role, advise my prayer-group to pray for my friend’s homosexual son who’s living discreetly with his boyfriend in a manner which has absolutely nothing to do with a promiscuous career in public lavatories?’
I sighed, ground out my cigarette and to signal my resentment that I was being dragooned into playing the bishop I reconnected us to the outside world by replacing the telephone receiver with a thud. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘while I put on my cope and mitre.’
‘No, don’t you dare sulk! I’ve always been very careful not to bother you about the prayer-group, and yet now, on the very first occasion that I’ve actually paid you the compliment of asking for your advice –’
I slumped guiltily back on the pillows just as the telephone jangled at my side.
II
‘I’ll answer it,’ said Lyle, slipping out of bed.
‘No, let it ring.’ I was already regretting that I had slammed back the receiver in a fit of pique.
‘If we let it ring you’ll crucify yourself imagining a suicidal vicar screaming for help,’ said Lyle tartly, and moving around to the table on my side of the bed she picked up the receiver and intoned in her most neutral voice: ‘South Canonry.’
A pause followed during which I wondered whether to light another cigarette. Contrary to Lyle’s fears I thought it was most unlikely that some suicidal vicar was screaming for help in an icy vicarage while his bishop lounged in a centrally-heated haze of post-coital bliss, and having made the decision to light the cigarette I turned my thoughts instead to Lyle’s prayer-group, those middle-aged, middle-class, church-going ladies who seemed so unlikely to want to discuss unnatural vice. It occurred to me that the kindest advice I could give them was to pray for the wholesome family life of their married friends and leave any deviant relations to God.
‘Just a moment, please,’ said Lyle, bringing the silence to an end. ‘Let me see if my husband left a number where he can be contacted.’ Sitting down on the edge of the bed she muffled the receiver in the eiderdown and whispered to me: ‘It’s the chaplain at the hospital. Desmond Wilton’s been beaten up in his church. He’s unconscious, he needs an operation and the chaplain thought you ought to know about it.’
Crushing out my cigarette I began to struggle out of bed.
‘Yes, I can get in touch with him straight away,’ said Lyle. ‘Either he or the Archdeacon will be with you as soon as possible.’ She hung up. ‘Charles, surely Malcolm can cope with this?’
‘I couldn’t possibly palm such a disaster off on my archdeacon.’
‘Trust Desmond Wilton to get himself beaten up on your day off!’
‘Darling –’
‘What was he doing anyway, getting himself beaten up? I just hope there’s no sinister explanation.’
I was appalled. ‘But Desmond’s been leading an exemplary life ever since he came to Starbridge! If we hadn’t been discussing homosexuality, it would never have occurred to you to make such a remark – and I refuse to believe there’s any truth in it!’
‘Dear Charles,’ said my wife, slipping into a black silk negligée. ‘Such a very Christian nature.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with any Christian nature I might have,’ I said, very heated by this time, ‘and everything to do with the fact that Desmond made a complete recovery from that spiritual breakdown he had in London. All right, I know you think the Bishop of London palmed him off on me, but even the best priests can have breakdowns and I absolutely defend my decision to give him a job in the diocese as soon as he’d recovered!’
‘I know you’ll always defend it – and how good it is for me to be reminded that despite all my advanced liberal thoughts about homosexuals you’re still so much more compassionate and Christian towards them than I am! If I were a bishop nothing would induce me to employ a pathetic old priest who’d been beaten up while soliciting in a public lavatory … Shall I try and track down Malcolm for you?’ she called after me as I headed for the bathroom.
‘Yes, he ought to be told straight away, but say there’s no need for him to cancel everything and rush to the hospital. The chaplain and I’ll sort things out.’
Five minutes later, dressed in a black suit with a purple stock and pectoral cross, I emerged from my dressing-room to find that Lyle had picked up from the floor the casual, off-duty clothes which I had discarded earlier, made the bed and tracked down my archdeacon. ‘He’s making a visitation at Upper Starwood,’ she informed me, ‘but I’ve left a message at the vicarage there.’
‘Good.’ I turned to leave but on the threshold I hesitated and looked back. ‘I’m sorry I took evasive action when you started to talk about the prayer-group,’ I said. ‘I really would like to hear more about it. Maybe later – when I’m in neither a rush nor a post-coital torpor –’
‘Of course. Later.’
I hurried away to the hospital.
III
When I had visited Starbridge in 1937, the year I had met and married Lyle, I had thought it more than lived up to its reputation of being the most beautiful city west of the Avon. In my mind’s eye I could still see it shining in the hot sunlight of that distant summer; I could remember how enchanted I had been by its medieval streets, flower-filled parks and winding, sparkling river, how mesmerised I had been by the Cathedral, towering above the walled Close on a mound above the shimmering water-meadows. ‘Radiant, ravishing Starbridge!’ I had exclaimed to myself more than once during that crucial time, but that was all long ago, and Starbridge was not the city it had been before the war.
Why must unspoilt county towns inevitably change for the worse? Those Starbridge parks remained flower-filled in summer but now they were litter-strewn as the result of the huge increase in tourists and the slovenly habits of the young. Most of the medieval streets still existed but a number of them south of Mitre Street had been bulldozed to make way for a hideous invention, a ‘multistorey car park’ which was attached to something called a ‘shopping centre’. This new development was so ugly that I felt hot with rage whenever I saw it. Fortunately the mayor who had encouraged this act of vandalism had dropped dead so I was no longer obliged to be polite to him, but the city council members lingered on, a sore trial to my Christian patience. More concrete horrors were rising on the outskirts of the city where a by-pass (on stilts!) was being constructed, but this innovation I was prepared to tolerate since its purpose was to eliminate the city’s traffic jams.
The Starbridge General Hospital, a Victorian building, was unchanged on the outside despite being constantly modernised within. It stood near Eternity Street on the river which flowed swiftly, fed by two tributaries, through the heart of the city. As I arrived that afternoon the rain was hardening into sleet and a bitter north wind was blowing. From the car park the tower of St Martin’s-in-Cripplegate, my archdeacon’s church, could be seen standing palely, as if numbed with cold, against a yellowish, snow-laden sky.
For a moment I thought of those radiant sunlit days of 1937, and suddenly I heard a much younger Lyle say in my memory: ‘I’m Miss Christie, Mrs Jardine’s companion …’ I hurried into the hospital but the memories pursued me and I heard Bishop Jardine himself exclaim: ‘Welcome to Starbridge!’ as he made a
