by Ashly Graham
‘Please, I insist you call me Violet. It is as good a name as any I have.’ As if to reinforce the logic of her request, Dark was pungently treated to a whiff of the same odour as had adhered to her ladyship’s notepaper. Its combination with the various artificial essences that the reverend was marinated in caused the air around them to hiss and turn white with smoke, and the dogs into an even greater frenzy.
The fumes rasped Dark’s throat. ‘And to you I must be Fletcher.’
Lady Enderby seemed unaffected by the chemical reaction. ‘How was your journey? ffanshawe was on time, I trust, and didn’t drive too fast. I always say, put a man behind the wheel of a car and he goes berserk, and ffanshawe’s no exception, are you, my little toad?’
Her chauffeur’s eyes burned but he said nothing.
‘Well now,’ said Lady Enderby; ‘let’s not hang about in the cold, there’s a fire indoors and the decanter awaits.’ She kicked the Pekingeses out of the way. ‘They’ll settle down as soon as they’ve got used to you.’ She drew an arm through his and they walked into the house followed by the dogs.
They were in a cavernous raftered baronial hall. In the huge stone fireplace, which accommodated two opposing stone seats, between two enormous andirons blazed a pyre large enough to roast a brace of martyrs. The heat it generated was enough to fill the whole room.
Dark started: the nudge ffanshawe had given him with his elbow felt more like a dig in the ribs, and it dulled the pain inflicted outside by the Pekingeses teeth in his ankles. Lady Enderby’s chauffeur cum factotum was proffering a salver with one very large schooner of sherry on it, and a small one.
‘Thank you, er...ffanshawe,’ he said, helping himself to the larger and downing a draught of Harvey’s Bristol Cream as anaesthetic and to steady his nerves.
Her ladyship frowned at her chauffeur cum factotum as he handed her the other glass, and turned to her guest. ‘I must apologize, Fletcher. Devil knows I’ve tried to teach him manners, but there’s nothing to be done about the man. Ignore him if you can. Now run along, ffanshawe, run along. Go and bite the heads off some chickens, we’ll have them for dinner tomorrow.’ It seemed a genuine order, for ffanshawe grinned and noiselessly departed.
Casting her shawl onto a chair—she had unwound the boa at the door and given it to ffanshawe, who was now wearing it—Lady Enderby adjusted her scarves over the shoulders of her long purple sheath dress and moved to the hearth. As Dark moved closer, the heat from the fire was so great that he had to retreat several steps, and positioned himself so that Lady Enderby was between him and the flames. He was already perspiring.
His hostess was haloed with flame as she said, ‘I can’t thank you enough for coming, Fletcher. You’ve no idea how important this business is to me.’
‘Oh I do, Violet, I do.’ Dark had forgotten about the business part.
‘No, you don’t.’ His hostess raised her glass at her guest and imbibed, and Dark imitated her. Lady Enderby motioned him to an easy chair and took for herself a cabriole-framed seat facing him. Between them was a low round occasional table with Boulle tortoise-shell inlay, on which she placed her glass, next to an array of dishes of smoked salmon, caviar, canapés, mixed shelled nuts, and a dish of pimento-stuffed olives.
Now that their mistress had come to rest, the three dogs—Dark’s impression had been that there were more, but the number reduced as they calmed down—draped themselves over her feet, watching intently in case she might throw them a morsel.
Although Lady Enderby regarded them fondly, they were disappointed. ‘Tiz, Ally and Meg,’ she said, addressing her guest; ‘they’re named after the three Furies: Tisiphone the Avenger of blood, Alecto the Implacable, and Megæra the Jealous One.’
Nonplussed, Dark inhaled a quantity of salmon, caviar and olives; then he dug his digits into the Braille of nuts hoping for a brazil and was straightway gratified.
Lady Enderby leaned forward. ‘Let us dispense with formalities, Fletcher. How do I grab you? Am I enough to make a reverend wriggle with rapture? Are you longing to swarm all over my form? To jump on my bones?’
This was sudden, but after many hours of rehearsal the ardent Dark was prepared. After tossing off the remainder of his sherry, which both fortified him and drew an appropriately sentimental tear, he placed his glass on the table, fell to his knees before Lady Enderby’s chair, cleared his throat, and sang:
‘“Where e’er you walk,
Cool winds shall fan the shade;
Where e’er you walk...”’
Breaking off Handel’s aria from Semele, he looked tenderly into his hostess’s eyes, the irises of which, like most other things about her, were tinted violette de Parme.
‘We will be like the owl and the pussy-cat in Edward Lear’s poem,’ he breathed, ‘and dance to the light of the moon, the moon, and dance to the light of the moon.’
‘It is possible.’
‘“O lovely Pussible! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!”’
The object of Dark’s affection fluttered her violet-mascaraed lashes, and a deeper blush suffused the violet powder on her face, as she glanced coyly first at the ceiling and then at the floor. Then, more practically, she inserted a fresh cigarette into the antenna of her holder, and pointed to an upright open silver receptacle on a Pembroke table to her left. It contained long lucifer matches. Trying to control his trembling hand, and without getting up, Dark drew one out; and was looking for something to strike it on when it sputtered into flame of its own accord. He proffered the light and watched, riveted, as Lady Enderby drew on the cigarette and exhaled an impossibly long stream of smoke from her violet-glossed lips. Even the smoke was her favourite colour.
Then she picked up and spread a Chinese bamboo fan decorated with painted tissue, and affected to cool her brow with it. Brimming with the Jaguar-, Jerez- and Violet-inspired emotion that was surging through him, Dark was moved to mine the lyrical vein more deeply. He raised himself to one knee beside his inamorata’s chair and seized his hostess’s spare hand.
Locating a section of finger between the gemstones, he kissed it fervently. ‘I am your devoted slave, Violet. Your command is my wish...to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. That’s Tennyson, you know. There’s quite a lot of Tennyson I can call to mind, in fact...’
The loan of the hand was withdrawn. ‘You’ll need more than Tennyson to deal with Ophelia Blondi-Tremolo when she’s made a bishop.’
‘Ha ha! What an amusing thought. That’ll be the day. Hell will freeze before…’
Lady Enderby arched a violet-lined eyebrow. ‘Do you really think so? One does so hate to be cold.’ She put down the fan.
Dark, chuckling, returned to his chair on all fours, grasped the arms and resumed his guest position. Finding that his glass had replenished itself, he refreshed his memory and himself, despite the dryness of the Tio Pepe that he now found himself drinking not suiting his palate as well as the Harvey’s Bristol Cream he had started with, or even the Cypriot Emva version of it that he stocked at home.
Resuming his seduction the reverend said, ‘Do you know Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal? Let me sing it for you…’
‘I’m serious, Fletcher. Next week the curate Ophelia is to be consecrated as a Right Reverend, a bishop, by His Grace the Most Reverend Archbishop of Canterbury…thereby making her a worthy successor to the blow-with-the-prevailing-wind Vicar of Bray in the satirical eighteenth-century song. Heretofore Ophelia has been consistent in one thing only, that of most laudably berating the bishops. But now she shall turn cat-in-pan and instead of berating them, if only verbally, she will agree to become one of them. So my question to you, Fletcher, is: how badly do you want to beat the bishop?’
The nerves in Dark’s arm went dead and his glass, falling, broke on the hardwood floor. He was as horrified as the holy man in Oscar Wilde’s exemplum of the strength of jealousy, when he was informed that his brother had been made Bishop of
Alexandria. Not doubting the truth of what Lady Enderby said, he struck his fist on the nibbles table; whereupon the plates and bowls jumped into the air and scattered their contents, and the dogs went into action.
‘No more!’ he cried above the din, as the romance in his heart was displaced by rage. ‘As Henry the Second said of Thomas Becket, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”’
‘We will do it together, Fletcher,’ said Violet soothingly; ‘and together we will rock the Church to its foundations. The process of demolition has already begun, indeed it is well under way. By the time Blondi-Tremolo realizes how foolish she has been, and how hollow her conversion and utter her apostasy is in joining the rest of the sinners and hypocrites in her profession, there won’t be a priest in good standing left in the land. So far it’s been like shooting fish in a barrel, and when the shooting match is over they’ll all be queuing up at the Gates of Hell and we’ll have to open all the lanes.
‘Fletcher, are you still with me? Your eyes have gone glassy. Ah, there you are ffanshawe. Our guest needs something stronger to drink—bring him a glass of brandy, I think he’s still sober enough for it to do him some good. And by the way, the virtual butler service just served Fletcher Tio Pepe on top of Harvey’s. Fix it when you go.’
The malefic ffanshawe went to a traditional drinks cabinet, poured eau de vie into a balloon glass and brought it to Dark; who, grasping it with both hands as a baby does a beaker, swirled it once and tipped the contents down his gullet.
The elixir fired his belligerence ‘I don’t understand how...’ he fulminated, ‘…Not in a million years would I have thought...’
‘Wheels within wheels, Fletcher. Yours not to reason why, as friend Tennyson wrote, yours but to do and die...this is Charge of the Light Brigade stuff, Fletcher, emphasis on light, but not to worry, you’ll have a lot of help. With my assistance and support you shall discredit Ophelia after she goes corporate. A smear campaign is what I have it mind. Once she is in charge of a diocese as the present Archbishop’s appointee, and toeing the party line, you shall go head to head and toe to toe with her and match her punch for punch.
‘So! my darling Dark, my darkling dear, this is your big opportunity. I am placing a great deal of faith, my kind of faith, in you, and you must understand how deadly serious I am in giving you this responsibility. This calculated move of the Archbishop’s, this ploy to bleach the Church’s underwear and whitewash its walls must not be allowed to succeed. We must visit ruination upon what’s left of the institution, and all the Sunday nincompoops who adhere to its practices not its preachings, by introducing into Canon Law that delightful re-rendering of the Ten Commandments you produced in what has come to be regarded in certain Circles—all nine of them, actually—as an exemplary sermon.
‘Then when we are victorious, Fletcher, and you are my Primate of All England instead of the ape or monkey kind of primate, I will reward you by gathering you unto my bosom. How’s that sound? As Cervantes says in Don Quixote, “Remember the old saying! ‘Faint heart ne’er won fair lady!”’
The reverend blinked thrice. It sounded good to him. No tilter at windmills he.
Chapter Thirty-Three
At Lambeth Palace Ophelia was met at Cardinal Morton’s Tudor brick gatehouse by the Archbishop’s assistant, and escorted inside, past the garden with its ancient fig trees. Entering the neo-Gothic residence they went upstairs to the top floor, and along several corridors lined with offices.
As they got closer to His Grace’s inner sanctum the air became progressively more still and solemn, as the sound of ringing telephones, keyboards, copiers, fax machines and secular-sounding conversation faded. Parquet floors gave way to deep-pile carpeting and, in the theological silence, antique time-pieces ticked off the seconds remaining until the Day of Reckoning.
The Archbishop’s aide was a severe-looking woman of about sixty, prim of mouth and manner, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a spinsterish bun. She had not given her name upon meeting Ophelia at the security desk. One of her shoes squeaked as she led the way, and her stockings brushed together with a swishing sound, an effect that she tried to minimize by walking slightly bow-legged.
Finally they went down a short passage, through the aide’s office, and into a heavily decorated room that bespoke the importance of its occupant. There was a desk the size of an aircraft carrier, very cluttered with papers and a winking telephone console. The furniture mostly comprised two winged leather armchairs and a tufted sectional sofa. A gas fire turned down low was flickering in the fireplace.
The Archbishop was conspicuous by his absence; his assistant seemed surprised at this, and hovered, unwilling to leave her charge unattended in case she might have designs on something of value that was small enough to secrete about her person, or a nose and eye for confidential documents. As they waited she maintained her silence and Kingsley Amis’s Edith Sitwell or lemon-sucking face of disapproval at being obliged to conduct a good-looking woman into a private meeting with her employer, as if Ophelia were responsible for arranging it.
To fill the time Ophelia went over in her mind the details of dinner the night before, when, in addition to being treated to a splendid meal, she and Effie had been entertained by observing the Archbishop getting mildly polluted and hearing a couple of risqué jokes that Effie said were new to her.
The women had been given a small flat for the night in a Church property that was reserved for the use of visiting dignitaries. When they arrived, in the late afternoon at London Bridge train station, a driver holding a sign was waiting for them in the forecourt, to save them having to change platforms and re-embark on the slow soul-tormented overground connection to Waterloo. The driver took them directly to their overnight accommodation in order that they might settle in, freshen up and prepare for that evening.
At the flat a housekeeper let them in. A welcome bouquet of flowers and a bowl of fruit were on the table in the living room, still wrapped in plastic. The housekeeper showed the pair the two small bedrooms and the tiny kitchen; and drew their attention to the fresh cartons of orange juice and milk in the fridge, and the bread and butter, and jams and marmalade, and the cupboard where the cereals and porridge were kept, so that they might make their own breakfast.
The housekeeper then departed, and the driver returned at six-thirty that evening to take them to Lambeth Palace, where dinner, he said, was to be served for His Grace and his two guests in an upstairs private dining room overlooking the river.
The waiter attending them, whose name was Beddoes, was disconcerted when both women declined the standard offer of sherry. Instead Ophelia asked for a White Lady, and Effie a Perfect Rob Roy, up, with a cherry. The gin and Scotch whisky were to hand; but the man had to spend some time on his knees with his head in the back of the drinks cabinet before emerging with dusty bottles of Cointreau, sweet and dry vermouth, orange bitters and a jar of maraschino cherries. He then went to the kitchen with a resigned expression to hunt for ice, egg-white, and lemon juice and peel.
When the waiter returned and as they watched him fumbling with a pamphlet on mixology, His Grace said good-humouredly, ‘I don’t think anyone has had either of those drinks since the last North American contingent was over. I’m surprised there’s anything left the way they were going at it.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘You know, we bishops take an oath that we aren’t wine-drinkers, which I have always interpreted as meaning not to excess…whatever that means. In the Service of Ordination and Consecration it says, “A Bishop then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous...” That’s a lot for any mortal to live up to, witness the…. Well, I’m not married, and I haven’t been in any brawls recently. But perhaps I ought to switch to drinking cocktails myself...not enough to get anointed, of course, any more than I already am.
‘Dash it, Bed
does, forget my usual sherry, this is a special occasion: I’ll keep Ophelia, and her friend of course, company by having a White Lady also. No, make it a Pink Lady. You’ve already got the egg-white, and I’m sure there must be some grenadine somewhere in your box of tricks. Pink but not scarlet, eh?’
Beddoes, who already looked on the verge of exhaustion, referred again to his booklet, went to the kitchen for double cream, and when he came back started fussing about with the percussive paraphernalia of measuring cups, ice, tongs, shaker, and strainer. About the only thing that he did not use was the soda siphon. Once the trio had their aperitifs, and Beddoes was mopping his brow with a napkin and looking longingly at the whisky bottle, they stood and watched the sun setting over the Thames.
Dinner began with an hors d’oeuvre of thinly sliced smoked wild salmon, with wedges of lemon and triangles of buttered brown bread, and optional sprinkles of capers, chopped egg, and diced red onion, accompanied by a nice Chablis; followed by Bœuf Bourguignon, an assortment of fresh vegetables and a mixed salad.
The red wine was delicious and in plentiful supply. His Grace announced, unnecessarily because neither woman cared, that it was a Gevrey-Chambertain Côte de Nuits pinot noir Grand Cru Burgundy, from the section of the vineyard as far away as possible away from Route N74, which was considered closer to Premier Cru status. It was also reckoned by those in the know as ‘seductive, soft, succulent, voluptuous, full of body and sex appeal, with good backbone and grip.’ The bottle had, he went on, ‘what oenologists call “good legs”: a quality that is as attractive in wine as it is in a…’.
Effie approved so much of the dessert, a Grand Marnier soufflé, that she asked for the recipe; it was brought to the table at the peak of its condition, which Oliver—as he insisted that they call him—described as ‘a moment as fleeting as a mayfly’s life on a chalk-stream’. That he could attest to, he said, because he had an old school chum, now a residentiary canon at Winchester Cathedral, who had introduced him to fly-fishing on the River Itchen courtesy of a worshipful local landowner.