Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch

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       THREE

      ‘I am going to set before you one of those standing themes that always ought to be preached about: the relation between the sexes … And if we achieve no other aim, we shall at least show sympathy with those who are concerned to manage the most baffling and the most ungovernable part of their instinctive nature.’

      AUSTIN FARRER

      Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968

      Said or Sung

      I

      Having completed this portrait of myself, my family and my professionally distinguished but privately turbulent life – having, in other words, set the scene for my third catastrophe – it is now time to describe the crises which battered me in rapid succession towards the edge of the abyss.

      ‘Do you remember,’ said Lyle, taking the telephone receiver off the hook one afternoon early in the February of 1965, ‘how miserable we were when we were forced to face the fact that our third child was never going to exist?’

      ‘Vividly.’ I was in an excellent mood for it was a Monday, and Monday was my day off. As Lyle severed our connection to the outside world, I sat down on the bed to remove my shoes.

      ‘And do you remember,’ pursued Lyle, drawing the curtains and plunging the bedroom into an erotic twilight, ‘how you said God might know what was best for us better than we did, and I was so angry that I hurled an ashtray at you?’

      ‘Even more vividly.’

      ‘Well, I just want to say I’m sorry I hurled the ashtray. We would never have survived a third child.’

      ‘Does this belated enlightenment mean you’ll stop feeling queasy whenever anyone cites the quotation: “All things work together for good to them that love God”?’

      ‘No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote – which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’

      ‘It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’

      ‘It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’

      Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamorous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black learner boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.

      Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was no doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for СКАЧАТЬ