II
‘My darling, I absolutely mustn’t go any further —’
‘Are you worried in case I get pregnant?’
‘There’s no question of me ever putting you in a position where you might get pregnant.’
‘How can you say that when we’re so obviously on the brink of —’
‘But we’re not. I’m reining myself in.’ Drawing back from me he began to rearrange his clothes.
‘Who’s reining himself in?’ I burst out, overpowered by my frustration. ‘Neville One who was brought up by puritan Nonconformists? Nevilles Two and Three who are supposed to be dead? Stephen, who’s supposed to be left at home with Dido? I know it can’t be Neville Four — he loves me and wants to go on!’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ he said irritably. ‘Stop treating a mere metaphor as a concrete fact!’
‘Your behaviour
is
a concrete fact, and I’ve come to suspect this whole mystery’s somehow bound up with your multiple personality —’
‘I have no multiple personality. What mystery?’
I ignored him. ‘If Neville One can be subjugated,’ I persisted recklessly, ‘and Nevilles Two and Three are dead, then it must be Stephen who’s holding you back — which in turn must meanthat your behaviour’s all connected with Dido. Look, Neville, just what the hell is your relationship with that woman?’
He got out, slammed the door so violently that the whole car shuddered, and strode off into the woods.
I stifled a sob. Then I hared after him.
III
‘How dare you talk to me like that!’ he shouted. ‘How
dare
you!’ His short, powerfully-built figure was now exuding an anger so violent that I recoiled from him in terror. Nothing had prepared me for such rage because never had I seen him so transformed. My Mr Dean had vanished and in his place stood a monster who looked murderous. I nearly fainted with fear.
Then the horror ended. The stranger vanished. My Mr Dean, white with fright, stammered: ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me —’ and hugged me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. ‘How could I have lost my temper like that?’ he said appalled. ‘And with you — the most precious thing in my whole life! How vile, how wicked, how —’
I sobbed no, no, no, it was all my fault and I’d never mention Dido again as long as I lived and please,
please
could he say he forgave me for making him so angry.
The dialogue eventually reached its foregone conclusion when we embraced, but afterwards he was unable to let the matter rest. He said urgently: ‘That wasn’t Neville Four. I promise you that wasn’t Neville Four.’
‘No, of course not.’ I dried my eyes.
‘That was Neville Two,’ he said, fathoms deep in mystified anxiety, ‘Neville Two when Neville Three was too weak to contain him. But how could he possibly have staged a resurrection?’ Catching sight of my expression he added hastily: ‘It’s all right, you’ll never see him again, I promise. Neville Four’s reburied him and covered the grave with cement.’
Unable to frame anything which could resemble a reply, I clasped his hand and we walked slowly back to the car. Above us in the trees of Chancton Wood the beech leaves were a vivid, sunlit green.
When we were sitting in the car again he said rapidly: ‘I’m under such stress at the moment. That’s no excuse for what happened, of course, but at least it’s an explanation for such a horrific failure of self-control.’
‘Honestly, Neville, let’s just forget it.’
‘I can’t. Supposing I’d hit you?’
‘But you didn’t.’
He seemed not to hear me. It was as if he were immersed in some private nightmare and was flailing around trying to wake up. ‘I have this horror,’ he said, gripping the steering-wheel, ‘this absolute horror of hurting women. They have to be kept safe, cherished, put on pedestals, worshipped, preserved from destruction.’ He was now gripping the wheel so hard his entire hands shone white. ‘If I ever wound up destroying a woman I couldn’t live with myself — I’ve told you that before, I’ve told you that I’m afraid of destroying you. And now I’ll tell you that I’m afraid of destroying
her.
A wife must always be able to believe with confidence that there’s one act her husband would never do with another woman. Then she won’t be destroyed.’
After a while I managed to say: ‘Darling, I do understand.’
But of course I didn’t. I could now see the ‘ropes of steel’ that bound him to Dido and prevented him from consummating our affair, but where those ropes had been forged and how they had come to bind him I had no idea.
He remained, as before, a mystery.
IV
The phone rang as I was drinking a de luxe dry martini, smoking my umpteenth cigarette of the day and feeling light-headed with relief. I had just worked out that Aysgarth, terrified of destroying Dido with another pregnancy, could not possibly be having sex with her; the very thought of such destruction would be sufficient to render him instantly impotent.
‘Hullo, darling,’ said my mother as I answered the phone. ‘It’s me. How’s the plant?’
‘Oh, doing wonderfully well!’ I had thrown out the corpse that morning.
‘Do remember what I said about not watering it too much —’
‘Yes, Mama. Any news?’
‘Well, we’re coming down to Pauncefoot the weekend after next — I have to judge the flowers at the village fete and your father’s decided to come too, which is a good thing as he’s been working so hard in London
(endless
committees) that I really feel it’s time he had a rest. Anyway, darling, we’d love to see you — why don’t you come for the weekend and bring some young people?’
Will anyone else be there?’
‘Only the Dean,’ said my mother satisfied, and added as I nearly knocked over my martini: ‘By a tremendous stroke of luck we discovered Dido was going to be away that weekend — she’s taking the children to visit her sister in Leicestershire — so as soon as he heard the good news your father rang the Dean to issue the invitation.’
‘Splendid — I’ll cadge a lift. Is he arriving on Saturday morning?’
‘No, Friday night. That’ll give him a little extra time because he has to leave early on Sunday morning in order to get back for matins. We were hoping he could give the Cathedral a miss that weekend, but apparently that’s not possible.’
‘What a bore. Okay, Mama, expect me to turn up with him on Friday week.’
‘You wouldn’t like to bring a friend? Perhaps Primrose —’
‘No, Primrose is fearfully busy at the moment,’ I said, ‘and as I’ve seen so little of you recently I’d rather come on my own.’
That pleased her. She asked after the Bishop, my work, the Lindsay family and my flat. Then she maundered on about Arabella’s marital problems, but when I at last succeeded in terminating the call I yodelled: ‘Yippee!’ at the top of my voice and mixed myself another jumbo martini.
‘... and it’s certainly very exciting that we can be together for a weekend,’ Aysgarth wrote, ‘although I daresay your father will stick to me like glue. However, no doubt we can wangle some time together in your little sitting-room! Do you remember how we read Browning together there once when you were seventeen? You said (knowing everything, of course, just as one always does at that age) that Browning was hopelessly passé, but I persuaded you to change your mind! How my mother loved Browning’s poetry. In some ways you remind me of her. She was an exceptionally clever, charming woman who — wait for it! — wrote the most delightful letters! I was her favourite. We always got on famously.
‘But I shall hastily terminate that Freudian digression — how tiresome it is that nowadays a man can’t even make an innocent remark about his mother without being suspected of all manner of complexes! — and pass on to my current ecclesiastical nightmare. A diocesan committee which will advise the Chancellor on the artistic merit and general suitability of the sculpture is now being assembled, but I’ve no faith that the members will do anything except fling up their hands in horror. Meanwhile I’m still recovering from the spectacle of my bishop throwing his weight around like
a mafioso.
But why should I be so shocked? Power-mania is an occupational hazard for big-time executives in large corporations, and no doubt I was being naive in supposing that a man who wears a flashy gold cross is somehow miraculously uncontaminated from all the seamier aspects of corporate life at the top. Fancy Charles trying to strong-arm me out of a hearing in the Consistory Court like that! Disgraceful.
‘To further complicate my life — as if it needed further complications — a thoroughly ridiculous storm in a teacup has erupted and threatens to turn into a hurricane-force gale. Lady Bone-Pelham, widow of the very recently deceased Sir George Bone-Pelham who did something so secret in the war that nobody ever discovered what it was, telephoned me this morning to say that Sir George made a deal with my predecessor to ensure he’d be buried in the cloisters. The preposterous sum of £3,000 is reported to have changed hands. My predecessor Dean Carter, who is even now, no doubt, shaking hands with Sir George in some unimaginable realm of the hereafter, is not available for questioning but I’m prepared to bet heavy money that he’d never have taken a bribe. I explained to Lady Bone-Pelham that for hygienic reasons we no longer buried people within the Cathedral but I offered her space on the cloisters’ wall for a memorial tablet and earnestly assured her that Sir George could be laid to rest in the very best part of the cemetery. "Over my dead body!" was Lady B-P’s retort. Unable to cope with the thought of two Bone-Pelham corpses on my hands, I then told her I’d have to consult the Chapter. Eddie thinks she’s almost certainly certifiable. Fitzgerald and Dalton, loyal to their former boss Dean Carter, are outraged by the bribery slur and say they don’t even want to sanction a memorial tablet. But meanwhile how on earth do I convince a senile old lady that I can’t dig up the cloisters’ lawn to receive her distinguished husband? All my love, darling, from your demented but devoted N.’
VI
‘Well, Venetia,’ said my father a week later at Flaxton Hall, ‘so you’ve finally deigned to visit us! You look, I may say, quite remarkably well, which is very perverse of you since young girls who storm off to lead independent lives are supposed to be rapidly wrecked by numerous unspeakable adventures ... My dear Aysgarth, how delightful to see you again! What did you think of that article I sent you on Mithraism?’
Aysgarth and I had been unable to enjoy ourselves in Chancton Wood that week because he had been obliged to attend an important meeting, but fortified by the knowledge that we would be spending the weekend under the same roof we had faced the loss of our Wednesday outing with equanimity.
Leaving Starbridge on Friday afternoon in his car we had paused among the ruins of Flaxmundham Priory, but our hope of a romantic interlude had been terminated by a coachload of trippers. Undaunted, confident that there would be better opportunities later, we had pressed on to Flaxton Pauncefoot and had arrived at the Hall in time for tea.
‘What a lot of weight you’ve lost, Mr Dean!’ said my mother admiringly as soon as she saw him. This observation was true but although Aysgarth should now have appeared smart and streamlined he still contrived to look scruffy. On that day he wore his best suit and a new white shirt, but both were the wrong size for his new figure; moreover his tie was carelessly knotted and he had forgotten to have his shoes cleaned. In contrast my father, lounging around in his shabbiest country clothes, contrived to look not only distinguished but elegant. It was a great sartorial mystery.
Dinner was a success. Aysgarth’s dinner-jacket was well worn and his trousers were a fraction too long, but he was in such sparkling form that I was sure no one cared that he looked as if he was wearing hired clothes. He and my father spent some time discussing the resemblance between the Kennedy brothers of America and the Gracchi brothers of Ancient Rome. (This conversation took place before either of the Kennedy assassinations, a fact which no doubt explains why I remember it as a prophetic debate.) I slung in a controversial comment now and then and enjoyed the conversation immensely. My mother made a valiant effort to conceal her boredom and was once allowed to murmur what fun it must be for the Americans to have a young couple in the White House, but everyone was much too busy arguing about the Gracchi to reply.
Eventually I was obliged to leave the men to their port and retire to the drawing-room where my mother droned on and on about Absolutely-the-Bottom Arabella and whether or not Sylvia was pregnant again. I yawned and flicked through
Country Life
and wished I could be swilling port with the men.
They joined us for coffee but afterwards my father was unable to resist the temptation to monopolise his favourite playmate and Aysgarth was borne away to the library for further delicious intellectual debate. I was so livid that I had to have a bath to calm myself down. Then I hung around my little sitting-room upstairs for hours but no one came. Finally I was once more in such a state of frustrated rage that I sneaked down to the dining-room to filch some brandy from the sideboard, but as I passed the library door and heard my father’s animated voice I knew I could give up all hope of seeing Aysgarth that night. I fell asleep on my sitting-room sofa at one o’clock in the morning and woke in a filthy mood with a crick in my neck some time after four.
However my spirits revived at breakfast when my father said: ‘It’s a damn nuisance, Aysgarth, but I’ll have to put in an appearance at the village fete this afternoon. Would you mind pottering around here on your own for a couple of hours?’ and Aysgarth answered that he wouldn’t mind in the least and perhaps Venetia could take him for a little stroll in the grounds.
I gave him a chaste smile and instantly began to wonder if against all the odds and despite all the hang-ups I could lure him from my sitting-room sofa to my bed in the room next door.
VII
It began to rain but I never noticed. It was Aysgarth who remarked: ‘Why are village fetes always so unlucky with the weather?’ but I barely heard him because I was gripped with the hope that I might finally lose my virginity. We had started off sitting on my sofa with a battered volume of Browning but the book had soon fallen to the floor. So much for Browning. No buttons had been undone but I had slipped out of my shoes and we were just pausing while I began to undo his tie. He had one hand on my thigh, I remember – under my skirt, of course – and the other hand was playing sensuously with my hair.
Then the catastrophe happened.
Without warning the door swung open and my father walked into the room.