Susan Howatch - Scandalous Risks

Dido prided herself on being a successful hostess. Her dinner-parties were patronised by an astonishing range of distinguished guests who enjoyed her eccentric remarks, but clerical wives are hardly supposed to toss off letters to the newspapers on controversial issues or make withering remarks about the Mothers’ Union during an interview with a women’s magazine. The press were rapidly enthralled with appalling results. Dido stopped giving interviews but could seldom resist a tart comment on any matter of public interest. (‘What do you think of the conquest of Everest, Mrs Aysgarth?’ Thank God someone’s finally done it – I’m bored to death with the wretched molehill!’ ‘Do you believe in capital punishment, Mrs Aysgarth?’ ‘Certainly! Flog ’em and hang ’em – and why not crucify ’em too? What was good enough for Our Lord ought to be good enough for mass-murderers!’ ‘What do you think of the Suez crisis, Mrs Aysgarth?’ ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury should declare that the entire disaster is a Moslem plot to humiliate a Christian country, and all the soldiers going to the Canal should wear crosses, like the Crusaders!’)

‘Aysgarth will never receive preferment now,’ said my father in deepest gloom after the Suez comment had been plastered over William Hickey’s Diary in the Daily Express. ‘How could that woman ever be a bishop’s wife? She’d outrage everyone in no time.’

Hating to abandon hope I said: ‘Could he still be a dean?’

‘Perhaps in one of the minor cathedrals a long way from London.’

‘Dido will never leave London except for Canterbury or York,’ said my mother dryly, but she was wrong. Late in 1956 after the Suez crisis had reached its catastrophic conclusion, Dido gave birth to her fifth and final child, a stillborn boy, and promptly lapsed into a nervous breakdown. From time to time in the past she had suffered from nervous exhaustion, but this episode was so severe that she was completely disabled. She had to spend a month in an establishment which was tactfully referred to as a convalescent home, and even when she emerged she could do no more than lie in bed in a darkened room.

‘I think she fancies herself as Camille,’ said Primrose. ‘I’m just waiting for the first little consumptive cough.’

‘Maybe she’ll commit suicide,’ I suggested.

‘Not a hope. That sort never does. Too damn selfish.’

The day after this conversation Aysgarth turned up on the doorstep of our London home in Lord North Street, a stone’s throw from Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. My mother was out at a charity coffee-party, my father was downstairs in his study and I was lolling on the sofa in the first-floor drawing-room as I reread Middlemarch. By this time I was almost twenty and had recently returned with relief to England after enduring weeks of exile with family friends in Florence.

When I heard the doorbell I laid aside my book and padded out on to the landing. In the hall below me the butler had just opened the front door and Aysgarth was saying: ‘Lord Flaxton’s expecting me,’ but from the tone of his voice I realised I should abstain from cascading down the stairs to offer him an exuberant welcome. I paused, keeping well back from the banisters. Then as soon as the hall was empty I sped noiselessly down the staircase and pressed my ear to the door of my father’s study.

‘… and since you’ve always taken such an interest in my career,’ I heard Aysgarth say, ‘I thought you should be the first to know that I have to leave London. There’s no choice. Dido’s health demands it.’

My father at once became apoplectic with horror. I too was horrified but I did rouse myself sufficiently to check that my eavesdropping was unobserved. Fortunately a gossipy drone rising from the basement indicated that the servants had paused for elevenses. With confidence I returned my ear to the panel.

‘… and now that I’ve spoken to the psychiatrist,’ Aysgarth was saying, ‘I can clearly see that she needs to make a completely fresh start somewhere else. The tragedy is that back in 1946 she so desperately wanted to come to London because she felt that here she could play a major part in advancing my career. The present situation – and of course we all know my career’s ground to a halt – is very hard for her to bear.’

‘Quite. But nonetheless –’

‘The death of the baby was the last straw. Dido now feels she’s a failure at everything she undertakes in this city, and she’s convinced that she has no chance of happiness until she leaves it.’

‘But Aysgarth,’ said my father, trying to mask his despair by assuming a truly phenomenal gentleness, ‘that’s all very well for Dido, but what about you?’

‘I couldn’t live with myself unless I’d done everything in my power to make Dido feel successful and happy.’

There was a silence while my father and I boggled at this extraordinary statement. I was too young then to feel anything but a massive outrage that he should be acquiescing without complaint in the wrecking of his career, and it was only years later that I realised this was my first glimpse of the mystery which lay at the heart of his marriage.

‘It’s clear to me that I’m not meant to move any further up the ecclesiastical ladder,’ said Aysgarth at last when my father remained silent, ‘and I accept that. I confess I’d be happy to stay on in London and devote myself to my German interests, but obviously it’s time for my life to take a new turn.’

My father managed to say in a voice devoid of emotion: ‘I’ll see what I can do about a Crown appointment.’

‘That’s more than good of you, but quite honestly I think you’d be wasting your time if you tried to pull strings in Downing Street. I’m sure I must have the letters “W.I.” against my name in the clerical files.’

‘“W.I.”?’

‘“Wife Impossible”.’

‘Ah.’ There was a pause. Obviously my father was so appalled that he needed several seconds to frame his next question. It was: ‘Surely Bell can do something for you?’

‘Unfortunately no canonry’s likely to fall vacant at Chichester at the moment, and apart from Chichester Bell’s influence is mostly abroad – which is no use to me, since Dido couldn’t possibly cope with the stress of living in a foreign country. I’ll talk to Bell, of course, but –’

‘If he can’t produce anything suitable, Aysgarth, I believe your best bet would be to go straight to the top and talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

‘He’s been implacably opposed to Dido ever since she criticised the hat Mrs Fisher wore at the Coronation.’

‘Oh God, I’d forgotten that disaster! All right, pass over Fisher. What about the Bishop of London?’

‘He’s fairly new and I still don’t know him well.’

‘In that case you must approach his predecessor. Dr Wand’s not dead yet, is he?’

‘No, but I have a fatal knack of alienating Anglo-Catholics.’

‘Then your Dean at Westminster –’

‘He’s been cool towards me for some time. I’ve been paying too much attention to my international concerns and not giving enough time to the Abbey.’

‘But there must be someone who can rescue you!’ said my father outraged. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to be famous for their brotherly love!’

Aysgarth somehow produced a laugh but before he could reply my father said suddenly: ‘What about your old diocese? Can you approach the Bishop of Starbridge?’

‘He’s another man I don’t know well. You’re forgetting that I left Starbridge before he was appointed.’

‘But I know him,’ said my father, who was one of the largest landowners in the Starbridge diocese. ‘He’s a dry old stick but we’re on good terms. Just you leave this to me, Aysgarth, and I’ll see what I can do …