‘My dear girl, Fisher’s hardly the man to be swayed by mere frivolities!’
‘Then what’s his ruling passion in life?’
‘Canon law.’
The problem seemed insuperable.
After a pause during which we racked our brains for inspiration I asked: ‘Who, technically, has the power to overrule the Archbishop of Canterbury?’
‘The Queen and God. I mean, the Queen. I really can’t start believing in God at my age –’
‘Never mind God, let’s concentrate on the Queen. Why don’t you pull a string at the Palace?’
‘What string? I don’t have a string – you know very well that I’ve never been the courtier type!’
‘Now look here, Papa: are you a peer of the realm or aren’t you?’
‘I’m beginning to feel like the inhabitant of a lunatic asylum. Venetia, the Queen would only refer the matter back to the Prime Minister, and since we already know Macmillan’s determined to pass the buck to Fisher –’
‘Then we’ve just got to conquer that Archbishop. Let’s think again. He’s an ex-headmaster, isn’t he? If you were to invite him to dinner with the headmaster of Eton and throw in the Bishop of Starbridge for good measure –’
‘This has all come to pass because back in 1945 Aysgarth married that bloody woman!’ exclaimed my father, finally giving way to his rage. ‘Why on earth did he marry her? That’s what I’d like to know! Why on earth did he do it?’
It was a question I was to ask myself many times in the years to come.
V
Our fevered plotting resulted in my father’s decision to give a little all-male dinner-party at the House of Lords. This made me very cross as I had planned to charm the Archbishop by begging him to tell me all about his life as headmaster of Repton, but my father merely said: ‘Women should keep out of this sort of business. Why don’t you start training for a decent job instead of loafing around smoking those disgusting cigarettes and reading George Eliot? If you’d gone up to Oxford –’
‘What good’s Oxford to me when all public school Englishmen run fifty miles from any woman who’s mad enough to disclose she has a brain bigger than a pea?’
‘There’s more to life than the opposite sex!’
‘It’s easy for you to say that – you’re tottering towards your sixty-sixth birthday!’
‘Tottering? I never totter – how dare you accuse me of senility!’
‘If you can spend your time making monstrous statements, why shouldn’t I follow your example?’
My father and I had this kind of row with monotonous regularity; I had long since discovered that this was an infallible way of gaining his attention. The rows had now become stylised. After the ritual door-slamming my long-suffering mother was permitted to play the peacemaker and bring us together again.
However on this occasion events failed to follow their usual course because before my mother could intervene my father took the unprecedented step of initiating the reconciliation. He did it by pretending the row had never happened. When I returned to the house after a furious walk around St James’s Park he immediately surged out of his study to waylay me.
‘Guess what’s happened!’
‘The Archbishop’s dropped dead.’
‘My God, that’s close! But no, unfortunately the dead man’s not Fisher. It’s the Bishop of Starbridge.’
I was appalled. ‘Our best ally!’
‘Our only hope! I feel ready to cut my throat.’
‘Well, pass me the razor when you’ve finished with it.’
We decided we had to be fortified by sherry. My mother was out, attending a meeting of the WVS. In the distance Big Ben was striking noon.
‘What the devil do I do now?’ said my father as we subsided with our glasses on the drawing-room sofa. ‘I can’t face Fisher without Staro on hand to make his speech about how well Aysgarth ran the archdeaconry back in the ’forties. In Fisher’s eyes I’m just a non-church-goer. I was absolutely relying on Staro to wheel on the big ecclesiastical guns.’
‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I think it’s time God intervened.’
‘Don’t talk to me of God! What a bungler He is – if He exists – collecting Staro at exactly the wrong moment! If Aysgarth ever gets that deanery now it’ll be nothing short of a miracle, and since I don’t believe in miracles and since I strongly suspect that God is an anthropomorphic fantasy conjured up by mankind’s imagination –’
The doorbell rang.
‘Damn it,’ muttered my father. ‘Why didn’t I tell Pond I wasn’t at home to callers?’
We waited. Eventually the butler plodded upstairs to announce: ‘Canon Aysgarth’s here, my Lord.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake show him up!’ said my father crossly. ‘You know I’m always at home to Mr Aysgarth!’
Pond retired. My father was just pouring some sherry into a third glass when Aysgarth walked into the room.
‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ said my father, ‘and have a drink. I assume you’ve heard the disastrous news.’
‘Abandon your sherry!’ said Aysgarth. ‘Send for the champagne!’
We gaped at him. His eyes sparkled. His smile was radiant. He was euphoric.
In amazement my father exclaimed: ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘Fisher summoned me to Lambeth Palace this morning. He said: “Let’s forget all the nonsense those women stirred up. We can’t let the Church suffer in 1957 just because my wife wore a certain hat in 1953.”’
My father and I both gasped but Aysgarth, now speaking very rapidly, gave us no chance to interrupt him. ‘“Starbridge is suddenly without either a bishop or a dean,” said Fisher, “and both the Cathedral and the diocese have problems which need solving urgently by the best men available –“‘
‘My God!’ said my father.
‘My God!’ said my voice at exactly the same moment. I had a vague picture of an anthropomorphic deity smiling smugly in a nest of clouds.
‘He offered me the deanery,’ said Aysgarth. ‘By that time, of course, I was almost unconscious with amazement, but I did somehow manage to open my mouth and say “thank you”.’
For a moment my father was silent, and when he was finally able to speak he could produce only a Latin tag. It was an emotional: ‘Fiat justitia!’
Aysgarth tried to reply and failed. Mutely they shook hands. Englishmen really are extraordinary in their ruthless pursuit of the stiff upper lip. If those men had belonged to any other race they would no doubt have slobbered happily over each other for some time.
‘Venetia,’ said my father at last, somehow achieving a casual tone, ‘ring the bell and we’ll ask Pond to conjure up the Veuve Clicquot.’
But I ignored him. Taking advantage of the fact that women were permitted to be demonstrative in exceptional circumstances, I exclaimed to Aysgarth for the first time in my life: ‘My darling Mr Dean!’ and impulsively slipped my arms around his neck to give him a kiss.
‘Really, Venetia!’ said my father annoyed. ‘Young women can’t run around giving unsolicited hugs to clergymen! What a way to behave!’