Absolute Truths (26 page)

As I drove home I made up my mind to fight apathy by answering
some sympathy letters so
as
soon as I arrived I retrieved the file
and retreated upstairs to Lyle’s sitting-room where I knew no one would interrupt me. But I never uncapped my pen. Sitting on the
sofa I retreated into my imagination. I had been doing this now
for some days. I began by imagining the conversation we might
have had if the catastrophe had never happened and then I would
visualise other scenes, holidays we might have shared, public
.engagements, private moments. They all seemed so real, so pos
sible, waiting ahead in that future which would never happen. By savouring them one by one as if they were inevitably going to take
place, I was able to rest from the ordeal of my bereavement.

At one o’clock the housekeeper called out that lunch was ready
so I went downstairs and consigned the entire meal to some
delighted birds beyond the dining-room window. Then it occurred
to me that
as
the boys had now returned to London I could take
a rest also from the housekeeper, whose presence was increasingly
grating on my nerves, so I explained to her that I was going to
be out every day for two weeks and that she could take paid leave
during that time. I also told Miss Peabody to give the charwoman
similar instructions.

After that I retired to the bedroom, where I managed to escape
into unconsciousness for a while. Later I opened the wardrobe,
and time passed not unpleasantly as I pictured Lyle in a variety of
outfits at numerous occasions in the imaginary future. When I
realised the time was four o’clock I decided to brew myself some
tea, but on reaching the hall I found the time was not four but six.
My watch had stopped. In my growing disorder I had forgotten to
wind it.

I was now alone in the house, but that was a relief because I
no longer had to worry about meeting people accidentally and
trying to think of the correct thing to say. Returning to Lyle’s
sitting-room I resolved to make a new assault on the sympathy
letters, but as soon as I opened the file I was paralysed by the
memory of the letter I had burnt. Obviously it was best to reply
to Aysgarth straight away so that I could forget about him. Overcoming my inertia by an enormous act of will I sat down at Lyle’s
desk and wrote: ‘My dear Stephen, Thank you for your kind
expression of sympathy. I assure you that in my memory the inci
dent to which you refer requires neither a wrathful response on
my part nor a guilty supplication on yours. Therefore you may
consider the matter entirely closed. Yours sincerely, CHARLES.’

After I had placed the envelope in Miss Peabody’s out-tray I
realised that the effort involved in constructing this brief communi
cation had exhausted me. Then I remembered that I had skipped
lunch. Possibly I would fed less exhausted if’ I had something to
eat. Returning to the kitchen I inspected the contents of the larder
but decided I had to be revived before I could face food. In the
drawing-room I mixed myself a whisky-and-soda.

It was odd that the telephone should be so silent. People had
obviously decided to leave me in peace to recover from the funeral.
Perhaps Charley would ring later. There was no chance that
Michael would — but I could not bear to think of Michael. How
were he and I ever going to manage in future without Lyle con
stantly negotiating reconciliations?

I drank a second whisky and reached for the decanter to pour
myself a third, but I thought better of that idea and returned to
contemplate the larder shelves again. In the end I opened a can of
sardines. Fish were nutritious. Eating fish would be a sensible,
well-ordered thing to do. I would cat fish.

I glanced into the open can but as soon as I saw the slimy slivers
within I experienced a twinge of nausea. I withdrew to my study
and made a sensible, well-ordered list of things to do, but I did
none of them; I merely returned to Lyle’s sitting-room and
resumed my position on the sofa, but this time I found I was
unable to escape into the imaginary future. 1 began to think of the
sympathy letters, those stark reminders of reality, and slowly it
dawned on me that in penning those few lines to Aysgarth to seal
up the past I had opened a window on to a future which I was
unable to face. Lighting a cigarette I began to pace up and down
the room.

I had just reached the door for the third time and turned to face
the sofa when the memory of Lyle’s last moments replayed itself
so vividly in my mind that I halted. Now indeed reality had me
by the throat; I was in the grip of that traumatic reaction which
is common among those who have suffered a severe shock. Making
a great effort to keep calm, I glanced around for something which
would distract my attention and moved towards Lyle’s desk, which
I had closed after completing the letter to Aysgarth.

I pulled down the lid again and remembered at once how I had
opened the desk on the day after her death, not to find her will,
which I knew was with our solicitors, but to see if there were any
unanswered letters which needed a prompt response. There were
not. Lyle, efficient as always, had been up to date with her corre
spondence and the contents of the desk were arranged with
extreme nearness.

I stared at those contents again: the couple of non-urgent letters
from old friends, a bill not due for payment until the end of the
month, the files relating to her charity work, the catalogues from
Marshall and Snelgrove, the stationery, the address-book, the paper-lips, pencils and Parker fountain pen. Shutting the lid of
the desk I began to open the drawers beneath – any action seemed
preferable to doing nothing and laying myself open to a further
assault by traumatic memories.

In the drawers I found mementos: photographs of the boys and
a selection of their letters from school, photographs of ourselves
– and press-cuttings about my activities, all carefully pasted into a scrapbook. The collection of cuttings was not comprehensive;
Lyle had merely selected the ones she liked best, and I began to turn the pages to see what new additions she had made to the
scrapbook since I had last seen it. As I did so, an envelope fell out
and fluttered to the floor.

The envelope contained a letter from Marian Lindsay, Malcolm’s
wife, who had enclosed a cutting about a visit which I had recently
made to my old school. Marian had written: ‘Lyle dear – thought
you might like to see this, it comes from my godson, the one I
told you about who’s now in the sixth form. He said Charles made
a terrific impression on the boys and they loved the fact that he
knew so much about cricket and rugger! See you at the prayer-
group tomorrow – can’t wait! Love, MARIAN.’

I saw the words ‘prayer-group’.

I remembered how I had meant to ask Lyle about it but had
postponed the task until another time. I remembered how Lyle
had tried to talk to me about it on the day of Desmond’s disaster,
but how I had neither listened nor taken her seriously.

The letter crumpled as I clenched my hand.

Guilt began to ooze from some sudden split in the fabric of my
mind. I said desperately: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry ...’ But the only
words which echoed in my mind in response were: you’ll never
hear her talk about that prayer-group now.

In shame I thought: maybe there’s a file somewhere, maybe she
made notes, maybe there’s something I can read which would
enable me to share the experience with her in some small way.
Dropping Marian’s letter in the wastepaper basket, I searched the
remaining drawers of the desk and when I found nothing I went
to the bedroom. I knew now exactly what I was trying to find.

Before going overseas in the war I had given Lyle a leather writing-
case for her birthday and I knew she would never have thrown it
away.

I was just thinking that I would have to wade through the junk
in the box-room when I found the case under a cashmere shawl
in the chest of drawers.

The case was locked. Back I went to her sitting-mom where her
handbag was still lying beside the sofa. I found the key-ring straight
away.

Inside the case were some very old letters, written by Lyle’s
father who had been killed in the First War, and also a cheap
exercise book, the kind one can buy at Woolworth’s. Opening the
pale blue cover I found that the first page was headed: JOURNAL.

Automatically, not even pausing to think twice, I sat down and
started to read.

‘
This is a spiritual exercise,’ Lyle had written with her fine-nibbed
fountain pen. ‘Clergymen used to keep journals as a spiritual exer
cise. I remember Alex telling me about his journal soon after he
had employed me to be Carne’s companion. How long ago it
seems now since I lived with the Jardines! When Alex told me
about his journal he was Dean of Radbury and the glamorous
years as Bishop of Starbridge were still in the future, but even then
he lived in a style which would be unthinkable for a senior cleric
today. When he did become a bishop he lived like a prince. All
those indoor servants – and the chauffeur-driven car – and the
vast quantities of claret in the cellar ... Funny to think that all
the while Alex was bucketing around as a great prince of the
Church, he was secretly scribbling away in that journal – and
making a hash of it. He told me once that in the end his journal bore no relation to what was actually going on in his life, and of
course that was why his awful autobiography, based on the journal,
was such a travesty.

‘
Poor Alex! Starbridge demolished him in the end, ploughed
him under, I can see that now. It overwhelmed him with too much
wealth, too much glamour, too much mind-numbing beauty. Deep
down, Alex was always the self-made man trying to compensate
himself for that hellish childhood which was so dark and dreary
and impoverished, and he just didn’t have the inner stability to
withstand an appointment such as the Starbridge bishopric. It cut
him off from God, cut him off from himself, cut him off from
the truth so that his journal became fiction. "Flawless, fairytale
Starbridge!" I can remember him saying as he gazed dotingly at
the Cathedral. "So beautiful!" But it finished him. Savage, sinister
Starbridge! A fairytale, perhaps, but not an innocent little fable
from Hans Christian Andersen. More like some gruesome concoc
tion of the Brothers Grimm.

‘
But I’m not going to let Starbridge plough me under and I’m
going to write a journal that’s true. Why do I have to do this?
Several reasons: (a) I feel that we’re very mixed up as a family and
that we’re now wandering around in such a fog of illusion that
it’s about time someone made the effort to discern the truth; (b)
I’m seriously worried about Charles, but because he’s the Bishop I don’t dare discuss him with anyone and so confiding in a journal is the only safety valve available to me; (c) I’m pretty damned fed up, but again I daren’t say so (bishops’ wives aren’t allowed to be
fed up) and anyway I’m not exactly sure why I’m so cross, but I
think if I write down my thoughts I might eventually have a better
grasp of what’s going on; and (d) today, 15th November, 1963,
I had lunch with Venetia in London and it was a disaster. I’d really
looked forward to seeing her again, but I could tell the meeting
was too painful for her. That’s because I remind her of Starbridge – demonic, destructive Starbridge! – and a lot of memories which
she now longs to forget.

‘
I understand but I’m upset. I want to help her but I don’t know
how. All I could think on the train was: I can do nothing more for that girl now except pray for her. But the trouble is I’m not
very good at praying. In fact I’m spiritually pretty stupid. What
an awful confession for a bishop’s wife to make! But there – I’ve
said it Or rather, I’ve written it down. And I feel a bit better, so
I think I must be on the right track. I’ll keep writing things down
and see where I get to.