything, don’t you? Talk about Sherlock Holmes! Yes, he took up with bloody Dinkie, who even then was nearly always stoned on some drug or other, and he ran the two affairs in tandem like one of those ghastly bisexual bores who treat their acquaintances as a sort of smorgasbord.

Well, of course yet again it was quite incredible that Christian should behave in such a way, but when I found out about Dinkie at least I knew I had to act; I could no longer go on sitting on the sidelines and playing it cool while my friend disintegrated before my eyes. So after he’d told me about Dinkie — still bragging that he’d escaped from Christian Aysgarth — I said to him: "If you really want to sample new identities maybe I can offer you more interesting possibilities than either Martin or Dinkie." And I volunteered to get him a false passport so that he could rocket around Europe doing all the things Christian Aysgarth would never do.

"‘Wonderful!" he said. "I can see the end of the dark tunnel at last —
Ecce lux!"
Then he laughed and exclaimed:
"Lux Mundi!" —
which he told me was the title of a famous book of nineteenth-century essays on theology. He said he’d use the names of all the contributors in turn, starting with Charles Gore, who I gather was the ring-leader of the gang.

‘Well, by that time it was clear he was mad as a hatter, but I reasoned that the first step towards a cure was for me to take control of the madness and manoeuvre it into less self-destructive channels. Bucketing around Europe pretending to be someone called Charles Gore struck me as being the hell of a lot better than bucketing around bedrooms with Martin and bloody Dinkie.’