Susan Howatch - Scandalous Risks

Possibly it was this torturous educational experience which set me apart from my sisters, but it seemed to me I had always been the odd one out.

‘That child gets plainer every time I see her,’ said Horrible Henrietta once to Absolutely-the-Bottom Arabella when they rolled home from Benenden for the school holidays. Those broad shoulders are almost a deformity – she’s going to wind up looking exactly like a man.’

‘Maybe she’s changing sex. That would explain the tomboyish behaviour and the gruff voice …’

‘Mama, can’t something be done about Venetia’s eyebrows? She’s beginning to look like an ape …’

‘Mama, have you ever thought of shaving Venetia’s head and giving her a wig? That frightful hair really does call for drastic measures …”

My mother, who was fundamentally a nice-natured woman whenever she wasn’t worshipping her plants, did her best to stamp on this offensive behaviour, but the attacks only surfaced in a more feline form when I reached adolescence.

‘Can’t someone encourage poor darling Venetia to take an interest in clothes? Of course I know we can’t all look like a fashion-plate in Vogue , but …’

‘Venetia, my sweet, you simply can’t wear that shade of lipstick or people will think you’re a transvestite from 1930s’ Berlin …’

Even my brothers lapsed into brutality occasionally.

‘Oliver, you’ve got to help me find a young man for Venetia –’

‘Oh God, Mama, don’t ask me!’

‘Harold, do explain to Venetia how ill-advised it is for a young girl to talk about philosophy at dinner-parties – she simply takes no notice when I tell her it’s so dreadfully showy and peculiar –’

‘Certainly, Mama. Now look here, Venetia old girl – and remember I speak purely out of fraternal affection—your average man doesn’t like clever women unless they’re real sizzlers, and since you’ll never be a real sizzler …’

‘Poor Venetia!’ said Absolutely-the-Bottom Arabella to Horrible Henrietta when she knew quite well I was within earshot. ‘No sex appeal.’

‘Well!’ said my father with a sigh of relief once his third daughter was married. ‘Now I can sit back and relax! I don’t have to worry about Venetia, do I? She’ll never be a femme fatale .’

‘… and I can’t tell you how glad I am,’ I overheard my mother confiding to her best friend, ‘that Venetia will inevitably have a quieter life than the others. When I think of all I went through with Arabella – not to mention Henrietta – and even dearest Sylvia was capable of being a little too fast occasionally …’

I remembered that remark as I dressed for dinner on the night of the Aysgarth-Ashworth reunion, and wished I could be a sizzler so fast that no one would see me for dust. I slid into my best dress, which was an interesting shade of mud, but unfortunately I had put on weight with the result that the material immediately wrinkled over my midriff when I dragged up the zip. I tried my second-best dress. The zip got stuck. My third-best dress, which had a loose-fitting waist, was wearable but hopelessly out of fashion and my fourth-best dress transformed me into a sausage again. In rage I returned to number three in the hope that I could divert attention from its unfashionable lines by swathing myself in jewellery.

‘Darling, you look like a Christmas tree!’ exclaimed my mother aghast as she glanced into the room to inspect my progress. ‘Do take off those frightful bracelets – and what on earth is Aunt Maud’s diamond hatpin doing in your hair?’

I sank down on the bed as the door closed. Then in despair I tore away all the jewellery and began to wallop my impossible hair with a brush. Eventually I heard the guests arriving, and after a long interval Harold was dispatched to drag me into the fray.

‘Come along, old girl – everyone’s thinking you must have got locked in the lavatory!’

Loathing the entire world and wishing myself a thousand miles away I followed him downstairs. The sound of animated conversation drifted towards us from the drawing-room, and as I pictured everyone looking matchlessly elegant I had to fight the urge to run screaming through the streets to Sylvia’s house in Chelsea.

‘Here she is!’ chirped idiotic Harold as I finally made my entrance.

All heads swivelled to gaze at my dead dress and diabolical hair. I had a fleeting impression of an unknown couple regarding me with mild astonishment, but just as I was wondering if it were possible to die of humiliation, my Mr Dean exclaimed warmly: ‘My dear Venetia, how very delightful you look!’ and he held out his hands to me with a smile.

It was Aysgarth’s kindness which first attracted me to Christianity; the contrast between his attitude and the callous remarks of the non-believers in my family was so great that I felt the explanation could only be theological. It was small wonder that I hero-worshipped him from an early age, but I must make it clear that I was never in love with him. Such a possibility was inconceivable, first because he was a married clergyman, a creature permanently unavailable for a grand passion, and second because he was over fifty years old and therefore incapable of being classed by my youthful brain as an object of sexual desire. Moreover Aysgarth had become considerably plainer since I had first met him in 1946. By the time of the Ashworth dinner-party eleven years later his springy brown hair was smoother, straighter and a shop-soiled shade of white, while his deeply-lined face was marred by pouches under the eyes. He was also much heavier, not repulsively fat but markedly four-square. ‘Aysgarth’s built like a peasant,’ my father remarked once, not meaning to be unkind but unable to abstain from that insensitive frankness which can be such an unfortunate trait of the aristocracy.

However after Aysgarth’s heroic kindness to me at the beginning of that dinner-party, I would hardly have cared if he had been built like an elephant, and as soon as Primrose and I had the chance for a quick word I said to her enviously: ‘You’re so damned lucky to have a father like that.’

‘Isn’t he wonderful? All other men seem so dreary in comparison.’

Immediately I felt annoyed with myself for giving her the opportunity to drool; once Primrose started flaunting her Elektra complex she was nauseous. ‘Professor Ashworth doesn’t look too bad,’ I said in the hope of diverting her. ‘In fact I’d say he was rather well preserved for a man of his age.’

After my embarrassing entry into the room my mother had cursorily introduced me to the Ashworths, but afterwards the Professor had been buttonholed by Harold while Mrs Ashworth had been cornered by my fascinated father so I had had no opportunity to converse with them. I now paused to inspect the Professor with care. He was a tall man who had kept his figure; I learned later that he had excelled at games in his youth and still possessed a single-figure handicap as a golfer. Middle age had given him a receding hairline, but his curly dark hair was streaked in just the right places with just the right shade of glamorous silver. He had brown eyes, a straight nose, a firm jaw with a cleft chin, and deep lines about his strong mouth. These lines, which immediately suggested past suffering, reminded me he had once been a prisoner of war.

I opened my mouth to remark to Primrose how rare it was to encounter a handsome cleric, but at that moment we were interrupted by James, Aysgarth’s soldier son, and I was obliged to endure a lot of jolly talk about nothing. Nevertheless I kept an eye on the Professor. He was gliding around, displaying a formidable social technique as he talked to everyone in turn. From various syllables which reached my ears I gathered he was even able to talk to Harold’s clothes-horse about fashion.