LITMIR.BIZ

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promised my father I wouldn’t do it. If I seem upset it’s because I’m angry that I’ve broken my word to him.’ Diving into the carriage he collapsed in a heap on the seat.

      Charley, who had been dipping into my copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, hastily shoved it aside but I paid him no attention. I remained in the corridor and stared out of the window at the smooth hills of the Starbridge diocese. The train was now hurtling towards our journey’s end.

      ‘Nick and I are down here for Easter, of course,’ said Charley, appearing beside me as the train slowed to a crawl on the outskirts of the city. ‘Nick stayed on after the end of term to begin the swot for his exams, and I delayed my return to Starbridge in order to make a retreat with the Fordite monks in London … Are you staying with the Aysgarths or are you heading for home?’

      ‘The former.’ As the train lurched over a set of points on its approach to the station I stepped back into the carriage and said abruptly to Nick: ‘Are we going to meet again?’

      ‘Oh yes. And again. And again. And again.’

      ‘What a terrifying prospect!’

      ‘No, it’s okay, you don’t have to worry. I’m benign.’

      ‘I see,’ I said. ‘A recurring phenomenon which ought to be entirely harmless. Like Halley’s Comet.’

      Finally I saw him smile. I noticed that he had good teeth, very even, and that when his mouth was relaxed he lost the air of solemnity conjured up by his spectacles. Again my memory was jogged, and as it occurred to me that he was as watchable as a gifted actor I at last solved the riddle of his familiarity. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Are you any relation of Martin Darrow, the actor?’

      ‘He’s my half-brother.’

      I relaxed. Although I’m not averse to paranormal puzzles I much prefer mysteries that are capable of a rational explanation. ‘My mother’s mad on him,’ I said agreeably, ‘never misses an episode of his comedy series, stays glued to the TV. But surely he must be at least thirty years older than you are?’

      ‘My father had a rather peculiar private life.’

      ‘Come on, chaps!’ exclaimed Charley, plunging bossily back into the carriage as the train finally halted at the platform. ‘Get a move on! Nick, as you’ve only got a duffle-bag, could you give Venetia a hand with her suitcases?’

      I stepped down on to the platform accompanied by my psychic porter. The sun was shining and far away in the distance beyond the train, beyond the railway yard, beyond the roofs of the mean little villas which flanked the tracks, I saw the slim straight spire of the Cathedral.

      Blazing with energy Charley bounded ahead and by the time Nick and I emerged from the station he was bouncing towards the episcopal car, a black Rover, as Mrs Ashworth emerged from the driver’s seat. I knew now, six years after our first meeting, that she was the same age as Aysgarth, but on that day she looked more like forty-five than sixty-one. It was not only her slender figure which made her seem youthful but the smooth straight hair coiled simply in a bun; an elderly woman who has the guts to flout fashion by refusing a permanent wave really does deserve to look a long way from the geriatric ward.

      Ever since our first meeting when she had boldly identified me as a femme fatale despite the massive evidence to the contrary, I had secretly labelled her my heroine and now, once again, my admiration for her was renewed. She was wearing a pale lilac-coloured raincoat, unbuttoned to reveal a straight grey skirt and a sky-blue blouse – unremarkable clothes, but on her they looked as if they had arrived by special messenger that morning from Paris. Her navy shoes, so different from the old ladies’ ‘support’ footwear which my mother favoured, were notable for the elegance of their stiletto heels. Mrs Ashworth might have turned sixty, but this boring fact had evidently long since been dismissed by her as trivial. Her triumph over the ravages of time was superb.

      ‘Hullo, Nicholas!’ she exclaimed warmly after she had given Charley a peck on the cheek, but I knew she was much more interested in me. ‘Venetia – what a surprise! I saw Dido Aysgarth earlier today but she didn’t mention they were expecting you at the Deanery.’

      ‘They’re not expecting me. To be quite honest, Mrs Ashworth, I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I’m a bit bouleversée at the moment.’

      ‘How exciting! Come and have tea. I’ve got a prayer-group turning up later and there’s a visiting American bishop who comes and goes like the Cheshire cat’s smile, but at the moment I’m absolutely free.’

      My spirits rose, and accepting her invitation with gratitude I slid into the back seat of the Bishop’s Rover.

      IV

      The South Canonry, where the Ashworths lived, was an early Georgian house far smaller than the old episcopal palace but still too large for a modestly-paid executive with a wife and two adult sons. The garden consisted almost entirely of labour-saving lawns; full-time gardeners were no longer an episcopal perk, and the Ashworths were aided only by a man who came once a week to civilise the lawns with a motor-mower. Mrs Ashworth hated gardening and kept no plants in the house. I always found the bare, uncluttered look in her home immensely appealing.

      As I was almost the same age as Charley I had been invited to the house occasionally in the past along with various Aysgarths and other young people in the diocese, but the visits had been infrequent and I had never come to know the Ashworths well. Neither had my parents. My father respected the Bishop’s intellect but found Ashworth was fundamentally unsympathetic to his sentimental, old-fashioned brand of humanism. Whereas Aysgarth was tolerant of agnostics Ashworth seemed hard put to conceal his opinion that agnosticism was an intellectual defect – and there were other differences too, as we all discovered over the years, between the Bishop and the Dean. Aysgarth was gregarious with an apparently inexhaustible supply of good humour, whereas Ashworth, behind his cast-iron charm, was a very private, very serious man. Laymen like my father dubbed Ashworth ‘churchy’ – that sinister pejorative adjective so dreaded by clerics – but Aysgarth was unhesitatingly labelled ‘one of us’. Ashworth, isolated to some degree by the eminence of his office, was held to resemble Kipling’s cat who walked by himself; his close friends had been left behind in Cambridge in 1957, and perhaps this was one of the reasons why he was so close to his wife. It was widely observed how well attuned they were to each other. They seemed to generate that special harmony which one finds more often among childless couples, the harmony of two people who find each other entirely sufficient for their emotional needs.

      Considering that the marriage was successful, people found it immensely interesting that the two sons should have undergone such obvious problems: Charley had run away from home when he was eighteen while later Michael had been thrown out of medical school. However, these embarrassing episodes now belonged to the past. Charley had been rescued, sorted out and replaced on the rails of conformity, while Michael had been steered into the employment of the BBC with happy results. Why Charley should have run away from home no one had any idea, but Michael’s hedonistic behaviour was universally attributed to a desire to rebel against his father’s puritanical views on sin.

      ‘There’s a screw loose in that family somewhere,’ Dido would say darkly, ‘you mark my words.’

      The irony of this statement was that Aysgarth had the biggest possible screw loose in his family – Dido herself – yet all his children were turning out wonderfully well. This fact must have been very galling to the Ashworths as they struggled to surmount their problems at the South Canonry.

      When I arrived at the house that afternoon I was immediately soothed by its well-oiled serenity. The drawing-room was notably dust-free and arranged with a tidiness which was meticulous but not oppressive. A superb tea was waiting to be served. The telephone rang regularly but was silenced almost at once by the Bishop’s secretary in her lair by the front door. Dr Ashworth himself was out, fulfilling an official engagement, but if he had been present he too would have been running smoothly, just like the house. I could remember him appearing during

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