Absolute Truths (92 page)

AUSTIN FARRER

Warden of Keble College, Oxford,

1960-1968

The Brink of Mystery

‘
What is the supreme motive of a truth-seeking mind? Is
it to explode shams, or to acknowledge realities? After the
detection of shams, the clarification of argument, and the
sifting of evidence — after all criticism, all analysis — a man
must make up his mind what there is most worthy of love,
and most binding on conduct, in the world of real existence.
It is this decision, or this discovery, that is the supreme exer
cise of a truth-seeking intelligence.’

AUSTIN FARRER

The End of Man

I have now reached the theological end of my memoir; I have written paradigmatically on the ontological, teleological and
soteriological nature of the twentieth-century Church of England
by employing the tool of Hegelian dialectic: the thesis and anti
thesis (I myself and Aysgarth) had clashed to produce (with the
aid of Jon, the channel for the Holy Spirit) the synthesis which
embodied both the substance of the Church, its ongoing purpose and its painful but not entirely unsuccessful journey towards sal
vation. However, since I am writing not just as a theologian but as a human being I shall end my memoir on quite another note.
(Thank God!’ would no doubt be the reaction of many after read
ing this paragraph.)
Aysgarth and I eventually left the cottage and walked together through the woods to the house. He had left his car in the
forecourt, and it was here that we shook hands before parting.
My last words to him were: ‘I shall tell Nigel and Malcolm that
I’m bound by the rules of the confessional, but don’t keep us
waiting too long for the accounts or they’ll start to worry about
what on earth it was you confessed.’

Needless to say, Aysgarth, that incorrigible gambler, merely declared that the trumps were all there, waiting to be turned up.
I sighed, envying him his nerves of steel, and walked away down
the drive.

Outside the gates I found my chauffeur sunk in a torpor behind
the wheel of his Volkswagen. As I scrambled into the passenger
seat I asked: ‘Were you sleeping?’ and he answered: ‘No, praying’ – a response which certainly put me in my place and reminded me
that even renewed bishops (perhaps especially renewed bishops)
needed to be prayed for. Then he said suddenly: ‘It’s all right now,
isn’t it?’ and I told him that it was.

We drove back to Starbridge, and
as
he halted the car outside
the South Canonry he said: ‘I think we should meet again at the
Cathedral at the same time tomorrow. It’s not necessary for me
to go through the whole building with holy water, but I’d still
like to celebrate mass on the exact spot where the ghost appeared.’

I was not at all sure I approved of this very Romish proposal
and I was quite sure I did not approve of my optical illusion being
treated as an objective reality, but I did my best to be polite. ‘That’s
an interesting suggestion,’ I said. ‘But if you’re merely proposing
the mass as a psychological exercise to set my mind at rest, I assure you –’

‘
The mass is never just a psychological exercise to set the mind
at rest! Really, Bishop, whatever are you going to come out with
next?’

I reminded myself what an enormous help he had been to me
in my hour of need and redoubled my efforts to be tactful. ‘Very well,’ I said soothingly, ‘we’ll do whatever you think’s best. I cer
tainly don’t want to have any more optical illusions.’

‘
I’m sure the ghost doesn’t want you to have any more optical
illusions either,’ said Hall. ‘I’m sure he’d much rather rest in peace
than flash upon the retina of your psychic *eye.’

‘Quite so,’ I said kindly. After all, even an exorcist must be
allowed his little joke, but I was unable to stop myself adding:
‘Now why don’t you just translate that last sentence into the other language?’

‘There’s no translation.’

I was still boggling at him when the front door of the South
Canonry swung open and Charley ran down the steps to meet
me. Pulling myself together I said hastily to Hall: ‘I’ll phone you
tomorrow – many thanks for your help,’ and unfolding myself
from the cramped space I scrambled out of the car.

What’s happened?’ I demanded, sensing Charley’s urgency and
immediately dreading that I was about to be confronted with some
new disaster. (By this time I was very tired and vulnerable to all
manner of wild fears.) ‘What’s wrong?’

‘
Nothing!’ It seemed that Charley had merely been keen to convey some unexpected but not unpleasant news. ‘You’ve got a visi
tor, that’s all – she did wonder whether to go back to her hotel
but then she decided to wait.’

I supposed it was too much to hope that Sheila had called to
announce her engagement to Paul Dalton. To Charley I said:
‘Make me another sandwich and some tea, there’s a good chap. I
feel I need fortifying.’

‘
Poor old Dad!’ said Charley, and the next moment I found
myself clutching his hand and holding it tightly. (Of course I was
very
tired. Englishmen like me don’t usually go to pieces by making tactile gestures whenever someone addresses them with affection.)

‘
There, there!’ said Charley, as if he were the parent and I were
the child – a small child who had been lost but was now found.
‘There, there!’ His fingers curled tightly round my hand.

I staggered into the brightly-lit hall, and as Charley moved away
into the kitchen to prepare my sandwich I walked into the drawing-
room. My mouth opened. I drew breath to say: ‘Sheila, what
a pleasant surprise!’ but the words were never uttered. My eyes registered the flash of pink trousers, my ears heard the jangle of
costume jewellery, and for one wild moment I thought I had
succumbed to yet another optical illusion.

Loretta said unevenly: ‘It was the phone call. You sounded as
if you really, truly wanted to see me. So in the end I junked the
plane, went back to London, drank three martinis, loaded myself
on to the train to Starbridge and checked in at the Crusader. Am
I crazy?’

I laughed and said: ‘Magnificently sane!’ Then I took her in my
arms and showed her how grateful I was for her courage.

I had thought that this scene would be the perfect ending for my
memoir – I am always very partial to a touch of romance at the
end of a story – but I find myself unable to resist producing a
third ending, a conclusion which combines the theological and
anthropological (‘human interest’) angles to form a Grand Finale
– and if anyone wishes to complain about this reckless literary
self-indulgence, I shall plead that I am now exceedingly old (it is,
as I write, 1975 – ten years after the events I describe in my
narrative) and allowances should be made for venerable retired
bishops.

But before I reach the Grand Finale, which takes place in Star
bridge Cathedral (where else?), I think I must say a word about what happened to everyone; I think it would be more truthful, if
less romantic, to admit that we didn’t all live in harmonious bliss
ever afterwards following that theologically pleasing scene in Jon’s
cottage – and since I have been so concerned with truth in this
memoir, let me pursue truth to the final line. Life is open-ended.
Human beings are fallible. They crawl forward, then slip back
before crawling on again. Catastrophes lurk to ambush them.
Tragedies erupt unexpectedly. ‘The creation,’ as St Paul wrote,
‘groaneth and travaileth in pain,’ but nothing worthwhile can be
created without blood, sweat and tears, and at least we know
that our Creator is alongside us, sharing our suffering and never
abandoning that enormous struggle to ‘make everything come
right’.

However, these thoughts on the nature of ultimate reality were
hardly in my mind during the romantic scene I have just described, and they were even further from my mind when Charley, returning
to the drawing-room to ask what filling I wanted in my sandwich, discovered me in this passionate embrace with a foreigner who,
despite her advancing years, was quite definitely a
femme fatale.
Charley was appalled. It took him some time to grow out of his
priggishness, and even today he tends to take an austere line on
matters connected with sexual morality.

I had hoped that Michael might take a more liberal line with
my exceedingly stylish romance (I refused from the start to describe
it as ‘autumnal’) but I had reckoned without the bizarre fact that
the young, who pride themselves on their open-mindedness about
sex, become very upset when the members of the older generation
display any hint that they are not quite, carnally speaking, ‘over
the hill’. Michael did finally manage to digest this outrageous mani
festation, but he spent some time going through a period of behav
ing like a Victorian paterfamilias, obsessively concerned that his
nearest and dearest should remain chaste. We even had a row in
which he accused me of betraying Lyle when she was not yet cold
in her grave (more Victorian behaviour) but since by the grace of
God I managed to conduct my private life as a man should and as a bishop must, he realised in the end that I was being true to
my principles and not letting him down. My relationship with him
bumped on erratically for a while but improved greatly once he
was married, and now, ten years after the crises of 1965, I can
only say that he is very good, keeping in touch, coming to see me
when he can and sharing his thoughts with me without constraint.

Occasionally I wonder how he endures his career in television,
but he has Lyle’s tough, pragmatic streak and seems to have worked out very well how to thrive in such a high-powered modern world. Perhaps it was this tough streak which enabled him to survive the
amoral maelstrom of the 1960s (I remain convinced that I should
have been rapidly ruined if I had been young in that decade) and perhaps too it was this tough streak which enabled him not only
to outmanoeuvre all the other eager young men who chased the
dangerous Marina Markhampton, but to create a successful mar
riage with a blonde and beautiful
femme fatale.

I must now summon the humility to admit that I was quite
wrong when I believed Marina was a mere decadent society girl.
I have long since decided that she is charming, intelligent, inde
structibly loyal to her husband and exceptionally kind to old buffers past their prime. She pampers me shamelessly and tells me how
gorgeous I still am. (All old buffers need a beautiful young woman
to peddle this kind of fantasy to them occasionally.) She and
Michael have one child, a son; needless to say, I am immensely
and foolishly proud of him.

Charley has two sons so far and more children are planned when
his wife has finished her doctoral thesis, but although his boys are
excellent little fellows they do not belong to me in quite the same way and Michael’s son remains the grandchild who reduces me to
being a doting old man. How fortunate it is that old men are
allowed to dote! It’s certainly one of the compensations of old age.

I want to say a few words about Charley’s wife who, as I have already narrated, captivated me from the moment I first saw her,
but I know I must choose my words with care for Rachel has
hidden difficulties which are not allowed to be mentioned. She
and Charley met again in 1968, when Charley had succeeded in
reaching his belated maturity, and they married in 1969 after
Rachel graduated from London University. Her nervous break
down occurred after the second child was born in 1972. She still
sees the psychiatrist who assisted in her recovery. I did try to ask
questions, but Charley would only say that in 1968 she had wit
nessed a violent death and that this had had a traumatic effect on
her. He also made it very clear that this subject was not to be
discussed, a ban which made speculation inevitable. Loretta
thought that the’violent death’ explanation was a fiction and that
the real trouble was that Rachel was trying to do too much.

‘
Women who try to be the perfect clerical wife, the perfect
mother, the perfect cook, the perfect hostess
and
the perfect doc
toral student are deliberately putting themselves on course for a
visit to the mental hospital,’ she pronounced, but this is the 1970s
and women are expected to be superhuman. (Lyle, I’m sure, would have had a very tart comment to make about this new social trend.)
I did not argue with Loretta; indeed I thought it probable that
Rachel’s quest for perfection had made her overstrained and in
consequence more vulnerable to the malign effects of past traumas,
but for reasons which I shall explain later, I was unable to dismiss
the ‘violent death’ explanation as a fiction..

All this reticence suggests I am on uneasy terms with Charley,
but in fact we get on well enough whenever we meet. I am
bound
to
say, however, that the brash, insecure young man of 1965
has evolved into a self-assured, strong-willed adventurer who is not always so easy for me to understand. Strangely enough I see
less of Alex Jardine in him now and more of Lyle; perhaps, in an
ironic twist of fate, he is not the clergyman that Jardine failed
to be but the clergyman Lyle never was. He has inherited from
her that same tough, pragmatic streak which enables Michael to
thrive in the world of television, and in addition I detect Lyle’s
Machiavellian ability to ‘fix’ awkward situations by a series of ruth
less manoeuvres.

I know he is a devout priest and I know I should be content
with that knowledge, but he is not the kind of priest with whom
I feel at ease; his approach is not quite ‘up my street’. He is certainly
a conservative, as I am, but he seems to think that anyone who
subscribes to the Middle Way nowadays is shying away from what
he calls the big issues. The big issues all seem to be about fighting.
Apparently we have to fight the sloth and indifference of secular
society, fight the decadence and idolatry of Anglo-Catholicism,
and fight every one of the liberal-radical heresies. Naturally the
Anglo-Catholics and the liberals don’t like this militant stance at
all and want to fight back. I foresee that by the 1980s the Church
factions will be completely polarised and that by the 1990s the
Church of England will be torn apart by open war.

‘
But by the year 2000 the Evangelicals will have won and saved
us all!’ says Charley, dismissing my doubts as the muddle-headed murmurings of someone far gone in senectitude.

Of course Charley can never resist an oratorical flourish, and no
doubt it is a good thing that the old-fashioned, biblically naive,
politically innocent Evangelicals are being replaced by this clever,
sophisticated new breed who will perform the essential function
of checking the excesses of liberal-radical theology, but all this
militancy is not to my taste at all. I also cannot help but notice
that when the Anglo-Catholics and the Evangelicals are jostling
for supremacy they become mirror-images of each other, both of
them paying far too much attention to that idol ‘The Church’ and
forgetting too often that we are called neither to lead nor to fight
nor to creep around the corridors of power in Machiavellian
manoeuvres, but to serve.

‘
Charley’s just a wheeler-dealer in a dog-collar!’ Michael said
acidly the other day. ‘Imagine supporting all that stuff about speak
ing in tongues — what’s in it for him?’

Charley is indeed very interested in the Charismatic Movement
and no doubt he is busy calculating how far it should be supported
to propagate the Gospel, but I do not say this to Michael. I say
peaceably instead: ‘All priests have a duty to support the genuine
manifestations of the Holy Spirit.’ But what do I really think about
the Charismatics? I cannot help remembering Bishop Butler’s
matchless comment: ‘Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revela
tions and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid
thing!’ — and immediately I feel not only sceptical but lukewarm.
But on the other hand, what does it matter what I think? I’ve had
my day. The old order changeth ... The Church of England is
no longer a gentlemen’s club, conducting business according to
gentlemanly rules, and I dare say it does need to throw off that
outdated image in order to be more effective, but something special
will be lost, something precious, some quality of elegance and
innocence that I loved.

And now
I’m
the one who’s making an idol of the Church. How easy it is to criticise others for the faults one cannot acknowledge
in oneself ! So I must not be too critical of Charley; I must accept
that the Church lives and dies in every generation only to be born
again in the next. It is Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday,
today and forever, not the Church, which is always in the process
of development.

It will be obvious by this time that Charley is doing wonderfully
well, frequently getting himself quoted in the papers, making
speeches in that ghastly invention the General Synod, running
conferences, writing articles, publishing books. He is a very busy,
very successful man, so busy and successful that he seldom has the
chance to visit me, but when he does come he is always most kind
and affectionate. He knows that despite all my doubts about his
militancy I’m proud of him — but I think he knows too that Alex
Jardine would have been even prouder.

Sometimes I mind that Charley has so little time for me these
days but I console myself with the knowledge that I always have
Michael to talk to, either in person or on the telephone; Michael
always has time for me. The television drama which he produces
goes from strength to strength. I admit to being prejudiced, but
everyone says that the BBC’s drama is magnificent. ‘British drama
on Channel Thirteen,’ said Loretta on our most recent visit to New
York, ‘is the only excuse any civilised American has for keeping a
TV set.’

I have enjoyed my visits to New York. It seems to me like some
European city which I can never quite identify — or is that city
merely the Edwardian London of my remote boyhood, a huge,
lavish, spectacular concoction where the nouveaux riches lived
cheek by jowl alongside the families with old money, and all were
surrounded by the teeming hordes of the poor? But whatever city
New York resembles it is certainly not Starbridge. Before I retired
I used to find the contrast very stimulating.