I could reply the front door banged far away in the hall. ‘That’ll be either Charles or our American bishop,’ said Mrs Ashworth, rising to her feet, ‘and let’s hope it’s Charles. I do like Americans, but all that sunny-natured purring’s so exhausting.’
‘Darling!’ shouted the Bishop downstairs.
‘Coo-ee!’ called Mrs Ashworth with relief, and added indulgently to me: ‘Isn’t he funny? He so often arrives home and shouts: “Darling!” like that. It’s as if he has no idea what to do next and is waiting for instructions.’
In walked the Bishop, looking like a film star in a costume melodrama. The old episcopal uniform of apron, gaiters and frock-coat, so suitable for the eighteenth-century bishops who had had to ride around their dioceses on horseback, was finally giving way to more modern attire, but for his official engagement that afternoon Dr Ashworth had decided to be conservative, and he looked well in his swashbuckling uniform. He was two years older than Aysgarth, but like his wife he appeared younger – not much younger, perhaps, but he could still have passed for a man on the right side of sixty.
‘How are your parents?’ he said to me agreeably after the greetings had been exchanged.
‘Seething. I’ve just left home and embarked on a new life.’
He gave me his charming smile but it failed to reach the corners of his eyes. Perhaps he was trying to decide whether I could be classified as ‘wayward’ or ‘lost’ or even ‘fallen’. Smoothly he fell back on his erudition. ‘This sounds like a case of metanoia!’ he remarked. ‘By which I mean –’
‘I know what it means. The Dean told me. It’s a turning away from one’s old life and the beginning of a new one.’
‘In Christ,’ said the Bishop casually, as if correcting an undergraduate who had made an error in a tutorial. ‘I hope the Dean didn’t forget to mention Christ, but these liberal-radicals nowadays seem to be capable of anything.’ He turned to his wife and added: ‘I lost count of the times I was asked about Honest to God this afternoon. People were deeply upset. It’s a pity Robinson wasn’t there to see the results of his ill-informed, half-baked radicalism.’
‘I thought Robinson was supposed to be a conservative,’ I said. ‘After all, he wasn’t invited to contribute to Soundings, was he?’
The Bishop looked startled. ‘Who’s been talking to you of Soundings?’
‘The Dean was very enthusiastic when the book was published.’
‘I’d have more confidence in Stephen’s bold espousal of the views contained in these controversial books if I knew he was a trained theologian,’ said Dr Ashworth. ‘However, as we all know, he read Greats, not Theology, when he was up at Oxford.’
‘But since he’s been a clergyman for almost forty years,’ I said, ‘don’t you think he might have picked up a little theology somewhere along the way?’
The Bishop was clearly not accustomed to being answered back by a young female who had never even been to a university. Possibly he was unaccustomed to being answered back by anyone. He took a moment to recover from the shock but then said suavely enough: ‘Good point! But perhaps I might draw a parallel here with the legal profession. Barristers and solicitors are all qualified lawyers, but when a knotty legal problem arises the solicitors refer the matter to the barristers, the experts, in order to obtain the best advice.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I must now leave you to your expertise,’ I said politely, rising to my feet, ‘and descend from the mountain top of the South Canonry to the valley of the Deanery.’ I turned to my hostess. Thanks so much for the tea and sympathy, Mrs Ashworth.’
‘Drop in again soon,’ said my heroine with a smile, ‘and if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said the Bishop, suddenly becoming pastoral. ‘If there’s anything we can do –’
‘I’ll see you out, Venetia,’ said his wife, and led the way downstairs to the hall. As she opened the front door she added: ‘You won’t want to lug your suitcases to the Deanery – I’ll ask Charley to bring them over later in the car.’
I thanked her before saying anxiously: ‘I do hope I didn’t upset the Bishop when I answered back.’
‘My dear, he was enthralled! Such a delightful change for him to meet someone who doesn’t treat him as a sacred object on a pedestal.’ She looked at me thoughtfully with her cool dark eyes before musing: ‘Maybe you’ve been concentrating on the wrong age-group; very few young men have the self-assurance or the savoir-faire to cope with clever women. Try looking for something intelligent, well-educated and pushing forty.’
‘It’ll be either married or peculiar.’
‘Not necessarily … Didn’t I hear a rumour once that Eddie Hoffenberg was rather smitten with you?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mrs Ashworth – I’d rather die a virgin spinster!’
Mrs Ashworth merely smiled her enigmatic smile and said: ‘Do keep in touch.’
I drifted away down the drive towards the Deanery.
V
Eddie Hoffenberg emerged from the Deanery just as I approached the front door, so there was no possibility of avoiding him. My father had once referred to him as ‘Aysgarth’s poodle – that bloody Hun,’ but my father, who had lost his best friends in the First War, was notorious for his anti-German sentiment. Other people, less outspoken than my father, were content to regard Eddie with a polite antipathy. ‘It’s my cross,’ Eddie would say with gloomy relish, and sometimes he would even add: ‘Suffering is good for the soul.’
‘It’s clergymen like Eddie Hoffenberg,’ I had said once to Primrose, ‘who make Christianity look like an exercise in masochism.’
‘It’s Germans like Eddie Hoffenberg,’ said Primrose, ‘who encourage the belief that we were doing them a favour by trying to kill them in the war.’
However although there was no denying that Eddie was a German, he was hardly typical of Hitler’s so-called master race, and the fact that he had eventually acquired British citizenship marked him out as a very unusual German indeed. He was tall, bald and bespectacled; his faintly Semitic cast of features had caused him to be bullied by Aryan monsters in the Nazi army, but since he had no Jewish blood in him, this experience had provided him with additional evidence that he was doomed to special suffering. Fortunately his army career had been brief. In 1944 at the age of twenty he had been captured by the British in Normandy, imported to England and dumped in a prison camp on Starbury Plain. Two weeks later Aysgarth, then Archdeacon of Starbridge, had paid a pastoral visit to the camp and naturally Eddie had been quite unable to resist the opportunity to moan to him about how awful life was.
It was not difficult to understand why Eddie had chosen to adopt Aysgarth as a hero, but it was far harder to understand why Aysgarth had chosen to return Eddie’s devotion. ‘Aysgarth has five sons,’ my father remarked once to my mother. Why should he want to play the father to a Teutonic disaster who’s perpetually encased in gloom?’ My mother had no answer, but Primrose eventually produced an explanation. ‘Eddie changed Father’s life,’ she told me. ‘It was Eddie who wrote to Bishop Bell and said how wonderful Father was with the POWs, and since that letter led to Father’s vital friendship with Bell, Father can’t help being sentimental about Eddie and regarding him as a mascot.’
Eddie came from Dresden, which had been devastated by fire-bombing in 1945– None of his family had survived. After the war he had quickly reached the decision that he had to begin a new life elsewhere, and when he thought of the one friend he still possessed he sought Aysgarth’s help. Aysgarth encouraged him to be a clergyman. Eddie had been a Lutheran once, but that was in the old, vanished life. Once Aysgarth had extracted the necessary money