Glittering Images by Susan Howatch Read Free Book Online Page B

think the clause permitting divorce for adultery was inserted into St Matthew’s Gospel in an attempt to correct the legalistic way in which the early Church had thoroughly misunderstood the teaching of Jesus –’
    ‘That’s Brunner’s theory, of course, but Brunner’s notorious for remodelling Christianity to suit the twentieth century –’
    ‘Brunner’s
reinterpreting
Christianity
in the light of
the twentieth century, and what’s wrong with that? Every generation has to interpret Christianity afresh –’
    ‘Bishop, are you saying that A. P. Herbert has a license to rewrite St Matthew?’
    ‘– and one of the outstanding aspects of Christianity is that Christ preached compassion and forgiveness, not an inflexible hardness of heart. How long were you married, Dr Ashworth?’
    ‘Three years. But –’
    ‘And during those three years,’ pursued Jardine, ‘did you have no glimpse of what the state of matrimony could be like for others less fortunate than yourself?’
    ‘That’s absolutely irrelevant to the theological point under discussion!’
    ‘You
were
happily married, I assume?’
    ‘Yes, I was – and that’s exactly why I’m opposed to debasing the institution of marriage by a set of fashionable divorce laws which go far beyond the teaching of Christ!’
    ‘It’s people who debase marriage, not laws – people who would keep a couple yoked together in circumstances which would have made Christ weep! Tell me, how long have you been a widower? It must be hard for you to remain single when you regard marriage as such a blissfully ideal state!’
    I hesitated. I was by this time very profoundly disturbed. I sensed I was losing control not only of the debate but of my inner equilibrium, the equilibrium which I had to maintain in order to be the man I wanted to be, and although I knew I had to terminate the conversation I could not see how to do it without a disastrous loss of face.
    ‘Well?’ demanded Jardine. ‘Why the long silence? Let me ask you again: how long have you been a widower?’
    I saw the trap he was setting to expose my hypocrisy but I saw too that there was no escaping it. Pride and prudence combined to make an outright lie impossible. In defiance I said finally, ‘Seven years.’
    ‘Seven years!’ The amber eyes widened as I gave him the answer he wanted. I felt as if my soul had been X-rayed. Nausea churned in the pit of my stomach. ‘You surprise me, Dr Ashworth! You talk so sanctimoniously about the institution of marriage yet apparently you have little desire to marry again! Is this because of a belated call to celibacy? Or are you perhaps not quite such a stranger to marital unhappiness as you would have us all believe?’
    He had tied me up in such a knot that I had no choice but to grab the sharpest knife to slash myself free. ‘I’m certainly no stranger to marital tragedy,’ I said. ‘My wife was killed in a car crash when she was expecting our first child, and I often think I’ll never recover from the loss.’
    There was a silence. The light went out of Jardine’s lambent eyes, and for a second I saw the grief mark his face as a memory seared his mind. Around the table no one moved. The room seemed suffocating.
    At last Jardine said, ‘I’m most extremely sorry, Dr Ashworth. I’ve no personal experience of losing a wife but I do know what it’s like to lose a child. Forgive me for trespassing so intolerably on what must be a very deep and private grief.’
    I was so conscious of shame that I was unable to speak. Jardine might not have exposed me as a fraud to his guests but he had exposed me as a fraud to myself, and I knew that to preserve my fraudulent mask I had taken the cheapest way out when I had had my back to the wall.
    I was still groping for composure seconds later when the ladies withdrew and Colonel Cobden-Smith immediately announced his intention of retiring to the smoking-room. Lord Starmouth offered to accompany him, and after helping