answer.
For a moment I recalled this mystery when Charley erupted into Fortnum’s that afternoon and hurried over to the table where I was waiting for him; slim and small, he looked so much younger than his years. I cheered myself with the reflection that at least he was mature enough to dress properly and avoid looking a mess. His short dark hair was combed and smoothed. His pale brown eyes blazed with energy. He was breathless, an indication of how hard he had tried to arrive on time, but he was smiling, delighted to see me.
‘Dad! So sorry I’m late, but …’ After he had produced his very acceptable excuse for keeping me waiting we shook hands, sat down and ordered tea. I then asked him about his work, and when he began to talk about the Lent sermons he was planning I became so interested that I quite forgot about my arduous meeting at Church House. I even forgot to enquire why he was so anxious to see me, but eventually, after the waitress had deposited our tea on the table and promised to return with the hot buttered crumpets, I remembered to ask what was troubling him.
‘Well, the first thing I want to talk to you about is Michael’s behaviour,’ said Charley, grabbing a sugar-cube to stave off his hunger-pangs. ‘But please don’t accuse me of telling tales behind his back. I’m acting solely with his welfare in mind, and the truth is his ghastly girlfriend hasn’t been faithful to him. So if he’s crazy enough to marry her –’
‘He isn’t. The engagement’s off.’
‘Oh, thank goodness! Actually I didn’t think he could possibly be serious since I hear on good authority that he hasn’t been faithful to her either. He’s been secretly plunging around with yet another girl from that awful Marina Markhampton’s dreadful set –’
‘Charley, repeating gossip really isn’t a suitable occupation for a priest.’
‘I know, but Michael’s such a chump about girls that I can’t help feeling concerned – and it’s Christian to be concerned, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘And if I tell you everything you can pray for him too, and that must be better than just me praying alone. Anyway, this new girl he fancies is called Holly Carr, and as a matter of fact she’s rather nice – I met her at that party Venetia gave last November – so maybe Michael will marry her, who knows, but he shouldn’t sleep with her first. It’s quite wrong to treat a nice girl with such absolutely unbridled contempt.’
I said nothing.
‘Well, aren’t you going to condemn Michael for carrying on with two girls at once?’
‘Since you know my views on such behaviour I hardly think it’s necessary for me to repeat them.’ Telling myself that Charley’s unedifying behaviour sprang from his insecurity as an adopted son and that any attempt to reprove him for being a priggish sneak would only make that insecurity worse, I made a big effort to change the subject.
‘Talking of Venetia,’ I said, ‘have you seen her since she was kind enough to invite you to that party in November?’
‘It was her husband who invited me – Venetia herself always behaves as if she finds me repulsive, and every other girl I meet reacts in the same way. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall in sheer despair.’
With dismay I realised that I had given him yet another opportunity to dramatise his insecurity. Charley had never had what was nowadays described as ‘a steady girlfriend’. I regarded it as another symptom of his immaturity. ‘Don’t talk such nonsense!’ I said, trying to sound robust. ‘You may not be classically handsome, but –’
‘Actually my utter failure with women brings me to the second thing I want to talk to you about. I think I’m being called to be a monk.’
The waitress chose that moment to arrive with our plate of hot buttered crumpets.
VII
Few bishops could have claimed to be a more loyal supporter of the monks and nuns in Anglican orders than I was, but it is a fact of life that parents want their children to marry and procreate. This is obviously such a deep-rooted human desire that one might call it a biological absolute truth, and it explains the surge of disappointment felt by parents when for whatever reasons their children abstain from marriage. I know there are Roman Catholic cultures where parents consider it an honour if their child chooses a celibate life, but I have noticed that the child is usually one of a large family and can be spared without too great a sense of loss. I did not have a large family of children. I had two sons and I wanted neither of them to be cut off from the complex dimensions of human fulfilment which I had experienced as a husband and father.
Indeed the fact that Charley was my adopted son only made me more anxious that he should wind up a married man with two-point-three children – or whatever current statistics rated the norm for a middle-class Englishman in the mid-twentieth century. If he deviated from this norm I knew I would feel that despite all my efforts I had failed to bring him up properly – and I did not want to think I had failed in any way with Charley. I needed Charley to be a success. It justified all the hardship I had endured in the early years of my marriage. Like his hero-worship of me, his success was part of my reward.
Telling myself that this new crisis was merely a manifestation of his continuing immaturity, I fought back my panic and toiled to appear mildly surprised. I said: ‘Isn’t this a trifle sudden?’
‘Yes, but it’s abundantly clear to me now that I’ve no hope of serving God properly unless I’m in an all-male environment and soaking myself in asceticism.’ Apparently unconscious of any irony he took a most un ascetic mouthful of hot buttered crumpet.
Still immaculately courteous I enquired: ‘But what’s driven you to abandon all hope of marriage?’
‘The realisation that I’m desperately in love with a married woman who finds me repulsive.’
‘You mean –’
‘Yes. I’m besotted with Venetia,’ said Charley, again referring to the young woman who had been Lyle’s protégée. ‘I think of her constantly. I dream of her. I toss and turn in bed every night until I’m drenched in sweat –’
Much relieved to receive this new evidence that Charley was sexually normal I said dryly: ‘How very inconvenient.’
‘Inconvenient! Dad, I can’t tell you – words fail me – it’s impossible for me even to begin to describe the quality of my erections –’
‘Dear me.’
‘– and they always come at exactly the wrong moment! Never in all my life have I experienced such –’
‘I’m sure they’re most remarkable. But Charley, I suspect the real question here is not why you should have fallen in love with Venetia but why you should always be falling in love with women who are unavailable for marriage. After all, Venetia isn’t the first of these hopeless passions of yours, is she? There was the married lady-dentist when you were up at Cambridge – and then there was that nun who gave those lectures on the mystics –’
‘Those were just adolescent infatuations. This is the real thing – and what slays me, Dad, is that I could have married her when she was single back in 1963! If only –’
‘You
