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THREE

‘I am going to set before you one of those standing themes that always ought to be preached about: the relation between the sexes … And if we achieve no other aim, we shall at least show sympathy with those who are concerned to manage the most baffling and the most ungovernable part of their instinctive nature.’

AUSTIN FARRER

Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968

Said or Sung

I

Having completed this portrait of myself, my family and my professionally distinguished but privately turbulent life – having, in other words, set the scene for my third catastrophe – it is now time to describe the crises which battered me in rapid succession towards the edge of the abyss.

‘Do you remember,’ said Lyle, taking the telephone receiver off the hook one afternoon early in the February of 1965, ‘how miserable we were when we were forced to face the fact that our third child was never going to exist?’

‘Vividly.’ I was in an excellent mood for it was a Monday, and Monday was my day off. As Lyle severed our connection to the outside world, I sat down on the bed to remove my shoes.

‘And do you remember,’ pursued Lyle, drawing the curtains and plunging the bedroom into an erotic twilight, ‘how you said God might know what was best for us better than we did, and I was so angry that I hurled an ashtray at you?’

‘Even more vividly.’

‘Well, I just want to say I’m sorry I hurled the ashtray. We would never have survived a third child.’

‘Does this belated enlightenment mean you’ll stop feeling queasy whenever anyone cites the quotation: “All things work together for good to them that love God”?’

‘No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote – which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’

‘It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’

‘It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’

Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamorous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black learner boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.

Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was no doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for out of my private income and now periodically triggering pangs of guilt that I should be living in such luxury while the majority of my clergy shivered in icy vicarages.

‘Isn’t the central heating turned up rather high?’ I said conscience-stricken to Lyle.

‘Certainly not!’ came the robust reply. ‘Bishops need to be warm in order to function properly.’

I thought Hippolytus would have made a very acid comment on this statement, but of course he had not been obliged to endure the numbing effect of an English February. Fleetingly I pictured Bishop Callistus toasting himself without guilt in front of a brazier of hot coals as he planned his next compassionate sermon to adulterers.

Our bedroom at the South Canonry faced the front of the house, and from the windows we could see beyond the huge beech-tree by the gate and across the Choir School’s playing-field to the southern side of the Cathedral: the roof of the octagonal chapter house was clearly visible above the quadrangle formed by the cloisters, and beyond this roof the central tower rose high above the nave to form the base of the spire.

‘Why are you gazing glassy-eyed at the curtains?’

‘I was thinking of the Cathedral beyond them. Since you’ve just apologised for throwing the ashtray at me all those years ago, let me now apologise for wanting our bedroom to face the back garden when we moved here.’

‘Thank you, darling. But of course I realised that was because you were slightly neurotic about Starbridge at the time. Imagine wanting to face a boring old back garden when you had the chance to face one of the architectural wonders of Europe!’

I laughed dutifully at the memory of this foolishness.

In contrast to the tropical temperature generated by the new heating system the bedroom presented a cool, austere appearance. The modern furniture was white; my wardrobe and tallboy, inherited from my father, stood in my dressing-room next door. Lyle had chosen the white furniture, just as she had chosen the ice-blue curtains and the wintry grey carpet. At first I had thought: how cold! But soon I had realised that the coldness became erotic when it formed the background for Lyle’s collection of nightwear. Lyle had never adjusted her wardrobe to her advancing years. Having kept her figure she had no trouble buying exactly what she liked, and what she liked had changed little since I had first met her. During the day she wore simple, elegant suits and dresses in chaste, muted colours and looked like a very exclusive executive secretary – or perhaps like a grand version of the lady’s companion she had been in the 1930s when she had run the palace so efficiently for the Jardines. But at night the air of propriety was discarded and amazing creations foamed and frothed from the ice-white wardrobe. Then indeed my pity for the celibate bishops of the Early Church knew no bounds.

‘What would I do,’ I said as I slid between the sheets, ‘if you weighed twelve stone and wore flannel nightgowns and had hair like corrugated iron?’

‘Die of boredom. And what would I do if you were bald and paunchy and looked like an elderly baby?’

‘I’m sure you’d find some stimulating solution.’

An amusing interlude followed. I find it curious that it should be so widely believed that no one over sixty can possibly be interested in sexual intercourse, and I find it well-nigh scandalous that so many people today still believe that Christianity is against sex. Christianity has certainly experienced bouts of thinking that there are better ways of occupying one’s time – in the Early Church, for instance, when the end of the world was believed to be imminent, procreation was inevitably regarded as a self-indulgent escape from the far more urgent task of saving souls – but today it is generally recognised among Christians that sexual intercourse is good. It is the abuse of sexual intercourse which causes all the problems and which prompts Christians like me to speak up in the hope of saving people from being exploited, tormented and wrecked. At Cambridge my undergraduates had nicknamed me ‘Anti-Sex Ashworth’, but no sobriquet could have been more inappropriate. I may be an ardent moralist but I put a high value on sex – which explains why I am an ardent moralist. I detest the fact that this great gift from God is regularly devalued and degraded.

‘St Paul should have had sex regularly,’ said Lyle later as we lit our cigarettes.

‘Why have you got your knife into St Paul all of a sudden?’

‘He was beastly to women and queers.’

‘That’s a highly debatable statement. If one takes into account that some of the Epistles weren’t written by him –’

‘What would St Paul have said to the woman in my prayer-group who broke down last week and told us her son was deeply in love with another man?’

‘I’m sure he’d have been extremely kind to her.’

‘But she doesn’t want mere kindness, Charles, least of all for herself! She wants her son to be accepted, particularly by the Church. She says: is it right that a promiscuous homosexual can confess to an error and receive absolution while two homosexuals who practise fidelity in a loving relationship are barred from receiving the sacrament?’

‘She’s mistaken in assuming that a promiscuous homosexual would automatically receive absolution. I certainly wouldn’t absolve anyone I thought intended to continue committing buggery in public lavatories.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Also I don’t think you should lose sight of the law of the land. Homosexual acts are illegal. You surely can’t expect the Church to condone law-breaking en masse!’

‘But what are ordinary, law-abiding homosexuals supposed to do, Charles, if they have no gift for chastity? After all, most heterosexual men find chastity quite beyond them – how would you yourself manage if I ran off and left you on your own?’

‘I’d run after you and haul you back.’

‘What fun! But seriously, Charles –’

‘Oh, I freely admit I’d hate to be celibate. But that doesn’t mean God’s incapable of calling me to such a life and it doesn’t mean either that I’d be incapable of responding to such a call if it came. By the grace of God –’

‘– all things are possible. Quite. But Charles, are you really saying that the Church has nothing to say to these people except that they should regard their homosexual inclinations as a call to celibacy?’

‘The Church has plenty to say to everyone, regardless of their sexual inclinations. And let’s get one point quite clear: the Church is not against homosexuals themselves. Indeed many homosexuals do excellent work as priests.’

‘Yes, but they’re the celibates, aren’t they? What I want to know is –’

‘My dear, I have every sympathy for anyone, heterosexual or homosexual, who’s severely tempted to indulge in illicit sexual activity, but the Church can’t just adopt a policy of “anything goes”! Any large organisation has to make rules and set standards or otherwise, human nature being what it is, the whole structure collapses in chaos!’

‘Yes, I quite understand that, but you still haven’t answered my question. What happens to the people who just can’t fit into this neat, orderly world designed by the Church? I mean, have you ever thought, really thought, about what it must be like to be a homosexual? Your problem is that you haven’t the slightest interest in homosexuality and you have no homosexual friends.’

‘Surely those are points in my favour!’

‘Charles, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you! Now stop being so frivolous and just try to be helpful for a moment. How would you, in your professional role, advise my prayer-group to pray for my friend’s homosexual son who’s living discreetly with his boyfriend in a manner which has absolutely nothing to do with a promiscuous career in public lavatories?’

I sighed, ground out my cigarette and to signal my resentment that I was being dragooned into playing the bishop I reconnected us to the outside world by replacing the telephone receiver with a thud. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘while I put on my cope and mitre.’

‘No, don’t you dare sulk! I’ve always been very careful not to bother you about the prayer-group, and yet now, on the very first occasion that I’ve actually paid you the compliment of asking for your advice –’

I slumped guiltily back on the pillows just as the telephone jangled at my side.

II

‘I’ll answer it,’ said Lyle, slipping out of bed.

‘No, let it ring.’ I was already regretting that I had slammed back the receiver in a fit of pique.

‘If we let it ring you’ll crucify yourself imagining a suicidal vicar screaming for help,’ said Lyle tartly, and moving around to the table on my side of the bed she picked up the receiver and intoned in her most neutral voice: ‘South Canonry.’

A pause followed during which I wondered whether to light another cigarette. Contrary to Lyle’s fears I thought it was most unlikely that some suicidal vicar was screaming for help in an icy vicarage while his bishop lounged in a centrally-heated haze of post-coital bliss, and having made the decision to light the cigarette I turned my thoughts instead to Lyle’s prayer-group, those middle-aged, middle-class, church-going ladies who seemed so unlikely to want to discuss unnatural vice. It occurred to me that the kindest advice I could give them was to pray for the wholesome family life of their married friends and leave any deviant relations to God.

‘Just a moment, please,’ said Lyle, bringing the silence to an end. ‘Let me see if my husband left a number where he can be contacted.’ Sitting down on the edge of the bed she muffled the receiver in the eiderdown and whispered to me: ‘It’s the chaplain at the hospital. Desmond Wilton’s been beaten up in his church. He’s unconscious, he needs an operation and the chaplain thought you ought to know about it.’

Crushing out my cigarette I began to struggle out of bed.

‘Yes, I can get in touch with him straight away,’ said Lyle. ‘Either he or the Archdeacon will be with you as soon as possible.’ She hung up. ‘Charles, surely Malcolm can cope with this?’

‘I couldn’t possibly palm such a disaster off on my archdeacon.’

‘Trust Desmond Wilton to get himself beaten up on your day off!’

‘Darling –’

‘What was he doing anyway, getting himself beaten up? I just hope there’s no sinister explanation.’

I was appalled. ‘But Desmond’s been leading an exemplary life ever since he came to Starbridge! If we hadn’t been discussing homosexuality, it would never have occurred to you to make such a remark – and I refuse to believe there’s any truth in it!’

‘Dear Charles,’ said my wife, slipping into a black silk negligée. ‘Such a very Christian nature.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with any Christian nature I might have,’ I said, very heated by this time, ‘and everything to do with the fact that Desmond made a complete recovery from that spiritual breakdown he had in London. All right, I know you think the Bishop of London palmed him off on me, but even the best priests can have breakdowns and I absolutely defend my decision to give him a job in the diocese as soon as he’d recovered!’

‘I know you’ll always defend it – and how good it is for me to be reminded that despite all my advanced liberal thoughts about homosexuals you’re still so much more compassionate and Christian towards them than I am! If I were a bishop nothing would induce me to employ a pathetic old priest who’d been beaten up while soliciting in a public lavatory … Shall I try and track down Malcolm for you?’ she called after me as I headed for the bathroom.

‘Yes, he ought to be told straight away, but say there’s no need for him to cancel everything and rush to the hospital. The chaplain and I’ll sort things out.’

Five minutes later, dressed in a black suit with a purple stock and pectoral cross, I emerged from my dressing-room to find that Lyle had picked up from the floor the casual, off-duty clothes which I had discarded earlier, made the bed and tracked down my archdeacon. ‘He’s making a visitation at Upper Starwood,’ she informed me, ‘but I’ve left a message at the vicarage there.’

‘Good.’ I turned to leave but on the threshold I hesitated and looked back. ‘I’m sorry I took evasive action when you started to talk about the prayer-group,’ I said. ‘I really would like to hear more about it. Maybe later – when I’m in neither a rush nor a post-coital torpor –’

‘Of course. Later.’

I hurried away to the hospital.

III

When I had visited Starbridge in 1937, the year I had met and married Lyle, I had thought it more than lived up to its reputation of being the most beautiful city west of the Avon. In my mind’s eye I could still see it shining in the hot sunlight of that distant summer; I could remember how enchanted I had been by its medieval streets, flower-filled parks and winding, sparkling river, how mesmerised I had been by the Cathedral, towering above the walled Close on a mound above the shimmering water-meadows. ‘Radiant, ravishing Starbridge!’ I had exclaimed to myself more than once during that crucial time, but that was all long ago, and Starbridge was not the city it had been before the war.

Why must unspoilt county towns inevitably change for the worse? Those Starbridge parks remained flower-filled in summer but now they were litter-strewn as the result of the huge increase in tourists and the slovenly habits of the young. Most of the medieval streets still existed but a number of them south of Mitre Street had been bulldozed to make way for a hideous invention, a ‘multistorey car park’ which was attached to something called a ‘shopping centre’. This new development was so ugly that I felt hot with rage whenever I saw it. Fortunately the mayor who had encouraged this act of vandalism had dropped dead so I was no longer obliged to be polite to him, but the city council members lingered on, a sore trial to my Christian patience. More concrete horrors were rising on the outskirts of the city where a by-pass (on stilts!) was being constructed, but this innovation I was prepared to tolerate since its purpose was to eliminate the city’s traffic jams.

The Starbridge General Hospital, a Victorian building, was unchanged on the outside despite being constantly modernised within. It stood near Eternity Street on the river which flowed swiftly, fed by two tributaries, through the heart of the city. As I arrived that afternoon the rain was hardening into sleet and a bitter north wind was blowing. From the car park the tower of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, my archdeacon’s church, could be seen standing palely, as if numbed with cold, against a yellowish, snow-laden sky.

For a moment I thought of those radiant sunlit days of 1937, and suddenly I heard a much younger Lyle say in my memory: ‘I’m Miss Christie, Mrs Jardine’s companion …’ I hurried into the hospital but the memories pursued me and I heard Bishop Jardine himself exclaim: ‘Welcome to Starbridge!’ as he made a grand entrance into his drawing-room. It occurred to me then that I was on the brink of remembering Loretta, but that was one episode from 1937 which I always willed myself not to recall, particularly since I had become a bishop. Blocking it at once from my mind I entered the hospital’s main hall.

A dreary interval ensued. I asked for Desmond but was told he was in the operating theatre. I asked for the chaplain but was told he was not in his office. I asked for the hospital almoner and/or the doctor in charge of the case, but was told to take a seat. Evidently I was becoming tiresome and needed to be disciplined.

Since I was not wearing my formal uniform of frock-coat and gaiters, and since my overcoat hid my purple stock and pectoral cross, I was not immediately recognisable as a VIP. I did toy with the idea of opening my coat and flashing my chest at the lacklustre receptionist, but I thought better of it. No degree of impatience can excuse vulgarity.

I managed to kill my annoyance by telling myself the woman was probably worn out by long hours and low pay, and having thus transformed myself from a cross old buffer to a charitably inclined bishop (a process which I found more than usually exhausting), I received my reward: the almoner arrived to look after me, and I was taken speedily down a chain of cream-coloured corridors to meet the doctor in authority. The almoner even called me ‘my lord’. For one golden moment I could imagine we were both back in those sunlit days before the war.

My spirits rose even further when the doctor told me that although the injuries were unpleasant, Desmond’s life was not in danger. A series of heavy kicks had cracked a couple of ribs; a series of heavy punches had battered his face, which was now being stitched up; the main problem was the shock sustained, and Desmond would need to be in hospital for at least forty-eight hours, possibly longer, while his progress was monitored. Since he was an elderly man, not robust, a period of convalescence would be advisable once he left the hospital. Meanwhile he could be allowed no visitors until the following morning.

Having thanked the doctor for all this information I was taken by the almoner to her office in order to deal with certain bureaucratic formalities relating to the admission. She did try to contact the chaplain on the internal telephone and when there was still no reply from his office she arranged for a message to be broadcast on the public address system, but he appeared to have vanished. Not wishing to delay the almoner further I said I would wait for him in the main hall, but this decision proved to be a mistake. No chaplain appeared, despite yet another summons on the public address system, but two cold-eyed men in raincoats entered the building and immediately collared me.

With dismay I found myself in the hands of the police and confronting the possibility of scandal.