Glittering Images (5 page)

The evening was warm and the prospect of encasing myself in my formal clerical clothes was not appealing but naturally I had no choice other than to martyr myself in the name of convention. I spent some time in front of the glass as I coaxed my hair to lie flat. I have curly hair which I keep short, but it has wayward tendencies which water can rarely subdue for long. However I never use hair oil. It makes me look like a bounder, and I was always unaccountably nervous in case my appearance reflected the wrong image in the mirror.

Yet that evening I found my reflection reassuring. Here was no bounder, no shady character from a modern ‘shocker’, but a clergyman who was thirty-seven and looked younger. Playing squash and tennis had curbed an inclination to put on weight as I left my twenties behind, and although I was a little too fond of good food and more than a little too fond of good wine, my appearance proved I had these weaknesses well in control. I saw no heaviness around the jaw, no pouches beneath the eyes, no giveaway lines around the mouth. I looked like the man I wanted to be and the image in the long glass seemed impregnable as I surveyed it in the golden evening light.

Glancing at my watch I saw the time had come for me to make my appearance downstairs. The curtain was about to rise on the stage at Starbridge, and leaving my room I headed for the wings to await my cue.

I had no trouble finding the drawing-room. As I descended the stairs I could hear the murmur of voices drifting towards me through the open door on the far side of the hall. A woman gave an attractive laugh, a man protested: ‘No, I’m serious! I’ve always thought
Peter Pan
was a most sinister story!’ and I deduced that the conversation had arisen in connection with the recent death of Sir James Barrie.

‘But Henry, you can’t possibly describe an innocent fantasy as sinister!’

‘Why not? Captain Hook reminds me of Mussolini.’

‘Everyone reminds you of Mussolini. Oh darling, I do wish you’d forget Abyssinia and look on the bright side for a change – after all, think how well we’re doing! We’ve survived the War, the Slump and the Abdication – and now that dear Mr Chamberlain’s poised to turn the country into a vast version of Birmingham with that divinely businesslike efficiency of his, I’m sure we’re all set for a rosy future!’

‘This sounds like another of Barrie’s fantasies. No wonder you enjoy
Peter Pan,
my dear.’

I walked into the room. The first person I saw was Miss Christie. She was standing by the French windows and looking formidably aloof. In contrast the other three occupants of the room were exuding that easy camaraderie which arises when people have enjoyed an unaffected friendship for a long time. By the fireplace stood an elderly man with a frank mild face and that air of self-confidence which can only be acquired from a lifetime spent in privileged surroundings. He was drinking a cocktail which appeared to be a dry martini. Perched on the arm of a sofa a handsome woman was also toying with a martini glass, and beyond her a plump, pretty, grey-haired little woman in a lavish lavender evening gown was selecting a water biscuit from a silver dish nearby.

Everyone turned to look at me. Miss Christie at once moved forward to make the introductions, but she was a long way away and the plump, pretty little woman forestalled her.

‘Dr Ashworth!’ she exclaimed, beaming at me. ‘How nice to see you! I hope your motor journey wasn’t too difficult but it must have helped that the weather was fine. Isn’t the weather beautiful? All the sunshine’s so good for the garden.’

I did not need to be told that I was being addressed by my hostess. ‘How do you do, Mrs Jardine,’ I said, smiling as I took her hand in mine. ‘It’s very kind of you to have me to stay.’

‘Not at all, it’s spendid for Alex to have someone clever to talk to! Now let me introduce you to everyone. Miss Christie you’ve met, of course, and here –’ she turned to the couple who had been debating
Peter Pan
‘– are Lord and Lady Starmouth who have always been so kind to us ever since Alex was Vicar of St Mary’s, Mayfair. They have such a delightful house in Curzon Street and Alex stays there when he has to be up in town for the debates in the House of Lords – oh, heavens, perhaps I shouldn’t mention the Lords’ debates, especially as you’re a friend of the Archbishop’s – Lyle, am I dropping some frightful brick?’

‘Dr Ashworth,’ said Miss Christie, ‘is probably only thinking how pleasant it must be for the Bishop to stay with friends whenever he’s up in town.’

But in fact I was thinking that the good-looking Countess of Starmouth might well be one of Jardine’s ‘lovely ladies’, faithfully chaperoned by one of the gentlemen whom Jack had described as ‘boring old husbands’. However this unflattering description hardly did justice to the Earl of Starmouth who looked alert enough to be entertaining even though he might have been on the wrong side of seventy. Perhaps Lady Starmouth kept him young; I estimated that she was at least twenty years his junior.

‘My wife collects clerics,’ said Lord Starmouth to me as we shook hands. ‘She’ll collect you too if you’re not careful.’

‘I adore clergymen,’ agreed his wife with that aristocratic frankness which never fails to make the more reticent members of the middle classes cringe with embarrassment. ‘It’s the collar, of course. It makes a man seem so deliciously forbidden.’

‘What can I offer you to drink, Dr Ashworth?’ said Miss Christie, middle-class propriety well to the fore.

‘A dry sherry, please.’ No ambitious clergyman drank cocktails at episcopal dinner parties.

A young man in clerical garb bustled into the room, muttered, ‘Bother! No Bishop,’ and bustled out again.

‘Poor Gerald!’ said Mrs Jardine. ‘I really wonder sometimes whether we made the right decision when we installed a telephone. It’s so terribly hard for the chaplain when people ring up at awkward moments … Oh, here’s Willy! Come and meet my brother, Dr Ashworth.’

I was introduced to a Colonel Cobden-Smith, a hale gentleman in his sixties with a pink face, white hair and a cherubic expression. He was accompanied by his wife, a thin energetic woman who reminded me of a greyhound, and by a very large St Bernard dog who padded majestically through the room to the terrace on his way to water the flowerbeds.

‘I know nothing about theology,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith to me as soon as we had been introduced. ‘I always say to Alex that I know nothing about theology and I don’t want to know anything either. As far as I’m concerned God’s God, the Church is the Church, the Bible’s the Bible and I can’t understand what all the arguments are about.’

‘Funny business, religion,’ mused her husband, uttering this dubious remark with such an ingenuous admiration that no clergyman could have found him offensive, and began to talk about a Buddhist monk he had met in India.

The young chaplain bustled back into the room. ‘So sorry, Mrs Jardine, but you know what the Archdeacon’s like when he rings up in a panic …’

I was introduced to Gerald Harvey. He was a short bespectacled man in his early twenties who seemed to be perpetually out of breath, and I wondered whether the Bishop of Starbridge regularly reduced his chaplain to this state of wild-eyed anxiety.

‘… and I’ve heard about your book, of course,’ he was saying, ‘but I confess I haven’t read it because all those ancient arguments about the Trinity simply make me want to tear off my dog-collar and enlist in the Foreign Legion – oh my goodness, there’s the doorbell and the Bishop’s still not down! I’d better go and see if anything’s wrong.’

He dashed away again. I was surprised that Jardine had selected such a plain, unsophisticated and clearly unintellectual chaplain, but before I could speculate on the existence of sterling virtues which would have qualified Harvey for his post, the butler announced the arrival of Mr and Mrs Frank Jennings. Jennings, I soon discovered, had just been appointed to teach dogmatics at the Theological College in the Close. He himself was unremarkable in his appearance but his wife was a pretty young blonde, and remembering Jack’s gossip I wondered how far her looks had qualified the couple for an invitation to the episcopal dinner table.

‘I found your book most stimulating,’ Jennings said to me agreeably, but before he could continue his wife exclaimed: ‘Good gracious, Frank, look at that gigantic dog!’

‘Alex had a dog once,’ said little Mrs Jardine as the St Bernard made a stately return to the room. ‘He called it Rhetoric. But we were living in London at the time and poor little Rhet was run over by such a vulgar Rolls-Royce – really, I’ve never felt the same about motor cars since … Do you have a dog, Dr Ashworth?’

‘No, Mrs Jardine.’

‘Do you have a wife, Dr Ashworth?’ called Lady Starmouth, giving me a friendly look with her fine dark eyes.

I was acutely aware of Miss Christie’s hand pausing in the act of pouring out glasses of sherry for the newcomers.

‘I’m a widower, Lady Starmouth,’ I said.

‘All clergymen ought to be married,’ said the authoritative Mrs Cobden-Smith, offering a handful of water biscuits to the St Bernard. ‘They say the Roman Catholics have frightful trouble with their celibate priests.’

‘They say the Church of England has frightful trouble with its married clergy,’ said a strong harsh well-remembered voice from the doorway, and as we all turned to face him the Bishop of Starbridge made a grand entrance into his drawing-room.

Dr Jardine was a man of medium height, slim and well proportioned, with dark greying hair and brown eyes so light that they were almost amber. The eyes were set deep and wide apart; by far his most arresting feature, they were capable of assuming a hypnotic lambent glaze in the pulpit, a physiological trick which Jardine used sparingly but effectively to underline his considerable gifts as a preacher. His quick abrupt walk revealed his energy and hinted at his powerful restless intellect. Unlike most bishops he wore his gaiters with
élan
, as if conscious that he had the figure to triumph over the absurdity of the archaic episcopal costume, and when he entered the room he was radiating the electric self-confidence which his enemies decried as bumptious and his admirers defended as debonair.

‘Don’t be alarmed, everyone!’ he said, smiling after the opening remark which had won our attention. ‘I’m not about to secede to Rome, but I can never resist the urge to counter my sister-in-law’s scandalously dogmatic assertions … Good evening, Dr Ashworth, I’m delighted to see you. Good evening, Jennings – Mrs Jennings – now, Mrs Jennings, there’s no need to be shy. I may be a fire-breathing bishop but I’m extremely tame in the company of pretty ladies – isn’t that so, Lady Starmouth?’

‘Tame as a tiger!’ said the Countess amused.

‘We used to have some good tiger-shoots in India,’ reflected Colonel Cobden-Smith. ‘I remember –’

‘I saw such an adorable tiger at the zoo once,’ said Mrs Jardine, ‘but I’m sure it would have been so much happier back in the wild.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the Bishop robustly, accepting a glass of sherry from Miss Christie. ‘If the unfortunate animal had been in its natural habitat your brother would have come along and murdered it. Did you arrive in time for Evensong, Dr Ashworth?’

‘I’m afraid I was late getting here. The traffic around London –’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t award black marks for missing services. Now, Mrs Jennings, sit down and tell me all about yourself – have you managed to find a house yet?’

As his wife was purloined by the Bishop, Jennings began to tell me about his arduous quest for a property in the suburbs. Occasionally I offered a word of sympathy but for the most part I sipped my sherry in silence, eavesdropped on the other conversations and kept a surreptitious watch on Miss Christie.

Lady Starmouth suddenly glided into my field of vision. ‘I think you must be the youngest canon I’ve ever met, Dr Ashworth! Does this mean the Church is at last beginning to believe it’s not a crime to be under forty?’

‘The canonry came with the job, Lady Starmouth. When Archbishop Laud founded Laud’s College and Cambridge Cathedral in the seventeenth century he stipulated that the College should appoint a doctor of divinity to teach theology and act as one of the Cathedral’s residentiary canons.’ I suddenly realized that Miss Christie was looking straight at me, but when our glances met she turned away. I continued to watch as she picked up the sherry decanter again but Colonel Cobden-Smith cornered her before she could embark on the task of refilling glasses.

‘… and I hear you were Dr Lang’s chaplain once,’ Lady Starmouth was saying. ‘How did you meet him?’

Reluctantly I averted my gaze from Miss Christie. ‘He gave away the prizes during my last year at school.’

‘You were head boy of your school, of course,’ said Jardine from the depths of the sofa nearby.

‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ I said surprised, ‘yes, I was.’

‘How clever of you, Alex!’ exclaimed Mrs Jardine. ‘How did you guess Dr Ashworth had been head boy?’

‘No boy attracts His Grace’s attention unless he shows signs of becoming a walking advertisement for Muscular Christianity.’

‘I adore Muscular Christianity,’ said Lady Starmouth.

‘If Christianity were a little more muscular the world wouldn’t be in such a mess,’ said the forthright Mrs Cobden-Smith.

‘If Christianity were a little more muscular it wouldn’t be Christianity,’ said the Bishop, again displaying his compulsion to argue with his sister-in-law. ‘The Sermon on the Mount wasn’t a lecture on weight-lifting.’