Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch Page B

aren’t you, which is always so terribly difficult, just as Browning says in the poem. Well, as I was saying —’
    ‘ Do sit down, Dido.’
    ‘ No, I won’t stay, Charles, I mustn’t interrupt your family gath ering for more than a minute, but I felt I simply had to tell you, as soon as I heard the news about poor dear Desmond, that I have it on the best authority from a very good friend in London that she saw Desmond at Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night last month, and of course you know what that means, don’t you, because no respectable person would normally be seen dead in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night.’
    ‘In that case what was your friend doing there?’
    ‘She’d just left a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.’
    ‘ Maybe Desmond was also emerging from an evening at the theatre.’
    ‘ Not with a young man in black leather, my dear. And my friend, who only wears glasses for reading and who met Desmond years ago when she did charity work for his East End mission — my friend tells me they were less than fifty yards from the public lavatories.’
    ‘My dear Dido!’
    ‘ I’m only speaking with the welfare of the Church in mind, Charles, and of course we all know Desmond was thrown out of the London diocese after being convicted of soliciting in a public lavatory —’
    ‘He was not convicted. He was arrested along with the drunk who took a swipe at him, but he wasn’t charged and the incident isn’t generally known. I don’t know who could have told you about it, but —’
    ‘Oh my dear, we all know, I can’t think how you convinced yourself that you could ever keep that kind of fact a secret, and to be absolutely candid, Charles, I can’t imagine how you ever dared take him on, particularly since you’re so rabid on the subject of homosexuals —’
    I tried to repudiate this slander but there was no chance. Dido had merely paused to draw a quick breath and had no intention of being interrupted.
    ‘ – but of course I do realise how soft you are on clergymen who have had nervous breakdowns, and the softness is your way of compensating, isn’t it, for that utterly ruthless line you take on immorality – no, no, don’t think I’m criticising you, my dear, quite the reverse, thank God at least one bishop takes a strong stand against immorality, that’s what I say! I’ve no time for all this silly permissiveness, and I said right from the beginning that Bishop John Robinson was up the creek when he spouted all that rubbish about a New Morality and gave silly young girls the scope to wreck their lives and go down the drain – and talking of going down the drain, I do hope poor dear Desmond can be eased into retire ment as soon as possible, because choirboys will be the next step, won’t it, and then you’ll wish you’d acted as soon as you knew he’d been seen in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night with a young man dressed in black leather. And talking of black leather –’
    The door of the study opened and in walked Lyle.
    ‘ Dido!’ she exclaimed. ‘I heard your voice as I came out of the kitchen – how sweet of you to call, but you must excuse Charles now because Michael’s paid us a surprise visit and they’re dying to talk to each other.’
    Almost panting with relief I escaped into the hall only to realise that the last person I wanted to face at that moment was Michael. I was still inwardly shuddering as the result of Dido’s reference to a ‘foreign drug-addict’, for I had long lived in fear that Michael, moving in Marina Markhampton’s fast London set, would dabble in drugs and wreck his respectable future with the BBC. I won dered what evidence Dido had for labelling Dinkie a drug-addict, but unfortunately I could not reassure myself with the thought that this was another remark generated by Dido’s taste for exaggeration. Dido could well know more about Dinkie than I did. Her two eldest stepsons – the sons of Aysgarth’s first marriage – also