Susan Howatch - Absolute Truths

‘Well, of course there isn’t, not after that archdeacon in London went looking for an address-book and instantly uncovered horrors! Wake up, darling! This time there’ll be a hidey-hole designed to outwit any archdeacon – try the bedroom.’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Only private detectives invade bedrooms.’

‘And the police! Darling, do you really want Desmond to hit the headlines in the News of the World?’

There was a pause while I wrestled with my middle-class upbringing, my public-school mores and my Christian duty as a bishop to look after a wayward member of my flock. ‘If you only knew,’ I muttered at last, ‘how much I wish I was back in Cambridge –’

‘Charles, this is not the time to wallow in a pointless nostalgia. Think of the Church – think of the diocese –’

‘If only I’d never taken him on! Of course I knew it was a risk but the Abbot-General absolutely swore Desmond was fully recovered as the result of that long retreat with the Fordite monks –’

‘Darling, stop fluttering around in a purple panic and search that bedroom. Or do I have to come over and do it myself?’

‘I must say I think this is a singularly distasteful conversation for a bishop to have with his wife!’

‘Don’t waste any more time thinking, Charles – ACT!’

‘Very well.’ I replaced the receiver, marched out of the room and almost collided with the housekeeper who had been approaching with my tea. Thanking her profusely I returned to the study, but as soon as the tray had been deposited on the desk and the housekeeper had once more retreated to the kitchen, I made another swift exit into the hall.

As I padded silently upstairs I was aware of the size of the house, built for a large Victorian family with several servants, and it occurred to me that this size was enhanced by the interior dilapidation which underlined the high ceilings, the wide staircase and the long corridors. I suspected the housekeeper neither dusted nor swept, probably because Desmond had never noticed whether she did so or not. Upstairs the cold intensified. Stooping over the floor in one corner of the landing I flicked open my lighter and saw the mice-droppings beside the hole I had noticed in the wainscoting. The notorious lines of a well-known hymn flared in my mind: ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate; God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate.’ I thought of my comfortable home and felt not only guilty but angry and ashamed.

I told myself that something should be done for the parish, but I knew the problems it presented were intractable. The diocesan board of finance had already classed the church as a white elephant which required too much money too often. The congregation had dwindled to a remnant. It was hardly surprising that the vicarage was now a mere sordid niche for a man whom no other bishop would employ, but how I hated that long decline from Victorian power to mid-twentieth-century enfeeblement! It made me despair of the future of the Church.

But then I remembered St Athanasius, battling on contra mun-dum , never giving up, never sinking back into despair, and it occurred to me that I should stop bewailing the present in disgust and pray for the future with hope. So I said in my head to God: ‘Breathe new life into this parish – resurrect it from the dead!’ – an outrageous demand indeed and I hardly hoped for it to be met, but no attempt to align oneself with God can ever be futile, and perhaps the result of my prayer would be that in future I would take more interest in this dying parish, a move which would produce beneficial results for the congregation.

To finish off my prayer I added my current mantra: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God,’ and feeling fractionally calmer – or was I in fact more depressed than ever? – I resumed my journey to Desmond’s bedroom.

In contrast to the chaos in the study, this room was uncluttered. It was as if Desmond had created a small, austere space where he could escape from a world which demanded too much of him. The narrow bed had no counterpane and no eiderdown and the top blanket looked as if it had come from an army surplus store. A dressing-gown, frayed at the cuffs, hung from a hook on the back of the door, but all his other clothes had been consigned to the wardrobe. Beside the bed I saw the Missal of the Fordite monks – Jon’s old Order – stacked with the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. An alarm clock nearby was so weathered by the vicarage climate that the metal had rusted at the base.

I noted the prie-dieu by the window, the crucifix above the bed, and suddenly as the aura of a devout life permeated my consciousness I felt as if Christ himself were watching me from some corner of the room which lay just beyond my field of vision.

Immediately I asked myself what Jesus would have thought of this shoddy episcopal invasion of a devout man’s monk-like cell, but my task at that moment, as Lyle had so forcefully reminded me, was not to think but to act. I picked up the Missal and shook it but no pornographic photograph or incriminating letter fell from the pages. Desmond had wanted to be an Anglican monk long ago, but when the Fordites had turned him down he had decided he was called to parish work after all. But had that decision of the Abbot-General been correct? Perhaps if the Order had accepted him … But I was wasting time in thought again. Setting down the Missal, I shook the Bible and the Prayer Book with equally unproductive results and opened the drawer of the bedside table, but I found nothing there except indigestion tablets. I examined the drawers inside the wardrobe but the majority were empty. Desmond had even fewer clothes than I had imagined.

However I noticed that in the section of the wardrobe where his one suit and spare cassock were hanging, a tin box was sitting on the floor alongside a down-at-heel pair of shoes. It was the sort of box, about fifteen inches high, in which people kept personal memorabilia such as old letters and family photographs, but when I tried to raise the lid I was unable to do so. Kneeling on the threadbare carpet I flicked open my lighter again and confirmed that although the hasps were unfastened a lock was holding the lid in place. I told myself that it was not unnatural for Desmond to wish to keep his personal memorabilia from the housekeeper’s prying eyes, but the locked box bothered me and I became even more bothered when I was unable to find the key.

I felt along the top of the wardrobe but my fingers encountered nothing but dust. I stood on a chair so that I could see the top of the picture-rail and door-frame, but no trace of metal glinted among the cobwebs. I lifted up the box and looked underneath but found nothing. It was certainly possible that Desmond kept the key with him at all times, but priests in charge of large churches usually have quite enough keys on their key-rings without further burdening themselves with one which was not in daily use.

I stood motionless for a moment in the centre of the room while I tried to identify the one place which the housekeeper would never touch. My glance finally fell on the crucifix. Removing it from the wall I found, to my utmost dismay, that a small key had been taped to the back.

I now began to feel distinctly queasy. In truth I had not expected to find the key hidden in such an abnormal place. A key hidden on top of the wardrobe or picture-rail would have indicated a normal desire for privacy; a key hidden behind a crucifix suggested nothing less than a guilty desire to be secretive. Very carefully I detached the key in such a way that the sticky tape could be reused, and tried the lock. It yielded, and as I raised the lid my last faint hope that the box contained innocent memorabilia expired. I found myself plunged into an episcopal nightmare.