Susan Howatch - Absolute Truths

‘Oh, nothing special, just all hell breaking loose. Quick, come into the kitchen before you get buttonholed by Dido Aysgarth – she’s just told me that Desmond’s been seen near the Piccadilly Circus public lavatories on a Saturday night in the company of a young man dressed in black leather.’

‘That woman’s round the bend!’

‘I only wish I could be as certain of that as you are. Drink?’

‘Make it a double.’

We withdrew rapidly to the kitchen where I took a new bottle of scotch from the crate on the larder floor and extracted two glasses from a cupboard.

‘Charles, you don’t believe this ridiculous story of Dido’s, do you?’

‘I’m trying my hardest not to, but you know what a nose she has for scandal. She even told me everyone knew about the disaster which ended Desmond’s career in the London diocese.’

‘Who’s “everyone”?’

‘I dread to think. The Dean and Chapter?’

‘At most, I’d say. No one knows in that parish, Charles – if they did, I’d have had people coming to me to express their anxiety. And how on earth could the story have reached the Dean and Chapter? Do you think some gossipy monk at the Fordite HQ spilled the beans to Tommy Fitzgerald during one of his retreats?’

‘I’m sure no Forditc would ever have been so indiscreet. Much more likely that someone in the Bishop of London’s office talked and the word got back to Aysgarth through his former colleagues at Westminster Abbey and Church House. After all, apart from the Fordite monks only the Bishop’s office knew – the Bishop nipped the scandal in the bud.’

‘It was a brilliant piece of nipping. If he hadn’t been sitting next to the Police Commissioner at that Mansion House dinner –’

‘Talking of the police, how did you tame Parker and Locke?’

‘Oh, that was no problem at all! I became very earnest and confidential, swore Desmond was a most devout Anglo-Catholic and assured them that I’d be among the first to know if he hadn’t always lived a blameless life. (Well, I was, wasn’t I?) Of course Parker and Locke believed me – the great advantage of telling the truth is that one’s so much more likely to sound convincing.’

‘But did the police then decide it was a motiveless crime?’

‘Yes, they started speculating that the attacker was a Langley Bottom lout stoned on LSD.’

‘Surely LSD hasn’t reached Starbridge!’

‘Oh, nothing’s sacred nowadays! Anyway I fed that theory to the hack from the Starbridge Evening News who turned up at the hospital just as I was leaving and he was thrilled, said he’d do an exposé on the Starbridge drug scene –’

‘But there is no Starbridge drug scene!’

‘There will be tomorrow. Anyway, I’d just finished making the hack’s day when the chaplain turned up – apparently he’d been collared on one of the wards by some bereaved relatives and by the time he’d sorted them out –’

‘I wondered where he’d got to. Did you tell him to watch Desmond?’

‘Like a hawk, yes, and he said he’d arrange for the nurse on duty to contact him as soon as Desmond recovers consciousness, but luckily they’ve left a woman police constable at the bedside, not that thug Sergeant Locke, so at least Desmond won’t be browbeaten as soon as he opens his eyes. At that point I finally managed to tear myself away from the hospital and rush to Langley Bottom, but the housekeeper had gone home so I was unable to get into the vicarage. Did you manage to get in earlier, and if so – good heavens, Charles, what is it, what have I said?’

‘Ye gods and little fishes!’ I shouted, leaping to my feet. ‘I’ve left that unlocked box in the drawing-room with Michael and Dinkie!’

As if on cue Lyle entered the kitchen with the box itself in her hands.

‘I hid it in the dining-room when you went to answer Michael’s ring at the door,’ she said, setting the box on the kitchen table as I slumped down with relief on the nearest chair.

‘Dare I ask what’s inside?’ enquired Malcolm, eyeing the box with dread.

‘Desmond’s bedtime reading,’ said Lyle, confirming his worst fears.

Malcolm went so pale that the freckles stood out starkly across his cheekbones.

I had first met Malcolm after the war on a course designed for army chaplains who were returning to civilian life. I had been asked to give a lecture on the theology currently fashionable, and afterwards ‘Malcolm proved to be the truculent member of the audience who sat at the back and asked awkward questions. At that time he had red hair and an impudent look. Later in the canteen he apologised, explaining that he was only taking the course because he had been ordered to do so by his bishop and that he considered it a waste of time to listen to theology when he could be out and about preaching the Gospel. I liked both his honesty and his zeal. Not everyone is born to be a theologian, and certainly not everyone is born to appreciate the Neo-Orthodox theology of Karl Barth.

Word reached me by chance in the early 1950s that Malcolm had raised some market-town from the dead in the Starbridge diocese, but I never dreamed our careers would intersect. Then in 1957 I accepted the bishopric and found I had inherited an unsatisfactory archdeacon. As soon as I had freed myself from this millstone, I offered the archdeaconry to Malcolm.

The archdeaconry was attached to the city parish of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, but Malcolm had curates to help him run the parish while he roamed his section of the diocese on my behalf. The archdeacon is by tradition ‘the bishop’s eye’, the henchman who keeps watch on all the clergy and churches in the archdeaconry and tells the bishop everything he needs to know. The diocese was divided into two archdeaconries, but the other archdeacon lived in the port of Starmouth forty miles away so I saw less of him, particularly since I had appointed a suffragan bishop to supervise the south of the diocese for me. Meanwhile Malcolm patrolled the north. The exercise of power had made him a trifle bossy in his manner, but he remained devout, diligent and efficient. I relied on him in my professional life almost as much as I relied on Lyle in my private life, and considered him one of my most successful appointments.

‘Am I right in thinking,’ he was saying morosely, ‘that the parish of Langley Bottom has finally driven its vicar completely round the bend?’

‘I hate to intervene at this point,’ said Lyle, ‘but Charles, we’re all waiting for you to join us for a drink. If you could just leave Malcolm alone for ten minutes to browse through the box –’

‘I’ll be along in a moment.’

Lyle withdrew, trying not to look exasperated.

As soon as we were alone Malcolm heaved up the hasps, flung back the lid and demanded: ‘How bad is it?’

‘Appalling.’

‘Within the meaning of the Act?’

‘Not being a legal expert on pornography, I’m not sure. What do you think?’

Malcolm efficiently inspected the cover of each magazine and flicked through the collection of photographs. His final verdict was: ‘No children or animals. All this might set the News of the World alight, but it’s not going to raise any eyebrows among the vice-squad.’

‘I certainly don’t believe the police would have any interest in prosecuting an elderly man who has no connection with a pornography ring and no interest in corrupting minors. But could there be a connection between all this stuff and what’s just happened to Desmond?’

‘Where’s the link?’

‘Exactly. There isn’t one, so in my opinion there’s no need to turn the box over to the police, but –’

‘Good heavens, no – quite unnecessary!’