‘That possibility,’ said my Mr Dean, helping himself to a modest measure of scotch, ‘is so remote that I don’t think we need consider it seriously. And I must guard my tongue about Charles, who was certainly more than civil to me last night – even though I nearly shocked him to death with my opening remark –’
‘But only a second before you arrived Mrs Ashworth had been teasing him about vamping young girls! I don’t think you shocked him at all – he was just taken aback because you slunk up behind him and –’
‘– hit him over the head with a double entendre! I must have been mad.’
‘I thought you were sensational. And so was Mrs Ashworth, making that little black dress look like a hundred-guinea model from Harrods just by wearing one piece of jewellery – and choosing rimless spectacles instead of glasses with distracting frames – and dyeing her hair so cunningly that no man would ever dream it had been touched up –’
‘Dyeing her hair? But no clergyman’s wife would ever do that!’
‘Yes, I expect that’s what the Professor thinks too whenever he’s not busy conquering everyone in sight by exuding that synthetic charm of his. But tell me: who is Mrs Ashworth? Where did she come from? And how did the two of them meet?’
‘Ah!’ said Aysgarth, settling down cosily for a gossip. ‘Now that’s quite a story …’
VI
Apparently Mrs Ashworth had grown up in a remote Norfolk parish where her great-uncle had been the vicar; her parents had died young. This clerical background had enabled her to obtain the post of companion to Bishop Jardine’s wife when Jardine himself, rocketing racily up the Church’s ladder of preferment, had been appointed Dean of Radbury in the ’twenties. Five years later in 1932 he had become the Bishop of Starbridge. In 1937, the young Charles Ashworth, already a doctor of divinity, had decided to visit Starbridge to do some research in the Cathedral Library, and since he was the protégé of Archbishop Lang he had been invited to stay at the episcopal palace. Crossing the threshold he had fallen instantly and violently in love with Mrs Jardine’s companion.
Since Mrs Jardine had been an ineffectual woman who had relied on her companion to run the palace for her, this coup de foudre had caused chaos, but Ashworth, much to the Bishop’s fury, had refused to be deflected from his romantic charge to the altar.
‘The whole trouble was,’ said Aysgarth, ‘that Lyle’s departure was a bereavement for the Jardines as well as a crippling inconvenience. They were a childless couple who’d come to regard her as a daughter, and they’d reached the stage where they couldn’t imagine life without her.’
‘Presumably they were all reconciled later?’
‘Oh yes, but back in 1937 –’
‘– the Jardine dragon had to be vanquished before St George could carry away the maiden on his shining white horse!’
‘As a matter of fact whether he was a saint and she was a maiden was hotly debated later when the two of them produced a baby only seven months after the wedding, but since the infant was very small and delicate, just as a premature baby should be, everyone eventually agreed that the maiden’s purity had been unsullied prior to her marriage.’
‘Rather tricky to be a clergyman,’ I said, ‘and produce a baby a shade too fast.’
‘Most embarrassing for poor Charles! However I never had any serious doubt that he’d behaved himself – he was always too ambitious to do anything else.’ As an afterthought he added: ‘He was married before – his first wife was killed in a car crash – but although he was a widower for some time before he met Lyle you can be sure he kept himself in order. The first thing a successful young clergyman learns to acquire, if he wants to continue as a success, is an immaculate self-control in dealing with women.’
‘At least nowadays clergymen can get married, which is more than poor St Augustine could – although actually I don’t understand why St Augustine couldn’t marry. Why did he have to be celibate?’
‘Well, in the days of the Early Church …’
We embarked on a fascinating conversation about the origins of clerical celibacy, and Aysgarth promised to lend me his copy of St Augustine’s Confessions.
‘My dear Venetia,’ he sighed at last as he finished his whisky and rose reluctantly to his feet, ‘how very much I enjoy talking to you!’
I smiled radiantly at him and felt like a sizzler.
VII
I should perhaps make it clear that contrary to the impression I may have created while describing the turning point of his career, I did not see Aysgarth often. He led a busy life at Westminster, and I was often away. After leaving boarding school I had been obliged to endure periods of exile in Switzerland and Italy, and even when I returned to England I often sneaked down to Flaxton Pauncefoot in order to escape from the ghastly London social events where I was either ignored or treated as a freak. Life drifted on. I had no idea what I wanted to do. My métier seemed to consist of sipping drinks, smoking cigarettes and reading books. There was no calling, no summons from God written in the sky in letters of fire, and increasingly often it seemed to me that my career as an adult was incapable of beginning so long as I remained condemned to the sidelines of life by my unfortunate looks and my embarrassing intellectual inclinations.
Sometimes I gave way to despair. Supposing I had to suffer the ultimate horror of not marrying? Then I would be ‘poor old Venetia’, that pathetic freak, till my dying day. The prospect was intolerable. My depression deepened. My parents found me increasingly difficult, and soon after the Aysgarth-Ashworth dinner-party they decided that something would have to be done.
It was unusual for my parents to stage a joint attack. My mother preferred to leave the bombastic behaviour to my father and take refuge in the conservatory, but on this occasion she was apparently desperate enough to decide that I was more important than her plants.
‘We just thought we’d have a little word, darling,’ she said soothingly after we had all assembled for battle in the drawing-room of our house in Lord North Street. ‘Your father’s actually quite worried about you.’
‘Worried?’ said my father, bristling with rage. ‘I’m not worried, I’m livid! I shouldn’t have to deal with a recalcitrant daughter at my age – it’s bad for my blood pressure.’
‘You should have thought of that,’ I said tartly, ‘before you frolicked around with Mama in Venice in 1936.’
‘Frolicked? What a damn silly word – makes me sound like a bloody pansy!’
‘Oh, do stop screaming at each other!’ begged my mother, fanning herself lightly with the latest edition of Homes and Gardens. ‘What happened in ‘thirty-six is quite irrelevant – except that here you are, Venetia, and we have to help you make the best of your life – which means we simply must insist that you now stop frivolling and –’
‘Frivolling?’ I mimicked. ‘What a damn silly word! Makes me sound like a bloody butterfly!’
‘Oh my God,’ said my mother, taking refuge in Homes and Gardens.
‘Just because you happen to be reading St Augustine’s Confessions’ said my father, storming into the attack, ‘you needn’t think you’re not frittering away your time – and I must say, I think Aysgarth should have asked my permission before he lent you that book. Parts of it are most unsuitable for an unmarried young woman.’
‘If you mean that incident in the public baths when Augustine was fourteen –’
‘What