by A. N. Wilson
—Start speaking, and then move, Ingrid. Don’t move then speak.
—So, when do I come forward?
—Hang on!
It was lovely, she was getting her little harrumph back, the little Madcap of the Remove hoot in her voice, which, ever since coming out of hospital, had been low and unlike herself.
—Yes . . .
And having fiddled about with her script, she came behind me and began to say my lines.
—I’ll set – Yes, that’s the moment to go – I’ll set out an answer to the charges – AND MOVE. –that I anticipate you’ll make against me.
She had come behind me and placed two hands on my shoulders. We must have touched one another before, I’m sure we had. We air-kissed when she’d been to our house for drinks once, before the Quake, but when she came to see Mum in hospital once or twice, we had not. That was a sign, of course, that we could not kiss one another, not just in a social way, any more. That something had already happened.
And now I felt her long white hands on my shoulder blades. Don’t laugh at me, reader, when I say that I practically swooned. I looked back over my right shoulder with a nervous smile and I could feel myself blushing so deeply. And our eyes met. And that was when we both knew, because there was a silence – it was probably only about five seconds, but it felt like forever. Life changed.
And, I was thinking, this is incredible, in front of Mum, and Lewis Compton. All she was doing was marching me forward a few paces, and saying the lines of the play while I walked, and she kept her hands on my shoulder blades. But it felt as if we were making love. That was because we were making love.
—And then when you get to But Greek delight cost me my ruin, stand still, she said. Her hands were removed.
It was like that deep heat treatment you get sometimes for aching joints. Her long white hands had the power to scald. I wanted those hands to grab me by my thick mousey hair, and turn me round to face her, and I wanted her open, smiling mouth to kiss mine, and I wanted her to start tearing at my clothes.
Instead, she let go of me and said,
—Right, let’s try it. Menelaus, if you give her her cue – If you want to, speak.
Instead of shouting, Nellie, I love you! Nellie, I give myself to you, body and soul, I went through the lines like a good professional.
This is what I mean about it being difficult, knowing how to frame this narrative. Because I now know so much more than I did that evening, eight years ago, about what was passing through people’s heads. And I know what would happen in the end. So I’m just going to try to write it all, like a narrative in a novel, with an all-knowing or almost-all-knowing narrator; only forgive me, reader, if I sometimes butt in, because, as you’ll have realized by now, that’s what I’m like.
The rehearsal broke up. Lewis offered to give Nellie a lift back to the centre of town. Her flat in the Deanery had been put back into some kind of shape by then – the windows replaced, and so on. Nearly all her books had been destroyed when the Cathedral tower came down, but the fireman saved a few hundred of them, crumpled and dusty as they might have been. She was a punctilious backer-up of her material, so though the laptop, and that morning’s work, had been destroyed, much of Euripides and the Masks of God survived on memory sticks, even though she had not looked at her book since the Quake.
You, reader, are going to have to get used to the new Nellie – the one who is both Digby and Eleanor Bartlett. She was much more confident. She got on better with Dionne now, because there was less to hide. She did not attempt, when talking to Mum and me, to disguise Dionne’s follies, but nor was she blind – as Digby had always been – to the woman’s virtues – a warm(ish) heart, and (on the whole) good intentions. Troubles lay ahead – most notably, in the many rows Dionne would have with the people of Aberdeen about the future of their Cathedral. Dionne was one of the many Bishops of our Church who hated architecture. She did not know this. She just thought that buildings, and beautiful objects, and tradition got in the way of the urgent mission to which she and her generation were called. But, like I say, all this lay ahead.
Nellie, her Dean, no longer shied away from telling Dionne when she disagreed with her. She recognized much good that Dionne did – for example, in forging links with the social services and making churches and parish halls available throughout the diocese to help people post-Quake.
Nellie was definitely Nellie now, to more and more people. Her students still referred to her as Digby, and even the Cathedral Folk had been asked to call her Nellie Digby – the ‘Bartlett’ was a thing of the past.
She went back to her flat that evening with her heart pounding. On the one hand, the rehearsal had gone well. Trojan Women was going to be a success, she could feel it, and she also felt a new empowerment, with the two sides to her nature – the scholar and the priest, the public and the private self, come together. For Digby would never have been public-spirited enough to direct a play for semi-professionals and amateurs; she would have been too diffident. And Dean Eleanor would have been too frozen to let Euripides, and his dangerous notions, speak through her. Nellie knew that the masks of God slipped sometimes, and that Euripides was good at snatching the masks away. But Nellie was also relaxed enough about her Anglicanism, now, to let these ideas – God versus no-God, even – dance about in her adorable head, and on her cherry lips. There was no need for Keeping Up Appearances any more. The Quake had torn off our Appearances. We had only what was left beneath, and with any luck, if you have been living a wise life, when Appearance is torn away, you will be left with Reality. And – I’m obsessed by those poems now, thanks to her! –
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
What happened to her that night of the Helen/Hecuba/Menelaus rehearsal was a pivotal moment on the journey. Before she had even got in to the flat, she found herself mentally packing up her bags, and ready to go back to England.
In no particular order, she had these thoughts: I am not cut out to be in the professional clergy. To be a priest, and to say Mass, yes, but my main task, with what years I have left to run, is to finish my book, and continue my life as a scholar. And then, there is Dad. He is the most important person in my life, and I can’t leave him for another few years alone in England. The Quake had made her realize how dependent she was on her father. Something similar had happened between me and Mum – I was quite as dependent on her as she was on me. And if the course of my relationship with Nellie had been a bit confused, and zigzaggy, this was very much down to the Quake, and the way the big shake-up made us both so preoccupied with our parents.
Nellie was thinking – first, I’ll get all my things packed up, and start sending belongings ahead of me to England. There was not that much, not now the library had been obliterated. Then I’ll go and tell Dionne that I’m resigning as Dean. I’ll save up telling Dad until it is all a fait accompli, a lovely present for him. She had begun to compose a letter, in her head, to the Master at Oxford, exploring the possibility of becoming a research fellow at the college, while she looked round for an academic post. She was far from being fixated on Oxford, and would in many ways welcome a change of scene if she could find an appointment somewhere else.
These were the thoughts, doggedly specific, which had been provoked in her practical brain by the shoulder-blades moment, by the moment when our eyes met and we both knew that we were . . . I do not want to use those two words yet . . . in . . . Yes, we were, deep in it. That thing which moves the sun and other stars.
Nellie found it deeply worrying and upsetting. She had not yet fully admitted to herself what it was that was so disturbing her. She felt that maybe those were right, her father included, who had warned her she had not yet made sufficient allowance for the effect of the Quake. She was all bright and breezy and saying she was fine, and all that was wrong with her was a slightly wonky arm. She was temperamentally equipped, after an upbringing in a series of draughty
houses which her parents could not afford to heat, to say, when she was cold and miserable, that she was fine. And for generation before generation, on her father’s side, there had been English people saying the opposite of what they meant, that unpalatable food was lovely, that cold picnics on wet beaches were the greatest possible summer treat. Moreover, those English forebears had all mastered the trick of hiding, from themselves, the secrets of the heart. No one wanted to be thought soppy. As for being soppy in a manner of which the Church had traditionally disapproved – soppy about your own sex – well, it was a phase which adolescents passed through, wasn’t it? The other thing was for Americans and exhibitionists or people in London. She remembered the rueful way in which her father and Uncle Lesley meditated on the fates of their fellow clergy who ‘came a cropper’. And she thought of Mum, good old Mum, laughing quietly at her husband, when he had said, about two parishioners, Miss Kelly and Miss Summers,
—The things people will say! They are perfectly respectable women. It’s a poor lookout if two people can’t share a house without other people drawing conclusions.
—I agree with you, it’s mean to gossip, Mum had said with a laugh.
—Yes, but you don’t think . . .
Nellie could still remember the astonished expression on her father’s face when Mum had failed to reply. When recounting this exchange to one of her friends, Mum had added,
—He said they were sharing a house, but it’s a one-bedroomed cottage.
Love between women, of that sort, was something which was not discussed, probably not understood. She was so close to her father, even closer to him since the Earthquake. The strange feelings, quite new to her, which now possessed her were creating their own earthquakes and aftershocks. She saw utter disruption, the embarrassment of public avowal yawning before her. She saw the awful challenge of complete abandonment. She had never let go, never in her life, never given in to emotion, and never felt emotion so strong. It was not possible to yield to such feelings. Chaos would come. And the thought of it shook her with holy joy, making her realize she must burn her boats fast, resign and leave the Island now, before the Thing Got Out of Control. She surely was in Control still? Though she must make sure never, ever, to be with the Girl alone. Never.
—No, it is lovely to break the routine.
Normally they Skyped at fixed hours, at the beginning or end of one day or the other. But she had had to speak to her father, and it was the first thing she did, that evening, on returning to the flat. Half past ten at night our time, so 11.30 in the morning in Winchester.
—Lesley was on the blower this morning. Says your Pontiff was on the television news.
It was Nellie’s turn for the light laugh.
—She was saying the Cathedral will have to come down.
—It’s far too early to say, Dad. We’ll need structural engineers to look at it. The tower came down.
—With you in it.
—With me in it. The spire collapsed. But the basic structure of the nave remains. I do not see why it should not be repaired and rebuilt. Oswald Fish never wanted the tower in the first place. It was only the then Pontiff who required it.
—‘Proud pompous and prelatical’.
They jointly laughed at one of their shared church anecdotes.
—There’ll be a hullabaloo if Dionne is serious.
—Well, you’re the Dean. You have the ultimate say-so.
—That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. Our canon law on the Island is different from the English. The Bishops have far more executive power over all the fabric of the churches, even the Cathedrals. Deans and Chapters aren’t really autonomous.
—But why would the donkey want to pull the Cathedral down, if it can be saved?
—You know what Bishops are like. Oh, Dad. Not for anyone, not even for Uncle Lesley, but there has been something so much on my mind.
—Go on.
—Dionne and Brian were very kind, offering me a bed when I came out of hospital, and I am really grateful to them. But while I was there . . .
—Go on.
—It was the second or third day. I came down from my bedroom in the middle of the morning. Dionne was letting a man out of her study. They were scurrying to the front door.
—The thought of your Pontiff scurrying is—
—Don’t be mean, Dad.
—Lesley said she reminded him of William Temple. Physically. Not intellectually.
—She did not want me to see her, and the guest, who tried to be matey, was hustled out of the door. Dionne went back into her study, and I went into the kitchen to make myself some coffee. Brian was there. He was having a day off work, and getting ready to go to the Links. Out of the window, he watched the guest being shown into the back of an enormous limo. He said, ‘You know who that was?’ And I said, ‘No’, hadn’t the foggiest. ‘Only Ricky Wong,’ said Brian. Don’t tell, Dad, but I’m so afraid he was making Dionne some kind of offer.
It was not the canon’s way to be ribald, so that his splutter of mirth signalled an understanding that the Bishop and the celebrated Shanghai businessman were hatching some scheme, and that his daughter was naïve in the extreme if she placed any but the most lurid interpretation on the visit.
—Well, do keep me posted.
She paused, because she wanted, and did not want, to speak of the things which had passed through her head as she came home. She would not have said directly, I have fallen in love with a woman, nor, I can’t face what this means so I am coming home, but she would have her own way of speaking about it. Rather, he said,
—How are all the others? How’s the family of the poor little boy?
—Devastated. Angry. Vulnerable. Pitiable to behold.
A huge sigh came from England.
—And Cavan?
—Dad, she’s so GOOD as Hecuba. She doesn’t declaim. She does it as quiet, almost whispered grief, shame, anger. We’re going to mike her up, so she won’t need to project at all. At first I thought it wouldn’t work, with her in a wheelchair, but it is really, really affecting.
—And Cassandra?
—I’m glad that Deirdre said she couldn’t do it after all. There’s something so undignified about poor Cassandra in her madness. Anne Roberts is superb.
—She’s the young actress, the friend of your friend Ingrid.
—She’s not especially my friend, Dad.
After a long silence, he said,
—Well, I wish I was going to see this production.
They spoke every day after that, Nellie and her dad. He had obviously broken his word, and been unable to hold back from discussing the Ricky Wong business with Lesley Mannock, and Nellie had broken her own inner resolution, ’cause she had told me and Mum about it, and we were wondering whether we ought to tell Deirdre.
Here might be the moment to keep you readers up to speed on what happened to our cast of characters in the future, ’cause after this chapter, it’s going to be the question of whether I ever managed to persuade this maddening, beautiful person to admit she was in love for the first time in her life, in love with me.
Deirdre? Well, one effect of the Quake was that the Fuck Bar policy was now in full operation. Barnaby had not moved back in with Deirdre, but he had defied Bar, and allowed Stig to become part of our lives down in Harrow. Mum lent Little Ingrid to Stig and Barnaby, and we all three – he, me and the kid – went rowing several times. Deirdre tried to take Stig rowing, but her stick arms are thinner than the oars and she caught more crabs than there are in Aberdeen Harbour. Nellie did eventually warn her about Ricky Wong’s ambitions. He’d persuaded Bishop Dionne that the Cathedral was a prime site for development. If, like Dionne, you believed that the old Anglican Communion was, in a very real sense, a Community of Outreach, and so much more than a collection of fusty old buildings and hymn books and such, Ricky Wong’s advice would have been music to your ears, as it was to hers. After all, he was offering her millions and millions of Island Dollars. All she would
have to do is spend a fraction of this on some modest quake-proof replacement (Ricky reminded her that when they had the big quake in Christchurch, New Zealand, they had built a cardboard cathedral). The rest could be spent on educational programmes, galvanizing the young, oh, there were no end of things which could be done with the money. We’re talking about eight years ago and, would you believe, the lawsuits are still going on. Deirdre led the charge, of course, but there were many others. Our Island was settled, very largely, by Anglicans. Anglicanism is in the blood. Many, many of us who aren’t Anglicans look to that Cathedral as a symbol. The thought of selling it off to Ricky Wong was abhorrent to thousands of people. But that’s not part of our story. Not my story, anyhow, except in so far as it impacted on Nellie and she on it.
Stig eventually did move in with Deirdre! There was nothing that Bar and her husband could do about it, really. He hit it off with George Eliot at first, squealing with delight as GE repeated ‘Course it’s a fucking parrot’ and ‘Jeez, Norm, don’t blame me’ at inappropriate moments. I was there when GE did it once, and it quite took me back to when I was sixteen and did not get the point of Deirdre, because she turned, in a flustered way, to the parrot and said, ‘I really don’t think . . .’ ‘Course it’s a fucking parrot’ . . . ‘I really don’t think that you should say that, George Eliot’ . . . ‘Course it’s a fucking parrot’, and we were back at St Hilda’s, and Rachael Newton and the gang were taking the piss as poor old Badley Dreary tried to get them to share Lily Briscoe’s Vision.
Some people are not very good at being happy, and it is a knack, not just a matter of luck. And I don’t think poor Deirdre would ever be happy. That’s why she had so skilfully chosen to fall in love with Barnaby who, though a decent bloke, was quite thick emotionally, and thought, when she said that she loved him so much, she’d have him on any terms, even if it meant him loving other women as well, that she meant it. What she meant, as anyone who understood anything could have told that dunderhead Barnaby, was, she wanted him and him alone, come live with me and be my love. Whereas, he thought she meant, leave the kid in my house, while you go off and shag your way round Aberdeen. So she shed a lot of tears over the time between then and now, and she did a lot of tearful staring out of the train window looking at the giant sheep farms and lush vineyards, as she sped towards Carmichael and her parliamentary life, but she never stopped loving our Barn, and maybe some people are just like that, want to be miserable, because they are programmed to be so.
