Glittering Images

FOUR

‘Who does not know that no clergyman, however hard-working and devoted, can maintain his spiritual influence if his domestic life be ill-ordered and unhappy?’

HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON

Bishop of Durham 1920–1939

The Bishoprick Papers

I

When I returned to Lady Starmouth I found her looking critically at her sketch. ‘I’m afraid this is no good,’ she murmured. ‘I seem to have lost my touch … How were the fish?’

‘According to your husband they’re all either asleep or dead.’ For a moment I remained motionless, watching her. Then I said casually, ‘Lady Starmouth, I hope you won’t think me impertinent, but may I ask why, when you were telling me about Dr Jardine’s Lovely Ladies, you failed to mention Professor Staviski?’

Lady Starmouth’s reaction was swift. ‘Loretta?’

‘Your husband’s just mentioned her. There were four of you, weren’t there? Not just three.’

‘Only for a short time, during the War.’ Lady Starmouth tore the sketch from the pad, crumpled the paper into a ball and put her pencil away in a wooden box. She said nothing else, and her silence was in such stark contrast to her earlier fluency that I felt obliged to say, ‘I’m sorry – obviously I’ve given you offence.’

‘My dear Dr Ashworth –’ Lady Starmouth spoke in the voice of one who finds herself in the most tiresome of dilemmas ‘– of course you haven’t given me offence! I’m merely annoyed with myself for not mentioning Loretta because, of course, it’s only natural that you should wonder why I left her out when I was prattling so freely about the Bishop’s past. However the truth’s very simple. I didn’t mention her because Alex hasn’t seen her since she returned to America in 1918 so she hardly qualifies now as one of his Lovely Ladies.’

‘She hasn’t visited England since then?’

There was another silence.

‘Forgive me, I’m being intolerably inquisitive –’

‘Pardonably inquisitive, you mean. Of course you’re wondering why I’m tying myself up in such knots.’ Suddenly and most unexpectedly she laughed. ‘Good heavens, anyone would think I had a guilty secret to hide whereas all I want to cover up is a little private embarrassment!’

‘Lady Starmouth, please don’t feel obliged to say another word! I’m only sorry that I –’

‘My dear young man, now you’re the one who’s behaving as if there’s a guilty secret to hide! I can see that the most sensible thing I can do is to enlighten you before you’re tempted to exercise a colourful imagination, but you must promise me you’ll be discreet. The story’s not scandalous, just sad, and I don’t want it repeated.’

‘I give you my word I shall hold everything you say in the strictest confidence.’

‘Very well, then let me say that Loretta has indeed returned to England for visits since the War, but she and Alex no longer have any communication with each other. I’m sorry to say that although Alex always treated her with absolute propriety Loretta fell in love with him and their platonic friendship went very disastrously wrong.’

II

‘Forgive me. Lady Starmouth,’ I said, ‘but in fact I’d been unable to resist wondering if Dr Jardine’s platonic friendships were just a little too good to be true. I still say that any clergyman who dabbles in close friendships with the opposite sex is playing with fire.’

‘Well, in this case I have to admit he got singed … Dr Ashworth, do sit down again – I find you disconcerting when you tower over me like this. It makes me feel I’m being interrogated.’

I sat down at once on the grass but she cut short my apology. ‘No, I know you’re not really interrogating me – it’s all my fault for encouraging your questions earlier, but before I close up like a clam let me just say a little more about Loretta so that you can see why for her sake I prefer to treat the incident as closed. She and I first met in 1917 but I’d heard about her for years because my mother, who was American, had been friends with her mother in childhood and they’d always kept in touch. When Loretta finally came to England she was in a terrible mess. She’d been married young to this man Staviski who was a diplomatist; when America entered the War he was transferred from Washington to London, and almost as soon as he and Loretta arrived in England the marriage went to pieces.’

‘He left her?’

‘She left him. But she was the innocent party – he’d made life quite impossible for her, so I had no hesitation in coming to her rescue. She stayed with us while she recovered, and of course she soon met Alex. Well, to cut a long story short I’ll just say that she was so successful at concealing her true feelings that for a long time neither Alex nor I had any idea she was in love with him, but eventually the truth surfaced and Alex was obliged to end the friendship. Loretta was dreadfully upset. I felt so sorry for her. It was all horribly awkward and pathetic, just as any unreciprocated attachment always is, and later we agreed never to speak of it again.’

‘What happened to her afterwards?’

‘When she returned to America she embarked on an academic career and now she teaches history at some college on the Eastern Seaboard. She’s never remarried but I still wonder if she might one day. She’s much younger than me, perhaps only a few years older than you, and although by fashionable standards she’s plain she’s by no means unattractive … However a lot of men don’t like a woman to be too clever.’

But I thought of Jardine, enjoying with Loretta Staviski all the intelligent conversation he was unlikely to encounter at home, and I was unable to resist saying: ‘Dr Jardine must have been sorry to lose her friendship – was he never tempted to see her again during her later visits to England?’

‘How could he? How could he possibly have renewed a friendship which had been so painful to her and so potentially dangerous for him?’

‘But was she herself never tempted to –’

‘This is an interrogation, isn’t it! My dear Dr Ashworth, aren’t you taking rather too much advantage of your very considerable charm?’

I privately cursed my recklessness and attempted to beat a smooth retreat. ‘I’m so sorry, Lady Starmouth, but many a clergyman has to deal occasionally with the sort of difficulty Dr Jardine faced here, and I’m afraid my personal interest in the subject got the better of me. I do apologize.’

She gave me a searching look but decided to be indulgent. ‘I’ve no objection to a sympathetic interest,’ she said, ‘but perhaps it’s lucky for you that I have a soft spot for clergymen … Heavens, here’s Mrs Cobden-Smith!’ Rising to her feet she folded the stool and picked up her artist’s satchel. ‘For your penance, Dr Ashworth, you can listen with an expression of rapturous attention to the stories of how she and the Colonel civilized India.’

‘You two seem to be having a very cosy little tête-à-tête!’ called Mrs Cobden-Smith as she approached us. ‘I’ve just been urging Carrie to get dressed. It’s no good lying in bed after a touch of insomnia – I told her to get up and have a busy day so that she’d be thoroughly tired by bed-time. I remember when I was in India –’

‘I was only saying to Dr Ashworth how interesting you were about India – but do excuse me, I must go and see Carrie myself,’ said Lady Starmouth, and escaped adroitly across the lawn.

My next witness had delivered herself to me with an admirable sense of timing. Fighting my reluctance I smiled at Mrs Cobden-Smith and suggested that we might sit on the garden bench to enjoy the sunshine.

III

‘It’s nice to sit down for a minute,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith. ‘I’ve been rushing around the town trying to buy horsemeat for the dog and the right cough-syrup for Willy. If Willy doesn’t have a dose of cough-syrup every night he coughs like a chimney-sweep and if George doesn’t have horsemeat three times a week he gets lazy – and talking of laziness, it seems you’ve been shirking your work, young man! I thought you were supposed to be closeted in the Cathedral library, not dancing attendance on Lady Starmouth! You’re as bad as Alex – he likes to dance attendance too, but of course in his case he’s just savouring the fact that Adam Jardine from Putney is now the clerical pet of a peeress. Did you know Alex spent the first thirty-seven years of his life being called Adam? It’s his first name. But when Carrie fell in love with him we said’ to her: “My dear,” we said, “you simply can’t marry a man called Adam Jardine – it sounds like a jobbing gardener!” So she found out his second name was Alexander and we rechristened him Alex. His stepmother was livid, I can’t think why.’

I finally had the chance to speak and I thought I had been offered a promising opening. ‘What a coincidence!’ I said. ‘Lady Starmouth was just telling me about Dr Jardine’s stepmother.’

‘Everyone was always rather appalled by the old girl,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith comfortably, quite uninhibited by any desire to be discreet about a dead relative of her husband’s brother-in-law. ‘She was a very strange woman – Swedish, and of course we all know the Scandinavians are peculiar. Look at their plays.’

I ignored this dismissal of the giants of the modern theatre. ‘But I’m told the Bishop was very fond of his stepmother.’

‘Devoted. Very odd. Carrie hated her, but when Alex’s sister died something had to be done about the old girl, who was by then confined to a wheelchair with arthritis and so of course Alex announced: “She’s coming to live with us!” Ghastly. Poor Carrie. I can’t tell you the havoc that decision caused.’

‘How did Mrs Jardine cope?’

‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, using a phrase which I was soon to realize was a favourite of hers. ‘It was five years ago, just after the move to Starbridge from Radbury, and Carrie was going through the – well, it was an awkward time for her – and everything was at sixes and sevens. I said to Willy, “Carrie will have a nervous breakdown, I know she will”, but of course I’d reckoned without Miss Christie. The old girl took to Miss Christie in the biggest possible way, gave Carrie no trouble and died good as gold six months later. I said to Willy, “That girl Christie’s a miracle-worker”.’

‘Is there any problem Miss Christie can’t solve?’

‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith a second time. ‘It was strange how she tamed the old girl, I must say. I remember it occurred to me once that there was a curious resemblance between them – not a resemblance in looks, of course – the old girl weighed a ton while Miss Christie’s so small and slim – but there was some odd resemblance of the personality. I suspect that the old girl, when she was young, had that same cool competence which Miss Christie now displays so noticeably. Alex’s real mother died when he was six, the father was left with eight children under twelve, or something frightful, and the stepmother restored order to the home – rather as Miss Christie pulled the Deanery together when she first came to Radbury.’

I was now offered a choice of two openings; I was tempted to ask about Radbury, but I was also curious to discover more about Jardine’s obscure background. Finally I said: ‘What happened to all the other little Jardines?’

‘One sister went mad and died in an asylum, three brothers went to the Colonies and died of drink or worse, one brother went bankrupt in London and hanged himself and the last brother simply disappeared. That left the younger sister, who eventually looked after the old girl, and Alex.’

‘Dr Jardine obviously had a miraculous survival!’

‘It was the hand of God,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith with that matchless confidence of the layman who always knows exactly what God has in mind. ‘Of course none of us knows for certain what went on in that family, but I’ve pieced a few lurid details together over the years and there’s no doubt the background was a nightmare. I used to talk to Alex’s sister Edith – a nice woman she was, terribly common but a nice woman – and she occasionally let slip the odd piece of information which made my hair stand on end.’

‘Lady Starmouth liked her too, said she’d had an awful life –’

‘Unspeakable. The father was a lunatic – never certified, unfortunately, but quite obviously potty. He suffered from religious mania and saw sin everywhere so he wouldn’t let his children go to school for fear they’d be corrupted.’

‘But how on earth did Dr Jardine get to Oxford?’

‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith once more, enjoying her attentive audience. ‘It was the stepmother. She finally got him to school when he was fourteen and kept his nose to the grindstone until he’d won the scholarship.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘since Dr Jardine owed her so much, wasn’t it a rare and splendid piece of justice that she should spend her final days with him in his episcopal palace?’

‘I dare say it was,’ conceded Mrs Cobden-Smith with reluctance, ‘although Carrie didn’t see it that way at the time. Thank God Miss Christie tamed the old girl before poor Carrie could have another nervous breakdown!’

‘Another nervous breakdown? You mean – ?’

‘Dash, I shouldn’t have said that, should I, Willy would be cross. But on the other hand it’s an open secret that Carrie’s a prey to her nerves. I’ve often said to her in the past, “Carrie, you must make more effort – you simply can’t go to bed and give up!”. But I’m afraid she’s not the fighting kind. I’m quite different, I’m glad to say – I’m always fighting away and making efforts! When I was in India …’

I let her talk about India while I waited for the opening which would lead us back to the subject of Mrs Jardine’s nervous breakdown. The characters in Jardine’s past were revolving in my mind: the eccentric father, the doomed siblings, the surviving sister who had had ‘a ghastly way with a teacup’, the mysterious Swedish stepmother who had exerted such a vital influence – and then after the years of darkness, the years of light and a new world with new people: Carrie and the Cobden-Smiths, the subtle charming Lady Starmouth, the clever American girl struggling from the ruins of a disastrous marriage –

‘– disastrous marriage,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, remarking how fortunate it was that Carrie had avoided marrying an officer in the Indian Army. ‘She would never have survived the climate.’

‘No, probably not. Mrs Cobden-Smith, talking of survival –’

‘Of course, Carrie’s had a hard time surviving marriage to a clergyman,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, playing into my hands before I could risk a direct question about Mrs Jardine’s difficulties at Radbury, ‘although the ironic part is that in many ways she’s cut out to be a clergyman’s wife – everyone likes her and she’s a very good, devout, friendly little person, but she should have been the wife of an ordinary parson, not the wife of a fire-breathing adventurer who periodically runs amok through the Church of England. It’s a terrible tragedy there are no children. Of course children can drive one up the wall, I’m not sentimental about children, but they do give a marriage a focal point, and although Alex and Carrie are devoted to each other any stranger can see they don’t have much in common. How ghastly it was when that baby was born dead in 1918! No wonder Carrie went to pieces, poor thing.’

‘Was that when she had her nervous –’

‘Well, it wasn’t really a nervous breakdown,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith fluently. ‘I was exaggerating. A nervous breakdown means someone climbing the walls, doesn’t it, and having to be whisked away to a private nursing home, but Carrie’s collapse was quite different. She just lay weeping on a chaise longue all day and when she finally had the strength to leave it she started consulting spiritualists to see if she could get in touch with the dead child – terribly embarrassing for Alex, of course, to be a clergyman whose wife consulted spiritualists, so it was arranged that Carrie should have a little holiday with her parents in the country. That did her the world of good, thank God, and afterwards she was fine until they moved to Radbury.’

‘Someone did mention that she found the move a little difficult –’

‘Poor Carrie! If only Alex had been made vicar of some quiet little parish in the back of beyond! But no, off he went to Radbury to run that hulking great Cathedral, and Carrie found herself put on public display as Mrs Dean – hundreds of new people to meet, all the residents of the Cathedral Close watching critically to see if she made a mistake, new committees to master, endless dinner parties to organize, Mrs Bishop looking down her nose from the palace, all the Canons’ wives trying to interfere –’

‘When did Mrs Jardine make the decision to engage a companion?’

‘Alex made the decision, not Carrie. Carrie was soon in such a state that she couldn’t make any decisions at all – although of course,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, ‘she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. Not really. She just went shopping every day to buy things she didn’t need – I think it took her mind off her troubles – and when she wasn’t shopping she was always so tired that she had to stay in bed. However finally she bought some really frightful wallpaper – the last word in extravagance – and Alex decided she needed someone to keep an eye on her during her little shopping sprees. Miss Christie turned up and was an immediate success. Alex used to refer to her simply as “The Godsend”.’

‘The Bishop must have been concerned about his wife,’ I murmured, selecting an understatement in the hope of luring her into further indiscretions, but Mrs Cobden-Smith merely said: ‘Yes, he was,’ and shifted restlessly as if aware for the first time that a stranger might read into her frank comments rather more than she had intended to reveal. I suspected that like most people of little imagination she found it difficult to picture what was going on in any mind other than her own.