– I could do all that; I’m perfectly capable of behaving like a gentleman and playing the game according to the rules, but where would it get me? Absolutely nowhere. I found that out last night when I made that mild approach and you dodged away around the coffee-cups. Well, dodging around the coffee-cups may be great fun for you, but frankly I’m not prepared to be treated as a minor inconvenience. I want to get to know you very much better as soon as possible – which is why I suggested this drive –’
‘Then why aren’t we driving? I don’t want to spend all afternoon in front of this five-barred gate while you regale me with impassioned nonsense!’
I started the engine and we drove on.
II
Within minutes we had emerged on to a broad plateau, and ahead I could see a track leading away from the road towards the ridge which marked the summit of the Downs.
‘Stop the car on the verge by that path,’ said Lyle. ‘This is where we begin the trek to the Ring.’
‘There’s no need to sound as if you wished you were chaperoned!’ I said lightly as I halted the car once more. ‘Now that I’ve defined exactly where I stand I promise I’ll behave like a stainless-steel saint for a couple of hours.’
‘What happens after a couple of hours?’
‘We’ll be back at the palace and you can hide behind the Bishop.’
As I opened the passenger door she said, ‘You’re very interested in the Bishop, aren’t you?’
‘Is there anyone in the Church of England who isn’t?’
We set off up the track. I wanted to hold her hand but I exercised an immaculate self-discipline and kept my fists shoved deep in my pockets. However I was not dissatisfied with my progress. At least she had neither slapped my face nor called me a cad nor demanded to be returned immediately to Starbridge.
‘If you want to know me better,’ she said at last, ‘why don’t you set the pace by helping me to know more about you? Most men usually can’t wait to recite their life-histories, but you seem peculiarly reticent.’
‘I didn’t intend this to be a history lesson. I’d rather talk about the present.’
‘What’s wrong with your past?’
‘It’s boring. I was born in the right county in the right residential neighbourhood of one of the right towns. My father has the right sort of profession and my mother indulges in the right sort of hobbies. I went to the right schools and the right university, got myself ordained at the right age and began my right career at the right time with the right man. Then I taught at the right places, wrote the right book and eventually became a Canon of the right cathedral. It’s all very dull, isn’t it? Dr Jardine’s past is so much more interesting than mine.’
All Lyle said was, ‘You’ve left out the right marriage to the right wife.’
‘So I have. Careless of me. I suppose that was because she did the wrong thing and died.’
We walked on. The sun blazed on the grassy hills dotted with sheep, and as we moved towards the summit of the ridge the view began to expand in every direction. It was uncannily quiet.
At last Lyle said, ‘You don’t give much away.’
‘Does anyone, even the people who rush to recite the carefully selected facts of their life at tedious length?’ I was trying to establish a line of conversation which would tempt her to rebut my argument with disclosures about herself, but she merely said with detachment, ‘I agree that the exact truth about people is usually impossible to know, but I think most of the time one can make an accurate guess about what goes on.’ She paused to look back across the valley behind us. ‘Take the Starmouths, for example,’ she said. ‘The Earl’s a good decent Englishman of the old school who takes a conscientious interest in his estates, does his bit for the country by a regular attendance at the House of Lords, and is devoted to his wife and children. Lady Starmouth probably gets a bit bored with him but she’s fundamentally good and decent too so she doesn’t rattle around like a society hostess but amuses herself instead with the safest class of men – clergymen, who have a strong stake in sticking to the proprieties. Now, I’m not saying this is the exact truth about either of the Starmouths, but I think the odds are I’ve given you an accurate thumbnail sketch. I mean, I don’t seriously believe, do you, that Lady Starmouth is a secret drug-fiend while the Earl keeps a mistress in St John’s Wood?’
‘Lady Starmouth is certainly not a secret drug-fiend. But –’ I thought of the Earl’s candid admiration of Loretta ‘– I don’t think I’m as sure as you are about that mistress in St John’s Wood. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to make reliable guesses about anyone’s intimate life.’ Without looking at her directly I was nevertheless poised to analyse her reaction.
But she merely said, ‘Isn’t the Earl a little old for fun and games in St John’s Wood?’
‘He might consider a mistress rejuvenating. But no,’ I said with a smile as we moved on again towards the summit of the ridge, ‘I confess I don’t really believe the Earl has a secret love-life any more than I believe Lady Starmouth is burning to seduce the Bishop.’
She laughed. ‘Lady Starmouth’s whole success with the Bishop lies in the fact that she at least would never play the over-passionate female in his company!’
‘Are there so many over-passionate females besieging Dr Jardine?’
Lyle suddenly chose to treat the subject seriously. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘A bishop’s more on a pedestal than an ordinary clergyman, but there were one or two very tricky women when he was Dean of Radbury, and apparently when he was Vicar of St Mary’s he was forever fending off society women who were far less principled than Lady Starmouth.’
I said equally seriously, to show that I understood the problems which could exist for certain clergymen, ‘But surely troublesome women reserve their most ardent attentions for bachelors?’
‘Oh, no doubt life became fractionally less hectic once he was married but unfortunately many women even today are tempted to write Mrs Jardine off as insignificant and imagine that the Bishop’s languishing in an unhappy marriage. However that’s rubbish, of course. The Jardines may seem to a stranger to be ill-assorted but anyone who knows them well will tell you they’re devoted to each other. It’s an attraction of opposites.’
We had reached the top of the ridge while she was speaking, and as we paused to survey the view we found that the outlines of the landscape soon faded into the heat-haze. Abandoning the obscure prospect across the valley I turned my attention to Starbury Ring which was now visible less than fifty yards away. The Ring consisted of two dozen tall rocks, planted several thousand years ago for purposes which were no longer known but which at once conjured up images in my mind of human sacrifices and other horrors of heathen worship. I thought how comforting it would be to believe that all bloodstained idolatry in Europe now lay sealed in the past, and for a moment I wished I were a Victorian who still had faith in the doctrine of progress. How delightful it must have been to look forward with confidence to the time when mankind would have achieved its inevitable perfection! How soothing to be able to picture an immanent, cosily accessible God who could be known with the aid of reason and a good education! But now the War had destroyed the illusion of progress, bloodstained idolatry was once more invading Europe, and the powerful mind of Karl Barth had perceived that God was remote, utterly transcendent, capable of being known only by revelation.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said suddenly to Lyle. ‘The sight of pagan stones sent me off at a theological tangent. You were saying the Jardines were devoted to each other –’
‘Yes, Mrs Jardine adores the Bishop, and the Bishop, like all men, adores being adored. Of course she gets on his nerves occasionally – well, you saw that this morning, didn’t you? – but on the whole he considers a little