‘Guess what’s happened!’
‘The Archbishop’s dropped dead.’
‘My God, that’s close! But no, unfortunately the dead man’s not Fisher. It’s the Bishop of Starbridge.’
I was appalled. ‘Our best ally!’
‘Our only hope! I feel ready to cut my throat.’
‘Well, pass me the razor when you’ve finished with it.’
We decided we had to be fortified by sherry. My mother was out, attending a meeting of the WVS. In the distance Big Ben was striking noon.
‘What the devil do I do now?’ said my father as we subsided with our glasses on the drawing-room sofa. ‘I can’t face Fisher without Staro on hand to make his speech about how well Aysgarth ran the archdeaconry back in the ’forties. In Fisher’s eyes I’m just a non-church-goer. I was absolutely relying on Staro to wheel on the big ecclesiastical guns.’
‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I think it’s time God intervened.’
‘Don’t talk to me of God! What a bungler He is – if He exists – collecting Staro at exactly the wrong moment! If Aysgarth ever gets that deanery now it’ll be nothing short of a miracle, and since I don’t believe in miracles and since I strongly suspect that God is an anthropomorphic fantasy conjured up by mankind’s imagination –’
The doorbell rang.
‘Damn it,’ muttered my father. ‘Why didn’t I tell Pond I wasn’t at home to callers?’
We waited. Eventually the butler plodded upstairs to announce: ‘Canon Aysgarth’s here, my Lord.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake show him up!’ said my father crossly. ‘You know I’m always at home to Mr Aysgarth!’
Pond retired. My father was just pouring some sherry into a third glass when Aysgarth walked into the room.
‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ said my father, ‘and have a drink. I assume you’ve heard the disastrous news.’
‘Abandon your sherry!’ said Aysgarth. ‘Send for the champagne!’
We gaped at him. His eyes sparkled. His smile was radiant. He was euphoric.
In amazement my father exclaimed: ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘Fisher summoned me to Lambeth Palace this morning. He said: “Let’s forget all the nonsense those women stirred up. We can’t let the Church suffer in 1957 just because my wife wore a certain hat in 1953.”’
My father and I both gasped but Aysgarth, now speaking very rapidly, gave us no chance to interrupt him. ‘“Starbridge is suddenly without either a bishop or a dean,” said Fisher, “and both the Cathedral and the diocese have problems which need solving urgently by the best men available –“‘
‘My God!’ said my father.
‘My God!’ said my voice at exactly the same moment. I had a vague picture of an anthropomorphic deity smiling smugly in a nest of clouds.
‘He offered me the deanery,’ said Aysgarth. ‘By that time, of course, I was almost unconscious with amazement, but I did somehow manage to open my mouth and say “thank you”.’
For a moment my father was silent, and when he was finally able to speak he could produce only a Latin tag. It was an emotional: ‘Fiat justitia!’
Aysgarth tried to reply and failed. Mutely they shook hands. Englishmen really are extraordinary in their ruthless pursuit of the stiff upper lip. If those men had belonged to any other race they would no doubt have slobbered happily over each other for some time.
‘Venetia,’ said my father at last, somehow achieving a casual tone, ‘ring the bell and we’ll ask Pond to conjure up the Veuve Clicquot.’
But I ignored him. Taking advantage of the fact that women were permitted to be demonstrative in exceptional circumstances, I exclaimed to Aysgarth for the first time in my life: ‘My darling Mr Dean!’ and impulsively slipped my arms around his neck to give him a kiss.
‘Really, Venetia!’ said my father annoyed. ‘Young women can’t run around giving unsolicited hugs to clergymen! What a way to behave!’
But my Mr Dean said: ‘If there were more unsolicited hugs in the world a clergyman’s lot would be a happier one!’ And to me he added simply, ‘Thank you, Venetia. God bless you.’
In ecstasy I rang the bell for champagne.
‘We need to be accepted as persons, as whole persons, for our own sake.’
JOHN A. T. ROBINSON
Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich 1959–1969
Writing about Honest to God in the Sunday Mirror, 7th April 1963
I
Aysgarth drank quite a bit. Not quite a lot. But quite a bit. There’s a difference. ‘Quite a lot’ means serious drinking twice a day. ‘Quite a bit’ means serious drinking occasionally and moderate drinking in between. Aysgarth was apparently the kind of drinker who seldom touched alcohol during the day but who regularly had a couple of whiskies at six o’clock. If he went to a dinner-party later he would then drink a glass of sherry before the meal, a couple of glasses of wine with the food and a hefty measure of port once the cloth was drawn. This was by no means considered a remarkable consumption in the political circles in which my father moved, and probably the upper reaches of London ecclesiastical society also regarded such drinking habits as far from excessive, yet by 1957 my father was afraid a rumour might circulate that Aysgarth was a secret drinker.
‘He keeps his bottle of whisky behind the Oxford Dictionary in his study!’ my father said scandalised to my mother after this eccentricity had been innocently revealed to him. ‘What a risk to take! He’s paying lip-service, of course, to the tradition that clergymen shouldn’t indulge in spirits, but what are the servants going to think when they discover the clandestine bottle? He’d do better to keep it openly on the sideboard!’
‘Since Mr Aysgarth hasn’t had a lifetime’s experience of dealing with servants,’ said my mother delicately, ‘perhaps he thinks they won’t find out about the bottle.’
‘I disillusioned him, I assure you, but he didn’t turn a hair. “I’m not a drunk and my conscience is clear!” he declared, not believing a word I said, and he even had the nerve to add: “‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’!” He’s quite incorrigible.’
My father also disapproved of Aysgarth’s occasional trick of drinking too fast. On that day in 1957 as we celebrated the offer of the Starbridge deanery, he downed three glasses of champagne in a series of thirsty gulps and sighed as if longing for more. It was not offered to him. ‘Fancy drinking champagne like
