Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch

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      ‘If you’re called to be a monk I’ll eat my mitre, but don’t listen to me, I’m just a married bishop. I’ll ask Jon if he’d be willing to see you.’

      Charley groaned and sighed and bit deep into his second crumpet, but this suggestion seemed to satisfy him and I realised he was much happier now that he had acted out his feelings in such an exasperatingly self-indulgent manner. I felt wrecked, of course, but I had long since discovered that feeling wrecked was an occupational hazard of parenthood, nothing to get excited about. I assumed I would eventually recover.

      I was still trying to calm myself by predicting my inevitable recovery when Charley said in a low voice: ‘If I don’t go into a monastery I might wind up making a mess of my private life,’ and I heard at last the genuine cry for help which in my distress I had failed to recognise earlier.

      At once I said: ‘Of course you won’t make a mess of your private life! I’ve brought you up, you’ve modelled yourself on me, you’re going to be fine.’

      Charley looked relieved, as if I had recited a magic incantation guaranteed to keep all disastrous futures at bay, but I was aware that a shadowy uncertainty was trying to rise from some burial-ground deep in my mind. I could not analyse this uncertainty. It merely hovered for a second in my consciousness before I blotted it out.

      Pouring myself some more tea, I began to calculate which train I could catch from Waterloo.

      VIII

      At Waterloo I telephoned Lyle. ‘I’m getting the six-fifteen,’ I said. ‘Have a stretcher waiting at the station.’

      ‘Did you murder that ghastly Bishop of Radbury?’

      ‘Not quite. But I feel in the mood to murder our Mr Dean.’

      ‘Don’t tell me Jack’s prize piece of gossip involved Stephen!’

      ‘Imagine the worst and multiply by ten. Darling, I’ve got to see Jon before I explode with the force of an H-bomb and devastate the diocese. Can you ask Edward or Roger to take the Rover to the station so that I can drive straight to Starrington?’

      ‘Oh Charles, don’t overdo it! You’ve been rushing around all day long –’

      ‘I’ll have a nap on the train. Oh, and phone the Community at the Manor, would you, to tell them I’m coming – I want to make sure the door in the wall is unlocked.’

      The operator came on the line to demand more money. Hastily I said to Lyle: ‘See you later,’ and hurried away on my journey to the one man who was always able to restore my sanity whenever I wanted to retreat to the nearest lunatic asylum.

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