Absolute Truths (82 page)

‘Sit down,’ said Charley. ‘I’ll clear everything up.’

‘
Such a mess – just look at it – how could I have been such
a
fool –’
’Just sit down. Don’t fuss. Don’t worry. Leave it all to me.’

He found a dustpan and brush. He swept up every fragment of
glass. He made some tea and even put a teaspoonful of sugar in
my cup
as
if he were treating the victim of shock. ‘There, there,’
he said, stirring the tea for me and sitting down again at my side. ‘There, there.’ He even lit my cigarette when I was unable to hold
my lighter steady.

And then another profound silence began as we struggled to find our bearings in the strange new world we found ourselves
inhabiting.

At last Charley said: ‘What a wonderful thing you did, taking me
on like that! I used to think it was all easy for you, effortless, a
manifestation of divine grace. Now that I know it was blood, sweat
and tears and a crucifying ambiguity, I can see just what a hero
you are – and better still I can sec you’re a hero I can be at
ease with. All that agony makes you human, makes you somehow
digestible – no, I’m sorry, wrong word, that makes you sound like
a
sort of biscuit, but it’s been difficult, you know, having such a
hero for a father, and I was always so afraid I’d never measure up,
particularly if I took after the person I imagined to be Samson.’

I managed to say: ‘I’m sorry – such terrible mistakes –’ but
Charley answered: ‘All that matters is that you’ve given me the
chance to make everything come right.’

He poured me some more tea. Then he took one look at my face, fetched the tea-towel from the draining-board and said: ‘Here, take
this, I don’t have a handkerchief ... Damn, is that Michael coming
down the stairs?’

It was.

Having used my substitute handkerchief I spread it on the table
and carefully examined the picture printed on it of Starbridge
Cathedral just
as
Michael, unshaven and under-dressed, padded
groaning into the room.

‘
Don’t slobber over me,’ he said automatically as I looked up.
‘I feel terrible. Oh God, isn’t there any coffee?’

‘Instead of worrying about him slobbering over you,’ said
Charley sharply, ‘why don’t you try slobbering over him?’

‘What an obscene suggestion!’ He turned to stare at me. ‘You don’t want to be slobbered over, do you?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘
What do you mean — "not particularly"! Why don’t you
just
say no?’

‘All right. No.’

‘
Why do you sound so unconvincing? Why are you looking
at
that tea-towel as if you’ve never seen a picture of Starbridge Cathedral before? Why has no one made coffee? And where the hell’s the Alka-Seltzer?’

I staged a modest recovery. Relieved to hear a simple question which required a simple answer I said: °There isn’t any left. I’ve been taking a lot of Alka-Seltzer myself lately.’

‘
Disgusting!’ said Michael before drinking a tall glass of water.

Charley began to make coffee. Michael dumped himself in the
chair next to mine and helped himself to one of the cigarettes from
the packet I had left on the table. I folded the tea-towel into
a
small square and sat looking at it.

Dimly I realised that this state of companionable hell could be classified as a form of survival.

VII

When Charley had finished making the coffee he disappeared
in
the direction of the lavatory, and
as
soon
as
we were alone Michael said: ‘I’ve got to go back to London.’

I hastened to answer: ‘It’s all right. I didn’t expect you to stay.’

‘
But you do see, don’t you, why I’ve got to go back? You never
criticised me last night for anything, not even for running away,
but I know now I can’t leave Marina and Emma-Louise to cope
on their own. And we’ve got to tell the truth to the police.’

After a moment’s hesitation I said: ‘If you help the police, perhaps the police will help you. Inquests can be handled discreetly, and I’m sure Holly’s family won’t want a scandal.’

‘
Even if there is a scandal I’ve still got to be there with Marina- I can’t let my friends down ... Are you all right?’

‘
More or less.’

‘
What was that fool going on about just now when he suggested
I should slobber over you?’

‘He was worried. I’d been a trifle emotional.’

‘Oh, I see ... How typical of Charley! He always jumps to the
wrong melodramatic conclusion, but I knew straight away you
didn’t want to be slobbered over. What you want’s very simple:
you want me to stop messing around and get my act together;
you want me to be the best possible television producer be
cause you think that’s what God wants and if God wants it, you’re
happy; you want to be visited occasionally but you don’t want to be buttered up by someone who’s pretending to be what they’re
not; you want to play golf with me twice a year, give me dinner
in London now and then, and be friendly towards me all the year round. You see? I know exactly what you want. I understand you
better than he does.’ He stood up as Charley returned to the room.
‘I must get dressed and hit the road.’

Charley demanded at once: ‘Where are you going?’ but Michael merely said to me: ‘You explain,’ and retreated upstairs.

Having given the required explanation I said to Charley: ‘Don’t feel you have to stay with me. If you want to go to Starwater, just as you planned, I shall be all right.’

That plan was made in another era.’ He sighed before adding:
‘I just want to do the right thing but I can’t work out what the
right thing is. I’d like to help Marina and Emma-Louise, but I
don’t want to get in Michael’s way and muscle in where I’m not wanted. I’d like to stay and look after you but you might not want
me fussing around. I’d like to go to Starwater and arrange all that’s
happened into a pattern I can manage, but I’m afraid of wasting
time and being self-indulgent ... What do you really think I
should do?’

‘No idea. Only you can decide.’

‘But what would you do if you were in my shoes?’

‘The wrong thing probably. Whatever the wrong thing is.’

‘But —’

‘
Charley, you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Pray, think,
a
ct.
Then if you do make the wrong decision at least it won’t be for lack of rrying to make the right one.’

‘
But if you could give me the tiniest push in the right direction —’

‘
God knows the right direction. Take the matter up with him
and leave me out of it. I’m just an ordinary man who makes mis
takes, and besides ... Think back to when you were eight and
went away to prep school for the first time. There came a point
when you had to let go of my hand and I had to step back and
watch you moving away.’

‘Like launching a ship.’

‘
Yes, but there’s no need for you to look
as
doomed as the
Titanic!
You’re going to stay afloat. And whenever you return to
port, you can be sure I’ll be waiting on the quay to hear about
the voyage.’

‘
Well, if you’ve got the faith to wait on the quay,’ said Charley, ‘I’ve got the faith to believe I’ll stay afloat.’ And having glanced
at
his watch he decided he could no longer postpone telephoning his
vicar to arrange a day’s leave.

I waited, still worrying about him, but when he returned to the
kitchen his mind was made up. ‘I’m going to visit Starwater,’ he
announced, ‘and cook you dinner afterwards. I don’t have to
choose between rearranging my head and looking after you. It’s
the London scene that I must
leave
to Michael.’

I was so relieved by this sensible decision that I could only say
batherically: ‘There’s some duckling a
l’orange
in the deep-freeze.’
A second later I remembered that this gourmet treat had ceased
to exist when Harriet, Martin and I had eaten it, but Charley was
already declaring that reheated French rubbish wasn’t good
enough for me and that I had to be fed freshly cooked British
steak.

Ten minutes later he set off for the station. He was carrying one
of Lyle’s string shopping-bags, and inside it was Samson’s bland,
evasive, unsatisfactory autobiography, reclaimed from its tomb amidst the books bequeathed to Charley long ago, and brought
out at last into the light of day.

Michael departed soon afterwards. He said: ‘No slobbering. Don’t
die. I’ll phone,’ and trudged outside to his car.

After I had waved him goodbye I decided I needed to be prone
for ten minutes, but the moment I lay down on my bed I started thinking about my optical illusion in the Cathedral. I had hoped that by this
time
I would find it less distressing, but to my dismay
I tound myself still recoiling in horror from the memory. It was
a relief when Malcolm telephoned.

‘
I can’t be with you this morning,’ he said in the voice of one who
bears bad news, and added
as
I was suppressing a sigh of relief: Not
only do I have to call at Langley Bottom to fuel Desmond’s bonfire
with you-know-what, but I have to go up to Starrington Magna
where a frightful row has broken out about the Maundy service.
Apparently the vicar’s threatening to wash everyone’s feet, and ...’
I ceased to listen. Eventually he said
goodbye
and the call ended.
Sinking back on my pillows I began to replay in my mind the
conversations with my sons.

After a while I got up and went to Lyle’s sitting-room. I said
to
her: ‘It’s all right now. You can rest in peace.’ Yet still I clung
to her. It was so very hard to let go.

I sat mourning her death, my third catastrophe, yet slowly I
realised that it looked different, felt different; I realised that it had
changed subtly from the last
time
I had confronted it. This delicate hint of a reshaping reminded me of a passage in a book by AUSTIN FARRER

. Moving downstairs to my study I found my copy of
Said
or Sung.

The skill of the divine potter is an infinite patience of improvisa
tion,’ I read when I found the right passage. ‘No sooner has one
work gone awry than his fingers are pressing it into the form of
another. There is never a moment for the clay, when the potter
is
not doing something with it. God is never standing back and
watching us; his fingers are on us all the time.’

I closed the book and thought of Harriet, talking of the creative
process. I realised I had never fully understood that passage by
Farrer until I had met Harriet — and even then I had only under
stood it intellectually.

But now I saw with my heart as well as my mind that out of
my first catastrophe had come not only my second marriage, which
had brought me so much happiness and fulfilment, but the self-
knowledge which had enabled me to be a better priest. I also
saw that out of my second catastrophe had come my career as a
theologian willing and able to speak out with authority on the
nature of evil, a career which had ultimately led me to the Star
bridge bishopric. Out of both my previous catastrophes had come
the radical change which had led to a broader, deeper, richer life,
and I had aligned myself with God not by blocking that change
but by embracing it.

I knew then that it was again
time
to embrace radical change.
This was the reality which Jon had grasped after Lyle’s funeral
when he had advised me to assist the redemptive process by align
ing my mind with God in prayer. It was no
use
clinging to the
past. That only impeded the creative will of God. I had to have
the faith to let go of the past, that much-loved world, in the belief
that there would be not only another lift to come, but a life
as
full and rich
as
God could possibly make it.

I thought of Harriet again. I knew the analogy with the sculptor
had now broken down, since the clay, unlike me, was inani
mate, unable to assist in the redemptive process, but I was not
dismayed. All analogies involving God eventually break down
because God can never be wholly encompassed by our limited
imaginations, and the breaking down does not mean that the an
alogy
is
invalid, only that God
is
indescribable. So I continued to
think of Harriet as I struggled to find the courage to move
on, and when I remembered how she had caressed her sculp
ture, I knew I was being called to believe in a creator who never gave up, a creator who suffered alongside his creation, a creator
who was driven by ‘an indestructible sort of fidelity’, by
an
‘insane sort of hope’ and above all by the most powerful form of
creative love to bring order out of chaos and ‘make everything
come right’.

The old order changeth ...’ I replaced Farrer’s book on the
shelf and left my study. One had to be active. One had to cooperate
with one’s maker. I was not just a lump of clay. I was a living,
corscious human being.

The old order changeth .. ‘ The words were going round and
round in my head as I re-entered Lyle’s sitting-room. I looked at
the sofa and remembered all those hours which I had spent sunk
in
passive misery as I clung to the past. But those hours were over
now. Those times were gone.

I thought of the new order which I could not see and the future
which I could not imagine. Then I said to my Creator, just
as
1
had said to him long ago in 1937: "Let thy will, not mine, be
done.
^"
‘ And it seemed to me at that moment that some mysterious
circle had been completed, and that in this ending was the new
beginning which I now had the faith to embrace.

I moved to the exact spot where Lyle had died. I had to wait a
moment to summon up all my courage but then I prised my cling
ing fingers loose from her image and let her go. Aware of the need
to m’- this mental act of farewell in a physical movement, I
stretched out my clenched fists and opened my hands and held the
position for a full minute.

Into my mind came a picture of Lyle, writing in her journal about Julian of Norwich. ‘All shall be well,’ Dame Julian had
written, ‘and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be
well...’

But it was still terrible to have to say goodbye.

Tears blinded my eyes.

I grieved and grieved.