‘It was a terrible risk to mess around with all those damned Huns,’ said my father, ‘but he’s got away with it.’ And indeed Aysgarth’s failure, once he turned fifty, to receive his big preferment lay not in the fact that he had aligned himself with the pro-German Bishop Bell; it lay in the fact that he had a disastrous wife.
Dido prided herself on being a successful hostess. Her dinner-parties were patronised by an astonishing range of distinguished guests who enjoyed her eccentric remarks, but clerical wives are hardly supposed to toss off letters to the newspapers on controversial issues or make withering remarks about the Mothers’ Union during an interview with a women’s magazine. The press were rapidly enthralled with appalling results. Dido stopped giving interviews but could seldom resist a tart comment on any matter of public interest. (‘What do you think of the conquest of Everest, Mrs Aysgarth?’
‘Thank God someone’s finally done it — I’m bored to death with the wretched molehill!’
‘Do you believe in capital punishment, Mrs Aysgarth?’
‘Certainly! Flog ‘em and hang ‘em — and why not crucify ‘em too? What was good enough for Our Lord ought to be good enough for mass-murderers!’
‘What do you think of the Suez crisis, Mrs Aysgarth?’ The Archbishop of Canterbury should declare that the entire disaster is a Moslem plot to humiliate a Christian country, and all the soldiers going to the Canal should wear crosses, like the Crusaders!’)
‘Aysgarth will never receive preferment now,’ said my father in deepest gloom after the Suez comment had been plastered over William Hickey’s Diary in the
Daily Express.
‘How could that woman ever be a bishop’s wife? She’d outrage everyone in no time.’
Hating to abandon hope I said: ‘Could he still be a dean?’
‘Perhaps in one of the minor cathedrals a long way from London.’
‘Dido will never leave London except for Canterbury or York,’ said my mother dryly, but she was wrong. Late in 1956 after the Suez crisis had reached its catastrophic conclusion, Dido gave birth to her fifth and final child, a stillborn boy, and promptly lapsed into a nervous breakdown. From time to time in the past she had suffered from nervous exhaustion, but this episode was so severe that she was completely disabled. She had to spend a month in an establishment which was tactfully referred to as a convalescent home, and even when she emerged she could do no more than lie in bed in a darkened room.
‘I think she fancies herself as Camille,’ said Primrose. ‘I’m just waiting for the first little consumptive cough.’
‘Maybe she’ll commit suicide,’ I suggested.
‘Not a hope. That sort never does. Too damn selfish.’
The day after this conversation Aysgarth turned up on the doorstep of our London home in Lord North Street, a stone’s throw from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. My mother was out at a charity coffee-party, my father was downstairs in his study and I was lolling on the sofa in the first-floor drawing-room as I reread
Middlemarch.
By this time I was almost twenty and had recently returned with relief to England after enduring weeks of exile with family friends in Florence.
When I heard the doorbell I laid aside my book and padded out on to the landing. In the hall below me the butler had just opened the front door and Aysgarth was saying: ‘Lord Flaxton’s expecting me,’ but from the tone of his voice I realised I should abstain from cascading down the stairs to offer him an exuberant welcome. I paused, keeping well back from the banisters. Then as soon as the hall was empty I sped noiselessly down the staircase and pressed my ear to the door of my father’s study.
‘... and since you’ve always taken such an interest in my career,’ I heard Aysgarth say, ‘I thought you should be the first to know that I have to leave London. There’s no choice. Dido’s health demands it.’
My father at once became apoplectic with horror. I too was horrified but I did rouse myself sufficiently to check that my eavesdropping was unobserved. Fortunately a gossipy drone rising from the basement indicated that the servants had paused for elevenses. With confidence I returned my ear to the panel.
‘... and now that I’ve spoken to the psychiatrist,’ Aysgarth was saying, ‘I can clearly see that she needs to make a completely fresh start somewhere else. The tragedy is that back in 1946 she so desperately wanted to come to London because she felt that here she could play a major part in advancing my career. The present situation — and of course we all know my career’s ground to a halt — is very hard for her to bear.’
‘Quite. But nonetheless —’
The death of the baby was the last straw. Dido now feels she’s a failure at everything she undertakes in this city, and she’s convinced that she has no chance of happiness until she leaves it.’
‘But Aysgarth,’ said my father, trying to mask his despair by assuming a truly phenomenal gentleness, ‘that’s all very well for Dido, but what about you?’
‘I couldn’t live with myself unless I’d done everything in my power to make Dido feel successful and happy.’
There was a silence while my father and I boggled at this extraordinary statement. I was too young then to feel anything but a massive outrage that he should be acquiescing without complaint in the wrecking of his career, and it was only years later that I realised this was my first glimpse of the mystery which lay at the heart of his marriage.
‘It’s clear to me that I’m not meant to move any further up the ecclesiastical ladder,’ said Aysgarth at last when my father remained silent, ‘and I accept that. I confess I’d be happy to stay on in London and devote myself to my German interests, but obviously it’s time for my life to take a new turn.’
My father managed to say in a voice devoid of emotion: ‘I’ll see what I can do about a Crown appointment.’
‘That’s more than good of you, but quite honestly I think you’d be wasting your time if you tried to pull strings in Downing Street. I’m sure I must have the letters "W.I." against my name in the clerical files.’
‘"W.I."?’
‘"Wife Impossible".’
‘Ah.’ There was a pause. Obviously my father was so appalled that he needed several seconds to frame his next question. It was: ‘Surely Bell can do something for you?’
‘Unfortunately no canonry’s likely to fall vacant at Chichester at the moment, and apart from Chichester Bell’s influence is mostly abroad — which is no use to me, since Dido couldn’t possibly cope with the stress of living in a foreign country. I’ll talk to Bell, of course, but —’
‘If he can’t produce anything suitable, Aysgarth, I believe your best bet would be to go straight to the top and talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury.’
‘He’s been implacably opposed to Dido ever since she criticised the hat Mrs Fisher wore at the Coronation.’
‘Oh God, I’d forgotten that disaster! All right, pass over Fisher. What about the Bishop of London?’
‘He’s fairly new and I still don’t know him well.’
‘In that case you must approach his predecessor. Dr Wand’s not dead yet, is he?’
‘No, but I have a fatal knack of alienating Anglo-Catholics.’ Then your Dean at Westminster —’
‘He’s been cool towards me for some time. I’ve been paying too much attention to my international concerns and not giving enough time to the Abbey.’
‘But there must be someone who can rescue you!’ said my father outraged. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to be famous for their brotherly love!’
Aysgarth somehow produced a laugh but before he could reply my father said suddenly: ‘What about your old diocese? Can you approach the Bishop of Starbridge?’
‘He’s another man I don’t know well. You’re forgetting that I left Starbridge before he was appointed.’
‘But I know him,’ said my father, who was one of the largest landowners in the Starbridge diocese. ‘He’s a dry old stick but we’re on good terms. Just you leave this to me, Aysgarth, and I’ll see what I can do .. .
IV
Neither my father nor Aysgarth hoped for more than a canonry, and both of them were aware how unlikely it was that any choice position would fall vacant at the right moment, but within twenty-four hours of their secret conference the Dean of Starbridge suffered a stroke and it was clear he would be obliged to retire. At once my father plunged into action. The deanery was a Crown appointment, but my father, undeterred by the thought of those hideous letters ‘WI.’ in Aysgarth’s file, started swamping the Prime Minister’s clerical advisers with claret at the Athenaeum. He was helped by having an eligible candidate to promote: Aysgarth knew Starbridge well from his years as Archdeacon, and as a first-class administrator he was more than capable of running one of the greatest cathedrals in England. My father beavered away optimistically only to be appalled when the Prime Minister admitted to him during a chance encounter at the Palace of Westminster that since the deanery was such an important appointment he intended to let Archbishop Fisher have the last word.
‘Oh my God!’ I said in despair when my father broke the news. By this time I had insinuated myself into the crisis so successfully that my father was taking the unprecedented step of treating me as his confidante. ‘Mrs Fisher’s Coronation hat!’
‘If Aysgarth fails to get that deanery,’ said my father, ‘just because Dido made a catty remark about a hat —’
‘We can’t let it happen, Papa, we simply can’t — Fisher must be tamed.’ It was now 1957 and the entire summer stretched before us. ‘Is he interested in racing?’ I demanded feverishly. ‘We could offer him our box at Ascot. Or what about tennis? We could offer him our debenture seats for the Wimbledon fortnight. Or cricket — you could invite him to the Pavilion at Lords —’
‘My dear girl, Fisher’s hardly the man to be swayed by mere frivolities!’
‘Then what’s his ruling passion in life?’
‘Canon law.’
The problem seemed insuperable.
After a pause during which we racked our brains for inspiration I asked: ‘Who, technically, has the power to overrule the Archbishop of Canterbury?’
The Queen and God. I mean, the Queen. I really can’t start believing in God at my age —’
‘Never mind God, let’s concentrate on the Queen. Why don’t you pull a string at the Palace?’
‘What string? I don’t have a string — you know very well that I’ve never been the courtier type!’
‘Now look here, Papa: are you a peer of the realm or aren’t you?’
‘I’m beginning to feel like the inhabitant of a lunatic asylum. Venetia, the Queen would only refer the matter back to the Prime Minister, and since we already know Macmillan’s determined to pass the buck to Fisher —’
‘Then we’ve just got to conquer that Archbishop. Let’s think again. He’s an ex-headmaster, isn’t he? If you were to invite him to dinner with the headmaster of Eton and throw in the Bishop of Starbridge for good measure —’
‘This has all come to pass because back in 1945 Aysgarth married that bloody woman!’ exclaimed my father, finally giving way to his rage. ‘Why on earth did he marry her? That’s what I’d like to know! Why on earth did he do it?’
It was a question I was to ask myself many times in the years to come.
V
Our fevered plotting resulted in my father’s decision to give a little all-male dinner-party at the House of Lords. This made me very cross as I had planned to charm the Archbishop by begging him to tell me all about his life as headmaster of Repton, but my father merely said: ‘Women should keep out of this sort of business. Why don’t you start training for a decent job instead of loafing around smoking those disgusting cigarettes and reading George Eliot? If you’d gone up to Oxford –’
‘What good’s Oxford to me when all public school Englishmen run fifty miles from any woman who’s mad enough to disclose she has a brain bigger than a pea?’
‘There’s more to life than the opposite sex!’
‘It’s easy for you to say that – you’re tottering towards your sixty-sixth birthday!’
‘Tottering? I never totter – how dare you accuse me of senility!’
‘If you can spend your time making monstrous statements, why shouldn’t I follow your example?’
My father and I had this kind of row with monotonous regularity; I had long since discovered that this was an infallible way of gaining his attention. The rows had now become stylised. After the ritual door-slamming my long-suffering mother was permitted to play the peacemaker and bring us together again.
However on this occasion events failed to follow their usual course because before my mother could intervene my father took the unprecedented step of initiating the reconciliation. He did it by pretending the row had never happened. When I returned to the house after a furious walk around St James’s Park he immediately surged out of his study to waylay me.
‘Guess what’s happened!’
‘The Archbishop’s dropped dead.’
‘My God, that’s close! But no, unfortunately the dead man’s not Fisher. It’s the Bishop of Starbridge.’
I was appalled. ‘Our best ally!’
‘Our only hope! I feel ready to cut my throat.’
‘Well, pass me the razor when you’ve finished with it.’
We decided we had to be fortified by sherry. My mother was out, attending a meeting of the WVS. In the distance Big Ben was striking noon.
‘What the devil do I do now?’ said my father as we subsided with our glasses on the drawing-room sofa. ‘I can’t face Fisher without Staro on hand to make his speech about how well Aysgarth ran the archdeaconry back in the ‘forties. In Fisher’s eyes I’m just a non-church-goer. I was absolutely relying on Staro to wheel on the big ecclesiastical guns.’
‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I think it’s time God intervened.’
‘Don’t talk to me of God! What a bungler He is – if He exists – collecting Staro at exactly the wrong moment! If Aysgarth ever gets that deanery now it’ll be nothing short of a miracle, and since I don’t believe in miracles and since I strongly suspect that God is an anthropomorphic fantasy conjured up by mankind’s imagination –’
The doorbell rang.
‘Damn it,’ muttered my father. ‘Why didn’t I tell Pond I wasn’t at home to callers?’
We waited. Eventually the butler plodded upstairs to announce: ‘Canon Aysgarth’s here, my Lord.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake show him up!’ said my father crossly. ‘You know I’m always at home to Mr Aysgarth!’
Pond retired. My father was just pouring some sherry into a third glass when Aysgarth walked into the room.
‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ said my father, ‘and have a drink. I assume you’ve heard the disastrous news.’
‘Abandon your sherry!’ said Aysgarth. ‘Send for the champagne!’
We gaped at him. His eyes sparkled. His smile was radiant. He was euphoric.
In amazement my father exclaimed: ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘Fisher summoned me to Lambeth Palace this morning. He said: "Let’s forget all the nonsense those women stirred up. We can’t let the Church suffer in
1957
just because my wife wore a certain hat in 1953."‘
My father and I both gasped but Aysgarth, now speaking very rapidly, gave us no chance to interrupt him. "Starbridge is suddenly without either a bishop or a dean," said Fisher, "and both the Cathedral and the diocese have problems which need solving urgently by the best men available —"‘
‘My God!’ said my father.
‘My God!’ said my voice at exactly the same moment. I had a vague picture of an anthropomorphic deity smiling smugly in a nest of clouds.
‘He offered me the deanery,’ said Aysgarth. ‘By that time, of course, I was almost unconscious with amazement, but I did somehow manage to open my mouth and say "thank you".’
For a moment my father was silent, and when he was finally able to speak he could produce only a Latin tag. It was an emotional:
‘
Fiat justitia!
’
Aysgarth tried to reply and failed. Mutely they shook hands. Englishmen really are extraordinary in their ruthless pursuit of the stiff upper lip. If those men had belonged to any other race they would no doubt have slobbered happily over each other for some time.
‘Venetia,’ said my father at last, somehow achieving a casual tone, ‘ring the bell and we’ll ask Pond to conjure up the Veuve Clicquot.’
But I ignored him. Taking advantage of the fact that women were permitted to be demonstrative in exceptional circumstances, I exclaimed to Aysgarth for the first time in my life: ‘My darling Mr Dean!’ and impulsively slipped my arms around his neck to give him a kiss.
‘Really, Venetia!’ said my father annoyed. ‘Young women can’t run around giving unsolicited hugs to clergymen! What a way to behave!’
But my Mr Dean said: ‘If there were more unsolicited hugs in the world a clergyman’s lot would be a happier one!’ And to me he added simply, ‘Thank you, Venetia. God bless you.’ - In ecstasy I rang the bell for champagne.