Scandalous Risks (35 page)

V

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Father Darrow instantly. ‘I’m sorry I sounded tough. Men often prefer compassion laced with toughness – it helps them maintain their self-control when such things are still important to them, but of course women aren’t confined in that kind of emotional strait-jacket.’

‘Too bad they’re not,’ I said. ‘I can’t stand either sex when they’re slobbering all over the place. Disgusting.’ I looked away as my eyes filled with tears.

‘Let me pour you some more tea,’ said Father Darrow.

‘Oh, please don’t now bend over backwards to be gentle and kind!’ I said. ‘That would finish me off altogether. Go on being tough. I’d prefer it.’ A tear rolled down my cheek. Loathing myself for being so feeble I made a mighty effort, dashed the tear aside and commented with a meticulous logic: ‘Since you recognised Aysgarth from the way he’s conducting this affair, I can only assume that this has all happened before.’

Father Darrow only said: ‘What name’s he using now?’

‘He’s gone back to Neville.’

‘No, he’s gone on. This would be Neville Four.’

I suddenly realised I was terrified. I forgot my desire to cry. I could only stare at him transfixed as he so casually conjured up the vision of a Dr Jekyll accompanied by a gang of Mr Hydes, but at last I managed to stammer: ‘Father Darrow, you’ve just got to explain – what in God’s name is going on?’

‘What’s going on, as I’ve already told you, is adultery, Miss Flaxton.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, but what’s really going on?’

‘That is what’s really going on. That’s reality. Aysgarth’s psychology is in fact very unimportant in this context.’

‘But –’

‘You think that if you understand his psychology you’ll be able to discern where the affair is going and what you may reasonably expect from it in the way of emotional satisfaction. But Miss Flaxton, fortunately you don’t need to know anything more about Aysgarth in order to make this crucial discernment. It’s quite obvious that the situation’s leading to catastrophe and that you should escape from it at once.’

I whispered: ‘Catastrophe?’

‘You both stand in very great danger.’

‘You mean in danger of being found out?’

‘No, in danger of spiritual destruction. Can’t you feel the Devil caressing the hair at the nape of your neck?’

Instantly my neck prickled. In fact so powerful was the impact of his suggestion that my hand automatically sped to the nape of my neck to clamp down on the hairs which I felt sure were standing on end. Then reason reclaimed me. Withdrawing my hand I wiped my sweating palm on the skirt of my dress and said in fury: ‘You can’t frighten me like that! No one believes in the Devil any more!’

‘Don’t connive at your own destruction, Miss Flaxton. To pretend the Devil doesn’t exist is to invite him to annex your soul.’

‘But this is 1963! We don’t believe in a three-decker universe any more! We don’t believe in God as an old man up in the sky! We don’t believe –’

‘We don’t believe the Devil is a charming little imp with horns. That’s true. The symbol’s outdated. But that doesn’t mean the Devil doesn’t exist, and that doesn’t mean the 1960s can do without symbols in their attempt to express ultimate reality. Believe me, Miss Flaxton, there’s nothing so very special about the 1960s – although future historians may well look back in wonder that so much was disbelieved so irrationally by so many.’

‘But Bishop Robinson says –’

‘The Bishop’s reaching for new ways to speak about God, but two can play at that game – let me reach for a new way of speaking about the Devil. Forget the little imp with horns! Throw him in the melting-pot, as Dr Robinson would say! But now think of Hiroshima, Miss Flaxton. When the atomic bomb was dropped many were killed but some people did survive apparently unscathed. Yet they were not unscathed. They had been contaminated by a great pollutant. It was invisible, but it entered the flesh of those unfortunate victims and settled in their bones and is to this very day busy destroying them. That was a very great pollutant, Miss Flaxton, one of the greatest mankind has ever known. But there’s another pollutant, the greatest pollutant of them all, and it attacks not men’s bodies, like radioactivity, but their souls. The attack is launched through the human consciousness, which, as any psychiatrist will tell you, is a dense and often impenetrable mystery. Human consciousness is like a well, and into that well, through every little crack in the brickwork, the Great Pollutant will seep unless rigorous efforts are made to keep it out. But if no efforts are made or if the efforts made are too feeble to be effective, the shaft will be fatally contaminated; a scum will form upon the water and in the end the entire well will be rank and putrid. Then the well, that source of life, will be dead, and the Great Pollutant will have triumphed over the miracle that was once clear and shining and beautiful in God’s sight.’

There was a silence. I smoothed the nape of my neck again with shaking fingers and stared blindly down at the table.

‘You may think you stand in the light, Miss Flaxton, but it’s a false light, and wherever the false light exists
it
will be there, the Great Pollutant, pouring darkness into the well of consciousness in order to lay waste the human soul.’

‘But I love Neville! And since love is good –’

‘As I said, you may think you stand in the light but the light is false. Now let me abandon the language of mysticism and talk directly of hard facts. I believe you when you say you love this man. But since he belongs to another woman, there’s no place for your love to exist. This truth is symbolised, of course, by the fact that you can only meet for any considerable time in that transient object, his motor car. To create a place where your love can exist in any satisfactory way is in fact impossible, and indeed any attempt to create such a place is to dabble in the dangerous delusion that your love can bring you anything other than the most destructive suffering. I beg you, Miss Flaxton, face reality. Don’t be beguiled by Aysgarth’s fantasies – or by your own.’

‘But I
am
trying to face reality! If you could only explain his psychology to me –’

‘That’s beyond my power. I’m a priest. I can’t betray the secrets of the confessional.’

For a moment I was dumbfounded. Then I was furious with myself for not foreseeing this impasse, and my fury combined with my disappointment to form an overwhelming despair. Again I found myself struggling to suppress my tears.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Father Darrow, ‘but what I can and will do is list the facts which – unlike Aysgarth’s psychology – are absolutely crucial here. One: Aysgarth is obviously living in a state of very great illusion. Two: this is probably, though not necessarily, generated by a desire to escape from profound problems either in his private life or in his professional life or in both. Three: because he’s in such severe difficulties he needs spiritual counselling without delay. Four: you’re in a position to wreck both his public and private life, and five: he’s in a position to destroy you. That’s reality, Miss Flaxton, and in consequence the only realistic advice I can possibly give you is to end the affair immediately.’

I sat shaking, shocked and shattered in my chair as the tears rolled silently down my cheeks.

‘Now let me warn you against the pitfalls you’ll be tempted to rush into as you automatically try to resist this advice,’ said Father Darrow. ‘One: don’t write me off as a senile old codger who’s forgotten what it’s like to be in love. I was about Aysgarth’s age when I fell violently in love with my second wife, who was then a woman not much older than you are now, and that’s a memory that can never die. Two: don’t write me off as an old-fashioned priest who’s mindlessly committed to supporting a conventional moral line. My support is rational, not mindless, because conventional morals actually evolved to deal with realities; they weren’t invented by a gang of old buffers who sat down one afternoon and decided to flex their imaginations in order to cause the greatest possible inconvenience to the greatest number of people – indeed if morals were invented in that way I wouldn’t be interested in them; my business is entirely concerned with reality, not fantasy. Three: don’t deceive yourself with the thought that Mrs Aysgarth might suddenly die. It’s true any of us can die at any time, but if you spend your life waiting for her to die you’ll wind up wanting to murder her – which will mean you’ve gone out of your mind. Four: don’t deceive yourself with the thought that this marriage could break up. Clerical marriages do break up, sad to say, but this one won’t. It’s not in my power to say why he’s bound to that wife of his, but believe me, he’s tied with ropes of steel. Whether he’s still intimate with her – a question you obviously find of deep interest – I have no idea, but in fact that’s not important. All that’s important is that by making love to you – in whatever sense – he’s doing you nothing but harm.’

‘But he’s not! He couldn’t! He’s so good, so kind, so –’ I choked on my words, lost control, started sobbing. ‘He hasn’t harmed me!’ I shouted hysterically. ‘He hasn’t done anything to me!’

Father Darrow rose to his feet and said simply: ‘Follow me.’

I stumbled after him as he led the way to a door on the other side of the room. When he opened the door I saw a bath, lavatory and basin beyond.

‘Come along,’ he ordered as I hesitated. ‘Come here.’

I staggered over the threshold and instantly he gripped my shoulders and spun me to face the mirror over the basin. ‘There,’ he said.
‘
Look
what he’s done to you.’

I stared into the glass. A bleary, blotched, blighted face, haggard with sleeplessness and drawn with grief, stared back. All my eye make-up had smudged. My chalk-white cheeks had a greenish tinge. Tears were everywhere.

Wrenching myself from Father Darrow’s grip I hurtled back to the table and collapsed in a heap on my chair.

‘And that’s just the beginning,’ said Father Darrow. ‘That’s just a little preview of the inexorable horrors to come. Now tell me –’ unexpectedly his voice softened as he altered his approach are your parents alive?’

I nodded dumbly.

‘Could you not go and visit them? They might be able to offer support to you in this very difficult time.’

‘Well ...’

‘But perhaps they’re not particularly sympathetic.’

‘They’re okay.’ I groped on the floor for my bag and began a long search for a handkerchief. ‘But they’re old, you see, so old, and I couldn’t bother them with my problems. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘How considerate. That sounds as if you’re fond of them.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘very fond.’

‘Are you an only child?’

‘No, I’m the last of six children.’ Quite without warning my voice added dully: ‘Sort of an accident, I expect.’ I was astonished. It was as if my voice had acquired a will of its own.

‘Oh yes?’ said Father Darrow, exuding his bewitching sympathy again and mentally wrapping it around me as if it were a rug.

‘Yes ... At least, that’s the impression one gets.’

‘Does one?’ said Father Darrow, metaphorically tucking me up in the rug and adjusting each fold to make sure I was cosy.

‘Well,’ said my voice, responding to the cosiness by becoming confidential, ‘when I was conceived my parents were visiting Venice – which was a very peculiar thing for them to do as Papa hates Abroad – and since they were both over forty and since it’s hard to imagine them being much interested in sex even when they were young, one can only suppose that Venice went to Mama’s head with extraordinary results.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Oh, nothing goes to his head except Latin and Greek. I can just imagine him sulking in Venice while Mama yearned to have a fling with some gorgeous Venetian ... In fact ever since I saw the film
Summer Madness in
which Katharine Hepburn falls in love with Rossano Brazzi in Venice, I’ve wondered ...’ But my voice trailed away.

‘Yes?’ said Father Darrow, very, very gentle now, his tough manner utterly abandoned. ‘What have you wondered?’

‘I’ve wondered if Mama had a similar fling ... but I don’t suppose she did.’

There was a silence. Father Darrow was uncannily still. I was reminded of a cat waiting with infinite patience and extreme cunning outside a promising mousehole.

‘My friend Marina Markhampton’s father isn’t her father at all,’ said my voice vaguely after a while. ‘They say it happens quite often among our sort of people. But of course I don’t really believe it happened in our family.’

Another silence fell. The cat continued to wait outside the mousehole and at last my voice remarked idly: ‘My father’s a frightful bore, but I’ll say this for him: he always does his moral duty. He’s taken a most conscientious interest in my welfare, and considering that I’m a freak, not like any of the others, and haven’t even been able to get myself married, I think he’s heroic to take any interest in me at all. In fact when we drive each other up the wall – which is most of the time – I almost wish he’d stop being so heroic and disown me altogether. But of course he never would. That wouldn’t be doing his moral duty.’

I looked around the room. The cat was snoozing on the hearth. A clock was ticking somewhere, and on the wall above the bed the crucifix hung in shadow.

‘My father’s a very moral man,’ said my voice. ‘He’s always crusading for some worthy, enlightened cause in the House of Lords – yet he’s not demonstrative with people, only with causes. The last time he kissed me, for instance, was at my sister Sylvia’s wedding – he kisses people at weddings for some reason – but that doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t mind him not slobbering over me. What I mind is being treated like a worthy cause which has to be hammered into shape. I don’t want to be hammered into shape. I want to be me. But he doesn’t see
me
at all, doesn’t care, doesn’t want to know, doesn’t understand ... Yet he’s brilliantly clever – I don’t want to give the impression he’s a fool, and I don’t want to give the impression he’s a monster either. When he’s in a good mood no one can be more charming and amusing – except his playmate Aysgarth, of course. But wait a minute – you don’t know, do you? I was forgetting. Now this is
really
bizarre. Aysgarth and my father are devoted to each other, have been for years. Isn’t it the most extraordinary coincidence that I should have fallen so violently in love with my father’s best friend?’