Susan Howatch - Glittering Images

Yet anyone would imagine, from Jardine’s pugilistic behaviour towards me, that if the earthquake happened at Starbridge all life at the palace would cease.

I told myself I was still smarting from the assault on my jugular vein, and returning to my prayer-book I made a new effort to concentrate on the office, but long before I reached the end the inevitable possibility was seeping into my mind. I told myself to suppose, for the sake of argument, that my plausible explanation of the ménage à trots was in fact entirely wrong; I told myself to suppose, again for the sake of argument, that I suspended belief and started to think the unthinkable. If Lyle were Jardine’s mistress it would explain both her reluctance to marry and Jardine’s pugilism towards a dangerous suitor.

The only trouble with this theory, which seemed at first glance preposterous and at second glance so unpleasantly plausible, was that it fell apart as soon as it was submitted to a close examination. For a start I could not imagine that Mrs Jardine would continue to treat as a daughter the woman who was sleeping with her adored husband. Mrs Jardine was not the cleverest of women, but I thought she would be sufficiently intuitive to know if the two most important people in her life were having an affair. However the real difficulty with the theory remained that I could not see a man of Jardine’s integrity leading a spiritual double-life. I was still willing to bet heavily that he was not an apostate, and unless he were an apostate adultery was inconceivable.

Somehow I reached the end of the office and began to prepare myself for dinner. All things were possible, even the unlikeliest of apostasies, but it was a waste of time for me to think the unthinkable unless I found some indication, however small, that Jardine was capable of unthinkable behaviour.

I stopped flattening my hair and stared into the glass.

Other clergymen fell into error. Why not Jardine? Suddenly, for clouded reasons beyond my comprehension, I felt an urge to prove that Jardine had at least once since his ordination been guilty of a serious moral failure – and that was the moment when I first started speculating seriously on the subject of Loretta Staviski.

Jardine’s threat to discuss the Virgin Birth with me over the port was never realized. One of the lay dinner-guests, Starbridge’s most distinguished architect, proved to be a non-smoker who could not be dispatched to the smoking-room, and out of courtesy Jardine at first avoided splitting theological hairs. However after a discussion of the arrests which had recently taken place in the German Evangelical Church the architect said deferentially, ‘Talking of clerical matters, Bishop, I hope you won’t mind me mentioning the A. P. Herbert Bill. I’m interested in your opinion of it, particularly as I too think that the grounds for divorce should be extended, but I’m still not sure how you justify your views theologically. What makes you so sure that Christ wasn’t laying down the law on this particular subject but only stating an ethical guideline?’

This was clearly an intelligent sympathetic layman who deserved to be encouraged. Jardine said kindly, ‘Well, the first thing you must remember is that Our Lord wasn’t a twentieth-century Englishman brought up in a culture which glorifies the modest understatement. He came from the Middle East and in the culture of his day people communicated important truths by the use of striking word-pictures, statements which we would call exaggerations. A well-known example of this is when Christ says: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”. A modern Englishman would merely say: “He can’t do it”.’

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