‘But have you always been an Anglo-Catholic?’
‘No.’ I thought of my father, an agnostic who could only tolerate Sunday worship when it came in the form of an intelligent sermon and the minimum of ritual. Then I remembered
my mother, a deeply religious and spiritually gifted woman who had had little interest in organized religion. ‘My parents went to church as a concession to middle-class respectability,’ I said, ‘but they always attended matins, never Communion. As a child I found church-going very boring. I did become more interested in worship when I was introduced to Holy Communion at the time of my confirmation but the ethos of my public school was protestant evangelical and I just couldn’t connect this expression of religion with my private “gnosis”, the knowledge which I sensed in every fibre of my being but which I couldn’t express verbally. It was only when I went up to Cambridge, where there was a variety of churches to choose from, that I discovered Anglo-Catholicism and saw at last how my private “gnosis” could achieve a full, meaningful public expression.’
‘Were the Fordites in Cambridgeshire then?’
‘They’d just opened the Grantchester house. I used to visit them regularly, and soon I was enrapt by the whole Anglo-Catholic ethos. My hero was Charles Gore –’
‘Bishop Gore? He was very important and famous, wasn’t he?’
‘He was one of the greatest religious leaders of the Church in this century. It was Gore who adapted the Anglo-Catholicism of the Oxford Movement to a more modern era when he enabled it to meet and master biblical criticism, Gore who encouraged young Anglo-Catholic priests to work among the poor, Gore who founded a brotherhood of celibate priests, Gore who seemed, when I was a young man, to have his finger on the pulse of an up-to-date dynamic version of Christianity, Gore who laid the foundations of the twentieth-century Anglo-Catholic ride which is sweeping through the Church of England –’ I had run out of breath. I broke off, recovered myself and laughed. ‘But I must stop at once! What a sermon! Forgive me, I’m afraid preaching is a terrible clerical vice.’
‘I like good preaching,’ said Miss Barton-Woods generously, ‘and I’ve no objection to hearing more about Anglo-Catholicism.’
‘But you still doubt that I could convert you!’
‘On the contrary, I’m sure you could convert me to anything if you put your mind to it!’ she said amused, and I knew I should leave at once before I lost all control and started converting us both to the pleasures of fornication.
It was on the next morning that I received my letter from the Bishop of Starbridge. I had written to him directly after the luncheon-party. I can write very clever letters when I choose and this letter had been exceptionally clever. I had not mentioned Aysgarth.
In his reply Dr Ottershaw declared how delighted he was to hear from me and how he quite understood why I had not presented my compliments to him earlier; naturally I had needed time to adjust to the world after my years in the cloister, and how very wise I was to stay in such a quiet beautiful spot while I was engaged in laying the foundations of my new life. However he would deem it a great honour if I would ‘dine and sleep’ at the episcopal palace as soon as I felt prepared to venture forth from my rural retreat. ‘My wife and I are simple people,’ concluded the Bishop modestly, ‘so you need not fear being inundated by a tidal wave of worldliness as soon as you cross our threshold. Moreover war-time austerities have forced us to close both wings of the palace and manage with only a few servants, so lavish hospitality, I fear, is very much a thing of the past. Nevertheless I trust we can offer you a quiet, comfortable and possibly not unstimulating evening should you wish to visit us.’
On receipt of this letter I obtained Miss Barton-Woods’ permission to use her telephone and rang the Bishop up. Dr Ottershaw was delighted. He sounded exactly like the benevolent holy man which all prelates should be but so few are. I guessed him to be seventy, silver-haired and stout, and when I met him a couple of days later at his episcopal palace I found my guess had not been inaccurate.
I dined at Starbridge on Saturday night. On Sunday I attended the morning services in the Cathedral, but by tea-time I had returned to Starrington Magna and at five o’clock I was walking up the Manor’s drive to call on Miss Barton-Woods.
I found her reclining on the drawing-room sofa as she browsed through the unread corners of the Sunday newspapers. Her long legs, clad in the sheerest of silk stockings, were coiled in a manner which displayed her slim ankles to perfection. I belong to a generation which was brought up to regard the occasional flash of a feminine ankle as erotic, and at that moment I found the sight of those two elegant ankles, so generously displayed, almost overpoweringly alluring. She had discarded her shoes in order to put her feet up, and now for the first time I could feast my eyes on her toes which sloped from the inner to the outer edges of her feet with remarkable symmetry. She was wearing a dark blue afternoon frock with a severe cut which emphasized the generous lines of her bosom, flattered her waist and offered tantalizingly veiled vistas of her hips. Her dark hair again emanated its aromatic newly-washed aura of purity, and her skin, radiating that quality which the florid poets call ‘the bloom of youth’, was worthy of a Shakespearean sonnet. Indeed so banal did any speech not written in blank verse seem at that moment that I had great difficulty in making my opening remark. It was: ‘I hope I’m not interrupting.’
‘Of course not!’ She tossed
The News of the World
casually on to the floor. Miss Barton-Woods ordered all the papers on Sunday. I thought it was magnificently extravagant of her and showed a broad charitable interest in human nature, even the human nature reported so pruriently in the paper she had just discarded. My eye caught the headline: RUNAWAY VICAR: NEW SCANDAL: CHAMBERMAID TELLS ALL.
William was purring around my ankles and I stooped to pick him up. He was not a handsome cat but he had that subtle air of distinction which intelligence always confers.
‘I’m glad to report,’ I said in response to her eager inquiry, ‘that Dr Ottershaw was really most obliging. He saw no difficulty about opening the diocesan coffers, and suggested that I
begin work in mid-October as soon as the inevitable bureaucratic details have been sorted out.’
Miss Barton-Woods’ pleasure was delectable to behold. Wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘So you’ll be running the parish until Philip Wetherall comes home from the war!’
‘Precisely. Miss Barton-Woods –’ I set down William as carefully as if he were made of bone-china ‘– now that I’m no longer a penniless ex-monk but a priest with a respectable stipend, I hope you won’t think it too great an impertinence if I tell you how very much I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?’
She never hesitated. She said simply: ‘I thought you’d never ask!’ and the next moment we were in each other’s arms.
‘The psychical man, for St Paul, is the self of our normal experience … He may rise to the spiritual man, or he may sink to the carnal man, or, as most of us do, he may fluctuate uneasily between the two.’
W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934
Mysticism in Religion
There followed an interlude characterized by fragmented conversation, unfettered exuberance and a succession of embraces so stimulating that I felt no more than thirty-five. My fiancée certainly could have passed for eighteen, but eventually proved sophisticated enough to suggest we might cool our ardour with champagne.
‘… oh, and Mr Darrow and I are getting married, Portman,’ said Anne as an afterthought after giving the order.
The ancient butler, who had been padding away towards the door, stopped dead, revolved slowly to face us and beamed from ear to ear. ‘That’s very pleasing news, I’m sure, madam,’ he said with verve. ‘May I offer you my congratulations, sir, and express the wish that you and Miss Barton-Woods will be very happy?’
‘Thank you, Portman.’ My secret uneasiness with servants meant that I was relieved as well as touched by his sincerity.
When Anne and I eventually drank to the future I was delighted to be reminded that champagne, a beverage which I have rarely encountered during the course of my ministry, tastes very much more intriguing than dry sherry.
‘When can we get married?’ I said emboldened by my first sip. ‘I hope you’ll agree that the only possible answer to that question is “soon”.’
‘As soon as possible,’ said Anne, having taken three gulps in rapid succession. With a shudder she added: ‘I must tell you everything now. His name was Hugo. We had a long engagement. A huge wedding had been planned at the village church.’
‘In that case I’ll get a special licence and we can be married at the end of the month. I suggest a plain ceremony at the chapel in front of a handful of close friends.’
Suddenly she began to weep. ‘I was putting on my wedding-dress when the letter arrived. It was vile – everything was vile – a cruel horrible nightmare –’
As I took her in my arms I said: ‘There’s no need to say any more.’
‘Oh, but there is!’ As she raised her tearstained face to mine I saw the painful honesty in her eyes. There’s one thing I simply must tell you before we go any further. He – I –’ But the words refused to come. Breaking down she clung to me again and I waited, stroking her hair until she was calmer. Then I said: ‘Since he was a fortune-hunter I’ve no doubt he did everything possible beforehand to get you into his power and secure his future. So of course he would have done his best to break down a door which should never have been opened.’
‘So you guessed.’ But she was no longer upset; she was only relieved that I could accept the sad truth without expressing either censure or distaste. ‘Oh, if only I could describe how
polluted
I felt afterwards when I realized how little I meant to him –’
‘Someone you loved breached your trust and treated you with contempt. Naturally you felt polluted – the very centre of your psyche had been laid waste. But from his point of view, what went wrong? Why didn’t he go through with it?’
‘With my consent he had a meeting with my solicitors before the wedding in order to discuss money, and Mr Musgrave told him that much of my capital’s tied up in trust. I hadn’t mentioned that; I hadn’t thought it mattered. Hugo said he had a
large private income of his own … But he hadn’t. He didn’t mention money in the letter he wrote me, of course – it was Mr Musgrave who told me later how shattered Hugo had been at the meeting. The letter just said –’ But again she was unable to go on.
‘If he had the kind of maimed stunted psyche I suspect he had,’ I said, ‘he would have made some disparaging remark about the way you demonstrated your love for him, and declared that you could never have made him happy – and of course he would have been right; that kind of deformed psyche is always impossible to please and no woman would ever have satisfied him. Clearly it was he, not you, who failed in the intimate relationship, but by slandering you in such a wicked way he was able to hide from his own inadequacies and run off like a coward to leave you bearing the burden of his failure.’ And as she stared, astounded by this radical re-interpretation of her past, I added in my most authoritative voice: ‘It’s plain he had a hatred of women and you should on no account think ill of yourself just because an emotional cripple made a cruel remark designed to boost his self-esteem.’
Her gratitude was so overwhelming that it was some time before she could speak but at last she whispered obscurely: ‘Do you mind?’
‘I mind that you suffered. I mind that any man could treat a woman so badly. But I don’t mind about you not being a virgin. Love’s too important to mar with quibbles about physical technicalities, and as for the moral aspect of the tragedy your repentance is so obviously genuine that no priest would hesitate to grant you absolution.’
She said: ‘I love you so much I can hardly bear it,’ and struggled again with her tears.
‘Bear it,’ I said, ‘and have another glass of champagne.’
That made her smile, and we sipped in companionable silence until I had summoned the courage to say: ‘There’s a lot I too must tell you about the past.’
‘I hope I shan’t feel as intimidated by your first wife as Mrs de Winter felt by Rebecca.’
An interval followed while the reference to Miss Du Maurier’s novel had to be explained to the ignorant ex-monk but at last I was sufficiently enlightened to exclaim: ‘What a distressing example of marital misunderstanding! Why couldn’t he have told the new wife straight away that he’d been so unhappy?’
‘I suppose it was guilt – and the fear that she’d be horrified by what he’d done.’
‘Ah.’ I paused before saying sternly: ‘You’re on no account to visualize Betty as a goddess on a pedestal!’ and after another pause I added: ‘Of course I’ll tell you all about my marriage one day.’
To my great relief Anne said: ‘I’m more interested in Ruth than in Betty – after all, Ruth’s the one I’ll eventually have to meet. Has she been married long? I suppose if you’ve got no grandchildren that must mean –’
‘I do have grandchildren. Ruth has a son called Colin and a daughter called Janet.’
The inevitable question followed: ‘How old are they?’
‘Growing up fast.’ For several agonizing seconds I wrestled with pride, vanity, shame and sheer fright before I forced myself to add: ‘Ruth herself is thirty-six now.’
‘Thirty-six?
’ exclaimed Anne amazed.