Read Online Mystical Paths by Susan Howatch - Free Book Online Page B

Sandy-the-Greek-Freak, whose real name was Alexander. Elizabeth and Pip, Dean Aysgarth’s two offspring by his weird second wife, were still children at the time of Marina’s Starbridge party, and I knew little about them except that Pip was a pupil at the Cathedral Choir School and Elizabeth hadbeen nicknamed Lolita by various ordinands at the Theological College.
    ‘Your father was the Principal of the Theological College back in the ‘forties, wasn’t he?’ said Christian to me when we finally met that night. ‘I can remember him visiting us just before Father left Starbridge to take up the canonry at Westminster.’
    ‘Ah,’ I said, very young, very gauche.
    ‘And I remember Sandy telling me about you,’ pursued Christian. ‘“What’s the point of reading Homer," you said to him, "when you could read Shakespeare instead?" Very shocking that was to Sandy! But I thought: there goes a man after my own xenophobic heart — a rampant chauvinist who goes to bed wrapped in the Union Jack every night!’
    Everyone laughed as I tried to assemble a sentence which would prove I was no mental defective, but before I could speak, my friend Venetia exclaimed: ‘Stop teasing him, Christian! You don’t have to be xenophobic to prefer Shakespeare to Homer!’
    ‘No, but it helps.’ Suddenly he smiled at me and at once became the Oxford don who was well accustomed to socially inept undergraduates. ‘I seem to remember you’re reading divinity at the Other Place,’ he said kindly. ‘How are you getting on?’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘I read theology up at Oxford, although my special subject is now medieval philosophy. Going to be ordained?’ ‘Yep.’
    ‘Good for you. You’re a braver man than I ever was.’
    ‘Darling!’ said his wife reproachfully. ‘You can’t imply you’re lacking in courage just because you weren’t called to be a clergyman!’
    ‘The Devil only knows what I was called to be,’ said Christian, turning his back on her, and at once I was aware of tension, of darkness, of a tingling on the spine.
    Marina surged past me into the middle of the group. ‘Chris- tian, did I ever tell you I met Nicky when I was lying semi-nude in a punt on the Cam?’
    ‘I should think you met a lot of people, my love, if you lay around semi-nude in a punt on the Cam.’ He raised his voice to address a man who had begun to drift towards us from a group by the window. ‘Perry, come and meet the bravest man in this room — Marina’s soothsayer’s heading for a cassock and dog-collar!’ And to me he added: ‘Nick, this is Peregrine Palmer, a very old friend of mine.’
    ‘Hullo, Nick,’ said Palmer. ‘Nice to meet someone under twenty-five who’s committed to Jesus Christ instead of that crashing bore Elvis Presley.’
    ‘I’m mad about Elvis!’ cried my friend Venetia hotly.
    ‘I’m mad about you,’ said Palmer, ‘and how you could enjoy that kind of moronic music is quite beyond my power to imagine ...’
    An argument followed about whether rock-’n’-roll had replaced religion as the opium of the masses. I wanted to talk to Christian but still I was unable to devise a remark worthy of his attention. Meanwhile Christian himself continued to lounge against the chimney-piece, his glass of champagne in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and his wife continued to gaze at him adoringly. So did Marina. That was when I realised that the secret hero-worship of last summer had blossomed into a passion which I had no doubt was platonic. Katie obviously had no doubt either. She was quite at ease, and when Marina offered her a cigarette she accepted it with a smile. By this time the debate had progressed from a disagreement about Marx’s ‘opium of the masses’ to a slanging match about Sartre’s brand of existentialism, and I couldn’t help admiring Venetia. Refusing to conform to the conventional pattern of feminine behaviour, she spoke up to both men, remained unintimidated when Palmer tried to