Scandalous Risks

‘In that case you must approach his predecessor. Dr Wand’s not dead yet, is he?’

‘No, but I have a fatal knack of alienating Anglo-Catholics.’

‘Then your Dean at Westminster –’

‘He’s been cool towards me for some time. I’ve been paying too much attention to my international concerns and not giving enough time to the Abbey.’

‘But there must be someone who can rescue you!’ said my father outraged. ‘I thought Christians were supposed to be famous for their brotherly love!’

Aysgarth somehow produced a laugh but before he could reply my father said suddenly: ‘What about your old diocese? Can you approach the Bishop of Starbridge?’

‘He’s another man I don’t know well. You’re forgetting that I left Starbridge before he was appointed.’

‘But I know him,’ said my father, who was one of the largest landowners in the Starbridge diocese. ‘He’s a dry old stick but we’re on good terms. Just you leave this to me, Aysgarth, and I’ll see what I can do …

IV

Neither my father nor Aysgarth hoped for more than a canonry, and both of them were aware how unlikely it was that any choice position would fall vacant at the right moment, but within twenty-four hours of their secret conference the Dean of Starbridge suffered a stroke and it was clear he would be obliged to retire. At once my father plunged into action. The deanery was a Crown appointment, but my father, undeterred by the thought of those hideous letters ‘W.I.’ in Aysgarth’s file, started swamping the Prime Minister’s clerical advisers with claret at the Athenaeum. He was helped by having an eligible candidate to promote: Aysgarth knew Starbridge well from his years as Archdeacon, and as a first-class administrator he was more than capable of running one of the greatest cathedrals in England. My father beavered away optimistically only to be appalled when the Prime Minister admitted to him during a chance encounter at the Palace of Westminster that since the deanery was such an important appointment he intended to let Archbishop Fisher have the last word.

‘Oh my God!’ I said in despair when my father broke the news. By this time I had insinuated myself into the crisis so successfully that my father was taking the unprecedented step of treating me as his confidante. ‘Mrs Fisher’s Coronation hat!’

‘If Aysgarth fails to get that deanery,’ said my father, ‘just because Dido made a catty remark about a hat –’

‘We can’t let it happen, Papa, we simply can’t – Fisher must be tamed.’ It was now 1957 and the entire summer stretched before us. ‘Is he interested in racing?’ I demanded feverishly. ‘We could offer him our box at Ascot. Or what about tennis? We could offer him our debenture seats for the Wimbledon fortnight. Or cricket – you could invite him to the Pavilion at Lords –’

‘My dear girl, Fisher’s hardly the man to be swayed by mere frivolities!’

‘Then what’s his ruling passion in life?’

‘Canon law.’

The problem seemed insuperable.

After a pause during which we racked our brains for inspiration I asked: ‘Who, technically, has the power to overrule the Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘The Queen and God. I mean, the Queen. I really can’t start believing in God at my age –’

‘Never mind God, let’s concentrate on the Queen. Why don’t you pull a string at the Palace?’

‘What string? I don’t have a string – you know very well that I’ve never been the courtier type!’

‘Now look here, Papa: are you a peer of the realm or aren’t you?’

‘I’m beginning to feel like the inhabitant of a lunatic asylum. Venetia, the Queen would only refer the matter back to the Prime Minister, and since we already know Macmillan’s determined to pass the buck to Fisher –’

‘Then we’ve just got to conquer that Archbishop. Let’s think again. He’s an ex-headmaster, isn’t he? If you were to invite him to dinner with the headmaster of Eton and throw in the Bishop of Starbridge for good measure –’

‘This has all come to pass because back in 1945 Aysgarth married that bloody woman!’ exclaimed my father, finally giving way to his rage. ‘Why on earth did he marry her? That’s what I’d like to know! Why on earth did he do it?’

It was a question I was to ask myself many times in the years to come.

V

Our fevered plotting resulted in my father’s decision to give a little all-male dinner-party at the House of Lords. This made me very cross as I had planned to charm the Archbishop by begging him to tell me all about his life as headmaster of Repton, but my father merely said: ‘Women should keep out of this sort of business. Why don’t you start training for a decent job instead of loafing around smoking those disgusting cigarettes and reading George Eliot? If you’d gone up to Oxford –’

‘What good’s Oxford to me when all public school Englishmen run fifty miles from any woman who’s mad enough to disclose she has a brain bigger than a pea?’

‘There’s more to life than the opposite sex!’

‘It’s easy for you to say that – you’re tottering towards your sixty-sixth birthday!’

‘Tottering? I never totter – how dare you accuse me of senility!’

‘If you can spend your time making monstrous statements, why shouldn’t I follow your example?’

My father and I had this kind of row with monotonous regularity; I had long since discovered that this was an infallible way of gaining his attention. The rows had now become stylised. After the ritual door-slamming my long-suffering mother was permitted to play the peacemaker and bring us together again.

However on this occasion events failed to follow their usual course because before my mother could intervene my father took the unprecedented step of initiating the reconciliation. He did it by pretending the row had never happened. When I returned to the house after a furious walk around St James’s Park he immediately surged out of his study to waylay me.

‘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.