Scandalous Risks

‘Oh yes. And again. And again. And again.’

‘What a terrifying prospect!’

‘No, it’s okay, you don’t have to worry. I’m benign.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘A recurring phenomenon which ought to be entirely harmless. Like Halley’s Comet.’

Finally I saw him smile. I noticed that he had good teeth, very even, and that when his mouth was relaxed he lost the air of solemnity conjured up by his spectacles. Again my memory was jogged, and as it occurred to me that he was as watchable as a gifted actor I at last solved the riddle of his familiarity. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Are you any relation of Martin Darrow, the actor?’

‘He’s my half-brother.’

I relaxed. Although I’m not averse to paranormal puzzles I much prefer mysteries that are capable of a rational explanation. ‘My mother’s mad on him,’ I said agreeably, ‘never misses an episode of his comedy series, stays glued to the TV. But surely he must be at least thirty years older than you are?’

‘My father had a rather peculiar private life.’

‘Come on, chaps!’ exclaimed Charley, plunging bossily back into the carriage as the train finally halted at the platform. ‘Get a move on! Nick, as you’ve only got a duffle-bag, could you give Venetia a hand with her suitcases?’

I stepped down on to the platform accompanied by my psychic porter. The sun was shining and far away in the distance beyond the train, beyond the railway yard, beyond the roofs of the mean little villas which flanked the tracks, I saw the slim straight spire of the Cathedral.

Blazing with energy Charley bounded ahead and by the time Nick and I emerged from the station he was bouncing towards the episcopal car, a black Rover, as Mrs Ashworth emerged from the driver’s seat. I knew now, six years after our first meeting, that she was the same age as Aysgarth, but on that day she looked more like forty-five than sixty-one. It was not only her slender figure which made her seem youthful but the smooth straight hair coiled simply in a bun; an elderly woman who has the guts to flout fashion by refusing a permanent wave really does deserve to look a long way from the geriatric ward.

Ever since our first meeting when she had boldly identified me as a femme fatale despite the massive evidence to the contrary, I had secretly labelled her my heroine and now, once again, my admiration for her was renewed. She was wearing a pale lilac-coloured raincoat, unbuttoned to reveal a straight grey skirt and a sky-blue blouse – unremarkable clothes, but on her they looked as if they had arrived by special messenger that morning from Paris. Her navy shoes, so different from the old ladies’ ‘support’ footwear which my mother favoured, were notable for the elegance of their stiletto heels. Mrs Ashworth might have turned sixty, but this boring fact had evidently long since been dismissed by her as trivial. Her triumph over the ravages of time was superb.

‘Hullo, Nicholas!’ she exclaimed warmly after she had given Charley a peck on the cheek, but I knew she was much more interested in me. ‘Venetia – what a surprise! I saw Dido Aysgarth earlier today but she didn’t mention they were expecting you at the Deanery.’

‘They’re not expecting me. To be quite honest, Mrs Ashworth, I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I’m a bit bouleversée at the moment.’

‘How exciting! Come and have tea. I’ve got a prayer-group turning up later and there’s a visiting American bishop who comes and goes like the Cheshire cat’s smile, but at the moment I’m absolutely free.’

My spirits rose, and accepting her invitation with gratitude I slid into the back seat of the Bishop’s Rover.

IV

The South Canonry, where the Ashworths lived, was an early Georgian house far smaller than the old episcopal palace but still too large for a modestly-paid executive with a wife and two adult sons. The garden consisted almost entirely of labour-saving lawns; full-time gardeners were no longer an episcopal perk, and the Ashworths were aided only by a man who came once a week to civilise the lawns with a motor-mower. Mrs Ashworth hated gardening and kept no plants in the house. I always found the bare, uncluttered look in her home immensely appealing.

As I was almost the same age as Charley I had been invited to the house occasionally in the past along with various Aysgarths and other young people in the diocese, but the visits had been infrequent and I had never come to know the Ashworths well. Neither had my parents. My father respected the Bishop’s intellect but found Ashworth was fundamentally unsympathetic to his sentimental, old-fashioned brand of humanism. Whereas Aysgarth was tolerant of agnostics Ashworth seemed hard put to conceal his opinion that agnosticism was an intellectual defect – and there were other differences too, as we all discovered over the years, between the Bishop and the Dean. Aysgarth was gregarious with an apparently inexhaustible supply of good humour, whereas Ashworth, behind his cast-iron charm, was a very private, very serious man. Laymen like my father dubbed Ashworth ‘churchy’ – that sinister pejorative adjective so dreaded by clerics – but Aysgarth was unhesitatingly labelled ‘one of us’. Ashworth, isolated to some degree by the eminence of his office, was held to resemble Kipling’s cat who walked by himself; his close friends had been left behind in Cambridge in 1957, and perhaps this was one of the reasons why he was so close to his wife. It was widely observed how well attuned they were to each other. They seemed to generate that special harmony which one finds more often among childless couples, the harmony of two people who find each other entirely sufficient for their emotional needs.

Considering that the marriage was successful, people found it immensely interesting that the two sons should have undergone such obvious problems: Charley had run away from home when he was eighteen while later Michael had been thrown out of medical school. However, these embarrassing episodes now belonged to the past. Charley had been rescued, sorted out and replaced on the rails of conformity, while Michael had been steered into the employment of the BBC with happy results. Why Charley should have run away from home no one had any idea, but Michael’s hedonistic behaviour was universally attributed to a desire to rebel against his father’s puritanical views on sin.

‘There’s a screw loose in that family somewhere,’ Dido would say darkly, ‘you mark my words.’

The irony of this statement was that Aysgarth had the biggest possible screw loose in his family – Dido herself – yet all his children were turning out wonderfully well. This fact must have been very galling to the Ashworths as they struggled to surmount their problems at the South Canonry.

When I arrived at the house that afternoon I was immediately soothed by its well-oiled serenity. The drawing-room was notably dust-free and arranged with a tidiness which was meticulous but not oppressive. A superb tea was waiting to be served. The telephone rang regularly but was silenced almost at once by the Bishop’s secretary in her lair by the front door. Dr Ashworth himself was out, fulfilling an official engagement, but if he had been present he too would have been running smoothly, just like the house. I could remember him appearing during my past visits and saying to his wife: ‘What did I do with that memo on the World Council of Churches?’ or: ‘Whatever happened to that letter from the Archbishop?’ or: ‘What on earth’s the name of that clergyman at Butterwood All Saints?’ and Mrs Ashworth, indestructibly composed, would always know all the answers.

After tea Charley went upstairs to unpack, Nick wandered outside to tune into the right nature-vibes – or whatever psychics do in gardens – and Mrs Ashworth took me upstairs to her private sitting-room. Unlike my mother’s boudoir at Flaxton Hall there were no dreary antiques, no ghastly oil-paintings of long-dead ancestors, no boring photographs of babies and no vegetation in sight. The air smelt celestially pure. On the walls hung some black-and-white prints of Cambridge and a water-colour of the Norfolk Broads. The only framed photograph on the chimney-piece showed her husband as an army chaplain during the war.

‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Ashworth, closing the door. ‘Now that we’ve got rid of the men we can relax. Cigarette?’

‘I do like this room,’ I said, accepting the cigarette and sinking into a comfortable armchair. ‘It’s all you, isn’t it? Everything’s your choice. All my life I’ve had to put up with revolting inherited furniture and now I’ve finally reached the point where I’m determined to have a place of my own.’

‘Splendid! All young people need to express themselves through their surroundings. You should have seen Michael’s room when he went through his Brigitte Bardot phase!’

‘I bet Charley puts up all the right pictures,’ I said, not daring to ask what the Bishop had thought of the Bardot pin-ups.

‘Fortunately Charley only has space on his walls for books. My former employer Bishop Jardine left Charley his entire theological library – no doubt because Charley always said he wanted to be a clergyman when he grew up … But let’s get back to you. So you’re seeking a room of your own! But why seek it in Starbridge?’

‘I’m not sure that I will – I’ve only drifted down here because I’ve got a standing invitation to use the Put-U-Up sofa in Primrose’s flat. I’m such a drifter, Mrs Ashworth! I despise myself for drifting but I don’t seem able to stop. It’s as if I’m marking time, waiting for my life to begin, but nothing ever happens.’

‘When will you consider that your life’s begun? At the altar?’

I was grateful for her swift grasp of my dilemma. Well, I know marriage shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life, but –’

‘It certainly was before the war. Perhaps this is a case where “the more things change the more they remain the same”.’

‘I think it must be. As I see it, I really do have to get married in order to live the kind of life I’d enjoy, but here I am, almost twenty-six, and I’m beginning to think: supposing I never marry, never win respect and status, never stop drifting – I could wind up wasting my entire life.’

‘A nightmarish prospect.’

Terrifying. And then I start to feel desperate – desperate, Mrs Ashworth, I can’t tell you how desperate I feel sometimes – and now I’m convinced I’ve got to act, got to get out of this rut –’

‘Well, it sounds to me as if you’re making progress at last! You’re looking for a place where you can express your real self; you’ve embarked on an odyssey of self-discovery … Do you have to worry about money?’

‘No, I’ve got a hefty income because I came into money from both my godmothers when I was twenty-one. Maybe that’s part of the problem? If I were penniless –’

‘– you’d hate it. I did. Now let’s consider your situation carefully –’

‘I don’t have a situation, Mrs Ashworth, I just have a non-event.’ The words suddenly began to stream out of my mouth. ‘I want to live – I mean live – I want to swill gin and chat about philosophy with a gang of brilliant people and smooch with handsome men and dance till dawn and burn the candle at both ends, but all I get are boring nine-to-five jobs, social events where I’m an embarrassing failure, no love-life and evenings spent swilling gin on my own while listening to Radio Luxemburg. I’ve never had a boyfriend. I did belong to a gang of clever people but they were all girls. Here I am, bursting to join in the Great Party of Life yet confined to the margins by my utter lack of sex appeal, and it’s awful, Mrs Ashworth, absolutely awful, so utterly vile and unfair –’

‘But anyone,’ said Mrs Ashworth, ‘can have sex appeal. It’s simply an attitude of mind.’

I stared at her. She gave me a sphinx-like smile. Enrapt I tried to speak but failed.

‘It’s all a question of confidence,’ said my heroine, flicking ash from her cigarette casually into the nearby tray, ‘and in your case it would be confidence in your appearance. You want to be able to walk into a room and think: I’m glamour personified – how lucky all those men are to see me!’

‘But I’m not beautiful!’

‘Neither was Cleopatra.’

‘Yes, but she was Queen of Egypt –’

‘– and she made the most of it. That’s what you have to do too – make the most of your assets. Stand up for a moment.’

I stood up.

‘Revolve.’

I revolved.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Ashworth tranquilly, waving her cigarette to indicate I could sit down again, ‘it’s all very simple. Wear plain, tailored clothes which emphasise your waist and hips. Never wear flat shoes even though you happen to be tallish. Favour V-necks to distract the masculine eye from your shoulders and take care not to stoop – that only makes the shoulders more noticeable. And grow your hair.’

‘Grow it? But Mrs Ashworth, I’ll turn into a sort of yak!’

‘Nonsense, men adore the Pre-Raphaelite look. Oh, and go to a beauty salon and get advice on make-up. You have the most beautiful eyes. Make them a focal point.’

‘But do you really think that if I do all this –’

‘That’s just the beginning. Then you must plot how to get in with a crowd of clever, interesting people by exploiting a clever, interesting person who’s already known to you. How about Christian Aysgarth? You can’t be much younger than his wife.’

‘Well, yes, I do know Christian and Katie, but –’

‘Splendid! They’re your passport to your new life. Don’t linger in dull old Starbridge. Seek that room you want in Oxford and wangle your way into Christian’s set.’

‘But Christian just sees me as one of Primrose’s gang of virgin spinsters!’

‘He won’t when you arrive in Oxford flaunting glamorous eye make-up and Pre-Raphaelite hair. I think that you and Primrose,’ said Mrs Ashworth, careful in her choice of words, ‘may have reached the parting of the ways.’ Before I could comment she was adding with regret: ‘I wish I could invite you to stay tonight, but thanks to Nicholas and our visiting American bishop, we’ve got a full house.’

I said with curiosity: ‘What’s Nick’s connection with your family?’

‘His father and Charles have known each other for many years, and since Jon Darrow’s now very old Charles likes to keep a paternal eye on Nicholas to make sure he’s all right.’

‘Isn’t there a mother?’

‘She died. There’s a half-brother in London –’

‘The actor.’

‘That’s right – and there was a half-sister, but she’s dead now too and Nicholas never had much in common with her children.’

‘He’s very …’ I tried to find the right word but could only produce a banality ‘… unusual.’

‘Yes, isn’t he? Sometimes I think he needs a substitute mother, but I never feel my maternal instinct can stretch far enough to take him on – although I must say, my maternal instinct seems to have stretched out of sight during this conversation! I seem to have forgotten I’m a bishop’s wife. Instead of advising you to vamp the intellectuals of Oxford I should be telling you to get a job at the diocesan office and help me with my charity work in your spare time!’

I laughed but before I could reply the front door banged far away in the hall. ‘That’ll be either Charles or our American bishop,’ said Mrs Ashworth, rising to her feet, ‘and let’s hope it’s Charles. I do like Americans, but all that sunny-natured purring’s so exhausting.’

‘Darling!’ shouted the Bishop downstairs.

‘Coo-ee!’ called Mrs Ashworth with relief, and added indulgently to me: ‘Isn’t he funny? He so often arrives home and shouts: “Darling!” like that. It’s as if he has no idea what to do next and is waiting for instructions.’

In walked the Bishop, looking like a film star in a costume melodrama. The old episcopal uniform of apron, gaiters and frock-coat, so suitable for the eighteenth-century bishops who had had to ride around their dioceses on horseback, was finally giving way to more modern attire, but for his official engagement that afternoon Dr Ashworth had decided to be conservative, and he looked well in his swashbuckling uniform. He was two years older than Aysgarth, but like his wife he appeared younger – not much younger, perhaps, but he could still have passed for a man on the right side of sixty.

‘How are your parents?’ he said to me agreeably after the greetings had been exchanged.

‘Seething. I’ve just left home and embarked on a new life.’

He gave me his charming smile but it failed to reach the corners of his eyes. Perhaps he was trying to decide whether I could be classified as ‘wayward’ or ‘lost’ or even ‘fallen’. Smoothly he fell back on his erudition. ‘This sounds like a case of metanoia!’ he remarked. ‘By which I mean –’

‘I know what it means. The Dean told me. It’s a turning away from one’s old life and the beginning of a new one.’

‘In Christ,’ said the Bishop casually, as if correcting an undergraduate who had made an error in a tutorial. ‘I hope the Dean didn’t forget to mention Christ, but these liberal-radicals nowadays seem to be capable of anything.’ He turned to his wife and added: ‘I lost count of the times I was asked about Honest to God this afternoon. People were deeply upset. It’s a pity Robinson wasn’t there to see the results of his ill-informed, half-baked radicalism.’

‘I thought Robinson was supposed to be a conservative,’ I said. ‘After all, he wasn’t invited to contribute to Soundings, was he?’

The Bishop looked startled. ‘Who’s been talking to you of Soundings?’

‘The Dean was very enthusiastic when the book was published.’

‘I’d have more confidence in Stephen’s bold espousal of the views contained in these controversial books if I knew he was a trained theologian,’ said Dr Ashworth. ‘However, as we all know, he read Greats, not Theology, when he was up at Oxford.’

‘But since he’s been a clergyman for almost forty years,’ I said, ‘don’t you think he might have picked up a little theology somewhere along the way?’

The Bishop was clearly not accustomed to being answered back by a young female who had never even been to a university. Possibly he was unaccustomed to being answered back by anyone. He took a moment to recover from the shock but then said suavely enough: ‘Good point! But perhaps I might draw a parallel here with the legal profession. Barristers and solicitors are all qualified lawyers, but when a knotty legal problem arises the solicitors refer the matter to the barristers, the experts, in order to obtain the best advice.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I must now leave you to your expertise,’ I said politely, rising to my feet, ‘and descend from the mountain top of the South Canonry to the valley of the Deanery.’ I turned to my hostess. Thanks so much for the tea and sympathy, Mrs Ashworth.’

‘Drop in again soon,’ said my heroine with a smile, ‘and if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said the Bishop, suddenly becoming pastoral. ‘If there’s anything we can do –’

‘I’ll see you out, Venetia,’ said his wife, and led the way downstairs to the hall. As she opened the front door she added: ‘You won’t want to lug your suitcases to the Deanery – I’ll ask Charley to bring them over later in the car.’

I thanked her before saying anxiously: ‘I do hope I didn’t upset the Bishop when I answered back.’

‘My dear, he was enthralled! Such a delightful change for him to meet someone who doesn’t treat him as a sacred object on a pedestal.’ She looked at me thoughtfully with her cool dark eyes before musing: ‘Maybe you’ve been concentrating on the wrong age-group; very few young men have the self-assurance or the savoir-faire to cope with clever women. Try looking for something intelligent, well-educated and pushing forty.’

‘It’ll be either married or peculiar.’

‘Not necessarily … Didn’t I hear a rumour once that Eddie Hoffenberg was rather smitten with you?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mrs Ashworth – I’d rather die a virgin spinster!’

Mrs Ashworth merely smiled her enigmatic smile and said: ‘Do keep in touch.’

I drifted away down the drive towards the Deanery.

V

Eddie Hoffenberg emerged from the Deanery just as I approached the front door, so there was no possibility of avoiding him. My father had once referred to him as ‘Aysgarth’s poodle – that bloody Hun,’ but my father, who had lost his best friends in the First War, was notorious for his anti-German sentiment. Other people, less outspoken than my father, were content to regard Eddie with a polite antipathy. ‘It’s my cross,’ Eddie would say with gloomy relish, and sometimes he would even add: ‘Suffering is good for the soul.’

‘It’s clergymen like Eddie Hoffenberg,’ I had said once to Primrose, ‘who make Christianity look like an exercise in masochism.’

‘It’s Germans like Eddie Hoffenberg,’ said Primrose, ‘who encourage the belief that we were doing them a favour by trying to kill them in the war.’

However although there was no denying that Eddie was a German, he was hardly typical of Hitler’s so-called master race, and the fact that he had eventually acquired British citizenship marked him out as a very unusual German indeed. He was tall, bald and bespectacled; his faintly Semitic cast of features had caused him to be bullied by Aryan monsters in the Nazi army, but since he had no Jewish blood in him, this experience had provided him with additional evidence that he was doomed to special suffering. Fortunately his army career had been brief. In 1944 at the age of twenty he had been captured by the British in Normandy, imported to England and dumped in a prison camp on Starbury Plain. Two weeks later Aysgarth, then Archdeacon of Starbridge, had paid a pastoral visit to the camp and naturally Eddie had been quite unable to resist the opportunity to moan to him about how awful life was.

It was not difficult to understand why Eddie had chosen to adopt Aysgarth as a hero, but it was far harder to understand why Aysgarth had chosen to return Eddie’s devotion. ‘Aysgarth has five sons,’ my father remarked once to my mother. Why should he want to play the father to a Teutonic disaster who’s perpetually encased in gloom?’ My mother had no answer, but Primrose eventually produced an explanation. ‘Eddie changed Father’s life,’ she told me. ‘It was Eddie who wrote to Bishop Bell and said how wonderful Father was with the POWs, and since that letter led to Father’s vital friendship with Bell, Father can’t help being sentimental about Eddie and regarding him as a mascot.’

Eddie came from Dresden, which had been devastated by fire-bombing in 1945– None of his family had survived. After the war he had quickly reached the decision that he had to begin a new life elsewhere, and when he thought of the one friend he still possessed he sought Aysgarth’s help. Aysgarth encouraged him to be a clergyman. Eddie had been a Lutheran once, but that was in the old, vanished life. Once Aysgarth had extracted the necessary money from the new Anglo-German Churchmen’s Fellowship, Eddie began his studies at the Starbridge Theological College and spent his holidays with the Aysgarths in London.

Ordination as a clergyman of the Church of England followed and a curacy was squeezed out of a Westminster parish. (A German was lucky to get any job in Westminster, but the Bishop of London caved in after Aysgarth and Bell staged a joint assault.) When Aysgarth became Dean of Starbridge he at once approached the new bishop on Eddie’s behalf, and Dr Ashworth, striving to exercise a Christian spirit after his own years as a POW, proved unwilling to make any move which could be construed as anti-German. Possibly he also saw the chance of unloading his current diocesan problem, a seedy Starbridge parish in the area of the city known as Langley Bottom where there was a run-down Victorian monster of a church, an equally run-down Victorian monster of a vicarage and a working-class congregation of twenty.