Scandalous Risks (32 page)

X

.. and that concludes my account of the drama of regiment and royalty,’ wrote Aysgarth after describing Thursday’s special service so wittily that I laughed out loud. ‘Let me now pass to a different form of drama and remark how amazing it is that
Present Laughter
opens next week – time seems to have flown lately, although it now seems an eternity since I last saw you (I don’t count our rendezvous yesterday on Lady Mary – that was just a crumb to keep me from starving). How I rely on your letters to ease the agony of waiting for next Wednesday – and talking of your letters, thank you so very much for the understanding you displayed when you commiserated with me about that **** Fitzgerald. As an eminent cleric I shouldn’t even think this word, let alone hint at it in a letter to a lady, but since it’s not a blasphemy and since I know you supported the use of four-letter words in
Lady Chatterley
’
s Lover,
I think I can at least be permitted an explosion of asterisks! If
only
I could get Fitzgerald promoted out of the diocese! I’ll have to renew my machinations at Church House.

‘I’m toying with the idea of writing a survival manual for deans, and the chapter headings are forming effortlessly in my mind’s eye. (i) How to survive your bishop. (2) How to box with your archdeacon. (3) How to kick a canon upstairs. (4) How to outwit a conspiracy to grab your churchyard. (5)....oh, the possibilities are endless! Isn’t it amazing that the Church should give the impression to laymen of being a stagnant pool? What a masterly exercise in public relations! But no, on second thoughts, perhaps the image isn’t so wide of the mark after all. Any biologist will tell you that a stagnant pond is always teeming with life – and that the life can take very unattractive forms. All my love, darling, longing, absolutely
longing
for Wednesday, N.

‘PS. (LATER) Lindsay’s just phoned to ask when I’m seeing Trumpet (senior partner in the Cathedral’s firm of solicitors). "Tomorrow," I said, "and I’m sending the bill for the consultation to the diocesan office." There was a strangulated gasp. I waited for the thud which would indicate that his body had hit the floor, but he somehow kept upright and said in a voice which quivered with rage: "I think that’s a somewhat inappropriate remark. The Chancellor will, of course, make an order later in respect of costs." Well, I couldn’t resist it; that snooty upper-middle-class tone was like a red rag to a bull, and I wanted to scare him out of his wits. "Fine," I said, "but let me warn you that by the time I’ve won this case by fighting it through the Consistory Court to the Court of Arches and the Privy Council — with the aid of the best ecclesiastical lawyers in London — the Chancellor’s going to award me costs so large that you’ll need a thumbscrew and a rack to extort the money from the parishes." Then I hung up and had a triple whisky to calm me down! Heaven only knows what Lindsay had, but I only wish it was three bottles of claret and apoplexy. The plot thickens! Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the next instalment of
The Aysgarths,
an everyday story of clerical folk ...’

XI

‘Neville,’ I said on the following Wednesday after we had been embracing for some minutes in the car-park on Starbury Plain, ‘don’t you think the front seat of a car is entirely the wrong place to demonstrate one’s white-hot passion? I always seem to wind up being much too intimate with the hand-brake.’

He laughed, resuming the embrace, but he soon became wedged, as before, between the seat and the steering-wheel. He kept the driver’s seat placed well forward in order to accommodate his short legs and the result was that the wheel allowed him little room to manoeuvre. ‘We must look on the front seats,’ he said humorously, pausing for air,
‘
as a
modern version of the chastity belt!’

‘But I’m so tired of these contortions! Why don’t we transfer to the back seat?’

‘Passers-by might think —’

‘I’m tired of passers-by. In fact I’m tired of this car-park. If you don’t want to walk up to the Ring, let’s go down to Chancton Wood and romp naked through the undergrowth!’

We both rocked with laughter at the ridiculous picture the proposal evoked. ‘You, of course, have the figure for earnest, earthy Lawrentian romps!’ he gasped at last. ‘I’m keeping my clothes on!’

But he drove to Chancton Wood.

XII

‘I’m sorry,’ I said after we had wound up far off the beaten track in a grove of beech trees, ‘I know I’ve dragooned you here against your better judgement and you’re probably wondering what on earth I’m going to suggest next, but I do accept that we can’t "go all the way", as my American friend Dinkie would put it. I just got so tired of other people milling around us, that’s all.’

‘So did I. And there’s been no dragooning. I drove here of my own free will.’ Suddenly he exclaimed in despair: ‘How little I can offer you! No wonder you became so angry up at the Ring two weeks ago — and no wonder you became so discontented today. I so much wish —’ But he stopped.

At once I said: ‘It’s all right. You’re utterly convinced it would be disastrous as well as morally wrong. I do understand.’ But as I spoke my mouth was dry with excitement. It had occurred to me that his despair might drive him towards some form of capitulation.

‘I know John Robinson’s right,’ he was saying unevenly. ‘I know he is.’ But the next moment he was scrambling away from me out of the car as if he were unable to endure the emotional dilemma which Dr Robinson had so serenely sketched.

Flinging open the passenger door I joined him as he slumped against the side of the car and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. His misery was evident in every line of his bowed head, drooping shoulders, downcast eyes and downturned mouth, and suddenly all my longings seemed intolerably immature and self-centred; I wanted only that he should be happy again, secure in his indestructible idealism.

‘My darling Mr Dean,’ I said, ‘of course John Robinson’s right! And I’m more than willing to cope with the demands of the New Morality. What I couldn’t have coped with would have been some peculiar hang-up about being too terrified to win a prize in case you later found you didn’t want it — or perhaps some peculiar mania for preserving women from destruction. Do you remember how you once wrote to me and said quaintly that women should be put on pedestals and reverenced? That really made me very nervous! But of course I can see now that you were just expressing your romantic idealism and your high moral principles. And they’re the reason, aren’t they, why you’re unable to discuss your marriage. It’s not because you’re still sleeping with Dido, still emotionally involved with her. It really is because your high moral principles demand that you don’t talk about her behind her back.’

He froze. ‘You didn’t seriously think –’

‘Yes, I did,
as a
matter of fact. I was convinced that the only reason you were able to take a high moral line with me was because you were still sleeping with her.’

He was ashen. He opened his mouth, shut it again and ran his fingers wildly through his hair. At last he managed to say: ‘I’m going to explode that theory once and for all,’ and then he pulled me violently into his arms.

During the embrace that followed I became aware – as indeed I had been aware two weeks before at the Ring – that he was a long way from being impotent. He kissed me so hard my tongue hurt. Then without looking at the door of the car’s back seat, he reached out and pulled down the handle.

XIII

‘Of course,’ he whispered, ‘we won’t go far. But I want to go far enough to prove ... and it would be just such a luxury to ...’ Words finally failed him.

I said: ‘I always did think it was the little luxuries that made life worthwhile,’ and we both laughed, hugging each other. Then he began to fumble clumsily with his trousers.

XIV

A long time later as we were lighting cigarettes he said in a low voice: ‘Be honest with me – did you find all that unspeakably sordid?’

‘
Sordid?
For God’s sake, what kind of a Victorian middle-class chump do you think I am?’

‘I’d have thought any girl, no matter what her class, might react adversely to an unfettered display of male carnality.’

‘Unfettered display of ...’ I dissolved into helpless laughter. ‘Darling, you’re talking exactly like a character in one of the Victorian pornographic novels that Arabella found in Great-Uncle Frederick’s library! But no, on second thoughts the seducer would have talked about his "member", not about his male carnality. Must you really be quite so bourgeois and old-fashioned?’

He winced. Instantly I was stricken. ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –’

‘I’m the wrong class, the wrong age, the wrong everything as far as you’re concerned!’ he cried in despair.

‘So what? I’d love you even if you were a working-class navvy of ninety. Now stop worrying that I found that delicious groping sordid because the truth is I thought it was complete and utter bliss – in fact I’m quite sure the full sex act could only have been an anticlimax,’ I added in my firmest voice, and as he smiled shyly – he even blushed – I had a glimpse of the passionate but strait-laced young man he must have been long ago in a remote era which I could not quite imagine.

I kissed him. ‘Have I really shocked you so much?’ I said amused. ‘What happened to that bold, freewheeling dean who supported the publication of
Lady Chatterley
’
s Lover
and who’s now fighting tooth and nail for the right to install a box of phallic cigars in the Cathedral churchyard?’

To my relief he laughed and relaxed. ‘He was temporarily elbowed aside by Neville One who was brought up by Primitive Methodists!’

‘And when do Nevilles Two and Three make their appearance?’

‘Never, they’re dead. Good heavens, look at the time! My darling, I must drive back to Starbridge as fast as if I were Juan Fangio chasing the world championship!’

We rocketed out of Chancton Wood and roared down the main road to the city. I think I only screamed three times. At least we didn’t kill anyone. As we soared over the river into Eternity Street I gasped: ‘Don’t forget to drop me by the Staro Arms!’

‘No, can’t stop — there’s a hulking great monster pawing the back bumper —’

‘Then turn into the Close!’

‘No, someone might see us —’ We shot off at a tangent towards the Market Place — but don’t worry, I’ll go round by St Martin’s and drop you at the top of Butchers’ Alley.’

We zipped around the Market Place, dived up Wheat Street, zoomed down Barley Road and bounced to a halt in Chasuble Lane behind a parked van. ‘Bother!’ said Juan Fangio’s impersonator with commendable control of his language, and gamely nosed the car around the van’s right wing. Brakes screeched as a lorry coming the other way successfully avoided a head-on collision, and in the distance the screaming abuse of the appalled driver wafted towards us on the summer air. ‘They really should make more one-way streets in this city,’ said Aysgarth placidly, trying to reverse back behind the van but finding that the car following us was blocking his path. ‘Now, I wonder what I ought to do next?’

‘Perhaps I’d better nip out and vanish,’ I said as an intrigued policeman began to cruise in our direction.

‘That might be a good idea. Juan Fangio’s temporarily stuck. Goodbye, darling — all my love — write soon ...’

The last thing I heard as I headed for Butchers’ Alley was the policeman saying genially: ‘Well, well, well, Mr Dean! You seem to be causing a little bit of chaos here ... ?’

I thought: that’s the understatement of the century.

Then I fell into my flat, sank into a delicious hot bath andreflected that even though I might still die
virgo intacta
I at least knew all there was to know about orgasms.

XV

‘I’ve brought you a plant,’ said my mother an hour later as I opened the front door and found her standing with a nasty-looking potted object in her arms. Behind her the uniformed chauffeur languished at the wheel of the Daimler which was slumbering, with superb insolence, beneath a sign which declared NO PARKING.
Present Laughter
had opened that week at the Starbridge Playhouse, and my mother was now on her way to worship Martin Darrow. ‘Plants are such nice house-warming presents, I always think,’ she was adding, ‘and that’s a particularly superior one because it does well with little light — it occurred to me that if you overlooked a narrow street like Butchers’ Alley the absence of light might create difficulties. All you need to do is water the plant until the soil is moist,
but not sodden,
and never let it stand in a pool.’

‘Thanks so much, Mama ... Sony these stairs are so steep.’

‘They’re no steeper than the servants’ stairs at Flaxton Hall ... Oh, what a dear little attic! I like it
very
much — how charming! But I do think Mrs Lindsay might have put up more suitable pictures — it looks as if those teenage daughters of hers made the selection! Next time you’re at the Hall, darling, do help yourself to a couple of old masters from the attics.’

‘Yes, Mama. Sherry?’

‘Lovely — yes, please! I must say, Venetia, you’re looking very well, really most striking — and so much more dignified than Arabella who’s suddenly gone ash-blonde and was photographed at Pompadour’s (always a fatal sign) with Archie Blenham’s ex-brother-in-law who’s now on his third divorce. I don’t
think
she’s sleeping with him, but of course it’s quite impossible to be sure.’

There was a pause. Then my voice said: ‘I’m sorry, Mama, but could you just say that last sentence again?’

‘I said I don’t think she’s sleeping with him but of course it’s quite impossible to be sure. She absolutely swore to your father last week that she’d never committed adultery in her life – so sweet of her to want to protect him from unpleasantness! – but a woman with dyed ash-blonde hair is surely
capable de tout.
Oh, and by the way, darling, while I’m on the subject f your father, I do wish you’d drop him just a
tiny
line so that he stops complaining about being neglected. It would make my life so much easier – and talking of letters I must tell you that Enid Markhampton wrote the other day and said how delighted she was to meet you again when she returned to the Chantry – she said what a charming girl you’d become! There! Isn’t that nice? I always believe in passing on "dew-drops". Apparently Marina had mentioned to her that you went regularly to the Cathedral – well, naturally I didn’t tell your father because he would have worried that you might be "getting religion" and becoming unbalanced, but believe me, as the worn-out mother of four lively daughters, I was
delighted
to think of you surrounded by clergymen and thinking noble thoughts! And talking of clergymen, how’s that nice Canon Hoffenberg?’

I began to talk about Eddie and tried hard not to think of my Mr Dean in Chancton Wood.