Susan Howatch - Glittering Images

‘No, Mrs Jardine.’

‘Do you have a wife, Dr Ashworth?’ called Lady Starmouth, giving me a friendly look with her fine dark eyes.

I was acutely aware of Miss Christie’s hand pausing in the act of pouring out glasses of sherry for the newcomers.

‘I’m a widower, Lady Starmouth,’ I said.

‘All clergymen ought to be married,’ said the authoritative Mrs Cobden-Smith, offering a handful of water biscuits to the St Bernard. ‘They say the Roman Catholics have frightful trouble with their celibate priests.’

‘They say the Church of England has frightful trouble with its married clergy,’ said a strong harsh well-remembered voice from the doorway, and as we all turned to face him the Bishop of Starbridge made a grand entrance into his drawing-room.

Dr Jardine was a man of medium height, slim and well proportioned, with dark greying hair and brown eyes so light that they were almost amber. The eyes were set deep and wide apart; by far his most arresting feature, they were capable of assuming a hypnotic lambent glaze in the pulpit, a physiological trick which Jardine used sparingly but effectively to underline his considerable gifts as a preacher. His quick abrupt walk revealed his energy and hinted at his powerful restless intellect. Unlike most bishops he wore his gaiters with élan , as if conscious that he had the figure to triumph over the absurdity of the archaic episcopal costume, and when he entered the room he was radiating the electric self-confidence which his enemies decried as bumptious and his admirers defended as debonair.

‘Don’t be alarmed, everyone!’ he said, smiling after the opening remark which had won our attention. ‘I’m not about to secede to Rome, but I can never resist the urge to counter my sister-in-law’s scandalously dogmatic assertions … Good evening, Dr Ashworth, I’m delighted to see you. Good evening, Jennings – Mrs Jennings – now, Mrs Jennings, there’s no need to be shy. I may be a fire-breathing bishop but I’m extremely tame in the company of pretty ladies – isn’t that so, Lady Starmouth?’

‘Tame as a tiger!’ said the Countess amused.

‘We used to have some good tiger-shoots in India,’ reflected Colonel Cobden-Smith. ‘I remember –’

‘I saw such an adorable tiger at the zoo once,’ said Mrs Jardine, ‘but I’m sure it would have been so much happier back in the wild.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the Bishop robustly, accepting a glass of sherry from Miss Christie. ‘If the unfortunate animal had been in its natural habitat your brother would have come along and murdered it. Did you arrive in time for Evensong, Dr Ashworth?’

‘I’m afraid I was late getting here. The traffic around London –’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t award black marks for missing services. Now, Mrs Jennings, sit down and tell me all about yourself – have you managed to find a house yet?’

As his wife was purloined by the Bishop, Jennings began to tell me about his arduous quest for a property in the suburbs. Occasionally I offered a word of sympathy but for the most part I sipped my sherry in silence, eavesdropped on the other conversations and kept a surreptitious watch on Miss Christie.

Lady Starmouth suddenly glided into my field of vision. ‘I think you must be the youngest canon I’ve ever met, Dr Ashworth! Does this mean the Church is at last beginning to believe it’s not a crime to be under forty?’

‘The canonry came with the job, Lady Starmouth. When Archbishop Laud founded Laud’s College and Cambridge Cathedral in the seventeenth century he stipulated that the College should appoint a doctor of divinity to teach theology and act as one of the Cathedral’s residentiary canons.’ I suddenly realized that Miss Christie was looking straight at me, but when our glances met she turned away. I continued to watch as she picked up the sherry decanter again but Colonel Cobden-Smith cornered her before she could embark on the task of refilling glasses.

‘… and I hear you were Dr Lang’s chaplain once,’ Lady Starmouth was saying. ‘How did you meet him?’

Reluctantly I averted my gaze from Miss Christie. ‘He gave away the prizes during my last year at school.’

‘You were head boy of your school, of course,’ said Jardine from the depths of the sofa nearby.

‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ I said surprised, ‘yes, I was.’

‘How clever of you, Alex!’ exclaimed Mrs Jardine. ‘How did you guess Dr Ashworth had been head boy?’

‘No boy attracts His Grace’s attention unless he shows signs of becoming a walking advertisement for Muscular Christianity.’

‘I adore Muscular Christianity,’ said Lady Starmouth.

‘If Christianity were a little more muscular the world wouldn’t be in such a mess,’ said the forthright Mrs Cobden-Smith.

‘If Christianity were a little more muscular it wouldn’t be Christianity,’ said the Bishop, again displaying his compulsion to argue with his sister-in-law. ‘The Sermon on the Mount wasn’t a lecture on weight-lifting.’

‘What exactly is Muscular Christianity?’ inquired Mrs Jardine. ‘I’ve never been quite sure. Is it just groups of nice-looking young clergymen like Dr Ashworth?’

‘“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”’ said the Bishop, raising his eyes to heaven as he quoted Hamlet.

‘More sherry, anyone?’ said Miss Christie, finally escaping from Colonel Cobden-Smith.

‘Dinner is served, my Lord,’ said the butler in a sepulchral voice from the doorway.

The dining-room was as vast as the drawing-room and it too faced down the garden to the river. I had wondered if the gentlemen were required to ‘take a lady in’ to dinner, but Mrs Jardine gave no instructions and as we all wandered informally into the dining-room I was hoping I might claim the chair next to Miss Christie. However there were place-cards, and a quick glance told me I was to be disappointed. Although I shared with the Bishop the pleasure of being seated next to Lady Starmouth my other neighbour proved to be the formidable Mrs Cobden-Smith and meanwhile, far away on the opposite side of the table, Miss Christie was once more finding herself trapped with the Colonel; to my irritation I saw he was clearly delighted by his undeserved good fortune.

After the Bishop had said grace we all embarked on a watery celery soup, a disaster which was subsequently redeemed first by poached trout and then by roast lamb. The main course was accompanied by a superb claret. I almost asked the Bishop to identify it, but decided he might subscribe to the view that in Church circles a keen interest in wine was permissible only for bishops or for archdeacons and canons over sixty. With a superhuman exercise of will-power I restricted myself to two glasses and was aware of Jardine noticing as I declined a third.

‘Leaving room for the post-prandial port, Canon?’

‘Oh, is there port, Bishop? What a treat!’ I assumed an expression of innocent surprise.

The dinner surged on, everyone talking with increasing animation as the claret exerted its influence. Mrs Cobden-Smith asked me about my background, and having established the exact shade of my class she was sufficiently reassured to give me the benefit of her opinions which ranged from the futility of giving the working classes houses with bathrooms to the folly of listening to the Indian natives who wanted independence. When I could escape from Mrs Cobden-Smith’s attentions Lady Starmouth pounced and I found myself being subjected to a far more subtle inquisition. Lady Starmouth wanted to know about my wife, but when I volunteered little information in response to her oblique enquiries she decided to probe my views on a topical subject affecting matrimony; I was asked what I thought of A. P. Herbert’s celebrated Marriage Bill which had triggered Jardine’s attack on Lang in the Lords.