by A. N. Wilson
None of us took her seriously. One reason was that, although Aberdeen is a city of getting on for half a million people – or it was before the Quake – it is – or was – in atmosphere more of a village really. It feels as if we all know one another, and it is rare, when two Aberdonians meet, for them not to discover some acquaintance in common. So an awful lot of us could remember her lessons at St Hilda’s. And even those Aberdonians who had never been taught by her had known people who were.
As I say, I’m afraid I had been NOT taking her seriously since I was sixteen, when I found myself in her English set. I used to keep a diary of her sad attempts to interest a roomful of unruly adolescents in the rarefied, beautiful mind of Mrs Woolf.
English with Badley Dreary. Hair grips in the woolly mop she calls her hair. Bright green granny-cardie. Jumble-sale floral dress. Grey knee socks. Crocs (also green). ‘This morning, we’re going to look at the way that . . . no . . . no, PLEASE . . . You must switch off your mobiles. Your phones, you must switch them OFF. Fiona – Jan – Rachael – PLEASE. Rachael, if you won’t put that phone away, I shall have to . . . I shall have to . . . Rachael, please, if you could put the phone away and tell us what we know about Mr Ramsay from the opening chapters which you will . . . QUIET EVERYONE! . . . you will surely have read by now . . . Well, after three weeks, I should have thought you could read a few short chapters. QUIET! Rachael, I did not catch that. [Roars of laughter] Say it again, Rachael . . . Well, now.’ Her sunburnt face freezes into a brave smile and yet the cheeks are pink with embarrassment and indignation. ‘I can’t imagine how you can draw that inference about Mr Ramsay. Well, it is true that Virginia Woolf knew some homosexuals . . . THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING A HOMOSEXUAL, Jenny, but I fail to see how you could think that Mr RAMSAY . . . No indeed. And we should never EVER use that word to describe such people . . . Because it’s . . . because . . . Steph, what is so funny? I think if you have found something to amuse you, you should share it with the rest of us . . . There are some words which intelligent people do not use, that’s why, Jan Kirkby.
Though we all spoke, and I wrote, about her as if she were a granny, she was miles younger than Mum. She was only in her thirties when I meanly transcribed her Virginia classes. I didn’t know then that she shared her house with George Eliot, a grey parrot whom she was trying to teach to recite, and a young graduate student working on Thomas Hardy called Barnaby Farrell. And . . . Hey, I thought I was meant to be the gossipy one, and here you are, wondering. The answer is yes. He told me when he and I were in bed together. Not only had she been his lover, they still were – very occasionally. If you’d told me that when we were all yelling our heads off during her To the Lighthouse class, I’d have thought it was grotesque, but once I’d grown up I could see her heartbroken hippy charm.
On her very first Sunday as Dean, Eleanor had spotted Deirdre Hadley in the Cathedral. Thin, almost worryingly thin, with blonde-greyish hair and a smile which appeared to conceal something. Deirdre, as I say, is one of our local members of Parliament. When she’s not on the campaign trail, or sitting at home teaching George Eliot to recite, you’ll often see her, walking in a kind of dream, in our beautiful Victorian Botanic Gardens in Gladstone Park. One of the things which made me so cruel about her when I was a kid was embarrassment. She lived quite near us in Harrow, a riverside suburb which, when Mum and Dad bought our little house, was really run-down but which little by little ‘rose’.
Even when we were giving Deirdre hell in the classroom, we recognized that, if you got her off the subject of that ruddy lighthouse and Mrs W’s stream of consciousness, she appeared to know every exotic tree and shrub, and to treasure them rather more than she did her perhaps too comfortable pupils.
Eleanor, being a principled person herself, was principled in a more subdued style. Her principles were clothed in politeness. So, she liked Deirdre while fearing an intensity, and held her therefore, from the first, at arm’s length. Eleanor’s dad often mused, during their Skype-colloquies, on the unpredictability of church congregations. What made some people attend on a regular basis, and made others into ‘occasional’ attenders? Deirdre’s whimsical blue eyes and her thin-lipped smile made her seem a dreamy child. If she had worn make-up, you would have felt disturbed, as can be the case when a little girl plays with her mother’s lip gloss or eyeshadow. The jumble-sale clothes, however, and the usually bare, slightly downy stick legs ending in crocs or Birkenstocks were old ladyish. When they appeared to be moving from the position of acquaintanceship towards something which might become a friendship, Eleanor had invited her to supper at the Deanery. The invitation, meant as a gesture of kindness, but borne also of a certain loneliness herself, and a feeling that they might have things in common – books at least – had caused flurry, not pleasure. After a number of unconvincing claims that the dates proposed were unsuitable, Deirdre had begun to mention dietary restrictions – Eleanor was not altogether surprised, Deirdre being one of those regular members of the Cathedral congregation who opted for gluten-free Communion wafers. But after a while, Eleanor began to draw the conclusion that she did not eat or drink anything, perhaps lived on air.
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat.
The dinner idea was dropped, though the pair had enjoyed a couple of walks along the banks of the Windrush, and after one of these Deirdre had consented to come back to the Deanery for refreshment in the kitchen. Tea and coffee having been refused, she opted for lemonade, and Eleanor had almost offered her a straw. She had sipped it very cautiously at first, in the way that children do who are afraid of an unfamiliar taste.
It was after she left teaching, and after Barnaby began his compensation for the Man Drought by taking on the conquest of the women of Aberdeen single-handed, that Deirdre’s interest in Animal Rights, and green issues generally, had come to the fore. She was not afraid. Even as a kid, I’d noticed her courage. While we were all taking the piss during her Woolf classes, she’d been unable to control us; but she had never shown fear. Now that she was a Friend of the Earth, and an activist, she had great boldness. Eleanor first noticed it after Deirdre had met Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Bishop Dionne’s three pugs. The Bishop had brought them to the Cathedral for the Animal Blessing Service which was held on the nearest October Sunday to the Feast of St Francis of Assisi.
Deirdre strode up to the Bishop and asked,
—Did you know that these pugs are in-bred?
—You’re beautiful, aren’t you? was Bishop Dionne’s response. If she had been addressing Deirdre, her words would have been true. The Pontiff, however, was cooing into Abednego’s ear (maybe Shadrach’s, who could be sure?).
—Brachycephalic dogs always are prone to breathing difficulties.
—Do you have reading difficulties, darling?
Dionne’s wit, like the Bishop herself, was on the heavy side.
—It is inhumane to breed brachycephalic dogs, and then to in-breed and in-breed so that they have flatter and flatter faces. They can’t BREATHE properly! When you think they are snorting and snoring in a charming way, they are gasping for BREATH!
Those who overheard the exchange began to realize that Deirdre was furious. She never raised her voice, though. From the educated, modulated tone, she could have been just talking to the Bishop about the flower rota.
Dionne gave her the brush-off. Suddenly showed a deep interest in a guinea pig that one of the choirgirls had brought along. The sight of the guinea pig made Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego splutter uncontrollably. Their protuberant eyes fixed on Fudge, the guinea pig, suggesting they would have liked to tear him apart, if they were able to open their jaws widely enough. All over their black, smooth, slobbery mouths and their sparse, black whiskers there were skeins of spittle. Those animal services for the kiddiz certainly brought out the red in tooth and claw side of Nature – more than they made one think of all things bright and b. or St Francis preaching to th
e song-birds – which, come to think of it, being Italian, stood a higher chance than most European birds of being netted, shot or ending their days encased in pastry. He might as well have preached to a crowd of sausage rolls.
Next day, and every day for a week, Deirdre stood outside the Bishop’s house with a placard. It was inscribed in gigantic italic letters, written with two fluorescent highlighters, one green one black.
PUGS ARE BRED TO CHOKE
She stayed there until Cavan Cliffe saw that a ‘story’ had been created. Then Deirdre came on Cavan’s radio show – Island Breakfast – and poured out all the stats: pugs and French bulldogs being bred as lapdogs for ‘SELFISH humans’. Her beautifully modulated voice, which we’d drowned out at St Hilda’s when she’d tried to read aloud from To the Lighthouse, now rang bell-like over every breakfast table in the Island.
—The Island is full of stray dogs, unwanted dogs, dogs in rescue homes. Why not ADOPT one of these dogs, who need your love, rather than wasting HUNDREDS of dollars breeding dogs artificially? Nature never MEANT SUCH CREATURES TO EXIST. They are human creations. The humans who do this think it is charming when their pugs snore – do they not realize that these creatures are gasping for BREATH? And we have a BISHOP, who is supposed to be a Christian, who has spent three hundred dollars EACH for these pathetic animals. The Bishop should surely be setting an example. To have brought those creatures to the Cathedral, on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, was tantamount to blasphemy!
Dionne was asked on Cavan Cliffe’s show to provide an answer. It wasn’t very sensible of her to have accepted the invitation. Her interview was a car-crash. She came over as smug, and blinkered. Everyone thought – you’ve got to hand it to Hadley: even when you don’t agree with her, she makes you think. Trouble is, she did not make us think hard enough. And even if we had, what would we have done? Evacuated the city before the Quake, and just left it to fall down empty, and without us? If we’re Trojan Women, she was certainly our Cassandra.
Later, we all came to know one another much better, and I realized she was one of those people who took up public causes because of private heartbreak. For most of the three years that Barnaby had been her lodger, he had also been her lover. Deirdre says that at first, they were really wonderful together, he was in love with her just as much as she with him, or seemed to be. The age difference is not that great – she is twelve years older than he is. In her quiet, strange way, she was always very matter-of-fact in the way she spoke of it. Said it was unrealistic to suppose that sexual intensity would last forever, but she would have been perfectly happy if this had evolved into quiet tenderness, the shared bed, the walk beside the Windrush, hand in hot, passionate hand. She deeply wanted his child. When his rampage through the female population of Aberdeen began, her heart cracked, but she could not be surprised. He was immature. He was vain. By all conventional standards he was beautiful, whereas her ethereal beauty was something which crept up quietly on you. Then you saw it and you could not forget it, in rather the way that Turner’s watercolours, when you have begun to see the world through his eyes, enable you to see beauty in supposedly bad weather – sun struggling to come through mists, grey clouds, yellow sun shimmering in morning fog. Deirdre’s beauty was like that, inseparable from ‘the eternal note of sadness’.
Eleanor often spoke about Deirdre to her father.
—Lesley Mannock thinks, if only she could get the young man to marry her!
—But, Dad, there’s Bar now, and the little boy.
Her father sighed.
—Lesley says, love will find a way.
—But Deirdre can’t MAKE him marry her.
—Well, we should pray for her.
There was an awkward little silence.
—I said . . .
—I know, Dad. I heard what you said.
Working alongside Bishop Dionne was undoubtedly the chief drawback of Eleanor’s job, but, unlike Digby, she suppressed feelings, swallowed contempt, and only ‘let off steam’ during her Skyped conversations with the canon. Dad always referred to Dionne as ‘the Pontiff’ and this helped a lot. She knew that if you were an Anglican, there had to be Bishops. They came with the territory. Whatever the drawbacks of Dionne, and of Brian, her Australian, golfing, businessman husband, they were not capable of blotting out in their entirety the benefits of the long Anglican tradition.
—Who alone workest great marvels . . . Dad would laugh, recalling how he had been ‘helped’ – a very Ronald verb – when he was in parochial life, by reciting the collect for the Clergy and People in the Prayer Book. Almighty and everlasting God, who alone workest great marvels: send down upon our Bishops and curates, and all congregations committed to their charge, the healthful Spirit of thy grace . . .
The author of the Prayer Book knew that it would indeed be a marvel if the Bishops and Curates could be so blessed, but it was something after which to aspire.
The great difference between Eleanor and Digby was that Eleanor accepted, as did her father, the possibility of divine help. She believed in God, whereas Digby did not. (Digby liked the joke, How do you define a religious maniac? Answer – Someone who believes in God. Another one she liked, she had seen printed on tee-shirts one day in the street market in Howley Street – ‘Too stupid to understand science? Try Religion’. Of course she did not share these jokes with Dean Eleanor Bartlett’s parishioners, such as the homeless to whom Eleanor took soup and comfort in the refuge centre she had opened in the Crypt – long before the Quake.) Most of those who saw much of Dean Bartlett, in or around the Cathedral, were either unaware of Digby, or only passingly aware of her. Most of the academics who enjoyed Digby’s seminars and lectures at the University, or who read her articles in the TLS, were what Eleanor’s father called ‘modern agnogs’, with no interest in religion one way or the other. The world is becoming more and more secular. The religious outlook is something most of us, especially my generation, simply do not begin to grasp. Eleanor was in this respect anomalous and Digby was normal. Apart from the religious divide, Digby and Eleanor held most stuff gently and ironically in common: a nostalgia for an England which no longer existed; exasperation with, but affection for, Oxford; a growing love of our Island, where they felt more and more at home; a love of the old canon, left behind in his modest flat. I was one of the few who saw them both – Digby in her world, Eleanor in hers.
The old Oswald Fish Cathedral, with its spire, and its stained-glass windows, and its choir in ruffs and surplices, twice daily singing their way through the repertoire of Prayer Book settings, from Merbecke to Howells, was a glorious thing in Tribal Eleanor’s eyes, an embodiment of what was best in the world. She saw that building for the first time when she came to Aberdeen with her Huia mother to meet her Huia granny. Both women had been teachers. Both had been baptized in the Cathedral. Ever afterwards in England, when Eleanor sang the evening hymn, she had thought of our Cathedral in Aberdeen.
The sun which bids us rest is waking
Our brethren neath the Western sky
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.
The hymn, with its tear-jerking tune, made her think of the mysterious time changes which steal upon the traveller as she flies from Europe to our Island, mysterious because somehow or another you do not merely fly into a different time zone – you actually seem to lose a day. She thought of the Anglican Communion spread all over the globe, a much-derided group of men, women and children, but forty million of them, trying, so far as she could see, to do good and to spread sweetness and light. The nickname for Anglicans in America was ‘The Chosen Frozen’. Eleanor happily identified with this. She was happy to be frozen, rather than responding to life with the often hollow expressions of emotion which were heard at Oscar ceremonies, in political speeches, in ‘misery memoirs’ and in broadcast interviews with ‘slebs’ who wanted to share their pain with the rest of the world. Behind the frozen exterior of dignified liturgy, seve
nteenth-century language, formal music and apparent unwillingness to be too dogmatic in religious definitions, there was a heart. Hearts which were exposed ceased to beat. The Chosen Frozen yet believed in the ragamuffin anarchy of the Gospels, the most revolutionary texts ever written, in which human beings are enjoined to die in order to live, in which human hierarchies are completely upturned, in which the meek inherit the earth, the mighty are put down from their seats, the poor have Good News preached to them and the rich go empty away. Who but God could have delivered such utterly life-changing messages to the planet? It was Trevor Huddleston, the monk who had challenged apartheid in South Africa with such wonderful consequence, who used to say that no more revolutionary text than the Gospel could be conceived.
It was so easy to mock Anglican wishy-washiness – did they or didn’t they . . . provide your own shopping list: believe in divorce; accept gay rights; believe in the Bible? Perhaps all the esoteric matters which threatened to ‘tear apart’ (the usual metaphor) this benign conglomeration of Churches – sexual morality of one sort or another being the one which caught the imagination of secular headline writers – really derived from different ways of reading the Bible?
Eleanor had never supposed that – for example – the words of St Paul were infallible, or that they could not be understood as coming from their own time and place. Those fellow Christians who took seriously his injunction that women should not be allowed to open their mouths in church (always assuming that Paul actually wrote the part of the letter in which this appears) seemed to be approaching the Scriptures in a way which – Eleanor believed – was simply wrong. So, she was not troubled by what St Paul or the Book of Leviticus said about same-sex relationships any more than she worried about the Jewish dietary laws with which much of the Bible was concerned.