Susan Howatch - Scandalous Risks

‘Just you wait, Mr Dean! This is the kind of stuff guaranteed to make the Bishop pass out in the pulpit!’

We plunged into the morning-room where I crammed the LP on to the turntable. Then I hesitated, holding the arm above the revolving disc as I tried to select the most suitable track. I didn’t want to bludgeon him into a coma with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. A milder introduction seemed called for. Finally the decision was made, and the next moment Presley – Presley before he became decadent and bloated and corrupt – the young, unspoilt, unsurpassable Elvis Presley began to belt out ‘You’re Right, I’m Left, She’s Gone’.

‘This is wonderful!’ cried the Dean. ‘Wonderful!’ And as I lifted the needle from the groove at the end of the track he exclaimed: ‘It makes me want to catch up with all the fun I missed out on in my youth!’

‘Was your youth really so drab?’

‘Drab! That’s an understatement. Primitive Methodists, no money, working day in, day out, in order to get on – why, the most thrilling moment of my youth consisted of a forbidden visit to the cinema where I watched Clara Bow oozing “It” as I sank my teeth into a sinful peppermint cream! Never mind, those times are gone now – and how glad I am that I’ve lived to see the dawn of a new era! Class barriers collapsing, sexual inhibitions being overcome –’

‘Good old Elvis! Want to hear some more?’

‘I want to hear everything! Play that song you were singing at dinner!’

I rummaged around and found it. ‘Okay, Mr Dean!’ I cried. “Off we go!’

The beat began to pound. Presley began to celebrate the joy of life. And suddenly Aysgarth rose to his feet.

‘Isn’t it great?’ I shouted, turning up the volume, but he merely cried enthralled: ‘Let’s dance!’

I kicked off my shoes, we grabbed each other’s hands, he drew me to the centre of the floor. And there, as Elvis Presley sang his heart out and the boards vibrated beneath our feet, I danced with the Dean of Starbridge to the beat of rock-’n’-roll.

As the final chord throbbed and we clutched each other, breathless with laughter, I saw that Primrose and Eddie were standing appalled in the doorway.

‘Honestly!’ said Primrose as I abruptly switched off the radiogram. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite so undignified in all my life!’

‘My dear,’ said her father, ‘you mustn’t be so serious that you forget how to have fun.’

At once Primrose turned her back on us and stalked off across the hall.

‘Leave her to me, Stephen,’ said Eddie. ‘You go on having fun.’ And he too withdrew, closing the door behind him.

‘That’s the nicest thing Eddie’s done in a month of Sundays,’ I said. ‘But why on earth is Prim being so idiotic?’

‘I’m afraid she realised I was cross with her.’

‘Cross? That wasn’t being cross! You should hear my father when he roars like a lion – that’s what being cross is all about!’

‘But Primrose is particularly dependent on me for my love and approval. Ever since her mother died –’

‘But her mother’s been dead for over twenty years – isn’t it time Primrose grew up? God knows, I never thought I’d hear myself say this but sometimes when I see this so-called “dependence” on you I really feel quite sorry for Dido.’

He merely regarded me with grave blue eyes and said nothing.

A panic-stricken remorse assailed me. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, furious with myself for plunging around in his family problems like an elephant cavorting among eggshells. ‘Tight as an owl. Rude as hell. Forget I spoke.’

‘My dear Venetia, there’s no need for you to apologise!’ he said at once, sloughing off both my tactlessness and his problems as if they were supremely unimportant. ‘Let’s be tight as owls together and go on having the time of our lives!’ And as he stretched out his hands to me again I was suddenly transported to the very centre of life.

My world turned itself inside out. In a split second of blinding clarity I saw him at last not as the family friend who was always so kind to me, but as the irresistible stranger whose personality, by some great miracle, uniquely complemented my own. My loneliness was annihilated; my despair exploded into a euphoric hope. Knowing I had to withdraw at once before my emotion could utterly overwhelm me, I blundered across the hall to the cloakroom, sagged in tears against the door and mutely contemplated the vastness of my discovery.

‘Venetia?’

‘Just a sec.’ I pulled the plug of the lavatory and emerged dry-eyed into the hall. As I saw the anxious expression on his face I realised he thought I was suffering from the effects of too much to drink, but although I opened my mouth to reassure him no words came. I was speechless because his entire appearance had changed. His white hair now seemed not shop-soiled but creamily distinguished. His forehead had assumed exactly the right height and breadth to enhance this impression of distinction and his nose, formerly large, had become exquisitely and nobly Roman. The lines on his face no longer suggested antiquity but the power of a fascinating and formidable character. His eyes, radiantly blue and steamily bright, made me feel weak at the knees, while his thin mouth, which turned down slightly at the corners, no longer seemed tough in repose but overpoweringly sultry; I felt weaker at the knees than ever. In fact when he smiled I felt so demolished by his sheer sexual glamour that I actually had to sink down on the hall chest. I had forgotten he was sixty-one. Or, to be accurate, I had not forgotten but the fact no longer had any meaning for me. He could have been twenty-one, forty-one or eighty-one. Such a trivial fact was of no importance. All that mattered was that he was the man I wanted to go to bed with that very night and marry the very next morning.

I suddenly realised he was speaking again. He was saying: ‘How about some black coffee?’ and my voice was replying without a second’s hesitation: ‘I think I’d prefer a very large Rémy Martin.’

He laughed. Then reassured that I was no longer expiring from an excess of alcohol, he vanished into the dining-room to raid the sideboard.

‘What happened?’ he enquired with curiosity as he returned with two brandies and sat down beside me on the hall chest. ‘Were you overwhelmed by Mr Presley?’

‘No, by joie de vivre – and by you, Mr Dean,’ I said, somehow keeping my voice casual. ‘You must be the trendiest dean in Christendom!’

He laughed in delight, and I saw then that his attitude towards me was quite unchanged; untouched by any emotional earthquake he was merely savouring the concluding moments of an entertaining evening. ‘I always regard it as a very great blessing that Pip was born when I was fifty-two,’ he said. ‘He keeps me young in outlook.’

Primrose chose that moment to return to the hall. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be such a kill-joy, but I genuinely can’t stand that sort of music.’

Aysgarth gave her a kiss to signal that her apology was accepted and asked: ‘Where’s Eddie?’

‘In the drawing-room. He started talking about the decadence of pop music and then before I could stop him he was holding forth on the decadence of Berlin in the ’thirties. I walked out when he began to ruminate on the nature of evil.’

‘I’d better go and rescue him.’

‘Why not just hit him over the head with The Brothers Karamazov ? I nearly did.’

They wandered off together to save Eddie from his turgid metaphysics. Knocking back the rest of my brandy I reeled upstairs to my room and passed out in a stupor of alcohol, ecstasy and rampant sexual desire.