in London. A week later I received a card in reply. It said: ‘Athenaeum = Utter Dragsville. Take me to that bar in the House of Lords, food not necessary, I drink lunch.’
I did not like this card at all but Lyle said Michael was only trying to shock me and there was no reason why he and I should be unable to down a couple of sherries in the House of Lords bar while we tried to make up our minds whether we could face lunching together in the dining-room.
We met. Michael, who had clearly been drinking, ordered a double dry martini. I let him drink one but drew the line when he demanded another. He called me an old square and walked out. After that, relations remained cool between us for some time.
‘He can’t last long at the BBC,’ I said to Lyle. ‘He’ll get sacked for drink and wind up in the gutter.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Lyle, and once again she was right. Michael continued to work at the BBC and even obtained promotion. Obviously I needed to give our battered olive branch of peace another wave. By this time we had reached the end of 1964 and I invited – even, I go so far as to say, begged – him to spend Christmas with us. I had hoped he might telephone in response to this fulsome invitation, but another of his terse little cards arrived. It said: ‘Xmas okay but don’t mention God. Will be arriving on Xmas Eve with my bird, the one Mum met when she snuck up to London to see my new pad. Make sure there’s plenty of booze.’
‘Oh God!’ said Lyle through gritted teeth when she read this offensive communication.
Making a great effort to seem not only calm but even mildly amused I said: ‘I don’t understand the ornithological reference.’
‘It’s his latest ghastly girl. She’s American.’
‘You never mentioned –’
‘She was too ghastly to mention.’
‘Well, if he thinks he can bring his mistress here and bed down with her under my roof –’
‘Darling, leave this entirely to me.’
Michael did spend Christmas with us at the South Canonry, but the girl was ruthlessly billeted by Lyle at one of the local hotels. Michael wore no suit. He did not even wear a tie. He was never dead drunk but he was certainly in that condition known to publicans as ‘nicely, thank you’, an inebriated state which fell short of causing disruption but was still capable of generating embarrassment. My enemy Dean Aysgarth, on the other hand, was constantly accompanied to a variety of services by a veritable praetorian guard of well-dressed, immaculately behaved, respectable and charming sons. If I had not had Charley to cheer me up I might well have expired with despair.
However, Lyle had been working hard behind my back, and on Boxing Day Michael sidled up to me with a penitent expression. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know that my new year’s resolution will be not to get on your nerves. Can we bury the hatchet and drink to 1965?’
We drank to the coming year.
‘I’ve decided that 1965’s going to be a great time for the Ashworth family,’ said Michael, coming up for air after downing his martini. ‘I prophesy no fights, no feuds and absolutely no fiascos of any kind.’
Michael had many gifts but I fear prophecy was not among them.
‘I am going to set before you one of those standing themes that always ought to be preached about: the relation between the sexes … And if we achieve no other aim, we shall at least show sympathy with those who are concerned to manage the most baffling and the most ungovernable part of their instinctive nature.’
AUSTIN FARRER
Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968
Said or Sung
I
Having completed this portrait of myself, my family and my professionally distinguished but privately turbulent life – having, in other words, set the scene for my third catastrophe – it is now time to describe the crises which battered me in rapid succession towards the edge of the abyss.
‘Do you remember,’ said Lyle, taking the telephone receiver off the hook one afternoon early in the February of 1965, ‘how miserable we were when we were forced to face the fact that our third child was never going to exist?’
‘Vividly.’ I was in an excellent mood for it was a Monday, and Monday was my day off. As Lyle severed our connection to the outside world, I sat down on the bed to remove my shoes.
‘And do you remember,’ pursued Lyle, drawing the curtains and plunging the bedroom into an erotic twilight, ‘how you said God might know what was best for us better than we did, and I was so angry that I hurled an ashtray at you?’
‘Even more vividly.’
‘Well, I just want to say I’m sorry I hurled the ashtray. We would never have survived a third child.’
‘Does this belated enlightenment mean you’ll stop feeling queasy whenever anyone cites the quotation: “All things work together for good to them that love God”?’
‘No, I still think that’s the most infuriating sentence St Paul ever wrote – which reminds me: why have you taken to writing it over and over again on your blotter?’
‘It calms me down when someone rings up and wastes my time by drivelling on about nothing.’
‘It wouldn’t calm me down,’ said Lyle, removing the counterpane from the bed as I stood up. ‘I’d just want to grab a gun and shoot St Paul.’
Whenever possible on my day off I played golf, but on this occasion bad weather had ensured that I stayed at home. The winter so far had been very cold. There had been blizzards in January, and although a dry spell had now been forecast there was as yet no sign of it beginning in Starbridge. I had spent the morning working on my new book about the early Christian writer Hippolytus and the sexually lax Bishop Callistus, and my glamorous part-time secretary Sally had taken dictation for an hour before returning home to type up her notes. Sally had been wearing a shiny black coat, which she had told me was made of something called PVC, and tall black learner boots which had appeared to creep greedily up her legs towards the hem of her short purple skirt. After viewing this fashion display the sexually lax Bishop Callistus would undoubtedly have dictated some weak-kneed thoughts about fornication, but since I was anticipating an intimate afternoon with my wife, I had been able to say to Sally with aplomb: ‘What an original ensemble!’ and deliver myself of some intellectually rigorous thoughts about Hippolytus’s theology. There are times when I really do think the case for a celibate priesthood is quite impossible to sustain.
Lyle and I were now alone in the house. Our cook-housekeeper had gone home at one o’clock; the chaplains had disappeared to their nearby cottages after a quick glance at the morning post to ensure there was no crisis which needed my attention, and Miss Peabody, who shared my day off, was no doubt doing something very worthy elsewhere. The house was not only delightfully quiet but delightfully warm as the result of the recent installation of a central heating system, an extravagance paid for
