Glittering Images

All Lyle said was, ‘You’ve left out the right marriage to the right wife.’

‘So I have. Careless of me. I suppose that was because she did the wrong thing and died.’

We walked on. The sun blazed on the grassy hills dotted with sheep, and as we moved towards the summit of the ridge the view began to expand in every direction. It was uncannily quiet.

At last Lyle said, ‘You don’t give much away.’

‘Does anyone, even the people who rush to recite the carefully selected facts of their life at tedious length?’ I was trying to establish a line of conversation which would tempt her to rebut my argument with disclosures about herself, but she merely said with detachment, ‘I agree that the exact truth about people is usually impossible to know, but I think most of the time one can make an accurate guess about what goes on.’ She paused to look back across the valley behind us. ‘Take the Starmouths, for example,’ she said. ‘The Earl’s a good decent Englishman of the old school who takes a conscientious interest in his estates, does his bit for the country by a regular attendance at the House of Lords, and is devoted to his wife and children. Lady Starmouth probably gets a bit bored with him but she’s fundamentally good and decent too so she doesn’t rattle around like a society hostess but amuses herself instead with the safest class of men – clergymen, who have a strong stake in sticking to the proprieties. Now, I’m not saying this is the exact truth about either of the Starmouths, but I think the odds are I’ve given you an accurate thumbnail sketch. I mean, I don’t seriously believe, do you, that Lady Starmouth is a secret drug-fiend while the Earl keeps a mistress in St John’s Wood?’

‘Lady Starmouth is certainly not a secret drug-fiend. But –’ I thought of the Earl’s candid admiration of Loretta ‘– I don’t think I’m as sure as you are about that mistress in St John’s Wood. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to make reliable guesses about anyone’s intimate life.’ Without looking at her directly I was nevertheless poised to analyse her reaction.

But she merely said, ‘Isn’t the Earl a little old for fun and games in St John’s Wood?’

‘He might consider a mistress rejuvenating. But no,’ I said with a smile as we moved on again towards the summit of the ridge, ‘I confess I don’t really believe the Earl has a secret love-life any more than I believe Lady Starmouth is burning to seduce the Bishop.’

She laughed. ‘Lady Starmouth’s whole success with the Bishop lies in the fact that she at least would never play the over-passionate female in his company!’

‘Are there so many over-passionate females besieging Dr Jardine?’

Lyle suddenly chose to treat the subject seriously. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘A bishop’s more on a pedestal than an ordinary clergyman, but there were one or two very tricky women when he was Dean of Radbury, and apparently when he was Vicar of St Mary’s he was forever fending off society women who were far less principled than Lady Starmouth.’

I said equally seriously, to show that I understood the problems which could exist for certain clergymen, ‘But surely troublesome women reserve their most ardent attentions for bachelors?’

‘Oh, no doubt life became fractionally less hectic once he was married but unfortunately many women even today are tempted to write Mrs Jardine off as insignificant and imagine that the Bishop’s languishing in an unhappy marriage. However that’s rubbish, of course. The Jardines may seem to a stranger to be ill-assorted but anyone who knows them well will tell you they’re devoted to each other. It’s an attraction of opposites.’

We had reached the top of the ridge while she was speaking, and as we paused to survey the view we found that the outlines of the landscape soon faded into the heat-haze. Abandoning the obscure prospect across the valley I turned my attention to Starbury Ring which was now visible less than fifty yards away. The Ring consisted of two dozen tall rocks, planted several thousand years ago for purposes which were no longer known but which at once conjured up images in my mind of human sacrifices and other horrors of heathen worship. I thought how comforting it would be to believe that all bloodstained idolatry in Europe now lay sealed in the past, and for a moment I wished I were a Victorian who still had faith in the doctrine of progress. How delightful it must have been to look forward with confidence to the time when mankind would have achieved its inevitable perfection! How soothing to be able to picture an immanent, cosily accessible God who could be known with the aid of reason and a good education! But now the War had destroyed the illusion of progress, bloodstained idolatry was once more invading Europe, and the powerful mind of Karl Barth had perceived that God was remote, utterly transcendent, capable of being known only by revelation.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said suddenly to Lyle. ‘The sight of pagan stones sent me off at a theological tangent. You were saying the Jardines were devoted to each other –’

‘Yes, Mrs Jardine adores the Bishop, and the Bishop, like all men, adores being adored. Of course she gets on his nerves occasionally – well, you saw that this morning, didn’t you? – but on the whole he considers a little irritation a small price to pay for a wife who’s genuinely good, very popular and thoroughly loyal to him in every way.’

‘The Bishop seems to have a most remarkable talent for surrounding himself with adoring women!’

‘The talent’s probably developed in reaction to his bleak childhood. Adoration was in short supply then.’

‘I thought he had a devoted stepmother?’

‘She wasn’t demonstrative. Until he was eighteen he hadn’t a clue how she felt.’

‘What happened when he was eighteen?’

‘He went up to Oxford, and when he said goodbye to her she cried. It was her supreme moment of triumph, you see. She’d singled him out as the best of the bunch and put him on the road to Oxford, but he’d always thought he was just a hobby for her as she had no children of her own.’ Lyle paused before adding: ‘I think probably in the beginning he really was just a hobby for her, but after a while she found that her ambition for him gave her the determination to endure a difficult marriage. “It was worth it all for Adam,” she said to me at the end of her life. She used to call him Adam. She hated the name Alex, thought it was frivolous, a nasty affectation of the Cobden-Smiths. “Adam’s not really Alex,” she said to me once. “Alex is just a mask, and beyond the mask there’s the Adam nobody knows except me.” That was a sinister thing to say, wasn’t it? I look at the Bishop sometimes and think: there’s an Adam in there somewhere! What a mysterious thing personality is, how eerie, how unfathomable …’

We were now standing in the middle of the stone circle. The stones themselves, stark and dark beneath their green-brown lichen, heightened the mystery of the Ring as it stood in that empty landscape, and seemed to bring the remote past deep into the present. I felt as if the Druids were brushing shoulders with Karl Barth as one bloodstained century merged into another in defiance of any conventional conception of time.

‘This seems an appropriate place to discuss mysteries,’ I said, ‘and particularly the mystery of personality. Let’s sit down for a moment.’

When we were chastely settled two feet apart in the shadow of one of the stones I offered her a cigarette. ‘Do you smoke?’

‘Only in my bedroom. But if you’re going to have a treat I don’t see why I shouldn’t have one too.’

‘You look like the kind of woman who smokes “Craven A”.’

‘Oh, so you see me as an adventuress!’

‘Let’s just say I have trouble seeing you as a companion in a clerical household.’ As I lit our cigarettes I noticed that her hands were small and that the large signet-ring emphasized the delicate curve of her finger. The skin on the inside of her wrist was very white.

‘Are you sure you’re not going to pounce on me again?’ she said after her first puff. ‘You’ve got a pounce-ish look.’

‘That’s because you’re so pounce-worthy. Now stop egging me on by putting impure thoughts in my head and tell me more about this Swedish stepmother. I’m interested in the influence she must have had on Dr Jardine.’

III

‘I first met her at Radbury,’ said Lyle. ‘She visited the Jardines there a couple of times, but then travel became too difficult because of her arthritis. The Bishop used to visit her in Putney whenever he could but I myself never saw her again until she came to live with us in Starbridge at the end of her life.’

‘It’s nice to think she ended her days with her Adam in his palace.’

‘Another edifying tale? Yes, I suppose it was, although the situation wasn’t entirely a bed of roses because poor Carrie was terrified of her stepmother-in-law. However,’ said Lyle, effortlessly glossing over the crisis which had shaken the palace to its foundations, ‘we all got on very well in the end. Old Mrs J. had decided that God was giving her a chance to redeem her previous coldness towards Carrie.’

‘She was religious?’

‘Yes, she’d been a Lutheran originally, like so many Swedes, but she’d been married to a man who thought institutional religion was rubbish, so she hadn’t been a regular churchgoer.’

‘But I thought Dr Jardine’s father was a religious fanatic!’

‘The fanaticism took an anti-clerical form. He thought all clergymen were instruments of the Devil.’

‘How extraordinarily difficult for Dr Jardine!’

‘Being married to a religious crank was hardly easy for old Mrs J.!’

‘Did she confide in you? It sounds as if she did.’

‘Yes, she enjoyed telling a sympathetic stranger about all the ghastliness she’d endured in the old days so that “her Adam”, as you called him, should survive his appalling home. Her first big battle was to get him to school. Old Mr J. thought schools were sinks of iniquity.’

‘He certainly sounds the most tiresome husband. Did she never consider abandoning Putney and bolting for Sweden? Or did her religious beliefs, such as they were, make an escape out of the question?’

‘There’s no doubt religious belief played a large part in her decision to stay – she became convinced she’d been sent into the family in order to save that child. “I felt it was a call from God,” she said. “I felt no other action was possible.”’

‘But surely once Dr Jardine was grown up – once he’d got to Oxford –’

‘Then the really ghastly problems began. The scholarship only covered his fees, and the beastly old father wouldn’t give him any money for his keep. Old Mrs J. used to starve herself so that she could send money from her housekeeping allowance – the old man only climbed down when she was half-dead with hunger.’

I said amazed, ‘But wasn’t the old man pleased that his son was up at Oxford?’

‘He thought all universities were dens of vice. However the Bishop survived and was awarded not only a first but a fellowship of All Soul’s –’

‘Happy ending!’

‘Good heavens, no – quite the reverse! Old Mr J. then said, “I’ve kept you all these years – now it’s time for you to keep me!” and it turned out that as he’d been living beyond his means for years while he pursued a life of gentlemanly idleness, his capital was now exhausted.’

‘What an old scoundrel! So Dr Jardine had to keep the family on the income from his fellowship?’

‘Yes, for a time he didn’t think he could afford to go into the Church but eventually he made the decision to be ordained –’

‘– and of course the old man disapproved.’

‘I gather the two of them nearly killed each other.’

I said appalled, ‘But couldn’t the old man see his son was opting for a good straight decent life?’

‘Oh, he never thought his son would succeed in living decently, no matter what profession he chose. The old man saw him sinking inevitably into corruption.’

‘But this must have been terrible for Dr Jardine!’ I was now having trouble finding the words to express my horror, and Lyle was looking at me in surprise. ‘Terrible – monstrous – intolerable –’

‘It got worse. The Bishop became vicar of the slum parish in Starmouth, and as he was unable to afford to marry and as he desperately needed a housekeeper he turned for help to his father, who was sitting in Putney being waited on hand and foot by a wife and two unmarried daughters. However old Mr J. refused to let either of the girls go to look after their brother. He had an obsession with female purity and thought they’d be ravished the moment they left his household.’

‘But surely if the Bishop was supporting them all he had the whip-hand?’

‘The old man still wouldn’t budge. Said he’d rather starve than risk his daughters becoming fallen women.’

‘Didn’t the girls have any say in the matter?’

‘Don’t be silly, this was well before the War and he’d ruled them with a rod of iron for years!’

‘No wonder one sister went mad!’

‘Mrs J. thought she’d go mad herself, but of course she came to the rescue. She said to the old villain, “If you won’t let either of those girls go, I’ll go”, and when he still clung to the girls she went.’

I dropped my cigarette and scuffled to retrieve it before it could burn a hole in my trousers. ‘But how could Dr Jardine, as a clergyman, justify depriving a husband of his wife?’

‘Oh, the old man wasn’t too deprived – she used to go home for a visit every fortnight. Besides, neither she nor Dr Jardine believed, when she originally went to Starmouth, that the arrangement would be other than temporary; they thought the old man would eventually release one of the girls, but as he wasn’t rational on the subject he didn’t.’

‘So she stayed on?’

‘Yes, she loved it after the gloom and doom of Putney. She involved herself in parish work, met new people –’

‘But what happened –’

‘– in the end? She went back. The elder sister began to go insane, and Mrs J. felt morally bound to go home since her husband’s need for her had become acute. However once she’d gone Dr Jardine couldn’t cope; he was already exhausted by the parish and he couldn’t withstand the loss of her help.’

‘So when he lost her he broke down!’

‘What an extremely ambiguous statement! All I meant was –’

‘What happened next in Putney?’

‘I’ve no idea. Mrs J. skated over that, but a year later the sister died in an asylum and the old man went senile. Old Mrs J. told me placidly it was the judgement of God.’

‘How did the Bishop deal with the new crisis?’

‘By that time he was in North London. The house allocated to the hospital chaplain was small but he rescued his father, stepmother and surviving sister and squeezed them in somehow. The father died six months later. Then old Mrs J. and the sister lived with the Bishop till his marriage.’

I decided it would be politic to prove to her that my mind did not always leap to the most dubious conclusions. ‘I can’t quite see why old Mrs J. made such a fuss about that marriage,’ I said innocently. ‘Surely she wanted her stepson to make a good marriage as soon as he could afford to do so?’

‘She didn’t look upon it as a good marriage. Carrie only had a hundred a year. Also Carrie was a bit old – thirty-two. Mrs J. thought that was suspicious, wanted to know why she hadn’t got off the shelf earlier … But of course the real truth was that although Mrs J. wanted her stepson to marry, no girl was ever going to be good enough in her estimation.’

‘Obviously it was for the best that she decided not to live with them after the marriage. But wasn’t she tempted to move closer to Dr Jardine once he left Mayfair? Radbury’s a long way from Putney.’

‘She was afraid of quarrelling with Carrie. That was why she stayed away until she was too infirm to stay away any more.’

‘I see now,’ I said, unable to resist angling for an indiscretion by using a suggestive remark as bait, ‘that the Starbridge finale isn’t just an edifying resolution of the problem of old Mrs Jardine – it even qualifies as a romantic ending.’

Lyle immediately looked annoyed. ‘It was a happy ending, certainly,’ she said in the tone of voice of someone who considers romance a breach of taste. ‘But romantic? That makes a complex and remarkable relationship seem banal.’

‘Have you got some grudge against romance?’

‘Of course – it’s the road to illusion, isn’t it?’ said Lyle carelessly. ‘Any realist knows that.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I think it’s time we went back to the car – you’ve got that pounce-ish look again.’

‘I suppose you do realize, don’t you,’ I said, extinguishing my own cigarette, ‘that you’re pushing me back with one hand yet beckoning me on with the other?’ And before she had time to protest I had taken her in my arms.

IV

This time I did not have the advantage of surprise and she had her defences firmly in place. As I pulled her towards me she said: ‘No!’ in a voice which precluded argument and shoved me aside as she scrambled to her feet.

I caught up with her halfway across the Ring but before I could speak she swung to face me and demanded, ‘What exactly are you up to? You take me for a drive so that you can get to know me better and yet all you do is ask questions about the Bishop!’

‘But I do know you better now! I know you smoke cigarettes in your bedroom, think romance is the invention of the Devil and have a profound admiration for that formidable lady, the late Mrs Jardine!’

‘I wish I’d never told you about her!’ said Lyle furiously. ‘It’s obvious you think she had some sort of obscene passion for her stepson –’

‘Wouldn’t “romantic affection” be a more accurate description?’

‘It was not a romance!’

‘Not in a tawdry conventional sense, no. But she sacrificed her life for his, didn’t she, and isn’t that really the unsurpassable romantic gesture? Dickens certainly thought so when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities but no one’s yet accused Sydney Carton of an obscene passion for Charles Darnay.’

‘I thought Carton sacrificed himself for Lucy’s sake, not just for Darnay’s. Maybe you should start rereading Dickens!’

‘Maybe you should start redefining romance. Cigarette?’

‘Thanks. I feel I need one after that exchange.’

When our cigarettes were alight we wandered on across the ridge. The Ring disappeared behind us as the track led over the brow of the hill, and in the distance we could see my car, crouched like a black beetle beside the dusty ribbon of the road.

‘I did admire old Mrs J.,’ said Lyle, ‘because I knew what hell she’d been through for the Bishop, but I have to admit she could be an awful old battle-axe. During her two visits to Radbury she reduced Carrie to pulp, and what was worse she used to enjoy it. Poor Carrie!’

‘You’re very fond of Mrs Jardine, aren’t you?’

‘She’s the sort of mother I always wanted. My own mother was an invalid – she had a weak heart – and it made her very querulous and self-absorbed.’

‘And your father?’

‘He was a soldier, one of the clever ones, very quick and bright and tough. He was killed in the War, of course, like all the best soldiers, and when my mother died in sympathy I went to Norfolk to live with my great-uncle. He was an ancient vicar who took me in out of Christian charity because no one else wanted me.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Twelve. It was 1914. You were wondering about my present age, weren’t you?’

‘Now that I know you’re thirty-five allow me to tell you that I’m thirty-seven. How did you find Norfolk?’

‘Dreadfully dull. I ended up writing my great-uncle’s sermons just to stave off the boredom.’

‘You don’t write Dr Jardine’s sermons, do you, by any chance?’

She laughed. ‘Not yet!’

We strolled on down the track. ‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘you’ve been described to me as the real power at the palace. How would the Jardines get on if you left?’

‘Oh, but I’m not leaving,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘How lucky for the Jardines! But where does that leave you?’

‘Exactly where I want to be – looking after my adopted mother and running the palace for the Bishop. I’m not interested in doing anything else.’

‘No, obviously there’s no time for other interests,’ I said. ‘Keeping that marriage glued together must be a very all-consuming occupation.’

She stopped dead. I stopped too, and as we faced each other I knew I had caught her off her guard.

‘Don’t misunderstand,’ I said swiftly. ‘I’m not calling you a liar. Earlier you made it plain that the marriage, despite its surface irritations, was a happy one involving that well-known phenomenon the attraction of opposites, and I see no reason to disbelieve that. Lady Starmouth also told me she thought the marriage was a success. But its success depends on you, doesn’t it? If you weren’t there to do all the things Mrs Jardine can’t do, the marriage would go to pieces along with Mrs Jardine – just as it did at Radbury before you arrived with your jar of glue to stick the pieces together again. Well, it’s always gratifying to one’s self-esteem to feel that one’s indispensable, but do you really think that once the Jardines are dead and you’re on your own at last you won’t look back and regret a lifetime of missed opportunities? Or are you simply going to say, as old Mrs Jardine said at the end of her life, “It was worth it all for Adam”?’

She was so pale that for the first time I noticed the faint freckles across her cheekbones. It was impossible not to conclude that I had shot an arrow into the dark and scored a bull’s eye, but all she said in the end was a stony, ‘I don’t call him Adam.’

‘Well, I should hope you don’t call him Alex either,’ I said, ‘or my imagination would really run riot. I’ve noticed he calls you Lyle whenever he isn’t referring to you as Miss Christie and I suppose it’s natural enough after ten years that he should follow his wife’s example in treating you as a highly favoured employee, but I’d certainly raise an eyebrow if you started calling him by his Christian name.’

‘Oh, shut up! You’ve made quite enough snide remarks for one afternoon!’

‘I thought I was making some intelligent observations in an attempt to solve the mystery!’

‘What mystery?’

‘The mystery you present to any man who admires you, the mystery of why you’re content to go through life as a mere companion –’

‘I’m beginning to think you’re the real mystery here, Charles Ashworth, with your interest in the Bishop and your Don Juan manners and the wife you won’t talk about and the past you gloss over so smoothly! Why are you going through this elaborate charade of making torrid passes at me?’

‘It’s no charade. I knew as soon as we met yesterday that I was deeply attracted to you –’

‘That’s the most unreal opening a sentence could have! You know nothing about me! You’re obviously deep in a romantic fantasy!’

‘Why don’t you tell me about this broken engagement of yours which has given you such a horror of romance?’

‘I’m telling you nothing more!’ She was taut with anger. ‘Take me home at once, please – I find this entire conversation deeply offensive!’

We walked on in silence, she hurrying as fast as she could without breaking into a run, I lengthening my stride to keep pace with her. At the car I said, ‘I’m extremely sorry if I’ve given you offence but please believe me when I say my admiration for you is genuine.’

‘I don’t want your admiration.’ Wrenching open the door she collapsed in a heap on the passenger seat; evidently I had shocked her to the core.

V

We did not speak throughout the journey back to Starbridge but as I halted my car in the palace drive I said, ‘Please give my apologies to Mrs Jardine and say I won’t be making an appearance at tea. I must do some work in my room on my St Anselm notes.’