VI
‘This is wonderful!’ cried the Dean. ‘Wonderful!’ And as I lifted the needle from the groove at the end of the track he exclaimed: ‘It makes me want to catch up with all the fun I missed out on in my youth!’
‘Was your youth really so drab?’
‘Drab! That’s an understatement. Primitive Methodists, no money, working day in, day out, in order to get on — why, the most thrilling moment of my youth consisted of a forbidden visit to the cinema where I watched Clara Bow oozing "It" as I sank my teeth into a sinful peppermint cream! Never mind, those times are gone now — and how glad I am that I’ve lived to see the dawn of a new era! Class barriers collapsing, sexual inhibitions being overcome —’
‘Good old Elvis! Want to hear some more?’
‘I want to hear everything! Play that song you were singing at dinner!’
I rummaged around and found it. ‘Okay, Mr Dean!’ I cried. ‘Off we go!’
The beat began to pound. Presley began to celebrate the joy of life. And suddenly Aysgarth rose to his feet.
‘Isn’t it great?’ I shouted, turning up the volume, but he merely cried enthralled: ‘Let’s dance!’
I kicked off my shoes, we grabbed each other’s hands, he drew me to the centre of the floor. And there, as Elvis Presley sang his heart out and the boards vibrated beneath our feet, I danced with the Dean of Starbridge to the beat of rock-’n’-roll.
VII
As the final chord throbbed and we clutched each other, breathless with laughter, I saw that Primrose and Eddie were standing appalled in the doorway.
‘Honestly!’ said Primrose as I abruptly switched off the radiogram. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite so undignified in all my life!’
‘My dear,’ said her father, ‘you mustn’t be so serious that you forget how to have fun.’
At once Primrose turned her back onus and stalked off across the hall.
‘Leave her to me, Stephen,’ said Eddie. ‘You go on having fun.’ And he too withdrew, closing the door behind him.
‘That’s the nicest thing Eddie’s done in a month of Sundays,’ I said. ‘But why on earth is Prim being so idiotic?’
‘I’m afraid she realised I was cross with her.’
‘
Cross?
That wasn’t being cross! You should hear my father when he roars like a lion – that’s what being cross is all about!’
‘But Primrose is particularly dependent on me for my love and approval. Ever since her mother died –’
‘But her mother’s been dead for over twenty years – isn’t it time Primrose grew up? God knows, I never thought I’d hear myself say this but sometimes when I see this so-called "dependence" on you I really feel quite sorry for Dido.’
He merely regarded me with grave blue eyes and said nothing.
A panic-stricken remorse assailed me. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, furious with myself for plunging around in his family problems like an elephant cavorting among eggshells. ‘Tight as an owl. Rude as hell. Forget I spoke.’
‘My dear Venetia, there’s no need for you to apologise!’ he said at once, sloughing off both my tactlessness and his problems as if they were supremely unimportant. ‘Let’s be tight as owls together and go on having the time of our lives!’ And as he stretched out his hands to me again I was suddenly transported to the very centre of life.
My world turned itself inside out. In a split second of blinding clarity I saw him at last not as the family friend who was always so kind to me, but as the irresistible stranger whose personality, by some great miracle, uniquely complemented my own. My loneliness was annihilated; my despair exploded into a euphoric hope. Knowing I had to withdraw at once before my emotion could utterly overwhelm me, I blundered across the hall to the cloakroom, sagged in tears against the door and mutely contemplated the vastness of my discovery.
VIII
‘Venetia?’
‘Just a sec.’ I pulled the plug of the lavatory and emerged dry-eyed into the hall. As I saw the anxious expression on his face I realised he thought I was suffering from the effects of too much to drink, but although I opened my mouth to reassure him no words came. I was speechless because his entire appearance had changed. His white hair now seemed not shop-soiled but creamily distinguished. His forehead had assumed exactly the right height and breadth to enhance this impression of distinction and his nose, formerly large, had become exquisitely and nobly Roman. The lines on his face no longer suggested antiquity but the power of a fascinating and formidable character. His eyes, radiantly blue and steamily bright, made me feel weak at the knees, while his thin mouth, which turned down slightly at the corners, no longer seemed tough in repose but overpoweringly sultry; I felt weaker at the knees than ever. In fact when he smiled I felt so demolished by his sheer sexual glamour that I actually had to sink down on the hall chest. I had forgotten he was sixty-one. Or, to be accurate, I had not forgotten but the fact no longer had any meaning for me. He could have been twenty-one, forty-one or eighty-one. Such a trivial fact was of no importance. All that mattered was that he was the man I wanted to go to bed with that very night and marry the very next morning.
I suddenly realised he was speaking again. He was saying: ‘How about some black coffee?’ and my voice was replying without a second’s hesitation: ‘I think I’d prefer a very large Rémy Martin.’
He laughed. Then reassured that I was no longer expiring from an excess of alcohol, he vanished into the dining-room to raid the sideboard.
‘What happened?’ he enquired with curiosity as he returned with two brandies and sat down beside me on the hall chest. ‘Were you overwhelmed by Mr Presley?’
‘No, by
joie de vivre –
and by you, Mr Dean,’ I said, somehow keeping my voice casual. ‘You must be the trendiest dean in Christendom!’
He laughed in delight, and I saw then that his attitude towards me was quite unchanged; untouched by any emotional earthquake he was merely savouring the concluding moments of an entertaining evening. ‘I always regard it as a very great blessing that Pip was born when I was fifty-two,’ he said. ‘He keeps me young in outlook.’
Primrose chose that moment to return to the hall. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be such a kill-joy, but I genuinely can’t stand that sort of music.’
Aysgarth gave her a kiss to signal that her apology was accepted and asked: ‘Where’s Eddie?’
‘In the drawing-room. He started talking about the decadence of pop music and then before I could stop him he was holding forth on the decadence of Berlin in the ‘thirties. I walked out when he began to ruminate on the nature of evil.’
‘I’d better go and rescue him.’
‘Why not just hit him over the head with
The Brothers Karamazov?
I nearly did.’
They wandered off together to save Eddie from his turgid metaphysics. Knocking back the rest of my brandy I reeled upstairs to my room and passed out in a stupor of alcohol, ecstasy and rampant sexual desire.
FIVE
‘The universe, like a human being, is not built merely to a mathematical formula. It’s only love that gives you the deepest clue to it.’
JOHN A. T. ROBINSON
Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich 1959-1969
Writing about
Honest to God
in the
Sunday Minor,
7th April 1963
I
The next day was Sunday and Aysgarth had earlier mentioned that he would be celebrating Communion in the dining-room at eight. Since Eddie and Primrose would inevitably attend the service I had decided I should make the effort to join them, but when Primrose woke me I realised,
as my
hang-over hit me between the eyes, that my virtuous decision would have to be revoked.
‘There’s something so wonderfully moral about alcohol,’ observed Primrose as I pulled the bed-clothes over my head with a groan. ‘Punishment always follows excess.’
I could have murdered her, but by that time I was too enrapt with my memories of the previous evening to bother. She departed unscathed and immediately the door closed I sat up, ready for Day One of my new life. I tossed off the necessary potion to soothe my liver. Then I flung back the curtains and exclaimed: ‘A celestial day has dawned for Venetia Flaxton!’ Outside it was raining, but who cared? The view, wreathed in shifting mist, seemed more romantic than ever. Sliding back into bed I lit a cigarette, hummed a verse of Presley’s ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’ and prepared for a delicious hour of meditating on the object of my desire.
It was immediately obvious that I could never speak of my love. Since nothing could come of my grand passion there could be no conceivable point in disclosing my feelings, and besides, there was no one in whom I could confide – except Mrs Ashworth, but I could hardly babble to the wife of a bishop about my new-found adulterous lust for a dean.
Having reached this conclusion I perceived a second obvious truth: not only would I have to keep my mouth shut but I would have to rise to great thespian heights to conceal my secret. No one must ever guess the truth because no one would ever understand the height and breadth and depth of my well-nigh incinerating desire. I pictured my siblings sniggering: ‘Poor old Venetia! A crush on an elderly clergyman – whatever will she think of next?’ And as for Primrose ... but no, the mind boggled. I had to carry the precious secret to my grave, but I could accept this necessity because I was so happy. I had been granted the power to love; nothing else mattered, and indeed to have wanted more would have been disgustingly greedy. Since it was quite impossible that Aysgarth could fall in love with me it was pointless to hope that my passion might be reciprocated, but I would be blissfully content with his continuing avuncular friendship, and so long as I could live near him, see him regularly and have the occasional little chat about God or Eternity or whatever else might interest him, my life would be indescribably rich and fulfilling.
So be it. I would still die
virgo intacta,
but having experienced passion on a cosmic scale I could at least tell myself that my years in the world hadn’t been a complete waste of time.
With a sigh I stretched myself luxuriously and decided I was in paradise.
II
My next task was to choose what to wear for Day One of my new life, but all my clothes now seemed so dreary, no more than a drab mass of browns, beiges and moss-greens. Then I remembered the red sweater which I had bought on impulse when I had visited Marks and Spencer’s to replenish my stock of underwear; I had just had a row with my father and was feeling aggressive, but now the scarlet seemed to symbolise not aggression but passion. I selected the sweater and eyed a pair of earth-coloured slacks. Did I dare wear trousers on a Sunday? Yes. I was in the mood to take a scandalous risk. My mother had brainwashed me into thinking slacks were vulgar on any day of the week, but I had long since realised they suited me. I have longish legs and not too much padding around the hips. It was true that I was usually at least seven pounds overweight, but we can’t all be the Duchess of Windsor.
I brushed my horrible hair and clipped it severely behind my ears to curb its tendency to billow around my head in a fizz. Then I slapped on some powder and went wild with the mascara which normally I reserved for evenings. My mother believed only fallen women wore eye make-up during the day, but Mrs Ashworth had confirmed my suspicion that this piece of folklore was out of date. I tried to recall whether Mrs Ashworth herself wore eye make-up but the memory eluded me. Dressing the part of a bishop’s wife, Mrs Ashworth was the kind of clever woman who would spend half an hour making herself up to look as if she was not made up at all.
Did I wear lipstick? No. Lipstick was going out of favour. The ‘look’ consisted of emphasising the eyes and hair. Jewellery? No, quite inappropriate for a Sunday morning in the Hebrides, and anyway I had decided to emulate Mrs Ashworth’s uncluttered simplicity of style. Was I ready? Yes. For anything. Forgetting my liver, which was still feeling a trifle battle-scarred, I sailed downstairs for breakfast just as the clock in the hall chimed nine.
They were all seated at the dining-room table. Primrose was pouring herself some coffee, Eddie was spooning sugar on his porridge and Aysgarth was buttering a slice of toast. Immediately in my imagination six trumpets blasted a triumphant fanfare while drums rolled and cymbals clashed.
‘Mr Dean!’ I exclaimed with a radiant smile. ‘Do please forgive me for missing Communion but I was prostrated!’
‘Maybe you should be prostrated more often!’ retorted Aysgarth, much amused. ‘You look remarkably well!’
‘Sheer mind over matter! As soon as I had willed myself to leap out of bed and sing the "Ode to Joy", I felt simply too wonderful to be true ... Eddie, why are you goggling as if you’d swallowed an octopus?’
Eddie stammered with an uncharacteristically marked German accent: ‘You look tremendous, Venetia!’
‘I
am
tremendous,’ I said, helping myself to eggs and bacon from the sideboard. ‘What else is new?’
Aysgarth started to laugh and when I glanced at him over my shoulder he gave me one of his saucy winks which meant, as I well knew, absolutely nothing.
I nearly passed out. Then winking back at him, as befitted a platonic friend of many years standing, I prepared to toy in ecstasy with a hearty breakfast.
III
‘Why are you made-up to the nines and behaving as if you’d just quaffed an entire bottle of champagne?’ demanded Primrose baffled as we set out in the rain for our morning walk.
‘It’s the after-effects of listening to Elvis.’ I then realised it was time to act the part of my old nonchalant self, but before I could say anything else Primrose was confiding: ‘I think Eddie’s terribly smitten – I’ve never before seen him turn such a strangulated shade of puce!’
‘Oh, people are always saying Eddie fancies me, but I don’t believe a word of it! He never makes anything which could be remotely described as a pass.’
‘Probably too frightened. After all, if you’re as ugly as Eddie, you’d be afraid that any girl you approached would simply shriek: "Dracula!" and run screaming in the opposite direction.’
‘True. I wonder if he’s ever done it.’
‘Approached a girl?’
No, had sex.’
‘Honestly, Venetia, why have you suddenly developed this appallingly one-track mind?’
‘As a matter of fact Eddie doesn’t strike me as being unsophisticated about sex – look at that cunning remark he made about Bishop Ashworth’s sex-phobia.’
‘Imagine doing it with Eddie!’ said Primrose shuddering. ‘Imagine doing it with your Maurice Tait!’
‘Maurice is actually rather good-looking when he takes off his glasses –’
‘Yes, but would he remain good-looking if he took off anything else? God, what a bloody peculiar thing sex is! Do you suppose your father still does it with Dido?’
‘Don’t be obscene!’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, that
was
a bit far-fetched –’
‘Of course all that stopped years ago!’
‘You mean they have separate bedrooms?’ I knew my Mr Dean was languishing in a ghastly marriage, and I knew it was impossible that he should love the middle-aged gorgon whom I had overheard nagging him so mercilessly, but I saw no harm in establishing beyond doubt that the marriage was entirely nominal.
‘They’ve had separate bedrooms almost from the start,’ said Primrose, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘That was because of her insomnia. But the separate bedrooms didn’t stop her getting pregnant five times.’
This was not exactly the news I wanted to hear. ‘In that case why do you think they’ve stopped having sex?’
‘The doctor told her after number five was born that she mustn’t have any more children.’
‘So what? I can’t see that proves anything, the state of contraception being what it is –’
‘I’m quite sure,’ said Primrose firmly, ‘that an eminent cleric of the Church of England would never engage in anything so sordid as contraception.’
‘But perhaps contraception’s no longer required. If the old hag’s had the change of life –’
‘I don’t think she has. I know she’s forty-eight and ought to be absolutely over the hill but she still gets monthly migraines when she has to lie in a darkened room and pretend she’s dying,’
‘In that case you’re right and your father must be entirely frustrated.’
‘He’s more likely to be faint with relief! Surely once a man gets past sixty he just wants to go to bed with a good book?’
But I thought of my Mr Dean regretting his repressed youth, and although I was sure he would recoil from copulating with Dido I did wonder how content he was with his enforced chastity.
‘He should never have married her,’ Primrose was saying, reverting to a well-worn theme. ‘Well, he never would have married her if she hadn’t ensnared him when he was still mad with grief after Mother’s death.’
I was, of course, familiar with the Primrose Aysgarth version of history, and out of delicacy I had never tried to debate it with her, but I was well aware that other people saw her father’s past in a different light and now for the first time I was sufficiently intrigued to throw tact to the winds.
‘Primrose, two and a half years elapsed between your mother’s death and his marriage to Dido! He couldn’t have been mad all the time!’
‘Dido kept him mad by chasing him so hard that he had no chance to recover his equilibrium.’
‘But I’ve heard it said that he himself was the one who did the chasing –’
‘That was simply a rumour Dido put into circulation in order to boost her ego. The truth was she sank her talons into him when he was vulnerable and then clawed away until he agreed to marry her.’
‘But that makes your father sound absolutely feeble!’
‘Nonsense! On the contrary it shows he was strong enough to marry out of compassion and tough enough to survive the inevitable disaster!’
‘So are you saying he never loved Dido at all?’
‘How could he have done? It was Mother he adored. He just saw Dido as a neurotic, pathetic failure and he was idealistic enough to think he could heal her by marriage. He acted, I assure you, not out of love but out of sheer nobility of soul.’ Elektra had spoken. I had no doubt I was supposed to swallow whole this theory which showed her father as a self-sacrificing saint, but I could not help but feel it raised more problems than it solved. There were plenty of neurotic women in the world; why had he allowed himself to be nailed by someone as dreadful as Dido? And why had he been driven to heal a neurotic woman anyway? And why had he felt it essential that the healing should take place within the framework of marriage when it must have been obvious that such a marriage could only prove disastrous? The more I considered the theory the more unsatisfactory it seemed; I could only conclude that Primrose had been carried away by her Elektra complex and that her father’s second marriage was a mystery she had never even begun to unravel.
Idly I heard myself say: ‘Bearing in mind the fact that your father must often have been vilely unhappy with the gorgon, do you think he’s ever looked at anyone else?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Primrose was genuinely appalled. ‘Of course, I know one does occasionally hear about vicars who let the side down, but
Father –
the former Archdeacon of Starbridge – a Canon of Westminster – and now the Dean of one of the greatest cathedrals in England –’
‘Sorry, forget I spoke.’
‘I know he talks racily sometimes, but underneath all that he’s quite exceptionally serious and devout! In fact you can be one hundred per cent certain that ever since he took his ordination vows not a single adulterous thought has ever crossed his mind.’
Yet again Elektra had spoken, but this time I was prepared to accept the pronouncement without question; it chimed with everything I knew about my heroic Mr Dean. I sighed, but I had never seriously thought that my grand passion had a hope of being consummated.
I vowed never to entertain such a futile thought again.