Absolute Truths

This lack of venom in my new job made committee work less tiring. I was also soothed by the deference shown to me whenever I ventured into the Palace of Westminster to attend the House of Lords or whenever I made a visit to one of the parishes in my diocese. But being a revered figurehead can be a lonely business and the dark side of all the deference was the isolation. Looking back I can see that this was when my marriage entered a new phase of intimacy and interdependence: increasingly I found that in my daily life I could only be my true self, relaxed and at ease, with Lyle. Of course I could also be myself with my spiritual director, now only twelve miles away at Starrington Magna, but Jon had become a recluse after his wife’s death in 1957, and although I did visit him regularly he never came to Starbridge. Apart from my wife I was on my own in that gilded cage of a Cathedral Close.

At last I pulled myself together. Realising that moping for Cambridge and bewailing my loneliness was all very self-centred, spiritually immature behaviour, I managed to stop thinking about myself and start thinking instead of how I could best serve God – a move which meant I poured myself into my work as I embarked on a massive programme of reform.

I started with the Theological College. It had begun life in the nineteenth century as an independent institution, cushioned by an endowment which permitted only modest fees to be charged, but in the twentieth century mismanagement and rising costs had brought it under the control of the diocese and the bishop was always one of the governors. I not only increased the diocesan grant which supplemented the now almost worthless endowment, but I also pushed the diocese into taking out a loan so that the premises could be improved and expanded. My fellow-governors, long accustomed to dozing at meetings of the board, were stunned by my activities but no one dared oppose me; they realised that no bishop of Starbridge had ever been so well qualified as I was to pump new life into that place, and besides, when I produced the evidence that showed the institution had become a moral disgrace they were so shocked that they almost fell over themselves to give me carte blanche.

I took a similar line with the diocese itself, which was also in a most sluggish and decayed state. My predecessor as bishop, I regret to say, had reputedly died of inertia. In the 1930s Alex Jardine had set the diocese alight with his dynamism, but after his retirement the authorities had taken fright and appointed mild-mannered nonentities to the Starbridge bishopric with the inevitable, enervating results. Dr Ottershaw, Dr Jardine’s successor, had at least allowed himself to be organised by an efficient archdeacon, but Bishop Flack, my immediate predecessor, had made a disastrous archidiaconal appointment and the diocese had become slothful. How quickly men become demoralised when their leaders fail to be crisp, conscientious and hard-working! At least my years in the army had taught me that particular lesson. Having woken everyone up by shaking them, metaphorically speaking, until their teeth rattled, I embarked on a plan of radical reorganisation.

All this took much time and kept me very busy. I appointed a suffragan bishop to manage Starmouth, the large port on the south coast, and I streamlined the diocesan office in Starbridge by pruning the bureaucracy which had mushroomed during the days of Bishop Flack. In addition to all this high-powered executive activity, I had to find the time to visit parish after parish in the diocese in order to preach, confirm and tend the flock in my role as spiritual leader. And as if all this activity were not enough to fell even St Athanasius himself, I was soon serving on committees at Church House, the Church of England’s London headquarters, and toiling at sessions of the Church Assembly. The last straw was when my turn came to read the prayers every day for a short spell in the House of Lords.

Dashing up to London, dashing around the diocese, dashing from committee to committee and from parish to parish, I began to wonder how I could possibly survive, but propped up by a first-class wife, a first-class spiritual director, two first-class archdeacons, a first-class suffragan bishop and a first-class secretary, I finally learnt how to pace myself, how to delegate, how to spend most effectively the time I allotted to private prayer and, in short, how to avoid dropping dead with exhaustion. After a while, when I began to reap the benefits of a more efficient diocese, life became less frenetic. But not much. No wonder time seemed to pass so quickly. Sometimes the days would whip by so fast that I felt as if I could barely see them for dust.

This arduous professional life, which became increasingly gratifying as I earned a reputation for being a strong, efficient, no-nonsense bishop, was punctuated by various awkward incidents in my private life, but fortunately Lyle and I, now closer than we had ever been before, managed to weather them tolerably well. Charley was no longer a problem. He recovered sufficiently from the agony of his eighteenth birthday to do well in his A-level examinations and I did not even have to pull a string to ensure his admittance to my old Cambridge college. He then decided to defer his entry until he had completed his two years of National Service. At first he loathed the army, finding it ‘disgustingly Godless’, but soon he was saved by his ability to speak fluent German, and he wound up working as a translator in pleasant quarters near Bonn. Having survived this compulsory diversion, he at last began to read divinity at Cambridge. Here he was ecstatically happy. Glowing reports reached me, and after winning a first he proceeded to theological college – but not to the one in Starbridge; I was anxious that he should have the chance to train for the priesthood far from the long shadow I cast as a bishop. To my relief his desire to be a priest never wavered, his call was judged by the appropriate authorities to be genuine and eventually he was ordained. It was a moment of enormous satisfaction for me and more than made up for the fact that I continually found Michael a disappointment.

Michael had not wanted to move to Starbridge. He thought it was the last word in provincial boredom, and we were obliged to endure sulks, moans and tart remarks. Later he developed an interest in popular music, already a symbol of rebellion among the young, and began to attend church only mutinously, complaining how ‘square’ it all was. Recognising the conventional symptoms of adolescent dislocation I kept calm, said little, endured much and waited for the storms to pass, but to my dismay the storms became hurricanes. Michael discovered girls. This was no surprise, particularly since he was a good-looking young man, and all sensible fathers are glad when their sons discover that girls are more fun than cricket, but I was concerned by the girls in whom he chose to be interested and even more concerned when he showed no interest in drinking in moderation.

He managed to do well enough at school to begin the training to be a doctor, but before long he was asked to leave medical school, not because he was incapable of doing the work but because he was incapable of avoiding fornication and hard drinking. Naturally I was concerned. I was also, as Lyle well knew, furious, shocked, resentful, embarrassed and bitter. She somehow managed to stop me becoming wholly estranged from Michael, and she somehow persuaded him to promise to reform. Jon suggested that I might make more time to talk to Michael, since such a move would make it unnecessary for him to behave badly in order to gain my attention, but I disliked the idea of being bullied by bad behaviour into reorganising my busy timetable, and I thought it was up to Michael to pull himself together without being pampered by cosy little chats.

‘My father never pampered me,’ I said to Jon, ‘and if I’d ever behaved as Michael’s behaving he’d have disowned me.’

‘But I thought you realised long ago that your father had actually made some unfortunate mistakes as a parent! Do you really want to treat Michael as your father treated you?’

I was silenced. Eventually, working on the theory that Michael was a muddled, unhappy young man who needed every possible support as he struggled to find his balance in adult life, I told him he was forgiven and promised to do all I could to get him into another medical school, but Michael merely said he now wanted to be a pop-singer in London.

Unfortunately by this time National Service had been abolished so I could not rely on the army to knock some sense into his addled head. I tried to control my fury but failed. There was a scene which ended when Michael announced: ‘Right. That’s it. I’m off,’ and headed for London with the small legacy which he had been left by my old friend Alan Romaine, the doctor who had ensured my physical recovery after the war. Lyle extracted a promise from Michael that he would keep in touch with her, so we were able to tell everyone truthfully that he had gone to London to find a job and we were looking forward to hearing how he was getting on.

‘I’m sure it’ll all come right,’ said Lyle to me in private. ‘What he’s really interested in is the stage, and he’s so handsome that he’s bound to become a matinée idol.’

I was too sunk in gloom to reply, but Lyle’s prediction turned out to be closer to the mark than I had expected. Michael became involved with a suburban repertory company and quickly decided that his talent was for neither singing nor acting but for directing and producing plays. He stayed a year with the company but then announced that the theatre was passé and that television was ‘where it was at’ (a curious American phrase currently popular among the young). To my astonishment he succeeded in getting a job at the BBC.

‘You see?’ said Lyle. ‘I told you it would all work out in the end.’

I found it so pleasant to be able to tell all my friends that my younger son now had a respectable employer that I decided the time had come to offer Michael the olive branch of peace, and writing him a letter I offered to take him out to lunch at the Athenaeum when I was next in London. A week later I received a card in reply. It said: ‘Athenaeum = Utter Dragsville. Take me to that bar in the House of Lords, food not necessary, I drink lunch.’

I did not like this card at all but Lyle said Michael was only trying to shock me and there was no reason why he and I should be unable to down a couple of sherries in the House of Lords bar while we tried to make up our minds whether we could face lunching together in the dining-room.

We met. Michael, who had clearly been drinking, ordered a double dry martini. I let him drink one but drew the line when he demanded another. He called me an old square and walked out. After that, relations remained cool between us for some time.

‘He can’t last long at the BBC,’ I said to Lyle. ‘He’ll get sacked for drink and wind up in the gutter.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Lyle, and once again she was right. Michael continued to work at the BBC and even obtained promotion. Obviously I needed to give our battered olive branch of peace another wave. By this time we had reached the end of 1964 and I invited – even, I go so far as to say, begged – him to spend Christmas with us. I had hoped he might telephone in response to this fulsome invitation, but another of his terse little cards arrived. It said: ‘Xmas okay but don’t mention God. Will be arriving on Xmas Eve with my bird, the one Mum met when she snuck up to London to see my new pad. Make sure there’s plenty of booze.’

‘Oh God!’ said Lyle through gritted teeth when she read this offensive communication.

Making a great effort to seem not only calm but even mildly amused I said: ‘I don’t understand the ornithological reference.’

‘It’s his latest ghastly girl. She’s American.’

‘You never mentioned –’

‘She was too ghastly to mention.’

‘Well, if he thinks he can bring his mistress here and bed down with her under my roof –’

‘Darling, leave this entirely to me.’

Michael did spend Christmas with us at the South Canonry, but the girl was ruthlessly billeted by Lyle at one of the local hotels. Michael wore no suit. He did not even wear a tie. He was never dead drunk but he was certainly in that condition known to publicans as ‘nicely, thank you’, an inebriated state which fell short of causing disruption but was still capable of generating embarrassment. My enemy Dean Aysgarth, on the other hand, was constantly accompanied to a variety of services by a veritable praetorian guard of well-dressed, immaculately behaved, respectable and charming sons. If I had not had Charley to cheer me up I might well have expired with despair.

However, Lyle had been working hard behind my back, and on Boxing Day Michael sidled up to me with a penitent expression. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know that my new year’s resolution will be not to get on your nerves. Can we bury the hatchet and drink to 1965?’

We drank to the coming year.

‘I’ve decided that 1965’s going to be a great time for the Ashworth family,’ said Michael, coming up for air after downing his martini. ‘I prophesy no fights, no feuds and absolutely no fiascos of any kind.’

Michael had many gifts but I fear prophecy was not among them.

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